Waco Is Weird

[JimmyJames 12271]

The twin peaks biker shootout and it’s aftermath was off the rails nuts. 

[DanRydell 799]

They did get an In-n-Out and a Potbelly, although the Potbelly already closed

[Longhornstampede 3186]

Why do they call it the Big O? I mean it's just a fucking schooner of beer exactly the same as I can get at Fred's in FW

[RPM 26354]

12 hours ago, C-Man said:

And Steve Martin. That's about the only positive thing I'll say about Waco, the asshole of Texas.

[RPM 26354]

dp

Edited January 5, 2022 by RPM

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4977]

13 hours ago, The Ace of Aces said:

I contend Tyler is weirder, as hard as that is to believe. Both should be nuked. 

Lol, ok

[Herbie Hancock 7376]

4 hours ago, Longhornstampede said:

Why do they call it the Big O? I mean it's just a fucking schooner of beer exactly the same as I can get at Fred's in FW

You absolutely can not get a schooner of beer at Fred’s in FW. 

[El Diablo 4232]

In the late 70's some civic minded fools organized "The Great Texas Raft Race" on the Brazos. It's only 3 or so miles from MCC's boat launch ramp, the starting point of said "race", to downtown, the finish line. It was pretty kooky and I don't know if it was intentional or not but the whole thing was just a floating parade of drunks. If you've ever been to the Just For Fun parade in San Marcos it was like that but with the chance of drowning. 

[El Diablo 4232]

16 hours ago, RDCanecutter said:

I used to work summer gigs in Waco where I'd rent the cheapest shack in the ghetto (basically, anywhere in the actual physical center of Waco that people never go to unless they are a cop or they live there) and amuse myself by wandering around on foot. So I figure that alone made Waco weirder, me being there.

But wait, there's more.

One day I was walking along a sidewalk in a fairly well-populated section, and there was a dead dog on the sidewalk. And it was a skeleton. As in, in this alleged human neighborhood, a dog had died in front of a house, ok, that could happen, dogs die... but not only did no one dispose of the carcass, but they let it bloat, rot, settle back down into leathery scraps, and then slowly turn to dust and bones, on the fucking sidewalk near several houses. Imagine the great greasy bloated flies, the crows pecking at it. None of these Waco trash could be bothered to even get a shovel and toss it into a pile of rubbish, much less bury it. Most likely none of the fat fucking Waco bastards ever even used the sidewalk.

That was our avant garde art installation. I would have thought that you of all people could appreciate it. The artist went on to bigger things.

 

[Native Horn 3515]

22 minutes ago, El Diablo said:

In the late 70's some civic minded fools organized "The Great Texas Raft Race" on the Brazos. It's only 3 or so miles from MCC's boat launch ramp, the starting point of said "race", to downtown, the finish line. It was pretty kooky and I don't know if it was intentional or not but the whole thing was just a floating parade of drunks. If you've ever been to the Just For Fun parade in San Marcos it was like that but with the chance of drowning. 

To be fair, Austin did the same thing in the 80s on Town Lake.

[El Diablo 4232]

Just now, Native Horn said:

To be fair, Austin did the same thing in the 80s on Town Lake.

Those were different times. When we were doing the raft race the drinking age was 18 and Texas didn't have an open container law. Cutoff blue jean shorts were de rigueur. 

[Longhornstampede 3186]

1 hour ago, Herbie Hancock said:

You absolutely can not get a schooner of beer at Fred’s in FW. 

Not anymore. They closed for their move

[TexasEd 8077]

22 hours ago, Samson's Wig said:

You didn't even mention the Chip and Joanna Gaines sex cult.

 

22 hours ago, Upgrayedd said:

Wait, what?

 

21 hours ago, Samson's Wig said:

If you know, you know.

 

21 hours ago, futureman said:

tell us more. 

 

21 hours ago, Samson's Wig said:

You couldn't handle the details.

 

21 hours ago, futureman said:

oh I think most people can handle made-up bullshit. 

 

20 hours ago, futureman said:

I wanted to hear about the sex cult. 

 

Paddles made of shiplap and front porch wings converted to sex swings...

 

Allegedly

[Al_4_ISU 12485]

6 hours ago, Longhornstampede said:

Why do they call it the Big O? I mean it's just a fucking schooner of beer exactly the same as I can get at Fred's in FW

This is a thing I've noticed in Texas especially.  Why do they put the state of Texas on Bud Light bottles?  Why did they rename Michelob Amber Bock to Ziegenbock?

Make people think something is special and unique to wherever they are and they are more likely to buy it.  You can walk into a million bars and get the exact same thing as a Big O, but because they call it something different, people think it's something different and special or whatever.

Marketing 101.

Edited January 5, 2022 by Al_4_ISU

[C-Man 27262]

1 hour ago, Longhornstampede said:

Not anymore. They closed for their move

They've had a second location since 2011 that's open during the OG Fred's move to Camp Bowie Road. I haven't been there but I have a sneaking suspicion you can get a schooner there.

[crash_davis 23115]

People will live anywhere for affordable housing. Fuck that.

Waco, College Station, most of the ass of nowhere towns throughout this state and the nation, you couldn't pay me to live there. Life's too short to life somewhere miserable.

[RPM 26354]

48 minutes ago, TexasEd said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paddles made of shiplap and front porch wings converted to sex swings...

 

Allegedly

I heard they really knock out walls and open things up.

[SimonBolivar 10959]

15 hours ago, Post Oak said:

I like it here.

I was going to post that I do too, but it's complicated. I did enjoy buying a brand new house for $250k last April that is now nearing $300k in value, but Waco is a frustrating place to live at times. Our traffic has become terrible where it takes me a good 45min to get from TSTC to Robinson on Fridays and near holidays. Our cultural options are lacking as with any city that has a metro of 250K people, but it's easy to daytrip to Dallas or Austin for those so it could be worse.  I'd like better restaurants but we have seen a ten fold improvement in that department in the last decade. Baby steps I suppose.

[SimonBolivar 10959]

1 hour ago, Al_4_ISU said:

This is a thing I've noticed in Texas especially.  Why do they put the state of Texas on Bud Light bottles?  Why did they rename Michelob Amber Bock to Ziegenbock?

Yeah it's weird.

 

 

 

 

Edited January 5, 2022 by SimonBolivar

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Al_4_ISU said:

This is a thing I've noticed in Texas especially.  Why do they put the state of Texas on Bud Light bottles?  Why did they rename Michelob Amber Bock to Ziegenbock?

Make people think something is special and unique to wherever they are and they are more likely to buy it.  You can walk into a million bars and get the exact same thing as a Big O, but because they call it something different, people think it's something different and special or whatever.

Marketing 101.

Wait until you hear about Texas Edition pickup trucks.

[Al_4_ISU 12485]

4 minutes ago, SimonBolivar said:

Yeah it's weird.

 

 

 

 

I mean, I'd get it if it were a Texas chain and not something that's full blown national like DQ or Anheuser-Busch.

[CHIEF 5095]

21 hours ago, SimonBolivar said:

They are the best people in the world and I think their religion is perfectly normal. The fact that 10% of my business comes from them has nothing to do with that statement.

 

My parents use to live in Waco, my mother was the field editor for Texas Agriculture. She worked with a guy, Jerry, that was part of the Homestead Heritage group. We have been to several of their "fairs", great people. They are very "mainstream" in their religious beliefs, many are former Mennonites, and Amish, left over differences in religious beliefs, but still like aspects of that simple lifestyle. They drive to work, and have normal jobs, but are still Old School at home.

CHIEF

[RDCanecutter 26473]

2 minutes ago, Al_4_ISU said:

I mean, I'd get it if it were a Texas chain and not something that's full blown national like DQ or Anheuser-Busch.

Chains in Texas act kind of like people in Texas. The ones who are really from Texas act fairly normal. 

[Al_4_ISU 12485]

9 minutes ago, FirstTimeCaller said:

Wait until you hear about Texas Edition pickup trucks.

All of our TV stations are out of Minnesota and Wisconsin and their Ford dealers all do something called the "Northland" edition which is just supposed to be all lumberjack-y or something.

Edited January 5, 2022 by Al_4_ISU

[Trey3216 15356]

4 minutes ago, Al_4_ISU said:

I mean, I'd get it if it were a Texas chain and not something that's full blown national like DQ or Anheuser-Busch.

THey started making Ziegenbock to compete directly with Shiner, which back then was pretty much limited to Texas and surrounding states.  So it wasn't that they changed the name of Michelob Amber to Ziegenbock here, it's that they started brewing that beer for a specific market (here) and that was that.  

[texashorne 1178]

When I was a student at UT, I went to visit my grandparents there around Thanksgiving. On T+1, I left to attend the Texas/Aggy game in College Station. I realized I forgot my gameday shirt in Austin so I stopped at Wal Mart in Waco to get another one. I asked the old lady in the clothing department if they had any University of Texas apparel. She said " Nope. All we have is aggy, longhorn and Baylor Bear." I told her longhorn would have to do. 

 

Also my grandad told me the story about Lovers Leap. Its a cliff along the Brazos where 2 teenagers killed themselves and thus gave it the name. Only thing odd about being told this story was me being about 5 years old at the time.  

 

[RDCanecutter 26473]

3 hours ago, El Diablo said:

In the late 70's some civic minded fools organized "The Great Texas Raft Race" on the Brazos. It's only 3 or so miles from MCC's boat launch ramp, the starting point of said "race", to downtown, the finish line. It was pretty kooky and I don't know if it was intentional or not but the whole thing was just a floating parade of drunks. If you've ever been to the Just For Fun parade in San Marcos it was like that but with the chance of drowning. 

I will say that I greatly enjoyed the waterways of Waco. Everything I really liked-- MCC, Cameron Park, (what was left of) Downtown-- was near either the Bosque or the Brazos. My free time veered dangerously close to recreational drinking, so I mixed it up with lots of kayaking on the rivers and Lake Waco (next to and over Waco's Atlantis, Spiegelville.) I was told that there were snakes and big-ass nut-chomping turtles everywhere, but that translated into my native Alabamese as "rivers."

In Waco I noticed lots of abandoned apartment complexes, sort of as if the Orcs had driven everyone out of Osgiliath. Some of them were only visible from the Brazos, with abandoned boat landings.

It was while kayaking that I told a bunch of heathen children on shore to quit throwing stuff at a duck. So the kids started throwing stuff at me.

[RDCanecutter 26473]

9 minutes ago, Al_4_ISU said:

All of our TV stations are out of Minnesota and Wisconsin and their Ford dealers all do something called the "Northland" edition which is just supposed to be all lumberjack-y or something.

And that's OK.

[SimonBolivar 10959]

Just now, texashorne said:

 

 

Also my grandad told me the story about Lovers Leap. Its a cliff along the Brazos where 2 teenagers killed themselves and thus gave it the name.

 

A girl in my high school fell off of it and broke her neck, yet somehow survived.

 

Cameron Park (Where Lovers' Leap is located is probably Waco's best asset with 416 acres and 20 miles of trails less than 1.5 miles from the Alico Building. It also has a fantastic zoo inside of it.

 

 

[Al_4_ISU 12485]

18 minutes ago, Trey3216 said:

THey started making Ziegenbock to compete directly with Shiner, which back then was pretty much limited to Texas and surrounding states.  So it wasn't that they changed the name of Michelob Amber to Ziegenbock here, it's that they started brewing that beer for a specific market (here) and that was that.  

It tastes fucking exactly the same as Amber Bock, IMO.  

[burntorangebongos 10752]

4 hours ago, El Diablo said:

In the late 70's some civic minded fools organized "The Great Texas Raft Race" on the Brazos. It's only 3 or so miles from MCC's boat launch ramp, the starting point of said "race", to downtown, the finish line. It was pretty kooky and I don't know if it was intentional or not but the whole thing was just a floating parade of drunks. If you've ever been to the Just For Fun parade in San Marcos it was like that but with the chance of drowning. 

There was a race like that on town lake back in the late 80s. People would decorate rafts and have kegs on them. I'm  talking rafts made with lumber and Styrofoam. Talk about a bad idea. At the end, people were burnt to a crisp and drunker than cooter brown. I did that once with coworkers and it was brutal because we didn't have enough water with us. I think they only held it twice or so. I dont think anyone died but no way they would be able to do shit like that these days.

[Covri 6253]

29 minutes ago, Al_4_ISU said:

It tastes fucking exactly the same as Amber Bock, IMO.  

I’d suspect any beer not made from corn tastes the same to you.  

[Bill Brasky 1459]

On 1/4/2022 at 10:03 AM, statsman said:

I did not grow up in Waco, but graduated HS there before matriculating at UT. I figured out quickly that I needed to get out of there. My folks still live there. 
Here is a top 10 list of Waco weirdness. They are not just a list of tragedies, although most are tragic. This is a compilation of bad things happening and civil society failing to respond in a normal or honest manner, making things…weird. In roughly chronological order- feel free to google for details

1. The career and murder of “sort of journalist” William Cowper Brann. 
2. The lynching of Jesse Washington 

3. 1926 Baylor-TAMC football riot, killing an Aggie. 
4. Incredibly successful and influential WHS football coach Paul Tyson relieved of duties due to suspicion of illicit relations with players. 
5. 1982 Lake Waco murders, with a strong possibility that the killer(s) were never found and innocent (of that crime, at least) men were executed. 
6. The1990 incident where two (married to other people) Waco news anchors went missing, only to be found in a clandestine tryst in New Mexico. 
7. Branch Davidians

8. Dave Bliss

9. Art Briles

10. Twin Peaks

wow. Can any community top that, for weirdness? I listed ten items and didn’t even need to add Kenneth McDuff’s murder spree while a paroled student at TSTI. 
Anyone want to argue that Waco isn’t weird?

7. isn't Waco.   That would be like something happening in Pflugerville and attributing it to Austin 

 

I'll add the complete cult-like obsession people have with the Fixer Upper people and how it somehow turned Waco into a tourist destination 

[BonzoMontreaux 1093]

I have family ties in Waco going back over 120+ years.  It's a great place to live growing up if you don't know anything else exists north of West or south of Lorena.

Moved the family to Austin in 94 and never gave moving back second thought after graduating UT.  Our remaining parents still live in the area.

That top 10 list in addition to the Tornado brings up a lot of recollections from my own memories as well as stories told to me.  

 

[Al_4_ISU 12485]

39 minutes ago, Covri said:

I’d suspect any beer not made from corn tastes the same to you.  

Absolutely.  Guinness might as well be Sierra Nevada Pale as far as I can tell.  Busch Light or GTFO.

[South Austin 52604]

Waco reminds me of Derry, Maine, the fictitious town in Stephen King's It and other novels.  It feels like there's some underlying evil in the town's essence that manifests itself every few years in these fucked up events. 

Edited January 5, 2022 by South Austin

[RDCanecutter 26473]

49 minutes ago, burntorangebongos said:

There was a race like that on town lake back in the late 80s. 

I think every river town had a raft race in the 70s-80s. Lots of folks floating half-drunk on homemade simulations of shipwreck debris, one or two dork teams paddling hard, actually trying to "win."

[SimonBolivar 10959]

Just now, South Austin said:

Waco reminds me of Derry, Maine,

[Post Oak 20273]

2 hours ago, SimonBolivar said:

I was going to post that I do too, but it's complicated. I did enjoy buying a brand new house for $250k last April that is now nearing $300k in value, but Waco is a frustrating place to live at times. Our traffic has become terrible where it takes me a good 45min to get from TSTC to Robinson on Fridays and near holidays. Our cultural options are lacking as with any city that has a metro of 250K people, but it's easy to daytrip to Dallas or Austin for those so it could be worse.  I'd like better restaurants but we have seen a ten fold improvement in that department in the last decade. Baby steps I suppose.

Yep, I wish it was better but it's improving. 

 

Your commute is fucked.  Can't take 35 and the Loop can be a shitshow at rush hour. 

When I have to go and see my folks in Axtell from Hewitt, I've started taking 35 to LaSalle to Orchard Ln to the Loop.  It's not ideal but at least I'm moving.

[Brisketexan 105336]

In 3rd grade, we hade to make a map of the state of Texas, showing the placement of several cities.  I lost points because I spelled the city "Wacko."  I would like those points back, please.

[Post Oak 20273]

1 hour ago, Bill Brasky said:

7. isn't Waco.   That would be like something happening in Pflugerville and attributing it to Austin 

 

I'll add the complete cult-like obsession people have with the Fixer Upper people and how it somehow turned Waco into a tourist destination 

I'm shocked Waco has turned into the tourist destination that it is.  Shocked.

I'm not complaining.  The Silos don't affect me much and overall it's good for the city I think

[South Austin 52604]

9 minutes ago, Post Oak said:

When I have to go and see my folks in Axtell from Hewitt, I've started taking 35 to LaSalle to Orchard Ln to the Loop.  It's not ideal but at least I'm moving.

[Al_4_ISU 12485]

26 minutes ago, South Austin said:

Waco reminds me of Derry, Maine, the fictitious town in Stephen King's It and other novels.  It feels like there's some underlying evil in the town's essence that manifests itself every few years in these fucked up events. 

When some buddies and I tailgated at Floyd-Casey in 2008, we all agreed that there was an "Indian burial ground" vibe in the air and that we just weren't welcome in this place.  I've never felt that anywhere else in my life, and at that time the only Waco weirdness I was aware of was the Branch Davidians and the Baylor basketball murder.

I'll never forget walking across a deserted tailgate lot to a row of porta pots with no one in line, and opening an unlocked porta pot to find an old woman in a Mennonite dress sitting on it.  I froze in terror and she slowly raised her head up to look me straight in the eye with an angry scowl.

I just slammed the door shut, turn, ran, and screamed like a little bitch.

[The Gimp 349]

[El Diablo 4232]

12 minutes ago, Al_4_ISU said:

When some buddies and I tailgated at Floyd-Casey in 2008, we all agreed that there was an "Indian burial ground" vibe in the air and that we just weren't welcome in this place.  I've never felt that anywhere else in my life, and at that time the only Waco weirdness I was aware of was the Branch Davidians and the Baylor basketball murder.

I'll never forget walking across a deserted tailgate lot to a row of porta pots with no one in line, and opening an unlocked porta pot to find an old woman in a Mennonite dress sitting on it.  I froze in terror and she slowly raised her head up to look me straight in the eye with an angry scowl.

I just slammed the door shut, turn, ran, and screamed like a little bitch.

The town IS named after an Indian tribe that once called the area home. The Texas Ranger Hall of Fame/Museum on the river had to stop some expansion construction a few years back because they were digging up human remains. Not sure if they were Indians or if it was an unmarked pauper's cemetery. 

[Kyrie Eleison 9312]

meh...i enjoy the pace here.

[Brisketexan 105336]

1 minute ago, Kyrie Eleison said:

meh...i enjoy the pace here.

Just what someone getting a shiplap spanking from Joanna Gaines would say....

[Kyrie Eleison 9312]

well duh...

and the duck hunting here is underrated...

[Brisketexan 105336]

Still gotta get my first hunt of the year in.....

[burntorangebongos 10752]

Regarding the 82 Lake Waco murders, that was that decade's dirty LEOs fucking up justice that was more blatantly obvious than the Twin Peaks biker deal. AND NO ONE EVER CORRECTED IT OR WAS HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE INJUSTICE.  Can that happen anywhere else? I dont think so.