Things To Do In Omaha If You Hate Baseball

Wayne

Wayne Brekke owns DungeonCrate. He was one of the first people to support us, and I'm grateful for that. So grateful that I spent more money going to visit him than he gave us in help, because I wanted to put his shop in the D&D film. We first met at GenCon and interviewed him there for the doc.

So I went to Omaha. That was the whole reason. Go see Wayne, film his shop, put it in the movie, go home.

I didn't know Omaha was rad.

The Raccoon Place

We went to Alpine Inn. It's a family-owned joint on Calhoun Road that's been around since 1973. Their Instagram literally says "AKA The Raccoon Place." I got to interview the owners, who were gracious and ready to share their story, the way people are when they've been doing something for 50 years and still love it.

You eat fried chicken inside. Through the plate glass windows of the dining room, you watch raccoons scarf down the leftovers outside. That's the thing. That's the whole thing. It's not a gimmick they added. It's just what happens at Alpine Inn, and they're fine with it, and it's perfect.

Two Hours In A Park

After filming a Lord of the Rings TTRPG game at DungeonCrate, I asked if any of the people in cosplay wanted to go make a thing. A few said yes, so we did.

We went to a park and shot a short film in two hours. No dialogue. It's about the perpetual nature of revenge seeking. We used handheld cameras and whatever light we could find. Park fixtures, moonlight, and a few candlelight things from a dollar store.

One of the college students who said yes ended up being the hero image for this whole website. You know the one. The young woman on the hero. That's her. I went to Omaha to put Wayne's shop in a documentary and I came back with the face of my entire brand.

Will

The last day I was in Omaha, I ended up at Will's house. Will was a DungeonCrate vendor. He just vibed. He offered to make me food and I offered to film it, and that's how things go if you let them.

He made me pernil. It was amazing. I've made it at home now because of him, which is probably the highest compliment I can pay a recipe.

Will's place was a normal 90s subdivision house. Nice, but normal. Inside, he's got a resin dice operation running out of a room in his basement. He printed the dice himself. And he lit up talking about it, the same way he lit up talking about his pernil recipe. Same energy, same pride, different craft. His wife's in the Air Force. He makes dice and sells collectibles. That's the kind of person you find in Omaha if you just say yes to things.

Then his dad told me about playing D&D on a submarine as a Vietnam vet. I made a D&D documentary, and here's a Vietnam veteran in a subdivision basement telling me he rolled dice on a sub. That's going in the film. Some things you can't plan. They just happen because you showed up.

Life gets wild when you let it happen to you.

The Best Drink I've Ever Had

The night ended at Anna's Place, a speakeasy-inspired cocktail bar inside Hotel Indigo on Dodge Street in downtown Omaha. I had a quick infused coconut rum with ube creme and something else I can't remember, and it was the best drink I've ever had in my life.

I don't know what else to say about it. It was that good. Go to Anna's Place.

What I Learned

Omaha gets talked about like it's one week of baseball a year, and that's a pretty thin way to describe a city. There are raccoons eating fried chicken through plate glass windows. There are college kids willing to put on cosplay and stand in dollar store candlelight to make a movie about revenge. There's a guy named Will making pernil in a subdivision house with a dice lab in the basement. There's his dad, a Vietnam vet, who played D&D on a submarine. There's a speakeasy serving the best drink I've ever had.

I shot this one, cut it, and narrated it myself, which means every weird choice in it is mine. Some of those choices are great. Some of them are the kind of thing you do when you're learning as you go. But I went to Omaha to see a friend and I came back with a film and a hero image and a drink I'll never forget and a story about D&D on a submarine that I didn't see coming.