Do’s

• Tip well.  Wanna support the local music industry in the live music capital of the world?  Tip.  The downside of an awesome live music scene is that supply far outstrips demand.  So that awesome band rocking your face off one night is slinging you pizzas the next or pedicabbing your ass around town because gigs pay so little.  Lots of folks hold down service industry jobs to get by before they make it big, help keep the dream alive.
• Tell us about that awesome show we don’t know about.  Got a tip about an awesome no-name band or under the radar party?  Fill us in.  We’ll reciprocate by telling you where to get the best breakfast tacos and how to sneak into Stubb’s.
• Look at our eyes, not our nametags or your iPhone.  Hey, I’m up here!  If you’re checking your texts or gauging our importance by our name tag while we’re talking to you , we’re less inclined to want to tell you about those tacos.
• Chat.  We’re friendly.

Don’t’s

• Buy a faux-trashed cowboy hat and wear it attempting to blend in.  This is the equivalent of wearing a black beret in Paris or a conical straw hat around Vietnam.
• Disparage Texas or “flyover country” while standing next to us.  We’re not all Republicans, and we’re not all assholes.  Obama got more votes in Texas than in Illinois.  And regardless of political differences, Texans get along together.  Go to a Willie Nelson show and try to figure out who voted for who.
• Say Austin is “just like (insert-coastal-city-here) but cheaper”.  No, it’s not.  That’s we live here.

In return for adhering to the above basic rules, lemme fill you in on some of the best things to hear and eat during your stay here.

Food:

• Tacos at Taqueria Star (the orange taco truck at S Congress and Riverside).  Open til 3am or later, Carlos and his family have the best salsa in town.  Both the green and red salsas are creamy, smooth and delicious.  The migas tacos are incredible and only cost $1.50.  Get them on corn and split the heaping of migas into both tortillas to turn one to two.
• Kerbey Lane or Magnolia at 2:15am.  No better place in the world for people watching or pancakes.  The Neptunian landscape at Magnolia fills you up with cheesy, gooey, lemony potatoes for like $4, and Kerbey Lane’s gingerbread pancakes or ginger sesame salad dressing rule the world.
• Fried pickles.  At greasy spoons and bars throughout town.  I don’t understand why this delicious combination of salt, friedness and ranch dressing hasn’t taken over the entire world, but they’re mostly an Austin thing.  Try ‘em.
• Sugar Mama’s instead of Hey Cupcake.  While wandering down south congress (which is only called SoCo by asshole real estate developers, btw), the temptation to patronize the cutesy little cupcake trailer will be overwhelming.  Don’t do it!  The cupcakes are dry, bland and expensive.  A few blocks away, Sugar Mama’s makes amazing desserts.  The smores bar rules, and the Marilyn Monroe is the most amazing cupcake you’ll ever try.
• The Snack Bar has an awesome patio, great sangria, and nice snacks.  It’s right in the middle of south congress, and is a great place to grab a drink while listening to their bands and watching the scenesters.
• Gordough’s. Gourmet donuts, mind bending iterations.  Open ’til 2am, right across the street from The Highball.
• Pizza? Perhaps I can suggest a place…I go there sometimes…it’s alright.

Music:

• The Movits! – A Swedish swing-hip hop group.  You won’t be able to understand them or avoid dancing.  Playing at Homeslice’s Music By The Slice.

• Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears – The next superstar to emerge out of Austin, he’s as funky as James Brown with less funky hair.

• Quantic – I’m not really good with remembering names of various kinds of electronic music.  So I’m not sure if he’s up-tempo, dub-step, trip-hop or ambient, but his music straddles the line of being chillable and danceable at the same time.
• The Lonesome Heroes – Their website says “psychedelic country music”, mine says they’re just great.  Grab a lonestar and give ‘em a shot.

Lonesome Heroes “Don’t Play to Lose” Music Video from Daniel Stolzman on Vimeo.

• The Saltworth Sundries – Another local band that’s hard to shoehorn into a genre, but I’d say punk-rockabilly with a banjo and trombone.  They jump around a lot, and since no one’s heard of them, you can jump around with them.  They’re playing at The Snack Bar next Saturday.
• See music you usually don’t see.  Don’t fly to Austin to hear the bands that play in your neighborhood all the time.
• In general, my advice is to avoid the big name events unless its your favorite band ever, and pick one area (south congress, red river, etc) and just walk around until something pleases your ear.  When it starts to suck, go next door.  You can run yourself ragged trying to catch that half-set of that band you’ve already seen before, but you’ll be exhausted.

Also, drink lots of free beer, it’s good for the soul.  Check out this meta guide to SXSW food guides for more searching, or just follow your nose to the nearest food truck.  Anything glaring I left out?

Brendan of Big City Mountaineers about to go nuts

A few months ago Russell told me that his friend Brendan was biking across the country to raise money for Big City Mountaineers, a cool organization in Denver dedicated to “enhancing the lives of under-resourced teens through transformative outdoor experiences”.  Brendan finally made it to town Friday and I took him to Homeslice to hear his story.  Russell came along and he saw his friend Bo there, so Bo joined us as well.

Simply put, Brendan is awesome.  He used to work in community journalism, and turned down a well-paying job with his previous boss to accept a low-paying gig with Big City Mountaineers.  He volunteered to take an unpaid leave biking across the country to raise money for BCM to fund future efforts to take kids from the ‘hoods to the woods.

Being around disadvantaged kids has given him a very healthy outlook on life.  The trivial annoyances of life don’t bug him.  We both share an intense love and agreement with the sentiments expressed by Louis C.K. in this video:

Biking 80 or so miles a day makes Brendan insatiably hungry.  He needs to put away 6000 calories a day just to break even.  So I was a little disappointed that he didn’t tear through the pizza with aplomb.  In his defense, he had eaten a meal only two or so hours before. He let me order the toppings even though I tried to defer to him.  Russell and Bo ordered other stuff to not rain on Brendan’s parade.  I ordered a mess of veggies, since I didn’t know how much nutrition the road provided.  He seemed to enjoy the pizza, but only hate about half of it.  The rest he took home, and I assume it will fuel the next leg of his journey.

Erin and I once biked from Seattle to the middle of the Oregon coast.  It was a great trip, but we were both taken aback at our never-ending hunger.  One of the greatest meals of my life was lunch one day along some dunes on the Oregonian coast.  Most of our lunches consisted of bread and dips (hummus, pesto, etc).  One fine day we splurged and got a garlic chicken pizza and devoured it on the dunes before taking a sun-drenched nap.  The last 20 miles of the day seemed like a breeze.

Brendan has it made.  His definition of wealth is being rich enough to pay someone else to make your coffee, a level he has achieved.  He’s biking across the country to help kids experience a new world that will help them conquer their treacherous neighborhoods.  Follow his blog and donate heavily.  If you are rich enough to buy coffee made by someone else, you are rich enough to help Big City Mountaineers change lives.

Cost: $29.50
Total this year: $446.50

Erin was still smarting from me eating her leftover slice three days before when we walked into Homeslice.  This time she got broccoli on her half to make it more distinctive from the anchovy half.  Sure enough, as we worked through the leftovers, I only ate the anchovy-laden pieces and avoided her slices.  Also, no fried eggplant!  First time that’s happened with us in a while.  Erin was in the mood for a change of pace.  As we worked our way through the leftovers, I managed to avoid poaching her slices, thus improving our relationship.

Erin and broke an uncharacteristically long Homeslice drought (one whole week!) and dropped by to get back on the right track.

We sat down, and I asked various waitstaff about my ideas for my Live Off Groupon Contest video ideas.  As we were going back and forth, we saw Anneliese and Colin at another table.  We came over to say hi, and it looked like they were eating eggplant subs!  Sadly, the subs turned to be the meatball variety, but we still reminisced about their helping us win the HOES contest.  Anneliese wrote a slew of recommendation letters for me in recent months, so I sent over a slice of cheesecake their way to thank her.  It felt so fun and sneaky to flag a waitress and say “get that table a dessert and put it on my tab”.

Homeslice has new pizza boxes.  I guess it’s to celebrate the opening of More Homeslice next door.  It’s another detail that makes Homeslice shine.  They could’ve kept on with the plain white boxes, but the cute designs show more personality.  It’s all in the details, people!

After we ate our properly delicious pizza and returned home, I used the pizza box to make my Groupon contest entry.  I think my resume shows that I can handle the rigors of the contest just fine, but I admit that other videos are more fancy.  My profile of Groupon business Sushi-A-Go-Go is much better/funnier:

Cost: $30.50
Total this year: $372.00

Pizza Loving Philanthropists Chris Lamprecht and Kerry Fisher

As you may remember, when Haiti got its ass kicked I felt compelled to help out.  So I created the Pizza For Haiti Challenge, which offered a free pizza date at Homeslice to the person who donated the most to Partners In Health, the amazing organization started by Paul Farmer featured in the stunning book Mountains Beyond Mountains.

I only expected to raise about $50 total, but Chris Lamprecht gave $50 right after I tweeted about the event.  Later, Kerry Fisher hit back with $100.  As the contest drew to a close, Chris came back with another $50 donation.  So they both tied with $100 total, and I took both of them to Homeslice to split the winnings.

I asked them why they donated so much through me, and they said they wanted to donate anyway and the pizza bribe gave them a good excuse.  It wasn’t like they wouldn’t have donated anyway, but this helped seal the deal.  I also asked why either one of them didn’t donate one extra dollar to put them over the other Price-Is-Right style, but neither had the desire to crush a competitor based on a negligible amount.

Kerry works in fundraising at UT, so she’s always on the lookout for interesting philanthropic endeavors.  She’s really interesting.  On a whim, Kerry signed up to host a triathlete from New Zealand who was competing in the Austin triathlon.  They had fun together, and she off-handedly told him that if he or his friends ever passed through town again they would have a place to stay.  “Well actually…” he said, thus beginning a period of periodic squatting by various New Zealand triathletes in her home for weeks on end.  It was a great deal.  They pulled her weeds and such, and she took them to the HEB and told them why they shouldn’t be so excited about competing in Des Moines.  She lived in New Zealand for a year after college, and found the country and its citizens lovely.  Which is good, because it sounds like half the country has crashed on her couch.

Upon hearing that Kerry worked at UT, Chris told a story about creating a computer program as a student there called “Class Grabber”.  He figured out a way to ping the registrar’s site many times a second so subscribers could claim an opening in a desired class the second it became available.  He eventually expanded to neighboring schools as well, but the arms race eventually became too much.  It was great to hear him tell the story though, I love tales of young punks outsmarting stodgy institutions.

I bought a pitcher of beer and ate an eggplant sub so Kerry and Chris could enjoy the pizza they earned.  We had a really nice time, I always enjoy watching conversations graduate from stilted to comfortable as beer and pizza get consumed.

Thanks to Jodi, Brian and Jeff for their donations as well.  Even though y’all didn’t win, Haiti won.  Partners in Health is an amazing organization, and the $325 is a little more than the average monthly earnings of five Haitians, so I feel confident that the money can make a difference.

Cost: $26.50
Total this year: $341.50

Pizza is better than moving

It had been too long since Erin and I had taken Jessie and Ryan to pizza, and as luck would have it, Adam was in town as well.  We all met up for pizza one night.

Splitting pizza five ways at Homeslice is hard.  Pizzas come with eight slices, which does not easily divide amongst eight hungry folks.  Choosing toppings is also hard.  Some of us wanted olives and others didn’t and we gently asked if we could get olives on 2/3 of the pizza (along with half pepperoni) and our waitress understandably said no.  We worked it out eventually, it just took some negotiating.  Erin offered to get an Eggplant Sub to make the numbers work better, which turned out to be a win-win situation.

Adam and Jessie are both lawyers, and they talked about the concept of “billable hours”.  It’s weird, being paid by the year doesn’t faze me, but telling me that I have to work 2000 hours seems pretty frightening to me.  Law is a weird little world.

Ryan helped Adam move his stuff from a storage unit in Houston to one in Austin.  Storage units also baffle me.  I totally get their utility, but I hope I never have to rent one.  Paying rent for my stuff seems like a sad way to live upon this planet.  If I have too much stuff for my home, shouldn’t I get rid of it?  In Adam’s case, he’s only temporarily keeping his stuff there until it makes more sense for him to move it to where he lives, but how many storage units start out as temporarily and end up being de facto permanent?  Then again, maybe it’s cheaper than getting a bigger place with more storage.

When Erin and I had a basement, we never went down there and our stuff just weighed on us.  We always felt like we should go through it, fix what needed repairing and give away what we didn’t need, but we never cared enough to actually follow through.  Now Erin and I live in a small apartment with a tiny amount of storage space.  It was hard to pare down our stuff, but it feels nice not having lots of crap that we never use.

On a similar note, I am very reluctant to throw out old pizza.  I can get a fresh pizza any time I want, but I can’t bring myself to throw out leftover pizza unless it’s over two weeks old.  So I eat old pizza instead of visiting ‘Slicey.  Well, I shouldn’t say “instead of”.  But I go less often than I could, if that’s any consolation to the Homeslice owners.

Cost: $27.50
Total this year: $315

Anchovy pizza + beer = A-OK lunch

I had lunch at Homeslice with Matt Glazer and Will Ikard recently.  All of us liked anchovies and beer, so the party hit the ground running.  They had just signed some big clients through GNI Strategies, and since I was having lunch with the I and the G, of GNI, I heartily congratulated them.

Matt and Will, in turn, congratulated me for winning the HOES contest again.  They hadn’t seen me since, and Matt said that he furiously checked his twitter stream while in New Orleans for my live updates from the sub.  It’s funny, both Matt and Will are super busy guys, they always have eight jillion things happening in their lives.  Their social media and political travails make them the kind of people that habitually check their iPhones constantly, and I always feel a step behind them because more than likely no one DM’d me in the last 4o seconds.

Nonetheless, they were enraptured by my tale of mind games, holding-in-pee endurance abilities and pre-contest training.  They acted like it was the most interesting thing they’d ever heard.  And I don’t mean that they were faking it, they just seemed genuinely amazed and flabbergasted.  They had me talking so much, I barely had time to stuff pizza in my mouth.

I told them that being able to pee whenever I wanted to was a magical experience for weeks afterward.  It really made me incredibly happy, and I was sad to lose that thrice-a-day sense of wonder and joy.  The secret to happiness is being satisfied with what you got, and I gotta pee all the time.  Eventually, the ecstatic release morphed into a dull contentment.  Even though I tried, I couldn’t keep the feeling as urinating whenever I wanted became routine.  I had discovered the secret to happiness and been truly happy with all aspects of my life due to a simple freedom shared by all, and I let it slip away.

Will suggested I write a story for the Chronicle or something expounding on my theory of happiness, but why would I send you out to their filthy pages when I can enrapture readers directly through this here blog?  So dear, dear readers, my message to you this morning is simple: the next time you have to pee and then successfully do so within five minutes of your urge, count your blessings.

Cost: $23.50
Total this year: $287.50

While Katie smiles sweetly, the pizza monster attacks

My friends and former Austin residents Latham and Katie came to town for a friend’s CD release party, and after nursing a horrendous hangover, came by to hangout.  After a few hours of chatting, we realized that we were hungry and hit up Homeslice just before closing time.

They’re both huge fans of beer.  Latham started homebrewing way before I began my beer-making adventures.  While they’re usually excited to try whatever I’ve concocted (most recently a blueberry chocolate stout), they were more interested in some tea after getting drunk until 4am.

As we dissected the events leading up to their most recent hangover, we talked about my first hangover, which I delightfully shared with Latham while we spent a semester in Singapore.  Lesson learned: all-you-can-drink wine followed by “ladies night” only leads to trouble.  Latham and I do a terrible job of keeping up with each other, but whenever we see each other we really enjoy it.  He’s very insightful, and sometimes I forget how cool, smart, interesting people often end up in stereotypically uninteresting places like Galveston.

One of my greatest trips was a weekend jaunt to Memphis to visit Latham when he lived there.  I hadn’t heard many people rave about Memphis, but I had just signed on to my first real job (the kind that pays you by the year rather than the hour) and wanted to do something crazy.  So I dressed up as Elvis and hitchhiked to Memphis from Dallas dressed as Elvis.  I made the cover of the Texarkana Gazette and had an amazing weekend in Memphis.  We ate at an incredible Chinese food and sub sandwiches place that featured a Ye Olde England decor, drank good beer and saw weird things.  It was awesome.

One of my perverse joys in life is hearing people tell their struggles with bureaucracy.  When we lived in Singapore, Latham would have me in stitches telling me about his latest run-ins with the university, dorm and medical administrations.  Sadly (or happily depending on if you’re a nicer person than I am) he didn’t have any recent tales of woe.

We went to Homeslice when our bellies told us to, and were told that the wait would be 25-30 minutes.  Since Homeslice is a five minute walk away, we debated whether to wait there or go back for a drink before returning.  Acting on a tip from the hostesses, we hung out and were seated in 15-20 minutes.

There were some really dressy people there that night, and as I walked to the back I mentioned to Kelly (a waitress) that a table over there might be here for prom, seeing as they were decked out in formal wear.  She gave me an “Are you kidding me?” look and said “Seth, it’s Valentine’s Day”.  Ooooohhhhhhhhhh yeeeeeeahhhhhhhh.  I remembered!

Erin and I aren’t too big on Valentine’s Day because her birthday is very close to it and we always do special stuff for that instead.  I had totally forgotten, but as I looked around, there were lots of obvious dates.

Katie liked Homeslice back when they lived in Austin, but she and Latham went nuts over the pizza.  They loved it, and truth be told it was a very good one.  I haven’t been going so much lately as Erin and I are working and trying to cook a little more.  This makes Homeslice taste surprisingly novel to me, and ever-so-delicious.

Cost: $27.50
Total this year: $264

Erin, Mike and Judy

This past weekend Aunt Judy and Uncle Mike came by for some pizza.  I hadn’t seen much of them since I moved back from Houston after working on the Michael Skelly congressional campaign in November 2008.  They had a friend in Georgetown and a meeting in Austin, so they made a weekend of it.

Since Erin and I had to work on Friday and Saturday, they stayed with their friends in Georgetown and met up with us afterward.  So we walked into Homeslice, hung out on the patio while we waited for a table and they immediately saw the kids of the folks they were visiting in Georgetown.  Small world.

Erin hadn’t seen Judy and Mike for years and years, so it was fun to see them get reacquainted.

Mike is from Chicago, and knows a thing or two about pizza.  He was a happy adherent to my “more is more” philosophy of pizza toppings, although he did slough off all his broccoli onto Judy’s plate.  Both he and Judy loved them some ‘Slice, and a merry time was had by all.

Cost: $30.50
Total this year: $236.50

Gene and Erin

About a week and a half ago, my stepdad Gene came into town for a day.  He’s trying to start up a therapeutic garden at the VA in Dallas for vets with physical or mental disabilities and had some meetings at A&M.  After the meetings he planned to swing through Austin and spend the night before heading back to Dallas.  Sadly, his car did not approve of his plan.  It overheated in Caldwell, and he had to have it towed all the way to Austin.  I picked him up at the dealership and we met up with Erin to grab some pizza.

Gene used to live in Austin back in the day, so it’s fun going around town with him and talking about how the town has changed in the last 30 years.  Answer: lots.  It was weird driving him around, for much of my life it’s been him taking me various places, not vice versa.

It was a little chilly out and I didn’t really dress appropriately because I figured we’d only be outside for the five minute walk to Homeslice before eating inside, but we waited for a while out back and then were seated outside.  D’oh!  They turned on one of those heater lamp thingies when we were nearly done with our meal, but it didn’t do much good.

While we were waiting, we were near a very large group of people that talked very oddly.  We couldn’t tell if they were speaking a different language or were speaking English through heavy quasi-deaf accents.  Perhaps it was a combination.  Erin and I have spent enough time abroad in enough different places that we can usually guess the general geographic origin of languages we overhear (South Asian, Scandinavian, etc), but we were lost with this one.  And we live right across the street from the deaf school, so that’s given us some insight into the variety of deaf accents.  Whatever the spoke, they seemed to all understand each other and have a nice time.

The great thing about dining with parents is that meals become more multi-coursed and fun with them picking up the bill.  Salad?  Sure!  Beer?  Why not a pitcher!  We happily obliged.

Although it wasn’t Gene’s first time at Homeslice, it was still nice to show him a piece of my life here.  When guests I care about come to Austin, I feel oddly paternalistic about Homeslice, like I want my loved ones to be impressed by the place.  Logically I don’t have anything to worry about, as the hour-plus lines attest.  As usual, Homeslice put on a good show, and we had a really nice meal.  The next day the car eventually got fixed and Gene was on his way.  It was nice albeit short visit.

Cost: $25.25
Total this year: $206