When it’s tough to park and the hotels are full and the Phillies and Orioles are sold out all weekend, life is good in the land of pleasant living. Bill Cole joins Nestor for Maryland Fleet Week and Baltimore Pride at Kooper’s Tavern in Fell’s Point where the vibrancy of our hometown is on display.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
baltimore, people, week, cooper, solar, fleet, planes, park, 21st birthday, roofing, fells point, ron, talk, gouging, spot, street, horse, years, coal, call
SPEAKERS
Nestor J. Aparicio, Bill Cole
Nestor J. Aparicio 00:01
We are W n s t a of 1570 tasks Baltimore and Baltimore positive or positively here, Sunshine boats, planes flying over. We’re Cooper’s not north. We’re Cooper’s Fells Point. We’re down here in Baltimore. It’s all brought to you by the Maryland lottery. The goal was seven doublers. Here we are at Cooper’s tavern next to slaughter on Thames Street, or is a bill Cole is going to call it tame street before it’s all over with your leg. We’re here for Fleet Week, Merrill Fleet Week and Phillies are in town. We’re going to New York next week. We’ll be a Costas on Thursday will be a Papist. The following Friday Bilko has joined us I would have brought my cold roofing mug with me here this morning. What are you doing down here? Man? You don’t know how many rooms and Fells Point your family since 1990?
8
Bill Cole 00:43
A lot? A lot. I don’t know. It’s pretty happening down here. I’ll tell you checks me now. He came from one side to the other side. And I mean, if he doesn’t make you happy to drive down Pratt street and see all the people like, you know, it’s just good stuff.
Nestor J. Aparicio 01:00
I was telling Ron, I came down at three and I fished over through like, like Little Italy, I went down Lombard or whatever to be proud. I made a left Pratt. And as I made the left, the planes were coming in, and I hadn’t seen them, but it could hear them. It’s like Sonic, I felt that my chest on 83, right. So I pull in and I can’t see the planes, I can’t see planes. But all I saw was a lot of construction, like Central Avenue, just a little bit east of like Little Italy. A little north of like, you know, Harbor East area, but construction workers everywhere. And they’re all got their phones out. And they’re all looking in the sky. And I’m looking at them. And all I see is they’re holding phones in my direction in the sky. And I know the planes are going by. But I’m thinking this is disruptive. I mean nothing. When these planes come by, you have to watch them. You can’t ignore it. It’s like the sonic boom of it. But they move so fast that everywhere I went people were like looked up in the sky like this. And I’m like, that’s kind of neat.
Bill Cole 01:59
I mean, we can go down this rabbit hole if you want. Because there’s one right, there
Nestor J. Aparicio 02:04
8was one right there. Yeah. And like,
Bill Cole 02:06
we used to be fortunate enough to do sand soccer the same time it was they were doing that down the beach or whatever. That was always wild to other than the fact that like, all the players stopped and looked up in the middle of the beaches.
Nestor J. Aparicio 02:21
It’s loud, right? But
Bill Cole 02:23
no, I mean, it’s super impressive. And it’s just so vibrant down here. And this is such a special little corner spot anyway, like,
8Nestor J. Aparicio 02:32
well, we’re we got to win. I mean, it’s the windows right here, I can touch the window. So
Bill Cole 02:36
the hotel across the street, you know, five stars, and then you’re walking across the cobblestone to a bar that’s been here for 200 years, like I challenge anyone I everywhere I go, tell me another city where you can do that.
Nestor J. Aparicio 02:48
I had a family for Philly at this table here as I was setting up, and they were telling me everything you you and I talked about creating Baltimore positive years ago, and I credit you as being the inspiration for some of this stuff. At least get my head around it. But they were like, we’d love coming down here. We you know, Phillies playing Baltimore, and then we saw that we’re like, we’re gonna go down and do that they didn’t know Fleet Week was even happen until like they got here this morning. Right? They flew it. They drove down there at the Hilton. They’re going to the ball game there, spend the day in the city tomorrow. They’re gonna watch the planes tomorrow, do the whole deal. And they’re like, we’ll have this in Philly. It’s literally what they said. And I had a real nice conversation with them about why they picked a weekend in Baltimore because that there are people in Bel Air that don’t pick a weekend that
Bill Cole 03:33
8need to, and I will get here. That’s crazy slouched like we are. I think there’s good effort going into farther than 300 miles. Right. So how do you touch people farther than 300 miles to bring them into town? And I think we have a lot of effort in that area. We’re still trying to figure out how to have that conversation inside 300 miles, right. Like, when the oils are good. Those people are coming back if
Nestor J. Aparicio 04:03
people want Hagerstown it’ll never come to Baltimore until the Orioles are playing a big game, and then they’ll come in, right. So how
Bill Cole 04:07
do we connect with those people on things like Fleet Week, or the auto show or the boat show and you know, manufactured events, everybody’s got their little niche and you know, you can easily draw them in so I don’t know this was really positive. I there was a good chance I was gonna text you and be like, yeah, well couldn’t park there. So but I got I got
Nestor J. Aparicio 04:28
so here’s my Baltimore complaint, and you will get here the plane. I pulled in about 1130 this morning. I feel like I’m competing with the planes. I went down to the foot of Broadway. Pass the horse pass Soundgarden pass Tsukasa that parking garage on the left, right by living classrooms I pulled in there were a couple spots. And I did the little QR code, right? Like just like I do for my lottery tickets here, right? So I do the QR code. And I’m like, alright, I’ll play along which phone number and okay, I’ll play it. I’ll put your license plate I put play on, it comes up it says $31.25 for four hours to park the car. No, that’s not that. That’s, that’s sweet daddy pricing for me on a Friday morning. So what I realized is they’re doing Uber surge pricing, their surge pricing because of Fleet Week. So I have a feeling next Friday if I come down to the park five bucks to 50 an hour, you know somebody may use something that’s not $8 an hour. So I was a little obviously taken aback but I would call it sticker shocked and I parked but I bought one up the street to brought back some of Baltimore guys went up there. Yeah, I went up the bank and golf I’m parked right on Broadway and the little center area. I paid $6 for four hours. You gotta
8Bill Cole 05:45
you have to pay for six or 32. Okay, right. And but you went there out of convenience. And they’re banking on that. And you chose to write
Nestor J. Aparicio 05:54
a familiarity. I knew where to park. I knew where there’s been a garage for 50 years. I
Bill Cole 05:59
gotcha. I’m with you. But you know, hey, good on them. I don’t know. That’s called capitalism. sound terrible thing I call it gouging. Why? That’s, I mean, hold on. Every single every single time. So that’s capitalism, brother.
Nestor J. Aparicio 06:18
8That’s what it’s clarity or Cooper’s. They charge another five hours for a beer for sandwich. Because they might be good. Probably not. They shouldn’t. It’s wrong. gouging is wrong. It’s an American. That’s not make that a value.
Bill Cole 06:30
Why? Why is it gouging if that’s the model over the course of the year, the only way they can give you $5 parking when it’s not crowded, is because they can get $30 pricing when they when
Nestor J. Aparicio 06:44
you were talking to two lawyers in Vegas, two weeks. This is what it was. I’m
Bill Cole 06:48
probably not gonna back off on this one too much. Capitalism is
8Nestor J. Aparicio 06:52
pretty speaking. I feel Mr. Rubinstein a presence within two blocks. I’m not I’m not allowed to come. But he is within two blocks. So you’re giving a speech to significant Baltimore representatives significant your
07:06
Fleet Week or for the oils or living classroom set has
Nestor J. Aparicio 07:10
a mixer with him today. Alright, so yeah, I’m here. We’re Cooper’s. We’re at Cooper’s in Fells Point. Bill Cole knows about, you know, there been a couple of times where you’ve invited me out for a beer. It doesn’t happen often. He only pretends to like me on radio. But you’ve invited me and it’s always down here. You’re always when you’ve invited me beers down here. Well, I think at one point, you had a property issue down here you’re looking at, there’s something going on. And but you’re one of the people that invite me to drink other than Ron Furman. Invite me to drink right here in Fells Point.
Bill Cole 07:42
8I liked Phil’s point. I mean, you know, we’re not going to get into too many stories of why I like it. But you know, it, there was a time period in my life where I may or may not have spent a fair amount of time down here. And yeah, and I still find it to have just such a genuine charm. And if you appreciate history, and you read anything about Baltimore, and the history and fells, and it’s just legit, man, and
Nestor J. Aparicio 08:07
whenever you’re not on Facebook, so when I was getting gouged by the American people trying to charge me $32 In my hometown to park my car. So I went up Central Avenue, and I went over to Broadway and I parked my car. And now I’m six blocks up of which you’re gonna have to help me carry some of this out of you didn’t know that yet. But I’ll get you a beer Max is on the way out of here because I got friends. So on the way down before I got to Max’s I looked up, and I had a moment. I have one of those moments. I’m walking down and I’m like the house of foam is gone. Right
08:40
Starbucks up the block. I didn’t stop myself. I didn’t know that. Very interesting. So
Nestor J. Aparicio 08:45
I’m walking down and I’m like the house. The phone’s gone. All right. barracudas is gone. All right, a pizza shop still here. And I’m like, the pizza shops right next to rodeos. And I took a picture here of me out in front of Rhodos right here. Me and some pals from Dundalk might have snuck into this joint a handful of times before our 21st birthday. We were dialysis two doors down. Yeah. dialysis. No,
809:13
it was cheers way way back. She goes.
Nestor J. Aparicio 09:19
They stopped. So Diana sews and Rhodos when I would go in there when I was Don’t tell Ron 17 1819 I would go in there on a Friday or Saturday night. And they’re always older Greek folks there because they rent they own the place. Right? So they would look at us and joy Dean Joe 21. You know, so we were in there. And they’d be playing like I remember the music. How would I know if he really loves me? So you know, we’re doing a Whitney Houston, you know what I mean? out on the dance floor, and then it would stop and the Greek museum Come on. And all the old Greek folks they would come out and they would do the you know, oh, you said they would do all of this. That was that I was Roadhouse and Diana Sosa 1986 87 Yeah, I love those memories. Sure. But yes, things that happened. What was your Bar? Bar? Were your Bar. Bar you know at bar. Ron bar bar, you know, bar down the street bar. Did it didn’t have any other name which is just always Bar. Bar.
10:20
Bar that one does. Ring a bell.
Nestor J. Aparicio 10:23
8You got to talk to real Fells Point about this stuff down here. Where did you where she came in on? No, no, we
10:28
were at. It was called cheers. Cheers. That
Nestor J. Aparicio 10:31
was the only that was your spot. It was my buddy’s mom the night of my 21st birthday, which he’s going to text me after this 1989 employee, bad English played hammer jacks. I had been going to hammer jacks for years like Ron I got an underage because I was a music critic. Right? So the night that I could first legally drink. It was midnight on a Friday night like into a Saturday. So I was like October 13 Like at midnight and I was trying to get into the horseshoe came in on at like 1030 and the bouncer looks at my Id come back at midnight dude. And I’m like, Eff you. I will never come back here. I will you doing this to me on my 21st birthday. You’re not letting me in. Gotta come back at midnight while I’m going over to Surfside Sallys and I’m never come and I don’t think I went to the horse it’s already started playing there. 15 years later my I had an anti horse thing
Bill Cole 11:28
weighed on me I really want to get into this this is like this is one of them therapy sessions. Where
8Nestor J. Aparicio 11:33
do you go John Stephens get some sushi down there
Bill Cole 11:35
like bitter like holding that again? Or Mandos job you know just holding you out
Nestor J. Aparicio 11:41
when you’re 21 you know you think you know it all I understand. I love the horse. I go to the horse all the time. I was there a couple of weeks ago. I probably don’t tell Ron probably go to the horse more in most places because he’s got a flower place there sometimes. And that’s my body. So that’s what drags me music drags me
Bill Cole 11:54
8i these days, I am more infatuated with walking just the streets down here than I am with getting stuck on a barstool in any one of them. So all right. I just think like, I know, I don’t know how long ago this was, but at some point, we would do some of our spots where I was in the car. Right? I definitely parked like there with that as my view while we were doing radio doing radio. Yeah. And that was like during COVID point you really do it just I mean, you know, like it’s just a good spot. It’s it’s Saturday’s a ball and it’s got the heritage. It’s it’s unique, like whatever flavor you’re into. It’s relatively easy to get in and out of in mind for me, I think I don’t know I paid six bucks to park I’m happy right? Yeah, I don’t know. It’s it’s fun. A lot of there’s a lot of people that have like made a living started careers like tried to pay their way through college. Like you know what I mean? Like it’s a salt of the earth kind of spot in Baltimore where you might cut your teeth and whether you’re in the knives are right here, right. 30 music scene bartender food, you know. So definitely an under the radar foodie spot.
Nestor J. Aparicio 13:11
We’ll get down here man. It’s Fells Point. It is Baltimore positive Talk brought to you by the Maryland lottery of Gold Rush seven doublers. To give away we’re going to be accosted. On Thursday before the Orioles game. We’re going to be Pappas on the 25th. We were up at Cooper’s North last week. We’re Coco’s the other day. I’ve had rockstars on and had a lot of friends on we’ve done movies, we’ve done symphony, we’ve done events up in the event guy and this Fleet Week and we talked so much about the if you look at the Baltimore calendar, like I did, working at the newspaper, we would look at it and say, All right, what’s going on here we got flower mark is early May. We’ve got the Towson town festival. We got the Preakness. We’ve got this Fleet Week thing is every other year now through the plague and I had Chris Rossa on last week for living classrooms and people put this on down here. It’s these manufactured events and the IRL. We try with Stephanie years ago to turn our city into a racetrack but this to me with the with Annapolis with Fort McHenry with reopening the Key Bridge at some point whenever that happens. This Fleet Week thing seems to be a natural sort of draw for for Baltimore.
Bill Cole 14:24
It certainly seems that way. I don’t
Nestor J. Aparicio 14:26
think the Phillies need to be in town to have a lot of people here.
8Bill Cole 14:28
I think it certainly doesn’t help you know, and the realization of people in Philadelphia that they can’t do Fleet Week like this or that they don’t I don’t know they can but they don’t. They get the Army Navy game. Yeah. I think that’s interesting. I think it’s totally a natural drawl. I think it’s super amazing. I think it’s good. Like, I keep like, yeah, you’re really distracted by like, F 14 or whatever. There’s
Nestor J. Aparicio 14:57
really, oh, yeah, somebody’s sober. He said that to fly lower than the Blue Angels are not here. Somebody thought they saw the Blue Angels. But these are not the Blue Angels. You call the Blue Angels if you want, but they’re not the Blue Angels. Yeah,
Bill Cole 15:09
it’s it. You know, that’s always fascinating. Like how can you not stare at that as it goes rocketing past in the sky.
Nestor J. Aparicio 15:17
8Well, that was the thing I text my wife for the first red light and 83 I’m like, it’s loud as you know, like really loud down here. And then the thing that struck me is every time the plane goes by your eyes go out the window every time you hear it. You’re looking up everybody’s looking up. So we have a weekend to that’d be fun down here it
Bill Cole 15:33
is. It’s an I’ll tell you I mean, I can’t really tell you can tell who some of the Phillies people are because of that. Well, they’re wearing baby burgundy whatever color that is. But I can’t imagine that this is mostly Philly Pete
Nestor J. Aparicio 15:50
It was earlier. Yeah. There’s Philly fans as
Bill Cole 15:53
well, you know, I mean, it probably is you know, because the Baltimore people work and today is work days. So we’re still working. How’s that?
8Nestor J. Aparicio 16:01
You working? You don’t have a beer yet. So
Bill Cole 16:03
some people do they have a hard time allowing me to call this working but yes, I would consider this work
Nestor J. Aparicio 16:09
because the summer co roofing and Gordian energy I saw Joe Enoch a little post up on LinkedIn earlier. What’s going on? Solar in roofing? You were talking? Rhonda? Yes,
Bill Cole 16:18
8fill me in. He did some stuff. It’s real busy. Just need the weather to cooperate a little bit.
Nestor J. Aparicio 16:26
What does that mean? hotter or colder? dryer? dryer? dryer? Yeah, it’s
Bill Cole 16:31
been a really wet year so far. So we just, you know, although we need it to rain for people to know that they need a roof at the same time,
Nestor J. Aparicio 16:38
we don’t hang Dizzy bows on the roof to get Yeah, we can’t
8Bill Cole 16:41
do a lot when it’s raining. All things are really good. I think we’ve, we’ve gotten to a place where you know, like, especially on the solar side. The opportunities significantly outweigh the capacity, the ability to get to it all. So like we’re, we’re, we’re just trying to hire, you know, people constantly, and they’re good jobs. And usually we’re finding good people. And I mean, that’s a lot of fun.
Nestor J. Aparicio 17:11
I like to hear that. What’s the qualification to be in the solar space? I don’t, I don’t even know. Could you take a clown like me in the 50s? Who’s done a lot of different things and say, I could teach you solar?
Bill Cole 17:20
Well, I’m not entirely sure you would, you would make it through our like soft skill questions. But yeah, generally speaking, we’ve created
Nestor J. Aparicio 17:30
8know what a soft skill is, but I think I was shot and assaulted,
Bill Cole 17:33
that would be exactly right. We’ve figured out a way to do what we’re calling a project engineer, which is sort of this entry level, like project management role, where we can begin to teach you all the aspects of solar from start to finish. And then that is sort of the launchpad inside the company, that if you want to get into sales, or you want to get into estimating or you want to get into Oh, Nm and service, or like we kind of can see where that
Nestor J. Aparicio 18:06
percentage of people have solar now, it’s less than 1% of the world, right? Like, it’s like that, right? Yeah, like so the growth. If you ever get to eight or 10%, it’s gonna take a whole whole hell of a lot of porting energies and solar people to make this transition. There aren’t enough companies like you doing the work.
Bill Cole 18:26
Yes. That there, it’s been a pretty rapid growth. I saw some posts the other day, it was like the 50th anniversary of the large industry organization, and they kind of laid out some timelines, and it really ramps up from like, 2005 to today, okay. But, you know, they paid attention to the fact that it was there in the 70s and stuff like that. I think, what we’re, what we’re trying what everyone’s trying to wrap their heads around is as we electrify the country, right, we push more things to electric away from coal away from we don’t have, you know, those are fine, they’re making electric I’m just talking about when you take your car and you’re making electric or you’re all the Wi Fi, all the database, all the
8Nestor J. Aparicio 19:14
stuff on my stove.
Bill Cole 19:19
Everything we’re electrifying everything, we’re we have to make sure and at the same time, we’re trying to take coal offline we’re you know, it’s takes a really really long time to build a nuclear power plant. So how do we compensate for the added desire need, you know, with generation and solar can do that
Nestor J. Aparicio 19:39
local power literally as local as it can get from the sun? Sure, bring it down bring it here it doesn’t go hydro it’s not wind. It’s not it’s none of that. It’s right on premise. I could I could make the electricity at my radio station from my roof in my land. To be be be neutral for
Bill Cole 19:59
8you don’t have to be Scientists to think about the idea that if we turned a 10% of all the cars electric you would need more electricity. Right?
Nestor J. Aparicio 20:12
Of course. Okay, there’s still stations they have it right
Bill Cole 20:15
so you’re gonna need more electricity. You’re just gonna say Where’s it coming from? Right you want to
Nestor J. Aparicio 20:21
want to get it from a nuclear plant you won’t get it right I got you okay, and it
8Bill Cole 20:25
takes all right it takes the blend like it takes a mixture I calmed down
Nestor J. Aparicio 20:29
I talk to you I learned things. While you’re at your role hard, no colas. Here he is coal roofing and Gordian energy. You can find him on my site at the bottom or positive or you can find them anywhere. rubes are being done for folks out there especially big rooms and and schools and big workplaces and all that stuff. And as well as pouring the royal farms coffee into my coal roofing mug every morning. You don’t want to go on Fleetway you keep looking up in the sky. Yeah,
20:54
well yeah, like I got friends down here. All right, we’re
Nestor J. Aparicio 20:57
gonna get a beer. We’re gonna break it out. I am Nestor. We are wn st big thanks to Patrick Russell to Samantha everybody down here at Cooper’s for making us comfortable Ron Furman and kale for stopping over Colin everybody here today for treating us well. The Gold Rush double seven seven doubles excuse me will be with us at cost is I got a big big week radio next week. A lot of stuff that I did this week that I couldn’t even get on the air because we’re doing so much with baseball so much with the Ravens this week, as well as with Fleet Week this week. So next week can be a bigger, better week. Very few of us can say we’re gonna be better next week and we’re this week. I think everybody should be saying I can promise that I am Nestor. We are wn st am 1570 Towson Baltimore signing off from Cooper’s in Fells Point back for more of our regularly scheduled programming right after this.
