ANMA - The Mall is a School Now
Episode Date: November 28, 2022Good morning, Gus. Grabbing a coffee from Bennu at Highland next to ACC then heading back to the office because of the rain, Gus and Geoff talk about Gus hates brunch, Malls of Austin, Tiny Town, Gus ...went to ACC, The sailboat store, Lucy in Disguise closing, Geoff quit fast food at ACC, Our last retail jobs, and How to fix a beeper. 2 new ANMA shirts on sale at http://www.store.roosterteeth.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
What would you do if you had the freedom to be anyone or to go anywhere without limitations?
Start your journey and experience for yourself the feeling of total freedom when you game with Alienware.
Alienware is your portal to new worlds where limits don't exist and the only rules are the ones you
decide to make. Defy boundaries and start gaming now at Alienware.com. Next-gen gaming is built with
Intel Core i9 processors. This is a Ruestur-Teeth production.
All right, this is episode 24 of ANMA.
Our last episode was at the hideout in Congress.
Oh, what a hideout.
And in ProVroom.
That was so...
I hope that that episode...
I hope we conveyed the sense of nostalgia we felt recording that.
I felt like it came through.
Yeah. I definitely felt like it came through. Yeah.
I definitely felt like it came through.
It was a lot of fun.
I thought about it all weekend.
Oh, really?
Yeah, just like, how much fun it was sitting in that room on that stage and just like being
like physically surrounded by all those memories.
It was cool.
It was really fun experience.
I've been telling people since we recorded about how we went there and the woman went
Gus.
And then it was catching up with an old friend.
Also, we, this didn't make the episodes
we were done recording by then,
but we walked out of the hideout,
then Jeff and I immediately turned the wrong way.
We walked the wrong way.
We were walking towards the old garage.
We got like halfway down the blocker,
wait a minute, the car's in the other direction.
We're not parking at the old garage.
We were just on autopilot, heading to the little field parking garage.
That was, it was crazy because I didn't have,
I don't know anything about the muscle memory.
So I just went, why the fuck did we go the wrong way?
That was so natural to do.
But last time we talked a lot about eating downtown
and how downtown has changed and the dillos and how the mall is back,
this time we're around highland.
So that's episode 24 is now.
We're around a mall that is not coming back.
That's right.
That's right.
Hey, before we get into this area,
which by the way, because it's now winter in Texas,
we went to get our coffee and then left
and went back to RT.
I have a film there's gonna be a lot of conference room, audio texture for the next like four
months.
Exactly what I was asking when we went over to turn style went like what are we gonna do?
I'm gonna check it out.
Get some ear mobs.
We're fine.
There were benches that we could have sat at.
There was wet.
There you go.
It was raining like episode two.
Yeah.
And you put us in the conference room when it was still dry and warm.
This is it's literally actually raining right now.
So it is not raining anymore than it was in the episode where we did.
My my phone just said light rain.
Just outside.
Yeah, it was outside.
It was not raining.
Yeah, you call it my phone.
We could have.
Are you calling Steve Jobs a liar?
Yes.
Yes, specifically.
Calling him dead.
Hey, anyway, before we get into it,
Gus said something in the car as an aside
that I would like to hear a little bit more about.
What is your issue with brunch?
I just don't, it's stupid.
What's the point of brunch?
Listen, the reason I don't like brunch
is when you go to a restaurant and they're like,
oh, we don't have the regular menu right now,
we have the brunch menu, I don't fucking want that.
I want the stuff you serve 95% of the other time.
Don't take away the food I want
and give me some shitty half breakfast, half lunch,
that's a neither.
And this is,
if you do, if you're splitting your attention
between two things, you're doing neither well.
So this is their fault for the one day of the week
that's a station brunch.
One day, listen dude, during.
If it was one day, that would be fine.
Oh, you really, you're getting like,
you, this happens, you're on Thursdays?
It happens all the fucking time. Oh, you really, you're getting like, you, this happens to you on Thursdays?
It happens all the fucking time.
Oh, you're still having the Thursday brunch menu.
Brunch.
Brunch is terrible.
Exists so that people can sleep in on Sunday
and still eat breakfast.
See, I just, continue to sell breakfast and lunch.
I just don't, brunch used to be a thing
that made it easy to go do that
and now it's a 45 minute wait to eat.
It's a 45 minute wait to do anything in Austin.
Got it, just go before 10 a.m. it's fine.
And then you know what?
Breakfast.
Breakfast.
Yep.
I don't hate brunch the way he does.
I just think it serves, it doesn't serve my purpose
because I will not wait for breakfast.
I'll wait 45 minutes for dinner or whatever.
Oh, never.
I don't mind, I don't mind waiting for dinner.
I'll never wait for breakfast. I will go somewhere else don't mind. I don't mind waiting for dinner.
I'll never wait for breakfast.
I will go somewhere else to eat breakfast.
I won't wait for any food.
What are you...
I would...
My 10 minutes.
That's my max.
We got to a restaurant and they're like,
it's a half hour wait, we leave.
We waited that long for coffee.
We waited 10 minutes at least for coffee.
Well, it's different.
This is for production.
Well, I'm gonna say no.
I'm not gonna say no.
So, if the coffee's really high-quality.
So, what if I wanted to go get dinner and we were gonna do a production with it,
but it was a 45 minute wait?
I would be annoyed that you didn't produce better.
There's no way in which Jeff is wrong or it has been.
No, I'm like, what is it?
Well, I wanna go out to dinner
because I live in this dipshit town
where everybody lives now.
I fucking, I make reservations.
We went out to dinner the other night,
we had reservations.
It's true.
We're back in a part of town that's changed a lot.
So we picked up coffee at Bennu over by Highland.
Yeah.
And Highland used to be a mall and is now a community college.
It's like the biggest Austin community college location
that there is.
And I think when you say community college,
people might have like mental images
of what a community college looks like in most places
or like wherever it is that they live.
A couple of small buildings, you know, but this location of ACC, they took over the mall.
It's like an old mall.
And they didn't use the whole thing.
I think they tore down parts of it.
The Austin Community College organization is a mini-headed hydra.
They have, that is a big organization.
There are huge campuses all over central Texas
and some of them that look like,
like the one on Rio Grande looks like a goddamn,
like it looks like Harvard.
Yeah, I think that used to be a high school
back in like the 40s and they retrofitted it.
But it's massive and they've built all of these apartments
and retail and everything in the area
and it's just such a strange journey
for that real estate, for the property of this area.
Because I remember back, you know,
when I first moved Austin,
and when I was younger,
I used to visit Austin all the time,
my family up here.
It was like, there were two malls in,
well, okay, real four malls.
There were two malls that we would go to all the time.
Okay.
It was Highland and Barton Creek mall.
There was also North Cross mall, Lakeland and the Arboretum.
I don't know how, why do you want to cast your net here?
I would say Lakeland and I wouldn't consider the Arboretum a mall.
It's like a shopping center.
Yeah, shopping center, outdoor shopping center.
Not like an indoor mall, you would think there were those fours.
Yeah.
North Cross is pretty much entirely gone.
I think it's just the guitar center now.
It had a very similar redevelopment cycle to this.
I mean, they ended up in very different places,
but it became a bunch of different things.
I think it still has the ice skating rink
is still available.
I thought that was gone.
No, a shopper all ice club, I think is still there.
I thought they blew Walmart is there.
There is like a still there. I don't think the Walmart is there. There is like, there was like a work,
what do you call that?
Like, work training facility there for a long time.
I think that's gone though.
But they bulldozed most of North Cross Ball.
Like the building is gone.
The building is gone.
I think the guitar center was part of North Cross Ball
if I'm remembering right?
And that might be like one of the only parts that's left.
I think you're right.
But Highland Mall, they kept most of it.
A little bit of it was demolished and they redeveloped it.
So it's weird because I had been going to Highland Mall
for decades.
And then, you know, God, when did it close down?
It probably closed down.
Oh six.
Somewhere there.
Somewhere on there.
I mean, it did that same thing where it was a mall and then it was an empty mall and then there were like four open stores and then there was like, I don't know, like an old Navy moved in for it wasn't an old maybe but something like that moves in for a little while and then then it's like a salon college for a little bit and then yeah, yeah, yeah, it was like when you were slowly watching it. Wither away. Yeah, I'm just like less and less stores and less and less people like you see you draw the line out, you were slowly watching it with her away. Yeah.
And just like less and less stores and less and less people.
And you're like, you see, you draw the line out.
You know, it's not sustainable.
And I don't know who at ACC or who broke
with that deal or who thought to redevelop it in this way.
It seemed insane at the time, but sitting here
and now we're sitting close to it now in 2022,
it was a really smart move.
It was really, really a great idea.
The whole area is really benefited from the redevelopment.
Well, and it's like following this trend in Austin
of these cool little capsule communities, right?
Like obviously where RT is is the biggest one.
What is that called?
Mueller?
Mueller is the biggest one.
Absolutely. Then there's that the one over at the grove over there,
the actual creek. That's not done yet, but it's close. Then there's this guy.
Then there was actually where St. Edward's University used to be,
not St. Edward's, sorry, Concordia University used to be right there on 35 and like 38th and
half street. That was supposed to be one of these as well.
And then that started to develop during 2008
and then they lost funding,
and that com crash, and it sat empty for many, many years.
Yeah, they moved the university, that moved,
but then like the redevelopment,
they just opened up an apartment complex there
in the past couple of months.
Like that's a very scaled back version
of what was supposed to be built there.
I like this trend though, I really do.
It seems like they're maximizing space, you know?
And it creates, I think, these awesome little mini hubs
where you can like, I guess,
soon if you live here, you go down to a Royal Blue Grocery.
I haven't seen one here, but there's one of those
at every one of these developments.
And there's like three different restaurants
in a Pilates place, and it's all, I don't know,
it's like a little mini town.
Yeah, it's a little,
well, the coffee shop we went to is packed,
but I think this there will be a little
empty right now because of the holiday.
So that has to be, I mean,
you're talking about capsule communities.
A lot of that is, you know,
people live around here, whatever.
That had to all be students, right?
Like all of the, those were all students.
You would think they're all on vacation,
like we're recording this right before Thanksgiving.
Ah, well maybe, no, because I saw people,
no, maybe you're right.
Yeah, they would've gone by now.
Yeah, you're right.
That's just their off.
So that's just here in the area.
But that's the thing with that ACC area now.
Like all of those apartments, what the fuck?
So many.
Who is living there and going to ACC?
That's crazy, too.
Well, I mean, I think a good portion of it is that,
but a good portion is also just people looking for a place
to live around here.
And we've repeatedly talked about how tough it has been
to fight housing.
It was.
What is apartment occupancy at in Austin right now?
Let me look that up.
Probably.
Yeah, it's a static release.
That's a static release.
That seems like you guys flipped.
How is that not a gust thing that he's looking up right now
and how is it you?
That's backwards.
And I mean, it's because I don't trust a lot of these numbers.
You have to look at who's putting them out.
Like there's no official city of Austin residency
or occupancy number.
You're going to look up like,
what does Zillow say our occupancy is?
It's from apartmentdata.com.
I don't trust him.
This is from Jeff Goldblum.
I'm not gonna find Austin says.
He's gonna find you in a department.
Right, that's the guy.
That's the guy.
No, it's just like,
it's crazy that Larry David was right about crypto
and they made a commercial about it.
Occupancy in Austin is at 91.3%.
Low, it's low for Austin.
Yeah, interesting.
That's a rental occupancy.
Houston is at 90.7% Sandy one, San Diego.
What?
San Antonio.
There you go.
It is also at 91.3%
cost a bank at Tonya around here.
And that's what we do called spanking,
and then Dallas is actually 92.5.
So it's a little low.
Yeah.
But you know, it's because they built so many fucking
apartments here by Highland.
I say it's low.
It's still like if you moved to Austin nine out of ten apartments are unavailable to you.
When I first moved to Austin as an adult back in January and 98, I didn't have a job and had no prospects.
Didn't know what I was going to do. I was living sleeping on the floor of a friend of a high school friend's studio apartment off a river side.
And that floor was not even. That floor was not even. That floor had tons of roaches.
It was not great.
So I didn't know what to do.
So I grew up in a small town out in the border.
I'd gone to college for a year in Houston.
But when you go to college,
it's not really like living life.
You're still kind of sheltered
like in a university setting.
So this is my first time like striking out on my own
coming to Austin.
I had no idea what I was doing. I probably did the same thing you did like, open up the one ads.
You know, it's the 90s.
There's really not much job search.
I guess monster dog comm existed, but it was still like a new thing.
Anyway, didn't know what to do for a job.
You know, open up the one ads and then I was like, fuck it.
I'm just going to go to the mall and apply it every store.
And so I came here to Highland Mall.
So Highland Mall is on you at the time.
Highland Mall is the one I went to. Yeah. And I tried to apply every came here to Highland Mall. So Highland Mall's the one you went to. Highland Mall's the one I went to.
Yeah, and I tried to apply every fucking store
in Highland Mall.
Guess how many job offers I got?
I'm gonna guess zero.
Zero.
Did not end up working at the mall.
Dude, can I just say, not to exchange subjects?
That's how really, I like your jacket.
Thanks, Brian.
It's a really cool jacket.
It is.
Isn't that nice jacket?
I think it's a great t-shirt.
Oh, it's a good t-shirt, too.
And the podcast.
If you could put that logo on that jacket,
we could sell the shit out of it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's like, when I moved to Austin,
I did the same thing, but I didn't carpet bomb.
I just went and applied it every place that was open.
But, man, I'm wondering if there were a lot of places
open here.
I was trying to like, for sure.
For sure.
I wonder if that's something that's lost
in my daughter's generation.
If they won't, like that kind of rejection.
Like I thought I was guaranteed
to get a job working at the porn store.
Workin' the cat like, because I was like,
I'm like 23, I just got out of the army.
I'm not scared to getting robbed or having like,
somebody pointed gun at me at this point in my life.
Like I feel invincible.
Like I wouldn't be, I wouldn't be weirded out by that.
And I'm not Prudish, so like I'm not gonna,
kink shame people for buying weird shit.
And they were like, no fuck you.
Like you're not, you're not porn store material.
I wasn't a dealer's material, which is I think worse.
So, boy, we're talking about dealers a lot today.
On and off.
This is a dealer's.
You know why dealers coming up so much?
Oh, why is that?
Well, because the mall's back, first of all.
Right, and I went to the mall last week,
which I think we covered it in the hideout,
in the hideout episode maybe.
But I went to dealers and in that and in that Dillard's,
guess what they had?
Clothes.
They have fucking tiny town.
They have my department's 56 Christmas Village stuff.
So when he says,
90 town, do you know what that means?
I don't, okay.
That's a funny story.
So here's a funny,
it's not so much funny as it is long and pointless.
When Emily got into this department 56 shit,
making the little Christmas villages,
she kept calling it Tiny Town.
And I thought that's what it was called.
Apparently that is a reference to an episode
of a rest of development I did not see.
And so for like a year, I went around to stores
asking if they carried Tiny Town.
And nobody knew what I was talking about.
Jack and I went to Disney, and we were assured
that they had a partnership with Disney.
We went to every store in Disney,
in Disney Springs and in Disney World, world.
And that is just for guests.
Thank you.
And asked for Tiny Town, and people to locked
we were fucking crazy.
And when I finally got home and I was talking
Emily about it, and I'm like, I'm like, yeah, nobody has tiny town.
And I think it was her dad said, is he talking about the rest of the woman thing?
And I, wait, what is that?
And that's when I found out it was, it's never been called tiny town.
It's department 56.
Anyway, fucking Dillard's carries it.
And the Dillard's, the Dillard's at the mall has a better selection than the Dillard's
at the domain house.
Great.
Yeah.
Did you stock up?
I bought a big tree for like a town, like a town center tree.
Uh-huh.
And that's guy glitter on the stuff.
Have you built it?
No, it starts Thursday.
Okay, I was like, that's when I asked the timer.
So the Halloween village is gone.
We had this text chain last night.
Halloween, spoiler for the list.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's spontaneous here. Now you know great.
Halloween happens after the last trick,
this is how it goes down to my house.
After the last trick or treat or leaves,
say about like nine or 10 PM when it's clear
nobody else is coming,
Emily starts taking shit down.
You don't even wait till the next day.
No, no, no, that is still Halloween.
Emily starts taking shit down
and it just ends up on the table.
And then in the morning, I got up, she went to work
and I put it all in boxes and I was like,
I'm gonna just do like, I'm gonna do like a nice thing
because she puts a lot of work into set.
No, I mean, I help too, but she's the creative genius
behind all the decorations.
And so I packaged up, it's a fucking nightmare
to get rid of Department 56.
Let me tell you.
The tiny town itself.
Tiny town is a lot of fucking nightmare.
Everything has a specific place you go in to get rid of department 56. Let me tell you. The tiny town itself. Tiny town is a lot of stuff. It's a fucking nightmare.
Everything goes, everything has a specific place you go in
and I am in a relationship with a woman who would leave me
if I ever threw a package away.
Like the things go back in the box that you bought them in forever
and so you have that box forever.
And so yeah, it was like a half a day of just packaging up
Tiny Town and fighting with Styrofoam, just like, I know you fit.
I know you fucking fit.
I took you out of this thing.
So you're saying like, Chris, like,
the Christmas doesn't go up until Thanksgiving,
but as soon as Halloween is over, fuck Halloween.
Yeah, like everything that's scary leaves
and everything that's harvest stays.
So like pumpkins without faces on them, they stick around.
Pumpkins with faces go.
Pumpkins with faces go.
Okay, that makes sense.
Yeah, you draw lines somewhere.
Yeah, you draw lines somewhere.
Like, uh, bales of hay, they stick around.
Bales of hay with corns on them?
Corn stocks are good.
Corn stocks with smiley faces stay.
Unless corn stocks are scary faces.
Yeah, I got you.
I know. That's ours how I see the system.
I get it.
Oh my god.
Yeah, and then without a system, it's anarchy.
Exactly right.
Well, that's that is that is Gus to the core.
Well, that is system.
There's anarchy.
Well, I'm learning a lot about tiny town,
but I should probably be learning about ACC.
And if you guys ever went to this school
or did anything at this place.
I never went to ACC.
I used to go to the small lot.
When I was in the army,
this was the most convenient mall to get to from Colleen.
Barton Springs was like on the other side of Austin,
Lakeways up way northeast.
And so this and North Cross were the two most accessible malls
and this one's right up the interstate.
So I spent, this was my mall.
What happened?
What happened to this mall?
Why is it as cool?
I think it's just that timeframe where like a lot of commerce
moved online and the mall started dying,
you know, in the early 2000s.
Early 2000s.
Yeah, and it just kind of withered away.
It kind of became a thing where there was no point
in going there.
It also had in town, it had like a bad reputation. People would say it was like the scary mall
or the bad mall. I never understood what that was. It was fine.
It was totally fine, but you were right. This was like the sketchy mall.
I don't, which I totally didn't get. I never understood. I came to this mall many, many
times. It was fine. There was nothing wrong with it.
And I think once that reputation built up,
like people were less inclined to go there for some reason.
Yeah.
It was fine.
I don't get it.
I don't understand.
Yeah.
I mean, it was like, like most malls at that time too.
It was like seven foot actions and three ribs.
And that was pretty much it.
Yeah, there was a lift.
And then like a store for like stationary and shit.
But you know, I did go to ACC briefly,
going to jump me back to ACC.
Did you really?
Yeah, when I first moved here,
I took a couple classes at ACC.
So you went from rice to ACC.
Yeah, I went down to that real grand campus,
which actually they've done a lot of development there too.
They have that huge parking garage there now.
When I went back in 98, there was no parking garage.
There was just like one level of street, like surface parking.
And the lot was way too small for the size of that campus.
Really?
Yeah, and it's like you'd have to show up early to try to find a spot
in circle.
And then you had to walk up, because it was like the parking lot
was down kind of behind where Austin, London,
Cadillus, like just a little east of there,
kind of by where they built the park.
So it was a skate park, is it?
Yeah, so you would park there,
and then you had to walk up a ton of fucking stairs,
because the campus was uphill from there
to go get to the actual campus.
It only took like two classes, I think.
Two, it was like, I can't fuck this.
So did you complete your semester?
Yeah, I completed one semester, and that was- So you have grades at ACC? I do, I think. Two, it's like half like this. So did you complete your semester? Yeah, I completed one semester and that was it.
So you have grades at ACC.
I do, I never thought about that.
What classes did you take, do you remember?
Fuck, I don't remember.
I really don't.
It's been 24 years.
I don't know what you remember.
Do you think you did well?
I think so, I think I tried.
Better than rice, probably.
Yeah, it was, it was, it didn't calculate,
it was at ACC. I think I tried. Better than rice, probably. Yeah, yeah. It was the, it wasn't in calculus at AACC.
My course load was a lot lighter, a lot easier.
But yeah, it was fine.
I enjoyed my time there.
It was, I think ACC is a real gem.
Yeah.
And I think a lot of people in Austin appreciate,
and I think people here understand
what a value ACC provides to the community.
If you live here, like the rates are unbelievably good
to take classes, because you're paying for in taxes,
which is fine.
Yeah.
And you can do really well.
If you don't get a degree there,
you can transfer to another college if you want.
But I mean, it's totally a great place.
And I think they have a lot of stuff going on there.
I totally agree. A lot of great, continuing education there too. And a lot of varied and interesting
courses and stuff. It kind of reminds me of like our little localized version of SUNY schools up in
New York. It's just such a great state run school system. Yeah, I'm a big fan of ACC.
And they have a ton of campuses. And some of their campuses are kind of weird.
I remember when I first moved here back in 1998,
like I said, I took like one semester classes.
I was living off a riverside.
And I didn't understand that there were many, many campuses.
And some of them were very far away from me.
Yeah.
So I just like, back then, you, I don't think
you could register online.
It was like, you would get like a printed catalog.
You would flip through.
And then you would call the number and then register like based on codes that were associated with the courses. And I
didn't understand that in the codes it told you what campus it was at. So I registered for classes
at the Rio Grande one. I registered for some like way up at the north one that's close to Round Rock.
There's that one way out Southwest. And a rich, all-ass building. And a tentacle, which is like almost all the way
out to the fucking Salt Lake.
It's like going to Fredericksburg.
I drove to that one once and I was like,
no, fuck this, I gotta drop this glass.
I'm not driving out here.
That is such a weird building out there
by itself in the middle of nowhere.
It's like one tall building where like,
two 90 splits off with whatever that road is that goes out to driftwood
Is that two night? I don't know whatever the fuck that wrote that is. Yeah, I think it is too many like near the Y
Yeah, whatever I
Yeah, I can't say that I ever went to to ACC
um, I
I had intended to I had the army GI Bill and that was part of why I went was the or the Army College Fund
Part of why join went with the Ortega Army College Fund. It's part of why I joined the Army and then, then Rischstein happened. And then I didn't see a point in going back to college.
Well, I mean, you also, and I just lost that money.
I just let that money disappear.
You had been doing pretty well with the call center too.
You had advanced pretty quickly and we're making it clear there.
So you think even if this hadn't taken off, you had success there.
I think you maybe were, you were fine with that.
It's true, but I had like a window. I think I you were, it's true, it's true. You were fine with that.
It's true, but I had like a window.
I think I had like 10 years from when I got out of the army.
So to start college.
Oh my God.
That's how they get you.
Yeah.
They tell you they're gonna give you money for college
and they bank on idiots like you not going.
No, totally, totally for sure.
And then so I was always in the back of my head.
I was like, I had to have like nine years left
to start school, eight years, seven.
By the time I was like 31, I'm we were.
Yes.
That ship sailed.
Yeah.
That was crazy time by then.
The area around ACC, there's so much and it's changed a lot.
And like I've only been here for a few years or whatever, but even like the few years I've
been here, it's totally different.
Like my wife took some classes at ACC and just get it like her associates or whatever, but like going and dropping her off or picking her up or whatever, the building and like the
amount of like moving out and moving in or whatever is crazy.
And I think they're trying to attract like international students and there's just so much
like you would never think that this would be especially I mean when you guys started
or whatever a pocket of Austin that would never be what it is now.
I think that they've very smartly started up partnerships with manufacturing in the area.
You know with Tesla and Samsung and Apple all you know opening up very big offices here.
I think they've partnered with all of them to do like fast track training and accreditation courses to get people into that skilled workforce when I think is a very smart move on their part.
What would you do if you had the freedom to be anyone or to go anywhere without limitations?
Start your journey and experience for yourself the feeling of total freedom when you game with Alienware.
Alienware is your portal to new worlds where limits don't exist and the only rules are the ones you decide to make. Defy boundaries and start gaming now at Alienware.com.
Next-gen gaming is built with Intel Core i9 processors.
You know, I just realized I'm about to contradict something we were talking about earlier.
We were talking about how this area had this small had a bad reputation of being kind of sketchy.
And then we didn't think it was justified.
I will say, I was about to tell,
I remember when I moved here,
reading in the Chronicle,
that Middle Fiscal Road,
which is the road that runs right by the mall,
had the most police calls per year
of any street in the city of Austin.
Well, okay, so.
But isn't that the bus station?
I mean, it's a lot.
That went up in that Middle Fiscal.
I think a lot of that problem,
we're gonna really talk about Old Austin forever.
I think a lot of a source of that was the real motel.
Yes, that was a huge, huge, huge,
real motel by itself.
I wanna say was like 500 police calls a year.
It was like three calls a day.
Right, it was something ridiculous.
And I think that's not on Middle Fiscal Road,
but it's adjacent.
Right, adjacent to it.
And I think the real motel was responsible for quite a bit of that.
Quite a bit of that. And that was also like a not that I'm saying that strip clubs are
places of distribute, but there was like kind of a strip club in a,
it was just kind of an interesting area. I think, you know, you just get
people who want to drink and then end up wanting to fight. Yeah. Yeah.
Oh, that's a variable. I mean, that happens.
And now it's a PBS.
Now the PBS headquarters is here.
What is?
Austin PBS.
That's so crazy.
It's a big sign.
It's a fucking cool asset.
It's cool building.
How do you get, I want to, I want to, like, how do we get a tour?
I want to go inside.
It looks really cool.
This whole area is so pretty from the outside.
We can just go.
I mean, like, SDSU and San Diego had the PBS location there and you could
just go, you didn't like it. I want to check it out.
Okay. Yeah, I don't care.
Okay, PBS contacts.
You got PBS contacts?
You got a PBS guy?
Yeah.
A PBS person.
Okay. Check that out.
Yeah, I'm sure we can figure that out. Have you been in the ACC Highland building since
they've reopened it as ACC?
No.
I think I've only been in two or three times.
I voted there a couple times.
So I used to have voting on this side.
Oh.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I used to have it on the side by venue where we went.
Then they moved it to the back side, back where the dealers
used to be on the back end.
You know, come and kind of buy where the lids was.
Actually, you said lids earlier.
And then they don't have voting here anymore.
Then they moved it over to that city office,
just down the street from there.
If you don't know me asking,
I'm not trying to dox either of us,
but that's not the closest voting place to your house.
Why would?
It's really close to work.
Real close to work, okay, that makes sense.
It's not too far from the RISTI studio.
Yeah.
That's one of the reasons I always,
I like early voting so much,
you can vote anywhere that has it. Yeah, I would just like, un-launch, go pick up some of the meat,
vote, and then go back to work. It's really easy. That makes sense. This place, I think the
shell of it is still there, but in the parking lot of the Old Mall, there was a store that I thought
was the... It made me warm a living... One of the many reasons I want to live in Austin was legitimately the store,
because it seemed like a big city to me.
If a city had this store, it had to be a big city
that I wanted to.
Do you wanna try to guess this?
I don't, I really, I really can't even imagine
what it would be.
I have no idea.
I'm gonna say something stupid, like Sears.
No, no.
No.
He's from Alabama, come on. Yeah, right, no. Selbow stores. No, what is it? The sailboat store. Oh, No. He's from Alabama. Come on.
Yeah. Saylboats store. Now what is it? The sailboat store. Oh, yeah.
It was a sailboat store and it was painted well and it looked fancy.
And I thought it's people have sailboats in Austin. This is where I want to be.
It's a place where you can go to a whole store just for sailboats.
I was from Alabama. Yeah. Even after even after five years in the army,
I was still a kid from Alabama who'd spent five years in the army, I was still a kid from
Alabama who'd spent five years in the army. The idea that there was a story you could go
by a sailboat at, I was just like, well, fucking, we're in New York City. I never went to
that. I never went to the sailboat. Just go buy it a million times. But there's like,
there are like a lot of weird shops in Austin that are like still around. Like there's
like a violin repair shop.
And you just go, two people go here
like to repair their violins.
Crazy.
Crazy.
And there's like a bunch of those and like main drags on stuff.
I assume a lot of those places either have 99 year leases
or own the building.
You know, it's gotta be case.
I never thought about owning the building.
That was like what happened with Lucy and disguise.
They owned the building.
Yeah, because they bought it forever ago when South Congress
was not a great place.
Yeah, when they sold onto it.
And they closed down last month.
Yeah, these were the new.
This was their last year.
They think right after Halloween,
that was like their big shaman.
Sad to see a place like that go.
It was, I definitely shopped there a bunch
over the last 30 years or so,
buying costumes or renting costumes and shit,
but, I don't know, but it didn't see what's happened.
The whole area's changed.
Like there's an Urmez store.
That's exactly what I was gonna say.
I think you guys have talked about that area specifically
where is that where you would go down
to get like free beer?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, first Thursdays, yeah.
You would talk about going there or whatever. Free beer, beer? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, first Thursday, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You would talk about going there or whatever.
Free beer, free movie passes, you mean?
Yeah, everything.
Yeah.
To bring it back up to here though, I do have a story about going to this mall that stuck
with me for many years.
I have had like a love-hate relationship with fast food my whole life.
And I've like quit fast food cold turkey a few times.
The first time I ever quit was at this mall,
because I was at the food court.
And I wanna say, I don't know what I was eating,
I'm gonna say a sabaro or fucking Wendy's or something,
but I was at the food court, order in food,
and I was still in the army at the time,
so I was like maybe 21 or 22 just down for the day.
And the guy who was taking my order
was having a conversation with his buddy
who was working there.
And he was complaining that his mom took his cell phone away
from him and he couldn't get it back
until he learned to be more responsible.
And I was sitting here thinking,
this guy is not responsible enough for a cell phone.
And he's making food I'm putting on my body. And I was just like, I don't want to eat it.
It kind of grossed me out the thought. And I need that time. I don't think I ate. I was probably like
a month after that. I quit. But there are a couple times later where I stopped for like years at a
time. But yeah, that was my first foray into quitting fast food because I just like,
I feel like-
You feel back behind the curtain a little bit.
Yeah, right.
I'm like, here I am 47 and I still remember clearly
the guy being like, yeah, just like,
I gotta figure out how to be more responsible
so I can get my phone.
What do you think you did?
I have no fucking clue.
I have no fucking clue.
I just remember thinking like,
I can't eat food this guy made.
That sounds terrible, but it's dumb.
But I just remember being like, he's composing me.
Like, he's not responsible.
It's a phone.
He's not responsible enough to dial nine digits on a phone.
Nine, what was he calling?
Seven.
Oh.
Canada.
That's like, if he's seven or 10,
I'll give you nine.
No, I'm not gonna worry about that.
I'll give him.
Oh.
Anyway, that's my one story from this mall.
What was the food place?
I think it was like a sabaro
or it may have been a Chick-fil-A or a...
I know there was a...
There was a sabaro and a Wendy's there.
I don't remember, there was a Wendy's there.
There was a Chick-fil-A. I'm sorry,
there was a Wendy's, it was like on the corner
of the food court.
It like didn't back up to a wall, kind of back to a wall.
Yeah, okay, it was out of the open.
For sure.
I ate it at that Wendy's many times.
Didn't get hired there though.
Did not get hired there.
Did I play there?
I did, I did.
I didn't play there, I think.
You weren't responsible enough.
I was a, oh, I was 19.
Yeah, fuck, I was 19.
Nobody wanted to hire me back then.
I also, that was also, I think I was also partially annoyed
because that was like five years before I got my first cell phone.
I remember thinking like, why is this kind of a cell phone?
Yeah, my first cell phone, I remember I got, I was living at the metropolis at the time.
So that would have been like 2000, maybe 99. It was one of those prime co-phones that everyone
had at the time back when like cell phones first really started exploding. It's just weird to me to
look back. I remember I I got that thin one,
after the kind of chunky boy everyone was able to get,
there was like one cell phone you get when they first came out
and then a year later they were three.
Yeah.
And it was like the slow proliferation of it.
And now it's just weird to me to think
that there was a moment of time
where that we lived through,
where it's like you went from being
unreachable wherever you went to now you're like tether
to a phone, you can be reached at any moment wherever you went to now you're like tethered to a fun,
you can be reached at any moment.
I remember being resistant to getting a self-unner.
I remember Bernie was mad about it.
He wanted me to have him for work
for like getting called in and stuff from scheduling issues.
And I was like, I didn't, I fought it for a long time.
Yeah, that sounds like a work problem.
Yeah, and not like a personal problem.
Yeah.
And now I can, yeah, it's like,
didn't they pay for us to have,
like didn't they subsidize cell phones for us for a while?
They did eventually.
Yeah, that was their compromise to make sure
that we were on the further managers
to make sure that we were on call unavailable.
Yeah.
I forgot about that.
Call center?
Yeah, call center.
And I remember thinking like,
I thought that was funny about at research. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, and just whenever we have a recording, it's just like go back and here's 12 notifications
from 12 different people.
Great.
Cool.
Oh well.
But man, phones were so,
those cell phones were so shitty back there.
I think I even applied to,
I think here at Highlymo,
I think I even applied to like a prime co-phone location.
Oh, where's it? Maybe a pinky's wired.
Remember pinky's wireless?
It might have been a pinky's actually.
That got, I don't remember.
It's been a quarter centuries since that happened. There's no, what was the, surely there's no pinky's wire, remember pinky's wire? It might have been a pinky's actually. That got, I don't remember. It's been a quarter centuries since that happened.
What was the last,
surely there's no pinky's.
No, I think the last one was the one over there
at like Congress and Riverside.
Right, which had like the gorilla, the pinky.
Yeah, I think that was the last pinky.
It was like a local cell phone store chain,
which really doesn't exist anymore.
I guess like now it's all like the carriers
operate the store,
but it was like a place you go and buy a phone and buy a plan.
Like they sold all the phones and all the different carriers.
It's weird to think about now.
Let me ask you this, because you weren't there
and applied for so many jobs.
All retail, they all said no.
Something about me, it was not likeable.
I can't figure out what it was.
You were asking, like, oh, I wonder if my kid
had this rejection, it's like everything's online. Like you just don't get out what it was. You were asking, like, oh, I wonder if my kid had this rejection. It's like, everything's online.
Like you just don't hear back from people.
Like you just applied everything online.
And we're in a world too, or like, I can't go to a restaurant without people asking you,
like, do you know anybody who's hiring?
Anybody who needs a job?
Yeah.
Like, we're desperate here.
Yeah.
Um, what was the last retail job you guys worked?
Not like the, the, the phone sort, whatever.
Like, I assume you guys both work some shitty retail job,
it's some shitty spot or whatever, forever ago.
Do you remember what that was?
It's weird.
I was just having this conversation with Emily last night.
We were talking about, I never was able to work
customer-facing stuff because...
It was...
Something about your face.
A hundred percent because of that reaction.
Yeah.
Like I made customers, I remember getting talked to
by my boss Keith, I worked in a place called
Sydney Fried Chicken in Alabama,
which is still there by the way.
We looked it up last night,
and I had a talking to you because I made customers
uncomfortable.
Probably why the porn store didn't hire you.
But I just couldn't not be a dickhead.
The last retail job I worked was I worked
in a video store in my last year in the army.
So I had like a, most soldiers,
at least when I was in the army,
had to moonlight to make a living
because the army doesn't pay you enough to live,
only to die.
And so I had a job working at a video store
in Eaton Town, New Jersey. And that was the best job working at a video store in Eatin' Town, New Jersey.
And that was the best job I've ever had in my entire life. And I include restructees.
I've talked about it before. The owners lived in Philadelphia and one of them got cancer and was sick
and so they never came to the store. And we had a manager who was just like 28-year-old
divorced single mom who was the coolest lady ever. We talked about this the coolest lady ever. Have we talked about this on this podcast?
Yeah, yeah, we talked about it on the podcast before.
She died and stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah, and that was a great job.
Just a great job.
How about you guys?
I had, before the call center,
before we were in Austin,
we were working at the call center,
I had three different jobs.
All three of them were kind of customer facing.
One of the weirdest, one I would say,
is probably a work that an office
supply store in Eagle Pass, the small town of Gropa on the border. There's an office
supply store, but I didn't work selling the office supplies. I worked off to the side
at the Beeper counter, and I could sell people beapers. I could sell people beaper plans,
and I could repair beapers. Like I had like a like tool. I had no training to do this.
They just hired me and they're like, you're the people repair guy. How do you fix a beeper?
Like where does it go wrong? Most of the time the problem. So there were a couple of different
things that could be wrong, right? Like this is so interesting to me. You have no idea. Like I
hearing about fixing old technology like this. Like this is such a lost. Yeah, it's not. No one
will ever have to do what Gus is about to describe ever again. So I am fascinated by this.
So there were a couple of different problems that could exist, right?
First problem would be like a carrier problem.
Like your beepers not receiving the signal, it's not receiving the pages.
So I had a list of different carrier phone numbers, like not publicly available phone numbers
for the different beeper carriers that you would call and like talk to one of their technicians
and be like, you know, here's the serial number on this beeper.
It's not getting service for some reason.
And then they would just like,
you delete it from their system and re-ad it,
be like, cool, now it's working again.
Hand it back, easy, right?
It's just like, the customer doesn't have the number
to call because they don't want,
the carrier doesn't want to be over one customer calls
that are pointless.
Like, I would have to troubleshoot,
oh, this is a carrier problem, call a carrier problem fixed.
The other problem would be like,
my beeper doesn't vibrate anymore.
Like it doesn't make the buzzing noise, you know,
when these are the two biggest problems
ever in a beeper.
So then when that's a problem,
you just take it apart and normally,
like the way that a beeper vibrates and buzzes,
it's like a haptic feedback in a controller.
It's just like a little cylindrical weight,
that's like half a cylinder, and there's like a motor that little cylindrical weight, that's like half a cylinder.
And there's like a motor that spins it around
and sits it's only half a cylinder.
It's like it's off-center
and it's both thing kind of vibrate.
The motor would get gunked up.
Like, peepers are dirty.
Like, shit, you keep in your pocket or I need to do it.
So you just like pull the lens and stuff?
Yeah, I would just like get like little tweezers
and just like clean all the gunk off it,
some compressed air, put it back together
and it would work.
Those are the two most common problems for a beeper.
Anything else, like, sometimes it would be like,
oh, you're like, it doesn't turn on,
the circuit board's bad, like, swap it out with a different one.
Does that one work? Yeah, here you go.
Let me charge you 30 or 40 bucks or whatever
the circuit board costs.
My big job in high school was I was an electronic
hydraulic and pneumatic tool repairman.
And that was like, the, that's how you fix 90%
of all tools is clean them.
Yeah, that was just gunk. Like every once in a while like brushes would be bad or like an armature
would would blow out. But yeah, like almost everything is just like he just cleaned out the gunk.
Yeah, it was amazing how much I was and I wouldn't do it in front of the customers with like a
little screen like, oh, and let me take it to the back. You know, and you're like taking apart and
it's like, oh, fuck this box. It's fucking beautiful fucking beautiful. It's like, it's like, it's actually a popcorn in your bag.
Yeah, I don't know how this got in here.
I also worked, when I was at Rice,
I took a job on campus there.
I worked at the AV department at the university.
And that was weird because it's like,
it was fields and fulfilling AV requests for faculty.
So it's like a professor would be like,
I need a projector in this room for this class,
because I'm gonna be for whatever reason.
So it's like you just like keep inventory on everything
and be like, I just gotta make sure that this piece of hardware
is in that room at this time and then go pick it up.
And then it was also, oh, the light burned out
in this projector or in this overhead projector
or in this film projector, or in this film projector.
You know, what kind of light bulb does it take?
And you have like this big inventory of different light bulbs
because everything used a fucking different bulb
and just matching the bulb and swapping it out.
Really easy.
And then I also worked at a lawyer's office for a while
for like a summer.
Oh, yeah.
I was a lawyer's receptionist.
So that was just like taking phone calls,
putting stuff on the calendar, greeting clients,
like that kind of making, like picture mail went out.
Is that every job you've ever had?
That's those three.
Yeah, and then just the call center and then Richard Heath.
You were thinking about how many jobs I've had.
Yeah, I've had quite a few.
I feel like you've had more than
Gossam I put together, probably.
I also worked at a little league field.
Sorry, for how about that? You were to tell what?. I also worked at a little league field. Sorry, forgot about that.
You were to tell what?
A little league field.
A little league field.
Oh, right.
Yeah, I was like a scorekeeper.
Getting out there hitting home runs.
I was like, your face was scorekeeping.
You were kind of doing like a mat daemon thing
where like, you were like hoping that like a team would see you
and you're like, oh, I'm just a groundskeeper,
but I'm a good, good star.
I'm a good star, yeah.
Yeah.
Being the little league scorekeeper for a few years,
kind of a ruined baseball a little bit for me,
because now that's all I can think when I see a play,
like, oh, it's a 5-3.
That's a 6-4-3.
6-4-3 double play there.
6.
Have you ever been fired from a job?
No.
No.
Oh, and I also worked at the Pro-Sharp Rocks place.
Right, right.
No, I never have.
I tried to get fired at that job.
You did.
I really got them.
I remember the conversations about it.
You're like, they won't fuck from fire.
I mean, I don't know what I'm just going to see
how long this goes, I guess.
I got fired from the very first job I ran.
Oh, yeah.
I was 15.
I got a job sweeping up hair at the salon.
You got fired from that job?
I got fired for being too gossipy.
At a salon.
I just talked to ladies all day long
and just got up in their business and just are in like,
just got, I got in the mix.
I got, I was too into the scene and they had to let me go.
I drove like two weeks.
Isn't that like one of the things people go there
to like socialize?
I thought I was providing a service.
Apparently, it sounds like it was distracting.
So, apparently it was too much.
So yeah, it's really a job of been fired from yet, you know.
Yeah, well give it time.
But so far, I'll be gate first job, first job, fucking.
That's like that could be a good podcast.
Like talking to people at a salon, just catching up on the one
I'm talking about.
I think you're gonna talk about jobs you got fired from.
No, no, no, no.
It's a little bottom James does it.
It's called the barbershop, the shop.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
How about you Eric, you ever been fired?
Not fired fired, but,
I mean, mutually parting ways.
I guess probably best if you, yeah.
Yeah, but like, I've had a bunch of work on jobs
and find weird jobs and Craigslist and all that stuff.
I like, I like jumping from job to job, doing stuff.
I think this is probably the longest I've stated a job
that was like an actual job, like paying,
like actual living money.
Because everything else was,
you work at a peer one, work at a zoo,
work at an electrical contractor,
work at an IT place,
work at Target, work at a radio station, it was just like, what could I do? place, worked at Target, worked at radio station,
it was just like, what could I do?
What was working at Target?
That was my first job.
I was the first person that I ever got hired
at a brand new target in my hometown in San
T California.
Did you enjoy working at Target?
It was fine.
I think I was there for like two years, two and a half years,
and they hired me to push carts,
and then I learned how to do everything else, so you just kind of, like two years, two and a half years, and they hired me to push carts, and then I learned how to do everything else,
so you just kinda, like everything else,
like at this job, just a pinch hitter,
just put me in wherever you need me, that kind of thing.
Just a institutional knowledge.
Yeah, it's just that, and then, you know,
you quit by going, fuck, how much am I making?
Eight, 10 an hour, I'm out of here,
and then, you know, you have a different job.
That was, I've had like a job lined up,
I think like the whole time,
I think I've only taken like a year off ever.
That was after I said, after I was working a job
that I hated, saved up 10 grand and quit,
and then just went like, okay, I'm gonna,
not work for the-
Yeah, I'm just gonna like not, 10 grand at the time
was like an insane amount of money
that I could just like live on it,
and that's when I moved in with Garrett.
I always wanted to work in it, like a big box.
It's easy.
I mean, the last two weeks were probably the best two weeks
that I was there,
because you could finally answer the super questions
that people ask when you're walking down an aisle.
And somebody goes,
Hi, excuse me, do you work here?
And you look at your name tag and you go,
no, and then you go, not for long.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so you're not for long. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so you're like, oh, that feels good.
Ask me a week.
Yeah.
But it was fine.
I mean, you know, you have here, the people that have been there for too long and the people
that like transferred from other stores or whatever, but it was fun.
I think if I was older and I worked there, it would have been like a problem because
I don't think I would have respected anyone that also worked there, it would have been like a problem because I don't think I would have respected anyone
that would also work there, but when I was 16,
I didn't know any better to not respect anyone.
I just like repetition a lot.
I think that's why I worked in newspapers.
It's why I've fucking, it's why I achieved 100,
had 7,000 episodes of every show we ever made.
And so I always like, grocery store or like a target,
always seemed like just like a zen kind of job for me like
Fronting shelves at a grocery store. I would pay to do. Yeah, it's
It's good, but then you have to be careful of being outlasting the people that leave because then they'll put you in the job that isn't the
Zen thing you want to do and you have to be the person that comes in at five in the morning to unload the truck to figure out what boxes go
Where and that's when it starts getting into like work and not, hey, you know, they put
me behind like the food counter. I worked it like they call it like food avenue. You know,
it's like, you remember the target used to have, it's not like just like Starbucks at every
target. It was like an actual like, here's popcorn and hot dogs, whatever. So I would just
go back there like, yeah, I need to like give the person a break.
So I would go give the person a break.
And it's good.
It's good.
Vice-cream would be like, all right.
Clean the slushy machine.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But it would just be like, we making a hot dog.
And I go, all right, I mean, a hot dog.
And then people will come to the counter.
And I'm like, I don't know how to cook anything.
I'm sorry.
And then you want to cook?
Yeah, cook.
Sorry, I give you popcorn.
But yeah, I'm working those jobs are easy.
I think it's a good fallback kind of a thing
where if you ever go to a new town,
I think it's a good way to like get on your feet
and then figure out what you're like.
You're not just a loser.
I'll listen and I'll do it.
I tried that.
I was gonna say like, I guess Gus is a cautionary tale
for me because when I was at the mall,
you know, because I don't know,
we've talked about this a bit, but the mall's back. When I was at the mall, you know, cause I don't know, we've talked about this a bit, but the mall's back. Yeah.
I've heard.
When I was at the mall last week,
walking around, everybody seemed so happy to work there.
And I remember just thinking,
like, these people all seemed to really enjoy their jobs.
I was, I thought, yeah.
Not that I don't enjoy my job, but I don't know.
You like, and see how you were,
I can see how you were,
how you walked into a mall and thought,
like, I must work here.
And I'm gonna apply it every time.
It was just easy.
There was just so many places you could apply to at once.
Yeah.
And just get rejected about so many times.
And it's climate controlled, is that?
You said, awesome.
All of our doors are outdoor malls.
Like all of our malls back home.
I think there was one indoor mall,
and it was the worst one.
All they were all outdoor.
It was San Diego, what do you expect?
That's true.
You know, you need to spend Diego?
It's all right.
No, it's not.
No, it's not.
No, it's not.
No, it's not.
We're getting right around 50 minutes
so we should wrap up.
But we should talk about Benu Coffee
because this is the second Benu Coffee
and you guys were asking what episode it was
that we did Benu before.
It was episode seven, like I said, LeCarr.
You said 10.
I said 11 or 12.
I said six. I said three. Okay, so like I said, it was episode seven, like I said, LeCarr. You said 10. I said 11 or 12. I said six.
I said three.
Okay, so like I said, it was episode seven.
And that one was on MLK.
This one's at Highland, ACC.
This is...
That was the hottest couple coffee that's ever been made.
I couldn't drink it for so long.
And then I started drinking it and it is,
like I have like a headache.
It does not taste good.
It tastes like eating coffee grounds.
I'm sad.
I'm like, I'm like really bummed out.
Yummy.
Here's what I'll say about this B-New coffee.
The issue I have with the other B-New coffee
on MLK, the original one is,
it feels like you're walking into a library
that's also a coffee shop.
And I just feel like if I make any noise,
like everybody's sitting there there looks at me like,
this is a recurring complaint with you.
Yeah, and that will just that be new specifically.
And also flight path.
And flight path as well.
Those are the two places that are like very studious,
I feel, where I feel like I'm imposing
if I go in there.
This one didn't have that vibe.
No, not at all.
It was loud.
Yeah, and it was.
People were studying,
or like they seemed like they had books and whatnot, but it was still loud. It was vibrant in a life And they were studying, or like they seemed like that books and whatnot,
but it was still loud. It was vibrant in a life. The line was long, the whole time. Yeah.
Seven. Okay. It's like a six. I feel like it's a little, this marijuana is a little more water
down. And I typically like a little more punch to it. I will say this felt like where B-new on MLK
felt like a coffee shop where you come and get coffee
and study and it's this thing.
This felt like a coffee shop where it's like,
try our weird signature drinks.
Here are 100 weird signature drinks.
They had a lot.
What did that dude ask?
I'd like to do it, ask me something.
I didn't understand.
I just went over to grab his Americano
because the guy called it out
and then another drink was there before he got his Americano.
And so he's handing it to Gus and he's like,
oh, did you get a Pride and Prejudice?
And guess what?
What?
I just thought I was like, I know those words,
but I don't know what you're asking me.
They just had a hundred signature drinks that were like,
and they were everywhere.
The ones that were on the counter,
on the printed out sheet were different
from the ones that were on the board.
And there were like little temporary ones.
And there were ones on like sticky notes next to the register.
And then there were like other ones
and like a book off to the side.
And it's, it was crazy.
And I don't drink coffee that way at all.
I think that's the reason I wanted to stick with something
I knew I could find everywhere
and not get like a weird fancy drink
because I didn't want to be getting something different
and comparing different things that every coffee shop went to.
But Jeff still got a nice coffee.
I don't like change.
Right, you repetition.
It took me 45 years to get the iced coffee
and Lewis Medina like beaten it into me that I would like it
and I finally did and then once I discovered I liked iced coffee,
I turned off hot coffee. And now I just like it and I finally did. And then once I discovered I liked iced coffee, I turned off hot coffee.
And now I just like this.
44 degrees outside.
Yeah, but we're not outside, we're inside.
It's a 63 degrees in here.
It is fucking, it is.
It was, it's that fucking cold.
We've needed it up six degrees since we've been in here.
With all of our hot takes.
Yeah.
I think, I think being is a fine,
it's a fine cup of coffee.
If you are a student on this campus, doing a study group meet up where someone's going
to do 80% of the work and you're going to phone in your five, that is what this is.
If you want to be in silent public, go to the B-News at MLK.
If you want to be in Rockus, uh, talky people public, go to the other one.
Next to a yoga studio in a Paris baguette where they don't do their own bread make their bread.
I don't think they pretend like they do.
I swear they don't.
They they they they act like they'd like bakery cosplayers.
It's like keep it.
They like to act like they're making stuff.
They like bring out trays like they just mean they heated it up.
Keep it up and see if you can get this room a little bit warmer.
Are you doing guesses or what? Well, yeah, we got some guesses.
I got some from my mom.
Okay.
I got this one from Meg P.
She says Austin Mania.
And I like that guess.
I was trying to think how it fits.
No.
No, the guesses are pretty acronym for anything.
acronym Austin. sorry James,
I don't think either one of them is anything,
I don't think you're close, bro.
No, not even in the building.
All right.
Oh, these are Jeff Mom guesses?
I got two from Jackie Ramsey.
All right.
Okay, my mother's suggestions are,
a normal morning in Austin.
Okay.
I like it, but no.
That's not it.
No. That was pretty good, but two. It's a good one. Anatomy of Austin. No. Okay. I like it, but no. That's not it. No.
That was pretty good, but it's a good one.
Anatomy of Austin.
No.
Oh, I like that.
Both great guesses, though.
They're good guesses.
I need to remind her.
It's more dream, like I say, it's dream logic, right?
Right.
A lot of these make too much sense.
Man.
That's frustrating.
It's hard to think of things that don't make sense.
Right, you have to think of something
that doesn't make sense and isn't clever.
And then you got it.
Boy, okay.
I don't know, send your guesses.
Send, how do they send them?
Like send them to ad-earque-bador?
Send them.
No, you can send them at Animal Podcasts on Instagram
and on Twitter.
That's where you can follow us as well.
Stay up to date with the coffee we've been drinking.
And the shirts we have on sale at startartrestortief.com. We have hang on
there's names for both of these. No one told me no one gave me any information.
Yeah, there's a there's a get your own podcast shirt. We have two shirts. The Anima L podcast
ringer and the Anima get your own podcast shirt. They're actually, I mean, when this comes
out, was it cyber Monday? Oh yeah. Some like that. So like, there's probably a deal on those shirts right now.
Probably.
Probably go grab them.
One way to find out.
Yeah, go go bogo or something.
That's a thing.
People bogo, I won't get one.
But that's it for this episode.
Any parting words for these people, any final thoughts or in parting wisdom you want
to give?
We're going non-canon for a couple of weeks.
Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah, we're on two weeks off, I think, coming up
these next two weeks.
And there's gonna be the gusts non-canon episodes.
Yeah, I can be in these episodes.
I don't know why I'm getting excluded from them.
Because you don't want, if we were,
listen, it's warm enough in here.
Let's just end it.
Here's the thing, here's the thing.
If you wanted to be a part of them,
then we wouldn't be taking them off, then we wouldn't be taking them off. And if that's the thing. Here's the thing. If you wanted to be a part of them, then we wouldn't Be taking them off then we wouldn't be taking them off and if that's the case
Gus I'm not giving you an inch on this. Thank you Eric. Thank you. Apply it evenly. Hey if you're listening black box down
We do supplementary episodes that are not core episodes
We still give ourselves a break we space it out a little bit. You just fucked up. How is that a break? You fucked up
The release cadence on this one. How?
Fuck this Eric. I'll see you sense? Oh my god. Fuck this.
Eric, I'll see you next week for whatever we record.
Yep, see you later.
Not canon.
Bye.
Bye. Example, together in Trempathos, Characombs, Characombs are free to deal as I've nothing to do with this podcast.
Analyze various unsolved and rooster-teeths,
cryptic podcast, f*** face.
Call to action.
Feel free to add something show premise specific,
but short.
Listen to show name on Apple Spotify
or wherever you get podcasts.
It's f*** face, a podcast.
Subscribe or no.
You do yes?
wherever you get podcasts.
It's f*** face, a podcast.
Subscribe or no, you do yes?