Hello, Mango Deck

The young woman on the phone said, “This is Julie at Mango Deck. The fire alarm won’t stop going off, and I don’t know what to do.”

Wait, what?

“Julie let me know that this particular 100-year-old house was now known among the students of West Campus as “Mango Deck.” ”

As an Austin landlord, I’m used to getting calls at random hours about things like fire alarms and broken dishwashers. But I didn’t have a tenant named Julie, and I didn’t have any commercial properties. I told Julie she must have me confused with someone else, and I suggested she call 911 for the fire department. I didn’t think much of it.

A few minutes later, Julie called back, and this time she had more information. She told me she had put a smoking toaster outside to quiet the fire alarms, and she shared that she was subletting a room for the summer in a house that I owned. Perhaps most enlightening, Julie let me know that this particular 100-year-old house was now known among the students of West Campus as “Mango Deck.”

A rent house by any other name

I let Julie know we needed to get her paperwork in order so her sublet was legal—and so if a situation like this happened again, we’d all know each other. Then I searched “Mango Deck” online, and all the results went to one place—a bar in Cabo San Lucas that looks like a place I’d have liked when I was 21. While the rental house Julie was living in is green with orange trim, there isn’t anything else about it that strikes me as particularly tropical or ocean like, but I guess the name works.

Keep Austin mango

Over the years, there has been some custom Mango Deck artwork and a sign that have passed down with the house, which usually rents to friends of previous tenants. Usually they take a group photo together on the front porch with the sign, and more than one group has sent a holiday card from the house.

It takes two to mango

The famous Mango Deck sign currently hangs over the front door of the house.

Now that the name has caught on, I’m no longer surprised when people ask for the house by name. I’ve gotten calls from oilmen from Houston: “Uh, my daughter Kylie said I needed to call you about reserving the Mango Deck for her and her friends’ senior year” and campus area leasing agents: “Any chance Mango Deck is still available?”

I haven’t been to Cabo since this came up so I can check out the original bar to see if there is anything there that makes me think of a green and orange bungalow in Austin. I doubt there is, but now I really want a picture under their sign.