Wonderful! - Wonderful! Ep. 61: Our Favorite Austin Stuff, Live!

Episode Date: November 29, 2018

We did a live show in our hometown of Austin, TX! We talked about our favorite stuff from the city, including an ill-fated restaurant, a local poet and an explosive state history lesson. Music: "Money Won't Pay" by bo en and Augustus - https://open.spotify.com/album/7n6zRzTrGPIHt0kRvmWoya MaxFunDrive ends on March 29, 2024! Support our show now by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join.

Hi, I'm Rachel McElroy. Hello, this is Griffin McElroy. And this is wonderful. Yep. We are at the Moody Theater. Rachel and I live here in Austin and have been lucky enough to see a lot of shows here. I was pondering backstage.

Last show I saw here was Carly Rae Jepsen. I missed her. And there is... Walking on the stage for And there is walking on the stage for Soundcheck and now for the show, I felt like there are do you feel like there's little pockets of Jepsen energy still, like when I walked through I felt like this thermal vent of

run away with me. When I came up the stairs. I saw like a mist hit your face and that mist was boy problems. This is our first live show of Wonderful. And this is my first time on stage, maybe since I did a dance recital. Yes.

So this is going to be sort of a 50-50 performance where I'll be doing wonderful, and Rachel's going to be doing her fucking dance recital. It's going to be so great. No, tell them the plan for this episode. This is a weather balloon for how we're going to do our live shows. Well, we decided to talk about things that we love here in Austin, Texas. Yes.

If you have never listened to our show before, hey. We talk about things that we're enthusiastic about. We used to talk about The Bachelor, and then we decided to do the opposite show. And now we're talking about all Austin stuff. We always open up. You got any small wonders? Oh, my gosh. Yes.

Okay. And that would be... You didn't have one, did you? Well, I mean, I took a ride share over here, and that was great. I guess that's sort of a local... Right? It's great they came. Thanks for coming back, I guess that's sort of a local, it's great they came. Thanks for coming back, I guess.

A little childish that you left, if I'm being honest, Lyft and Uber. But I guess thanks for coming back, or else Rachel would still be at home right now, and it would just be at me, maybe we'd Skype you in. True. Oh, and stickers. Yeah, fuck yeah. I was leaving home, and I was trying to get out of the house

without my two-year-old becoming upset. And so I gave him some stickers and then just waltzed right out of there. Yeah. Stickers and lift really went hand in hand on this one to get Rachel to the theater tonight. So praise them. It's going to start to feel more natural the longer we go into the show. For me, you're crushing it. What are yours?

I want to bring up one local thing, which is the Reuben sandwich at Biederman's Deli on Far West. We go to Biederman's all the time for their bagels. They're fantastic. Hadn't had their sandwiches before. Had one when your folks were in town. It was like somebody spiked a volleyball down my throat a little bit

in terms of how I felt afterwards. But the during part was very good. For those not familiar with the show, Griffin always talks about his digestive system at the beginning of every episode. That probably won't be the last time. The other thing is I saw this video backstage of this

cow in Australia that weighs 1.2 tons and is like three times as big as any other living cow. Fucking absolute unit of a cow. I love this cow. Not really an awesome thing, but long horns, not cow, but whatever. Okay. Okay. So we have a few topics prepared for you, local delights.

Do you want me to go first? Yes, please. We talked about that backstage. That was fucking theater that you all just saw. My first thing is seeing those rental scooters in a sad, destroyed kind of state. Yes. Yes, no, that's exactly right. Yeah. I don't know why it pleases me so much to see rental scooters in a sad, destroyed kind of state. But I see it often. And every time I do, I get a little pep in my step. And I think,

I think it's because it's, it's this act of defiance that represents this kind of aimless rage that I really love. Like, hey, it's a rental scooter. Let's fuck it up. We hate these things, right? Right? We hate these things, right? They're bad. They're bad, right? They've got to be bad. Let's throw them in traffic. Yeah. Has anybody read something about how they're bad? It seems like they're probably bad, right? All right, let's set it on fire. Let's go. It's just this powerful act of rebellion fighting against something.

So when you say, like, in disarray, you're just talking about, like, tilted on its side? Well, I've got my three best scooter wreckings that I have seen. Number three, I saw a big pile of just like six of them piled on top of each other like some sort of bohemian trash sculpture next to a bus stop on North Lamar. So like a cuddle puddle.

Kind of like a cuddle puddle. In their defense, that may just have been a natural occurrence because there's so many. On North Lamar, for some reason, rental scooters outnumber sentient human beings. Number two was so good that it made me use social media,

which is saying something. You may have seen this if you follow me on IG. Hit me up. Don't. I never post. I saw one on 6th Street, East 6th Street, as we were driving out of town, going on a road trip.

I did see one jammed into a sewer drain on the side of the road. I needed a cigarette after seeing this scooter, partially because it's, of all of the vehicles to see, peeking out of a sewer drain, like a little mobile Pennywise,

a scooter might be the funniest imaginable one. What do you think happened that motivated the person to do that? Yeah, maybe they were used to sort of the way their own scooter handled, and so they took a bad, like, spill and out of rage, they looked around and jammed it down a sewer drain. I like to think about that moment because it's a public area, and it must have required a lot of force.

What if it's like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles situation? Oh! But up from the sewer comes the scooter. Or Michelangelo got the za and then tried to ride down the sewer, but his scooter got caught, and he was like, eh, fuck it. My number one favorite one I saw literally 10 minutes before the sewer drain one on East 6th Street. We were waiting to pick up a friend at an apartment complex on East 6th Street.

And we looked up, looking at this apartment complex, three stories off the ground on one of the balconies of this apartment complex, someone just had one. Whoa. Someone just, the fucking gall of taking these rental scooters and saying, this one's mine. And displaying it and saying, if you reserve a rental scooter like that, I feel like you aren't renting it, you are now leasing the rental scooter. But yeah, I like seeing these things fucked up. I know that's childish of me. What is your first thing?

My first thing is Blue Jeannie. Blue jeans are... Blue jeans are... I can't make the joke that I didn't hear you twice. Blue jean is fantastic. Yes. I'm glad you guys get to see the kind of disappointed faces that Rachel makes at me when we're recording in the studio.

Well, I just didn't know I was doing this podcast with Clint McElroy. Yowza! That was two insults with one stone. So Blue Genie, as you may be most familiar with the art bazaar held now on Airport Boulevard, started in 2001. And actually, the first location was on Springdale, which is where you first did your Austin

Mbembe show. Did anybody come to that first Austin Mbembe show? Okay, that's not a lot of people because we put it on in a weird fucking warehouse and we threw it ourselves. Rachel took tickets and sold eggnog and one of our friends was running lights. It was wild.

We had hot chocolate in little styrofoam cups, if I remember correctly. We have a lot of friends here in the audience tonight. I'm pretty sure they are the only ones that clapped for that. Thanks. Yeah, they are. So the Blue Genie Art Industries is the organization that started the Blue Genie Art Bazaar, and they are famous for creating giant art and commercial sculptures.

You may be familiar with the Franz Hamburger Girl, which was made by Blue Genie Art Industries. The Bullock Texas State History Museum has these large six panels illustrating the museum's theme, the story of Texas, and that was made by Blue Genie Art Industries. And now, since 2001, they are up to over 200 artists with more than 400 applicants each year.

If you watched Making It... Did anybody watch Making It? Don't spoil it. Oh, I'm Don't spoil it. Oh, I'm about to spoil it. Oh. Rachel's about to spoil the first and only season of the new show, Making It. Well, no, I don't have to spoil it. But one of the

artists is a part owner of A&K Woodworking and Design, and you can see his work. At the Blue Genie. What's funny, I almost included a Blue Genie thing as one of my things because they used to do the Danger Derby. Do you have anything about the Danger Derby?

Yeah, I was going to mention that. The Danger Derby rules. Please, tell us about the Danger Derby. So unfortunately, they don't do that anymore. Yes, I saw the Facebook post, which we'll explain after you explain what the Danger Derby is because it was heartbreaking, this Facebook post. Yeah, so they would, the original location at Springdale had a two-story, 20-foot tall roof, so they would the original location at Springdale had a

two-story, 20-foot tall roof and they used to take 100 feet of track and run it from the roof down to the ground and people would race Pinewood Derby cars. But what could make that dangerous, Rachel?

So they would ignite the area around the track with a burst of flames. They also had a swinging sledgehammer and a buzzsaw one year, which is great. You get to go inside. You got to go inside and look at all of the cars before they raced. And I remember we saw a cool light up TARDIS one. I was like, fuck yeah. That thing got demolished. Just immediately somersaulted. So when I was looking this up to see if they were still doing it,

there's a Facebook post from I think 2015 saying like, hey y'all, so because of forces beyond our control, they didn't say it explicitly, but you created a fucking death zone on your roof. I can't imagine they had the permits because those permits cannot possibly exist. So the Blue Genie Art Bazaar opens immediately after Thanksgiving every year and is open all the way until Christmas. So you can go and buy local art. Go check it out. It's fantastic. Yeah.

Question. If it was still running, could we do one of the rental scooters on the Danger Derby ramp? Best of both worlds. Can I talk about my second thing?

Please. It's a restaurant recommendation. Not. It doesn't exist anymore. It's a restaurant memoriam. Four.

Pacific Rim Sushi Sports Bar and Yakitori Grill. Oh my gosh. How perfect. We used to live up in North Burnett, which is this, like, buckwild treasure trove of every imaginable, like, Asian restaurant type you could ever, like, think of. It's fucking great, and that's, like, really our wheelhouse. So this place opened

called Pacific Rim and it was miraculous. It was in that weird kind of inaccessible plaza on Burnett and Research Boulevard and our interest was piqued. We went there twice. The first time we went, we were like hell yeah, sushi yakitori, let's tear it up.

We showed up. Sure enough, they did have many TV showing sports, which is already a sort of strange hybrid, let's tear it up. We showed up. Sure enough, they did have mini TVs showing sports, which is already a sort of strange hybrid of enjoy your sushi and watch all the football games. Not sooner, five minutes after we sat down and began enjoying our sushi and football, a jazz trio did set up right next to our table and began playing jazz.

We felt like explorers in the new world. Just like, do people know about this place? And in fact, the second and last time we went to Pacific Rim, we went because we had to bring our friends to this wonderful place, the Pacific Rim Sushi Sports and Jazz Bar and Yakitori Grill. Buckle the fuck up. Months passed. Things were, I guess, going kind of rough for the Pacific Rim Sushi

Sports and Jazz Bar and Yakitori Grill. I'm assuming it's because they used to do all-you-can-eat sushi. Yowza. The food was pretty good. It was, yeah. They wanted to revamp the brand. No problem. That happens in Austin all the time for some weird reason. In January

of this year, they made a move so bold that I can't believe we all get to exist in a world where it actually happened during our lifetimes. They became Pacific Rim Cajun Sports Bar and Kitchen. We never went, though. We never went, so we can't speak to the transition. This is from their website.

Come on down and enjoy one of our $7 daily lunch specials. Oysters, seafood boils, fried seafood baskets, po'boys, burgers, and more. They went wild with it, legitimately embracing this new brand of food. And yet, they did still have some traditional Japanese dishes on it. Still had a yakitori section.

Not as much of an emphasis on sushi, but that would be the weirdest thing. I don't think you can legally serve sushi and like a crawfish boil in the same restaurant. This is their daily specials. Yes. Unless. Unless.

The daily specials that are listed on their website, which is still in operation tragically, reads like a fucking werewolf transformation. If the werewolf was also New Orleans music legend Dr. John. Monday, beef teriyaki bowl. Tuesday, chicken stir-fry noodle. Wednesday, Cajun crawfish fried rice. Thursday, chicken pasta with tomato creole sauce.

Friday, crawfish etouffee. It becomes more Cajun as the week goes on. I like that because I imagine they thought let's not lose the original spirit that motivated our restaurant let's keep it half the week they didn't get many weeks to test that little

theory out with to wrap it all up 41 days after the switch the restaurant was locked up and shut down because of unpaid rent. So, sad. You could read it as they made the Cajun switch as one sort of last desperate maneuver

to rescue the restaurant. I like to think it was always in the cards and that we simply didn't deserve Pacific Rim, sushi and jazz bar and Yakitori Grill and cajun sports bar and kitchen it was too fucking beautiful to live thank you thank you pacific got a couple jumbotrons and i'll let you get back to the rest of the show. This first one is from Maddie, and it's from Frank, who says, You've solved my podcast puzzle. That's right, it's the other half of Sexy American Gothic. I figured a curator like you can appreciate getting the McElroys to chisel your likeness in audio stone.

So here, swing by this statue garden anytime you want to remember how special you are to me. I love you so, so, so much. Anyway, here's a pupper gif, I can't, duh, I can't, hmm, I don't know how to break this to you, I can't put a gif in the show, I simply, I simply can't put a gif in the show, you recognize it's an audio medium in the, in the body of your message, and then ask me to put a gif in, I can, I can do nothing for you, but I, Maddie, I hope you enjoyed the message. Here's one for Catherine from Drew who says, dear little bug nugget, now that we've pushed the key rings together, oh no, they specifically want Rachel's air horn sound. I'm so sorry that she's not here, but I think it'd sound a little something like this. That is a bad simulacrum,

but you just remember the fond times. Coming home to you is my daily small wonder. I like you and I love you and I always want more of you. Happy Christmas. Happy anniversary. Happy birthday. Love. Former new boo Drew. P.S. James likes you too, but he didn't help me pay for this. They wanted this December 2018, which means this is the first time we've ever been early for a birthday. What a refreshing change of pace. Okay, that's it. Thanks to Maximum Fun for having us. Thanks to Bowen and Augustus. I say all this stuff in the live show. So let's get back to it. Here it comes. Bye. Hi, I'm the JV Club podcast, Janet Varney, and I used to suffer from indecision. I couldn't choose between Star Wars and Star Trek, whether to call or text, or the best way to cook my eggs.

But now, thanks to my weekly dose of We Got This on Maximum Fun, my decisions are made for me. Thanks, Mark and Hal! Warning. We Got This may cause shouting, phone throwing, the illusion that the hosts can hear you, laughter on public transit, and death. We Got This with Mark and Hal. We know what's best. What is your second thing? My second thing is a trip to the Poetry Corner. What's the Poetry Corner theme song? Do you have it loaded up, Paul?

We didn't get it. There's not one. I just very much wanted to scare our tour manager, Paul Soborn. Griffin, do you want to go for it? Yeah, sure. It can be like... Every time I do it, I do like an upright bass, and it sounds like the fucking Frasier theme song.

Do you want me to do the Frasier theme? Yeah, sure. Hey, baby, I hear the poetry calling. Toss salad and scrambled verses. That was... One of the worst things I've ever done on a stage. But you met your Frasier quota. I did, yeah.

I can tell the boys, don't worry. I freed us from the curse. We don't have to do it during My Brother, My Brother. If you haven't listened to the show sometimes, Rachel talks about poetry. A lot. And it's great. It's fantastic. It's the best segment on the show i am so glad that you clarified that for the audience they would have been

totally disoriented yeah sure fair uh so i am going to talk about i'll edit it out oh shit it's live a uh a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin. Woo! And that is Dr. Harriet Mullen. Woo! Woo. So she is a poet that has written nine books of poetry spanning four decades.

Holy shit. She has received multiple awards. How big are the books, though? See, that's the thing with poetry. They're usually pretty small. Yeah. You can turn it out five pages. This is a book, but they're great fucking poems.

Anyway, one more book for the pile. By the way, I heard what you all said about poetry this week on My Brother, My Brother and Me. I thought I was a staunch defender of the art form. No, you did. You made it very clear that pasta is not poetry, and I appreciate that. So while at UT, Harriet Mullen wrote editorials for the Daily Texan, contributed to UT-sponsored student magazines,

and worked for an African-American community newspaper, the Argus. Her poems I very much enjoy. She's got a very unique style. In an interview for the Poetry Project, she said, The linguistic, regional, and cultural differences marked by Southern dialect, Black English, Spanish, and Spanglish, are fundamental to how I think about language and how I work with language and poetry. My attraction to the minor and the marginal,

to the flavor of difference in language, has something to do with this sense of heteroglossia that was part of the environment of my childhood in Texas. Fuck yeah! I got way smarter just hearing you say all that stuff. So, the super cool thing,

if that wasn't cool enough for you, she is currently teaching in California, and so I emailed her directly and asked her if I could have her permission to read a poem. What if she just lowered down from the ceiling on cables right now, like, what's up, motherfuckers?

Here it comes. Sandstorm could start playing, and she's like, prepare yourself for my fucking righteous poem. So she emailed me back within like 24 hours and said, yeah, go ahead, read it. All right. Which I was super pleased about. So the poem I'm going to read is called Shedding Skin.

It was published in her first book, Tree Tall Woman, which came out in 1981. Everyone, absolute silence. Don't, absolute silence. Can we snap in rhythm? Would that fuck you up if we all snapped in rhythm to the poetry reading? Well, how are you going to know what the rhythm is, though? I'm the one on the fucking stage. I'll tell everybody

what the rhythm is. Just go ahead and start, and I'll bring it all. I'll bring it in. But don't get distracted. Now it's like American Gladiator poetry edition. I'm firing tennis balls at you as you run the gauntlet reading a poem. Okay. It's to go great. You don't even know what the poem is about, either. What if it's a really somber poem? You're going to feel pretty silly.

Is snapping especially jubilant? Snapping is the most somber sound that a person... Show me how you're going to snap. I mean, it'll be under the table so you can't see it. But then they won't see it, so I have to do it up here. Not yet, but get ready. I like that instinct. You've read the poem. Should I not snap? I feel like you've set a trap for me. Okay.

Okay. Pulling out of the old scarred skin, old rough thing I don't need now, I strip off, slip out of, old scarred skin old rough thing i don't need now i strip off slip out of and leave behind i slough off dead scales flick skin flakes to the ground shedding toughness peeling layers down to vulnerable stuff and i'm blinking off old eyelids for a new way of seeing by the rock i rub against I'm going to be tender again. That was a good poem. The snapping did distract from it.

A decent amount. I liked it. It was very evocative. It also reminded me of the time that I got so burnt up at Florida. And on the way back, we stopped at a hotel and I was really sore

and Travis gave me a back rub and it was the most horrible thing that's ever happened to both of us. But obviously the poem has a lot more smart stuff. Yeah, I don't know if you've been to a lot of poetry readings. Do they snap in rhythm during the thing?

Not usually, no. So when I pitched that... And usually people that hear the poem don't raise their hand and say, you know what that reminds me of? Ha ha ha! Oh! Why not? I like imagining you, though, at a reading of Dr. Harriet Mullen raising your hand and being like,

Excuse me, Dr. Mullen? One time my brother gave me a back massage on vacation and a bunch of my skin came off. Is that right? And she'd be like, Yeah, that's right. You're the first one to get it. Anyway, she's a very talented poet. Absolutely. Thank you for letting us read your poem. Sorry we snapped all over it.

Do you want to hear my third thing? Yes. We usually only do two each, so we thought we'd go way faster than we usually do recording at home, and that ended up being very true. My third thing I'm very excited about. It is Angelina Eberle. Does anybody

hear... Who here has seen the statue downtown of the woman firing the cannon? Who here knows the the statue downtown of the woman firing the cannon? Okay, who here knows the story about that? A decent amount. It kicks ass. I can't believe they haven't made a fucking movie about this story.

Okay, I promise, the setup for this is worth it. It's 1842. And residents of Austin and a detachment of folks working for then president of the Republic of Texas, Sam Houston. I'm so excited. I'm just like... They got into a little dust-up.

This dust-up, historians now call the Archive Wars. Are you fucking kidding me? That is the most badass sci-fi ass name I have ever heard for any, the Archive, Master Chief in Halo 6, the Archive Wars.

I was thinking it sounded a little bit like a new Star Wars movie. Absolutely. More background, it's 1836. Let me take you back even a little bit more. Texas Revolution's popping off. Texas President Mirabeau B. Lamar, which, best fucking name, Mirabeau,

beats Sam Houston, who is the current president of Texas, which is weird. Wait, when you said beat. Beat. That's his middle initial. Oh. What did you think I said? I thought you said beat.

No, Mirabeau B. Lamar beats Sam Houston in an election and moves the Capitol, decides to take all the archives from Houston, which is named after Sam Houston. That must have been a wild time to be like making cities and shit. Says, I don't like Houston as the Capitol.

Let's move it to the center of the state because it'll be more sort of strategic and shit and close to everything else. That became Austin, Texas. Hats off, Mirabeau. So he moved the archives. Think of the archives for the purpose of the story as a capture the flag flag, or a golden snitch. Moving them was an ordeal. It took like 50 wagons to get all this stuff moving down. It took them a long time. Austin's the capital. Cool. During this time, Austin was put at risk during the Mexican Revolution. Mexican expeditionary forces were coming up. San Antonio in particular would get in danger. When that happened, Sam Houston would be like, see, we got to fucking move it back to Houston. It's farther east. It's a

little bit safer. Get it out of Austin. It'll get destroyed. And then every time it happened, the people living in Austin would be like, no, we're good. Like, we're good. And Congress would be like, no, we're good. We're not going to move the Capitol. 1841, Sam Houston wins back the presidency. He's like, alright, we're moving these fucking archives. Austin got under threat again. Austin was like, we're cool. Chill. Chill. Chill. Congress was like, chill. Chill. Chill. This happened

a bunch of times. Can you help me understand what was in the archives that was so valuable? This part of the story is not clear to me. But you know how like... Just a lot of like third grade spelling tests. I think you think of it this way. It was like they had the internet in a bunch of boxes.

And they needed that to make the government go. Like pie recipes and pictures of nip slips. Nip slips for sure. This goes back and forth. Sam Houston eventually says, fuck it, I'm the president. Archives are in danger.

More importantly, the town of Houston's named after me. It'd be fucking sick if it was the capital. I'm gonna go get these archives. He sends 20 dudes and three wagons to Austin. Just go into the general land office,

get the archives, come back. This is where Angelina Eberly comes in. Had a rough road, Angelina Eberly. Her first husband, who was also her first cousin, go for it, in 1818, they got married. She opened an inn in San Felipe de Austin, not to be confused with our city of Austin. Then her husband died and,

uh, and the town and her inn were just destroyed to prevent them from being captured during the, the, the revolution. So got on back on the horse, remarried to not cousin and moved to Austin in 1839, became a widower again.

That's too bad, but she opened up an inn in Austin called the Eberly House. This is where it gets so, so tasty. That year that she opened the inn, President Mirabeau B. Lamar came in town. Sam Houston was on his cabinet, came with him.

He was grumpy about this whole Austin's the capital shit, and in a petulant act said, I'm not staying at the fucking governor's mansion. You know where he stayed? The Eberly House house which was angelina eberly's in i thought that would get bigger like whoa apparently angelina eberly did not enjoy the company of sam houston so much flashback to forward to the fateful night of the archive robbery angelina eberly wakes up what's that sound are they robbing the archives? Fuck that.

She gets out of bed, runs down Congress Avenue, finds a fucking cannon, points it at the general land office, and shoots the building. Long story short, this very much scares the robbers. They take off with the archives, but a cannon going off in the middle of town woke everybody up, so everybody from Austin chases them down, gets the archives back, a bunch of other stuff happens,

but tell Austin's the capital, we won. What I love to think about are the minutes between Angelina Eberle waking up and her firing this big cannon into a building on Congress Avenue. Because I am prone to, if I hear a bump in the night that wakes me up,

Rachel can attest to this, I will sometimes leap out of bed and go to confront the noise. Really, I'm offering myself up as sacrifice to whatever is making the noise. I think Angelina may have done the same thing,

but like way bigger. She did shoot a building with a cannon without much thought for the property damage that would be done and also the potential killings. It was dark, I imagine. They were inside a building.

She heard some shit going down and said, I'm going to shoot the building with it. There's just so many logics sort of, I don't want to say leaps in logic. Maybe she had it all figured out. I think most people would jump out of bed potentially and go towards the noise and just say, hey, cut it out.

True. The cannon feels like a few escalations. Can I pitch my theory? Yes. The inn was close to the general land building. It's a tall sort of castle like structure that I think is still around because I guess the cannon

didn't do a whole lot to it. It was built across the street from her inn, I guess. I imagine she looked at it every day and said, man, I fucking hate that building. Or she looked at the cannon every day and was like, man, I want to fire that cannon. Either way, Angelina Eberle

kicks ass. That's the archive war. The coolest shit in Texas history. Do you want to do your third thing? I know the number is red on the clock, but if you're feeling it. I can do this one real quick. All right. Sparky Park. Sparky Park.

I love Sparky Park. Nobody knows about Sparky Park. Awesomey Park? I love Sparky Park, but nobody knows about Sparky Park. Awesome, you're about to. You can find it on 3701 Groom Street. It is a pocket park that had a previous life as an electrical substation in 1930. It's as rad and as dangerous looking as you might assume. In 2008, the city of Austin, through the Organization of Art in Public Spaces,

commissioned local artist Berthold Haas to construct a whimsical wall in the pocket park. With help from neighbors... Austin kicks ass, by the way, the fact that that happened. Go build me a whimsical wall at this electrical substation! Ha-ha! So the neighbors in the community assembled a variety of stones and mirror balls

and glass and broken antique glass dishes and other shells, painted stucco, petrified wood, molded cement, freeze marbles, repurposed ceramic disc insulators to create this wall. And it's in this beautiful park with elms and crepe myrtles and plum trees. And big, like, metal rods and antennae. Yeah.

It's beautiful. It's a beautiful park. We used to go there on walks all the time. It's beautiful, and it's where we had our... We had our engagement photos there. We also went geocaching there one time, rich with geocaching opportunities. There was one we couldn't find. If you find it or have found it, hit me up.

I want to know. I know the harder it is to find, the better stuff they've got inside. A Tootsie Roll Pop, for example. But that's, I mean, that's Sparky Park. I love it. I love that it exists. I love that the community was involved in creating it. Yeah.

I just, I love repurposing, you know, something that served a very distinct purpose for a more creative space. I also just love a pocket park. I look at a Zilker and I get overwhelmed. There's so much park here. I don't know where to play soccer. I get so frustrated because I,

when I want to play soccer, I want to play it now. Sparky Park is about the size of a regulation soccer field. How big is that? 200. I had one we didn't get to and it was grackles. They're the nastiest fucking birds ever.

You'll have to take my word for it. Usually at the end of our show we do like audience submissions and we super don't have time to like go through the aisles um but i'm gonna count to three and if you have something that is in town that you think is dope just scream it one two three for sure for sure for sure that's like the funny quote from the from the movie uh the dazed and confused, and he's like, for sure, for sure. For sure, for sure, yeah. I realized backstage before we walked out here that we don't have a usual way

that we close out our shows, which is problematic. Thanks to Maximum Fun for having us on the network. The great, great network. Oh, we're not done. Wait, Paul, I gotta, Paul. Paul, wait. I have to thank Bowen and Augustus for the use of our theme song, Money Won't Pay.

You've just heard it. You can find a link to that in the episode description. Your real audience are not clicking anything right now. Thank you all for coming. Yeah, thank you so much. Hey, Griffin, did I do okay? You did amazing. Thank you.

I think I fucked up a few times, but I got another podcast after this one, so I'll try and make my way up for it. Well, we don't usually have a thing we say here at the end of the show. So I'm just waiting for the drop, and then we're going to get up and just kind of walk off. Hey, you know what? You better hurry. I think this episode was the slap. Okay, bye. MaximumFun.org

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