Potato Pals

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Así que sequieres provarlo que el grinch preparo, bea McDonald's y veras lo que tremor, en novo grinch meal, ya en McDonald's. In McDonald's participants,

parapa pa pa.

He can play your food. I like it.
It's his name, not mine. It's my podcast.
You heard him.

We're walking around again.

It's another walkie-talkie.

We should trademark that.

Walkie-talkie?

I think they might all be walkie-talkies at the way this is going. I was telling my wife after something about the recording, and we've done how many episodes of Amma did we do?

73. 73.
Yeah. And so this is our third.
Pretty good. This is close enough, right? Yeah.
So 70-ish, and then we've done, this is our third of these.

And I had more fun doing that walkie-talkie than any of the other ones for some reason.

So, yeah, same. There's something great about walking around.
I don't know, it brings a different energy. So today we went to Rudy's on Lamar, what is this, like across from the Central Market?

I never knew there was a parking garage down here. Me neither.
No, me either. Never needed it.
This is on Marathon Street, right?

It's a weird street. So we're just gonna walk around the area here and let's see what happens.
You guys familiar with this? Yeah, I used to ride my bicycle around here a lot. I like the neighborhoods.

A few years ago,

I did something really stupid and I fractured my foot and I had to buy

a boot for my foot right over here. I guess that's where that orange theory is now.
There was like a... That's their regional offices, by the way.

When did you, how did you break your foot or fracture your foot?

I was at, I'd gotten a haircut and I was leaving the barbershop and they were like three or four steps down to go down from there to the parking lot.

And I was texting, I was like using my phone or something. I wasn't paying attention.
And I thought I'd done all the steps, but there was one more I hadn't accounted for.

So I kind of tripped and fell and just like landed awkwardly on my foot and it fractured my right foot. Let's go this way.
And, you know, I did that thing where

And I fell down, got super embarrassed, so like I popped back up and tried to play it off like nothing happened.

But then my foot was in incredible pain, so I fell down a second time. No!

But at least your hair looked good. Yeah, at least it did.
So I had to wear a boot for like eight weeks or something. Man, I have no memory of that.
Uh-uh. What year was that?

That was like 2015, 2016, maybe. Oh, wow.

Probably 2015, if I have to guess. We were definitely at stage five.
Huh. Jeff, you ever broken bones?

Not really.

I mean, I had my jaw rebuilt, right? So it was like spot into pieces. There's lots of bones broken.
Yeah, that's a bunch, but it's done on purpose. But yeah, it was an on-purpose break.
Yeah.

I don't... I mean, I think I broke a toe a long time ago.
Right. And I'm pretty sure it's still broken because it's been hurting now for about six years.

And I can't walk barefoot sometimes. Oh, wow, really? Yeah, it's that whole thing.

You got to put a boot on it. Yeah, maybe I should.
Maybe eight weeks of a boot might have saved me six years of misery.

But no, other than that, maybe. Maybe Toe.
Now, how about you?

No, nothing broken. I think it would be gross to break something.
I wouldn't want to do it.

This is exactly where I've got my boot.

Well, it was like a medical equipment store before. It's weird because there's like a bunch of medical supply stores right here.
I guess this is the hospital so close. Yes.

But I'm with you, Jeff. That time I fractured my foot, that's the closest I've come to like breaking a bone.
Really? Yeah, and I guess technically it counts, but it wasn't like I had to put a cast on.

It wasn't. Did you wear a boot? It was just a pain in the ass.

Yeah, like I've never had a plaster cast in my life. I had to have a cast on my hand after I had surgery on it, but that was because I ripped up a bunch of tendons.
Yeah, the bones were fine.

The odd thing was the doctor put an e-collar on him, too.

He just wouldn't stop chewing at it. So he said if I could go two days without chewing on it, he'd let me take it off, but I couldn't.
So I had to wear it for a month.

What are you gonna do?

What's with palm trees in Austin? Why is that something that people are trying this right over here? Uh, yeah,

I don't know.

I guess I mean hot as shit, I guess. They they are down on like the Texas coast, right? Like, they haven't been corpus and shit.
Yeah, I guess. Here it's just so dry.

Like, we go through periods of such severe drought. Yeah.

I can't imagine

that they would do well. Well, then it freezes and they all die all the melt.
And then it's like, oh, I guess we'll just replant these. Like, that's the plan? LA stopped doing it, right?

They said they're just not going to be able to do it.

I believe so, yeah.

I think they said that

it was like the cost and the maintenance and everything for like a non-native species was just like why are we for a tree that doesn't want to be there? Yeah, exactly.

They're filled with roaches, right? This little

is that true?

I think they're just like roach motels. This little compound right here at the corner is so cool.
It's like three different houses. It was for sale a couple years ago for way too much money.

But it'd be neat if you

this is like regulation household.

If you want to have like your little regulation compound, you got your main house right here and you got your little garage, and you got your sideways house going that way.

That's the studio, you know. Yeah.
And that's, I mean, it all makes sense.

I don't know if I've ever been on this particular little street that we're on. I definitely.
If you take a left here, it cuts out to 38th and a half street. Okay.

Right there where the hospital, all that stuff is. Yeah, I've been this way.

Yeah, I've come down this way. There's two little inlet streets that come right here.

This is cool. Is that a volleyball net in the front yard? Looks like it.
That's awesome. Man, I left the volleyball in the car.

I saw the dumbest thing yeah earlier I was heading over to where we were gonna meet up and I was driving down a street to

to get over to the highway and a big tree had fallen over into the street like one of these that you see here I don't know what had happened big branch fell over it was blocking both directions no one could get around it and it was very visible the street was very straight I could see it coming so as I'm approaching I think well I'm not gonna get around that so Doing the logical thing, I turned off onto a side street and worked my way around.

Uh-huh.

But I I felt like I was the only person who did that. Every other person on the street just continued going, pulled up to the tree, and then just stopped.
Like, what do they think is going to happen?

Right. Then like you see people like starting to put it in reverse or starting to try to bust a UE.
It's like,

you saw it was there. Yeah.

Did you think you were going to honk at it and it was going to move?

Get out of the way.

I'm coming through. It was just so bizarre to watch.

I don't know, like they're just like,

almost like you're driving on instinct or like a lemming or something. Where it's like, I'm driving, this is the street I'm on, that's where I need to go.
Well, there's no other option.

That happened the other day when President Joe Biden was in town and you couldn't drive anywhere. But boy, people thought they were just going to jump on the freeway.

Yeah, to be fair, a couple people did. This is one of the uglier houses in Austin, I think.
You think so? Super 90s. I mean, it's huge and fancy, but you get a good look at it.
It's fucking weird.

It's just, it's like that wood. Or I'm sorry.
Like, look at that one on like the outside. Oh the top is really weird.

Yeah, and it's actually weirder further in like if you go to the other side you can't see the entrance is bizarre. Is that like a

alcove like a balcony at the top? It looks yeah, it could be yeah like a weird balcony. Let me take a picture.
That's one of those artistic 90s house early 2000s houses like one of the

one of the OGs of that era, I think. Weird.
Yeah. Very weird.

I love how shady it is through here, but whoa, a stick almost hit Jeff.

That's why I've been to Gavin once.

Where's Future Jeff? Wait a minute.

But like,

if I lived in this much shade all the time, I think I'd go crazy. Why is that? It's just there's no sun hitting you.
Like,

there's no sun hitting you directly on so many of these houses. Like, so many of them are just permanently shaded.
That's great for your AC, for your electricity. I bet it's great.

It's bad for my mental health. I bet it would make me nuts.

I bet it was bad for almost every one of these houses two and three years ago during the freezes oh yeah yeah there's nothing would melt it would all just hang also all these trees just fell on their

I assume just fell right on their roofs yeah heavy because you're right every house is covered by a giant limb yeah and these trees are weak as shit yeah it's really really shady through like this whole neighborhood they get deprived of water in the summer which weakens them and then at winter they don't have the

it's what happened the last couple years they don't have the strength to handle the weight of all the ice oh is that right because they've been essentially sapped of of their energy throughout the year.

That tree I saw this morning didn't even take a freeze. It was a normal day.
Yeah. Fucking half of it fell off.
Yeah.

We'll go with Ramsey Park here in a second. Oh, that's good.
That's your park.

We figured out our situation for paying, and it worked. Yeah, it did.
How are you feeling about it, Gus? Yeah, it's not great. We need to tool with it a bit.
We need to figure it out. So we got chalk.

Gus has chalk-resistant tires. Yeah, Gus didn't love drawing on his car with chalk.
I'm gonna have to wipe that off. That's what I was.
Yeah, that's yeah, it's not hard to do. I thought it was.

It was hard to get the chalk out there. Yeah.

You had to get it started on the ground.

So now I just got to carry chalk in my car? I guess. I mean, we can leave it

with the microphones or something. Yeah, we'll do that.
I mean, that's like the best we can do. Nobody can expect you to carry chalk.
It's dangerous to keep chalk in your car as hot as it gets here.

Yeah. I mean, the chalk.
Spontaneous

chalk.

Does it melt? Does chalk melt? Yeah. It does.
Lava. What? Is lava chalk? It's melting rocks.

Did they say chalk? Melted rocks? What the fuck?

This is like talking to Gavin.

Is chalk rocks? Yeah. Chalk's rocks.
Okay.

I'm not a part of this conversation. I'm looking at houses.
Chalk's absolutely rocks. Yeah, this looks like the most LA home in Austin.
This guy right on the left? Yeah, that's right here.

The Spanish-style town. Yeah, absolutely.

When I think of owning a home, that's what I think, like in my head, that's what it looks like because that's just what houses look like to me yeah

like growing up that's just it oh here's that solar white and stucco adobe and everything

uh but guess ended up paying for our delicious meal it was good we uh we went and got the uh rudy's baked potato that's why we're at rudy's i guess i didn't mention that earlier um love the big potato i feel like you know like i mentioned we went to the one here on lamar This Rudy's been open for a couple of years.

I think back in the day, Jeff and I used to always have to go to the one out by Barton Creek Mall off at 360. To this day, when I think of Rudy's, the image of Rudy's is that location.
Is that right?

Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Wow. Oh, yeah.
100%.

I could not begin to imagine how many times I've eaten at that location. This is the start of Burnett.
Burnett starts here. Yeah.

Oh, but then this one opened a couple years ago. Much more central located.
But I feel like, I mentioned this to you guys over while we were eating our potatoes.

I feel like when that one first, when the one here in Lamar first opened, it didn't taste the same as the other locations. I don't know if they were going through like

growing pains or just like launching or what was going on. It wasn't as good.

I feel like I remember there was a thing about that. Like, they weren't cooking their food there.
They were bringing it in at first or something. They had the cooker set up.

It tastes the same now, though. Yeah, now it's totally fine.
Now it's like every other location. That's the thing with Rudy's.

It is super consistent. It doesn't matter what, look, at least in Austin, all locations I've been to,

Austin, New Bronffos, all on 35. Doesn't matter which one you go to.
Eric, I'm going to ask you a question about Rudy's and BBQ

because it has been a major part of my life for the last 30 years. Yeah.

And whether I wanted it to be or not, right? And

it's so synonymous with here and Texas and all that stuff. Oh, for sure, yeah.
But you're from California. Yeah.
Was

barbecue a big deal growing up or in California? And was it like when you thought barbecue, did you think of what Texas barbecue is? Or was it different?

Was it when someone said barbecue, what came to mind? Yeah, what comes to mind? Because when Alabama, it was like always this like sloppy, saucy ribs and shit that I wasn't crazy about. Huh.

I wasn't a huge barbecue fan until I came here. I wasn't a huge barbecue fan until I came here either, but it was not a thing.
Like in San Diego, there are places that do it.

There are like Phil's barbecue in San Diego is like the barbecue spot. They have like a couple of locations.
It's good.

And then you come out here and you have barbecue anywhere and you go, oh, I didn't know what it was supposed to be. I get it now.
What about the top gun place? You go get barbecue there all the time?

No, not all the time.

Would go to

a vision doctor who worked on the Top Gun movie and had the Top Gun movie playing all 24 hours a day on a TV in his office. Really? Yeah, it was pretty cool.
That's a proud American right there.

But when I think of barbecue, it's what we got like today. Like, it's brisket.
It's

bad stuff. So did Texas change your opinion? Like, do you eat barbecue differently now?

I love barbecue now. yeah like before i was like oh i don't really care whatever and then now it's like oh damn dude like

the the thing about it is

it's so good

out here that

the like worst of it like you know i wouldn't say rudy's like the worst of it but man that's like the most baseline

like oh it's like the same at all like their locations it's good and then everything above that is like man this shit is awesome yeah but i got no problem going to Rudy's all the time and just getting that because it's so good.

It's very equivalent to like fast food barbecue, right?

You go in, you get it, you know what you're getting. It's the same all the time.
Oh, you, yes, yeah. The consistency is the fast food.

It's a little inconsistency, but I would say it's way better than fast food. Oh, dude.
Completely agree. Even though it is very fast food.

But the nice thing about Rudy's, and we've always said, we've said this for years, is you go to Rudy's because it's consistent and you know you're going to get an A minus probably. Oh, for sure.

Every day. Yep.

whereas if you drive to lockhart and you catch smitties or chryses on an off day you've sunk an hour and 10 minutes of driving into a b minus which is soul crushing yep when you when you want

amazing texas yeah it's like when people come here and visit if they've never been here before i take them to like terry black because it's you know it's just south of the river and it's right next to the palmer events center and it feels like austin and you wait and then you eat there and it's like wow this is really good and then when they've been here a couple of times they just just go, you just want to go to Rudy's.

And they go, yeah. And they eat it.
And they go, this is fucking good. Yeah.
There's plenty of other stuff you can do with that save time. Exactly.
Yeah, you save it. Four hours of line time.
Yeah.

And that to me is how much is your time worth? Because, man. That being said,

for people that hear about how crazy the lines are and say it's not, no food can be worth it and stuff. And I tend to agree.

If you can get your hand on that level of barbecue,

Interstellar, supposedly, I've never had it. Valentina's, I think, is gone through some rough times, but like Fleisse Franklin or La Barbecue,

you absolutely should

drop everything you're doing to eat it. It's so fucking good.
I've only had Franklin one time. It's just

date kept from us. It was during COVID, and I had a friend, like, I guess they were doing like online orders or whatever.
And he got the online order. He's like, come over.
I got this.

Let's fucking do it. And we ate a bunch of Franklin.
I went, that's awesome. I would not wait eight hours in like this.

I used to do that sometimes for the salon girls back in the old days, right around the the same time, because you'd have to get like too much for one person or one family. Yeah.

But still, you could get it, and it was easy. You just drive it and they put it in your trunk and you drive off.
Yep. And so I would go drop it up there.

Do you guys want to grab a bench over here and chill for a minute? Yeah, let's do it. This is nice.
Yeah, I would like some shade.

Yeah, no kidding. The shit we were talking about shade earlier.
I could go for some right now. I talk no shit about shit.
Flowers wilting. But the thing about

the thing about Rudy's is it's so consistent. Like, I didn't know what barbecue turkey was.

Like, I thought turkey was just whatever until I had, like, Rudy's, and I went, oh, this is fucking, this fucking rocks. I don't think they have a single bad thing on the menu.

No, there's not a single thing where I would say, don't get that. No, they had.
No, absolutely not. I'm not going to put this on here.
Jalapeno

cheese brat thing or whatever. They're a jalapeno cheddar sausage.
Dude, it's so good. That's the best thing on the menu.
It is.

People will say it's brisket. But I think that jalapeno cheddar sausage and honestly the prime rib.
Yeah. It's

don't usually order it. Bernie would always get it on, like, when we'd have like a, I don't know, like a weekend get-together.
He would always get one. It's so fucking good.

Their prime rib is so fucking good, and you forget about it. They do something with brisket that, you know, I feel like we should talk about.

People, sure, sunglasses, people who aren't from here, there's ants all over this thing,

are going to find maybe a little strange. We'll order that one.
Yeah.

You can buy.

When you order brisket, you can order regular brisket. Oh, yeah.
Lean brisket or moist.

Moist. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
yeah. And moist just means uh fatty.
Yeah, like all that fat has just melted.

And you get the burn-ins, too. Yeah, typically.
Oh, and boy, it's fucking good. Yeah, I always go for the moist whenever possible.

Now, we talked about this a little bit, but you said that you're like vegetarian mostly like weekdays, and then on the weekend, you kind of like go for it or whatever.

You broke it in the middle of the week for

content, baby. Yeah, hell yeah.

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Can I ask a favor? Sure. Will you guys be my potato pals? Oh, fuck yeah.
Okay. Wait, wait, wait, what does this entail? So I know exactly what he's getting at.

What I found out, because I went to dinner with Jeff the other day, and I brought up going to get this potato. And then

Jeff's wife doesn't like baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, any potatoes. Salad.
Yeah. She doesn't like the consistency of potatoes.
She only likes them when they're more crunched than potatoes.

So like a crinkle fry, waffle fry,

very overcooked tater tots, and very overcooked hash browns are the only things she'll touch. That's right.
Wild. Yeah.
And so it's so weird because potato was probably the predominant

ingredient to every meal of my childhood. Oh, yeah.
Like potato was served in some form or another, especially growing up in Alabama. Potato's cheap and easy.
Cheap and very cheap and easy.

And we had mashed potatoes probably five days a week when I was growing up. Her family was the opposite.
They never touched potatoes. They don't fuck with potatoes.
They're ricey. They're in that.

There's either

lives in the woodlands.

There you go.

You either, I think that you're either rice people or potato people. No, I don't.
We definitely weren't rice people growing up. I never had rice.
No. Very rarely.
And so

I guess that's where the break.

We had Spanish fries. That was really it.
We had Spanish fries. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, yeah.

I'm not to perpetuate any stereotypes. No, no, no.
No, please go ahead. Perpetuate.
No, but me too. Like, where do you land on tortillas?

We had that, but dude, a baked potato where you just like, I'll just stab this with a fork and then I'll throw in the microwave and this thing's ready. And you just, we were talking about like

mashed potatoes are like such a perfect form of the food, but that's why I like a baked potato because it's like having mashed potatoes in a little container. Yeah.
And oh, with none of the effort.

Zero. That's the thing.
And that's zero. It's like a soup and a bread bowl.
It is. It's like a soup in a bread bowl.
It is. It's a potato bowl.
Yeah. Yeah, it's a mashed potato bowl.

And here's why I need you guys to be my potato pals because I learned later in life to like a baked potato. Growing up, I thought they were boring.
I thought they weren't a sexy potato to me.

It was always like a cheap version or like a quote-unquote healthy version of a mashed potato, which I much preferred. And so I ignored them until probably my mid-30s, late 30s.

And now I'm married to a woman who won't look at them, and I just don't have access to them in my life.

We finally have the technology to improve baked potatoes, and you're left wanting. Yeah.
I know, I know. And that's why I want to have my potato pals.

And that technology is smoking it, cutting it open, slamming it with all the cheese and sour cream and butter you can find, and then topping it with brisket. Listen, that's a

there was so much.

The baked potato at Rudy's is the best value of delicious to dollar you can get anywhere because the potato by itself fully dressed is like six bucks.

And then if you want to throw a meat on there, like we got a brisket, it's like 10. Yeah.
And you get as much brisket as you would get if you bought like a sandwich for 14 bucks.

Yeah, it's definitely a sandwich amount. Yeah.
And the potato is loaded, like you said, with tons of butter, cheese, if you want sour cream, chives, all that shit. Yeah, and it's just so much.

Like, I'm not saying like 10 bucks is super cheap, just like the cheapest meal you can get. I'm just saying the amount of food you get and the quality of food you get for $10 is crazy.

Cause I mean, you, I mean, that's like the big thing, right? Like McDonald's, you can't even get like a Big Mac meal for $10. Yeah, yeah.
Me and Gus split one.

We ate the whole thing. I'm

perfect full. I feel so good.

It was so fucking good. Every bite was like, God damn.
And then somehow there was a mystery fork.

Someone put a fork in there. We got halfway through eating our potato and then went, why is there a fork sticking out of our potato?

Now, you might be thinking, oh my God, somebody who was making this potato left a fork in there. No.

One of us stabbed a fork straight up and down into the potato and then we just didn't see it as we were. We were walking around.

It was like, we were like those drivers who didn't see the big branch

eating around a fork that was standing straight up in the middle of our potato. You guys have a fork one.
It was crazy. And we just looked at it and went, where'd this fork come from? And guess what?

I don't know. I assumed it was your fork.
And then I looked in your head and you had a fork. We both had forks.
Then you had a fork and it was like, what happened here?

And then it didn't matter because we just took it out and then kept eating. There was no hesitation.
Just went, oh, that's fine. One of us put it in there and we just didn't use it.
Absolutely.

What's up, man? Did we record an Anna here?

Yeah. We did, right? We went to Stinson's coffee shop, which is on the other side of this park, and got coffee and walked over here and sat somewhere over there.
I think, yeah, we were. We drove.

We were walking over here. Didn't drove, man.
We were in that, right? Isn't there like a little covered? Yeah, yeah. There's like a little pavilion thing on there.

We just got like the weirdest sense of deja vu and realized we had done this before. Yeah.
Is this our first repeat location? Oh, we did figure eight twice. Wow.
Those were different figure eights.

Very different figure eights. Yeah, this is the first location that we've been to twice.

Completely uncomfortable. Yeah, no, this was totally by accident.
Yeah.

We just kept walking and then ended up here. I was getting ready to turn around.
I was like, man, this is, it's hot.

I'm glad we stopped because it's not like last summer where we're in the shade and the breeze is not killing you. No, I'm not actually cooling down.
The breeze feels good in the shade and it's nice.

Yeah. But that walk back is going to be pretty warm.
But whatever. I'm not worried about it.
But we'll walk back as the crow flies. We meandered over here.
Yeah,

absolutely.

This is going back to something I talked about last week. This week, you know, it's hot.
Last week I talked about how cool it was and how nice it was. This week is,

we are back at average highs for summer. Yes, average highs.
This is how summer is supposed to be.

It's like, it's hot, but you stop in the shade, you're fine. It's doable.
It is. It's not like we're in Phoenix.
The high is 95 today, which I think is probably average. The low is 78.
Yeah.

And it's 92 right now, and it feels like 92 without being like brutal.

It's supposed to be 96, 97. Then it starts getting it like Saturday.
It's supposed to be like 99. Yeah.
Hot, but like not insane.

And then hot on Sunday. But it's the difference between 99 and 109.
Exactly. It's such a difference.

It's so much more than 10 degrees. It's a huge difference, especially in Austin where the breeze is so hard to come by.

Or when you do have it, it's like a blow dryer. Yes.
The gentle breeze. Growing up in San Diego, I'm just so used to, oh, there's just airflow.
Like all the time.

There's just always a wind that's blowing through. You don't get that here all the time.
So, like, when it's happening right now, it's like, oh my God, it feels so fucking good.

And you can survive this weather. But boy, when it's 108 and there's no breeze and you just go, huh, it's like we're in an electric blanket all the time.

It's it's back to a summer where you can enjoy it on the margins. Like I went for a bike ride this morning at 9 a.m.
Yeah, and it was breezy and gorgeous.

And tonight at about 11, I'll walk the dog for 45 minutes or maybe 10.

Maybe 9.30 or so.

And it'll be awesome. Like, it'll be fucking gorgeous and wonderful.
And then you just, you know, in the daytime, you look at a computer. I've been walking the dog around 8, and it's been awesome.

It's been so nice out. You're a big dog walking guy now.

I love walking the dog now. I do too.
I'm all about walking that dog.

I'm taking that dog. I'm walking that dog.
My old dog, my old dogs

were too old. Yeah.
So they couldn't walk. This dog, he fucking, he can't stop.
Down the walk, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

My dog doesn't need to walk, but he has like a backyard that he kind of hops around in or whatever.

But he likes going on the walk, and then he comes home and he pants so much because he's like, We've really walked like a mile or whatever that my wife is like, is he okay?

And I'm like, Yeah, this is just what a dog does. Yeah, this is he's getting exercise.
He's not used to that. Yeah, yeah, he's not a couch potato.
No, exactly.

Uh, can I, I'm gonna, can I nerd out for a little bit here? Please allow me, if I may. I was curious, you mentioned about like the breeze in San Diego and how it was always wind blowing.

I started really thinking about that the other day. Uh-huh.
Like, why is it when you're by the ocean that you get that sea breeze?

And I finally realized, maybe I'm an idiot, maybe everyone else knows this and it's common sense, but it finally clicked to me why sea breeze is a thing.

The sun does not heat water at the same rate that it heats land. So the air over land gets hotter faster than the air over water.
So the air over land begins rising, you know, hot air rises. Yeah.

So then there's almost like there's less air on the ground. So then the cooler air from the sea puts you in place.

It just never really blows hard enough where we're going to get, you know, we get like little dust doubles and everything, but it was never really hot enough to like, or cool enough with like the hot air to be like a disaster because everything's gentle.

It doesn't get hot, hot, hot. So like the hot, hot air isn't crazy, crazy hot and the sea breeze isn't crazy, crazy cold.

It's just all medium air sort of together and you get it blowing in constantly. It rocks.
It is so, oh, it's great.

Now, see, I always just assumed it was just because there's no trees in the ocean to slow it down

buildings. And so it gets to build up wind speed and then it hits the land and it pushes in.
And the further inland you get, the further obstructed it is. It's like friction.
Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, he thought that it was God blowing on the ocean, and then when it rained, it's his tears. And

yeah, the marine layer and that like sea breeze and everything is why it's so easy in San Diego

all the time. It's so nice.
I mean, when you guys would come for Comic-Con, which just passed at the time of this recording, Comic-Con was a summer last week.

I thought I'd never go there again. Me too.

When you guys would come, that was the

ideal time for like summer vacation because people will come in June, but we have crazy June gloom where it just, the marine layer comes, like rolls in and doesn't burn off coastally. It just stays.

So it's just gloomy, overcast all day, every day, like all through June. July rolls in, it starts getting hot.
So all that stuff burns off around 10.

And then you're at the beach and it starts getting hot and everything. And it's fucking great.
The last the best. The last time I was out there was 2019, the last pre-COVID Comic-Con.

I've not been back in five years. But man, it's

it was nice. That was a good trip.
Yeah, you recommended I go out to what was it? Ob oh yeah, Ocean Beach, dude. Obi Rock.

Yeah, it's awesome. It's it would be a really cool place to live.
Way too expensive. Yeah, I looked at it.
I was like, this place is nice. I pulled up like Redfin Hawaii.
I was like, oh man, this is.

It's brutal now. Yeah, yeah.
It used to just be where it's like, hey, what's up? Are you a burnout? Yeah. Come on down to Ocean Beach.
And you're like, all right, cool.

What were you doing at Comic-Con in 2019? I think I was there too, but we were

on the Warner Brothers boat. Yeah, we had to do content on the Warner Brothers boat.
Oh, I was on it with you. Yeah.
Yeah. That's right.
We did that together. That's what it was.
I was producing it.

Yeah. And then I was out there with Drew Saplin, and we put it all together and everything.

And then on the last day when we were breaking it all down, he wanted to just pack it up and get like back to the car and take all this stuff back. And he's like getting all frustrated or whatever.

And I'm like, no, we don't have to call a car. We don't have to get anything.

We'll have the boat take us across the harbor and then it'll drop us where the car is parked because that's where we unloaded or whatever. And he's getting all frustrated or whatever.

And it takes like an hour and then it finally goes. And I remember being out in the harbor with him.

The bartender gave us a bottle of bourbon that he mashed blackberries into that he didn't end up using for whatever the thing was. So he gave that to us.

We're drinking it on the boat in the bay and dolphins were jumping around the boat and the breeze was cooking and everything. And he just went, I just want to tell you that I was wrong.

I think about it all the time.

It was like the last great time that I really had in San Diego where I went like, this is why people come here. It was that being on a hornblower cruise and

the sea breeze is kicking and everything. I don't know that I've still had that experience.
Let's go. Fuck you.
It's always just a bunch of people pushing by me in fucking costumes. Dude, let's go.

We did that year on the boat. That wasn't bad.
Like, we weren't able to.

Yeah, you didn't have to go in. It was just on the boat.

All I remember about that is that guy telling us to piss out of a second story window.

How liberating it was.

I forgot about that.

I think that got cut

from the final version. That's what I got.
That was cool as hell. I don't think that made it.

Let's go to San Diego. Let's do one of these things over there.

Let's do it on a hornblow Eric's. Eric's turf.
Get a brunch. Okay, here's what we do.
Yeah.

We all get in a car. Yeah.
We divide up the tire. We drive to the airport.
Whoever's got the most tire on the ground, we have to go in and buy plane tickets.

That person has to to buy two plane tickets to San Diego. Here's what we do: fucking crazy.
We asked Nick to figure out how much money this podcast makes from

DIA. Uh-huh.
And

DII. D-I-I-directly integrated ads, direct ad integration.
I think they're both correct. Dynamically,

dynamic ad insertion, dynamically inserted ads. Dynamic ad insertion provides dynamically inserted ads.

So see how much money we make out of D-A-I-A-A-A.

And then just use that as our plane pool. We're going to have to make this podcast for five years.
Yeah, yeah, we can save money by having a little while fly us there. Yeah.

No, that is not a cheaper way. No, come on, you can do it.
I can do it. That's not, that is not a cheaper way.

It would also take fucking forever. Yeah.

It would be like driving a car there. It'd be faster, but it would not be pleasant.
I mean, if it's like a couple hundred, like a hundred bucks a month, we'll get there in like a year. Yeah, right?

We just watch the fairs. Easy.
We can all share a hotel room. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We can do it. We can do it old school.
We can do it 2004 style.

We'll just go stay at Eric's parents' house, they can go. Oh, they would totally be fine with it.
They'd be like, Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's called Rocco.
Yeah,

Rocco would not be okay with it. Rocco would say no, and oh, it can, it has to be you, yeah, yeah,

yeah. Sean would say yes, but he would also not have room for us, but but he would have promised it before he thought about that.
It would be really good.

Uh, I would love to go to San Diego with you guys and do something for like two days,

like fly in,

burritos, go to the beach, go on a hornblower cruise, like around the bay, all that stuff. Like, I think that would would be so killer.
I would fucking love to see Eric Badour's NFT. Yeah.
Oh, dude.

Oh, it would be a blast. I love San Diego.
It would be a blast. I would have so much fun.
You're selling me on this. I think it'd be great.
You should look into this. Yeah.

Legitimately look into it and see how we can make it. I think we should make it happen like in a January timeframe.

Just like really peak tourist season. Yeah.

Jeff looks concerned. I'm totally concerned.
No, I was off of a different idea. I was trying to think if we were there for three days, could we do a season?

A season of the show? Like a mini season? Do you like four episodes?

Oh, do you like four episodes there oh yeah absolutely yeah oh yeah there's so many coffee places we could go to that i want to go back to yeah uh we can go to we could do a whole burritos in the beach thing we could do one on a hornblower cruise we could go record shopping in san diego whoa burritos and beach yeah

yeah oh we go definitely go record shopping We could time it so we can go see probably my friend's bands play and then hit the neighborhoods and walk around. Oh, yeah.
Hit up a top gun tour.

You can do a top gun tour. That's right.
You can go to Miramar. You can look at it.
And then you can go to...

There's a place called Brewski's. I think it's called Brewski's Barcade.
And we found out about it after, like right after it opened, me and my friends were like, oh, this is fucking sick.

It's a free play arcade. Like, we don't have to pay to get in, but it's a bar and arcade.
So we're like, oh, we'll go get like some beers and play like these arcade games or whatever.

So we order some beers and we're like, fuck, man, I'm hungry. They got food.
Yeah, yeah. We look at the menus and it's like cheese sticks and chicken fingers and like that kind of stuff.

So we order it. And the guy's like, yeah, we got it.
No problem. He rings it in.
And then a few minutes go by and we're kind of hanging out at the bar having a drink.

And then somebody walks in the front door with two baskets of food. Not through like the back or there was like no back.
Yeah. It was just through like the front door with like two baskets of food.

And hey, you guys had that? Yeah. They set it down and whatever.
And we're like, what the? Why did I come in through the fucking front?

We were next door to the strip club and we had ordered strip club food.

They worked out of one kitchen.

That's awesome. And we realized like, oh, this is a place.

This is like a before or after kind of situation where you're like, oh, we can get drunk and do this thing, and then we'll go do this thing. And it was like, oh, this is, oh, yeah, we are by like

the Air Force base. We're all putting it together now.
There's a, there used to be a couple of restaurants over here on airport. One of them's still there, Bunbelly.

And right next to it used to be a place called Halo Eatery. It was like just south of 51st on airport on the east side.

And I remember one time I was driving by, I was like, oh, my wife and I were like, we should try that

Heyo Eatery, right? So we go home and like look on the line, find their online ordering, order the food, drive over, and I go in to pick it up. And I walk in and I walk in and the place is empty.

Just a couple of tables, and there's just like one dude sitting there using his phone.

And I like walking, I'm like, hey, on an online order? He's like, oh, okay. You know what's the name? I tell him my name.
He goes, okay.

And he walks out the front door, walks over next door to Bunbelly,

gets the food and comes back and gives it to me. I was like, what? What? What?

What's going on here? Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
And it was stuff that wasn't on the button belly menu. What the fuck? It was like they had their own menu, but it was cooked next door.

So I think, I think both those restaurants moved. I think they're over in the, like, grounded by the hot pot place

over by 99 Ranch. Oh, okay, and then they're over in 99 Ranch.
I'm lucky, okay. But they used to be over there in an airport right next to each other.

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Rules and restrictions apply.

That is the hardest shopping center to park in the city of Austin. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's you told me that you had no trouble every time. A few episodes ago.

I have told you that a bunch, and I have changed my mind.

I said it, and people heard it, and now all the spaces in the back are gone. It's terrible.
Yeah, the spaces in the back are gone. They used to be there.
You could park in the back. 91.

Apartments, that's it's over. Nope, all done.
Yeah, you cannot go there at all on the weekend.

It was a parkable place until maybe two months ago. Yeah, the problem is

it needs to get worse before it gets better. Yeah, that's that's absolutely because where it's at right now is tenable enough where they're not going to fix it.
Right.

All of the aisles are two-way parking. They just need to re they need to tear it all down and redo it so so it's one way and you can sneak through.
Because right now it's like there's not enough room.

All the spaces need to be redrawn because they're too small.

It's just a nightmare. I wish you could cut and paste because there's that like three-story parking garage next to Book People and REI.
Oh, yeah. It's never been in use ever.

I mean, it's available, but that parking lot has never been full enough to grab it and put it right there. Yeah, if you could just

put it right down, you'd be set. It's like if this was Sim City rules.
Yeah, we could Sim City it. Yeah.
I think the other option, if they didn't want to disrupt it too much, would be to dig down.

Ooh, a little bit down. I bet that would take a long time.
That would be a pain in the head. It would take a lot.
What would they hit on that side, too? Like a lot of rock? That's a lot of rocks.

You're going to need a lot of jackhammers. It's probably very firm because the train track runs there.
So I'm sure it's random. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yep. It's very, very firm.
That's all the trash,

no doubt, buried there.

It has to be awful. You know, that's what people used to do until the...
Oh, yeah. This is the 1800s.
Yeah, you just dig a hole and that's

your backyard. Yeah, that's your trash hole.
And then most of it decomposes because it was chicken bones and discarded bread and garbage, whatever.

But then it's also, it's that, and then glass bottles. Yeah.
And so you just dig up and you go, it's a lot of glass bottles. It's like a time caps.

Ben Franklin, was it Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson? I think it was Ben Franklin, was one of the, like, started one of the first trash services in America in Austin. Yeah.
Huh.

In like seven, in the mid-1700s.

I found all this out in the soul, right? I was going to say, this is all right. Yeah, this is all right, man.
Come on, geez. Should we start walking? Yeah, yeah,

let's start heading back. What's with all like the weird, shady, illegal, legal gambling that's in Austin?

I think it's the same thing as all the weird, shady, pseudo-legal weed stores that are in Austin.

There's a gas station by my house that sells liquor. Yeah.
They sell fireball. And I was like, how are you guys able to sell liquor?

And they're like, oh, there's like fireballs like just under the thing that they don't fuck with us. There's two different kinds of fireball.

There's one that's in like the larger, you know, like Fireball, Fireball. And then they have a lower ABV one that they trip.
They don't change like almost any of the branding on.

And I think they got sued for it.

Oh, yeah. I did hear about that.
Yep. They also sell at a lot of gas stations.
I don't know if you guys have seen it now. A lot of pre-rolled joints.
A lot. A lot.
A lot.

A lot of gas stations just have like 300 pre-rolled

THC joints.

What's up?

Puerto Rico license plate. That's cool.
I'm not sure if if you're still looking for those. That's neat.
Yeah, put it on your list. It's not on the

part of the United States.

I do. I 100% do.

It's the fucking stupid game on my iPhone doesn't.

I need South Carolina. It's the only state I need right now.
I'm just in a fucking... You ever been to South Carolina? A bunch.
Really? I went to college there. Oh, that's right.

Yeah, for a semester. And then Gus and I did an event there.
I think we talked about it on this podcast.

We thought we were going to die on the plane. Yeah, yeah.
I do remember that. There's, you're talking about those gaming rooms.
Yeah.

There's, there's a Thai restaurant I really like over off of Lamar called Tataya's. I don't know if you've ever been there.
Yeah, we're good. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.

Kind of if you go like that parking lot behind it. Oh, I know.
There's a game room back there. Uh-huh.
And I've been there.

Oh, I haven't been to that game room, but I know exactly what he's talking about. And one time I got really curious about it.
So I was like, I'm going to, you go this way? Yeah.

Like, I'm going to walk over to that game room. I want to see what's going on.
You're crazy. And you're crazy.
I walked up to it, and there's like a metal grate over the door.

There's like a camera, and there's a sign that says, I forget what it says, but it says something like, To gain access, ring buzzer and hold your ID up to the camera.

Whoa, I was like, Yeah, this is not something I'm doing. So I didn't go in, but I was like, I'm curious what the setup is.

I read

a thread on the Austin subreddit about those a couple months ago, maybe a couple weeks ago, even. I don't know if you guys saw it.

But somebody said that what they do in there is they have the way they, because they handle the pseudo-legality of it, is you buy.

i may have misread this but i don't think i did uh-huh i apologize if i'm getting this way wrong because i know it sounds ludicrous i think you buy like tied pods or laundry detergent in some way and then you bet with that yeah and then when you win you trade it for money that's it's it's like how gambling in japan works right

it sounds like a pachik yeah where it's like oh you won plates you're like i didn't want plates oh you go next door with the plates and you exchange the plates for luckily enough through some weird coincidence there's a store next door that buys this exact kind of box.

I mean, it's so lucky for you that you won all these plates. The guy next door loves these plates, he goes crazy for these plates.

You know, just take all of these plates like across the alley, uh-huh, right there. That guy's gonna.

That guy who's chain smoking cigarettes, two hands, he'll buy those plates off you for some crazy shit.

I will say, I don't know if it's a sign of like the world at large or the U.S. at large, or if it's just an Austin thing, uh-huh.

But I am feeling things get a little wild westy lately, these last like last year or so. I feel the same way.

If you're out and about or going around, it's like... Things are a little wacky.
I love it. I do too.

I want it.

Like people seem really comfortable operating illegal businesses in public right now. Yes.
That was not the case

10 years ago.

It definitely was not the case 20 years ago when I lived here. It is now commonplace and nobody seems to give a fuck.

I'll tell you guys about the one that I see a lot because I don't want to give away its location, but it's exactly how what you're talking about is exactly how I feel because I see it and I just go, you can't possibly get away with this.

And they are daily. People realize the rules don't matter.
Yeah. Yeah.
I think we are really getting to that point. We're getting

like peak realization that rules don't matter. Well, I think a lot of it has to do with like the policing and stuff and like the quiet quitting and the yeah yeah.

It's just been the it's like there's no consequence to most of this stuff. If the president's immune, I'm immune.
That's right, baby. If they come after the president, who's next? Me?

He's the only reason they're stopping.

He's stopping them. They're coming after me, but he's in the way.
Yeah, yeah. Have you ever been here to Draft House? Yeah.
No. Yeah.
I didn't even know this was here. It's a great spot.

They got tons of great beer. It was like a British pub.

I don't go there anymore.

It looks like they would have amazing food. They do not.
It's a bar.

But it is a great bar. And they have trailers outside.
I was about to ask, what kind of food do they have? No, they don't.

I used to get disappointed when I'd go there, and I'd be like, oh, I was fucking starving that's so funny it's not the alamo draft house right no no it's the draft house d-r-a-u-g-h-t yeah yeah drought house

drought that's where my uh when my cousin had his political campaign that's where he had his kickoff event oh is that right yeah that's pretty cool so the i introduced him to give the speech nice um how do you guys feel about the cicadas uh and the i don't care i feel the same way why are people why do people dislike them i've started to dislike i think it's way worse in other parts of the country probably huh it's got to be right because this is not an issue i equate them with summer yeah and just like being a kid and being out and about i'm much more i think the

the plant jiz or tree saturday oh yeah that's right is way worse wait forgot i forgot about way bigger deal that we have to deal with in austin i forgot about tree comb

just wake up every every other day and your entire yard and house and everything you own is covered in sticky

you guys want to go to bumble make a new friend or whatever that's their

corporate headquarters right yeah Yeah.

I think.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it is.

Weird space for a corporate headquarters.

I think that they laid off some people recently. No.
Speaking of, did you see Bungie? No, what happened? Announced they were doing layoffs. Are they really?

Yeah, I think they said, I don't want to get it wrong. Uh-huh.
But I want to say that they announced like

200 layoffs, but they're building out a

new studio within PlayStation within Sony proper and they're gonna move a bunch of them over there to try to help seed it.

It's like a way to keep but still a bunch of people are gonna lose their jobs and it's like one everything I was reading in the subreddit and the Reddit threads about that was like it's just Sony slowly absorbing Bungie until there's nothing left.

But

it's crazy. Bungie

Bungie makes Destiny now. Is that like their thing?

Oh, they've been for like the last 10 years. Right, no, but like that's like their thing, right? Like they don't make, they don't, do they make anything else?

Well, I think they have a marathon remake coming out okay so the answer to my question is no yeah

if we ever wanted to work in a really cool building i think this marathon building right here is i thought you were gonna say this what a segue i thought you were gonna say this law office and i'm like what are you talking about no totally we're talking about marathon but that that marit that's marathon street and that building is called marathon yeah

good work We cracked the code. This means something.
Yep. We should talk about the potato and rooties and stuff because we're near like right.
We're almost back to the car.

I feel like we're at the end of the episode, but we're talking about that.

Yeah, but we got to rate it because I want to know what Jeff thinks about this. Perfect fucking tin of a potato if I've ever had one.
Incredible. I don't know how it would be improved.
Yeah.

Yeah. Maybe some more salt, but you put salt on a potato yourself.
Yeah. Yeah.
Dude,

you guys were doing barbecue sauce on it. Didn't even cross my mind.
Oh, yeah.

I got to do the barbecue sauce next time. Hell yeah.
That seemed like such a move. That was so smart.
And it didn't,

it just didn't hit me.

I'm normally not like a big sauce person. I don't, in general, I don't like sauces.
I'm not a big catcher person. I don't typically eat a lot of barbecue sauce either.

But there's something about the Rudy's barbecue sauce with the Rudy's barbecue. It's just

double plus good. Just really hitting.
I feel the same. I feel the same way about

what's that fucking salt lick.

Like, I feel like their meat is mediocre until you put their barbecue sauce in it. And then somehow the two work.
But their barbecue sauce on its own, okay. It's fine.

But it's something about how when you put the combination together, it works

exceptionally well. And then you top it off with some blackberry cobbler.
Yeah. You set.

So also. The sides at that place.

10 out of 10 potato. Yeah, I agree.

Oh, definitely. Like, this is the second time I've had it in four days.
I wouldn't.

Give it to me again, please. I wouldn't.
know how to try to beat it in Austin. I wouldn't even know where to go.
No, it's it's so

so good. You know how we how we're trying to create like a and I said by we, I mean, I had, I said it once

that we should create a uh national hot dog registry yeah for regulation yeah maybe we need to have like a potato could we could be potato heat send us your local potatoes yep yeah if you know of any great baked potatoes in austin please let us know uh we're trying to build a an austin potato heat map but what about our next episode are we calling our shot is there anywhere else that we want to go because that it's it's happened every time so far on this run of episodes i feel like we talked about another place didn't we did we did i was jazzed about something else really i don't remember it was i haven't started working on the edit for episode two so i don't it was not coffee no it was something it was a uh well you're talking about breakfast tacos here that was that's right yeah we're talking about here we talk about

i don't remember but oh you know what it might have been day nada

it was talking about daynata it was day nada yeah maybe we got a day nata maybe we can make that happen they don't open until 3 p.m no that's that's the whole afternoon rooster teeth's not here to stop us yeah that's right they can't stop us they and and boy ooh they want to so bad, but they can't.

They can't. Oh, they want to.
They're just going, oh, we want to stop you. Um, and they are us because we were rooster teeth, so we were going, like, oh, I want to stop.
I want to stop.

I can't stop it. Um, well, that'll do it for this episode.
Good morning, Gus. Uh, follow us on whatever the social media things are in the description if you haven't worked that out yet.

Um, any uh final thoughts, parting words for the folks at home? Don't uh don't sell a potato short.

Oh, he's taking a picture of the tire, it's a good tire.

Bye.