Yeah, I broke my arm last week, oh broke it. I did. I did. So I took a nasty fall. I
tried to, you know, put my hand out and my wrist out to break the fall and wound up breaking my
elbow. So was anybody you can sue or, you know, I mean, it was a crack in somebody's, you know,
you can trip in a store or something where you can make some money off this. No, it's not,
it's not, it's not the first thing that comes to mind. But I'm really just making sure it gets
healed. I'm Dr. Charles, you know, take about eight weeks. So, oh man, you know, there was a movie called
The Fortune Cookie with Jack lemon and Walter Mathau. Walter Mathau was a kind of a sleazy lawyer
and he was whiplash Willie was his name. And Howard McNear played Floyd the barber was in his office
one day, a real disheveled office. And he tripped and fell and heard himself. And Walter Mathau said
where'd you fall? And he said, well, in front of that little sandwich shop over there, say, couldn't
you drag yourself a block to the main company? They've got money. He doesn't have any money.
You drag yourself out. Oh, I'm sorry about that. Yeah, well, look, I mean, it's my left hand,
are my left arm, no, I write arms, I'm right handed to that house. But it's also, you know, it's for
eight weeks. I mean, it is humbling when it takes, it takes long to get dressed or to, well, how do you
drive a car? You know, one handed, you know, so you do the best again. So, but it's, you know, it's
also just a bit of a humbling reminder for people who have a disability where they might have to
contend with this their whole life. I know. Yeah, you know, it's a real adjustment. And so, you
know, for people who, who, uh, who managed to overcome restrictions like that their whole lives,
I am, I am humbled and amazed by the work that people can do, uh, with limited mobility and,
in an arm or a hand or a leg or whatever. People born without arms or legs. Yeah,
you know, they say that they just find life. They're happy as a clam. It is amazing. So it is a
humbling thing. Yeah. Is a painful thing. But it is a humbling thing to, uh, to go through this.
I'm 52. It's the first time I've broken a bone in my life, right? So I don't have a, you know,
a childhood story of falling off a bike or something to, to compare it to you. But yeah, I, uh,
it was a doozy. So I, I had never broken a bone in my body in my entire life.
Wow. Good. However, that said, every one of my ribs was broken when I had heart surgery. They
had a cut them off. They had a cut them all open. And for the, now that was 14 years ago.
For the first time a few weeks ago, I was going in. I have to go in every six months for, you know,
exam. And I said, could you look up my last CT scan from six months ago? I want to see what it
looks like in there. And she said, sure, she brought it up. And there are 10 rings holding my
ribs together. Wow. There's 10 circles in my, they're like, I don't know, they're plastic
or wire on them. They are, but they're a 10 of them. And they're so obvious when you see them,
holding my, and I said, well, my ribs are all healed. They said, would you like us to cut your
opening end to take them out? I mean, they're in there for the rest of your life. Wow. I've never
noticed that. Wow. Do you feel the metal? No. No. No, I tried. No, I can't feel them.
Interesting. But you know what? When I had all those ribs broken when the first medication
kept wore off, whoa. I mean, it was painful. Every time I moved, I felt it. Yeah. And so my
sympathies go with you. Now, was this your mistake? Or is it somebody, somebody left something in
the middle of the floor that they shouldn't have, that I tripped over? But it is what it is.
So when's a divorce coming? No. I managed to do it in front of a hundred people. So there was
a reset. Oh, no. Oh, embarrassing. All right. Well, I hope you feel better, man. Thanks. Thanks.
So you went to a couple of ribbon cutting ceremony. Yeah, I didn't do that with one hand.
Well, I didn't cut, I didn't do the scissors. The superintendent did, thankfully. Let's talk
about those. Yeah. So it was great. There were three of them yesterday. And this is sort of part
of people might remember that 2020 referendum for the school district that passed by a landslide
of five votes, right? Every vote matters, tens of thousands of votes casted and passed by five.
So thank you to the voters that made that happen. But that has allowed us to build, you know,
there's a new Red Apple school being built where Walden once was a 10th and center. But yesterday,
we cut the ribbon on renovations that were made to Hordelec High School. You know, it's a 1928
building that hadn't been updated ever until we did that. So they were able to put in new facilities
and new equipment. And as C. Johnson School looks, you know, completely different on the inside.
And they added a gym and added some space there and able to put in some extra art space and
learning space for the kids that was just great. And then Mitchell Middle School had a real facelift
done and expanded gym and again, new classroom space. And you know, those buildings were built
in the 1930s. So some of these buildings really haven't had updates in almost a century. And
just to see how excited the faculty are, the staff are. But as importantly, the students and their
parents about, you know, what it is to be able to go into a building where they've got new facilities
and new computer equipment and new stem room and other places for kids to learn really,
really exciting stuff. And it ensures that those buildings will last for another, you know,
50 years so that we can keep educating kids there. So it was a really rewarding thing to see our
schools being updated that way. And really grateful to have been part of helping to pass that
referendum. Now, you said where the Walden School was. It's not there anymore, huh?
No. So if you go by 10th and center now, you will see a completely new building that is up there.
Whoa, where was I? It was like a coma in this. Yeah. So, so, so that building was one of the oldest
buildings in the city. It was built before the Civil War in 1854. Somebody pondered that it might
be the oldest flush toilet in the city. We were never able to confirm that. But, but I mean,
it had been there for a long time and the newer part was built in the 19 teens. But it had outlived,
it's it's usefulness as a building, which just became so and disrepair. So if you go by 10th
and center now, you will see a building they're they're doing the interior now, but the exterior
of it is done. And so if you drive by there, you'll see a brand new building that's gone up.
Now, is the Jane school still an operation? It is not. So there's a few. In my wife, I live
a block away. And I was wondering because I saw all these construction trucks. There are no kids.
Yeah. So, so Jane school, the old red apple and Winslow school sort of over by
14th street there. Those are all properties that'll be seated over to the city for
redevelopment. So by the end of this year, we'll begin to look at if those could be
transition into housing or some other useful purpose. They're beautiful buildings, right? I'm
just the architect. And they just renovated the Jane school not too long ago. They put a new thing
that that little cone thing made on top of the street. Yeah. So they keep the buildings in good
repair. So you know, I mean, sometimes you get these old buildings that are just in such
disrepair, or it's just like, Oh, there's no. Like it's it's got a beautiful facade, but it's so
far gone. You just can't can't imagine doing anything next with it with the school district,
you know, because we've had school children in there all these years, the buildings are,
you know, the roofs are tight. The windows are tight. It's in a good state of repair. So we're
looking forward to opportunities to transition that into possible housing. I'm moving forward.
I feel bad. I love I live only a block or so from the Jane school and I love looking at when I
go home and you know, wake up in the morning and I go like, I can't imagine a beautiful building.
It's or the facade of it is amazing inside no good. Well, it's it's harder to make. I mean,
they're inside of its chopper than you might think. Did the kids have to shovel coal in the winter
to get it? Who's that? I think they're about to have a time. We might have actually the case.
And the I mean that the older part there was also built before the Civil War, right? So it's a
really old building, but you know, they don't make walls that thick anymore. They don't put that
kind of design feature into it. It is I mean, if you're heading south on Main Street from downtown,
it is the facade of that building, you know, and that turn that you see there. What would you call
it? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that is, you know, it's a real part of the view shed from the downtown.
Hate to lose that, right? I mean, it's a really great piece. Now, the addition that they put
on in the 70s that, you know, less attached to that, it's kind of a shoe box that they added on
there. But the the historic part of it is just really a beautiful piece. Oh, you know, my my wife
said to me, she says, I don't think that school's open anymore. Yeah. Because they have all these
trucks and trailers on the property and no kids and I see the kids playing there all the time.
Yeah. And they're not there. Oh, that's kind of sad. Well, I mean, may have seen so
just dead. I'm added in elementary school. So they're now a K eight. And so you got kids going
over there now. And you know, Geesey came down as well. So that's another school. Really? Yeah.
Yeah. So if you drive by there, it's an empty field. So if you get knocked down the YMCA,
you're not going down the school should not, well, you knocked down the YMCA personally.
I got to take the first away. But put that and then Roosevelt School will also come down.
Pretty soon. So it's just a different. They're going to more of a K eight model in so many
spaces. Red Apple will become a K eight. So that's a no more middle school. Now there's some
standalone middle schools that are so there and Walden is still a six through 12. So there's
a little bit of a blended there. I'm trying to think, is there any standalone just middle schools left?
You may be right. There may not be anymore. I don't you'd have to ask the school district
for a certainty. But my middle school is gone. The one I went to is the buildings there,
but it's abandoned. My high school is gone. The buildings there, but it's abandoned.
This is in New York. Yeah. Long Island. Yeah. It's all gone. I mean, my entire child and my
grammar school is there. We had about five grammar schools in our town. One of them was Fairfield
Elementary. They have old it is every classroom had a fireplace in it. Wow. And we took a tour of
as a historical thing. We took a tour when the kids were, you know, going there and they don't use
the fireplaces, but they're there in the room. And at Christmas time, they decorate the fireplace.
Well, the Kenley were Walden is now. It has fireplaces. Oh, man. You know, I hate to get rid of
history, but you know, you got us. It's not practical sometimes to keep these old buildings
and these barns heated. Well, you want to reuse them when you can. But if they've moved past,
sort of, you know, if it costs more to restore it or update it, then it does to start over.
That's generally how they make their decision. Well, this was a depressing half hour.
I know. It's progress. I know. I mean, I know nostalgia can be a powerful thing.
I'm like, oh, my gosh, that's where, you know, I mean, I went to Walden for seventh and eighth grade
where that new building is down. Sure. Are you driving? I'm like, oh, the old school's not there
anymore. Well, that's, that's a little sad. But then I think of a brand new building. I know.
I know. My research for kids and the opportunity for kids to really do well at a magnet school,
right? In that part of the city, I think that's great. I think that's great. You know, we had a
reunion of my very first radio station. And that was back in the 70s. It was a vibrant top 40,
you know, hot rock and radio station. Now it's all Chinese 24 hours a day. Oh, wow.
And it was so depressing. It's serving a purpose of the Chinese community.
But this was a hot rock and flamethrower radio station at one time.
And that was Chinese. Well, it's, yeah, it's time. And it's serving its purpose of the Chinese
community. Yeah, but it was kind of depressing to me. Well, you know, there's touch students that
we call home, right? You know, the places that, you know, the house that you grew up in or the
the school that you went to or the places, you know, the first job that you had, you know,
I mean, look, we took down a good chunk of the mall to put in the woodmins, right? I mean,
I had three jobs at that mall. I know. I mean, you know, how do you feel about that?
Well, you can nostalgic, right? I mean, just like, oh, man, no more cinnabon. Oh, well,
what are you going to do? You know, no more record town, you know? Is that where you work,
cinnabon? Cinnabon and record town and walled in books for a bit. You know, so, you know, you just
sort of, you know, you're just sort of like, oh, it's just not, it's not what it once was. And,
you know, I've never seen that show stranger things. They, one of the seasons, I forget which one,
they do, they somehow found a 1980s mall perfectly preserved. And you just, you know, it takes you
back to all these childhood memories. And that's great. But if you'd been to the mall, you know,
in the last couple of years, it was a ghost town, right? I mean, there was, there was, I'm going on
there. And so, so this is a way to reuse that land. And I know, I know. I know. I do. I want to,
I lit my mother's to say, stop living in the past. Well, yeah. I mean, again, the style just
good, right? You want to have those fun memories, but not so much, you know, I wouldn't want to have
a kid going to a school that was built before the Civil War because I had nostalgia for the building,
right? I want him to get into a modern facility where they can learn and have the internet and
hey kids for Jim class anyway, shoveling coal. Let's go. That's right. That's right. But I
get it that nostalgia. I know, right? I know. And I, I, this, my mother said, you'll live in the past.
Yeah. And I feel bad even movie theaters when they're gone because that's what I live for movie theaters.
There's some, by the way, we'll talk about this. I saw the new Godzilla movie.
He's shitting Godzilla. Yeah, yesterday. Yeah. Awful. Oh, just awful. Okay. All right.
That's another thing. That was talking about the elevators. They're working.
They are. So we were out for pretty much July and August because the the window was in
answer. The elevator was in in disrepair. And so we had to have it serviced and the
the sort of the podium that lifts it up and down needed to have a new sheeding put in it. And so
we had to make sure that that was in good working order, which it now is. So that's great. So
next week, we will bring city council back to city hall. I do probably right there with the
library. Right. So I want to publicly thank Nick Dempsey and the whole team at the library for
letting us do our council meetings and our and our committee meetings there over time. It was
really a bit of an inconvenience for them, but they were, they were great about it. And he's
working on the bill. You'll get it. Well, it's nice about having a city building to be able to
have as an auxiliary. So good to have the YMCA, but you tore it down.
Again, if you've been in that YMCA shortly before it was torn down, that is not a place you'd
want to have a meeting. So, but yeah, so I want to thank the library for their their hospitality,
but just remind people, you know, if you want to come to city council or there's a committee that
you want to cover, they're back in city hall. The elevators are working. And so come on back.
Pre-civil war elevator? No, 1930s, 1930s. Really? Yeah, yeah. So the building was built in 1930,
something. So those cables must have been nice and hot throughout those years. I know. It's,
you know, I understand progress. I do understand that I used to take pictures of buildings before
they were torn down and while they were building the new one. And, you know, I look back at them,
and I my mother said, stop living in the past. Well, there are places where we can do preservation
though, where we want preservation recene. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the whole parade of homes
that they do, but if you think of sort of, you know, the historic pavers on college avenue there,
right? I mean, nobody would want to get rid of that. And I think of even just the work that we've
done to restore the Horde like buildings in Bell City Square on Northwestern there, right?
You know, who's moving in there? Who's with the nursing county eye? Yeah, they might be there
already. Yeah. Well, they just sound at least they're moving in there. Yeah. So that was
repurposed very well. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, if people haven't been to the inclusive
being there that coffee shop that's in the middle of it, so a lot of people just sort of knew it
driving by Northwestern. That's where Haven used to be. And, you know, the school district had
storage there for a while. But if you go back there, there's, you know, like a dozen of
those beautiful historic buildings and they've restored about half of them. And so it looks great.
And so when we can restore historic buildings, if we can find a way to do it, we want to do it,
but sometimes, you know, it's interesting to be on their use downtowns across America.
Some of them are really going by-by because they're building malls and strips, you know,
shopping centers. I remember when I, why, I read about it, that the mall was going to put
downtown out of business. Well, here's downtown as vibrant as ever and the mall's gone. Yeah.
Well, I think we're now in this post-COVID post-Amazon world where retail's just a lot harder,
right? I mean, if you want something, you go on your phone and you can generally have it the next day
or a couple days away. So the days of, there's some things that I want. I want to go to,
so I'm going to go to this amount of water where they have lots of things. You know,
those days are just, they're not completely gone, but they're just not what they once were.
And so if you're thinking about retail, it's just a lot harder to think through when there's
such digital platforms that make it so easy. So people got to, you know, and I think that's what
makes downtown stick out, though, is it's got some architecture to it. It has a sense of place to
it. It's got, you know, it's got the museum and it's got the historic buildings. And, you know,
downtown receipt incorporation does a great job of putting events together. So there's a reason
to come down there, a reason to celebrate and check out the downtown. We've got five K events
coming in next week. Oh, man, they've done a great job. They don't think they took festival hall,
memorial hall. Totally turned around. The festival park, rotary park. The band is there now. Yeah.
They were seeing concert band. Yeah. And they just, there's events all the time going there.
No, it's really did a great job. Five K events are making that place lively again. They absolutely
did. They absolutely did. And for a long time, you know, we, you know, had our time booking
events, but they've they've put community events together, which the community was really clamoring
for. And they've done a good job of booking it out to, you know, get it to a place where,
where we're at least breaking even on it. So that's great. What about the YMCA land?
Any takers on that yet? Not yet. So the bluff is going to need some work and some
remediation. So before it's quite ready to be generally when you want to put a site out for
for bed, you want to know that it's a developable site as the developers like to say. If you say
to a developer, here's a piece of land, and you just need to put a couple million in into it,
and then you can start building that that's harder to do. Not impossible, but we got to stabilize
the bluff and make sure that all the remediation is done and get the EPA to sign off on that.
But it is an exciting redevelopment site, right? Did you grow up in nursing? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
We did a thing at the one of the churches the other day, Jim and Carol, Jim,
Missy or Carol Carol June forte. Oh, she's a great local. The 50s and 60s growing up,
going to the beaches and pools and nursing. They did the Washington Park pool, which is you go
there today. It's very depressing. I didn't grow up here, and I was crying when I saw that site.
They were talking about two beaches that don't exist anymore. The 14th street beach,
which if you take in 14th street all the way down to the end, that's where it was.
There's no sign that ever existed. There were stairs going down. There was a vibrant beach.
Now there's the rocks put up to prevent erosion. There's no sign that beach ever existed.
And they speculated there was a south beach at one time because there's a north beach.
Right. Do you remember ever hearing about a south beach?
So I don't know if they were called a north beach south beach formally, but you can see
sort of where the park is down by Gateway there, the name of which is escaping me right now.
I apologize, but that's been restored as a natural area. So if you get to walk down there,
down by Gateway there, that's where there was once a beach long, long ago. There was a boat ramp,
boat ramp, you know, as recently as maybe 15, 20 years ago, but that's all been restored as
sort of natural wetland. But you know, we had somebody just drown near Kerry Hole Park just a couple
weeks ago. I know. And so the challenge that you have, I mean, we are one of the few cities that
still has lifeguards. I mean, just visiting Sherboy in a couple weeks ago, they've got like
fun. I'm like, so where are your lifeguards? Like, oh, we don't have like guards. We just post
swim at your own risk, right? But because those riptides and undertoes can be so powerful, we plead
with people, please swim in the guarded areas. So we have north beach and south beach that are
guarded during the summer months. And it's just really important for water safety as much as
people would love to have, you know, but between south beach and north beach, it's almost a mile of
beach, right? I mean, it's not like it's a small piece of land. So, but the more you sort of
add beaches and facilities, number one, the erosion of it once they put the breakwater in there
made it harder to maintain that. But number two, just from a water safety perspective, you want to
you want to have people swim in guarded areas. So we can prevent drowning.
There's honor. We're seeing Mayor Corey Mason is here.
