Here’s why Ocean City doesn’t want offshore wind turbines

It’s a lot more complicated than even destroying the sunrise view of the Atlantic Ocean from the boardwalk in Ocean City, Maryland forever. As Mayor Rick Meehan points out, there’s far more at stake for the ecology and economy of our favorite lifelong resort and its future with the pending fight for the shoreline.

Mayor Rick Meehan of Ocean City, Maryland, discussed his background, including his Baltimore roots and early work experiences in Ocean City. He highlighted the city’s annual Mako conference and the success of large-scale concerts, which attract 55,000 people. Meehan expressed concerns about the proposed offshore wind energy project, citing its potential negative impact on the ecosystem and economy. He emphasized public safety as the city’s top priority and mentioned ongoing efforts to build a sports complex due to space constraints. Meehan also reminisced about Ocean City’s traditions and the importance of maintaining a positive image despite isolated incidents.

• [ ] Continue opposing the offshore wind energy project and advocate for a greater distance from the shore.
• [ ] Explore alternative renewable energy options that do not compromise the ecosystem and economy of Ocean City.
• [ ] Finalize plans and secure a location for the new sports complex to host sporting events and tournaments.

Ocean City Mayor Rick Meehan’s Background and Connection to Baltimore

• Nestor Aparicio introduces the show and mentions the Maryland lottery sponsorship.
• Nestor and Mayor Rick Meehan discuss their shared Baltimore roots, with Meehan mentioning his upbringing in Towson and education at the University of Baltimore.
• Nestor humorously compares the appeal of Ocean City to leaving Cumberland for the beach.
• Meehan shares his first visit to Ocean City in 1962 and his early work experiences there, including working at an arcade on the boardwalk.

Personal Connections and Ocean City Traditions

• Nestor recounts his son’s experiences working at Secrets on the boardwalk and the tradition of telescope pictures.
• Meehan explains the significance of the telescope pictures and their role in Ocean City traditions.
• Nestor and Meehan discuss the rebranding of Ocean City with a smiley face logo, which has become a popular symbol.
• Meehan describes the large smiley face sign on the boardwalk and its popularity among visitors.

Mako Conference and Ocean City’s Concert Series

• Nestor and Meehan discuss the Mako conference and its annual occurrence in Ocean City.
• Meehan explains the partnership with C3, a concert promoter, to bring large-scale concerts to Ocean City.
• The concerts, including Oceans Calling, Country Calling, and Boardwalk Rock, have attracted 55,000 people each year.
• Meehan mentions the challenges faced with weather-related cancellations but highlights the success of the concerts.

Public Safety and Offshore Wind Energy Concerns

• Nestor asks Meehan about the most important issues facing Ocean City as mayor.
• Meehan emphasizes public safety as the top priority, including lifeguards, police, and EMS services.
• Meehan discusses the ongoing battle against offshore wind energy projects, which he has opposed for eight years.
• He details the proposed turbine heights and distances from the coast, expressing concerns about their impact on the ecosystem and economy.

Impact of Offshore Wind Energy on Ocean City

• Meehan explains the potential negative effects of offshore wind turbines on the ecosystem, including the horseshoe crab sanctuary and commercial fishermen.
• He mentions the financial burden on Maryland ratepayers to subsidize the wind energy project.
• Nestor compares the situation to his experiences in Maui, where wind turbines are located inland.
• Meehan argues that offshore wind energy is not sustainable, reliable, or affordable and criticizes the political decision-making process.

Ocean City’s Sports Complex and Community Events

• Nestor and Meehan discuss the importance of sports and community events in Ocean City.
• Meehan highlights the success of beach soccer, beach volleyball, and pickleball tournaments.
• He describes the recent renovation of the skate park on Third Street, which is the oldest operating skate park in the country.
• Meehan mentions the need for a first-class sports complex due to the lack of space in Ocean City proper.

Historical Context and Personal Memories

• Nestor shares his memories of visiting Ocean City with his family in the 1970s and the impact of Fisher’s popcorn on his experience.
• Meehan recalls his involvement in the booze league softball games and the history of the league.
• They discuss the evolution of Ocean City’s sports and recreational activities over the years.
• Meehan emphasizes the importance of maintaining the community’s traditions and providing opportunities for children and families.

Challenges and Future Plans for Ocean City

• Meehan talks about the challenges of finding a suitable location for the sports complex outside of Ocean City.
• He mentions the ongoing efforts to secure a piece of property and the involvement of a committee in the planning process.
• Nestor reflects on the positive impact of events like Mako and the importance of showcasing Ocean City’s attractions.
• Meehan expresses pride in the community’s ability to handle incidents and maintain a safe environment for visitors.

Final Thoughts and Closing Remarks

• Nestor and Meehan discuss the importance of promoting Ocean City’s positive aspects despite isolated negative incidents.
• Meehan reiterates the town’s commitment to public safety and the efforts to keep visitors safe.
• Nestor shares his love for Ocean City and the special memories created there.
• The conversation concludes with Nestor thanking Meehan and expressing his excitement for upcoming events in Ocean City.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Ocean City, wind energy, public safety, sports complex, concerts, boardwalk, tourism, rebranding, smiley face logo, offshore turbines, ecosystem impact, community events, beach activities, public services, Maryland lottery.

SPEAKERS

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Rick Meehan, Nestor Aparicio, Speaker 1

Nestor Aparicio  00:00

Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T, am 1570 tasks in Baltimore. We are Baltimore positive. We are positive because we’re in Ocean City, Maryland. It’s all brought to you by our friends at the Maryland lottery have the lucky sevens doubler the pressure luck. I’m not going to give the Whammy to the mayor of Ocean City here, but you know, I did come by and Lauren here from the mayor’s office has a Mako cookie, so make it looks like something out of Jimmy Buffett, or like fins up, fins left. I’m not sure what it is. I’m not going to eat your delicious sugar cookie there, because I I got some cookies from the ugly pie yesterday over at Salisbury. But I’m down here in Ocean City doing Mako. And this conference comes every year. The mayor comes by, Mayor Rick manager, and you’re not just like the mayor. You like a ball. You’re a Baltimore on like us. I mean, you just a recovering Baltimore on coming down here,

Rick Meehan  00:45

right? Well, that’s, that’s correct. You know, I lived in, I grew up in Baltimore, grew up in Towson, and went to high school at Delaney High School, right in the middle of Baltimore. Academy better all the time. You know, a University of Baltimore graduate. So then I migrated here to the Eastern Shore and to the best place in the state

Nestor Aparicio  01:02

of Mary. I always say, anybody came down here? I tell perlasi that you left Cumberland. Came down. I’ve been to Cumberland. Nice. I mean, you know, it’s like, it’s okay. You got a beach here? You know, if you got a beach here, who doesn’t want to be here?

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Rick Meehan  01:12

I’ve never known anybody that came here with the intention of staying and leaving. They all stayed. I mean, it’s just, it’s a great place to it’s a great place for the millions of visitors that come every year that we entertain, but it’s a wonderful

Nestor Aparicio  01:24

place to live. What was the first time you came to Ocean City that you remember the

Rick Meehan  01:27

first time I came to Ocean City was the summer, I believe, of 62 it was after the storm of 62 came down with my parents, stayed at the commander hotel, and we stayed we came back a couple of years, stayed at the commander, and then by 1964 65 I was working down here. I worked down here all the way through high school and college, and I knew I worked at the fun K the arcade on the boardwalk at Ninth Street. Would you sell? I was a cashier. I was there, you know, turned the people were buying tickets and getting changed, play ski ball at all that stuff, win a prize. I was pretty quiet, you know, I just gave it to change. But I was right there on Ninth Street back in the 60s. That’s where all the action was, right. There was a gesture weight guy from the inlet doing it. He might have been up there. Yeah, he might have been up there. Then some of those guys major weight. It was age or wait, it was a great, it was a great spot to be. It was a great way to, you know, work, have a job, learn to live up. You know, I was living with my friends, you know, when I was, like, 16 years old, and it was, it was a great experience, and I knew this is where I wanted to be. And when I graduated from the University of Baltimore, I moved down here,

Nestor Aparicio  02:37

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my son moved here and lived above shenanigans for three summers

Rick Meehan  02:42

in the Shoreham Hotel. In the Shoreham hotel,

Nestor Aparicio  02:45

I went upstairs in his little dorm up there, up the top, at the top of the top, overlooking the the ocean, and he worked at Secrets for three summers as the scoping picture guy. Oh, okay, yeah. So he banked in, you know what I mean? And I’m thinking that’s even better to be in a scope out on a beach, because you get sunburned and all that. But scope, he’s man. That was the thing here, getting all telescope

Rick Meehan  03:04

70s. It is, and it’s still, it’s still going strong, you know, telescope pictures. You know, everybody has some of those telescopes somewhere in a drawer, and you pull them out and you look at them, and it gets you, you know, generations purchase those, and they do it every year to keep up their little key chains of the telescope pictures. It’s one of the Ocean City traditions, and it’s something that we think is very important for

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Nestor Aparicio  03:26

ocean so I went through this with Tom that smiley face. When I see the logo, I think it’s maybe the best logo I’ve ever seen. I mean, I’m trying to think of any other logo that I look at and I see a son a smiley face, and no one to see, and I’m thinking what I think was built for you. How do we wait 100 years to figure out that

Rick Meehan  03:42

logo, you know, somebody was probably in our advertising agency, was sketching something out, and all of a sudden, wait, what is this simple? Oh, we knew right away that that was what we were in the process of rebranding with Tom it was doing rebranding for Ocean City. And, you know, the smiley face was the perfect logo. And then it led to, you know, our tagline, Ocean City somewhere to smile about. And it truly is. So it all just fell into place, and we’ve used that now, and we’ve rebranded the entire convention center with it and everything else. And people love it. People love it. There’s a big smiley face, and on the boardwalk at Fourth Street, right in front of shenanigans, right in front of the Shoreham hotel, and it’s right on the end of the boardwalk as these big letters that say smile with the smiley face. You can’t even imagine how many people. It’s huge, and it’s about as big as the backdrop this booth stop there and have their picture taken with that right there on the boardwalk. So it’s, it’s catching on. Everybody loves,

Nestor Aparicio  04:43

well, you’re pride for Ocean City beams through Mayor Rick man is here. We’re the the Mako convention, talking about Mako and events like this. This happens every year. I was coming down before Mako. I sat with you at the Harrison before the plague, probably seven, eight years ago, all of the cuts. Concerts that have come every time I brought you here. It’s been a couple years since I’ve had you on the concert. Thing has become and Tom and I talked about it, I am blown away that it never happened here before. I told him I went up to Dewey Beach in late 91 to see a concert. I went down to Virginia Beach in the late 90s, and they were doing festival weekends. That was something that I don’t know. There was a reluctance here, or could you pull it off, or couldn’t you? But clearly that has become, these are super bowl weekends for this town, right? There’s no doubt

Rick Meehan  05:26

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about it, absolutely. And we were lucky enough to partner with c3 which is a huge concert promoter, and they came to town. I met with them. They just happened to come in my office one day with a couple of the guys from O, A, R, Mark Robert was in there. Yep, Mark came in and Marylander, exactly. And they came in to tell me that they were looking to do a concert in Ocean City. They were Marylanders. They wanted to do something here. And we started to talk, and I turned them over to Palazzo, who had just started working come back and just come back to work for the Town of Ocean City. And the next thing you know, we’ve got oceans calling. We’ve got country calling. We got boardwalk rock. And these concerts, I mean, I’m sure Tom was talking about it, they bring 55,000 people to town, and it’s who stay, who stay, and it’s the south end of the boardwalk. We actually close everything off. We’ve included the boardwalk in the concert venue. Nobody else does that, so that’s part of the concert venue. So everything South and North Division Street is the concert venue for 55,000 people. They’ve been terrific. They’ve been sold out every one of them. We’re going to continue on, no rain, no rain, no rain. We had rain. We had to cancel the first year because we had a

Nestor Aparicio  06:34

hurricane. I mean, you guys were ashen face too, because I had to talk to you about it the next year. And you’re like, we put all this into it. It didn’t happen, it didn’t happen, it’s gonna happen. We’re, I remember you guys over around the corner, you guys, like, we’re seeing this through. We’re gonna do, yeah, even though we disappointed people in the weather, you know, this is gonna be a thing. And here we are three, four years later, and nobody remembers the rain for a couple years online. Is everybody in my life’s like, trying to, like, I said to Tom, like, get a room, you know. Can you help me out with that? You know, give me a ticket, you know. Well, take it. I’ll figure out. But the room, you know, room is hard to Can I sleep on a beach? You’ll throw me off for that,

Rick Meehan  07:07

right? We’ll throw you off, yeah, so you go to acid. He could do that. Then come on over for the concert. So there’s a way to do no mosquitoes over there or anything. Oh, no, not at all.

Nestor Aparicio  07:17

I’ll get a room. I’ll figure it out.

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Rick Meehan  07:19

But you know, everything we do is weather dependent, and you know, we’re going to have those things or something’s going to get weathered out, whether it’s rain, whether it’s a storm. I mean, it’s the exception to the rule, but it’s something we’ve learned to make adjustments with, and you just have to do that when you’re right on the coast.

Nestor Aparicio  07:33

All right, so I’m going to ask you the political question, sure, what’s important in Ocean City as the mayor? What do you what keeps you up at night? What’s first thing? Get you going in the morning, what are big projects? And then, obviously, when you get in the middle of summer, you’re just, you know, you’re flying with it, right? I mean, the winter is more for planning, the summer is more for hold on to the rails and, you know, let’s get through the summer, make things happen. But what’s important here long term, I hear so much about the wind and the towers. I hear a lot about the sports complex. Obviously what happened here in the middle of the night shows up on my timeline within 30 seconds, all I know is, when I come down here, I have great experiences always when I’m here and one crazy incident starts to define any place, not just Ocean City, but that’s not the biggest problem here. Isn’t crime at all,

Rick Meehan  08:18

not at all. You know, public safety is our number one priority. That’s it. Number one priority. People want to come somewhere where it’s clean and it’s safe, and we have the reputation for being both, and that’s lifeguards, but that’s our number and the lifeguards, one thing down here is be careful, to water, beach patrol, our police officers, our public safety officers, you know, our EMS, all of our public safety divisions, I mean, they’re the most important thing for us is to make sure that we keep our community safe and we have the services available and necessary as somebody has something, you know, a medical issue or whatever, and you can come to Ocean City and, you know, those things will be in place, and that’s, that’s our number one priority, sure we have other issues, the offshore wind. You mentioned that I’ve been battling that for eight years. It’s hard to believe it was eight years ago that I first saw the renderings of what they were proposing to build off our coast, and I raised an objection to it, and wanted to have a discussion about it. And nobody listened. Nobody has listened to us for eight years. And eight years ago, these these proposed turbines, were six megawatts, and they were about 350 400 feet tall. Today they’re 18 megawatts. They’re 938 feet tall. They’re two times the height of the tallest building in Ocean City. If they were built on land, they would be the tallest structures in the state of Maryland, and now they told everybody they’d be 17 to 20 miles offshore. I told everybody from the beginning, that’s not right. Their lease area starts at 10 miles off our coast, and they’re proposed now to be 10.9 miles off our coast.

Nestor Aparicio  09:54

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How far would it have to be out to be acceptable?

Rick Meehan  09:58

Well, in the. Beginning, that was our big concern. They would have to be 26 nautical miles. And that was our concern, was the distance

Nestor Aparicio  10:06

that’s not far. Because, from what I understand, when these boats go out to catch Marlin, they’re going way

Rick Meehan  10:13

further. They’re going way further, yeah, and in other areas of virginia beach that 26 miles offshore, we that was our original concern was that was what it would do, how it would industrialize the sunrise, industrialize the coast of ocean off Ocean City, but look like a backdrop from Star Wars, but nobody would listen. And then over the course of the couple years after that, we started to learn and figure out how it was going to affect our ecosystem, the horseshoe crab sanctuary, our commercial fishermen, our recreational fishermen. Mean all of these things and all these organizations got together with us, and it was going to be devastating to basically, we do, how many of them would there be in the first stage? Would be 114 of them? That’s what’s planned.

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Nestor Aparicio  10:58

I didn’t know that and when I thought there before or five little things,

Rick Meehan  11:02

114, and what I can tell you is, you know, the rate payers of oceans, excuse me, of the state of Maryland will pay for this. There will be a charge. There will be a wind tax. There will be a charge on every rate payers bill to subsidize us wind, which is an Italian company for building these turbines so they can be profitable for them. That’s exactly what’s going to happen. The turbine, this

Nestor Aparicio  11:25

isn’t saving ocean everybody in ocean cities like at half price electricity. No, no. That’s the part that I’ve been to Maui, right? And you go to Maui now, they built them on the hills there. So I’m in Maui now, it’s a little bit of a weird it’s not like on the beach or whatever. But they, when you’re in Maui, you just they’re not like radio, I own a radio tower, right? I mean, which isn’t all that. It’s not that ugly. My tower is kind of pretty, you know, it’s kind of small, but, but in, in all honesty, I’m there and I looked at it, I’m like, well, that’s a little weird. It doesn’t feel like Hawaii, you know what I mean. But I’m thinking, well, they’re out in the middle of the friggin ocean, and they got to figure out how to get everything out here, groceries, just everything has to get to why? And I’m thinking, well, maybe this is what they had to do out here in the middle of the ocean. I don’t know that this is what we have to do. It

Rick Meehan  12:10

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isn’t because they’re not affordable, they’re not sustainable and they’re not reliable. I’m going to tell you, you know, God forbid if they’re ever built out there. 10 years from now, people are going to look back when we have a wind turbine graveyard out there and say, What the heck were people thinking? You know, there are other forms of renewable energy. There’s other forms of energy that we ought to be investing. Why would we destroy the whole ecosystem and the whole economy of Ocean City, Maryland, for a project that’s going to fail? It doesn’t make any sense, it’s the check off a box. Politically, it’s the wrong box. Rick

Nestor Aparicio  12:44

Meehan is here. He is the mayor of Ocean City, Mayor like, Can I sing the old song? Sure, it’s the old song for me. So I’m doing my 27th anniversary this week, or this month. I’m doing my 27 favorite things to eat. So every day I’m promoting a local business. On the way down, I stopped at Hooper’s Island stop Salisbury. I’m in Ocean City today. I’m picking my place tonight, and I don’t want to disappoint less down at Thrashers. I mean, I’m Nestor, he’s less. He’s one of my blood brothers. But I’m going to feature Fisher’s popcorn. Oh, there you go. I’m going to go up to the boardwalk. And because I was just thinking like through the course of my life, my mother brought me down here probably 1974 75 we stayed at the plen Plaza. I was a little boy, and I, you know, we walked down to boardwalk, and I had never had anything like caramel popcorn, you know, at that point in my life. And I don’t know of anywhere else in the world I’ve ever had it where it’s warm, like that, like words. I mean, go to Pennsylvania Dutch market. They got some nuts or whatever. But Fisher’s popcorn, when they put that thing together into caramel. I mean that to me. That’s Ocean City. That’s my that’s my go to when I’m at Ocean City.

Rick Meehan  13:48

Well, we got to get Lauren on here. Didn’t you work at fishers that was Lauren’s first job in Ocean City. She worked, she worked at fishers popcorn. And you know, that’s one of the traditions, that’s one of the staples of Ocean City, the Thrashers, the fishers, popcorn, some of those things. They’re synonymous with Ocean City. They’re, they’re things that that everybody goes to when they come down here at least once the 50th anniversary. Me getting fishers. You know, they mail it all over. I buy it for people for Christmas. I go and have those things. They ship them everywhere. I mean, you go to Dolly’s candy, all those places that’s that’s what people think about. You know, it’s the sights and the sounds and the smells of the boardwalk that people remember. They remember when they walk up on that boardwalk every year. They remember the sights, the sounds, the smell, all of that. It just kind of tickles something in your brain and let you to give breathe a sigh of relief. I’m finally here. I’m back at the beach

Nestor Aparicio  14:41

sports and the sports complex, and talk about things that every time I get together with you guys, I’m thinking, what are the best ideas to bring people to the beach? Well, sunshine, global warming’s helped out September and May, I guess, maybe even in April at this point. But you filled this thing up. The sports piece of this seems to be every time i. Together with, obviously, Tom’s a sports guy, no golf, and his brother baseball and all that. But I lived in downtown Baltimore, and I saw what a volleyball convention could look like for a convention center. And obviously I’ve been down to Disney World and and I don’t have grandkids. My son’s grown up, and I don’t have a little league or lacrosse or but everybody, I’m a sports guy, you know, everybody, all the league, soccer, travel that feels to be something that, like a Disney World would have, that like you’re trying to step up that game. And I know it’s important.

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Rick Meehan  15:29

It is, you know, we’ve seen what sporting events can bring to Ocean City, and I think we were one of the first to have beach soccer. We have beach volleyball, beach tennis. Now beach soccer is huge. We’ll have 400 plus teams pickleball downtown. We’ve got some pickleball Well, we’ve got that generation wants to play pickleball. We just built some new pickleball courts. If you really want to see something that’s magnificent. We just repurpose, rebuilt our entire park area down on Third Street, both for two blocks, and we have the water tower. You by the well. It’s a little north of that we have the oldest continuing, continuing, operating skate park in the country, skateboards for skateboarders. And that was originally built in 1976 it was remodeled in 1984 85 again, in 96 we just remodeled and rebuilt that entire block. If you go down there, it’s a whole half a block of skate courses down there. It’s, I was, we were there for ribbon cutting just earlier this week. All the kids are out there. Was for skateboard camp. I mean, it’s fantastic. And it’s the oldest operating one continually, continuously operating one in the state. Hey, you kid on a skateboard. Get off the boardwalk. Well, remember that. That is exactly why it was start. It was originally built with donations back in 1976 because then Mayor Harry Kelly Pat got the Council to pass a law prohibiting skateboards on the boardwalk or on city streets and a contingency of Ocean City residents, led by a lady by the name of haystacks Marlow. Her sons were skateboarders, and she said, You’ve outlawed skateboarding on public areas. We need a place to skate. And she fought for it, and that’s how the skate park began, and now it is absolutely beautiful, and it’s so well used our basketball courts that whole area. But sports are a big part of Ocean City. We have huge wrestling tournaments and volleyball tournaments right here in convention center, but we need more room. And I know you talked to Tom Palazzo, our goal is to build a first class sports complex. Our challenge is we don’t have the room on the island. We don’t have room in Ocean City proper, so we have to go outside of ocean city somewhere in close proximity,

Speaker 1  17:42

on a footpath of this size, right? Oh, yeah, actually

Rick Meehan  17:46

bigger, almost. I mean, we’re looking at fields too. We’re looking at 10 to 12 Multi Purpose fields, plus a building of about 150,000 square feet, and it would host all types of tournaments and sporting events on a year round basis. The challenge has been to find a piece of property, because it’s outside the city limits, and deal with, you know, another agency and another government in order to find a spot to do it. But we’ve been working on it. We have a committee that’s working on it. It will become a reality. You know, I often say good things take time. Well, this is one of those good things. It’s going to take us a little time, but it’s going to happen.

Nestor Aparicio  18:22

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I think was 50 years ago this summer that my uncle ran the bonfire. My uncle Omar Aparicio, we lived in the summer. He had a place on 2829 street out, you know, a little apartment. You know, I watched Charlie’s Angels out there when I was a kid in the 70s. In the summer, we came down here, but they it was a very competitive softball league that Phillips the bonfire, all the bread, you know, embers, you know, back in 7576 and they would all get together, usually, like on a Sunday or Monday, when business was down as morning. And I remember being a little boy at the at the softball fields next to the water tower.

Rick Meehan  18:58

This, no, it was on Third Street. It was on Third Street. What I can tell you, I played, I played in that league, believe it or not, had a team in that league, and played all those guys, and there were only eight teams in the league, and everybody knew each other. So it was really fun. But we played Sunday mornings. Sunday morning. The reason we played Sunday mornings is there were blue laws in the state of Maryland, and you couldn’t buy alcohol on Sundays. So they were closed, so all the bartenders and all the restaurant tours and all that, a lot of the kids that you know the restaurants, some were closed, most were open. But in the restaurants, you still could sell with dinner, but that’s how, and it was called the booze League, that’s what it was originally called. And we’d be out there on Sunday mornings, after long nights on Saturday night. So we were, it was a little rough, but we were out there playing softball. I remember as a kid

Nestor Aparicio  19:45

down there, my dad got me up Ocean City. I’m like, What the heck am I doing down here? At eight o’clock in the morning, that’s it. Guys run around with bonfire logos

Rick Meehan  19:54

on your softball. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. And you know, that’s evolved. That’s part of the history of Ocean City. And. And it was a lot of it was a good time. Look, working down here, growing up here, it’s just a great place. There’s so many things to do, so many opportunities for kids. It’s a great place to raise your kids. Will

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Nestor Aparicio  20:11

you tell everybody with Mako that I love where they put me here because I’m in front of the garage doors. They just Shut the garage door. So it’s going to be 12 degrees in here soon. All the sunlight went away, but I told Tom was here. Almost always call him Sam, because he looks like saying, and I’ve known Sam longer and better, but the place I stayed, I was looking at it my senior week, five senior weeks, I’m not, you know, you don’t come to just one senior week in the 80s, was right here at convention center, like I could see my condo Island, like, literally right here, 38th Street. It was where my condo was. And I think I’m sitting here broadcasting when I began the day. And I’m like, looking at every memory I had started that flashback sign, every girl, the buddies I was with, the beer we drank, the neighbors we had senior week, every memory, whether it’s 1975 as a little boy being here, whether it was Fisher’s popcorn, you it’s, it’s, it’s a heightened sensibility when you cross the bridge. It is because everything that happens here, you sort of

Rick Meehan  21:09

remember it. You do remember it’s somehow, it’s etched in your mind forever. And like we talked about, the sights and the smells of the boardwalk, soon as you get back into Ocean City, all those things come back, they’re pushed to the front somehow. And you remember all those good times, and it’s a wonderful place. And you know, we’re very proud of the fact that we can entertain 8 million plus visitors a year, and so many of those visitors are returned visitors, generational visitors that have been here with families through generations. And you know, that’s, that’s what I see, and those are the people I get to talk to. And I’ll tell you what it it really makes me proud of our community.

Nestor Aparicio  21:43

Well, it’s, you know, the worst thing is when you have an incident down here three in the morning, and it shows up at five in the morning, and the whole world’s talking about it, and I’m thinking, one bad thing happens down here, 10 million good things happen down here. And that’s always I proprietary about. That. It makes me angry when people come down here try to wreck somebody’s experience, you know? And then I hear about, where can you go to Ocean City anymore? I’m like, it’s wrong with you people. Exactly right. Millions of people come down here. There’s going to be incidents. We get through those incidents, and I know you’re proud of how you handle that stuff. We

Rick Meehan  22:13

8

are. And they’re isolated, unfortunately, in this day and age, in the world we live in, you know, we’re not immune to everything that’s happening around us, but it’s an exception if something like that happens here, but especially during the summertime. Look, we’re times square square. As far as the state of Maryland is concerned. We’re high profile during the summer. So if you’re trying to draw attention to yourself, unfortunately, people choose Ocean City. But what we do is try to discourage that, because we do have a tremendous police force, we do have a great Intel you know, on what’s going to happen when it’s going to happen, and we’re always prepared, and our goal is to keep those things from happening, but like just you just said, every once in a while, if it happens, we’re going to contain it, and we’re going to move on,

Nestor Aparicio  22:54

and we moved on, and I’m going to be out on the beach. There’s nothing better than waking up here at 630 in the morning like I did today, and just seeing the town as the sun’s coming up and it’s quiet, you get up down the coastal easy. Get in and get a coffee. But I love Ocean City. I love being good. Yeah, appreciate you, Rick. Thank goodness. Thank you. So Mr. Mayor Rick, me and me here, joining us here. We’re notion City, Maryland. It’s a Mako. I don’t I got my little cookie. I’m not gonna eat your cookie, Laura. I’m gonna make sure you eat I had enough cookies. Man. I’m a cookie monster here at this point, Mako is is a great event for Maryland. Everybody comes down here. It’s great to have the mayor stop by. We have a lot of guests. Senator Chris Van Hollen is gonna be stopping by. We have three different county executives stopping by, talking about local government, talking about Ocean City. And I’ll see you in a couple weeks. Okay? When the black Croat, when Lenny Kravitz shows up, my wife and I are gonna be here. Good. Gonna be great here and shake it. You’re gonna order good weather for me, right?

Rick Meehan  23:43

We got it. You got it. You put your order in early. I’m coming

Nestor Aparicio  23:47

back down Ocean City Football season ahead. I am Nestor. We’re stepping up and taking a break. All of it’s brought to you by the Maryland pressure. Luck right there. I’m not gonna give you the Whammy. All brought to you by the Maryland lottery. Your friends, a curio wellness and our newest sponsor at GBMC. Back for more in Ocean City, Maryland, we’re at Mako. Stay with us. You.