Food Trucks with Roy Choi

hi man hi hayden my little truffle nugget that's not even a that's not even a thing that's not a thing that exists in the world that's how i think of you hayden what what is a truffle nugget what is a truffle nugget in your weird little brain hayden when you strip off head to toe naked in front of the mirror and look at yourself that is a truffle nugget okay well i you know what i'm not sure that i do that very often but maybe i should because i haven't encountered a truffle nugget and i need some insight yeah man get naked get in front of that mirror take it all in you've only got that one bod one life you know why why will i'm gonna get naked and get in front of the mirror and see what a truffle nugget is truffle nugget looks like now look i'm gonna be honest i'm going a bit loopy over here we're in some kind of a winter heat wave which is weird um but the episode we're doing today is about food trucks which are a big deal in the united states of america some areas more than others but i'm wondering in new zealand when i say food truck what do you think what's your vibe is that when when you say food truck i think of food truck of a food truck it's a truck with food coming out of it you go up to the food truck and they will serve a particular type of food you buy that food and the food comes out i i don't know what you think this country is man we have food trucks like the the first one of these was like basements and i i was i we don't really have basements that's but we have got vehicles that food comes out of them there's one across the road right now it's a ramen truck it's very delicious it's called miso rice i'm david farrier and new zealand are accidentally marooned in america and i want to figure out what makes this country tick now as hadn't just said yes new zealand does have food trucks we have a lot of food trucks although it has it i guess they're less ingrained in our culture than they are in the united states recent figures here have food trucks approaching three billion dollars in annual revenue with steady growth expected in the coming years people love a food truck it's delicious and accessible and brings a community together and generally cities are becoming more friendly towards them because it's an expected part of the culture but while they have lower startup costs than a full-blown restaurant that doesn't mean it's a walk in the park but what the hell do i know later on in today's episode we're going to be joined by food truck icon and all-around nice and thoughtful guy roy choi the korean-american chef who created a food truck selling tacos like you've never had them before his story is a fascinating one we recorded with him last week and i'm very excited to bring you that interview today so let's get started so prepare to have that hungry belly quelled by the wonderful treats of your local food truck because this is the food trucks episode hi robert hello david do you ever strip naked in front of the mirror and just stare at your um nude body do not food for thought some quick admin at the top pun intended not at all no puns i do unlike you where every pun is intended food truck for thought jesus christ i'm never making a pun um on purpose always accidental yeah just quickly some admin in the top um if you are a patreon member um we're going on tour very soon we're doing uh salt lake city we're doing a lot of food trucks we're doing a lot of food trucks in austin we're doing dallas if you're a patreon member we're going to be doing some little meetups in each city um we'll be posting the details a couple of days before the um tour date so join us patreon.com flightless bird there's a lot of fun stuff going on over there we do bonus weekly episodes there's bonus posts there's ad free episodes all that stuff feet pics sometimes when you feel like it nude feet nude feet optional you don't have to look at them yeah you can skip over those although everyone that's seen my feet 4.98 on wikifeet.com has i've never had a complaint they've always enjoyed the experience i mean something brought that down from a five right you you son of a bitch someone someone brought that down yeah i think i think i know who yeah i think i know uh it's really good food trucks food trucks i think you and i we both like eating but we like eating in different ways i feel like i go more scummy you have more of an acquired more acquired taste buds i like a mcdonald's cheeseburger sure you like an ice oyster yeah that's fair to say yeah both of those statements are true um where do food trucks as an american where do food trucks sit in your kind of cultural lexicon like what do they mean to you i mean i i like food trucks a lot i don't eat them a lot it's normally like a late night thing yeah i think most of the time i end up at food trucks last time i ate one was when i was in new york and i was in the park and there's a bunch of food trucks around it's like it's they're just there i feel like yeah right they're in front of you but they weren't always like that growing up in chicago when i did i don't remember food trucks being much of a thing and i remember the first time i went to portland eating at food trucks and being like this is incredible all right this is what is this yes like i love this it was normally like ethnic food it's not yeah you're not getting a mcdonald's food truck yeah yeah i i would say mexican food is my main go-to for food trucks yeah which for me has been such an experience here because new zealand has a lot of food like we're not food adverse but we don't and correct me if i'm wrong but we don't have a lot of food but we don't have a lot of food like we're not food adverse but we don't and correct me if i'm wrong but like we don't do a lot of good mexican food so being in los angeles i feel one of the luckiest things about being here is holy shit it's good yeah and it's everywhere and when you go to a food truck it's quick and it's delicious and it's like affordable a lot of the time as well yeah yeah absolutely um i mean yeah food trucks were definitely like a drunken food too the one yeah i used to partake um in that i feel like i in in america i did a lot of them with you when we we go to concerts and stuff yeah which is like the late night food thing as well yeah it's like you're driving back from some venue somewhere and they're scattered all around the city and it's like oh there's one or you might go to a certain location where you know it's good because obviously there are good food trucks and there are not great food trucks it's like a fucking variety out there and it's almost the joy of it seems to be able to find the one that you like and that is good and is near you well and i think at some point it hit the like zeitgeist is kind of a hip thing because like portland was the first time i always a cool city yeah portland yeah but then i do remember like the next big run-in with food trucks was uh austin at south by southwest they've got a lot of really great food trucks right so they bring them out from there which is a festival that's gotten bigger and bigger and more sort of up its own like in to the point where you're like in search of the food trucks and it's like on tuesdays they park in this bar and in the back yeah right and then they eventually did make their way to chicago i think the like bureaucracy around them i recall like people being annoyed right that is like it's hard to yeah there's a lot of just like red tape we talk with roy troy a bit about this about like how cities become accepting of them or not because like yeah i mean they're also an interesting thing because they're not uh building they're like they're on the street yeah they got wheels yeah it's like they're they're taking up some sort of space that could be parking or sidewalk and i feel like america is obsessed with those spaces as well yes and in tuesdays like i feel like yeah hiking wards and cops and everything there's that whole culture of it as well and then i remember in 2010 there was a show called the great food truck race oh it was a show network reality show a reality show i don't know if you know this about me so it's like kind of real i mean it's based in reality yeah so wait so what happened in the show what was the premise uh different like little restaurants they would help them build a food truck and they would go around they'd like race across the country and have challenges oh my god so it's like it's part building part food part race they would like build a little business essentially with this food truck and then the winner got to like keep it and a bunch of money yeah yeah but i looked it up before we started recording this and they've been 18 seasons of that at this point oh my god which i remember yeah i watched like the first season of it there's a lot more yeah yeah that's like the dream when you make um a tv show it's like the dream of a tv show it's like the dream of a tv show it's like the dream to come up with a format that is just never ending yeah that's just gonna keep making and making seasons yeah have you had any sort of chaotic food truck experiences have you ever had like a bad experience um sort of food poisoning or you're being uh attacked because you're sort of out and that you're out in the wild at a food truck no i don't i think people that drink after a concert all of my food truck experiences are great like la at this point too like you go to events yeah food trucks are there like if it's some sort of outdoor event or thing. I've been to like birthday party where We've had the Kogi truck that the person rented to be outside of the party to go get food. I feel like you would do a good food truck. Like, I feel you have, like, you love food. You're good with design. I feel like you could run at some point. If the podcasting game falls over, if people finally are like, fuck, there's too many podcasts. Like, I'm over it. Which weirds me out that that hasn't happened already. Yeah, yeah. I think you could do a really good food truck. Get Calvin in there flipping some things. I mean, we just did the breakfast at the preschool, and we were making breakfast tacos. See, this is prep. This is great. The other dad and I got very competitive about it. Where, like, we got a bad state, like, in the corner away from things. And we're sharing the grill top with someone that took it very seriously. But then that made us get more into it. It turned out good, though. I mean, we. It's amazing. Yeah. Did you make a new dad friend in the process? He was already a friend. That's why we teamed up. Oh, that's so nice. The food industry is tough. It's very tough. I have a ton of respect for, I mean, food trucks, people that own food truck businesses. Totally. I just raised the fact that you could, like, magically just do it. Yeah. It's, like, fucking hard. It's very hard, and I don't think it's got a huge success rate. Yeah. Like, I know plenty of chefs that have restaurants. And I don't think it's easy. Yeah. It's not like they're all like, man, I wish we could go into the chilled out world of the food truck. Yeah. I think it's that funny thing. Or the chilled out world of restaurants. Of restaurants at all. It's that thing, isn't it, where as someone that goes and eats, it's you're having the most chilled out experience you could have. Like, you're sat down in your butt. Someone is bringing you food, sitting outside a food truck. Delicious. Other side of it, like, chaos. Yeah. Opposite of. I think I could help, like, figure out a cool restaurant and place to be in. But the ins and outs in the day-to-day of that. And, like, just like even, I think, a really killer restaurant struggles. Completely. A lot. Yeah. So. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. That's the wild thing. This is maybe a tangent we don't need to put in, but am I right in thinking there was a headline about some food truck? There's been a scandal recently. There was, like, a food truck, and it was, like, $1,500 meals or something? No, they're like, Hubert Keller had a $1,500 burger. It was the most. It was the most expensive burger. No, so, sorry, not a food truck. I'm talking pop-up. So, an international. Oh, Noma. You're talking about Noma. I'm talking about Noma. Yes. So, this is news. Sorry, I'm not a food guy. Okay. So, Noma is, like, a really incredible restaurant in Denmark. Okay. That is, like, known to be one of the best restaurants in the world. Okay. We like them. They do good food. But. I don't know if you would say that. I haven't been there. But they. They're known for good stuff. Yes. They've come to America. They've come to L.A.? They're doing a pop-up in Silver Lake for, like, three months. Okay. Which is sort of in our neighborhood-ish. They, like, moved their whole staff over. Right. American Dream. We're going to L.A. I have known some people that know them. And, like, they were losing money to be here. But. Okay. Where they put up. It's, like, $1,500 per person. I'm just reading it now. For three months. And it sold out, like, instantly. Like, I went. When they went on sale, I went to look at it. And within a minute and a half. The, like, three months fully booked. Yeah. But then it came out that the head chef, Rene. Uh-huh. Like, videos resurfaced of how toxic of an environment. All right. Being horrific to employees, et cetera. Right. Right, right, right. And I don't know, like, enough of the details about it other than that. But he stepped down. Like, they had a bunch of sponsors pull out. Like, MasterCard was sponsoring the dinners here. Oh, my God. They pulled out. Yeah. If MasterCard is sponsoring you. You know. You know that you're, like, doing a good thing. Yeah. When they leave. Uh-oh. And then it hit the, like, climax of it is he stepped down as the chef. After the, like, first day that it opened here. That is sort of, like, the perfect chaotic food scandal. Yeah. Like, it sounds like it's awful what he did. But that is, like, coming to L.A. was a bad move for them. Apparently. He's wishing he never decided to come to L.A. Because, yeah. I don't. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, maybe the standards are just as. I wonder what cancel culture looks like in Denmark. Like, if somehow L.A. being part of it. I don't know. I've read a bunch of the, like, statements from Noma, too. Yeah. Before he even resigned. It was just, like, we. Yeah, we knew that this was an issue. We've, like, since put things in place and improved and no longer this way. Yeah. It still was a little bit of, like. PR crisis response, it seemed like. Yeah, right. I also think when you do, like, when your headline is, like, $1,500 tickets, no matter how good the food is, a lot of the public, it's instantly kind of against you. Yeah. You're kind of like, there's an attitude of, like, come on. Yeah. You know? There's a point. I don't think it was a cheap meal in Denmark, either. I don't think they came here and were like. And threw it out. And were like, let's gouge Americans in L.A. Oh, my God. $1,500. It's insane. Yeah. I don't know what the aftermath of it. It's been either. I don't know. Like, even the statement when he left was just, like, he's stepping down. I don't know who's taking over. It's all a big murky mess. Yeah. I'm sure the answers are out there. I've been following it that closely. It wasn't a food truck. I just got confused. It was a pop-up. Well, the other thing is, like, that took over social media like crazy. Like, it was. I follow another chef who he was. He's doing a panel at South by Southwest this week about it, and he was just, like, his own business. And I was like, "Oh, my God. completely getting swallowed by the Noma scandal? Because like not getting any Epstein stuff, not getting any of these other things it's just all noma it's like trump didn't need to go to war with iran to like cover up epstein files noma no much is happening just noma was happening because my algorithm my algorithm the last like two weeks been all noma and survivor 50 what's amazing about that is my algorithm has been neither of those things it's not yeah i mean your phone's out right oh god it's coming it's coming i'm gonna start forwarding you that too it's so true um we didn't go um to a 1500 outing no we took it for this episode we're going to get into the um roy choy chat soon but rob and i very briefly went to elio's taco we decided we've been there before after some shows it's friggin delicious so we called him leo well we didn't want to get yelled at by people for not visiting a food truck on this episode it would be like um waffle gate house yeah um waffle gate waffle house gate waffle house waffle house gate it'd be like an episode on waffle house and not going to waffle house who would do that no that is a psychotic thing to do or a lord of the rings episode without watching lord of the rings how could you like i'd turn that podcast off instantly i'd never listen or respect that host again yeah but there's a really good taco food truck that's always super busy no matter like that's yeah if i know I need something late and I think everything is going to be closed I know that place is going to be open I will also say I often witness people smoking meth near it's uh it's an it's certainly intense part of town yeah there's always stuff going on it's very American opposite is a giant target kind of glowing at you um there's a lot there's always a lot of antics going on yeah in that particular area was I with you that last time where there was just someone smoking crack on the bus didn't see the um crack on the bus episode that's a lot yeah um like totally not trying to hide it just like crack pipe out yeah sitting on the bus it's um it says modern life in the center of la i mean what's this near is it sort of hollywood is that where the area is yes our hollywood area um leo's taco highly recommended this was our this was our outing are you ready to wait an hour for tacos it is what's the time it's like 10 p.m on a monday night yeah big old line where are we and what is this place you are right now in east hollywood on sunset and western and this guy's been here and they are here until like i think four in the morning or something and people coming from the clubbing all the nightclubs over there so when they come this direction everybody stands in line all the way down there until they get there and they're known for the al pastor which is the pork right behind you yes that's what's really good you come here a lot no not really but i used to when i used to drink i don't drink anymore so you don't find me here two in the morning anymore you gotta find a different place for me no no no my party there's a long over but the but the taco stands still here so that's good the spanish people brought this you know this is this is how it's done shawarma right this is how it's done in the middle east that style right they brought it with them to here they and it became but they kept the tradition because the shawarma used to have real charcoal you see it's heated with charcoal where now the shawarma is all gas oven you know what i mean see they put charcoal in there you see that it's delicious tradition from like hundreds of years ago and it's the best and then the way he cuts that pineapple and throws it on it is the - That's the best. You see that's a pineapple up there. - I'm a big fan of a bit of pineapple on meat, so I'm into this. - Oh, you're gonna enjoy that. Yeah, order the al pastor, you're gonna be thankful. And I'm going to get an alpastor. if I could. Uh, two. Thank you so much. Um, uh, look, Rob, I'm very happy with this. Meaty, delicious. I don't usually eat this late at night, but I'll make an exception. Are you happy? Yeah, these are really good tacos. They're not skimp on the toppings either. There's a lot. You are eating a lot over there, my friend. Mm-mm-mm-mm-mm. I'm going to save the listeners from my chewing, and I'm going to turn off this recorder. Stay tuned for more Flightless Bird. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Support for Flightless Bird comes from Shopify. When you start a new business, it can be super overwhelming, every day. This seems to be a new decision that needs an answer. 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Our refrigerated trucks keep your items fresh while our associates are committed to getting every detail right. Carefully selecting and packing your order with care. Because bringing you fresh, quality groceries is what we do best. And right now enjoy $20 off your first online order of $75 or more. Restrictions apply. See site for details. Kroger. Fresh for everyone. That was delicious. I love that food. Ate very quickly, inhaled it. Also forgot to say, the number of toppings at the food truck. Just everything you want. Delicious. I mean, that one is the real deal. They have like a salsa bar. It's very lit up. They had like a storage truck next to the truck that they had like extra supplies and like a break room. Essentially, it's in a parking lot and it's lit, but there's like little tables and you just end up sitting next to a whole bunch of random people that are out for a variety of reasons. Like they're there for like a million reasons and you're there and it's delicious. Yeah, it's very. Kids, adults. Very LA. One thing I like about LA and it's that it's like everyone is out late. Like old people, kids, like everybody is just out and about. It's really fucking great. New Zealand tends to go to bed. Everyone's in bed. I'm going to make a sweeping generalization here. By about 9pm. Everyone. Like everyone. So you don't have like bars that are open late? No. No bars out past 9. No, there are bars, but. What's your like closing time at a bar though? Look, I feel it's. Oh God. It used to be 2. Yeah, 2am is like normal. But generally, a lot of restaurants and stores will shut a lot earlier than they do here. And so generally people go. Earlier being what time? On the spot. Look, everything in New Zealand shuts at about 5pm. 5pm? Out of 5pm? Nothing. Well, let's say there's like parts of. Like even in Chicago, there are parts that like your downtown, the restaurants and stuff are not open. Parts of downtown, they're not open super late. Or like the suburbs. There's certain suburban areas. Yeah, so that image you have of suburbia, it's the entirety of my country in New Zealand. 5 o'clock shut. Go home. Watch TV. Watch some rugby. More than like office areas of cities, I feel like do that. Because there are definitely parts of downtown Chicago that are open very late. They stay alive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In New Zealand, we don't have that. No, no. Not. Oh, shut. Yeah, okay. And I won't hear any different. No, okay. No, everyone's in bed early. Okay. Now, how the heck did we get Roy Choi on our tiny podcast? Because I love this man. Yeah, so Roy is a friend of mine and I texted him and was like, hey, we're going to do a food truck episode. I feel like there'd be no one better to talk to but him. Amazing. He started Kogi food trucks. Which is a huge deal. Yes. But I know that. Yeah, we'll get into that. We'll get into that. Tacos Por Vida is his like new taco thing. He's got a really incredible restaurant in Las Vegas called Best Friends. That last time I was there, I went to. Not related to the animal sanctuary in Utah, which we did an episode on. No. Very separate. It's really cool. You like walk in the reception area. It looks like an old supermarket. Oh, I like this. And then you're kind of like brought into this giant dining area. One thing I do find with chefs and people that love food is they're not content. But they're not content to just do one. It's like they've got so much so much of a creative brain. They've got to do this thing and this thing. I don't know if that has to do with the business stuff we talked about earlier, too. If like, unless you scale it, that's hard to make money, maybe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I know like Kogi now has their like sauces in supermarkets. Yeah, right. It's not just like, let's put more food trucks out there and sling more tacos. Well, despite having a million things on, he still came and talked to us on a weekend, which I find kind of incredible. Yeah, we were very lucky to have him sitting on the couch with us. This is Roy Choi. My name is Roy Choi and I cook. I cook for the streets. I cook inside of buildings, but I try to feed the people of Los Angeles and Orange County. We're going to be talking about food trucks. That's sort of the entire reason you're here. But I'm sort of wondering how you got into food in the first place. It's one of those things where there was never really a beginning or end or a middle. It was just always there, you know. So it's kind of like, you know, if you're born into a skateboarding family or you're born into a rock family, you know, like, or you're born, your parents were artists. It was one of those things. My parents, if you can imagine if my parents were artists, but instead of being artists, they were cooks and they were food people. And what I mean by food people is we ran restaurants. We ran food stores, but also in our off time all we did was food. So 18, 19, 20 hours a day during work time, it was all food. Running the restaurant, opening the restaurant, cleaning the restaurant, you know, working with purveyors, paying bills, all that. And then the days off, you would imagine we would kind of shut that off, but instead we would go search for food. Like we would go to Riverside or Santa Barbara. Yeah, Newport Beach, wait by the pier. at 5 6 a.m for the fishermen to come in um you know go out to the farms in brawley and el centro and um you know and just search for food it was just something that always happened on the weekends like today here at griffith park and elysian park we would it would have been so easy if they just bought like kentucky fried chicken or pioneer chicken or yoshinoya but they would cook everything from scratch and bring everything and of course it's the kids that have to lug everything so there was never a beginning or an end it's pretty rare for people that work in the restaurant industry right they just like barely cook for themselves yeah because a lot of and it happened to me too a lot of restaurant kids are scarred by growing up in a restaurant so in many cases you do something as far away from it as possible and i tried that as well it just you know the lure of it pulled me back was that a fun childhood or was it incredibly stressful and intense or were you kind of loving it the whole time i was kind of loving it yeah yeah it's uh you know like when you're around restaurant people it's the best because anyone who ends up within the circumference of a restaurant or a food thing usually can't make it anywhere else in society so you end up kind of like on this pirate ship with a bunch of other misfits and um and you just relate right away you know and i'm talking about like dishwashers prep cooks waiters servers hostesses um you know from a very young age you know like you're just surrounded by adults but the adults are kind of like children too because they're just they're just fucking around all day man you know prepping listening to music you know flirting with each other and so i i really loved it and then your your parents are working all day too so you don't have a normal structure you're a kind of like a latchkey kid and you're just free to roam you know because they're so busy i had a restaurant over here in atwater like my family and i was like nine years old and i told my parents like yo i'm gonna go get some coffee or i'm gonna go run to the store they would just be chopping and be like yeah see you later do whatever you want do whatever the fuck you want just don't bother me because you probably grow up quite quickly as well right that you become kind of an animal yourself quickly because again you're surrounded by adults and and there's no um there's no age requirement in terms of like helping out so which i think is great you know i'm not talking about child labor i'm just talking about like helping out jumping in yeah if you're like uh if you're building houses like your kid can't come and start building a house whereas with food there's that lower point if you're an investment banker you know it's not gonna go well yeah it's not gonna go you can't really go to the office but when you're in a restaurant the kid can help you out you can help shuck peas they can help make dumplings they can help pound the noodles you know um they can clean out the coke machine you know so that part's really fun it makes you extremely agile in a very young at a very young stage worst part of it as you're a kid like with the bits of it that you worst part of it is you're poor you're literally watching your adult figures in your life um struggling you know struggling and you but you don't comprehend it yet but you do feel it you know because as children we feel all the pain and we feel all the you know the complications and and abuse and everything in life you know it's just we don't have the the vocabulary to um put it together and you don't know any different you don't know any difference so when you when you're exposed to it very early instead of being sheltered to it be tough you know to see to see adult figures cry to see them uh you know avoid avoid things like cod uh uh collectors phone calls collection agencies you know um have lights just go off you know um in the middle of service you know because the bills aren't paid you know those things are really tough to to witness and not just from your parents but from everyone around because anyone works in a restaurant anyone working in a restaurant in a lot of cases are day-to-day you know not even month-to-month day-to-day so um to see the the ups and downs of people's like disposition and mood and everything like it's a trip when you're young you know it's the interesting thing with that field as well because like you're working your butt off but you're not doing it to get rich you're doing it because you kind of love it and you're in it right do it yeah what are you you might be wrong everyone would love to be rich but the the thing about in the i don't know if that even is a part of the um motivation at all none of it is you know and again going back to skateboarding it's like skateboarding you know or snowboarding whatever you don't pick up the board to be like i'm gonna be a gold medalist or i'm gonna be a millionaire you know if that stuff comes along you find your own swag whatever but um but cooking's like that you know like you don't pick it up and like try to be rich so um but the difference is you never get rich so i feel it's very rare like not to make this about me but i feel like in journalism it's the same like you don't get into journalism you're rich you do it because like you fucking love it you fucking and but you're not going to get rich and there's no way that you can stop yourself from doing it no it's just in there it's in there you've got to go find the story you got you got to like hop on the greyhound and do this and you know whatever and get to the the smallest city in the world to write the biggest story and it's the same thing with food man addictive is how addictive yes do you remember the moment we started thinking food trucks because obviously like you worked in the restaurant game and did very well and i imagine thinking of a food truck is a very different way of thinking about food do you remember when that became a spark or a concept yeah it didn't become a concept in terms of running it until kogi happened which was 2008 uh but that doesn't mean that that's the moment it entered my life it had been a part of my life my whole life you know um i've been exposed to it since i was a child uh i was very young when i was left alone um so i was i was free from about five years old just wandering the streets because i was traveling throughout a lot of areas in koreatown and downtown i was always exposed to a lot of trucks um as i got older into high school all i would eat at is trucks like my hobby was going around finding food uh i've started this new series called on the fly recently where i'm kind of going back to who i was as a high school kid because now with food everything is so researched right and in the world too like everything is has go all these gateways that we pass it through we watch content we do research we narrow it down we get it to the top 10 you know and then uh we look at ratings and then we it's so curated everything's curated even if it's curated in the right way um back in high school nothing was curated i would just be rolling and they just pull over yes there it is you see it there it is whatever it is there it is yes and um and trucks were like that for me so it was always intertwined in my life i just didn't know that it was a career because when you grow up when you grow up in in the streets and in the neighborhoods it's it's usually your aunties or uncles or family members running these trucks it's there's a there's a very blurred line between the business and the people you actually know it's almost like it's all intertwined together like being in a village just because someone sets up shop doesn't mean like they're a stranger that that's a person you grew up with and know and usually those businesses are set up uh out of necessity you know and they're not really set up as something like i'm going to go do this you know is that the only option to do that job yeah and it's like what you said we're journalism it's like you you are there's no other choice there's nothing else that you can do except this this you wake up a lot of people who run trucks and a lot of street stands when they start to cook in all the food at home they can't stop you know they're cooking for like hundreds of people and they just keep cooking and cooking cooking they bring it out and sell it so yeah i never thought it would be a business but then um i lost everything in 2008 the world was in a very sensitive place and i i couldn't find another job for months and my friend called me and he was like yo let's put korean barbecue in a taco i think you'd be the right guy to do it yeah we went out and got a coffee and we um what a great pitch yeah it was like right there it all it just happened it's like starting a band it was important for me to be at that place in life because i heard him 1 000 you know i could i had nothing else to like weigh it against it was just like yo let's do it and then literally the next day i was like oh my god i'm gonna go to korea i'm gonna go to korea and do it and then the next day we went out and shopped the next day i came up with the prototype recipe and then the next day we went out so it was like that holy yeah and it probably had to be that way or not at all right i think so you know again like a band you know like i think it it has to be that way you kind of sometimes have to start before you know how to do it and you see a lot of bands start that way right they don't know how to really play yet but they start they start playing and um and then through that synergy and not overthinking it it things start to uh appear there's magic in that world there's magic in that world there's magic in our world you know and sometimes we stifle that magic and that magic sometimes comes from the moment and the fission of those things interacting with each other. And it's the same thing with cooking. The emotion of foods come together and it's that magic. It's the magic of a sauce and how it lays on a plate and it can only live for like two or three seconds before it dies. And that's kind of how the Kogi truck emerged. So in New Zealand, we don't have a food truck culture at all. Like we'll get food trucks at a bougie music festival, you know, but as far as just being on the street, not really a thing. So in a really basic way, what makes food truck culture so special in general? Like what is it about it? Because in New Zealand, we didn't have the experience of me and kid walking around being able to just interact with that. It's weird that you wouldn't have it because your weather seems very similar to ours. It's so good. Yeah. And it's so good. And yeah. We just have cafes and fish and chip stores, but it's all physical buildings. Do you have like street food, like open air shop? I watched that movie Boy from Taika Waititi. Oh my God, so good. Great movie. And that's all I know about New Zealand. Oh, that's all you need to see of it. It's the best. Like it seemed like there's like little tiny shops and stuff. There are, but just there are. Food served out of igloos or something. There is. We very famously have like sausage sizzles on the street, like barbecue and like meat spring. But it's not, just not the idea of here's a truck that rolls up, it parks on the side of the street. It's not like a commoditized in terms of like a business, like so much, yeah. That culture, we've got like one big food truck in Auckland where I'm from and that's it. So what is it that makes it so special if you haven't grown up with that? Obviously it's like it makes food accessible to people, it's cheaper, it's quick and it's good. I think it's pretty LA too, because we didn't have that in Chicago. Like I remember going to Portland for the first time. First time and being like, oh, there's food trucks everywhere. This is incredible. That's exactly what I was going to touch on is it all comes down to culture. I think. I think it comes down to culture. This is how we express our culture. So you have to go back to who really started it. It's the Latino culture. It's the Mexican taco trucks of the fifties and sixties that bled into Venice beach and the hot dog stands of Venice beach and the carts and the fruit carts and the fruteros. And then, and then that leads into the world. The working class neighborhoods of Los Angeles County, and then the construction boom, we had a big construction boom here in the eighties. And so all those buildings you see kind of like in downtown and stuff, it's not like they were all built, but a lot of them were built. We didn't have a huge skyline back then. And so but then they were all being built kind of around the same time. And so that mobilized a whole need for catering trucks, because as you've probably experienced in this city, we're a little bit different than a lot of other cities. We're not like a Metro city where you can just walk down and go to the bodega. Oh, it's the most spread out nightmare place of all time. It's like so many cities in one. So many cities in one. Let's say you're working for three months as an iron worker, construction worker at the spot, but that your work area may be in a home or in a building that has nothing to eat around you, you know, and you're there and you got like 30 minutes that you can come down and eat and go back up. That's where the truck culture comes into play. Because we are such a mobile city, we come to you, you know, the food comes to you. And so there's that. It's the weather, it's the West Coast vibe, you know, we're a rolling culture. You know, we drive, you know, hundreds of miles a day, you know, on a normal day, sometimes like people drive like, you know, two, three hours, four hours a day. You know, and it's just something built into our lifestyle. Yeah. To be mobile, you'd have wheels on all the time. But I think that the food truck itself, you have to, you have to give credit and you have to go back to, uh, the Latino immigrants that came. Um, it started with taco trucks for sure. Yeah. It feels like such an immigrant story, like the grind of it, though, like white people here aren't going to be getting up early to work and food trucks. There's a little bit of hot rod culture to it. There's a little bit of like building your own DIY. A lot of those trucks were built themselves, you know, it's like taking old chassis and engines from like older, like delivery trucks and things like that. And then like retrofitting, we're still doing that, you know, retrofitting them. It's really cool. And I don't think that could have happened again in any other city than LA because LA has so many, um, I mean, we got rules and shit, you know, like any other society, but we also got a lot of like, I like to, you know, I like to call them, you know, like corners and shadows. Shadows and blind spots. We're such a big city that you could do something like, like us three could go do something somewhere and no one will know, you know what I mean? And that's the great thing about LA. The energy exists here. I've noticed that. And that's kind of how food trucks started, you know, and like street food starts is like, you just kind of post up like for us, even like even us as the second generation of it, our first spots were like in empty parking lots next to railroad tracks. Uh, where we warehouse districts and um like there are places like vernon huntington park commerce like uh warehouse districts factory districts that were closed during the day all these places that no one is around and luckily we had technology social media to pull people in but even if we didn't have social media i think we would have been in those spots anyways well you know the city so well yeah probably know those places to go yeah stay tuned for more flightless bird we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors support for flightless bird comes from helix now we're kind of coming up to that springtime spring cleaning season and my suggestion is that you upgrade your home with a helix mattress helix has sponsored this show since it started i've loved my helix mattress and if you don't have one i strongly suggest you get one a good night's rest is really important to set your you up for a good one when you don't get sleep i find myself being very cranky when i don't sleep cranky cranky cranky so that's why a good mattress is important you don't need to be tossing and turning on a mattress that's not suited for you so a sleep study that helix ran found that 82 percent of those involved saw an increase in their deep sleep cycle while sleeping on a helix mattress i have found that myself since i've had it big fan i also have an annoying back and helix has been really good with that as well it's also the most awarded mattress brand tested and reviewed by experts like forbes and wide and they offer free shipping and seamless delivery delivering right to your door with free shipping in the u.s the other great thing is the happy with helix guarantee you can rest easy with seamless returns and exchanges the happy with helix guarantee offers a risk-free customer first experience designed to ensure you're completely satisfied with your new mattress go to helixsleep.com bird for 20 off site wide that's helixsleep.com bird for 20% off site wide that's helixsleep.com bird for 20% off site wide that's helixsleep.com bird for 20% off site wide make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent to you helixsleep.com bird when you shop kroger delivery you can expect the savings you love and fresh groceries delivered right to your door our refrigerated trucks keep your items fresh while our associates are committed to getting every detail right carefully selecting and packing your order with care because bringing you fresh quality groceries is what we do best and right now enjoy twenty dollars off your fresh groceries first online order of seventy five dollars or more restrictions apply see site for details kroger fresh for everyone abercrombie is and always has been the destination for holiday dressing think soft sweaters for those cozy nights in and classic matching sets for unforgettable nights out with friends complete the look with our wool blend anf carry trench and you're all set make this season all about the moments you turn into traditions have a very abercrombie holiday shop in the app online and in stores can you talk about the whole like twitter of it all for kogi yeah kogi started with uh at the time twitter started we started in a perfect storm of twitter the iphone and the economy crash holy shit yeah so it was the iphone just came out um you know like one and one and hundred of your friends had one yeah and i remember that time almost like the tvs of the 50s everyone had to gather around the one device yes the one device you know and watch the ed sullivan show you know like that's kind of how it was with the iphone at that time and then there was no idea understanding of uh mobile social media in terms of we were still heavily entrenched in the myspace era so everything in chat rooms you know so we still had to go home and plug in and like yeah dial up the chair dial up yeah you had a computer room yeah there was a computer room we had to wiggle into our special table yeah yes and you knew you were committed for an hour so you had to kind of like sink in and like oh yeah everything else had to be taken care of and you were there you know right the idea of it just being like fluid was just being introduced so twitter was around for a few months but it people couldn't connect the dots of why the hell do i need it you have people like who are we communicating to why all that yeah and then um the economy crashed with the real estate crisis and people were really really scared. It was a very sensitive time in America. It was this really, like really barren situation. But then this, this, it was, I call it like a Cheech and Chong truck. There's this little truck that came through people's peripheral and then the, and then the technology allowed it to come through. And then I think the, the world needed a little bit of a, a, a pick me up and a smile. And weirdly we were the one that were that smile, you know, it could have been something else could have been anyone else, but you know, Kogi was the one, you know, and it's weird every time I talk about it, right. Cause like, you know, I w it was like, I was there, it was me. I'm a very shy person. I don't like to, I don't like to like to toot any horns or anything, but like, you don't strike me as a horn tooter. Yeah. It's hard to talk about, but but as I get older and older with it, um, I do realize the significance and importance of it is, uh, there are sometimes certain moments where Jimi Hendrix walks into the room, you know, um, yeah, it's that magic in the universe. There's a magic in the universe, you know, and it just happens to be that person or thing that happens. And for, for us at that time, it was Kogi where the world was extremely hurt. People were losing their homes. People were killing themselves, you know, um, families were being broken up, uh, and no one knew what the next step was going to be, you know, and it was very much like the early days of COVID. Everyone just reeling and not knowing if life will ever come back or not. There were no answers. And then this truck, you know, I'm looking at, uh, is that Tommy Jerry? But it was like a Tommy Jerry feel like there was like this little cartoonish thing that kind of came into the world. You know, like what the fuck is that? And then, that's where Twitter came into play. It became like a scavenger hunt. People needed a distraction. And then the, the, the, the thing at the end of that rainbow was this taco that tasted like nothing ever anyone ever tasted before, but it also connected all the dots. And that just within days, it was crazy. Within days, we went from like begging people to eat our food. We used to park, uh, in the clubs at Hollywood Boulevard. And, um, to like 2000 people on the street. Oh my God. Yeah. It was, it was, I didn't re I didn't realize it was that quick when things just happened. It happened all within like a month. So the month of November to December was hit or miss. And then right around December into January is when everything just started blowing up. You just wouldn't be sleeping. That's great. Thanks for picking up on that. We would, we would do back-to-back shifts. We would, um, it was one of those situations where, you know, you're so busy, you're prepping as, as people are still ordering. You're just trying to keep up with, with, with the plate, with the thing. It's like, um, yeah. And then you would sleep for a few hours, wake up the next morning, just prep and get back on the streets. Yeah. You were probably still figuring out how food trucks worked at that time too. Like how to do it. Cause it wasn't as much of a phenomenon as it is now. And yeah, till that moment, we were figuring out, where we go in, like how this whole thing flows and works. Uh, before Kogi started, um, we, you know, we had trained, I trained on the truck for a little while, uh, one of the catering trucks, a couple of taco trucks. So I started to understand the mechanics of it. Um, but we never imagined like, you know, what was going to happen, happen to happen. Like, you know, like we were just looking to maybe do a regular business every night. Sometimes I would hire people in, you know, literally the line goes, you can see the end of the line. Oh my God. And we only have like two or three people working. Yeah. Um, I would just look at someone, they go, yeah, come on. And then, yeah, come on, come on, come on, get on the truck. And then they go, yes, chef. Yeah. Wild methodology. Really, really good. And that's kind of how everything was a split second decision. Um, wait, what was the beautiful time, man? I missed that time so much. Well, that probably answers my question. What was the combo of fun versus this is really fucking stressful having 200 people there waiting. Oh, it was never stressful, man. Yeah. Cool. Just joyous vibe. Oh, it was like, yeah, it was like Led Zeppelin, man. It was just the first two years was just, it was the best, man. I, I, I, I think about it a lot lately. Um, I just, cause the world is so complicated right now. And, you know, I just, I missed that time, man. I really, really missed that time, that, that, that time for myself, but also for the city also just where we were as a civilization, we were still kind of figuring things out. We were transitioning from kind of a semi low tech kind of analog digital world into where we are now. Um, the information was still at the bridge of where, you know, journalism was still totally really strong. You know, uh, there were, there were trusted sources where you could, you know, we were all collectively also, uh, bound by certain, you know, collective ideas in terms of information. Yeah. And just how to be polite, how to be polite. And, and again, we were, we were still a little bit, uh, just dumb, you know, like just figuring out to where the stuff could go. Yeah. Better word. Yeah. I think if you're lucky in life, you have that sweet spot of like a year or two where you can always look and go, Oh my God, that was just the right time. That was the right time. Did you see people kind of looking down at food trucks at that time? Cause if I feel like you brought so much, I didn't wrongfully, but like, this is cheap food that we're not used to where you like really brought this credibility to the space where now there's like, like East side King or East side Kings in Austin, like the people are searching out their food. Oh, it's definitely racism. You know, as a, as a minority in this country is things that we go through every day that we have to sometimes, uh, swallow as you grow up, you know, um, whether you're Asian, Latino, black, you know, whatever it is in this country, you know, uh, you're outnumbered many times you're hearing things, you know, in the periphery, in the ether about yourself. Sometimes, you know, you can't confront it, you know, because again, you're in a, in a space where everyone are making these off color jokes and, and saying these, these really racist tropes and like, you know, uh, or at school, you know, you have to deal with it. And so as, as someone that has to walk through the world this way, we're used to it and we see it and we find our ways to try to, to chip away at it, uh, in terms of food trucks, they were being called roach coaches. So that's a really bad term. You know, um, there's so much embedded in that term, you know, I haven't heard that. They were called roach coaches. Um, and they were, they were called that way in a, in a very, in a way where people would really, really laugh, uh, horribly at, at people very much. Like we're seeing now, uh, how the rhetoric around, uh, immigrants and, um, illegal immigrants and not even, not even people, not even people, like subhuman roaches. Labels are placed on them before even you have a chance to even like know what the hell is going on. Right. It's already decided. It's already, that person is a murderer, illegal, you know, a criminal. And then, and then we need to kick them out of this country before you've even had a chance. That's what was happening with food trucks. The same exact rhetoric, roach coaches, you're going to get diarrhea. You might die. We need to get these out of here. Don't ever eat on one of those. Um, it's filthy. It's disgusting. Uh, it's an eyesore. Um, you know, we need to eradicate the world of these things because they are infiltrating our streets and our neighborhoods. And, um, before you know it, you know, we're going to be inundated and run over by all of them and we have to stop it now. That's what was happening, which it was just like other people's culture and their food being other people's culture and the food is delicious. Uh, and it's working their ass off just to, just to keep their lights on. Yeah. So Kogi comes along. We didn't start Kogi to be deep at all. We started Kogi to make $800 a night and get phone numbers from the club. That's how everyone starts, right? That was the business plan. That was it. There was no deepness in anything, but I think that's what allowed us to get deep is because we went in, which with such naivety and, and short-mindedness and, and we just were open to whatever was going to happen. And what Kogi did was it changed the vocabulary and the attitude around that labelization of a roach coach of dirty, of looking at other humans and saying they're beneath you or less than you. Kogi all of a sudden took that word roach coach, turned it into gourmet, right? So that same truck now became gourmet food trucks instead of roach coaches. Language has such a our world as you know as a journalist like it can completely shift how people look at the exact same thing you know and then it can change the whole course of society by changing that word so you change the word from road shows to food to gourmet food trucks it changes the whole trajectory of everything the the industry becomes a billion dollar industry uh cities like austin washington dc portland oregon uh and just multiple cities all throughout the country start to uh have food trucks cities like chicago which are notorious for not having food trucks because of the mob ties of al capone and going back into controlling all aspects of commerce and food and there were all these uh draconian laws that wouldn't allow you to have certain things because all those had gateways and controls uh-huh all through the underground huh chicago went back and started to change all these things amazing yeah so because you know the world was changing and and cities had to change with it and this was all happening quickly relatively this all happened in a year that's insane i didn't know this is in a year so from 2000 up to 2008 end of 2008 when we started roach coach rhetoric dirty diarrhea by 2009 gourmet food truck uh this billion dollar industry cities around the country changing england getting on board australia getting on board uh poland getting on board john favreau getting yeah yeah that guy yeah well i remember watching that film in new zealand you can yeah consulted on that whole thing as a based on your shit yeah yeah i saw the poster for new zealand every country had a different poster it was oh yeah yeah no totally yeah um but yeah that that all happened that all happened in a year and and it hasn't looked back you know um and it filled a void of like uh beyond just the food i think it created a bridge of culture for people to love each other a little bit a little bit more in a way that they didn't know they could office workers going down and having a moment for themselves at a food truck people in neighborhoods coming out of their homes and you know meeting their neighbors looking at looking at things um um a lot of people going to neighborhoods they normally wouldn't have gone to and standing for two three hours we brought a lot of people together um because the waits were um really long and the people coming to eat the trucks were all kind of a similar spirit so they were all there for this for the same reason it was very um you suddenly got something in common with all these people that you thought you might have very early burning man you know before it turned to shit yeah there's also so much more accessible too for different socioeconomic classes of like i can have good food at a reasonable price now it was a gateway it was also brought generations together uh from grandpa parent to kids i like to look at koge as all the nuances individual people that were lonely you know and needed a place to go or maybe not lonely but just needed some time for themselves koge was a sanctuary for that you know because in that first year you could put on your headphones go wait in the koge line for three hours read a book talk to your the person in front of you or behind you it was like waiting in a line for a ride at disneyland but it wasn't aggro it was extremely loving and caring and and you chose to be there that was the difference i think that's the number one characteristic of the koge line is that everyone that was there chose to be there for three hours you see that in anime culture comic book culture right now in k-pop community and there's a community that's built yeah and uh it was really beautiful man i miss it so much but you're doing porvita now right yeah we do tacos porvita that is an offshoot of koge koge's always been and it kind of shows in a way where society and the financial society continues to falter and go for us as people because koge's always been a very affordable option it's been a cornerstone to our business to be the entry point for anyone right so our food in 2008 started at two dollars and 50 cents or actually two dollars for a taco oh shit it's only three dollars now you know and yeah that's insane 18 years later you should make it more i should i should but uh but then it wouldn't be serve the purpose of what koge is for catering it used to be like someone could get the truck for like a thousand bucks right and that was like affordable um but that's like even expensive now for a lot of people so we started tacos porvita to go back to the essence of koge to take koge even deeper and so like for five six hundred bucks you can get tacos porvita so because the truck itself comes with some built-in costs so tacos porvita is no truck uh grill setup and um you know and then like if you were just throwing a party for like 30 people your kid's birthday party uh you could you could we wanted to create another level of affordability you know how was the return to that because it was you tested it as like a stand at first again and i remember yeah when that opened and like it had that same buzz and feel that koge did of like roy's got another pop-up better you want to go wait in line for four hours for tacos it would be like a a big actor going back and doing like a black box one man one person theater show i love it man if i could just do that that's great so what we did was um this was like three four years ago and uh we just decided to start something out of the blue and um just go back and start cooking on the streets and make it very very like uh impulsive and spontaneous so what happened was just going back to the original style putting out a tweet um tell them we're going to be at this spot until we sell out and people still showed up like thousands of people showed up it was crazy it was like four hour lines i've never been inside a food truck i don't know what it's like under that pressure and making things i've like looked in from the outside what are the main elements of chaos or what makes it make sense in there than working in a restaurant the limitations of the truck first like it's so limited like it's this tiny space like what makes that good and what makes that like terribly stressful well one is you're in very close quarters so uh i call it butts be button you know so you're gonna you're gonna touch butts yeah yeah yeah and you're gonna bump into each other and uh and you know it's like being in a submarine you're gonna have to get along with the person you're with for very long periods of time and um it's bumpy you know you got to travel from one location to the other you have to work in the rain you have to work in the heat you have to go through traffic you have to hold your pee until you get to the bathroom yeah of course yeah you know and you have to pre-plan ahead and like go to the bathroom before you have to prep on the truck it's like there's a lot of things that make it really weird but fun but the limitations are the power of a food truck i think that's the most beautiful thing about it um again going back to garage band type stuff you know pushes you to have to be creative you to be creative you have enough equipment to pull off almost anything um you have a hot you have a hot plate the hot like plancha you have a steam table you have a cutting board you have refrigeration you have a little warm oven if if you don't get in your own way there's enough there for you to figure out what you want to do you know and again uh this i hope is my last music analogy i'm sorry for so many i'm really sorry i apologize but again if you just have one small amp and a guitar like you figure that shit out you know you figure it out sometimes that might be the best music you ever made in your whole damn career you know and um and so that limitation is where a food truck is where people where people do get in their own ways i'm a chef i need all this stuff you know i need all of these bells and whistles in order to pull off this food well the way i look at it is if you don't have those bells and whistles create a whole fucking different type of food then you know don't create the food that requires bells and whistles look at what you have and then plug into it and become one with what you have and then figure out how you're gonna how you're gonna make the food around what you got yeah those limitations and those limitations you can look at what they make in prison man you know i'm saying less to hide behind too if you don't have all the bells and whistles it has to be good if it's gonna be that simple yeah you could pull off so much with a hot plate a microwave a little a little steam kettle like i could cook you a 12-course meal with with a coffee kettle a hot plate and a microwave i'll cook you a 12-course meal very boring logistical question but how does it work with where you can park up and operate like is the city like a big thumbs up to food trucks is it like a bit of a nightmare like you can park up and you don't have the right license and you get booted but how does that work technically there is a thumbs up but there are also a lot of little thumbs downs here there. And so what you have to look at it is you have to also look that there are different cities in this one big city and different cities operate different ways. So, um, let's start with the easy basic stuff. The, the truck itself is a moving licensed vehicle. So, um, in terms of not only a business license, but in terms of health life, health license. So you are within, within that truck, you are, uh, kind of in your own force field as far as wherever you go. So that it's a really awesome and strange phenomenon to exist in this modern world where your own little force field travels with you wherever you go. And the rules that apply to where you were will reply to where you are. Yeah. I see. Yeah. So yeah, everything. It's really cool. So within the the same rules that apply to a car apply to you, the same rules of parking in a meter apply to you. Um, the only thing you can't do is park next to a school that's when they're in session within like 500 feet or something like that. And, uh, in like residential neighborhoods, unless you're hired for a catering event and stuff like that. But, um, other than that, you can, uh, you can park anywhere you want to park. Oh, and you can't park to other next to other restaurants. Uh, similar to a school, like within like 500. Okay. Like I can't park like right in front of a restaurant, you know, um, but other than that, uh, you can go anywhere you want to go. Yeah. So it's loose. That's cool. Yeah. But then there are other cities like Glendale is a different city than LA. Pasadena is a different city than LA. Those cities all have little rules and stuff like that. So you may have to get a business license from them or a permit from them or things like that. Uh, and then the last part of it is there are street politics and that, and there are some city politics and, uh, enforcements that are against street food. Um, unfairly, you know, a lot, a lot of street food vendors have been attacked and, um, unfairly like, uh, disrupted. And so we've been fighting really, really hard for the justice of street food vending to make sure that it stays legal. And even though it is legal, the problem is when you get to the streets, sometimes what's legal ain't legal. Whatever certain things say on paper, uh, when it's 1am and you're out in the middle of the streets, sometimes completely that people aren't going to know what that paper says. Sometimes there are different rules. And they've got their own ideas about what's going on. Yeah. You know, in LA and other cities, like you, there's street knowledge and there's book knowledge. You know what I mean? So it's kind of like that. You got to deal with that. And you got to know when to turn on your street knowledge. You got to know when to maneuver. You got to know when, you know, you got to put the books down and figure out what's happening right in front of you, you know? And, and so you have to navigate that as well. You can't just like, you can't just like, at all times, always be like, here's my, here's my folder, you know, and see? Yeah. Not going to find it. So sometimes you have to figure it out. Yeah. You need to be so switched on to people and culture as well, doing what you do. Yeah. Like it's not, you got to concentrate and be aware of all of that. All of that. You also have to be hospitable, you know, and I'm not talking just dangerous street shit, law enforcement shit. I'm talking also, maybe you have to deal with the building manager who says you can't park here. Right. But then legally you can, right? So what are you going to do? Just argue with that person and yell and go back and forth? Yeah. It's how you convey this. You also have to turn. Turn on your charm, you know, and you have to like, you know, figure things out. You have to like make a bridge. Give you one example. Kogi, when we first started, the first night we started, we were going in front of the clubs in Hollywood, but we, we can't park in front of the clubs. You know, you know how it is at the clubs. They got bouncers out front. Everyone's like, if you, it's like the, it's like the airport, you know, whistles, get out, move, move, move, move, move, move. What we did, our idea was, I know, like, you know, like, I don't know, like, I don't know these bouncers, man. Like I know who they are. I know I grew up with, with them, their homies, you know, like not maybe them specifically, but I grew up with guys that are bouncers. So I know, You get that. I know, I know the psychology. I know how they, their personality, I know who they are. I know if I hand them a burrito and they eat this burrito, they're going to be good. They're going to be straight. So that was the plan. It all made sense in my mind. So we pulled up and they're like, you can't stay here. You can't park here. Can't park here. We hand them a burrito. We were just like, the whole team was like, just eat the burrito. Then you tell us what you want us to do. They ate the burrito. They're like, you, yo bro, like just stay right here. Just, just you, you good all night. Something so simple. That's the kind of things you have to do when you're out there, you know, Not show them a folder of papers that you have. Show them the folder of papers. Yeah. Yeah. Just finally, how, what's here in 2026, what's food truck land like out there in Los Angeles? Is it thriving? Is it in between? Is it, is it changes? Is it stale? It depends on what type of food truck there is. Again, I think when you say food truck and I'm not blasting you, I'm just saying that like anything in life, there are levels and, and, and facets to it all. So food truck is not one one thing, you know, it's, uh, there are taco trucks, there are dessert trucks, there are catering trucks, there are long chairs, there, there are fusion trucks, there are, uh, BDA trucks, there, there are sandwich trucks. There's, there's all kinds of different trucks, you know, and it depends on kind of like, there are late night trucks, they're drunk, drunk after club. There are hipster trucks, east side trucks, west side, each with their own ecosystem trucks, you know, so it's all, it all depends on what's going on. I would say taco trucks, marisco trucks, media trucks, like those types of trucks, our pastoral trucks. I think they're doing great because they're locked in to the city. They're locked into the communities. You'll find a lot of them in the neighborhoods in which those trucks come from. Inglewood, Lenox, Hawthorne, East LA, Boyle Heights, you know, Van Nuys, you know, it's all embedded within it. So those trucks I think are fine. The, the kind of, uh, fusion modern trucks that Kogi kind of spawned, those have really, really been hurting lately, you know, because a lot of people not, I don't think it's entirely because the, the trend changed. Or the food changed. I think it was really because of COVID. You're here because of COVID. Yeah, COVID fucked a lot of things up. COVID fucked it up because those trucks really evolved into feeding office workers. It became the number one life, lifeline for the modern food truck. You know, no, nobody went to their offices for four years. A food business can barely last four days without business. That, that just completely obliterated. That market. Then you have like, kind of like the dessert, the dessert trucks, ice cream trucks, all those things, those kind of, they've been struggling. Churro trucks I think are holding on. People have moved away weirdly from like shaved ice, they shave ice and soft serve trucks. Those used to be really big ice cream trucks and all that stuff. It kind of, it's not as big anymore, but, uh, churros are hanging on. Yeah. We're definitely past the boom, but, um, but things are holding on. And just final, final question. That very first item you made to sell on your very first food truck, was it really just a quick, like overnight kind of like quick invention? Yeah. It was a lifetime in the making that I was finally able to, uh, have an opportunity to put together. So the flavors were finally a chance for me to express everything that I feel and that I am. Um, before that, I was like, okay, this is going to be, this is going to be something that I'm going to be, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to be, you know, I'm going to be, you know, I'm going to be, you know, I'm going to be, you know, I'm going to be, you know, I would, I would kind of separate being a chef. And in my personal life, being a chef, I was cooking as a chef. Um, and a lot of that is influenced, uh, through European, uh, technique and standards and knowledge. Um, but not just that it was also just, I didn't think that the food that I loved or that were, that I truly craved or that I loved, uh, that I truly craved or ate or was in my home that I could translate that into a restaurant setting. So I would cook restaurant food and then I would get off the clock. Like you were touching on, like, we don't eat the same food that we cook when we're working in restaurants and I would get off the clock and go eat the food that I really loved. Yeah. Which is street food. And, um, I just never found the bridge for that. And then Kogi was the bridge. It was like, so the moment my friend called me, we went the next day and shopped. And then the next day when I had the ingredients, I just started, I just started cooking. You know, I knew we needed a salsa and then I was just like, okay, that's also, it needs dried chilies and needs to taste like tacos uh salsa roja but then i want it to taste like the first vinaigrette and bite that you get at a korean barbecue then i was thinking there you know it has to have a little bit of a mole feel but the mole could be gochujang and which is fermented bean paste and then these could all come together there's an acidity but the acidity is not just lime it can be rice vinegar and then there's a nuttiness that's not peanuts but it could be sesame so it was like all these things coming together if you're hungry yeah listening to this and then it just happened it was just flowing and uh and then it was one of those things where you knock it out on the first try you know we stuck the landing on the first shot so doing all that we were doing in an apartment kitchen in koreatown and then i made the sauce i made the marinade uh we came up with the vinaigrette we cooked the beef we chopped it and then we made the sauce and then we made the marinade before even anyone tasting it i just put the first taco together there were like four of us in the room gave everyone a taco we took a bite we're just like fuck this is crazy fucking got it let's go tomorrow yeah and the recipe hasn't changed since then which is crazy so have you ever eaten at a food truck i have eaten at some food trucks i have i'm a fan of food trucks i like delicious food quickly i don't like the experience i'm just a bit adhd i don't like the experience of sitting down for a long period and being stuck in a seat and that whole experience i don't love and the whole ceremony of having to order or talk to us or free yeah just some if i'm in the mood yeah but sometimes the procedure of sitting down and then like the ordering different layers and then waiting for the check and it's all i that my default isn't loving that you would love korea so korea yeah i've never been so korea has a lot of the restaurants the real restaurants not the foodie restaurants but restaurants neighborhood restaurants restaurants that you go to your parents go to every day and all that stuff their restaurants brick and mortars everything all that but the the people that come in they're ordering as they walk in yeah but it's ordering like a military sergeant yeah and they're walking in the door and ordering yeah but everyone is doing that and then this the people working there it's all built in for that so then by the time you walk and get to your table which is only from here maybe to the other side of the room the food is already on the oh this is fucking heaven it's heaven this is heaven and everyone's agreeing that that's the system no one's being everyone's agreeing that that's just the way it is that's the system yeah oh my god sometimes you'll pay before this is what i'm talking about because that's the other thing there's no tax there's no tax and tip right so there's no tax and tip so there's no reason to figure it out after yeah so you walk in and you drop a five you yell your order yeah the food hits your table and you get the fuck out of there and you had the most delicious food and the most delicious food you could stay as long as you want yeah but you don't have to but you don't have to and um and then you just walk up and go but it's it's it's really um i think we have it backwards here in the in western culture because there's so much ceremony built into eating food i think that the you know the ceremony can come during and after like eating at home the food should just come you know i could not agree more yeah and then that sparks everything just like because we do it in a home environment in western culture you the food hits the table and then everyone's and then everyone has a nice time and they're chatting and they're happy it's that waiting i think it's the waiting yeah we love roy choy yeah the way he talks about food and uh just like the soul of yeah cooking i really really love i don't know a lot of food people that are in that world and so i was just kind of blown away it's like sort of like combined like knowledge and passion and it's just in his bones because as it's like from day dot he was brought up in that and it's it's him like you can't separate food from who he is it's the whole thing um and i mean just the way he talked about kind of the class wars of it too is yeah i think an important part of the story of which maybe we're not supposed to call them food trucks either no and also the um we're talking about like the roaches and like how that coach yeah roach coach i didn't know about any of that but just when he was talking about yeah the power of language and perception and all that stuff that's a massive thing to shift people's perceptions like that exactly the point right now where it's almost for some swung too far in the other direction where it's almost too fancy yes and i think he sits in this he understands like both those worlds perfectly which i mean there is like that's that is what's really awesome about la like you've got those not just food trucks but you've got the like just tents up in a parking lot yeah in people cooking food like that's some of the best food you can get in la and you like it hits you when you drive by you can smell it it's the smell is that and when you like walk out of a concert and they've got the hot dogs wrapped in bacon oh my god and the onion like that smell every time yeah uh yeah walking out of a concert in la almost every single concert they're just lined up ready to sell hot dogs it's a joy it's an incredible array of bootleg t-shirts from the show yeah because they know that the merch is expensive and then outside they know that you've been spending like the food costs a lot inside you're probably hungry because you just have some like tiny terrible like fries or if there even is food if there's even food they know everyone and there's drinking yeah yeah they want to spend a couple bucks on a hot dog wrapped in bacon so good the smell is incredible um if you have any food truck stories flat spread chat at gmail.com i'm sure you're sick of me saying that email address by now but would love to hear from you maybe you have a food truck maybe you've got a recommendation in your city or town would love to hear from you i mean the one thing that we didn't bring up was the kiwi food truck that showed up outside of our show in denver oh hell yeah hap and his um ice creams yes oh my god happy cones was that right happy cones yeah yeah of course there's food trucks that are that are desserts and ice cream and sweet things which i love yeah like royce said there's a million like food truck is almost too general because there are so many different kinds and versions and different street food also really liked how he talked about it being good that there are limitations and what you can do in there something about having limited like room to cook and to make food and to store everything and that somehow leads to really fun flavors and treats and everything have you seen uh mateo's matcha oh okay we need to talk about this sorry that's i know you love matcha since i met you i am also partaking in a lot of matcha have you gone to mateo so on the way to your house or on the way to our studio here drive past every time i haven't been i have not been either what it is it's a man with a poster board he's got a little table um he's often sitting out in incredibly hot temperatures yeah i feel he's got an umbrella but i also don't know how he's doing it corner of an intersection yep a stop sign not an intersection a stop sign like neighborhood stop sign and yeah he's selling uh matcha it's only matcha yeah uh i think a lot of i think it's iced or is it i hope it's i mean yeah he's got a cooler i would imagine i there are a lot of i've seen people buying it yeah it's not like a failed venture i'm super curious whether he's kind of doing it guerrilla style i don't know if you're selling drugs if you need to have he's got his food license is what yeah that kind of thing but look i'd look good on you we're not out to shut down as much like good on you yeah but i'm fascinated by him because the only other like what i liken it to is when you get a kid like with a lemonade stand yes it's very i mean we get those in the neighborhood too it's an adult lemonade stand but with matcha it's the same energy the posters written almost like a lemonade stands i feel like what we need to do is uh for patreon you need to go do a little mini interview with mateo i think and we can post that i want to talk to mateo and i want to try the matcha yeah i try matcha he's a nice looking guy he looks um yeah i'm not like oh who's the fuck's this mateo guy sitting on the street corner um you're calling the cops who is this guy from behind the the bushes like hand gentle and i may have spoken about this before but just talking about because mateo is kind of i think he's like a he's an attractive man there is a and i'm i'm i'm going to stumble into probably insults and stereotypes and everything here but there is an incredibly fucking hot um rubbish truck driver i have heard about this yeah at the coffee shop they love they love to watch yeah he's like so i mean i don't know garbage man they call him yeah he's just it's like uh levi's commercial or something yeah it's that kind of a guy he's always wearing like very tight short very tight um that's sort of low so you see that um the muscles of like i don't know what that bit is but it's not abs but it's the bits between the abs and the legs it's like a little yeah you know it's a little triangle anyway just blows my mind this guy i'm bringing it up because i think he could be an episode because i think he could be an eye into the world of an incredibly legitimate thing that we need in the city which is the rubbish truck driver who we don't think about because they're just doing all this important work in the background so i think your goal is you got to hang out by the garbage cans on garbage day catch him ask if you can go for a ride with him can I go for a ride with you that's my words I think normally garbage truck drivers are in pairs though right I think they're in pairs you kind of hang off the back right could I hang off the back with him but I've also seen the garbage man on our street like only one guy in the car I think in the truck maybe I think we need all these answers okay Matteo the macho guy that seems like a Patreon bonus so you're putting him in Patreon territory you're putting hot rubbish truck guy as a full epi somewhere I think that could be a fun full episode he's like a Calvin Klein model and it's just as an amazing and again not stereotyping here but it's just an amazing juxtaposition to have him hanging off the back of a rubbish truck when in our culture we're used to seeing them like on a billboard or at the Oscars or something you know it's just okay I'll pursue it Roy Choi again thank you wonderful human big fan thank you Rob for exploiting a friendship to get us a really good guest anytime on the show feedback as always flightlessbredchat at gmail.com it gets increasingly detailed and wonderful feedback primarily that I'm going to read out involves two episodes trains which just aired last week and we have a lot coming in from our Jehovah's Witnesses episode so much train crashes in case you train crashes did skip one we didn't just do an episode on trains no that would be boring if you haven't listened to Jehovah's Witnesses or trains I'm biased but I think they're both great episodes there was a really great bit of feedback on our Instagram account yeah I know what you're talking about already and they apologize they're actually lovely but it's a very reactive bit of feedback and they basically said this episode is so clearly essentially it's sort of like paid for by the car lobby because this is so anti-train yeah like this is blatantly anti-train and this is I'm shocked and horrified by this I'm exaggerating it slightly but it was pretty hard line yeah that big motor was funding yeah our anti-train episode I would love to say I would love big motor to be sponsoring the show because we would be making so much money yeah Volklagen wants to sponsor the next episode we do on train crashes but no there's a bit of other feedback about this but essentially it was sort of just saying look trains are great and riding on public transport fantastic we love it yeah I think we both romanticize and do like train rides my god it was not about that we are very Rob and I are very pro-train and concept of train very anti the train companies not giving a shit about human safety yes but to the person that did leave that comment you were gracious and wonderful and we commented back and you you also commented and it's all fine it was just very funny at the time we really enjoyed that we were in the text chain about it and it was it was a good laugh yeah just being paid off by the car lobby is a really good concept in the stories we were writing and saying about putting pennies on the tracks incredibly common I will add incredibly common in New Zealand where I kind of made out like it never happens in New Zealand happens all the time Kelsey said can confirm putting coins on a railroad track is still an American tradition in the Midwest I'm from Michigan my parents taught me and I teach my nieces and my nephew the tradition continues every time we hear a train go by overnight we excitedly race over the tracks in the morning to find the coins we left behind the coins become collector's items that we show off at our family's cabin very cute where do you keep your coins do you have them somewhere boys have like a piggy bank I think that's where our coins go kids still have piggy banks mine do that's adorable I had a piggy bank they have no concept or Vinnie Calvin kind the value of coins now. Vinny doesn't give a shit. Vinny, well, he doesn't know what a. No, I mean, wonderful. No concept of money. Brilliant. He had this coin, this is a plastic coin from school that has like a man's face on it. And he asked, like you use that coin to get the man to do things for you. That's what he thought it was. Because that's why his face was on there. I see. So it was almost like a genie. That you find this man and he does six things for you with this coin. I wish money did this. That would be so sick. He was trying to explain that to me this morning with the coin. He's trying to tell you. He's like, this is how this coin works. What if he's right? Might be. A lot of people wrote in about Brightline, which, if you don't know, is the most dangerous passenger train in the United States. According to a report released by the Miami Herald, July 15th, 2025, Brightline trains have killed 182 people since they began testing in 2017. Also, if you're on Instagram, go to at Brightline Crash Tracker. Every time there is a death on a Brightline train, the account posts an alert. And I recommend going there. It's bleak, but it gets the horror across in a, we're using a sense of humor, which I think is a really effective way to get across information sometimes, especially when something is so bleak. Where does Brightline, where are they out of? Brightline is the only privately owned, the only privately owned and operated intercity passenger railroad in the U.S. Development started as all abroad Florida by Florida East Coast Industries. So it started in Florida, began between Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, and expanded, additional routes planned. Its terminal is in Miami and Orlando, Florida. So it's just Florida though? Look, I fear whenever I say the fact, recently, I get it wrong. So I'm very worried. Hopefully someone can tell us. Can you tell us where Brightline trains go? Yeah, I feel Florida is just, but trains go a long distance. So it would be weird if it was only one state. It's a fact. It's just in Florida. All right, got it. Okay? Yeah. How do you hear first? Jerry Rodin, who is coming to our Salt Lake City live show. Thank you, Jerry. We'll see you there. Jerry says, I'm listening to the train crash episode. Rob said that in Chicago, the school buses are required to stop at railroad crossings and open the window. He mentioned the 95 Fox River Grove, Illinois, bus train collision, which killed seven students as a possible reason for the policy. Jerry says, I live in a suburb of Salt Lake City and the history of that policy possibly has its roots in this area. In 1938, a school bus full of high school children was crossing over train tracks in heavy fog. 1938, the bus was struck by a freight train. The driver and 23 students were all killed. The accident resulted in regulatory changes, including the requirements that bus drivers stop at all railroad tracks, open the door, look both ways and listen for trains. For the worst thing you can imagine happening to like a bus full of kid train. Horrible. Jerry, thank you for that morbid bit of history. Sarah wrote in, to be honest, I haven't finished listening to this episode yet. Always a danger sign when you give feedback before you finish listening, but in this case, I respect it. I wanted to tell you that my aunt was actually run over by a train driver while in her car. My uncle, in brackets, not a good dude, was drunk, parked on the tracks when a car was coming and tried to kill my aunt by leaving the car there. There with her inside. She survived. Lots of surgeries and complications, but she was a true badass who fought a train and won. Her story deserves to be remembered. I agree. She sounds fucking amazing, Sarah. Respect to her. If you can get hit by a train while you're in a car and survive, holy shit. Garrett says, possibly Jarrett, but I think it's Garrett. In light of the recent episode and the request for train related stories, I thought I'd share the time my dad was hit by a train or more accurately, the time he hit a train. Great opening line. I'm instantly intrigued. We've got a lot of stories about people getting, everyone either knew someone or had someone in their family that was hit by a train. Sometimes, when I do these episodes, I think, have I just gone down a rabbit hole without enough context about the greater picture? And I do do this often. Yeah. In the case of train crashes, no, I feel like everyone if our listeners has had a train story, which is blowing our minds. My dad was hit by a train or more accurately, the time he hit a train. He somehow didn't see a moving train on the tracks and drove directly into its side, ripping off his truck's front end. My dad says he was looking at the log truck parked near the tracks. And despite the truck driver's frantic arm waving, my dad responded with a wave of his own and then drove into the train. The best part was he then featured on the local news as there was a prison break in his rural area and all news stations were up from the city covering that. The lead of the story was train. What train? Love the podcast, keep doing all the work. Really love that his dad was just focused on a a truck who was waving at him. He was just like, hey, hi. Which to be fair is what I would do. Yeah, that seems like a David story. Pamela, my mother's name. Yeah, I know. This is, don't you talk about my mother. Pamela says, in the early 80s, I lived near a town in Uppsala, in the state of New York that freight trains drove through but didn't stop at. One hot summer afternoon, a small group of young teen boys, my classmates, were walking on the one lane wide train bridge when a train came into view. Although the same age, one was much shorter and soon fell behind as they tried to outrun the train. What an image. Little short guy. Left behind. Awful. Got left behind as they tried to outrun the train to get to the end of the bridge and get off the tracks. The shorter boy didn't think he'd make it and instead lay as flat as he could on his back between the rails. trails which kind of respect him that is a bold yeah yeah when you're running away from something to like stop and think can i do something else yeah my god um the other boys made off the train bridge the train stopped with a freight train wagon directly over the short kid and he had the barest of scrapes so it stopped but it did pass over the top of him and he survived he survived no doubt the boys were all grounded but the luckiest got his photo taken for the county newspaper i like that in this time in america all these interactions ended up in the paper i drove into a train it's like yeah i lay under a train just extraordinary yeah that is i love the alien films and there's one of the alien films is prometheus and there's an iconic scene in it where a woman is running away as a giant skyscraper high spaceship crashes towards her and she just runs in a straight line and narrowly misses it and everyone watching it's like run off to the side yeah run off to the side but when you're running you're so scared you would just run in a straight line this kid was like no this train's here i'm not gonna outrun it i'm going to lie down i mean that's some quick thinking it's extraordinary um i wouldn't i'd get hit by the train in the back as i'm running yeah kate said i grew up in a suburb 30 minutes north of boston and people getting hit by trains was just a normal occurrence for us a boy a few years older than me was hit by a train while walking with his headphones on i never knew this wasn't a normal occurrence outside the u.s and now i'm horrified and kate just reminded me in new zealand people do get hit by trains it happens everywhere you guys have trains in new zealand we just got them last year that boat took a long time to get to new zealand yeah yeah we've got all sorts of things recently uh since you left so before you left you didn't know about the now it's all new so yeah people who get by trains in new zealand but america definitely cares a lot less about it um spencer said i really enjoyed the train crash episode glad spencer it reminded me that some people like my dumb ass sister in brackets but mean actually believe in a conspiracy theory that we did not build the railroads but rather we discovered them from a previous civilization called the targeria i'm intrigued by this i like this yeah so i'm going to make a mention of this we'll come back to this it goes something along the lines of there was a giant mud flood that buried everything before it and train tracks were left over from that um i suppose it's quite problematic in the sense that it's nice slave labor involved in how they were actually built might be up your alley to do an episode on that yeah i mean and targeria just makes train dreams movie not not factually accurate actually accurate we're a lot of people that nominated for an oscar wasn't it jenny i worked for a rail car manufacturer for five years let me tell you that was very quick way to learn just how dangerous rail cars are there are a ton of gruesome accidents involved with um the manufacturing and repair of rail cars these are super heavy cars on top of razor sharp wheels and all it takes is a little jolt forwards or backwards for a human hand to get horrifically injured so i just like jenny pointing out like just trains are trains on tracks at any pace well any like industrial machinery like that is also very unforgiving i had an uncle that uh worked in like a factory like that and his wedding ring got caught in a machine and just ripped his finger off oh horrific yeah we have this big metal machinery like yeah human bones are not gonna stop that it reminds me of my dad i'm sure my dad might be telling this he's fine he's lived a full life he doesn't listen so he also doesn't listen to this i've tried to get him to listen i've set it up on his um on the ipad wait can we before you tell this story are there like topics that we could cater to him to like kind of trap him into finally listening my dad yeah he would like stories about if we do an episode about bob dylan okay he'll listen to that okay if we do a story about um dairy farming or like cows he'd probably listen to that we can do that right american topic um yeah dylan and cows dylan and cows okay now what's this story about your dad he is a real handyman so he does everything like he builds things he's good with cars good with plumbing good with like he builds things yeah but i remember there was he had a power saw and it's a big like spinning disc you know that you like pull along and it will chop big bits of wood yeah and i can't remember exactly how it happened but his so many questions because i was like was he naked i don't know his um got drawn in and like partly like cut open by i believe it was a bandsaw wait what so you severed it so it wasn't chopped off but his sack was compromised by a saw and now i think about i never asked him at the time like how like was it did it go with the pants it must have gone through the pants was pamela she was in the house she wasn't doing something kinky and no no it wasn't a six no he was like building um no he wouldn't know because he wouldn't be naked because it would just cut through the clothing i mean maybe was i think we need a follow-up on this story do we need to do an alice safaria i mean at least patreon episode special yeah but i just always remember thinking um it made me think about testicle sex differently ever after because i'm like you can cut through that no testicles were severed none of the mechanics of it purely the skin and he just like openly shared this yeah like i'm i didn't he wasn't going to cover it up well he wasn't into it he was he was embarrassed but he wasn't going to like hide it i do that that's not like coming up uh like you tell me dinner time sure i would tell your family you tell natalie well yes she would find out but it's not like we're going to tell the kids this story yeah they're too young if you're kids you i was when how old was i when the testicle sack was severed maybe 16 or something okay i guess you're old enough that's old enough to know and was he like bedridden for a bit my dad is such a hard ass not a hard he doesn't complain you know that's working with me yeah and loosely a lot relentlessly he uh fair he doesn't complain and so no he said it happened said my my testicle sack got opened up stitched up it's back to fine we won't talk about it again and he never did okay we need to talk about this again though just skylar um oh skylar i won't go into this because we're running over time but she sent in like actually i'll read the beginning of it because i just think it's a really good counterpoint it's counterpoint it's kind of what the instagram user was getting at this one's a complaint email says skylar um but maybe one from a place of understanding as an american question mark honestly i thought europeans would be five steps ahead of me on this complaint but i checked the comments and have accepted the possibility that europeans maybe don't listen to a podcast about in new zealand in america um car brain that was a low blow she's going for it as i read this i'm like i'm going to start by nagging you yeah that was a really good neg car brain in um quote marks is a term used in transit enthusiast circles about the ways that car ownership shape people's view of the world and safety it's framed by train lovers as a sort of insanity but it's understandable if you drive a car issues that affect drivers affect you it's the statistics drivers ignore that are more frustrating that 40 000 to 45 000 us drivers die each year for reasons they have nothing to do with trains that 77 of drivers have been in at least one accident that every car in the u.s has five times its space taken up in parking huge desolate swaths of land um she goes on for a long time but i think it is a really good point and it's kind of what that original comment was getting to two thoughts on that um i think that of course cars are horrifically dangerous people get scared about flying it's like if you're gonna die you're probably gonna die in a car of course more likely in the car than getting hit by a train i i agree completely um people should take public transport trains carpools boats all of that i try to take votes as often as i can more canals in l.a this is my main form of transport i came here tonight by canal uh but at the same time um it's kind of i see this as being a little bit of sort of what about ism where you do a topic and there's this thing of like but what about this yeah it's like and i think she's got a good point skylar and i completely understand it and i think it's valid at the same time i also think a story about um train companies um horrific negligence when it comes to safety is also yeah i mean that story to me was more about capitalism and yes big trains more about profit than safety i don't think either one of us saying don't ride trains public transport great yes ride trains great just be careful when you encounter a train crossing i mean just mostly walk places though don't drive cars i completely agree um i love walking you see me walking around a lot yeah sometimes you'll see me walking and you'll take a secret photo of me walking and send me a photo yeah okay look i know there's a lot of feedback but i find this really informative and interesting jehovah's witnesses yep so we did hear from a lot of jehovah's witnesses so we have we have more jehovah's witnesses than i thought listening to the show yeah most of the incredibly polite reasoned um that's great um the main complaint as i expected from members of the religion was you didn't talk to anyone from this religion and you only told negative stories about the religion to that i'd just say in general i think with nine million adherents i think jehovah's witnesses are going just fine and i kind of see my our role in a way is i think I think to take a critical eye is a valuable thing. The religion's doing just fine without us. There's a lot of people talking good things about it. I think being critical is not the end of the world if you're a Jehovah's Witness. And if anything, if someone is talking shit about it, maybe get in there and make your organization better to others. That's my hot take. With that in mind, Jessica said, I'm very disappointed that this issue has no one that is currently a witness. Really? Of course, former witnesses always have bad or flat-out wrong things to say. It's a very one-sided story. So disappointing. Nailene, I'm an avid listener and really enjoy your shows, but I'm very disappointed in this episode because it is so one-sided and only negative. As a journalist, you should be doing your due diligence when reporting on issues and real topics affecting real people. To what I would say, Player Spread isn't really journalism. It's more a fun, mostly entertainment show with a bit of journalism thrown in. And? I'm not really. It's not a religion podcast. And also, I'm not into both sides-ing things as well. I think if you say one thing, you don't have to have the other side talking back to it. It's like, when we do an episode on climate change, I'm not going to give equal time to a climate change denier. Yeah, yeah. I feel a little bit like that with this. Yeah. Kristen said, I've been a long-time listener and was so excited for you to peek into the world of JWs. I was born and raised as a JW, baptized at the age of 13, and escaped around 18. I'm 43 now, which is my age, Kristen. I have many stories and experiences that are wild to recall, but one thing I feel is extremely important to mention that wasn't spoken about in this episode was their shunning practices, i.e. disfellowshipping. Disfellowshipping is a public act of shunning from family, the congregation, and anyone in affiliation with the organization. It's caused many to lose all they've ever known and even cost some of their lives after not being able to cope all over things such as smoking or premarital sex. There's also one other disturbing policy called the two-witness rule. Have you heard about this, Rob? From comments? Yeah. Basically, if an individual has experienced abuse, for example, their claim has no merit unless having been witnessed by at least two other JWs. This organization is also geared towards keeping the woman subservient, one example being that none are allowed to stand at the podium to give a talk or to lead a prayer unless with their head covering. So yeah, I think the two-witness thing, there's a lot of news articles about this in regards to child sexual abuse being covered up. If there's not these two people witnessing it, the whole thing is just ignored. So I think that's really important and something we missed. So maybe part two at some point. I'm into this. I'm a bit overwhelmed by feedback. Really quickly, in regards to calling San Francisco, San Fran, Brigetta Rodin, great name. I believe Brigetta is from New Zealand, where I'm from. U.S. listeners might hate to learn that there's a popular music venue in Wellington, our capital, called San Fran. It comes from the business that was its original building, a massage parlor called the San Francisco Bathhouse. So many New Zealanders may say San Fran because I've been to that music venue, it's great. So you're blaming the music venue now? I blame the music venue for my inappropriate shortening of San Francisco. So any emails about the shortening, direct to the music video instead of FlightLispererChatAchievement.com. Complain to the music venue. Great venue. Georgette says, Hello, Rob and Bravet. You missed the opportunity to talk about Prince becoming a JW later in life. I had no fucking idea about this. Did you know this? No. Can you imagine Prince knocking on your door with pamphlets? It happened to a friend of mine. Bodyguards limoed the whole bit. Wow. If that story is true, holy shit. Yeah. That's amazing. Imagine your musical hero turning up to convert you, not to their music, but to their religion. I'm sure his conversion rate was very high. That'd be amazing. Yeah. Are you going to turn him down? Blows my mind. I love Prince. Very quickly, a fact check. Steven wrote in, on the recent Train Crashers show, a listener suggested bourbon. I love that topic. But they were incorrect. You don't have to be in certain parts of Kentucky to make a spirit labeled bourbon. The U.S. government has recognized bourbon as a distinctive product of the U.S. so it can be made anywhere in the U.S. So apparently, what I said a few weeks ago, bullshit. It happens. Don't have to be in Kentucky. Was it? It happens. What was that? It happens sometimes. Sometimes. Yeah. I mean, you're a human. I've been known to be a flawed human being. Thanks for listening as always. Flightersbreadchat.gmail.com. Very keen to hear your food truck stories. Again, if you want the dates and locations of our Flightersbread meetups and the cities we're doing this for, you can go to flightersbread.com. Bring live shows in. Come and join our Patreon, patreon.com slash flightersbread. Speaking of. And we'll have an interview with Mateo, I think, on there soon. So go join us and Mateo. Yes, please. On Patreon. Like and subscribe. See you next week.