Wisconsin: Supper Clubs

and hi hayden my beautiful snorlax how are you oh that's good thank you thank you you took my notes about personalizing it did you like it you did yeah i did because i do feel like snorlax a lot of the time just a big boy who wants to lie down and sleep today's episode is about supper clubs and i'm wondering when i say the two words supper clubs what comes to mind what do you think hayden donnell oh that is it's it's been a long time since you've completely stumped me with one honestly i i thought that all aspects of america would travel to me but for some reason not a supper club for some reason i think it might be like uh toast masters or something where people stand up and give speeches or supper what do you do at supper you have a little nightcap maybe a little amaro and and talk to another gentleman in a top hat what what do you do at supper club well are you gonna tell me do i have to listen to this stupid podcast to find out yeah here's a transition here's your answer starting now i'm david farrier in new zealand accidentally marooned in america and i want to figure out what makes this country tick now for a while we've gotten emails to flightlessbirdchat at gmail.com which like hayden i had never heard of until the email started flowing in part of the issue is that where rob and i live in la supper clubs aren't really a thing am i wrong on that rob i'm not really sure what we're doing the hell are we doing but then i ended up in wisconsin at a giant cheese competition and it seemed criminal not to poke my nose into the world of the supper club which primarily exists in upper midwestern states like iowa michigan which i always want to say is michigan apparently it's michigan and wisconsin they have their origin in the prohibition in the 20s and the 30s when alcohol was deemed very naughty people looking for other ways to entertain themselves without getting arrested by the 50s and 60s supper clubs were basically a thing that everyone knew about a place to hunker down and hang out and today in the midwest it seems like they're as big as ever begging the question still what the fuck is a supper club so make like hayden and put on your top hat because this is the supper club episode okay so this episode about supper clubs is part of our infamous um wisconsin series yeah we started a month ago we started a month ago so it started uh with uh an episode on cheese and cheese heads i went to a giant cheese competition i saw giant wheels of cheese i ate cheese incredibly cheesy hayden if you recall talked about his love of night cheese as did you we all love night cheese before bed then informally the series got much longer than it's intended two parts because we were dealing with um evilly wahongi who is a new zealander a wisconsinite now a wisconsinite her family is in wisconsin she is in a nice attention facility so that sort of informally stretched out the two-part wisconsin series into a four-parter did you did you get my pun there i i saw you looking happy and i didn't know why do it again oh the wisconsinite wisconsin i a wisconsin knight she's a welder from wisconsin wisconsinite that yeah that i mean wisconsinite would be the term of a person from wisconsin that's what i went with i didn't go with you there's always you're like the riddler there's always and there's always like quite an annoying other layer to what you're saying um we're recording this at 9 30 in the at 8 30 in the morning and that went over the head if you were a criminal mastermind and you were uh sort of talking to the police via riddles about your murders you would the police would the feds have throw up their hands in frustration at how annoying your clues were now that we're not dealing with this these puns anymore just let them keep killing that's what they'd say about you the point is this is part of our wisconsin series wisconsin i'm wearing my wisconsin shirt beautiful part of america a part of america that's really won me over yeah i do think it's a little bit criminal you went to wisconsin and didn't do the dells though yes yeah and the emails are informing me about this yeah i mean like you you go to wisconsin that's kind of what you do you go to the dells yeah so my thinking on this and where i got it very wrong is i realized when i was packing my bag to go to wisconsin i looked at the weather i forgot your bathing suit and you're like i can't go to the water park no i saw that it was incredibly fucking cold there it was i was packing jackets and i thought to myself it's going to be closed no that's this is a water park it's going to be closed thrive this is something i was deeply unaware of i didn't know that some of the shit is indoors and it's all year round yeah and that's sort of what the people do there when they're bored it gets wintry what do you do clearly you go swimming but in new zealand that that's a that's a cultural mismatch that i did not clock yeah um i fucked up my family still in chicago my family that still lives in chicago goes to the dells around christmas time and so it's it's just tradition you pack up the family the kids you jump in the car and you go it's just two hours north of chicago two and a half hours north of chicago and are you staying is it in my mind going to the dells feels like going to vegas you maybe stay in a hotel for a night you're sort of in you're permanently like in vegas you're always in a casino in the dells i feel you're always in a swimming pool and all the swimming pools are connected to each other via underground tunnels is it kind of like that uh not my family has time shares you know about time shares we have that in new zealand but i feel like i'm not familiar with it because i feel like it's a it is more of an american thing expand yeah you like buy into you buy a time share and that gives you time that you can share in different locations around the country that they have i'm completely confused now it's like a it's like a step up from a hotel it's usually a little bigger but yeah not not as as nice of amenities uh-huh and it's very uh like airbnb sort of but i thought wait i thought a time share is when you and i together yeah would buy a property and we'd share what time we could spend there it's kind of that but okay at a much grander scheme in a like more of a resorty area but the resort is just shitty condos so you've sometimes you'll have hundreds of people going on a time share you pay a little bit and you get to spend some time i think the people you're sharing with don't really come into play because it's just a bigger scheme okay and notoriously when you go and stay at a time share you have to like sit through these meetings where they try to sell you them because you can give it you can let like friends go and stay like we would go and use my parents time share yeah and then we my dad would be like well you get like 300 bucks or voucher for meals if you go can you go to this meeting and it's just a sales guy that tries to sell you more time for two hours of like well your parents got it you guys should buy into this time share this is a whole other world i didn't realize this yeah um have you ever considered going in on a time absolutely not you get to what holiday and sort of a shitty kind of uh well so that's the other thing is uh they have like it's one brand i think windham is the one my parents have uh-huh so you have to look at where the windham locations are usually not in every like metropolitan area that you want to go visit it's like oh we want to go to la i guess we'll stay in indio because that's where the time share is close somewhere in the desert yes huh and i think they have like affiliate brands too that you can do but you have to also plan them like a year out is it for old generally older people i think so i think those are the people getting scammed and i mean i think my dad has they've had it for 40 years and i think he's the case where like he really takes advantage of it and makes it worth his while okay but normally i think you're paying these fees to be in this association and time share and getting very little bang for your buck yes but you could put that money into better places not my dad and i think my sisters bought in one of my sisters bought in with him right um and so going back to the dallas they've got a time share at the dallas you have a time share so whenever they want to get wet they want to go on a slide they want to have fun pack up the bags kids we're going to the time share i'm sure we have listeners that have time shares and uh we'll write in correcting some of the spread chat at gmail.com i want to hear from people that are deeply pro time share and people that are very anti-time share yeah i want your horror stories and i want to hear from people that are deeply pro time share and i want to hear from people that are deeply pro time share and i want your dream stories i do feel like airbnb has probably hurt the whole time share business okay i see uh because yeah but but it is like it's not a hotel like you're getting a uh full kitchenette a living room two three bedrooms so you're getting a much better place to stay size wise than you would if you're just a family going to get a hotel and cramming into that and am i right in thinking that a timeshare this is the timeshare episode is aimed primarily at families as opposed to individuals who are traveling around i would say so if you need to go to pegosa springs with your family time share there see i i also feel when i start describing what a supper club is i think it's going to be very much like you describing what a timeshare is but i just confuse you more and more as opposed to clarifying anything yeah probably what do you think a supper club is yeah i go to a dinner party a bunch of like neighbors getting together bringing tupperware uh with casseroles over and mingling you mentioned prohibition in the intro so i'm thinking of like that 70s show uh-huh the episode where they're having like a party and you've got the parents drinking yeah and there's hors d'oeuvres and appetizers it's sounding great really good it's not it's not that this is a rarity where i feel like we have a topic where perhaps i know 10 more than you do possibly you might unless it's just uh you tell me what it is and i'm like oh yeah that's a dinner party yeah that thing but okay for the record because i until i went to a supper club i had so many images in my mind of what a supper club was what is conjured up in your mind right now when i say supper club is in wisconsin yeah you know this a bunch of neighbors bringing food over well weirdly technically that is a there there is a supper club that is that you could say i'm gonna have a supper club at my house and that is sort of a loose definition of having people over to the house yeah but in wisconsin and this is where i know i'm gonna get something wrong about this a supper club is essentially a restaurant right but it's a restaurant so it's a physical location it's kind of the vibe in there and i've only been to two supper clubs so far the vibe is very everything's sort of wooden and brown and very the lighting's a bit dim it's very settle into your chair strap in because you're not leaving for fucking eight hours eight hours i'm just ad-libbing a little bit but the idea like eight hours so a supper club the idea is that you were there not just to not like in la where we're dining and dashing you know we're not rushing in with our busy lives you're sitting down at five o'clock you're having some drinks the cheeses start arriving on crackers you're sort of nibbling on cheese for an hour another cocktail then the dinner comes in who's in attendance this is like you go with your family you go with yes so yeah all of the above it's a social thing like a chili's you're going to chili's and there's other people having dinner and one level it's like a chili's where a bunch of random people all agreeing to go to this place on the other hand it's going with your friends and just bonding with each other almost like you're over your own uh dining room table so it's all about it's a dinner with your friends yeah it's a real it's a restaurant but everything about it is geared that you stay there for ages because it prioritizes talking and like sipping on a drink nibbling on some cheese and then the food comes in and everything's fucking big it's a big steak it's a giant trout or whatever fish you have in america on your plate ordering individual from a menu yes as a menu okay the club is deceptive because i thought the club indicates some kind of membership or some kind of fancy outfit i think that's where hayden got the idea of wearing a top hat to me club meant the frequency of it that you're doing it like once a month on a certain sunday nothing to do with that not really or okay no all the club i think really all it indicates is that you're going there and you might uh because people that go there all the time you might get to know other people that go there so maybe it's a bit like ah see you there see you at the club like a country club but with no membership okay and it's not expensive okay like there are fancy supper clubs there are so i went to a very fancy supper club there are supper clubs that are like dive bars they're super low key but generally they're all relatively affordable i and maybe again coming from la where everything is so generally expensive i was crazy what you could buy with your money there just massive feasts would come to your table i'm really curious if the time thing is actually something that's part of this or just something that you globbed onto and couldn't get out of your brain when you went to it knowing how my brain works yeah quite likely that's what it seems that's what it seemed like chat at gmail.com to create any of this maybe we'll learn in the doc if that's actually yeah it is it's definitely this idea of they're not rushing you out the door they're not wanting to fill your table with the next person they want you to stay there and drink any alcohol is a big part of it well i'm just wondering if this is just wisconsin culture that's kind of midwest culture more and if somehow you're conflating any restaurant trip in wisconsin yeah no i in this case i wouldn't put the blame on me i put the blame on wisconsin i think wisconsin has conflated the dining experience with their laid-back chilled out nature and have combined the two all right well i guess let's hear about it this is my experience in wisconsin obviously the way to learn about what a supper club is is to go to a supper club and the one i'd heard a few people mention so far was the tornado steakhouse there was also the fact it was just around the corner from my hotel and the very first person i walked into there was a kiwi i'm a server my name is jazz now i know that voice you're a new zealander i'm a server my name is jazz i'm a server my name is jazz i'm a server my name is jazz i'm a kiwi what are you doing in the tornado room in medicine i love it here i'm a server i've been here this is my 10th year just it's like a family and we love the clientele here and the food is amazing before getting back to work jazz introduced me to her boss my name's henry i'm the owner and the chef of tornado steakhouse i'd describe the tornado steakhouse as feeling really warm and cozy it's all wooden and there are a lot of booths and there's a bar and it's all packed i opened it in 1996 so it's been quite a long time i was a youngster and this june will be our 30th anniversary when henry bought it it was already a supper club called crandles which had been really popular in the 50s so this location has been a supper club in one form or another for ages when we first opened it was like people were like getting into swing dancing and and cigars and this rat pat thing and it was like oh my god we fit right into this trend and then suddenly steaks were big again and then and now more lately in the last like five or six years it's like people are in love with supper clubs you know we've always seemed to be in the right place at the right time even though we haven't moved or changed at all our menu has been the same since we opened looking around the room it does feel like a throwback to a different time which is sort of what supper clubs are all about usually they have like a white linen tablecloth it's dark it's got the wood paneling they serve old fashions they serve big steaks everything comes with a salad or a soup and a side dish prices are reasonable it's inviting for you know you don't need to be in a suit and tie you can come dressed however you want thank god for me yeah you're lucky some supper clubs are essentially like a dive bar basically a bar with steaks yeah others are high-end restaurants a popular divy supper club in town is called toby's but honestly i've done so many dive bars lately i feel it's time to live it up a little all on flightless birds dime so after pre-gaming at the tornado room i head to the fanciest supper club in town harvey house so starting in the very center over here we have our everything seasoned cheddar grissini on both ends of our relish tray we have our pickled red and gold beets along with some b and b pickles and some summer sausage summer sausage yum yum as well as our smoked white fish spread i hope you enjoy harvey house is a kind of elevated supper club it still feels old-fashioned and cozy it's just also really really fancy i'm sitting here with craig trost who works with the wisconsin department of tourism he had a big hand in getting top chef here a few years back the supper club's born out of prohibition people wanted to come out and be with their community again and gather at the bar and hang out and so the supper club became this very slow dining experience in wisconsin i was raised in a supper club i was drinking kitty cocktails or shirley temples as some people call them i mean i remember sitting there with my parents for a three-hour dinner craig tells me that certain days are defined by certain foods at a supper club saturday is going to be your prime rib sunday is going to be your broasted chicken then there's the fish the walleye is a classic wisconsin fish We're the home of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior. We have both of those lakes touch our borders. We have the mighty Mississippi along the western coast of the state. So we're bordered by water on three sides. And Wisconsin is the home to 15,000 inland lakes. So we do fish and we do it well. Friday is going to be your fish fry, no matter what time of year. Fish fry is something I can get on board with, as it kind of sounds like the fish and chips we have back home in New Zealand. In Wisconsin, a fish fry is usually cod, perch, bluegill, walleye, smelt, or catfish, fried in beer batter. And it comes with things like coleslaw, baked beans, or fries. There's theories about why the Friday fish fry exists. One story is that it dates back to the Catholic Church really trying to take care of the fishermen because business was slow. And so the concept of Lent, you know, you got to give up something, right? And so a lot of people now, you know, in the Catholic community give up meat. And so a lot of fish is consumed on a Friday. And so hence the Friday fish fry. But it was so popular that it's just every Friday now. It's just every Friday. At this point, we're joined by Shaina. My name is Shaina Papich, and I am the creative director and co-owner of the Harvey House. My husband and I opened it together. So it's really a family restaurant. We have three little kids that run through here. My daughter is sitting at the bar right now. She's four. You can really only do that in Wisconsin. One thing that's been on my mind this whole time, is what makes a supper club a club exactly? Is there a membership or can you just sort of walk in the door? Yeah, it's just a restaurant. It's a style of restaurant. And I think the club is actually interesting because I don't actually think that Midwest people love like a members only club. So I think club is really not the right word. If you were thinking of it in that context, you are definitely not an idiot for not knowing what a supper club is, because I don't think anybody really knows what a supper club is. It's a pretty subjective thing, I think. So there is a lot of different styles of supper clubs throughout the Midwest. And I think there is like a few things that, you know, come up over and over again through supper clubs, but they don't necessarily need to be in supper clubs. So I think there's like a sense of nostalgia. There's they're usually sort of like family owned and run. There's usually some classic sort of Midwestern staples like chicken cordon bleu or a fish fry. They really love their fish here. Fish, fish, fish. We do have the filet of fish sandwich that's delicious that you should definitely try. And that has walleye in it. Is fish a big thing in this area? Walleye is. So walleye is a Lake Superior fish. Cod, fish fry on Fridays is kind of a supper club thing. Drinking is also a big part of supper club life. The old fashioned is a big drink that you will see everywhere. There is a Wisconsin old fashioned. Wisconsin old fashioned is served with muddled fruit on the bottom, usually a cherry and an orange slice with a sugar cube. We serve. We serve our old fashions with brandy instead of bourbon. Give it a little bit of a sweeter flavor. There's ice cream drinks after dinner. There's all kinds of fun little touches to a supper club. And what kind of people are generally coming to a supper club as people coming in on dates? Are they families? Are they people over the age of 90? Like how does it work? So I think that is different in each supper club. I think some supper clubs are really the only restaurant or sit down restaurant in certain communities throughout Wisconsin. So that is sort of like your third space. I think supper clubs in larger places like Madison. We see a lot of special occasion guests and we see a lot of regulars as well. So, you know, it's really a combination. And I guess that's the other main thing, the social aspect. Supper clubs are full of people and they're all here for ages. And so you get to meet new people and make new friends. But there's a lot of relationships that get formed here between guests, between staff, between whomever that are really memorable and special. So before I left. I talked to a few of the people around me just to see what the vibe was. And as is so often the case, when you talk to random people, people can be kind of amazing. My name is Christine Whelan and I am the purpose professor at Emory University. We always see somebody that we know. It's really nice to be able to smile and wave at folks. My name is Chuck Rezon and I'm a researcher. I study psychedelics. So Madison turns out to be a world center of psychedelic research. And so I run most of the programs. At the university, I'm a psychiatrist. So my work is trying to discover new ways to treat depression. Psychedelics have this really powerful signal that they help a lot of people. Again, just random people sat next to me, all fans of supper clubs, all fans of this part of the US. It's the fifth coast. The number of people that pass through here that then go on to impact history is unbelievable. And the things that have been done at this university, antibiotics, here's where they figured out how to make them available to people. And that's what we're going to be doing here at Emory University. So we're going to be looking at how to put pasteurized milk and how to put it in the United States. You think about Frank Lloyd Wright was here. John Muir was here. It's wild. This place is like this intense hotbed of creativity in this sort of area of the country that's more stable, friendly. It's a really, I hate the weather, I'm from California. But in terms of the human element here, it's one of the optimal spots in the United States. So Christine and Chuck were on one side of me. Heather was on the other. She raises money for the cancer center at the local university. A lot of my growing up was in Wisconsin and my dad's side is from Wisconsin. So I have spent a lot of time in supper clubs around the state. She made sure I did things right here. You have not been to a supper club if you've not had a grasshopper at the end of your meal. And before I left Madison, her and her family proved that whole hospitality thing by taking me out to some other local spots. Butterbird for more fun. More food. Then on to watch my first ever college basketball game. Cheers! Go back, Heather! I learned that the Badgers have a New Zealander on the team, Hayden Jones from Nelson. And I realized my journey into supper clubs started with a Kiwi server at the Tornado Steakhouse and ended with another one. This one on the basketball court. 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I think you're completely right. Or a big city. I think it would be, I don't think it would work. I think people are too rushed. And I think people just don't have the personality to slow down and chill the hell out. Yeah, which I can appreciate that. Drawn out, hang out. You went by yourself? I went by, the first one I went by myself. It was actually very funny. I went to the two. The first one I went to, just been in town forever, just on my own, at a table. And when I was being served by Jazz, I just felt so sad because I was just, it's funny when you're, well, yeah, that's what I, I would, I would probably just be annoyed at the service if I went by myself to a Supper Club. It's, you sit down, I had my phone to keep me company. But you're essentially just, it's, it's just very funny when you are in a, at a table that has a chair on the other side and there's no one there. Yeah. One of the things, this is a side dish. One of the things I love most about America, one of the things unintentional is that I love that if, um, if you're on your own, you can go at a, often at a restaurant, there'll be a bar or you can have bar food, especially a diner. I love that. Yeah. We don't really have that in New Zealand. You don't have bars at restaurants in New Zealand? Not, am I making sense? Not really. Like it's very hard in New Zealand. It's, America has made it okay to be alone and to be a loser. You can just eat on your own and you're not judged for it because there are usually seating arrangements that don't make you feel like a dickhead. Right. Yeah. You're not taking a six person booth by yourself, sitting in the middle like this and asking. And, and the Supper did have a bar. Yeah. And if, in another situation, I probably would have sat there, but I was sat at this little table in the corner. And it's just objectively very funny when you're on your own eating a lot of food. Yeah. Yeah. No, I have a very like specific image of them in my mind. I mean, it's, I keep just thinking of chilies of like going to a suburb, a suburban chilies and you got the bar and there's people sitting in there. I'm going to complicate this further. I'm pretty confident I haven't been to a chilies. And so when you make that reference, I don't know what the hell you're talking about. It looks like we've got a chilies episode. Yeah. Okay. Um, there was a mention of, uh, grasshopper at the end of every meal and you just totally glazed over it. I did glaze over it. Look, so a grasshopper, I'm going to talk in general terms here cause I'm worried if I get specific, I'll fuck it up. No. So this thing that I'm deeply into, uh, in Wisconsin and in supper club culture is that they are really into creamy cocktails. I'm a creamy cocktail man. I always have a bottle of Bailey's in the freezer because it's the creamiest of drinks. And so Wisconsin is as popular as the idea of essentially taking, they're essentially ice cream drink, like a thick shake essentially, or a milkshake, but adding booze in there and that is normalized and it's not childish and everyone is doing it. So a grasshopper, it's green, hence the grasshopper. It's got some kind of alcohol in there. Tell me what it is. It's just creamy, sweet deliciousness. God, it was good. And it's fine. It's normal. And it was great to be in a place where I wasn't being mocked for having a creamy cocktail. Cause in LA people are like, what are you doing? You meant to be shredding for summer. You can't be having that creamy cocktail. That's crazy. I did think you was the insect and that would have been a fun twist and, uh, make it kind of a creepy culty thing. If, everyone has been left was given a grasshopper to crunch down on i am glad we cleared that up yeah very glad we cleared that up i took some other notes that i thought was sort of interesting so i mentioned in the intro that it kind of the whole culture of them came out during the prohibition where people were sort of gathering in these places and making their own fun either with alcohol or without oh so they were this was illegal uh the origin of them was legal now they are very legal did you feel a bit naughty then um i did i felt a bit naughty when i was eating alone yeah that felt like i was up to something weird uh but apparently again i wish i had more details on this but in my brief research into this topic apparently the first supper club was actually in california not wisconsin what part i don't know okay somewhere just a just a little fact you can hold on to there yeah I like giving out facts that are very broad big and so when you bring them up people will just have more questions yeah yeah and well and not know the follow-ups no and you're not sitting on a computer with internet right now that could tell you the answer to either no no internet here i'm always in flight mode okay every second of the day talking to the creamy cocktails i found a website vine pear i think it's a wine website but they did this big feature purely on the ice cream cocktail and i think it's really interesting and i think a lot of people don't know what it is it's a brandy alexander which i sip to the bar inside our 175 year old supper club and former inn in southeast in wisconsin it tasted like a posh dark chocolate milkshake with a boozy edge sporting a creamy texture as soft as silk this is great food writing right here but the place where i drank it might matter more and then it goes on to the next on to speaking about this amazing club and then there's a quote from john die who owns cocktail lounge i find ice cream cocktails to be charming and just a real unique piece of wisconsin he favors the golden cadillac for its booziness and complexity from the addition of herbaceous galliano liqueur quote people in wisconsin can take anything that's bad for you and make it worse for you he says they'll take a burger and put butter on there or take ice cream and put booze in there it's a beautiful place i really like that quote so they're basically just all gotten on board with a boozy ice cream the interior sounds a bit like uh magic castle fair i would say magic holy shit no i'd say it's a supper club you go in there for ages yeah you make a night of it you're drinking you're eating it's a long meal the magic castle is la supper club i think you might be onto something but with magicians running around yeah it's a little and very expensive another fact uh harvey house that boo um bougie one that i went to the mvp for the woman's hockey club uh the woman's hockey team at the olympics caroline harvey because she's called harvey the harvey house hosted her afterwards and apparently she's fucking awesome just a little sports fact that i threw in there for you bonus sports fact for rob another fact do you want to hear it yeah love would love to so um i was told while i was at my bougie supper club um an origin story of why they tend to put um brandy in their old fashions instead of bourbon so apparently when europeans were immigrating over to the united states the wine would go bad these ships took a long time sometimes air got in there disaster they drink the wine disgusting they vomited all up awful so what they'd do is they would spike the wine with brandy and they'd put it in their old fashions instead of bourbon and they'd put it in brandy to make it last longer and therefore you have brandy wine and so somehow that whole put brandy and things stayed in wisconsin and now they tend to put brandy into their old fashion instead of bourbon also they tend to have a sweeter palate here in wisconsin he said and then it got kind of weird a real trip if you order a scotsman old-fashioned generally they're going to ask you if you want it sweet or sour and that simply means do you want it with squirt or seven up i don't know what squirt is or it's just like an off-brand seven up or sprite okay so they're basically just sweetening everything up oh i mean it's uh like club soda instead okay oh i see so it's like club soda or you put seven up and if you want it sweet yeah because it's lemon and lime and syrup finally we had an email months ago that i saved and i thought it's appropriate to read it's from coltrane it's from coltrane great name right yeah wisconsin consistently ranks among america's drunk estates with this comes the wisconsin dive bar and i love unlike any other wisconsin dive bars have their own games special drinks and memorable bartenders they're often situated within the old houses of our european immigrant ancestors and are in residential neighborhoods i live in milwaukee and have eight dive bars within a mile of my house and we live in a residential neighborhood that's an amazing stat yeah i mean in chicago uh when i lived in bucktown there were two three four dive bars within a few blocks really right there like in in a little neighborhood and yeah it was just like that's a house on the corner that's corner bar yeah it's converted into a bar i really like that i like the idea of a house being converted yeah into a bar weirdly i went to a cafe in la last week there wasn't a house that somehow got permission from the other residents to have this bustling cafe in the middle of a residential area it's actually really good cold train ends by saying outsiders will always be greeted with open arms by the locals and i think that's how i would sum up my wisconsin experience it was welcoming those people that woman i met at um the supper club she was like what how long are you here for oh you've never you've never been to a college basketball game come with us the next night she was amazing and she brought me to a bar booked us in at this amazing chicken place the next night went to this college basketball game found out there was a new zealander on the team i'm like holy shit go new zealand so you're college basketball fan now i am go badgers you're always a bit of a bad if you had to pick a sport it would have been basketball basketball yeah nba made it my older brother robert farrier he was very good at sport very good at basketball and so i tried to be like him tried to play basketball not very good tall though so that helped didn't help me yeah not coordinated so i guess pretty bad at catching dribbling running shooting dunking i would i would love to uh watch you play basketball yeah look it wasn't graceful and i tried for a number of years but point being i know the rules so i can watch and understand what the hell is going on maybe we need to find a pickup basketball game in l.a. to go play though i feel like they're always playing out at the beach everywhere okay yeah there's like a there's a court right by our softball fields and there's always games going on there too i was not terrible at three pointers okay so watch out yeah let's see okay a few final items just quickly in regards to evilly whose family is in wisconsin as we said earlier um she is still in a nice attention facility um she's still in a nice attention facility um she's still in a nice attention facility and um when this episode airs we'll have made her um in there for 33 days quite a long time in last week's episode i mentioned how our minister of foreign affairs winston peters had gone and talked to the media and said evilly fucked up she didn't declare a drug conviction from 10 years ago new zealand is washing our hands of things i was talking with my friend dylan about this because we've come in and out of america before and we were like what is this declaration of drugs like there's that winston peters made it sound like there's a form you fill in where when you enter the united states you're handed a form and you sort of tick have you had prior offenses yeah which also though that doesn't warrant being arrested oh to be clear doesn't no doesn't warrant being arrested and yeah no none of that does that has been taken care of it's not an outstanding warrant no absolutely not evilly could have come into the airport screaming 10 years ago yeah i had a conviction that doesn't mean you should lock evilly up for 33 days but just as like i get obsessed with sort of technicalities so i reached out to an immigration attorney about this and i said we've got our minister of foreign affairs saying evilly didn't declare when she entered the america entered america and i said how could she declare and so this is what the immigration attorney told me there isn't a way or a requirement for her to have declared her drug conviction and to match up um to the cbp officer and declare it which doesn't make any kind of sense no idea when she last renewed her green card but green cards generally are valid for 10 years at a time however when you fill out an i-90 form which is the form to um replace um or a newer green card if you take a look at it there's nowhere on the form that you have to disclose arrests convictions charges or anything evilly should hopefully be released on bond by the next time we hear about her case so there is no form when you're applying for your green card there is no form when you're when you arrive in the united states when you're on a green card um she went on to say in regards to bond that's currently being denied in 95 of cases i have a few clients in adelanto right now as well they're just doing everything possible to make people just decide to go back to their home country instead of being detained indefinitely but for many people who are detained this is their home and they're not criminals that's just the messaging they want americans to believe to be able to sleep at night about these detention centers so in summary winston peters and the new zealand government you are no words okay feedback there was a lot of distress about a comment you made um in an episode last week yeah about how we were thinking of ending flight this bird and then we got a webby award and we decided to soldier on yeah that was a joke it was a deadpan joke so i would just like to say as a listener flight this bird you just experienced what i experienced off the internet and i just want to say thank you so much for watching i hope you enjoyed it and i'll see you in the next episode bye we were we were planning to continue to make this show for as long as we can um so i just wanted to allay any fears um alexis wrote in saying i just finished the cheesehead episode and i'm so mad at myself i live in madison and i swore i saw you when i was leaving the badger basketball game in early march but i thought no way that can't be the coolest guy in the world david ferrier is that what that says i added that okay but then um i saw the episode this morning looked at the dates for the cheese competition and realized it probably was you alexis it was me lesson being if you see someone you think you know in a weird place just go up and say hello worst thing that can happen is they go you're crazy i'm not said person dylan says thanks for sharing eberly's story i love the whimsical episodes but this is the kind of journalism that's missing from the u.s media thank you dylan's very kind there are definitely podcasts that cover very um intense topics but um thank you for the kind words you're awesome paula wrote in i'm behind but i just watched the puzzle episode and wanted to give my opinion on easy versus hard puzzle options for a beginner like yourself i find the busier they are the easier they are as you can look for certain items in the picture the best for this in my opinion are puzzles by jan van harshteren harshteren harshteren whether these are available outside of new zealand is a different story however my dad also made me a board with an edge so it just slides under the couch i think that was a suggestion for you rob you can also get felt mats that roll up i framed a heap when i was a bogan teenager and hung them up recently i found these in my parents shed 30 years later parents sheds parents attics and basements great places to look in years on you find all your weird shit from when you're a kid natalie wrote in with a number of um items and i'm going to end on her would you like to hear them rob um my wife natalie you decide that's the game is this your wife okay in regards to the coriander gene i mentioned the coriander gene a long time ago david i am one of the 10 of folks who has the misfiring aldehyde detection system that makes coriander or cilantro aka cilantro taste like soap you humorously suggested that we were more evolved than others this is where things turn i'm not happy about this at all i actually felt quite distressed reading this suggested that we were more evolved than others but sadly the opposite is true way back in the days of yore a relative of coriander was poisonous so early humans had these systems that detected that so we wouldn't eat it however that relative plant died out leaving us with the edible coriander or cilantro of today the detection system and taste and smell has gradually filtered out of humanity due to evolution and is no longer needed so the ones that still have it like you are going to be able to eat them are going to be able to eat them and that's why i'm going to give you a little bit more of a taste of what coriander is and then i'm going to give you a little bit more of a taste of what it's like to be able to eat coriander so i'm going to give you a little bit more of a taste of what it's like to be able to eat coriander so i'm going to give you a little bit more of a taste of what it's like to be able to eat coriander so i'm going to give you a little bit more yeah i think calvin might have it i'm not sure though if he just doesn't like cilantro and is being picky he's not a picky eater though maybe he doesn't like it because it tastes like soap it might be that give him some soap and then give him some cilantro and see cilantro cilantro cilantro give him cilantro and see if he knows the difference it's just a blind taste test eat a bite of this bar of soap grate some soap and then have some cilantro and see uh cruel it does sound like i am advocating for something quite mean just a little tiny drop yeah we did when you were a kid um and if you got into trouble or swore i will wash your mouth out with soap and water it was the threat yeah it never happened but it was a threat yeah it was in uh christmas story is that where it came from i don't know if it came from there probably did not come from there but he's gotta eat the bar of soap but my um brother had a very bad mouth as a kid i don't know if it came from there probably did not come from there but he's gotta eat the bar of soap but my um brother had a very bad mouth as a kid filthy mouth swearing or just rude uh both okay and i don't think he would mind the soap so my mom would have she would then do tabasco sauce instead um wait so your mom tried the soap yeah and he was like yum yum like yeah let's let's let's do bring it bring and so she swapped it out for hot sauce hot sauce how did that go down he didn't like that did it um change his behavior no no still still the same uh okay so the next uh it's appropriate the next line in this email my crazy mom i haven't pre-read this we'll cut it if it's inappropriate my mom is a true weirdo and has done a large number of bizarre things over the years but one of the silliest was the following story which i'm inspired to tell by the story of the monkeys getting into the beer that you told on an episode of the show side of just listen to i don't even remember that episode it was vaguely familiar a long long time ago at one point one of her many jobs was a night security guard at a shopping center she was walking around about 4 a.m and heard a noise behind her and saw a crab scuttling down the aisle center towards her befuddled she went to the bakery and asked the bakers there who would come in early to make to bake their wares for the day for a cardboard box they gave it to her she went back and tried to get the crab into the box without touching it and couldn't so she stuck her foot under the box to try and flip it in there and it latched onto her foot with its claw you can see this coming so here she is hopping around with a crab on her foot inside a suburban shopping mall at 4 a.m we better fucking learn where that crab came from at the end of the story i'm gonna be annoyed trying to pry it off with her other foot eventually she wearing shoes i guess open toed sandals maybe i'm imagining her mom's just bare foot in the mall wandering around at 4 a.m which is a very kiwi thing to do yeah eventually she kicked her own foot out from underneath her and fell into a shop window setting off the alarm at which point her manager radioed her to find out what the hell is going on forcing her to have to tell him that she'd fallen into a shop a shoe shop to be specific whilst trying to kick a crab off her foot from memory i was quite young when i heard the story someone came up to help her they got it off safely and into the box so we all want to know turns out the crab was from the sea food shop and a notorious escapee they called him alfred crabs do like to escape i remember in biology class at back at bethlehem college the private christian school i attended very homophobic back in the day dr margaret layton who would she's the best teacher at making you feel guilty as hell for anything the crabs escaped from the tank in the biology lab great escapees crabs and when we came into the class a bunch of them were dead some of them and she got so angry blamed you for it she did i think blame someone for letting them loose but they escaped on their own crabs and octopus great escapees i mean i think maybe they both know they're about to be killed and eaten i think that is the case seafood we think that seafood isn't smart some of the smartest shit out there yeah i mean octopus oh my god i could watch octopus videos for hours all animals are amazing but the octopus they can fit in a jar they can take a lid off the jar yeah they can blend into any environment they're sort of friendly they'll all see an octopus teacher where that guy was fucking the octopus it's like crazy was he fucking the octopus in that no okay pretty much it was it's been a while i don't know okay just doing that's the boys no that was me doing a joke but that was the boys where the deep yes the deep was fucking an octopus played by tilda swinton at tilda swinton yep i love that it makes me like the boys again a show that we love but has this last season has fallen off a bit uh if you have any feedback flightless bread chat at gmail.com uh if you have thoughts feelings corrections um over on patreon this week uh rob and i play uh the marriage game where we attempt to get to know each other even more intimately than we do now um that was a suggestion from one of our patrons yeah that's patreon.com slash flightless bird a great way to support us obviously patreon but if you just want to give us a star rating on apple podcasts or spotify and leave us a review that is fucking algorithm it helps it gets us out there um very proud of our um our wonderful ratings at the moment so thanks for giving us good ratings yeah only rate though if you like the show star don't be a negative nancy yeah don't bring us down don't be that guy or girl we'll see you next week see you next week you