Podcast: The Ride - The CityWalk Saga - Sector 9

Episode Date: September 22, 2018

Confusing service and confusing shoe brands. The CityWalk Saga - Sector 9 consists of: Dongpo Kitchen Skechers Locker Room by Lids Voodoo Doughnut Listen to Podcast: The Ride Ad-Free on Forever Dog Plus: https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/ FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

FOREVER! DOG! When your town has let you down When your porch has fallen short When you're too worn out to run And need some ribs or a Cinnabon You need a place A place for rock

A place for roll A place where Oakland Raiders merch is sold A sublime hot topic and billabong A place where you can purchase a candy thong So let's go take a walk

Let's all go to CityWalk Tonight Podcast The Ride presents The CityWalk Saga A daily, 19-part, extremely necessary series Exploring the stores, restaurants, and wonderful magic That make up Universal CityWalk Hollywood. Do we say welcome to CityWalk's podcast ride with Sector?

We say Sector 9, right? Or no, we wait? What do we do? Is this part of it? It could be. I forgot what we were doing. We say, well, hello, welcome to Podcast the Ride, and then say the CityWalk saga, and then were we saying yeah

we're saying just the sector number we don't say what it is because we're going to get that we're going to get that a little when he announces okay that's how we do it hi my name is mike carlson uh you're listening to this uh amazing series we have gone a little mad from city walk madness which i guess is a disease you could possibly contract i don't think i fully have it um jason sheridan do you have it city walk madness uh uh you know been up there a lot recently some trips are better than others you know yes like one day at a time one trip at a time uh-huh uh also joining us scott gerdner how how are you how's your madness level as far as city walk um well i think it i on a scale of one to ten i think it goes up with every episode so we're, I think it, on a scale of one to 10,

I think it goes up with every episode. So we're at nine right now. And on a scale of one to 10, it'll be at 19 by episode 19. I felt ebbs and flows like going up there. Some days I'm just like having a ball and then some days it's like kind of a real chore because maybe I have something to do in an hour and a half

and I feel very rushed. And then you can really feel maybe what people say when they say they don't like City Walk, which, by the way, I'm not saying. I still love City Walk. One of the things that happened that factors into this episode made me say out loud, maybe I don't like City Walk. What? Yeah.

This is only, we're only in the ninth. Yeah, but we just had a, it was just a big meal fail it was just undeniably and i'm not even sure it was city walks fault entirely but i don't know i'll get into it it's uh there's there's a whole i would say i was taking somebody from out of town around and i don't think i or the walk put either of our best feet forward okay okay i get that let's throw it to the keeper oh yes to see who what what of the fine establishments are in sector nine let's go to the board boys boys today's sector is sector nine dongpo kitchen sketchers locker room by lids and voodoo donuts good luck boy okay so we're dealing with dongpo kitchen sketchers locker room by lids which is not

just the lid not just leads has led led to some confusion in our text message chain i think or confusion on my part and worrying that everyone else was confused and i feel like it's probably actually never been confusing to anyone that went to city walk because no one cares about those places no one goes to get a hat at city walk if we didn't say any more about this we would have already spoken about it more than any anyone people who work there uh and voodoo donuts last but certainly not least what i may call the jewel of this sector oh interesting uh yeah this sector we should do we should do one where because we could just also make these up people don't have we could be like oh the shoe factory is in sector

nine and people be like oh oh i remember that yeah that's that shoe store called the shoe factory nerf zone nerf zone yeah okay so this obviously is the all nerf store yeah and it's the basic nerf bats and guns right you know you could buy a wedding cake made of and then i would be like you know the nerf stores theming isn't so great i think that they should really like do something a little bit more fun and theme park style like how about like a giant nerf gun or something that's like sitting outside or like a at least a giant yellow nerf ball that like kids could like roll around in the store and then people would be listening to this i'm exasperated by all of it yes jason would be like i like it and did you know that they have like nerfed ball

treats up that would be basically how it works and rinse and repeat that look like the yellow nerf balls oh my god those that would be great that would be fun by the way this is a great idea is there a nerf store anywhere i don't think so i don't think there is a big opportunity and how did that not happen in the 90s when nerf is operating at peak nerf peak nerf city walk is peak peak 90s there should be like a super soaker store in the 90s too. There should have been just full super soakers, different kinds, small, large. You would have seen Michael Jackson and Macaulay Culkin hanging out there every day of the week. We have a super soaker store, Macaulay.

And crowds of adults just going, oh, I don't know. No, people, everything was fine in the 90s. They were like, we love these two entertainers that's what they were thinking concerned by any of this yes it was the 90s i did see a picture from it could have been the 90s maybe it was the early 2000s of uh the sketcher store was there but like very close to it was also a van store do you remember this scott oh into the same district yeah eating kind of which is crazy to me because that feels like a similar similar but not not exactly the same i guess very similar yes

but vans i think would be competing more with uh elements or billabong sort of thing i see what you're saying but i mean they're both primarily known for shoes for shoes uh i let's bang that out real quick so sketchers um i learned that sketchers is the okay what is this uh qualifier um the third largest athletic footwear brand in the united states after nike which includes air jordan and adidas that is kind of crazy to me i didn't realize sketchers was that popular yeah really i mean i kind of do what is the full list of shoe company popularity uh no i no i don't caught what kind of theme park journalist you don't know the top 10 shoe companies jason get the fuck out of here i mean here's the i went to the sketchers wikipedia page i followed one of the links it had an an article which followed to an article about the top athletic uh footwear brands doing

a click through i feel like is already further than most uh podcasters and certainly me a lot of times go. Oh, sure. So I'm impressed by that. So let me not, let me actually give you journalistic. I mean, I do have half of a journalism degree that I then converted to a television degree. Hold on a second here, Jason. I'm on a story that's from, it's from successstory.com and I looked up 10 most popular shoe brands and I think this says something very different but

does it say athletic hmm does it say no it you know what you're right it just says popular because because we're looking at number six here is berluti which is like a fancy dress shoe is number six on this list okay yeah i don't know seven johnson of course johnston and murphy shoes is number eight where's the bruno molly the uh uh isn't that the name of it the um oj's shoes where he he said during the trial i wouldn't i wouldn't wear no ugly ass shoes like that hmm it was or am i quoting something from a sketch i don't even know i don't know either oj actually uh one of his first spots uh when when he was found not guilty was at the nerf uh store it's gotta celebrate and he held up a nerf knife aha funny right yeah it's funny because

i uh i'm not guilty uh anyway sorry to derail uh so sketchers i i walked through the sketcher store the other i thought maybe like oh i know know they had those ones that like the shape ups, Skechers shape ups. And I thought that was their thing. And I thought like, oh, they're less expensive. I didn't find them any less. Everything was between like 50 and $70, I feel like. That's expensive.

Yeah. And also the other thing about sketchers that logo is on everything and it's real big and it's not practically aesthetically pleasing to me at least yeah and lack of the t is pretty irritating i hate the lack of a t i was just thinking that that bothers me so much it should be called sketchers schedules or something it's weird i don't know there's a reason for it i was just on autopilot and i wrote sketchers in the notes a couple times and i did use the t i wasn't even thinking about that well um give me something else to dislike

the other thing uh in 2012 they settled a multi-million dollar lawsuit that they had misled consumers with those shape-up ads oh interesting uh 40 million dollars it says yeah whoa wow but they survived you know they survived they survived and they of course have their beloved gang of burger king kids club best characters the sketchers kids you i'm sure when you went through the store made a real note of the the gang who you know if i'm looking at a photo and there's like there's the boy side there's like kind of a rockabilly guy with sideburns and a robot with a light up yellow face and then like a reboot like the 90s cgi character reboot and kind of a deadpool ripoff ninja man and a green goblin ripoff man

and then somebody my wife described as a as a courier who's just like running in a hat with an s on it and that's the boy side and then there's a bunch of girls too there's kind of a hannah montana pink hair pop star and a masked girl it's all really strange because they aren't labeled and none of the shoes tell you who the characters are and you can't find it online either no reference to there's no sketcher kidopedia that sucks it's also weird because there's a photo of all these characters and you can't see any of their shoes they exist only to sell shoes and i don't know what shoes they are wearing there's one especially with just just like 1% of a flap of a shoe. Like, why cut it off there?

Yeah. It's weird because you would think they would want to make the shoes very visible. So, you know, a kid would go in and go like, I want to be like the Deadpool sketcher kid. And I want to wear whatever shoes he's got on. But no, they really, yeah, they've like fucked up by not just giving these kids names. Because that's all you need to do. Because we would for free list them all. Yes. Right now. like fucked up by not just giving these kids names because that's all you need to do because we would for free list them all yes they had i just listed vaguely what the characters look like

we'd give them an ad but for free on the show because we'd be so excited yes that would extend this part of this segment like 10 minutes if there were names for all these kids yeah they don't have to have any personality they don't have to have any backstory we would fill it in but they fucked up because we're about to end i'm assuming unless we have a ton more sketcher stuff like i i don't really well i just think again i'll say it's very odd to see that logo stamped on like because they also sell like casual shit like leather shoes kind of stuff you might wear with a more casual suit or business casual but then that fucking sketcher's logo is stamped in the leather on the side it's so jarring to me you're reminded of the poor

spelling at all times yeah um i have one final thing about the sketcher's store which is there um there is a gumball machine and if you work at the Skechers store and you're listening, on the back, closest to the back of the store on the left side, there is some chewed up gum deposit on the back of the gumball machine. So, just maybe take care of that. If you're a GM listening to this, you know, get an employee on it. But just do be aware there is some built up gum. That's gross. Well, yeah, they're listening and

they will probably rectify that quickly uh i don't want to get anyone fired over this uh just just just trying to be helpful so locker room by lids so leads is hats yeah and locker room by lids is everything else sports apparel related and also some hats and a lot of hats and all yeah more hats it's just that locker room which i guess like they were thinking like they didn't want it to be foot locker because obviously it doesn't make sense not just shoes but like locker room suggests sports i guess yeah i guess it has Well, and it's a lot of jerseys and that's what's in the locker rooms. Right.

So, it is an applicable name. Why didn't they just, I think that there's some hubris here or some ego involved with this company

because why does it have to say buy lids? Does anyone care? I think that's a branding thing, right? But you know what I mean?

There's so many different companies that are owned by the same one big company, and they don't necessarily feel the need to brand it everywhere. It feels like the Lids thing is confusing. Why didn't they just call it Jerseys? Yeah. Just call it Jerseys.

Lids and Jerseys, and people are going to be like, well, I trust the Lids brand so much that I'll go to see what they have as far as Jerseys are concerned. This is a thing on our beloved The Prophet. There's been a number of cases where he kind of combines stores, and then it's such and such, buy such and such. Oh, so he likes that. Yeah, and that's the thing I disagree with him on.

I think that's a fashion label gimmick. Sure. Apparel thing. Yeah, yeah. He doesn't like the idea that the name of the brand is the same as the name of the brand is the same as the name of the store actually what you're describing with sketchers he would like a you know high steppers by sketchers yeah uh a great idea of a shoe name that's interesting i'm looking here

lids is owned by hat world inc well now hold on i don't know why there's not a world establishment because that has me that that is my interest. I mean, certainly Hat World is a better name than Lids. Yeah. I think Lids is cool, but Hat World is so much better. And, like, that's a more exciting title. Hat World is the best level on Super Mario Odyssey, right? Let's see.

There might be a Hat World, actually. Hold on. Do they call it that in japan or dubai or something maybe they loosen the brand the lid sports group operating within hat world inc comprises the lids retail headwear store the lids locker room specialty fan retail chain the lids clubhouse retail store and its internet business www.lids.com and www.lids.ca i think you ever hear that and you think thank god we don't have real jobs there's like there's probably 200 people who day to day have to make sure that all of these brand names are intact and presented correctly

yeah um what a what a dull world yeah so what's interesting is that it seems like lids is pretty self-contained they're not owned by some giant conglomerate well i feel like i mean people always want you know uh sports apparel you know people always want jerseys and hats and stuff uh i thought it was interesting that they had so much variety in locker room by lid certainly as soon as you walked in the door very thoughtful a lot of world cup jerseys sure world cup also playing directly on the giant big screen uh uh outside of the movie theater yeah it's your source for sports it is yeah exactly okay i maybe i'm wrong they are owned but this is so confusing they are owned by genisco which owns johnston and murphy shoe wear oh uh something called deer stags uh journeys

journeys kids oh yeah underground by journeys uh shuh trask and by Journeys retail of footwear for young women 20 to 35 years of age. And they own the tender care centers at the border that the children are being insured in. Jesus, probably. That is what happens to these horrible companies. There is also, before Locker Room by Lids, if you can imagine such a time, there was a store in there for a long time called sports

avenue which is similarly great silly to hats how world um a thing that i liked about sports avenue is that there was a big shack on the outside because it must have opened when shack was on the lakers but they did not have access to the Lakers rights so Shaq was dunking in a red jersey which he I don't believe ever wore in his girl he's not he was magic and then Lakers uh I wouldn't be the guy to tell you but I don't it's certainly at the time he wasn't wearing red and I think in his jersey just said like all, All-Star, Team Jump. It was as watered down of branding as it could be. The pride the LA fans felt when they saw Shaq in his famous red and brown.

Team Jump? Just representing Team Jump. Team Jump. Great brand names in this zone. What an area. You know what I haven't said about just to backtrack what i what i i forgot to say at the beginning is that with sector nine we are moving into the city walk expansion zone this this whole everything passed the hard rock cafe and starting with uh sketchers and the food court around there is where that's what all got added in 2000 when the uh that when the the billion dollar expansion of somehow that little

jesus christ like the wind-up toy store cost a billion dollars the rest of city walk leading up to that point cost three billion dollars which is so weird when you think about theme park numbers isn't it supposedly california adventure entirely costs like 700 million dollars that's really the first yeah the first unfixed version and yeah when it opened was yeah i think 700 they said something like less than the like something where the most prominent thing was sports avenue and yeah and then there was there wasn't the redo like a billion dollars a california adventure yeah it caught two billion i think just carthay circle area just that street the main drag heading up to carthay circle and california venture was like a billion dollars it looks

the same as all this history yeah yeah yeah oh bueno vista street is uh uh yeah but and that's like beautiful molding recalling classic california and this is a bunch of fucking gaudy crap metal and uh uh you know like a big helmet i just where'd the money go this was a scam is that uh also like the cost of building on top of what essentially a tiny mountain you know trying to run water and power maybe again as someone without a real job i don't know and i hope to never know but maybe that costs more money to construct yeah i'm sure um they also threw a little money down uh for the inauguration of city walk 2.0 which i didn't know about until the other day that this was somewhere i don't know if it was in this sector somewhere around this zone there was also there was a harley davidson store at one point in time that was one of the most exciting aspects of city

walk 2000 so in keeping with the motorcycle spirit they kicked things off with a motorcycle parade led by the easy rider himself peter fonda uh he what he led some motorcycles several feet forward and then he said are you ready to start partying that's also what he said on twitter recently i was threatening to kill trump or something oh or something like that but now i mean it was like cat like i'm gonna run you over with a motorcycle parade a two mile an hour motorcycle parade uh okay are so are you ready to start partying? Then quote the LA Times, that was the cue for a fireworks display and a set by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. God bless him. 2000, a simpler time.

Big Bad Voodoo Daddy who played New Year's Eve at Disneyland like two years ago. I'm pretty sure. They were the primary. Yes. Oh boy. I feel like the age of the good band at Disneyland is a little over.

You would have preferred a Cherry Poppin' Daddies, perhaps? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got me. Something a little more high-end. A Brian Setzer Orchestra, of course. Yeah. Then Larry Kurzweil, the president of Universal Hollywood, said, Who better to launch the new City Walk than Peter Fonda?

Yeah. I guess. That's an open-ended question. I don't know. Henry Fonda? yeah i guess an open-ended question i don't know a currently popular star of the year 2000 uh what we're offering is a totally cool entertainment experience so having him here fit right in perfect city walk and city walk 2000 and peter fonda both totally cool man that's so funny yeah something huh um i'd also like to say that i believe that 2000 was when the new city walk logo was introduced and if you can picture that in your

minds i i want to say just off the top of my head that that logo contains seven fonts and 65 colors all screaming is that the one that's currently i think so up there you know where the letters are all kind of on different levels yeah there's some of them are jagged and like kicking each other in the butt and uh there's like electricity and it's like it's on a broken tv um it's uh the logo is a big i could see if if you pulled up in a cab and you look at that logo outside the Bucca di Beppo, maybe you'd go, you want to just take me back? I don't know. I'm glad they've just stuck to their guns for 18 years.

That was also the only logo in Orlando because Orlando was only opened in 99, the city walk. Correct. I was saying a lot of Disney world feels like it's 90s like you go to blizzard beach and it's like the 90s are back yeah and it does feel like that even though this expansion opened what year 2000 which i guess is very close to the 90s so like it does feel like the 90s are alive at city walk still which i think they're just slowly trying to get rid of that feeling that vibe but yeah i think big mistake i think keep the 90s alive forever the dream of the 90s is alive to paraphrase portlandia portland's the home of one of the newest additions at city walk

voodoo donuts oh yeah i wasn't sure if we were saving that for last oh whatever we're not we're not that transition was just so good yeah it was good jump around um you're eating a voodoo donut right now because i went up i don't know why i did because i was like we're recording and you're eating you also said you had had that kind before so i was not sure that you were gonna well you can have the rest of the other one oh okay uh here let me first let me start out with a negative about voodoo donuts and we were very excited because we found out voodoo was coming we voodoo donuts was like the hipstery donut place in portland and it's like you would see pictures of lines down the block and everyone was very excited about it and then it feels like they were just like we're cashing out like yeah let's put this thing everywhere

like this we're not at a cool exclusive thing anymore we're gonna be in every tourist trap well if you're seeing the owners talk i don't think so because i i have now and uh i don't think i wouldn't apply the word cool to them well they they are also members of big bad voodoo dash so you don't call them cool anyway we've got to get out we're opening this store and now we need to get on a plane to st louis i got a trumpet to tune um so we were very i remember jason and i at this time this has been open for how long two years uh i think two years a year and a half yeah i remember we were texting about it when's the voodoo donuts coming very excited because i had not been to the i had been to portland but the line far too long when i was there i was like i cannot we were trying to sightseeing and we did

not want to wait for two hours jason told me of something that they do in portland and i think you know where i'm going with this they do in portland and i was very excited for this to come to city walk it makes sense that it's not there, but I was disappointed. Jason, the phrase I believe you used or made me aware of was, bucket of misshapens. Yes. And what that means is that when they're making a donut, and it kind of comes out weird or wonky or looks weird.

Tastes fine. Tastes fine. Tastes fine, but it's just a little irregularly shaped. Like a big white plastic bucket used for like hauling utility or paint. Like a big orange bucket from Home Depot. Yeah. Yeah, it's a giant Home Depot style bucket. They throw a bunch of misshapen donuts in there,

and then you can go in there and buy them for like 20 bucks, 30 bucks. Something like that. Like some sort of markdown rate. A bucket of misshapens. Yeah. And very early on when we were we were uh going up and trying voodoo donuts for the first time we learned that they do not have buckets of miss shapens no i found out about it i think either from uh kelly pseudoconic or matt

fraction uh uh her husband uh one of them posted a picture on their blog or Instagram or something of the laid out misshapens and the bucket next to it and explaining what it was. When I heard it was coming here, I was like, well, that sounds great. Now, I kind of knew that they probably won't do that for City Walk.

I know. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. You can, I believe, buy a coffin full of donuts though for like 135 dollars but are they misshapen no it's just a coffin full it's just a you get to keep the coffin so that's just correctly shaped donuts that's that's fun i guess but it's less fun than getting a grab bag because like i was all excited for you to go up there and get a bucket of misshapens and bring it back down and we could all like rifle through them i don't know that it would have made it back down brother oh jace when jason's feeling low he would just head up the hill

to city walk and get a bucket of misshapens and hey the usual mac put it on the tab jason pulls up to the bar and he just go he eats and literally when i say this bug the bucket is like 16 inches tall what isn't it it's big right i think it is a giant depot or lowe's bucket that you would buy if you had a job to do i have to say that this isn't the full voodoo donuts experience that we were hoping yeah because the bucket of miss shapens is not there i also had some trepidation when they were coming because l one very cool thing i think about la is is there is like a culture of mom and pop donut shops uh a lot of them run by uh uh immigrant families from asia uh uh and there's a great story on eater about this and about like the signature,

like pink box that a lot of donut shops use goes back to like, um, one of the first, uh, uh, uh, immigrants from Asia. I forget when seventies,

maybe late sixties, seventies, you know, there was a lot of conflict, uh, over there at the time. And they came over, they started, you know, someone showed lot of conflict uh over there at the time and they came over they started you know someone showed them how to run a donut shop and then they brought a family over and they

started expanding the donut shop and very early on they asked for a red box because that's that's a good luck color um and what something messed up at the print factory and they're like oh we're sorry the order it came out as pink boxes and they're like oh we're sorry the order it came out as pink boxes and they're like well we already paid for it we'll just take them we'll just take them and then it was such a big hit it kind of spread everywhere um that yeah i'm gonna take out that segment of you talking about the donuts and i'm gonna play the national anthem under it segment that because like you're that's so much information it's very interesting but it also sounded like you're really giving a nice like patriotic speech

about america and immigrants and i was nice yeah it's it is a a cool little thing uh uh i learned especially in la la only really last few years got like dunkin donuts but like there's winchels there's more la specific chains right but we've also like the last few years got like dunkin donuts but like there's winchels there's more la specific chains right but we've also like the last few years seen like a lot of bougier donut change bougie donuts bougie ice cream glazed so like i have to give voodoo credit because even with city walk pricing factored in it's not that much more expensive than the donut shop i walked to up the street from my house we thought it was a little overpriced for what we yes i think some of the bigger ones but like your standard like i had a buttermilk bar and it was about the same as like the buttermilk

donut i usually get now i think it i don't know that it was any better honestly i think it was probably a little smaller i feel like some of the stuff is a little smaller and then i know once you start putting bacon or cereal on top of stuff it's definitely like some of the more wild donuts yeah are pricier and certainly they have the stumptown coffee which i think is okay but like priced much higher than like a starbucks and only one size you're stuck with really a giant yeah that's what i found yeah we just we had a big big uh four dollar thing pretty tall we didn't need that much iced coffee hot okay fancy hot coffee some uh uh roasters taste like soup to me sure oh like tastes like a a a bouillon broth almost or like a thin i don't know it's it's kind of like a weird taste for me yeah and i don't mind just a burnt black bad coffee yeah i don't

either in fact that's one thing i like a lot about the donut shops in la it's kind of like a standard coffee shop cup of coffee would you uh would you rather be buried in a giant pink donut box or a giant bucket of misshapens or the coffin or the or the uh voodoo coffin i think that pink donut box now would they have to fold up your body to make it fit in the square shape? Or would a custom long pink donut box do the job? Custom, I think, right? I think custom. Hey, look, as long as they're folded.

You don't want to pay for that custom box. Well, I don't want to pay. Now that you say that. That's going to be expensive. Maybe just put the ashes in a pink donut box. The ashes in the donut box is a good solution here's what i think is a good solution uh you get that acid that walter white you would use in the vats to get rid of a body and you use the plastic misshapen bucket that's a good idea just dissolve your body in the misshapen bucket right because you got to use plastic you can't use ceramics

so it would be perfect for it um we are misshapens when we are born and we are misshapens when we die one one thing i do like about voodoo and and like i said i had a buttermilk bar i ship mike and i shared some of a a raised glaze raised vanilla iced with captain crunch berries on it right yes uh uh both very tasty uh one thing i will say about like some of these nicer more upscale donut shops it does they do taste very clean by which i mean like at some cheaper places like you can kind of taste the oil a lot or like the donuts can be very greasy especially they've been sitting out for the day yeah it's not a consistent flavor through the whole thing sometimes yeah i tell me if I'm wrong.

Do all the donuts taste a little stale? Because I've had Voodoo probably three times in the last year and a half. Every time I feel like, this feels like it's a day old. I think I've had a lot of cake. Have you had a lot of raised ones? I'm a raised man. Where are we all at on donuts? Cake or raised?

I don't even know the difference. Really? I guess weight is raised. Cake is like a thicker and raised is flakier. Yeah, both of the ones we have here, the Captain Crunch and then the other with the Voodoo Man, those are raised. I'm raised then, yes. Yeah, because I'm already...

You like cake, right? I've grown more to like cake. I think it's more popular in Los Angeles, back east. Cake is more popular in Los Angeles. I don't like that. Certainly growing up back east, I ate a lot of raised. A lot of Dunkin' Donuts are raised. Krispy Kreme is all raised.

That's all raised. Most of it's raised. Yeah, usually pretty much everywhere offers some sort of one or two cake options. Yeah, I forget what they have over there. Because I went to Krispy Kreme a couple weeks ago, and Krispy Kreme does taste so much fresher than this. You think so? I think so, yes.

I'm more of a fan of Krispy Kreme, the simplicity, and it is like a, was it more distinct taste than what I, these specific things I brought today from Voodoo. I think this is, I think Voodoo is honestly, Voodoo's charm is the branding, the marketing, and then the insanity. Something that's crazy, which of course, you know, I like cereal and having a lot of frosting on it and it's crazy shaped or something. But I honestly think it's on the level of Dunkin' Donuts. I don't think the donuts themselves are anything that special.

Also, I don't know if i like that crazy again i watched some videos with the owners and they're talking about how like you know honestly like i mean i shouldn't say this but what we did is we got a little baked and we walked up and down the supermarket aisles and we were like yeah i need a donut with captain crunch on it and then bang there it is and that made me like i hate that i like this and they're like they're they wear like pants with fruit loops on them they're all a bunch of hep cat kooks i don't i think gravy style yeah yeah yeah i haven't brought up wavy gravy in this podcast gravy and pig pad of uh the donut world i love wavy i'm gonna give duncan though the edge because i think i've always found them very consistent sure and they are cheaper than voodoo too yeah but if we're talking city walk voodoo is probably your cheapest snack option up at city walk pretty easy well it depends i mean we're not talking talking about sugar but you can get a nice little bag of candy for three bucks.

I guess so. I guess that depends on if you find candy that filling or what sort of snack you're looking for. Of course, it depends on what kind of snack you're looking for. Of course. Yeah, so yeah, I would say it's on the level of Dunkin'. I like the Voodoo Donuts, but it certainly came in overhyped, came in hot, no bucket of misshap shapens so i was a little let down not i would certainly have a donut there again

but i was a little underwhelmed by it they also don't have like the the edgy stuff that they have in portland like dicks and joints that stuff didn't make it to the theme park setting yes there's the bawdiness is not there there because they don't want to offend anybody. Because they're not... The people with the Portland sensibility can handle vulgarity, I guess. But the people at the City Walk, they're worried about the kids maybe being offended. We're a PG shop. And honestly, I'm fine with that.

Yeah. Because as you know, we don't like too much vulgarity, especially around a family entertainment area. I wonder how the... I guess we'll talk about this in that sector uh the things from another world also important from portland all right oh interesting uh uh you know what else about voodoo oh the voodoo mascot the voodoo man mascot yes we were uh they they had the grand opening for the voodoo donuts is at the city walk in or Orlando as well.

Oh, yeah. And who were we bothering on Twitter? Were we bothering Jim Hill on Twitter? I think Jim Hill we were bothering, asking if he was going to be a face character. Yeah, will this mascot character be there every day? Can we meet him? What did he say?

Did he answer us? I think he did. I think he said he'd look into it. I think he said he'd look into it, but we never found out. We've got to get that answer from him. Yeah. He probably said, that's it, exactly. I think that is i think he said he looked into it but we never found out how to get that answer from yeah i probably said that's it exactly i think that is probably what he said but he never

said it to us so he's gotta look jim uh way in here way in here buddy maybe we'll just have him on to just talk about the character of the voodoo donuts man voodoo donuts spirit man they named him in a video i watched but i don't remember it vo Voodoo Donuts Spirit Man with Jim Hill is an episode coming down the pike soon. Deep research about that character. It's happening, Jim. Whether you agree to do it or not. Yeah. If you don't know, we're talking about

Entertainment Podcaster. We've talked about him before. Listen to his podcast Disney Dish. Anybody who's in Sector 9 probably knows probably what if you're getting into podcasts right for the first time and you're going like i thought this was about theme parks and they're talking about donuts and buckets of miss shapens and shoes this is an episode about shoes and donuts you know they say every comic book is someone's first comic book so that's

exactly what i'm trying to do yes uh ahoy hoy to anyone coming in on sector nine of the city walk saga i'm just starting right in the middle uh we are in the middle aren't we so i guess that brings us to the last establishment at sector nine and scott you said you had some an experience at this one dongpo kitchen face is grimacing yeah i had a i had a very odd time there so i i went up with my friend ryan who's in town who i went to high school with and probably spent a lot of time at city walk with in high school but he hadn't been in a long time he was dying to see the new developments sure the voodoo donut and uh and and you know he lives in hong kong currently so i thought oh let's we're taking him to dongpo kitchen and comparing the delicacies

makes a lot of sense but it was very late when we were up there and uh so we we went in at like uh 10 30 um and uh so it was not meal time and dongpo kitchen so this is a space that's been occupied by several other higher-end Chinese establishments. Panda Express has tried something called Panda Inn, which exists in various locations. And I think that was the family who runs that company or started that company. I think Panda Inn came first. That was where they popularized orange chicken,

and then they started Panda Express. Interesting. I believe in Pasadenaena where the experimental kitchen is oh really the test kitchen express it's like if chili's 2 was more popular than chili's yeah but uh but this is a recent addition to city walk is dongpo kitchen my friend being versed in chinese history and culture uh let me know that he is that is named for su dong po who is a poet and gastronome in the song dynasty uh he is on wikipedia he's described as the preeminent personality of the 11th century but now he is mainly known for having a pork dish named after

him uh so we we we went in there and you know what i'll say the the decor was very nice this kind of this calligraphy feeling. These big paintbrushes and actual poems written out in characters which are hand laid. I think the decor is very nice in this place. But we went in at 1030 and I'm worried when we go into places and just want a drink and dessert. I feel a little awkward about it because the guy the person doesn't get tipped as much so i went in and asked like hey can we just do a drink and dessert thing and the the very sweet hostess who said oh yeah oh of course no we our desserts are

excellent here um take a look and showed us a list and oh that's this all sounds excellent yeah so i'd love to oh and as for drinks we have uh many options here take a look many wine yes yes oh our wine is excellent well here come yeah come on in she's very like oddly sweet and awkward and inviting and and and and led us to a table and uh like oh okay good i'm really glad this is not imposing on them right in any way then waiter comes up waiter a very brusque curt uh ponytail dude uh who just like what do you want and like clearly at the end of a long day like immediate tension and frustration and i was like oh you know we're just doing kind of a drinks and desserts thing i roll uh i order a glass yeah yeah a lot of negative energy extremely i just said let me do a glass of sauvignon blanc no drink we don't have alcohol

the last half hour past 10 30 we don't have alcohol huh that's 10 30 oh okay that's a cutoff i think i've encountered this i think uh uh and i encountered this at carl strauss once my family went at 8 30 and they went no we already did last call and we're like what and they're like yeah we closed at nine you gotta do last call half an hour beforehand at the beer restaurant the beer restaurant the restaurant that you walk into and there's giant beer tanks you can't pass 8 30 i mean it was like november so technically like an off season but still that's weird well the whole like you know like city walk is your place to drink and dance the night away but you know around 7 45 you should probably make a thing about getting out of here yeah it doesn't make sense to me so there was no alcoholic option and all we were gonna do was a dessert and i we were like do i

i don't want no i don't like boba i'm not gonna force a boba down so we said you know we're just we're just doing this this um rice ball thing and he like gave us just the thickest glare and then just snatched menus walked away and we're like what's happening here and and then he comes back with water and slams it down just the loudest you could slam a glass of water down furious at us um then he uh then comes somebody comes back with the dessert. Seems like you guys just ordered the rice balls? Yeah. Puts it down also a little mad. Basically, what this ended up being,

it looks like two soft-boiled eggs floating in a dessert version of egg drop soup. And it was mostly dessert broth. And it is not shareable in the least. So I'm sadly spooning some of the soup onto a plate trying to pick it up with chopsticks it's falling apart take a bite it's bad my friend mostly takes the broth the broth is bad we have sour looks on our face and then ponytail man goes past my friend and he's in the middle of a conversation

with another server and he says yeah they only got they only got rice balls i don't want to talk about it this would have upset me for a month this this might be one of the worst service done like i you know i know the service industry very hard industry i i but this i this is crazy to me like this is like a i don't want to do this but i feel like i got our email so but like this is intense well luckily i have luckily as an outlet and uh luckily by me not remembering his name or hopefully not seeing him again this certainly stronger than me ponytail man cannot come back and find me um there was there was a general then i started to figure out oh they're trying to close up they close at 11 but i didn't know that that wasn't on this and the this poor hostess who so monologued about the drinks and the desserts. Then she sat a family down.

And it's a mom and two kids with the little iPad menus lit up. And then I look back and they, you know, these innocent looking little kids. And then the hostess yells, well, Steve told me to seat him. This whole thing was unraveling. Customers are being screamed about oh no it was just coming apart it was crazy we tried to go get a drink there once after a movie because their yelp page that's one complaint i have about city walk sometimes the uh yelp hours do not line up with actual business operating hours uh and i guess that's kind of true for anywhere but

you'd think city walk they'd be a little more on the ball at that i don't know maybe but again yeah i had a similar like well it seems like they're open the doors open and we're like hey we just want to get a drink and they told they but then they're like oh no sorry we're close but i'm like but both your doors are wide open and like that's and all literature about you says that you would be open now here's the thing i worked at the container store when i was younger because i'm gonna say i'm gonna share my experience because it's one of the only real job i mean i was a pa and stuff but as far as real jobs that's what that's what i had if somebody walked in the door we were told we close at whatever 10 o'clock and somebody walked in the door at 9 59 you let them browse you let them do whatever you try to help them

you certainly maybe could say oh yeah we're closed but i'd be happy to do whatever like the customer service is that even if people are annoying and won't and like won't leave or kind of not being so aware of what's going on is that you don't tell them get the fuck out of here that's not nice also this is bad customer service i think like voodoo certainly but especially dong po kitchen like kind of their first volley of like a changing city walk like this is an upscale this is an international brand it's like a chain of uh high-end restaurants uh in in china uh maze maze who dong po is like throughout los angeles county in very nice uh locations like very nice establishments uh apparently i don't know

i've never been to them uh but reading about it like yeah santa monica century city and then the city walk one is a little more like you know for a general audience but it's still like well that's the face like that's the experience you're having like i'm not expecting like you know the ritz but still like a mean ponytail man screaming about me i've never been yelled about in a way which just made us like yeah we gotta get the fuck out of here this is this is crazy uh i think that look that probably the people that work at dongpo will listen to this they will offer you a meal maybe on the house they did not know you were an influencer coming in there a theme park journalist and i also think once the voodoo people they will send multiple buckets of miss shapens to jason's house i mean

that'd be great and i think that they hopefully will make this right i'm sure uh you know there's sometimes you get an employee that's cranky and they don't understand exactly how other employees listen to podcasts right scanning for mention of their brands and they make it right which to that to that effect i'd like anything that's coming to us from hat world inc as well oh yeah if hat world inc is listening please uh send us uh what do we want from them oh i'd love any of these sports fans that we are the the vintage philly scholars used to be baby blue and like kind of maroon and i really like that pairing okay i want anything that says andre dawson on it my favorite cub when i was five scott we're taking orders see what i think wait do they own lids locker room or do they own no they don't own sketchers no they know no that's a different yeah they do own that fancy shoe like mccormick shoe whatever

i want replicas of the shoes that oj wore the night of the murder i think that's that's doable yeah perfect replicas in his size not mine they They have cobblers that could just put a custom shoe together for you. Yeah, custom cobbler on it, but not some mean ponytailed one. Right. Well, that's kind of getting us to the end of Sector 9, which is we're getting near the end of... Did we chase the halfway point? Did we pass the halfway point during this one?

I think halfway through 10 we'll hit the halfway point. We're almost there um and i see right now we're getting our uh stone it is misshapen oh it is wonderful it's a little misshapen stone yeah put it with the bucket of the rest of the stones the sector keeper is smiling on us today um and he'll also smile if you come back tomorrow to listen to, is tomorrow Lids regular? Lids proper? I don't remember. Yeah, Sector 10. It is confusing

that they're in different sectors, but hey, that's how the sectors go. Well, there's stores in between them. Yeah. All right. Well,

follow us on all the things, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Podcasts are Right, and we'll see you tomorrow. See you tomorrow. Thanks.

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