Why don't they just make more? There's whole bunches of pigs.
Or jack up the price? Or do what NFL teams do which is sell "seat licenses", where they charge you to sit in line then also charge you for what you want to buy.
Many examples of similar phenomena elsewhere. I stood in line at Hot Doug's in Chicago twice, decided it was ridiculous both times and left without getting anywhere close.
What's your beef, Heebie?
Anyway, paying someone to wait in line is just another stupid perk of being rich, so fuck those guys. Wait in line (or do they do take-out?) if you want to eat there.
Having 5 hours to spend all morning in line is also a perk of being...something. Being not me.
I've never eaten at Franklin's, but I've read that he's considered a good guy who shares his techniques publicly.
And it occurs to me that much as I love BBQ, I haven't had all that much of it at restaurants. Smoque, which is the popular spot in Chicago, is fucking amazing--notably better than anything else I've had--but I have no idea how it compares to black joints on the South Side, or to a place like Franklin's.
Also, who can wait in line for lunch for four or five hours? It's insane! Some entrepreneur needs to bring a cart serving breakfast.
If the breakfast cart was good, you'd just have to start lining up at 2:00 a.m for that.
7 is right. There's a good business opportunity for someone there. Just cook barbecue earlier than they do, show up with a cart and start selling it to people so they can eat barbecue while they wait in line.
Anyway, paying someone to wait in line is just another stupid perk of being rich, so fuck those guys.
Yesterday the Supreme Court, in a surprising fuck you to rich guys, banned lawyers from sending people to hold a place in the bar section oral argument line. The DC version of gourmet scenesters I guess.
All the oral argument lines or just the express (12 arguments or less) line?
The rule with the "doubles" vendors on the street here is that you go to the guy with the longest line next to his cooler. I don't generally partake myself, because food poisoning.
I tried to go to Franklin's a few years ago, not knowing it had blown up. It was late enough that after maybe 20 minutes they came out and said they were out of basically everything, but there were a few scraps and ends left if that floats your boat.
I refuse to believe that the Franklin's is notably more delicious than any other reasonably high quality barbecue.
2-3 years ago, it definitely was. Since Mickelthwait, La Barbecue, and now Kerlin have opened, it's really only worth doing once in your life. Also, the pre-orders are now vacuum sealed, rather than smoked the night before, so that's no longer a viable option.
Why don't they just make more?
I believe he still personally monitors all the smokers or trains people up over a really long apprenticeship before he's willing to set them loose.
Smoque, which is the popular spot in Chicago, is fucking amazing--notably better than anything else I've had--but I have no idea how it compares to black joints on the South Side
We liked Honey1 better, and got a very basic tips and links from there when it was on Western near Fullerton. It's moved to 47th Street. Sides are not much there and considered beside the point.
For amazing sides and very good BBQ, similar to Smoque but less out-of-the-way and crowded, try Rub at Western & Lunt, almost in Evanston.
For a while I was getting my hair cut at a place here that takes your name down on a chalkboard and then calls it out two or three hours later. It was a very good haircut for a good price, and you didn't have to wait there the whole time -- but you had to wander back near the time they'd estimated, and in the meanwhile you risked drifting into the world's worst bookstore.
It definitely caters to a certain kind of privilege, not wealth but the ability to waste several hours on the weekend, or living in the neighborhood and not working from nine to five, so you can go during the week in the middle of the day.
I ended up finding a place that's almost as good and does online appointments. But waiting in line sure is a thing for some people.
I remember waiting and waiting, and half the time thinking how stupid it was, and the rest of the time thinking I was special for waiting for this awesome haircut.
It helped that one time I got a kind of bad haircut there. Broke the spell.
They should start taking people from the end of the line.
For a while I was getting my hair cut at a place here that takes your name down on a chalkboard and then calls it out two or three hours later
Is it on Valencia?
12 That looks delicious.
I was traveling for a few weeks in Spain way back in the day when I realized I really needed a haircut about my third or fourth day in Granada. There were two barbers on the town square. One guy had a line out the door and the other had no wait at all. Being a tourist with limited time you can guess which one I went to. My gf spent the next 2 hours in the hotel room trying to fix my haircut.
do they do take-out?
They do, but they have a minimum order of (IIRC) $100, and more importantly they require a reservation. And those are booked months out.
Pretty sure I first saw this somewhere other than the Daily Mail.
I wonder what future cultural historians will do with the fact that intensely fetishized gluttony is the defining feature of the bourgeois of our age.
21: I don't see how that could possibly work. Wouldn't everybody at the front of the line just leave it and go to the back?
22: Isn't that pretty standard as far as human culture goes? "Look at me eat this thing, and how much of it I'm eating, and how pointlessly stupid I'm being to waste so much time caring about this HAHAHAHAHAHAAA TAKE THAT PEASANTS" seems pretty common.
Since Mickelthwait, La Barbecue, and now Kerlin have opened, it's really only worth doing once in your life.
I've done none of these!
I've done the Lockhart barbecues. And I like some of the Heebieville ones.
Is it on Valencia?
No, crossing the bay to wait 3 hours for a haircut is way too much trouble. It's the one by the bookstore that sells first editions of Edmund Wilson's lesser works and Kindling and Four Quartets t-shirts.
"sells" s/b "displays as if for purchase"
22: Been done for decades
Fredric Jameson, Ancients and Postmoderns, 2015
But I want to argue that it is exacerbated in the modern period, and very specifically in all the arts we characterize as modernist, and that it is exacerbated in the modernist period for a specific historical reason, namely the process of differentiation characterizing modernity in general. "Differentiation" is a useful term and concept invented by Niklas Luhmann, and it designates the tendency of reality in the modern period to differentiate itself into distinct semiautonomous levels which we come to think of as multiple and coexisting realities with their own specific intelligibilities, each semiautonomous and relatively distinct from the other. Thus, to take an easy example, that of the academic disciplines: their differentiation from that initial, primordial magma which is theology can be documented and dated with some accuracy. The trajectory of this immense historical process--in which Philosophy separates itself out from Theology, and the Law and the Natural Sciences from Philosophy, only then to undergo further differentiation themselves, as when Chemistry and then Biology become separate disciplines in their own right--this process can stand as a kind of model of the kind of dynamic of differentiation that is seemingly reversed in our own postmodern period (where, for example, Biology folds back into Astronomy, and Linguistics and Anthropology back into the thing we now call Theory).
Always been foodie status-seekers of course, talking wine round Sappho's lounge; the difference now is the loss of midcult and masscult after the end of the great compression, iow, we are self-consciously abandoning egalitarian ideals held within living memory and enshrining difference as a moral virtue.
Brilliant genius-level essays on Rubens and Wagner so far; I love this guy
try Rub at Western & Lunt
Cool, thanks.
try Rub at Western & Lunt
Hey, the train goes there from Waukegan!
26: I got a pair of pants (on sale) from the men's expensive hipster clothing store near there.
Speaking of sales, I just spent way too much money on the Criterion half off sale.
Franklin BBQ is pretty awesome, and he is a very nice guy. I used to eat there back when it was a trailer and there was no or little wait. We had it for our wedding party as well, and Franklin himself volunteered the time to show me how to cut the brisket when I went to pick it up even though there was 4-hour line (because there is a technique to cutting brisket and he was obsessed that I know it before serving my guests).
In Austin, I would say the only place that really compares for brisket are la Barbecue, John Mueller's, and maybe Freedman's. Micklethwait and Kerlin are both solid. All of the above are better than the Lockhart joints.
Franklin used to work for John Mueller, but Mueller didn't teach him to cook brisket. The guy who eventually took over la Barbecue, John Lewis, used to work with Franklin when Franklin BBQ was just a trailer. I believe they learned to awesome brisket together and may have competed as a team at bbq contests. Not sure why Lewis left Franklin, but he did and I don't think it was without rancor.
Before opening John Mueller's BBQ, John Mueller used to be the pitmaster at la Barbecue, which is owned by his sister. There was some heavy-as-shit family issues and he was eventually run out of that business. And the last I saw, the current pitmaster at Freedman's was a guy who trained under John Lewis at la Barbecue.
Franklin cooks approximately 1100 pounds of brisket a day. That's a lot. And it sells out in hours. He feels he can't cook any more than that and maintain the quality he wants. Maybe he's right, I don't know. I do know that when they first moved into their current building, he had big plans to be a lunch and dinner joint and a happy hour spot, but the demand overwhelmed that vision, and he just rolled with it. He's also had many, many offers to franchise and expand, and he's turned them all down. Seriously, the dude could have made bucco bucks by now (or at least much more than he already has) by simply trading on his name. But he hasn't. Take that for what it's worth.
anyway, enough history and shit.
I love Franklin but have not eaten there in years because the line is ridiculous. Apparently during last year's SXSW he did an Austin-residents day where an Austin resident could reserve a spot in line via text message. The line was still 4 hours. Would love to see more experiments with that line and how to reserve or claim spots.
21: I'm pretty sure they could get most of the benefits of their approach by taking people from the queue in random order, instead of last-in, first-out. That would also eliminate the incentive for people at the front to leave in order to later rejoin the queue from the back.
I feel like that approach works mostly when you aren't dealing with a very limited supply of goods in a time sensitive way. Going with the last person in line works fine when it has the effect of people just showing up when it's convenient for them rather than ending up in a competition to see who can get there first and then all standing around for hours. But if you're certain to just run out at some point before everyone has gotten some barbecue not lining up seems more likely to (1) have people showing up the exact same way in the hopes of maximizing their chances because they'll be standing around longer, or (2) lots of people hiding just around the corner hoping to sprint to the end of the line right when the place opens and get in there first, or just general chaos and everyone hating everyone else. So it wouldn't actually make things much different except it would be way less predictable and way more stressful for everyone involved.
I would say the only place that really compares for brisket are la Barbecue, John Mueller's, and maybe Freedman's. Micklethwait and Kerlin are both solid. All of the above are better than the Lockhart joints.
If we are just talking brisket, I agree. Mickelthwait, to take an example, also has great sides (e.g., jalapeño cheese grits, homemade bread), pork ribs, sausage, and occasional special items (e.g., goat). And I don't think I've ever waited longer than 15 minutes.
Yesterday the math department down here went to Bill Miller's bbq, which was pretty yuck.
Also, there's so many reasons already to be jealous of Austin, that it's totally annoying that they get the best of a culinary cuisine associated with rural towns.
Also, as far as I can remember, they have the Alamo.