Wonderful! - Wonderful! 388: Our Favorite Austin Stuff, Live!

Episode Date: September 17, 2025

Griffin's favorite community! Griffin's favorite social nicety! Rachel's favorite amateur performance space! Griffin's favorite ochre nectar! Griffin's favorite civic perk! Rachel's favorite local poet! Griffin's favorite tiny parking lot! Griffin's favorite hottest coolest place! Rachel's favorite moral center! Griffin's favorite way to cram in art! Griffin's favorite rockin' lawyer! Rachel's favorite kind of sprawling real estate!Music: “Money Won’t Pay” by bo en and Augustus – https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoyaEquality Florida: https://www.eqfl.org/

Crazy. You talk first. Thank you. Hi, I'm Rachel McElroy. Hi, I'm Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. It is a podcast where we talk about things we like that's good that we're into, and Austin we're so into you. Even after all these years, distance has made the heart grow terribly fond.

We're here to tell you. We know that we left. and it wasn't about you. It was about us. It was kind of... It was more about Texas, like statewide stuff than like y'all specifically, which I'm sure you can relate to. But we're not here to talk about that.

Here on Wonderful, specifically during our live shows, we take some time to talk about the things that we love about the city we're currently in and great news. There's a lot of it for. here. So tonight, we thought we would focus our efforts in talking about things we like that's good that we're into and specifically that we miss a great deal about Austin, Texas, since we have moved away to our nation's capital. Should we do small wonders? Yeah, we can do small wonders. You got anything? You introduced this bit knowing that you never have

one of these cocked and ready. Well, I wanted to start because I wanted to steal one that you might do. Oh, shit, okay. We went to that balloon. Museum. God damn it, that is what I was going to do. We were looking for stuff to do with the little kids, and if you go there right at 10 a.m., it is only small children. Yeah, it's pretty great. And it was kind of amazing. Really, really great inflatable art at the Balloon Museum.

At the Lewis Shanks. At the old Louis Shanks, which is cool, because you'll be in a room, and it's like, balloon rave, and then you'll be in another room, and you'll be like, clearly they had, like, credenzas lining the wall here. There's ghosts of furniture. Same carpeting, same, like, tote. walls like it feels very much like a lewis shanks it's the only difference is more balloons significantly more balloons uh shit babe i really don't uh i really don't have sorry yeah i know

um i mean the hotel we're staying at is is pretty nice but i don't want to say it in case people try to follow us or whatever um you know what horses It's a little on brand. It's wild to just be in the downtown of a major metropolitan city and see a few horses. And most of the times, cops is on the horses, but I don't think the horses had a choice in the matter. They didn't eagerly sign up to be accessories to state violence necessarily.

They're just God's most beautiful and perfect creatures. And it's cool to see one downtown. Let's start things off. We have prepared a lot of things today. Most of mine are much shorter than Rachel's, so I'm going to do them fairly quickly, starting out with the thing we miss most from Austin is, of course, our friends, DVDs that we...

No, our great group of friends who we formed so many lifelong bonds with while we were here. This isn't particularly funny, but I would be remiss and not starting out. We tell our brief origin story, right? Yeah, we moved here and made a bunch of really kick-ass friends. Oh, sorry.

I moved here in 2008. I did AmeriCorps in 2009. I met every single friend I have now. Yes. Basically through AmeriCorps. Yes. And then I, like a parasite, moved here and was like, mine now, trapped in my web.

And then we all got married and went to each other's weddings. We have one big, crazy communal, like, 12 way wedding it was not legally binding uh we i wanted to start off with this because a lot of them are here tonight uh what's up what's up dog pound it is not easy making friends as an adult but i always found it easier here uh largely because folks i found more easy to talk to and eager to share the stuff they've got going on in their lives which brings me to the next thing i missed about Austin, Texas, which is people not being weird about their jobs. There's this weird etiquette thing in D.C.

Where if you ask someone what they do for work, they react like you've just taken a big bite out of their arm or something. And I think it's because everyone's so certain that everyone else is trying to flex nuts about how big their law firm is bigger than their law firm. And they usually just try to like laugh the question off like you're a rumple-stil-skinned like trickster imp trying to like steal their kids with a riddle or something can i tell them my story about when i talked about what you do oh yeah this i mean it never goes great i went i went to a book club with a bunch of new people that i just met and they asked me

what my husband did for a living and i said well actually he makes podcasts with his family and they when they tour and and you know that's how they make their living and the woman touched me on the arm and she said good for him I wasn't there for that And so Rachel didn't have to tell me that story But did the moment she got home from Book Club The jobs here are just more fun in general And so that's great for me

When I'm talking to someone who like Does a startup dating app for dogs or like runs an underground Bayblade arena for adults. And I'm like, well, I do podcasts for a living. They're like, hell yeah. So, yeah, I do miss that about this city. Yes. Rachel, what have you prepared next?

Okay, so I wanted to talk about our beloved karaoke bar. And that is common interest. Common interest, North Burnett, if memory serves. Yes. Yes. Yes, I don't remember the first time we went, do you? Probably when we lived in North Burnet at some junction. Yes, we lived in the grand neighborhood called Wooten.

Wooten, yeah. And we wandered over there, and it's like a sports bar typically, but they have karaoke every night of the week, and the talent is unmatched. Yes, it's true at next level. And unlike egos, it doesn't feel like, It is a destination karaoke spot when you walk in. Yeah, it's underground.

So we were always pleasantly delighted at just the caliber of performers. Yes. And also, you know, they have jello shots and syringes. You know, it's just like... Yeah, yeah. The duality of man is really on display at common interests. I said it was underground, but common interest is not subterranean. I don't want people to get confused.

You were looking for some videos of... Yes. Some star performers, the great thing about common interest is the same people go there every week, which is always what you look for in your karaoke destination. Tried to find some videos, couldn't find a lot, and then I remembered that I had taken quite a few vines from common interest, which I have pulled for us to show here in this slide show presentation, Paul, if you can load up those vines. So that's demonstrative of the fact of the floor there was a slightly older lady who would get in

and do let the bodies hit the floor every time we were there which was always pretty lit Yeah, so when I, you know, it's hard to find research about the common interest, but I did find that, at least according to the website, that it is the second oldest original bar under single ownership. All right. In Austin, first is Broken Spoke. It started out as a piano bar on Medical Parkway in August of 1974.

Jesus Christ, okay. And they moved to their burnet location in 1986. They first implemented karaoke in 1989 on a trial basis. Way ahead of the curve, I will say. I have never been to their paintball karaoke. You can find a lot of YouTube videos about it. Yeah, so they have a karaoke where I guess people can shoot you with paintballs if you don't do good enough.

I wouldn't recommend doing that one. They also have a random karaoke where you spin a wheel and have to sing the song that comes up, which is also pretty, I think maybe for me, more terrifying. One of our best memories, though, is you can get private rooms there. They have, like, a small room that holds 12 people. They have a large room that holds up to 30 people. No fucking way, man.

But we spent a New Year's Eve there one year. We spent a New Year's Eve there. It's a wonderful place if you've never been common interest on North Brown. I would recommend it. I especially keep an eye out for Nathan, who was one of our favorite performers. I want to talk about something that is tragically and inexplicably absent. from our nation's capital and that is literally any

queso at all. DC really is like a great multicultural hub so we've been able to like replicate a lot of the food stuffs that we do that we fell in love with here but for whatever reason it's an absolute queso desert

and when you can't get it in a restaurant it's served in like one of those little like Costco sample cup size deal which is not enough to satisfy my queso hunger. You can't get the torchy shit with like a scoop of guac and cohita cheese and whatever that drizzle is on top. You can't get a styrofoam bowl of that sweet ochre nectar from Posse East. You can't get that next level cheese pull from a casso fondito from Fonda San Miguel.

Forget about it. If you did a cheese pull out of some queso in D.C., they'd lose their fucking minds. So I'm considering becoming a queso bootleger from here up to the whole... Big old barrels in our basement. Just a cement mixer to keep it from congealing. Another thing that is also sort of inexplicably absent from our nation's capital that I do miss a lot from living in Austin is congressional representation now. To be fair, though, sometimes you live a place and you have it,

and it's not exactly what you wanted. Yeah, touchy subject, touchy subject. I understand that. Especially now that Texas's districts have been hewn into the shape of these insane eldritch runes. But it could be way worse. You could have no congressional representatives whatsoever.

D.C. does have a non-voting member of the House of Representatives, which is cool, but it would be way cooler to have voting members of the House and any... They don't even have, like, an honorary senator who can sit there and, like, do Sudoku while everyone else is voting to take your rights away? Just like a visual reminder.

What's that? Just like a visual reminder that D.C. exists. It doesn't make much sense to me because there's more people that live in D.C. than Wyoming and Vermont, so maybe they could share some of theirs, but whatever. I know what you're thinking, though. Hey, at least there's no taxation. No, we still do that.

Isn't that fucked up? Yeah. What else have you... Oh, I know what's coming next. I know what's coming next. Yeah, but pretend you're excited and surprised. Okay, cool. I would like to take this entire audience

on a little trip to the Poetry Corner. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, baby, I hear the poetry call in to scurrying and scrambleese. If you don't listen to Wonderful, I started doing that in, like, episode one, and it's been fucking, like, 10 years, and it's, I don't know how to stop the train anymore. What poet have you brought for us today? So I found a local poet that I was not familiar with, and that poet is K.B. Brookens. Shit, yeah, all right.

Good. This is a poet that still lives in the Austin area and is very active, so I thought maybe there'd be somebody in the audience, so I'm excited. to hear. So they moved to Austin in 2018. They were born and raised in Fort Worth, attended Texas Christian University and graduated in 2017. And I would like to read a poem that was originally published in 2021. And the poem is called Elon Musk is moving to Austin. Oh, fuck. You picked another poem you were going to do here first. and you were like, I actually changed my mind because that one is going to make everyone too sad.

But now I am actually worried about the effect this other poem will have. This may not surprise you. Not a lot of poets are big tech pros. So, I think we'll find some commonality with the voice in this work. Can't wait. Elon Musk is moving to Austin

and every grandpa's truck is the truck of my dreams. Forest green or yellow thunder chromed out blue or rusty carmine. I love all the sun-died variations of red, really. I love the squeaky door handles swinging open at the twin liquor store on the old side of Congress. By old, I mean it hasn't been gentrified yet.

I want every grandpa truck to stay owned by a grandpa and my grandpa to always have gap-toothed yellow teeth. The silver caps shine brighter the longer you preserve them, I think. The trunk's dusty yellow leaves, older than the tech booms, bringing a tampering white dream to all thriving populous cities. I want Congress to never be called Soko again. And it'll never be by all those truck-driving abuelos tipping their cowboy hats to me on Friday eaves. They are my realm of possibility. When I grow up, I want to be a little bit. I want to to be all their leaky motors and leather seats combined.

Tonight, I'll be sure to let the cranky grandpa in first. Maybe we can link up after sip shopping and yell at some clouds, or I can listen to his audible history of what Austin used to be. We'll never be the tech utopia they want us to be, not while men can still grow up to mirror their cars, not while Texas lights gleam on and grandpa's glow, despite their cracking paint jobs effortlessly. Lovely.

It's really, really, really good. But what's it mean, though? Gives me, giving me some real nice goosebumps on that one. Okay, so KB was the program coordinator of the Gender and Sexuality Center at the U. All right. The University of Texas. at Austin, where they founded the Black and Queer and Trans Collective and co-led the president's

LGBTQIA Plus Committee. KB runs a video series and a newsletter called Trans News That Doesn't Suck. Wow. KB has also released a memoir called Pretty in 2024, which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in transgender nonfiction. Rad. And they receive their MFA and creative writing at the U.T. Austin New Writers Project. Wonderful.

So, yeah, check out K.B. Brookins. A quick one. I do miss, with my whole heart, a very special place called Peter Pan Mini Gaw. I made this side show. I fucked this one up pretty bad. I'll own that. For 77 years, Peter Pan Minigolf has been holding shit down south of Town Lake with its small-ass parking lot and its giant plastered dinosaur statues and inexplicable

B-Y-O-B policies. You can drink, you can play minigolf, and Peter Pan is there. There's just a lot of aesthetic, like, symmetry happening that I really, really enjoy. bonus points for being literally across the street from Butler Pitchin' Putt, which is also a beer garden. So your opportunities to improve your approach game while drinking, and then your short game while also drinking. And then going over to Sandy's hamburgers for a frozen custard, it's just like a perfect golf-filled afternoon. This one is not technically in Austin, but it was by living in Austin that I was given access. to it.

So I would like to talk about the hottest coolest time in Texas way

on Shlterbond. I love... Wait, can you give me the... Sure, sure, sure. We're going to

Schlutterbond. Whoa! It's the hottest, coolest time in Texas. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you.

Thank you. I almost did as a segment how Dairy Queen can't make up its fucking mind on what it wants its Texas-based commercial jingle to be. Anyway, I love a water activity

in that Texas summertime heat whether it's casting off from Don's fish camp down on the San Marcos River with a whole bottle of white wine decanted into an al-gene bottle. But fucking nothing

beach slitterbond, y'all. They have a water-propelled rollercoaster your slide and an like infinite loop or lazy river and the scariest wave pool I've ever been in and also like five different swim up bars. That is where Griffin and I had our first white claw. That is true. Obviously it changed everything for me. Another bonus is you get to visit the big buckies on the way down there, which does get

its own carve out here because Virginia just got its own Buckees, its first Buckees back in June, but it is two hours away from us and there's no way that the Calacchis probably even exists there so special shout out. That's what a, what a freaking

drive hitting Buckees down to Schlitterbond. Crazy man. Hey, let's extend our trip a good two to three days. We'll pull our kids out of school for the week. We'll lose them forever in that way of pool. Yes, absolutely we will. We did watch a kid go under for a bad amount of time on one of those slides, y'all.

Which I think is like a Schlitterbond ride of passage, is saving a child's life. Yeah, that lazy river, you remember? It's one of the lazy river, but it's like a downhill course, and then it has like these little waterfalls you go over that splash down into these whirlpools. You see a kid go over the water slides, just, oh no. Feels great to save a kid, gang. It is true. What have you got next, babe?

Okay. One of the things that I miss a lot about living here is when your grocery store takes care of you. Yeah. I apologize for the image selection. It was hard to find a great representative. image of H.E.B. Disaster response. That is not true. You could definitely have found something better than that. I feel safe with him.

He's going to take good... What happened? What burned down? Don't write this way. We've got all the flour tortillas you need. So one of the last things that happened before we moved away in 22. was the big freeze in Texas. Correct response. Yeah. Pretty bad.

I was eight months pregnant. And we lost power and water to our house. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was very cold. To say the least, yeah, absolutely. And then we left our house because we found a hotel and we came back and our pipes had burst

and flooded our master bathroom and bedroom. And another bat. It fucked up like a good quarter of our place for sure. Yeah. And we were doing the whole thing. We were melting snow so that we could flush our toilets. I mean, it was bleak. It was bad stuff.

But, you know who showed up? H.E. Buddy, kicked in the door. He said, Climb inside me, it's real warm. That's what he sounds like. You guys have never heard H.E. Buddy talk, but that's what he sounds like. There is a story that I just, like, I had kind of forgotten about, but when I was researching this,

it's a story that happened in Leander, where a bunch of people were in H.E.B. Trying to stock up. And the power went out in the grocery store. And so everybody is lining up. like 20 cashiers, the power is out, nobody knows how they're going to check out, and they just let everybody leave without pain and all the stuff in their cards.

Solid. And then they verified the story on Twitter, but they, like, didn't turn that into, like, a big... A national news piece, yeah, for sure. Yeah. So, H.E.B. has an emergency response team, and they have something they call their DRUs of their disaster response unit, which is a convoy of more than 15 vehicles, which includes

two mobile kitchens, water and fuel tankers. They're fully equipped with an HEP pharmacy, mobile business services unit, which allows people to fill prescriptions, cash checks, and pay bills, and provide access to an ATM. They're mobile kitchens, which have two 45-foot-long food preparation facilities that are designed to serve up to 6,000 meals per day, and our staff with H.E.B. employees who are prepared to serve hot meals. It's incredible. There was a New York Times article in 2021, and there was a novelist and journalist who lives in Austin named Stephen Harrigan who said, quote, it's like HEB is the moral center of Texas. he said, quote, there seems to be in our state a lack of real leadership, a lack of real efficiency

on the political level, but on the business level, when it comes to a grocery store, all of these things are in place. Yeah. HGB should just make its own power grid, and you can... We'll run long extension cables

like a hive mine from the nearest 80s. We have some good grocery stores in D.C., but nobody has helped us out when the power goes out. That's true. I do remember when COVID first hit, and everyone was like, oh, oh, no. And H.E.B. was like, don't worry, fam. What do you need?

And Randalls was like, it's Mad Max Fury Road. Everyone fucking get here fast. Oh, no, it's all gone. Just kidding. Randall's was probably okay, too. It's just the only other grocery store I can remember. I'd like to talk about and I don't have like a huge eye for the arts

but I've always really really enjoyed the Austin Studio Tour it is because I don't have an eye for the arts that it was always such a great prospect for me because you can really cram in a lot of art over the span of like one or two days they run the Austin Studio Tour for two weekends a year it's coming up November 8th and 15th

those weekends this year if you want to attend and artists all across the city open up their studios and their galleries and just invite people to come inside and see where they get to where they do their stuff and let them into this super intimate

look at the process and also like sell them incredible works of art well and that's what I mean people say when they go to galleries when they leave they're like man they really crammed it in and that's like...

It really crammed it in there that's like the nicest thing you can say it's high price. Yeah when I walk out of a museum my rating is like how crammed did I get get in there. It really is like a great sort of primer every year just like gaining this like rolling education

of like what the art scene is and like what people are making, what it's like to work in an art studio, just learning about the like endless array of like mediums and styles and it's just a nice cross section of local art and it's a great opportunity. And I've seen this kind of done at other places we've been and places we've lived. but never really on this scale. So it's a really great opportunity. And I do also want to talk, my last thing tonight that I want to talk about

is just a Titanic, monolithic figure that I miss a lot, even though the footprint isn't as large these days. And that is David Comey, the attorney. Thank you. There are so many attorneys in D.C. There are so many. Just like everybody is an attorney.

Everyone, everyone, and they don't want to know about your podcast. We have no sure. If I got an automotive accident, hopefully not. But if I ever did in D.C., no shortage of choices for legal representation. I can pretty much guarantee none of them are going to be rocking fucking corn dreads. That's for sure. David Comey's billboards used to hang over. I didn't see it this time, so I don't know if they are gone.

But they used to hang over the drive back that we would have from the airport back into the city. And so when I would go on tour or like when I was working at Polygon, I'd be gone for a week and I would get back in town. And I would be greeted upon my return with that first, that familiar wave of cleansing dry heat that just sort of like purges all of your, your micro, bio-biomes and stuff off of you. But then also his billboards, some of which professed, quote, I may not look like an attorney, but it helps me sneak up on them.

That's fucking crazy. It was a balm for my soul. I felt like immediately this incredible sense of place, this sense of home. I tried to research David Comey to see what he was up to now, and it was difficult to do so. But every single, like,

article comments or like Reddit thread or anything I found about him was full of people saying like, yeah, you used to manage my band. He's the nicest guy ever. Or a lot of, he whipped my ass at pickleball. He's fucking cool. Oh my God. And this is one quote from

a comment on one of his old commercials that said, my grandma lived next to him. I fish in his pond. Fucking the coolest. The coolest ever, David Comey. I don't know where you're at now, but I hope

I hope you're doing well. Do we have time for one more? Do you want to do one more? We might want to. It's up to you, babe. I mean, I just wanted to say it's, man, I really miss having, like, a hundred restaurants and breweries that have playgrounds. It's so convenient. Yeah, it's unbelievable.

It's not something that we can really find anywhere in D.C. I googled it endlessly since we've moved there. Real estate is a bit tighter. Yeah, that's the thing. So Texas is there, unfortunately, a lot of places did not survive the pandemic, but the ones that do that have the landscape. So like Austin Beer Works, for example, opened up a 64-acre location that has a dog park and a disc golf course.

Crazy. Meanwhile, brewing in South Austin has a playground, food trucks, a mini soccer pitch, a stage, and a sand volleyball court. Yeah. There was this article in Texas Monthly by Richard Santos, who I believe we used to be the executive director at Austin Batcave. But he gave an interview to Texas Standard and said, you know, this past Easter Sunday, I was looking for an egg hunt for me and my five-year-old to go do, and there were eight

different local breweries doing egg hunts. I just missed that, man. Yeah, I miss that a lot. I miss going to a home slice where they just had the shire in their front yard for some reason. Always lovely. I had one other thing that we don't really have time for it, so maybe we just run down the list of just all of the many local businesses that we miss so very much. Like book people and Dragonslayer and Toy Joy and Terror Toys and H.E.B.

And the Chili's at 45th in Lamar. I genuinely like more than any other place on Earth, Austin is the place that when I visit it, I feel like there is just too much to see in one trip. And what's really cool is like now our kids are older. We moved away when Henry was five. And it's really incredible to bring them back here for a lot of reasons, but to take them to these places. We took Henry and Gus to Tara Toys yesterday. And Henry saw the big dragon bust thing that's like hanging up over the entrance and started to talk about how nostalgic he was.

and we went inside and he was talking about being like nostalgic about the smell of Tara Toys and like genuinely I got pretty choked up and I think it's just so rad that like this is his hometown and it's and it's Gus's hometown too because it's like I don't know there's so much

incredible stuff to do here and so many incredible places to like take them back to and see that sort of spark it's really lovely we miss you all tremendously and thank you so much for coming out tonight and for having us back. I want to say thanks to Bowen and Augustus

for these for our theme song, Money Won't Pay. You can find a link to that in our episode description I just said to a live audience of people who are not looking at a hyperlink online. We have posters out in the lobby that were designed by John Barlow that kick ass. We signed a bunch of them. I believe we are sold out of the Pulsaborne Memorial

canned food drive challenge coins. But if you do want to make a donation to Hope Food Pantry, Austin, you can still do that out there as well. But thank you all so much for coming out and listen to our podcast. Is there anything else?

Yeah. Okay. Bye. Bye. Money more, hey, working on. Maximum Fun. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artist-owned shows. Thank you.