Jake Rakatansky, Julian Fields, and Liv Acar reunite in Palm Springs after a five-year gap, critiquing the city's inflated costs and "fake lagoon" water scarcity compared to Vancouver. They analyze the area's history of "old gay money" and AIDS survivors now leading tech giants, while Liv notes absurd club entry rules denying her access due to a lack of facial hair. The hosts lament missing local staples like In and Out Burger before promoting Patreon access to premium series like Man Clan and Trickle Down, highlighting the disconnect between California's artificial landscape and its cultural evolution. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, MahmoudAshraf/mms-300m-1130-forced-aligner, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.00, and large-v3-turbo
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Palm Springs Premium Episode00:09:25
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Welcome to the QAA Podcast Premium Episode 333.
Jake's Takes, Liv's Gives, Coachella Edition.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rakatansky, Julian Fields, and Liv Acar.
Well, folks, we finally did it.
We brought the rings of power together in Palm Springs, and the three OG QAA hosts got to meet Liv in person for the first time.
It was glorious.
Great.
How long have I been on this podcast for?
I haven't met you guys in person.
Yeah, like half a decade or something?
Yeah, how long has it been?
So, 2021, maybe?
Oh my God, that's crazy to think of.
But Travis is still in the hospital from it.
It literally almost killed him.
Yeah, he realized he was like, it was kind of like inception, like he was in a dream within a dream within a dream.
Well, he thought Liv was like 48.
So he actually came apart.
He kind of shattered in front of us.
Yeah, unraveled, unraveled.
Well, I didn't get to go to the dinner because we were driving in late.
But how was that?
Was that fun?
Did you guys have a good time?
It was great.
Yeah, it was.
Yeah, it was.
We definitely, you know, used the QAA dime and you weren't there.
It's sad.
Next time you have to, you know, participate.
Yeah, I'll order a patty.
I'll get a patty melt on a QAA dime.
A patty melt just sounds like you're eating like a dog turd or something.
Why do Americans come up with dishes that just sound like you scraped it off the floor?
A melt.
I will say it was impressive to find a place that's like more expensive food wise than Vancouver.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, it does.
Jesus Christ.
Because the food was like fine.
Like it was good, but like.
No, but you're also in Palm Springs, which is like a very wealthy kind of suburban area.
And we're going to like one of these places that is probably double the price you'd get for the same quality in LA.
Right.
Yeah.
Not like maybe that much, but still, like you're paying a premium for being, you know, if you're like in the OC or in Palm Springs, like you're going to be paying like kind of a very different standard.
If you go by the beach, like, you know, Malibu will be like that.
Well, you'll get like really whatever Italian food for the price of what you would be paying upscale Italian food in the city.
But, Liv, this was your first jaunt into California, right?
It was.
Yeah.
I regret not staying for longer coming to LA.
Although, given how destroyed I was after the festival, maybe heading right back wasn't the worst idea.
It is the best idea.
Liv definitely had Palm Spring eyeballs, getting off the plane.
Wow, what the fuck?
Because it is very impressive, Palm Springs.
You see the mountains and huge and these rows of palm trees.
And you're stepping off the plane from Raintown, British Columbia.
Raintown USA.
Yeah.
It will be soon.
Yeah, it will be soon.
Soon enough, Raintown USA.
I made this joke on Twitter about like it being like my impression of California is that it's just Minecraft biomes.
Like it's just a new biome.
It's like you're these 64 by 64 squares and each one has a distinct biome.
If you go to Big Sur, like up the coast, all the biomes are really close together too.
So you'll have like, hey, I'm in the plains.
Like, oh, wait, I'm on like big rock facades with like crashing waves and oh, I'm in a redwood forest.
Everything is within like, you know, meters of each other.
The neighborhoods are kind of like that too, where like just like, Very different, like block by block, like it'll look like two completely different places.
But what's nice about Palm Springs is like you'll be in the parking lot of a CVS, like looking at one of the most beautiful vistas you've ever seen.
Yeah.
Like it is, it's a crazy, it's like just like a crazy like mishmash of like convenience and like pure, like unadulterated nature.
I don't want to be insulting to it, but it basically shouldn't exist.
It's one of these places where, unless like, unless like water can be massively displaced and essentially misused.
Cannot exist.
I mean, LA is essentially the same thing.
A fake lagoon.
Yeah, we don't have our own water.
Like, we just don't have the water for anything that's happening in California.
We're a fake lagoon.
Yeah, I was even like standing, there's a big grass field.
We took like the shuttle from our hotel to Coachella.
And like, there's this big grass field that like it sends you to.
And I'm just talking to my friend about like, how much water do you think needs to be maintained for this just grass field?
Like, it must be, I mean, like it's just absurd.
Like, it's what is, how much of a public good is it?
To have this field be authentic grass.
Yeah.
And in the summer, you need like an ankle high, like building that covers all of the grass so that it can survive like the heat.
Right.
You need to create like a miniature hothouse for each blade of grass.
Yeah.
I was disturbed because it was not an especially hot weekend either.
It was like 27 to 30 Celsius.
No, it was incredibly like temperate for the time of year.
Yeah.
We lucked out in that regard.
There was a sense in which it felt like a very, it felt like a fake city partially because it was just exactly how California is portrayed in the movies.
That main kind of highway where it's got the really long palm trees and then the scenic, you know, mountain in the background.
Yeah, it's kind of like if Pasadena had vistas, you know, and Pasadena is used as like every town in the USA.
And in movies, of course, that means a whole like class notch above reality.
But this is like that plus, you know, just being surrounded by these massive mountains.
And there's some incredible like hiking trails and stuff like that where you see like mountain flowers, butterflies, you ascend to like.
A fucking waterfall that you can bathe in.
You know, I mean, there's some stuff around Palm Springs that is truly amazing, but like that main kind of flat land where the city itself is, I mean, that place should have been baked off the map like long ago.
Yeah, there's something oddly like it's very beautiful.
Like in Vancouver, it's very beautiful as well, but it feels less fake.
There's something oddly fake about Palm Springs to me.
No, Vancouver would exist.
Like it is a vibrant place with plenty of its own water.
Yeah, like it had a population, I believe the The lower mainland had like 700,000 indigenous people approximately before it was colonized by Europeans.
Like it's a geographically very sensical location to have a lot of people at.
Palm Springs, it's like, no.
And I'm no specialist, but yeah, Palm Springs would be like a migratory stopping point, maybe if it was being occupied by animals during a certain part of the year.
But sticking around there during part of the year where it becomes just the hottest you've ever fucking experienced, like the atmosphere itself feels like an oven, is a totally different story.
Yeah, and the history is also strange because it's very like old gay money, like people who survived the AIDS crisis and came out to be like, you know, C executive at Apple or something.
I'm assuming you did the gay sex resorts there?
Of course, every single one.
That's what I say.
Yeah, of course.
Coachella, quote unquote, right?
I see Jake's new mustache.
I see Jake's new way of being.
They wouldn't let me in with that one.
They just give you a little glue on one.
It was like back in my 20s, you would show up at the club and they'd be like, no sneakers.
You'd have to go figure out something else.
This time, there was like, hey, no clean shaving.
You need a stash to get in here.
Yeah.
Liv, did you go to, did you try In and Out Burger?
I did not.
I don't even know if there is one in Palm Springs.
I feel like there is, but maybe I'm wrong.
I think there is.
I'm not wrong.
Did you go to Agua Caliente, the casino in Palm Springs?
I did not, no.
Yeah, casinos, there's something horrifying to me about a casino.
Really?
Especially one in Palm Springs.
Yeah, no, especially, yeah.
But it's like your favorite streams, except older people and they get to smoke cigarettes.
Yeah.
You've been listening to a sample of a premium episode of the QAA podcast.
For access to the full episode, as well as all past premium episodes and all of our podcast miniseries, go to patreon.comslash QAA.
Travis, why is that such a good deal?
Well, Jake, you get hundreds of additional episodes of the QAA podcast for just $5 per month.
For that very low price, you get access to over 200 premium episodes, plus all of our miniseries.
That includes 10 episodes of Man Clan with Julian and Annie, 10 episodes of Perverse with Julian and Liv, 10 episodes of The Spectral Voyager.
With Jake and Brad, plus 20 episodes of Trickle Down with me, Travis View.
It's a bounty of content and the best deal in podcasting.
Travis, for once, I agree with you.
And I also agree that people could subscribe by going to patreon.com/slash QAA.
Well, that's not an opinion, it's a fact.
You're so right, Jake.
We love and appreciate all of our listeners.
Yes, we do.
And Travis is actually crying right now, I think, out of gratitude, maybe?