Shut up Austin- Pt 3

Okay... before I go any further let me just say that I was only planning on Austin for 2 or 3 days, like every other city... but ended up staying there for 6... and it wasn't because of how much I liked the barbecue... I had a really, really great, unforgettable time in Austin, and did lots of fun things and had lots of fun times etc, etc...
Anyway, the next morning we woke up and Mike, Victor and I walked to a taco stand right near their house to get tacos. I got one barbacoa and one carnitas. They were good.

Then I got dropped off at my home away from home away from home (Epoch Coffee) to do some writing while Mike and Victor and Alba paid some billllz and shit...

Then Victor went to work and Mike, Alba and I went to get some brisket.

Later that night, two bands I knew from New York, Ex Humans and Foster Care were playing at Beerland so Mike and I headed down there. I ran into my buddies and met some of Mike's friends and blah blah blah show stuff.








After the show, we went back to Mike's house and his friend Ryan Foster (of Total Abuse fame) over and we hung out and drank beerz. Mike told me about an amazing thing that I had never heard of before... Caveman starring Ringo Starr... a really crappy movie in which he deals with the slapstick adventures of being a caveman? There's also a slapstick attempted rape scene? It's kind of like the beginning of the Michael Cera/Jack Black romp Year One.

Damnit, Austin- Pt2

The next day I got to meet Mike's roommate (and band mate in Criaturas) as well as Alba, Victor's girlfriend who had just moved to Austin from Barcelona. Also, Mike's turtle Stu, who is apparently the mascot of Clockcleaner.


That day wasn't too exciting. Mike and Victor went to work, I went to Epoch Coffee to do some writing. I walked back to the house from Epoch and had some girl time with Alba, and then we bravely ventured out on our own, two ladies unfamiliar with Austin, to go take a bus to The Grand for a DJ night.

The Grand seemed like an unlikely spot for a DJ night... it was a big, well lit pool hall in the middle of a strip mall, but it turned out to be pretty cool. People were playing pool, and drinking cheap beer, and the DJ was spinning the same type of records that "hip" DJs apparently play at "cool" DJ nights all around the country.
I met some people, including Ryan, Mike's awesome friend who had gotten his ass beaten by some skinheads at a Templars show a few days before.


Eventually Mike and Victor showed up and we drank with them for a while until piling into Mike's car to head back to their place...



I just drank with Mike, and listened to Pink Panzer (a gay white power band) and drank more and fought to stay up and was thoroughly charmed by his gay gothy ways...


Fell asleep sometime around dawn... it was a really, really great time.

Fuck You, Austin- Pt 1

I left Tucson in the middle of the night and headed to El Paso. In El Paso we had to transfer buses to head to Austin. Not too far into Texas all of a sudden our bus got stopped at a Border Control checkpoint and three rowdy US Marshalls charged onto our bus demanding proof of citizenship. I'm no fan of cops and immediately started trying to think if there was anything I could have done wrong that would give these brutish dudes a reason to fuck with me. Never have I been so glad that I don't smoke pot.
Once they were done looking for illegals, they opened the luggage compartment under the bus and let the drug sniffing dogs go wild. After a few minutes one of the Marshalls came back onto the bus and started yelling for someone name Kelly to reveal themselves. After yelling her name a few times, a little scared girl who looked about ten years old stood up and said that she was teh Kelly they were looking for. The Marshalls looked kind of confused and asked for her mom and took tehm off the bus. I was just thinking "man, that mom is a BITCH if she put drugs in her daughter's suitcase" but in a minute the two of them were back on a bus and the correct culprit, a pretty average looking dude who was sitting one row away from me, was removed from the bus and cuffed. Crazy times. Fuck tha police, etc.

In several more hours I made it to Austin. I was planning on staying with a dude I know from Termbo, a guy who went by "Black Mike." I didn't really know much about him other than that he was pretty crude on Terminal Boredom and was open about the fact that he was pretty "hated" by most people. I don't know why I wanted to stay with him, I guess I thought he sounded fun and I was intrigued. After 5 weeks on the road why not get rowdy with some weirdo? Unfortunately he had to work until 11, so after I got off the bus I got picked up by my friend Adam, a music writer I had met at SXSW the year before. He picked me up and brought me to Mike's house.


The three of us went out to grab some food and I had a Mexican Martini, which was basically a margarita with olives in it. After that the three of us went to Adam's house for a bonfire. His roommate Carolyn was there, who I've met before when she was playing in Woven Bones. The bonfire was cool and we drank some beers.




After that Mike and I just went back to his house and we drank some beers and watched some Lady Gaga and Katy Perry youtube videos and just went to sleep. Austin was about to get a lot more fun in the next few days...

Tucson Tooooooo

The next morning I couldn't help but sleep in, I was tired from busin'.... In the morning I woke up and Donn took me over to his guitarist Bernice's house. There we met up with Bernice and her boyfriend Ivan.


They then took me to one of the craziest tourist attractions in Tucson, Mission San Javier, a really beautiful mission from back in the day.



We then climbed to the top of a cool little crop of rocks. The weather was so beautiful and the sky was so clear. I really wanted to see a roadrunner, but was not so lucky.


We then went to get tacos. Tucson is super close to the Mexican border and is supposed to have great Mexican food so I really wanted to try it out. We went to BK, a taco and Sonoran hot dog place. Everyone but me got a Sonoran hot dog, but I'm a total hot dog snob... I really don't care all that much about New York pizza or bagels, but I really feel weird eating a hot dog outside of New York.


Afterwards Donn and I took a short bikeride into town and did some vintage shopping, which was nice.


We then went back to Bernice's house so Pop Gestapo could practice, and I watched the awesome Tucson sunset and chatted with some bros.



Next we went to Scrappy's, an all ages youth collective, for another hardcore show. Blood Spasm, a way old band with a singer with MS played and told all the young kids to never give up on being punk. It was whatever.



After getting a few drinks and hearing a young band that seemed like their only influence was Real Estate, I was on the Greyhound, waiting for my next adventure.

Tucson

Took a long bus ride from LA to Tucson and met some interesting people during my layover in Phoenix. One woman was taking the bus all the way to Florida to introduce her new baby daughter to her grandparents. I talked to a dude who was from Wales but had just spent a year in Australia, and was going to Tucson to see his girlfriend. I asked him if he knew Eddy Current Suppression Ring, he didn't.


Donn, a guy I knew from Terminal Boredom, picked me up at the bus station. The weather was nice. He had this crazy huge van called the Disco Chief.


We went to drop off my bag and I met Donn's wife Rachel. She was kind of eerily similar to me. Her name was Rachel, she was from Westchester, she was Jewish and she loved Douglas Adams, PG Wodehouse, Buffy and Angel. They also have two adorable dogs.

We went to a "cool" area of town and ate some food and then headed over to The Surly Wench, a bar frequented by derby girls, for a show. A shitty hardcore band called The Stripper Killers played first and some girls went crazy for them. Then it was The Besmirchers, who were much better and pretty crazy.


We then went to a fucking Best Western where they were having a crazy karaoke night. I got to meet the legendary Mark Beef and I also got to do some killer singing.