It’s a Burger Episode

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All right, this is episode 61. The last episode, it's okay.
The last episode was a couple of weeks ago at this point. We did a little pre-record.

That was at Annie's Day and Night where we got those tacos

on Riverside. Good name.
Yeah. I like it.

That was a cool spot. Talked a lot about breakfast tacos living on Riverside.
Old Austin food against New Austin food. Waffle House against Taco Cabana.

And a fun Starbucks drive-through story. But that was all last time, right? This is this time.
And it is a new episode of Amazon.

How prevalent are breakfast tacos?

Prevalent. Prevalent.
Prevalent. Prevalent.

Eric and I both.

What are you going?

I just walked into something here.

Sorry. It was so exciting.

Oh, that's so exciting.

It's a stern thing. How many stern thing? Oh, fuck, dude.
I'm usually the only one that was so exciting. Oh, God.

How prevalent are breakfast tacos in the rest of the country these days? I don't know.

I don't think at all. Growing up in Southern California, it was breakfast burritos.
We didn't really have breakfast tacos.

I didn't really have any breakfast tacos until we came here for like RTX forever ago. And we went, wow, this is a cool idea.
They don't exist in any big way in Michigan.

When I used to have, before Rooster Teeth, when I had that other job, you know, it was a traveling job and I would go... I'd spend five days a week like somewhere else in the country.
Yeah.

Usually small towns in the middle of nowhere. And I remember one time around 2000, 2001, I was on a trip working at one of these places.

And a couple of the local employees came into the office where I was working. It's like, hey, one of them comes up to me and goes, hey,

you want any breakfast tacos? I was like, oh, yeah, I'll pitch in for some breakfast tacos. And then like all the other employees started laughing.

And the one, the one who came in talking, who asked me if I wanted a breakfast tacos, was like, see, I told you all they're real. She's like, I'm from San.
She's like, I'm from San Antonio.

And no one here believed me that breakfast tacos are a thing in Central Texas. So I came in here to ask you to see what your reaction was.
And you just proved that I'm right.

And I was like, so then I have my wallet in my hand. So I'm like, so are there no breakfast tacos?

She's like, sorry, no, no, there's no breakfast tacos. That's the saddest way that could have gone.

I don't understand why it hasn't become a thing yet because.

They're so fucking good, right? And it's not like I've ever met anybody who came to Austin.

Maybe if you go and you get like a dog shit, like lukewarm breakfast taco from a coffee shop at 11 a.m but you take somebody to a real breakfast taco place a sit-down place or even just like your favorite you know like uh trailer that has good quality tacos i've never seen anybody go like oh yuck

this is what you guys this is what all the fuss is about every single human being goes oh it's really good why the fuck don't i eat this every day yeah

and i always said when i you know i used to go to portland a lot back in the day i spent a lot of time up there and uh there was always this there was this restaurant on i want to say it was on albina or Mississippi Street somewhere around there but uh

it uh

please

physically harmed someone you can cut or you can cut that out or leave it cut it cut it awful burp that was an awesome burp uh

that's one of those ones you can smell yourself all the way out so anyway I went in Mississippi there uh there was a restaurant that was just called Austin style tacos oh wow and I never went in because I was like I can't go in this is fucking ridiculous

but it was always packed and I remember thinking like whoever this motherfucker is he's got to figure it out because it's always packed austin butler it maybe it was austin butler style austin butler style tacos yeah yeah good uh

so i i'm sorry i immediately derailed you said breakfast tacos and it made me think about that but like i i love a breakfast burrito but

a breakfast taco might be superior oh yeah just because the breakfast burrito is the size of your forearm and at 8 30 a.m while you drink a white banana monster you don't need that that's fucked it's fucked And it's the thing that you get.

Like, that's so normal to go get a whole breakfast burrito and you're just fucked all day. Yeah.
When was the last time you had breakfast tacos?

When we recorded the Ennie's Day night. Oh, a couple weeks ago.
I had them this morning. Yeah.

I went to my Taco Rito and got some beet and cheese tacos. Damn.
I'd say I probably still eat them.

I mean, it is definitely like, I would say like 80% of my breakfasts are breakfast tacos outside of the house. I don't make them at home.
I make them all the time at home. Yeah.

I make migas and stuff all the time. I never had migas until I moved here.
And then it's like, damn, that's so cool. Yeah.
It's like, oh, we're just putting some chips with these eggs, huh?

And it's like, yeah.

I've been on a chili killer's cake the last couple of years. It's replaced chilies.
Chili killers are really good. Yeah.

I went, there's a Veracruz

restaurant not too far from us here. Veracruz Tacos is like a local place, very well known.
I think we've talked about them before, maybe on a couple times. Probably is.

But they have like a brick and mortar restaurant. They opened a couple months ago over here in Mueller, not too far from the studio.
I didn't know that. Yeah, it's great.
It's like, well, anyway,

it's great. I highly recommend it.
And I went there with my wife and my in-laws a couple of weeks ago. And, you know, they all ordered breakfast tacos and I ordered chilaquilas.

And

when we left, my wife was like, I don't know, you know, I don't know why we all order breakfast tacos.

I saw you order the chilaquilas and every other person in there, or every other person who ordered chilaquilas in there was speaking Spanish to the server.

She's like, I should have keyed into the fact.

Maybe that's what I should have got. Not that the breakfast tacos are bad, but just like the chiliquilas are really good.
Chilaquilas is fucking awesome.

I wonder, you know, this would be great for the audience because we have a global audience. We do.

Let us know if you have ever heard of breakfast tacos outside of people talking about Austin or Texas. Yeah, have you had breakfast tacos where you're at? Do they exist? Are they popular?

If they are Denmark and you're just going, you call them like something else?

I don't know. I was going to make fun of it, but I don't know how to do that.

What do Danish people sound like? Yeah, I don't know. I really don't know how to do an accent or any of the languages.
They call them.

You're getting away scot-free

dude you lucky this time yeah you lucked out denmark i'll get you next time i'm gonna listen to a scars car no way they're not from there

after i do some research you're fucked

just wait till i figure out something to do with those wooden shoes and a dike and a windmill and tulips

here it comes

uh

yeah let us know let us know if that's a thing

uh So today's a burger episode. Yep.

Kind of like in garbage. It's a family episode.
Yeah. It's a burger episode.

So we're having an afternoon. Did you guys have coffee today already? Yeah.
I did. Yeah.

Yeah, I have two cups before I leave my house. You have me too.
I'm just curious.

We didn't have the coffee together. I just want to hear your coffee.
I also got some more in the afternoon. Yeah, I've made some coffee at home.
You went to Barrett's?

I went to Barrett's last weekend. Yeah, I rode my bike over there.
It was very nice. I've done Barrett's on this podcast.
No, not yet. It's real good.
It's real good. like that.

It's fucking great, right? I put it up in the same. Well, you know, we'll get there.
We'll get there. Yeah, don't, don't, don't, we'll get there.
Don't expect that. It's exciting.
We'll get there.

I can't wait. We should have gone.
Well, we have to go soon. I'm almost out of beans, and I don't want to go drag myself over.
Parking there sucks. I got some Greater Goods beans.
They're pretty good.

They're pretty nice. I've been enjoying that.

So it's a burger episode. We went to Dan's hamburgers.
Right.

I was going somewhere with that. Sorry.
So it's a burger episode. We went to Dan's.
Dan's is

a local chain that's very interesting. It's got some history.
I don't know that you or I know it very well. We just like the urban folklore of it.

Uh, but it reminds me of a lot of Buda because when we worked in Buda, yeah, uh, that, what I don't know, seasons three through

five.

Yeah. Yeah, when we worked at the first office.
Well, seasons one through five were in Buta, but the apartment three to five, specifically.

Specifically, the apartment timeframes that I'm talking about. They had just opened up a brand new dance down there, and that was our go-to lunch and breakfast spot for a long time.

They had really good breakfast tacos, really good, basic breakfast tacos. Like, if you have bacon, egg, and cheese with some red sauce, they got you.

Uh, and then, you know, the burgers we would eat at all the time. I would say that that's probably next to like Two Mamas or Garcia's or the brief stint we had with Big Oak BBQ.

It's probably the place we ate at the most in that period of time. And so, Dan's has a

lot of red versus blue probably got worked out over Dan's hamburgers. Yeah.

If I think about it. And

that made me feel kind of nostalgic. I've been feeling really nostalgic lately because

there has been

a threat of an I-35 expansion in Austin for the entirety of my living here.

It's finally happening. They are going to tear down the upper deck.
They're going to widen I-35. I didn't realize they're tearing down the upper deck as part of that.
I think so, yeah.

They're going to widen I-35. So all of the establishments,

yeah, but only for the next like decade.

All of the establishments on the feeder road,

uh, not all of them, but a lot of the establishments on the feeder road right around downtown are going away. Yeah, they got it, they just got a 90-day notice to get kicked out.

And I'm talking about places that you love, like that Mexican restaurant, El Tapatillo, over there. Is that what it's called? No, you think of Los Altos.
Los Altos is over there.

Uh, Eric's Eric's sex shop, Dreamers, is over there. Yeah, where am I supposed to go for all my sex now? What? Also, uh, your favorite,

your vampire store, I think, is with a glass coffin.

Yeah, there's a fucking vampire store. Yeah, your vampire store.
There's a vampire store right over there. It's in a house.
They sell it. It's called a glass coffin, and you buy like vampire supplies.

What are vampire supplies?

I don't know. Blood, teeth.
I'm not into it.

I feel like...

Supplies related to vampires are for the killing of vampires. They probably got both.
I think it's all

the deal. Are you pro or anti-vampire?

I think the deal is it's all bullshit, so they can sell whatever whatever they want yeah yeah yeah because if you walk into that store to buy that stuff you're already kind of bullshit you're committed you're committed you're into the thing this is the guy who made a ghost hunting show but he's really vampires i love vampires

don't want to go to the vampire store to buy vampire stuff uh anyway but uh one of those places that's gonna be bulldozed is starseeds yeah yeah which is and it's i also i also found out i was doing a little bit of research i think i might devote the next so all right that i record to it um it's actually called Stars Cafe again.

I noticed that. Yeah.
And I was kind of bummed to see that they were, they had been given that notice. And I was thinking they're going to try to move, but I was reading a KXAN article about it.

They were going to try to move or they're still investigating moving, but I think the rent for they couldn't find rent anywhere that's not three to five times more than they're paying now.

And like most restaurants in Austin, they're just barely scraping by. Right.
You know?

But man, that's a lot of history, a lot of my history and a lot of our history wrapped up in that little building.

I first went there when I was 18 in 1994, and

it became my first favorite place in Austin.

And I fell in love.

If you've never been there, if you're not from Austin, you probably haven't been there. It's just a shitty.

shitty, greasy spoon, hole in the wall, 24-hour diner that serves bad breakfast and bad burgers. But

it was the place that everybody went to when you after you left a show at 2 a.m.

and you weren't ready to go home yet or the bars closed, but you still wanted to party or whatever, you wanted to sober up. Everybody ended up at Starseeds.

And I would say from 21 to most of my 20s, I spent there with you. Yeah.
I would say I think that back then the options were like star seeds, Kirby, or Magnolia. Yeah.

And I wasn't about that Kirby or Magnolia crowd. I was a Star Seeds person.
Kirby and Magnolia were also always fucking crowded. You always had to stand in line.

Nobody wants to get out of your car at 2.30 in the morning after you just left the bar and go stand outside a diner for 15 minutes to get in to go get shitty food. Starseeds,

you very rarely had to wait. It was rare.
It would happen, but it was rare.

You got to sit in this grimy fucking diner with sticky seats and even stickier table and employees with incredibly sticky attitudes. They did not like you.

There were no two ways about it. It was so, there was something so charming about the whole experience, you know? I always loved it so much.

And I was really bummed to see that they're going to, they're going to have to go away. I understand it.
And I think that everybody in Austin understands the

desperate need we have to expand Interstate 34. Do we? We do.
Do we fucking hide there? We don't. I don't think we need to.
Nope. One more lane.

I mean, and there was, we've talked, I think we've talked about this before, where it was such a, like a well-known place that when you would go there when the bars would close at 2:30 in the morning or whatever, it was a regular occurrence to run into other friends of yours.

Like, oh, you were out too. Like, you went to another place, and you would just be like, oh, let's.
It made your social circle feel so much bigger than it was. Yeah.

Because, Gus, you and I have never had a large social circle. It's a line.
But you're right. It's a lot.
It's a line for me.

Occasionally, Eric steps across the line and an alarm goes off.

But you're right, we would go there and there'd be like a 30 or 40% chance we'd see somebody we knew or kind of knew and that always felt cool. And I was kind of bummed to see it go.

I'm not, I guess I can't be too bummed because I don't think I've been there in 12 years.

The last, it's probably been nine or 10 years since I've been there. And it's changed ownership three or four times at this point, I think, too.

But

I think it's probably going to go away and because, well, I don't know. How do I know? This is a conjecture, right? Maybe they'll find a new space to move it.

But when it moves and and i hope if they want to continue the restaurant and they do and they find an awesome spot for it and i hope it has many great years at that spot but it uh

that that location sorry people are looking at us out the window that location is going to go away and that which has been there since i want to say 1966. Wow.
Yeah. And it was originally Stars Cafe

because the hotel, the motel behind it was called the Stars Inn. It's a days in now.
It's a days in now.

I guess when they changed it to the Days Inn, they changed it to Star Seeds Cafe, which is what I always knew it as. And then a new family bought it two years ago and flipped it to Stars Cafe again.

But it was such a big part of my life that one time I drove by and they were replacing the sign on the top and they were throwing the old letters in the dumpster.

And so I waited till the guy was finished and I went and I dug the letters out.

I was in Hathew. Do you remember? Yeah, yeah.

We were driving by. We were like, we saw them putting putting the shit in the dumpster.
And I had the S and the S from Starseeds

in my yard. They were like old rusted yellow metals.
And I painted them. I repainted them.
I had them all fancy. I don't know where the fuck they are now, but they were like a big part of my house.

I had one inside and one outside for a long time. I remember because we drove by like that was such an influential place to us.
Yeah.

When we were talking, we were like, I can't believe they're just throwing it away. They're just putting it in the dumpster.
Yeah.

It was a

when it was a much bigger place when Austin was a much smaller place. Yeah.
I'll say that to Austin. And it's just like, just reading that today, I was kind of, it's a kind of bittersweet.

I'm also like, I'm cool.

Change happens. Yeah.
You know, it's inevitable. It has to happen.
But definitely like the closing of

a certain chapter for, I imagine a lot of people in Austin, a lot of grimy, tattooed, hungover, dirty people, you know, who ate a a lot of mediocre Sunbow breakfasts there which used to be the majority of the city I feel like the different

have changed quite a bit it used to be a lot of a lot of people that fit that descriptor you're talking about and I feel like it's not that case anymore I only went once and there was one guy working.

There was like no one else. I went with like my wife.
There was one guy working.

He took our order and then he went back into the kitchen and made the food and then he brought it back to us and then he sat back down and started reading his paperback. So

it was great. I've been reading reviews on Reddit about it, people talking about, you know, having like a like, remember your favorite Starseeds moments.

Apparently it's been like that since the pandemic. Oh, really? Yeah.
It didn't used to be that way.

It used to be there was, there would be a dude who was cooking who, behind the counter, who looked like he just got out of prison,

probably because he just got out of prison and was on work release. And then there were like two bored like counter help

host or hostess people who were like, super fucking cool and way cooler than you and too fucking bored and they were reading like Kafka or whatever behind the counter and uh it was such a vibe man yeah and uh that but that Austin is

no longer no longer exists it's changed quite a bit I think you can find it around the campus area still I just don't think we go around the campus area at all I bet you can find things that are pretty similar but not quite that yeah maybe Red River Cafe I think you can I think there's definitely spots out there it's just spots we don't go to at all like why would I go dude going around campus get fucking real I don't I don't want to go to around campus back then either yeah I don't go to Starseeds anymore.

Exactly. But anyway, I just read that and I thought that was kind of a,

I felt kind of melancholy about it, you know, but just a sign of a change in times.

It

so

I'm going to have to disagree with you on something you said earlier. Okay, please do.
I don't think we should be expanding 35. I really think it's counterintuitive.

or counterproductive to do so.

I think that what we should be doing is investing more in our mass transit and building out the system that, you know, got voted on a couple of years ago and trying to accelerate that because we need to move people more efficiently, more people in smaller spaces versus people in one or two people in a car.

Totally, totally agree with that and agree with you there. I don't think that that's the real problem.
I think the real problem is interstate commerce.

I think the real problem is semi-trucks going up and down the country. And we've got to alleviate that.

When I'm stuck, I don't get on I-35 very often, but when I'm stuck in traffic on I-35 and I look around, it's me and just 18 wheelers as far as the eye can see.

And mass transit is not going to solve that. Is that what the, what, 130? 130 didn't solve that.
Well, yeah.

They said they were going to build it and then they were going to pass a law to make all trucks have to go out there and they're like, oh, wait, we can't do that. Yeah.

Ah, we got the perfect plan. Uh-oh.
Oh, man. That sucks.
But I think, you know, if you had alternatives, then you wouldn't have to drive and be stuck in there with the semis. Sure.

Give 35 to the to the semis. Give 35 to commerce.
Let's find other ways to get it.

I'm totally on bar with that. And like

Mopac is the other, is on the other side of town and is the opposite of that, right? It is just packed all the time, but there's no semis. It's just local traffic.

And I look at that and I think like, wow, we really need more than that HOV lane to fix that problem. Like that, that's a great example of needing mass transit.

I just think 35 just has bigger problems than Austin traffic. I think that a big problem with Austin's infrastructure is that you can't go left and right.
You can only go up and down. Yeah.

You have to get on city streets. I could take 15th to get across town.
And it's like, oh,

I have to drive downtown to go across town, or I can go all the way up north to get across town to go all the way back down. And that I think is a really, really, really big problem here.

You know, there's a, we were talking about folklore earlier, and we'll probably talk about Dan's folklore as we understand it. Yeah.
That was a thing that I always heard when I first moved to Austin.

And maybe you know if this is true or not. I think it's like one of those things that's partially true, but I guess the guy who designed 35 committed suicide.

Yeah, I think that's a story that's passed around. I don't think it's actually true.
It's not true? I thought that it was like, it was one of those things that had elements of truth.

We know that person's niece.

Oh. We worked with her at the call center.
That's why I know that it's true. That's why you know it's not true.
That's not true. Yeah.
Okay.

Because I said that once around her, and she's like, actually, it's not true. It was my uncle who made that.

She's still alive. Oh, dang.
You have to tell me who it was off camera. I mean, they should build East-West freeways, right?

Like, that's not insane. Let's not build freeways.

I'm with you. I'm with you.
I don't want to build freeways, but there's none.

We're not going to go to 71 or up 183 to 1. That's insane.
The fact that you can't get from the airport to downtown without calling a car is fucking nuts. Yeah, that's stupid.
That's nuts.

This is an unserious city for things like that. That's wild.
It's an unserious city

considering

the city is seriously courting global industry

and trying to be

a major player in the global entertainment world. There was a very long article in the New York Times last week or the week before about how fucked the Austin airport is.
Oh, really?

I don't know if you read it yet.

It was

specifically about

near collisions. Like, it starts highlighting that near collision last February between the FedEx plane and the Southwest plane

at Bergstrom, but then talks about other incidents. And

it's very much like, hey, the U.S. airspace in general has problems, but the Austin airport's fucked.
There's going to be an accident soon.

Was the gist of the article. I hope it's not you.

It was an interesting read.

Maybe I'll send it to you guys if you haven't seen it yet. Did it set the airplane community ablaze or what?

It was a lot of, it was in the aviation communities. It was a lot of, yeah, I mean, they're not entirely wrong.
Wow. It's just, it's a busy airport.

And nationwide,

air traffic control is largely understaffed. The FAA has kind of fallen behind on recruiting there.
And I think that we're starting to see some of the edges fray a little bit.

I think most air traffic controllers have to work mandatory overtimes, like six days a week now.

And it's just like, it's just starting to wear out. And it's going to get worse, right, before it gets better because it takes so long to train up new staff competently.

And so there's going to be a vacuum

for a few years. Right.
People retiring and the new people not only starting, but getting the experience of being early in their career and catching up and having trouble recruiting in general. Right.

Yeah. I wish they would talk about it more because I think it's a great.

Like that's a great job for people who aren't really sure what they want to do, but if they have interest in something like that, if you find that early enough in your life, dude, you're like,

you're making a difference and you're set and it's a government thing and it's like man there's there's just a lot of people that i think could go and do a career like that that have no idea that thing exists yeah i know you don't need a college degree to do that job uh like you got you have to pass obviously all of their exams to make sure you can think like you need to have like a very specific way your mind works to be able to think and do that job but like you said it's a government job when i toured the facilities here in austin i met a dude who's probably a little older than me he's like yeah i've been doing this for you know 20 25 years i'm getting ready to retire he's like

it's like, imagine being a little older than me. And like, the guy's already like, I'm going to retire.
I've got, you're going to have a good pension from this job.

I don't know if it's still the case, but and I feel like I may have mentioned this on this podcast, so I apologize if I'm repeating myself.

But when I joined the Army, you know, I went to journalism school. Journalism school, they actually tell you this early on,

has the second highest rate of suicides in military schools. The first highest rate is air traffic control, and it's by a mile.
Wow. Like, it is so fucking stressful.

That's the most suicides in the military that happened during what's called AIT happen in air traffic control. That does not sound like that.
Or at least that was the case in 1994. Right.

It's been, I recognize, 30 years, but you know.

30 years without Kurt.

Cobain.

Yeah.

Think about it. I remember the day he died.

It was the day I got to Fort Hood.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
I think we talked about it on the podcast. I forgot about it.
I went to my first strip club that night. Hey, man, how's it going? Hey, Kurt Cobain's fucking dead.
Yeah, exactly.

That guy just RSVP'd. He can't make it to the wedding, unfortunately.
I know.

Oh, man.

It was also the first time I went to a strip club, first time I got kicked out of the strip club.

A lot of firsts. It was an important day.
Yeah, it was a big day. Big day.

You always remember the big ones. Kurt Cobain died so you could fly.
Oh, man.

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We might have to make this episode a little bit shorter than normal because we have a lot of things going on today.

But I want to get into dance hamburgers. So there are, how many, I can think of, off the top of my head, I can think of three dance locations in Austin itself.

There's the one down here off Fairport that we went to. Yeah.
There's a one on North Lamar, kind of by Kanan. Which is supposedly really good.
I've never eaten that. I've been there.

That one's excellent. Yeah.
And then there's another one down south, like off of Ben White and Manchek, I think. And then there's

the one. The one in Buta we talked about

four.

Maybe. Is there five? That's all I can think about.
A dance hamburger corporate office, Ben White. Terrible burger, sir.

I have no idea. It tastes like paper.

Dan's a fantastic burger. I wouldn't say it's better than Hilbert's, but it's like in the, it's like the,

it's like the tier just below that. Yeah.
It's a fucking, like, you can't go wrong. Yeah.
You won't be unhappy. Hilbert's just had a 50th anniversary party this past weekend.
Oh, wow.

At the location here that we went to. Their own location off of Cameron.
I was out of town, so I couldn't go. I fucking know I was very, very upset about it.

But yeah,

huge milestone for them. Just pass it.
We should have done a podcast from it. Next time that we did, we should

do a live podcast. 54 years.
But Dan's, I agree with that. Like, just a level below.

Dan's is sort of

when I moved here, that was sort of put on a

pedestal is not really like the right term, but it was definitely lauded as like, this is an Austin institution.

Like, this is one of our places. Don't talk shit about it.
Yeah, it's definitely that. And

then I ate it and I went, oh, this is fucking good. Yeah.
Like, it was, it's very good.

But you guys said there was lore around Dans and that has to do with like a divorce or something. Do you want to do you want to do you feel you go for you probably more than I do.

Here's how I understand it. There was a restaurant in Austin on South Congress for many, many, many years.
It's a torchies tacos right now. It's a very fancy torchies tacos.

It used to be this incredibly charming hamburger,

kind of like top-notch where you can roll up. And I think that there were some out, some of the

sonic style car hop things, yeah. But you could also go inside and it was

really well designed inside and really cute and Austin-y. And it was called Franz.
Yeah. Franz hamburgers.
And there was a giant like.

Kind of like big boy.

Kind of like a Bob's Big Boy statue of a lady holding a hamburger with like a ponytail on top. And it was like one of the things that you saw.
Like you go down South Congress.

There's a few things that stick out. You know, Lucy in disguise always stuck out.

Fran's hamburgers always stuck out. It's like, it was pretty larger than life.

And it was one of those places that you walk in and you were walking into a place that hadn't been updated since 1955 and it felt like it. And

I loved it. I fucking loved it.
I loved going there. It was so much fun.
And it was such a cool place to go sit at. It had such a great vibe.
Apparently, Dan and Fran got divorced.

And in the divorce, as I I understand it, Fran kept Franz. Dan spun off and created his own chain of restaurants called Dan's.
And so they were like dueling restaurants.

The burgers were the same, by the way. I know.
Exact same restaurants.

You never went to France because it closed before you got here. It was the exact same thing.
You've eaten France. You ate France today.
Yeah, whatever. What you just had, that was Fran's burger.
Yeah.

Wow.

It's crazy. The only difference is Dan's is a little more sparse, and you'd go into France.
You'd be eating next to a picture of like

an old Corvette or whatever, you know?

And so Dan's grew, and I think that he had a different vision than Fran's, and I think Fran just wanted to keep her restaurant going.

And eventually, I think she retired and sold the place.

The giant Fran statue, I've seen in different yards around town. It makes its way around.
It was in Cherrywood for a while. I saw driving through one day.

But yeah, and then so eventually Franz, I guess she got out from under it, retired or whatever, sold it. Torchies opened up there, and now Dan's is still going strong.
But that's the lore that I know.

Nutshell, that's what I know as well. Yeah.

Contentious, as we understand, contentious.

Yeah.

Divorce kills a lot of restaurants. Manja, same thing happened to Manja.
Oh, is that what happened to them? I think a divorce took Manja out, yeah. They had a few locations.

They had one right by campus where the Via 313 is now. That was a different building.
They actually bulldozed it. There's that.

There was the one off of Lake Austin Boulevard over by Poolburger, actually. Yep.
And there was the one off Italian restaurant, though. There was the one off of Mesa as well.

There was the one on Guadalupe, right? Yeah, that was the one by where Via 313 is. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
What is

the dangerous? It was a deep dish pizza place. Like Chicago-style pizza, and it had a Godzilla.
Their mascot was a Godzilla with sunglasses. Cool.
And he is now on top of Wheatsville Co-op.

I was about to say

that thing. Yeah, that was the Manja Donald.
That guy. Like, that makes no sense to be on top of Wheats Ko-a.

I have no idea that that's what it was. I just went, I was kind of.
It's a deep

deep dish pizza Godzilla. So you think they're trying to like rub that in the nose of Via 313? Because Magic used used to be right there across.
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, they're trying to like rub Via 313's nose in it and go, like, yeah, you know, manja. I heard, I heard once there was a manga still in town somewhere.

I think that there was one by the domain, like off of Duval and Mopak. We should have a

burger episode if it's

it might be gone. Um, how do you spell it? M-A-N-G-I-A.
Yeah, like manja when you're here. Oh, yeah, it was like super manjala pasta.
No, no, it was super deep dish, like fucking super

thick

pizza. pizza i i i would eat it every now and then but it was it was a lot like that was a fucking

that was a lot to eat like you had like a slice you're like i'm done there's a lot of a lot of maybe it's the case in all cities but i spent my entire adult life in austin for the most part so this is what i know a lot of divorce related drama a lot of family drama around restaurants we get into the whole blacks thing where you've got like yeah like like a lot of people go to terry blacks down there on uh barton springs it was called blacks briefly he's the grandson of the Black family who's famous out

in Lockhart. They have a restaurant out there called Black's.
And I think his own family sued him and told him he couldn't name it Blacks. And so he had to call it Terry Blacks.
There's a lot of that.

That's

a Mueller barbecue. Do you remember Mueller Barbecue way back in the day? That dude was always having fights with his family and always opening it up and closing down new barbecue restaurants.

That's insane. Yeah.

Yeah.

Like if you ever go down to Lockhart, which maybe we should make a trip down there one of these days, like it's just barbecue city down there between like crisis blacks three uh smitties yeah and and two of those are good i don't like blacks i'm not i'm not a big fan of black's barbecue either well just kreitses and smitties are just like next level next level incredible next one time

i was at kreits's

and uh i don't know if it's still i haven't been to kreises i'm because it's in lockhart it's a little bit of a job i haven't been down there in a few years uh you would go in and you would like queue up go in get in line order all your barbecue and then you'd get in a a different line for your sides and your drinks and whatnot.

And like the line was like in an un-air-conditioned space because you were out kind of by the pits.

And then you would come inside for your sides and all that. So that's where you would sit down.
Anyway, I was sitting inside.

I'd gotten all my food and everything, and I was sitting inside not too far from the counter where you get your sides and your desserts and all of that.

And there was an employee behind the counter, and she's wiping the counter down. And there's this guy kind of across from me eating barbecue.

And he like looks around, looks up, sees the woman wiping the counter down, walks over to and goes hey um do you have any barbecue sauce and with she's not looking up she does not look at him she's just looking down wiping the the counter she goes why do you think the barbecue needs it he goes yeah i uh i i think i could use the barbecue uh some sauce for the barbecue and she stops wiping the counter, looks him straight in the eye and says, well, then maybe you shouldn't eat here.

Whoa, that's awesome. Then looks down and continues wiping that same spot on the counter.
What are you doing? The guy's just like, oh, what?

I saw somebody ask that lady for a fork once, and she said, God gave you two forks. They're called your hands.

they don't fuck around there they're not known for being a surly place no it's just that they're very particular about their barbecue yeah it uh and for good reason i mean that place has been around forever they've been doing it right for a very long time yeah it's it's it's really good great barbecue dude that's that's cool as hell we should go down there for yeah an episode you've eaten there what you've eaten there when did i eat there when you came to emily's birthday party yeah when we rented that we rented that house out in Lockhart, yeah, that was, I, I got crisis at that.

Oh, that shit was good. That's right.
Yeah. Yeah, that was like, I couldn't stop.
Yeah. Yeah.
That was so good. Chris is amazing.
And I think the other place, Smitty's, is a little better.

Smitty's is probably a little better. Yeah.
Wow. And so, and the Smitty's is like, it's an experience to go in.
They call it the Cathedral of Meat. You go through this hallway.

The walls are blackened from soot from all the beef from over 100 years. There's an open fire in the ground at the end of it.
And it's like, it could be 20 degrees outside.

You walk through the hallway and it's 110 instantly. And you got to like go through that gauntlet to get up to order your meat.
And it's fucking

so good. But we're talking about...

Yeah, we're doing Dan's, baby.

So yeah, excellent burger.

In my opinion, not up to the same caliber as like a Hilbert's. But for me, Hilbert's is like the perfect burger.
Again, giving it that caveat.

If you're visiting Austin and you're hungry, Dan's is a great place to go get a burger.

If you're visiting Austin and you want to have an Austin experience and you want to eat like the best burger you can get, there's probably better places that'll or places that'll give you a better Austin memory, maybe.

You know what I mean? I wouldn't make it the one burger I ate in town. I maybe picked Mighty Fine or something, but

it's a fucking great. It's an institution.
Yeah.

And

the foods, the food's good.

It's a really good burger.

They dice the onion on it. It's like lots of little diced white onion, which I do prefer.

Hilbert's gives you that whole fucking solid white onion ring, which can be a little tough to get through sometimes. So the diced onion on this is a little more, a little easier to get through.

That's what bugs me at In-N Out, too. I feel like you get half an onion.
Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. But I do, I do like onion.

I'm a big

onion, but I do prefer them diced. Yeah, what would you rate the burger? I mean, I agree with you.

I think it's a I would take a friend who's in from out of town here, but not the first time they're in Austin. It would be like the second or third time, and I'm like, oh, you should go get a burger.

Check the spot out. I get an eight.
Eight is exactly the number.

I think that's spot on. I'd say it's a it's on the same level as like What's That's better than Whataburger.
Oh, I think it's definitely better than that.

Well, Whataburger's gone downhill a little bit the last couple years, but it's all I know is how it tastes now, and I don't like it. I think Whataburger sucks.

Whataburger is like a seven.

Not to spoil my Whataburger review before we go to the bottom. Don't worry, we weren't going to eat at Whataburger.

You spoil that all you want. We're not going to eat it.

Convenient. They got an app and you can customize everything in order online.
Dude, they got great customization. Whataburger's awesome.
The app's a little clunky, though.

Like, if you want to order just a burger without a drink, it's like you have to go through the drink screen in the checkout flow. It's like, I don't want this.
Why are you showing me this?

You just bought a whole Whataburger outfit, didn't you? Maybe I have like a Whataburger shirt. That's a great Hispanic Heritage Month merchandise.
I bought a Whataburger Guayabera, it's awesome.

I love it. That's so cool.
That's so great. It's gonna be my old guy thing.
Okay, I gotta start thinking about how to get those shirts.

They had another shirt that said Guay Amboriesa, but they were sold out of my size. Oh, that's fun.

That's a fun. That's fun.

We, it's we're like 35 in, but we do have to wrap wrap up pretty soon. But we do want to get to an anarchy question.

If you want to send us a question, you can at Anma Podcast on Twitter and on Instagram. But you can also go to the subreddit that we do not run or slash Anma Podcast.

There's a weekly discussion thread. People drop in questions and stuff like that.

Let's grab one from there. Let's see.

This is from Epsilon Protocol.

That's my favorite video game on the Sega Saturn.

I had a choice between getting a Sega Saturn and a PlayStation. I picked Sega C D.
Oh, no.

No.

I bought a Sega CD. Oh, boy.

Saddest thing. I could have had a PlayStation.
I could have had a PlayStation guy with a fucking Sega Saturn. Hope you enjoyed night.
Dude, that's exactly what it was. It was that.
That was it.

That was it. It was that.
I think there was a Sonic game. A bunch of demo discs.

Frank Thomas Big Hurt Baseball.

All I had was tunnel rats.

See, rats was it? Tunnel rats.

Epsilon protocol, activate. Y'all have been busting your collective asses for a long time, other than sabbaticals.
How do you prevent burnout in your work?

And how do you work to prevent burnout in those who report to you? I don't think anyone really has anyone. I have one person that reports to me, but I don't worry about his burnout.

How do you guys deal with burnout in general? Other people's burnout is no longer my concern.

It used to be for a very long time. Yeah, absolutely.
Other people's burnout was all about it. And now it's called dogmark.

So it

It was genuinely my main concern.

I think you should answer that first, Gus.

It's weird. I think we've covered this before.
I think we broke ourselves

at an early age.

So we're not the best people to talk about that.

I got to give that big caveat and that big asterisk out of the way.

We had a very unusual,

we were in a very unusual position when we started this company, and we worked in extremely unhealthy ways for a very long time. So that part of my brain is broken to a large extent.

Which is also, I will say, I think a generational thing because we weren't unique, right? That was how you worked back then.

And I would say if Rooster Teeth probably definitely enhanced my unhealthy relationship, I shouldn't, I think it sounds like I'm blaming Rooster Teeth.

The thing that we created, our passions, you know, our desire to make stuff, Gus, led to my, enhanced my unhealthy relationship with work.

But it started for me probably in the Army when I was working seven days a week for five fucking years. And then I worked on a newspaper.
And then it was a weekly news.

It was the largest weekly newspaper in the Army. So you would put it out on Thursday, and then you would go back to your office, and you'd be behind on the next episode, next newspaper.

And newspapers don't take holidays.

And so I was already used to working on a treadmill. And then we got hired at, not too long after that, I got hired at the tech support company, which was a treadmill.

I mean, you and I were, it just never stopped. It was 24-7, 365-day a year, seamless integrated tech support, which is what they called it.

And so we were already attuned to a world that like, okay, you know, like a lot of jobs you say, I'm going to go on vacation for two weeks. I'll see you and I'll just leave it on my desk.

I'll take care of it when I get back. You know, a 365 day a year tech support company isn't like that.
Yeah. And so Gus and I were already in that world for years before

Rooster Teeth started from that world. And so we just applied.
Rooster Teeth was our escape. It was our escape.
And what a fuck. No, dude.
Yeah, but what a fucking escape it was for sure.

But Rooster Teeth was our escape from that. And we just applied the same work ethic, unhealthy or healthy, however you wanted to look at it, to the thing that we wanted to do.

And for us, that was the most freeing thing on earth because I was under the impression that I was going to have have to physically work myself to the bone until I died because that's how it is.

But I was doing it for somebody else and somebody else's thing. So when Gus and I got

a whiff of the opportunity or the possibility that we could work ourselves that hard for ourselves, there was nothing. That was awesome.

And I didn't want to slow down. Yeah.
So for, it was years.

Before I I'm sure you were the same way. It's years before I could even think about burnout here.
Yeah. It's like there was no no time to deal with it.

So these days it's very different, you know, where it's it's a lot more

relaxed than it used to be back then.

I just try, you know, I feel like one of the benefits here is the variety of different things that you get to do. It's like I'm not if I had to do Anma every day,

that would not be great. We would burn out.
But like I'm doing Anma today, I might do Stinky Dragon tomorrow or like just whatever projects pop up. That helps keep things fresh.

And, you know, we're able,

if we plan far enough in advance, we can schedule time off. And it's finally to a point where I can like close my email and not have Slack open, like leave the office and then not worry about it.

Be like, I can take care of it when I come back. Like there are people who can do things without me.
I'm not, I don't need to be there.

I think you really keyed into the answer for me as well, which is we are blessed. And I guess I shouldn't say blessed because all the stuff I'm doing now is stuff that I made or helped make.
So, but

blessed in the sense that they're, like you're saying, Gus, there's enough variety that if I'm hitting the wall on so alright, which happens fairly frequently, I can just go, oh, I'm just going to put this away for a while.

And I, because there's three things I need to do on Fuckface, or there's four things I need to do for the break show, or for Anma, or I wanted to write, you know, so there's always, like, whenever you hit a roadblock or you hit a burnout moment, which happened all the time to me now, especially as I get older, you just, you just compartmentalize it and put it away and then work on something fresh for a little while because

there's always something else for me to do. And so

I never have to feel stuck. And that helps a lot.

I feel like Rooster Teeth as a company now is more versatile. I don't know if that's the right word, but than it's ever been where you can compartmentalize and do different things.

You weren't doing podcasts. You weren't doing a bunch of these smaller things.

Everything was like, here's the RT short. This is going to take all your time.
And now you're doing achievement hires. You're all this, this is taking all your time.

It was larger pillar pieces instead of like the smaller things where you can kind of pick them up and put them away as you need.

And I feel like that's a lot healthier, I guess,

to work in that way than it is to,

all right, well, I have to see this thing through to the bitter end because this is the only thing I'm working on this week and burning out on it that way.

There was one more question that I wanted to get to. This is from Thex Gamer192.
I found it interesting.

You guys have previously joked about pulling the founder card in order to have something happen. Was that a real thing that you could have done? If so, did you ever use it?

And I didn't laminate mine and I watched it. I knew it.
It was in my pants. To me, that's what this podcast is, where everyone just sort of leaves us.
They're like, well, it's the Gus and Jeff thing.

And we'll just, we'll leave them alone with that. Yeah.

That's this show is. The founder's card.
That would have been a, boy, that would have been a way better.

The founder's card. Son of a bitch.
Every once in a while, I'll ask Eric, like, how are the views? How are the numbers on Inla? And Eric goes, you don't, don't ask.

It doesn't matter. You don't need to worry about it.
But here's the thing. It does fine for a little show that

costs as much as hamburgers. Yeah.
But I know that when I tell you the number, you're going to be like, all right, we have to devise a plan to figure out how to find growth.

And I'm like, we can just go get coffee with Gus. Let's just do it.
This is the one where we can hang out with Gus. I know.
I'm my own worst enemy. You protect me from that.
I appreciate it.

There are times, like,

you know, we do get bogged down sometimes in looking at the numbers and things like you're talking about. Like, I don't want to make a show with the intent of hitting KPIs.
Yes.

Like, I want to make a show because I enjoy it or I think creatively this makes sense. I don't want to worry about, like, is this meeting some other broader, larger goal? It's like we should just let.

the creativity or the idea drive it, make it, make it as good as we can. And then if it's successful, great.
If it's not successful, then either the creative sucked or I don't know.

I'd rather look at it in the rear view and analyze why it didn't work than try to over-tinker in a pre-production

like a thousand yards down the road and try to figure out how to avoid pitfalls that aren't necessarily there.

I just think that you work yourself into, you're solving problems that aren't problems and you're creating other problems and you're not solving, like you're not solving the right things.

And it just slows the process. It does.
That's true. And boy, it makes it not fun.
Yeah. Boy, it makes it not fun.
Eric is bound and determined to make sure that we make this stuff fun.

God, that's all I want to just.

Because then it doesn't come, it comes across in the final product. Yeah, it comes across.
I totally agree.

If we had a fucking hour-long animal meeting about KPIs this morning, I'd be sitting here like a fucking zombie. Like, oh, you know what? I would rather fucking put a bullet in my head.

There's no way I'm going to go through a KPI meeting like that ever again. And that's why I think that key performance indicator.
Yes. Yeah, sorry.
In case you didn't know. Sorry.

And that's not a roostie thing. That's an industry.
No, that's what it is to have a job. And no, like even when I worked outside of entertainment, that was the term.

But I think that finding the fun in stuff is super key to make you not burn out.

And also, when it's like pulling the founder card, I think that you have something like that because you've been successful in how many four decades or something?

I don't remember how your math works. The founder card, as it is, as it, if it

ever manifests, it tends to manifest as Gus and I

having a lot of historical knowledge.

So that when a problem arises or an initiative arises or a thing they want to do, Gus and I can go, well, this is how it worked in 2008. This is what we did in 2012.

We had this problem in 2014, and this is how we adjusted for it. And so I think it's less about like...

Gus and I are never going to pull up like a red card in a meeting and go like, no, you know, that's not possible.

We're not soccer referees.

Yeah, you're never gonna get institutional knowledge, but we have a lot of historical institutional knowledge, and I think that they're that we are able to influence certain things at times when appropriate.

Yeah, and but we're not in charge, no, no, not at all. And you guys are also like, I don't want people to get the wrong idea about like the founder's card being like a real thing.

Like, you would send an email and be like, Hey, I, this is my role, and this is what I'm doing, and that's the end of it. And you need to get in line.
Like, that does not.

Can you fucking imagine Gus or I ever speaking to anybody like that? No. Oh my god.
But that's why we work together.

Because I just wouldn't, I just simply would not work with you if that's how you work. I would hate to be that person.
Yeah. Yeah.
I would hate to be around them. Yeah.
I just wouldn't work with them.

But it,

again, I think the founders thing is more like

to be able to have a little bit of shelter from like having a show like Anmo where it is, we're going to go spend $13 on some cups of coffee and sort of do this fan service thing because I don't know that you have a lot of that yeah in other facets.

Yeah, for sure. You get a lot of leeway.
I will say that. That's that.
Like when you have three decades of hits in under your belt and you come to somebody and you say, I want to do this thing.

I recognize it doesn't make sense on paper right now, but you trust me because let me do it. Let me make, let me work it.
Give me 18 months and I'll make it make sense.

You get like,

we have that, I would say for sure. Yeah.
And we named a podcast that comes that comes from 20 something years of busting our asses doing this day in and day out.

And like, that's the currency, like, that's the currency that you accrue. Yeah.
For sure. I think winning solves everything and having success over time,

where you can have the historical knowledge really. That to me is the founder's card more than going, I started this thing.
Yeah.

Nobody gives a fuck. Yeah.

I've been working here for five years. I don't give a shit.

Cool.

Well, if you want to send us good questions like those, those are very good questions. Excellent.
You can, and we have to get out of here. But at Anima Podcast, Instagram and Twitter.
Sorry, X.

R slash Anima Podcast, a subreddit we don't run. Check it out.

Also, you can subscribe to First, watch Face Off. Check out all the FaceJam content we're putting out at facejampod.com, face, or face, fuckfacepod.com.
Also, tune into the break show every Monday.

Turn in. That's the break show is great.
That's a founder's card right there. There you go.

It's currently the only live broadcast show in Year's Teeth, and it doesn't need to be, and it's only broadcast live to appease me. Yep, I think.
Pretty much. And also, Stinky Dragon.

A lot of great stuff coming out of Stinky Dragon. Got a puppet show coming out in a couple weeks.
Yep. And new episodes.
Guys, thank you so much for listening to Anne. Any final words for these folks?

Just win, baby. Good morning, Gus.