07/20/2018
Pig Vycious BBQ,
Joey. I would like to attempt to clear a few things up with you. Let's go back about 10 years. Now, I have no idea what your local economy was like at the time, but from San Francisco, through Arizona, and into Austin Texas, it was pretty fu***ng bunk. Most of the people I knew were tired as hell of working jobs that took up all of our time and failed to even provide the basics. Homes were being repo'd by the banks, triple-reverse mortgages were creating neo-ghost towns in places that used to be part of the comfortable middle class. I've always been a member of the working poor and at the time I was only working more and getting even poorer. So were my friends. The best part of all of it was that property owners were also desperate.
In order to pay the taxes on the empty lots they had slated for development when the economy went to s**t, landlords all over town opted to lease space on vacant properties to whoever could pay the rent, whenever they could come up with the cash. A bunch of my friends decided that they'd had enough of working for nothing, pooled their recources, begged, borrowed, and in some cases, I'm sure, stole what they had to in order to build out a mobile kitchen and go to work for themselves for once. F**k the Man, right? Let's do this. I'm assuming you know exactly what I mean. After all, you're doing it right now.
When I moved to Austin at the edge of a nervous breakdown, I met some good-ass people. People like me in the sense that they didn't feel comfortable doing anything they had been doing all their lives. People who wanted to strike out and at least try to make a living on their own terms for a change. A lot of these people were musicians and artists who couldn't quite do life on the road, but also couldn't stray far from the stage. People who loved to get stupid, have some laughs, drink truckloads of beer, and still be able to contribute to the local culture as well as provide for themselves and their families. This particular confluence of circumstances created the perfect breeding ground for trailers like PiG ViCiOUS.
Jason and Jay set up shop in the winter of 2009 in an empty dirt lot on a corner on the East Side of Austin at a time when relatively few caucasians dared to "brave the East Side," unless you were like us and had been living in ghetto ass hoods for the last 30 years. It had historically been the home of the Hispanic community, rife with Tejano bars, cantinas, run down beer bars that stocked nothing but mountains of warm Bud Light, tortillarias, pinata party stores, mom n pop mercados, kick ass karaoke, and that part of town where if you weren't getting stabbed, you weren't living right. The part of town no one really gave a s**t about unless you had an excess of heart and soul. Within a year, that lot was covered with food trucks owned and operated by other friends we either had or made while sharing our days and nights out there working together, hustling side by side, grinding it out for no more than beer money (if we were lucky), while the world still cowered on the west side of Interstate 35.
There were some amazing trailers at East Side Drive In, like Shelly's (RIP) The Local Yolk, The Vegan Yacht and their amazing Frito Burrito, Bits And Druthers (hands down best fu***ng UK fish n chips in the States), Pueblo Viejo, Mati Greek, and Love Balls with the takoyaki & Japanese-style street food. The first one I worked at was my buddy Tim's double decker British bus, The #19 Bus, named after the famous transit line in London mythologized in the Clash song "Rudie Can't Fail," complete with a mural of Joe Strummer on the side and table seating on the roof. It was like a giant steam roller in there in the summer of 2010, and I'd be in there from 10 am til 3:30 am every day, sweating my ass off, just trying to keep our place in the lot. When the City changed up some regulations pertaining to propane enclosures, he was forced to close it down. Jay had decided he no longer wanted to do daily food service at PiG ViCiOUS, so I ended up stepping in to become Jason's right hand man. He'd handle the managerial side of things, and I'd help with the menu, the online presence, networking, imagery, artwork, soundtrack, and general dysfunction of the overall theme.
But mostly we all just hung out together with our friends and trailer park family, drinking beer, eating each others food, playing music, building things, helping each other with repairs, jumping on line when someone was weeded out, throwing parties, having fundraisers, putting smiles on the public's faces, meeting new and inspirational characters, having babies, losing friends, family members, and lovers, and seeing ourselves on TV, in the news, and doing interviews for radio. We laughed together, bled together, cried together, and some even died together. And for a minute there, we found ourselves thinking, "Holy s**t. This might actually work."
Well, it didn't work. Fast forward to 2013. The moratorium was lifted on development and Austin became a boomtown, forcing us out and back to the nightmare of working for other people. Some of us were more fortunate than others and have had moderate success in avoiding the trappings of wage slavery, which brings me to my point. I reached out to you because PiG ViCiOUS meant something to me. It meant something to a lot of people, both in our own town and all across the globe. It was one of the best things I've ever had the honor of being a part of. It was intensley personnal to me and to everyone involved. It was freedom, it was a dream, it was a symbol that showed people that if our dumb asses could do it, so could they. You saw it, and you did it. You just did it with our name and basic theme.
Now that you know a little about us, I don't feel I have to tell you that I understand what you're doing out there. I know it's hard. Trailers come and go, it ain't as easy as it looks, and you give it your all, all the time. The fact that you've been going for over 4 years says to me that you do it with heart, and you do something that folks enjoy. Those last two things are crucial. I applaud you for it. I do. S**t is rough most of the time and takes a certain kind of stupid to stick it out and see it succeed. You're doing it, my man, so cheers to that. The only thing I take issue with is the obvious use of our thing. If you believe in what you do, why do it under someone else's banner? Why not your own name and aesthetic? Something that tells the world, "THIS IS WHO I AM, GODDAMNIT! BLOW ME!!!" Instead, you chose to tell me that when I contacted you. We got more than a little bit in common, and telling me to f**k off really only serves to f**k you in the end, where you could have had a friend. Now people are talking s**t, and they have the right to do so. As I mentioned, what we did here was very important to a lot of them. We banded together when times were tight and saw each other through a lot of things. We were there for them then and they're here for us now. And that's all on you.
I have no interest in seeing you fail at your endeavor. In fact, I'd be a little bummed if you did. Hell, we were on our way into a brick and mortar when everything went to s**t in Austin, and we still have ideas that may one day become a reality. I'm all for someone going full on DIY. I'd like to see you maintain a long and lively career out there being your own man, and maybe one day have your kid take over the joint. That would be cool as hell. That's what they used to call The American Dream, yo. And that s**t is harder and harder to come by these days, unless you're some privileged, rich co******er who's willing to swallow mouthfulls of corporate/tech cm to achieve it. You don't strike me as that kinda guy. Neither are we.
Change your s**t up a little and you be you. You can't be us - we're already dead.
Be cool, dude. Just think about it.
- PiG ViCiOUS, Austin TX, 2018
https://www.facebook.com/EastSideDriveIn/
Austin's BEST Food Trailer court since 2010. Getting better all the time!
