MAHD House Bar Talk
Voted #1 in Funny comedy Podcast in Ohio by feedspot!
Voted #2 Cleveland podcast all time by good pod!
https://goodpods.app.link/dBzUBiLwyNb
Jimmy and Gito just talking about things going around at MAHD House Bar & Grille In Elyria, Ohio. Jimmy Is the owner of MAHD House and Gito is his close friend that helps out around the bar. Listen in while they dissect the daily dealings of the bar.
YouTube @MAHDHouseBarTalk
MAHD House Bar Talk
Antonio Baez on Community Growth and Holiday Humor 2 of 2
Ever tried to keep holiday traditions alive while navigating the ever-rising cost of groceries? We share our own trials, tribulations, and laugh-out-loud moments as we juggle family culinary expectations and cultural traditions, ranging from hillbilly cooking to Puerto Rican pastelas. The conversation doesn't shy away from the more serious impact of holiday gatherings on finances, offering creative solutions to keep the spirit alive without emptying your pockets. Taking a step beyond the dinner table, we highlight the necessity of maintaining cultural vibrancy in communities like Lorraine, where traditions are woven into the very fabric of local identity.
The challenges Lorraine faces extend beyond preserving holiday cheer. Communities grapple with neglected public spaces and a dwindling job market that was once buoyed by industries like Ford and steel mills. Through heartfelt stories and candid observations, we tackle the frustrations of ineffective public services and the disparity in maintenance standards. Our discussion shifts focus toward the critical need for economic revitalization, emphasizing the importance of developing a workforce-ready environment. We explore the potential of political initiatives to attract new business investments, stressing that visible progress and transparency are imperative for sustainable growth.
How are automation and the gig economy reshaping the job landscape? We weigh in on the quirky realities of convenience services and the push for remote employees to return to the office. Shifting gears, we emphasize the urgent need for trade education in schools, sharing success stories from those who have thrived through vocational training. As we wrap up, our discussion pivots to the essential role of community leaders in fostering change, addressing systemic issues like wage stagnation, housing inequities, and the need for genuine community engagement. Through it all, we underscore the resilience required to overcome challenges and pave the way for a more equitable future.
We want everyone to enjoy the show and really appreciate your feed back
Drink water, drink a soda, eat dinner and I'm ready to go. And even at home, the same thing. I'm like soda, some bourbon, I'm like I don't like waking up like, oh man, I got a headache and I don't want to be fat either, and I don't know if a lot of people that smoke weed become fat or not, but it used to be that you would have to eat all the time right.
Speaker 2:I must be secretly smoking weed, and I don't even know it because you're eating a lot.
Speaker 1:No, I don't. You know, my family has a big, you know weight problem or whatever. So, uh, or they've had a weight problem in the past.
Speaker 5:I'm like dude, did you just throw your family out there?
Speaker 1:that you just say that my asses are all fat asses.
Speaker 5:They're bigger, they're bigger than me they're bigger than me.
Speaker 1:I can't afford a little bit.
Speaker 4:They're bigger than me.
Speaker 5:He didn't even deny it. He's like, yeah, y'all fat, they're bigger than me. I can't afford Christmas dinner. We're coming to your house.
Speaker 1:No well, they always do it at my house and I'm like, oh my God.
Speaker 2:That's why he calls them fat, he's hoping they'll eat less.
Speaker 1:This time we were buying dinner. We're looking at the prices, because prices are just crazy now for everything, even save a lot. I mean, the only thing we have is save a lot. We want to keep them here, dude.
Speaker 5:I own a restaurant. Can you imagine it's destroying?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so expensive and people are like and how can they do DoorDash? Even though that's probably a relevant business? They spend the money. That's a relevant business for you too.
Speaker 5:You probably do it, do you do a lot of door? We have, uh, uber eats, but we are gonna actually we're gonna move. We have door dash. We're signed up with them. The problem is with them is that they created the menu and they used a menu they found online from like 2018 or something. I'm like, yeah, I can't do yeah, so fried mushroom. I have to go fix all that stuff before I allow that to go online I thought you had like fried mushrooms, okra.
Speaker 1:You had a whole bunch of stuff back in the days that I wanted when I came out.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah, that all got disappeared. Well, not only that, just the prices alone. Just the prices are even unbearable. I mean, you could put on an order that we're out of something on DoorDash but the prices.
Speaker 1:You couldn't afford to do it at those prices. We were looking at prices yesterday, just uh, my wife makes a ham, that's like her go-to thing, she makes a nice honey ham or whatever and I was like do you want pork as a side again, because it's probably the cheapest thing to buy right now.
Speaker 1:So I just bought another whole pork loin and I'm like I'm not gonna make lechon or panini or anything like that, I'm gonna make a pork loin, I'm gonna do the seasoning like it and I'm gonna cut it real thin like I might serve everybody well, you know what you grew up.
Speaker 5:What did your mom used to make for christmas dinner?
Speaker 1:because your mom was a hillbilly white cook yeah, my mom made, uh, like she would make meatloaf, meatloaf no, for Christmas I mean. Pot roast meatloaves For.
Speaker 5:Christmas, Really oh damn.
Speaker 1:She would make like candy, like the yams, the candy yams. She still does.
Speaker 5:See most of us white people. We have Cabbage and noodles.
Speaker 1:No, no, most of us do Thanksgiving again. That's kind of like the white family does Thanksgiving again.
Speaker 5:Italians usually do pasta, though.
Speaker 1:But my mom didn't cook.
Speaker 5:We talked about it.
Speaker 1:My mom didn't really cook a lot my dad was a cook.
Speaker 5:Well, you said she cooked more like the hillbilly food.
Speaker 4:And my dad was like I don't want that.
Speaker 5:I'm not eating that.
Speaker 1:I'm just curious. He was traditional like rice. You know rice and beans. Your dad was a good cook. Yeah, my dad's a good cook.
Speaker 5:We're going to do this year. We're going to do lasagna.
Speaker 1:Well, we were thinking about doing like a lasagna, but like a pastela lasagna. You eat pastelas I do, but like doing that. So the masa, just make it like a lasagna instead of making individual ones.
Speaker 5:I wonder if that'd be good.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't know I mean it's the same, sounds right, it tastes the same, so it's. I mean it's just not in the yeah it sounds right and the way that you cook it is you boil it, you put it in a pan like a pastela casserole, right, yeah, like a casserole?
Speaker 1:yeah, hey, you know, I think there's a name for it. But I, you know, my know, my Listen, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I'll drink it. I'll drink it too, but yeah, so we'll see.
Speaker 5:I'm just curious. I know we're doing lasagna this year for the first time.
Speaker 1:So going back to Lorraine, because we went off.
Speaker 1:We went off a little bit on thing, but we but so go back go back to Lorraine is, you know, those traditional things as we're losing, you know, as you know, you grew up in the city, so so, keeping those type of when I'm talking about community events and doing things like that keeping some of the traditions and keeping that, it keeps. It keeps the vibe, you know the vibe alive. So you know, puerto Rican festivals, doing the Easter egg hunts, whatever, and keeping it some kind of international christmas. We just did uh, where people still remember that, like the reason we had a uh, which was like the band playing, you know, the weedle and all that stuff like that. It it was because some of the people online on facebook were like man, we're losing that. And they kept saying and they were sending me a message, hey, when can we bring up? You know the band's back, and I'm like, hey, when can we bring a Pajaran? You know the band's back, and I'm like, all right. So when we looked for a band, we were like we want specifically that band because that's what the people are, that's what the community was asking for. Sure, we have a large, you know, hispanic, the largest Hispanic population, obviously in South Lorraine anyways. So that's, you know, keeping those things going and not forgetting about those In the meantime, in terms of while you're trying to build economic development and bringing businesses and that being the forefront of your focus, you still have to keep those.
Speaker 1:For me, I still have to keep those traditional traits alive where people are still coming back. You know, the reason we focus a lot on the park is, you know, most people see events and stuff happening at the park because, first of all, it's an open venue. Anybody can come, it's for everybody. The more focus that you put in the park, or the more people and the events that you have between Darius and between you know, Fitz for Youth, and between George between the baseball leagues and Ole in the kickball leagues you keep bringing, that it makes them.
Speaker 5:Oh yeah, I'm supposed to meet. He was supposed to meet with me yesterday. He wants us to do a kickball league with him again.
Speaker 1:You know you, those people are already doing it in the community. So how do you, how do you prevent them from having to, you know, do having to do the fields again, have more events there, and then they're like man, we have to do it. And then you got someone like me and Ray that were like no, you guys will be for the city, you guys will be cleaning this up. Come and cut the grass, do it often or redo the electric.
Speaker 2:I find it hard when that grass was so high and they could actually give other people tickets for it. That's, that's just crazy.
Speaker 1:No, but we, you know, someone said that too and I think it was one of us we were talking about you know the same, the same thing, like if we're, you know, if our grass is high and they come and cut our grass, can they be like, hey man, the city, where here's a, here's a citizen's uh ticket right, saying, you know you didn't come and pay me. You know we were cutting the grass, sometimes ourself. You know, like I mean, I was cut, I cut the grass a few times. You know, in certain areas, you know, around the memorials, around all the memorials around the ballpark, you know, like I mean, because it's just a natural thing to do. Yes, we have to make sure that the city is doing their part too.
Speaker 5:Well, why don't you guys? This is my question. Why can't you guys get somebody out there that has the contract that you could call One of the landscaping companies there's numerous ones, In fact, there's two right here with mowers and trailers that you could have on call that, if something happens, you could send them out there to take care of it? They do. How did the grass get this tall? It depends.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's the question Did it rain? No, come on.
Speaker 5:Did it rain.
Speaker 2:Holy shit. That's like saying that road just happened last year Hold on, but which part of the area was that high?
Speaker 1:Who?
Speaker 5:cares, does it matter?
Speaker 2:Yeah does it matter, because I'll tell you one thing.
Speaker 1:They created this.
Speaker 2:It was right there on 57 and 31st Street.
Speaker 4:Where the memorial is.
Speaker 2:No 57 and 31st Street. That whole side was just this high. It doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter. I don't know why and this is me too. I've struggled with it I don't know why I can go to Avon and these other cities and the lines on the curve would be like, I could tell you why?
Speaker 5:I don't know why. Because they got business and money. Even when we were kids. We felt a little hopeless in Lorraine growing up In the 80s, I'm just saying. But we thought we could probably at least get a job at the Miller Ford, I mean at the least. I mean if we couldn't succeed at least we could do that. I mean it wasn't like I personally felt hopeless, Like not hopeless. I just personally didn't feel me and Troy to hit on this this week. I personally never thought I'd live past 32, you know 34, 34.
Speaker 5:That's as a kid, that's how I thought so I never as a kid I thought 32, 34, I'd never even be. See that, you know what I mean. So I wasn't all that worried about it. But as a as a whole I always thought I would at least have a chance. I could get a job at Ford. I thought maybe it'd be hard to get that job, but I thought I could do that if I had to. You know what I'm saying these kids ain't got that hope right now. These guys, right now they have no hope. We had the mill through shovel no, not when I was a kid. You had Campana when I was a kid, campana, that Through shovel no, not when I was a kid, you had Campana when I was a kid.
Speaker 2:Campana, okay, campana.
Speaker 5:That was a good career back then. It was a decent job back then it wasn't bad, no.
Speaker 4:Ford.
Speaker 1:What was next to Ford Atlas? Not Atlas.
Speaker 2:Next to Ford.
Speaker 1:It was like a welding. What was it called? Oh, not next. Well then, you also had on Elyria Avenue, not Elyria Avenue, on Pearl Avenue too, by the Wonder Bread. That was a good job. Where the trucks parked, they parked their trucks in the back.
Speaker 2:Oh damn, yeah, it was a trucking company. Was it always a trucking? I don't know if it was.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was a trucking company, but I remember dropping my older brother work there for a while.
Speaker 2:He was making good money back then. Yeah, and then they had damn. What was that company called?
Speaker 1:Don't know. The steel mill was the highlight.
Speaker 2:Remember we did some work for the lady that ended up having Ford was the highlight.
Speaker 1:No, I know, but I'm talking about for our community too. So obviously Ford was the highlight, but the steel mill was a.
Speaker 5:For South Lorraine.
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah he just knew that was there. Yeah, he just knew that was there. You know what I'm saying? It ain't there now.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah, and that's the thing. Until you fix that dude, it's just not going to. It's literally not going to.
Speaker 5:You can put all the community centers, you can do whatever you want, but until you bring and you know what Right now is a key element, because you've got Trump, who is in office and he's demanding that these people bring jobs back. He just had this whole thing with this Japanese guy that he's, you know, bringing what was a 200 billion, I think. Well, it was 100 billion. He tried to talk him into 200 billion to bring, to invest in this. There's all these different. We've got a workforce for you. We've got the workforce right here in Lorraine.
Speaker 1:Well, I building here. He had mentioned Lorain in the past too. That's a whole different subject. He had mentioned Lorain in the past about man. There's thousands of workers at the steel mill, people that lived on 29th and 28th. They're like tapping the screen. Maybe this was a couple years. Maybe this was a couple of years. Maybe this was 20 years ago, because you know.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying they don't come to the area. So having people come, and you know, I mean I hope so, man, I wish you know, I wish the new administration taking over the best elect you know, specifically for us.
Speaker 5:Get on that phone with somebody. Call Vance or somebody. They'll take your calls, those people will take those calls I've spoken to.
Speaker 1:JD many times.
Speaker 5:You have? Yeah, really. Yeah, I mean Vance. I mean yeah, really You've talked to him. Yeah, no kidding, yeah, he's, really You've talked to him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no kidding, yeah, he's just now being the vice president. I get that I worked for Congress in previous times.
Speaker 5:Oh, I didn't know that. How did I not know that I?
Speaker 1:guess I didn't know that. Yeah, so not that I was a congressman.
Speaker 5:I worked for Marcy.
Speaker 1:Kaptur for about five.
Speaker 5:Oh, okay okay.
Speaker 1:So yeah, we've had those conversations with you know and everybody you know what happens is that party line gets in the middle of everything on both sides and they really you know if you're not.
Speaker 5:I don't feel like that's the case right now.
Speaker 1:Well, it might not be the case now. I mean, you can see, you know it turned out a different way. Yeah, and that's because of what we had. Yeah, yeah, and they're like we can't do another four years of this.
Speaker 5:Right right, right, right right. Whether there's some good or some bad. Well, there's just this craziness Like have you seen the woman that wants she wants the dummies to be test dummies to be a woman? Have you seen that?
Speaker 1:oh, the gender, gender specific test dummies, have you seen her?
Speaker 5:she looks like a character out of the simpsons. I swear to god, it's, she is. It's a joke and she's. I want to say connecticut or something I forget where she's at.
Speaker 1:How about you just put faces on it of people you don't like? Yeah?
Speaker 1:well, I just don't understand like these are your big fucking issues like you're like can you, can you petition like hey, I want ray ray in the next tesla test dummy car? No, no, no, I didn't say that I like ray ray, he's just mad at me I'm no, I'm joking, I'm not saying you know, I'm just not him in the car, but like a face like you should be able to petition well, her thing is, she's trying to say that the safety standards aren't the same because they don't use female test dummies.
Speaker 1:This is the stupidest shit I've ever heard in my life, yeah, but the test dummy's like 145 pounds or something, so I guess the average woman isn't 145 pounds.
Speaker 2:I don't know. In America they're 160. To me it's a waste of time to give her that attention, even talking about it, but she's a congressman.
Speaker 5:What?
Speaker 2:else is she going to do.
Speaker 5:I mean, you know Is she a Democrat. Yeah, oh, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:I shouldn't even have asked that. I don't think any Republican was like I can't wait to do this.
Speaker 2:There's so many issues. It was like I can't wait to do this. There's so many issues. This is my priority.
Speaker 5:Well, she looks like she could be like the girlfriend of what's the show with the minions. What's his name? Gru Gru. She looks like she could be like the girlfriend of Gru, or something the Come On Me guy. Yeah, she looks ridiculous. She looks In fact. Let's just show her to her. No, if you've seen her, it's not just personal dude, this is like this, this shit is crazy.
Speaker 1:Well, you know. So you, you mentioned that too, and that that's that's another challenge. You know where you, where, sometimes you you go around in a circle, even in council, and you talk about things, things that really aren't important. People talk about stuff that you know that isn't really important to the general population, like that who sent her an email with the petition of her whole constituency saying this is not gender neutral.
Speaker 5:Here she is right here. Here she goes right here. No one did that. Here she goes right here. Here she goes right here. No one did that. Here she goes right here. And for vehicle and highway safety programs.
Speaker 4:Cutting emissions improve resiliency and address inequities, while creating and sustaining tens of thousands of jobs. Looks like a cartoon character and generated economic opportunities for working and middle class families. And we make strong investments in our districts for community projects.
Speaker 1:It's bad dude Kind of looked like from Scooby-Doo. What was that?
Speaker 2:The brain girl. Oh, now you're jumping in with it.
Speaker 1:Scooby-Dooby-Doo. What was the brain? The girl with the brain, daphne.
Speaker 5:Daphne. She's worse than that dude. She looks more like a. I don't even know what the hell she looks.
Speaker 2:More like if Daphne and Scooby-Doo had a kid.
Speaker 5:And I'm not trying to degrade her looks, but she does look comical. But what's the point in this shit?
Speaker 1:These are the people that are wasting their time Making laws, passing laws, and they're talking about stuff that's irrelevant, correct? I mean, maybe her initial statement sounded good, but then when she was like, and my priority is that we will have the first female craft, you're like hold up, what happened? That's so retarded.
Speaker 2:I'd be one of them, guys. I'd just walk over there and put a wig on it. There you go, stupid Y'all like the eyeliner.
Speaker 1:Put a little eyeliner or something.
Speaker 5:My first statement, my first thought was could she be the first female test dummy? That was my first thought. But, I mean, you know, that's just me being an asshole, I guess.
Speaker 1:But even in council sometimes you get wrapped around. You know someone's agenda. It's like hey, you know, I got an email from someone that this, and then they bring it up and you know you're looking at the minutes and you're like okay, nothing, nothing, nothing. This has nothing to do.
Speaker 5:See, that's how I feel when you tell me about all the different events and stuff. That's how I feel when you tell me about all the different events and stuff.
Speaker 4:That's how I feel about South.
Speaker 5:Lorraine.
Speaker 1:To me. You're wasting your damn time. We're on the same agreement. You go to a city like Medina.
Speaker 5:They have a nice beautiful fireworks display and they have all these different events and stuff going on, because people have jobs and they have careers, they have money there. You get that money here. All that stuff will happen.
Speaker 1:In fact, the factories may actually put on the events, but I think we're we're talking about the same thing because you know, I don't want you to believe and I don't think you believe that you know the main priority is just to do community stuff or not. It's not what's happening. That's, that can't be so far from reality. There are works to try to bring businesses and bring factories and stuff back in here. It's taking time. Not, it just takes time, it's taking a lot more time.
Speaker 5:It takes your effort and time. So this is my argument. And I know it does, but when you take your time and segmented a portion too much, it towards something wrong instead of something that it's actually going to fix it. That's the problem. Because it does take time, yeah, but so take that time and use it for something that's actually going to help.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you would. But that's the the. The argument is what is the what? This is your perception of what is wrong, of taking all the time to what is wrong, where an event takes two or three days you know to plan, and then you have your entire first year or six months that you're working on bringing a bill, bringing a business here, but you got to go through all the red tape of, okay, getting things signed, legal, talking, how can they do it? What kind of initiative, what kind of uh investments can we do as the city? You know those talks are happening. That time is not gone without that time.
Speaker 4:That's going on talk some more to other businesses or find out what they need, or one out there and that is and that is happening.
Speaker 1:But what people see is they don't see the inner workings of how everything is happening indoors, and not all the time. Sometimes they do, because sometimes it's published like hey, this is people that we talked to, these are people that we went out to speak with and these are people visiting the property talking about how they can invest. We've got you know, you could do a public records request and see how many people have reached out about doing something in that area is like the steel mill or the stove works or any of that property. But so those those conversations are happening, not just conversations. There's progress, that is happening, that's just. And when I say it takes time, like it takes too much time, not like that, it's just taking time and it's not moving quick. And that's my challenge.
Speaker 5:What about reaching out to companies that haven't even considered?
Speaker 1:here, though, All the time.
Speaker 5:You do that all the time, all the time.
Speaker 1:Okay, we're doing though, all the time you do that all the time, all the time. Okay, we're doing that all the time, you know, we and and for me specifically, I'm reaching out to multiple companies like, hey and the first year was me learning my job like what can I offer, you know? Uh, what can I offer as advice to these companies that the city can help with, right, you know? So that was building a block of saying, hey, do do. I'm like, you know, talking to ray, talking to administration, talk to the building, housing and planning, like what are the incentives, if there are any incentives, to talk to these, because I can say, hey, I got a building right here that's been closed for a while, you want to move here. And they're like, okay, thanks, you know.
Speaker 1:So that's what I did is we went and we said, hey, what kind of incentives, what are things that we can offer? And then I can go back to them and say, hey, this is the plan, this is how our city dynamics is, this is why we believe it would work for your company. And we're really then, after that's done, then it starts their process to see can we financially fund, can we financially do it? Does it make sense for us to move here, you know, or to move our business, or to move a location here. And those are the conversations that it seems, you know, within just my little bit of time, has been more apparent than others. It's like, ok, well, yeah, we've looked at that property several years ago and this is where our stats are. And then they give us their survey of how they believe. They're like it's just not there. We're like, okay, well, how do we get it there? How about you trust us and meet in the middle? And they're still like, yeah, well, no, you need a salesman.
Speaker 5:That's what you need.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so you gotta be a salesman that's.
Speaker 5:I mean, that's what you got to do.
Speaker 1:You got to sell it to them and I mean and that's the learning process, is there too, is, you know, being able to sell to those, to those businesses and those corporations that, hey, this is why you should do it. And now, now you mentioned it before, we have probably, undoubtedly and unquestionably the best location for Geographically, geographically, for.
Speaker 5:That's a fact, yeah.
Speaker 1:You got water.
Speaker 2:River, lake beaches.
Speaker 6:But, that still takes
Speaker 5:up a lot of that that is a big portion.
Speaker 2:So they got to force them to get off the pot.
Speaker 1:And that's why you're seeing a lot of progress over the beginning portion of the year where they started fining them. They were able to get a search warrant where they couldn't do that before and they were able to go in there like boom, here are all the violations that you're doing and we're just going to keep hitting you with violations, and violations, and violations until you start responding, you know, and then you get epa involved.
Speaker 5:Like these are the epa violations, and I'm sure there's a ton of can you get the federal government involved in the epa the epa no, I mean, can you get the federal government involved in and getting some development out there, forcing hand out there? I mean I mean they'd send all that money everywhere else.
Speaker 1:It looks like Representative Latta has been very engaged with the city now, which wasn't the case in previous time, so that looks like it's working.
Speaker 5:Who is our?
Speaker 1:representative Latta.
Speaker 5:Latta? Who is that? I don't even know. I've never even heard of him. Oh, bob Latta? Oh yeah, I do know who that is.
Speaker 1:Okay, oh, bob Latt. Oh yeah, I do know that it's okay, that's so. Yeah, yeah, after the redistricting it used to be Marcy Kaptur in this yeah, yeah, and you know, with within her office, they brought a lot of money for the dredge facility in the back and to redevelop some of that site next to the Black River, that the trailway back there, yeah, yeah, and you know they did a lot of work. I mean millions of dollars in there, um, but you know, anyways and now we've read none- of a visible, by the way no, that's not true.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, it's visible, it's not?
Speaker 5:visible? Yes, it is. If you come to lorraine, you drive to lorraine from out of this area from 6 11, you see. Yeah, maybe from 6 11, I guess but I'm talking, it's not visible.
Speaker 1:57 or broadway. Well, this is no. No, this is my struggle as, as you know, a South Lorraine, uh, uh this is why it's barely visible over on six 11, you know perceptions, reality, right. So when I drive down all my streets in my ward, you know, I and you're four by four.
Speaker 5:I look at the lift it Four by four. I drive a truck, yeah.
Speaker 4:I drive a truck.
Speaker 5:Sometimes I got to go through the rain.
Speaker 4:You just said you got to go to the bank.
Speaker 5:My bank's over there, man yeah.
Speaker 1:So you know you realize when you have a house. You got to have a truck man, because you know you can't move nothing I have a truck.
Speaker 5:for one reason I have a truck. My wife has an SUV. No, my boat stays there at the marina. I have it for one reason, one reason only. I don't shovel my driveway, I don't mess with my driveway, I just go, I let it pack down. I figure, god put it there, he can pick it up. I'm just never doing my driveway. Where does your wife park? He can pick it up. I'm just never doing my driving. Where does your wife park?
Speaker 1:She's got a Jeep.
Speaker 5:We just roll out.
Speaker 2:We really had no bad snow yet Years.
Speaker 1:But when we did, it'd be nice to have a two-wheel drive, front-wheel drive car, personally for me in the snow. Or an old Crown Vic, those were really good too, but the trucks don't. Personally for me in the snow, you know. Or a crown old crown vic, those were really good too, but the trucks don't.
Speaker 5:these trucks are sucking the snow okay yeah, I mean that's what I have yet to prove, but my raptor was amazing in the snow?
Speaker 1:yeah, mine's good in the snow too but, but anyways, you know what I was saying is you struggle when you drive down and you look at the streetscape of of south lorraine and you have these businesses. You know which I mentioned earlier. You know, now we're putting weight on these businesses, citing them and finding I was like where's that at?
Speaker 4:I thought you hit one of the windows are open, I thought you hit one a little ding ding ding.
Speaker 5:I do have those Don't use them.
Speaker 1:But you know, those are the struggles that I find myself with all the time. Is I like man, I kind of want to cut this guy's crap. You know like what is he doing? And then you know you reach out and you're like, hey, you know you can see the hundreds of emails and they have like all these apps. Now that the city has, they have like 40 different apps. It's ridiculous, now that you're sending, hey, take a picture of the residents, take a picture of the issue. You send it. They're like okay, we sent an inspector out there. All right, that person's something's been put on their door, they've been cited. And you do that.
Speaker 6:Yeah.
Speaker 5:You go and do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, quit wasting your time doing that and spend that time calling another business that wants to come to South Orange, clean that damn mill out of there. I mean, leave them citizens alone.
Speaker 5:Leave them alone and call another city.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm talking about these businesses too that are on that street. They're falling apart.
Speaker 2:You're like who owns this property. You know what? There's a lot of them that are doing stuff too. Like I said that Sky lift, you got Hashledge, you bought that old, yeah, but you see what he does.
Speaker 1:He has somebody that comes, he's cutting his. He only has a little piece of grass, but someone's cutting that thing every day, all the time. What are you?
Speaker 2:talking about that thing. Looks beautiful man.
Speaker 1:People are cleaning that all the time, but it's the ones that are holding on to these properties hoping for some miracle investment. You're holding on to this property. It's on the demolished, it's on the demo board. This property is going to be demolished. What are you doing? And there's a lot of property.
Speaker 5:Can you annex it like they did Beachcomber? Can't you just annex them from them? What does that take to do Like?
Speaker 1:by taking my eminent domain or whatever.
Speaker 5:I don't know they took it from Ben. Ben had that Beachcomber's on the lake. They took it from him.
Speaker 1:No, but at a certain process they can. So they're like, okay, it's our property, but now then it's our property and our problem right now. You got to cut the grass, you got to maintain it down, now we got to do this and that's another. You know, costing money too. But then you get, you know, these businesses. They were like, hey, I'm going to buy it, or they get it donated to them for a couple grand.
Speaker 1:You know a couple grand, like 10 grand, 15 grand, and they're like oh, I got a vision of this and be like hey, but by the way, can the city can?
Speaker 5:the city. Yeah, but you'd be better. We got to get like. We got it Like. He brought up the franchises. That's a big thing that, like when it comes to restaurants and stuff, you need more of that there. You need Starbucks, you need a lot of McDonald's, but you know what?
Speaker 1:I mean. You need those types of things we have you know two options for restaurants that are in the process right now on Grove Avenue that are working. They're working to develop those. They've redeveloped the inside already, but the outside is taken. It's something they haven't done yet. So you know, we're hoping to get a couple of those restaurants here coming up in the new year. They're not franchise restaurants per se, but that's what you need.
Speaker 5:That's what you need. I want a Taco Bell. I mean, I don't know about Taco Bell.
Speaker 1:You know I went to the east side where the old Dollar General was. Me and my wife were driving yesterday. I'm like it's a nice Taco Bell.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we poured a concrete over there.
Speaker 5:Didn't they have a shooting there already though, Didn't they?
Speaker 1:That doesn't matter I'm pretty sure they did. We don't. We don't talk about that. Talk about the good stuff. You know, in every city, you know there's going to be some challenge you know, sheffield late. You know, sheffield village had had a shooting at mcdonald's you know, yeah, wasn't that like the boyfriend? Or something you know. So something you know, stuff just it happens like that and we got you know, there's criminals out there that just want to.
Speaker 2:They're miserable. They want to bring it upon other people.
Speaker 1:And that's why you know we have to put more officers on the road, put more people in the department that actually care.
Speaker 5:That ain't going to help that, though. I mean they're not going to come shoot at Taco Bell when a cop's in the area. They'll wait until they drive away. I mean it's that they can help that right I mean that just isn't that just people are.
Speaker 1:I mean people are just evil, you know, people just have evil traits and there's shootings everywhere and you know you can't.
Speaker 5:that's a mental health issue that's going on in this country that I personally think has to do with with uh, uh, idle minds. That's what I think is the biggest problem. I agree with that too. I think that you know Trump said it best when he said that and I was shocked to hear it. When he heard it, I'm like yeah, he's right. You know, if you want to solve depression, work harder. Because he's right, people that are working hard, they're not depressed, they're just working and they ain't got time to be.
Speaker 5:You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:And the people that are depressed. You guys are all going back to work.
Speaker 5:All the people with the depression issues. 90% of them are people that are on disability or Social Security. They're sitting at home all the time, they're not getting out and about. And Reagan said two years ago he said the best social program you can have is a job. That's the best social program out there. Huh, I said years ago. I thought you said two years.
Speaker 1:I mean you know all the social, you know giving away money and stuff like that became just. I mean, people just took advantage of that, oh yeah, and you know no one needed to of that, oh yeah, and you know no one needs. No one needed to work.
Speaker 4:Right Rather than not work.
Speaker 1:I can just do door that and I'll knock any of these people that are driving for driving cars, door dash and stuff.
Speaker 5:Just have a license Right and not be they don't check to make sure they have a license.
Speaker 1:I don't, they're like man I'm running this door dash and I'm like you ain't got a license, bro. Then I got to worry about getting their food to the people, because it's not their fault. Do you? Really. Yeah, it's not like an Amazon truck, you can just be like hey, let me call another door dash.
Speaker 5:So you roll up in the cop car with their food.
Speaker 1:I have Like a delivery guy. I'm like where's this food? I'm like you ain't got a license.
Speaker 4:Oh, that's hilarious.
Speaker 1:I'm like it doesn't change the fact that someone ordered from you. They're screwed. They're sitting there waiting for two freaking hours.
Speaker 5:That'd be a good skit. That'd be a good skit Like pull over somebody that got no order drunk.
Speaker 2:Imagine that people trying to get their money back from them too. Hey, I didn't get my food. Nah, it was delivered, we gave it to them.
Speaker 1:It's terrible because I don't know what checks they do. I know, like Uber or the Uber organization and Lyft, they do like you have to send your driver's license. The car has to be like a certain.
Speaker 5:Yeah, it has to be nicer.
Speaker 1:Something like that. But like Uber Eats or DoorDash, you can just open your app Like when I'm leaving here, I go DoorDash and just grab the food from here and drop it off. Really, you know, like that's crazy, you know.
Speaker 2:So you're like hey, I'm delivering you got.
Speaker 5:We have a seal sticker on it that you can't just take off. It'll rip if you take it off.
Speaker 1:Now do you get it from the company? They send it to us.
Speaker 5:Yeah, they send us a spool of stickers that you seal it. Put the bag in and seal it. Then it's sealed and it shouldn't.
Speaker 1:What if someone orders the stickers on Amazon?
Speaker 5:You could.
Speaker 2:Put it in a different bag. I don't think anybody's trying that bad.
Speaker 5:Those door dashers get enough free shit anyways, because Bobby's girlfriend was doing that for a while. And there were so many people that would cancel it after they picked it up and they would just get it and take it home and eat it.
Speaker 1:It charges another fee, though. Right, what do you mean? Yeah, like, instead of me going to BK, I could just drive there and grab my burger. I got to spend $28 for someone to drop it off to me or something I don't understand.
Speaker 5:It's more yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:I don't understand how people talk about how broke they are, but they're ordering DoorDash and shit Every day. Yeah, it's crazy Every day.
Speaker 5:There's people in the community Because they're sitting at home smoking weed and they don't want to go out.
Speaker 1:That's what it is oh damn, you solved the problem. Or they worked and they're too lazy to.
Speaker 2:Nah they're sitting at home playing video games, smoking weed. I have never ordered nothing like that ever I have, I have.
Speaker 5:And it's never been good you tested it, though.
Speaker 2:Right, you was just testing it when you.
Speaker 5:No well, I ordered from myself, just to see how it worked.
Speaker 1:My wife does Walmart. She's the one and I argue with her all the time about that too, because I'm like we could have just went to Walmart and spent like $58 in a fee to have this, but her logic it's giving someone business.
Speaker 3:You're not even going to walk into Walmart anymore, I think it's going to be where they're going to, just end up being an.
Speaker 5:Amazon-style hub where they'll just come and bring it to you.
Speaker 1:I believe that Home Depot, lowe's, all those places, man, you walk in and I mean that's contributing to a lot of the issues with people not working because you don't need to have a real facility and a real hardworking job anymore. You can do it easier. You can do a course online and be an online person now and you get a check every if you can get that job.
Speaker 5:I mean, I don't know people that they're walking away from that because they've been too much. I know, like my brother-in-law works for Amazon AWS, which is like their data service and stuff. Like he's a recruiter and he was, uh, work from home and they want him to come back in and actually they gave him a limited amount of time and he's planning on just disappearing. Before that happens, He'll find another job. Well, that was.
Speaker 1:Elon. I mean, I heard it when Elon was talking.
Speaker 5:People just aren't as productive.
Speaker 1:He's going to mandate everybody to come back to work. He's going to give them a little time to work your work day job. He did that to Twitter is what he did. Give them a little time to work your way up.
Speaker 4:He did that to Twitter is what he did. He did that to Twitter and half of them quit right away.
Speaker 5:They're going to quit. Yeah, half of them quit right away, and that's what he's hoping to do with it too, for the federal government.
Speaker 1:I mean, look at all these people that are just working. Well, they're saying too like I guess we're the same end is you have robot, you know? I mean everything's advanced Robotics, yeah, Robotics, so you can go to like the chemicals everything, I think Chemical, or one of these organizations I've just seen. They're hiring and like their main thing is do you know how to work a robot?
Speaker 5:Yeah, it's going to be. I mean that's what it is it. Yeah, it's gonna be. I mean that's what it is, leading that way, that's all. Yeah. Yeah, that's that is what it's gonna become.
Speaker 1:I mean, there's no question, that's where it's gonna go thinking about that when you're, when you're looking at different buildings and new, new uh infrastructure or whatever you're like, okay, well, what do you bring here that's going to be sustainable, continuous, you know. So. You know they've, they've uh. You know there's been some talks about agriculture stuff. You know things like that. You know sustainable agriculture.
Speaker 5:Oh see, I think you should be, but they build them, they build. I think professional offices are more important.
Speaker 1:I think that's what I think, but no one comes to work. They all work from home.
Speaker 5:Yeah, but that's going away though. They're going away now.
Speaker 1:Key Bank. 90% of their employees work from home.
Speaker 5:Yeah, is that true? Now, besides their, small little hub. No, I know, we've done a lot of jobs where we've went in and it's because people are downsizing. So, like office buildings, we're going in and building them a new office because it's a smaller version of what they were doing, more efficient. But actually I just went and looked at one recently where they're bringing everybody back from the office they don't want. So now they're growing because they don't want people working from home no more. That's good and I think that's going to happen.
Speaker 1:I'm just jealous. I don't care about how people are making their money, but I'm just jealous that I have to go to work every day, you know, regardless of the work, and everybody else is like oh man, I see them. You know, I see some postings. You know that they're in mexico again or somewhere. I'm like and they're like oh, working from home is so hard. I know I've seen like that.
Speaker 5:Have you ever seen a video of the rv people like that's a husband and wife. They drive all over the country. They're just in an rv and they do all their work while they're on the on the road I had a uh, sergeant, cool I had a sergeant major that was in charge of my unit once, and that's what he had he just had an rv.
Speaker 1:He didn't have a house, yeah, and he had an rv and that's his. His wife worked from home and he just traveled and then when he needed to be at this drill station, he'd be there and just he's like this is the best season I'm getting paid ridiculous amounts of money being in the service and he's like this is all I do is I'll deploy and I'll come back.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I knew a guy who had a house. He had a property in Texas with like 35 acres and a deck and he'd roll his RV up to it just for a few months a year. But other than that this was back when malls were relevant he traveled the country just doing for chance construction, just doing mall work. So his wife was with them, they had their satellite, they just they traveled the country and that's all they did. And then, but with mall work back then you wouldn't work basically from thanksgiving till january, you know what I mean. So he'd go back home and sit on his, you know he'd pull up to his deck and that was it. You know what I mean. Pull up to his deck, and that was it. You know what I mean. And then eventually he was planning on building there when he retires.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the mall thing is a big issue. I mean that'll never be a mall again. Oh yeah, man, that's crazy.
Speaker 2:But that's not Lorraine, I just read they're going to close.
Speaker 1:All the big lots, yeah, big lots, all the big Big Lots is all Big Lots is going to close?
Speaker 5:Yeah, because people are just shopping online, that's just all there is to it.
Speaker 2:That's all they're doing. Amazon killed them, killed everybody.
Speaker 5:Yeah, Amazon is destroying. And what did they do?
Speaker 2:Didn't people go on strike, or what happened there?
Speaker 5:Did they go on strike? They're supposed to, certainly if they don't get their contract. Was that?
Speaker 2:Walmart or Amazon.
Speaker 5:Amazon. So Amazon is up for their picketing. They're trying to go on strike. I don't know if they did or not, though.
Speaker 2:They better watch.
Speaker 1:They'll just automate that damn thing. That was a test of all those drones they've seen on the ground. Let's see if they can work. It's like, all right, let's lift them off, do it.
Speaker 5:Well, the problem with Amazon is that most of their workers aren't even working for Amazon. They're all like subcontractors, so they're not even privy to getting the kind of money that. Amazon would even offer or benefits or anything. They're just getting subbed out to them, but yet they're in. Amazon clothes, amazon trucks. You know, it's crazy, so just talking about employment and stuff.
Speaker 1:I mean, you don't even see Amazon trucks anymore. There's a white van.
Speaker 2:I see a lot of Amazon.
Speaker 1:We got different wives evidently they're in a cowboy to my house. They're just like we don't have enough. We have to take two trucks out to this house, but you see the other trucks and people are delivering them in vans. That happens during the holidays.
Speaker 5:It's been that way.
Speaker 4:In 2019,.
Speaker 5:We built a place out in Euclid that did military parts, but it was right next to Amazon. The actual shipping place is across the street, but there was the center where everybody picks up the loading, where they would load Twice a week. It was only every day. You'd come through there and the Amazon vans were in line. It's ridiculous. It's crazy, like they're lined up out of the parking lot down the road down up on Euclid. It's wild. I mean it's, there's so many. It's absurd. But twice a week it was regular vehicles, vans, cars, whatever that would do is only twice a week. It was regular vehicles, vans, cars, whatever that would do.
Speaker 1:It was only twice a week, though, that they were doing that. They've been doing it with the mail too. So the mail carriers I've seen some guy like some ripped-up jeans or whatever. I'm like this guy on my porch.
Speaker 5:You know, and I'm like, oh, maybe he's the post office guy. You apartments right there. How did they get away with that?
Speaker 1:shit. No, I hate when the Amazon Do you ticket them. It depends. It depends how long they can block the road.
Speaker 2:You got 83 backed all the way up and this guy just stopped. And it's not even that he's. I'd feel a little bad if he jogged a little, you know like hurry up, no, they just just nonchalant.
Speaker 1:They're on the same, you know the same with, like the mail, the mail trucks.
Speaker 5:I've seen those parked on the roads on near there, yeah, but not like that, like on 57 down here, where those apartments are right before, right before 113 or right past 113. From here those apartments they don't pull in those apartments to do it. They park right on 57, and I'm granted that's only supposed to be 35 there, but still nobody does it yeah, I mean maybe 83 won't kill you.
Speaker 1:I've never cited one specifically just for their dropping off packages. There has been, you know, accidents, speed I mean because they're on a time crunch. They get their packages at 5 in the morning or whatever, and by like 6 o'clock they're like bro I, I gotta drive all the way back, or maybe maybe there was another sub substation or something that they park at I don't know um, but I was talking about, like you know.
Speaker 1:So we're talking about people not working. You know, what made like lorraine grow is not a you know ford steel mill or what kept it moving, but also those like the small mom and pop. You know what we're missing the shipyard I was just about to say the same thing, yeah you know, but that was way before my time, but that you know, not mine, yeah, but you know, they're those small mom and pop uh distributors, like you know where they just had one.
Speaker 5:Those are gone. That's a wrap. That's those are. You know, they're gone on the country, they're gone in the world but that's what a lot of that on 28th Street had.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know this building right here Right, and that's my whole problem.
Speaker 5:Quit trying to. You got to level those buildings and put something else there, Because those are gone. They're gone, they're not coming back, Just like the doctor's offices and little architectural firms and stuff. They're gone. It's all firms now. Everything's like big, huge centers basically, instead of a firm or whatever. They're like hubs yeah, and they're doing that.
Speaker 1:Even the temp agencies. I remember there was a couple of temp agencies in Lorain like Ameritem. You could just pull up and get a job at the printing shop in Oberlin or, you know, energizer plant, where they pick you up in the morning, you drive out there, you know. You know you get your check kind of skimmed. Yeah, You're like that shit was horrible. You're making $12, but here's your $7 an hour.
Speaker 2:Here's another thing they used to hire people at Ford and they would have them work until their time limit was up. Then they'd let them go and then they'd bring them back, so they wouldn't have to hire them. That was bullshit.
Speaker 1:I didn't know that they did that a lot. But some of those people in hindsight they got hired in because they met certain people and they're like bro, how do I? Get in this place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I know a friend of mine I ain't going to say his name, but he went through like three rounds of that shit and then finally he got hired in. But I'm like damn, that wasn't right. They were supposed to hire him at the first round, so it was like six months you were.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so he was like a couple days before the hire point.
Speaker 2:And then, yeah, that should be legal as hell.
Speaker 1:Still mill. They did that, they let him go and should be legal as hell.
Speaker 2:Still, they did that, they let them go and then they'd be like, hey, you want to come back to the tab and you're like I'll have been off for two weeks.
Speaker 4:Yeah. And then they'd start them all over Like here's your start date.
Speaker 2:Then you start over that was bullshit yeah.
Speaker 1:But, and they have experience at that point too, but those places people used to make a little bit of money. They were at least working people, so they showed up every day hoping to grab that golden ticket because you'd stand in line. I did it too as a kid. I'd stand over there at a Maritimes. The reason I mentioned a printing place because those are the two places I worked in. I wound up settling with Elyria Foundry, so I worked at Elyria Foundry for a while.
Speaker 1:They did almost the same thing but, then, I just went to the military, because they're like you're getting close to that thing. So you know, this is what's going to happen, blah, blah, and I'm like, well, I'm already at, like the top, you know, I'm not going the same job and he just started so then I wind up going to the military.
Speaker 1:But those things like that, you know, I've uh, we reached out to a couple uh temp agencies as well to see if they'd be interested in, you know, bringing something like that just to give someone don't do that an opportunity to work. Stop it I'm telling you dude, that's the last thing we need.
Speaker 5:It's not what we need. We don't need bullshit jobs in Lorraine. Dude, we don't need no more bullshit jobs in Lorraine. They would be better off to go be a fucking bartender than they would be to take the bullshit job. Are you hiring for bartending? Well there's people hiring not me, but there's people that are. I know I do every summer when I start the patio but I mean you don't need bullshit jobs. If somebody wants to bring a bullshit job, just ignore them and spend your time on someone else Bullshit jobs are pointless.
Speaker 2:You've got to listen to the non-living wages.
Speaker 5:Temporary serve at temp jobs. Temp jobs are bullshit jobs.
Speaker 1:People working at McDonald's. You know they're making under $25.
Speaker 2:And it's not a career job.
Speaker 1:But that's a job that they went and worked. That's a job that they wanted to work.
Speaker 2:Those are like kid jobs going to advance after that.
Speaker 1:I understand, but you know people that want to work will find work and if you don't give them options, there you go.
Speaker 1:There you go, so quit wasting your time with the dumb shit, but if you don't give them options to find work or transportation, you know transportation's a big issue for our and I'm talking about if we're talking about south lorraine transportation, our hub, our food desert that we have. We don't have food we don't have. We have a grocery store. We definitely love uh key foods. They need to stay. Anybody else that does is similar to them, but we have a food desert. We don't have means of transportation to get to jobs. When we do surveys we're like who has a car in South Lorraine? You might see a lot of cars, but how many people can get to work if they were offered a job? Those are things that we looked at too.
Speaker 5:What are all these cars? We see, I don't see a house without a car in front of it. See, I go down Guidos, they don't even got driveway, but they got three cars each In the yard and everything.
Speaker 2:There are people that don't drive.
Speaker 1:They might own a car but they can't drive. That's the Uber Eats car. Whatever dude, you know what when I was a young man.
Speaker 5:I lost my license because I was at Vicks and I let a buddy of mine take the car home because he got caught underage. I was underage too, but he took it home because I was talking to some girl. So I'm like here's the keys. He went and totaled my car and I didn't have insurance or any of that. I was like 19 years old and they took my license from me and you walked.
Speaker 4:No, I didn't walk. I drove my fucking ass without a license and supported my family. What was I going to do? You got to do that.
Speaker 5:What was I going to do, I just drove. I just was a little more careful, whatever. You know what I mean, but I took care of my family. I went to work, I figured it out. I mean, it's just.
Speaker 1:I don't know man.
Speaker 5:But this is, this is different levels that you're talking about Different levels. No, you're making it more complicated than it is. Get somebody to change Lorraine's outlook. You have to get somebody in there, and having kumbaya parties is not going to help it.
Speaker 4:You've got to have somebody to come in here.
Speaker 5:You work as hard as you can to get at least one, one major, major person in there. That's an employer that is spending money. That one will trickle down, I promise you, and once somebody has an opportunity to get that job, they don't need to drive because it's in their fucking neighborhood. You know what I mean? It's just it's wasting time on dumb shit that doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1:But I think the way that you're explaining it is a little bit Simplified.
Speaker 5:No, my dad always said keep it simple, stupid.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the KISS principle. What's the KISS principle? Let's hear this Keep it simple stupid.
Speaker 5:Oh okay, I never heard that. I never heard it as a KISS. Yeah, alright, that makes sense.
Speaker 1:The KISS principle. That's what we try to use. But you got to do this. You have to still engage, you have to do the community stuff. I agree that your main focus, and the main focus, has always been on bringing back some type of business, industries, whatever it is, office buildings, whatever it is to pay people. That is the goal. That's 100% a goal. But if you aren't visible, you don't have people. That's it, that's 100% of the goal. That's 100% a goal. But if you aren't visible, you don't have people.
Speaker 1:That's it, that's 100% of the goal.
Speaker 5:That's the only goal. That's it. Everything else is bullshit. Until that gets there, everything else you do is bullshit. If you have a community event in this neighborhood and you keep doing it long enough, there's going to be fights and shootings going on because the neighborhood does not have positive income for people to live.
Speaker 1:You've got to do it right. You've got to do it right. There's always going to be instances where you have some type of person, you're not having it in. Medina, some type of person. They're all over the place. I disagree with this. It's not happening everywhere. I can promise you if you hold 30 events in.
Speaker 5:Oakwood Park. Five of them are going to have something crazy going on.
Speaker 1:I'm going to say more than that, probably more than that, but read the blotters, read every city and see what kind of situations they are having. At certain times we have a stigma because we can't even have a graduation at you know Avon thing without getting into a big issue, you know. So that's a youth and management problem, right, you know? Do you have enough people to make sure that this doesn't happen? And what are we teaching our kids and how are we developing them? These little small things that you're doing on the outside, of doing the inside work and trying to bring to business, that's engaging them, that's engaging the youth to say, hey, you do matter. We're trying to build this, we are in this process of building, but these are things that we can do.
Speaker 5:But kids will fix those problems. When there's no hopelessness, that hopelessness is vicious.
Speaker 1:But we're talking about different. We're talking about that's not. That's not. That's the problem, it's not. We're talking about different areas of life?
Speaker 5:No, you're wrong.
Speaker 1:You're talking about hopelessness. You're talking about no, I'm not.
Speaker 5:I'm talking about today being hopeless. A kid in Lorain right now is either hopeless or trying to get out. Period, until you fix that. You can't fix that with community parks. There's some Some, that's it. That's the only two options in that city. You either want out or you're hopeless.
Speaker 1:You fix the hopelessness with good education and people who care in the schools. And they'll leave, and they'll leave, and they'll leave, and they'll leave, and they'll leave and parents those ones will leave.
Speaker 5:Those ones will leave, maybe, and the parents, they don't.
Speaker 5:The parents, yeah I told you earlier, if they don't see any engagement, of course I know you don't believe me, but I'm telling you, the parents in the 80s paid a hell of a lot less attention to the kids than the kids do today. Even the worst of parents are spending more time watching what their kids are doing than my mother did. My mother didn't care about what was going on at school. She looked at the report card. It was either right or you got your ass bit.
Speaker 1:That's it. That's not what I'm seeing and I deal with the kids all the time. So, you're not seeing that.
Speaker 5:How can you say that?
Speaker 1:I'm seeing. The kids aren't, don't have a, they don't have parent influence. That's what I'm seeing. That's what I'm seeing is kids don't have a parent influence right now that they don't, they are living on their own. You know, the hopelessness is because they don't have anybody.
Speaker 5:That's there, but we, but we did the same thing when we were kids. Yeah, but in the 70s 60s, kids just did.
Speaker 1:We're talking about a different, we're talking about a different dynamic of life, and not not that everybody grew up the way you did or everybody didn't grow up the way you did. I mean, you're, that's what you dealt with and that's cool, that's your opinion, that's your observation of how you grew up and that's perfect. But what I see here now, in this day and age, is.
Speaker 5:It's not that. How do you know that, though you're not in nobody's house? How the hell do you?
Speaker 1:know that to the houses. I'm seeing them. I know what the kids are talking about. I see the kids on the street. I'm encountering these kids where they don't have a parent at home or when they're getting a home. They're both of their parents are drugged up or one's dead because they od, or they're both od and or that. Now the kids od and I'm seeing that every day.
Speaker 5:Well, no, I'm not disagreeing with that, but that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:I'm not disagreeing with that I don't think you were, but what I'm saying is I think that's more of an issue now and of course, back in the 80s, 90s or whatever, they had their issues too. I grew up in a house that had similar, but my mom was there whenever I was, you know, when I came home. So I grew up in a house that had addiction and stuff, but I felt at that time I was like man, we could do whatever.
Speaker 5:But that's a whole different issue you're talking about. I'm not talking about. My mother didn't have addiction issues. She didn't have problems like that.
Speaker 1:But I just use that as a but that didn't make her.
Speaker 1:You asked me why. How am I seeing it? What am I seeing? And that's what I'm seeing is that the kids nowadays and there might be a plethora of kids that are that their parents are both working, so they just don't have anybody and they're so consumed in work and and providing a good wage. It ain't because of the industry is not not only not being here, it's because the price hikes and everything under this last administration and whatever it's's a pricing of everything. Everybody has to work all the time to be able to fund. So your kid is the secondary portion. It's like did you get eat? All right, cool, and then I'm going back to work and that's what I'm seeing right now. Is that that's? I mean?
Speaker 5:there's all kinds of statistics that are showing but you're giving a reason why your parents aren't paying attention. I'm telling you they didn't back then anyways, just because they just didn't In the 70s and 80s parents just weren't there, wasn't this whole big thing on education like there is today.
Speaker 1:You mentioned Harrison Academy. You mentioned fields. You mentioned being able to go outside and being able to interact with people and having some social ability.
Speaker 5:And none of that had anything to do with my parents.
Speaker 1:And right now you don't have that. That's my whole argument.
Speaker 5:You just made my argument for me? No, but you're saying you just made my argument for me. Put the programs in to fix the kids, it's not the parents.
Speaker 1:No, but that's what I said initially is that you have to have these programs, these community events.
Speaker 5:Not community centers, Harrison's, Charleston's freaking trade schools that are. What do you think?
Speaker 1:Harrison was a community center, no it wasn't.
Speaker 2:No, it was not when.
Speaker 1:I was growing up, it became a cultural community center.
Speaker 5:No, no, when we were there, that was garbage we're talking about. When we were there, it was garbage for me when we were there, it was.
Speaker 1:Boxing Academy Right.
Speaker 5:That was after us. When we were there, it was a school Actually, Lorain City Schools. Yeah, it's a school district. It was called Harrison Academy.
Speaker 4:Right, yeah, right.
Speaker 5:And that's where we went for building trades, knowledge and things like that. That's where we went to school.
Speaker 1:No, we definitely need those back in school because we talked about that. That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 5:Those are the things. The parents are no less engaged than they were, then Maybe their lives are more fucked up, but they're no less engaged. I promise you that you're wrong because you weren't around in the 80s. You're a product of the 90s, when things got soft, when politically correct came in. All of a sudden the kids were in their freaking car seats and your parents were.
Speaker 5:You're talking about that time frame. You're talking about that timeframe, but you're talking about that timeframe I'm talking about today. And then what I'm saying to you is you're a product of that nineties and looking for that. And I'm telling you and that was part of the problem in the and I seen it in the nineties where parents were like, oh, you're mean to me. Or or kids were, oh, you're mean to me to their parents and I wouldn't have dared. Said to my mom she was mean to me, she would have beat the living shit out of me.
Speaker 5:She would have showed me what mean was.
Speaker 1:But guess what? Nothing's happening right now. The kids don't have an opportunity to say you're mean to me or you're good to me, or anything to their parents, anything to their parents. The kids don't have a parent that's there providing any discipline, whether it's beating the shit out of you or giving you some constructive or whatever the quote-unquote constructive discipline. Stand in the corner, take away your game.
Speaker 5:I believe that's very limited. I don't think it's any less than it was in the 70s. The 70s was a heroin. You forget the 70s and 60s was drugs, that's what I'm saying but I don't think it's any different. The difference is that there's no support for the kids when they're away from the house. That's my whole point. But a community center that's not focused with the education or trades or anything like that is not going to help them. That's stupid. That's just a place to hang out.
Speaker 4:You know what they were doing at this community.
Speaker 5:At the Boys and Girls Club, they were teaching them how to make beats.
Speaker 1:But when I first mentioned, a community center.
Speaker 5:What did I?
Speaker 1:say though. When I first mentioned a community center, I said that there needs to be some traits that can teach welding.
Speaker 5:That needs to just be their school, that's just how they go to school.
Speaker 1:That's it the school needs to just have.
Speaker 5:you need auto body back, you need fricking, you need all those different things.
Speaker 2:Auto body welding yeah, that needs to come back.
Speaker 5:Carpentry that needs to come back. Electrical yes, you can. Why not? It wasn't always there, so why isn't it? Why can't you change it? That's the ignorant fricking, that's the ignorant idea to say that you can't. Yes, he can.
Speaker 1:Well, I can help, he can help, he can push it. Yeah, I believe in that. That's how I grew up when I was in school. What got me out of school and I lived past 18 was auto mechanics, was Mr Biggie.
Speaker 5:You know where most of those guys that are older, that are working at Rydell, that are painting NFL football helmets right now, you know where most of them learned how to paint those helmets.
Speaker 1:Probably in the rain.
Speaker 5:In auto of them learned how to paint those helmets An auto body, yeah, so why would we not have that still? So we need those.
Speaker 2:What was that? What JVS or whatever it's called?
Speaker 5:JVS is still there.
Speaker 2:yeah, we need those. Jvs is still there. That's what we need, something like that around here.
Speaker 1:Vocational schools. I mean those are. I mean that's where it's at right there.
Speaker 5:That's way more important than community centers is my whole point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I think you're taking the community center as just being a place where just people can just come, like a daycare, and that's not what I was talking when I mentioned it earlier. I was talking about routing trades, different things like that. But you have organizations that want to create a community center and that's what they want to bring. So you're like, okay, well, how can we help you do that while you're not us help? That's not our.
Speaker 5:But the problem is is, if you take that community center for the trades, okay, and you have it in the community and it's not going to school every day, those kids aren't going they're not going to do that after they went to school.
Speaker 5:They're going to go play their video game. So if it's not part of the school system, they're not going to do it. They're just not. I wouldn't have. When I got out of school, I was going to go hang with my friends and go ride dirt bikes or whatever I was going to do. I definitely wasn't going to freaking learn how to hammer nails.
Speaker 4:They don't do that Unless you pay me.
Speaker 1:They don't do any of that anymore. They don't go outside at all.
Speaker 5:It's okay, but that's because they're on video games, and video games aren't the worst thing in the world, although everybody wants them to be. We have to accept it and move on and that's what they're doing.
Speaker 1:I had video games and I spent a few hours a day after school.
Speaker 5:You know who Scotty Camp campana is right, you know his son, vinny. People used to give scotty shit when he was young because he was vinny was always on video games that kid's phenomenal that kid is an amazing adult doing a hell of a job with campana's. Now you don't and, and, and, and. So there's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 1:There's nothing wrong with kids living that life and they are getting some socialism. Video games aren't the overall issue, not all of them and not probably not on any of them. It's the engagement of family. I do agree with you about trade schools. I do, I I mean or some kind of trade within the school. That's important.
Speaker 5:That's the only way but there's got to be hope afterwards, that's the problem is there any kind of trades in the schools?
Speaker 1:I, I'm saying Lorraine, they have the auto mechanic shop.
Speaker 5:They do have the mechanic shop still there?
Speaker 1:I didn't know that.
Speaker 5:I'm impressed.
Speaker 1:They have some kind of computer engineering. With the implementation of Lorraine Community College opened up a little bit more doors for those that are like that early college program where they can actually choose a field and actually be going to high school and learning a field at the same time. Like, for instance, my kid wants medical, so he's early college, he's taking classes to try to get him, to create him. So I mean those programs are there.
Speaker 5:Those have always existed, though.
Speaker 1:Early college came probably maybe 10, 10 years.
Speaker 2:No, it's been way before that I'm talking about within Lorain School.
Speaker 5:No, when I was a kid, there was kids that were going to LCC.
Speaker 1:I'm talking about LCC as a partner in Lorain. I'm talking about the building.
Speaker 5:Dude, they did it in the 80s 90s.
Speaker 6:You're not listening. You're cutting me off.
Speaker 1:When you drive to Lorain High School right now, you see a big sign that says Lorain Community College. That's what I'm talking about. Where they can leave, where they don't have to transport, they don't have to go to the college. There's a spot in the school. It's an integration with their education now?
Speaker 5:Oh well, that's stupid. I'd rather see a trade school. Let them go there, that's good for them.
Speaker 1:Some are doing that too, but what I'm saying is that implementation helped a lot. That implementation of having them leave their class from their learning their regular general studies and then saying, hey, I'm going to walk over to the next wing and go into a program that I want that's going to help me develop. I think that was a good step in the right direction.
Speaker 5:In the 80s, there literally was.
Speaker 1:I mean the smarter kids. The smarter kids were taking classes.
Speaker 5:I mean I worked with one at Campbell's, but that's about it Campbell's. Yeah, I worked with the one there, you remember that place.
Speaker 1:That was Every Sunday.
Speaker 2:That was. I thought that was before your time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean. I mean, I grew up in the 90s, so you know how old are you 40, 40?
Speaker 5:So he's that same age as my brother and sister.
Speaker 1:So I grew up in the 90s but I remember, you know, campbell's Ponder. I mean all those places are specific.
Speaker 5:You know, you might have went to school, my sister actually. No, no, no, south Marine should have been South, or not? That's right, you were west sider, I forgot yeah I forgot.
Speaker 2:Huh, what's that I said? West side but anyway.
Speaker 1:So trade, I mean all those, I mean that's what got me out, you know, was being able to have something else where you know, one of my first jobs was working at molynex ford when it was around you know the auto nation, or whatever and doing that type of work while I was in high school I was like, man, this is cool, maybe I'll be this, maybe I'll do this, and then it just didn't, you know, then you get, I started thinking about money and I'm like, well, leary foundry is hiring this, plus I can work here at dogs and suds. So I was working at Dogs and Suds, lyria Foundry and Red Rock.
Speaker 2:Did you have to wear a low cut over at Dogs and Suds?
Speaker 1:Lope.
Speaker 5:You were cooking, I'm sure right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, eileen is a sexist motherfucker.
Speaker 4:He's a man, he was cooking?
Speaker 5:Yeah, I was definitely cooking. She put the girls in skirts out front and the cooks out back in the back heating up yeah, something I don't know about cooking, but I was definitely heating the food up, you know.
Speaker 1:You know you take the bag pour it in here. It gets hot, yeah, and you serve it no no, I mean, it's I.
Speaker 5:I'm not saying I just. I guess my whole thing is I'm trying to beat a dead horse, because I just want everybody to stop focusing on putting bullshit programs to communities that need real help. They don't need an event to go to, they don't. They don't even care. Honestly.
Speaker 5:No but that's saying to just eliminate those peers. They'll do that. When there's money, I promise you that there'll be events all day that when there's money. I promise you that there'll be events all day long when there's money there, you got to get the money in that process?
Speaker 1:what are you doing in that process while you're developing that, that, that, that new construction or whatever? What's what's happening in that meantime?
Speaker 5:I don't care. Spend no time worrying about that. Spend all your time worrying about the.
Speaker 1:But that's not what the community is asking for, so it might be our own personal beliefs.
Speaker 5:The community is asking for money.
Speaker 1:I share a lot of the same views that you do, and that's why it gets into going back and forth Sure right, right, right, Because I agree with you.
Speaker 5:But in that meantime, while you're doing stuff in that, no, I'm not saying like I see what Darius did and to me when I look I go it's stupid, but yeah, obviously it's done something In that little period you have to do.
Speaker 1:For me, I feel like if you're not engaging and not doing that, it's just an addition. So, to clear up, it's an addition to the process that's happening.
Speaker 5:It's like me at home. Okay, in my personal life, If I got money problems, why would I focus on anything else except those money problems? Do you understand what I'm saying? No absolutely If it's struggling. Yeah, my wife might be worried about Christmas, but I'm struggling right now and I got to make sure the money's there for the Christmas. I'm focused on that. I do not look at anything else. I don't give a shit about anything else, yeah.
Speaker 1:But when your kid jumps in your lap, whether you're having hard times or not and this is an analogy your kid jumps in your lap and you're having hard times and saying, hey, dad, I love you, come play with me. Are you spending that time saying I love you and playing and doing something and engaging?
Speaker 5:No, I said I love you. I got shit to do.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to lie, dude, that's the truth. See, I tried to throw an analogy. You know what I'll give you an example.
Speaker 5:I got a buddy.
Speaker 5:I got a buddy who's got a lot of money. He's worth millions I don't know how many but his son, joe. Joey is now starting to take over the company. Okay for him. They have a large drywall business metal stud drywall business. Joey feels a certain way that his dad wasn't there that much when he was a kid, didn't go to his dirt bike tracks and things like that. But joey has I don't know what is it $400-some-thousand-dollar house, now $500,000 house, fucking money in the bank. He's got a beautiful career. He's got a whole company to take over. He's got everything he needs in life. You know what I mean. So he'll get over it. You know what I mean, yeah.
Speaker 1:I hear what you're saying in that, because I I mean being a military guy and knowing the suck of life and just saying, get mad, get the hell over and move on. I get, I get that portion, I get having a rough life. I don't go back to say, oh my god, I had a rough life. This, no, it made me who I am today.
Speaker 5:Kids need real problems. They need a dad. That's not. You think joey would be anything if his, if his dad was spending all his time with him. Just say Joe made that money anyways. Say that money just came to him and he was always with Joey. Do you believe Joey would be the same person today? No, he wouldn't. He'd been coddled. He would have been. He wouldn't have had problems and he wouldn't have been able to handle problems today.
Speaker 1:Now he can because he's had real problems in his life. He would have been coddled if his dad just said I loved you and I made one of your dirt bikes you could say I love you, but that doesn't mean you've got to stop working and paying bills If your dad just made one of your dirt bike thing.
Speaker 5:I didn't say he didn't make any of them.
Speaker 1:I'm just saying he bitches that he didn't make it to because that's what kids want at a certain point and maybe they might not need it at that time, but some kids just want, and later on down the road he's going to be standing. I don't know if his dad passed or anything, no, or maybe it's up for the dad to say hey, man, I regretted not being there, but hey, you wouldn't be who you were if I didn't give you the hard love.
Speaker 5:No, his dad says.
Speaker 1:I wish you were the oldest instead of the youngest so I could have worked with you more. That's good. I mean different dynamics of life. I'm not saying that I'm that person. You can ask my kids right now. Do I always, you know, because this is my opinion.
Speaker 5:This is my opinion. I'm better off to show Dylan how to be a man than I am to to go throw the ball with them today.
Speaker 5:You, you, you have to show him what being a man is first. That's my first response. But it's his mom's job to be soft. He needs a soft. I'm not saying that's his mom's job, my job Isn't that? I love him, I want to do for him and if I got time, yes, I'm going to do that with them if I'm not exhausted. But at the same time, I got to show them how to be a man, and if I don't show him how to be a man, who's going to show him?
Speaker 6:But some kids don't even You're there. For them, that's all that matters.
Speaker 5:Sure, yeah, that's what. Yeah, you got to be there for them, but some kids don't have any of that.
Speaker 1:I get that.
Speaker 5:I understand that I'm saying I would focus on this first and then everything else can fall into place. You see what I'm saying. Maybe it's not the prettiest and sexiest right now, but once you get that right it will work. It will all work in the end.
Speaker 1:A hundred percent.
Speaker 5:That's how.
Speaker 1:I feel, but during that long time, that small time, I believe you know for me, because it's things that are already happening, these things are already happening, that have been happening for years, you have to contribute to those. You know.
Speaker 5:But what if that job that I can make it's not showing up to the debates or the campaign stuff.
Speaker 1:It's doing the real stuff.
Speaker 5:What if the job that I could make $300,000 off of, instead of bidding that I'm over here throwing a baseball? That's what I'm trying to tell you.
Speaker 1:No, but when those processes happen, you're at the table, though, so I get what you're saying.
Speaker 5:That's what I'm saying and that's in the personal life. But I'm saying, if you apply it to the city, if you're focused on this and missing this, that's a big deal.
Speaker 1:That's a big deal it is, but I think what you're maybe saying is that during those three days of planning for a community day, there were some opportunities.
Speaker 5:Maybe I'm not saying there isn't. I'm just saying, if you focus your energy on it, I mean you're talking three days. I mean that's one event. You're saying three days. I mean that's, how many events do you plan in this?
Speaker 1:last year it's like well, we did like four.
Speaker 5:Okay, so there's right there.
Speaker 1:There's three weeks, there's two weeks, there's three weeks.
Speaker 5:There's three weeks you could have been hardcore focused. I mean, let's be honest.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but there's no data to show that it wasn't being done during that time. That's what I'm saying that you weren't still focused, that I wasn't still focused. I'm not saying that you're asking me, you're asking in general. Everybody should be focusing on.
Speaker 5:Well, I'm saying that since like 90, there's enough data to show that it hasn't happened since 1990. You see what I'm saying? That's 35 years, dude. I mean, that's Then what hasn't happened? Nothing.
Speaker 1:In that fucking city Nothing, nothing has nothing in that fucking city.
Speaker 5:Nothing. Nothing has happened in that fucking city in 35 years at least.
Speaker 1:I mean, people are still here, so there must have been something. Yeah, barely.
Speaker 5:Barely people are still here. I mean, they're not homeowners. They're not homeowners.
Speaker 1:They're not homeowners, they're not workers, workers we got rental properties because you can make more money.
Speaker 5:The population is far less in your house the population is far less than it was you know what I mean in 1990. It's far less, in fact, the schools they've shut three schools down and turned them down to one. Yeah, I mean that's a.
Speaker 1:That's a. You know the amount of people, kids, that we have. That's a. That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 5:That's 35 years, and I'm not putting it all on you. You've been in that one year.
Speaker 1:I don't take it.
Speaker 5:I'm saying 35 years of focused on the wrong motherfucking thing in this city period. That's what I'm saying, that's what I see. 35 years somebody's focusing. The stats show that, yeah, the show that you know what I mean. The stats are. There's nothing here. It's getting worse and worse and they dog the people that want to do something good. The guy they told you about the office he owns a property on Broadway. He was planned on putting a nice office building in there. He wants to put like he wanted to bring, but they just it's just shit.
Speaker 1:We got one in South Florida.
Speaker 2:He owns the building. Now, what about Spencer when he tried to do shit here?
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, they well, we talked about that too, man. They definitely stepped on their own feet many years.
Speaker 2:They've been stepping on their feet, their own feet, for all these years. Well, that's where the change needs to be right there.
Speaker 1:That's where the change needs to be, and that's what we're talking about.
Speaker 5:I, and then that alleyway behind there doing all them arts and crafts festivals. It's nice, I've been to it. When they do that, what is it the fire?
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 5:Firefish, firefish, that's nice back there. I've been there when they do it, I get it, it's nice, it seems nice back there, a black room. Why don't they spend the same kind of effort and money into it?
Speaker 1:Those are organizations. Yeah, that's so. Yeah, okay, so firefish, give us all your money. They'll start donating the money back so we can build a building or something I don't know. But those are organizations, that's not.
Speaker 5:It might be city, city helped processes, but they're not city, they're also. They're also. They're also people that are deeply involved in Lorraine politics, that are running the firefish festival and all these other festivals. They're very deep rooted in them.
Speaker 5:There's some nuances for sure, so I mean I'm just saying you know I it just I'm not meaning to be on you. I know you're only a year in, but all I'm asking you is that. All I'm asking you is to to worry more about that every morning when you wake up. How can I get somebody here that's going to employ these people enough that these kids feel like there's a job whenever they do become an adult?
Speaker 1:and want to stay in Lorain, and that's what I wake up with every single day. That's the main focus, and the main goal has always been.
Speaker 4:So yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, you know, I wanted to move back here to Lorain if I didn't believe in the city, I didn't need.
Speaker 5:I don't need to be, here. I mean, if we're being honest, was it a little bit just because it was a lot cheaper to live here?
Speaker 1:Oh sure, my family was here.
Speaker 5:Other than that, I mean.
Speaker 1:But you're like it's going to be a lot cheaper to live here, right?
Speaker 5:No, I didn't even know I was.
Speaker 1:You didn't even 20 years old now. Now, in hindsight, thinking of latin, now I'm like, well, you know it's pretty, you know pretty not expensive for me, because I bought my house at a good time and I it's been the same pay forever. So I'm like, okay, why would I go somewhere else? But back then it wasn't. When I came back in 2008 it was no different. You just wanted to come home. The still mill, I could still. Went to the steel mill. The steel mill was still actively running. It might not have been in 2008., wasn't it? It's been. Whatever they call it, it's like 10 employees or something.
Speaker 1:11, 12 years. No, my family worked there. They worked at Republic, they worked at Republic, they worked at US still, so I could have went over there too.
Speaker 5:I don't remember being open that late. It might have been, I don't remember.
Speaker 1:It was small, I mean, I don't know about 10 employees, but I think it had like 15. Oh, you know what it was.
Speaker 5:But wasn't it like Robinson pipe in there and stuff? It wasn't no mill workers hardly. No, it was mill workers. It was like sub-companies, wasn't it? Most of it.
Speaker 1:No, that fire was still burning up there. Yeah, it was In 2008?
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah, but wasn't it being ran by like Robinson Pipe? I?
Speaker 1:don't know who ran it, but it was still running there, because I think, danny worked there and it was like minimal money because it was a sub-contractor.
Speaker 2:No, he pipe, that was just in the middle.
Speaker 4:They just went in there. That's an outside contract.
Speaker 5:That's an outside contract for another thing.
Speaker 2:That's like MTW or something like that.
Speaker 5:Yeah, there was two different ones. There wasn't a lot of actual mill workers.
Speaker 1:They had pipes coming. It was running back then when I came back.
Speaker 5:But I think it was running and being checked by Robinson Piping them, I think they were the ones that cleaned the pipe.
Speaker 2:They'll go down and drain the holes and all them vacuum pumps and all that stuff.
Speaker 1:It was like $23, $25 an hour or something like that. Well, I don't know how it worked, but I tried to get in there and they're like you got to know somebody who knows somebody. I'm like man, I'm trying. Who do you know? How do I get in there? The temp agency was hiring them in there. They're paying them like 18 to $25 an hour in 2008.
Speaker 2:I'm like that's cool too. I'll go work for them.
Speaker 1:But instead I went to the foundry, worked there one day, came out with all the black sit and I was like hey for me. I was like I'm Well, you know, my grandfather had worked there, he was medical. My uncle had worked there. He'd lost his legs from the train, you know and so I was like man, this ain't chipping and grinding. I'm like look at this frigging 70-ton thing, or whatever, over my head.
Speaker 5:We're almost four hours in, holy shit. Are we four hours Three and a half. Three and a half. We are, yeah, three and a half hours in.
Speaker 1:But you know agreement, you know priority has to be bringing you know business in. There are works in that and that is a straight focus and a full focus.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've been hearing that shit for so many years, yeah. So have I so you got to tell us something different.
Speaker 5:I try, dude. I moved to South Lorraine when I was a young man. The first house I bought I bought in South Lorraine. I tried and it's just like I can't stay here. I can't. I had to go. I mean and I think that's most people- Let me chime in for 30 seconds.
Speaker 6:Okay, let me steal your microphone. Man Lorraine is so hard to work with. It's almost like they don't want business. That's what we were saying earlier. You have businesses that want to be here and they're such turds. They make it so hard to be here. They force people out. Yeah, you know, you change that, that's what?
Speaker 5:that was our opening statement. Actually okay, why?
Speaker 4:was our opening statement. That was my bad, my bad I missed.
Speaker 6:I missed the opening. But yeah, man, they just they screw with businesses and hilarious, the same way Anyone that's there. They think they got to mess with. We're the only people here, man. Come on, give us a break. It's not the case. Then anyone coming in new? They make it so hard to do anything. They're just constantly messing with you.
Speaker 5:I'll relate that to when I was young. My first construction company that I owned was James Interiors, which was a union company. I was a union carpenter. They treated me like a piece of shit all the time. I was a small guy I had like eight carpenters working for me. You know what I mean. But I was doing everything I was supposed to. But if you Lord forbid, you made one slip up. They treated you like you were the worst person in the world. You're trying to.
Speaker 5:They're actually at the union meeting telling the guys how bad I you know, and I'll give you what it was. It was Wade. I gave him a year's credit. I give him a year's credit when he gets hired on and by giving him that year's credit, apparently I had to start his benefits immediately instead of 90 days, like it's usually supposed to be 90 days with his bennies. So I didn't know that. So once they told me, I paid it. But they were in a union meeting bragging how they got me, trying to fuck them over and this and that that's the kind of shit they were doing, and meanwhile they did nothing for the workers whatsoever. They did nothing for them and eventually I went fuck you, I'll just go non-union and I was a union man at heart. But you're not going to bully me like that when I'm trying to do what you want me to do and what I would consider the right thing. So it's the same thing in Lorraine when you're bullying them and causing these issues and saying that it doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1:It just doesn't make sense. That's what you hear from a lot of the businesses that have left, and the businesses they have right now is you know they're always getting screwed with. And that's what we were talking about. You know that red tape of doing anything. That's horrible.
Speaker 1:And then you know, you got all these people that are doing everything wrong. They're getting all these breaks. You know like, oh, we'll give you another break, or hey, we'll give you an extension, We'll give you an extension, but someone that's bona fide, that has everything they're like. Oh man, you know, here's your fine, or whatever.
Speaker 2:They just need to work with people more.
Speaker 6:That's all, if you can fix that.
Speaker 5:I'm going to leave you with one last thing before we go. Jim's final touch, my final touch If the community wants these events you're talking about, then they should have a neighborhood group or block that does them, they do and they should go do them, and that shouldn't even be in your plate. That's all I'm saying. If that's what they really want, they should be out there doing it.
Speaker 1:They do. It's got the friends of South Lorraine and there's other groups that are doing it.
Speaker 5:Yeah, you let them do it and you let them build their community and you let them, while you focus solely and only and completely on getting them some work. I mean that that that those communities, if that's what they really want or need in their community, just move out of their way and let them go do it. If they need the park, give it to them. You know what I'm saying? Stuff like that. That's all I'm going to say about that. I mean, that's not to me, that's the community. If it's important to them, then they'll go do it, yeah.
Speaker 1:I agree, but it's also one level of responsibility that does fall on the weight of the award representative.
Speaker 5:It's like baseball and basketball. You don't have to go and find people to come play baseball, they go and figure it out. You provided the fields, they fill them up. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:And that's what we're going to keep doing. We'll keep being engaged, keep being engaged with the community. These things are already fluid and they're already working by way of Friends of South Lorraine, another organization, not just Friends of South Lorraine, but other organizations that are doing things throughout the community to help.
Speaker 5:Shout out to the Grind League.
Speaker 1:Grind League hey, did I not mention Darius Ernie?
Speaker 5:Yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 1:The Grind League Fits for Youth. You know all those programs that they do. All the time, you know, is to give back, is to do community function.
Speaker 5:And let them do what they do.
Speaker 1:But that was already a process of my responsibility prior. So to let it go and to not have some input or some organization with that is never going to happen right now. But I agree to your point the focus has always been about rebuilding infrastructure.
Speaker 5:It hasn't always been. It hasn't for me, I know, I know, I know, I know, but I'm just saying it hasn't always been.
Speaker 1:I think within the last four years too.
Speaker 5:I don't know. You know I love Ray Carriot, but I heard too much about sweeping and painting and I mean we got to do more than sweeping paint. It's just got to be more than sweeping paint.
Speaker 1:Those are little things that you do within the community on that low time where you're like, hey, there's something that needs to be done and it's not that it was founded or the foundation was Ray or is me, in terms of like we create, we are creating this. This stuff was already Sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we're like, like we have to support these yeah yeah, I get it, you know so you might see us a lot, but it's really these are already things that are happening and we're just helping them get their feet, like, okay, you're running, you're, you're walking. How can we get you running? And how do we get this done? And sometimes by using a platform. You know it helps promote that, you know sure yeah absolutely so it's never been about.
Speaker 1:Oh, my god, I can't wait to completely do the park. Is my only focus, or anything like that, or or anybody's focus. Maybe it has been, I don't know, but those are just little things that are already in the process of being made or done, and using a platform where you can get things done quicker or have those little things that are really like the nuances, the little easy stuff, like hey, I want to use this. Ok, what's the problem? Well, they're giving me heart, don't?
Speaker 5:worry I got that.
Speaker 1:We'll get that taken care of, and you know, and I'll be out there to help and support you so we can continue going like the grind leagues fits for you. It's the baseball kickball. You know you have to be present for those things. You know you don't have to devote your whole time Like I'm not running the league.
Speaker 1:Sure Right, no, right but you have to be present for those and not for a picture or a photo shoot. You have to be present, like I'm participating in the discussions with this, to help make this thing grow and to continue. But the photo shoots are nice right? I don't really like photos, man. You see, if people take pictures of me, I'm always like you know. Unless it's with my family, I don't really care. I hate that stuff, man. I hate even my name being talked about for anything.
Speaker 2:Oh, we're talking about you here. Yeah, we're going to see you in the next couple months.
Speaker 1:But I hate that. You know, I don't even know what my next you know few years looks like for me in terms of what you know. That's gotta, that's gotta be the thing, is you gotta?
Speaker 5:remove yourself from like. You just spent a year learning how the process goes and now you gotta start learning how to go outside the box. Yeah, you know what I'm saying and and figure these things out. The biggest problem, though I don't care what anybody says, is careers, because if you can help these kids and get them a start, they're leaving once they get going, and that's just ridiculous. Lorraine is, geographically, is probably one of the greatest cities in this area.
Speaker 4:Really is for sure, I mean it has everything you could want.
Speaker 5:You know what?
Speaker 6:Here we go. Hold on. You know there's so many Hispanic people in Lorraine. It's because they left the fucking country to come. My bad, I'm not supposed to swear on it. They left the country to come here. So back in. Whatever people left where they were to come to Lorraine To get away from the garbage. The point is, who's leaving anywhere to come to lorraine? That's it we're, yeah, we're talking about they were doing that.
Speaker 5:That, when they did that, that was because there was a job there for talked about, right, that's two nationalities.
Speaker 1:So you know in the 20s, uh, they were, they were it was the international city because of that, because they were always coming here for a different reason, here's a cheerleader. All right, all right, all right. In the 20s and in the 40s, you know, there was some stuff, and then in the 60s there was some urban renewal.
Speaker 2:You ain't got no mill. You ain't got no steel mill. You ain't got the shipyard.
Speaker 6:You ain't got the you ain't got none of that those communities and that kind of created.
Speaker 1:You created Urban Renewal and everybody's like man. You're shutting us out from the community you brought us too. Right right, right and not you know. Some were inadvertently brought, but some that you told us that we could come and make a better life, and then you just said, no, you can't do this, no more, you know. So then people started leaving. Well, those people are retired.
Speaker 5:That came, for that they're done, and I mean they moved on and went somewhere else.
Speaker 6:Two times. Who's leaving their country to come to Lorain?
Speaker 1:Twice two times it happened. You know like it's, it's, you know twofold.
Speaker 5:Well, the Haitians are heading towards where's the Haitians at. They're in South Carolina.
Speaker 1:Do we have?
Speaker 5:Haitians in South Carolina? No oh no.
Speaker 1:The Haitians are coming to Ohio, but that's a bullshit Springfield.
Speaker 5:That's bullshit job. They're working down there. That's not even I think like it was like 18 an hour they're going there to work for that's crazy, I don't understand that. 18 an hour and you got Haitians coming into work?
Speaker 1:That's wild, I didn't. I mean 1818 an hour. People, kids, should be running to that $18 an hour.
Speaker 5:You're out of it. You see you're part of the problem. Fix that right away.
Speaker 1:No, I'm just saying Fix that right away. Okay, zero money $18 an hour.
Speaker 6:Fix that right away.
Speaker 1:How does that match up? Fix that right away. $0, $18 an hour $18 an hour ain't shit.
Speaker 5:Fix that right away is better, because the government will pay for everything. Oh yeah, I mean, make up your mind, dude. If you're going to go work every day, you don't want it to be a fucking struggle. $18 an hour is a struggle, you got to pay for gas, you got to have a vehicle.
Speaker 1:I'm talking about for a young kid right out of high school. Wants to make $18 an hour and has nothing but lives with his parents, is that not?
Speaker 5:right. Change your mind. Change your mind. That's a wrong opinion to have.
Speaker 1:Of course I'd want to make $50 an hour if you give me that job, but I don't make no money.
Speaker 5:When I was a kid, I was never hoping to get 18 in an hour. Okay, that wasn't my dream to make 18 an hour. That was in 1992. I was coming out of high school. I wasn't dreaming of 18 an hour.
Speaker 1:What were you dreaming?
Speaker 5:of Back then, maybe 25 or something, but it was never $18. And that was in 1990. This is 2024.
Speaker 1:I didn't have that. Look, the military makes less than $18 an hour, not really. That's not true. I'm in the military. They house, you Doesn't that count for something they feed you. What does that count?
Speaker 5:What does that cost?
Speaker 1:It's not for free. You pay for that. You know what. It's included in your BAH and BAS. That's all encompassed of the military contract. That's all encompassed in there. Look how much you're getting paid Not to get off in the military track, because I'm telling you the truth my son's in the military right and he's making less than $36,000 a year. He was probably when he first started. Before he got married. He was probably making probably $36,000 a year.
Speaker 5:That's $18,000 an hour with benefits and everything else paid for. All that stuff is there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you're paying for it. You don't see it.
Speaker 5:You don't see it, but you're paying for it when you look at your end of year statement. But it's not coming out of the $18,000. It's not coming out of the $36,000.
Speaker 1:How, when you look at your end-of-year statement and you see everything, that it is just this. They're like here you go take, here you go take, Okay. Well then, fuck you the government needs to fix that.
Speaker 4:That's the first thing they need to fix.
Speaker 5:If that's true, they can go to hell. They need to fix that. Feed my goddamn soldiers.
Speaker 1:They need to be paid and house my soldiers you know, when I came over here, the only reason I moved here, too, was is I was on my end of year contract and I was getting paid. You know they pay you out for you Take your terminal leave, terminal vacations, any days that you haven't used, or whatever. And you know you're like, ok, I'm only getting paid. Sixteen hundred dollars. Sixteen hundred dollars a paycheck. Sixteen hundred dollars a paycheck. You know like OK, well600 a paycheck, $1,600 a paycheck. You know like okay, well, I'm going to go, you know where. I know I know Lorraine, my family's here, I don't have to pay for daycare, drop my kid off at my parents' house or something like that. You know doing that. But because of the income and this is 2008, that's why people move to these- areas is because they know that they don't have to pay as much.
Speaker 1:But could I survive on $1,600 a month by myself or $1,600 a paycheck by myself? I think I could have survived anywhere, nah. I think I could have survived, not anywhere Not comfortably, but I think I could have survived in other locations, not anywhere.
Speaker 5:Well, they pay you based off your have survived in other locations, not in Boston, not anywhere.
Speaker 1:Well, they pay you based off your locality, oh, okay, you get paid based. So people that live in that are from New York, that are in the military, they get paid your locality of what New York would be. But my point is is that at 18 an hour.
Speaker 5:I'm not saying that, not as like. When I first got out of school it was $12 an hour. It was my when I first got in a carpenter's unit it was 12, but that was for a job that I was at the bottom of and the pay rate was 24. I mean, these people are going for 18. This is it. This is the topped out. It's 18. That's not. That wasn't the dream in 92. And you're going to tell me that that's okay in 24? Go fuck yourself.
Speaker 1:That's not acceptable. It's not the dream, but someone making that, saying that they can't live on $18 an hour is not Depending on where they live, is not true, though?
Speaker 5:I don't believe you. People can't live.
Speaker 1:No, I don't believe that at all. The food costs a lot.
Speaker 5:You're out of your mind, Well obviously you haven't lived on $18 an hour. That's why you think that I've lived on way less than $18 an hour, not today, right Not today I've lived off probably less than that. Not today, not today. If you have to go get an apartment right now, what does that cost you? $1,200. The girls that work here are telling me $1,200 to $1,500. Okay that Girls that work here are telling me $1,200 to $1,500.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's one paycheck. That's one paycheck. That's $1,600, probably one paycheck.
Speaker 5:How do you think 18 an hour works? No, listen, that's two paychecks, dude. But that's what you. 18 an hour is going to take you home about six, 50 a week.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you're saying we're talking about getting people to work. Obviously you want to pay them. Good, but someone getting someone to work for not getting paid, or someone to work for $18 an hour, does that make sense? It doesn't make sense Not to that's, that's to work.
Speaker 5:Fix that in your head.
Speaker 2:No. I'm telling you right now fix that in your head. You can't do it off 18 hours an hour. You can't.
Speaker 5:Going to work like that for and you don't even have a gas or car. 18 an hour is about $6.50 a week.
Speaker 6:You guys are crazy, no.
Speaker 5:What do you mean?
Speaker 6:no, If you want more money, fucking no.
Speaker 2:Spit it out.
Speaker 5:What are you talking about?
Speaker 6:There's no way Companies can't pay that man. That's crazy.
Speaker 5:Okay, get out, get out, so listen.
Speaker 2:But we're supposed to pay $1, for rent.
Speaker 5:I'm not and and three hundred dollars for utilities. You know what I'm saying?
Speaker 2:that's not gas that's not no of course not.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying that you, I'm not saying that your, your goal or your strive should be take as less money as possible.
Speaker 5:You can't live off 18 an hour and you need to figure that out. Maybe you can if your wife makes 18 an hour too. Maybe you could survive then.
Speaker 1:But 18 an hour. Ain't going to support a family or you or even yourself, so both of them work making $18 an hour.
Speaker 5:Okay, could they survive? Yeah, not very well, but yeah, $18 an hour. Okay, could they survive?
Speaker 1:Yeah, not very well, but yeah, yeah, I mean everybody survives off their own. Their own means I I agree with you need to make more money. Come on now. Like you know, my goal is not. I can't, I'm not going to take a job for $18 an hour now, but have I made $18 within the last seven years?
Speaker 5:but explain to me why. Why you could pay 24 in 1990. But you can't play 45 in 2024 for trades? Explain it. Yeah, that's a trade, that's what. That's what the ford was paying, that's what the mill was way. I mean, why can you not? Why, in 1990, could you pay at that time? I mean, that's what nobody can explain to me. You can play then, but you can only pay 32 now.
Speaker 1:That doesn't make any sense, are we pushing out the same materials as we were back then in these companies?
Speaker 2:The companies are making more profit.
Speaker 1:The companies are making more profit, but are they pushing out the same amount of materials? I don't know that answer. So, what I'm asking? I'm asking that answer for a union carpenter. Back then. You know, yeah, $24 an hour and you said you made that win. When I got out of the trade, that's when we started, I was making $7 an hour at a restaurant. Well, I started at $12, but by the time like by 98, I was at $24 an hour.
Speaker 1:I was working at the phone is what you're saying. I was making $11 at the time.
Speaker 5:My point is how could you pay $24 then and now it's only $32? That's an $8 an hour difference.
Speaker 1:The people are taking either more money or they're not producing.
Speaker 5:I mean, you could buy a house a nice house back then and your payment was $600 a month. A nice car your payment was $200 a month. Nice car your payment was two hundred a month. Groceries for a family of four was a hundred a week.
Speaker 1:Maybe ninety a week. Could you do it with the interest rates right now? Absolutely not.
Speaker 5:You're out of your mind. You're wrong. You're out of your mind Because you should be able to, you should, you should be able to. But interest rates were seven when I bought my first house and then my house payment was 600 a month. But you're making how much an hour? 24. Yeah, almost 25 by then.
Speaker 1:Not everybody was Not everybody made that.
Speaker 5:I get that, but what I'm trying to say is there's people like him that say you can't afford it, companies can't afford it. That's the illusion they want to tell you. I don't listen. Isn't that the big secret in this country? That we needed slave labor? Then we need illegal immigrants. Everywhere we need, we need cheap, fucking slave labor. Basically is what this country is trying to say, and it's got to stop because there's no one that's with when you do that. There's no purchasing power within our country. We can't. Nobody has the money to spend. They don't have the money. We've seen what it's like when, when the country can spend 2020, when everybody's out spending money. Could you imagine if people made a decent enough wage that every day, everybody's out spending money? The whole country would do be better off for it. But this country and these business owners who, by the way, are getting four or $500 million a year to run a company, you know what I mean are trying to convince everybody that if you paid more than 18 companies couldn't afford it. It's insane, dude.
Speaker 1:That's the stupidest thing I ever heard that's why I asked the question are they producing the same amount you got that you?
Speaker 5:I would assume they're producing more. They've got robots and technology you have to look at.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna tell you what. See what they.
Speaker 2:Like I said, well, you know I drive a concrete truck. We talked about it. We talk about it all the time. These houses are going up so fast. I've never seen nothing like that.
Speaker 1:That's going to fail soon. That's going to fail in the next few years.
Speaker 2:But look it, they're building the house. They're sold before the third house down the road is done or even started. That one's sold. Matter of fact. Carry on.
Speaker 5:You bought the one off the waiting list. I don't think they're going to fail, and I'll tell you why. They're not going to fail because of the interest rates. When it's time for them to fail, they are going to drop them rates finally. I hope so. Yeah, when it's going to fail, that's how they're going to.
Speaker 2:And that's't just saying that field, I'm saying a lot of fields.
Speaker 1:Well, you're talking about housing, Well housing and construction, Manufacturing, Construction roads.
Speaker 2:It's going way. There's way more production now.
Speaker 5:Yeah, there's no reason that they can't pay these wages. And that's the obsession with the whole country is that we're always looking for cheap labor. You know, bush said we need Mexicans to do the jobs that Americans don't want to. They just don't want to do them for nothing, dude. I mean, the Americans have been doing them jobs forever, but only if they had to. If they could get a slave to do it, they'd do that. Or if they could get a Mexican to do it, they'd do that. Or if they could get a Mexican to do it, they'd do that. I mean, america's got to get over that. That's got to stop. It has to eventually.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but we're talking about I know what you had mentioned in terms of making money, having a trade, but what about McDonald's? What about fast food?
Speaker 5:That's not somebody. That's that person. That's the high school job you're talking about.
Speaker 1:And that's what I'm talking about. That's got it, that's not that's not there to support your wife and kids. That's what I was referring to. But that's what I was referring to originally was eighteen dollars an hour. I was like for someone out of high school eighteen dollars.
Speaker 5:But if you go to work at McDonald's and you make that kind of money at McDonald's. The thing is that job if you focus and work hard at that company. I know people that make six figures that work at McDonald's.
Speaker 6:So there's the problem I have with it. Everyone thinks they should make that Not a skilled trade, just in general, everyone should make bank, that's true. There's the problem. Yeah, if you're a skilled trade, you should make bank. That's true. There's the problem. Yeah, if you're a skilled trade, you should make money, but McDonald's people want 24 an hour and all this crap. There's a problem. Draw a line.
Speaker 5:Yeah, well, that's not those jobs. Jobs like McDonald's aren't designed for a family man. That's not what they were there for.
Speaker 6:Yeah, but you're not going to get those people to agree with that.
Speaker 1:And I don't know what factor you're talking about in Springfield. That's why I was just—.
Speaker 5:I don't either, but I know that I saw the thing that that's why the Haitians came, because whatever it is down there—.
Speaker 1:Well, they ain't making no money. In Haitian it was like 18.
Speaker 5:It was like 18 an hour. But the problem is they come here and they take six of them and put them in a house Same thing that the Mexicans do when they come illegals.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean, not just Mexicans, but illegals South America anybody.
Speaker 5:Well, I mean, I'm in the drywall business, dude, they're Mexican. You could get over that. I don't know what to tell you, but I mean it's not racist dude.
Speaker 1:They are not all Mexican, though, as well as say the El Salvadorians, not the drywall hangers and not the carpenters. Ecuadorians.
Speaker 2:They're getting into concrete now too.
Speaker 5:Not the construction workers. Those are illegal Mexicans. Well, el Salvador's and people that are coming in, they're not coming here for jobs.
Speaker 1:Those are some dirty people trying to do something else. Everybody on your line just want to work hard. Actually, everybody on the line. Did they come from? Did they come from Mexico? I?
Speaker 2:know how they're Mexican because, they cook right there on the job.
Speaker 5:He's a fact that it does real good they do. They'll take the torpedo heater with the beans and shit. It's so good.
Speaker 1:That's efficiency. Hey, whatever I ain't knocking them shit.
Speaker 5:They were across the street from me at my house. They were rutting and it's like three or four families in there.
Speaker 5:Okay, you can survive when you gang up in a house, and that's what's going on with the Haitians out there. The problem is, if you come to America for a better life, it's not so that five of you can live in a house together. If you want to live the American dream, you need enough money, like they did when they came to work at Ford or when they came to work at the mill. When Puerto Ricans came here, they didn't come here to live in a house together, grouped up and punched up together to survive. They came here and they were able to get their own home and they were able to provide for their family and have a better life. They did put them in a whole bunch of houses grouped up and stuff when they came over here.
Speaker 1:But I agree with you in terms of the money. I agree with you in terms of the money. I mean anybody who comes by way of any outside entity besides the US, that comes into the US, that is coming for a better life and to see a foreseeable future. They should be paid a relative wage, considering to where they live.
Speaker 5:When Puerto Ricans came here to work at Ford and at the mill, they were grouping them up.
Speaker 4:Not that I'm aware of.
Speaker 1:That's what.
Speaker 5:Homewood is Homewood.
Speaker 1:they built those houses to sell them.
Speaker 5:Campito, all that area.
Speaker 1:They built those to sell individual homes, campito, globe, all that area was like that. There were two, three families living in a home.
Speaker 5:Okay, I don't know. I've never heard of that in my life. There's no different than I've never heard that in my life, not once.
Speaker 2:I'm going to fact check it. I will fact check it.
Speaker 5:I will, but I've never heard that once in my life.
Speaker 4:Okay, my grandfather built his house in 63 at.
Speaker 5:Homewood. My grandfather built his house in 63 in Homewood, fairly new in the development, and I've never heard that from any of them.
Speaker 1:Some people had a better opportunity and better.
Speaker 5:Well, when you came to work at the Miller Ford plant, you didn't have to group up with, you could afford to have your own house.
Speaker 2:And then there's another thing. It was, it was the males that came first.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they were brought over here to work because they were getting certain restrictions from the government, because workers from Mexico were working here illegal and undocumented, and they were returning them back. So then they went to Puerto Rico, loaded them up and pretty much said, hey, put all the publications. There was somebody that knew somebody who knew somebody and they were like hey, I know where we can get work. But that's not going to get us in any strict. Yeah, but you're talking about I understand that, but I don't remember, I've never heard that ever.
Speaker 4:I never heard that either it was the same.
Speaker 5:I will fact check it at some point.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm saying, I got family that came from there and I'm saying Not every family Right and I'm saying but not every family, but it was the same scenario.
Speaker 1:That's where Campito was built, that whole area. I think they were built as small homes so that an individual could afford them, but they weren't like they were dual homes dual housing when my grandparent, when my grandfather came, they stayed in a house with pretty much the entire family.
Speaker 2:Well, it must have been. Was it like duplexed up at the time?
Speaker 1:No, it was just rooms Like your room right here. This is your room and your family and then we all ate together. I'll look into it.
Speaker 5:I've never heard that in my life. I've never heard that.
Speaker 4:I don't know.
Speaker 5:But even if it was regardless, there was a path to get out and get your own place If you come here and you're working as an illegal and there is no path. That's the problem with America is this cheap labor that he, you know Mike Ogle stepped in and said you know, companies can't afford that.
Speaker 4:Clearly they can because they did it in the past.
Speaker 5:Greed it's not even just greed. There's a problem. There's a mentality that's hard. Well, the CEOs are making all the money. It's not even just greed. There's a problem. There's a mentality that's hard, especially when it jumps this fast.
Speaker 1:CEOs are making all the money. They're creating redundancies so they can filter that money in there as well. So there's a CEO and a vice CEO and then a secondary CEO.
Speaker 2:Right right.
Speaker 1:And everybody's making money. You're seeing them growing and the working person is staying at the same, and that's the way it is. And then hopefully you get some security where you start building up your payroll, like, oh, now I'm making 19, one more year, now I'm making 1925.
Speaker 2:That's like the post office, you know.
Speaker 5:Yeah, we're not talking about jobs that start you low. I mean, every job starts you low and you have to work your way up by 18.
Speaker 1:I mean, every job starts you low and you have to work your way up. You talk about 18, I'm like 18?
Speaker 2:Yeah but they're saying that 18 is the top pay. That's it.
Speaker 5:That's what the factory pays is 18 an hour. That's it. I mean, that's just not the way it's supposed to be. I'm not saying they're going to be supervisors, but you should be able to go to work every day and at least live in a house by yourself with food and a decent vehicle, and maybe go on a vacation, and for them, I mean, that's the least.
Speaker 1:For them at 18 or whatever they're making. Maybe that's norm for them. But that's what I'm telling you. You can't do it.
Speaker 5:You can't physically do it, you just can't. The numbers will not add up to that. If you go. If you go there and you're making, even say they're making 18. Okay, and, and they have one kid, so it's a independent and he has one kid, we won't even have a wife who needs to work but isn't. When we're not even gonna say that, just just say it's a woman went there and she's got a kid at 18 an hour. The government has to step in and assist her or she won't be able to afford to live at 18 an hour. That's a fact. She won't be able to pay her rent, her fuel, her utilities and groceries on 18 an hour. It won't happen, and that's a little bit ridiculous in my opinion.
Speaker 1:I mean you got tax issues. Tax issues. I mean, why are properties skyrocketing? Why is someone renting a home for more than two thousand dollars or twelve hundred bucks or whatever it is, if the house was always rented or always at a standstill or the house is paid off?
Speaker 5:why are they? Well, the houses are jumping for.
Speaker 1:For there's two reasons but I'm talking about like apartments. So you got an apartment, a full apartment complex that it used to be 500 to 600, whatever it was. You know I haven't lived in an apartment out here you know, but before I was paying in.
Speaker 4:DC. I was paying $1,600 a month.
Speaker 1:Barely. I had to work at a toy store, Right, right, right and. I was in the military.
Speaker 2:Right, right, right right. I'm like I can't afford this. I got a question. Is this? No, I don't know if it's true or not in lorraine, say, you buy a beat-up property, then don't you got to put money in escrow? Oh, you don't know, I don't have any own property.
Speaker 1:So I don't know, but I heard you had a.
Speaker 2:Whatever it costs to fix it this is unbelievable to me, but anyways, whatever it costs to fix it this is unbelievable to me, but anyways, whatever it costs to fix it you've got to put it in escrow, that same amount of money you've got to spend out of your pocket, and then, once you get it done, then you get your escrow back. So that might not be true, that's what I heard.
Speaker 5:So the way that works, what that is is that's the sale deed, and I don't know if that's still going on. I don't know if they did that or not. It's what caused the reason that we have as many rentals as we did. We already had enough rentals at the time and then they caught. They did that, so then what would happen was, if you went to sell he's right when you went to sell a house, the city would come in and do an inspection. I don't know that this still happens or not. I don't know.
Speaker 5:I'm just saying investors thought it was the greatest thing in the world because they would come in and they could just put the money in escrow. They didn't care. You know what I mean. So they would come in, they put the money in. Or if, like me as a person, like an individual who's buying a house, me and my family are going to move into this house, this, and that I can't get the same as he can, because he's got the money to put in that escrow and get this deal done and closed on, you know what I'm saying. I can't afford to do it. So now, all of a sudden, only investors are buying it, and the reason for it? It came from a good spot. What they were trying to do. The theory was that each time a house changed, like somebody bought the property. We made sure that it was up to snuff and it was nice and it was well taken care of, and that's where it comes from. The problem was that it does seriously deter homeownership. It really ends up putting the advantage to the investor.
Speaker 2:It was a monopoly.
Speaker 5:You know what I'm saying. So I believe that went away. I think that Lorraine got rid of that. I think they did. I hope they did, but I'm pretty sure they did.
Speaker 2:But I remember that was like really horrible. Yeah, I mean at first it sounded like.
Speaker 5:you know it's so many programs look like a good idea on the outside until you actually enact them and see, because people are very good at taking advantage of what they can, you know, and investors seriously took advantage and the houses weren't selling for as much because of that. You know what I mean. Because they would just go to them and say, well, I'm not doing that, I've got to put $10,000 in escrow before I can even have it. I'm not paying you that. And a typical person that was buying it for himself couldn't even do it at all because he didn't have the money to put in escrow.
Speaker 2:do it at all because he didn't have the money to put an escrow, because you had to put that money in, then you still had to do the repairs. Then you would get your rest going. So, you had to have a lot of money to finish that house, so it was horrible, it was bad. That seems crazy.
Speaker 5:Yeah, that's how it was. I don't know if it's still like that or not. It could be, though I don't that's called. I forget what the name of that is. There's a name for it, though, but Lorraine wasn't the only one doing it, there was other cities that did it.
Speaker 1:So would they use that money in X-Row to do the repairs?
Speaker 4:No, for the house before they sold it? No, yeah.
Speaker 5:So essentially like if I bought the house from you, okay, and they came in and inspected it and said this needs done, the sell would still go through and the money would of yours would get shortened and go into there. Okay, you don't want to enter that escrow. The problem became if you owed 92 on your house and it was 98. So there's only six for escrow and it's got 12 to go in escrow. We can't even work a deal now. There's nothing I can do for you.
Speaker 1:I know there's some properties that you know not. Maybe it might be in relation to that is that you know someone passed, someone passed the kids going to sell the house, but they had this money was given by the city and it might be totally different we're talking about. The city had given money to do repairs, to help them do repairs, but it put a lien on the property instead. Inadvertently, it says, hey, here's your loan to do the repairs. The person dies. Now they're trying to sell the house and they're like no you can't sell the property.
Speaker 5:Yeah, no, this isn't. The money wasn't coming from the city, it always came from the seller. Yeah, it always came from the cell, right right, yeah, it always came from the cell, but, like I said, it came out to where it was. You know, again, it's the same thing. It's what you owe on the property, and then they add the repairs to it. Now, all of a sudden, you have to be able to sell it for whatever the city decides your repairs are.
Speaker 2:And the city was out deciding it too on top of that. Yeah, I don't want to. I don't want to sound like I was pointing something out that I knew about. I'm clearly saying I don't know how?
Speaker 1:yeah, I don't know. I didn't know that either.
Speaker 5:That seems kind of that's what caused, in my opinion, that's what caused the serious rental issue.
Speaker 1:That's going on. Yeah, because they're like I'm just not going to sell, I'm just going to rent because most people couldn't it was only investors that really they loved it.
Speaker 5:Investors a Investors love it. Everybody I know that invests. They're like that's the greatest thing ever. They loved it.
Speaker 1:The original conversation was in reference to like the price hike in rentals, you know.
Speaker 2:And that's it.
Speaker 1:So you know, nowadays, you know you go to the same property on wherever, even in our area that you know last year or two years ago, $600, $700, 600 that's because they were so stagnant for so long. Now they're like it's, it's going up to 1400 a month, the same property, nothing changed, and now it's 1400, you know. So I'm like is that a tax issue?
Speaker 5:I mean it, you know it's uh no, it's a stagnant issue if you think about it like, like lorraine's and out.
Speaker 5:I need to be making in the city of lorraine, like, say, your typical split level over there in homewood area, you could buy that for around 60 in like 1990, 60 to 65, 80 for a real nice one. That was true in 2018 too. You know what I'm saying. That's a long stagnation. And the same was true with the. Rents were about the same, like they were, maybe were about five, 50 and 90, and they had got up to maybe six 50. So it just was so stagnant for so long. And you know these people that own these properties, they, they have rents, this and that and then you jump up the. You give them the excuse. When you jumped up the property taxes 40%, you know what I mean you gave them that huge incentive to say, okay, we got to go up. Now, you know what I mean. And Waterbill went up with the government, all that stuff they had all these, you know. So that's where it came from and they were stagnant. I mean they had been stagnant for a long time.
Speaker 1:So just a change. They were just like hold on.
Speaker 5:Eventually it has to go up. Everything has to go up eventually. And that's all I'm saying about wages. Them wages are at that stagnant mode where they have to go and it's going to hurt Everybody's going to hate it, all these companies, but it's going to have to happen.
Speaker 1:It has to happen. How much concrete workers are making?
Speaker 5:nothing, starting off by jump, it's chump change, you know, under 30, 30, no, no, not even 30.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a and he's in a union that's a challenge, and he's in a union that's a challenge of its own.
Speaker 5:It's either a weak union or and I don't know, I ain't gonna say hourly.
Speaker 2:But yeah, but not only that, not in terms of, but we're talking starting, just starting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 26, yeah so. And now? You're talking, that's a that's in the concrete, but we're talking starting, just starting, starting, yeah, 26.
Speaker 5:Yeah. So now you're talking that's in the concrete business. Like you're saying, this is a nine month a year job, yeah, I mean, and most of the time I mean some companies do go, but that's a nine month a year job, yeah, and you're already making 26,. So you're not even going to make 52 on a year. On a year, you see what I'm saying? I mean it's not acceptable.
Speaker 1:I mean, I agree with the pay increases. When we were talking about that, I didn't know what position you were talking about. I was thinking in general.
Speaker 2:I'm like someone out of high school making a little bit of money, I mean whatever.
Speaker 1:They're making something.
Speaker 5:Out of high school I worked at Subway man and a little bit of construction too $7 an hour here, $11 an hour there.
Speaker 1:I was like hey, I can work all these jobs.
Speaker 5:Yeah, that was my thing. You can't have that mentality that 18 an hour is not enough. Just remember that. Just really sit down with your wife.
Speaker 2:Go tonight and look with your wife and do the math.
Speaker 5:Find out what she spends on groceries and ask her Just write it down. And then compare that to what somebody who makes $18 an hour takes home.
Speaker 1:Not $18 an hour. What they take home, it's not going to be you know they're going to have to work another job, of course, or two more jobs, there you go.
Speaker 5:That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 1:But I didn't know what $18 you're talking about. I'm like, okay, someone's coming out of town, you know, hey, I'm making my little $18. I'm like, okay, you ain't making nothing if you're just sitting at home, but I get what you're saying in terms of the price.
Speaker 5:Yeah, but if you make enough, where they take your benefits from you, that's a big problem too. You get people that don't want to work because I'll lose my benefits. That's horrible.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean. Or they never get married because they're like hey, you stay your thing, Right right, right, that won't work.
Speaker 5:That was awesome having you in. We got to get off of here. We're over four hours now. This is the longest podcast we've ever had.
Speaker 1:I think our last one was a little bit longer. We had fun, though, I mean.
Speaker 5:I had fun with it. I'm not trying to, I'm not hosing you, I'm just.
Speaker 4:I really feel like that.
Speaker 5:I feel like there's too many people that think it's not enough or it's enough. 18 not enough or it's enough. 18 is enough for 20. And you know what the sad part is? One part of the conversation I agree, I agree, yeah, I agree. But the sad thing is you get guys that are workers that are like wait people yeah, they do, and because they're not really thinking of it and they're you know what I mean.
Speaker 5:They're just not really. No, they're not at that pay. He's not at that. He ain't at 18 an hour. He wouldn't get out of his bed for 18. He drinks more than 18 an hour.
Speaker 1:It was good man, I appreciate it. Like I said, anytime I come on here or it's the second time I take stuff back. It's important to kind of clear. I take stuff back and you know it's it's important, you know, to kind of clear up some things and you know, let people know and what do you got to say to the citizens of south lorraine?
Speaker 2:yeah about that.
Speaker 1:In them roads come on hey, south lorraine, you know what's important to you is important to me. You know I'm uh, you know avic advocate for you. Uh, you know the roads. They're on the list. It's been said many years, but this is a priority of ours, it's a priority of mine and you know it's going to come. When it comes, I don't hold the shovel, I only hold the button to vote and advocate for funds. So when people present something to me and say that, hey, this is where their money is going to be spent next year, it better be on our roads, it better be on our system, it better be on our productivity of our city and our ward Fair enough, there you go.
Speaker 5:You heard it from Anthony. He said better be. You heard that Better be. He's on it. All right, peace Later.
