sweet hospitality

OVER THE YEARS I'VE HAD VARIOUS PEOPLE I'VE JUST MET OFFER TO give me all kinds of cool things. And this isn't the result of me walking around with my hat extended, looking for a handout. We're talking random acts of generosity.

Like the carpenter in Boston — Galway Johnny — who gave me his new acoustic guitar after he learned mine had recently been stolen. Like the mechanic in Oklahoma — Norman John — who insisted on giving me a free tune-up 2 days after my VW bus broke down near the El Reno Federal Penitentiary. Or the portly stranger who handed me a $100 bill after reading my old blog as we sat working on our Apple laptops at a San Antonio coffeehouse.

There've been many more and one day I'd like to jot down as many of these random acts of generosity as I can remember. But until I get around to doing this, my recollection of the most recent example will have to do.

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The day I got my cabbie job, one of the old-timers down at the taxi stand/home office laughed when I told him I was just starting out.

"Good luck," he chortled with a slight shake of the head. "You startin' out at the worst possible time of the year. School gettin' out. Weather gettin' hot. Whole town slow down when it get that kinda hot."

He was right. Making decent money driving a cab in a town that slows down in the summer — a town I just moved to — was not so easy. I'm on the hook for $440 a week in cab fees. Yes, that's $440 per week. Plus gas. Which means I need to earn over $500 bucks behind the wheel before I make a dime for myself.

The guy who trained me claimed he worked banker's hours and averaged $200 a day. Me, I didn't make squat working the day shift. My golden hours have been between 10, 10:30 at night and 3 in the morning. And the $200 days were few and far between.

Consequently, I've been looking forward to the start of football season since the day I got this job. Football season means school is back in session, UT football games and drunk fans at bars needing cab rides home.

Which is exactly what Austin Hank needed on the opening Saturday night of college football season a week and a half ago.

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"Early night, huh?"

I picked Hank up outside Dogwood on West 6th Street. It was a little before midnight and the joint was jumping, the streets were humming and I was trying to make small talk with my new customer.

"I don't need that from you right now," Hank answered defensively from the backseat. I only got a quick glance at him when he got into my cab, but he looked like he could've been a Marine at some point in his life. And I immediately seemed to be pissing him off.

"I just sent another guy home because he was talking shit," Hank said, fighting back a drunken slur.

"I wasn't talking sh-..."

"I just did 8 shots with this asshole," Hank interrupted, "and you know where he is right now?"

"Where?"

"At home," Hank said proudly. "In bed. 'Cause I fucked his shit up. He couldn't keep up with me. That's why I don't need this from you right now."

"I didn't mean anything by it," I said as we rolled down West 6th through the Clarksville neighborhood of Austin. "I was just noting that the place was hopping. So going home at midnight seems a little..."

"I don't need this shit right now from you," Hank snarled again. "I just sent a guy home for talking shit."

I kept my eyes on the road and laughed at the magnitude and absurdity of our booze-induced communication breakdown.

"Dude, trust me, I wasn't giving you shit. I was just pointing out that you were going home earlier than most people. And that's a good thing. You're missing the traffic, the late-night puking, the frustrating attempts to get a cab after last call. Man, checking out early is a wise choice. I admire your decision-making."

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I'm not sure if Hank was buying my bullshit. But before long we were talking football, which almost always greases the cabbie conversational wheels. Apparently, Hank had been drinking all day. Watching games at various bars. Getting hammered. When he told me he went to UT in the late '90s, I couldn't help but ask: "So, did you know Ricky Williams?"

Several weeks ago I saw this fascinating documentary on the legendary Longhorn running back. The film followed Williams during the sabbatical he took from football, a personal growth year during which soft-spoken Ricky was going to a holistic cooking school and teaching yoga. And smoking a lotta ganja.

"Ricky used to give us rides home when we'd get drunk on 6th Street!" Hank laughed. Then he made it clear that he's not the type to be impressed with fame and celebrity. Hank just saw the irony of the whole thing. "We'd be too drunk to drive," Hank recalled, "so Ricky would insist on being our designated driver back to campus. Thing is, he was probably high the whole time!"

We had a good laugh over that one. Before long, we were laughing at all kinds of things. Hank told me he had a crazy writer friend at Texas Monthly I had to meet. I apologized for infecting the hometown he loved so much with another Californian. He told me I didn't seem so bad for a guy from L.A.

By the time we got to his house off Bee Caves Road, Hank told me to pull up into his gravel driveway.

"Come inside," he insisted. "I've got something I want to give you."

Worked for me. I had to piss real bad and the stench of gas station mini-mart bathroom urine was getting old.

"Mind if I use your toilet?" I asked approaching the side door Hank had just walked through.

"Down the hall, make a left," Hank called out as he headed towards what I assumed was the kitchen.

It's always a strange feeling when a complete stranger invites you into their home. I always feel honored and humbled — after all, it's a pretty massive show of faith and trust. Then there's the part of me that's a little creeped out as I wonder if I've just walked into the home of a serial killer. But that's just the L.A. guy in me oozing out.

I glanced around the bachelor bathroom and noticed framed photos of Hank and what I later learned were his nephews and nieces. Like me, Hank is a single guy. With siblings who have kids. Unlike me, he lives alone.

"You ever see Lonesome Dove?" Hank asked as I walked out of the bathroom, the sound of a flushing toilet trumpeting my return.

"I was JUST talking about Lonesome Dove yesterday with my girlfriend!" I told Hank. "It's her favorite movie of all-time."

"So you've seen it?"

"No! I've never seen it," I said. "I've never read the book either. But my girlfriend keeps telling me I have to see the movie. She was just telling me that yesterday."

"Well, then, here you go," Hank said as he handed me a DVD case featuring the cowboy incarnations of Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones. "Your very own copy of Lonesome Dove."

I was stunned.

"What?...No...You're lending this to me, right? I'll watch it tomorrow and get it back to you."

"No," insisted Hank. "That's for you. I've got 7 copies of it."

I vigorously shook Hank's hand, my face engulfed in a grateful smile.

"See, THIS is the kind of thing that makes Austin such a great place!" I gushed. "It's the people. From what I can tell, you guys are about the friendliest fuckers in America."

We'd come a long way from Hank snarling at me when he got in my cab. All in the space of about 13 minutes.

As I floated back to my cab, Hank had one more thing to tell me.

"If you ever have a son," he said, his slow gait crunching across the gravel driveway, "lock him in a room with that movie. Everything he needs to know about being a man, he can learn it watchin' Lonesome Dove."

Thanks, Hank. We'll let you know how that works out.

I love Austin.

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cool brees on a hot hump day

JUST BEFORE MIDNIGHT ON ANOTHER STEAMY SUMMER NIGHT. It's Wednesday in Austin and I'm poaching me some free Wi-Fi outside the Hilton Gardens hotel on 5th Street, a Drew Brees heave from I-35.

Speaking of Drew Brees, I had a customer in my taxi last week — a spunky blonde born-and-raised in Austin — who said she made out with Drew Brees back when they were high school classmates.

How does this come up in the course of a 5-minute downtown cab ride, you ask?

Well, when Ms. O said she grew up here in Austin, I immediately asked what high school she went to. Upon learning she was a Westlake High grad, I asked if she knew Drew.

"Knew him?" piped up one of her 2 drunk male cohorts. "Dude, she made out with him. She knew him alright."

"C'mon!" I shot back, calling 'bullshit' without actually coming out and saying it.

"It's true," she confirmed. "I went to a dance with him."

"Really?" I said glancing into the rearview mirror to see if she was the kind of girl a future superstar quarterback might make out with in high school. (She was.) "What was he like? Was he a good guy? He seems like a good guy."

"Oh, he was a great guy," answered Ms. O. "Couldn't have been nicer."

"So...?"

This is where my sense of propriety fails me. Asking too many questions. Crossing the line. Probing too deeply.

What the hell, they were drunk.

"So why didn't it work out?" I continued. "What happened?"

"What happened was we were young, he was nice...but I couldn't get past the birthmark."

With this confession, the cab erupts into a peanut gallery of "C'mon!"..."So shallow!"..."Give the guy a break!"

As billions of football fans around the globe now know, Brees has an impossible-to-miss birthmark — or is it a mole? — shaped like New Jersey running north-south down his cheekbone.

"The guy was a star quarterback in high school," I reminded Ms. O. "You couldn't get past a little thing like a birthmark?"

"Have you seen it?" Ms. O asked. "It's not a little thing. And it had hair growing out of it!"

The cab once again erupted into fits of laughter, friendly derision and good-natured revulsion. As we silently, perhaps unknowingly, took comfort in the fact that even Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks have flaws and don't always get the girl.

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the day is long

TODAY I TOOK MY FIRST TRIP TO THE TEXAS WINE COUNTRY. I drove a group of 4 women — Duke grads who met 20+ years ago in college — down to Driftwood, where I dropped them off at a couple wineries while I took in the view when I wasn't enjoying the air conditioning in my cab.

One of the women, Julie, is an English teacher at Beverly Hills high school — breeding ground for entitled brats, hard-working immigrants and future superstars like Angelina Jolie and Lenny Kravitz. (Not to mention Pauly Shore and Monica Lewinsky for you fans of the D-listers.) A decade ago Julie was my next door neighbor in LA — our 3-unit building was about 13 yards from the Beverly Hills city line — who once invited me to speak to a couple of her writing classes about this book that I was working on at the time.

Ten years later I'm making $120 bucks for driving Julie and her friends around for the day in Austin. But don't cry for me Angelina. As you'll see if you continue reading these posts, I'm thoroughly enjoying the experience.

In the meantime, you can read about my first night ever in Austin right here.

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friday night lights

THE UNOFFICIAL TOWN SLOGAN HERE IS "KEEP AUSTIN WEIRD." If you've never been here you may be wondering — What does this mean exactly? How can an entire town, the state capital of cowboy Texas no less, be WEIRD? And why are they so damn proud of it?

Hopefully this blog will shed some light on these and other Austin-related questions. Today's example of Weird Austin is the funky trailer in today's photo. This groovy little explosion of the entrepreneurial spirit is one of the many food trailers here in Austin. (For more on the trailer food vibe in town, check out this video I made a couple weeks ago.)


I haven't tasted the goodies at this particular trailer yet, but according to the menu they serve coffee drinks and pastries. But so far it's got my favorite name of all the food trailers. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to...

Fat Cock.

Keepin' it weird.

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In the two months since I've been on this job I've had at least 13 people invite me in for some post-work refreshments. Oh, and there was that blowjob offer. (No thanks, ma'am. I appreciate the offer though.) Most of the time I politely decline these friendly gestures. But last night I decided to roll with the Austin spirit — these are about the friendliest people in America — and say yes to a friendly young dude who had moved to Austin even more recently than me.

Lee is an Italian kid in his early 20s from New Jersey. Lived there his whole life until 2 months ago. When I found out I was an Austin vet compared to Lee I had to take him up on his offer and find out what brought him here.

"I did a lot of research, dude," Lee said, surrounded by one of the more epic bachelor apartments I'd ever seen. There was single guy shit all over the floor — clothes everywhere, pizza boxes, receipts, magazines, ticket stubs, water bottles. The only pieces of furniture were the new flat screen TV and the table it sat on. And, of course, the Playstation, with various gamer DVDs scattered near the TV. A few feet away was the bed Lee sleeps on — the biggest, baddest inflatable mattress I'd ever seen.

"What do you mean, you did research?" I ask while I peruse his old ticket stubs. Poor guy had to sit through a Knicks game.

"I'd lived my whole life in New Jersey," he tells me while simultaneously checking his text messages. "Not that I don't love New Jersey. My family's there, my friends, it's all good. But I'm young. I'm 23 years old. Life's too short. You never know what can happen, so you gotta get it while you can."

"Indeed."

"Actually, dude, the truth is, last year my mom died."

"Aw, man, that sucks. Sorry to hear that."

"Yeah, man, cancer. Totally sucks. AND my grandmother died not long after that. Plus my girlfriend at the time, her grandmother died too. So that was 3 big deaths, right in a row like that. And it just made me think...I gotta get out and live, man. I gotta do some cool shit while I'm young. I wanna experience life. I wanted to live somewhere new, somewhere I've never been before."

"And your research told you Austin was gonna be the best place for you?"

"Yeah. Well...I was looking at Miami. San Diego. But this place...I just kept hearing good things about it. So I moved out here 2 months ago, I got a transfer with my job and it's been great. I don't know of any other place in America that has so many things to do — and the people are cool. Everyone's chill here, y'know? It's got those hardcore hippie types. But even the people who aren't hippies, they're havin' the hippie vibe rub off on 'em."

Lee has short dark hair and is a HUGE Knicks fan. The only thing hippie about him is his fondness for the hippie lettuce. He showed up in Austin not knowing a soul. The day he moved here was the first time he'd ever set foot in Austin.

"So you like it here I take it?" I ask him, pretty certain of his answer. "You feel like you made the right decision?"

He looks around his apartment, the pigsty prince surveying his kingdom — quite possibly the happiest man in town.

"Dude," Lee gushes. "Austin is cool as fuck."

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mr. cab driver

SO HOW ARE YOU LIKING AUSTIN? What's it like out there? Do you miss California? What the hell are you doing driving a cab?!

People keep asking me these things. So instead of answering these queries each and every time, I figured I'd start yet another blog, this one focused on my new life as a cab driver in Austin. How exactly I came to drive a cab in Austin is a tale I've already told many times to my hundreds of customers over the last 2 months. It goes something like this:

I moved to Texas in March to work on a documentary about a certain iconic rock 'n roll star. (I'm pretty sure I didn't sign a non-disclosure agreement on this, but just in case...) This long-dead, Texas-bred Rock Icon spent some time in Austin — went to UT for a while, made her mark all over town — and I moved to Austin to work on a documentary about her. Back in LA I'd been hired to help the director, whose last documentary got an Oscar nomination, write up a treatment that helped the film get the blessings of the notoriously-hard-to-please family of the long-dead, Texas-bred Rock Icon.

The LA-based producers were going to announce the project at this year's South-by-Southwest film and music festival. Thus my purchase of a one-way ticket to Austin, where I'd be joining my girlfriend, Tamale, who graduated from UT about 15 years ago and had moved back to Texas a year ago. I was told that I was in the budget as the writer and I could expect to participate in the project.

Well, about a week into my stay it became apparent that the project was temporarily on hold. The music rights were more expensive than the producers had anticipated and they needed to work some things out.

Two months later, they still hadn't worked things out.

And I was driving a cab in Austin.

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"Let me ask you something."

I didn't get a good look at him, but I think the guy in the backseat is wearing a T-shirt and a baseball cap. Maybe army fatigues. Within seconds of flagging me down at MLK and Lavaca he tells me he's drunk. Then he tells me he just got back from Iraq about 3 months ago.

"Are you okay talking about it? Do people ask you about it? Do you even want to get into it?

"You know, it's funny you should ask," he says. "I just started talking about it 3 weeks ago. I'm seeing someone for PTSD."

"So how's that going? Is it good? Do you mind me asking you all these questions?"

"Nah, man. It's cool."

"What about your friends? Do they ask you? Do you they want to hear about it?"

"You know what, man? Most people, most of my friends, they'll ask me, 'So . . . did it suck?' And I'm like . . ."

I glance into the mirror. I watch him get a faraway look in his eyes. Trying to think of the words to describe what he's feeling.

"Did it suck? No, you know what sucks? Getting your car towed for parking tickets sucks. Getting your stereo ripped off sucks. Going into a war zone . . . watching people get killed . . . trying not to get killed yourself . . . Does it suck? No. It more than just sucks."

He goes on to tell me his name is Kevin. He's in town from Chicago with his girlfriend and, I think, his aunt. Kevin says he was a sargent — one of the leaders — and did 2 tours in Iraq, where he was combat the whole time. He says he's always been fascinated with social science. "The way governments and countries work," he says as we drive down Guadalupe.

When Kevin went into the Army he says he was a true blue neo-conservative Republican. "I thought I was informed, I studied the issues, I voted for George Bush. Twice. But after what I experienced in Iraq . . ."

Again, he pauses. Looking for the right words? Instinctively scanning the thumbnails of his mind, seeing images he'd rather not look at?

"After what I saw in Iraq, I've done a complete 180."

"But why? What made you change your perspective? Was there one incident that crystalized it for you?"

"No," he tells me. "It was gradual. But I just . . . I started asking myself WHY? Why are we destroying this culture? Why are we losing American lives? For what? It's not making a difference. In Iraq, Afghanistan, it's not helping things dropping bombs and killing people. I saw it with my own 2 eyes. We're spending all this money on destroying things over there. For what? We should be spending that money here, where people are suffering, where people are out of work. We need to use that money here. Not over there. It makes no fucking sense, man!"

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When I drop Kevin off at the Hilton Gardens we end up parked for another 10 minutes, exchanging email addresses with promises to stay in touch. He says he's got several thousand digital pictures he took in Irag of everyday life. The stuff you don't see on the news.

"Man, you gotta share your story," I tell him. "Get it on video."

He seems reluctant. Maybe the pictures will have to do. Or maybe it's just that no one's ever asked. Personally, I'm interested in what makes a person do a complete 180 like that.

"The good thing is," I add, "we're at a point in history where there is no one holding you back from telling your version of the truth. The gatekeepers can't keep you quiet any more. You get a video camera and throw it up on YouTube, and you get enough people telling their glimpses of the truth, that's how things are gonna change. The facts can't be ignored anymore, not if people like you report back on what you see."

"Yeah, you're right."

I'm quite done with him.

"It takes being in the middle of a big story, something that's getting a lot of news coverage, to really understand how the mainstream media gets it so fucking wrong, how the truth gets manipulated and distorted and twisted into lies and half-truths."

I was thinking in my case about my experience helping my friends open and run their medical marijuana dispensary back in LA, the other job I had before I moved out here to Austin.

But that's another story for another day.

More stories from the cab to come.

And hopefully a link to Kevin's Iraq photos.

Time to hit the streets.

It's Friday night in Austin.

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