NBC Affiliate – WGRZ’s Coverage
WIBV Ch. 4’s Coverage
ABC Affiliate – WKBW’s Coverage

Our trip may be over, but the story continues. We finally have time to deliver all our content to you our loyal fans!

Stay tuned over the next few days and weeks as we update the blog with the detailed accounts of our travels in each city. We have TONS of Pictures and HOURS of Video to edit down and deliver to you!

We are thankful for all the support that you have shown us during our Journey, we appreciate the comments, the donations, and those of you who hosted us as we crisscrossed the United States!

If you are just joining us for the first time, please check out our posts from the beginning of the journey until now. Also, you can become a fan on our facebook page and read through our status updates to get an insiders perspective on the trip.

If you are a publisher, please contact us. We would love to produce a book about our travels, we have detailed notes and beautiful imagery to support our stories!

Stay Tuned! The BEST is yet to come!

First stop was the New Orleans CVB to pick up our VIP passes and to collect a list of places of interest. There was a lot of interesting information, but most of the attractions listed were too touristy for the #12hrs crew. At that point we told Renso, “show us the local version of uptown!” —and off we went on another Twelve Hour demolition derby.

It was around this point that Joe broke the news that he’d be leaving the trip—but only temporarily—he had to return to Buffalo to quit his job! He had taken all his available vacation time in order to go on this journey, but the-powers-that-be were unhappy that he was taking it all at once—so they gave him an ultimatum, and he responded. The only catch with this was that Joe’s flight was at 6 am, and since Clark (AKA Mom, AKA The Tour Manager) wasn’t going on it, he wouldn’t be waking everyone up. The crew was going to have to party straight through to wheels-up, or Joe risked losing a ton of money.

We headed to Renso’s house, took some quick showers and charged all our gear—we knew this night was going to run long so we needed to have full power. While at the house, Renso’s roommate introduced us to an incredibly niche genre of Hip Hop called “Sissy-Bounce,” which only exists in New Orleans at this point. He also made us aware that one of the forerunners of the genre, Sissy Nobby, would be performing live at the Dragon’s Den that night!

So what is “Sissy Bounce”? Some things are best described using video:

Needless to say, after witnessing the video we had no choice but to go to this show and experience this fascinating microcosm of the hip hop universe. Ultra-Pride, Dirty South, Hip Hop?! In a musical genre that is known for its homophobia and misogyny? We had to meet these trend setters and witness this social upheaval that started in the dance hall.

It was time to head out and start seeing the sights and tasting the flavors of the creole country. Our first stop was the “Ernie K-Doe: Mother-In-Law Lounge,” this colorful establishment is family run and was established after the death of Ernie K-Doe in 2001. It is a vibrantly colorful establishment, full of live music, life, and the history of “The Emperor of the Universe.”

Upon Renso’s recommendation, we headed to Parasol’s to get “the best Po’ Boys in town.” To be honest, neither Joe nor Steve were overly impressed with the food, but it was filling and gave us enough fuel to drink through the night. Carrie, the bartender at Parasol’s, was a Buffalo native and informed us that Drew Love, one of our favorite bartenders from the Pink, had bought us several shots, long distance. It’s always great meeting people from Buffalo on this trip.

After the Po’ Boys, it was off to Dragon’s Den to check out the Sissy Nobby show. This club was was probably what dudes were looking at when they came up with the word “sweatbox,” it was about 115 degrees in the place and so humid that water droplets glowed around light sources.

Clark went up to the band after the first set, and challenged one of the MCs to an ass shake-off. This was a foolish endeavor since Clark had never tried to “drop it like it’s hot” before. However, over the course of the competition, we were able to capture some hilarious video.

After the Sissy Nobby show, Steve and Jeremy traveled to Harrah’s to participate in some games of chance, while Clark, Renso, and Joe headed to Bourbon
Street for a tour of what the city had to offer. The bar crawl continued for quite awhile, and eventually the boys decided that they needed to head back to Parasol’s to be closer to Renso’s house.

After celebrating the fact that the restaurant was open “after-hours,” Joe headed home to Buffalo, NY to quit his day job. The next morning, Clark and Steve ran into their first logistical screw up and almost missed their flight out to LA. Running through an airport last-minute was inevitable at some point in this trip, but they made the flight.

See ya in LA!

KPIX Van

#12hrs and KPIX Crew Shot

We headed downtown to film our segment for the news. We were “surprised” with a “special” guest, Dave from CBS 5’s travel show. The whole crew was very excited to meet Dave. You can see our antics on KPIX here: Video

"Special Guest" - Dave

Dave gives Joe Crabs and Joe tweets about it.

Dave walked us down to Fisherman’s Wharf and treated us to some delicious crab. Fresh seafood is always so much better than the stuff we get in Buffalo.

Crabs!

Stunning by our whips

After this it was time for the real fun to start. GO CARS! These things are absolutely wild, albeit a little lacking on the torque side (Read: We had to push them up some hills). They also contained a GPS “tour guide” that told us interesting facts about the things we were seeing and constantly reminded us that we weren’t on an officially sanctioned tour and that we should immediately make a U-Turn.

Taking the outside line on the corner

Fisherman's Wharf

We spent the afternoon dashing around the city, seeing the sights, hearing the sounds, chatting up strippers on the corners, and repeatedly disobeying traffic laws. However, the afternoon soon waned and as with most of our tour stops, it all came to an end just a bit too soon. We had to catch our flight to NOLA and so we dropped off our straight-pimpin-whips to the fine people at Go Car Tours and started to beat feet towards the BART.

Golden Gate Bridge

China Town

On our way, we stumbled into a very happening district of the city and grabbed some excellent food at Giordano Bros and Taqueria Zorro. After our meal, we caught the BART to SFO and we were soon on our way to New Orleans!

The Original BART

Additional San Francisco images available on Clark’s Flickr.

Here’s the B-Roll footage from Austin, the full episode is gonna be wild.

When we arrived in Austin we were greeted by Evan from Delaware North (the company that pretty much runs all the retail and food in airports nationwide) he was kind enough to take us out to lunch at The Salt Lick in the Austin airport. Food was AMAZING, try the brisket..no seriously try it, but make sure you leave room for the most loaded baked potatoe I’ve ever seen in my life because you’re going to want to sample that, trust me.

After a welcome but extended stay at the Austin airport we were scheduled to meet up with our host for the night Mr. Dan Northcutt (goes by Northcutt, because he’s rad like that). Now when we first met Northcutt he emailed us telling us of his hot-dog restaurant suggesting we hit it up to grab some hot dogs and cold beers (interestingly enough that’s both their slogan and website (www.hotdogscoldbeers.com) now when someone tells you that they own a hot dog joint you’re not really expecting much. To be honest I thought we were getting picked up by a Texas hick in a pickup with a rocking mullet. I’VE SINCE LEARNED NOT TO JUDGE A BOOK BY IT’S INTRO EMAIL.

Northcutt couldn’t have been more awesome if I invented him for the purpose of this project. Dude was on point. Just amazing. Picked us up took us to one of many business ventures of his, Frank. Frank isn’t just a hotdog shop. OH NO. It’s a GOURMET hog dog shop, a bar, a chill lounge (located on the 2nd floor for the nights when you just wanna sit back sip some whiskey and relax) and bodega. YEAH THAT’S RIGHT A NEW YORK CITY STYLE BOGEDA. IN A BAR. That’s how cool this guy is, he can put a bodega in his bar and get away with it and still pack the place every night.

So we’re at Frank, chilling, trying to plan out the evening, couple beers mixed with a couple shots of Jameson just figuring out where we can shower when in walks Taylor the man behind Austin’s Restaurant Week and coolest new mag Rare Austin (www.rareaustin.com). Taylor tells us he has this membership to a Men’s Club called the Metropolitan Club and he’s set us up with some showers and a bar tab (people just love taking care of us it’s mind blowing). Of course we take him up on his offer and head over there immediately as a shower and beer is exactly what we were looking for at that moment.

When I say that Austin continually surprised me is a gross understatement of what that city actually gave back to me on a consistent basis. We walk into the “Member’s Only” room and WOW. Steam room, showers with 7 plus shower heads, just about every men’s grooming product you could imagine and oh yeah waiter service bringing us cold beers in the biggest goblets you’ve ever seen.

I had to indulge in a quick (1 hour is quick right?) steam before I moved into the shower to allow the 7 different shower heads to further indulge me in extreme luxury. After the showers everyone moved on to the grooming stage of extravagance. Gold Bond, hair products, hot shave cream, the works. We were truly living the life of trust-fund playboys, just without the douchiness of being raised complete pricks..it’s what we call a true win-win.

Post most-amazing-shower-in-the-world we headed into the Lounge area to charge up our gear and sip on some goblets of beer. After getting sufficiently distracted by the amazing situation we found ourselves in, Northcutt calls to tell us to get our asses back to Frank so we can get this night started (by night I mean 5 in the afternoon). So off we went.

When we got back to Frank, Northcutt had his whole crew waiting for us. Among them was Stuart who gave us a quick rundown on the huge growth that Austin has been experiencing. He also happens to have a SUPER hot girl friend who owns a high end cupcake shop down the street from Frank called Delish (www.delish-cupcakes.com). Yeah, we went and got our cupcake on.

We all walked down to La Condesa which served up some really unique and delightful apps. We had sushi on a tortilla, some mini brisket burritos and REALLY REALLY good margaritas. The tab? Just shy of $300 and covered, because we’re apparently really fun to hang out with (thanks again guys!). Apparently people in Texas eat a lot more than us folks from New York because after that we went back to Frank for some platters of their amazing hot dogs. When I say amazing I really mean knock your socks off good hot-dogs. These ain’t your run of the mill street meat dogs. I’m talking Chicago style with the greenest relish you’ve ever seen and onions so sweet you swear they were made of sugar. I mean NY Style Sausage that is so authentic you’d swear you heard a cabbie cursing in the background.

So now it was officially time to “Keep Austin Weird” (the city slogan, really could a more perfect city exist?). Our first stop was the Dizzy Rooster where they had a candle light tribute to Patrick Swazye (apparently when you bounce here you have to watch Roadhouse as a training video). After that we headed over to St. Cecilia’s to class it up a bit. While enjoying martinis and margaritas we met up with the guys from English Teeth (www.myspace.com/englishteethmusic) who gave us a track to use for the Austin b-roll video.

We’ll talk again in San Francisco!

Video archive: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Send the Cast and Crew Off - Sept. 3rd at Social (228 Franklin St)

Who: Clark / Joe / Steve / Jeremy / Friends / Family / Fans
What: The official Bon Voyage! party for the Twelve Hours in a City crew.
When: September 3rd, 2009 – 9pm until we drop.
Where: Social (228 Franklin St) Buffalo, NY
Why: Party with the crew of the show, help $end them on their way, win merch from our sponsors!

This party is not to be missed, a fun filled evening at the newest club in town. This one will be recalled in local lore for years to come. Make sure you’re a part of it!

See you there,
Joe and Clark