I’ve Had a Memory

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Hello.

Hi.

Good morning.

Good morning, Gus.

Good morning, Eric.

Good morning.

So

we're doing this on the back of yesterday's episode.

No, no, no, no, no.

Well,

last week's episode, but this is a back-to-back record.

Right.

Just to accommodate some stuff.

um

but last week we went to lt gray which we really really liked and really really recommend excellent yeah we uh we talked about achievement hunter zen jack stolen laptop uh valve and gabe newell uh simpsons of futurama uh

f1 any litany of things but this week we're all over the place we're at annie's and uh that's now

I think we're gonna have a lot to talk about.

Annie's day and night.

Yeah.

I don't remember what we covered in the Buzz Mill episode.

That's the only other episode we've done on Riverside Drive.

Yeah.

And it was so long ago.

But

further down Riverside.

We are further down Riverside, and we're a lot closer to

where we used to live.

I don't know if we, that's what I don't know if we covered or not.

But Gus and I lived on a few blocks from here.

I don't want to dox whoever bought my old house.

But we lived a few blocks from here off of, kind of off a road called Pleasant Valley.

I lived there for seven years.

You lived with me for on and off for a few.

Yeah, and before that, like, I lived in apartments.

Right, I think we talked a lot about that.

Yeah, all around Riverside.

So I think, I don't know if that's still the case now, but I feel like Riverside, at least back then, was definitely like an introduction to the city of Austin, like a stepping stone when you get here.

It's like a,

it felt like everyone lived on Riverside for a while when they came to Austin for a while.

I bought my first house in

Austin when I was 23 years old.

That's how I met Bernie.

We talked about that probably in the past.

Yeah, we did.

And for $92,500 right down the road from here in 1999.

And it was very much the like, it's like your introduction to Austin back then.

Yeah.

Clearly not the case now.

The thing that I remember most about it is I bought that house and I was so excited to buy a house.

I'd wanted to, you know, for a while and I felt I was really proud to be able to buy one at 23, you know, not going to college and barely surviving the army and all that.

But

I'm sorry, I lost my transaction.

But then literally the month I bought the house, the Austin Chronicle released an episode.

The Austin Chronicle is like our local free mag where you find out about like punk shows and stuff, right?

And it's where News of the Weird used to be printed before we had the internet.

That's what we would read.

I think they still print it.

They probably do, yeah.

And

I bought that house, and then the month after I bought it, I picked up an Austin Chronicle, and the cover of the Austin Chronicle said, Riverside Drive voted the ugliest street in Austin.

And I thought, god damn it.

In your defense, they run that article.

They run that cover every now and then.

I feel like I've seen that cover five times.

Yeah, yeah, it's true.

But I mean, it's,

I can't speak to it now.

It's been decades since I've lived down here on Riverside.

But it was always,

I always liked living off of Riverside.

It was always like a good mix of people.

And it was much more affordable than living in the rest of the city.

At least it was back then.

Affordability was great.

Great mix of people is true.

A lot of young, vibrant energy, which is true.

Things I didn't like about living on Riverside were a lot of young, energetic people, a lot of crime.

I remember back then, it was like, it was a fighting street.

I was in that riot at the back door

one night right down the road that I got sucked into.

There was a Taco Cabana right there.

I want to say it's like Pleasant Valley.

That Taco Cabana,

we used to love Taco Cabana.

I used to go to Taco Cabana all the time.

But that Taco Cabana, if you went there after 8 p.m., there was like a 30% chance you'd get into a fight going in or out of the place.

And so it was like, that's...

Hey, tacos are ready.

Well, let's get our tacos.

That's what Riverside was like.

You guys keep going.

I'll get them.

It's like, don't make eye contact.

There's like a 30% chance you're going to get into a fight anywhere you go because everybody was young and drunk and poor.

Yeah.

Right?

And so it's just, there's a lot of it, there was a lot of aggression back then.

There's like a few restaurants here on Riverside that are still there that I think of, that I associate with my time living here.

That Tao Cabana is one of them.

The Thundercloud Subs, that's a little west of there, like next to the liquor store.

Next to Riverside Liquor, yeah.

And that Tacos Al Pastor, which is even further down, which I think is still there.

That Riverside Liquor was instrumental in helping me along

my path to alcoholism.

I spent so much time and money visiting that Riverside Liquor.

And that Thundercloud, but I didn't become a sandwichaholic somehow hey who knows why we ordered uh breakfast talk us from the place here thank you eric eric went and got them sitting at this place and he's day and night uh i gotta say gus and we're somewhere between uh we're east of pleasant valley and west of benwhite yeah we're all we're almost to benwhite slash 290.

i i can i think i can see the lights from here in this

adorable old white house with lime green shutters and this huge uh front like texas sea porch with like crushed ground like what do they call it?

Kalachi, not Kalachi, Kaliche, Kaliche.

Yeah.

And then there's like a cowboy pool, there's a couple of trailers, and it's just adorable, and it's pissing me the fuck off.

Why is it pissing you off?

Because this, I lived on this street for seven years, and we didn't have anything like this.

If they had had shit like this when we lived here, A, we wouldn't have been able to afford living here.

Yeah, no kidding.

But B, we would have never left.

Yeah.

This is interesting because

so much development in other parts of Austin affect,

or still to this day, affect my use of this street and my coming down here because back before Ben White was finished as a freeway, you know, it used to have lights on it.

You used to have to stop all the time.

This is the way that you would go to the airport.

You would drive down Riverside here and then out here where Ben White is or 290 or 71 or whatever.

No, it's not 290 on this side, it's Ben White or 71.

You would hook a left and go down to the airport that way.

And it took them years, took them like 10 years to make Ben White a freeway from here out to 35.

But this is the way I would come down, even my old job, before Rooster Teeth, when I lived off of Riverside in the damp apartment,

I would travel.

That was a traveling job, so I have many memories of like pre-dawn driving down Riverside this direction, heading to the airport to go fly it up, bum fuck middle of nowhere to go do that job.

But you don't have to do that anymore.

So I can't remember the last time I was on like this stretch of Riverside.

I don't ever have an excuse to come down here anymore.

What did this used to be?

Do you know?

I don't think.

Just a house.

It was that house.

Oh, that.

So Annie's Day and Night is a house that we just went into and ordered.

And then there's like a little pat, I don't know what you would call this.

Patio, outdoor seating, whatever with a couple

of

colaches.

Stepping on Kalachis.

All over.

And you give me some credit for remembering the word caliche.

It's not a popular, that's not a big word.

Nobody knows that word.

I knew it.

Yeah, and thank God you did because I was drowning.

You ordered in Spanish, too.

And Jeff was so impressed.

No, I love it because

when Gus and I became friends, he was very timid about his

ability to speak Spanish and he was always a little nervous about it and I remember when you moved to Puerto Rico you had to spend some time practicing and you were really nervous about having to speak Spanish full-time and then in Puerto Rico it's a different dialect as well.

Right.

And so that was scary and I just I just love

I've grown a lot more confident in it.

I'm not necessarily any better at it

but I'm definitely a lot more confident and give you know.

At least it's an effort.

When you went to Puerto Rico and it was a different kind of Spanish,

what were like the main differences in dialect then that you kind of like raining?

I hadn't even considered Puerto Rico.

Absolutely, it's a different dialect.

I just never considered it.

In Puerto Rican Spanish,

you drop a lot more of the S's

in the middle of words.

They just kind of like, you don't pronounce it.

It's not as Ford in the pronunciation.

There's also words that are unique to...

Puerto Rican Spanish and in general Caribbean Spanish that you don't have in Mexican Spanish.

Like for example,

there's slang in Caribbean Spanish, and depending again, if it's like Puerto Rico or Dominican Republic, it can mean slightly different things.

In Puerto Rico, you can call a bus a Wawa, which you would never do in Mexico.

I believe in Dominican Spanish, a Huawa is like a van.

So, like, there's small differences there.

I don't know if it's Puerto Rican Spanish or just a word I'd never heard, but in Puerto Rico, they referred to dimes as chavitos, which, again, is like,

I'd never heard that before,

you know, growing up on the border, living close to Mexico.

It's little things like that, where you're like, I understand almost everything you're saying, but you threw a word in there that I'm a little curious about.

And then, of course, the food's different.

So, like, whenever anyone says the name of food, it's like, I don't know what the fuck that is.

You were saying they drop the S in the middle of some words.

Yeah.

Do you have an example of

Mexican Spanish and then Puerto Rican Spanish?

I don't know that this is one definitively, but it's just a word I picked up off the top of my head.

Like in Mexico, if you're saying like, excuse me, you would say like desculpame

but in Puerto Rico you would drop that the culpame

I don't know that that's necessarily one that they use but like adios it might be like adio you know that's like the s just appears sometimes

I never understood when

so I just ended up dropping it a lot of times

but yeah it just it just is not as prevalent if you watch I mean it's it's it's hard to say if you're you know you don't speak Spanish but lots of times if you watch TV shows or movies and you know people are interacting with each other in Spanish, it's like, oh, these people are all speaking different dialects.

Like, I remember there was a scene in Breaking Bad where it's like all the drug dealers are in Mexico and they're all having a conversation around a pool.

It's like, these dudes are all from different countries.

Oh, really?

They're all speaking to each other very differently.

And one of these dudes does not speak Spanish.

So we ordered from the little, it just says tacos open.

Is that what?

Oh, I do see that on the chalkboard.

I mean, I think they're just saying, hey, but.

Yeah, I think so.

Oh, just a little taco truck in the front here at Annie's.

We smelled it getting out of the car.

We parked and got a car.

We're like, I don't know what that is.

We're getting that.

If you live down the street from here, would you come here and eat this all the time?

Yeah.

These are really good.

Great tacos.

These are, this was a.

It's like pick three.

Yeah, the breakfast tacos.

It's morning, obviously.

So pick three fillings for, and it's three bucks for the taco.

Is this very?

Extra fillings are 50 cents each.

This is very

2000 Austin breakfast taco.

This is very happy taco.

You know, oh, interesting.

There used to be a place called happy taco down.

Austin was a little less foody.

A lot of it looked more like this, I guess I would say.

Now we just have more variety, but I do miss some of these old standards.

Well, sometimes, like, that's the problem, right?

Sometimes

people and establishments look to elevate food that doesn't need elevating.

And

lots of times establishments do like fusion stuff or new stuff or like a new take on something that didn't need it.

Right.

So you end up with like

something different, not necessarily something better.

And sometimes you just want the actual original thing.

And that's great.

That's what I prefer.

I'm not a big like

fusion fan.

I'm not a big like, let's reinvent this thing.

It's kind of like what we talked about at Hilbert's.

When it comes to cheeseburgers, just give me a plain cheeseburger.

I don't want all this other fancy shit on it.

Like, I want a very basic, classic burger.

And I think that permeates to a lot of other food as well.

Yeah, I feel like Austin food is very trend-based.

You go through these swings where everybody's into this thing, and then it swings to another direction.

And then, yeah.

Except for, well,

I would say maybe the one exception is barbecue.

I feel like there's a lot of barbecue traditionalists.

Uh-huh.

But

even that does have some fusion sometimes.

You know, people try new things with it.

But for the most part, that's pretty standard.

That Egyptian barbecue fusion place that we remember when we went to Oddwood and I thought it was a coffee truck, but they had just changed it to be a barbecue spot?

Oh, right.

Yeah, yeah.

Down off of airport.

Maynor.

Yeah.

I ate there.

It's so fucking good.

It is like Middle Eastern flavors with this brisket that was like super

traditional, regular brisket, but then put into like a pita with like a lot of like Middle Eastern flavor.

I really, really recommend it.

KG barbecue, I think is what it's called.

What's interesting about barbecue is that I feel like that's not necessarily one specific cuisine, right?

Like when you're here, you have to very specifically put an asterisk on it and say Texas barbecue.

Like every, just about every culture, every country around the world has their version of barbecue that all came about independently.

So you can definitely, that I'm a little more forgiving on.

Just because even within the United States, when you go to different parts of the country and you say barbecue, that can mean something wildly different.

You know, here it's brisket.

It's not pork or, you know, even sausage.

It's like swimming in sauce.

Right, you're not getting that white barbecue sauce.

Alabama has white barbecue sauce, right?

Yeah, it's the worst, worst, dude.

I didn't think I liked barbecue until I moved to Texas.

Really?

Yeah, I would have it on, like, I'd like a steak or something, but barbecue was all vinegary and gross when I was growing up.

I was not into it and just like super soppy.

Yeah.

You know?

I was in kind of a mood this morning.

It's just been, there's just a lot going on.

We had a great car ride here.

Oh, yeah.

We got here, we ate a taco, and I had a cup of coffee.

This is my second cup of coffee today.

Had a cup of coffee.

I feel so good right now.

This taco was excellent.

Great cup of coffee.

The outside feels so good.

It is like not 105 degrees.

I'm thrilled to be doing this right now.

What did you get in your taco, buddy?

So I got the chorizo with the papas and frujoles.

So

I like,

I think egg should be standard.

I have a real problem with Austin breakfast tacos because egg is not standard for breakfast tacos.

It's always like, pick some ingredients.

And then it's like, oh, you have to choose egg.

I refuse to choose egg.

It's, it should be what everything is based in.

Having to choose it is, that's my standard.

Like, it's not the ingredient.

It's the mother sauce.

Yeah.

It's the tortilla.

It's when you say breakfast taco, it has egg.

That's how it should be.

So I got it without, and it held and it was fine.

This is a good taco.

So I will say the caveat to that, and the carve out, maybe you'll agree with me here, is in this case, at this trailer, you do have to pick egg.

It's not a default.

Yes.

Because one of the other options is Migas, which has egg in it already.

So you can't, I think it's a backstop to prevent you from getting egg and migas because then you're getting like double egg in your taco i should have gotten the migas uh but there's nothing in here i would have taken out to get the migas so i would have just had to add something we're very good potatoes yeah i i think jeff and i had the same thing it was a potato egg and

he heard you order in spanish he got excited and he said i'll have two of those and then she said what and i ordered in spanish you did he just repeated what he said it was

i knew what he was saying he did a great job it's easy it's uh easy to identify ingredients so this area being outside and and on riverside and everything you were saying that this was kind of like the drag that you would take to get to the airport and everything.

Yeah, it's really green out here.

It's really nice out here.

It's a little shady and everything.

Is this how it was when you guys lived over here?

Like, was it like a big, busy street on Riverside?

It was pretty, yes.

It was pretty busy.

It's always been a busy street.

If anything, it might have been more busy because, like, Gus is saying, it was the main thoroughfare to the airport for most of Austin.

I guess if you were extremely north, you were probably coming down differently.

Even then, you would have taken 183.

183 was hell back then.

It was hell.

Yeah.

You would have avoided it a lot back then.

So, you know, it was, in some ways, I guess, a busier thoroughfare because

it was the life, you know, it was the main vein to get in and out of the city.

And what an ugly main vein it was.

And I remember, I think that was one of the big complaints of that Chronicle article you were talking about about Riverside being the ugliest street in Austin was that anyone who came to Austin to visit

the airport.

This is how you would get in a cab and get into the city is you'd have to drive down Riverside.

And that's what the Chronicle was complaining about like this was how everyone was like welcome to Austin look at our ugly street also I've had a memory okay

Gus you can maybe this will trigger something with you Eric was asking what this place used to be and I said I think it was probably just that house I think it might have been a used car dealership you think so it was either a mechanic or a used car dealership I feel like this area was full of cars this looks like this was probably a mechanic shop based on the amount of parking they have yeah and that that's interesting that's starting to feel right in my head maybe we're gonna look at Google Street View and and try to figure it out if it goes that far back.

But there really wasn't a lot from Pleasant Valley to 290 on this road.

Like there's a left turn you take to get to an ACC campus

on Grove, yeah.

And then that was about it.

Then there were some old houses.

I think they built a school somewhere, like a grade school around here somewhere.

But it really, it was just a, you know.

I think

it went up to Pleasant Valley, and there was a little more east of there.

I would say like up to Montopolis.

Like we knew, we were talking about that on the right over here.

We knew some people who bought a little condo over there off of Montopolis.

And Montopolis leads over to that co-location facility where we housed received servers for many years when we moved in from Sacramento to Austin.

That's where they were before moving, you know, before Amazon had their cloud services and you could just move everything to the cloud and not worry about physical hardware anymore.

So, I mean, I think, yeah, I would say Montopolis might have been like the extreme edge.

And beyond that, there were a couple of things, but not really much.

It was...

here's a memory that being down here triggered.

It was so fucking dead here

in terms of shit to do.

It was a big, big, it was a big deal in the city of Austin when Waffle House opened up, which I thought was ridiculous because I grew up in Alabama and Florida and Louisiana where there's a waffle house at like every exit on the interstate.

And the waffle house isn't too far from here.

It's like right here.

Yeah, and so they opened up a waffle house right there across 290 from us.

Not 290 on this side.

Not 290 on this side, yeah.

And

it was such a big deal that, and I was like, oh, cool.

I grew up in Waffle Houses.

I was where we'd go after school every day.

It was like, you know, it was like the number one restaurant my friends and I would go to because it was cheap as dicks.

And like, you know.

Dicks are cheap.

And they had a great bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich.

And you get some hash browns, get a little jalapenos on that.

So is that what you grew up with is Waffle House?

I grew up with Waffle House.

Before I turned 18, I probably ate Waffle House more than any other restaurant in my life.

When was the last time you've been?

It's been a couple of years.

Yeah.

I still love it.

And I would still go.

I go on road trips if I need to, you know, sit down for a while.

But when this Waffle House opened up, it was, there were lines like down the road.

You would get on a waiting list like it was Jeffrey's or like you were eating at the fucking four seasons.

It would be like an hour wait to eat a Waffle House.

People in particular.

I don't like lines.

People in Austin love lines.

Same thing happened when Krispy Kreme opened up.

Everybody lost their goddamn minds for Krispy Kreme.

So I avoided the Waffle House for a while, but you would go at like midnight because it was open, you know, 24 hours a day and it wouldn't be busy then so one time I went with a friend I think I went to probably after a show or a party or something I rolled into the waffle house we or we rolled into the waffle house at I want to say maybe two in the morning

and it was crowded but not full and there were you know it's just people soaking up some food trying to soak up their liquor with a little bit of food right trying to sober up I was honestly probably doing the same thing and while my friend and I were before we'd even received our food we'd ordered

on the other side of Waffle House, there was like a couple ladies and a dude, and one of the girls,

I guess, was so drunk.

I don't remember the

parameters around it.

I just remember that she stood up and threw up all over the table.

Like projectile vomited, like in a horror movie all over the table.

And then her friends, They just left.

They were like, we're so sorry.

And they just fucking took off.

And then it smelled so bad.

You know, like, that's a very particular smell.

And the Waffle House is not big enough

for it not to permeate throughout it.

And it sat there for a couple minutes.

And then

the

Waffle House employees got into an argument over who was going to clean it up.

Yep.

And they determined that no one was going to clean it up because they weren't, nobody, like, you clean it up, you clean it up, you clean it up.

And they're like, fuck it, I'm not cleaning it.

I'm not cleaning it up.

It'll just sit there then.

And so I had to get up and and leave because I couldn't take the smell.

And I didn't go to a Waffle House for probably six or seven years after that.

Including that Waffle House.

I don't think I went to that Waffle House for another decade, but

I couldn't think of Waffle House without thinking of that smell.

I'm surprised that did not

start a chain reaction because after you've been drinking two in the morning, already, you know, everyone's feeling, well, not everyone.

Sure, a lot of people are already starting to feel really queasy trying to get the food into them.

I'm surprised it did not create a cascading vomitorium experience.

Who knows what happened after I left?

But, you know, I probably sat there for 10, 12 minutes during the argument and everything.

And then when it became clear that nobody was going to clean it up and they were leaving, and we were just like, we got to go.

We can't do this.

And so we canceled order and left.

And, yeah.

You know, in Alabama, thinking about what I was talking about, the Taco Cabana earlier.

In Alabama, Waffle House is where you go to get into a fight.

Right?

The Waffle House is the place you walk into and you've got like a 30% chance of getting into a fight, which is, it seems relatively safe here.

That's what the Taco Cabana was for us here on Riverside in the 90s

that's funny it's funny that we compare those two because when i was growing up the place we always went to was a tau cabana yeah because i i grew up in in a really small town and we only had two 24-hour restaurants on the american side of the river it was a tau cabana and a kettle

nobody's going to kettle so we used to go to kettle all the time until the tau cabana opened and then it was like fuck that kettle we're never going back i don't know if kettle's even still around and then it was like From then on, it was like we had to go somewhere in the middle of the night.

It was always Tawa Cabana because they were also 24 hours.

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse, and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest-paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, No, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

AKA Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September September 10th.

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You and I got tricked into going to a kettle with George once, back when we still worked at the tech support center.

I don't know if you remember this.

I don't.

There used to be a kettle down, like...

Oh, it's the one off 35?

Yeah, it was off 35.

Just south of Orlando.

It's a car dealership now, I think, or something.

But we walked into that kettle, and it was one of the grossest places I've ever been.

And the lady that waited on us was older, and she kept talking about my pretty colors, and she kept touching my arm every time she came by.

And I was

horrified.

And I was like, I was like, George, we are never coming back here again.

He's like, I don't know what your problem is.

It's great.

It was like $4.

The places I remember eating with George are the best places on earth.

It was the first cafeteria that's no longer there off of like 35 and Ben White.

Do you remember?

And the Super Salad over there by the Target near Westgate.

Super Salad, I'm all on board with.

And the Delaware Subs, where he would go and he would order a foot length on the company and then eat half and take the other half home for dinner.

Yeah, yeah.

And he was like, company just bought me a free dinner.

Yep.

It's like, dude, you're the vice president of the company.

Stop doing that.

Do you remember there was a, at one point when we were still working at the call center, you know, we had that old

ACD, the call distribution system was like this old piece of junk hardware from probably the 60s or 70s.

It would electrocute you if you touched it wrong.

And

we eventually upgraded it.

We replaced it with like a modern call distribution system made by a different Intertel?

Yeah, it it was an Intertel system.

And I don't know if you remember this, but as part of the training and as part of learning the new system, a couple of us had to go down to Houston to like official training on the hardware, like learning how to fix it, learning what it is.

So I went down to Houston with George, and George was from Houston.

Yeah.

So I stayed at his parents' house for a week, and we went to do the Intertel training down there.

And it was weird, like...

It was almost like having like a high school sleepover.

It was like, I'm there at George's house with his parents doing going to school during the day and then like coming and hanging out at night uh

yeah it was just like a weird experience like i remember laying there being like i'm an adult

i'm sleeping in a single bed right now i got fucking bills to pay

but it was great it was great it was it was a lot of fun learned a lot about the intertel system

pretty useful today yeah no not at all it was very useful for us at the time yeah but that's why like we talked about before like like watching the stream of OAI data, it's like, oh, someone's hanging up on customers.

It's that person over there.

It's because of that training, right?

It's like because of learning all of that stuff.

Yeah, totally not applicable to my job anymore.

This street was Austin to us for a long time, though, because if you think about it, we lived there,

I mean, together for a period, but we both lived here probably seven years.

I mean, you lived on Riverside for the first six or seven years you lived in Austin.

I think you moved that apartment you had over by Barton Cook Hall,

that was the first

2001.

That was the first non-riverside place you lived in Austin.

And I was still here for a little bit after that.

But then I came back.

So whatever.

But then the call center moved to basically right here.

It was like between Altworth and Riverside.

And so all of our friends lived on Riverside in apartments.

We lived on Riverside in apartments and shitty houses.

And then our job was right off of Riverside.

And so we really never traveled much further than Old Torf South and then much further north than 6th Street, honestly.

Like that was Austin.

That was Austin to us for many, many years.

I mean, look at it now, though.

How often are you south of the river doing stuff like this?

Like, you know what I mean?

Emily and I were talking about that the other day.

You know, we're looking at buying a house in Michigan or whatever, and I don't think I'll ever buy another, like,

home home in Austin just because I'm not Elon Musk.

I'm not a billionaire.

But if we were to buy another home in Austin, I think I would buy a place south of the river just because it would feel like living in a different city.

Because it's been so long since I've been down there.

And when I go down there to go to like South Congress for a meal or whatever, it's like, oh, this place is awesome.

I forgot about this.

We spent a lot of time down here.

And because everything I, you know, I'm up north now.

And it is.

It's at the, Austin's at the point now where it's big enough that parts of the city feel really distinct from other parts of the city.

And you stay in your area because it's annoying to get around.

Well, it's funny you call out South Congress because I feel like South Congress is not at all is almost unrecognizable from when we used to spend our time down here.

Like everything on the east side was essentially bulldozed and rebuilt.

All that's left is maybe a couple of places on the west side of the street that are still the same.

The only thing you would recognize if you visited Austin in 1999 or 2000 and then visited Austin today, the Austin Motel was still there.

I would say what I was saying.

And Hotel San Jose is there.

Those two, Weros and Alan's Boots.

Yeah, there you go.

Weros and Alan's Boots.

That's about it.

Yeah, because even like Lucy Lucy in disguise is gone and everything on the other side of the street got bulldozed.

Like literally everything on the other side of the street got bulldozed.

I think the Amy's ice cream is there, but it wasn't always an Amy's ice cream.

That was the first Schlotsky's.

Yeah.

It used to be Zen.

Zen Japanese fast food was right next to it.

And then it became Robot Sushi, I think.

I think

if Zen is still around, they used to have a location on the Drag, right by Civil Goat, actually, where we went before.

If they're still around, I think they might have one location on Anderson still by that Starbucks over there.

You remember we went to that Starbucks once over there on Anderson?

You know who I'm talking about, like where Zen is.

We had a friend who was working there.

And that's a really busy Starbucks.

That's a friend who was working there who's been on this podcast.

Yes.

And

we were like, oh, let's go see our friend at work.

And so we got in the drive-through line at the Starbucks.

The drive-through line at that Starbucks is fucking ridiculous.

It's really long.

So we got and we waited forever.

And Jeff was driving.

We get up to to the order window and we recognize our friend's voice, the one taking the orders.

And he's like, you know, welcome to Starbucks, whatever.

I'll be with you in a minute.

And Jeff just goes, fine, whatever.

In the most assholy voice he could.

We place our order and then we go up to the window to get our drinks.

And he sees us.

He's like, oh man,

I thought you guys were just huge assholes.

He was like, man, I was like, I'm going to spit in these guys fucking shit.

These guys suck.

He didn't work that long.

No, no, he did not.

Oh, you don't

Yeah.

That was a long time ago.

I think about that every time I drive past that Starbucks page.

I go to that Starbucks sometimes.

Really?

Yeah.

Yeah,

I probably have not been back to that Starbucks since

that ride.

That was in your old Mazda pickup, if I remember right.

Yeah, that's how long ago that was.

My old Mazda B2200 that I got when I was 18.

Jeez.

Oh, man.

But now, so speaking of Starbucks, I feel I'm sorry, I'm going to jump ahead a little bit here.

I need to make a segue to this coffee.

I've been wanting to talk about it for a little bit here.

I'm really glad we came here.

This coffee

has a really

delicious coffee flavor, but it also has a significant amount of bitterness to it, which we have not had in a long time.

So, I'm very relieved that this is finally not another 10 out of 10.

Yeah, this is not a 10 for me.

No, but this is a fine cup of coffee.

Yes, I got, I have like nothing really negative to say about it.

It's just a fine cup of coffee.

Thank you for not being another

fucking knock it out of the park.

I could drive all the way down here.

I don't want to come.

I will say, though, what this place lacks in coffee quality, it more than makes up for an ambiance.

Oh, I it's it's a totally fine cup of coffee.

Yeah, yeah, it's just not the house on the inside.

It feels like the original Luster Pearl.

Oh, I know.

Oh, interesting.

You know, it's like an old like wooden baseboard, kind of like wooden walls, just like kind of like shab, I guess, shabby chic or like what do they call it?

A coastal southern.

Yeah, is that what they call it, guys?

I have no idea.

Caliche.

This is a place that I would bring people who don't live in Austin.

Yeah.

This is 100% a, hey, we want to go, like, take us somewhere that's, you know, different.

And I would go, let's go to this place for a cup of coffee and a taco.

If you come at night, it looks like they have beer.

Oh, yeah.

They do.

They have

Palomas.

They have a lot of people in night, right?

Yeah.

They got Palomas on draft.

Hell yeah.

I like their little sons they have.

Yeah.

Painted on the.

Fences.

Everything here is

cool.

And the coffee, I think, is pretty decent.

Yeah.

Again, if I lived right across the street, I would walk here all the time and get a cup of coffee and a taco.

It's also super fast.

And maybe you guys will think I'm crazy for saying this, but it's cool

in a non-pretentious Austin way.

It feels like Austin, but not

in Austin in the worst ways.

I even feel like that's too negative because Austin in the worst ways I still like.

Yeah, of course.

But you know what I mean?

Like it has the quality.

There's an unassailable quality to sitting here that you don't get

that you used to get in Austin that you don't get now.

That's exactly what I was going to say.

I felt like the city used to be a lot

It's not the right word.

It's a lot less pretentious a lot less concerned about image than it is now.

It used to be like no one gave a fuck what you were dressed like what you look like every place like a place like this you might have like a dude in a suit next to like someone who like a drag rat who just like stumbled over here for some reason.

And that I feel like that was a lot more common.

I think

it's become a lot more stratified in the decades since then.

I think that's a great way to put it, Gus.

Yeah.

So I love it for that.

Like, I feel like I'm sitting at Spiderhouse in 2003.

Yeah.

Kind of, you know?

Yeah.

And not decor-wise, but just like vibe-wise.

Yeah, it's really not a lot of people here.

There's some people inside working.

There's people just kind of hanging out, listening to music and having a cup of coffee.

Little taco truck.

And then what I, what, honestly, what I like about it is that we're not surrounded by a bunch of other things.

It's just, I was just in a neighborhood right off Riverside.

Like, there's just nothing really going on.

Yeah.

I think it's cool.

And also, when you drive down Riverside, it changes fast.

That was suddenly, it was just like, oh, we're coming down to like Montopolis and then Riverside.

And then all of a sudden, like these big apartments that are brand new and this place.

And you're like, whoa, this is all.

Wow, this is new, new.

I remember.

So we didn't drive by it, but on the other side of Riverside, down Montopolis over there, they built an apartment complex with a name very similar to a trendy apartment complex a little further down Riverside.

I think that was back in like the late 90s or early 2000s.

It was a

like the place I lived at was

the metropolis, and it was kind of

popular and people like to live there.

They built this other one down here.

I don't know if it's still called it, but they named it the Metropolitan.

And I felt like it was always like kind of a, like a, oh yeah, the metro place off of Riverside.

Yeah, that one.

You know, it was kind of like a, yeah, we're that's that's us like they relied on people not knowing the difference and signing a lease at the wrong one

But yeah, and then in since then they've built way more apartments and condos and who knows what the fuck else over there a lot down here, right?

Like yeah, there's just it because I think if we just kept going it would I mean similar it's Austin in a nutshell, right?

It's unrecognizable from the place that Gus and I moved to.

Yeah, you know, which is

happens.

I think that happens.

That's not a complaint.

Yeah.

I think that's most towns 20 years ago to now.

I mean, it's just San San Diego is unrecognizable.

What is the San Diego Rockets, by the way?

You're wearing a hat that says NBA San Diego Rockets.

Oh, you don't know about the San Diego Rockets?

No.

Before they were the Houston Rockets.

They were in San Diego?

San Diego lost two basketball teams.

Yeah.

Why were they

called the Rockets in San Diego?

I assume the Rockets was because of the NASA thing in Houston.

Why were they called the Rockets?

I think that that's just a thing.

I don't know.

We're military.

I don't know.

It's like, why is the Utah Jazz the Jazz?

Exactly.

Why are the Lakers the Lakers?

Yeah, exactly.

Because they came to Minnesota.

The San Diego Rockets were a team.

The San Diego Clippers were a team.

San Diego Chargers were a team.

We have a long history of people leaving our fair city.

San Diego is the city of Wars.

Yep, pretty much.

At least we got the Padres.

Eric Bador.

Was a special team.

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, well, now I learned.

And an MLS team.

That's something, right?

Are you really?

What are they going to be called?

I don't know yet.

The Rockets.

The Rockets.

Clippers 2.

Yeah, Manny Machado is like, I'll run a bunch of the money and I'll bring an MLS team here.

Landon Donovan tried to do it and so he started some other like USFL thing or whatever.

USFL is combining with the USFL, right?

Yeah.

Who do you think it's going to be called?

USXFL?

I think it's going to be called the

Spring Football League.

Yeah, I think that's just what they're calling it.

Oh, SFL?

I think they should call it.

The S-U-XFL?

Yeah.

I think it's like the NSFL.

I think it should be Extreme United States Football League.

They even call it the National Spring Football League.

They should all, like The Last Boy Scout, one player should have a gun and run down.

There's a bullet somewhere on the field.

If you can find it, you can use it.

Now we're talking.

Do you guys remember The Last Boy Scout?

I do.

That's God.

What a great movie.

Still a good movie.

It's fun.

That was my comfort movie in my 20s when I

couldn't sleep or I just wanted to.

I would always put Last Boy Scout on.

Shane Black.

It's the guy who did, he was in Predator.

I didn't even realize that was Shane Black.

Yeah, did

Lethal Weapon and all that stuff.

That's it.

What was Damon Wayne?

Damon's Wayne's dead kid, Alex, right?

And he was always like, to Alex, the accountant, to Alex, the archaeologist, yeah.

It's a good movie.

It's a great movie.

Do you want to give a number rating to your coffee?

I'd say this is like a seven.

Yeah.

I put this coffee at a 775.

It's fine.

Let me see.

I got nothing against it.

I would drink this again tomorrow.

It's fine.

It's just, we've been on too hot of a streak and we knew this was going to happen.

7.1.

Yeah.

Like, again, I would come here again.

No problem.

I think.

Seven for the coffee.

The ambiance is like.

I hope people are digging the audio texture.

I hope that's coming through.

There's a lot.

It's charming on the river.

It's a deer

right on Riverside.

It is a fence, though.

Yeah.

Some trees, some bushes.

That's a fence a dog could jump.

Oh, yeah.

That's a fence a gus could jump.

Let's get a video for social.

In like a month, when the weather's actually fall,

you could spend six hours sitting here with your easy.

It's easy.

I think it's going to be fall this weekend.

It is.

Have you seen that?

Yeah, but we're going out of town.

Yep.

It's bullshit.

Oh, I know.

Because then when we get back, the weather goes back up.

It's like, hey, high is 74.

And I'm like, oh, awesome.

Oh, wait.

We're going to fuck.

Sucks.

FL.

Oh, man.

Yeah, I've been on a kick of old

like logos.

I bought one of the old SDSU Aztec hats.

I was wearing that, but I don't know that, you know, that's like a logo they got away from.

And then this old rock hat.

Clearly, clearly, they got away from that logo.

Yeah.

Every now and then in the Austin subreddit, I'll see people looking for all ice bats.

Oh, yeah, hell yeah.

Jerseys and logos and stuff, the old hockey team.

Or Toros.

Oh, I forgot about them.

Yeah.

They do when you go to Round Rock games now, they sell a lot of senators gear.

You buy an Austin senator's hat and stuff.

It's pretty cool.

It's nice that they see that stuff through.

Let's get into some anarchy questions.

Yeah, let's do it.

Plural.

Yeah,

I'll lead with this one.

We'll see where it takes us.

This is from Synth D.

Hey, all my family died.

Can you send me merch?

Is that Gavin?

It's the Gavin approach.

It's smart.

So this is from A.

Walters, 08.

This is on the ANMA podcast subreddit, where you can leave us an anarchy question if you like, or you tweet at us.

Fine.

I live in a small town in Pennsylvania, a population of 7,500.

We don't really have a lot of independently owned restaurants around.

We have big franchise stuff like McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Taco Bell, things like that.

Wish we had more of a variety.

So you drive further and find it.

Nice audio touchdown.

My question is, how often do you eat at big chain restaurants when you have so many small business choices to choose from and support?

Way more than I used to.

I absolutely agree with you.

Yeah, when I was in my 30s, 20s and 30s, I only wanted to eat at local establishments and support local business.

The problem with Austin is it grew to such a size that it's prohibitive to eat at those places now because of lines, because they're doing so well.

Yep.

And so when you're in your 40s and you're out shopping and you're hungry, sometimes you just go to the fucking Cheesecake Factory or Carraba's because it's close and

there's a space in the parking lot.

I got to say, I feel like I've maintained.

It's

probably 95% of the time I'm out somewhere.

It's a local establishment.

It's probably not that common that I go to train.

The one exception that I'll carve out is like Whataburger.

Yeah.

Just because that's like a.

But it's local-esque.

Yeah.

You know?

By the way, they have great Hispanic Heritage Month merch.

I just want to throw that out there.

Do they really?

Yeah, they really, really do.

They fucking killed it.

You going to get any?

I did.

Did you really?

Yeah.

But,

yeah,

for the most part,

I eat at a lot of local places.

And that actually makes me want to follow up on something we talked about before.

Remember, we talked about that Thai place that closed down?

Yeah.

They opened up.

They didn't reopen, but a new place opened in that space.

A new Thai place opened up in that space.

And that place is fucking excellent.

So good.

I'm going to go check it out.

The other day, because that Thai place used to be, it was Emily's favorite restaurant.

Absolute favorite.

And so, she was heartbroken when it closed down.

We haven't tried the new one yet.

I think the new one's better than the old one.

And I liked the old one.

That's great.

Yeah.

I went to Tataya's for the first time.

Tataya's awesome.

I'd never, I mean, I'd ordered from Tataya's, but I'd never eaten in.

Oh my God, dude.

That place is excellent.

It's awesome.

I think we mentioned it.

The people are awesome.

The place is awesome.

It's so cute.

I think we did talk about it.

We mentioned it once about how that place is so popular and does so well that I think they close for like a year and a half for renovations.

And then around the holidays, they'll just close for a couple of weeks at a time and be like, whatever.

We'll reopen in a couple of weeks.

You'll come back.

Yeah, and it's always busy as hell.

So you used to not have online ordering, and it used to be you had to call and to place an order.

And that is the one time when I would call a place to place an order that...

they would consistently have busy signals.

Like, I can't remember calling any place and getting a busy signal except for calling to Tayas.

Back then, now they have online ordering.

Yeah, I'll have to try that new place.

Although I'm kind of in love with the Tayas after eating in there.

But I would say I'm probably like 65, 35 at this point.

Like 65 local, 35

non-local.

I'm more about convenience than anything at this point in my life.

Yeah, and I think it probably used to be easier.

Austin is still, I think, unusual in this aspect.

It's not as extreme as it used to be, but I always felt like there was almost a lack of chains.

Yeah.

That used to definitely be more prevalent.

There are more chains now than there used to be, but there was definitely like in the core of the city, there weren't very many.

Of course.

You're saying that, and I agree.

However, if you look on Google Maps for any number of chains within Austin, they're in Round Rock.

Yeah.

There are so many shut down chains.

The closest Applebee's is in Round Rock.

Quiznos is up in Round Rock.

TJF TJI Fridays is closed.

You can't go to so many different places.

For FaceJam, it's been really hard

trying to find a lot of these chains that are still open and around and everything.

Like Schlotzky's is like, oh, in the middle of, you know,

what is that?

Like, Anderson.

Yeah, there's one.

Schlotzky's is local, though.

It is.

And there are fewer now than there almost ever have been.

It is.

It's really crazy.

I don't know what it is.

I think it's just getting priced out, having the franchise and having that stuff.

The closest Carl's Jr.

is in, what, Cedar Park or whatever?

There used to be one off of Slaughter.

Yeah,

there used to be.

Okay.

All over the city is all that used to be here.

Is there still a Del Taco down on Slaughter?

There is not a Del Taco in the city of Austin.

Really?

That was the only one.

And I was excited when I was there.

I don't, I'm not going to beat the drum for Del Taco.

I enjoyed it growing up and I really liked it in college where I could get a half bean and cheese burrito for a dollar, like right down the street from my house.

I don't want it, but I miss it.

I want to eat it one time and then be done with it.

But the closest that it is, like, I'll go back to San Diego.

I'm not going to waste a fucking meal on Del Taco.

I hear you.

Like, get real.

But, like, there's not one in Austin.

And that, it's prevalent for like a lot of chains.

There's one Wiener Schnitzel.

There's like Culver's, like one Culver's.

It's

one up north on

Kramer and then one down off of like Brody and Slaughter somewhere in that.

Is there one right down there south?

It's maybe one up Kramer's still there.

Yeah, that is.

I drove by it a couple of weeks ago.

I went not too long ago.

My wife wanted a mint shake and you're saying, oh, mint chocolate chip.

And I'm saying, no,

mint.

Just mint.

I remember when that Culver's up on Kramer opened, you and Bernie and I were really excited and we went up there because we're like, what's a butterburger?

Yeah.

And then we had it and we're like, oh, it's just a burger.

That's fine.

I don't think we ever went back.

I think they cook it with butter.

Butterburger's a trick.

But they got the curds.

They do.

The cheese curds are good.

I'm not a curd fan.

And they got their concretes.

It's good.

Concretes are good.

Butterburger sounds like they cook it with butter.

They put butter on

the top of the bun.

Yeah.

And it's like, that makes up.

That sucks.

Fuck that.

Fuck that.

I always like Culver's.

It's fine.

Yeah.

I had nothing against it.

I haven't been there in years, but I like Culver's.

I used to eat at Culver's back at the old job before Rooster Teeth.

Like, I feel like Culver's was really popular in the Midwest.

And I spent a lot of time in the Midwest.

And Culver's was one of those places I used to eat at on the road.

Really?

Pretty, pretty regularly.

it was Culver's and there was like a diner that they have up in the Midwest that we don't have here that I used to eat at because it was like a 24-hour place and since I was working on the road working I.T.

you know I'd have to eat like at three or four in the morning a lot God what was that place called they had pies that's all I remember about it oh fuck Marie Calendar no no no it's like a it's like a it's a diner only in the Midwest it was like in Wisconsin I used to eat there all the time anyway it'll come to me later I miss when I lived on the east coast we would eat at this place called friendly's all the time I think I've heard of it I've never been to Friendly's is great great.

They have great, it's where you go to get like huge banana splits and like ice cream floats and stuff, but they also have food and shit.

And I always, I always, when I moved to Austin, I was always sad that there wasn't a Friendly's here.

But we have the Friendly Spirit.

Yeah, we used to.

How about we'll do one more and then we'll wrap up.

We'll keep it a little shorter.

Did two in a row, two days.

Cool.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm doing my coffee anyway.

It's from Grayton.

Greeten?

Grayton.

What's the best local Austin snack food?

Oh.

Local Austin snack food.

Is there a snack that you think of when you think of Austin?

Is there like a snack food?

Is there like something that...

Well, I mean, if I'm thinking of like something that's specific to Austin, it's going to end up being like something barbecue related.

And my answer might be something that's not necessarily native to Austin, but maybe more native to the region, would be like Frito Pies.

I feel like Frito Pies big, you know, in the South and in Texas in general.

Pork rinds, I feel like, are big.

Pork rinds.

But they were big in Alabama when I grew up, too.

So,

Austin snack food.

I mean, I guess we have a couple local tortilla

companies, right?

Yeah, that's a tough one to try to think about.

Because as much as I think of Austin food,

I can't think of a snacky thing that...

I mean, we say that, but you can't go to a restaurant in Austin without getting chips and salsa.

I guess I would have to say that.

Oh, I think, I mean, it would probably be queso.

Queso, I would think.

Yeah, and the same, I mean, I kind of put that in the same bucket with Frudo Pikes.

Even though I said that, I feel like those are both San Antonio things.

Well, I was going to say, I was going to say, like, we've got El Malagro, right?

But that's a San Antonio Calfie.

I think we just have an Austin location.

Yeah.

I would think queso is probably the thing that is like a snacky food that if I were to like go back to San Diego, like if it was like, you open a restaurant, queso would be the thing.

I don't, we never really had queso at all growing up, and it's fucking good.

How about Juiceland?

Oh, that's interesting.

Smoothies.

Yeah.

We have a lot of smoothies.

We have this local company called Juiceland.

There's another one called the Daily Juice.

They're very popular.

There's a lot of juice places in Austin.

When I go get a haircut, my barber will message me and he goes, what's up, Playboy?

Can you grab me a juice on the way?

And I go, I got you.

Yeah, I think I maybe would say that because Juiceland is thriving.

There's 30 of them.

It's a nice, cool drink to have on a brutal 110-degree day

in the Austin summer.

Yep.

slurp up those liquefied berries.

Well, I think that'll do it for Anma.

This is a good one.

This is fun.

This was fun.

And I like being down here in this area.

Yeah, dude.

It's like being home again, kind of.

I think we'll drive down Riverside to get out of here.

Let's do it.

Do some reminiscence.

Well, if you want to follow us on social, you can't at Anima Podcast on Twitter and on Instagram.

There's also a subreddit that we do not run, r/slash anima podcast.

You can leave us questions at any of those places.

You can also see pictures of the video.

Do you remember when I got stuck under the gate at the metropolis?

I don't know why.

I just thought about that.

you got stuck under the gate i was drunk and trying to get back into my apartment and they dropped me off at the wrong gate and the gate wouldn't open so i thought i'll climb i'll crawl under it because it was like a little bit of a gap and i got stuck i was drunk at like three in the morning

then i had to like like unstick myself and then walk up pleasant valley to the main gate to get in i forgot about that until right now

we'll see you next week if you stuck around for the business portion of this podcast you got to hear that like you tuned out fast, man.

You blew it.

Oh, man.

All right.

Well, we'll go drive by.

I'll pull it out to you.

That was a great way to end this one.

All right.

We'll see you next week.

Bye-bye.