One Fry Short Takes Houston

I had a hell of a time this weekend. We had a gig downtown at the Holiday Inn by 59 for a guy graduating from University of Houston. Me and my partner had already decided to get a hotel room for the night rather than having to drive all the way back north to our homes, a good hour or more driving time at the wee hours of the night.

Fortune smiled upon us this weekend because the guy throwing the party gave us the “discount code” for UofH graduates. Even better? It was at the friggin Hyatt. We got a $200 hotel room for only $60, and because of that we decided that after we finish our gig, we’d go party on Main street which was only about 9 blocks away from our hotel.

The gig was pretty fun, although it was a bit older crowd than we were expecting. The time went by quickly and we were fortunate enough to be able to leave our equipment in the ballroom so we wouldn’t have to lug two 15″ speaker cabinets and a DJ console up to the 25th floor of the Hyatt after we were already done and exhausted from DJing all night.

We went back to our hotel room and then headed three blocks south, six blocks east and we were in the middle of Main Street Party Central. I had flashbacks to New York City while walking the distance, and when we reached the club district the flashbacks changed to Austin.

Downtown Houston really has changed since they renovated everything when the Super Bowl came to town a few years back. Along with the addition of the light rail system, they’ve also significantly cleaned up the area as well. Gone are the clubs several miles apart, gone is the garbage and the “scary” element of being downtown. It was a much lighter atmosphere and everyone was there to have a good time.

We went into a club and talked with the DJs on two different floors just to scope out the competition or whatever, then after we finished our drinks we decided to move on to the next club. The place was getting a little stale anyway. I did get to see a guy breakdance, so that was pretty cool.

The next club blew my mind. Not because of the club itself, but the person that lurked inside. First, a little back story:

Almost a year ago, when DJ Big G and I were thinking about getting into the DJ business, we went over the 1960 area and talked to a few different DJs about everything involved with the business, how everything went, what to look out for, etc. Just general business crap. The last guy we talked to was a pretty damn good DJ and was very friendly to boot. He, out of the few we talked to, gave us the best information out of anybody else. His name is DJ Simon, and that was the last time we saw him since we started out last May.

Flash forward to Saturday night, we walk into a rather rectangular bar (narrow but long), and made our way through the crowd to the bar. We spotted the DJ upstairs and DJ Big G said “that guy sounds like a strip club Dj.” Of course we both thought this funny because to REAL DJ’s, strip club DJ’s are the bottom of the barrel. The upstairs area was roped off and at first it didn’t look like we could get upstairs, but after we caught the attention of the DJ, he waved us up.

We go upstairs and immediately the guy looks familar. TOO familiar. We start looking through his CD collection and notice “DJ Simon’s Mix” on almost all of the CDs. Slowly the two peices of the puzzle start to fit together. Almost a year to the date of us starting this business, we find the man who gave us the most inspiration to start it. Talk about coming full circle.

He actually remembered us, too! Not only that, but he KNEW who we were by our company name. Big G handed him a business card (after we all had re-aquainted ourselves) which he took, stopped almost dead sentence and said, “You guys are One Fry Short? I don’t know if you know this or not, but you guys are making a LOT of DJ’s very nervous.” Me and Big G almost shit ourselves on the spot. I knew we had a little bit of street cred, but we didn’t know we had enough to make it all the way downtown. I think my head grew about four sizes larger in the span of seconds.

We spent the rest of the night partying with Simon upstairs, dancing with hot girls, and drinking lots of alcohol. We stumbled our way back to the hotel and enjoyed the beautiful night view of downtown Houston before retiring for the night. I’d have to say that so far, that was the BEST night i’ve spent ANYWHERE in a long time. It’s on par with the trip to Austin back last July for my cousin’s birthday, if not even better just because it was directly related to my DJ business. It just reassured me that I’m not wasting my time in this business, and reinvigorated my interest 200%. Especially when Simon not only recognized us by face, but by our company name. It makes me really proud to be One Fry Short Productions.