Making time for the Orioles again…

Bill Cole and Nestor discuss the reemergence of Orioles baseball in lives of many Baltimore folks and how going to Camden Yards has suddenly become cool again with new ownership and a great, young team on the field.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

bridge, talk, driving, city, years, point, prince edward island, week, baseball, baltimore, game, sheila dixon, downtown, pei, lacrosse, people, sports, winning, person, roof

SPEAKERS

Nestor J. Aparicio, Bill Cole

Nestor J. Aparicio  00:01

Welcome home we are wn S T am 15, seven, eight, Towson, Baltimore and Baltimore positive we are taking the Marilyn crabcake tour on the road. I have these awesome PacMan scratch offs, they look cool. They allow me to do funny things on my screen when I’m doing my YouTube introductions, we’re going to be up at Green mount bowl next to green mount station next to the casino and the horse ballasts and all that stuff. They got me when they put the Baltimore positive logo up on the backdrop of the bowling alley. So we’re going to be we’re not going to have a bowling alley pizza, we’re going to be having Greenmount station crabcakes and we’re gonna talk about the horse racing industry that’s on Wednesday. Today, before we get together for the oral game, I’m gonna probably move over watch the oral game next door and have a beverage up in Carroll County. When we get to Hampstead. It’s all brought to you by the Maryland lottery conjunction with our friends at we have we have a new sponsor Liberty pure solutions. So there are new old sponsor, they’ve been with us many times, a big shout out to Doug and everybody over there, keep in my water clean, making sure that my coffee is fresh in my coal roofing mug and my ROFO and we’re bringing it all together. And then next Friday, we’re going to be down to fade Lee’s Luke and I will be wrapping up the draft in the middle of the draft. And then he’s added to the draft and we’ll see if I can get into the Orioles game because the Oakland Athletics will be in town that’s 26 will be at faily seafood at the new Lexington market. You gotta get down a bell we always say on the show. Nothing good happens in Baltimore. Right madness progress everywhere. Have you been to the new fatally shed? Dude, you picked it a new St. Louis. You know, there’s progress happening right downtown Baltimore, I promise you.

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Bill Cole  01:35

Yeah, no, haven’t made it there yet. I do. I do have a piece of like horse racing trivia, if you if you want to give it a shot. So Okay. In a meeting yesterday, I made the comment that I just was making it up. I wasn’t really sure whether it was true or not. But it was driving him a point it was that no Triple Crown winning horse. LED every race at the quarter pole. So the

Nestor J. Aparicio  02:11

complexity of the question is even Secretariat wasn’t winning at the quarter pole.

Bill Cole  02:15

Yeah, my my point to the crew was like our first quarter with all the weather we’ve had wasn’t like the most wonderful quarter. And I was like, but we got to still run the race, you know, we can still win the race, guys, we still have three more quarters. And it’s like all the Triple Crown winners, none of them. Were winning in all three races at the quarter pole of every race. See, I

Nestor J. Aparicio  02:36

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love that, you know, whenever we get together whenever I’m doing something accelerant with you, or I’m added any of these things. There’s always a sports component, that certainly white men in our culture used to measure themselves for their management for their basketball team for their golf game, we just got off a masters for their pickleball game, you know, we’re all measuring and measuring. It is interesting. I bring Bill Cole for COVID, who’s gonna who is like a legitimate CEO. He’s one of those guys like me with the Baltimore accent that actually has run things for 30 or 40 years. His company, of course, been 100 years. But like, it’s interesting that taxes this week, right? And I wound up you know, like, getting in under the quarter pole into trying to get that done with Linda Raskin as well. In measuring things, we’re measuring things all the time in our lives and business. And I guess this brings us to the baseball conversation around yours. And even football because the football team can’t measure itself until September they can’t play. That’s the only measurement they really have other than money, which we don’t know about. But the baseball thing. We’re all like sort of measuring this every day right and getting back into the flow of Tyler wells being injured and what are they home next time and dad take me to the game. I have to like a turkey dinner, stick my thermometer into you and find out where you are. Because before we begin to segment before I started having coffee in the coal roofing mug, you started talking to me about Oriole baseball. Dude, I’ve known you a long, long time. You don’t ever begin conversations with me that begin with Hey, my kid went to the ballgame last week. So please do tell I was wearing baseball. It

Bill Cole  04:14

is very true. No, I think my question for you because you’re always closer to the polls of it is in my universe. There is a heightened fever and interest and willingness to participate. So people that I know that have previously not even going to the game didn’t even really hit their radar

Nestor J. Aparicio  04:39

or the some of the people who voted for the orange guy who said I never go downtown because that group is a hole. They go downtown with Garth Brooks comps or when there’s the right concert or the right thing. If the Orioles become that right thing, then oh, we have a Baltimore positive moment now don’t we?

Bill Cole  04:59

Well, yeah, and I guess I would move I would put my awareness in a couple different buckets. So like, from my young daughter’s perspective, right, the kids

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Nestor J. Aparicio  05:14

barely knows the rules of baseball. You’ve said many, many times to me. And

Bill Cole  05:18

it is on their radar. Right like it’s on because

Nestor J. Aparicio  05:22

their girlfriends and boyfriends and friend friends and neighborhood friends are going or their parents like the nerve centers what you’re saying

Bill Cole  05:30

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people are going teachers are talking about it schools making note of it. Like it’s hitting there

Nestor J. Aparicio  05:36

is a Don molar in every school that has an Oriole jersey on on Fridays at the school. Right, right.

Bill Cole  05:41

Yep. And then, you know, so and so’s Instagram or snap shows on that the game. Oh, they went to the game. You know, they

Nestor J. Aparicio  05:49

have fun that they have fun. Yeah. Did your son Africa time?

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Bill Cole  05:54

Yeah, yeah.

Nestor J. Aparicio  05:55

But give me the shortcut that Ned did you go to a different?

Bill Cole  05:58

It’s a different category.

Nestor J. Aparicio  06:00

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But that’s fine. But is he a soccer, lacrosse? Is he a sports guy is your Raven? Like, give me the profile? Because we know about this.

Bill Cole  06:08

He’s a play not watch sports person, right? Like, and he’ll play anything, right? But he likes to play Overwatch. But he’s also, you know, 21 getting ready to graduate college living his best life. So pickles is interesting. And you know, his friends are interesting. And so that was like I said Loyola bought the tickets for the seniors graduating seniors. I don’t know if that’s something they do.

Nestor J. Aparicio  06:34

His gateway is not even Manny Machado or Buck show alter. His gateway isn’t even. I love Adley rutschman. His gateway is social. Completely social. Correct. We’re not talking about Tyler wells being hurt, or who’s pitching denied or we love Jackson Holliday but doesn’t really know if he’s left handed or right hander care much. You’re

Bill Cole  06:58

correct. And if if school hadn’t bought the tickets and all the you know, all his people were going

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Nestor J. Aparicio  07:05

school gave him an entree to go. And now if dad says do you want to go? Maybe you’ll go back as long as he can go to pickles.

Bill Cole  07:11

Right? Well, yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know that that part has yet to be unpacked. I think like, Would you do that? Again? Not in a school related environment. Sure. With his buddies, yeah, probably. You know what I mean? Like, but he went on Friday night. And it was bananas. Like I had picked him up. We took care of something. And

Nestor J. Aparicio  07:35

that was the Jackson holiday. No, no, I

Bill Cole  07:36

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was a fadeless. I know how crazy. It was bananas down there. Like it was it felt really, really good. And, um, you know, whatever, old curmudgeon Dad, I’m just driving through the city getting ready to drop him off trying to figure out which

Nestor J. Aparicio  07:51

which red light was so fair, cold, and he’s gonna jump out the car and call car services. Yeah, I mean, it

Bill Cole  07:57

was it was it felt really good. It looked really good people walking. You know what I mean? Like the old days when there was just, you know, 40,000 people walk into the stadium. It was

Nestor J. Aparicio  08:09

really good. So yeah, they’ll call Gordon. My

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Bill Cole  08:13

curiosity goes to this. You know, is that something that is being experienced by lots of people? Right? Well, clearly

Nestor J. Aparicio  08:22

it is when they have 35,000 people there on a Sunday afternoon, the first kick off the season. Like if that’s the starting point, first couple of nights were slow the weather. It’s the weather, the weather, the weather. I mean, do the weather was so beautiful on Monday and Tuesday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday this week. If you had any Jones at all that you want to go see Jackson holiday Adley rutschman, go to a game, get outside, walk around, support David Rubenstein support what you know, just whatever. Like, it was a really good excuse to go to the ballpark. And they had decent crowds Monday and Tuesday. But kids are still in school. They’re playing the games earlier, the 630 thing. I mean, as I get to be older, I’m like, I don’t know if I’d like it if I lived in rising sun or if I lived in Forest Hill, or if I lived in even Hereford or Shrewsbury. But like it’s also over at 915 which is also cool. I don’t know what that means for like the Baja beach club in me, and then your boy to say, Okay, there’s an opportunity like the game’s over and we can use the night and go to to Pepys after the game or get dinner like I don’t know when it becomes a later earlier thing or really invigorates the city. And this is the thing where if I’m sitting with David Rubenstein and look one way or another, they’re gonna let me in to have a press pass or they’re not either way I’m gonna be heard from I mean, like, and I hope they let me in and I hope that we’re all cool, and I’m a part of it. I don’t feel a part of it when I’m watching it on TV and Brad Hollander saying his dog has a press pass. Truly, He said that on the radios dog as a prospect. But that being said, watching it from the outside and trying to evaluate it to the top line is To this, they’re gonna be really good baseball team for a couple of years. Like they have a real chance to like they have a chance to win your son, your daughter, your dog. My cat, everybody’s in. What am I wearing? Right now? I’m wearing a curio wellness. Orange, Baltimore bird shirt by the way, it’s for 20 weekend get over there take advantage. By the way, Bill if you if you have aches and pains, this move product over a foreign daughter very, very, very effective. Especially on my L three and l four. I got things going on back there, but they’re gonna win. What’s that gonna mean?

Bill Cole  10:35

Well, my question is, is the the improved interest and vigor from the fans? Is that just pent up demand? And oh, yeah, it’s okay. Now let’s go. Let’s get down there. Or are the Orioles actually doing something from a marketing standpoint? Yeah, they’re winning to move the needle. Well, winning.

Nestor J. Aparicio  11:04

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Writing in Tampa didn’t mean the same thing to your point. teachers in school were and stuff neighborhood. But they also didn’t have booth PAL and Brooks Robinson. And this. My last name is Aparicio The reason I’m on the plane. And the reason I’m here is because of the baseball team, then because they did special things in 1966. Right, like so. They lost the Dodgers in fourth grade. Who knows, right? Who knows where I’d be. But I would just say there’s a community here. And I always speak to lacrosse, and I speak some degree to soccer. But you can do both lacrosse and baseball really intersect in a sort of a weird way. If you’re a kid, boy or girl, and you’re in the you know, outside of the butterfly, and you’re a lacrosse person, that there’s a lot of lacrosse time spent, especially when the games are 630. Right? You move the games back now all of a sudden, you can’t see the games. That I would just say what this means for the city is my big question to your point, people coming back? Are they just parking going in and leaving? are they sticking around? Are they thinking I’d like to live here or like the movie or I’d like to come back on Friday when the team’s not here and go to the aquarium. Right. I’m making that part of it up. But all of that’s important. And then to to my original point politically, sociologically, Fox 45 V. Now the Baltimore Sun is owned by the by the gypsies, there’s this muscle memory of I mean, you’re you’re 15 minutes late on this call, because you can’t get off the highway because of the bridge. Right? You’ve already had a bad morning. And it’s 8am. Because like, everybody’s got 20 more minutes and other directions. If you use anything that looks like the tunnels or the bridges, because of the tragedy that happened here three weeks ago, we’re all trying to figure that out to this muscle memory of I’m going to go downtown again. It’s it’s the basis of everything we’re doing, like 25th anniversary documentaries coming out next week. We turned Baltimore positive seven, eight years ago, about turning the city around. I did three the birds not in any I mean, you go back and look it up, I wrote a book. I didn’t do any of it to be a dick. I did it because I saw the city deteriorating, I looked out my window on this view and saw no one going the ballgames again, and I bought property downtown and live there for another 17 years. So all of this was about Baltimore, making Baltimore better to your point, used to be 13,000 people coming down on a Sunday in April. Now there’s 35,000. What did that mean for me cheese? What did that mean for all the businesses, how many people stuck around once they fixed the harbor, because there’s nothing there to like, really grab you at this point Cheesecake Factory to come through and grab a meal or are gathered there in that area. That’s what all of that was set up for 30 years ago, which Anna Marie designed all this and all of that. But what does this mean? What that muscle memory of people coming back down? If you’re, your boy went down and had a good time, he might go back when there’s not a ball game. And that’s an exposure that we’ve been trying to reach for years. Bill, you and I how do we get people back downtown? And how do we get them to come back again?

Bill Cole  14:09

Yeah, I would also as just as a nice quick public service announcement, somebody really needs to run a campaign or 95 of like, buying your kindness your your inner nice person and just recognize that the traffic sucks for everyone. Because man is just really angry out there. Like people

Nestor J. Aparicio  14:36

haven’t experienced traffic and we experienced for years locked in a closet, right? Nobody went anywhere and people were driving like, like, like maniacs. I mean, I if there’s anything if I ran on a policy and as I talk to policy makers, if there’s anything Johnny do anything we that I would want to change as God it would be we need to hire more police, to police highways and start really, really getting the people who are doing 90 miles an hour drag racing off the highways. And you know, I talked to Sheila Dixon, I said, What are we doing about the motorcycles in the city. So drag racing every Sunday, like, these are quality of life issues when we lost life, six months ago over on the west side of the beltway in a tragedy, that you would think that at some point, we need a TSA for the hunt, we need, we need cops that just do nothing. But drive the highways and make sure that we’re not having that anymore, because it’s really, it. Everyone notices it, there’s no one who drives anywhere that doesn’t notice how lawless the driving has become.

Bill Cole  15:49

Right, I would just go a different route and deeply invest in the autonomous vehicles like like, we really don’t need to be driving. And it would all work better if we weren’t driving. And we can have special human driving areas. And then you can still for those that actually enjoy, you know, the sport of driving, they can go there. But getting up at 95, the computer ought to be able to do that. And I should be able to do something else. We really need to get there. Because it will save so many lives, that it needs to be a priority. Right? Can

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Nestor J. Aparicio  16:25

you imagine that? You and I as kids would talk about talking to each other on a television screen on Zoom? And you would say something like that out loud? You know what I mean? Like if you would have called my radio show back when you were an intern here 25 years ago for the Bob ad show on Sunday mornings. And you and Bob Haney on a Sunday morning and I would have been awakened out in Las Vegas on a date at three in the morning and they would have said, Dude, you gotta get Haney and Cole off the air man. They’re talking about cars driving themselves stop this madness, right. That’s how far we’ve gone. I just had to pinch myself. I had to pinch myself every time I think there’s new Oriole ownership. But when you start talking about Look, dude, the problem isn’t the cars or ticketing. The problem is we’re not using the computers to drive the cars right?

Bill Cole  17:11

Because all all the police officers are is putting another human in risk at risk. Right? Like,

Nestor J. Aparicio  17:18

oh, I don’t disagree with you. I mean, I wouldn’t have no problem if they had speeding cameras every mile on every road. I wouldn’t mind that kind of surveillance society to say now what you don’t want when you’re on the road, we are going to monitor you we’re going to monitor every one of you MF errs because you are more lives are lost cancer this that whatever terrorism we go more lives are lost by distracted texting, drunk driving, we driving stupid driving, drag racing. I I like I would be very clean water forever. You know, I mean, I’m always on like, we have to have clean water. That’s all like Don Mohler would tell you my liberty pure sponsorship that I love clean water. I think that’s the way that you come after us that in the grid, right. But I think we’re killing ourselves driving. And yeah, I mean, I worry about my wife every time she goes down the street.

Bill Cole  18:12

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I just think it’s needless risk. There’s enough risk in the world. To your point. Like I think it’s needless, I’m not interested in a surveillance state. I’m not interested in I know you’re not my my elected officials having access to cameras capturing all of that, like, how do

Nestor J. Aparicio  18:28

you stop people from driving 90 miles an hour this Monday? Because they’re not having an automated car this week? Well, then we need kindness, billboards, I’m with that.

Bill Cole  18:37

No, no, like that. The only thing holding the only thing holding back the autonomous vehicles is regulatory environment. Like I fully believe that the computers are there, the systems are there. The problem is we can accelerate technology, you know, I don’t know, 1000 times faster than we can pass a bill through legislation to allow for autonomous vehicles or, I mean, we can’t that’s that’s, that’s the hardest part of it. Well, that’s the

Nestor J. Aparicio  19:08

corporate lobby for keeping clean coal. That’s the corporate lobby for it, you know, saying solar is a bad thing and, and turbines cause cancer and stupid stuff. 75 million people are gonna vote for that November. Okay,

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Bill Cole  19:22

so who’s the lobby that’s fighting against autonomous vehicles? I don’t I mean, right. I don’t either like that’s what I mean. Uber drivers. It’s such a it’s such a needle. Yeah. Well, let

Nestor J. Aparicio  19:35

me deploy my taxi. Right. Right. The medallion login your city.

Bill Cole  19:39

The truck drivers union might be yes, sure. Anybody who anybody? I mean, I think at one point that a lot of people now you’re, you know, I was going I think, point that data point was like one in five jobs in America or transportation Orient, yeah. And drive and drive. What

Nestor J. Aparicio  19:57

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does Pete Buttigieg do if there’s no trip?

Bill Cole  19:59

So we have to figure out we have to figure out, you know, where those people work, I get it. That’s, that’s all part of the process. Like, if they’re good enough to be a professional driver, there’s a whole lot of other things they can do in our world that are productive and meaningful and give them gainful employment. But the fact that we have tools that could prevent the loss of life, you know, this week, there was a head on collision up in Harford County, a 36 year old man, 44 year old father, you know, like, hit pretty close to our people right out there and, like, it’s just needless, it’s needless, and it’s annoying. And I don’t you know, I don’t get it.

Nestor J. Aparicio  20:43

Okay. Well, I think to start with baseball and transportation and getting places and getting to the game, I guess my bigger point is getting back to downtown. Yeah, that the bigger picture of this is Yes, Mr. Rubenstein you invested 2 billion yes, you’re gonna make 3 billion yes, you’re gonna have fun yes, you get to make commercials with Cal Ripken and it’s and yes, the team’s gonna be good. And yes, they might win a World Series or five. And I’ll sit here all day and talk about whether Gunnar Henderson is getting 200 million or whether Adley rutschman is getting 150 million or whether like I love all of that I’ve done all of that. What is so what does that mean? For bringing people downtown and keeping them and making young people like your son and your daughter want to come back and do something else and be be a part of it right be a part of the city and, and and rejuvenate the city. And I’ll go back to Purple Rain one purple rain to where I’ve written at length and the basis of my my career, as you’ll see in the 25th anniversary next week, is that sports brings people together. black people, white people east, west, north, south, male, female, young, old, rich, poor, Eastern Shore, western shore, brings people together unlike anything and the baseball team. We forgot that, you know, I did free the birds. It was all about that. It wasn’t about fu to Peter Angelos. It was about please sell the team to somebody saying so we can have this experience back and we we could get 3 million people back downtown and my condo might not, you know, lose a quarter of a million dollars in value over 20 years like all of these things that happen that I was predictive Nesta Domino’s back in 2006. With free the birds. You now have blue sky. Good team. Cities. hit rock bottom. We have an election coming up. I had Sheila Dixon on last week. Brandon Scott, Ivan baked all of all of you can come on bill for I saw Bill Ferguson. I invite all these folks on I had Shannon Sneed, I had Sheila Dixon on. I’ve had Zach Blanchard. I’ll have everybody on in the next three weeks that wants on. So it was an open invitation. If anybody heard shields, why’d you ever on not endorsing Sheila at all? Had she long because I’m a I’m a community person. And I said, What’s going to lift the city? Crime, education, schooling, all these things you and I have been talking about for eight years, as you pointed out on the 25th anniversary documentary, but the baseball team being in local hands with Cal Ripken doing commercials every day with a team that’s ungodly, good, like my wife. Still as like, my wife loves baseball. But I keep saying you have no idea how good these guys are. Have like the pedigree of these players. I’ve never seen anything like it in my lifetime. Now, what’s it going to mean for the city five years now, five years from now, whether there’s a parade or not for either one of these franchises, what does this period of sports renaissance and $1.2 billion of our money invested in this and they can’t put the freakin baseball game on on Friday? Right Friday night your kids at the game? Hope you don’t want to watch the game. Unless you had Apple whatever the hell it is. So these are issues baseball to your point A month ago is baseball is going to die. Mr. Rubinstein, you better do some things to save it. Now today. You’re like, hey, Nash, you want to go to the game next week? They’ve come a long way. Now, how do they keep people there? And what does this mean for the city? I’m gonna keep asking that question.

Bill Cole  24:14

I was driving through downtown, I don’t know a day or two ago and I’m pretty sure I saw like a new sports bar that I had never seen before. Like Charles Lake Street somewhere in there. Okay. So you know, I don’t know. There’s there’s indications there’s stuff. The tech hub, right? Did we talk about tech hub. Did you talk to you know, Marc Anthony Thomas.

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Nestor J. Aparicio  24:41

He has an open invite for a year so please book him.

Bill Cole  24:45

So that’s like, decades of have Investment and Opportunity that will continue to drive. Really smart, young people. into our city. You know and that’s kind of like that that’s that Baltimore greedy little foodie cool town that young people

Nestor J. Aparicio  25:14

a destination town with a really good baseball team, but

Bill Cole  25:17

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a place they want to live like they like when you’re younger you’re adult you’re not. You’re not evaluating public safety in the same way you are when you’re raising a family or you’re older and you don’t feel like putting up with stuff anymore or whatever. So I think we have a really strong brand in 21 to 30 sector Well, I

Nestor J. Aparicio  25:41

don’t hear our town leave with murder the way it was five years ago anymore, correct?

Bill Cole  25:46

Yeah, I Yes. I think there’s good stuff being there’s good stuff being done everywhere. And quite frankly, I think we we hit on the the bridge, as the

Nestor J. Aparicio  25:56

bridge brought a huge spotlight to our city, the month Henschel

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Bill Cole  26:01

federal Pixy dust that gets sprinkled on the cities when something terrible happens. And 20 years of consequences that comes from that.

Nestor J. Aparicio  26:13

I hadn’t been to New Orleans lately. Speaking of that, right? When you say something like that, with a tragedy in my lifetime, I think about New Orleans. I was there the night of the storm, literally, I I escaped that morning when the storm came. And Katrina because the Ravens had played there that weekend. So I mean, I remember how it felt there and what was going on. And then I remember going back a year later, and seeing the lines from the floods and being like, Oh, my God, the water went, how I and the Superdome, like all of the scenes of you know, Fats Domino on his route like all of that. I haven’t been to New Orleans in, you know, a number of years. It’s I mean, it’s been been a good decade since I’ve been in New Orleans. Since, you know, we won the Super Bowl, we went back the next year. So it’s been since 14 that I’ve been to see what that pixie dust means 20 years later, right? Really?

Bill Cole  27:02

I mean, I think, you know, I’ve have not been a party to conversations with people in the know, in New Orleans, but people who I know who have been, people will readily admit and acknowledge, right, the stimulus that occurs from that. So say what you want, like, it’s going to happen in one way or another, it’s up to us to figure out how to do that in a way that is inclusive and meaningful, and, you know, is building for the future, not in today’s, you know, Bs, instant gratification way. You know, like, we have some real opportunities, you know, there’s a huge push of reshoring, all our manufacturing well, who doesn’t want to put their new manufacturing plant right on the water, so they can ship their products all over the globe? Like, I mean, there’s so much opportunity with this. And, okay, when you have a bridge, it has constraints, right? It’s it already is a certain height, and it has a certain depth, and we have an opportunity to change that we can’t change it because there’s another bridge farther down the water, right? The Bay Bridge, so you’re not going to be able to change that. Or maybe that is part of the longer 20 year plan. And maybe we’ve got to change that. And there’s always been talking about a second bridge across the bay and all that. Well,

Nestor J. Aparicio  28:27

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Larry Hogan was all about that. Yeah, I

Bill Cole  28:30

mean, there’s always been talk, he’s trying to kill the red line

Nestor J. Aparicio  28:33

all over again, as Senator so well, I’m happy to talk to him about that. I won’t be voting for that. And and by the way, if he wants to sit with me, and the first three questions are about abortion, abortion, abortion, because women listen, I if he doesn’t want to sit and talk to me, that’s Shame on him. And if people would vote for that, shame on them. So I would just say that out loud. I don’t like I don’t like sports owners or politicians who duck me or anyone who have questions when they’re taking 1,000,000,002 from the government, let’s say or trying to run for Senate. So yeah, I mean, I’m happy to talk about all that stuff. But Larry was the king of we need another bridge. I’ve always thought we needed to bridge from Aberdeen. I always felt like you really want to get rid of the congestion put something further north up. And that probably would really help things and it probably would open the Eastern Shore and the western side of Delaware to all of all of that boating country over there that we can’t get to Chestertown you know, I just

Bill Cole  29:37

want us to be able to create a viable theory like with your court like a car ferry like who doesn’t like a good car ferry ride like that? That’s fine. How did they ever tell you

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Nestor J. Aparicio  29:49

my best car ferries viable in

Bill Cole  29:51

you know, in the bag? How’s that a viable Have

Nestor J. Aparicio  29:54

I ever told you about the time I went to Nova Scotia and I went to Monckton, and I was gonna go to Prince Edward Island. Are you familiar with Prince Edward Island? It’s your oysters Come on, come from the right. Yeah, Pei, right. So, um, Prince Edward Island is an island. It’s, it’s it’s a land, you know, it’s a landmass in the middle of sort of nowhere in Canada, North of Monkton, sort of a little west of New Brunswick. And I met hockey players from there, okay, it’s a little place. But I Doug McLean is from there who was once the Skipjacks coach, a guy named Tyler Larter, a guy named Kent painter. They were skip jacks, and they were all from PEI. And they were always said, You gotta come to Pei, man, you gotta get on a boat to come. We don’t even they’re building a bridge. This is in 1980 678, you’ll learn in the documentary about my Skipjacks past, right? So all these years pass, and I’ve been friends with Doug McLean forever. Um, and he’s a hotshot Canadian television hockey expert, and the professor and all that good stuff. So they always told me to go to PEI. So my wife and I went up and this was the weekend it’s gonna die from not your mama’s. We were seeing Jason Bruce Springsteen up in mountain place called magnetic Hill wild place. You take your kids someplace there, Google magnetic Hill, Monckton wild card goes up the hill because of the magnet weird. Anyway, we were going to Prince Edward Island. And we were going to make a day of it. We were gonna go to Charlottetown and get some fish or something, right. And there’s this giant bridge giant bridge bigger. I could be wrong, but I don’t think I am. It’s bigger and longer than the Bay Bridge. But not as long as the Hampton Norfolk crazy thing that my wife thought I was making up when I told her there was a Bridge Tunnel until we did it. So but it’s really long, it was the most expensive project in the history of the Canadian government to build this bridge to unlock Prince Edward Island, from what you pointed out, the only way you could get there was on a ferry. And the three residents I knew as hockey players 40 years ago, would always tell me about it. So my wife and I pull up to the bridge. And there’s a beautiful, big, big house, you know, with with all the storytelling, and we went in park had to pee, right? Let’s pay. We go to P and they got a movie and they had a trick. They showed us how they built the bridge. People died making the bridge and we do right. And they had this beautiful film. So we’re sitting there for 20 minutes, we’re looking around, we’re looking around, and we go to leave. The bridge was like $45 to cross. So it’s gonna cost us $45 Just to go have lunch in Charlotte. We never crossed the bridge bill. So we came back. And I had Doug McLean on. I’m like, Dougie, I went up to Prince Edward Island, and I got to the bridge. It was 41 bucks, man, and I’m like, I didn’t do it. He’s like, You gotta be kidding me. He said, We We spent all of this money we did all this ingenuity. He said, can I ask you if it would have been a fairy and would have been 15 bucks? Would you have done it? And I’m like, Yeah, of course I would have done it would have been fun. It would have been a fairy.

Bill Cole  33:19

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Point. Like who doesn’t want to take a ferry? You just drive your car on a ride? Yeah, I agree. I think I’m looking at what ferry just so you know, right now. Sorry, the 2023 rates for that bridge. It is $50.25 for a car to cross that

Nestor J. Aparicio  33:42

bridge. The Prince Edward Island bridge. Yep.

Bill Cole  33:44

$50 That is insane. That’s

Nestor J. Aparicio  33:51

it Canadian money. It’s only about 38 but it’s still a lot, you know, Bill Colas used

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Bill Cole  33:59

to get a motorcycle.

Nestor J. Aparicio  34:01

I get on the back of a bit of cheaper lunch, telling me what you do. You did something. I got a press release from you. You did something like really cool. Went to church this week. Big white top. I don’t know what the heck it was that please tell me.

34:13

Yeah. Boy,

Nestor J. Aparicio  34:16

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I have to pull the press press release.

Bill Cole  34:18

That’s one way to make me look like I have no idea what’s going on? Oh,

Nestor J. Aparicio  34:21

no, no, I like literally, I got something in my email the other day that said, you guys did something at the Colonial Baptist Church. You did a roof replacement, correcting issues that caused significant damage to the church. They had a skylight. You know, I have all this verbiage here that I can read your next step Call Roofing really thrives when you work with customers who have challenging construction and usage problems. You’re delighted to have been a part of that solution completing the project on time and on budget with an emphasis on the safety of members, employees and workers. So there you go. Is that good?

Bill Cole  34:57

That’s that’s pretty much exactly what we do every single day. So yeah, that’s well done by the marketing people here.

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Nestor J. Aparicio  35:07

I read a good commercial, I don’t know if you know that or no, it’s

Bill Cole  35:10

really good. Yeah, I mean, that is a prime example of, like, we’ve been doing this a long time. And my people genuinely get, like work satisfaction out of being presented with a challenge and a problem, and then helping to, you know, solve that problem with the customer, you know, one big team like, like we, we need, we understand what needs to happen, and then we’re going to try and figure out a way to make that happen. And that that’s what gives our people just that, that satisfaction of their job, and it helps for engagement. And nobody

Nestor J. Aparicio  35:53

sees roofs through this is a beautiful roof on this church, I’m looking at it right now. And I’m thinking nobody would see it, unless you had a drone, take a picture of it, like, you know, because people will think about the roof leaks, we talked about this all the time, you know, it’s like, I don’t need a dentist, I got a toothache period,

Bill Cole  36:08

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we’re, we’re really working hard, trying to get continuously get this message out there that TierPoint out of sight out of mind, I totally get it. I’m a very logical, realistic person. But by doing minimal maintenance work along the way, you can seriously extend the life of the roof, which is hundreds of 1000s of dollars in the lifetime, right.

Nestor J. Aparicio  36:40

So really don’t want to put a new roof on a person, you really don’t, right.

Bill Cole  36:43

And I get that and we want to help you do that, like we like it’s sort of cannibalism, right of our own, like we do reverbs we replace rooms, but at the same time, we’d really much prefer to get involved and catch little problems before they become big production of

Nestor J. Aparicio  37:03

a wrecking your business at a time when you can’t afford it. You know, I see these vegetated roof systems and solar, you know, you’ve created a situation where it could become a 00, you know, it can literally take away something and add value and, and, you know, be something nice to you make nice roofs,

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Bill Cole  37:27

the solar is, you know, I mean, we are at the place. I’ve been saying this for a long time. But I think we’re finally there. Like, if you’re getting a commercial roof done, and you’re not getting a integrated solar roof price for comparison purposes, I’m not saying it’s necessarily going to be right for everybody. But everyone in the marketplace today should know what those two opportunities cost, and be able to do the valuation on that. And

Nestor J. Aparicio  37:56

the same way, whether you decide whether you want an electric vehicle or get like you have those up, do you have those options now? Right, it makes

Bill Cole  38:02

a ton of sense. And they are, you know, the government is still heavily incentivizing it. And they’re very lucrative projects for the people who it takes. It’s a little bit of education, right? Like it’s buying something that you’ve never bought before. And it has a life expectancy, you know, similar to like the mortgage on your house, and it’s a 25 years warranty. And it’s a long term concept. But I highly encourage people to at least kick the tires on it and understand it.

Nestor J. Aparicio  38:32

8

Because here cool roofing coordinators, you’re listening because you do have to go and I gotta go. But you’re the only person that has seen the doc, if you haven’t seen them, because it’s not completely done. But you have seen the rough in of the documentary in its totality. My wife hasn’t seen it. My son doesn’t want to see it till it’s done. Is there anything you want to like warn the audience in regard to the documentary? Oh, no.

Bill Cole  38:53

I mean, I think that makes me feel pretty special. Thank you. I anticipate that I am one of, you know, 10s of millions of views that will occur because it is such a core piece of like, like, I’m reliving my life through your life, right? Like my experiences at those times were different, or I was born age or whatever. But all of those things are all meaningful to anyone who’s like, been in our area for bedtime. Yeah. So it’s super fun to watch how you move through the world. You know, well, the world

Nestor J. Aparicio  39:40

moves when we get real, right? Like,

Bill Cole  39:44

when we get really old, we can have wonderful, fun conversations about when your moniker becomes nasty, you know full well going in and maybe you didn’t realize it at the time as well as you do today. that’s got positive and negatives to it. And for people who can’t stop to think long enough to understand that it’s a moniker and it’s a you know, it’s a there’s so much more to that. It’s just amusing to me. So I’m glad you’re telling the story because it’s fun to take nasty Nester and kind of peel back the onion a little bit and you’ll

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Nestor J. Aparicio  40:26

laugh you’ll cry. You’ll be amazed. Right? Exactly. You

Bill Cole  40:30

want to spend your Sunday afternoon Yes. No,

Nestor J. Aparicio  40:33

no, no, it’s coming out on Thursday at five oh wait for all your free the birds folks out there 5:08pm Next Thursday, April 25. It will be released at a an internet near you. There you go in sound around in your pocket winds in smellivision. I am Nestor. He is Bilkul. We are WNS da 5070 faster. Baltimore we never stop talking. Baltimore positive. Come see us next week up agreement bull or data fails.