We went to The Hub for dinner last night. That wasn't the crappy part though.
The Hub is awesome. We went there because we read in the September issue of Austin Monthly that The Hub is "locally owned and dog friendly." So we brought Zoe along. The diner fare was good and the portions hearty, to say the least. They serve a veggie burger that's roughly the size of a crop circle, and a couple of other veg dishes. And the service was excellent; they were so nice to us. They even brought out a tennis ball for Zoe to play with and gave her a bowl of nice cold water.
(I'm going to leave out the part where Zoe was so excited to be in public that she ran around like crazy and completely ignored the tennis ball. And, when we called to her, she did her very best trick: pretending to be deaf; and then took a big ole dump right on the Hub's dog-friendly patio. So embarrassing..(And that is also not the crappy part, believe it or not.))
Zoe, Enjoying The Hub's Dog Friendly Patio
No, the crappy part came this morning when, all excited to blog about our first official day of "living local in Austin," I asked Charlie what he'd eaten for lunch the day before.
"Um. . . a sub," he replied.
"Yeah? From where?" I was poised to hear about whatever cool local deli he'd discovered.
"Quiznos."
"Quiznos? I thought we were eating local?"
"Oh, crap. I forgot."
And then a big fight ensued.
Turns out that Quizzies are franchises, so they are at least kinda, sorta locally-owned. And being that this entire conversation took place before our morning coffee had finished brewing, which is not really a good time to discuss, well, anything with me, I probably overreacted just a bit.
But, see, yesterday, September 1 (the day that, in our house, will now probably forever be known as the Day Charlie Ate at Quiznos,)was actually our second first official day of living local in Austin. We started when we got here, about a week ago, and except for our hotel stay, we were doing really well at buying local. But we'd decided that we needed a do-over after last Sunday, when we made the mistake of trying to use the GPS to find a locally-owned pet store to get the kitties new collars and a wading pool for Zoe.*
After driving around for a while, and stopping at one place that had supplies for birds, fish, reptiles and dogs, but nothing for cats, we (and by "we," I mean Charlie) had a meltdown and ended up at PetSmart where we got what we wanted. We rationalized that going to the PetSmart was a greener option than driving around, wasting gas, looking for a local place. Buying local, especially in a strange city, is hard. Ever since we got here, at least once or twice a day, we'd be driving around and one of us would exclaim something like: "Oh, look. Dunkin Donuts!" and the other would then deflate that enthusiasm with something like: "Nope. Not local."
So what did we learn from this experience? That it's best to do research online first when trying to buy local. If only we had known about resources like the Austin Independent Business Alliance (IABA) web site: ibuyaustin.com then. In our defense though, we were a litte busy – what with all the packing and the moving and the house-hunting – to research this whole buying local thing too much. But now we know. Here's hoping our future attempts at buying local will be a little less crappy.
*Rorschach already lost his collar and Zoe is terrified of the wading pool. She thinks it's an outdoor bathtub or something.
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