True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 300: Episode 300
Aired: 2023-06-19
Duration: 01:37:31


=== Adult Baby Diaper Lover (06:46) ===

[00:00:00]  I want to say this, actually, is because I was reading some little scuttlebutt the old True Non-Street Urchins were scuttling around about.
[00:00:10]  Uh-huh.
[00:00:12]  And a lot of people really want the adult.
[00:00:16]  What is adult diaper baby lover?
[00:00:18]  Is that right?
[00:00:18]  Oh, wait, adult baby diaper lover.
[00:00:21]  That's illegal.
[00:00:22]  Adult baby diaper lover.
[00:00:24]  Well, I don't know what they're into.
[00:00:26]  Well, they're into a couple different things.
[00:00:27]  But this is what I want to say.
[00:00:28]  Yeah.
[00:00:29]  You people are fucking sick.
[00:00:30]  Not the ABDL, ADBL.
[00:00:33]  It sounds like it's anti-defamation league.
[00:00:38]  She pissed their pants considered no less than they did.
[00:00:40]  Why do so many of our listeners want this episode?
[00:00:42]  Because it's lurid, Liz, and it's gross.
[00:00:45]  And it's weird.
[00:00:46]  And it's strange.
[00:00:48]  And people want that.
[00:00:50]  Imagine if you could knowing about, having firsthand, well, secondhand knowledge about the kind of person who is an adult, but who pretends to be a baby, but who also wears a diaper without actually having to be in the room with them.
[00:01:05]  That's the power of podcasts is we can bring that to people.
[00:01:08]  But I have to be in the room with you every time we do this.
[00:01:35]  There's no adult baby diaper lover diaper baby adult lover episode coming.
[00:01:41]  I am an adult.
[00:01:42]  Wait, I'm a, I'm a, I'm an adult lover.
[00:01:44]  Wait.
[00:01:45]  A A D L. I'm gonna, I'm an adult.
[00:01:50]  Wait.
[00:01:50]  Wait.
[00:01:50]  I'm gonna.
[00:01:51]  Adult brace.
[00:01:54]  Diaper list.
[00:01:55]  No, wait.
[00:01:57]  Adult.
[00:01:58]  I'm gonna A L D L. I'm an adult lover on the down low.
[00:02:04]  No, I'm an adult lover, diaper lover.
[00:02:06]  I don't want to.
[00:02:07]  Adult lover, diaper lover doesn't want to.
[00:02:09]  Dude, honestly, I got this just like, I mean, maybe it's the time.
[00:02:13]  It's 300th episode, I should admit this, but like, low-key, like, some adults be looking pretty good.
[00:02:21]  Like, I'm just like, sometimes I'm just like at, like, I'm hanging out at the park and I see like next to the playground, like, the people who have kids.
[00:02:27]  And I'm just like, oh, look at that dude.
[00:02:34]  Because that's right, ladies and gentlemen.
[00:02:35]  I'm bisexual.
[00:02:37]  I'm bisexual.
[00:02:38]  You know, I will say this is a little reveal is that I actually do have an idea for the adult baby diaper.
[00:02:44]  Did I get it right?
[00:02:45]  Adult baby diaper lover episode.
[00:02:47]  What is it?
[00:02:48]  Well, I'm not going to say it right now because I don't want to spoil the fun.
[00:02:51]  But I actually do have an idea for that episode that I've been kind of cooking in the old Liz brain.
[00:02:56]  So low.
[00:02:57]  You've thought about this without me?
[00:02:58]  Yeah.
[00:02:59]  I think about a lot of things without you.
[00:03:00]  That's the nature of what?
[00:03:03]  Of being human.
[00:03:05]  Yeah, well.
[00:03:07]  I, first of all, I'm not bisexual.
[00:03:09]  I'm pansexual.
[00:03:10]  And I'm Brace Belden.
[00:03:11]  Hello, Brace.
[00:03:11]  I'm Liz.
[00:03:12]  We are, of course, joined by our producer, Young Chomsky.
[00:03:15]  And this is the 300th episode of Truan.
[00:03:17]  Yes.
[00:03:18]  Gong it, baby.
[00:03:19]  Where's the gong?
[00:03:20]  Where's the no?
[00:03:20]  Hold on.
[00:03:20]  Don't edit this out.
[00:03:23]  I think you hit him right on the nose there.
[00:03:25]  Right.
[00:03:26]  He doesn't have a nose.
[00:03:26]  His nose is kind of the center of the gong.
[00:03:28]  Did we ever name the gong?
[00:03:30]  Well, so you weren't here for this, but Young Chomsky and I sometimes kind of come here and do like this ritual thing.
[00:03:38]  It kind of looks like videos you'd see of the Azov Battalion in like 2017.
[00:03:42]  Yeah, there's kind of like Sweat Lodge vibe in here.
[00:03:45]  Very much a sweat, just like a bunch of guys.
[00:03:48]  The North Man or whatever.
[00:03:50]  You know, the Northman.
[00:03:51]  I thought I was going to die.
[00:03:52]  And we hit the gong, right?
[00:03:54]  Sort of behind each other, hit the gong.
[00:03:57]  And it's called Liz.
[00:04:01]  And I don't want to freak you out with that.
[00:04:02]  The gong is called Liz, but it's in like a nice.
[00:04:05]  That's not the name.
[00:04:06]  I think we should name it Gong Gong Marcos.
[00:04:08]  Gong Gong Marcos?
[00:04:09]  Okay, Gong Gong Marcos, it is.
[00:04:11]  Yeah, Gong Gong Marcos.
[00:04:12]  I'll take that.
[00:04:12]  Because we love him.
[00:04:13]  It's a Gong Gong.
[00:04:14]  And then you get to hit him every time.
[00:04:16]  Gundam Marcos.
[00:04:18]  It is our 300th episode, Liz.
[00:04:20]  We're just going to keep saying that.
[00:04:21]  Yeah, that is, I want to, so actually, let's clear up some Truanon lore here.
[00:04:26]  Ooh.
[00:04:26]  First of all, you guys have to be nice to us today because it's our 300th episode.
[00:04:30]  And so you can't get mad at us for these extraneous details that we're adding in.
[00:04:36]  But people, the numbering of the Truanon episodes has long been a point of contention for some of our more attentive listeners.
[00:04:45]  Attentive.
[00:04:45]  Definitely an A-word for sure.
[00:04:47]  Attentive listeners, right?
[00:04:48]  For some of our listeners who either did really good or really bad in school have been like, where's episode?
[00:04:55]  What's Young Chomsky?
[00:04:56]  I'm flipping the mic around.
[00:04:58]  What episodes do people think that there are and there aren't?
[00:05:00]  So I think there were, we went from like 46 or 47 to 50 to correct the fact that there were some bonus episodes early on that were not accounted for.
[00:05:12]  Wait, we did that on purpose?
[00:05:14]  Yes.
[00:05:14]  Well, I do think I remember this conversation.
[00:05:18]  I do remember the conversation that we had because I will, just to, again, let the listeners in on a little lore here.
[00:05:27]  Young Chomsky is a very attentive producer.
[00:05:29]  Definitely.
[00:05:30]  He seems like he did either really well or really bad in school.
[00:05:33]  Which we love here at Truanon, obviously.
[00:05:36]  But I remember a very early on conversation when I believe it was the episode where Jeffrey, spoiler alert, killed himself.
[00:05:45]  He passed.
[00:05:45]  And, or did he?
[00:05:48]  And it was like, wait, does this live within the canon of the episodes or does this not live within the canon?
[00:05:55]  Do we, like, how do we designate that this is separate?
[00:05:58]  And there was a conversation, and it was like, okay, also the art is black because this is different.
[00:06:03]  And then we can set up for like, we did a couple like rando episodes that were.
[00:06:09]  We've had a lot of early on.
[00:06:12]  I'm talking early on.
[00:06:13]  I'm going to estimate this is actually like our 350th episode.
[00:06:17]  It's our 300th episode.
[00:06:18]  It's why it's our 300th episode because it is called episode 300.
[00:06:22]  Episode 300.
[00:06:23]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:06:23]  But I'm just saying, in terms of total episodes we've done.
[00:06:27]  I don't even know.
[00:06:28]  It's something probably in the realm of 350.
[00:06:31]  I know there's those like fucking like 40 or whatever that we didn't even release.
[00:06:35]  So yeah, all right.
[00:06:36]  Definitely before like, especially some of the 2020 stuff got settled, there's a lot of unreleased stuff out there.
[00:06:44]  We'll put the Dominion episodes out.

=== Why We Left Wikipedia (11:56) ===

[00:06:46]  Yeah, I mean, just like once the litigation's over discovery and all that, you know, it's just like things will change.
[00:06:51]  But for now, those are, those are staying locked in the vault.
[00:06:54]  It is funny, though, because when people notice that we have episodes missing, they're like, what are they covering up?
[00:06:59]  It's like, we put it on the internet.
[00:07:01]  You can't.
[00:07:01]  You know what we're covering up?
[00:07:02]  Hillary's emails.
[00:07:03]  Hillary's fucking email.
[00:07:04]  I've seen Frazzle drip.
[00:07:06]  Did I tell you that my neighbor, my neighbor's friend was asking me about the podcast?
[00:07:10]  And then he was like, oh, have you looked into Hillary's emails?
[00:07:14]  Interesting.
[00:07:15]  Have you?
[00:07:16]  I would if I could get them.
[00:07:18]  Yeah.
[00:07:18]  And also, if you do have, we'll make some requests to the audience today.
[00:07:22]  If you have Hunter's entire email thing, I know I could get it eventually.
[00:07:27]  We know who has the laptop.
[00:07:29]  Yes, we do.
[00:07:30]  And I don't think he listens to this show.
[00:07:34]  But if he does, I think he should send us a copy of it.
[00:07:38]  Listen, I'm a small C, small government conservative, right?
[00:07:44]  I think the government should be so smart.
[00:07:46]  You are reasonable people.
[00:07:48]  I'm a reasonable person.
[00:07:49]  I'm interested in the truth.
[00:07:51]  Yes.
[00:07:52]  And frankly, like, I like looking at dicks.
[00:07:55]  Like, I'm not, just like as an aesthetic thing, you know?
[00:07:58]  Like, I want to see what he's rocking with.
[00:08:00]  Like, you don't walk, I mean, you're a woman, so you don't do this.
[00:08:02]  But like, young Chompson, you walk down the street and you see a guy, every guy you see, you're like, what are you rocking with?
[00:08:07]  Right?
[00:08:08]  Like, what do you, what are, what's, you know, how many times are you like, looking at Hunter's photos.
[00:08:15]  I see it.
[00:08:17]  I mean, the thing with that is it's crazy that you can see the president's son getting a foot job while he smokes crack.
[00:08:24]  That's crazy that you can do that.
[00:08:26]  And I'm tired of pretending it's not.
[00:08:28]  Okay.
[00:08:28]  People say he's a private citizen.
[00:08:30]  I'm sorry.
[00:08:30]  If I found a picture, a video of a private citizen getting a foot job while smoking crack, I'd be like, that's fucking insane.
[00:08:36]  Also, it's like, this isn't like Chelsea Clinton when she was 12 and reporters calling her ugly or whatever.
[00:08:41]  Yeah.
[00:08:42]  Yeah.
[00:08:42]  Adult Hunter Biden.
[00:08:43]  Have you seen the pictures of him at that parade in Ireland?
[00:08:45]  He's 75 years old.
[00:08:47]  He's so old looking.
[00:08:49]  It's crazy.
[00:08:50]  And I mean, listen, I've been, I've been in, I've been not smoking crack for a long time, right?
[00:08:57]  But I've been in a lot of places where people who used to smoke crack will talk about their experience with that stuff.
[00:09:01]  I've talked to a lot of sober people who used to have bad drug problems.
[00:09:05]  And I got to be honest with you, in almost nine years, I have never met anybody who's as much of a fuck up as Hunter Biden is.
[00:09:13]  Like, just in, from that perspective, like, he is extraordinarily high.
[00:09:20]  And so I think that in itself is a story, but these, you know, these liberals want to cover it up.
[00:09:24]  Yeah.
[00:09:25]  But we've done it.
[00:09:26]  We've done a lot of episodes.
[00:09:27]  We did a whole episode on Hunter Biden.
[00:09:28]  We've done episodes.
[00:09:29]  Sometimes.
[00:09:30]  People make comments in the Patreon and they're like, wow, you don't, why don't we hear about that?
[00:09:34]  Bitch, we did that.
[00:09:35]  We've done it.
[00:09:37]  We've done two episodes a week for four years.
[00:09:40]  We've done it.
[00:09:40]  Oh, that's crazy.
[00:09:41]  I know.
[00:09:42]  I don't even like to think about that.
[00:09:44]  But yeah, we've covered so many.
[00:09:46]  And listen, people always talk about the podcast.
[00:09:50]  A podcast never made any sense.
[00:09:52]  What do you mean?
[00:09:52]  It's just about us.
[00:09:54]  It's about us.
[00:09:55]  It's about our journey.
[00:09:56]  For me, the podcast is about us trying to understand what's going on in the most broad sense.
[00:10:03]  Yeah.
[00:10:03]  And so that's what every episode's about in a sense.
[00:10:06]  And it's true crime.
[00:10:09]  To me.
[00:10:10]  Well, I think that this episode is about that.
[00:10:13]  Us trying to understand what's going on.
[00:10:16]  Is that a sweet little segue I hear coming from you?
[00:10:18]  No, but I was just thinking.
[00:10:20]  Yeah.
[00:10:20]  It could be a segue or not.
[00:10:22]  We can say other stuff about ourselves if you want.
[00:10:25]  I don't want to get too navel-gazy here.
[00:10:26]  No.
[00:10:27]  Especially, well, I mean, I got like a, it's kind of.
[00:10:30]  Yeah, it's kind of weird there.
[00:10:31]  You know the thing that Boba Fett falls into?
[00:10:33]  The worm?
[00:10:34]  He's a Sarlac?
[00:10:35]  I got kind of like a Sarlaq thing going on with the old belly button.
[00:10:38]  The great Pitt of Carcassonne.
[00:10:39]  Yeah, the Pitt of Carcoon.
[00:10:41]  And it's just, it's like, it's got dun da da.
[00:10:47]  But, yeah, we can transition.
[00:10:57]  But I do know, Liz.
[00:10:58]  Actually, we're not transitioning now.
[00:11:00]  Okay.
[00:11:01]  Isn't there somebody we forgot to mention?
[00:11:03]  The dear, sweet old listeners.
[00:11:05]  Oh, did we?
[00:11:06]  Well, we've complained about them briefly, but we also should thank them.
[00:11:11]  Okay.
[00:11:12]  Thank you guys.
[00:11:14]  Okay, that was waiting for that.
[00:11:15]  Thank you.
[00:11:16]  Say it like you mean it.
[00:11:17]  No, but really.
[00:11:18]  I mean, we, I can't believe that we're still doing this sometimes.
[00:11:22]  I mean, when you just said two episodes, I mean, it hasn't really been two episodes a week, but let's just say.
[00:11:27]  I would say average out.
[00:11:28]  It's definitely been at least two episodes.
[00:11:30]  Average out.
[00:11:31]  No, so we've done three episodes a week.
[00:11:34]  That's true.
[00:11:35]  We've done five episodes a week before.
[00:11:36]  No, we haven't.
[00:11:37]  Yeah, during the trial, we'd throw it.
[00:11:39]  We did.
[00:11:40]  That was so fun.
[00:11:40]  I want to do that.
[00:11:41]  I would love to.
[00:11:42]  Well, we might.
[00:11:43]  We might.
[00:11:44]  We'll talk about that.
[00:11:46]  But it's like crazy to think that we've been doing this for four years.
[00:11:50]  And it's all because of people just listening to you and me fucking talk and Young Chomsky making it sound way better by taking out all the dumb shit that we say, which is crazy because we say so much dumb shit.
[00:12:00]  So much dumb shit.
[00:12:02]  And here we are, Brace.
[00:12:04]  Yeah.
[00:12:05]  It's, it's, it's funny.
[00:12:06]  I, you know, I don't want to, no one wants to hear this, but it's been, it's been nice doing this with you guys.
[00:12:12]  And I am, I am always astonished.
[00:12:14]  Every single time anyone's ever come up to me like randomly and been like, I like the podcast, I am floored, like shocked that that's happening.
[00:12:23]  Not in a bad, not like the podcast sucks or whatever, but I'm just like, wow, that's crazy.
[00:12:26]  People listen to this.
[00:12:28]  So thank you for listening to this.
[00:12:30]  It really has been, it's been a wild ride.
[00:12:33]  And frankly, like, that's what makes this so hard.
[00:12:36]  Stop it.
[00:12:38]  Nice try.
[00:12:39]  That's what makes this so hard because I'm me tooing you.
[00:12:43]  Oh, man.
[00:12:45]  The show's over.
[00:12:46]  Why did I see that coming?
[00:12:48]  Yeah.
[00:12:48]  I'm sorry.
[00:12:49]  I'm me tooing you.
[00:12:50]  What did I do?
[00:12:51]  You said that you said that you said, looks like you've been working out a lot lately.
[00:12:58]  And then you punched me in the ass cheek, closed fist really hard and made the boxing noise when you did it.
[00:13:06]  Liz, I don't know if you don't remember that.
[00:13:09]  And then you sort of, then you sort of used, you used my protruding.
[00:13:13]  Frankly, yes.
[00:13:14]  My ample bosom.
[00:13:15]  You used my ample bosom as a speedback.
[00:13:19]  And to me, it just that I know that like you kind of like, you're from like a locker room culture.
[00:13:24]  Like you love.
[00:13:26]  Oh, actually, there's something I want to mention about that.
[00:13:28]  You love sports and stuff, but that is, that's difficult for me.
[00:13:32]  I do want to say, I looked at our Wikipedia today, which I don't know if I've.
[00:13:35]  By the way, Young Chomsky, I just want to point out, you say Wikipedia.
[00:13:38]  Wikipedia.
[00:13:39]  Which just like got stuck, which is what it is.
[00:13:41]  I say Wikipedia.
[00:13:43]  It's a Wikipedia.
[00:13:43]  I'm a Wicca.
[00:13:45]  I'm a Wicca guy.
[00:13:46]  I looked at our Wikipedia today.
[00:13:49]  You're a sports writer.
[00:13:51]  What?
[00:13:51]  That's what it says.
[00:13:52]  I have a Wikipedia?
[00:13:53]  No, but that's what it says.
[00:13:54]  Well, maybe you do, but that's what it says on the truant on Wikipedia.
[00:13:57]  It says I'm a sports writer.
[00:13:59]  It says you're a journalist.
[00:14:02]  It says, let me see.
[00:14:06]  Let's see.
[00:14:07]  Oh, no, it says you're a writer.
[00:14:09]  No, well, I'm not.
[00:14:10]  Yeah, but I didn't know you wrote a sports article.
[00:14:13]  You didn't?
[00:14:13]  No.
[00:14:14]  Oh, I wrote a thing about Jim's Harden for Dead Sports.
[00:14:17]  I know.
[00:14:17]  I read it earlier today.
[00:14:18]  Oh.
[00:14:18]  Yeah.
[00:14:19]  It's good.
[00:14:20]  Oh, thanks.
[00:14:20]  Really?
[00:14:21]  Yeah.
[00:14:21]  Thanks.
[00:14:22]  Yeah.
[00:14:22]  I'm just saying, if this podcasting thing doesn't work out, you should get into watching basketball.
[00:14:30]  But yeah, for some reason, it's also, I got to be honest with you.
[00:14:34]  It says we're dirtbag left here.
[00:14:36]  It does.
[00:14:37]  It does.
[00:14:37]  You know, I have pushed back on that since the inception of our podcast.
[00:14:40]  I've always said, I'm not a dirtbag.
[00:14:42]  I'm not a dirtbag.
[00:14:43]  I'm just racist.
[00:14:46]  Like, I'm a very clean person.
[00:14:48]  You are, Liz, you, anybody, I challenge any human being to look at Liz at any point since I've known you and I've known you for a very long time and been like, that's a dirt bag.
[00:15:01]  Thank you.
[00:15:02]  That's a dirt bag.
[00:15:03]  Thank you.
[00:15:04]  Me, I don't want to call me dirtbag left.
[00:15:07]  I'm not a dirtbag.
[00:15:08]  I don't wear a trucker hat.
[00:15:10]  You know, you looked at my hat right now.
[00:15:12]  It's not a trucker hat.
[00:15:13]  It's a regular hat.
[00:15:14]  Okay.
[00:15:15]  You know, I'm like, you know.
[00:15:16]  You sometimes wear a trucker hat, though.
[00:15:18]  I wear it.
[00:15:18]  That's not true.
[00:15:19]  I have one trucker hat.
[00:15:20]  It says French Revolution on it.
[00:15:23]  But it broke, so I don't wear it no more.
[00:15:26]  We are a normal person true crime podcast.
[00:15:30]  I want to be clear about that.
[00:15:32]  And again, episode 300, I'm being indulgent.
[00:15:34]  Nobody wants to hear this stuff, but I'm complaining.
[00:15:37]  And another thing.
[00:15:39]  And another thing.
[00:15:41]  I'm telling you this.
[00:15:42]  There has been not a article on this podcast in four years.
[00:15:47]  And my goal is.
[00:15:48]  No, there was one and it called us anti-Semitic.
[00:15:51]  That is true.
[00:15:52]  The only press we've gotten, besides, I think you interview with the LA Review of Books online only blog, like a month after we started.
[00:16:01]  Outside of that, the only article about us literally is in the Daily Beast and is like, are these dirtbag left stars flirting with the far right?
[00:16:11]  Yeah.
[00:16:12]  Spoiler alert?
[00:16:14]  No.
[00:16:14]  Yes.
[00:16:15]  Flirting's, okay, pause on that.
[00:16:18]  It's unbecoming for men to flirt, but it is anti-Semitic in it.
[00:16:24]  And that is the press that we've gotten.
[00:16:26]  And you know what?
[00:16:27]  I wouldn't be called anti-Semitic with any other people in the world, but you guys.
[00:16:30]  Oh, thanks.
[00:16:31]  No, I really wouldn't because you're Polish, notably, you know, your history of your people is very anti-Semitic.
[00:16:36]  And so if I was with other people, that literally wouldn't happen to me.
[00:16:39]  But I'm just saying, like, it's crazy because we have all these talents.
[00:16:42]  Like, you know, Liz is, you know, she makes leather pants.
[00:16:45]  Like, young Chomsky, of course, long distance swimmer.
[00:16:48]  I myself can dunk.
[00:16:50]  And it's like, none of these things are in our Wikipedia because no one's written about them.
[00:16:53]  And it's like, cool.
[00:16:55]  So like, if I die tomorrow, where will people learn that I can dunk?
[00:16:59]  You know what, though?
[00:17:00]  But I like that because we have been doing this for four years, 300 episodes and some change, whatever.
[00:17:08]  And it's all been from people just listening to it.
[00:17:12]  That's true.
[00:17:12]  There's none of the fucking bullshit in the magazines or in the society pages or in the whatever, whatever, none of the trend pieces, none of the clout, fucking fashion magazines.
[00:17:21]  There's not even a promo photo of the three of us together.
[00:17:24]  Yeah, none of the hungry, which all that stuff's fine.
[00:17:26]  It's fine.
[00:17:28]  But we are superpowered from listeners who are listening to this right now.
[00:17:34]  Well, not right now, but in the future after we've already recorded this.
[00:17:37]  But I just think that's really cool.
[00:17:40]  And we've never done an ad.
[00:17:41]  And we've never.
[00:17:44]  That people know about.
[00:17:44]  Yeah.
[00:17:45]  I mean, we do, you know, we put it in there occasionally.
[00:17:47]  Actually, you know what?
[00:17:49]  So as some of our live show attendees might have been made aware of, we've actually had ads on the show, but we've done sort of like Che Guevara style guerrilla advertising for a long time.
[00:18:01]  We learned this, of course, from the great Che, Mao, et cetera.
[00:18:05]  And, well, I mean, here's one that I know we got a lot of good feedback about from the company, but from our 9-11 series.
[00:18:12]  Yeah, ever since those towers fell, I feel like there's just been a square space in downtown Manhattan.
[00:18:17]  And so many people reached out.
[00:18:19]  They were so touched and invested in, I mean, all of the kind of emotional work that you put into telling the story of your time in the troubled teen industry in our series, The Game.
[00:18:35]  But I'm not sure if they caught this.
[00:18:40]  I went in as a frightened 14-year-old boy.

=== Steam Beer Mystery (15:32) ===

[00:18:42]  But as I went through the program, with all its ananities and half-assed techniques, I hardened into something else.
[00:18:49]  And I spent every single second thinking only of escape and revenge and stamps.com.
[00:18:58]  And so you know what?
[00:18:59]  With our 300th episode, yeah, we're DraftKings now.
[00:19:03]  Fuck you.
[00:19:04]  Gamble.
[00:19:05]  It's cool.
[00:19:13]  So, all right, we're actually going to talk about today something that has a connection to the beginning of our podcast.
[00:19:20]  We started in, when did we start?
[00:19:22]  July or June 2019?
[00:19:25]  July 23rd, 2019.
[00:19:27]  Look at this guy.
[00:19:27]  July 23rd.
[00:19:28]  My God, look at this guy.
[00:19:29]  Wow, actually, we're on the corner.
[00:19:30]  It's on our calendar.
[00:19:31]  You don't even see it.
[00:19:31]  It's the podcast.
[00:19:32]  It's June, right?
[00:19:32]  I'm not like looking at the July calendar.
[00:19:34]  I'm always looking ahead.
[00:19:36]  You always got to keep your eyes on the prize.
[00:19:38]  The prize is today.
[00:19:39]  It's not in July.
[00:19:40]  No, you can't be, you know.
[00:19:42]  Well, anyway.
[00:19:43]  Shouldn't we just be doing a four-year anniversary?
[00:19:45]  Are we doing a 300?
[00:19:46]  Well, okay.
[00:19:47]  Anyway, milestones are milestones.
[00:19:48]  So when we first started, I was working at a brewery.
[00:19:54]  Yeah, a little company called Anchor Steam.
[00:19:56]  Well, Anchor, it's funny because everyone actually calls it Anchor Steam, which I still do myself, but it's technically Anchor Brewing Company.
[00:20:05]  All right, whatever.
[00:20:07]  I think I quit in, let's say, now that I'm a small business owner, Q1 2020.
[00:20:15]  So a little bit before the pandemic.
[00:20:17]  Q1FY 2020.
[00:20:18]  Q1FY 2020 is when I deceased my exit from the corporation's accounts and of that nature.
[00:20:26]  When did you start working there?
[00:20:28]  I started working there in, I think, late 2017 or 2018.
[00:20:32]  2018.
[00:20:33]  I was going to say maybe early 2018.
[00:20:35]  Yeah.
[00:20:35]  Q1.
[00:20:36]  No, late 2017, around that time.
[00:20:39]  Yeah.
[00:20:40]  And yes, I worked there for like two, a little, maybe, I think a little over two years.
[00:20:46]  And in that time, we unionized.
[00:20:50]  And I mean, just to give a little background on anchor, I mean, I've been drinking that shit since I was like 13 years old.
[00:20:57]  Probably not the best advertisement.
[00:20:59]  It's not like they sold me the beer.
[00:21:00]  But like, you know, anchor steam is like the San Francisco beer.
[00:21:04]  I think it's pretty safe to say, right?
[00:21:05]  Yeah.
[00:21:06]  I mean, it's like, it's everywhere.
[00:21:08]  Yeah, it's everywhere.
[00:21:09]  It's the mascot for the city in a weird way.
[00:21:11]  It is.
[00:21:11]  Like, they sold it at the Giant Stadium.
[00:21:13]  Like, it's like.
[00:21:14]  You're wearing the hat right now.
[00:21:15]  I'm wearing an anchor.
[00:21:16]  Well, I made this hat.
[00:21:17]  You did?
[00:21:18]  Well, yeah, I made it for the, it's anchor.
[00:21:19]  It's the union hat.
[00:21:20]  Yeah.
[00:21:21]  But yeah, you know, I have it tattooed on me.
[00:21:23]  But it's just like, it's, that, that bright yellow.
[00:21:26]  Yeah.
[00:21:27]  And the blue.
[00:21:28]  And the, you know, it's a very recognizable anchor.
[00:21:35]  You know, that's like, it's like a, you know, it's the famous anchor.
[00:21:39]  And recently it was broken.
[00:21:41]  The news was broken by Dave Infante, friend of the show, about the fact from an unnamed news broken to him from an unnamed source that they were discontinuing their Christmas ale and that they were no longer shipping anchor to any distributors outside of California.
[00:22:02]  Now, many listeners are wondering, why should I care right now?
[00:22:07]  And we will tell you exactly that.
[00:22:08]  But I think it is, I mean, to give you a little bit about like the background of that.
[00:22:12]  So the Christmas ale is, listen, to get us out of the way, I'm not a beer guy.
[00:22:16]  Me neither.
[00:22:16]  Not a beer nerd.
[00:22:17]  Not a beer guy.
[00:22:18]  Not a beer nerd.
[00:22:18]  Are you a beer drinker, Jan Chomsky?
[00:22:20]  You are a brewer.
[00:22:21]  What you were.
[00:22:22]  Did you know this?
[00:22:23]  It was like a hobby that I thought women would be into, but I just blew a bunch of vats.
[00:22:31]  It's like not that easy to screw up, but I screwed it up a bunch of times and I stopped doing it.
[00:22:35]  You got to be more attentive.
[00:22:37]  The fact that you thought women would be into micro brewing as a hobby has led me to just completely change all of my thoughts about you.
[00:22:47]  10, 15 years ago.
[00:22:48]  That is, I'm that.
[00:22:50]  And I lived in Philly.
[00:22:51]  Did it work?
[00:22:52]  Were they?
[00:22:53]  Were they impressed?
[00:22:53]  Were women impressed by this?
[00:22:55]  Like one was.
[00:22:57]  That's pretty good.
[00:22:58]  You know, there's women that are sexually attracted to the Columbine shooters as well.
[00:23:03]  Microbring was a big thing.
[00:23:04]  Microbrewing was a very big thing.
[00:23:06]  Craft beer, especially like 10 years ago, craft beer was fucking huge.
[00:23:12]  Just to give a little history of anchor, because this is kind of, you know what?
[00:23:15]  This is frankly, this is a little San Francisco episode we got going on here.
[00:23:19]  So Anchor started in 1896.
[00:23:23]  And as a lot of people know, who loves beer?
[00:23:25]  The motherfucking Germans, right?
[00:23:27]  And who was coming over here like fleeing like rats from Germany all throughout the 1800s was Germans.
[00:23:36]  I guess who else would be?
[00:23:37]  Well, Jews.
[00:23:38]  But those are often German Jews as well.
[00:23:40]  Yeah.
[00:23:40]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:23:41]  That was the wave of that came maybe 30 years after this.
[00:23:44]  But, you know, San Francisco, Liz, what's the town known for?
[00:23:48]  Our love of motherfucking gold, right?
[00:23:50]  Oh, I was going to say an immigrants.
[00:23:51]  And immigrants.
[00:23:52]  Well, yes.
[00:23:52]  Yeah.
[00:23:53]  Diversity makes us stronger, but you know what makes us even stronger than diversity?
[00:23:56]  Motherfucking gold in them Nar Hills.
[00:23:58]  We love gold.
[00:23:59]  Yeah, we love gold.
[00:23:59]  We're crazy for gold.
[00:24:00]  It's a town built on guys that are crazy for gold.
[00:24:03]  But not a lot finding gold.
[00:24:04]  Not a lot finding gold.
[00:24:05]  How do you actually get rich during the gold rush, Liz?
[00:24:08]  Cottage industry for selling shit for people to go find gold.
[00:24:12]  Exactly.
[00:24:12]  And what do those people do when they can't find gold?
[00:24:14]  Drink themselves to death.
[00:24:16]  Yes.
[00:24:17]  So a lot of breweries were started in the 1800s by German immigrants, including one that made a beer called Anchor Steam.
[00:24:24]  It's a great name.
[00:24:25]  It's a fantastic name.
[00:24:27]  Very vodka.
[00:24:28]  It's great.
[00:24:28]  And you know, a little thing about steam beer too, because Anchor Steam is a quote steam beer.
[00:24:33]  What does that even mean?
[00:24:34]  So that's the thing is when I got a job at Anchor Steam, listen, full disclosure here, I haven't drank a beer.
[00:24:40]  I haven't gotten fucked up in like almost nine years.
[00:24:43]  I haven't drank a beer probably in like 12 years, right?
[00:24:45]  You can't shoot beer.
[00:24:47]  Well, you can, but that's like some Motley.
[00:24:49]  It's like you would shoot vodka or whatever.
[00:24:51]  But yeah, you can shoot Motley Crew.
[00:24:54]  I know multiple people have shot vodka tequila all that shit.
[00:24:57]  It's not good for you, but you still do.
[00:24:58]  That's crazy.
[00:24:59]  It's insane.
[00:25:00]  Yeah, you get fucked up.
[00:25:01]  Anyways, steam beer.
[00:25:03]  I was just like, oh, I don't know what steam beer is because I was never like, I quit drinking at the point where like you would learn what those words meant.
[00:25:10]  And so like I was still just drinking, I mostly drank liquor.
[00:25:14]  My drink of choice, I don't know if I said this on the show, a whiskey, double whiskey and water to fill the rest of the glass or a triple whiskey and water to fill the rest of a pint glass.
[00:25:25]  Yeah.
[00:25:26]  Not big into beer.
[00:25:27]  And I was like, oh, steam beer is probably like a kind of beer.
[00:25:29]  Like, I didn't know what an IPA was.
[00:25:30]  I still don't really know what an IPA.
[00:25:32]  I know what the words mean.
[00:25:34]  I don't know what it is.
[00:25:35]  It attracts a lot of annoying people.
[00:25:37]  Yeah.
[00:25:37]  And here's the thing.
[00:25:38]  I don't want to know.
[00:25:39]  Don't tell me what it is, right?
[00:25:42]  But a steam beer is its name.
[00:25:44]  Nobody knows.
[00:25:45]  That's the thing about steam beer.
[00:25:47]  Is nobody actually, including like historian, literally nobody knows.
[00:25:51]  There's rumors that like it was, it's called that because of the way that they cooled down stuff.
[00:25:57]  They left it on the roofs of buildings in San Francisco and the Pacific breeze cooled the whatever they were doing up there.
[00:26:04]  That's the one I choose to believe.
[00:26:06]  That should be true.
[00:26:07]  There's another one that it was like it's related to the brewing process in some way.
[00:26:10]  That's probably true.
[00:26:11]  That's probably true.
[00:26:12]  There's another one that it comes from the German word for damp, damp, damp, dump.
[00:26:16]  Dumpf.
[00:26:17]  I don't know.
[00:26:18]  It means steam or no.
[00:26:19]  Dumpf means steam, I guess, but that seems a little too clever.
[00:26:24]  And then there's like a kind of beer.
[00:26:26]  It's like a dumpf beer.
[00:26:28]  And then there's another one that it comes from like the kegs.
[00:26:31]  You'd have to like let off a little steam first.
[00:26:34]  But regardless, nobody knows.
[00:26:36]  It is now called this style of beer is now called the California Common Beer.
[00:26:42]  Really?
[00:26:43]  Yeah.
[00:26:44]  It's a very simple beer.
[00:26:45]  I don't know how to describe beer, right?
[00:26:47]  Yeah.
[00:26:48]  And so for those of you listening, I'm going to read.
[00:26:51]  Actually, Liz, you know what?
[00:26:52]  I think you're going to do me the honors of reading from Randy Scorby, a beer judge from Beer Connoisseur, his review of the beer.
[00:27:02]  And do this in your most beer guy voice, please.
[00:27:04]  Now I'll do it in my voice.
[00:27:07]  This beer starts with a lightly rich bready malt character that gives way to light toast and caramel as it warms and opens up.
[00:27:15]  As the malt settles down, a woody, earthy, hop aroma and a light, fresh apple ester offer a complimentary balance.
[00:27:23]  The flavor also does not disappoint.
[00:27:26]  The bready, toasty, and caramel malt sweetness is balanced by woody hops and a prominent hop bitterness that lingers into a crisp and dry finish.
[00:27:35]  The breadiness from the malt lingers gently into the aftertaste.
[00:27:40]  This beer pours an inviting copper color with an orange hue that pulls you into the glass.
[00:27:46]  You know, I think that's actually very nice.
[00:27:47]  Yeah, I think that I don't know what really that means, but it sounds like it's good to drink, right?
[00:27:51]  I saw a very funny meme today, well, funny to me meme, that what that shows like, oh, you know, this is when you don't know what to say about a wine, just say this.
[00:28:00]  And it was like a guy leaning over and being like, this one shows a lot of tension.
[00:28:05]  Oh.
[00:28:06]  I would say character is a good word to describe something that you don't know how to say about it.
[00:28:10]  But I would say I think this guy, Mr. Randy Scorby, that's the name for the True Anon books, does a great job describing anchor steam.
[00:28:20]  I actually can taste anchor steam when I'm reading this.
[00:28:23]  I mean, and that there is a really like an orange hue that does pull you in.
[00:28:26]  Yeah, it is.
[00:28:27]  It's a good fucking beer.
[00:28:28]  You know, what's funny is I actually remember, was it before we started the podcast or maybe it was right when we started the podcast?
[00:28:37]  I met you down at the knockout because they were filming something about something that was going on with anchor, maybe.
[00:28:45]  They were filming the Huffingtipoast thing they filmed on me.
[00:28:48]  Yeah, and I think we had an anchor, an anchor steam.
[00:28:51]  Yeah, yeah, I'm sure we did.
[00:28:52]  They sold it to me.
[00:28:53]  I did, but I did.
[00:28:54]  Yeah.
[00:28:55]  And I think our friend did.
[00:28:56]  I forgot you're in that video.
[00:28:57]  Well, don't tell people because then they'll go look at it.
[00:29:00]  I mean, what are they going to do?
[00:29:02]  But yeah, it is.
[00:29:04]  I mean, I drank a lot of that shit growing up, right?
[00:29:06]  It's because it was like, it's not a, like, to me, a craft beer is like something that tastes gross and it's $10.
[00:29:11]  And Anchor Steam was like cheap.
[00:29:13]  You know, it was cheap, but good.
[00:29:15]  Yeah.
[00:29:16]  It's not a Bud Light.
[00:29:17]  It's not a yours.
[00:29:19]  Exactly.
[00:29:19]  And that was like when I realized that the only beer, it was like some Belgian beer that people drank.
[00:29:26]  I can't remember what it's called.
[00:29:27]  Blue Moon.
[00:29:28]  No, that's fake.
[00:29:29]  It's fake Belgian.
[00:29:30]  They're all, every beer is fake, which we'll get into in a little bit.
[00:29:33]  Actually, I don't even know if that's Belgian beer.
[00:29:34]  I don't think that is Belgian.
[00:29:35]  I think Blue Moon comes from California, maybe.
[00:29:37]  That comes from America.
[00:29:39]  But it's not a, it's, I've never had it.
[00:29:42]  But in style.
[00:29:43]  Anchor, anchor, oh, I don't even know what that means, but anchor, anchor was like a beer that I was like an approachable beer to drink because it looked like a beer you would drink, right?
[00:29:50]  All the other ones had crazy like oranges with a mohawk and shit like that, or like a crazy devil skeleton with like pilot goggles.
[00:29:58]  That's shop top you're talking about.
[00:29:59]  I'm not drinking that crap.
[00:30:01]  That's another one of those fake beers.
[00:30:02]  Yes, yeah.
[00:30:03]  Or like the zombie sucker or whatever they're called.
[00:30:05]  It's too crazy.
[00:30:06]  They're all looked like little Halloween things.
[00:30:08]  And Anchor looked normal, right?
[00:30:09]  Like it looked normal.
[00:30:10]  It was an old school label with a fucking, but not like Sari Jailer, Jerry Sailor, Sailor Jerry style.
[00:30:18]  You know what I mean?
[00:30:19]  That's a throwback.
[00:30:20]  Exactly.
[00:30:20]  It wasn't like that kind of stuff.
[00:30:21]  It just looked old and normal.
[00:30:23]  Okay.
[00:30:23]  And I liked it.
[00:30:24]  It looked like something a human being would drink.
[00:30:27]  And it connected to San Francisco history.
[00:30:28]  I mean, San Francisco is, and I learned this actually when we were doing the union campaign.
[00:30:32]  San Francisco had a lot of German breweries back in the 1800s.
[00:30:36]  And of course, a lot of Germans working at those breweries.
[00:30:39]  Back in those days, they lived at the brewery.
[00:30:42]  I think it was, I got to be honest, a lot of the kind of shitty jobs you had back in the olden days, you also had to live there.
[00:30:49]  And these guys had to live at the fucking brewery, work 18-hour fucking days, and they actually formed a brewers union in San Francisco and were really, really, really militant.
[00:30:59]  I mean, the Found SF has all this great website, but it has all this, you know, all these pictures of like, you know, breweries back in the day in San Francisco and the workers there.
[00:31:08]  They describe the demands of these workers, and this is from the 1800s, as being for free beer, closed shop, which means that like it's a union shop, freedom to live anywhere for brewery workers, a 10-hour day, a six-hour week, a six-day week, and a board of arbitration.
[00:31:25]  This eventually led to a nine-month strike of brewery workers in San Francisco, which they were actually able to, they won the strike, which is pretty extraordinary.
[00:31:36]  After like all like the Brewers Association, basically of America came after them.
[00:31:40]  They actually beat, they won.
[00:31:43]  Which is, this was a little few years before ILWU started, which is its own crazy strike that led to a kind of a gun battle.
[00:31:51]  That's a different story.
[00:31:53]  Anchor, so Anchor was a San Francisco beer that like of all those kind of like early breweries that started in San Francisco, you know, post-Gold Rush, Gold Rush breweries, Anchor was really the one that actually, for some reason, made it, even though the product that they were making wasn't exactly refined, right?
[00:32:12]  Yeah.
[00:32:13]  It was kind of like a sour beer at points.
[00:32:16]  Sometimes it was a good beer, then the person who owned the brewery would die and they'd be replaced by somebody else and then it would be kind of a bad beer.
[00:32:22]  You know, it was a San Francisco staple.
[00:32:24]  They sold it at all.
[00:32:25]  They had contracts with all of the different, like the spaghetti, old spaghetti factory and like all these kind of like old San Francisco institutions.
[00:32:32]  Taunts.
[00:32:32]  What's up?
[00:32:33]  These haunts.
[00:32:33]  Exactly.
[00:32:34]  And it's funny.
[00:32:35]  Like when we were talking about this episode and like, you know, looking, looking into some of this stuff, it really, it made me nostalgic for like a San Francisco that was done before I was born, but which the memory of still really lingered throughout, I think, both of our lives.
[00:32:52]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:32:53]  I mean, I feel like, yeah, there's a kind of like bohemian weirdness to San Francisco.
[00:33:00]  That's, it's not, it's not even weirdness or quirkiness, but the kind of like, I don't know how to describe it, but it was like something that was always kind of haunting the city and like wanting to come back.
[00:33:13]  And I think as a kid growing up there was something I, I don't know, for you, but I was always kind of like chasing after.
[00:33:20]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:33:20]  Absolutely.
[00:33:20]  And trying to find, whether that meant like trying to go find it at North Beach and exploring or the Castro or all these kind of like weird little enclaves and kind of seeing where you could find it pop up again.
[00:33:31]  Yeah.
[00:33:32]  Specs.
[00:33:33]  Like going to specs kind of gave you that.
[00:33:34]  That's this bar actually across some city lights, which I did not get that feeling from, but across some city lights in this kind of like weird little alley that like it felt like, I mean, even though it's, you know, obviously far removed from all of this stuff, had like a lingering kind of ghost of that memory of like old San Francisco.
[00:33:53]  Yeah, I know, I think definitely it did.
[00:33:55]  And it's funny because like people kind of think of San Francisco as this weird town, but what they think of is like Burning Man, right?
[00:34:01]  And like that kind of like hedonistic, it's weird because like San Francisco's sort of like oddity became really like, I think inseparable from like this version of like just basically hedonism, right?

=== Chicago's Great Fire Revisited (15:16) ===

[00:34:15]  Like getting high, you know, like the hippies.
[00:34:17]  Yeah, jacking off on the street or whatever.
[00:34:19]  Yeah.
[00:34:20]  And it's like, that isn't like, that's like a little different.
[00:34:22]  And like, yeah, and like, or like tech people taking too much acid and shit like that.
[00:34:26]  Like, that's like a different, that's different.
[00:34:30]  I don't know how to describe it, but like that's like, that's like a, um, that's a sort of mutated version of kind of what it became.
[00:34:36]  I say metastasized.
[00:34:38]  Exactly.
[00:34:38]  Yeah, metastasized is a good word for it.
[00:34:40]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:34:41]  So Anchor was kind of doing badly, but was still, like, they weren't bottling beer anymore.
[00:34:46]  They weren't canning it anymore.
[00:34:47]  They were just selling it in various bars and it was fucking sour and gross.
[00:34:51]  So in 1965, this guy named, and this is really kind of Anchor's like famous era, a guy named Fritz Maytag, very young guy, very rich.
[00:35:02]  And I can give you one guess as to why he's rich.
[00:35:04]  And that guess could be answered easily by his last name, Maytag.
[00:35:09]  Yeah, my mean is right there in the name.
[00:35:10]  Exactly.
[00:35:11]  Maytag Appliances.
[00:35:12]  This guy, I think fresh out of Stanford or something like that, you know, rich, rich young guy, bunch of money, drinks an anchor steam at the old spaghetti factory, walks over, takes a tour of the brewery, and then buys it for like $5,000.
[00:35:25]  That's so cool.
[00:35:25]  It's, yeah, it is.
[00:35:26]  I mean, you got to hand it.
[00:35:29]  That's pretty cool.
[00:35:29]  Yeah.
[00:35:30]  Yeah, and he...
[00:35:31]  I'll take it.
[00:35:31]  That's what I always imagine.
[00:35:33]  It's like, you know, you have like a crazy monopoly money person and you can just like walk into a place and you go and you like look around and then you go, I'll take the lot.
[00:35:40]  And you like kind of like make that big gesture with your hand.
[00:35:43]  I'll take the lot.
[00:35:44]  Could you imagine like eating like a meal at a restaurant and feeling so satisfied?
[00:35:49]  And then to the waiter, you're like, you know what?
[00:35:50]  I'm going to buy this place.
[00:35:52]  Fire you, but I'm buying this place.
[00:35:54]  I'll take it.
[00:35:56]  Takes the lot.
[00:35:57]  Fritz Maytag, I got to be honest with you.
[00:35:59]  Rich guy, whatever.
[00:36:00]  We hate rich people here, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:36:02]  He does a good job of running the fucking company.
[00:36:04]  Yeah, sometimes that happens.
[00:36:05]  Sometimes it fucking happens.
[00:36:07]  I mean, the thing is, he wasn't running this.
[00:36:09]  And this, I think, becomes very germane, especially when we talk about the later iterations of the company.
[00:36:14]  I mean, this guy is independently fucking super, super wealthy, right?
[00:36:18]  So like he's not searching for this sort of like infinite growth kind of thing.
[00:36:22]  He's trying to actually, by all accounts, and like I, you know, I've worked with people that worked with him for a long time.
[00:36:28]  You know, he, by all accounts, the guy really just wanted to have a good brewery.
[00:36:32]  I mean, it sounds like he was passionate about the product.
[00:36:36]  Yeah.
[00:36:36]  Yeah.
[00:36:36]  And he really cared about it.
[00:36:38]  It was like almost like everything that I've read, I mean, this sounds corny, but it seems like he viewed himself more as like a steward than like a profiteer.
[00:36:47]  Yeah.
[00:36:47]  He was, but it was like he was trying to really do right by a product that he really believed in.
[00:36:53]  And again, like this was not the most like, it's not like he bought Budweiser or something.
[00:36:57]  You know what I mean?
[00:36:57]  Like this wasn't printing millions and millions and millions of dollars every day.
[00:37:00]  It's a local craft brew.
[00:37:01]  And it's funny because actually I was, there was a, there's an interview Dave Infante did with the historian who worked at Anchor when I worked there, this guy, Dave Burkhardt, who he's talking about, he's still friends with Fritz and like goes and gets his haircut with him.
[00:37:14]  And he says that when Fritz started there, he realized they were using baker's yeast in these fucking, in the beer.
[00:37:20]  Like it was really bad beer.
[00:37:21]  So he like, you go, I don't know anything about beer and I know that's not what you're supposed to do.
[00:37:24]  Me too.
[00:37:24]  I've seen that brewery.
[00:37:26]  The basics of fermentation will tell me that that's not how that works.
[00:37:29]  Exactly.
[00:37:30]  And so what he does is he like he gets really passionate about this and he realizes that like, he knows that it's like very connected to San Francisco, right?
[00:37:38]  It's really this link to like this 1896 era in San Francisco.
[00:37:42]  And so, I mean, people, you know, might, you might be familiar, if you know anything about San Francisco, there was a big earthquake and a related fire in 1906.
[00:37:50]  People forget the fire.
[00:37:51]  People forget the fire.
[00:37:52]  You can't forget the fire.
[00:37:53]  The fire destroyed the city.
[00:37:54]  It wasn't the earthquake.
[00:37:55]  It was the fire after the earthquake.
[00:37:57]  That's how they found it.
[00:37:57]  The fire was caused by the earthquake.
[00:37:59]  Yeah.
[00:37:59]  So it's a one-two punch.
[00:38:00]  It's a one-two punch, but the second punch is really what the knockout was.
[00:38:03]  San Francisco basically almost entirely burned to the ground in 1906.
[00:38:08]  Like, not exaggerating a little bit.
[00:38:10]  Like, the city was raised, decimated.
[00:38:13]  They were blowing up.
[00:38:14]  There was all these fire breaks they were doing around Van Asse.
[00:38:16]  They were like blowing up buildings to try to prevent it from spreading.
[00:38:18]  But there's very few things that remain from the 1800s in San Francisco.
[00:38:24]  I'm not talking about the building, but I'm talking about the company here.
[00:38:26]  Anchor was this sort of link to that past there.
[00:38:29]  And Fritz understood that, right?
[00:38:31]  And he understood that it linked from basically almost the genesis of this city because Anchor had previously been a different brewery or whatever, but throughout the entire history of the city to its present day, right?
[00:38:43]  And 65 when he buys it.
[00:38:45]  And he really works on making it like this San Francisco institution sort of worthy of that name.
[00:38:50]  And it becomes a San Francisco institution.
[00:38:53]  I mean, they really start experimenting.
[00:38:55]  They refine the process of brewing the beer so that their kegs weren't sour, that it tasted good.
[00:39:01]  They started making kind of different beers too.
[00:39:03]  They basically invented the West Coast IPA.
[00:39:06]  Got to be honest, I don't know what that means, but I know they invented it.
[00:39:09]  All right, good for them.
[00:39:11]  And the really notable thing here is that Anchor is sort of widely, it is widely known, is the first craft brewery in the country.
[00:39:19]  Yeah, I mean, it was such an icon that even so, I mean, you know, we'll move up for one brief second into the not too distant past, real close, you know, a little bit in the future from when we just left Anchor.
[00:39:32]  But when Laganitas, which is a, you know, kind of locally brewery to San Francisco up in Petaluma, they sold to Heineken and the owner, and they're huge.
[00:39:43]  I mean, I'm sure you've seen Laganitas at your fucking grocery store because they've been, they've just expanded.
[00:39:48]  Yeah, they're massive.
[00:39:50]  But, you know, when they, when they sold to Heineken in their press release, this is what it said.
[00:39:54]  The revolution in brewing and in beer culture that began at 1705 Mariposa Street in San Francisco has metastasized to every corner of the world.
[00:40:03]  Now, I do have a problem with him equating revolution with cancer.
[00:40:07]  Yeah, that is an interesting choice of words.
[00:40:09]  But despite the kind of weird wording of that, I think it's notable that everyone knows to point to anchor as the kind of locus of really what like craft beer and you know, craft beer as a, not movement, because it can't become a city.
[00:40:28]  That became, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:40:29]  But as a kind of like institution of like what it could be.
[00:40:32]  It's like, this is where it began.
[00:40:34]  There's a good interview with Fritz Maytag from the Chronicle in 2015, I think, which is actually five years after he sold the brewery.
[00:40:44]  And he gives this answer to a question about, you know, his sort of feelings about anchor and about its relationship to San Francisco.
[00:40:56]  And the answer he gives is he says, of course, I'm very proud of it.
[00:41:00]  It went from having nobody who'd ever heard of it to slowly, slowly realizing that we had become what the Japanese call mibutsu, which is a famous local product.
[00:41:08]  If you're in Japan and you go to Hamamatsu, you bring home smoked eel because everyone knows that smoked eel is the mibutsu of Hamamatsu.
[00:41:15]  I like that concept a lot.
[00:41:17]  I think Anchor did become that, part of the color of San Francisco, which after all is a city that's had a lot of color in its time.
[00:41:24]  And I think that really, I mean, I think about, there's a sort of formerly famous author named Herb Kane, you know, who was kind of like the San Francisco writer about San Francisco for a long time.
[00:41:37]  A columnist.
[00:41:38]  A columnist.
[00:41:38]  Yeah.
[00:41:39]  My dad said he once met him and he was an asshole.
[00:41:42]  No, I would believe that.
[00:41:43]  I would believe it.
[00:41:43]  But in my head, Kirb Kane is like, his face is made of fog.
[00:41:48]  Yeah.
[00:41:48]  Like he kind of like blows in and blows out with the fog of San Francisco.
[00:41:53]  I mean, I love it.
[00:41:54]  And he just overlooks the city and then he says something that's a bit trite and corny, but also kind of makes you feel good.
[00:41:58]  Yeah.
[00:41:59]  And you read it in the paper every day.
[00:42:00]  Exactly.
[00:42:01]  And I would actually, I would, I would read and I would read it at ex-girlfriend, Herb Kane, sometimes at night because it's a good thing to read it because it's very cozy.
[00:42:10]  Like a big warm blanket of fog.
[00:42:12]  Exactly.
[00:42:13]  But it is.
[00:42:15]  San Francisco was this, like, what are you saying?
[00:42:17]  This, this local product that we were proud of, right?
[00:42:19]  Like it was something that like people had like some like sort of civic pride about.
[00:42:23]  Yeah.
[00:42:24]  And remember, San Francisco is a small town.
[00:42:26]  It's a small fucking town.
[00:42:27]  It's fucking small.
[00:42:28]  Seven miles by seven miles.
[00:42:29]  I mean, I think it's closer to seven by five, but I know that the line is set at seven by seven.
[00:42:33]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:42:35]  But it's real small.
[00:42:36]  That's our fishing rights against Cookland.
[00:42:38]  So like if they, if they have their trawlers come over, we're legally able to fire on them.
[00:42:42]  And so Anchor, you know, was like a mascot of the city.
[00:42:45]  It was like, you know, even its logo, it looks like it's a flag.
[00:42:48]  Like, you know, we had Anchor Steam and Crazy Crab.
[00:42:59]  Unfortunately, Maytag actually sells it in 2010.
[00:43:02]  I mean, I mean, the guy's old as far.
[00:43:04]  You know, it's not like that crazy that it happened, but he sells it to these two guys who I'm sure that he thought were going to do like a really good job of turning the brewery around.
[00:43:12]  They did not do the best job.
[00:43:13]  They didn't run it into the ground, but they certainly did not improve its fortunes by any great margin.
[00:43:18]  It was two, I think, executives from Sky Vodka.
[00:43:22]  They sold it, and don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure they sold it at a loss to Sapporo.
[00:43:27]  Yeah.
[00:43:28]  So Sapporo is, of course, the Japanese company that makes Sapporo beer, which is, and I'm not just saying this, because this is something that a lot of people think, it's the beer that you kind of only drink when you go to a Japanese restaurant.
[00:43:42]  Yeah, you get, yeah, you get a big, they always have the big, tall ones.
[00:43:46]  Does it only come in tall form?
[00:43:48]  I don't know.
[00:43:49]  But it's always in tall form.
[00:43:50]  And it's like people are like, oh, you go to Sapporo, we have sushi.
[00:43:54]  Exactly.
[00:43:54]  Yeah.
[00:43:55]  People mostly drink it when, you know, when they go to Japanese restaurants.
[00:43:58]  They had started an American subsidiary called Sapporo USA.
[00:44:02]  Sapporo USA's one brewery they bought was Anchor.
[00:44:07]  And I think this is a good sort of juncture to talk about Kraft Brewery's relationship, or Kraft Beer's relationship rather, to the big companies.
[00:44:20]  Right.
[00:44:21]  Well, we kind of were saying, you know, Craft brewery, brewing.
[00:44:26]  I can't say it, craft brewing was really fucking popular for a while, right?
[00:44:30]  Yes, it was like a huge, it was almost like a movement in San Francisco, in Northern California, in Portland.
[00:44:36]  It was huge.
[00:44:37]  Up in Seattle, obviously, through the Midwest, you're in beer country.
[00:44:40]  So there's a lot of these kind of micro brews that popped up and people kind of experimenting with things and kind of playing around and doing their own thing and getting popular.
[00:44:50]  And a lot of consumers really responded to that in local markets.
[00:44:54]  Yeah.
[00:44:54]  You know, so you had the rise of, you know, like I mentioned, Loganitas, you had Goose Island.
[00:45:00]  You had these big, you know, kind of big popular spots that would open tap rooms.
[00:45:05]  They've opened other breweries.
[00:45:06]  Yeah.
[00:45:07]  Kind of like be able to kind of distribute more than, I don't know, they probably even thought when they got into it.
[00:45:12]  Goldenroad down in LA, another example.
[00:45:14]  And it's, there was a sort of like, you mentioned it was kind of like a movement then.
[00:45:18]  Yeah.
[00:45:19]  And like, I'm sure a lot of our listeners, if you're old enough, remember this, right?
[00:45:22]  And it, because it's, it's, I think it's changed a little bit.
[00:45:25]  But like, there was this whole thing of this, like, we're sticking it to the man by having these like kind of small beers.
[00:45:31]  And it's like, it's this whole thing where it's like you're supporting small businesses that care about you, not like the big beer companies.
[00:45:38]  Yeah.
[00:45:38]  Right.
[00:45:39]  And so it sort of became this like kind of within the beer world, kind of a counterculture in some ways, right?
[00:45:47]  There was like this countercultural ethos associated to it.
[00:45:49]  It was like independent and they had these crazy labels with a motherfucking crazy goblet on it or whatever.
[00:45:54]  And it was called like fuck you ale.
[00:45:57]  I mean, it was the 90s.
[00:45:59]  It was, well, it was, yeah, the 90s and 2000s.
[00:46:01]  Everyone was doing this crazy thing.
[00:46:03]  Never got past the 90s and 2000s, early 2000s in terms of like the labels, at least, and the names of the people.
[00:46:11]  No, but what I mean is that it was the 90s and the big beer companies were hurting too.
[00:46:16]  Yeah.
[00:46:16]  Because it wasn't just that consumers were turning to these like little micro brew places that they were liking in there, you know, as a kind of like Gen X, fuck you, to the big companies.
[00:46:26]  But also like, you know, this happens a lot, consumer tastes and alcohol were also just changing.
[00:46:30]  Which they do, yeah.
[00:46:32]  And like big companies like Budweiser weren't doing so great.
[00:46:36]  And so they started to look to like where the consumers were going and were like, shit, we better chase some fucking profits.
[00:46:43]  Exactly.
[00:46:43]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:46:44]  And so in 2011, AB InBev, which is the biggest beer company in America.
[00:46:51]  Horrible name.
[00:46:52]  Horrible name.
[00:46:53]  I think it's like Anheuser-Busch combined with InBev.
[00:46:56]  Yeah, Anheuser-Busch Inbev.
[00:46:57]  It was the merger.
[00:46:58]  Yeah.
[00:46:59]  Yeah.
[00:46:59]  They started buying in 2011, started buying up craft breweries.
[00:47:04]  And in fact, I believe they started, don't quote me on this, but I think you can quote me on this.
[00:47:08]  I think they started with Goose Island in Chicago.
[00:47:12]  Now, I have a personal connection with Goose Island because I met a bunch of the people or a few of the workers there and Labor Notes in like 2017, 2018.
[00:47:22]  And I played a very minor advisory role in their own, their union campaign, which there's actually, I think, a long article out about in the Chicago, whatever, the newspaper they have there, Chicago Times.
[00:47:35]  That's it.
[00:47:35]  That's right.
[00:47:36]  The Chicago.
[00:47:36]  That's not the Herald.
[00:47:37]  The Herald?
[00:47:38]  The Daily Chicago Advertiser.
[00:47:41]  But the big Chicago newspaper has an article about basically the union busting campaign coming from Goose Island, like leadership or management against the workers there, which unfortunately the management won that.
[00:47:53]  Took me just 10 minutes now to think of a Daily Planet joke.
[00:47:56]  A Daily Clark Kent.
[00:47:58]  Crazy, that guy was a journalist.
[00:48:00]  Crazy, no one could tell from the glasses.
[00:48:01]  Remember when that one fucking, Ben something, got pushed over by the Montana guy?
[00:48:06]  The journalist.
[00:48:07]  What was that guy's name?
[00:48:08]  Ben Collins?
[00:48:09]  No, that's not him.
[00:48:10]  That's a different guy.
[00:48:11]  Anyways, the journalist got, imagine if he did that to Clark Kent.
[00:48:14]  Clark Kent would punch a hole through.
[00:48:16]  Well, you couldn't because.
[00:48:17]  Oh, he has to keep it in.
[00:48:18]  Well, he's too strong.
[00:48:19]  He's too strong.
[00:48:21]  Oh, his hand would break punching him.
[00:48:22]  Yeah.
[00:48:23]  Yeah.
[00:48:23]  I would easily annihilate Superman with a well-placed shot in his eye.
[00:48:26]  Well, you.
[00:48:27]  Yeah.
[00:48:28]  That's true.
[00:48:28]  I'm different.
[00:48:28]  Native kryptonite.
[00:48:29]  I'm different.
[00:48:30]  Exactly.
[00:48:31]  But they had a 75% card check, and then the management fought back with some union busting techniques, which we'll actually talk about later in the episode, and were able to be there.
[00:48:41]  But anyways, AB MBEV bought up Goose Island and then really started buying up just so many of these breweries.
[00:48:48]  Yeah.
[00:48:49]  And I think from, you know, I think from just to kind of like flip the perspective on that, I mean, if I owned a brewery, I mean, look, a big company comes in and they're like, look, we can give you access to so much, like so much infrastructure.
[00:49:04]  Yes.
[00:49:04]  We can, and this has been the case, right?
[00:49:06]  And early on, a lot of breweries that sold to, you know, whatever it was at AB InBev or Molson Course or Constellation or whatever it was, they suddenly had distribution networks that they would never had access to.
[00:49:19]  Yes.
[00:49:19]  They suddenly had, you know, a lot of freedom to experiment with new brews because they had access to facilities that they didn't have before.
[00:49:30]  They had money.
[00:49:30]  They had money.

=== Access to Capital Changed Breweries (14:44) ===

[00:49:31]  It's huge.
[00:49:32]  Having that access to capital at being a small business, I mean, it's totally game-changing.
[00:49:38]  Exactly.
[00:49:38]  So it's not just a selling out thing.
[00:49:40]  Yeah.
[00:49:41]  I just want to like defend the breweries.
[00:49:44]  I mean, the thing is, like, there was a hard choice.
[00:49:47]  This was a hard choice for a lot of breweries, and there was a lot of pushback about this.
[00:49:51]  This was a big, very, very, very like hot topic in the craft brewing world because it was viewed as like selling out.
[00:49:59]  And then once your craft brewery gets all this capital behind it, you can outstrip your competition that might be independent.
[00:50:05]  I mean, it's tough, you know?
[00:50:06]  Yeah.
[00:50:07]  It's tough.
[00:50:07]  I think it is.
[00:50:08]  It's both selling out, but also it's an opportunity.
[00:50:12]  So it's a real tough decision for a lot of people.
[00:50:15]  Well, a lot of these companies, a lot of these companies, like almost every, I'm not going to say almost every, but like a huge number of craft breweries ended up selling to one of the major beer brands, mostly to actually to AB InBev in the years since 2011.
[00:50:31]  I mean, they had, I don't know the exact statistics on it, but they have like a significant portion, if not a majority of the industry sort of within their portfolio of brands.
[00:50:42]  And the interesting thing about that is, you know, say, okay, right, we're a brewery that makes like a Mexican lager and like our flagship beer, which is Braces Funky Spizz.
[00:50:57]  Braces Funky Spizz, IPA, and then a Mexican lager, right?
[00:51:01]  Which is delightfully nutty, people call it, with a hint of frijoles.
[00:51:07]  Let's say AB Inbev, which owns us, buys up, of course, Liz Franzak Brewing Industries Limited, based out of Montauk.
[00:51:16]  And you guys, of course, have Liz's pink light beer.
[00:51:22]  Pink drink.
[00:51:22]  Pink drink, zero calories.
[00:51:25]  100-proof, the first 100-proof beer.
[00:51:27]  100-proof, zero calories.
[00:51:28]  And a little bit of fentanyl.
[00:51:31]  And you also produce a Mexican lager, right?
[00:51:34]  So we are now competitors underneath the same brand.
[00:51:40]  And so what happens is, is like AB InBev, you know, all these different, you know, these big kind of mega corporations that own these beverage, you know, these beverage corporations that own these craft breweries would actually winnow away sort of algorithmically all but the best-selling one or two beers that are sold by these craft breweries.
[00:51:58]  Yeah.
[00:51:58]  And I think these companies, by the way, they pay a lot of money to consultants, business management consultants, sit down and clicky clicky, look at the numbers and look at how, what are the most efficient ways we can strip away anything that could be seen as a kind of wrench in the gears of extracting even the most minuscule profit.
[00:52:24]  Exactly.
[00:52:24]  Yeah.
[00:52:25]  And so like, say, you know, Liz Franzak Brewing Industries Limited in Montauk, her Mexican lager sells slightly better than my Mexican lager, which even though it has a hint of old Mexico frujoles in it, sells 5% less, right?
[00:52:42]  But we're distributed by the same distributor.
[00:52:45]  Deloitte or whatever that motherfucker is.
[00:52:47]  Deloitte, Deloitte, McKinsey, some 25-year-old is sitting in an office at AB Inbev and is like, cut the Belden Mexican lager.
[00:52:54]  No more frujoles.
[00:52:56]  No more frujoles.
[00:52:57]  And that's it.
[00:52:58]  So if your favorite beer has disappeared sometime in the past five years and it's made by a craft brewery that's owned by one of these companies, which it most likely is, that is almost certainly the reason why.
[00:53:09]  So, Sapporo, right, starts up Sapporo USA and buys Anchor in 2017.
[00:53:18]  And so, this was actually a pretty momentous kind of occasion within the craft brewing world because Anchor had previously been independent, right, for a very long time and it held out a lot longer than the rest of these.
[00:53:30]  But it was weird too because Sapporo didn't actually own, didn't really have an American presence, right?
[00:53:35]  They owned Sleemans up in Canada, they own breweries and I think Vietnam.
[00:53:39]  I know Sleeman, but actually, Sleemans came in very handy for me, which I'll tell you about.
[00:53:44]  They own like breweries outside of Japan, but like Sapporo USA had nothing in its portfolio except for Anchor.
[00:53:51]  And so, the thinking was when people were like, Well, are they going to try to brew Sapporo here?
[00:53:56]  Because I mean, anyone who out there, I'm sure a couple of you have taken a tour of Anchor.
[00:53:59]  It's rather antiquated, it's very large facilities, yeah, it's a whole city block and a half, big, giant like factory basically.
[00:54:07]  Yeah, uh, but not the most but also it's giant for anchor, it's not Budweiser, it's not but yeah, it's not Sapporo, it's not like those fucking breweries on Vallejo and shit.
[00:54:19]  Yeah, it can't produce that much, like it couldn't produce something like that at that scale, exactly.
[00:54:24]  So, they buy, they buy anchor for 85 million, and everyone's kind of like, What are they gonna do with this fucking?
[00:54:29]  And so, around that time, I needed a job, and a lot of my friends from growing up worked there.
[00:54:38]  And that's uh, you know, a bunch of people I'd known had worked there, and so I got a job there.
[00:54:44]  Uh, and uh, when I got a job there, it became apparent that there was uh, people wanted to unionize because they were afraid of the future of the company.
[00:54:53]  You know, they were they were they were concerned about some issues at work, and they were owned by this massive corporation, which I mean, Sapporo is a huge international brand, right?
[00:55:02]  Like, obviously, America, it's mostly drunken Japanese restaurants, but like it's big in Japan, and it's just like it's sold basically everywhere.
[00:55:12]  I mean, it's a worldwide distribution, and so we're like, Well, okay, there's some money around about this, but like nobody's jobs are getting easier, and the pay.
[00:55:21]  So, when I started working there, I got paid minimum wage.
[00:55:24]  Which was that at the time?
[00:55:25]  I think that, and this will shock many of our listeners outside of California or San Francisco, but I think it was like $14 an hour.
[00:55:32]  It's not only going up to $160 this summer, I think.
[00:55:38]  Yeah, which I, again, like if you live in like, you know, Arkansas, you might be like, You're getting paid.
[00:55:42]  It's San Francisco.
[00:55:43]  That's really not a lot of money.
[00:55:45]  Yeah, I was desperately broke the entire time I worked there.
[00:55:49]  Yeah.
[00:55:50]  But I, you know, it was, this is an example.
[00:55:53]  Like, you know, you're supposed to get a raise after a few months there, right?
[00:55:57]  But a few months after I started working there, they raised the minimum wage.
[00:56:00]  And so my raise was just, it went up with the minimum wage.
[00:56:04]  And like, that was my raise.
[00:56:06]  Right.
[00:56:06]  And so obviously, exactly.
[00:56:08]  And like there was no, there was no way to like to get a better pay, really.
[00:56:13]  There was like that, I mean, the fucking raises were dog shit.
[00:56:17]  Like they would give like two out a year to two like random employees, basically.
[00:56:22]  There was no way to like get a fast track to a better job, like they were any track to a better job there.
[00:56:29]  I mean, it was kind of a shitty job that was like, most of the guys I knew there were like punk dudes and skaters.
[00:56:34]  I mean, there was a lot of older guys that worked there from the Maytag era who got paid.
[00:56:39]  Fritz made it so like it was in the, you know, whoever owned the brewery had to pay them what he was paying them.
[00:56:44]  And Fritz Maytag didn't want a union there.
[00:56:47]  He's a rich guy, but he did the smart thing that rich people do sometimes where he paid everyone insanely high to keep them.
[00:56:53]  To keep them, right?
[00:56:54]  And so, and also, like, you know, you're getting paid like several times more than you would get paid at any other brewery.
[00:57:02]  You're not going to unionize.
[00:57:03]  You know, you're like, this is great.
[00:57:04]  Why would I want to fuck with this?
[00:57:07]  But guys like me or most of the people who worked there for since like 2010 were not getting paid very much.
[00:57:13]  And the hours were really like, you know, sometimes you'd be working like, you know, every possible hour.
[00:57:18]  And then the next week they would schedule you for like five hours.
[00:57:23]  So it was impossible to do any kind of planning, but it's also impossible to keep like a part-time job outside of that because with the way it would work is we would basically fill these large orders and you never knew when like an order of 600 barrels in a day would come down.
[00:57:36]  So like you can't start working at the flower shop part-time because you don't know if you'll have to work at the brewery part-time that day.
[00:57:42]  Yeah, I remember when you were working there.
[00:57:43]  I mean, you're almost like on call.
[00:57:45]  It was very weird the way the scheduling was working.
[00:57:48]  And the hours were insane.
[00:57:50]  The hours sucked.
[00:57:51]  Yeah.
[00:57:51]  I have, I've, as long as I'm listening to the show will know, I have sleep problems.
[00:57:55]  And I don't know.
[00:57:56]  The hours at Incher did not help.
[00:57:57]  Did not help.
[00:57:58]  I think I was up at like five every day to go there, which I know that's for a lot of jobs, but you never met a guy who has as bad sleep problems as me.
[00:58:06]  It was rough.
[00:58:09]  So I basically slept like two hours every night, not for lack of trying.
[00:58:13]  And it just, it sucks, you know, like there was no, there was like, it was kind of, there was an era of depression for a lot of people that worked.
[00:58:20]  It's just like you weren't, and you were getting paid shit, right?
[00:58:23]  And it's San Francisco, the Bay Area is an expensive place to live.
[00:58:26]  A lot of some of our coworkers were sleeping on couches.
[00:58:29]  You know, it was just like, it was.
[00:58:31]  Well, in the years of 2011 to then, too, it got San Francisco got crazy more expensive.
[00:58:37]  It changed a lot.
[00:58:38]  It changed a lot in those years.
[00:58:41]  So we got together with some people I knew from DSA and from ILW, which is the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which does dock workers up and down the West Coast, also warehouses and sailors, like inland sailors.
[00:58:58]  And, you know, we basically started having these meetings.
[00:59:02]  I've talked about this, I think, have I done this show?
[00:59:05]  I'm sure I have.
[00:59:06]  I don't know if you have.
[00:59:07]  But we did this, we unionized essentially.
[00:59:10]  So what we did is there was a group of five of us with an organizing committee.
[00:59:14]  We met once a week.
[00:59:17]  We went over, everyone had a list of names.
[00:59:20]  You assigned everyone a number, one through five.
[00:59:23]  Five being they're like a big supporter or you know they're going to support 100%.
[00:59:27]  And then one being like, there's nothing you can do to change this person's mind.
[00:59:30]  Like they're not going to, they're not going to change.
[00:59:32]  And so you assigned everyone you knew it was going to be one way or another, their number, and then everyone else, which was most everybody, was blank until you talked to them.
[00:59:41]  And you would sort of sound them out, you know, a few different talking points, see how they felt about things, see what people's concerns were.
[00:59:48]  And then we would meet and we would talk.
[00:59:50]  We were all assigned.
[00:59:51]  There was about five of us.
[00:59:52]  We were all, you know, would assigned or assigned ourselves, different sections of people.
[00:59:58]  And we would have like a few people each week to talk to and have one-on-ones with.
[01:00:02]  And we would, you know, we would meet with them outside of work.
[01:00:04]  Of course, it's a brewery, right?
[01:00:05]  So people drank together, you know, and Anchor has a tap room.
[01:00:08]  People would hang out there and talk.
[01:00:10]  Obviously, not an earshot of any management or anything like that.
[01:00:15]  And we, you know, we slowly sort of worked up to where we actually had quite a lot.
[01:00:19]  We had a pretty big organizing committee at one point, like how many people?
[01:00:23]  10 people or something like that, like coming to meetings, which is it's tough to get 10 guys to come to a meeting.
[01:00:28]  So in any circumstances, let alone after fucking work.
[01:00:34]  And, you know, eventually we had enough people to where we could do something called a card check.
[01:00:43]  Now, can you explain what that is?
[01:00:44]  Easy.
[01:00:45]  So the card is actually a card that you sign that it states your intention that you want to join a union.
[01:00:50]  And what it's really doing is it's calling for an election.
[01:00:53]  Now, people who might remember Obama's, I think it's his first campaign, he campaigned on card check.
[01:00:59]  Yeah, which would be card check.
[01:01:01]  Exactly.
[01:01:01]  Which would be, because all, you know, if you're talking right now, you'd think like, hey, wait, if somebody signs a card that they want to join a union, doesn't that are, that's a yes vote on a union, right?
[01:01:11]  You'd think.
[01:01:11]  You'd think.
[01:01:12]  And so like, if a majority of employees sign a card, that means that they're, they want a union.
[01:01:18]  You'd think.
[01:01:19]  What it actually does is it calls for an election with the NLRB, the National Labor Relations Board.
[01:01:25]  And so what it does is essentially gives the company a certain amount of time to mount a campaign against you.
[01:01:32]  Yeah, yeah, a little chance for an intervention.
[01:01:34]  Exactly.
[01:01:34]  And so legally, the NLRB sets it like something like 35%.
[01:01:38]  You need cards signed to call for an election, which is a dangerous number because some people will actually will do that.
[01:01:46]  We'll get 35% of their coworkers to sign a card and then call an election and then lose the election, right?
[01:01:51]  Because what you actually need is you need like 75, 80% of people because you're going to lose some people.
[01:01:56]  Yeah, you got to bake in.
[01:01:59]  You're going to get little weak willies.
[01:02:02]  So we got something like 80% of people, which is crazy because you're like, wow, 80% of people that I work with want a union.
[01:02:10]  And of course, it never actually turns out that way, but like, legally, you should be able to have a union after that.
[01:02:16]  We march on the boss, which is funny because Anchor is several stories and I'd actually never been to the stories where there's an office.
[01:02:23]  So I didn't know where I was going.
[01:02:26]  And I you and how many people go up there?
[01:02:29]  About five of us went up there.
[01:02:31]  Did you have the cards in hand?
[01:02:33]  I did.
[01:02:34]  Yeah.
[01:02:34]  And I had.
[01:02:34]  Mr. Belden goes to Washington.
[01:02:36]  Exactly.
[01:02:36]  And I went up to a guy who looked official and I was like, who can I give this to?
[01:02:42]  He's like, I don't even work here.
[01:02:44]  He was like, he was like German or something.
[01:02:45]  He was like, I don't know who are you, Google.
[01:02:47]  What is this going?
[01:02:48]  I think he was like working in marketing.
[01:02:50]  In which case you were doing a bad job.
[01:02:52]  And people thought the Japanese and the Germans would never work together.
[01:02:54]  Exactly.
[01:02:55]  Well, yeah.
[01:02:55]  And it was kind of a, yeah, storied history there.
[01:02:59]  We get sent to a conference room and have to wait for a guy for like a very panicked guy for about 10 minutes.
[01:03:04]  Give him the paper and nothing happens for a few days.
[01:03:09]  And then they launch this campaign against the union.
[01:03:14]  And that was an interesting experience because that was coming from Sapporo in Japan.
[01:03:22]  Yeah.
[01:03:22]  And in U.S. Sapporo USA was just like some people from Sapporo, Japan.
[01:03:26]  It's kind of a show.
[01:03:27]  It's not a show company because it's not a show company company company company.
[01:03:29]  It's like a holding company.
[01:03:31]  It's not like they hired like an American CEO.
[01:03:33]  Like these are dudes from Japan.
[01:03:35]  But also, like you said, they didn't have another, they didn't have any other breweries under them.
[01:03:38]  Exactly.
[01:03:39]  So it's like kind of a holding company just for anchor.
[01:03:42]  And like, I'd sometimes see Japanese guys in the brewery, but like they didn't talk to us.
[01:03:47]  You know, like we didn't, I had no relation with them.
[01:03:50]  You know, like we had never met them or anything like that.
[01:03:53]  I think they introduced us to like a vice president in charge of something at some like all hands meeting.
[01:03:57]  He talked for two minutes.
[01:03:59]  You know, it was like that kind of relationship.
[01:04:02]  And so they do these kind of like classic, really classic union busting tactics.
[01:04:06]  I think they hired a firm, which is always what they do in an employee, I employ your relations advisor advisor.
[01:04:13]  Well, that's what I did here when I was busting you guys.

=== Implicit Threats and Family Loyalty (05:11) ===

[01:04:15]  Of course.
[01:04:17]  And really, no matter where you're working, they have the same playbook, right?
[01:04:20]  Yeah.
[01:04:21]  Is they tell you like, they tell you a bunch of bullshit like, oh, the union's just going to take, you know, they take your money.
[01:04:27]  Like, and of course, yes, you do pay dues to a union, but like nobody would, you don't start paying until you have a contract and nobody's going to sign a contract that like nobody's going to vote for a contract where they lose money, right?
[01:04:42]  Right.
[01:04:43]  Like nobody's going to unionize and then have a contract being like, all right, you actually, your pay is exactly the same, but now you have to pay union dues and you get no benefits.
[01:04:49]  And also no one's going to sign a cont no one's going to be surprised.
[01:04:52]  Yeah.
[01:04:53]  Because the whole point is that this is all bad.
[01:04:55]  Everybody knows.
[01:04:55]  Yeah.
[01:04:56]  Everybody knows and it's transparent.
[01:04:57]  And our union dues were like nothing too.
[01:05:00]  So it was like, that didn't really work.
[01:05:02]  And then they started having these small group meetings with us where they were like, hey, like, you know, we have an open door policy here.
[01:05:07]  I could just see, like, I love, I wish there should be a show about that, but you have like Union Buster guy who comes in, those consultants, but they're just like, hey, man, you're looking kind of down today.
[01:05:16]  You want to chat?
[01:05:17]  Yeah.
[01:05:17]  You got to like outreach a little bit and you're kind of like, hey, man.
[01:05:21]  It's kind of like sideways cap, kind of trying to be like one of the guys.
[01:05:24]  Jack, Jack Bensinger has like a good skit he did about being like a Starbucks union busted consultant.
[01:05:30]  Oh, I bet.
[01:05:31]  But, but yeah, they did that kind of shit with us.
[01:05:34]  And they were like, you know, like, oh, you might actually like, there's no guarantee that you'll get a raise.
[01:05:38]  It's like, yeah, but we're unionizing to do that.
[01:05:41]  Like, you're never going to give me a raise.
[01:05:43]  So why would NoCast?
[01:05:44]  That's the status quo, actually.
[01:05:45]  That's just literally the status quo is I've never gotten a raise.
[01:05:49]  And they started talking, like, well, you know, money, we don't know about the money.
[01:05:53]  And we're like, I'm like, listen, I brought the financials.
[01:05:56]  I was like, Sapporo looks like it's actually doing pretty good.
[01:05:59]  And then, you know, it's the fact is, is that every Sapporo brewery in the world, as far as I could tell, I couldn't tell if the one in Vietnam was unionized, but I assume it is, is union, including the ones in Japan.
[01:06:12]  So I got in contact with the Japanese workers at Sapporo and I got in contact with the Sleemans workers and I actually got the contract from Sleeman's.
[01:06:23]  They're Teamsters up there.
[01:06:25]  And I got their contract and I looked and I brought, I would bring this, I actually passed out copies of the contract.
[01:06:30]  Yeah.
[01:06:31]  And I looked at in my job at Sleemans in Canada, that guy was getting paid like $35 an hour.
[01:06:39]  And I know it's Canadian money, but that guy's getting paid way more than you.
[01:06:44]  More than I am.
[01:06:45]  Yeah.
[01:06:46]  Way more than your coworkers.
[01:06:47]  And so I would pass this out to anybody.
[01:06:49]  We would all, you know, obviously in every small group meeting they'd have, there'd be one of us in there.
[01:06:53]  So I would give someone a contract.
[01:06:54]  And I had the contract and I would show people this contract, left copies of it around.
[01:07:00]  You know, they would do this stuff like, hey, we're family, right?
[01:07:03]  We're family.
[01:07:04]  And it's like, you're not my family.
[01:07:05]  You're the guy that pays me $14 an hour, right?
[01:07:08]  And like to come here at five in the morning.
[01:07:10]  Like my dad would never do that.
[01:07:12]  He wouldn't own a brewery.
[01:07:15]  That's why I call you guys my family.
[01:07:16]  Exactly.
[01:07:17]  Because I make you come here at four o'clock in the morning.
[01:07:19]  True.
[01:07:20]  And another tactic they do, which they didn't do very successfully with us, is they often try to play races off against each other, right?
[01:07:26]  So like in like a restaurant environment, front of house will be oftentimes like English speaking, if not often very like white people, right?
[01:07:34]  Back of house will be Spanish speaking, you know, immigrants.
[01:07:39]  And they will have like specific consultants that are like, all right, fuck the white people are all like, they're going to, they're like Bernie Sanders, bisexuals or whatever.
[01:07:46]  But like the Spanish-speaking people, we can A, threaten them with deportation.
[01:07:49]  And this didn't happen at Anchor, but like they're classic tactics.
[01:07:52]  This is a classic.
[01:07:54]  Campaigns that I've worked on, this has happened.
[01:07:56]  Yeah.
[01:07:57]  They will like, you know, they'll sort of subtly hint at like maybe deportation, loss of immigration status, uh, maybe someone's not legal.
[01:08:05]  That knowledge is always out, you know what I mean?
[01:08:07]  Like, that is, that, that is in the air there.
[01:08:10]  Um, and they'll pit, they'll pit basically races against each other.
[01:08:13]  Um, you know, they'll, they'll, they'll, they'll do all these different, like, kind of like really weasel, weasly, weasly fucking tactics, and they'll really ratchet up the tensions.
[01:08:22]  Yeah, so we did this campaign where we were actually, we put up, um, I had a list of every single vendor of anchor in San Francisco, and uh, we had these giant rallies, uh, which, yeah, you really remember, yeah,
[01:08:37]  yeah, yeah, yeah, you guys went to, yeah, um, and uh, we had we support anchor workers, like big posters that were totally put up in every place that served anchor because there is an implicit threat there that I will continue to make implicit and not explicate.
[01:08:55]  But there's an implicit threat there, right?
[01:08:57]  That we support the workers, we also sell your beer, right?
[01:09:01]  And we had rallies, we had multiple rallies, I got to go on TV, um, which was nice, uh, which I can't find the footage of, but I have a picture of it.
[01:09:10]  And we should say, I mean, I do want to say these posters were all over San Francisco.
[01:09:14]  All over San Francisco, anchor is served everywhere, everywhere, every bar, every single bar in San Francisco has it.
[01:09:21]  If not on, I mean, I, every single, I don't think I've been in a bar in San Francisco that didn't have an anchor.

=== Implicit Threats Revealed (02:53) ===

[01:09:26]  It'd be insane.
[01:09:27]  It'd be always, they just always had it.
[01:09:29]  Yeah.
[01:09:30]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:09:31]  And so the culmination of that big public campaign that we did, which was really crucial because we didn't tell people to stop drinking anchor.
[01:09:37]  We told people to keep drinking anchor, but there's also something implicit there.
[01:09:41]  We also, implicit, listen, implicit's great.
[01:09:44]  We love to be implicit.
[01:09:45]  We got lots of implicit on this show all the time, which a lot of the little, you know, inspires a lot of scuttlebutt among the gumshoes, which I appreciate.
[01:09:55]  And those are little breadcrumbs for you.
[01:09:57]  Little breadcrumbs, right?
[01:09:58]  Q style.
[01:09:58]  Keep them on their toes.
[01:09:59]  Exactly.
[01:10:00]  So, so, yeah, yeah.
[01:10:02]  So we, you know, and we, you know, a letter in Japanese from a Japanese, not only the Sapporo union, but like a rail union that maybe carries Sapporo is that there's, that's good to show people, right?
[01:10:13]  Because that means like, look, there's guys in Japan that are on your side, right?
[01:10:16]  And they carry Sapporo on their trains.
[01:10:20]  So we won, obviously.
[01:10:23]  Spoiler alert.
[01:10:23]  Spoiler alert, we won.
[01:10:24]  Yeah.
[01:10:25]  We fucking smashed that motherfucker.
[01:10:27]  We won the shit out of that.
[01:10:30]  And then there was a contract campaign.
[01:10:32]  And at that point, like, you know, there was, there was guys that were stepping up, who are still stepping up, who are still rocking that.
[01:10:38]  I'm like, you know what?
[01:10:39]  Take the fucking, I'll support you guys.
[01:10:42]  And did an insane job.
[01:10:45]  And they got it to where like my job that I got hired for at $14 an hour now, you're like 20.
[01:10:49]  I mean, I don't know the exact, I did know the exact numbers pretty recently, but I didn't write them down, unfortunately.
[01:10:54]  But you're like making like $21 an hour now.
[01:10:56]  That's huge.
[01:10:57]  It's huge.
[01:10:57]  I mean, it's insane.
[01:10:58]  And there's like phasing for raises.
[01:11:01]  There's like actual progression at work.
[01:11:03]  Like you can get better jobs there.
[01:11:06]  Yeah.
[01:11:06]  And move up the ranks a little bit.
[01:11:08]  There's job security.
[01:11:09]  There's healthcare.
[01:11:10]  Incredible.
[01:11:11]  Yeah.
[01:11:11]  That schedule is like is rationalized.
[01:11:14]  I mean, it changed a lot.
[01:11:17]  But of course, 2020, COVID, right?
[01:11:23]  And so COVID, obviously, the brewery was still going, but skeleton crew.
[01:11:27]  It's really good that they got the contract before COVID because there was a lot of job security there.
[01:11:32]  Yeah, totally.
[01:11:34]  But Sapporo took that time to put in automation.
[01:11:37]  And so, you know, you know the True Non's feeling about automation, right?
[01:11:41]  We hate the robots.
[01:11:42]  We don't like the robots.
[01:11:43]  We don't like the robots.
[01:11:44]  Master robots.
[01:11:45]  And here's the thing.
[01:11:46]  We're right.
[01:11:46]  Because when I was working on the line there, we're doing 600 barrels a day, right?
[01:11:50]  Not every day, but we have a capacity to do 600 barrels a day.
[01:11:54]  It's a lot.
[01:11:55]  Now, with the robots, it's like 300.
[01:12:00]  It's because it just, it's slower.
[01:12:02]  It's slower.
[01:12:03]  That's why it's slower.
[01:12:05]  There's literally no other explanation.
[01:12:06]  It's just literally slower.
[01:12:08]  Of course it is.
[01:12:08]  And that is, I mean, think about that.
[01:12:10]  That's a 50% capacity reduction.
[01:12:13]  50%.
[01:12:14]  That's crazy.
[01:12:15]  That's a bad business decision.
[01:12:18]  That wasn't the only bad business decision.

=== Classico Rebranded (06:15) ===

[01:12:20]  The rebrand.
[01:12:21]  Oh, my God.
[01:12:22]  Anchor rebranded.
[01:12:23]  Now, I don't know if we're going to, how we can show you guys this because you've really got to see the visuals.
[01:12:30]  You've got to see the visuals of it.
[01:12:32]  It is so bad.
[01:12:33]  The original Anchor Steam logo, we talked about it.
[01:12:36]  It is an icon.
[01:12:37]  It's kind of like a little wonky wheelie.
[01:12:40]  Like it is, it's like a little quirked, but not in a like corporate quirk.
[01:12:45]  Not in a corporate quirk.
[01:12:46]  It's not.
[01:12:46]  It's not like it's a pasta.
[01:12:49]  Yeah.
[01:12:50]  Yeah.
[01:12:50]  This is like an old sailor guy who's just like hanging out and maybe he's like, oh, my letters are a little loopy because I've had a couple beers.
[01:12:58]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:12:59]  And it's, it's classico.
[01:13:02]  It's classico.
[01:13:03]  It's definitely classico.
[01:13:05]  Classico.
[01:13:05]  I mean, look at it.
[01:13:07]  Now they rebranded in 2021.
[01:13:10]  I can't, I don't know why this happened or why this continues to happen, but it looks awful.
[01:13:18]  It looks like the logo for a condo development inside a like University of Michigan themed airport.
[01:13:26]  Yeah, yes.
[01:13:27]  It is horrible.
[01:13:29]  It looks like airport beer, right?
[01:13:31]  This is what they said.
[01:13:32]  We're honoring our past while staying true to our roots with a look as bold as the brand it represents.
[01:13:39]  But with beer as it is with people, it's what's inside that counts.
[01:13:45]  And we didn't change a thing about our iconic beers.
[01:13:48]  But it's also about, no, you did.
[01:13:50]  You fully did.
[01:13:52]  The reasons it was iconic was because of the branding of the beer, because the way the labels looked, the fucking the bottle caps looked, everything looked, and then it had to change.
[01:14:01]  It changed and like, if you go to that brewery, that brewery is like an old school, fucking giant ass concrete, motherfucking building, like old San Francisco building, the post office downtown, all that uh, and it's totally incongruent with that, right and like that.
[01:14:17]  That's what i'm saying is like it's this, like disconnection from like the history and like what made and like yeah like okay yo, i'm a communist or whatever, but it's like yes sometimes, like the things that actually cities produce are what makes that city, like that, that gives that city its connection to its past course.
[01:14:33]  I mean, what is, what is?
[01:14:36]  What's represented in this?
[01:14:37]  Is the relations that produced it exactly yeah, it's the people, it's the places, it's the it's, it's everything.
[01:14:45]  It's yeah exactly, and like what this does, what it's nakedly trying to glom on to the fucking warrior no disrespect to the to the warriors moving to San Francisco right, like that's why they changed, which don't even get me started on that, I won't get started.
[01:14:59]  I would never defend that decision.
[01:15:00]  It's insane.
[01:15:01]  This is fucking horrible, just like this is just trying to glom on to that shit right, but it's also, I mean it's that you'll recognize it a mile away.
[01:15:11]  It has been completely smoothed out of any kind of eccentricity, any kind of human touch, any sort of fingerprint, and it's that.
[01:15:21]  You know.
[01:15:21]  I know it was like Lindy Man calls it like refinement culture or whatever it is, but it is that.
[01:15:26]  You know.
[01:15:26]  It is that kind of like you know, boardroom meeting, you know market researched to the to the end.
[01:15:36]  Yeah, just completely stripped of all kind of like blood and guts and fun.
[01:15:42]  And it's history history yeah, it's connection to the world right, and just yeah, smoothed out easy, no personality, no personality.
[01:15:52]  No, it looks like it's, it's the, it's, the.
[01:15:54]  It's the design equivalent of a whole foods at the bottom of a mixed-use condo.
[01:15:58]  Yeah, you know, and like it's and it's just it's.
[01:16:01]  Yeah, and they were.
[01:16:02]  It's funny, it's because like, when they rebranded, like they were prior to that, they were going to do like a collaboration with Thrasher.
[01:16:08]  Right, another former employer of mine.
[01:16:09]  This is, I hate fucking company.
[01:16:11]  No, stop doing collaboration.
[01:16:12]  Yes, but it is.
[01:16:13]  But SAN Francisco Thrasher is like a San Francisco company.
[01:16:16]  I know I also hate collaborations, right?
[01:16:18]  When we did some, I was like, but they were San Francisco companies at least.
[01:16:21]  And it's just like, it's like totally became, it became like nothing, right?
[01:16:25]  Like they, they, this is, it is directly attacking why people liked the beer.
[01:16:29]  Yeah.
[01:16:30]  And, you know, so the lions automated, they change it.
[01:16:33]  And then they, you know, they kind of like, they back out of these collaborations.
[01:16:38]  And then they buy Stone Brewing, which is another big brewery, or it's another California brewery in late 2022.
[01:16:46]  And that is really when I'm like, oh, this is their strategy now.
[01:16:49]  Because the thing is, they had tried to make Sapporo at Anchor.
[01:16:53]  And Anchor is, let's say that it was an imprecise method sometimes.
[01:16:58]  It's a few people.
[01:17:00]  No, it does have the human touch, right?
[01:17:03]  I racked any, if you drank fucking anchor out of a fucking keg anytime between the time that I worked there, I fucking kegged that, right?
[01:17:12]  Which is insane.
[01:17:13]  Because I should be nowhere near things that can explode like that.
[01:17:17]  But it's like they buy this other brewery and they can brew Sapporo.
[01:17:24]  And it's called Stone.
[01:17:26]  And it's just like, it becomes basically replicating the AB InBEV thing.
[01:17:31]  And that leaves us basically where we're at today, right?
[01:17:34]  I mean, that's like they announced that they're discontinuing this Christmas ale.
[01:17:37]  And the Christmas ale had been in an unbroken line for 49 years.
[01:17:42]  Yeah.
[01:17:42]  It was like a special thing that was always, you know, it was a big deal when it would be in stores.
[01:17:47]  It had a special Christmas label that was always different every year.
[01:17:52]  Hand drawn.
[01:17:52]  Hand drawn.
[01:17:53]  It always had a really cute little Christmas tree on it in some way.
[01:17:57]  And they're just not doing it anymore.
[01:17:59]  And it was a staple of the city.
[01:18:01]  Exactly.
[01:18:02]  The holiday time.
[01:18:03]  It was like a classic.
[01:18:04]  I've literally given them as Christmas gifts to people, the magnums.
[01:18:07]  Totally.
[01:18:08]  And, you know, we would, at the, at the brewery, like, we would all get off the line that we usually worked and like worked the line that had those for like, you know, a week or two.
[01:18:15]  And it was just like, it was something that we did.
[01:18:17]  People love the Christmas ale.
[01:18:19]  And they're, they're, they're cutting that as well.
[01:18:22]  And like, you know, I'm not here to like be like, get on a podcast and be like, I want this fucking beer back or whatever, because that's not what it's really about.
[01:18:30]  Like, it's not about me.
[01:18:31]  I don't drink beer.
[01:18:33]  I, you know, I would get in some trouble if I did.

=== A Christmas Tradition Lost (08:04) ===

[01:18:36]  I maybe start being a cool guy.
[01:18:38]  But like, it's really about that, like, this, this, it's this, it's a funny thing that these, that happens is like things that you like and things that you like, you hold sacred without maybe even knowing it, right?
[01:18:50]  Like these companies come in and they have these consultants and they will just like fucking chip and chop away at it until it's like something that's so disconnected from the past that it might have well have been reborn every single day as the sun rises.
[01:19:00]  And I think they look to strip something if they can't, you know, if they can't somehow chase these like these profits that are so high, you know, they have to strip everything that could ever be seen as an inefficiency, like we're saying, to any possible profit.
[01:19:17]  Yeah.
[01:19:18]  Everything has to get stripped away.
[01:19:19]  Yeah.
[01:19:20]  That it could be in the road on the way.
[01:19:23]  To efficiency.
[01:19:24]  To that profit.
[01:19:26]  And in doing so, it takes all of the character, everything that kind of made that thing.
[01:19:31]  It's the thing.
[01:19:33]  And now it's not that anymore at all.
[01:19:36]  I mean, that's a good point, like, right?
[01:19:38]  Like inefficiency is like, it actually, I mean, not that I'm like, you know, giving great revelations here, but it's like the inefficiency in some of these things are actually what gives it its beauty, right?
[01:19:49]  Which gives it its connection to like the spirit of mankind and like the earth and stuff.
[01:19:55]  It's like, it's, it is the inefficiencies, right?
[01:19:57]  We're not robots.
[01:19:59]  And what, what happens is, is like these big companies come up and buy up, you know, maybe a place that is inefficient and then make it efficient and then are shocked that like it sells less.
[01:20:11]  You know, and like that people, that the, that, that the spirit is, they try to drain the spirit and then are shocked that the spirit is drained.
[01:20:18]  And I think it's so like, it's emblematic of like so much of San Francisco, right?
[01:20:23]  Yeah, I was thinking about that a lot.
[01:20:25]  You know, we haven't, it's funny because we started this podcast in San Francisco, but we're not there anymore.
[01:20:30]  We're not.
[01:20:30]  I haven't been back.
[01:20:31]  When was the last time?
[01:20:32]  Oh, we were there in November.
[01:20:33]  Yeah.
[01:20:34]  Oh my gosh, of course we were there in November.
[01:20:36]  Yeah.
[01:20:37]  It's funny.
[01:20:37]  We stayed in the Tenderloin, which probably a mistake.
[01:20:42]  I'll say it.
[01:20:42]  Liz smokes fucking some ice, dude.
[01:20:44]  Liz got on some Tina.
[01:20:46]  I'll say, you know, it's, you know, it's real fashionable, I think, right now to really rag on San Francisco and talk about how insane it is and how much has changed and all that.
[01:20:55]  And just like presented as this kind of like lawless city, which I don't think is completely correct.
[01:21:02]  No.
[01:21:02]  But that it is the worst that I've ever seen it in my entire life.
[01:21:05]  Yeah.
[01:21:06]  And it's really sad.
[01:21:07]  Like it makes me really, really sad.
[01:21:09]  Yeah.
[01:21:10]  Yeah, absolutely.
[01:21:12]  It's funny.
[01:21:12]  I was thinking about it too with like, you know, it's like, you notice how like all these, all of our websites kind of like have stopped working.
[01:21:21]  You notice that?
[01:21:21]  Like we've talked about that on the show.
[01:21:23]  Like it's like Twitter kind of like is just a bunch of bots.
[01:21:26]  You're doing that thing now where you're like calling bots.
[01:21:28]  If you say, for those of you who are on Twitter, if you say, I need a sugar daddy.
[01:21:32]  Yeah, I've had questions about these tweets, by the way, that I didn't was not prepared to answer.
[01:21:35]  I need a sugar daddy.
[01:21:36]  I do need one.
[01:21:37]  I'm not like looking for one, but I need one.
[01:21:38]  But often sugar mamas will hit you up too.
[01:21:41]  But what is it?
[01:21:42]  If you say, I need a sugar daddy on Twitter, you will immediately get all these bots that just say DM.
[01:21:46]  But it's cool because they picked all ugly people of men and women as the avatars to make it more realistic.
[01:21:55]  I DM'd with one and I believe it unfortunately wasn't man in India.
[01:21:59]  Oh my God.
[01:21:59]  Yeah, presenting as a woman.
[01:22:00]  They're bots.
[01:22:01]  I mean, the whole site is useless.
[01:22:02]  It's all wonky.
[01:22:03]  Yeah.
[01:22:04]  I mean, Facebook is like a literal insane asylum.
[01:22:07]  Yeah.
[01:22:08]  Google like doesn't, you have to like game the Google algorithm in order to find information.
[01:22:12]  Like none of this shit works anymore.
[01:22:14]  And it feels like the people who built it have kind of abandoned it and left it for us to kind of figure out.
[01:22:20]  Like everything there on the internet and all these websites are scams.
[01:22:24]  It's all just like everything new that's created is like some version of like.
[01:22:28]  you know, a new gambling token or whatever.
[01:22:31]  It's all just ways to scam people.
[01:22:33]  And we're all just sort of like left to like figure it out and kind of make our way because they've, this is the world now and we have to use all of this stuff.
[01:22:42]  And it's like the same thing in San Francisco, the place where they all fucking designed these websites.
[01:22:46]  They all came in and they redesigned the city in their image in a lot of ways.
[01:22:51]  I mean, really not even purposely, but it was the effect.
[01:22:55]  And then they just kind of abandoned it.
[01:22:57]  Yeah.
[01:22:58]  And I go to that place and we see it, you know, and it's like, you know, I don't want to be one of those people who like complains about it's not so it's like some Fox News like crime place, but we just have to be realistic about what's going on there.
[01:23:10]  Like it's the worst that I have.
[01:23:12]  I mean, I grew up there and then I lived there for like seven years after that.
[01:23:16]  And like, it's, it's not great.
[01:23:19]  And I feel like it's been abandoned a bit.
[01:23:23]  Well, it's to me, what I think of this happening is like all of these companies came in and like, this is really what made me like kind of think about like, maybe we could do an anchor episode or whatever.
[01:23:32]  Like these companies came in and they saw, they saw this like germinal essence of what makes the San Francisco at least like so excellent.
[01:23:40]  And you can really take out San Francisco and put your own fucking city in because I know this has happened to a lot of major cities.
[01:23:45]  It's like they come in and they see like what makes this place beautiful and unique and what makes the people who live there love it.
[01:23:53]  And they try to mine that essentially, right?
[01:23:56]  And they try to tap into that.
[01:23:58]  But what they do is it's like, I mean, and this is what I got to call the fucking NSM and the Daily Beast for.
[01:24:03]  They're vampires, right?
[01:24:04]  They come in and fucking suck it dry and kind of leave this husk behind.
[01:24:08]  And then they say, and then they're like, oh, you did this.
[01:24:11]  They point to the people that live there and say, you did this.
[01:24:14]  And it's like, you did this, motherfucker.
[01:24:16]  Like, you came here.
[01:24:18]  You fucked this up.
[01:24:19]  Like, there is, it's not like, that's what drives me crazy because it's like all these fucking tech motherfuckers, like Gary Tan, all these fucking stupid motherfucking cocksuckers out there who fucking like popping off all the time.
[01:24:31]  It's like, huh, I wonder if there's any connection between all of all of your cohort coming here and what it is today.
[01:24:39]  I wonder if they, I wonder, that's crazy that they just happened at the same time.
[01:24:42]  You know, it's like, obviously there is.
[01:24:44]  And it's more, it's even more than that.
[01:24:46]  It's like these, like the re, I thought I would never, ever, ever, ever move out of San Francisco.
[01:24:50]  Yeah.
[01:24:51]  Ever.
[01:24:51]  I probably told you guys that.
[01:24:53]  And then at one point I had to look around and be like, I, there is nothing I know.
[01:24:58]  You know, there's nothing I know here.
[01:25:01]  And it's heartbreaking.
[01:25:04]  I still, I think, I think about San Francisco literally every day.
[01:25:10]  You know, and it's just like, it's, it's, it's, I mean, it's just the way it goes, I guess, you know, it's just like, but I'm not saying like, obviously things change everywhere, right?
[01:25:21]  Like, that's the nature of history, you know, marches on.
[01:25:23]  But like this is a different, more peculiar aspect of it, right?
[01:25:27]  Where it's like, it's a, it's like strip mining the soul of these places and these institutions that you might love.
[01:25:33]  And Castro Theater being turned into a fucking like event space for whatever, for what's it fucking called?
[01:25:40]  Did it?
[01:25:40]  Yeah, it's now turned into like, it's that it's like an OnlyFans, not OnlyFans, only one song that it's Another Planet, Another Planet Entertainment, I think owns.
[01:25:52]  I don't even know what that is.
[01:25:53]  It's like it's like Golden Voice or something like that.
[01:25:56]  But it's like they take these things and they inhabit them and they wear them, right?
[01:26:00]  Like it's, you know, it's like Leatherface or whatever.
[01:26:04]  But there's these like secondary effects too, right?
[01:26:07]  Because it's also, I mean, I was thinking about this.
[01:26:10]  We were talking about this episode and I was just kind of thinking a lot about San Francisco over the past couple of days and like remembering stuff.
[01:26:16]  And I remember I was living in the hate when a lot of these startups really started going.
[01:26:22]  And it would be like ones of like, oh, now you don't have to do laundry anymore.
[01:26:25]  You just come and there's lockers and you just leave your laundry and then it just magically is lost.
[01:26:30]  Laundry locker on Lower Hayden.
[01:26:31]  I used to walk past it on the way.
[01:26:32]  Yeah, I lived like a block from there.
[01:26:35]  And I mean, all of these companies, by the way, don't exist anymore.
[01:26:38]  Oh, no.
[01:26:38]  And it's ridiculous.

=== The Nostalgia Of Lost Startups (07:05) ===

[01:26:40]  But it has changed the way that cities, like cities depend on a kind of like, you know, various like interwoven matrices of mutual dependence.
[01:26:51]  Yeah.
[01:26:51]  Right.
[01:26:51]  I mean, you could say like the Slovenian Society, but cities literally depend on that, right?
[01:26:55]  Because you got, you know, they depend on that economically and socially.
[01:27:00]  We're not a sack of potatoes.
[01:27:02]  No, but, you know, for you, you know, you need your local laundromat to support your local debt.
[01:27:07]  You know, all these kinds of things and neighbors and people.
[01:27:09]  And you're all next to each other and building stuff for your neighbors and for your community and like literally at your jobs and whatever.
[01:27:18]  And all that stuff goes into making a city what a city is and making it thrive and not turn into decay and danger, which it always has the chance of doing, right?
[01:27:30]  I'm not saying anything unique.
[01:27:32]  I've contributed to that decay and danger before.
[01:27:34]  Oh, no.
[01:27:34]  I mean, this is all, you know, many, many people have written about this.
[01:27:37]  And I'm not some urbanist or whatever, but I'm saying like, and all these sorts of like the quote unquote like tech revolutions in the service economy or whatever have completely and totally gutted like that social dependence and that economic dependence in neighborhoods.
[01:27:54]  And so you have people where you don't, you know, all those businesses and obviously after COVID too, there was no, there was no one for them to serve.
[01:28:05]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:28:06]  You know, and it just completely has gutted so much of what has made, I mean, we were talking, and I can't believe that a place like North Beach has survived.
[01:28:16]  Insane.
[01:28:17]  It makes me so happy.
[01:28:18]  You know, really, the Italians, you know, if you've got a civil society there, it's a thick civil society.
[01:28:22]  But they, I mean, really, North Beach is still such a special place.
[01:28:27]  Even the flower shop that I worked there with the fake gypsy owners is still there.
[01:28:32]  And I don't know.
[01:28:32]  I mean, I know a lot of people say this is just what happens.
[01:28:35]  This is, you know, and I know that's true.
[01:28:37]  And I feel like wistful about it.
[01:28:40]  Yeah.
[01:28:40]  You know, I don't know.
[01:28:42]  I think it's right too.
[01:28:44]  Yeah.
[01:28:44]  I think it's okay to feel wistful and nostalgic for things.
[01:28:47]  But I also don't think that history is some like progress is not just like some forward march forever.
[01:28:53]  Like that's fucking bullshit.
[01:28:55]  Yeah.
[01:28:55]  Yeah.
[01:28:55]  You know, like Ben You Mean always had like a great thing where he was like, you know, I'm going to butcher this, but because off the top of my head, but, you know, Marx talks about, you know, the locomotion of history, the revolutionist locomotion of history.
[01:29:12]  And he was saying, well, maybe it's not.
[01:29:14]  Maybe it's, you know, people trying to get off the train.
[01:29:17]  Yeah.
[01:29:17]  And it's that moment of saying, stop.
[01:29:21]  Yeah.
[01:29:21]  You know?
[01:29:22]  And I think about that a lot, you know, and it makes me like, this is so corny.
[01:29:28]  But we haven't been corny in like a while.
[01:29:29]  So we're going long and who knows how many people are actually listening at this point.
[01:29:34]  But like, I feel bad.
[01:29:36]  Like, I want to go back.
[01:29:37]  Like, I, I, I want to know that there are people that are there to like take care of that place.
[01:29:44]  Yeah.
[01:29:44]  I'm not saying I'm that person because it's not one person.
[01:29:47]  I'll buy it up there again.
[01:29:49]  But like it takes people that really fucking love that place to take care of it.
[01:29:55]  And I just, you know, I feel like a lot of people came in and then they left and it's been abandoned.
[01:30:01]  And it just makes me really, really sad.
[01:30:04]  Yeah.
[01:30:05]  Yeah.
[01:30:06]  I think when you talk about this stuff sometimes, it's like people have this sort of reflexive, almost defense of it, right?
[01:30:11]  Like things get worse.
[01:30:12]  It's fine.
[01:30:13]  Like things get worse.
[01:30:14]  Things get worse.
[01:30:14]  But it's like, it is, I think, I think, and again, like, I probably sound like some fucking Gen X guy or whatever, boomer guy or whatever.
[01:30:22]  But like, I think really one of the most important things about being a human being is like, is this connection with other human beings?
[01:30:30]  And it's like the way that that technology and that like, you know, driven trends in society because the way that our economy works now, like social trends basically are totally at odds with that.
[01:30:43]  Right.
[01:30:43]  And like, if you live in a city, the city, the environment now does its best to sever you from your others.
[01:30:51]  You know what I mean?
[01:30:51]  Like it's like it really is like it.
[01:30:53]  They want you.
[01:30:54]  I mean, it's like at home meeting Netflix, ordering Grubhub.
[01:30:57]  Totally.
[01:30:57]  You know, like getting, getting your fucking, meeting people off of apps, all this stuff.
[01:31:01]  It's like, okay, like, I understand why this stuff all happens.
[01:31:04]  Like, in, you know, it's discrete forms, right?
[01:31:05]  Like, I see what led to all of these things.
[01:31:08]  And I'm not, like, I'm not a fucking social scientist.
[01:31:11]  I'm just saying, like, this is how it is to me as somebody who is in this thing, you know?
[01:31:14]  It's like, it's, it's, it's, it's, there's a reason that you fucking are on so much fucking Lexapro and that you're fucking crazy depressed, right?
[01:31:22]  And it's like, it's, it's, it's not something to relish or just to like to be like, oh, like, you know, it's, it's, it's like we saw that that, the John early special, it's like talking about how like the ads are, like, oh, I hate everybody.
[01:31:36]  I order Grubhub or whatever.
[01:31:37]  It's like, well, actually, like, you should like love your fellow human beings and like try to try to be among them.
[01:31:42]  And I think that like, there's this leap that a lot of people go into.
[01:31:44]  And this is like, this is why everyone you know is so anxious and everyone you know is so miserable.
[01:31:48]  It's because it's like, it really, you have to actually like be able to get past that ledge and like connect with people.
[01:31:53]  And it's really difficult to do because everyone else is basically in this same sort of hole that you are.
[01:31:59]  Right.
[01:31:59]  And it's like you have to kind of claw out of your hole and try to be in this society, a society that doesn't really exist anymore.
[01:32:06]  I don't know.
[01:32:07]  I think I think about back to the union campaign, right?
[01:32:09]  Like it's like in that, I've been really honestly, I don't want to say blessed.
[01:32:15]  I don't mean this in the blessed way, but I have been like blessed to experience throughout my life.
[01:32:21]  The joys of like brotherhood, right?
[01:32:24]  And of like, of struggling alongside my fellow man and like for a goal, right?
[01:32:28]  Multiple times in my life, I've been able to do that.
[01:32:31]  And there is a reason that is like throughout history known as one of the most like beautiful life-changing things that you can do is to struggle alongside your fellows in a real way.
[01:32:42]  And like, and a lot of a lot of the political things I see people, people basically replicate what they do on the outside, right?
[01:32:47]  There's like backbuy and I hate you.
[01:32:50]  Insane people bumping up into other insane people.
[01:32:54]  But like really this, this, this kind of stuff, it's like you understand like it's the quiet joys of brotherhood, right?
[01:33:02]  And it's, it is, it is a feeling that is, that is completely unmatched.
[01:33:06]  And I think a lot of people want that feeling in some form or another, and then maybe don't pursue it or like, you know, fall into anxiety or depression or something like that, which those are real things, right?
[01:33:18]  I'm not, I'm not trying to dismiss that, although it probably sounds like I am.
[01:33:22]  But like, nothing gets done unless you do it.
[01:33:27]  It's really like, it's a stupid fucking, I was always making fun of Marcus Aurelius in the last episode, but it's like, that is true.
[01:33:33]  It's like, all these people, it's like, people literally ask me, it's like, well, it's like, you just do it.
[01:33:38]  Like, there is like, you can't, people always like wait for their like Lenin or whatever.
[01:33:43]  It's like, well, or like their leader or whatever.

=== Quiet Joys of Brotherhood (03:45) ===

[01:33:46]  People, just you do it, right?
[01:33:49]  Like you go or be a, I'm good at taking orders.
[01:33:52]  It's like, go be a person who's incredibly good at taking orders.
[01:33:56]  Like be, that sounds weird to say, but like, you know, be like, be a worker among workers.
[01:34:03]  But you actually, like, nothing gets done unless you do it.
[01:34:05]  It's really, really what I think.
[01:34:08]  And like, it's, it's, it's, it's, that's the, that's the thing I think a lot of people like sort of don't get past that.
[01:34:15]  It's like they think that like something's going to come along and is going to sweep them up in this beautiful tide that they'll be able to just like roll on with everybody else in.
[01:34:23]  But, like, that tide has to get started somewhere.
[01:34:34]  Well, Liz, episode 300, I have something to confess to you.
[01:34:38]  Olive juice.
[01:34:40]  Nice try.
[01:34:41]  Vacuum cleaner.
[01:34:43]  Wait.
[01:34:43]  What is that?
[01:34:44]  Look at me.
[01:34:44]  Look at me.
[01:34:45]  Look at me doing it.
[01:34:47]  That's me.
[01:34:48]  No, wait, it's just vacuum.
[01:34:49]  Vacuum.
[01:34:50]  Oh, yeah.
[01:34:51]  Yeah.
[01:34:51]  I see it.
[01:34:52]  Yeah.
[01:34:53]  That's pretty good.
[01:34:53]  It's pretty good, right?
[01:34:54]  Because it looks like something else because listeners can't see that.
[01:34:57]  Fifth grade, I hit him with the vacuum.
[01:34:59]  I had to teach you with a vacuum every day.
[01:35:02]  Dennis and Minnesota.
[01:35:03]  Every day.
[01:35:03]  I wasn't that, you know.
[01:35:05]  Vacuum's kind of dad.
[01:35:06]  It's not going to see.
[01:35:07]  Guys, 300 episodes.
[01:35:08]  300 episodes.
[01:35:10]  What should we do for our 400th one?
[01:35:12]  Should we finally, the goat we have?
[01:35:14]  Yeah, definitely.
[01:35:15]  Yeah, we should sacrifice that motherfucker.
[01:35:18]  People still listening because we went really long.
[01:35:20]  Thanks for listening, you guys.
[01:35:21]  How long did we go, Yarn Tonsky?
[01:35:23]  It's almost, it's like an hour 45.
[01:35:26]  Hour 45.
[01:35:27]  Okay, we've gone longer than this.
[01:35:28]  We've gone longer than this, but it's a long guy.
[01:35:31]  We wanted to talk.
[01:35:32]  We wanted to talk.
[01:35:33]  And we got impassioned.
[01:35:34]  It's also really hot in this room.
[01:35:35]  It is crazy hot.
[01:35:36]  It's crazy hot.
[01:35:37]  Thank God I have such a long poose.
[01:35:39]  What's it called?
[01:35:40]  Placket.
[01:35:40]  Placket.
[01:35:41]  My placket on this Volcom colored shirt I'm wearing is, I would say, four-fifths of the way down the shirt.
[01:35:48]  So I'm basically shirtless right now.
[01:35:51]  Well, I'm Liz.
[01:35:52]  I'm Brace, and I love you guys.
[01:35:54]  I'm glad you love it.
[01:35:54]  I love you guys too.
[01:35:56]  And I love doing this podcast.
[01:35:58]  Yeah, me too.
[01:35:59]  It's fun.
[01:35:59]  You know what?
[01:36:01]  We spent every day on this motherfucker.
[01:36:03]  And I like to do it.
[01:36:06]  We are very hashtag blessed to be doing this.
[01:36:09]  And I say that with all sincerity and no irony.
[01:36:13]  And thank you guys so much for listening.
[01:36:16]  It really is like fucking insane.
[01:36:20]  And we really, really like doing it.
[01:36:22]  And we're going to keep doing it.
[01:36:23]  Young Chomsky, who's our producer?
[01:36:26]  It's me, Young Chomsky.
[01:36:30]  You guys are both fired?
[01:36:31]  Wait, by the way, this is unrelated, but I just want to say really quick, it's crazy that wait, Berlusconi's kid is named Luigi.
[01:36:39]  Luigi?
[01:36:40]  Can you double check that for me, Richard?
[01:36:42]  Luigi?
[01:36:43]  Is that just?
[01:36:44]  So his name is Luigi Berlusconi?
[01:36:47]  What?
[01:36:47]  Yeah.
[01:36:47]  What's he doing?
[01:36:48]  Is he like a TV news presenter?
[01:36:49]  Is he a TikTok star?
[01:36:50]  What's his deal?
[01:36:51]  He's got to be kind of older now.
[01:36:53]  He's handsome.
[01:36:54]  What's his job?
[01:36:55]  What's it say, like the Google result thing?
[01:37:00]  Obviously, he's a car mechanic.
[01:37:01]  He's a 34, yeah.
[01:37:03]  No, plumber.
[01:37:04]  Oh, plumber.
[01:37:05]  Plumber.
[01:37:05]  Women don't be gaming.
[01:37:07]  That's true.
[01:37:08]  I only played when I only played Mario Kart.
[01:37:11]  Which is why I thought they were mechanics.
[01:37:13]  Yeah.
[01:37:13]  Oh.
[01:37:16]  He's an economist.
[01:37:18]  One of the realest jobs you can have.
[01:37:19]  Let's hear for economists.
[01:37:21]  Yeah.
[01:37:21]  Wahoo.
[01:37:22]  Wahoo indeed.
[01:37:24]  And the podcast is called One, Two, Three True Non.
[01:37:30]  And we'll see you next time.