Podcast appearances and mentions of Barton Springs

What would you do if a snake came charging at you while you were tubing on Lake Austin?

Today, we're joined by an architectural and interiors photographer who's crushing it down in Austin, Texas.He grew up in Cancún, Mexico, and first picked up a camera when he was 16. That was it—he found his thing. But for a long time, it stayed a hobby.In 2020, he decided to make the jump. He left the old grind behind and went pro, focusing 100% on his photography business.Now, he's the one people call to shoot amazing architectural spaces. And when he's not behind the lens, he's outside, hanging with his dog, Ellie, or cooling off at Barton Springs. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“When you hear ‘Yacht Rock,' what's the first band or musician that comes to mind?”That's how JB and Sandy kick off this episode, sparking a nostalgic and hilarious debate about the music that defined a generation—and the labels artists love to hate. From Christopher Cross to Steely Dan, the crew dives deep into the world of smooth tunes, local legends, and the quirky history of Austin's music scene. But the episode doesn't stop at music. JB and Sandy, joined by Tricia, take listeners on a whirlwind tour of Austin's weirdest news, including the story of a Travis County correctional officer arrested for smuggling… chicken wings! The team can't help but laugh at the absurdity, pondering whether the real crime is not paying officers enough or just having a side hustle as a “wing smuggler.”Other highlights include:Zilker Park's post-ACL transformation: How Austin City Limits Festival gives back to the city and why disc golf fans feel left out.The rise of magicians at adult birthday parties: JB and Sandy explore the trend, share personal stories, and even search for Austin's best magicians for hire—including the unforgettable “Peter the Adequate Magician.”Clown sightings in Austin: From Balloonatik to Doodle Bug, discover the strange world of professional clowns living in Barton Springs and the surreal experience of seeing them drive by on a Saturday morning.Family, nostalgia, and music: Touching memories of Nat King Cole Christmas albums, Bee Gees hits, and the magic of Elvis duets.Notable Quotes:“Guys, the longer you're married, the unfunnier you become.”“He was suspended without pay. He has since been fired and has been arrested for chicken wings.”“Four clowns living around you, it's like you're in a nightmare.”Guest Insights:Tricia brings her signature humor and local perspective, while JB and Sandy's chemistry keeps the conversation lively, unpredictable, and always entertaining. Call to Action Love the show? Subscribe to JB and Sandy, leave a review, and share this episode with your friends! Follow us on Instagram and TikTok at @JBSandyATX, and catch every episode on the iHeartRadio app. Your support keeps Austin weird—and keeps the stories coming!

What do Barton Springs, stormtrooper gear, and Robert Redford have in common?

Texas is tackling its booming population's water demands with a bold $20 billion investment plan to secure sustainable supplies and infrastructure by 2050. In this episode of In The Newsroom, Todd Votteler, a veteran water expert and editor of the Texas Water Journal, joins the podcast to discuss the state's dynamic water landscape. With Texas expecting about 40 million residents by mid-century, the state is addressing urgent needs through a recently signed bill that allocates $10 billion for new water supplies and $10 billion for infrastructure upgrades, pending voter approval on November 4, 2025. Votteler highlights the Edwards Aquifer Authority's pioneering groundwater regulation, born from 1990s endangered species litigation, which protects iconic springs like Barton Springs while balancing growth pressures. Innovative projects, such as Corpus Christi's seawater desalination plant and El Paso's groundbreaking direct potable reuse facility, signal Texas's push toward diverse water sources.However, challenges persist, including groundwater strain in areas like Jacob's Well and ongoing Rio Grande water disputes with Mexico. The state's proactive approach, including a surprise veto and special legislative session, underscores its commitment to water security amid rapid growth.waterloop is a nonprofit news outlet that explores solutions for water sustainability.

Topics: Skims for Men, DIY Wainscoting, Flirty Lifeguard, Texas Vacation, Duped by Fixer Upper, Waco, The Silos, Joanna Gaines, Austin, Barton Springs, Big Bend, Forth Worth Rodeo and Shopping, Air BnB, USA's Space Program?! (NASA, Artemis), Cowgirl Aesthetic,  Destin Spring Break

We're stepping outside the Disney bubble and heading deep into the heart of Texas for an unforgettable trip to Austin. That's right—we swapped MagicBands for cowboy boots and spent the weekend soaking up everything Austin has to offer, from mouthwatering food to meaningful moments.We're talking Michelin-starred barbecue brisket that melts in your mouth, spicy chicken from a food truck named Spicy Boys, an incredible cowgirl hat experience at Kendra Scott's Yellow Rose boutique, and a dive bar that turned out to be surprisingly sober-friendly. Plus, opening up about a powerful personal milestone—reaching 475 days of sobriety—and how a three-hour Blue October concert helped finally deliver the clarity.Whether it's floating in freezing cold Barton Springs, indulging in gourmet ice cream, or spotting a puppy in an Uber, this was a weekend filled with unexpected joy, emotional growth, and plenty of laughter. So if you're looking for an inspiring, delicious, and downright weird adventure beyond the theme parks, grab your hat (and maybe a churro for comfort) and come along for the ride!MEI-Travel – Expertise. Ease. Value.No matter where you want to go, our trusted partner MEI-Travel, will handle the planning so you can focus on the memories. They offer free vacation planning services and have nearly 20 years of experience creating memorable vacations. Visit MEI-Travel for a fee-free, no-obligation quote today!Follow Us on Social MediaFacebook GroupFacebook: @MainStMagicTwitter: @MainStMagicTikTok:  @MSMPodcastInstagram: @MainStMagicVisit Us Onlinewww.MainStMagic.comwww.MainStreetShirts.comGet Dining Alerts!Find last-minute and hard-to-find Disney dining reservations with MouseDining.com! Get text and email alerts when popular theme park dining reservations open up. Get last-minute seating! Get the next table! Set your alerts now! Get the next reservation!Visit our Partnerswww.MSMFriends.comThanks to TFresh Productions for our theme song

At the beginning of April, Austin City Council learned that they'd be facing a $33.4 million budget deficit that's only expected to get larger. Meanwhile, council members finally made a plan to accept $32 million in grant money to replace the bridge over Barton Springs, and add a cool $8 million of the city's own. Host Nikki DaVaughn is joined by Amy Stansbury, editor-in-chief of The Austin Common, to talk about all that — plus why outreach teams are crucial to the city's homelessness response, what we're doing with a new batch of EPA money, the future for historic Palm Park, and a new AC rule that will keep all Austinites cool this summer.  Learn more about the sponsors of this April 30th episode: Aura Frames - Get $35-off plus free shipping on the Carver Mat frame with Promo Code CITYCAST Visit Port Aransas Want some more Austin news? Then make sure to sign up for our Hey Austin newsletter.  Follow us @citycastaustin You can also text us or leave a voicemail.  Interested in advertising with City Cast? Find more info HERE

Michael Trainer (00:01.292)Welcome to peak mind. your host Michael trainer. And today I want to talk about relational dynamics and the balance that is necessitated in our relating. And for me, you know, I studied years ago with the traditional healer in Sri Lanka, and he said to me that health is the heart rhythm. It's the, it's the rhythm of the heart and That became so poignantly clear to me when I thought about being in utero and the fact that for nine months, the thing that defines our reality in the darkness of the womb is the beating of the heart. And we all share this heartbeat, right? From birth till death, there is a miracle which is the beating of our hearts. And that heart is always in relationship with the world. If we get anxious, it beats faster. When we calm, it beats slower. It's the rhythm section. It's the rhythm section for our life's music. And the people that we meet bring in the other instruments. They're like the, you know, the guitar, they're the piano. And when we're in harmony, The sound is beautiful. But if we don't take care of the heart and the rhythm of the heart, if we're not mindful of it, we lose our way, we lose our balance and we get out of tune. And one thing that was hugely clarifying for me was I realized actually, you know, society tells you you're an introvert or you're an extrovert. And I found that I was both. I absolutely need to be alone and recharge and I absolutely need to be social and get energized from being around nutritious people. And then I learned that there's something called an Ambervert which is both an introvert and an extrovert and one enables the other. And it was so clear to me this weekend when I was at a conference and meeting with people and around new energies and stimuli. Michael Trainer (02:29.524)and quote unquote networking, but really just connecting with people, but new people. And for 12 hours a day, today I was actually meant to fly. And I was like, you know what? No, I can't. I need to just be at home and ground. I need to go to the water. I need to find my center. I need to tune my instrument. I need to get back in rhythm with my heart. So that when I get back out with people, I am in an amazing way. And I think when we don't take care of our instrument, we don't take care of our heart, we don't pay attention to those signals, that's when we get out of balance. And in Sri Lanka, where I live with this healer that I had the great fortune of studying with, when someone got profoundly out of balance, it was actually the role of the community from sunset to sunrise to richly recreate through this elaborate and beautiful ritual. their shared cosmological worldview and elaborate fire dancing, flower offerings, dance, drama. The person was placed in the center and it all rotated around them. And slowly the collective brought them back into the rhythm of the community, back into the rhythm of the collective heartbeat. And in that is health. because we are inextricably linked. And we live in a fallacy that we are kind of islands on a hill, we are individuals. And while there are beautiful aspects to our individuality, there's also a biological imperative. are connected, we are interdependent. And so to tune yourself into the collective heartbeat, but also to know when to withdraw when you need to do your own tuning so that you can play beautifully with others. This dance I think is not often talked about, but is so important. And so for my ambroverts out there, for those that both are introverts and extroverts, I think it's so beautiful to recognize where the bridges are and to be in the listening for your bridge. Michael Trainer (04:54.526)and to find the way to stay in the rhythm, your rhythm. And for me, it's knowing when I'm getting a little too much noise and I need to return the signal. And today was an exact exemplification of that. I canceled the flight, I stayed home, I got a nap in, I got a workout in, I went to Barton Springs and went in the water. And that combination served me. I'm now... My cup is more full, I'm gonna get an early night's sleep. Tomorrow I'll be ready to get back in the world. So do the things, my friends, that keep you in your center so that you can connect beautifully to others when you are out in the world. But know also when you need to retreat to take care of yourself. Sending so much love, I'll talk to you tomorrow.  

Welcome to peak mind. I'm your host Michael trainer. And today's episode is going to be a short but powerful one. And it is the message to show up and stay in the fight even when you don't feel like it. And I'm using fight here metaphorically. But tonight I got home 10 o'clock. after a 12 hour day with a massive amount of socializing, what would traditionally be called networking, et cetera. And I am exhausted, like feet ache, brain done, et cetera. And I committed to do a podcast every day. And so I thought what more better topic. Because through the course of today, there were probably five or six times I felt like going home. And it was tempting. I wanted to come home. I wanted to sit on the sofa, turn on Netflix, and just zone out. And not that there would have been anything wrong with that, but I had so many epic connections that I would not have made had I listened to my initial impulse to go home. And I share that because I think many of us face moments where we are, we want to just give in. We want to listen to the call of our comfort. And sometimes that is appropriate, but I would argue that if you can find a way to grab a brief window of respite. So for me, instead of going home, I went outside. put my feet on the grass and I absorbed the sun and I let myself rest. I calmed my nervous system. And taking that brief rest was enough for me to get back in the game. Back in the fight, so to speak. And I'm so glad I did because I wound up having an epic 12 plus hour day connecting to incredible humans, likely some future business partners, future friends that I would not have made had I Michael Trainer (02:26.09)Listen to that inner call to go home that introvert aspect of me that that calls for me to to retreat now there are definitely times days where Recharging is called for so this is not to say never rest There are days. I just spend as an ambervert alone to recharge. I go to the Barton Springs or I go to the ocean I take time to tend to myself, to honor myself and to be in silence. And those are beautiful times. But today was a day of connection, a day of getting out there, meeting people, a conference surrounded by people I respect, peers, people who have shared a line interests. And oftentimes those environments can be overwhelming. But when we take the time and practice the tools of re-centering ourselves, we can get back in to the context of connection. And in this world starved for human connection, it's an incredibly powerful act to not go for the proximate connection we can find in our telephone, and instead to stay in the act of meeting new people and finding shared resonance, which I did time and time again. And when you do that, you also build momentum. the world providence comes up to greet you and more people will come up to you and conversations will get easier and you'll uncover uncommon common ground. And that's what happens when we stay in the commitment to that music that wants to live in the space between us and other people. And so my friends, today's a short but sweet episode to share. Stay in the song. Stay in the song, stay committed to the music because you never know the beautiful harmony that will come to live on the other side of your commitment.  

Texas' iconic springs are facing growing pressure from urban development, groundwater pumping, and climate change, threatening the lifeline of both ecosystems and communities. But through sustainable aquifer management, conservation easements, and innovative policies, there is hope for keeping these vital waters flowing.  This episode features conversations with Vanessa Puig Williams of the Environmental Defense Fund, Robert Mace of The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University, and Tim Loftus of the Barton Springs Edwards Aquifer Conservation District, exploring the science and strategies behind protecting Texas' springs. The discussion covers how endangered species regulations have helped safeguard Barton Springs, the challenges of balancing private property rights with conservation, and the importance of setting caps on groundwater pumping. Other topics include the role of land conservation in sustaining spring flow, the rise of aquifer storage and recovery, and how community engagement is key to long-term water resilience.waterloop is a nonprofit news outlet.Subscribe to the podcast on Spotify or Apple.Never miss a video on YouTube.Follow the news on Instagram, LinkedIn, X, and TikTok.

Thank you to our Sponsor: BlueChew BlueChew - Try your first month of BlueChew FREE when you go to https://bluechew.com More Valerie Vaughn YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Getinthecartv IG: https://www.instagram.com/getinthecar_ 0:00 Valerie Vaughn Casts Her Line 4:05 Barton Springs, OC to Austin, Masks in LA 11:45 Valerie's Content, Partying vs Healthy Living, Men vs. Women 21:52 Michael Jackson, Diddy 25:55 How Valerie Vaughn Got Into Cars, Fishing on a Boat 33:56 Valerie Vaughn on KT 37:40 If David Were a Girl, Wealthy Acquaintances, Social Media Validation 42:00 Banning TikTok, Valerie's Favorite Car, White Girls vs Black Girls 50:57 BBLs, Valerie Vaughn's Internet Business, Hall Passes 58:02 Valerie Relationship Advice, David's Dating Advice New Tour Dates: https://www.davidlucascomedy.com/tour New Merch: https://tinyurl.com/bdm6tc54 Become a member to get custom emojis: https://www.youtube.com/@DavidLucasComedian/join Connect with David Lucas Website: https://www.davidlucascomedy.com Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/davidlucas Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidlucasfunny Twitter: https://twitter.com/funnydavidlucas Youtube: ​⁠@DavidLucasComedian  David Lucas was born in Macon, GA. He started acting an early age, performing in numerous stage plays at the Macon Little Theatre. He relocated to Hollywood where he was a contestant on, “MTV Yo Momma”. He has since written for several television shows and continues to perform stand up all over the country (for such comedians as Louis CK, Erik Griffin, Joe Rogan, Brendan Schaub, Tony Hinchcliffe, Bert Kreisher, DL Hughley and many more). David is a Kill Tony Hall of Famer and currently headlining his own tour! Filmed By Daniel Casas https://www.instagram.com/presentedbydaniel A 7EQUIS Network Show https://www.7equis.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Be honest, when's the last time you were there???

Why is Travis County suing the state of Texas? Who can we thank for the dramatic and sad video of Barton Springs Pool's repairs? And Tuesday is HAAM Day — what exactly is it, and where and when can you see live music? (Answer: Everywhere, and literally all day). We get into all of it today on the Friday News Roundup, with host Nikki DaVaughn, Hey Austin newsletter editor Kelsey Bradshaw, and our guest, Rikki Hardy of HAAM. And stick around after the roundup for our Don't Go Gently tip for this weekend.  We'd like to thank Tecovas, who makes our favorite Western wear in town, for being our exclusive launch sponsor.  Want some more Austin news? Then make sure to sign up for our Hey Austin newsletter.  Follow us @citycastaustin You can also text us or leave a voicemail.  Interested in advertising with City Cast? Find more info HERE 

It’s the hot to Barton Springs’ cold. Why is Big Stacy warm year-round? The post How is Big Stacy Pool naturally heated? appeared first on KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts.

In this episode of The Texan Recap, Audio Editor Mercy Solis chats about the Texas win over Michigan. Plus, Barton Springs's summer season closes early. Reported by Emma Hutchinson and Erika Pernis. Hosted and edited by Mercy Solis. Cover art by Emma Berke. Music by Top Flow Productions.

In this episode of Building Texas Business, I learned valuable lessons from Patrick Terry, founder of the popular Austin-based restaurant chain P Terry's Burger Stand. Patrick explains how the company's success has been centered around its commitment to natural ingredients, competitive pricing, and exceptional customer and employee care. We explored the challenges of maintaining price discipline amidst rising costs and inflation, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. Patrick also shared insights from his origin story, hiring practices that bring on passionate individuals, and the importance of company culture. He also touched on the strategic considerations that underpin P Terry's expansion plans into new markets like Houston and the employee support programs in place. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS I discussed the inception of P Terry's Burger Stand in 2005 with founder Patrick Terry, focusing on their strategy of using high-quality, natural ingredients at competitive prices to differentiate from fast food giants like McDonald's and Starbucks. Patrick emphasized the importance of customer feedback and employee well-being in ensuring operational efficiency and customer satisfaction, without relying heavily on marketing or advertising. We explored the challenges of maintaining pricing discipline amidst inflation and supply chain disruptions, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how P Terry's managed to outperform competitors with consistent pricing strategies. Patrick shared the origin story of P Terry's, highlighting their commitment to quality food and a strategic hiring process that prioritizes employees' passion for the restaurant business. The unique approach to food preparation at P Terry's through their own commissary was discussed, showcasing how it helps maintain quality and cost control, along with their plans for expansion into Houston. We delved into the significance of company culture and employee care, including P Terry's innovative non-interest loan program for staff in financial need, as a means to foster loyalty and engagement. Patrick recounted the emotional journey of running the business, his brief hiatus from leadership in 2019, and the decision to reengage with renewed vigor, underscoring the importance of leadership in maintaining company culture. The strategic expansion from Austin to San Antonio and the considerations involved, such as logistical feasibility and location selection based on cost and accessibility, were discussed. We highlighted the balance between choosing affordable locations and ensuring they are accessible to customers, using demographic trends and growth areas to inform business decisions. Patrick shared personal anecdotes, including his early entrepreneurial ventures and the cultural philosophy at P Terry's, emphasizing the importance of setting high standards and leading by example. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About P.Terry's GUESTS Patrick TerryAbout Patrick TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode you will meet Patrick Terry, founder and owner of P Terry's Burger Stand. Patrick attributes the success of P Terry's to two fundamental strategies First, work hard and listen to your customer. And second, take care of your people and they will take care of your customer. Patrick, I want to thank you for coming on Texas building Texas business and it's just a pleasure to have you on as a guest. Patrick: Well, thanks, I'm honored to be here. I really am. Chris: So I think the first place to start is for you just to tell us, those that don't know of P Terry's, what is P Terry's and kind of. What are you known for? Patrick: Well, so my wife and I started P Terry's 2005. So we'll be celebrating our 20th anniversary next month, next year, and the idea behind it we sell we're a quick service hamburger stand, and the idea behind it was if we were going to compete with, you know, the giants in the industry the McDonald's and the Burger Kings and the Jack in the Boxes and the Chick-fil-A's you know everybody. You know we're going to have to find a way to be different and you know I talk about so often. People want to get into business and they find a retail store or a restaurant or a concept that they like and they go across the street and pretty much do the same thing as the guy that they liked. And when you do that, all you've done in a best case scenario, is you take half his business. It's pretty hard to take all of his business. If you're going to do the same thing, then you're going up against the fact that he's established. Clearly he's doing okay because you liked it and he's there. And so I think that's the biggest mistake new business owners and entrepreneurs make is they like a yogurt stand and they go across the street and they do the same yogurt stand. And so, all that said we were going to be different, and where we were going to be different was that we were going to offer the quality beef and the food that we serve is really that of an upscale restaurant, to be honest and we were going to do it through a drive-thru and a dine-in at a fast food restaurant, but we weren't. Because of that, we weren't, of course, able to charge any more than the fast food guy across the street, so what we were trying to do was make ourselves bulletproof. We were going to offer a quality product that you couldn't get at a fast food restaurant at a price that was the same as the guy across the street that wasn't serving that quality food. And obviously, if you're able to pull that off, it's a huge advantage. And by doing so what we did, we established right away that we were going to look for a fair profit, and that was what it was going to be. And so if I could sell an order of French fries and I might be able to get $2.50 for that order of French fries, I looked at the cost and I'm thinking well, actually, my overall cost of goods, I only have to sell those franchise at $2.15. We have very low overhead. We have a small office with a G&A under 6% and we work hard and we work smart and we don't spend money on marketing or advertising. We don't have that luxury. We don't pay, of course, any franchise fees because we own the business. And so we were able to pull it off. And so we serve a black Angus, all natural beef, and what that means is it's antibiotic free, it's hormone free, it's a vegetarian fed, it's a pure beef. I mean it really is a great product. We serve the same thing with a hormone-free chicken. And you know, our buns don't have high fructose corn syrup. Our potatoes come from Idaho and they're fresh and they're cooked in a canola oil which doesn't have any hydrogenated oils. I mean, we literally just went down the line and said, okay, this is what we're going to do. Now we're going to have to make it work and by keeping our costs down and, frankly, working really hard, really hard with a lot of smart people, we were able to pull it off. We opened up our 34th store two weeks ago in Cibolo, outside of San Antonio, and, as you know, we're on our way to Houston. We have our first Houston location in Richmond I believe it is in October, and we're going to have five. We plan for five Houston locations. One of the other things that we do that makes this unique is that we have our own commissary. We cook we do a lot of cooking and for our restaurants ourselves, so we bake our own banana bread, we bake our own cookies from scratch, we make our own veggie burgers from scratch. We take chicken breast all chicken breast, boneless, skinless breast and we actually grind it into a patty for a chicken burger and for our chicken bites. And all that's done in the commissary by our own staff. We share the offices, share a space with the commissary, and every morning three or four trucks go out and deliver that product to the stands, and so we're able to keep our costs down by doing that as well. We pretty much just take charge of everything we do, yeah and that's what separated us. Chris: Well, it sounds like what I'm hearing is a very focused, you know thought into what you wanted this business to be and I guess what you didn't want it to be. So you know what I heard you talk about is, you know, obviously very cost conscious, so that you could be profitable, but also singular, focused on this. You know premium quality food at a lower price point and you know really it sounds like in the beginning, very focused on what profit margins would look like, what your cost of goods would be. Before you even opened a store it seems like. Patrick: Yeah, and I don't want to make it sound like we're smarter than we are, because a lot of that stuff just you know fortunately just works itself out. Now where it got tricky is when COVID hit and the supply chain issues and the inflation that we've seen and where we've benefited from that is by having always done what we've done in the last 19 years and everyone's read about. You know the McDonald's Big Mac combo meal. It's for $16 in Idaho and you know McDonald's are great operators. So I got nothing bad to say. But every time you take a price increase if you're not looking over your shoulder when you do that if you're not conscious of? am I really doing everything I can before I go up on this price? Patrick: way I can make this a nickel instead of a diamond. Unless you've done that from the start, you find yourself taking price increases to cover up mistakes or issues of the day, and it becomes this band-aid that's very hard to take off, right. Chris: We've seen that in your industry right, where the classic pass it on to the consumer, and then in the fast food wars just over the recent months, the consumers rebelling. Patrick: Absolutely, absolutely. And so when you know Starbucks and McDonald's show, you know negative comp store sales, last quarter, for the first time since you know COVID hit, we were up 8% in our compor sales. And because, frankly, when you take our strategy and you stick with it and the hard part is sticking with it it's really easy to look around and go, man, that guy over there he's getting six bucks for that burger and I'm only getting five. I could probably go up a quarter and that's the illusion, right, you get into that game and there's a mind game and if you're able to keep pushing that off and, trust me, it's a hell of a lot easier going up a quarter. When you're able to pull that off, then you don't go down that rabbit hole and find yourself in a situation where so many of our competitors have found themselves. I mean, I look around and see what similar pricing is, I mean what similar menu items are and what the pricing of our competitors are, and I'm astounded. I mean there are some of our competitors are 20 percent higher than we are on their menu, and you know we're all serving food out of a drive-thru and so it's a dangerous game. It really is. And so I think that I think you've hit on it exactly the way it is, it's a discipline and it's every day. Chris: Yeah, well, that's what Jim Collins talks about in Good to Great. You know, discipline, people with disciplined thought and disciplined action is how you get from good to great. Yeah, so let me, let me take you back, cause I mean I love the thought that went into to the concept from the beginning, but what inspired you to, in 2005, open up a hamburger stand? Patrick: Well, thank you for asking. It's almost embarrassing, I apparently. When I finally did it, a score of my friends contacted me to remind me how much I had been boring them for so many years that I had always wanted to open up a hamburger stand. And do not ask me where that came from. I have no idea, other than to say that I love the idea of serving a hamburger, french fries and a milkshake. I just, I just think that's glorious and I know that's probably way over the top, but there's something so satisfying and it's probably because it's my favorite meal that I just can't get past it. So I had always wanted to do it and I had a particular location that I had in mind and I lost it five years earlier and it sat empty for five years and finally it became available, and so that's when we opened up at Lamar and Barton Springs in Austin. Chris: I love that. Well, I mean. So, like, like any good entrepreneur, in my view, you followed your passion, your favorite meal, something that you have a passion about doing. Patrick: Let me tell you, if you don't love this business, you better not get in it, because it is consuming, it's all consuming. And so you know I look around. When I used to, you know, when I would hire somebody, I would remind them that if they didn't really love the restaurant business or what we do every day, you are not going to be happy, and if you do love it, you're going to be very happy, because we're drinking out of a fire hose here pretty much every day. Chris: Let's talk a little bit about hiring, because I think that's really regardless of the industry, really regardless of the industry. I mean, companies are made of people and you've got to get the right people to help, you know, maybe bring your vision to light, your strategies to life. What have you done over the years to make sure that you are making that right hire decision? I assume it's evolved over time and I think there's at least a couple of pieces. I'd love to maybe hear how it was starting out, but oh, yeah, it was. I know that coming out of COVID it had to be even more challenging, because people wouldn't even come to work. Patrick: Right. Well, when we first opened, the first day we opened, my wife Kathy was there and she had no restaurant experience. I had some and I put her through it. It was. You know, it was very difficult, and she likes to tell the story that she looked around the very first day and realized that there was no way we were going to do this by ourselves. And so the first three years we were in the stands every day. I mean, I worked every day, morning to night, and by doing that I got to know, obviously, everything that it took to run the stand, every position. But I also got to see the people that were there and I was able to separate the ones that were working out and the ones that weren't. And I was not a good hire at first. There is this you know, boy, it's easy to take what you think is the simple route and just put a body in place and, man, if it's the wrong body, everyone's miserable, and so it took me a while. I just had a certain, but I was not going to give in. I had a certain level of employee or stand or team member that I was, that I had envisioned, and so I wasn't going to lower the bar. And so the first three years were really difficult because a lot of people you bring in had other unfortunately had other fast food experience and they brought a lot of bad habits with them. And so you know, it's one of those deals when you hire somebody, frankly, they either have to be scared of you or they have to like you, and I'm not the guy that they're going to be scared of. That's just not the role I want to play. It's not the business I want to run. We're not always going to agree, but my hope is that we like and respect each other and respect each other. The other thing is what we learned being there every day is we learned so? Many of our employees' lives are completely different than mine. You know I've been around for a long time. I had some money in the bank. You know I had a college education, I had a career before this, so it's really easy to live in your bubble and not recognize it, and so I tell this story a lot. We had an employee, vinny and this was 18 years ago and, by the way, I'm proud to say Vinny still works for us, as do a lot of those people in those first few years. They're still with us and Vinny's truck broke down and I had worked all day and I didn't want to do his job that night, so I convinced him just to get in a cab and I would pay for the cab. And then when Vinny got there, I said what's going on with the truck? And he said well, it's going to cost $150 to get fixed and I don't have $150. So I handed him $150 and I said pay me when you can, because I need you here and I need your truck fixed Now if I'm in a corporate office, then he probably loses his job because he didn't show up. Right, right, I don't answer the phone, we don't have that conversation. So then I've lost an employee that I've had for 18 years. But, more importantly, I understand the position they're in, and so the very first thing we did from that is we created a non-interest loan program for all of our employees. So if you walk in to my office right now or you don't even have to do that you tell your manager, and the manager is going to make a phone call and you say I'm behind in my rent or I have a, you know, whatever it is, you're going to get a loan, and if it's under, if it's five hundred dollars or under, we don't even ask, we just you get it. If it's more than that, we want to know what's going on, you know. And so what we did is we made hiring easier. This is a really hard thing to do every day. The last thing I need to do is make it more difficult. So so we started by taking care of our people better than most, and they told their friends, they told their relatives, and so they understood that this is a two-way street and I'm going to take care of you, but you have to take care of me and, of course, the way you take care of me is you take care of the customer. Advert: Hello friends, this is Chris Hanslick, your Building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast, is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations and business leaders? Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm at boyMillercom. And thanks for listening to the show. Chris: That's great. I mean the idea and I think it's true in any organization. If the people that work for you think that you genuinely care about them as a person, not just that they get the job done, you're going to create loyalty and engagement with that employee. Naturally, hearing your story leads me to the question about culture. Let's talk about that. How would you describe the culture at P Terry's? Obviously, the fundamental philosophy you just described, I would assume, is some of the foundational elements of the culture that you're trying to build or have built. So what can you share about that? Patrick: Well, I'll tell you the obvious. You and your listeners already know this culture is the most important thing. There's nothing even close to second when it comes to running your business. The culture that you establish speaks for who you are, not only to your employees, but to your customers. Speaks for who you are, not only to your employees, but to your customers. There's nothing more important. I can't even think of number two. I'll tell you an interesting story very quickly. I hope it's real. I had a person call me and want to visit with me about the business, and they had a very successful online clothing company and they were about to open up stores for the first time. Everything they had always sold was online, and he asked me what it took to open the store and take care of the employees for the very first time. Right, this is all of a sudden. It's not a click, it's a conversation, and I probably talked for 15 or 20 minutes about everything we do every day for our employees. I thought I really thought his head was going to explode. I mean, he. It was so beyond the realm for him. And I get it right. This is like, and what I was trying to explain to him was you're, you may be selling the same item, but you've got an entirely different business model now. I mean, now you have, for the very first time, you have a person representing you selling that product to someone. And boy, you better get that right. And so that's really what it boils down to is understanding what we do every day and what our people do, and the culture has to be led by me. You know, I read a great line a couple of weeks ago. Somebody said to the person running the company, what's your job? And he said my job is to be right. And so when you accept that as your job and, by the way, I don't do it by myself, oh my Lord, not even close right, I mean, I've got all. I got these people around me that are just terrific, and but I certainly go to them and we certainly talk about everything. But the first thing that this has to be established is I'm here and I answer my phone and if, if you're in the hospital, I need to be there and make sure everything's okay. If you have a family member that has an issue, if there's something I can do, I got to do it. And then you have to understand everyone has to understand that there's a bar set and no one goes below the bar, and I can never go below the bar, obviously, and so it's really for me and for P Terry's, it's really by example, and if you know, dogs and kids can spot a phony a mile away. And so if you're not sincere in what you're trying to do and what you believe in and I've had some people that work for me that I could tell immediately you know you're faking it and you know you just don't feel the same way the rest of us do, and nobody wants to be in that position. So you're not happy here and I'm not happy with you here, so let's just shake hands and walk away from each other. So there's a lot of that going on, but the culture and what we do every day, the first thing we do is we just take care of our people and then we count on them to take care of the customer. Chris: Yeah, Some of what you're saying there I've heard others speak to. We certainly have that philosophy here in the business we run in this firm and that is we say we hire and fire from culture. Right, you have to know what the culture is. You have to look for the people the best you can through interview processes and hire from culture. More importantly, when you figure out someone's, you know you set the standard and you can't go below it. But if you see someone that's consistently going below it or faking it, then you've got to move fast and they need to be out of the organization. And it doesn't have to be harsh to your point. Chris: They're not happy, no one's happy. They're going to be happier somewhere else that has a different set of standards that connect with them. But you've established your standards. You've tied behavior that you can demonstrate is consistent with that that comes from the top down, and then everyone can be on the same page. Patrick: And it has to be. It's almost like, you know, being in the middle of an orchestra. You know we're all playing the song and we've all got a part to play, and if one of us, you know, drops the violin, it's not going to feel sound the same. Yeah, so true. Chris: So you know, reading up on, you know the goings on at P Terry's. I want to kind of turn the conversation a little bit to the last maybe I guess it's been four or five years you did something that is not easy for a founder to do in 2019. You decided to step down as CEO of you know, your proverbial baby let's talk about that. Obviously not the first time an entrepreneur has done that and kind of handed reins over. What led to that decision and how was it for you to kind of transition out of the CEO role? Patrick: Well, if it's okay, I want to step back a couple more years before that and talk about something that it really doesn't make the papers very often. That, and talk about something that it really doesn't make the papers very often. We had at one point I had just kind of hit a wall. I was exhausted. I was working with a kind of a person that I had next to me that was, you know, my right hand man. It was just it was. We had been going at such a pace for so long. You know, my wife and I have funded, had funded this business all by ourselves. The entire time we borrowed money but we didn't have any other investors, so everything kind of fell on us every day and the idea came up that maybe we should sell because this is just exhausting. And we did a dog and pony show and had a half a dozen legitimate buyers and we got a wonderful offer. You know, as I said to the person when I turned him down, you offered me enough money to go live on an island and I've got two little girls. I don't get to live on an island even if I wanted to. So I appreciate the offer very much and I think what I was doing when I did it, and it was sincere, I wasn't trying to waste anybody's time. But I think after the offer came in and my wife and I both agreed that we didn't want to do that. This is not how we wanted our legacy to end. I think I was looking for validation. I had never been validated for the work I had done, other than you know that the we were allowed to expand. Our business was good, our customers were very appreciative, but from an industry standpoint, I didn't know what we had created. I really didn't. I'm not the guy that I'm terrible at networking. I don't go to. I don't go to meetings, I don't go to conventions, I just I really it's not my deal, I really just work. And so I got that validation and then I made a decision that the next decision we made was do we want to leave Central Texas? You know the Austin area, and I had never done that. And so I thought well, I got some great advice one time that I don't want to learn something that somebody else has already learned, that I don't want to learn something that somebody else has already learned, and so I chose to bring somebody in with the experience of having done that, and Todd came in. Todd Korver came in. He had a great resume, same moral compass that we have here, a really good guy. And what I was finding was that, no matter what, I'm still here, and there are certain things that I'm just comfortable with, that, if I'm going to be alive and still owning the business, that it's important to me that we do every day. And so it wasn't that Todd did a bad job. It's just that I looked around and said, you know, there's stuff going on that I think we can do a little differently. Maybe we can do it better. I don't know, because I don't have all the answers, but I think I'm more comfortable in the front seat than I am in the back. The departure was amicable, he's a good guy. He's got a great job here in Austin. He's going to do very well there. But I just found that if I'm going to be in the office every day, you know I might as well do what I really want to do, and so that led to me coming back, and so, you know, I think it also gave me a new energy that I hadn't had because Todd did some heavy lifting for four years, and so we kind of have come back with the vengeance. We got the idea four days after Christmas that maybe we should really take a serious look at serving chicken bites. We compete against everybody in the business and Chick-fil-A is, you know, the leader, and so a lot of our customers had told us hey, the only fight in our family. You know, my kid wants a chicken bite at Chick-fil-A and I want a hamburger or a chicken burger from P Terry's. And so, you know, the 29th of December we had this conversation and the 16th of March they were for sale in our stores. We made them out of our own kitchen and we created them and, you know, worked on sauces and stuff, and so we've really been going very fast at that. But that you know, and I found that I'm just much more happier if I'm going to, if I'm going to be around, if it's going to still be my company. I'm just happier being the guy that's running it. Chris: I understand. Well, it had to be difficult, especially so it sounds like you stepped out of the CEO seat but stayed, I guess, involved in the company. That had to be challenging, right, it was one thing if you kind of, like you said, go to some Island or just complete a separate business, but and I, you know, I did my best. Patrick: I didn't think it was fair to, you know, be in Todd's office every day pounding the desk, going why aren't we doing this, why can't you do this? I, you know, I let him run the company because that was the only fair thing to do, but I was in the office next door and so you know, you're right, I'm not on an island and so, yeah, at some point it just was like easier for me just to do it. Chris: So let's let's talk a little bit about the expansion. You mentioned that you had expanded beyond kind of the Austin area into kind of San Antonio. You just mentioned a store in that area your plans to come to Houston you mentioned just a minute ago, and ultimately five stores, what? I want to talk about maybe have you share, is kind of what goes into that thinking of the strategy, of when it's right to kind of take those steps which I would assume are, you know, somewhat trepidatious. Patrick: Yo, absolutely, and what we found is that we were interested to see in the challenge. Absolutely, and what we found is that we were interested to see in the challenge. And you know we really had established ourselves in central Texas. We have a lot of stores here, you know we're. I mean I have there's Lamar Boulevard in Austin. I have three stores on Lamar Boulevard, you know, and about three miles apart. So we're pretty inundated and I just wanted to see, I believe that our concept traveled outside of Austin. I believe that our concept really works most places and I wanted to see what we could do. And so San Antonio made the most sense because of our commissary and our delivery, so we can be in San Antonio in just over an hour. And that made it. And, by the way, we just went down, you know, i-35 and we opened a store in Kyle and one in San Marcus and one in New Braunfels and then into San Antonio and so so from a logistics standpoint it made sense, but it was really kind of a challenge. Now, I don't, you know, there is something I truly believe in and you know I have to tell you real quickly, I spoke at a UT, at the MBA program, one time it was a wonderful class, and the professor called me after the class and he said I got to tell you the students loved it and I thank you for coming. And I said well, I appreciate that. And he said but I got to tell you I'm probably not going to be inviting you back. And I said totally fine, can you ask, can you tell me why? And he said well, there's nowhere on the syllabus that just says work hard and listen to your customers. And I said okay, well, I get it, cause that's, frankly, all I know to do, to the God's honest truth is that's all I need, that's all I know what to do. And so you know we take. What I was getting to is, at some point you take a leap of faith and you've listened to the people around you and at some point, obviously, you're the one that has to make the final decision. And then you, just you know, you trust your experience over all these years and you know you make the jump. You just make the jump. Chris: So I guess just you know, since I live in Houston, what was it about Houston that makes you think that you know again the concept travels? Why the first location in Richmond? What are some of the things there that you know, you and your team see and are excited about that you and your team see and are excited about. Patrick: So we picked that part of Houston because we could drive from Austin again for our commissary until at some point we will hopefully have a satellite commissary in Houston. But a lot of it is the loops are of interest. There's a lot of growth there, there's a lot of room for expansion and, frankly, when you get in the middle of all of your fair city it gets very expensive. So you kind of go to the loops because the land is cheaper and the leases are cheaper. So there's definitely some of that. I'm just being very honest about it. I mean, there's some great locations but I can't spend $300,000 a year on a ground lease, you know it doesn't, I think it's a well. Chris: the transparency is what we're after here, and I think, again, kind of for a listener to go look, you may have some great ideas, but be smart about that expansion. It goes back to the first thing you said. You've been mindful in this business of controlling cost, and obviously I can speak to it. You're picking locations where the population's growing, so that's not a bad thing either. Right, your demographics must line up with the things that you know makes a store successful. Patrick: And at the same time and I've got a competitor across the street from me, across the highway from me, in San Marcos, and you know he picked a really bad location and my assumption is he picked it because it was cheap. So you know there's a balance here, right? You know you got the land for $60,000 a year and the reason is because nobody can get to it, so you got to be careful about that. You know, I had a friend of mine come to me. He and his wife came to me years ago and said I think we're going to get into the restaurant business. And I said why? And he said, well, we're going to sell, I think we're going to sell sandwiches. And I said what are you going to do that? And he said, well, people have to eat. And I said yeah, but they don't have to eat at your restaurant. And unfortunately, you know there is. You know, you just have to look at this stuff so realistically. And that balance of, yeah, I'd love to be in that location, but it's a wonderful location, but it costs me so much. All I'm going to do is sell burgers and, you know, not make any money, that's right, I get to pay the landlord to sell burgers, right? Yeah, that's exactly what it is. That boy, that's a tough. That's a tough way to spend your day. Chris: Well, patrick, thank you so much for sharing the story and the ups and downs, but I'm looking forward to having a burger once you get here you said you did it in Austin, obviously, and it is as good as you described. I want to turn a little bit to just a little personal side of things. Obviously, you've said a couple of times you just know how to work hard. What was your first job, even as a kid? Patrick: So I had a lemonade, a Kool-Aid, stand in front of my, in front of our house I was probably five or six and my dad was, and my parents were always there and always had suggestions and my dad came up to me and he said you need to put the because we lived in West Texas. I grew up in Abilene and you think your summers are hot, so my dad said you need to put the temperature on the. On your poster and and I said so I wrote it's 102, kool-aid, five cents. And you know the car stopped and it was such a great idea and so I always had that influence. I said that was my probably my first inroad. I remember in seventh grade I started selling candy bars there was no you know, costco or Walmart or anything back then or Sam's to the grocery store and buy a little six-pack of Hershey's. My mom would go and take me and I started selling so many candy bars at the 10.30 break that I was messing up the senior store at noon and the superintendent called me in and told me to stop. So that's funny, all right. Chris: So this is a question I ask everyone, and I'm incredibly intrigued to get your answer, because you're the self-described hamburger guy. Right, I got to know do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue? Patrick: Oh, I'll go to Tex-Mex all day, okay. Chris: I'll go to Tex-Mex. Patrick: And I love barbecue, don't get me wrong. But I got to tell you if I can have chicken enchiladas with the verde sauce and a side of rice and beans. I am doing just fine. Chris: Okay, so it's your second favorite meal. Patrick: it sounds like yeah, absolutely, my poor children. I'll tell you this real quick. I know you want to wind it down. My daughter is 16 now and when she was 10, she went on a water ski camp and she spent the day. And she got in the car and she said I said what'd you have for lunch? And she said they served these submarine sandwiches. And I said, oh, what'd you get? And she said a meatball sandwich. And I said, oh, that's great. And I said you don't seem like you're in a good mood. And she said I didn't know those existed because my poor children eat P Terry's every day. So that's, you know, that's it's a family deal. I love it. Chris: It reminds me of the story of you know, it was in a movie a while back right when the parents try to tell convince the kids that yogurt was vanilla ice cream exactly. Patrick, thanks again. Really enjoyed meeting you and hearing your story. Congratulations on the success and best of luck as you expand and move into the Houston market. Patrick: I appreciate it Well. I'd love to meet you one day and grab a burger. Chris: Let's do it, in fact, let's stay in touch on when that Richmond store is open, and I'll be there. Patrick: Absolutely, absolutely, and I'll even buy. Chris: What do you think? That's a heck of a deal. Very good, well, thanks again. Patrick: Thank you, I enjoyed it very much.

Chucky talks with his cousin Diego about the week they spent together in Austin, Texas. From 6th Street to Rainey to Barton Spring to BBQ, Chucky gave Diego the world-wind tour of ATX. Find out Diego's impressions of his first time in Austin.

Can we hook up this group of girls with a groups of guys they met last weekend?

We spend a lot of time in Austin talking about how many new people move here. But most of us don't talk much about the people who came before us — way before us.  If you've ever taken a walk along Shoal Creek or gone to Barton Springs on a hot summer day, you're doing […] The post Where have Austin’s Indigenous people gone? (archive episode) appeared first on KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts.

Our love for the world around us and our passion for protecting that world can come from many different places. It can come from a connection to the land, or a magical experience we had with other people in a particular place, or our sense of awe from the beauty of the living creatures that inhabit these ecosystems. But that love and passion can also come from seeing or experiencing the destruction of the same ecological web, from pollution in the air that rains down onto a playground, or the clearing of a wildlife habitat to make way for a fossil fuel pipeline.Dave Cortez has been organizing for environmental justice in Texas for the better part of two decades. He lives in Austin now, but the love and passion that guides him came from the Rio Grande, the Sierra Madre Mountains and the high desert of West Texas. And from fighting a copper smelter and other threats to the land, air and water in and around his native El Paso. Dave has a fierce love for his El Paso Community. But cutting his teeth as an environmental justice organizer in his hometown wasn't easy. Dave is now Director of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, where he's bringing his El Paso roots and years of experience on the streets and in the communities around Texas to the Sierra Club's statewide campaigns.I've known Dave for many years and used to regularly attend environmental justice meetings in Austin that he helped organize. I've seen him rise from an on-the-ground organizer to the leader of the Texas chapter of one of the oldest and largest environmental organizations in the world.Our conversation tracks his education as an environmental justice organizer. From the playgrounds of El Paso to the gentrifying neighborhoods of Austin, his story reflects the changing nature of the American environmental movement and the exciting possibilities of more robust connections between community-based frontline environmental justice struggles and the large and powerful environmental organizations with nationwide influence.You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.Please rate, review, and share to help us spread the word!Dave CortezDave Cortez is a 3rd generation El Pasoan now based out of Austin where he lives with his partner and six year old daughter. He grew up and learned organizing on the frontera, where industrial pollution, poverty, gentrification, racism and the border wall are seen as intersecting issues. Dave serves as the Director of the Sierra Club Lone Star Chapter, and has been organizing in the Texas environmental movement for 18 years. Dave is supporting staff and volunteers across Texas who are organizing for power by centering racial justice and equity alongside frontline communities directly impacted by polluting industries.Quotation Read by Dave Cortez"There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives. Malcolm knew this. Martin Luther King, Jr. knew this. Our struggles are particular, but we are not alone. We are not perfect, but we are stronger and wiser than the sum of our errors. Black people have been here before us and survived. We can read their lives like signposts on the road and find, as Bernice Reagon says so poignantly, that each one of us is here because somebody before us did something to make it possible. To learn from their mistakes is not to lessen our debt to them, nor to the hard work of becoming ourselves, and effective. We lose our history so easily, what is not predigested for us by the New York Times, or the Amsterdam News, or Time magazine. Maybe because we do not listen to our poets or to our fools, maybe because we do not listen to our mamas in ourselves. When I hear the deepest truths I speak coming out of my mouth sounding like my mother's, even remembering how I fought against her, I have to reassess both our relationship as well as the sources of my knowing. Which is not to say that I have to romanticize my mother in order to appreciate what she gave me – Woman, Black. We do not have to romanticize our past in order to be aware of how it seeds our present. We do not have to suffer the waste of an amnesia that robs us of the lessons of the past rather than permit us to read them with pride as well as deep understanding. We know what it is to be lied to, and we know how important it is not to lie to ourselves. We are powerful because we have survived, and that is what it is all about – survival and growth. Within each one of us there is some piece of humanness that knows we are not being served by the machine which orchestrates crisis after crisis and is grinding all our futures into dust. If we are to keep the enormity of the forces aligned against us from establishing a false hierarchy of oppression, we must school ourselves to recognize that any attack against Blacks, any attack against women, is an attack against all of us who recognize that our interests are not being served by the systems we support. Each one of us here is a link in the connection between anti-poor legislation, gay shootings, the burning of synagogues, street harassment, attacks against women, and resurgent violence against Black people. I ask myself as well as each one of you, exactly what alteration in the particular fabric of my everyday life does this connection call for? Survival is not a theory. In what way do I contribute to the subjugation of any part of those who I define as my people? Insight must illuminate the particulars of our lives." - Audre LordeRecommended Readings & MediaTranscriptIntroJohn Fiege  Our love for the world around us and our passion for protecting that world can come from many different places. It can come from a connection to the land, or a magical experience we had with other people in a particular place, or our sense of awe from the beauty of the living creatures that inhabit these ecosystems. But that love and passion can also come from seeing or experiencing the destruction of this same ecological web: from pollution in the air that rains down onto a playground or the clearing of wildlife habitat to make way for a fossil fuel pipeline.Dave Cortez has been organizing for environmental justice in Texas for the better part of two decades. He lives in Austin now, but the love and passion that guides him came from the Rio Grande, the Sierra Madre mountains, and the high desert of West Texas—and it came from fighting a copper smelter and other threats to the land, air, and water in and around his native El Paso. Dave has a fierce love for his El Paso community but cutting his teeth as an environmental justice organizer in his home town wasn't easy.Dave Cortez  Two of my close family members worked at the plant. My dad's brother worked at the plant and then worked at Chevron on the other side of town. And then his brother in law, worked at the plant and retired. And here I was, this younger punk, you know, sort of just not super close to the family, showing up at events and they asked what I'm doing and, oh, they think I'm a paid protester, you know, forget my education, forget what's at what I'm actually saying. You know, it's, deep cultural assimilation. It's deep colonization, sort of this Stockholm syndrome that develops out of poverty and repression. It's horrific, and it's sad to watch. People fiercely defend the only thing that has helped them in their eyes and not be able to acknowledge the harm that's been done. It's not different from, you know, addiction in that way, or depression.John Fiege  Or domestic abuse. Dave Cortez  Exactly. It's heartbreaking. It still hurts me to talk about. John Fiege  I'm John Fiege, and this is Chrysalis.Dave Cortez is now Director of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, where he's bringing his El Paso roots and years of experience on the streets and in the communities around Texas to the Sierra Club's statewide campaigns.I've known Dave for many years and used to regularly attend environmental justice meetings in Austin that he helped organize. I've seen him rise from an on-the-ground organizer to the leader of the Texas chapter of one of the oldest and largest environmental organizations in the world.Our conversation tracks his education as an environmental justice organizer. From the playgrounds of El Paso to the gentrifying neighborhoods of Austin, his story reflects the changing nature of the American environmental movement and the exciting possibilities of more robust connections between community-based frontline environmental justice struggles and the large and powerful environmental organizations with nationwide influence.Here is Dave Cortez.ConversationJohn FiegeWell, you grew up in El Paso in Far West Texas, and it's right on the border of Mexico and New Mexico. Can you tell me a bit about growing up there, and your family and how you saw yourself in relationship to the rest of nature.Dave Cortez  I've got a little picture I'm looking at my my very first demonstration. It's a bunch of kids, kids meaning college kids, my my age at the time, about maybe 22, 23, and a big peace flag and we're hanging around what was called Plaza de Los Lagartos, Plaza of the Alligators. And we're there I think we're protesting, must have been continuing invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, but you know, I keep it up. And I keep pictures of the mountains of West Texas, the edge of the Rockies is what cuts into the central central part of El Paso, the Franklin Mountains. And then you have the Rio Grande, the heart and soul of that land. And on the other side of the river, those mountains continue into the Sierra Madres all the way down to the coast. It's majestic. It's, you know, that land is as colonized as is its people. You know, it's been, the river has been dammed up upstream in New Mexico, and two reservoirs to provide water for agriculture and farming and things like that, recreation. It was the only area of water that we we had access to when I was a kid. We would drive up to Truth or Consequences and load up on nightcrawlers and whatever other tackle and bait, and then take my dad's car and drive along somewhere, find a good spot. And fish from the shore for a couple of days at a time, camp, and, you know, that was a desert lake. It was wild for me, because we didn't have water, you know.John Fiege  So tell me about what you did. Dave Cortez  Well, we would just go up there. That was, that was our place to go get get access to water, you know, away from the desert, you know, growing up in El Paso, you just, it's It's dry, it's desert, we get, we used to average nine inches of rain a year, it's down now, you know, but the Rio was, it's always been sacred and it was special, it was a place you could go and see water. Not all year round, but most of the year and see it flowing and you look in any direction, away from the mountains, and you can see what feels endless, but it's actually you know, two or more hundred miles to the horizon, you see Thunder heads 30, 40, sometimes 45 or 50,000 feet high way far away, you think maybe you hope maybe those might come your way, maybe we'll get lucky and get a little bit of rain. Most times they don't. But with that sometimes you're blessed with the outflow that carries the smell of creosote, a native plant in the region that everybody's come to call the smell of rain. And, you know, even if you don't actually get the rain yourself, you might get some of those breezes and some of that wonderful smell. And it's, it's life giving, it's restorative. As a kid, you know, I was fortunate that my family made an effort to take us out into the desert quite a bit, we would go chase storms, we would watch lightning, my father would turn the AM radio to a blank station so we could hear the the lightning on the radio, the static pop. And we got a real kick out of that and we'd go off roading and find spots and park and you know, just hang out. And that was a pretty common thing for a lot of folks around town is just to get out into the desert. You know, my my heart and soul and my spirit is connected to that land, it is part of that land, I draw strength from those mountains, from that river. I worry about moving further away, what that might do to me, how how that might be a strain. Even just being here in Austin 600 miles away, it feels very far. You know, my family was middle class, I call it 80s middle class. And, you know, both my parents worked. I have two older siblings. And you know, we were all in public school and doing our thing. You know, everything seemed, you know, like The Wonder Years kind of situation. And you know, you don't when you're young, if you're fortunate, you don't see a lot of the issues around you. It wasn't until my teens, my parents split. And I was living with my mom and started to see a lot more other sides of life, some of the struggles, and just kind of notice more about the town, about the culture. But it was really when I moved back to El Paso after college, here in Austin at St. Edward's, where I studied political science and philosophy and environmental policy. When I moved back, it all started to come together how much I missed, how much I was removed from about my community and my culture in my youth. You know, so the language is the biggest example. We did not speak Spanish in my family. It was something my parents spoke to each other when they needed to talk about something that we didn't need to know about as kids. John Fiege  Right, right. Dave Cortez  You know, we didn't know about our indigeneity we weren't raised around that, we didn't know about the cultural connection to the land. I think in some way the spirit in my family drew us towards it. We would go spend time around those things, but we didn't really have conversations about it. And the biggest thing I didn't know about was how heavily polluted and contaminated the air was growing up. I tell a story about going into middle school. This time I was in in private school and Catholic school. Just being out on the playground it's a you know, concrete schoolyard kind of situation. And you run your hand on the on the railing and there's yellow chalk-like stuff and you don't think twice about it because it's like chalk. Or it's dust. Well, you know, in that part of town, downtown El Paso, it's because of the copper smelter. We had a 110 year old lead and copper smelting operation called Asarco that was less than two miles away from where I was going to school. And you know, you move on, maybe, you're a kid, maybe you wash your hands, maybe you don't. And it just, you know, when I moved back, I thought of that--I thought of all the times, I used to play in the dirt, like every other kid in El Paso does, you know, you don't got Barton Springs to go to or Greenbelt Creek, you play in the dirt, dig tunnels, and that stuff gets in you. And that's loaded with heavy metals, arsenic, cadmium, lead, you name it. It was it was a huge shock for me to learn that the land that I was around as a child, and the air that I was around as a child was just heavily contaminated. And I knew nothing about it. John Fiege  But what was the experience like when you were actually in college and getting more heavily into activism? Like what was motivating you? And how did you see yourself in relationship to other folks?Dave Cortez  Right on. Well, I can't leave out that the reason I came to Austin was because of my older brother and my older sister. I had never seen green, like this town, when I came to visit my sister in the summer. So I just was blown away, everything was green, there was water, it rained, I just felt like an oasis and I wanted to come here. So I went to St. Ed's, which ended up being, you know, expensive as hell, but really cool in the sense of, you know, an opportunity to learn, to be away from home. You know, and so, I didn't really know what to make of this town when I was here. I didn't know what to make of the people, the students, but by the grace of the Creator, in serendipity, I was thrown into a class on social movements. And that's a study in the 1960s. And so, you know, I developed a really foundational experience learning about the broader politic of American civil society, in that case, which blossomed into deeper learning around political theory and rhetoric, dating all the way back to some of the Greek philosophers, and modern day political thinkers, but I really got a ton of wild information into my head. In 2006, it wasn't here in Austin. It was on North Padre Island. The Austin Sierra Club was organizing a trip, there was a woman I liked at the time. And we were were fancying each other and were like, "Hey, let's go camping. I don't know what a crawfish is. But they're doing a crawfish boil. And they say they're going to clean up the beach." So we grabbed my SUV when we went and set up, and it was awesome to be out there around all these people we didn't know, you know, offering us free food and beer and just, you know, associating on this beach. And that, I really loved. Folks might not know this, it's like 60 plus miles of primitive Beach, outside of Corpus Christi. But I didn't quite understand what we're really doing until the next morning, right at dawn, when I was awoken by these huge sounds of tractor trailers hauling right by the water right in front of us. Just a caravan of them driving down to the other end of the beach to do gas drilling. You know, we get out of the tent, and we're watching this and I mean, you just want to, you know, throw something at those trucks, you know, and go put your body in front or something like "What the hell's going on?" And you're just watching the rubber, the plastic, you name it just fall off these trucks. And in their wake is just a mass of debris, and trash. And this is all in endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtle habitat, its nest a nesting area for the Kemp's ridley sea turtle. And that's why we were there. And so, you know, right after that we all commiserated and got to work and picked up more trash than I think, you know, I've ever picked up. And I'm still shocked that that was allowed. But that's really where I started to take a turn and understand more about how the state facilitates this destruction, the destruction of the land and for the profits of few. And shortly after that I graduated, and that was it for my time in Austin.John Fiege  So after you graduated from college, you went back to El Paso, and you became an environmental justice organizer for El Paso, ACORN. And it was shortly after your time there in 2009, that right wing activists did a big hit job on ACORN and brought down the organization in the US for the most part. An ACORN was was a powerful community organizing group at its height, and it had this unique community based organizing model. Could you talk a bit about the ACORN organizing model and how it, possibly, I assume, became part of your organizing DNA?Dave Cortez  Just like learning about the 1960s is a pillar of my practice. The  work with Acorn is right there with it. You know, it shaped me, maybe it's just because it's one of the first things I learned about, but it'll be with me, as long as I do this work and have breath in my lungs. You know, some people were quick to point to that it's built out of the school of the Industrial Areas Foundation and Saul Alinsky model of community organizing, and yeah, that's true. But, you know, I didn't know any of that. I didn't, you know, I was, I was just taken in by these folks. There was a guy, recovering addict, just trying to make his money doing his canvassing while I was hanging out at a coffee shop, kind of where I was living in El Paso, the university. And there's my day off and I'm out there hanging out. There's this dude, his name was Ken. Ken let me know how they were planning to reopen the ASARCO copper smelter, the big 120 820 foot tall smokestack that I grew up around, and I was shocked. And, and that's, you know, like I studied all these things. And I was like, wow, I cannot believe that that's right there, my mom lives over here, you know, she works there, I live over here. And, you know, I told them, whatever I can do to help: get more letters, spread a petition around, whatever I can do. And they invited me in to meet the team, which was a small team. And the first task they gave me was actually nothing to do with that it was just to go distribute information about free tax prep, helping people in a really poor community, not far from where I went to middle school in which is not far from the smelter, get access to tax prep, in English and Spanish. And at the time, I had a, I had a mohawk. I covered that thing up real fast. I wore a straw cowboy hat and went door to door knocking on people's doors, let them know about this. And Jose Manuel, the the lead organizer at the time, the director saw me and, you know, was into it. And, you know, they offered me a job after a few days of that. And the job was doing the same thing, plus inviting people to come to a community meeting about the reopening of ASARCO. So here's a way that we can help you. With some, you know, with your money, basically, your your bottom line, and also, there's a situation happening, that can affect and will affect your your health and well being, and the safety of your family. At the time, I didn't realize that there was a very intentional strategy there. But that strategy is essential to the work that we do as environmentalists and in climate justice activists around the country, and here in Texas, people are struggling, and you got to find ways to help them directly with what they're struggling with day to day, which is often their pocketbooks. And so if you can do that, you're going to build some trust, you can build some relationships, and then you might be lucky to talk to them about another bigger, more complicated issue.John Fiege  That seems to be, like, a really beautiful definition of the difference between environmental justice organizing, and traditional environmental organizing, where environmental justice organizing, you have to start with the community, and make sure everybody you know, you have to deal with everything, you can't just isolate an environmental issue. Would you agree with that?Dave Cortez  Absolutely. Absolutely. I don't know where that came from. I again, I'm not a I've read all the books about these things, but that, the model that was picked up by so many organizations and NGOs is is you know, it's it's almost like counter revolutionary, it's almost counterproductive. Like you're intentionally trying to marginalize your base in silos, you know, so, so whatever we do, you know, I try to espouse that in folks, some of the work we've done around Austin and other parts of Texas, that's the route we go, talk about bills, talk about bills every time and then, you know, start to figure out what else is going on, you know. With ACORN, a major flaw in the national model was that they would want to sign people up to be bank draft members, like you, you'd push a card onto them, "Hey, send this card in with your bank info or something. And we'll sign you up, you know, so you get access to our help." And obviously, I didn't do that. And as the work evolved, and we got more people canvassing and doing the work, we didn't do that either. It went against our values. Now, if there were middle class people, people with more means, yeah, we'd asked them to do that, too.John Fiege  To contribute a certain amount each month.Dave Cortez  Yeah. But we also did things differently, in the sense of, we organized, we found, you know, folks who are highly motivated by the issues, students, artists, residents in the nearby communities who wanted to contribute, and contribute their time, That theory in the ACORN model of, you got to get people financially bought in to be committed, I think can be challenged and there's lots of ways to get people plugged in. And so, one other key here was, you know, I wasn't brand new, this work wasn't brand new. There had been people fighting ASARCO before I was involved, obviously, and it had ebbed and flowed in terms of how much community opposition from just, like, working class people was centered. There was a lot of wealthier folks, politico types, you know, people who worked for legislators or senators or city people, you know, academics, things like that. And there was a handful of working class people in a smattering of workers from plant workers. So our job was really to find more just like students and people in the impacted communities, but it had been going on for so long that people were really drained. You know, parents who, whose children had MS as a result of this or had other health problems, they eventually backed off because it was just too exhausting to go up against the machine of the Texas State Government and go testify, and struggle, and they just couldn't do it anymore. You know, so we had to find new people and inject new life. You know, we made it a point to work with some of the younger folks to start a--not really an acorn chapter--but just a group on the campus called students for reform. And those kids are amazing, a couple dozen students, Chicanos, for the most part, all going off to do awesome things in their lives. But for three, three years, four years, they they led the fight, they're on campus challenging the administration to disclose more information and trying to represent student opposition to the reopening of the smelter.John Fiege  I was looking up some articles about ASARCO. I found this this one 2010 article from John Burnett, who's a NPR correspondent based in Austin. So he talks about in 2009, the US Justice Department announced the settlement of one of the largest environmental bankruptcies in US history, in which ASARCO would pay a record $1.79 billion to settle claims for hazardous waste pollution in you know, at 80 sites, as many as 20 states, including the copper smelting operation in in El Paso. And he quotes some interesting community members like an 82 year old former maintenance worker named Miguel Beltran, who says, "you can't get a job here in El Paso compared to ASARCO, ASARCO is the best place to work. We were just like a family." And John Burnett, also quotes an anti-smelter activist named Debbie Kelly, who says, "They marketed very well. And the people of El Paso were brainwashed believed that this was the most wonderful thing El Paso could possibly have, this tall polluting contaminating smokestack." And this is this classic tension and environmental justice organizing. The big polluter in town is often the biggest and best paying employer as well, especially for folks with limited education. And these working folks often side with the company in some ways, and then at some times, kind of accepting the environmental problems for the economic opportunities. And the smokestack itself is this shining symbol of progress and prosperity that goes way back to the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. What was your experience with this tension between economic opportunity and environmental health in the organizing, and how that was represented in the media?Dave Cortez  Well, let's take a few cracks at it, because it's a big question. You know, I'll start with my family, two of my close family members worked at the plant, my dad's brother worked at the plant and then worked at Chevron on the other side of town. And then his brother in law, worked at the plant and retired. And here I was, this younger punk, you know, sort of just not super close to the family, showing up at events, and that's what I'm doing and "oh," they think, "I'm a paid protester," you know, forget my education, forget what I'm actually saying. You know, it's, it's deep cultural assimilation. It's deep colonization, sort of this Stockholm syndrome that develops out of poverty and repression. It's horrific. And it's sad to watch, you know, people fiercely defend the only thing that has helped them, in their eyes, and not be able to acknowledge the harm that's been done. It's not different from, you know, addiction in that way.  Or, or depression in that way. John Fiege  Right.  Or domestic abuse. Don't talk about it. Dave Cortez  Domestic abuse. Exactly. You know, it's heartbreaking. It still hurts me to talk about. But, you know, that was the case. And you know, in that situation, just try and make peace with your family just, you know, get through the gathering. And you go on in, you know, some of my family was very supportive, you know, like, "yeah, that stuff's bad, and we should do better." You don't get investments in the well being of a community that like say, in Austin and all this money flooding here and STEM education being invested in and, you know, pre K access and, you know, nature based education and Montessori education, things like that. All of this is part of that, that conflict that pushes you to try and find the best thing you can for your family. And any of the workers that I organized alongside say the same thing. They were so proud and happy--Daniel Adriano another sort of lead visible face against the reopening of smelter, he's a former steel worker, you know, he tells a story about like, his dad worked there, his uncle, his cousins, you know, it was just like a family thing, like everybody, if you could get a job at ASARCO, you knew you'd be okay. You could raise a family, maybe even your wife or your spouse, your partner wouldn't have to work. But, you know, behind that, that Golden Gate, there was a lot of things that people weren't being told. You know, things like, maybe you shouldn't be taking your work clothes home and washing them. Right. They sent people home to wash, and that's very common in heavy industry in the 80s 70s 80s and 90s, you know, these these companies do that. In Danny's case, his kids got sick, you know, and they developed health problems. And he points to that as part of the reason washing his clothes in the same machine with, as his kids clothes. His wife feels guilt about that. Heavy guilt. John Fiege  Yeah. That's hard. Dave Cortez  You know, it's violating. You know, they had them--that settlement came because they, well, in part because ASARCO was caught for illegally incinerating hazardous chemical weapons waste materials from Colorado, in the smelter in these men weren't told about it. And they shoveled this stuff in there and were exposed to, you know, not recycled waste, just direct waste from the Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wow facility, a weapons manufacturing facility, Dow Chemical weapons manufacturing facility. That stuff was burned and they were exposed. You know, it's infuriating. And once they learned that, and they were falling ill and they had some evidence, they tried to organize other workers, let them know former workers let them know what was going on. And, and they encountered the same thing that I encountered with my family: just like this, this wall of acceptance, this willful ignorance. You know, I don't know about that, you know, just like denial, denial. And that was really hard on them. They got ostracized, they lost a lot of friends. You know, and so they found allyship in other people whose families had been sick, residents on the other side of the river in the Colonias, whose children had been severely sick, who were bleeding every night because of bloody noses and heavy metal contamination. You know, they found allyship with Debbie Kelly in the current place, which is sort of a wealthier neighborhood, you know, the educated, more white affluent folks who didn't want the smelter around. And this, that's how the "Get the lead out" coalition really came together it was--you just had these different interests aligned around this lack of justice, but the worker piece was always--and the economic piece was always always, you know, the straw that would break our back. And when ASARCO hired a PR firm, Teresa Montoya, to build their campaign, their marketing campaign to reopen the smelter, that was their big thing. I want to work for ASARCO I want to work for ASARCO and they march out all these Chicanos and throw them in front of a plant in their hard hats and talk about the good jobs and the pay. You know, it's tough to compete with. I know the people in Port Arthur, in Corpus Christi, even down in Brownsville, you know, and you name it. John Fiege  It's the same story everywhere. It's the same story.Dave Cortez  In Appalachia, as well, with the coal miners. Absolutely. The amount of energy it takes to fight Goliath. You know, you never have enough you never have enough resources. You got a PR firm In, you know, this facility was owned and run ASARCO, Grupo Mexico owned by Carlos Slim, at the time the wealthiest man in the world, you know, like, you're never going to have enough just to stop the bad thing. How are you going to strategize and organize in a way where you're talking about building the good, and replacing it with something better and taking care of these people? It's doable, it absolutely is. But at the time, when you're in the sock like that, it's very hard to pivot. And it's very hard to motivate people who have resources to give you those resources to bring on people to pay them to do that work. It's a boxing match, take your hits, and wait for the time to throw a punch. You know, and I think one thing that really hurt people hurt ASARCO a lot, was when it came out that at their operations in Arizona, El Paso and elsewhere, in the 70s and 80s, they had been using health standards, health assessment screenings that were based on a false standard that black men and brown men had a 15% higher lung capacity than white men, therefore, they could be--they could work 15% longer, they could be exposed 15% more than white men. And that came out. And you know, we had some incredible, dedicated educated volunteers who were digging this information up, who were, you know, putting it to the to the news outlets. And without the news outlets putting that information out there, like the New York Times that put it out about the hazardous chemical weapons waste, you know, we wouldn't have been able to really punch back. But that stuff came out and then we could organize with it. We made materials out of it. I made sure everyone knew that, you know, this is the kind of crap that this place was built on, no matter what they say now you can't trust them. John Fiege  Right. Yeah. And this--another thing that John Burnett brought up in this NPR story is, he quotes some longtime community members who said that when the winds were blowing to the south toward Juarez in Mexico, the smelter would crank up production and send pollution directly into Mexico where they could, they could do nothing to regulate it or stop it even worse than in the US. And that's a pretty insidious and cynical route around US environmental regulations. American companies have this long history of sending their polluting factories and jobs overseas. But in El Paso, they could just send the pollution directly to Mexico while keeping the plant and the jobs in the US. Were you able to do any cross border organizing in El Paso to combat this kind of flagrant disregard for air pollution in Mexico?Dave Cortez  I wasn't able to myself, or it wasn't a choice I made to do myself on the broader scale. Marianna Chu, who worked at the time for the Sierra Club, and as an independent activist and organizer did a whole hell of a lot and deserves a ton of credit. Marianna, and others were also were able to build relationships in the Colonias and get to talk to people that were, you know, the definition of directly impacted, right on the other side of the river. You know, you drive through, you pass on I-10, and you look to the left where you're passing through downtown, and it's just colonias and that's Colonia Felipe and some students who we'd found and became acquainted with at UTEP and were filmmakers and they were able to get over into the colonias and document the lived experience of some of these folks, and it's horrific, and they made a short film, I'm happy to share called The Story of Cristo and it's a little boy, you know, who's like that, he's bleeding, bleeding every night, because he's got heavy metal contamination, two years old. You know, and that story spread. You know, it was similar to other families all throughout the Colonia. Dirt roads, just full of metal, not a lot that could be done unless there was funds provided for it. And part of that settlement in relation to the chemical weapons waste was that ASARCO would give money to an outfit in Mexico to pave those roads. You know, that's it. Accept no wrongdoing. No, no responsibility. We don't admit nothing but, here, take this and leave us alone.John Fiege  Literally, sweeping it under the rug. They're just laying asphalt over the dust.Dave Cortez  Absolutely. I mean, that's that's absolutely right. And, you know, one interesting intersection here with with the colonias there was, as we marched towards the end of 2007 and 2008. You know, we're still fighting the plant, it started to become more and more dangerous and people were less responsive, and less receptive to being interviewed on camera with our comrades, and the gangs, were starting to move in to the Colonia and control things more. And that was that it wasn't safe anymore you can, the last thing you should be doing is driving over there with a camera. And so those stories sort of drifted away, those folks. And we weren't able to really work with them a whole lot more, because the narco war was starting to take root.John Fiege  Because it's, it's how it's the same thing they do to fight you, they give your neighbor a job, and then and they get your neighbor working against you. Dave Cortez  Absolutely, I mean, you know, you're not going to go toe to toe with the same weapons, you got to find a way to find their weak spot and cut them at that weak spot. And, you know, I learned that, I learned that in this fight, you know, we weren't scared of these people. We weren't scared of their minions. We weren't scared of the, you know, the former workers who wanted the plant to open. We weren't scared of them. They tried. Everybody tried to intimidate you, you know, but I'll start with, with that part, first, as a critical strategy. My, you know, 23 year old high energy, Mohawk wearin' self, right, like, I thought I knew it all and was ready to go, just like against that jerk down on Red River Street in Austin. And, you know, the first public meeting, debate, whatever, that we helped organize, some of those, those workers were there outside and they were, you know, they pick a smaller person, a woman to argue with, and she ain't scared of them. But you know, soon enough, there's, there's four or five of them around her and oh, man, you know, machismo is something all of us from the border suffered from and that kicked in hard. You just get into it with these guys. But, you know, that is not the way, that is not the way. You know, arguing and fighting, especially with the people, even though they're trying to get you to do it. The people who want a job in these facilities, the community members who just want a better way for their life, you cannot let the people at the top pit us against each other. That's why it's so important to be anchored in community talking about the nuance, you know, how to step and where, what to look out for, and really trying to build together, it has to be at the forefront.John Fiege  Isn't that the history of American industrial capitalism, that for it to work, the, the industrialists need to pit various groups of people against one another, whether it's along lines of race, or income, or religion, or geography, or immigration status, or, or whatever. Like, that's, that's how it works. You need to divide people by those things, so they don't get together and they don't, they don't form a allegiances.Dave Cortez  That's right. That's right. I mean, it's, but it's not something that's created by the oligarchs and the industrial capitalists and the power holders. It's something that they exploit, right? It's a, it's a wound that's already there. And, you know, it's something that concerns me greatly about broader civil society, and our failures to build community, in relationship in brotherhood and sisterhood. You know, in a true spirit of mutual solidarity, the more that we neglect doing that work, the easier it is for something to divide us or someone to exploit it, we see it, there's an endless amount of examples we can point to. But if you start your work in trying to build something better, and build through a positive relationship, it's going to feed in the long run, it'll help you endure all of the struggles that are going to come the conflicts, you know, the the infighting, the personality disagreements, whatever, you got to have some foundation and I learned that from that, that night outside the UTEP Library arguing with these guys that, "No, we got to we got to find a way to work with these workers. We got to really center the fact that people need work in jobs." And and that's where, you know, I really started to become close with, not the guys I argued with, other workers who were already disaffected, Charlie Rodriguez, and Danielle Riano and Efrain Martinez and others. You know, they became, in some ways they already were but from my work, they became the center of what we're trying to do and focus on, that this is actually not what we want these, these jobs are not the kind that we need, because look what they did to me. And so that's one piece. We've got to find a way to get people more meaningfully involved with the policies we're trying to change, so there's just a far greater number of people pushing for positive investment in something that is, you know, not just like NGO staff, you know, like, the less NGO staff and those boardrooms, the better. You know, get every day, people in their meeting, pressing for these decisions, and calling for it, and that makes it much harder for the special interests to push push their own agenda.John Fiege  Well, that's a good transition to Occupy Wall Street. So in 2011, Occupy Wall Street began in New York City in Zuccotti Park. And then the movement quickly spread around the world, including to Austin. And I know you were heavily involved in Occupy Austin, and its campaign to get the city to divest from commercial banks. I participated in a couple of those occupy Austin Bank actions. And I don't think I'd met you yet. But, you know, as many people might remember, one of the big discussions and debates around Occupy was whether and how to organize and whether to make formal demands, which always makes me think of Frederick Douglass who famously said, "power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did. And it never will." But those words from Frederick Douglass, were not the guiding light of many occupy organizers and participants, I'd love to hear you talk a bit about your experience with Occupy Austin, and the internal debates and conflicts about what it was and how it should operate. And what you brought away from that whole experience that you put into your organizing work after that. Dave Cortez  Yeah, it was one of the most exciting times of my life so far, you know, to be able to three, four, sometimes five nights a week, meet up with 50 to 60 people not at a general assembly, but a working group meeting, and everybody's there ready to, you know, talk and break out and figure out the next step for getting people to close bank accounts. And, you know, organizing the rally and building the art and all those things. It was organic. I'm so happy that, I'm fortunate to have that experience in this city, and in this country. It was real, you see the romanticized version of uprisings in film, in writing, and on the news, different ways around the world. But, you know, this was that, at least the closest I've been to it, and it wasn't just the, you know, the sign holding, and, you know, petition gathering, we did all that. But it was, I mean, like people were, people were in, you know, the sacrifice time away from whatever they had going on around them to contribute to something better, and I have never seen an appetite, so large for participating and contributing to something that can change the world. I've seen it tried to be engineered a whole lot by NGOs. And it's laughable. It's insulting, you know, but for me at the time, it was it was like a dream come true. I remember a week before occupy launch, there was a meeting happening at Ruta Maya, and the room was full of people, and, you know, a bunch of white dudes, hippie yoga types on stage, you know, talking about some stuff, but I'm up there front row, just, you know, like, eager. And just like listening, I'm like, "This is great," you know, so they open the mic for everybody to come up and have something to say. And it was awesome. I'd just never seen it. You know, I was like, "wow, this is the Austin I always wanted to see," you know. Sure enough there was a meeting after that the next day, and the next day after that. And that kind of continued on for a few days. And then and then there was the day of the launch and lots of people packing City Hall. I mean, you couldn't move there were so many people out there and there were people talking for hours. Everybody was just willing to stay. And you know, I can't, I just can't believe how patient people were for weeks. And just like hanging out. You know, I think they just wanted something different. And they wanted to be part of something, like I said, Now, me, day one. I'm like, "yo, if we're gonna be out here, we need some data." And I got my clipboard. And my dear friend and former partner Betsy had been working for a group that was doing foreclosure organizing and getting people to move their bank accounts or close their bank accounts. And so, you know, I got some, some materials from her and took up like six clipboards, to the to the rally. And that was my whole shtick was just like, "Hey, y'all, we should close our corporate bank accounts," and people loved it. You know, it was like, "hey, here goes, put your name down, if you want to help out," and I mean, I filled up pages and pages of this thing, people who wanted to help out or close their bank accounts. And from that, you know, like, you'd find more people that were like, "Hey, I used, you know, I can help with that. And I used to work at a bank," or, you know, "I've got some time on my hands," you know. And so we, it was rad, because while all the noise was happening, the day to day that people were more familiar with Occupy Wall Street. You know, the the General Assemblies, the infighting, the conflicts with the unhoused folks and things like that, we had this parallel track of our bank action crew, which was doing, building switch kits, and, you know, trying to reach out to people to, you know, help walk them through how to close their bank accounts and stuff like that, or organize marches on the bank, so people could go in and come out and cut their credit cards, so we could all celebrate, you know, like, that was, that was great. That's classic organizing. I, you know, if you weren't down in City Hall, every day for that first month, you're missing out on something, you know, I don't think people appreciate enough how much work people invested into trying to maintain a space, like, maintaining a physical encampment is, you know, the people with the most knowledge on how to operate a small, little civil society is the people have been doing it before, which is our unhoused folks, you know. And there was a huge class conflict, that really emerged quickly, that the police and the city manager and others began to exploit, you know, by trying to bring more unhoused folks down to City Hall, allowing some to sell and distribute drugs, not enforcing any oversight, you know, we had women attacked, you know, and attempted assaults and things like that, that they were just looking the other way on. Because they wanted this to go away. And it was up to us to figure out how to manage that. And that really became the core of the non-bank action, kind of conversations. You know, everybody wanted to do solidarity with everything else. But it was really about, like, how do we keep this thing going? And how do we maintain our presence here? You know, do you negotiate with the city? Who negotiates? Who's responsible? Do we just say, you know, F-U, we're not going to talk to you all, you know, but like, through all that, like, some amazing friendships were developed, and I mean, like bonds, true, real friendships, and people may not be super close anymore, but all it would take is a phone call or text to bring people back together. You know, it's something I'll just value for the rest of my life.John Fiege  Yeah, totally. And in 2015, The Austin Chronicle named you the best environmental activist in Austin for your work as, "The heart and soul of Sierra Club's 'Beyond Coal' campaign in Central Texas." And I know you've done all kinds of work with the Sierra Club. But I wondered if you could talk about what the fight has been like to transition from dirty energy to clean energy in Texas, which, of course is the oil capital of the country. And looking over the years you've been doing this work, what stands out? What have you learned from this massive campaign?Dave Cortez  Like you said, it's Texas, we're the number one carbon emitter in the country, and a huge one in the world and the United States cannot meet the modest two week goals in the Paris Accords unless Texas gets its act together, you know, and we got some real problems here, not just from fossil fuel pollution, but from industrial and toxic pollution and just from our livelihoods, you know, there's another story out yesterday, you know, are we going to have power next week, because we're going to hit hit the peak of the summer. You know, it's hard to think about the fight for clean energy in Texas without thinking about the power of the fossil fuel and industrial industries. There's there's been a battle since 2000 and 2005 to stop new power plants and advocate for clean energy. The fuel type changes and you know, back then it was coal and then it is gas and and now, it's like, oh my god, we just don't have enough power. Now, how do we get it? But it's still the, you know, trade associations, the Association of Electric Companies in Texas, you know, Oncor, which is an electric distributor company, NRG, you go down the line, Energy Transfer Partners, all of these fossil fuel corporations, making billions and billions of dollars, still call the shots, they still influence, and basically direct, decision makers on what is going to be acceptable in terms of, even, discussion. You can't even get a hearing in the state legislature on flaring reduction, which is a very modest thing. Because they have enough influence to make sure that that conversation is not even going to happen. And their members, like Energy Transfer Partners, and others are some of the biggest donors to politicians in the state. So, you know, why shouldn't we listen to those people? Kelsy Warren, Dakota Access Pipeline CEO, behind Energy Transfer Partners, gave a million dollars, his largest donation ever to Governor Abbott, right immediately after the legislative session. And this is after his company made well over a billion dollars, I think it's closer to $2 billion, coming out of the winter storm, Energy Transfer Partners. While people died, these people decided it would make better financial sense and profit sense to go ahead and withhold supplies of gas to power plants and gas utilities, and let the price go up before they would deliver that gas and therefore make a ton of money. Forget that more than you know, some say 200, some say 700 people died, many of them freezing to death, many of them carbon monoxide poisoning during the storm, forget that. It's all about the money. And that's the biggest takeaway here, just like we would be fighting Carlos Slim, and ASARCO and other folks, you got to look at what the interest is, you know, why are people supporting this? Why are they facilitating this? I know, it's easy to just say, well, we just got to vote these people out. Well, you know, we've got to come up with strategies that will allow us to do that. We've got to come up with strategies that will make it so, in this state that's so heavily corrupt and captured by corporate interests, fossil fuel interests, industrial interests, that we're going to find a way to cut into their enabling electorate. Their enabling base. And it's more than just a voter registration strategy. It's more than just a mobilization strategy, or getting people to sign a petition, it gets back to what we started talking about with ACORN. What is their base? Where are they? What are their interests? And where does it make sense to try and make some inroads, and cut away? And unfortunately, we just don't have enough of that happening in Texas. There's an effort to try to build coalitions with, you know, some social justice and some youth focused organizations. But we're all part of that same progressive "groupthink" or Democratic base, that we're not actually doing much to expand, other than registering some new voters. And there's a lot of unpacking that needs to happen. You know, can we go talk to some steel workers or some people on the Texas-Mexico border, who started to vote more for Republicans and Trump, because they were worried about the Green New Deal? They're worried about losing their oil jobs. Why, I mean, like, to this day, we haven't made that pivot collectively as a movement, and it's hella frustrating.John Fiege  Yeah, it gets back to what we were talking about earlier with, you know, kind of the DNA of environmental justice orientation to this work, the work has to be intersectional if you want to transition Texas, the oil capital of the world, to to non-fossil fuel based energy, you know, you need to deal with, with voting rights, you need to deal with the bad education system, you need to deal with healthcare issues, you need to deal with police brutality, and you know, it's like it's all connected. To think that we can remove this issue of decarbonizing our energy source from all of that other, you know, what some people see as messy stuff is delusional, it just doesn't doesn't work, doesn't make sense. Especially, and it's so obvious in places like Texas, where, you know, what are they doing? They're just trying to, they're trying to suppress the vote, like, they know what the deal is, you know, they're they're losing numbers. They need to disenfranchise more voters in order to maintain this system. Dave Cortez  You know, there's an important caveat and distinction for environmentalists, environmental justice folks, or whatever. You know, if you talk to John Beard with Port Arthur Community Action Network, you know, he's a former steel worker. His whole pitch in Port Arthur is about youth engagement jobs, investing in the community. He's willing to talk to the companies, things like that. It's not environmental-first type of thinking. But the enviros, and you'll see this any legislative session, if you pay attention, we are on the far losing side of the losers. Okay, the Democrats being the losers, you know, Democrats in Texas carry House Bill 40, which is the ban on fracking bans. You know, Mrs. T, Senator Senfronia Thompson out of Houston, she authored that bill, Black Democrat, you know, revered for her work on voting rights and reproductive justice. You know, enviros, we are way, way out of the mix. And so even if we got those organizations doing the work you're talking about, to speak about climate change, speak about the grid, you know, pollution, things like that, we'd still be part of that losing side. And I'm not saying we need to need to be building out into red country, or rural country. It's a critique of the broader progressive movement that we aren't doing enough to find people, the greater majority of people that don't participate in our process, in politics, in voting, except in presidential elections. We are not doing enough to reach people who are just going about their lives and do not give a s**t about the things that we post online about our petitions or positions, or our op-eds, or whatever. That is where the fight is, we've got to draw more people in while the right wing tries to keep more people out. That's our only pathway. And so--John Fiege  What does a just transition mean to you?Dave Cortez  It's what we've been talking about, it's a whole shift in, you know, the operating system of a of a community, whether it's a town of 50,000 people or a state of, you know, 25 million. Just transition means that we're taking into full consideration, our triple bottom line, you know, our health, and shelter, and food, you know, our economics, our jobs, and ability to put, you know, bring income and get the things that we need. And, you know, just the land and our ecology. Just transition has to anchor that we are--that those things are connected, and that they're not--they can't be separated, that in order for our families, and our children and our neighbors and all that, to have a future and have a livelihood, we need to be concerned about our air quality, concerned about our water quality, but also about the quality of their education, the access to healthy food and grocery stores. If you were to talk to people and ask them to envision what, you know, their dream society looks like, which is a hard thing for people to do nowadays. You know, you'll hear some of these things and just transition is the process that we take to get there. It's not about you know, getting a worker from a fossil fuel job into a clean energy job.John Fiege  Well, and speaking of that, you know, in addition to your beyond coal and just transition work, you've done a lot of work with low income communities of color in Austin around a whole assortment of things: illegal dumping, access to green space, community solar and solar equity, green gentrification among among a bunch of other stuff. Can you talk about gentrification and how Austin has changed in the time you've been there and the tension that's emerged about Austin becoming one of the greenest but also increasingly one of the least affordable cities in the country? Dave Cortez  Yeah it's tough. People in Austin are largely still here to just party, have fun, make money. You know, they're really eager to do what they moved here for, you know, go do the cool thing and the restaurant, and the corporate soccer game and whatnot, you know, fine, whatever, I'm not trying to harp on people who want to have a good time, the problem is that there's no thread of the greater good of civil society, of trying to care for those in town that struggle and have the least. That doesn't exist here. It's just, it has lessened every year, it might be new people moving here might be more money here, and people being displaced. But you know, for the most part, with gentrification, the white wealthy middle class here is strong, you know, median family income is close to $90,000, you know, qualifying for affordable housing, you can make a ton of money and still qualify for affordable housing. And the people that move in, my brother calls them the new pilgrims. They're not super interested in learning what was there before, they're interested in what's around them now, and what might come in the future. And we do have a responsibility to make sure that we not just offer up but press on people at the doors, at community events, you know, cool, fun, s**t, barbecues and things like that, to learn what was there before they came, you know, sort of an onboarding into the neighborhood. And we did some of this in Montoplis, my old neighborhood that I lived in before I moved to South Austin, you know, people who I was like, "man, they're never going to help us," they're just, you know, part of that new white, middle class "new pilgrim." When I learned the history of the community, and the issues that were going on, I said, "Hell, yeah, whatever I can do," from, you know, cooking funding, speaking, writing letters, coming to meetings, you name it, you know, but we had to keep on 'em. And we had to give them a meaningful task. There is a lot of power, gentrification sucks. But I've really tried to work with myself on not being--automatically hating folks for just trying to move in into a home. But you do have to challenge folks on how they behave after they've moved in, you know, in Austin with our urban farming and desire for new urbanism and density and things like that, the culture of I know what's best is so thick, and it's really hard to stay patient. But I try to, even when I get mad and angry and frustrated, I try to remind people of what's called the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing, and the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond's Principles of Anti-Racism, encourage them to read them, and to do everything they can to just shut the F up, and go listen to the people that they're talking about in affected communities. And get a sense of where you might be able to build some common ground.John Fiege  I actually wanted to spend a minute on that because, you know, you started, or you were one of the organizers, who started environmental justice group in Austin years ago, and I went to a bunch of the meetings. And I feel like that's where, you know, we got to start hanging out a bunch for the first time. But you would always start the meetings with the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing. And, you know, those came out of this meeting hosted by the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice and Jemez, New Mexico back in the 90s. Can you talk more specifically about the principles and why they're important to the work you're doing?Dave Cortez  So when you're thinking about undoing racism, or being an antiracist or antiracism work, you know, you're acknowledging that you're confronting a built system, something that's built under a false construct, race, you know, and when you're going to combat that, there's, you know, there's a lot of issues to it or whatever, but the Jemez principles will help you see, how do you approach people and talk about it? You know, for example, listen, let people speak is one of the principles, you know, listen to the people on the ground. Don't barge in there don't don't come in with your your petition and your fancy stuff and, or be online and be a dick. You know, go try to introduce yourself and get to know people. You know, ask questions. That's okay. You know, people were very generous for the most part, whether they're Black or Brown or or Native or Asian, or you name it, you know? If you're able to ask questions and listen about an issue, people will likely talk, you know. Trying to work in solidarity and mutuality is another big one for me, you know, it's not just about like, "I'm here to help you," versus, "I'm here because our struggles are connected and intertwined. And for me and my family to be successful and get what we need, it depends on your family, and your people being successful and getting what you need. How can we work together to make sure that we everything we do reinforces that and that we lift each other up?" A lot of things that we see is very transactional in the advocacy and activism world, you know, sign this, and then we'll go do that for you, or will tell the person to do the thing and change? It's not so much how can what can we do to help you directly, like we talked about bills and taxes and things like that. But also, we have to know that, what is it we're gonna get out of it, it's not just this potential policy outcome. There's tremendous value in human relationships. And in culture and community building, you're going to learn about the people in your community, you're going to learn about the history, you're going to learn, you know, and make new friends and maybe some recipes, maybe, you know, some new music or something. It's limitless. You know, humans have tremendous potential in beauty. But we we rob ourselves of that by, you know, retreating into our silos in our, in our four walls. You know, Jemez can give something--these are short, short, little principles that can give people something to read and reflect on, they can be kind of abstract and theory based, but when you're advocating for change, and then you look at these and you ask yourself, "sm I doing this?" There's tremendous potential for learning, and changing how we do our work.John Fiege  And the Sierra Club is one of the oldest large-scale environmental groups in the world. And it's traditionally been a white organization. Its founder John Muir made racist remarks about Black and Indigenous people, and in 2020, the Sierra Club officially apologized for those remarks and the white supremacist roots of the organization. In Texas, with your work and your presence, I feel like you've really helped the Sierra Club evolve there, where you are, and you th

I'm glad you liked the description. I apologize for the mistake about Mehrshad. I will correct that and add more hashtags related to Austin and podcasts. Here is the updated description: ``` Welcome to another episode of Tea With Rami, where Rami and his guests have candid conversations about various topics over a cup of tea. In this episode, Rami is joined by his friend Mehrshad, who is also an Austin resident and a lover of podcasts. They talk about how Austin has changed over the years, and how they feel about the city they love. They start by sharing their favorite places to eat in Austin, such as Franklins and Stubbs, which are famous for their BBQ. They also mention some of the food trucks that offer diverse and delicious cuisines. They then move on to talk about the iconic places that make Austin special, such as Zilker Park, Barton Springs, and the Capitol. They recall some of the fun and memorable experiences they had at these places, and how they reflect the culture and spirit of Austin. They also discuss the music scene in Austin, which is known as the Live Music Capital of the World. They talk about some of the artists and genres that they enjoy, and how music is an integral part of Austin's identity. They also pay tribute to Austin legend Willie Nelson, who is a symbol of the city's musical heritage and influence. They then switch to talk about the challenges that Austin faces, such as traffic, gentrification, and loss of friendliness. They share their frustrations and concerns about the congestion on IH 35, which is one of the worst highways in the country. They also talk about the impact of Elon Musk's presence in Austin, and his plans to build tunnels to ease the traffic problem. They wonder if this will be a good or bad thing for Austin, and how it will affect the environment and the community. They also talk about how Austin is becoming more expensive and less diverse, as more people and businesses move in from other states. They worry that this will change the character and vibe of Austin, and make it less welcoming and friendly. They also express their support for Austin FC, the city's first professional soccer team, which they hope will bring more unity and excitement to Austin. Despite the changes, they still love Austin for its food trucks, music, and BBQ. They agree that Austin is still an amazing city, with a lot of potential and opportunities. They end the conversation by thanking each other and the viewers for watching, and inviting them to share their thoughts on Austin in the comments. If you enjoyed this video, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe to Talk2Rami for more episodes of Tea With Rami. Let us know in the comments what you think about Austin and how it has changed over the years. Thank you for watching and stay tuned for the next episode of Tea With Rami. #TeaWithRami #Austin #Talk2Rami #Podcast #BBQ #Music #ElonMusk #WillieNelson #AustinFC

Some are old, some are new, some are wild, and some are blue. Bachelorette parties can often be too much or too little. It can be hard to please everyone, especially with a group of different personality types. In reality, the only one who needs to have the time of their life is the bride, but it's always better when everyone has a great time!When I flew to Austin, Texas, for my future sister in law's bachelorette party, I did not know what to expect. I had never been to Austin, and I had never met any of the girls coming besides Jess (my now sister-in-law) and her maid of honor, Natalie. I was pleasantly surprised by the entire trip and the people I was with. We had an absolute blast, getting along famously, and got a little bit of everything Austin had to offer in just a few short days.When to Go and Where to Stay.The best time to visit Austin is in March when there is lots of sunshine, but the weather isn't too hot yet, and the air is breezy and filled with the blooming of Texas spring. For a bachelorette party, there are many excellent Airbnbs to choose from. Their price ranges are very fair. Plus, staying in a house with a group for bonding is always better!Lunch/BrunchFor a fantastic Tex-Mex spot, try Gueros Taco Bar. I had some of the best breakfast tacos I have ever had, and I also got a frozen margarita that was top-notch. My favorite lunch spot was, hands down, Terry Black's BBQ. The brisket melted in my mouth, and because I was so stuffed, I took my cornbread on the plane ride home with me!ShoppingThe streets of downtown Austin were lined with thrift booths and handmade jewelry. From cowboy boots to handmade copper jewelry and unique fringe jackets, this little shopping area was such a blast! I got a super cute floral blazer at one of the vintage vendor booths. When moseying around downtown, don't forget to get an "insta pic" with the famous "I love you so much" wall downtown!Dinner My favorite dinner spot was at the Oasis. This is a MUST-do when in Austin. The entire restaurant, bar, and shopping center sit on the cliff overlooking the gorgeous Lake Travis. The view is spectacular and unlike anything I have ever seen. It had a serenity, and you felt like you were looking at a coastal area in Greece! You can eat excellent Mexican food on the cliff with the view of the setting sun. The stars come out after and set in a rich blue-shaded sky that looks like the ocean. For a fancier dinner night, try Il Bruto. Il Bruto is a charming Italian-inspired eatery nestled within the heart of the city. It is a mix of rustic, stylish, and cozy! Renowned for its handmade pasta dishes crafted with fresh, locally sourced ingredients, Il Bruto is basically traditional Italian cuisine mixed with innovative twists. SnacksMy favorite local culinary delight had to be the Kolache. Originating from Central Europe, this delectable pastry is a sweet treat filled with an array of delightful fillings like fruit, cheese, jam, or meat. Crafted from a yeast-based dough, it's then generously stuffed with the chosen filling before being baked to perfection. Kolaches are widely enjoyed as a breakfast staple across various countries, including the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and the United States. In the late 1880s, Czech immigrants brought the tradition of Kolache to Texas, and it soon found its place in Texan culture!DancingAustin has a poppin' party scene! Whether you are looking for a club vibe or boot scootin', you will be pleased. Some hot bars were the Neon Grotto, Shangri-La, Sam's Town Point. Also, check out Rainey Street, where a local told us the fun is at. The night we went out on the town, we stopped at Domo Alley-Gato Tatsu-Ya for drinks, went to Il Bruto for dinner, and learned to western dance with some real cowboys at The White Horse. Texan VinoIf you are with a group of wine girlies, check out The Duchman Family Winery in Driftwood, Texas. This hidden gem sits at the heart of the Texas Hill Country, and they're all about crafting wines that scream Texas pride. From their vineyard tours to tasting sessions, they're all about letting your group hang out while letting you sip on some funky vinos. And guess what? They only use Texas-grown grapes, so you know you're getting a taste of the Lone Star State in every glass. When we went, the weather was perfect, and we continued bonding in the breezy yard out front of the winery. Whether you're into a zesty Vermentino or a bold Aglianico, a trip to the Duchman Family Winery is a fabulous place to hang out in the sunshine and taste Texas charm.Outdoor ActivitiesAustin has beautiful scenery with a mix of rolling hills, rivers, and cityscape. It also has quite a few natural hidden gems. The two-mile hike to Hamilton Pool Preserve was quiet, & relaxing. It was non-strenuous, and the rocky cliffs and sparkling streams were serene. The pool was spectacular, but the water was cold! I took a relaxing nap in the warm sun with the sound of the trickling water. Another must-see spot is Zilker Park. Here, you can relax in the cool river or rent kayaks and adventure through the calm water. We saw so many turtles tanning on logs and Grackle birds. We kayaked through the tranquil water under bridges, getting a great view of the city. Afterwards, we relaxed in the park and had a little picnic with the view of the city behind us. Austin, Texas is the ultimate destination for an unforgettable bachelorette party. With its lively atmosphere, diverse entertainment options, and vibrant nightlife, Austin offers the perfect backdrop for celebrating the bride-to-be in style. From indulging in mouthwatering barbecue and craft cocktails on Rainey Street to dancing the night away to live music on Sixth Street, there's no shortage of excitement in this bustling city. With its abundance of trendy boutique hotels, scenic outdoor activities, and pampering spas, Austin provides endless opportunities for relaxation and adventure alike. Whether cruising down Lady Bird Lake on a party barge or exploring the city's eclectic shops and art galleries, Austin promises a bachelorette party experience that's as unique and memorable as the bride herself.

Welcome to BG Podcast Episode 225! On this episode the Bingham Group CEO A.J. Bingham and Associate Hannah Garcia wrap up the weeks of November 27th in Austin politics. TOPICS INCLUDE: ✅ The Home Options for Middle-income Empowerment (HOME) Initiative and what's ahead at Council. ✅ Council's passage of public safety stations as community benefit eligible for density bonuses ✅ Barton Springs potential renaming LISTEN ON! Reference links: ✅ Council Member Leslie Pool's office created a HOME hub to consolidate information -> https://www.atxhomecoalition.com ✅ Agenda for 12.7. 2023 Austin City Council Special Called Meeting -> https://www.austintexas.gov/department/city-council/2023/20231207-spec.htm EPISODE 225 ABOUT THE BINGHAM GROUP, LLC Bingham Group works to advance the interests of businesses, nonprofits, and associations at the municipal and state level. Follow Bingham Group on LinkedIn at: bit.ly/3WIN4yT Learn more about today's hosts at: ✅ A.J. Bingham -> https://www.binghamgp.com/ajbingham ✅ Hannah Garcia -> https://www.binghamgp.com/hannah-garcia Contact us at: info@binghamgp.com www.binghamgp.com

In this long awaited podcast episode, I speak with Architect and Broker Associate Brian Linder, AIAA seasoned real estate professional with 20 years of experience in high-end, custom residential design and construction and a master's degree in architecture, Brian Linder, AIA, brings design-oriented expertise to the buying and selling of estates, architectural properties and historic residences.Over the course of his career, Brian has represented some of the most notable properties in Los Angeles, including work by Rudolf Schindler, Angélil/Graham, Coop Himmelblau and Eric Owen Moss. His sophisticated eye and understanding of complex real estate transactions have enabled him to assist buyers in finding value for their investment at every level of spending. A skilled marketer and Certified Negotiation Expert, Brian has also helped owners and developers market distinctive projects, from land with plans through the construction of speculative ventures. Viewing architecture as an opportunity, he brings his expertise to help buyers find the most interesting, well-designed homes available in their price range, and to help sellers get the highest possible prices for their special architect-designed homes.Brian has built his real estate practice around a concept he calls “The Value of Architecture.” This concept is based on the notion that architectural homes provide countless lifestyle benefits, carry greater premiums, and tend to be less sensitive to market fluctuations. Brian leads the ongoing UCLA Extension course “The Value of Architecture” and has further developed this thesis in presentations to the American Institute of Architects, the Society of Architectural Historians and various local and national audiences. Brian is also committed to promoting architecture as art, featuring the work of practicing architects, including Marmol Radziner, Pugh Scarpa, and Patrick Tighe, on his website.Brian spent several years as an architect and construction manager before earning his broker's license and joining the firm formerly known as Mossler Deasy & Doe, the original marketers of architectural real estate in Los Angeles. Licensed in California, Texas and Washington, Brian has since been involved in the sale of architectural properties from Southern to Northern California and marketed out-of-state properties as far afield as New Canaan, Connecticut. In addition to working out of Compass's Beverly Hills office, Brian holds court in Austin, Texas and has sold numerous architectural homes in a wide radius, including properties in Marfa, Texas, the minimalist modern art and architecture mecca.When he's not representing clients in real estate, Brian enjoys spending time with his kids, doing hot yoga several times a week—sometimes followed by a cold plunge in the ocean or Barton Springs when in Austin—hiking, mountain biking, surfing, touring architectural homes, organic gardening and chicken husbandry (he has seven raised beds and eight laying hens in his front yard), traveling, meditation and Native American studies. Brian holds a BS in Business Administration from Carnegie Mellon University and MA in Architecture from UCLA. He is an active member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and certified by the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards.Here's a link to his website:  https://thevalueofarchitecture.com/Link to Blog:https://inmawomanarchitect.blogspot.com/2023/09/interview-podcast-w-brian-linder-aia-of.html

In this episode of the weekly recap, audio editor Aislyn Gaddis talks with Texan reporters about The Friendly Rio Market, a corner store that doubles as a music venue, and Hole in the Wall, a historical music venue that just secured a 20-year lease. Plus, a 100-year-old pecan tree at Barton Springs might have to be removed because of a fungal infection. Reported by Diego Saldana, Kylee Howard and Sarah Brager. Hosted and produced by Aislyn Gaddis. Cover art by Emma Berke. Music by Top Flow Productions

We discuss whether having a large penis can trigger TSA security at the airport,  which of us would be better suited to survive a zombie apocalypse, and Emily taking her boyfriend to Barton Springs for the first time.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The worst answer ever given was given, Barton Springs, Survivor adds a wrinkle and Hot Wheels.

(Episode 3) In the 1990s, Austin voters passed landmark protections for parts of southwest Austin that sit on top of the aquifer that feeds Barton Springs. That set off a chain of events that had a profound effect on how the city would grow in the coming decades. The full transcript of this episode of […] The post Listen to This Podcast or We’ll Poison Barton Springs appeared first on KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts.

Join Glenn and Lee for a Juicy BoomATX episode featuring the Austin original JuiceLand's Founder and CEO Matt Shook!  This episode has it all, slackers, BBQ, juice cleanses, George Bush, banana cars, banana dolphins and so much more.Whether a natural juice and smoothy fan or not, give this episode a listen today and you will fall in love with Matt's JuiceLand story.  It really is your typical slacker loves Barton Springs, needs a job, buys a juice joint, rides in a banana and gets the girl love story! Check it out and do a juice cleanse with us!BoomATX - Interesting Austinites Doing Interesting Things!

Monologue:Stephenson Building Project by the City of Dripping SpringsWTF Sink Water or Bottled Water? The  Worst Bottled Water and the Best Bottled WaterHistory of Barton Springs Swimming PoolAlgae in Town LakeGuest:Bill Bunch is an environmental attorney who has worked on behalf of the Sierra Club, Hill Country Foundation, Travis Audubon Society, Texas Rivers Protection Association, Texas Center for Policy Studies, San Marcos River Foundation, as well as private landowners and neighborhood groups. However, he has been most active with the Save Our Springs Alliance, where he serves as executive director. The Alliance has been deeply involved in protecting Barton Springs and other major springs of the Edwards Aquifer. Their efforts have included pressing for development and enforcement of water quality ordinances, listing of endangered and threatened species, shifting development to less sensitive sites, acquiring conservation lands, and promoting environmental education.  Bill has led the SOS Alliance's lawsuit against the City of Dripping Springs trying to overturn the Discharge Permit granted by the State of Texas that would allow the City to improve wastewater access in Dripping Springs. Steve Mallett and Michelle Lewis meet the most interesting people, and discover the places and events that make Dripping Springs, Texas, a Hill Country oasis. Learn why every year, hundreds of people move to this small town just outside of Austin. Every episode features a local resident who's talent and past will make you want to know more about what draws so many unique people to this historical town. From ranchers to engineers, cowboys to entrepreneurs, bankers to bull riders. New episodes weekly.Support the showThanks for listening! Make sure to follow us & leave a review. Apple PodcastsMallett and Michelle on InstagramOur Website - Sign up for latest updates. We love your feedback & comments. Email: mallettandmichelle@gmail.com

Good Morning Gus! From Hot L Coffee (which is actually the Carpenter Coffee Bar), its a hot episode of ANMA. It's a warm day south of the river so Gus and Geoff talk about Geoff's disappointment, Barton Springs tips, 20th anniversary, Chuy's memories, Botanical Garden, Comic Con, The changing skyline, Kite festival, & Danger in Dallas. RTX is coming up July 7-9 and we'll be doing a live episode. get tickets now at www.rtxaustin.com Sponsored by Shady Rays  http://shadyrays.com + code ANMA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mei-Lan Maurits is an intuitive singer who has dedicated her life to the awakening of our planet with her voice and music. James Gibson is a musician, producer and composer and Mei-lan's life partner. Together, they create magic. In this first episode of Stars & Destruct, Juliana Spicoluk, Mark Spicoluk, Mei-lan Maurits and James Gibson talk about camper vans, Skrillex, Costa Rica vs. Austin, parenting, channeling, healing & fear, parents, country stars, The Artist's Way and how Mei-lan began to sing. Sponsors: BOHO BEAUTIFUL ASCENSION: This next level yoga program explores the deeper dimensions of optimizing your physical body, conscious mind & divine spirit. Over 40 videos of yoga and meditation to rise to your next level: www.bohobeautiful.life/ascension Use the code STARSMEILAN FOR 20% OFF MEI-LAN'S MUSIC SANCTUARY Check out Mei-lan's amazing sound healing and meditation catalog by accessing her custom app: www.mei-lan.app Learn more about stars+destruct.: Website: www.starsanddestruct.com IG: www.instagram.com/starsanddestruct Get to know the hosts of stars+destruct.: Juliana Spicoluk: www.julianaspicoluk.com IG: www.instagram.com/juliana.spicoluk Mark Spicoluk: www.markspicoluk.com IG: www.instagram.com/mark.spicoluk Stardust: Mei-lan Maurits https://www.mei-lan.app YT: https://www.youtube.com/c/Meilanmaurits IG: https://www.instagram.com/meilanmaurits/?hl=en Other topics we discuss in this episode: Co-creation, the music industry, Queen of The Bush, new beginnings, Barton Springs, The Artist's Way, the exodus to Austin, Mei-lan's creative Process, survival patterns, new beginnings… stars+destruct. manifesto We have chosen this apparatus to explore a wild cosmos of minds, to awaken our hearts and to expand ourselves. To step off the mat & live the practice of unity. Each & everyone of us sees the world through our own unique light. And amidst this constructed space we wish to connect our lights as constellations, beyond opinion. To dissolve false narratives that divide us. To stand tall with one another's truths. To learn to hold different perspectives simultaneously. To free the path to the stars. To create cosmos out of chaos. “I have lived with several Zen masters -- all of them cats.” ― Eckhart Tolle “After this whole acting thing is over and done, you eventually have to be human. Some people are never human. It's very weird.” ― Joe Rogan “Compassion is the radicalism of our time.” ― Dalai Lama … remember to look up

As massage therapists, many of us are limited in the number of clients we can see in one day. If we work too much, we risk burnout or even worse – injury. So how as a massage therapist can you earn additional income?  In this episode, Julie is joined by Peggy Lamb LMT, BCTMB to discuss how massage therapists can extra money through passive income streams.  Peggy has practiced massage since 1986 and is nationally certified. She currently owns a private massage and movement therapy business, where she practices when she's not teaching. Peggy received her initial training at the New Mexico Academy of Massage and Advanced Healing Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and at Wellness Skills, Inc., in Dallas, Texas. She taught clinical anatomy and physiology, Trigger Point therapy and Swedish technique at Wellness Skills, Inc., in Dallas and at Texas Healing Arts Institute in Austin.    In this episode, Julie and Peggy discuss:  How to create mentor relationships with successful business owners  Why do massage therapists need to look at additional ways to earn income What passive streams of income can massage therapists use How does affiliate marketing work Ways to talk to your clients about non-therapy offerings  The easiest way to use technology when offering additional non-therapy services to your clients  How to shift your mindset when incorporating passive income into your business  Best piece of advice from Peggy Lamb:  Get a business coach! More About Peggy Lamb LMT, BCTMB, and her Massage Publication Practice  Peggy Lamb will tell you she is a massage therapist. She is a massage therapist, but she is so much more than that. When Peggy confronts a problem, she doesn't just solve the problem for herself. She will solve the problem for others, and try to ensure that the problem isn't a problem for all her clients. When she tore a rotator cuff, she learned about shoulders, how they move, how they function, and how they function well. Not only did she completely recover from her injury, she wrote a book "Releasing the Rotator Cuff" so other massage therapists can help their clients with shoulder injuries. When faced with a back injury, Peggy worked to recover from that, and recover she did. Not content to just overcome her own injury, she wrote another book "The Core of the Matter", with content geared to help others, and other massage therapists, with back problems. Peggy doesn't just fix issues that come up in her life, but she fixes those issues for others. Peggy Lamb is not just a massage therapist, she is an author of five books, a creator of four instructional DVDs, a teacher of massage therapists, and a leader in her field. All of this comes from one feeling the desire to touch, to heal, and to be touched.  In addition to her extensive training in massage therapy, Peggy holds a master's degree in Dance from American University in Washington, D.C. She has volunteered for 10 years with "Truth be Told", teaching creative movement and writing to incarcerated women. Peggy brings her eclectic and extensive background into her teaching for an interesting, enjoyable and enlightening learning experience. When she's not working, Peggy can be found dancing, swimming in Austin's Barton Springs, hiking or even dog sledding.  To learn more about Peggy Lamb, LMT, BCTMB  head over to https://massagepublications.com/  Sign up for Peggy's free mini-course:  https://massagepublications.com/5-tips-to-avoid-shoulder-pain/  Check out Peggy on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube    Connect with Julie Alexander and Handcrafted Therapy  To learn more about Julie Alexander, LMT, and Handcrafted Therapy Events and Wellness Center, head over to www.handcraftedtherapy.com  Join the Handcrafted Therapy Facebook community at:  https://www.facebook.com/handcraftedtherapy  Or on Handcrafted Therapy's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCifwJkvdSkrMpVH63BwuBuw   

If you ask me, the independent nurseries and growers of our world – especially those focused on helping us as gardeners create not only beautiful gardens but also gardens that contribute to the ecologies of our places, are some of our great national treasures. This week following Labor Day, we celebrate these treasures wherever they may be in conversation with one: Barton Springs Nursery in Austin, TX, where since 1986 the owners and staff having been raising both plants and gardeners right. In 2021, Barton Springs Nursery succeeded from the founders Conrad and Bernadine Bering into the skillful and passionate hands of garden designer Amy Hovis, and horticulturist William Glenn and photographer and systems designer Greg Thomas. The three, plus their dedicated and knowledgeable staff continue the long and beautiful Barton Springs Nursery legacy of offering in-house, seed-grown, native and climate adapted plants (without the use of toxic chemicals), inspiring display gardens, and garden education ensuring low-impact, high contribution - and even higher joy - gardening for Austin – and the planet. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit cultivatingplace.com.

Become a producer of the show and get your bonuses! Sign up for our Patreon! www.themidnighttrainpodcast.com    We've all heard the story of Jack the Ripper, right? Hell, we did a two-parter on the case not too long ago. You know the story. Some crazy person, running around hacking up people, disemboweling them, and nobody knows who it was. You know, that old chestnut. There were other cases similar to the Jack the Ripper case, like the Vallisca ax murders, the Hinterkaifeck Murders, and quite a few more that we've covered right here on the Midnight Train.    Well, this story is right in line with those unsolved atrocities and… it happened before Jack the Ripper decided to go all willy nilly and mutilate a bunch of poor women.   The Servant Girl Annihilator, also known as the Austin Axe Murderer and the Midnight Assassin (which is my favorite for obvious reasons), was a still, as of yet, unidentified serial killer who preyed upon the city of Austin, Texas, between 1884 and 1885. The murderer's nickname originated with the writer O. Henry. Apparently he had mentioned the murderer in a letter he had written, coining the dipshit murderers name.   The brutal killings in Austin occurred three years before Jack the Ripper terrorized London's East End (and there are some who believe the Servant Girl Annihilator and Jack the Ripper were the same person and we'll touch on that later). Although these murders happened 75 years before the term serial killer was coined, it still sealed Austin's reputation as the first city in America to have a serial killer — and the peice of crap responsible to be known as the first serial murderer in the country. Not exactly someone sane is running to be the first, but someone has to be the first something, right?   First, let's talk about Austin, Texas and a smidge of its history.   As per Wikipedia: Evidence of habitation of the Balcones Escarpment region of Texas can be traced to at least 11,000 years ago. Two of the oldest Paleolithic archeological sites in Texas, the Levi Rock Shelter and Smith Rock Shelter, are located southwest and southeast of present-day Austin respectively. Several hundred years before the arrival of European settlers, the area was inhabited by a variety of nomadic Native American tribes. These indigenous peoples fished and hunted along the creeks, including present-day Barton Springs, which proved to be a reliable campsite. At the time of the first permanent settlement of the area, the Tonkawa tribe was the most common, with the Comanches and Lipan Apaches also frequenting the area. The first European settlers in the present-day Austin were a group of Spanish friars who arrived from East Texas in July 1730. They established three temporary missions, La Purísima Concepción, San Francisco de los Neches and San José de los Nazonis, on a site by the Colorado River, near Barton Springs. The friars found conditions undesirable and relocated to the San Antonio River within a year of their arrival. Following Mexico's Independence from Spain, Anglo-American settlers began to populate Texas and reached present-day Central Texas by the 1830s. The first documented permanent settlement in the area dates to 1837 when the village of Waterloo was founded near the confluence of the Colorado River and Shoal Creek.   Got all that? Good… maybe you can explain it to me later. Just kidding… kind of. The victims   The first unfortunate victim was Mollie Smith, a 25-year-old cook working for the Walter Hall residence on Sixth Street (then named Pecan Street). She was killed on December 30, 1884, in a grisly killing filled with an extreme amount of blood due to the ax wounds to her head, abdomen, chest, legs, and arms. Her body was found outside and placed in the snow next to the family outhouse. She was attacked with an axe in her sleep, dragged into the backyard, raped and murdered. Walter Spencer, 30 yrs. old, also attacked and wounded.   The second poor victim was Eliza Shelly, a young woman who worked as a cook for the family of Dr. Lucian Johnson. Killed a few months after Mollie Smith, Shelly had been brutally murdered on Cypress Street on May 7, 1885, and her head left almost completely split from the blows of an axe. She was the mother of three children.   Because of the killer's apparent weapon of choice — an axe — the murders were first known as the Austin Axe Murders until a well-known resident, William Sydney Porter (that writer guy with the pen name, O. Henry) wrote in a letter to a friend: "Town is fearfully dull, except for the frequent raids of the Servant Girl Annihilators, who make things lively during the dead of night." After his letter became public, locals and reporters began referring to the murderer as the Servant Girl Annihilator.    On May 23, 1885, a third hapless woman, also a young servant person, became the next victim. Her name was Irene Cross and she lived on East Linden Street, just across from Scholz Garten. A reporter on the scene after her vicious attack stated that she looked as if she had been scalped. This victim was killed with a knife, as opposed to the aforementioned ax. Was this attack the work of the Annihilator or a different lunatic?    As summer dwindled down, August brought forth the arrival of a horrendous attack on Clara Dick. Later that month, another servant named Rebecca Ramey was wounded and her 11-year-old daughter Mary was killed.   At this time, the citizens of Austin were scared as shit and began protecting their homes with extra measures. Other cautions, such as increased patrols in neighborhoods, going home before sunset, and 24-hour saloons closing at midnight, we all also put into place. (It's worth noting that despite the legend, Austin's famous moontowers were not constructed during this time. They came later in the 1890s.)   Next victims were 20 year old Gracie Vance and her 25 year old boyfriend Orange Washington. They were sleeping in a shack behind the home of Vance's boss when the couple was brutally attacked with an ax. According to the local paper, Vance's "head was almost beaten into a jelly." Gracie was also dragged into the backyard, raped and murdered. Lucinda Boddy and Patsy Gibson, both only 17 yrs. old, were also attacked and wounded.    Weird note here, up to this point all the victims were African-American, but they were not all servant girls. And many noted that white residents had not been attacked. At least not yet.   The final two murders occurred on Christmas Eve (or possibly December 28th), 1885. First, 41 year old Sue Hancock, the mother of two, described as "one of the most refined ladies in Austin," was found in her backyard (now the Four Seasons Austin) by her husband. She had been dragged there while sleeping and succumbed to her wounds.   Hours later, 17 year old Eula Phillips, "one of the prettiest women in Austin," was found dead in her in-laws backyard (where the Austin Central Library is now located) she was also dragged into the back yard, raped and murdered. Her 24 year old husband, Jimmy Phillips Jr, sustained severe wounds in the attack. Ultimately, both spouses of Sue Hancock and Eula Phillips were accused, but found not guilty of the murders.   After the Christmas Eve murders in 1885, the killings stopped, but the fear was still palpable. At the time of the murders, Austin had been changing from a small frontier town to a cosmopolitan city, but the reputation it acquired because of the crimes put a halt to the city's growth.   The suspects Although approximately 400 men were eventually rounded up by authorities and questioned in the killings, all suspects were released and the murders remain unsolved. However, there are a few names from history that stand out as possible murder suspects.   Nathan Elgin was native of Austin and a young African-American domestic servant who knew the streets of his hometown.    The majority of this next part was taken from the website servantgirlmurders.com   Late one night in February 1886 a saloon in Masontown in east Austin was the scene of a violent and disturbing incident. The surrounding neighborhood was in an uproar because a drunken, raging man had dragged a girl from the saloon to a nearby house where he could be heard beating and cursing her while she screamed for help. The entire neighborhood had come out in the streets and the commotion caught the attention of a nearby police officer. Police officer John Bracken arrived on the scene and the saloon keeper, Dick Rogers and a neighbor, Claibe Hawkins, went with Bracken to stop the man from beating the girl to death.   Rogers and Hawkins went into the house and pulled the man away from the girl and into the front yard. As Rogers and Hawkins grappled with the man, Officer Bracken got out the handcuffs. The man would not be subdued – he threw off Rogers and Hawkins and knocked Bracken off his feet. The man turned on them and brandished a knife. As Bracken tried to recover a shot rang out. Bracken drew his pistol and fired. The shot brought down the raging man. The man's name was Nathan Elgin. There was no explanation for Elgin's rage at the girl, named Julia. Bracken's shot did not kill Elgin instantly but it did leave him paralyzed and mortally wounded; he died the following day. A subsequent autopsy revealed that Bracken's bullet had lodged in Elgin's spine which accounted for the paralysis. The doctors had also noticed another detail – Elgin was missing a toe from his right foot. During the investigations of the crimes the authorities had carefully noted the footprints which were often bloodstained and had made distinct impressions in the soil as the perpetrator carried the weight of the victim. Apart from general measurements of size and shape, footprints in most instances are not especially distinctive and they would not have been much use to the authorities had they not possessed some unusual feature. But the footprints left behind at the Servant Girl Murder crime scenes did share a very distinct feature – one of the footprints had only four toes. The authorities never shared this fact with the press or the general public during the course of 1885. The press frequently complained about the secrecy surrounding the murder inquests and argued that making all the details of the crimes public would facilitate the capture of the responsible parties more quickly. The authorities disagreed and kept certain details of the cases to themselves – details that they hoped would eventually identify the perpetrator and link him to the crime scenes. After Nathan Elgin's death the authorities unexpectedly had the direct physical evidence they had been waiting for – a foot that matched the distinctive footprints of the killer. But the foot belonged to a dead man. What were they to do with that information? What could they do with it? To imagine the state of mind of the authorities at that time one has to understand the heightened state of fear and suspicion that was present in Austin at the beginning of 1886. In the month since the last murders in December 1885, the city's police force had been tripled in size. A curfew had been enacted and private citizens had organized into patrols to guard the neighborhoods after dark. Strangers were forced to identify themselves or be evicted from the city. Saloons and other raucous downtown establishments, usually open twenty-four hours a day, were forced to close at midnight. A new era of law and order had begun. Would there have been any advantage in revealing that perhaps the midnight assassin was dead? And what if Elgin was not the mysterious murderer of servant girls? It was in the authorities' best interest to wait and see if the murders continued. Maybe the authorities believed they had gotten lucky – they couldn't arrest, prosecute of convict Elgin, but perhaps the problem had been solved. But in February 1886 it was still too early to be sure. It is important to remember that at the beginning of 1886, the Christmas Eve murders were not the last murders, simply the latest, and the investigations into the murders continued, notably with detectives still shadowing other suspects. While the authorities were not able to make use of the evidence against Elgin, the defense attorneys for James Phillips and Moses Hancock certainly were. Eula Phillips, wife of James Phillips, and Susan Hancock, wife of Moses Hancock, had both been murdered on December 24, 1885 and both husbands were subsequently charged with murdering their wives. In May 1886, during the trial of James Phillips, defense attorneys introduced into evidence floorboards marked with bloody footprints that had been removed from the Phillips house after the murder. They were compared to the footprints of the defendant, who removed his shoes and had his feet inked and printed in an elaborate demonstration in the courtroom. Even though Phillip's footprints were substantially different in size than the bloody footprints on the floorboards, the jury was unconvinced. The motives of jealousy and drunkenness as argued by the prosecution convinced the jury and they found Phillips guilty of second degree murder. When the case against Moses Hancock was finally brought to trial, the Hancock received some substantial legal help in the form of pro bono representation by John Hancock (no relation) a former U.S. Congressman, one of the state's most prominent political figures and one of Austin's most astute legal practitioners. Also providing assistance for the defense rather than the prosecution, was Sheriff Malcolm Hornsby, who during his testimony, described making a cast of Elgin's foot after his death, the significance of the missing toe, the similarities between Elgin's footprint and the footprints left at the Phillips and Ramey murders, and that fact that there had been no further servant girl murders committed since Elgin's death. Even so, the jury was not completely persuaded and after two days of deliberation, a hung jury was declared and the case was discharged without a verdict. The verdicts in the Phillips and Hancock trials illustrated the consensus on the Servant Girl Murders and the motives behind them – that the murders had been committed by different persons with conventional motives. Was Nathan Elgin the Servant Girl Annihilator? In my opinion, he most likely was based on 1) direct physical evidence linking Elgin to the crimes, 2) testimony of Sheriff Malcolm Hornsby as to Elgin's ostensible guilt, 3) the fact that there were no further Servant Girl Murders after his death, and 4) Elgin fits the criminal profile of such a killer. *** Nathan Elgin – A Criminology The Servant Girl Murders were over 130 years ago and few official records pertaining to them have survived. Likewise, there is little surviving biographical information about Nathan Elgin, however the information that is available strongly correlates to traits associated with a Disorganized/Anger-Retaliatory (D/AR) serial killer profile, and the crime scenes of the Servant Girl Murders correspond exactly to that of anger-retaliatory crime scenes: In the anger-retaliatory rape-murder, the rape is planned and the initial murder involves overkill. It is an anger-venting act that expresses symbolic revenge on a female victim. Nettled by poor relationships with women, the aggressor distills his anguish and contempt into explosive revenge on the victim… the aggressive killer will either direct his anger at that woman or redirect his anger to a substitute woman. Because the latter type of scapegoating retaliation does not eliminate the direct source of hate, it is likely that it will be episodically repeated to relieve internal stresses. Dynamically, the rape-homicide is committed in a stylized violent burst attack for purposes of retaliation, getting even, and revenge on women. The perpetrator tends to choose victims from familiar areas… and may use weapons of opportunity in percussive assaults with fists, blunt objects or a knife. The subject tends to leave a disorganized crime scene, and the improvised murder weapon may be found within 15 feet of the body. The following traits are common to the D/AR serial killer profile and I would argue that they are present in the historical record specifically in connection to Nathan Elgin: childhood abuse or neglect early violent episodes violent fantasy resentment of authority escalation stressors Additionally, Nathan Elgin would have possessed the locational expertise critical to successfully enacting the murders and eluding the authorities, culminating in a distinctive signature killing style – the attack on sleeping female victim using blunt force to the head, carrying the body away from the house into the yard where the victim was then raped. Childhood Abuse Suspicions All of the murderers were subjected to serious emotional abuse during their childhoods. And all of them developed into what psychiatrists label as sexually dysfunctional adults.  From birth to age six or seven, studies have shown, the most important adult figure in a child's life is the mother, and it is in this time period that the child learns what love is. Relationships between our subjects and their mothers were uniformly cool, unloving and neglectful. (4) The disorganized offender grows up in a household where the father's work is often unstable, where childhood discipline is harsh, and where the family is subject to serious strain brought on by alcohol, mental illness, and the like. (5) One of the primary components in the creation of the D/AR serial killer profile is a dysfunctional, abusive relationship within the family and especially between the mother and the subject. The mothers often have psychological disorders or they have been victims of emotional and sexual abuse themselves and are then subsequently abusive with their own children. At best the mothers are emotionally distant and at worst they are physically and psychologically abusive. Nathan Elgin was born in 1866, the fourth of five children in his family. The Elgin family had moved to Austin from Arkansas after the war, to the freedman's community that came to be known as Wheatville. Nathan had three older siblings that had already married, started their own families and evidently lived normal lives while Nathan was still a child growing up in Austin. However the older siblings' mother, Angeline, had been a different woman than Nathan's mother, Susan. (6) There is no record of what happened to Angeline, she presumably died or separated from her husband, Richard Elgin, but after she left, a woman named Susan Pearce appeared in her place to raise Nathan – whether she was his biological mother is unknown. I think this substitution in the maternal line is significant and I would speculate that Susan Pearce was an abusive catalyst in Nathan's emotional development. The 1880 census listed 14-year-old Nathan Elgin as still living with his parents; it noted his ability to read and write, and his occupation as “servant.” He was likely placed into service by his mother. For Nathan, being a domestic servant at that period in time would have entailed working in an environment with Victorian strictures and discipline, submitting to the authority of women, both black and white, carrying out whatever tasks were ordered without argument.  Habitual abuse or humiliation of young Nathan could have been facilitated by such conditions and it is easy to imagine him having suffered abuse in such a position considering the rage directed at this particular class of women only a few years later. Any abuse Nathan experienced as a child without having the physical ability to stop it, would in the meantime have fueled an inner world of revenge fantasy and anger waiting to be unleashed. Not until he was a teenager would he finally gain the physical ability to express that anger, except toward whomever was the source. The source or its memory, the humiliation and shame they had used to define him, would retain the ability to make him feel helpless and impotent. The result, once he had gained maturity, would be not just fantasies of rage, but their physical expression, enacted again and again upon victims who were substitute for its source. Early Violent Episodes – Resentment of Authority – Violent Fantasy These adolescents overcompensated for the aggression in their early lives by repeating the abuse in fantasy – but, this time, with themselves as the aggressors. He is seen as an explosive personality who is impulsive, quick-tempered, and self-centered. In the summer of 1881, Nathan Elgin was arrested for carrying a pistol and getting into a confrontation with another young man near the Governor's mansion, “they cursed each other for some time and aroused the neighborhood.” Such incidents were not particularly remarkable for that time period and the newspaper frequently reported similar skirmishes between young “bloods,” however it does demonstrate that Elgin already had a violent disposition at a young age.   More remarkable was an incident in 1882, when Elgin sent a threatening letter to a deputy sheriff promising to “whip destroy and kill” the deputy the next time they met. The written expression of violent threats and fantasies, especially toward the police or other authorities, is one of the classic serial killer tells. Nathan's letter was described “reckless and bloodthirsty” in the newspaper, a description that would later be more fittingly applied to the murders of 1885.  Locational Expertise Apart from committing the murders in the middle of the night and using the cover of darkness for concealment, an intimate knowledge of the city would have been key to the killer's ability to elude the authorities. Nathan Elgin had locational expertise – he had grown up in Austin as it was being built. As a child in the 1870s he would have seen the wood-framed buildings that lined Congress Avenue and Pecan Street replaced by brick and mortar storefronts. He would have seen the streets graded and the wooded hills cleared for elegant neighborhoods, schools and churches. By 1885 he would have been intimately familiar with how the city worked and moved. He would have known all the shortcuts, the hiding places, which yards had dogs, which doors were left unlocked. He would have known how to go unnoticed and he would have known what was around every corner. Escalation The disorganized killer has no idea of, or interest in, the personalities of the victims. He does not want to know who they are, and many times takes steps to obliterate their personalities by quickly knocking them unconscious or covering their faces or otherwise disfiguring them.  [The victim] will often have horrendous wounds. [The killer] does not move the body or conceal it. The offender is usually somewhat younger than his victims.  In July 1884, there were two instances of women, both African American, being stabbed in the face as they slept. The women survived; the authorities investigated them as separate incidents. In August 1884, an African American woman was struck in the head with a smoothing iron as she slept. These nocturnal attacks, though not fatal, were so idiosyncratic in style that they must have been a fledgling attempt by an anger-retaliatory killer who would later escalate with gruesome results.  In November 1884, police reports mentioned a non-fatal nocturnal assault on a domestic servant as she slept in her bed. This incident never appeared in the newspaper.  A little over a month later, an African American woman named Mollie Smith was struck in the head with an axe as she slept; she was dragged into the backyard and raped. Her body was hacked to pieces by the killer and left at the scene.  Mollie Smith's murder set the pattern for all that followed. Locational Expertise and Escalation and Signature in the Vance/Washington and Hancock/Phillips Murders The disorganized killer doesn't choose victims logically, and so often takes a victim at high risk to himself, one not selected because he or she can be easily controlled…  …the assault continues until the subject is emotionally satisfied  The killer's personal expression takes the form of his unique signature, an imprint left by him at the scene, an imprint the killer is psychologically compelled to leave to satisfy himself sexually. After four murders the killer had become very adept and perhaps overly confident and by the time he entered the cabin of Gracie Vance he was confident enough to attack four persons simultaneously. Gracie Vance was a domestic servant employed by William Dunham and she lived, along with Orange Washington, in a cabin in the rear of his property. When the killer entered Gracie's cabin, instead of finding a solitary sleeping woman, he found three women and one man. Undeterred he proceeded to incapacitate all four as quickly as possible; however, one of the women was only briefly insensible and she went for help while the crime was still in progress. Neighbors were awakened by the disturbance and the police were called. Dunham and the neighbors went to investigate and a man was seen fleeing the scene. They fired their pistols at him as he made his escape in the darkness. As with the other victims, Gracie Vance was found in the backyard; her face had been pulverized with a rock. The suspect had fled in the direction of Wheatville, just to the west — the neighborhood Nathan Elgin had grown up in.  The Christmas Eve murders were in many ways the skeleton key to all the murders in that they demonstrated all the specific facets of the killer's MO and signature — his locational expertise, his ability to improvise and adjust at the scene as well as his emotional escalation which demonstrated the extent to which he would go to enact a very specific sex murder scenario – an attack in the bedroom upon a sleeping victim, then rape and murder in the backyard – even when the completion of that scenario was problematic.  Susan Hancock, unlike the other victims, was white, but other than that, the murder was carried out identically to the previous murders. It is unlikely the killer had the specific intent to select a white victim; rather something about the location, the house, and the fact that there was an axe in the backyard attuned to the killer's preferences. As with the other victims, Susan Hancock was struck in the head with an axe while she slept and then carried into the backyard. Susan's husband was asleep in another room but was awakened by the disturbance. He went into the backyard, saw a figure standing over his wife and threw a brick at him. Even though the perpetrator was armed with an axe he didn't retaliate against Hancock – instead he fled the scene by jumping over a fence into the alley. Hancock then ran to the east side of the house to cut him off but he wasn't there.  Instead of fleeing into the darkness, the perpetrator ran west, back toward Congress Avenue, the city's main thoroughfare. This peculiar evasion demonstrated that the perpetrator was very confident about where he was going — that he expected he could hide in plain sight. It is interesting to note that had Hancock gone west to cut off the fleeing perpetrator he might have been able to stop him, which could have brought a definitive resolution to the murderous events of that year. However, seeing the perpetrator had escaped he went back to his wife and called for help. Heading toward Congress Avenue, the perpetrator cut through the yard of the residence of May Tobin where his sudden appearance out of the darkness startled a young woman and her male companion – in his haste he could have literally run into the young woman. A confrontation occurs – the man threatens and insults him in demeaning and racist terms, perhaps the woman does too. The perpetrator has to retreat again and this would have been too much. The urge to kill had not been satisfied and would only have intensified after a humiliating confrontation. He follows the couple's cab across town to the residence of James Phillips. The cab arrives, the young woman, Eula Phillips, discreetly makes her way into the quiet house. Less than an hour later she is found in the backyard, raped and murdered. The killer could have dispatched Mr. Hancock and completed the crime at the Hancock residence but he did not. Likewise, he could have attempted to kill Eula and her companion in the relative seclusion of May Tobin's premises. Instead, the killer's primary motivation was the realization of a very specific violent sexual murder scenario. I believe a confrontation must have occurred at May Tobin's residence between Eula Phillips, her imperious companion, John Dickinson, and a very volatile Nathan Elgin. The confrontation had to have made him angry enough to pursue her across town — even though he had no idea where they were going or what he would find when he got there. I believe he was so angry that he pursued her at his own peril, when other, easier opportunities for a kill were in closer proximity. The bloody footprints left at the Phillips house would subsequently be affirmatively compared to the footprints of the deceased Elgin.  Austin Daily Statesman 3 June 1887 Stressors …by the very nature of their childhood, serial killers are most likely to lead lives full of stressful events. As children and adolescents they lack self-esteem, are isolated and maladjusted, and are therefore poorly prepared for coping with life as adults.  Historically, the retaliatory killer's marriage will have been ill-fated and he will usually be in some phase of estrangement. …If he has a relationship, there will have generally been a history of long-term spousal abuse, which will not likely have been covered by criminal complaints.  In the study of serial sexual homicides, a “stressor” is defined as an event, interaction or conflict in which the killer is reminded of past humiliations and abuses. To purge his feelings of shame, inadequacy or powerlessness the killer will endeavor to enact a murderous scene in which he is powerful and in total control. In the case of Nathan Elgin, there is a remarkable example of a pre-crime stressor in the instance of his wife, Sallie, giving birth to a child the same night two women were being murdered on Christmas Eve. I believe that this was more than a coincidence and whatever stressors Elgin was susceptible to were triggered by this event. While the birth of a child would not normally seem to be cause for a murderous rampage, in the case of a D/AR profile it very well could. Nathan had married Sallie Wheat in 1882. She was a year older than him. They did not live together. It is not unusual for serial killers to be married, however it is rare in the case of the D/AR killer profile because of their volatile temperament towards women. Sallie could have held the power in the relationship; conversely she could have been subjected to abuse herself. There is an indication that Sallie was aware, at least subsequently, of Nathan's responsibility for the murders – as a means of disassociation she raised Nathan's son under the surname Davis rather than Elgin.  Post Mortem We read a great deal of theorizing about the series of murders in Austin, that all the assassinations were the work of a cunning lunatic — a monomaniac on the subject of murder.  From what I can learn, I don't believe anything of the kind, and it is my deliberate opinion that these murders can not only be unearthed, but when probed to the bottom, it will be found that they were committed by different individuals and that in each case they were prompted by lust, jealousy, or hatred. (27) A Monomaniac On the Subject of Murder would be an apt title for a 19th century dime novel. The quote above by Waco Marshal Luke Moore was closer to the truth than he realized but the ideas he articulated were not exclusive; Nathan Elgin was indeed a monomaniac on the subject of murder and he was motivated by lust, hatred and revenge. In contemporary criminal investigations of serial sexual homicides, law enforcement will have decades of criminal profiles at their disposal which have been painstakingly created as a resource to match types of murders to specific types of offenders. In other words, they know who they're looking for. And the more unusual the murders, the easier it is to focus the investigation toward a specific type of offender. If the Servant Girl Murders were committed in this day and age and the perpetrator had left behind similar evidence, contemporary forensic resources and methods would create a criminal profile and evidence collected could confirm or eliminate potential suspects. The perpetrator would most likely be apprehended very quickly. Serial killers who are apprehended and convicted are later questioned extensively by the authorities and they are usually quiet happy to talk about themselves because they frequently have an inherent superiority complex and are eager to expound upon their mastery and superiority even though they are behind bars. It is interesting to note that the wounded Elgin was not interviewed by reporters, which was unusual – almost everyone involved in a shooting at that period in time had a reporter waiting for them after being attended to by a physician. Nor did the police make any statement regarding Elgin. The inquest of his death was held in secret. Elgin most likely spent his last hours delirious as doctors made a futile attempt at finding and removing the bullet that entered his side and lodged in his spine. If Elgin's murder spree had followed the trajectory of most disorganized serial killers, he would have continued to escalate until his confidence overcame his self-restraint and he would have eventually been caught or killed fleeing the scene. Hypothetically, if he had been arrested for a murder, unless he specifically admitted to it, I doubt the authorities would have connected him to all the murders. Had he been arrested and interrogated I think Elgin would have baffled the police, but they wouldn't have spent much time contemplating him; he would have undoubtedly been indicted, tried and hung in short order. The newspaper account of him would have been a typically villainous caricature from that time period, and people today would still wonder if he was responsible. So now, another suspect and a possible connection to Jack The Ripper.   The next suspect was Maurice (no last name given), a Malaysian cook who worked at the Pearl House in downtown Austin. The Pearl House had connections to a majority of the victims of the Annihilator, therefore this theory took off like a mother fucker..   Allegedly, once Maurice left Austin only 3 weeks after the last murder, bound for New Orleans and ultimately London, the murders ended. And although the killings by Jack the Ripper were arguably more brutal in nature, many believe the Austin and London killers were actually the same person — a murderer that began to escalate his killings. Something that has been studied and noted by psychologists and other people smarter than us. Maurice apparently told acquaintances at the hotel that he was going to work aboard ships as a cook to earn his passage to London for a fresh start. A little known fact: the cook Maurice was actually suspected after the last murder and put under surveillance   According to Reddit author Sciencebzzt:   So many people who follow the Ripper case seem to want him to be a suave, elegant dude. A surgeon or a royal or a tormented upper class freak of some kind. But the facts don't suggest that. People say whoever killed the girls must have been skilled with a blade, that may be true, but the "brutality" suggests they were cut up like animals, skinned and gutted almost. The way a butcher... or a cook... might. Anyway, back to Austin in 1886. Most experts on serial killers will tell you it's unlikely that the murders will just stop, unless the murderer is dead, in prison, or has moved elsewhere. In fact, most will say that the serial killers M.O. usually evolves, and changes... while the main motivation doesn't. This would explain the difference in the Ripper murders 3 years later... and also why they seem to have the same extremely brutal motivations. Jack the Ripper didn't use an axe the way the Servant Girl Annihilator did, however, this may have been because an axe was not a common thing to carry around in 1888 London, the largest city in the world at the time. In 1884 Austin, a town of 10,000 at the westernmost terminus of a railroad line, an axe was likely less conspicuous. The scariest part though... is what happened after 1888. Whoever "he" was, he was obviously a highly driven, aggressive murderer, and he already had success (probably) in leaving Austin and getting away with murder. Well, consider this: After 1888, similar serial murders of women started happening in port towns along major trade routes, like Nicaragua, Tunis, and Jamaica. If the Servant Girl Annihilator and Jack the Ripper were the same man, given the highly aggressive style, brutality and rapid succession of the murders, one quickly after the other... it's likely he killed far, far more girls than we know about, all over the world.   Did Maurice leave to avoid the authorities and escalate his murders or did her simply leave because his reputation was tarnished?    The Jack the ripper murders were allegedly from april 3 1888 to 1891.    The Vallisca ax murders were on June 10th, 1912   New orleans ax murders May 1918 to October 1919   I spent countless hours looking up ship records from 1886 and there is one record of a “Maurice” that went to England from the US. The funny thing is, his name was Maurice Kelly. The Ripper's last known and documented victim was Mary Jane Kelly. It's probably just a coincidence but what if it isn't?   TOP 10 MOVIES BASED ON REAL UNSOLVED MYSTERIES https://www.watchmojo.com/video/id/44882

Take 3! Do better! Moshing and kicking and colorful shirts. Kids from the 70s still exist. A Barton Springs dilemma. YURP prison guard stories #shankblessed Noted author Penny Brushwood takes the stage as Brian and Justin jump into the (rat) shoes of an improv role-playing adventure!  Penny just launched a book! Check out the new #1 book (really!) "Periwinkle and the Crystal Cave": https://www.amazon.com/Periwinkle-Crystal-Cave-Penny-Brushwood-ebook/dp/B0B8XY3FTM Not watching the show? Follow us on YouTube to see all the goods! http://watchgreatnight.com We're on TikTok now too: https://www.tiktok.com/@greatnightpod Email us! GreatNightPod@gmail.com is the place to send in games, punishments, stories, or kind words :) Get an extra episode every week only at https://www.patreon.com/greatnight and enjoy the preshow and postshow in all the public feeds!

Take 3! Do better! Moshing and kicking and colorful shirts. Kids from the 70s still exist. A Barton Springs dilemma. YURP prison guard stories #shankblessed Noted author Penny Brushwood takes the stage as Brian and Justin jump into the (rat) shoes of an improv role-playing adventure!  Penny just launched a book! Check out the new #1 book (really!) "Periwinkle and the Crystal Cave": https://www.amazon.com/Periwinkle-Crystal-Cave-Penny-Brushwood-ebook/dp/B0B8XY3FTM Not watching the show? Follow us on YouTube to see all the goods! http://watchgreatnight.com We're on TikTok now too: https://www.tiktok.com/@greatnightpod Email us! GreatNightPod@gmail.com is the place to send in games, punishments, stories, or kind words :) Get an extra episode every week only at https://www.patreon.com/greatnight and enjoy the preshow and postshow in all the public feeds!

PROGRAM NOTE - The podcast will be inactive for about two weeks as the podcast host takes care of some family business and R&R. Next episode will be published on Tuesday, August 24. Austin health and government authorities have declared the spread of monkeypox locally to be an official health emergency. The CHIPS And Science Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden yesterday, could be huge for Austin's burgeoning microchip manufacturing sector. As local school districts resume classes, AISD is still struggling to fill teaching positions - all while a new poll finds that the overwhelming majority of public school teachers in Texas are on the verge of leaving the profession. The LCRA is resisting calls to reform its water management policies to adjust for increasing demand and dwindling supply - they say existing plans, set to be updated in 2025, are sufficient for now. A recent hike in minimum wages for City of Austin employees is likely to cause future budgetary challenges. A new tower planned for the Domain will be the tallest yet in Austin's "second downtown". Alex Jones, thus far found liable for about $50 million in the Sandy Hook defamation case, could be protected from paying most of that judgement due to a 2003 lawsuit reform law. Monday marked the 30th anniversary of the 1992 Save Our Springs election, via which enduring local ordinances to protect Barton Springs were enacted.

Hey y'all! In this basic bitch we talk about Erin and Ange's wild roller coaster ride in Austin, Texas including being there the day that the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The trip was a trip and included lot's of breakfast tacos, celebrating Anthony Bourdain's birthday at one of his (and our) favorite spots, late night Whataburgers, Tupac sightings, oh, and Covid. Be careful out there folks, Covid is still out there and contagious AF. We're thankful for vaccines and boosters working to minimize how severe this virus could be. HUGS.--Thanks for listening and for your support! We couldn't have reached 600 episodes without your help! --Be well, stay safe, Black Lives Matter, AAPI Lives Matter, and fuck the Supreme Court.--SUPPORT US HERE!Subscribe to our channel on YouTube for behind the scenes footage!Rate and review us wherever you listen to podcasts!Visit our website! www.bitchtalkpodcast.comFollow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.Listen every other Thursday 9:30 - 10 am on BFF.FMPOWERED BY GO-TO Productions 

Mike Feeney and Oscar Aydin join Luis J. Gomez and Zac Amico and discuss another Real Ass Podcast podcast war, Luis fighting Jason Ellis on April 8th, Luis and Oscar switching sexual preferences, Luis' experience at Barton Springs in Austin, Baby James encountering a topless woman in the wild, their first time having a sip of alcohol as kids, ASMR videos, Does It Live - the man attempting to jump from the elevated train tracks to a roof, the angry customers trashing a French fry restaurant in Manhattan, the bodega worker who killed his attacker and so much more!(Air Date: July 8th, 2022)Support our sponsors!ZippixToothpicks.com - Click here to start your healthier alternative to smoking today!NevenEyeWear.com - Buy 1 pair get 2 pairs free! No code needed!YoKratom.com - YoKratom.com - Check out Yo Kratom (the home of the $60 kilo) for all your kratom needs!Submit your artwork via postal mail to:GaS Digital Networkc/o Real Ass Podcast151 1st Ave, #311New York, NY 10003Submit to be Luis' sparring partner by sending a video and your information to RealAssOfficial@gmail.com!Real Ass Podcast merchandise is available at https://podcastmerch.com/collections/real-ass-podcastYou can watch Real Ass Podcast LIVE for FREE every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 11am ET at GaSDigitalNetwork.com/LIVEOnce you're there you can sign up at GaSDigitalNetwork.com with promo code: RAP for a 7-day FREE trial with access to every Real Ass Podcast show ever recorded! On top of that you'll also have the same access to ALL the shows that GaS Digital Network has to offer!Follow the whole show on social media!Mike FeeneyTwitter: https://twitter.com/iammikefeeneyInstagram: https://instagram.com/iammikefeeneyComedy Special: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG2MgJiTu3oOscar AydinTwitter: https://twitter.com/IHaveGayDHDInstagram: https://instagram.com/ItsOscarAydinLuis J. GomezTwitter: https://twitter.com/luisjgomezInstagram: https://instagram.com/gomezcomedyYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/LuisJGomezComedyTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/prrattlesnakeWebsite: https://www.luisofskanks.comZac AmicoInstagram: https://instagram.com/zacisnotfunnyGaS Digital NetworkTwitter: https://twitter.com/gasdigitalInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/gasdigital/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today is Election Day, as runoffs for both parties' primaries are decided - and numbers from the early voting period indicate that statistically, almost none of us have voted yet. Kaitlin Marie Armstrong, wanted under suspicion of the murder of pro cyclist Anna Moriah Wilson, remains at large - U.S. Marshals say they believe Armstrong is still in the Austin area. Travis County Commissioners are on the verge of declaring a public health crisis related to an uptick in drug overdose deaths. Austin's unemployment rate has dropped below pre-pandemic levels. The city is calling for additional training resources in order to head off future staffing shortages for Austin-Travis County EMS, Austin Police and Austin Fire. Don't be surprised when you see one - driverless cars are now making the rounds in Austin. Revitalization plans for East Sixth Street could provide an opportunity for smaller music venues to operate with more financial stability. Barton Springs and Deep Eddy Pools are set to re-open some normal operations. Stormy weather remains possible and temps stay cool through Wednesday, before a return to typical late-May heat.

In spite of expectations of record demand throughout the summer, ERCOT is expressing confidence that it will be able to meet that demand. Experts say further diversity among power suppliers is the key to future reliability. Gas prices are continuing to rise past record highs - Austin's average gas price could hit $5 per gallon soon. Early voting continues through Friday in the primary runoffs - Texans who did not vote in either party's primary in March can vote, and have the choice of voting for either party's candidates. Amidst continuing staffing shortages that threaten Austin's public pool opening schedule next month, current lifeguards are keeping up the pressure for a pay raise. Delays in security screenings at ABIA have crept back up - lines were out the door again over last weekend. HAAM - the Health Alliance for Austin Musicians - is seeking a $1 million allocation from Austin's city budget to cover funding shortfalls. Austin has been ranked the #4 best city in the U.S. in which to start a career, and #2 in Texas for our quality of parks. Meanwhile Williamson County has been named the richest county in the state measured by median income, which is now over $87,000 per year. A UT Tyler study has found marijuana legalization to be more popular in Texas than any of our top elected officials. The former home of Austin Java, and more recently the Barton Springs location of Ski Shores, has been re-opened by McGuire Moorman Lambert as their second location of Lou's. The September 10 visit by Alabama to Texas at DKR may be an early game, with a kickoff time of 11am. NFL legend and Westlake Chapparal Drew Brees has been shown the door at NBC after only one season as an analyst. And Gorillaz has announced a local show, at the Moody Center on September 30.

Austin's Public Safety Commission is calling on the city to make its EMS workers a better offer for a pay increase, while reporting shortages of police and EMS staff and an increase in aggravated assaults and property crimes. Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who was acquitted after killing two people during George Floyd protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2020, is considering attending Texas A&M. Austin's job market has been named the "hottest" in America by the Wall Street Journal for the third year in a row - we're also leading most other top U.S. metros in professionals leaving remote work behind to return to the office. Several UT-area businesses, including historic burger joint Dirty Martin's, are in the crosshairs of Project Connect redevelopment on Guadalupe between 27th and 29th Streets. Barton Springs Pool continues operating under a limited schedule as Austin city lifeguards, especially those tasked with overseeing Barton Springs, continue their fight for a $22 per hour minimum wage. Meanwhile, Hamilton Pool is set to re-open for swimmers, but good luck getting a reservation. Texas Longhorns baseball looks to recover from a sweep by Oklahoma State last weekend, hosting Houston Baptist at Disch-Falk Field tonight. And some wild weather may be on the way in the form of a significant and much-needed rain event Wednesday night through Thursday, followed by potentially record-setting heat by next weekend that could push the vulnerable Texas power grid to its limits.

We discuss Jason's problems with cruise life, whether Nick should sleep with a listener's wife, and our Daily Draft of Austin roads. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this episode Blessing and Andrea deep dive into the effects of a terrible work environment on the mental health of employees, how important it is for the workplace to be inclusive and how beneficial it is for employers to create a workforce that is intentional about retaining working mothers and caters to the needs of parents. They are joined by Sherrie Nguyen - Senior Manager, Product Marketing at Indeed & Stacy Peters - Manager of Learning Operations at Indeed who chat with them about the programmes and policies that indeed has in place to make sure that they create a workplace that promotes mental health, reduces burnout and absenteeism, increases productivity and provides adequate benefits for Indeedians and the global workforce Indeed caters to.   Sherrie Nguyen is a long-time Austinite, wife to her high school sweetheart Andy, and mother to 5-year-old Amaya. Originally from Houston, TX, Sherrie is the proud daughter of Vietnamese immigrants and first in her family to graduate college. She is an activist for working parents and caregivers, and she's on a mission to re-imagine a world of work centered on care. Sherrie has worked in tech for over a decade and is currently employed with Indeed as a Product Marketer and also Founder and Co-Chair of the Parents & Caregivers Inclusion Resource Group. She is the recipient of the 2021 Austin Under 40 Award for Technology. Sherrie mentors with the Young Women's Alliance and Breakthrough of Central Texas. Her happy place is swimming at Barton Springs or skateboarding. In her downtime, you can find her devouring a book or sharing deep belly laughs with her family. Stacy Peters is a Manager of Learning Operations at Indeed. Her role leads a Learning Operations group that drives effective learning experiences. They partner with Learning and Development teams to deliver learner-centered communication, innovative technology solutions and processes to help Indeedians learn and grow.  Additionally, Stacy is the Co-Chair of Indeed's Black Inclusion Group (BIG), Americas Region. Their mission is to foster an environment of growth and belonging for members of the African Diaspora and allies to promote a diverse and inclusive work culture and support business objectives. Stacy is also doing the single-mom life with her brave, intelligent and beautiful 13-year old. They both enjoy roller skating, good music, and tasty Trinidadian dishes! Sometimes, you can find Stacy on stage sharing one of her life-long passions - singing.   This podcast is in partnership with Indeed, the world's number one job site, a company committed to helping women find better work. Visit www.indeed.com/betterwork and join us as we #LevelUpWithIndeed. Become a member of the Mother Honestly Private Network by visiting www.motherhonestly.com/membership and if you are a Company seeking support for your employees and their families, visit www.motherhonestly.com/atwork to provide real solutions at home and at work. The Motherboard launched last month! Get feedback, coaching, and advice on big decisions with the nation's leading thought-leaders on the homefront and workfront, visit www.motherhonestly.com/motherboard to get personalized guidance tailored to you. You can also expense this cost as a stipend, Learning and Development, and or Professional Development You can visit our guest today at https://www.linkedin.com/company/indeed-com/  

The first of what's likely to be several lawsuits in that recent crash on Barton Springs Road has been filed by one of the several people injured against both of the drivers involved. Lots of real estate news this Friday: Austin homeowners should prepare for a shock when they see this year's value appraisal from the Travis Central Appraisal District - the average has jumped about $220 thousand in just one year. Real estate sales data shows a 77% increase in home prices in the Austin area over the last five years. The pace of homebuying has slowed lately but prices have not - Austin's local median home price now sits at $624,000. Among the rich and famous buying homes in Austin is Oscar-winning actress Emma Stone, who bought property in Tarrytown last summer. Watch your wallet in a more literal sense as well - pickpocketing is up 175% in downtown Austin lately. Real estate guru Gary Keller has expanded his Austin music-centric philanthropic efforts by buying the long-closed One World Theater in west Austin with plans to re-open it soon. The developer behind the project that worried the Austin LGTBQ community in threatening several bars in the traditionally gay-friendly 4th Street district says it plans to preserve the area's cultural integrity. A location has been chosen for former President Donald Trump's appearance in Austin - his "American Freedom Tour" event will happen on May 14 at the Austin Convention Center. A 100-mile trail under construction will allow Austinites to hike all the way to San Antonio - the Great Springs Project will connect Barton Springs in Austin, San Marcos Springs, Comal Springs at New Braunfels and San Antonio Springs when completed. Texas has been ranked among the best states for remote workers. And a hot and humid Easter weekend is in store, upper 80's today and mid-90's Saturday and Sunday, with a chance of storms - parts of the Texas Hill Country near Austin have returned to Extreme drought conditions, including areas surrounding Burnet, Llano, Mason and Fredericksburg.

We spend a lot of time in Austin talking about how many new people move here. But most of us don't talk much about the people who came before us — way before us.  If you've ever taken a walk along Shoal Creek or gone to Barton Springs on a hot summer day, you're doing […]

Ron Wayne joined me to discuss the release of his new single One in a Million. Ron is true artist, and I am excited to see how he continues to express himself. He is very attuned to how he maintains his energy, and it's always a privilege to catch up with him. It was too nice to be in the studio for this episode so we rolled a joint up, set up next to Barton Springs, and dropped in for episode 38! • Go check out his new video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__ZtZuR_pMg • Follow: @ronwayne_ • Bringing the conversation of community & culture to Austin, TX. • Please give us a RATING & REVIEW if you enjoyed the episode & be sure to SUBSCRIBE! • Instagram: @eazy.does.it Studio: @eazys.studio Email: evan.h.duvall@gmail.com Website: eazydoesit.org Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You guys. I did it. I went in freezing cold...well...64degree water up to my neck. On this week's #RachTalk I talk about my first visit to Barton Springs here in Austin, TX and how crazy this whole year has been since my business had to go into quarantine. I give you my ultimate Women's History Month Dinner Party guest list AND give you a sneak look at all the things and a special speaker to look forward to at Rise Women's Weekend!RISE Live Women's Weekend is coming May 14th - 16th, and it's our ONLY CONFERENCE OF 2021! When was the last time you did something just for you? Let this be the experience you give to yourself, and experience a community of women who are all rooting for you! Our live edition features some never-before-seen activations, including breakout sessions, A-list celebrity guests, and next day/week/month playback so you can access content on YOUR schedule! Tickets will never be more affordable than they are right now, so grab yours before the price goes up! -> https://bit.ly/rlww2021--After #RachTalk, please enjoy a snippet of this week's episode of my latest podcast, Your Fave's Faves, featuring Brad Paisley! For real! Listen to the full convo by clicking here -> https://megaphone.link/CAD5967061714 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices