Rachel Weidinger – SXSW Awesomeness Presenter, Real Life Awesomeness Personifier
You can't hide from the internet, Rachel. There's too much awesomeness.
Rachel Weidinger is one of my favorite people. Ensconced at the fascinating intersection of art, nonprofits, food, tech and weirdness in San Francisco, we met when I frolicked in the nonprofit tech scene a few years ago. She took Erin and I to Burning Man and let us crash with her and her friends at the Burners Without Borders camp. And one random time she gave me a jar-let of meyer lemon jam, which I sadly finished off just a couple of weeks ago.
I look forward to SXSW partly for the music, but mainly to reconnect to old friends like Rachel. She got in yesterday, and Erin and I wasted no time taking her to Homeslice. While waiting for a table we went next door to a party that benefited Falling Whistles, a cool sounding group that helps child soldiers and prisoners in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Then we went back to Homeslice and ordered our food. Rachel seemed fascinated by our story. We talked about love and pizza.
I forgot to bring this up last night, but one of my favorite stories about Burning Man (which I experienced courtesy Rachel) regards the psychic pizza delivery service. One day I got caught in a crazy sandstorm. So I’m fighting the wind/sand/dust while wearing apocalyptic masks and such, and things finally relent. I’m walking back to camp, and I see this person Ive never met before carrying this amazing looking pizza. I asked him where he got it, and he said “here, I made it for you”.
What?
Him: “Yeah, I made it for you. Psychic pizza delivery service. You were thinking how good a wood-fired pizza would be right now, right?”
Me: “Uhhhh….yeah….but….”
Him: “Here you go! I made it for you because I knew you wanted it”. He cheerfully have it to me and walked away. This started an apparently life-long string of gaining free pizza through bizarre circumstances.
We had a lovely bottle of wine, a lovely pizza (roasted red peppers, fried eggplant, basil, fresh mozzarella, artichoke hearts, half green olives and half kalamata olives) and some lovely milk and cookies. She seemed to enjoy them all.
Rachel gave us some insight on Austin as a SXSW attendee, with parties that sound more fun than they actually are, higher than usual geek density on airplanes to/from Austin and presentations. Hers is on “Handheld Awesomeness Detectors: Worldchanging Mobile Apps” (Ushahidi, Seafood Watch, etc) today at 5pm. Go, she’s a funny, goofy speaker. If you see her around town, bring her a pizza from the psychic pizza delivery service and just walk away, I’m curious what she’ll say.
Cost: $29
Total this year: $525.50
Psychic pizza delivery sounds awesome!
Seth, I had this EXACT same experience last night, except it was with cocktails. At Peche. The server / bartender / genie at our table looked at us and guessed what we would like. We trusted him. And he brought us magic.
Lovely post, per usual.
I had THIS MUCH FUN with you guys. Thank you so much for sharing that very heavy tasty amazing pizza with me (the leftovers of which were all I ate yesterday.)
Most grateful for the time and good conversation. You are a joy to share a dinner table with. Thank you for sharing your beautiful Austin with me.