Branden: 0:00

It's really important for me to remember these people. I really looked up to the Jay Sarnos of the world. And the visionaries like Steve Wynn and the original entertainers that populated Las Vegas. It is really important for me to, in my life, to try to create things that keep those people relevant or remembered. Because that's what made this city great, was those people. The mob and those entertainers, and those people, and those visionaries made Las Vegas great. Everyone needs to come here and experience Las Vegas once in their lives. If you are born here, your soul comes to this planet, you have to come to Las Vegas. and I'm hoping to create that here. And it's great that the Evel Knievel Museum is going to be here. That's what we're going to

Joe P: 0:57

do.

Heather: 0:58

Evel Knievel inspired millions of us with his courage and perseverance. We're building a museum so you can relive those memories and be reinvigorated with that spirit of bravery.

Evel Knievel: 1:11

My name is Evel Knievel. I'm a professional daredevil.

Heather: 1:15

Along the way, we meet people involved in the life, the times, and the legacy of the King of daredevils. Here with their stories is your host, Joe Friday.

Joe P: 1:26

Hey howdy friend. this is Branden. He's my new neighbor. Yeah.

Branden: 1:33

Hello, everyone.

Joe P: 1:33

The best way to predict the future is to create it. That's what you do.

Branden: 1:41

That makes me sound like I'm a futurist or some kind of

Joe P: 1:44

I think so.

Branden: 1:45

Yeah?

Joe P: 1:46

we're working on a future project. I like

Branden: 1:47

to go back to the future. I guess I create the future, but I rely upon the past and a lot that I do because it's nostalgic. So a lot of things that I create are based off of my childhood.

Joe P: 2:06

Pirates?

Branden: 2:07

Yes. Pirates. Disney. Disney was a huge influence for me. Going to Disneyland as a kid, my father owned pizza parlors, sit down pizza parlors in Bakersfield, California. Very, similar to Kansas. And I always wanted to combine animatronics and pizza, and I don't know where my ADHD is going with this. That's what influenced me. So I had the idea for Chuck E. Cheese before Chuck E. Cheese. And I actually designed Evel Pie to look like those sit down pizza parlors that I remember in the 70s. The wood paneling, the player piano, the music.

Joe P: 2:48

So much like Kansas. Pizza Hut was started in Wichita. Was it? Yeah. And then, Showbiz Pizza Place. Did you have that in California?

Branden: 2:57

So we did, and I'm actually really good friends with Aaron Fechter, who designed all of the robots for Showbiz and was a partner in Showbiz. He's a great inventor and a great man. He lives in Florida now. Yeah. And I think he has one of the last few remaining sets of characters that are boxed. There may only be one boxed set left.

Joe P: 3:19

Boxed? Oh, they're

Branden: 3:20

real robots? An actual mint condition Rock A Fire Explosion band from There's

Joe P: 3:26

one left?

Branden: 3:28

There's one. He had a fire. He's like the ultimate scientist. So he created some sort of clean gas fuel that was going to be the future of barbecuing. I don't know what happened. He left it running and it shot across like the big metal container shot like a missile into the side of the building and the entire building exploded and everything. A real Rock A Fire Explosion. That's an amazing tie in, oh my gosh. We're not even I'm not even on DMT right now and you're making sense.

Joe P: 4:00

Wow, What a connection because that was started in Topeka, Kansas and they had 200

Branden: 4:08

Plus stores, and they left like a zero, I think, off the books, and then they folded but they ended up absorbing Chuck E. Cheese or something into their Okay,

Joe P: 4:16

I did not know that part.

Branden: 4:18

Yeah, they miscalculated on their expansion. I don't know, something weird happened there. I get a little confused, but

Joe P: 4:25

Were you going to do the real Rock A Fire explosion? Like with the real characters, Billy Bob and Fats? Yeah, so

Branden: 4:33

where my ADHD brain is going with all this wormholeness is that what I'm doing next to the museum here is going to be a Heavy Metal Pizza Party and I'm bringing an entire animatronic Rock A Fire explosion Band that's going to play metal and a bunch of other surprises that we can talk about later if you want. Or we can talk about now.

Joe P: 4:56

Yeah, we can talk about it right now. Yeah,

Branden: 4:58

no, it's going to be amazing. you're going to enter on a 1970's carnival dark ride, like the old haunted house dark rides. So from the exterior, you're going to get in a little cart. It's going to take you up two stories, provided that the city allows me to do this craziness. and it's just like this crazy story that you go through of the characters that you're going to meet inside that actually make up the members of the band and then you're dropped off inside of a 1970s early 80s retro arcade with pinball stunt cycle game like the original where you jump the buses and Evel Knievel pinball machine, of course, you've got to because we're right next door. And then all retro arcade games. And then there's the Land of Ice and Snow. There's the Swamp. There's a, you said Pizza Hut. There's actually an homage to a 1970s Pizza Hut within Heavy Metal Pizza Party. But we're not going to call it Pizza Hut so I don't get sued.

Frank Gifford: 5:58

Yeah.

Branden: 5:59

And then it's going to be like a player piano and that style of pizza. Yeah. It's craziness. It's all the craziness. There's the band and there's this Castle Grayskull kind of thing going down. And every 90 minutes the entire restaurant is going to be invaded by a horde of goblins or skeletons and the castle is going to be defended by animatronic rats with catapults and they're going to battle it out and there's Muppet characters swinging from the chandeliers and it's just utter mayhem. So that's Heavy Metal Pizza Party.

Joe P: 6:36

Okay, can you tell us a couple members of the band yet? Are you ready to do

Branden: 6:41

that? So I'm looking at, I'm basing one of them off of this 1970s, early 80s heavy metal rock legend called Thor. And Thor had a couple of albums out and he actually performed here in Vegas. So he's going to be the singer and he's got big metal spikes. And then we're going to have some kind of goblin and some kind of troll like character, some kind of maiden type character from some heavy metal goddess warrior. So yeah, so it's going to be unlike, it's going to be a spectacle unto itself. There's nothing on the planet that exists and I'm a punk rock kid. Like I grew up as punk rock kids like you did.

Joe P: 7:27

Yeah.

Branden: 7:27

So heavy metal, we used to go to battle with heavy metal kids growing up. We used to, back when you could fight with like chains and baseball bats, nowadays you get shot. We used to battle like all the heavy metal kids growing up. and now I like Yeah,

Joe P: 7:44

like they're wearing this bandana around their head.

Branden: 7:47

Yeah, I grew up in Bakersfield, so the kids from Korn used to hang out. And I swear we used to beat up on them. They got the last laugh. Now I'm doing heavy metal and I love it. I love like Dio and I love Slayer, and I love Iron Maiden, and Ozzy Osbourne, and

Joe P: 8:04

Did you ever hear of Slaughter?

Branden: 8:05

Yes, up all night, sleep all day. I like

Joe P: 8:09

I just learned they were from Las Vegas. I think

Branden: 8:12

one of them like still lives out here. Oh, right on. Something like that. I don't know, I don't know the guy personally, but Sebastian Bach lives out here from Skid Row. There's a bunch of metal dudes that have all ended up in Vegas. It's their last holdout. It's like they're circling their wagons and they're just like sitting there and I'm going to help bring it back. Heavy metal's rad. I'm going to get the fashion. Listen to

Joe P: 8:40

you. What would young Branden say about yourself? Heavy metal's rad.

Branden: 8:44

It's rad now. It's cool. You know what I mean? all the fashion, the hair, the makeup. Yes. The guys and girls. just to cut up t shirts, the music, I mean there's

Joe P: 8:54

Eyeliner, maybe?

Branden: 8:55

Eyeliner, yeah, I don't know. Were they wearing

Joe P: 8:58

lip gloss?

Branden: 8:59

Probably, yeah, they probably had some kind of

Joe P: 9:01

Poison?

Branden: 9:02

Yeah, poison, those guys, everything. That all started, that glam rock goes back to Mark Bolin and T Rex and Bowie and Alice Cooper. I think one of their girlfriends decided to put makeup on them one day and, Boom. It was over. It was androgynous. There was

Joe P: 9:21

a time when you had the same virus that I have. Which is this Evel Knievel bug.

Branden: 9:26

Oh Jesus, I guess I got another one? I just went to the doctor, he said everything was positive. So I think I'm good. But yeah. Yeah, no, when I was a kid. I loved Evel. Who didn't love Evel Knievel? I grew up in the 70s. I was a 70s kid. This guy's jumping stuff. He's like the ultimate American hero. He was this real superhero. You know what I mean? I'm on my bike and I'm jumping my friends and barely missing them or sometimes hitting them and we're throwing lawn darts at each other and lighting crap on fire. Lawn darts.

Joe P: 10:02

Yeah, so awesome.

Branden: 10:04

I mean there was like it was total mayhem growing up as a kid in the 70s and Evel Knievel represented that and had all the toys had the whole thing. I didn't want to play video games. We had an Atari and I wanted to be out on my bike jumping crap Yeah, but

Joe P: 10:16

what I mean by the same bug is we all liked Evel Knievel It's just you and I like him a little bit more. Probably you got rid of all your Evel Knievel stuff, right?

Branden: 10:25

I have some and then

Joe P: 10:26

you had to buy it all back pretty much.

Branden: 10:28

Yeah to load

Joe P: 10:29

up your restaurant.

Branden: 10:30

To load up, yeah, to load up Evel Pie and design that. I tried to find as much as I could. Kelly provided all of the photos, family photos and stuff that were unseen.

Joe P: 10:40

That's my favorite part.

Branden: 10:41

Yeah. I love those. I loaded up with that. We had the bike. We had the pinball machine.

Joe P: 10:47

Everybody loves that place.

Branden: 10:48

It's cool, right? It's just cool. One thing, you just, Evel is just cool. And no matter how much money you have, you can't buy coolness, right? You could try, but it was the perfect combination. A pizza place was there before and it failed miserably. Oh really? A fondue place was there and it failed miserably. Duh. Who wants to eat molten cheese in 200 degree weather? Yeah. It was just the ultimate cool. And what was rad is I grew up with skate culture and I grew up with all these things. So I was combining punk rock logos with skate logos and making them Evel logos. I think I helped bridge the gap a little bit more. And also provide a new audience, so to speak.

Joe P: 11:37

Yeah, you're absolutely right.

Branden: 11:38

Yeah, so it's all me. Yeah,

Joe P: 11:40

Evel Knievel is a verb now. Thank you.

Frank Gifford: 11:45

Yeah, there you

Branden: 11:45

go.

Joe P: 11:47

But your creativity didn't stop there.

Branden: 11:50

Yes.

Joe P: 11:50

You've adopted this town and made it so cool. You weren't going to just stop at Evel Pie. Was your next stop Golden Tiki?

Branden: 11:59

Actually, Golden Tiki was before. Oh. Yeah, it was a couple years before. I've been coming here since I was a little kid in the 70s. Just to go back a little bit further into my love for Las Vegas, growing up in Bakersfield, it's five hours away. And my dad owned the pizza parlors. And so the mob, they controlled all the cheese and the sauce. And eventually in the 80s, the video games they delivered, became our partners on. So we would come to Vegas and they would sponsor all of our show tickets and I saw Liberace and I saw Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra and all those guys and I went to topless shows. I'm six years old and the girls are winking at me and at ten, actually, excuse me, probably eight or nine, I'm drinking booze like White Russians at the MGM hotel in the black and white movie theater. Because I tipped the girl. That's how the town ran. And as a little kid, I'm wearing a suit to breakfast. That's how cool Vegas was back then.

Joe P: 13:04

You wore a suit to breakfast.

Branden: 13:05

And so when we come to town, my dad would come in the town, we'd go to this place called Leaning Tower Pizza. We'd never eat pizza there. And there was this big fat guy who was named Tiny. Of course, right? It's

Joe P: 13:17

an Italian thing.

Branden: 13:18

Yeah, it's like a thing. And and my dad would shake hands and this is before cell phones, whatever. Tiny would pick up a phone and boom, we were dialed in. That was it. and the whole town ran that way. I love this town and I've been involved in this town and so when I had the opportunity to turn another bar that was a loser before in Chinatown with no parking. Yeah, my business partners at the time were like,"What do you want to do?" And I'm thinking punk rock bar and they're like you want to do a tiki bar and I'm like you cool if I can do It my way. I did tiki in the 90s in San Diego. Like I was part of the resurgence of that whole thing in America, right? So I was over it and so I created like Uncle Bob's Dirty Disneyland, animatronic hula girls, parrots that cussed and

Joe P: 14:09

oh, yeah, I saw those. I didn't see the hula girls. Oh, yeah

Branden: 14:13

you're going to have to fight to get a word in edgewise with me. It's just a flow of it comes out of me. I so apologize. I haven't even had coffee this morning. But, yeah, so that's Golden Tiki. I got to do Golden Tiki.

Joe P: 14:27

Yeah. Have you had a fail?

Branden: 14:29

I have to hit home runs every time I get up to the plate. I don't have money. Okay. I'm a kid from Bakersfield whose dad always had businesses, was successful, promised me to be successful. Basically he lost kind of everything, went bankrupt. And I had to borrow money to bury my pops. I was one of the pioneers of the rave scene in North America. Every time I threw a party, I had to hit a home run. I had to, it had to make me money every time. Every time I did a business, I look at it that way. I have no choice. I go up to the plate. I have to hit home runs every time.

Joe P: 15:08

Where did you invent a rave party?

Branden: 15:11

So I'm one of the so in the 80s, I'm in high school. I'm throwing outlaw, illegal keggers out in the fields in Bakersfield. We're listening to Kraftwerk, and Tubeway Army, and New Order, because that's what got the girls. Punk Rock didn't get the girls. That's true. New Wave. New Wave. I figured it out real quick, really fast. If you, except in the movie Valley Girl, that's the only time. Nicolas Cage, who was a punk rocker, got the cute girl. I had to figure out how to dress like Corey Hart from Sunglasses at Night with my white shirt and Ray Bans.

Joe P: 15:50

Yeah,

Branden: 15:51

Chicago. Or else I couldn't get the girls. Punk rock girls weren't as cute as they are nowadays back then. What was wrong

Joe P: 16:02

with them, Branden?

Branden: 16:04

Nothing. They're beautiful people. But I just, They weren't my style. In order to do that I threw parties out of necessity. Which is, I guess a lot of people in life, that seems to be what their muse is. For poetry, for music, or for what not, it seems to be mostly women. Yes. Unless you get into the Greeks, and then that's another thing. But, yeah. So yeah, I did parties, so like in 1986, I'm throwing these parties and then I heard about 86.

Joe P: 16:38

You're not old enough to buy booze?

Branden: 16:40

No, I just told you I was drinking at eight or nine in Vegas. Back then, I grew up in Bakersfield. All the farmers and the people, they're feeding booze. Like my friends are all Basque and they're feeding booze to those kids in baby bottles. Like drinking was a part. I probably drank more before I was 21 than I ever drank after. And we would just drink beer. We drink like Coors Light, Like in red cups and like by the gallons full. I don't even drink beer nowadays. It's so bizarre. So I'm out in the fields and we're throwing these parties. I hear these news stories coming out around 1988 about the UK and they're doing these all night dance parties to this new music that's called Acid House Music and techno and they're doing drugs and I'm like, wait a minute. This is I can do drugs? You can do drugs all night, and you can dance to this music, and it's repetitive. This is essentially like Pac Man, right? I grew up on Pac Man. Oh, it is. It's a little dude in the dark eating pills and to repetitive music. That's like perfect, right? It is. It is. And the rave scene was like punk rock. It was like do it yourself, right? So I'm out, it's really fun playing in bands. I'm a terrible guitarist and I'm doing flyers and, so I was a party guy. I was already throwing parties. So I started doing raves and I was one of the original, it's debatable, probably one of the first people in North America, because of my prior history, definitely, to do raves in North America. So I'm one of the pioneers of that scene. And my biggest party, I started off with a couple hundred dollars and it was essentially like Kinko's Flyers at the time. And I moved it up and my biggest event got up to 60, 000 people. And one of my flyer kids out of LA, his name was Pascal, or Pasquale. And he went on after I quit to throw EDC, which is the largest rave, one of the largest raves in the world right now in Las Vegas. So that's the history of where he started and where I went and ended. And the reason I stopped is my dad dies in 99, and my mom wants something in, like a one liner to tell friends at a cocktail party what her son does. And I decided to get a real job. Ended up for a company opening up nightclubs in the Midwest and East Coast. We come out to Vegas. They don't open a nightclub. I'm stuck here in Vegas, which is fine, and I've spent the last 20 something years here in Vegas. Now I have kids and a family.

Joe P: 19:23

What did the first rave look like? Did you have the lights?

Branden: 19:27

yeah. We started off of the actual rave raves, other than the cornfield parties, Started doing apartments, houses, and then I had the opportunity There was a friend of mine. His name was Pietro Legreca. He just wrote a book called Pesos, The Rise and Fall of a Border Family, okay? So Pietro's family, he's half Italian and half Mexican and his family controls, controlled all the money exchanges. A majority of them in Mexico. The president of Mexico used to call up and like go,"You can't change the money exchange. You can't change." They would control it, right? And they had all these massive warehouses and import and exporting and whatever they were doing. And they would come to Vegas and spend all their money. Pietro has this giant 6 million mansion in Coronado at the time. It's probably worth 20 million today on the water. Owns these polo fields in Rosarito, Mexico, which is about half hour from the border, and we start doing mansion parties at his place. Then we start, we did the first rave ever in Mexico called the Birth of Baby X with Pietro's family at this polo field down there. This is how much pull they had. We bused 3, 000 kids from the border over the border, down there and back, not searched once, not asked any questions. No one did anything on New Year's Eve of'90,'91 or whatever it was. And that's how much pull they had. It was incredible. You couldn't do that today. obviously like it's insane. Eventually Pietro's family got wiped out through various means. Oh yeah, met a lot of interesting characters down there in Mexico. The owner of, Caliente Racetrack, when I was going to go do a rave party once, he had this big glass desk that he would sit behind. And inside of the glass desk was twelve of the most venomous snakes on the planet. You'd just sit there and these snakes would be slithering around. Doctor

Joe P: 21:36

Evil.

Branden: 21:37

It was, dude, beyond. It was so crazy. I could spend another podcast just on those stories alone. The first rave with carnival rides we did called Wild Kingdom, which is where EDC kind of came from, Electric Daisy Carnival, which was carnival rides. And then my biggest, most well known one was called Narnia. Our events, what set us apart was everyone was doing Dr. Seuss and Mad Hatter and all these ecstasy, blah, blah, blah. We were doing more spiritually based, so we had gurus, we had yogis, we had symbols, we were outdoors. Doing

Joe P: 22:14

what? Doing what?

Branden: 22:16

they'd be on stage working with the energy.

Joe P: 22:20

I haven't been. What? I have not been.

Branden: 22:23

Oh my god. To the EDC. To the EDC. Okay, yeah. You sounded, that was really cool how you said that. I like that. It was like, like you smoked the marijuana cigarettes.

Joe P: 22:36

Yeah. No, I haven't been. Are there still carnival rides there? Yeah.

Branden: 22:40

Yeah, they do the whole thing. It's massive. I just went We had helicopters. We flew in on helicopters because we're old. We're too lazy to walk and park. That's how we. That's how you roll. We're boujee. We're boujee now. I can't do the drugs anymore. My chemistry's changed

Joe P: 22:57

What are you talking about? You flew in on a helicopter.

Branden: 22:59

or any less.

Joe P: 23:00

From Las Vegas to Las Vegas on a helicopter?

Branden: 23:03

from the executive terminal, and then we flew in to EDC and there's helicopter landing. You can land inside of EDC on a helicopter. Oh, your

Joe P: 23:14

office is at the airport? Is that right?

Branden: 23:17

Yeah, I just moved into new offices across from the airport. Yeah.

Joe P: 23:22

That's your commute now.

Branden: 23:24

No, I don't want you to think I take helicopters everywhere I go. Just when I go shopping,

Joe P: 23:32

How many kids? Are they kids or did they grow and mature as we did?

Branden: 23:37

No, I'm like a senior citizen. I walk around there and those kids think I'm like a vice cop or something. They're like,

Joe P: 23:43

No, I'm cool. I got fuzzy boots.

Branden: 23:46

Yeah. They don't, trust me or whatever. It's evolved. It's cool to see something that we created. We're like the Dog Town of ravers. You know what I mean? we're like the originators of skateboarding, but with raves. So to see it grow from where it started to where it is today, it's pretty amazing. It's pretty crazy. And those kids are having fun and good for them. And how many

Joe P: 24:13

of them again?

Branden: 24:14

Oh God, they claim over 500 or 600 thousand people, but it's really 150 thousand, 160 thousand, 170 thousand a day. So how many people are going multiple days? All of them. Yeah, so it's promoter math, right? So it's like me, I'll tell you I had 60 thousand people and there's probably 10 thousand people who showed up because promoters just naturally lie about everything. That's

Joe P: 24:39

huge for Las Vegas. I've

Branden: 24:40

been lying about everything so far.

Joe P: 24:44

We really are neighbors though.

Branden: 24:46

Yeah, I helicoptered to his house. That's

Joe P: 24:51

huge for Las Vegas though, that's probably 50 thousand rooms at least, right?

Branden: 24:58

I don't know what our full room count is right now, but those kids they'll go ten to a room. But it's a huge impact on the city for money. It's a great thing for the city. I'm actually working on creating a, I'm talking with some people right now, creating a permanent festival space that will have more of these festivals going around the clock, monthly, Oh, cool. Instead of once a year.

Joe P: 25:24

It's at the racetrack, right?

Branden: 25:26

This one's at the Speedway. Yeah. Oh, Speedway. Yeah. I'm from San Diego, so when you say that, I'm thinking Del Mar. Oh, gotcha. Yeah. I'm thinking horses. Yeah. Follow that train of thought there? Yeah. Yeah, it's great. The city needs more of it and the city is just growing exponentially. So happy to be here and see it all as it happens.

Joe P: 25:48

I do have to give a shout out right now to The Space who loaned us their podcast booth. We are building one into the museum. That's going to be kick ass. It's going to be in one of Evel Knievel's old trailers, but the Space has opened up their podcast facilities for us to use in the meantime. It's beautiful. We really appreciate it. When this place, The Space, heard about our need for a state of the art studio to produce our fledgling podcast, they graciously offered up their room, their equipment, and most generously their tech team."Anything you need, just let us know," they said. The deluxe recording space has everything we need. Featuring broadcast quality equipment in a soundproof stylish lounge, and a place to gather, record and produce tracks with superior audio quality. Honoring its core value of giving back, The Space is also home to Mondays Dark. The show here Mondays Dark is phenomenal.

Branden: 26:44

Yes

Joe P: 26:45

Broadway is closed on Mondays. It's same with the Strip. And the show people are off on Mondays. So where the players play when they ain't playing is at Mondays Dark. It costs like 20 or 30 bucks to get in and you can see these headliners that play on the Strip, but instead of the guy singing Cher, he gets to sing whatever he wants to for only 20 bucks. And they raise 10 thousand dollars every other week for a local Las Vegas charity. That's

Branden: 27:14

amazing. That's awesome and Mark is an amazing person for all that he's done and contributed to the city for sure.

Joe P: 27:23

He's been very welcoming, but everybody has, and you have.

Branden: 27:26

It's a beautiful facility. These are amazing facilities, definitely.

Joe P: 27:31

As far as our podcast goes, you can expect even more in the coming months. As we outfit our own booth at the Evel Knievel museum located at the Mission Linen Building. What's really neat about the project is that it's downtown. I get a lot of feedback about it being in the Arts District. Really? Yeah. Do you?

Branden: 27:50

Like good or bad?

Joe P: 27:52

Good. The Arts District in Las Vegas is one of the hottest properties in the world.

Branden: 27:59

I believe so. Downtown on Fremont, where Evel Pie is, and that area surrounding there. I lived in downtown San Diego, so I saw that evolve from, basically, hookers and sailors and drug addicts to what it is today. It's crazy with a ballpark and

Joe P: 28:16

oh yeah it was

Branden: 28:17

nothing like you would run from one club to the next. It's nowhere near where it is today and I've seen the evolution of downtown and Fremont, that area and the Arts District is where it's all really progressing towards

Joe P: 28:32

Fremont. What was his name, Hsieh?

Branden: 28:34

Tony Hsieh. Tony Hsieh. Regardless of what people read or say or do about Tony.

Joe P: 28:40

Yeah.

Branden: 28:40

I'll never say anything bad. That guy put his money where his mouth is. He came down and spent hundreds of millions. You know, it wasn't the way I would do things. But he did it his way. He allowed a bunch of people to do their dreams and their passions, which is great. And I think that a lot of people took advantage of him, unfortunately. and the way that he ended up is rather tragic and sad.

Joe P: 29:06

Oh, yeah.

Branden: 29:06

And I honored him at the Golden Tiki with a shrunken head. He had come into the Golden Tiki one night. He said he loved it, but he always wanted me. He's like,"Why didn't you open this downtown?" And I'm like,"This is the opportunity that I had and this is where I went. And this is what I did with it." But no, I, God bless him. Wherever he is in the universe right now, I wish him the best. So he's zipping around somewhere.

Joe P: 29:38

Did he do Arts District, too, or was he north of there?

Branden: 29:42

No, he was all downtown, like around Fremont and he bought up all those areas. I don't know if he owned any properties up in the Arts District. There's been a lot of great Heavy Metal Pizza Party was going to be down there on, more on Main Street.

Joe P: 29:57

Yeah?

Branden: 29:58

Yeah. But the landlord, and my old business partners at the time. He was like, my 22 year old nephew doesn't think it's cool. And I'm like, dude, your nephew? Whatever. But yeah, I've always loved that Mission Linen Building. That is the coolest building in Vegas, it's one of the coolest. Cirque, they looked at it. They wanted to do, their offices out of there at one time. Yeah. Yeah. So it's very cool. It's a very cool, it's a very cool building. Like I look at buildings as is. I don't look at Let's change this and make it nicer. I'm like, This is great. Let's leave it with the broken windows and the graffiti. I love it. And I am really bad at that because I have never had that luxury. I don't have the money to go in and go Oh, yeah, we're going to add brick and a bunch of bougie finishes which we do now and J Dapper is an amazing developer. He's my business partner as well, on the roller rink and on Heavy Metal Pizza Party. I can't say enough awesome things about J. He really, when everything went down with me and Evel Pie and the Golden Tiki, he rose up and had my back and I'm loyal. I'm loyal to those who are loyal to me.

Joe P: 31:20

So we were looking at places and Branden's right. We found the perfect place. J hooked us up with the perfect place for a museum and a pizza place and a coffee neighbor, also, Mothership Coffee.

Branden: 31:32

Yes, it's Mothership, yeah.

Joe P: 31:34

J also started the Huntridge Plaza and bought the Huntridge Theatre which is an old punk rock venue. But in the Huntridge Plaza is a barber and a start up restaurant which is delicious.

Branden: 31:48

It's delicious. It's Winnie and Ethel's. Yes. It's great. Yeah.

Joe P: 31:53

And then a Circle K gas station with an old style sign on it.

Branden: 31:58

Yeah. J does these really great, like, he is inspired by the architect ural design Googie. I don't know if you're familiar with Googie. They did a lot of stuff in California and Beverly Hills and gas stations and he bases a lot of his designs off of that. They have Yukon Pizza. Those kids are amazing. That kid's yeast, like yeast is a very big thing, and that yeast has been in his family for a hundred and something years. And yeah, it like started off with his great grandma. I

Joe P: 32:29

don't know. I haven't been there. They're closed on Tuesdays, and that's when I go get my hair cut.

Branden: 32:35

At the Garrison? Marcus cuts my hair at the Garrison. I love the Garrison. Yeah, Berto's

Joe P: 32:40

my guy. He's right next to him.

Branden: 32:42

Oh yeah. Yeah.

Joe P: 32:43

They're all patriots and Marcus is like the world's worst survivalist. He's out there in Pahrump killing chickens.

Branden: 32:49

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like he's has like his goats or something or

Joe P: 32:53

yeah, we didn't talk about the roller rink. We're drinking and we're roller skating, right?

Branden: 32:59

Yeah, there's going to be waivers for sure. I came up the great idea to put a bar in the center of the roller rink. We have three bars that we're involving because it's always a great idea to involve booze and roller skating.

Joe P: 33:15

Right on.

Branden: 33:15

Yeah, so the roller rink's going to be totally amazing. I'm programming the exterior music to sound like 1970s Muzak from a parking lot. When you enter, it's going to be all Muzak. When you walk up, there's going to be these 20 foot tall Pegasus on each side of the starlight, it's called the Starlight, and then you enter through a tunnel. And there's these muses, statues of the girls from Xanadu. And then there's a pro shop with all of our cool merchandise. And then there's elevated concessions. you can have all the fried burritos and hamburgers and hot dogs and pizza and things that you would get, but better quality, because rink pizza back in the Seventies was, essentially, if you put vomit and that side by side, you couldn't tell the difference. It was like a toss up on which one to eat. Then there's a bar on the exterior of the rink and then a bar in the middle. There is a secret tunnel that you can skate through. There's a secret kind of, I hate to use the word speakeasy because those are over.

Joe P: 34:23

They are.

Branden: 34:24

Yeah, it is a homage to Siegfried and Roy. You enter through the arcade and it's all animatronic white tigers and Siegfried and Roy floating and levitating. It's just this very surreal thing. Yeah. You're

Joe P: 34:42

predicting the future by making it

Branden: 34:44

Yeah. It is Oh

Joe P: 34:46

man, that is so cool. And an homage to Siegfried and Roy.

Branden: 34:51

I love Siegfried and Roy. I was trying to buy one of their houses and I had my friend flew in, my friend Felix, who started in the rave scene with me, with literally, I think it was 500, 800 bucks in black lights. He started off in 1991 and now does all the lights at EDC. Does touring shows for famous artists. Has multiple hundreds and hundreds of thousands square foot warehouses in multiple states. So Felix flies in and we're getting ready to sign the paperwork. And this guy walks in right after us. Two ships passing in the night and he has a briefcase. And the briefcase is filled with cash. And boom, he buys Siegfried and Roy's magical estate. It was so rad. It was like, there was a secret bookcase that moved. And said,"ta da" or something. Then you go into the bedrooms and one of them was Siegfried, I think, with long hair and it was painted depicting like he was fighting a wizard. There's just, there was just so much awesomeness where they kept the tigers and the waterfalls and just amazing. It was so amazing. I wanted that house so bad.

Joe P: 36:13

Yes. Yes. Yeah.

Branden: 36:19

Yeah, it would have been really cool. With the

Joe P: 36:21

Mirage closing, I wonder what our chances are to get that sculpture?

Branden: 36:27

I think that it's probably... I wish I could get it. I wouldn't even want to know what the price that thing is. I think it's bronze. Damn. Yeah, I'm sure it'll go in a museum or they'll just keep it there on Las Vegas Boulevard.

Joe P: 36:41

They'll probably keep it there. They'll probably

Branden: 36:42

keep it there. It's

Joe P: 36:43

almost on public property out there.

Branden: 36:45

I don't feel that they have been honored properly, and their contributions to the city, and It's really important for me to remember these people. I really looked up to the Sarnos, the Jay Sarnos of the world. And the visionaries like Steve Wynn and the original entertainers that populated Las Vegas. It is really important for me to, in my life, to try to create things that keep those people relevant or remembered. Because that's what made this city great, was those people. No one remembers that the Mormons founded this place, And no one cares. The mob and those entertainers, and those people, and those visionaries made Las Vegas great. And made it into, when you're born on this planet, it is part of your human existence to, it is your own, and I don't want to compare it to Mecca of course, but it's your own, everyone needs to come here and experience Las Vegas once in their lives. If you are born here, your soul comes to this planet, you have to come to Las Vegas. and I'm hoping to create that here. And it's great that the Evel Knievel Museum is going to be here. That's what we're going to

Joe P: 38:15

do.

Branden: 38:15

Yeah. And, and the museums are doing great. Punk Rock Museum's doing great. And

Joe P: 38:22

Yes! And the Haunted Museum made me pee my pants.

Branden: 38:25

Zach killed, yeah, he, I peed my pants. I just peed my pants. That's just the age we are. No, but Zach Bagans, another Aries, he's an Aries like us. Overcollector, hoarder. That describes us. His collection, it goes on and on. I didn't know I needed to pack a tent and a couple of days worth of food to go through that museum, but it's amazing. It's an amazing collection. And it is some pretty weirded out, scary things there. Yeah.

Joe P: 39:03

And then the Mob Museum is an incredible draw. It's an

Branden: 39:06

incredible museum too. They did a great job. So

Joe P: 39:08

Yeah, you're right. Museums are doing good here.

Branden: 39:11

Yeah. Okay, so you come to Las Vegas multiple times. They're starting to see the shows. you can only see the Cirque show so many times. They're great, but they've had their moment, right? That's why this town spends so much money on sports, and concerts, and it's great. But you can only eat at so many celebrity chef driven restaurants where the chef, celebrity chef has never even stepped foot in and you can only be treated so badly and robbed of your money through all these extra resort fees and all these extra things where you're going to start looking for things off the Strip and you're going to start looking for things to go explore where you're not taken advantage of, where the locals hang out. As locals, unless you're working on the Strip, no one goes there for any reason unless they're getting comped to go see a show or a concert. Or the rest of the town is on fire. So we go and the best food in Las Vegas is in Chinatown and in the Arts District. And then, these different experiences. And shows? Those shows are over. Sitting in a chair on your hands is over. Immersive environments and real immersive experiences are the future of Las Vegas.

Joe P: 40:36

Branden, it's a pleasure to meet my brother, who I never even knew before.

Branden: 40:39

I was upset, though, I couldn't bring my helicopter here. They don't have helicopter parking, so That's true. It's so great to meet you. Thank you for your time and allowing me to not allow you to speak much during our interview.

Joe P: 40:54

It's okay. I have plenty of opportunities to sit there in my closet alone. It's nice to have this space and have somebody to talk to. Yeah,

Branden: 41:03

and it was great. I appreciate your time. Thanks a lot.

Joe P: 41:06

Love you, buddy.

Branden: 41:06

Love you too, man. Looking forward to creating the future.

Heather: 41:09

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe. It's our mission to preserve and present the legacy of Evel Knievel. if you have an idea for an episode or a guest, or have a suggestion to improve our show, just drop us a line at joe at thrill dot show.

Evel Knievel: 41:29

I just think the Evel Knievel way.

Heather: 41:34

We leave you with the encouraging words from the book of Deuteronomy. Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid. For the Lord your God goes with you. He will never leave you or forsake you. Until next time, happy landings! You like to fly to the seat of your pants? This is where you belong.