Texas can really take it out of you. The miles on our ice cream fleet to Austin, TX and back home totaled over 14,000. That’s counting Crash’s sidetrip to Florida for Langerado, which seemed like a good idea at the time. Yeah… seems kinda crazy, driving multiple vehicles across the country just to give away ice cream. Maybe that would explain why we’ve all been a bit beat since then and the energy tanks are still being refilled.
South by Southwest is the biggest event we do all year. We ran three separate projects that allowed us to give away over 11,000 free ice creams. We had Bessie, the ice cream truck there slinging Blue Bunny ice cream treats, two push carts decked out with artwork for the new Stella McCartney line of bags from LeSportsac, and our new Toyota Yaris Bessita, which was slinging cream as part of the Free Yr Radio project. The good news was that we had an amazing crew in town making everything run as smoothly as possible.
The music portion of SXSW runs from Wednesday through Saturday night and I’d be willing to bet that one those days there’s music being played somewhere in Austin at any given time. This also means there are a lot of cream slinging opportunities out there.
Things kicked off a little later than I would have liked on Wednesday, but once Bessie was loaded with cream we headed to Brush Square Park, right in front of the convention center, for the Canadian Blast day party. It’s a prime spot to throw a party and to give away ice cream because everyone has to grab their badges for the fest. We got to hear a bit of Hot Springs then Kate, James, and I switched off to check out the DJ/Hip Hop Explosion with Cadence Weapon, Ghislain Poirier, Megasoid, Skratch Bastid, Grand Analog AND Subtitle (who might be the honorary American among the bunch). It was quite an impressive and loud display of skills and scratching, and I’m glad I got to see it because it prolly won’t ever happen again.
While we were parked out front, Chris Kelly, who I’d met a couple years ago around Sasquatch Festival, strolled by with his newest group, The Choir Practice. For the last couple years we have done an Ice Cream Man Presents column for the daily paper Austin Chronicle during SXSW. We pick a band that comes by the truck and write a few hundred words about who they are and where they’ll be playing. The Choir Practice is pretty much what you’d picture (a mostly vocal group) and I thought it would be fun to start our ICM Presents series off with something a bit different, and FUN.
A trip to Austin isn’t complete with a trip, or three, to Hoovers for some Honest-to-Goodness Good Cooking. The chicken fried chicken is the best chicken I’ve ever had and the Housemates, consisting of fried okra, garlic cheese grits, mustard greens, jalapeno creamed spinach, and more, are so good they could be a meal on their own. After that we split up again and Gooch headed over to La Zona Rosa for the Free Yr Radio opening night party with Times New Viking, Simian Mobile Disco, and Yeasayer.
This is the second time we’ve rocked Free Yr Radio. Last year at CMJ in NYC, we converted a Yaris into a temporary Bessita and slang cream all over the city. The project is a partnership between Toyota and Urban Outfitters that is created to raise funds and awareness for independent radio stations around the country. Naturally that’s something we can completely get behind and what’s better to add to the mix than free treats? The good news is that we’ll also be hitting up most of the Free Yr Radio shows throughout the rest of the year so keep up to date on the schedule on their myspace page.
Thursday is really the first full-on day of SXSW. I headed over to Yumi Ice Cream to pick up the treats donated by Blue Bunny, then came back to discover that the artwork we needed for the push carts still hadn’t arrived. Without many options, Craig decided to run to the local copy place and print out a bunch of color copies to paste on the push cart to get us by until the vinyl would arrive the following day. It took a while to get them done but they looked surprisingly good by the time they hit the streets towards The A.V. Canvas Saddle Crafts Club event at Emo’s.
Gooch loaded up Bessita to hit Cream Vintage, Urban Outfitters and the Free Yr Radio Broadcast Corner while we headed back toward the convention center so James could head on in to take care of all the artist that were in attendance for Flatstock, a collection of over 100 rock n’ roll poster artists from around the world. Out front, I ran into hometown homies Crystal Antlers and decided they’d be great for the second installment of Ice Cream Man Presents. Especially since they drove all the way to Austin without having an official SXSW gig.
Austin streets are setup in a pretty standard grid format but it gets a lil’ tricky with street closures, a dissecting freeway, and a bunch of one way streets. It worked out perfect that we could head up Fourth to stop by the Levi’s Fort to catch up with everyone over there. Last year we spent a bunch of time there and I knew how hot it could get for the workers inside and wanted to make sure we could quench their thirst. It’s one of the best venues in town and I made the rounds with a cooler bag to hit up all the people helping out. We couldn’t stay long because we were in fifteen minute parking and the meter maid had marked our tires.
Once it starts getting later in the day we’re usually excited to head over to the East Side to see what’s going down. Daytrotter was doing a bunch of recording by Scoot Inn so we headed over to catch up with Rachel and Daniel. It was WAY more peaceful over there so we chilled out for a bit before heading back into town to get ready to Rock the Rabbit and roll the carts up to the JellyNYC/LeSportsac TX Garage party.
I’m generally a nice guy and like to work with as many people as possible. We’ve kept an open line of communication with SXSW and we offer to sling at their parties while in town. A few months ago Paula from LeSportsac had called Darin at SXSW because they were interested in giving out free popsicles from push carts during SXSW. Darin, being the nice guy he is, said, Uh…..there’s a guy who already does that. You might want to talk to him about it. Naturally we wanted to work with LeSportsac because it would allow us to give away even more goodness. Theyd just launched a new line of bags with two designs by Stella McCartney so we decided we’d wrap two carts with the designs and give away fruit pops during the fest. They had also partnered up with our friends, JellyNYC, so we rolled the carts up a few flights of parking garage inclines to get to the top where bands like No Age, Phosphorescent, O’Death, and AA Bondy were playing. Starr stuck around for most of the night there while Stella, Kate, Craig and I headed down to 3rd and Brazos for our late night shindig.
Last year’s Playboy party was pretty far out on the East Side and the space was a lot smaller. Illinois and Ghostland Observatory played which was right up my alley. This year they moved the gig to the center of downtown to a vacant warehouse and had Justice, Moby, MGMT, and The Heavy. The line was around the corner when we showed up and I ran into Chris from Illinois who had somehow managed to land the illustrious title of Host for the night. After a bit we continued around the building and pushed the cart inside and setup in corner that worked perfect. There was just enough downtime to grab some BBQ and a beer before the crowd rolled in. MGMT took the stage and their stage show was good but the music was a bit uninspiring. We all switched off a lil bit handing out pops and some bunnies stopped by to snap a few pics. Moby really got the party started and was mixing in all kinds of great tracks. We wanted to stick around for Justice but it was past 2 and we still had a couple more days of non stop slinging ahead of us.
Damn… how do these reviews end up getting SO long? Ive only just finished Thursday night too. Maybe I just need to streamline things a bit and not talk about EVERYTHING that happened.
Friday was set to be a fun day because we had plans to stop by two of my favorite venues in Austin, The French Legation and Hank Sinatra’s. We started things off by heading by the Fort again then tried to get to the the Other Music/Digforfire.tv party at The French Legation. Bessie started acting up and stuttering and stumbling along, especially in low gears. At first I thought it was a lack of transmission fluid but that wasn’t it. We decided to push on a bit to get to the party, then once we arrived James and Kate ran the show while I popped open the hood for a thorough inspection. It took a while and some help but I finally tracked down the problem: a bad connection between a couple spark plug wires and the distributor cap. By the time we were back up and running we’d already missed the VICE party and Hank Sinatra’s so we did the next best thing… HOOVERS! Before we skipped out I rounded up the members of Port O’Brien and snapped a pic of them by the truck for the final ICM Presents article.
There are a million things going on at once during SXSW and it’s highly likely that you’ll miss a ton of your friends who are in town. We’d been trying to catch up with the guys in Dead Confederate but it didnt work out. After dinner Kate and I found out that they were going to be at Spider House for most of the night so we stopped by to say hi, catch some tunes, and sling some cream. In hindsight, we woulda spent the rest of the night chillin’ there. Instead…… we tried to hit 4 other parties, all of which were busts. Did anyone end up finding the No Age/Health show that was supposed to go on under the Lavaca Street Bridge at midnight?
Saturday is the last day of the fest and we were set to go big. I loaded up the freezer and a couple coolers with treats then headed back to grub some breakfast tacos before beginning the day. There were a ton of parties on Saturday but the two biggies were Mess with Texas at Waterloo and The Garden Party at French Legation. We also wanted to get a push cart by the Hot Freaks party at Club Deville again because it seemed to have worked out great on Friday. We also wanted to stop by the Sansa Playground at the Elks Club. Kate won some free ice cream in the ring toss and we tried to get the skee ball machine working but something was aloof. They had all kinds of cool stuff there and a DJ booth set up not too far from the pool where people were lounging.
The turnout at the French Legation was good on Friday, but nothing prepared us for the onslaught which was about to occur on Saturday. Thurston Moore was playing as we arrived, and we backed into our VIP parking slot and the line started forming… fast. It was definitely the craziest it had been all week and there were dozens of people lined up at the front and back windows. We thought about holding onto some goods so we could sling later but decided to dish it all and call it quits. We checked in with the rest of the crew and Starr was having a blast at Mess with Texas and Gooch was on his way over. After helping to clean up a bit and giving a bunch of folks a ride to the M. Ward/Jim James show at the church up the street we decided to head to Ruby’s for some good ol’ Texas BBQ. It took a while but we were in no rush. We had nowhere to be.
On Sunday we took our time and got everyone to the airport that was flying home then decided to go watch In Bruges at Alamo Draft House before hitting up Threadgills and mini putt putt. Once Monday morn rolled around, it was time to head home. Bessie and I mixed it up a bit and headed south through San Antonio then west to Marfa. Due to spring break, there were no hotel rooms so we kept on and I ended up sleeping at a picnic area off I-10 on a slight incline, with my feet above my head. I woke up with a head full of mucus and the realization that it was finally time to start taking the antibiotics the doctor had given me a week and a half before. I rolled into Tuscon around 3:00 and got some coffee before catching up with some friends and grubbing on some cheese steaks. I had wanted to play whiffle ball in Austin, but it didn’t happen there, so Nate and I decided to get some swings in before I headed west to get closer home. It’s been a week since I’ve gotten back to Long Beach and I’m still not right. Hopefully after I’m done with these meds it’ll be back to normal, whatever that means.
Thanks to Pure Buttons and Pikcard for getting us some cool buttons and custom guitar pic cards to give away while down there.
And… last… but certainly not least. Rola, I’m sorry I didn’t have a Pink Panther pop on the truck when you came by. I promise I’ll get one to you…. sometime, somewhere.
SXSW Review 2007
SXSW Review 2006
