That checkered Eastpoint Mall water tower has been gone for four decades but rocker John Allen of Stone Horses joins Nestor of Colgate Elementary for a nostalgic tour of Dundalk, Essex and the end of the mall we grew up in and learned the ways of the world. OK, so who remembers the penguins? Or the monkeys? Or Safety Town…
Nestor Aparicio and John Allen, formerly of Child’s Play and Stone Horses, reminisce about East Point Mall’s nostalgic significance. John recalls the mall’s open-air design and its safety school. They discuss the mall’s evolution, including the addition of Chick-fil-A and the Aladdin’s Castle. John shares memories of buying 45s at Sound Waves and meeting Oriole players. They also talk about the Circle Barbecue’s iconic taste and the impact of local institutions like Pappy’s. John updates on Stone Horses’ upcoming show and their new record, “Redemption Chronicles Two.”
- [ ] @Nestor Aparicio – Find and share pictures of the East Point Mall penguins before the mall closes.
Nostalgic Tour of East Point Mall
- Nestor Aparicio introduces the show, mentioning the Maryland Lottery and the Maryland Crab Cake Tour.
- Nestor and John Allen discuss the closure of East Point Mall and their nostalgic connection to it.
- John Allen shares his first memories of the mall, including its open-air design and the safety school.
- They reminisce about the Penguins at the mall and John’s skepticism about their existence.
Child’s Play and Stone Horses
- John Allen talks about his band, Stone Horses, and their upcoming show at Barrel House Live.
- They discuss the band’s sound, which is influenced by AC/DC and Aerosmith.
- John mentions his tribute to Kicks with Ronnie Younkins’ Blues Vultures.
- Nestor and John share their love for music and the impact of bands like AC/DC on East Baltimore.
East Baltimore Memories
- John Allen recalls the spaceship house in Eastwood and the neighborhood skateboard ramp.
- They discuss the roller hockey and street hockey played in East Baltimore.
- John shares a story about a tooth being knocked out during a roller hockey game.
- Nestor and John reminisce about their childhood in East Baltimore and the unique accents of the area.
Baltimore Accents and Dialects
- John Allen talks about his English teacher from Buffalo and the Baltimore accent.
- They discuss the origins of the Baltimore accent, including influences from Cockney English, Pennsylvania Dutch, and Southern accents.
- John shares a story about a New Jersey audience member who found his accent unusual.
- Nestor and John talk about the Baltimore accent’s uniqueness and its cultural mixings.
East Point Mall’s Cultural Impact
- Nestor and John discuss the cultural significance of East Point Mall, including its role in their lives and the community.
- They reminisce about the mall’s various stores, such as Hoschel Cohn, Kmart, and the White Coffee Pot.
- John shares his memories of buying Christmas gifts at the mall on Christmas Eve.
- They talk about the mall’s impact on their social lives and the importance of meeting friends there.
Circle Barbecue and Local Institutions
- John Allen shares his memories of the Circle Barbecue, including its iconic taste and the owner’s dislike of long-haired rockers.
- Nestor recalls his family’s tradition of buying barbecue from the Circle Barbecue after church.
- They discuss other iconic local institutions like Pappy’s and the Thunderbird.
- John and Nestor reflect on the nostalgia associated with these places and their impact on their childhoods.
Music and Concert Experiences
- Nestor and John discuss their experiences with concerts and the impact of aging on performers.
- They share their thoughts on Bon Jovi’s recent performance and the challenges of maintaining vocal range.
- John talks about his own preparation for performances and the importance of warming up.
- They reflect on the nostalgia of attending concerts and the changes in the music industry over the years.
Supporting Local Music and Community
- Nestor and John encourage listeners to support local musicians and attend live shows.
- They mention upcoming events and shows featuring local bands.
- John talks about the band’s new record, Redemption Chronicles Two, and their plans for the future.
- They express gratitude for their fans and the support they receive from the community.
Personal Reflections and Future Plans
- Nestor and John share personal reflections on their lives and careers.
- They discuss the importance of family and community in their lives.
- John talks about his plans for the band and his hopes for the future.
- They express their appreciation for the listeners and the opportunity to share their stories.
Final Thoughts and Farewell
- Nestor and John wrap up the show, expressing their gratitude to the listeners.
- They remind listeners to support local businesses and musicians.
- John shares a final thought about the importance of nostalgia and the impact of the past on their lives.
- They sign off, looking forward to future shows and adventures.
Nestor Aparicio 0:00
Welcome home. We are WNST AM 1570 Towson Baltimore. We’re Baltimore positive. He’ll be making the funny faces here in the program. It’s all brought to you by our friends at the Maryland Lottery. We are the Maryland Crab Cake Tour. We’re here at Pizza John’s in Essex, homeland of Child’s Play, the first band. We’ve already had Jackabino family members and friends rolling by here today, and Brett, the manager of Pizza Johns, has a Brian Jack story to tell. We’ll tell some of those, but we’re going to tell some East Point Mall stories with John Allen, formerly of Child’s Play SR 71, Charm City Devils, currently in Stone Horses, but I screwed up already.
John Allen 0:38
I think you got it. All right, I’m
Nestor Aparicio 0:40
trying to get it right. I stopped
John Allen 0:41
listening. Well, it’s all brought to you. Well, so listen,
Nestor Aparicio 0:43
brought to you by our friends at GBMC as well as Farnin and Durham. You’re allowed to bust my balls. I’ve known you too long, and you’re allowed to do that. So I brought you over here under the ruse of like, I’ll send you home with gluten-free pizza for your wife and your kids. Maybe we’ll get some crabs at Costas, but we’re going to do that next week. My mom’s birthday this week, but the whole East Point Mall thing was your idea. So, like, you wrote to me about a month ago and said, “Hey, man, I want to go back to the mall one last time. And I’m like, “Well, my kid lives still lives across the street from there, and in my childhood home, and I haven’t. I go buy it all the time. I don’t know the last time I walked into the mall, and it’s like anything else-they’re closing it down. Like, what are you closing down my mall? Well, when’s the last time you went? Right. So there’s a little bit of that, and then there’s the whole nostalgic part of you living elsewhere in Howard County. That it’s been a long time since you’ve been to the mall, but there is a point for all of us, like, and if White Marsh Mall was your mall when that day comes, or Golden Ring, which is long since gone, and I don’t remember getting the invite to the last chance to go over to Golden Ring Mall. But this, you know, it’s a last chance. We had our last chance at Memorial Stadium and some other things. I don’t know, like I don’t expect to be too romantic about it, but like I know you are. I know you had a million stories about this front mall. You love telling.
John Allen 2:07
Well, I mean, you know, it it was within walking distance. So I remember my first memories. My mom walked me over there when I was really little.
Nestor Aparicio 2:17
Shopping center, not a mall. It was a
John Allen 2:18
shopping center. It was still open air. All the buildings were red brick, and they had a safety school over in the far parking lot, probably like right where the J.C. Penney’s is now, or or close to it. And they would every summer they’d set up these poles with with real deal traffic lights,
Nestor Aparicio 2:39
stop signs,
John Allen 2:40
stop signs, and they they had yeah they had streets. They had like little houses, little post
Nestor Aparicio 2:46
offices, right? Yeah.
John Allen 2:47
They and and then the real treat was one of the houses you could go in. They had a had a water tank, so you could get some nice cool water there on a hot summer day. And then we would go after that was done in the morning, Saturday
Nestor Aparicio 3:02
morning. No, I don’t know if I did safety school
John Allen 3:06
on Saturday. I
Nestor Aparicio 3:07
still have my certificate.
John Allen 3:08
Nice. I had it
Nestor Aparicio 3:10
on the safety town.
John Allen 3:10
Very important to you. I saved it. I
Nestor Aparicio 3:13
still have it. I mean, I know I have it. It was orange. It was on my bedroom wall all my childhood.
John Allen 3:18
Okay. And literally,
Nestor Aparicio 3:19
my safety town. My mother put it up in 1973, and it still sat there in 1985. Right? I don’t know why.
John Allen 3:25
Maybe I didn’t get a certificate. Maybe I didn’t. You didn’t get a
Nestor Aparicio 3:28
participation show.
John Allen 3:29
But but maybe not. But after that, like after we do the morning session, we would walk back to Hochul, and they had a big restaurant there on the second floor, and the one whole wall was just a plate glass window, and it overlooked the entire shopping well mall, but the shopping center. It was like a it was like a
Nestor Aparicio 3:49
veranda. It was like a veranda. It was like a like a breezeway almost. Right, right, yeah, right. It was yeah,
John Allen 3:55
open air. I think they had, I think they had trees and everything you know in there. But it was uh yeah, it was more like a breezeway kind of deal. I think the restaurant was called the Penguin Room, and that’s that kind of ties into the live penguins that apparently they had in this one showcase window, which I don’t remember at all.
Nestor Aparicio 4:16
Everyone remembers the penguins at these points for
John Allen 4:18
me, and and like I can’t find a picture anywhere. People
Nestor Aparicio 4:22
have posted those pictures of the penguins.
John Allen 4:24
You said that last time we talked. They’re never seen, dude.
Nestor Aparicio 4:28
If you go to even my Facebook and just put in penguins, it’s not Pittsburgh penguins, but East Point Mall, East Point Mall, and penguins. I’m telling you, there are people have put pictures up. They put pictures up of Hochul Kohn. They put pictures up of the of of the water tower that I have. What? You’re you’re being you’re being silly. I’m telling you, people have put pictures up of the penguins. All right, and I’ll find them. All right, I’ll find them before this is over with today. John Allen is here. He’s a doubting horse, stone horses. What’s going with the band? Give me a little band update. Last time you were here, we had a single, very blue collar kind of sound. I would say your sound sort of emanates from all things AC/DC, and I would say that because in your Child’s Play plugin, and I had Phil Wise run since last time we got together, your bandmate, that like there’s an AC/DC thread I think that runs through East Baltimore and everything that was ever any band, even kicks that came along before AC/DC.
John Allen 5:32
Yeah, I think it’s a band that that a lot of people in this town kind of loved, and I think that’s why you know when Child’s Play started out doing you know our covers, it was I think we really kind of found ourselves when we started doing AC/DC and Aerosmith kind of covers blues, heavy blues, rock, blue collar kind of vibe, and I think that’s what make a living kind of kind of vibe that it has. So you know, please go and stream it a lot on Spotify or wherever you stream your music. The band is called Stone Horses, and we’re going to be at Barrel House Live September 18th up there in Falston. And Ronnie Younkins of Kicks is going. You just mentioned kicks. They’re Ronnie’s band, the Blues Vultures, are opening the show. And what we’ve been doing is, I’ve been jumping up with Ronnie’s band, and we do a little kicks tribute. And I do my best to to get up there and sing real high, like Steve Wyman, and sing. I saw that act. That was a good act. Atomic atomic bomb. Do you only
Nestor Aparicio 6:42
do that
John Allen 6:42
west of Frederick, or do you do that? No, we’re gonna do it. We’re gonna do it Dundalk North up there in Boston. All right, good. Bel Air, yeah. Have you found the picture yet?
Nestor Aparicio 6:50
Well, I found the amusing live penguins at the East Point Mall. Kitties and grown-ups too enjoy the antics of these full dress ambassadors from the land of Santa Claus feeding time at 7:30 each evening. It is a heap of fun. This is the Hoshel Cohns. mr. Max Hoschel, our co-founder, invites you to the grand opening of East Point Shopping Center, October 9, 1956.
John Allen 7:15
Wow!
Nestor Aparicio 7:15
So there you have it. My parents had just bought the house across the street. But there’s no
John Allen 7:19
photos of the people
Nestor Aparicio 7:21
put pictures of the penguins on my timeline. I promise you that it happened, and I will find them. And once I find them, they will be yours to keep forever. Okay,
John Allen 7:32
never happened.
Nestor Aparicio 7:34
You know what people would believe never happened is that there was a blue and white. It looked like something that would be like a a water thing that would sit at the bottom of the ocean, but it was actually a spaceship house that lived in Eastwood and Colgate and the city law, and that is no joke. There was a futuristic house that was modeled and sold on these Erector Set arms, and it looked like a blue circular.
John Allen 8:06
Was a spaceship? It
Nestor Aparicio 8:07
was a spaceship.
John Allen 8:08
Yeah.
Nestor Aparicio 8:08
Now I would tell your daughters that who are like beyond teenagers. One of them’s old enough to drink, I think. And if I told them that there was a special spaceship, well, what are you going to do about it? The special spaceship that lived, they would say, you’re making that up.
John Allen 8:25
Yeah,
Nestor Aparicio 8:26
they would say Uncle Nestor’s crazy. Well, they would say.
John Allen 8:28
So ever since I was a kid, it was always in a yard right behind Eastwood Little League’s clubhouse over there off Fade Avenue, right at the city line, where 45th Street runs into, I guess it’s it’s Fade Avenue, and I thought it was always there. And if you go on the intro web, you can see that it actually lived down in Eastwood near Rugerio’s. At some point, there was a parking lot that kind of goes down towards the the ramp that go that takes you from North Point Boulevard onto Eastern Boulevard or Eastern Avenue, headed west. The only thing I remember being on that lot when I was a kid was kids in the neighborhood built a erected a skateboard ramp.
Nestor Aparicio 9:14
There was a lot of that East Baltimore in the early ’80s,
John Allen 9:16
like a quarter pipe, and I remember seeing a line of kids getting ready to take their Kmart, you know, skateboards down that ramp, and then I heard Darren Stobel broke his arm or something, and a bunch of the dads went down there like vigilante style and and hacked that ramp, took it down. So that was the end. It was the ramp’s fault. That was the end of the ramp. Right, right. But yeah, your
Nestor Aparicio 9:41
neighborhood-they played a lot of street hockey. It was hockey always up on that in that cage, and it was a basketball court that really became a roller hockey place.
John Allen 9:51
Yeah, I
Nestor Aparicio 9:52
played roller hockey up there. The only place you could go in East Baltimore to play roller.
John Allen 9:55
I did too. I I missed the whole the heyday of that. It was like a lot of older kids. And by the time I came along, it was always me and like two other kids. That was about it. One day we had four. I think it was his name was Steve Holter. My buddy, my neighbor, hit a slap shot. Steve Loving hit the slap shot, and Steve Holter grabbed his mouth, and he was like, “Oh man! And then the guy who hit the slap shot, Steve Loving, skated over and he picked something up. And he goes, “Here, man! He handed him his front tooth. It was like a cartoon. It had it was completely intact with the roots, you know. And the guy saw that and passed out. Freak! No, he just freaked out. He started bashing like the sign. It was you know on the chain link fence and just just threw a tantrum for about you know 510 minutes, and then finally skated home and got told his parents and yeah they jammed that tooth back up like but yeah you went oh you had
Nestor Aparicio 10:54
my sphincter
John Allen 10:55
yeah yeah I’m
Nestor Aparicio 10:56
wearing my straight out of Dundonck shirt and that hurt you know nice going
John Allen 10:59
to the mall need to get you a circle T-shirt. Listen,
Nestor Aparicio 11:04
John Allen is here. He’s not only my rock star buddy and and friend, life of friend, and Stonehors. You go see them at Falston, september 18. 18th. All right. Raven season. So that’s a Thursday night. Was it Friday night? Friday night. It is a Friday. Friday night. Okay. You’re a historian about a lot of things, you know, about your own lineage, heritage, East Baltimore. You have you have all of this really bizarre, random knowledge. You’re like this. You’re like this book nerd, rock star guy, buddy of mine, right? I’m a font
John Allen 11:35
of useless knowledge. You
Nestor Aparicio 11:37
are, you are. One of the fun things we always have fun with, and I know we do this with Gina Shaka all the time. Who, by the way, highly endorses that we’re going to East Point Mall, and she remembers the Penguins because I asked her. So, but she doesn’t have any pictures. I’ll find some pictures of the Penguins. You put me on a. I will find them. I don’t want to say by sunset today, but before the mall closes, I will find pictures of the penguins at the mall for you. Okay, we had the spaceship. We’ll get the penguins.
John Allen 12:05
Do you remember White Coffee Pub Jr. 100%
Nestor Aparicio 12:08
Oh my God. Well, I worked at Soundwaves at East Point Mall in 1984, so I’ll give my mall story in a minute. But I want you to give this this part. Is when you and I get together and Gigi Papadopoulos, who’s also from Eastwood, when we do the Baltimore accent. I don’t know anyone. I have a friend who’s an actress, and I said if we were to do a Dundalk skit, you, me, Gigi, and I have to think of somebody else that can do the Baltimore accent as well as we can do it. We could do like commercials on the radio, whatever, in the Baltimore accent. I had an argument last week with someone that said the Philly accent, same as Baltimore, and I’m like, it’s very close. No way, it is, dude. I was in Philly last week for three days, and I listened to those. The way they say daughter, and the way they say water, wooder, daughter. They, they, it’s something about it. Maybe it’s close to somebody on the outside. To me, I would if you put 100 Philadelphia people and 100 Baltimore people in front of me and gave them two drinks and made them speak the way they speak, I would never confuse any of them. Like I think Philadelphia’s very different.
John Allen 13:10
You’re better with dialects than I am, man, because people from Delco County with that accent, I think, is very close to a Baltimore accent. It’s probably a lot of the same sort of different cultural mixings, you know.
Nestor Aparicio 13:25
The Baltimore thing’s amazing, though. Like that, we can go into it. And when I think of East Point Mall, or I think of Dundalk, I think of my mother, or Miss Eadie, or people in the neighborhood, or the way people spoke in our neighborhoods at that point in life. And I guess people left over from you know pre-war. My parents were married right here at Mount Carmel Church in 1945. My dad worked at Martin Marietta, so I’m thinking pre-World War II people with the accents that came, honestly, from Germany, Italy, you know, Poland, all the things that made East Baltimore East Baltimore because Baltimore didn’t have an accent till it created its own accent, which came out of something off of a boat in Europe, and I don’t know what it is. I thought maybe you would have some insight into that.
John Allen 14:08
Well, when we were in ninth grade, I had an English teacher from from Buffalo, and she Judy Judy yeah Judy Higg, and she made me painfully aware of my Baltimore accent, or or Buffalo, our Baltimore accent. She had
Nestor Aparicio 14:23
terrible Buffalo accent.
John Allen 14:24
She said, “You all are Southern belles. You’re Southern belles. Just like that. She’s like, you know, you get one inch of snow and everything closes. One one winter we had 12 feet of snow. We had 12, and we still went to school and put our beer in it. She used to kill me, but yeah. So and there’s there are these books out there called Baltimore East, and it claims that Baltimore accent is cross between Cockney English, which is from probably the sailors, and you know who who wound up in the harbor, you know somehow and wound up staying here. During revolutionary times and maybe shortly thereafter, Pennsylvania Dutch, which I don’t know.
Nestor Aparicio 15:06
Now I hear that in Delco, Pennsylvania Dutch is is go up to the Amish market and just talk to the people there. Like I like there there is a lilt about it that is very Pennsylvanian and to me Philadelphian more than than Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh has that Don Don Don Don Don Don Don like. It’s a little bit like that, but I abs there isn’t there is a dialect associated with Lancaster County for sure, 100%
John Allen 15:33
And then you know then the Southern thing too that Maryland or the the blue collar Baltimore accent has. It definitely a southern thing. Yeah. And the first time I ever played New Jersey, I came all stage and I was all hyped up. You know, pumped myself full of caffeine to play the show, and then you play the show, and then you’re you’re fired up anyway. I was chatting up this young lady at the bar, and she just looked at me like I had three heads, and I was like, you know, what? What’s what’s going on? She’s like, you talk fun. She goes, she goes, the way you talk. I said, what about it? And she’s, she’s like, she’s like, it’s weird. And I said, yeah. I said, I said, what’s weird about it? I said, I said, what? You know, somebody makes me laugh. Your accent. She’s like, I don’t know. I never heard it before. I never heard that before. And I said, well, what does it sound like? Where does it sound like I’m from? She’s like, I don’t know. She’s like, it sounds like a southern accent mixed with like an English accent. Yeah, that’s pretty much what it is, right? You know, you know, right? It’s not just East Baltimore. It’s it’s all over Baltimore, really. I mean, you know, I don’t. Well, you and I
Nestor Aparicio 16:50
have done a decent job of like we could fake it, like we could do a fake sweaty balls podcast, and I don’t know, man. If we didn’t drink and we didn’t let our let the O’s and the A’s fly, you know, I like, but the accents of East Baltimore. When I think of East Point Mall, I just think of I think of accents, and I’m in Essex, and I wonder how we how it got this way, and how if we went to our high school reunion, there would be a lot of people that kept that accent. Some people that that got rid of it. Some people never had it, quite frankly, because their parents weren’t from wherever, you know. Like I know a lot of people, Baltimore people. When I listen to them talk, I’m like, “That’s where. Oh, my parents are from Philly. My parents are from Pittsburgh. My parents are from Virginia. You know, my or my parents are from New England or whatever, where they would in some way pick up something from their parents that didn’t make them sound like we sounded. I mean, my dad was from Scranton, Pennsylvania. My mom was from Abbeville, South Carolina. But I’ll say this: my real mother, Connie, grew up in East Baltimore, and she’s when Gina Shock speaks.
John Allen 17:57
That’s for you. Gina
Nestor Aparicio 17:58
Shock and my mother, my real mother. When I’m with Gina, I feel like I’m with my mother. I tell her that all the time. It freaks her out, but she laughs like my mother, talks like my mother. Gina is basically my mother’s age, basically, and they grew up, yeah, 14 blocks apart.
Speaker 1 18:15
Wow!
Nestor Aparicio 18:16
You and I grew up nine blocks apart, probably 10 blocks apart. She grew up another five blocks away from where my mother grew up, and it’s it it’s the same accent from 1968 through 1975.
John Allen 18:29
The
Nestor Aparicio 18:29
way people spoke in East Baltimore, and our parents were everybody on my block spoke that way.
John Allen 18:35
Right. Well,
Nestor Aparicio 18:35
everyone older than me had, you know, they talked like they went over to the mall, and when he went over the mall, they got lottery tickets, and you know he went to Harlington. You know
John Allen 18:44
it really struck me. And I
Nestor Aparicio 18:46
talked like that. I’m sure I talked like that when I was 15.
John Allen 18:48
I was talking to, well, to tell a story about you know Judy Hague again. She said the first time she came to Baltimore, and this is back when we had gas station attendants who would check your oil. Sure, oil, she said. She said, “The first time I came here, the guy said, ‘Can I check your oil? And she was baffled. She didn’t know what he was talking about. She said, ‘Oh, oil! And I was sitting in the classroom thinking, ‘Wow, my dad says oil. I probably say oil. You know, so it’s like, yeah. I mean, it made me really, really conscious of of that. And Phil, Phil’s wife, Amy, she’s not from anywhere around here, and she she’s like, “You have an accent, and she was saying it in front of our our longtime white man, Jimmy Wrigley. And she’s like, she’s like, Jimmy, don’t you think he has a Baltimore accent, and Jimmy’s like, “What? What’s the ball? Yeah, yeah, because we’re we’re also used to hearing it, you know. So, but yeah, it’s uh, it’s it’s interesting, man. I I I I never thought of it. I don’t know. I just didn’t. I guess it was stigmatized. It really it really hit me later. If you remember, Tracy Alman used to have a her own the show, right? Yeah. Well, she had this actor on who went. This guy, he played bagel on in the diner. Barry Levinson. Okay, sure. And then he went on to play in L.A. Law, and he was originally from Baltimore. Well, she did this skit, which I didn’t think was very funny at all, and it was called Baltimore Stoops, and she and the guy, the actor, I can’t remember. Well, he clearly wrote it,
Nestor Aparicio 20:32
right? Yeah,
John Allen 20:32
it was his idea, I’m sure. And they sat. The word stoop, yeah, right. They sat on the stoop, and they were talking like this, and everything knew. So I was sitting there at my parents’ house watching this, and I was getting really pissed off. I was it infuriated me. I was like, “We do not talk like that. That’s bull. I swear. Like three days later, I was in my convertible, and I pulled up to the light there. Clinton and Highlands. No, outside of our neighborhood at Rugerio’s. Okay, and I overheard these guys. You know, my top was down in my convertible, and I hear these guys in the pickup truck, like just behind me. Yeah, I was telling Butchy that we ain’t gonna do that no more. And I thought they were goofing, and I slowly turned my head, and they were not goofing. They were. That’s how they talk. I
Nestor Aparicio 21:21
want to do like a whole segment or a whole show on Baltimore Accent E. So I’ll get you and Gigi. No, nobody
John Allen 21:27
will get it. You know, John
Nestor Aparicio 21:28
Allen is here. We’re going East Point Mall for the last time. Why? Why? Why? Why did you hit me? I don’t know. I mean, I’m I’m very nostalgic. I am.
John Allen 21:37
I thought you hit me. Yeah. I mean, you blame me if you know. I remember, you know, of course, I’m from Baltimore. I belong to a like bowling league at the Bear Lanes over there. East
Nestor Aparicio 21:48
Point Mall, yeah, today. And I was a member of the Highland Towers on Saturday mornings. Nice, 845. Highland Towers, huh? That was name of the league. Highland Tanners.
John Allen 21:56
Okay, I don’t think we
Nestor Aparicio 21:58
had any Highland Town, not the Holland Towers.
John Allen 22:00
Right, right. But I remember going. My grandmother worked at Hoshi Cone downtown. But at Christmas time, when they needed extra help, she would be out here at East Point Mall. So we were we were out there all the time. I mean, do you remember that you could pay your bills at Hospital Cone? Of
Nestor Aparicio 22:18
course, yeah. I mean,
John Allen 22:19
like wow, like weird. My
Nestor Aparicio 22:21
dad got his paycheck, so East Point Mall for me. I remember, like you, open air 7273, 74. They they mauled it to compete with Golden Ring was coming. White Marsh came around 81, right? But but East Point was the first shopping center that became a mall. Was on the bus line, huge population in the early ’70s. You know there were more people in Dundalk and Essex than there were anywhere else in Baltimore as a suburb, and the mall opening, and I was five years old, six years old, and it’s all I knew. You know my dad got his paycheck.
John Allen 22:57
He’s right across the street from you.
Nestor Aparicio 22:59
Well, the Kmart opened in about ’74, and and this is a great music story because it really the mall’s about music for me more than sports. I mean, sports was about the bus line and going to the arena, you know, going to the Civic Center or going to Memorial Stadium.
John Allen 23:12
East Point only had the one music store record store for a while, right? And then Record Bar opened later in the ’80s. Record
Nestor Aparicio 23:19
bar came, and and then well they did sell records I think inside of some of the department stores
John Allen 23:25
had them two
Nestor Aparicio 23:26
guys was the place that had records and pretzels two guys down on Merrick Boulevard right so that’s if you wanted records they had a records section they sort of specialized in that hippie thing two guys did they were more of a had
John Allen 23:40
everything
Nestor Aparicio 23:40
yeah right right but they were more of an out. They were more of a department store that more modern, I think. Right at that point, where Hustlers and Hoshi Cones were more refined and clothier than they were home goods.
John Allen 23:55
I remember buying singles in the record department at Hudson’s. Hudsler’s. I don’t remember. I don’t remember. Hutzler seemed to be
Nestor Aparicio 24:02
the place that would have like jazz, and they wouldn’t have the the Three Dog Night album. They they you know they they would have the Lawrence Welk album. They bought
John Allen 24:12
Island Girl by Elton John there, which is 75. I love that song. Not PC anymore. No, I love that song. I do. So
Nestor Aparicio 24:19
so anyway, I called WLPL to request that
John Allen 24:22
LPL. Hell yeah! Oh yeah! So
Nestor Aparicio 24:24
I got my first. I’ve told this story to you before. I got my first 340 fives at the Kmart at between East Point where the Colgate Fair was. So my first three singles were Neil Diamond, if you know what I mean. Got to get you into my life. Helped her scale through the Beatles, and the Beatles were way broken up by then. And Afternoon Delight, Starland vocal band, Afternoon. Oh my God! Okay, going fine, baby. Going to hold it. Maryland’s own. Maryland’s own, Starland vocal band. So I bought those, and then after that, my dad, I fell in love with music. My dad would get his paycheck on Tuesday from the point. So, and I know this to be completely accurate because it was 1975, 76, 77, 78. And the reason I know that is every Tuesday my dad would get paid. Every Tuesday my dad would get his paycheck. Every Tuesday we walk to the mall. Wait, he would cash his
John Allen 25:17
paycheck.
Nestor Aparicio 25:19
Yeah, he would he would go to the mall, cash a check, and I would get to buy a 45.
John Allen 25:23
That’s nice.
Nestor Aparicio 25:24
And I went to Sound Waves at East Point Mall. Sometimes Harmony Hut, which you would know is the record bar, which became Harmony Hut.
John Allen 25:32
Okay, fair enough. I do remember. Yeah. Now we have someone in our
Nestor Aparicio 25:36
timeline that could that she will make that legit. She will verify
John Allen 25:39
that. But the location
Nestor Aparicio 25:41
Lauren knows all that where the
John Allen 25:42
Soundwaves was. Early on, they actually sold. They I remember they had a drum kit in there. They were selling drums. They they had
Nestor Aparicio 25:50
they had it was a music store. I agree with that. Yeah. Two doors down was the White Coffee Pot Junior, which is where I used to go on my work break because I worked at Soundwaves in the summer of ’84. So that record shop I have been going into forever. They
John Allen 26:03
had a white coffee pot inside. White coffee pot.
Nestor Aparicio 26:06
White coffee pot, not junior. White coffee pot. The junior was grocery. Right. The white coffee pot had the coffee. It had a coffee bar and a countertop and yeah, eggs and bacon in the morning. Okay. So I used to get my French fries and gravy then. So I in 7576, 7778, those four years, I had one of those 45 spaceship things with the the the the you would put your your 40 fives onto the chain, stack them, right, and it had a little plastic top on the top that locked,
John Allen 26:38
and it would all
Nestor Aparicio 26:40
and you could carry them with you, like 150, like 150 40 fives. Oh wow! It was a plastic little spaceship thing that your 45 sat on. Okay. Once you took them out of the sleeves or whatever, right? Right. So, all of those years, if I told you how many singles, if I just looked at the Billboard charts from 7576, 77, I had, I can tell you who was on what label. Every Casey and the every disco song, every Tavarez song, Casey and the Sunshine Band, Earth Wind and Fire, every Boston Aerosmith, Ted Nugent Kiss. I discovered Kiss in ’75, Kiss Alive One, and my cousin’s base or attic, and then after that, I was addicted to music, and every Carly Simon, nobody does it better. Every Kenny Rogers, Gambler, all of that music, disco, black, funk, rock, a lot of rock. I mean, a lot of rock, yacht rock, Dooby Brothers taking it to the streets. What a fool believes, all of that. I I can tell you every 45 of Arista, the more and more and more true Andrew True connection, Captain Tenniel, and A and A. Like the
John Allen 27:55
dude, like Daniel Stern’s character in the diner. Remember, he he could tell you what label, what the color label was, what label it was, he could tell you the catalog number.
Nestor Aparicio 28:03
So East Point Mall was your 45 Savant, but East Point Mall was the place I went that brought everything to life. It brought Christmas to life. It brought Santa Claus to life. It brought new things. When Chick Fil A showed up, no one had ever seen a chicken sandwich until 1980, when that shit like literally we were the we were the first mall to have a Chick Fil A. The Chick Fil A is where you’re going today. It’s a cracking crab. There was a Chick Fil A that was that was on the edge of the mall across from the Silber’s Bakery. I don’t remember that at all. And then they put the Aladdin’s Castle in. Come on, man! There was no food court in East Point Mall. Oh no,
John Allen 28:39
yeah, no, that was
Nestor Aparicio 28:40
the became the middle food court. They put a cookie cookies right in front of the right in front of the Santa Claus or the J C Penney. Right, this is before the Sears was there. Any of that, right? Original mall. Right, the Sears was the hostel or the Hutzlers at the time, and at the time, sort of the Murphys. The the Murphys was where the York Steakhouse was became the Ames. The Ames was the pantry pride. The Ames was the supermarket in the mall. We had a mall attached to the supermarket, right? And then they brought Friendlies in on that side of the mall. Remember that? There was a little bowling store, little little sporting goods store next to the Friendlies where I got all of my duck pin bowling balls. My dad would go in there and order chest protectors, catchers, mitts. It was a sporting goods store. It was like a Shiflet and Horn kind of sporting store.
John Allen 29:28
I don’t remember that. Yeah, no, no, man. The
Nestor Aparicio 29:30
mall had everything here.
John Allen 29:32
Here’s the question: You want to buy
Nestor Aparicio 29:33
your girlfriend a gift at the? You had to go to a mall. Things remember
John Allen 29:36
always, right? I would go to get my Christmas gifts on Christmas Eve,
Nestor Aparicio 29:41
you and everybody else. Where’d you park? Yeah, right.
John Allen 29:45
I’d run in there and be like, “Oh yeah, okay, you know. But yeah, yeah, Hochul Cohn. Yeah. See, I don’t remember that. That. But
Nestor Aparicio 29:54
I met every Oriole player at East Point Mall. Brooks Robinson signed autographs at the Brooks Robin. Store upstairs at the Hoschel Cone, upstairs second floor. There’s a Brooks Robinson sporting goods store there in the early ’70s. Yeah, I bought a Chicago Blackhawks jersey there, Tom Lysiak jersey. Also, every Oriole player. That’s where I met Kevin Eck. I met Kevin Eck at the Games store in Eastport Mall in 1979, the Good Oriole year that summer. Now the Luskins was across the street on Eastern Avenue, cheapest kind of town. He would bring in players. Jack Luskin would pay Ali May in 1976 to sign autographs on a Monday night on their off night at Luskins. You’d stand in line, get a Polaroid. But East Point Mall, I met Joe Irman at J.C. Penney. Now that J.C. Penney would bring Colt’s in in ’75, ’76, ’77 on like a Monday or Tuesday night, they would Joe Irman met me sign autograph, and then the game store in East Point Mall, which was buy the East Point liquors and the bricotos and where hardware fair, correct? Right on the inside, there was a games store in 1979. I don’t know what the hell they sold. Now, don’t ask me. It wasn’t video stuff in 1979. But Billy Smith, Kiko Garcia, Scott McGregor, Mike Flanagan, Al Bumbry, all the 79 Orioles, I met at East Point Mall, so like when I think East Point Mall, like think about that, man. If you met if you met Bob Turk or Captain Chesapeake when you were a kid or whatever, probably happened at the mall, right? Literally, and I don’t know if Tiffany ever performed there, like or you know what I mean, like any of the mall performances. But like the mall was, it touched all of our lives in some way. So for you to say I want to go back to the mall and hang out, I’m giving you. I’m talking about the girls I met, or how many times Joe Elliot got chased and arrested by the cops or thrown out of the mall, or whatever. No, but I mean these my these are my my buddies at the mall. We would go over and just hassle the mall gate. Never anything enough to get arrested, just enough to get thrown out, yelled at.
John Allen 31:59
Yeah, man. Yeah, I mean, at that point, that was the town center, you know, for for us, you know. Like, if you go, I hadn’t watched Fast Times at Ridgemont High in years, and I I watched it on a flight a few years back, and I was like, oh my god, yeah, this is this is my teen. We didn’t text each other; it was our social center. Yeah,
Nestor Aparicio 32:21
like the only way you could find your friends,
John Allen 32:23
yeah.
Nestor Aparicio 32:23
And and keep in mind, we came of the era too, and this is would really did where kids whose parents liked them a lot would get them their own phone. Like some girls at school would have their own phone in their room, in their room, so that they would be off the house phone.
John Allen 32:39
Right.
Nestor Aparicio 32:39
Before we had call waiting. Remember, there’s no call waiting. Oh, he’s been a business. My parents
John Allen 32:42
never got it. Right, exactly. So,
Nestor Aparicio 32:44
like you being in a band where somebody’s calling to book your band or wants to discover your band, and your mother or father answering the phone, literally, right? Like that was the way when Alex Van Halen called me to do the interview with me in 1986 on the 5154. My mother answered the phone, and I was in the shower. Now here’s Alex Van Halen, drunk, up at the Philadelphia Spectrum, trying to get me on the phone, and I’m in the shower. I just missed my Baltimore accent. I said, “That’s great. That’s great. My mother’s yelling at me in the shower. You got a fan call, Alex Van Holling, join the fame for you. We are the Maryland Crab Cake Tour. We’re telling old rock and roll stories. John Allen is here from Stone Horses. Their band’s gonna be playing at Falston Barrel House. Joyce Bucci’s calling at five. Yeah, tell her yes. Hell yeah, we’re gonna have two beers. It’s all brought to you by the Maryland Lottery. Raven Stratchoffs, our friends at GBMC, keeping me healthy and alive. I talked about my A1C in the last segment with Dr. Steve Elliot of Elliot Chiropractic. Also had Jessica Vallis here from Harford Designs. She runs my website. She did a nice turn up here in Pennsylvania to the Seven Valleys Ice Cream Playground that she is a part of trying to put together for her children and other children in the community to keep a an ice cream legend alive. I to honor that had a mint chocolate chip. Did you know that they do milkshakes at Peach John? You know you do milkshakes at Peach Johns. They should do their Thunderbird. Do you ever get Thunderbird?
John Allen 34:14
Heck yeah,
Nestor Aparicio 34:14
yeah man. You talk about the so you got to tell a circle barbecue because we’re telling old stories and we haven’t told you any music, anything? You this morning blew my mind with your circle barbecue thing, and you know the whole history of the circle barbecue,
John Allen 34:28
right? Well, and the reason I know that is because we used to annoy the hell out of the owner, Nick and myself. He hated
Nestor Aparicio 34:36
kids.
John Allen 34:36
He did, but especially long-haired rock and roll. In his defense, he opened that place in 1946 after World War II, and he’s smoking
Nestor Aparicio 34:47
that weed in my parking lot.
John Allen 34:48
So he he had been dealing with young punks for like over 40 years by the time we came along, and yeah, so after like with. Child’s play. We would play on the weekends, and our old manager Brian’s dad, mr. Roy Jackabino, rest in peace. He used to pay us with these little Manila envelopes. He’d put our our pay in there, our cash, and Nick and I would go pick up our $100 or whatever for the week for playing shows. And we first we’d go be at like a Monday night. We’d go to the arcade at Merritt Point Shopping Center, and we’d stay in the arcade playing like Spy Hunter and different games and Space
Nestor Aparicio 35:31
Invaders. With what was it called? Oh shit! Okay, time time out.
John Allen 35:37
Not timeout. That was that was in the Golden Mall.
Nestor Aparicio 35:38
Go ahead, keep going.
John Allen 35:39
But anyway, we the poor guy, he was like, we’d be the last ones in there, like 11 o’clock on a Monday. That was a
Nestor Aparicio 35:45
great arcade.
John Allen 35:46
It was right behind
Nestor Aparicio 35:47
the friendlies. Yeah, right behind the friendlies on Merritt Boulevard.
John Allen 35:51
No, no, no. This was this was this was Merritt Park by the by the the library.
Nestor Aparicio 35:58
I know where you are. Okay, I got you. Okay, I got you.
John Allen 36:01
So the guy would finally kick us out, and me and Nick would, you know, we were already kind of imbibing a little bit, smoking a little bit of the wacky tobaccon, so that we would roll over to the circle, which you know didn’t open until 7p.m. in the evening, stayed open before even on a Monday night. So we would go inside, and mr. Frank and Miss Audrey would be sitting there reading their newspapers, hoping that it would be a slow night and they wouldn’t be bothered by anybody, especially not people coming inside to the circle. You always kind of walk up to that window, outside counter window,
Nestor Aparicio 36:37
yeah.
John Allen 36:37
So like we go in. I don’t
Nestor Aparicio 36:38
know that I was ever walked in there more than five times in my life. Yeah, so like literally, you order from that little glass thing.
John Allen 36:44
So we started going inside. Me and Nick, you know, we didn’t have anything to do, and we were wide awake from playing. You know, up being up all night for the rest of the week from playing gigs. So they had a pinball machine in there initially when we started going in, and we’d play the pinball until our food was ready, and then we’d eat our food, then we’d leave. But I was asking a bunch of questions. I was like, “So what year’d you open? And you know, blah blah blah blah. And this, like within like a week, he had a big poster up on the wall of aerial photo of of like what Dundalk Avenue looked like. You know, 1946, and then when the when he built the the circle and what year it was and all. So then from there on out, if you asked him any questions, he would just point to that like dump on me. Within like two weeks, the pinball machine was ripped out. You know, he was like, he they did not want to deal with that. They didn’t want to talk to you. You know, they were they were so over at that point. But but the story I was telling before was the first time I ever went to the circle. We just played the Capricorn like a sat on a Saturday night or something. I piled some people into the car. Friends of mine, John Hancock, I think was Michelle Laird, and maybe somebody else. And we got we smoked some some pot. I was really high, really paranoid. And we go to the circle, and it’s mob, just pat, and I walk up to the window, and I’m super paranoid because of you know imbibing, and I’m waiting. Well, there were
Nestor Aparicio 38:08
10,000 cars, but there were never more than five people that wanted the barbecue.
John Allen 38:11
Well, like I mean, like literally, maybe, but but I had to wait in line for about 10 minutes, and the whole time I’m like so stoned, and I’m trying to remember everybody’s order. Like one person wanted hot dog, another person wanted like onion rings, all this stuff, right? So I’m trying repeating this in my head so I don’t forget. So I finally get up to the window, and I’m like, mr. Frankie, you know, comes to the window, and I go, okay, I want a hot dog, I want onion rings. He goes, Oh, you
Speaker 2 38:37
want a
Speaker 3 38:37
hot
Speaker 4 38:37
dog,
Speaker 5 38:38
huh?
John Allen 38:38
I’m like, Yeah, and some onion rings, and he’s like, “Oh, you want onion rings, huh? And I look around at the people standing there looking at me. I’m like, “Uh, finally dawning on on this stone brain of mine. You don’t have onion rings. And he’s like, “You see onion rings up there on that menu? All I had was potato chips. There were like six things on the menu: barbecue, cheesy cube, hot hamburger, hot dog. They made milkshakes. I promise you, they made milkshakes. He made
Nestor Aparicio 39:10
me milkshakes. Oh
John Allen 39:10
man, like that-that was Nick and I. I didn’t like his milkshakes.
Nestor Aparicio 39:14
Were always icy. They weren’t very good.
John Allen 39:16
You know what? They were awesome. I love those. What he did was he would make a batch of milkshakes and then he would put them in the freezer. He had a like. That’s
Nestor Aparicio 39:24
right. He would pull without and hand it to you. And that’s
John Allen 39:26
why it was like ice. It was ice crystals in that. I
Nestor Aparicio 39:30
love that. Oh man, get the get get your proper milkshake here, Peach Johns. Come on, man. Circle
John Allen 39:35
the circle, man. And yeah, so so yeah, they only had potato chips, ham, not hamburger.
Nestor Aparicio 39:41
Well, the barbecue was phenomenal. It was great.
John Allen 39:43
Oh yeah, it was great. That was my parents would
Nestor Aparicio 39:45
buy that in the little plastic cord. So my story of the circle is we would on nights when we would go to church on Saturday night. Okay, we would go to the 5o’clock mass or the 7o’clock mass. The 5o’clock mass got. Done before it was open. 7o’clock mass, we could stop by, and my parents is what we would always do. We would buy either half quart or whatever, whatever half quart, whatever that little quart, whatever that thing is, and we he would do rolls. He would sell you six, basically hamburger rolls. I mean, blue ribbon rolls, potato rolls, right? And we would take those home, and we would have those for dinner on Saturday after church. And we’d stop at J.K. Bakery too, you know, Saturday night, Sunday morning.
John Allen 40:28
J.K. Bakery, and we would
Nestor Aparicio 40:29
only really go to church on Saturday nights in the summer because I was in CCD with you on the Sundays. So like summertime was when June, July, August. There was no CCD. We would move church the Saturday night in the summer, and we would go, and then we would we would have barbecue. So on every Saturday night for most of my childhood, you know, I mean, maybe not every Saturday, but three out of four in the summer. So I mean, the taste of that barbecue is so iconic to me, and I tasted it for the first time in my adulthood about that eight or 10 years ago, at Merriweather, I want to say Cheap Trick was. I’m trying to think of who it was. You weren’t with me. It wasn’t that Rod Stewart Cheap Trick show we took. I was at a show on the lawn before it became barbecue
John Allen 41:16
that reminded you of the circle. No, it
Nestor Aparicio 41:17
was the Circle. I mean, it was the same recipe. Yeah, there was a truck. There was a food truck inside Merriweather, within the last 10 years. Okay, and I was, you know, getting food at Merriweather. It’s like a little spotty. You and I go to dinner before we go to Merriweather most times, and for whatever reason, I didn’t eat that night. My wife and I were there. We were rattling along, goofing off. Might have been like, I don’t know, this is a show. And I grabbed it. I took one bite of it, and I’m like, oh my God! It is the circles. I mean, I savored it. Yeah. Because it, it’s barbecue. It was barbecue sauce. It was like a very crafty kind of nothing special. Right. It’s kind of ketchupy, quite frankly. It wasn’t wasn’t bougie at all. I mean, but memorable.
John Allen 42:00
Yeah.
Nestor Aparicio 42:00
You would agree with that? Yeah. Have you eaten anything like that in your adulthood? Once in my life, I had it in Merriweather and I remembered
John Allen 42:07
it. I’m trying to think. I mean, like on the way back from, you know, we had with the band, we had some some van issues down in in Tennessee a couple months ago, and I had to go back down and picked it up, and on the way back, there was a sign. It said “Best Barbecue in Virginia, and it was like this, like old rundown truck stop. Perfect. And I stopped there, and it was pretty damn. It was similar. It was very similar. Yeah,
Nestor Aparicio 42:35
I mean that’s what I mean. Like if I could find a place that had circle barbecue, it wouldn’t be the best barbecue I’ve ever had. It was called Smiley’s.
John Allen 42:42
I just Smiley’s. I just found the receipt in the bed yesterday, and I was like, “That was the name of the barbecue place off 81. See, you made
Nestor Aparicio 42:50
these shirts for the circle. So I mean, and down here, you know, my parents were married at Mount Carmel in ’45. The Thunderbird was the other, and they served Dairy Queen. Yeah, there was like a it was a Dairy Queen. So I mean, these iconic places, and they’re all. What do you think your daughters or people our age would look at as iconic? Because I shared this goofy picture of you and me faking it. You always make these goofy faces everywhere we go, all of our friendship, and I had these pictures of you and me. This was the night we were drinking wine together, and I pulled it off. And that is the iconic
John Allen 43:26
East Point poop
Nestor Aparicio 43:28
plant. I mean, literally of our childhood. And I know anybody who don’t
John Allen 43:31
think it’s a gas tank, right? It’s not a water.
Nestor Aparicio 43:33
It wasn’t. I don’t even know what it was. Water
John Allen 43:35
tank, or but it’s
Nestor Aparicio 43:36
it’s absolutely hilarious that I put these AI images, AI images. But this thing’s been gone 40 years. The circle’s been gone 25. It hasn’t
John Allen 43:47
been gone 40
Nestor Aparicio 43:47
years. It was ripped down during our senior year. I promise you. Really, I had work study, dude. I had work study, and my buddy Lewis used to drive me home from school every day back, and I haven’t seen him in 40 years. I remembered seeing it getting ripped down during coming home, and I’m like, how could it be gone that long? And it feels like if I drive over there, I still see it in the sky, but it’s gone, and no one, and no one younger than us would ever know that image or what it was, but iconic to everything of my childhood-the first 20 years of my life, like Memorial Stadium, or like all of that. Like when we go by East Point Mall, like today, we’re like, “Yeah, we’re gonna get a beer. Joyce is coming. We’ll be church. But five years from now, it’s gonna be something else, and we’re gonna go buy it and be like, “Oh my God, the Penguins, the Mall, Santa Claus, my first albums. You know, the girl I kissed. You know, whatever, whatever it was. You know,
John Allen 44:45
I did a Google search a while back on East Point Mall, and it kept pulling these images of Sinclair did this world tour of dinosaurs. They had these giant dinosaurs and stuff, and I was like, this. There must be another East Point Mall somewhere else in. In the country, because I couldn’t figure out the building behind them, and like, like it was Hutsol’s, and it was it was at Peace Point Mall. It was the early ’60s, mid ’60s, or something. They had these gigantic dinosaur. I don’t know what they were made out of, but they had this tour thing, and you could go through it and see how
Nestor Aparicio 45:19
big a real dinosaur. Yeah, they had like big
John Allen 45:21
dinosaur eggs and stuff. It was cool. It was way before our time, but you know, there
Nestor Aparicio 45:25
weren’t a lot of museums then. There wasn’t, you know, there wasn’t even a Disney World then, right?
John Allen 45:29
I guess so. Like
Nestor Aparicio 45:29
dinosaurs were something you saw in books and in, I mean, not even good movies. There wasn’t even like Godzilla, you know. So like to experience a dinosaur to be a kid in 1964, yeah, you know where would you go? You know what I mean? King Kong. That would be right, or whatever
John Allen 45:44
there by that water tank. There had been a putt putt course.
Nestor Aparicio 45:49
I remember that.
John Allen 45:49
So that’s what I was telling you. Like in the morning, we went to safety school.
Nestor Aparicio 45:52
You’re then
John Allen 45:53
we had lunch. Then we remembered
Nestor Aparicio 45:55
something.
John Allen 45:55
Then we would have lunch, and then we would walk back across the parking lot to the putt putt, and it was already like really run down because you know 100% stuff. It was like orange. There was a pub put
Nestor Aparicio 46:06
over there. See, like my kid would remember the laser tag at the mall that came in the next generation. Okay, like in the 80s and 90s, Photon was the laser tag where they would, and I think even for like my kid or younger people, the arcade was the center point for the mall after we grew a little older. Was there an arcade? Oh, Lad’s Castle was there. Absolutely. Well, I took my kid there when he was of that age. Okay. But and the McDonald’s went into the mall. That’s when it jumped the shark. You know, fast food inside the mall. But I, it’s where we went. It’s where all my friends went. It’s where we met people.
John Allen 46:44
Pixie Pizza.
Nestor Aparicio 46:45
Pixie Pizza. You remember? Wow, you’re going way back.
John Allen 46:48
So the the guy who’s from my neighborhood who started Pizza Two goes down in Ocean City, that was one of the places I’m told where he got his start. He he worked for Pixie Pizza and then he worked for Calamas Pizza, another Dundalk
Nestor Aparicio 47:02
institution.
John Allen 47:03
Yeah,
Nestor Aparicio 47:03
but there was never a Pappy’s inside East Point Mall.
John Allen 47:06
Not that I’m dude.
Nestor Aparicio 47:07
That Pappy’s picture I put up last week is the most viewed thing on my Facebook.
John Allen 47:11
Really,
Nestor Aparicio 47:12
a Pappy’s mug. They had
John Allen 47:14
locations like all over the place, and I just I’m never. You wonder what
Nestor Aparicio 47:18
when did it downfall with some of these chains that like are beloved in that way,
John Allen 47:22
right? Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know that one that was there, Oldham Street, though. I’ll never forget that that image, man. My mother and I going in there after we had a really bad storm in Baltimore, and I guess it was still kind of still raining with whatever. And we go in, and the lights are out. The power was out, and they had candles burning. And this was a three-story building, a warehouse on the corner, and the pappies was on the first floor. Well, they had pots like all over the restaurant because water was leaking through the two floors above into the the pappies, and they were still making pizza, and because it was old school, you know they had analog cash registers back then. Yeah, they didn’t have to worry about power for the for the registers or internet or any of that stuff. They could still. I don’t. They could still run their business.
Nestor Aparicio 48:14
I remember being at Pappy’s. There was one in Essex too, but I like I don’t I don’t have like memories. It’s a little before. It’s funny how these cutoffs happen, where I could say like tops or two guys, you know, to people or Hoshels or Hutzlers, things that existed or didn’t exist. White coffee pot, these iconic Baltimore pantry pride, these things that are like gone, Mercantile Bank, you know, sitting in these in the the picture. But you know, today we’re gonna take a little piece of that. We’re going East Point Mall. John Allen is here. We’re in Essex telling old stories. Pick the band. What’s going singles? What’s going on? How’s my boy Jason doing? Everybody good?
John Allen 48:47
Jason’s good. We are working on doing another record, Redemption Chronicles Two, and that’ll have some of the old material that that never put on bottom, but a bunch of new songs as well. All
Nestor Aparicio 49:00
right. So you’re working, working band. Not going on the road, no tours we know of yet. You’re not going out with the Stones.
John Allen 49:06
No, no, not this year. Gotten the call yet?
Nestor Aparicio 49:09
They’re getting younger. You know, I’ll tell you that right now. Stone Horse is great band, my friend John Allen. You can find the whole back catalog at Child’s Play and SR71 and all that good stuff. And by the way, before I go, just last thing: you being a singer in rock and roll band and a washed-up drummer that’s done doing all that and trying to sing like Steve Whiteman, the Bon Jovi thing that happened last night as we recorded this, dude. I love him, and I know you know him. I’ve interviewed him. I’ve spent some time around him. You toured with John Bon Jovi, I was going to grab you and Aaron to try to go up to New York. They did that show down at the arena that I didn’t get a chance to go to. The 500 people went to the day after. I had a couple friends who went to that show who are not like the biggest music people. They just like Bon Jovi and like bands. My one buddy and I’m going to leave him at it because he’s a sponsor. I’ll leave him alone. Bill Cole said. To me, it was nostalgic. That’s what he said to me. It wasn’t great. He thought it was nostalgic, and I thought I feel sorry for John. What’s happened to his voice and like all that? I don’t know that I want to pay to see it. And I’ve been watching the video. I almost went. I had a I had a room on Sunday night for the World Cup last week, the fifth show I was going to go to. He played Raise Your Hands that night. I would have lost my mind, but I was going to go. The amount of money, the amount of effort to go see it. I’ve seen the videos. I ran into Phil X a couple months ago with Triad. I wanted to do it, and I didn’t want to go and feel sorry for him, and I didn’t want to go and not enjoy it. I didn’t want to go and be a prick the way I was to Axl Rose because he couldn’t sing that night. They’re playing Archer Park again. It’s just thing with music and concerts. Like, I showed my wife five minutes of the Rush concert in Dallas the other night, and she didn’t like Rush. And she’s like, “That’s good. And I’m like, “That’s why I’m going in the up to see that next week. If it’s not good, I can’t spend 300 bucks on it. I can’t build around it. And Bon Jovi’s voice falling apart this week. I’m not shocked by it. It wasn’t great to begin with by any artistic measurement, and watching him try to do the things that he needed to do to sing the songs that I love, that he loves, that he can’t do anymore. I could drop an f-bomb here to say it’s effing painful. Like it’s hard to watch.
John Allen 51:18
Yeah. Well, I don’t
Nestor Aparicio 51:20
have that hard time with Robert Plant trying to do things in his range right now. That’s very appropriate. I have a hard time seeing Dylan can’t do it. People that shouldn’t be out doing it anymore, in whatever way that means. I don’t mean to be mean. I’m just saying, like you’re charging for it. I love Bon Jovi, and my heart was broken this morning. Four in the morning, I woke up and saw that it failed him last night. And Pat Monahan came up to save him. Like that’s a beautiful thing. But I don’t even know what I don’t even know what to say or make of it. But I know you love John. We both love John Bonjour. He’s big part of our lives, right?
John Allen 51:50
Yeah, yeah. And and and he’s a good dude, man. Great dude. You know. So I don’t know. I saw an interview with Sammy Hagar, and it’s it’s you know it’s it sucks. I mean, like if you’re a guitar player and you got a cold, you can still play the show, you know. And if you’re a singer and you got a cold, you know, you might have a hard time. And and if your your instrument, which is your vocal cords and and your voice, I mean, it’s tough. I mean, for me, I I pump myself so full of caffeine. You know, here’s some iced tea right now, and then, like, I send my bodies through all kinds of torsions, man. I do all the caffeine to get up, up, up, up, and then, like, I’ll take some vitamin B to give myself. You warming up real
Nestor Aparicio 52:33
good before show? Well,
John Allen 52:34
all this stuff, and then I’ll then I’ll drink some rum to kind of relax because one of the things you you know they tell you to do is you got to be relaxed when you sing. If you’re tense, then that hurts your vocal bits, right? So I do all these contortions, but that’s a throw coat tea, which tastes terrible and makes my insides do you know flips and and everything, and then and then I’ll warm up a bit, but I really don’t ever get warm until after that first or second song? You know, it’s like when I really like I try to warm up, but I don’t blow it out. You can’t
Nestor Aparicio 53:08
emulate it too. Yeah, it’s like not until
John Allen 53:09
I get up on stage and I’m really kind of belting it. I should probably do a better job at that because I never had to really warm up a lot. But if you had to play five
Nestor Aparicio 53:20
nights a week for the next eight weeks. It would really be tough while you’re getting in a van, while you’re moving around. I mean, I just and being a poor guy doing it’s one thing. Even doing it four seasons, taking Jets, whatever Russia’s doing to get to their shows at 72. Getty lost his voice, had the cancer shows too. I mean, dude, it’s it’s and I have, I can’t be mad if I go to New York on Monday night and Getty can’t make it to post, I’d rather you know you know like I can’t I can’t be upset about it. Well,
John Allen 53:48
what I was gonna say was like you know I don’t I didn’t realize like I guess now that I I am you know getting older I do have to do a better job at warming up because I never had to before and you know Father Time you know what do they say about Sure, undefeated, right? Undefeated. So it’s you know some people age you know better with with the vote. Pat Monahan you just mentioned. I saw Train last week and he was phenomenal. He sounded exactly like every record, and and his range is really high. You know the guy was unbelievable.
Nestor Aparicio 54:21
He always
John Allen 54:22
is. He always is. I mean, it’s such a great band.
Nestor Aparicio 54:25
Yeah. Well, we love music. John Allen’s here. Go listen to Stone Horses. Download the music. Take care of the local music. Support your local musicians. I know you got a friend coming in over here at Lunacy and Essex this weekend. We got traveling musicians from this area. Support them. They’re out. Shout out to Eddie Lauer, who got some good reports on his heart. Last time we were here, we’re talking about Ed. Ed’s still with us. We’re still going to strum together and do something at some point. And and also shout out to Paul Lamantia, my former guitar player, longtime who lost his father a couple weeks ago, Sammy Lamantia. I got so many friends. Alan McCallum lost his mom this week, so loved everybody out there. Take care of your parents. If you got them here this summer, and come out see some rock and roll and enjoy yourself, we’re doing the Maryland Crab Cake Tour at Costas Inn and Timonium on Thursday. I’ll have some more friends coming out. It’s all brought to you by the Maryland Lottery. John Allen gets number three because I’ve given out now three of our top prize 20,000. I just got these yesterday from Roz. These are the new Raven scratch-offs. They are available. Also, our friends at GBMC, Farm and Derma are sending us out on the road. If there’s any breaking news out of Ravens Camp, Luke’s there next week. It’s all brought to you by our friends at Coal Roofing and Gordian Energy. Get on that tech service as well. My thanks to our friends at Pizza Johns here, Terry, Kelly, everybody at the bar, Sharon taking great care of us, Brett for being great people, Danny Ornestics. Come get a cheese steak. Enjoy yourself, and by all means, I did not eat the French fries and the gravy, but you can. 684 10 6877733. Always the same number here at Pizza John’s in Nestor. Signing off. I am Nestor. He’s John. We are WNST AM 1570 Towson, Baltimore, and we never stop talking. Rock and roll in Baltimore. Positive. Stay with
