Who is your first call when you walk outside in Baltimore and see the Northern Lights? Bill Cole and Nestor discuss Bucket Lists and chasing The Northern Lights and what happens when it suddenly happens – and you can’t believe your eyes? And even the legitimacy of the pictures get questioned in the aftermath…
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Northern Lights, crab cake tour, oyster tour, solar efficiency, Orioles playoffs, bucket list, Phil Jackman, roofing weather, light pollution, ticket prices, fan loyalty, corporate sponsorship, travel plans, foodie community, Black Friday
SPEAKERS
Bill Cole, Nestor Aparicio
Nestor Aparicio 00:01
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Welcome home. We are W N, S, T Towson, Baltimore. We’re am 1570 set a spot out on your dial, right next to the 98 rockers in the WBA ellers and the the bears. The mayor of the lottery gives us these Raven scratch offs to give away. I’d love to tell you that I have the whole crab cake tour scheduled together for November, December, but I don’t I did have a great crab cake tour stop last week at Pizza John’s, where they have a great crab cake. But you don’t know that because you’re too busy getting the pepperoni pizza or you’re too busy getting the cheesesteaks or the meatball subs or the crinkle cut fries and the gravy. Luke Jones joined me for his birthday, my birthday, Leonard raskins birthday last week, all of that you will hear this week, including the Northern Lights appearing for my birthday. You would have told me, in September, what do we have a better chance of doing? The Orioles winning the World Series in October, or me seeing the Northern Lights in Towson, I would have said, well, I mean, the Orioles have haven’t won in 41 years. That’s going to happen because the Northern Lights could never happen. In Towson, all of our friends at the Liberty pier solutions have made our oyster tour a beautiful thing, as well as curio wellness, we’re celebrating 26 years. Bill Cole is going to join me now. I do not have the bill Cole Cole roofing mug because I haven’t seen Bill in like six weeks. He’s like disappeared on me here through the playoffs, but football starts and I lose you. But I have a 26th anniversary logo with the crab cake and the oyster. I just have not put it up on the Zoom yet for us to be able to have it on video, I promise by the end of the week. And here’s my problem, Bill, I don’t maybe you can speak to this now that the it’s cold out, and, you know, 30 degrees in the morning, waking up. I don’t know if that’s better or worse for roofing or for solar. Donald Trump says when the windmills are out, we don’t have any power. So when it’s a cloudy day, the solar doesn’t work, right? Idiots. Nonetheless, I gave all of October away to the Baltimore Orioles, thinking like I would be in New York and Luke and I would be eating Korean barbecue in Manhattan, and no Orioles take a face or literally the worst thing they could do, like, first 48 hours in, it was over, right? Didn’t have to get on a plane, didn’t have to go anywhere, didn’t fill their own stadium. We’ll talk about that for the next six months. But what it did for me is it like, opened October up. It’s like, get stuff done. So like, I’m getting work done. I’m planning all my crabcake tours, the oyster tours there. The website looks great. Um, then Phil Jackman died this week, so we’ve been doing a lot with Phil Jackman this week, because he really was a godfather to what we do here. So that’s where I’ve been. Where have you been? You’ve been on roofs. What’s, what’s going on with you? Bill Cole, yeah,
Bill Cole 02:32
lots of really good stuff. Uh, cold. This kind of cold is just sort of wonderful for the guys, right? Like, it’s just beautiful day after beautiful is where
Nestor Aparicio 02:42
you want to that’s good. That’s roofing. Weather is what you’re
Bill Cole 02:44
talking solar, believe it or not, like we want bright, shiny sunshine and cool temperatures. That is when it operates most efficiently. So it’s good times for that, as when
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Nestor Aparicio 02:55
it’s 120 like it is in Phoenix every day. That’s not optimal for solar. Nah. See the things I learned. I don’t know this stuff, you know?
Bill Cole 03:07
You know, I miss the Northern Lights thing, like it was, just wasn’t even on my radar at all. And I’m, I’m, I’m nerdy like that, like I do space stuff. And then the only conversation I had about that was someone telling me that it was fake news and that it wasn’t really real, and that, like, if you looked up like, who
Nestor Aparicio 03:28
is that person? Don’t, don’t name that person, but that person a they’re voting for Trump, right? Because they wouldn’t use that term, right? This is a real delineation point for me over the next few weeks, because I know who they, I know who you are that’s voting for Trump. And I sort of asked myself, hmm, what could be getting to you to vote for that guy the third time? So when I when I hear that, when I hear people just using the terms, any of the nonsense that has come about from Q Anon, or anything that emanated ever off the lips of Kelly Anne, whatever her name was, eight years ago. Who’s disappeared? Um, like, they’ve all disappeared, including, including the daughter, right? Like, what sort of Ivanka? I don’t even know. Her name her her kid owned all the slum properties here in Baltimore, right? Like, they got all their money from Saudi Arabia, and they’re just out doing their thing, but fake news that the Northern Lights could be fake news. Explain this to me, that what I saw out the window was fake. Was that? Ai? So
Bill Cole 04:32
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did you see it? I mean, yes, his opinion was like, yes, people were posting, people were posting pictures, and that there was some sort of filter, this, his some kind of filter deal with the phones. Like, not that people. It was like, intentional hanging out with who it wasn’t an intentional it was that the filters on the phones, like, just kind of made it more visible, maybe, and made it. People believe it more, but I, like I said, I completely missed it. So, okay, so
Nestor Aparicio 05:05
I told this story last week at Pizza, John’s and Essex, but I’m going to tell it to you because I do you know, I went to Spokane chasing the Northern Light six months ago. Do you remember this? Yeah, we
Bill Cole 05:15
talked about it. Yeah,
Nestor Aparicio 05:16
we did. Okay, we did talk about it. Why did I go Spokane?
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Bill Cole 05:20
By the way. Love Spokane. Spokane, beautiful.
Nestor Aparicio 05:24
Yeah. I mean, that’s why Mark few went, never, never left, right? But basketball team there, Gonzaga, the whole deal, right? So there’s a whole sports thing there too in Spokane, including Washington State and Eastern Washington and apples and just all of that stuff. Forest fires, things you don’t see. You know, incredible racism in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, which you do see here. You don’t have to go far to see that, but I would say for the Northern Lights, I never thought it possible to run out my door and see it here. So therefore, I always thought I needed to go north I believe it or not, I think if it’s a European thing, because it’s marketed more as Iceland, marketed more as Finland. There’s, there’s a place in Upper Finland, I’ve talked about this called caucus. Lawton, K, a, U K, E, S, l, a, U, T, E N. Look it up. Caulk slaughton. It is a igloo resort. It’s a mush to dogs. It’s, it’s inside the Arctic Circle, but it’s civilized. You can get a plane in and it’s, it’s Gucci. It’s not cheap. It’s not cheap. But even when you go you sleep in an igloo, and you have to stay up all night, because if it happens, what I learned is, when it happens, it’s like a rainbow, the one I had stayed about 20 minutes. It stayed from 719 I have the pictures, to 735 and then it faded. And it faded where my camera could see it, and I couldn’t, but I could see it right, like this jabroni on my show, don’t bring me. Don’t bring me. Your friends who don’t believe in science, bring them here, and I’ll get a scientist from Compton state to come over and teach them eighth grade science if they need to know that. So, um,
Bill Cole 07:12
well, he’s not, he’s not disputing the concept of it. He’s just saying that, if you look at the pictures people were posting, and there’s filters on the cameras.
Nestor Aparicio 07:26
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I had no filter on my camera. I have time. Bill, let me explain to the story.
Bill Cole 07:30
Picture. Took a picture. Dude, I took.
Nestor Aparicio 07:34
How many pictures do you want to see? Like, let’s, let’s play the game. You know, let’s, let’s play the game. Let’s play the let’s talk about this. Because I cannot believe, okay, so, so I’m going, I’m going to do this for everybody, because y’all are going to love this once I do it out on the video. So if you’re listening on the radio, go to the video. If you’re listening to the podcast, sorry, you can’t see it, you can go to my Facebook. You get my social media. Here is the story. The Northern Lights have been a thing for me. For 15 years, my wife went and did the solar eclipse in northern New Hampshire and had a celestial experience. She was like on the the Canadian border New Hampshire up north, right with her sister and her dad. And the pictures in the video she has are worthless because the experience the light didn’t the phone couldn’t capture instant darkness, instant brightness. The thing that happened six months ago the Northern Lights. People capture it all the time. It happens a lot in northern New Hampshire and Maine and Northern Quebec and different places in this continent. Happens in Alaska, one of my Dundalk friends that I grew up with moved to Alaska 25 years ago, met an Alaskan dude. She’s lived in Alaska her whole life, her adult life, so she puts them up every year too. I’ll see she got the Northern Lights and moose and stuff. That’s Alaskan, right. I went to a Tony Robbins seminar about seven years ago with my wife, and my wife paired up with a guy who lived inside the Arctic Circle in Norway, like you had, you know, group pairings for things that you do, for workshops, right? And I went to dinner with her and this guy, she’s like, I met a guy from Norway. Go to dinner. We went to we were in in West Palm Beach, went out to dinner. And I said to him, I’m like, Hey, man, you live in like upper Norway. Have you ever seen the Northern Lights? And he said to me, my friend, this would be like me asking you if you have ever seen the moon. So this began, this whole thing, my wife wants to do safari in Africa, and she will do that. I’m hoping, with the man who saved her life and her dad and her sister, they really want to do it. I had some friends. My friend John libratore laboratories restaurant was over in Africa two weeks ago, spent 18 days, saw the big five, like all that stuff, right? So I love when my friends get to do these cool things. You. John Allen’s done that. My rock star buddy has been over there with his family. I haven’t done it. So my wife’s list, you know, I would go, for sure. I mean, I would go to Africa, no problem, but I would stay home with the cat if they were doing that for a month, and I and I would love their pictures, and love that they’re doing it. I’d rather her spend the money on her sister than her than me, right? But the Northern Lights are different. And this is where my dear friend at Faith leaves, Mr. Bill. I know you’ve sat with him over a deviled egg, and he said to me, these crabs. There’s no one that farms crabs. They’re wild. You have to go catch them. And if you want to go see the big five in Africa, you can go stay at Oprah’s place. You probably stay at the Holiday Inn in Johannesburg, and drive into Kruger and see something, right? So, but the Northern Lights, you can’t just, it’s like saying, I’m gonna see a rainbow today. Okay, you know the conditions. You’re not in control of this, right? That’s what makes the Northern Lights crazier, because I said to my wife, we could spend 510, grand going to upper Finland and sit in an igloo all night and stare out and come home really disappointed. Um, because that’s possible, right? So the Spokane thing happened six months ago, because over the course of time, science has gotten better with this, right? There is a thing called N O A, A, don’t do it now, but you can do it later, N, O, A, A, and just put Northern Lights forecast up.
Bill Cole 11:25
I’ve already, yeah, I’m up in there. I’m on Okay,
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Nestor Aparicio 11:27
so it pops off right, and it’s really light green, but when it gets red, it means things are happening, right? It’s, it looks like a weather map, right? So back in March, when the big one happened, and people in Florida, friends of mine in St Petersburg, had pictures of the Northern Lights. People all over the South because it it, it appeared, and it appeared in Maryland, people in Frederick, people in in Deep Creek Lake, got a show. Like out in the western part, got a show. The next morning, I woke up and it was a story. It was on people’s timelines. People my friend in Minnesota, saw it, you know? People saw it, right? Jen’s sister saw it in New Hampshire. Didn’t see it in New Hampshire because it was cloudy. That’s another thing. Cloudy eclipses, forget it. Cloudy. Northern Lights can’t have it. You can’t have it with clouds. It doesn’t happen. So you have to be somewhere where it’s clear, in addition to the phenomenon actually happening, right? So back in the spring, whatever night that was, I’ll go back. I woke up in the morning and the forecast was for a g5 after a g4 so the forecasting was tonight, it’s going to happen again. And I found this out at 11 in the morning, and by one o’clock, I used 50,000 southwest points. My wife and I jumped on a plane at three o’clock, flew to Denver that day like literally, she came home from the store, and I said, pack a bag. We’re going to Spokane. Let’s go chase the Northern Lights tonight. Be romantic, this place called loon lake. So we landed in Spokane at 930 and we went to loon lake up all night, rental car. Beautiful. I mean, it’s beautiful. It was romantic. It was we had a Dairy Queen. It was nice. It was Spokane, and nothing happened. We stared out the window until five in the morning, and we were really tired, little frustrated, but, you know, drove back, got a nap in, woke up at 10 in the morning, spent a few hours in Spokane and then flew home at four o’clock and got home at midnight. So we, like, did an in and out, didn’t see anything but Spokane. And we’d already been to Spokane, which kind of sucked, uh, probably should have flown somewhere else, but somewhere I’ve never been. But Spokane is the northernmost point that is a city in the United States, latitude, longitude, the northern further north in Portland, Maine, further further north in Seattle. It’s, it’s north, right? It’s really, it’s Canadian. North Spokane is so we thought that was our shot. It didn’t happen. We laugh about it five months later, one day, I’ll see it BILL Right. One day we’ll go right. And the one day for me, having done it, I don’t know that I’d fly to Iceland. I don’t know that I would. I probably be more inclined to go to Quebec or go north on this continent, where I don’t have to spend two grand to get there and then a grand and not you like I, I’m not going to invest 20 grand in seeing the Northern Lights and then not see it because I realize, unlike we already saw it, yes, but this is before last Thursday, right? Okay, so I’m just trying to give you a funny because Lena Raskin financial advisor and I said to him, you know, much money I saved seeing the Northern Lights, but I want to give you, okay, you take That’s funny.
Bill Cole 14:33
That’s funny. So how reliable is the forecast 30 minutes.
Nestor Aparicio 14:40
So okay, so what, what, what the science is, and
Bill Cole 14:44
8can they future predict, or can they future like Beyond Today, like a month or a year, or whatever?
Nestor Aparicio 14:50
No, no, no, they just know it’s more active, and it’s like a like a volcano. Once it gets more active, it gets to the point where you know it’s going to be. Once it starts to build up, you can see they have signs. It’s the sun. It’s Sun storms, right? It’s geomagnetic energy coming out of the sun, right? That creates this phenomenon. I’ve done a whole lot more research on it since I failed and trying to figure out, much like you doing roofing and solar. I mean, your grandfather would say solar. Like, what’s that, right? Like, so you’d have to, like, get into this and figure this out. The last six months, I’ve done a little bit, and I’m not scientific. I’m not I mean, I had George Schulen all my science, I would have failed eighth grade biology. I mean, like, I’m not, I understand what I own a radio station. Don’t really know how it works. If you had a gun to my head and said, How does em radio work? How’s that tower thing send out things into the car and and then you hear Nestor and Phil Jackson,
15:46
I don’t magic, yeah,
Nestor Aparicio 15:48
I don’t know how CDs work, where I put a CD in the machine, and I don’t really know. I really don’t know. And CDs are gone, and I don’t know how they work, so I just trust the science, which your friend might want to do on the northern lights that I actually saw. So what happened was, last Thursday, Phil Jackman died. That’s first thing happened in the morning. I was pretty morose. My wife told his family, like Nestor, not handling this real well, and I’m not handling it real well. What
8Bill Cole 16:17
time are your pictures from?
16:19
Like I’m looking to show them to you.
Bill Cole 16:20
I’m looking at I’m going to give you evidence.
Nestor Aparicio 16:23
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I’m going to give you evidence. So at 230 in the afternoon, something showed up on my timeline that said there’s a Northern Lights thing happening. Aurora borealis thing happening tonight, at 233 o’clock, Thursday. Okay, so that would have been Thursday the 10th, right? Is that the right 10th? Yeah, I think so, on Thursday the 10th of October, at approximately 2:43pm um, I found out, and I I have a few Northern Lights friends, um, Wendy Braun fine from curio wellness, loved my Spokane story, the romanticism of it. Six months ago, I told her the thing that really helped. And this is where I can, I can do a plug for them. They have this great product. Have you heard of cannabis? Bill? This is a product called move. And this is like, I call it Bengay, or absorbing Junior, to look this thing saved my, literally, my back. And I’m gonna put some on right now, because my back’s a little tight, um, and my ass in flying to Spokane and sitting in a car all night, right? Like all that sitting is not the best thing for my my l4 so when you put that
Bill Cole 17:30
on, when you put that on, is this conversation going to get weird in about five minutes? Or no,
Nestor Aparicio 17:35
this is not, no, this is not, see you, don’t you gotta, like, oh, well, this is the problem with your job. Is to education. You have Donald Trump out telling people when the sun goes behind the cloud, your so your solar panels don’t work, which is so anyway, you could put this on without getting high. You can use most of the products in the store without getting high. So nonetheless, but it’s fun to be high, and it’s fun to watch a Northern Lights high too. I didn’t have time for all that, because it happened too quick. So last Thursday, at 233 o’clock, I start seeing that tonight could be a night. And I said to Jen, I’m like wine flying to Spokane a I don’t have any points left. Um. And I said to her, what effort do you think we should put into this? And I said, Well, we should at least drive west to Frederick, you know, we should go somewhere where there’s no light, and if we’re going to do it, and she got giddy about it, she’s like, we should do this. We should go for a ride. We flew all the way to Spokane. It’ll cost no money, Royal farms. We’ll put some drinks in, you know, in the cooler, get some water. We’ll go out and sit somewhere on a farm. It’ll be nice. We’ll take your CD, we’ll take your iPod, we’ll have our music. Take a nap. We’ll take pillows. It’s our car. One of us can sleep in the back seat. And I’m thinking, I got pizza John’s on Friday. I had a show pizza John’s on Friday. I’m like, I’m gonna be upside down, but, but from a planning standpoint, I had nothing going on Thursday. And I’m like, I’m in, I’m in, I will do something now we at Google Maps up like, where are we going to go? Where are we going to go? Where the northern exposure has no light everywhere in 83 you have York, you have Harrisburg. Get away from 83 you go west toward Frederick. You’re going to have Frederick. But if you go No, I said to her, here’s where we’re going to go. Nine o’clock tonight, we’re going to drive out past Westminster toward Emmetsburg, tawny town. There’s nothing north of there. We’ll find a shallow area with low trees, and we’ll we’ll park. There’s no lakes out there. She was looking at like pretty boy liberty, like things like that. Okay, so this is at four, 435, o’clock. Baseball was on. Baseball games were on. The early game was on. I had a yoga class at 730 that I take most Thursdays. I had taken a Wednesday class. I was a little sore. Baseball was on. We made something interesting for dinner, I think so we were like hanging out and 530 Eight, she takes a nap because of the evening I’m watching baseball. 630 she comes out. She’s taking a nap while we’re watching baseball, half in, half out. 645 seven o’clock, and I put up a status that said I’m driving to Deep Creek Lake. Who’s going with me? Who’s going, who’s going and people were like, This is the big one. There’s a guy named Chuck cook. I don’t know Chuck. He’s a fan. Put up. This is the big one. This is the one. This get out of your house. This is the one. This is the one at 622 635, he puts this up on my thing. It’s dark out. But I don’t realize it’s dark, because it doesn’t get dark at 630 in my mind, right? Because we right, we haven’t. Changed clocks yet and all that, so I’m like, it’s not dark enough at 637 o’clock. At 715 Jen and I, she had a cooler out, like we were plotting about a nine o’clock because we thought it’s not gonna happen before nine o’clock. We’re gonna drive past Westminster, that was the plan at 727, 15, someone on my Facebook, bear, B, E, A, R, probably not their real name. We’re Zoll. I don’t even know who this human is. Wasn’t a friend. This was somebody that wanted to be my friend, but I couldn’t friend them, because Facebook’s that way. Put a picture up of a pink blob and said, This is Towson right now. Go outside. I put my shoes on. I didn’t even have a jacket on. I grabbed my phone, literally from where I’m standing. And I went outside and Bill, I’m going to share my whole reel with you, okay? And we can have, I’m going to let it all play, and you can tell me if it’s real or not. Okay? So this is, these are my photos. I think you can see here. It says Hampton, October 10, 720, 3:28pm, this is picture 439, this was the first picture I took. Can you see that? Yeah, you see the stars coverage. This is due north. You see the purple and the pink. And I’m like, Oh, my God, it’s the Northern Lights. Now I’m trying to get a video of it, and I there’s a plane going overhead, and the lighting isn’t pick picking up what I’m doing. And I think I said, Oh, ish. I said, Oh, my God. Now this is a 27 second video, and I think I’m yelling, holy ish in it, probably it goes away on the light, is what I’m saying. So I can see it, but the camera couldn’t see it because the camera setting wasn’t right on it. So then I got my camera to where it would adjust to what my eyes were seeing, and it was more beautiful in the camera than what my eyes are seeing. I’m not going to lie, but I didn’t, dude, this is at 724, 28 I don’t have any time to look at filters, right?
Bill Cole 23:10
No, I get it, but that, that is, fundamentally the discussion that I had, is that all these pictures that have some kind of enhancement that occurred, whether intentional or not just from the cameras, make it pop so much more significant than when they take, like, a video that doesn’t have the filters on, you know, whether that’s real or not real, whatever, it doesn’t really matter, right? Like you’re telling me, this was an amazing experience for you, I will forever be, you know, mad at myself that I’m just stuck under a rock sometimes and don’t know what’s going on in the world because I choose not to participate on Facebook. I guess, like, I guess it’s a consequence. But like, that was, that was fundamentally the issue was that in the videos, it’s, yes, there’s something occurring. It’s slightly reddish, whatever. No, no, no, this. And then you see the pictures, like the picture, and it’s like, holy crap. It’s just so much more.
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Nestor Aparicio 24:12
So my wife moved away from the light, and when she moved away from the light, it got more green. You see, this is her picture, that that’s her picture. If the light that your eyes see, it would be like, I look at the stars in her picture, see how many more stars are in her picture. And she got the greens because she moved down the hill. And the one thing we went out, we were like our neighbors had two porch lights on. My one neighbor had one porch light. My other neighbor had one porch light. Those porch lights greatly affected our pictures. If those lights were off, the pictures would have been look, look like they came from Norway. And so it really is a light pollution issue. You that if you’re in Baltimore and you didn’t think it looked great, since you’re in a city and there’s light everywhere, yeah, so if you were somewhere in Tawny town, looking north, and the neighbors didn’t have their floodlights on or street lights on, it is a phenomenon made for darkness, right? Like the darker it is, the better it’s going to look. That’s a fundamental proposition. But dude, it was, it was unbelievable. It was it we came in and we’re looking at the pictures in the videos, and it’s over. And here’s the weird thing, we’re like, it’s gonna happen again. So they said in three hours it would it would return, and at 1030 it returned, and I was asleep. I I slept. I put my phone on and told people, if you see it, ring my phone like, I put that out loud, like, call my phone. I will wake up. I’ll run out. If you see it, it happened again at 1030 and I can’t speak to that. The pictures were much more faint at 1030 even in Ocean City, even in other places. The second one was, was still would have been amazing to see it. But how about this, dude? You ready for this when I’m out in the field, if this happened to you, would you call me? Let’s see what kind of friend you are at 730 7:30pm if this happened, would you call me? If you were out driving with your kids in the car and you saw the freaking Northern Lights, and you really saw it like you saw it, I would take pictures. Do you pull over? Do you tell it? What do you do when you see it? Because I had not been prepared for this. I was not prepared for bear wear Zell to put a little pinch streak out me to grab my underwear in the middle of the baseball game and run out and see it and say the thing I said was holy. That’s exactly what I said out loud. My wife’s like, you’re being really loud. I’m like, there’s nobody out here. Holy lights, you’re seeing this so believable. And I’m yelling to no one. So what I did was I took five pictures and one video to prove it, and the next thing I thought, and this speaks to my love of my Son. I called my son, I rang him from outside, and he’s like, Hey, Dad, what’s up? And I’m like, go outside. Go outside. The Northern Lights are outside right now. Go outside right now. Bye, and I hung up, and then I started videoing again, right and taping it. And Jen and I didn’t get into it. You know, people dance in front of the Northern Lights like that’s a thing when you go and do it. Family picture. We thought, and this speaks to my ignorance, that it would happen again. We thought we’d be outside again later in the night and have a it’s only 730 it’ll get better. No, it won’t, right? You know you got one chance. Opportunity comes once in a lifetime, right? So I took these pictures, and the first thing I did is I text Wendy, who loves the Northern Lights. She was hearing Mr. Rubenstein speak. She was at that Greater Baltimore committee Downtown Partnership thing where the protesters, climate change protesters, came in in the middle of the Northern Lights and protested. But nobody there saw it. None of the people that were there, they’re in a room. They couldn’t see it. I was supposed to be on a yoga mat. So I’m telling you I was going to, I was, would have been 100% on a yoga mat at 726, I called my son. My son ran outside and saw it. Took pictures of it from Dundalk. So my son has picture. He has a selfie with him and his wife. It’s not, it’s it’s more the pink thing than bear saw, but it’s similar lights. And so my son saw it. So there, so there’s my long winded way of telling you that, like I did something last week while you were gone, and that
Bill Cole 28:40
you, you know that it was a legitimate Northern Lights in Maryland occurrence. You’re validating, but you can I was challenging that. Um, yeah, you
Nestor Aparicio 28:52
think it didn’t happen, or you that? No, I
Bill Cole 28:54
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don’t I. I mean, at 730 I think I was sitting at my desk in my office working like so it probably happened, and I just had no idea it is, you know, uniquely bizarre. You asked me what I would do. I think you’re the neurons in your brain fire pretty insanely at that point, like you’re saying, I, you know you’re you’re assessing what’s streaming.
Nestor Aparicio 29:22
I I’m getting a little like, it’s so beautiful that your eyes will water. Yeah, your eyes will water. I mean, you like it, especially if you think that you’re like, is this really it would be like, the Orioles win in the World Series. It’d be like, Is this really happening? You’d see them dancing at Camden Yards. There’d be that moment, and you’d say, this, is this really happening? Is
Bill Cole 29:42
it’s different from that, from the standpoint of there is, whether you want to say there’s five months of anticipation to that winning of the World Series, or you just call it seven days, seven games, you know, like, what? There’s some, there’s nine innings of anticipation, and you know it’s coming. This is shooting star esque, like, random, like, yeah, there was a little bit of warning. But because you have so much knowledge around it, because you’ve chased it before, you know that maybe it’s not like the percentage of winning the lottery, but it’s somewhere in that neighborhood because clouds, whatever. Oh, there’s all these reasons that it just doesn’t happen. So I think we react differently, like I would, I would as uncomfortable as this might, you know, be hokey or goofy, like true love, right for your son, is why it occurred to you to call him, because really, all the neurons were, like firing in your brain. It’s such a well,
Nestor Aparicio 30:55
I mean, maybe that speaks to whether you’re really selfish or whether you’re sure, right? Like that speaks to narcissism and deep, deep stuff to say, when I’m somewhere doing something amazing, who would I want to share it with? Right?
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Bill Cole 31:10
Even, even more, like you didn’t show me pictures with you in it. You know what I mean? Like you were enjoying the moment for the for the sake of the moment. I don’t know that my children will even understand that concept, because everything is about sort of like this proof of life. Let me share like, if I’m not in a picture, if I’m not in a selfie picture, that it may not have actually happened, right?
Nestor Aparicio 31:38
This. This is my picture at 736 so now we’re going on a good 1213, minutes, right? Like that. We were out there doing this, right? And I shot, you know, I shot a couple of minutes of video of it, because I thought the video would be the evidence, right? This is my son’s picture from Barry. You can see this at 739 I got this in my reel. This is what it looked like in Dundalk from,
Bill Cole 32:04
you know, there’s like, massive light pollution for him.
Nestor Aparicio 32:10
8
Oh yeah, you can see the lights in it,
Bill Cole 32:14
the ability for it to even be visible. So this is
Nestor Aparicio 32:16
what his picture was. And then there’s his selfie right over Mr. Frank, literally over his left shoulders were Shonda Schilling grew up, literally right right there. So these are my pictures, and you can see the radio station towers. And this is my reel. This is, this is, so I shot, you know, a good minute and a half of video. And you can see the differences as down here at the bottom, these are my wife’s pictures in the green, as to how it it, it sparkles and it changes light, it, it looks like the end of times, right? It looks like, well, it might be God’s coming, right? You know, do we?
Bill Cole 32:55
Do we have any historical writings from people that this occurred prior? Revolution.
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Nestor Aparicio 33:01
I don’t know. I don’t I don’t know how they were documented prior to the there’s probably biblical documentation of it, not knowing what it is.
Bill Cole 33:09
Yeah, I just would love to make sure of that, like maybe these only started happening after World War. Dude, how would you explain a
Nestor Aparicio 33:16
rainbow to a child? How would you explain a rainbow to a child when they happen.
Bill Cole 33:22
8
It’s kind of right, why or when,
Nestor Aparicio 33:25
but like the first time you ever saw a rainbow, and then it disappears quickly, and how you see it, and where you are when you see it, and how the clouds are and how bright it is, and whether it’s a double or not, whether it’s a full or not. Like if you’ve ever seen a full double rainbow somewhere, it’s if you’ve never seen one, it’s the first time you’ve ever seen one, you would think somebody’s playing a game, right? Like, because it’s so majestic, it’s outrageously majestic, right? Like, a beautiful sunsets that way.
Bill Cole 33:53
Oh, I think I was in my 40s before I saw, like, a full one. You know what I mean? Like it, like it just and that’s probably not true, but it’s the first, first time I like no, you can make it. That’s the first time I like
Nestor Aparicio 34:07
joking coffee, right? I acknowledged seeing
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Bill Cole 34:10
a full one. Good news, the Northern Lights are not a unintentional consequence of dropping atomic bombs on Japan. The earliest reference, according to the Google, is like 679, to 655, BC Assyrian astronomers. So they’ve been talking about it for a long time.
Nestor Aparicio 34:37
But of all the things you can chase, including hurricanes that happen every year if you’re a hurricane chaser, tornadoes that happen a ton, right? Like, if you’re one of those chasers of things, and the power of a torna, the people that Chase tornadoes are crazy, right? I mean, Twister chasers and all that. People are getting the planes in the middle of hurricane Helene and like all of that stuff. So this is one of those phenomenons in the world that, I mean, I’m not going to chase volcanoes, I’m not chasing forest fires. I’ve seen one of those. It’s unbelievable. But this is one of those things. It’s like crabbing with Mr. Bill at the fadelies, where you can’t plan it. You have to go do it. You can’t harvest it. You can’t grow it. You can’t just say I’m going to Iceland to see the Northern Lights? No, you’re not. You’re going to Iceland. You might see the Northern Lights, right? Bill Cole is here. He is called roofing Gordian energy. We didn’t know where this is how you been Orioles. You got anything for me? I mean, you didn’t go to the playoff games. Obviously, you and I went back and forth on the empty seat. There’s a whole SEC segment we’re going to be doing about how they’re going to grow this off season, and how they’re going to make noise this offseason. And what typically happens happens that the Ravens have started to play and started to play well, and the Orioles have kind of gone away, and some people are watching the Mets and the Yankees, but not Dodgers, but not everybody. And baseball takes a little nap for a while, especially like you were. You didn’t follow it to begin with. Your kids aren’t into it, and I really, I question how they’re going to get back into the space here in the off season.
Bill Cole 36:10
So how many postseason losses in a row? Is
36:14
8
it 10?
Bill Cole 36:15
Right? I mean, that’s like, that’s pretty disturbing.
Nestor Aparicio 36:25
I can’t blame Katie Griggs or David Rubenstein for Zach Britton. You know, I mean, like it was 10 years ago.
Bill Cole 36:31
I’m just saying like, baseball is this wonderful sport that, for whatever reason, maybe because traditional gameplay is somewhat boring. There’s all this statistical superstition and that. Like, like, there’s
8
Nestor Aparicio 36:48
a lot of time spent with that, a lot of squeeze and not a lot of juice. Is literally right.
Bill Cole 36:53
Baseball loves their superstitions and their curses and all that. And like, how man
Nestor Aparicio 37:01
the curse of Angelo, write a book?
Bill Cole 37:05
8
I just know that, like, nobody bought a row and like they were, I mean, this year you could, you can, kind of, like, understand, you know, I mean, the team that got you there wasn’t really the team in the end. So you know that that’s different than last year, where last year was like, What the heck just happened? Well,
Nestor Aparicio 37:25
I can tell you about 12 and Marques and 14 and like, we can go through all of that, but I mean, to me, that’s like talking about Brady Anderson and Cal Ripken at this point, and Jeffrey Mayer The thing that Luke said. And this is Luke saying it, so I take it a lot more seriously than anything. I would say we were together pizza, John’s, and he said, I have my my dear friend, John Keller on. You can listen to that and watch that out here and be a part of it. Looks like they haven’t won anything, like they haven’t won anything, and won anything they want a playoff game, and they’re raising ticket prices, and they have nuke this, and they’re they sent out a a price increase in August as a first act of their new ownership. That pissed off everybody, and they took away rewards, like Southwest did to me. Um, they took away rewards, and fans are pissed, and then two playoff games where they were scalped, Bill, I haven’t had you on so i Man, it’s been a while. So Bill Cole’s here from cole roofing and Gordian energy. He puts roofs on commercial spaces, takes care of people with solar and humors me. He is sometimes my my psychotherapist. In this case, I’m good. My head’s good right now, but it’s been a while. It’s been like a month since we got together. So lots happened with baseball and losing and the playoff games and all that 10,000 empty seats, all the things that happen the night of the first playoff loss. Well, I guess was Tuesday or Wednesday, whatever day that was, I went to dinner at the Beaumont with my wife in Catonsville, and we went over there. 730 was when the game ended. The other game was going to be coming on. There were games all day. It was, it was wild card stuff, right? So we went over to Beaumont. We sat down at the bar, and everybody at the bar. It’s a small bar, 1012, seats. Everybody there had been at the game, and I didn’t engage with anybody. They’re wearing oral gear and whatnot. But we listened to them. We couldn’t sit at the bar. We had a table so we could hear everybody at the bar, and they got into this long conversation of how much money they paid for their tickets. I’m a cease ticket holder. I paid 125, I paid 100 bucks. Oh, really. I got them this morning. I paid 18,
39:33
right?
Nestor Aparicio 39:36
Yeah. And these are the people that were the most loyal, that had been with the team from Rio Ruiz that paid for five years of 120 losses that bankrolled it, all that did all of that. They they got their renewals for playoffs, and they paid full price, and everyone else could have got in for 15 bucks. So and is
8Bill Cole 39:56
the is the strategy? Yeah. The like television deal, like, if you find, I don’t think if you find this television, or maybe TV was a bad example, because I might have confused you there where I was going, is if you buy your ticket for $125 but day of game, people are buying tickets in your section for $18 we’re going to refund your account the difference, and it goes as credits towards future tickets.
Nestor Aparicio 40:29
They’re, they’re not, they’re not that benevolent, right? But do that how they got about that
Bill Cole 40:33
isn’t that interesting, well, but isn’t that interesting? Like a way of level setting or a way of, at least putting price guarantees around your season tickets, they’re
Nestor Aparicio 40:44
8
gonna have to do something for every Birdland member throw $200 worth of free sodas into their account or something, because people are pissed, right? And there aren’t that many of them, Bill, there aren’t that many people that give the ores money. I haven’t given him a nickel in 20 years, and you haven’t read my dear David Rubenstein letter, I would encourage you and everyone else. Even if you hate my guts, there’s some real good, interesting, um, because Phil Jackman died this week, I’ve had to think a lot about what I’m writing, because Phil hated my show. Phil love me, but hated nasty Nestor. And, you know, wasn’t always humored by my shtick in that way, because he was a straight up, you know, more more, he was 87 years old when he died last week. So he was a different era, different place, a different mindset, a different conservativism than I have in a lot of ways, but though he was a Democrat, but I would say this, he whenever I was with him as an adult, took him dying for me to realize that this week, and it took a lot of tears on my part and finding a lot of tape. He always was caustic and challenging and tough on me, not as a journalist, but as a friend, because he like, why are you thinking about it that way? Okay, let me. Let me tell you what I think and why I think that way. And he really wanted to change the way I thought about things, the way I wrote about things, the way I evaluated business, the way I evaluated decisions in sports, why a coach would go with a player or not, but above and beyond that, why a team would sign a player or not. And Phil always had a sense of the business side of all of that from when the bullets left. He would always say to me, you know, yeah, first thing they do, they build a stadium, and they just think they’re going to have a 35,000 base of fans, and they’re not, you know, partial game holders. And you know, that’s when tickets mattered. Phil would always talk to me about that, that stuff, you know. And that was the basis of how teams exist or not. Phil would be like people ask me why the bullets left. You see that building down there? They making my money, you know. And that was in 1973 and that was before, or say, and that was before Edward Bennet Williams and Camden Yards, and where the money’s coming from. And that’s why, when I’m the guy say I’m not anti Mr. Rubenstein or Katie Griggs. Katie Griggs has now been charged to run that team, to go out into this community. She knows no one here. I and she’s as corporate as corporate machines right out of the corporate Dartmouth school. She’ll never speak to me. I can’t imagine she’ll ever have a quiet two hour. Tell me what you know, because I still think it’s allowed. I don’t, I don’t think any of that’s going to be allowed. This is so corporately run, and now she’s going to go out to coal roofing and everybody at accelerant and everybody we know, and ask for hundreds of 1000s of dollars for skyboxes, for tickets, because getting eight grand from you for season tickets or me, that’s not even enough to that doesn’t buy the toilet paper in the clubhouse. They need real are you watching the Yankees? Are you watching the Dodgers? You saw three out of the four teams spent $300 million on payroll. The Orioles haven’t spent 80 million in a decade. So where is the money coming from? If it’s Mr. Rubenstein’s benevolence and him and Mr. Big pants araghetti, if they’re gonna throw 200 million a year at this for five years, throw a billion at it, because we’re giving them 600 million through the stadium, and they think like there’s money here, but there are not rich people here. There are lacrosse fans here. There’s a lot of African Americans here who’ve never been to a baseball game. Because I watch baseball I look at Yankee Stadium. It’s all white people. Just look at it. Look at it tonight, tomorrow night, anywhere. And I’m thinking to myself, you’ve lost 10 playoff games in a row. You’ve tried to raise ticket prices. The people that paid $100 didn’t get their value out of it. You offered them for 10 and nobody came on a Wednesday afternoon, nobody came right. So she now has to go out on the street and and clap and make enthusiasm for this baseball team when the football team is running ads trying to sell tickets. To the football team can’t sell its tickets. I’m, well, you know, I I’m just speaking out loud as a informed, concerned Baltimore sports fan as to what do the Orioles have to sell the next six months? Months. That’s different. You know, you saw the press release that came out Tuesday. Right? John Angelos no longer works here. John angelos, we did retain him for a short period of John Angelos is no longer here. They issued a press release on that Tuesday, so they read my letter last week, even though you ever read it yet, but 10,000 people have read it. But like I the time, it’s go time Bill, right? I mean, it like, if you’re the baseball team and you’re there working every day in this off season, it’s go time, they have to do some things.
Bill Cole 45:55
I think it’s very interesting that there’s a, you know, like the ecosystem or the web, however you want to think about it, right? So they don’t seem interested in a plumbing contractor, right? Buying a sign or whatever, like they they need big companies and big money and everything that all the costs are so high, but then it’s sort of that I don’t know, uh, cycle of death, like the death cycle where there aren’t these companies in bulk. Like, how many? Like, we’ve had this conversation before, right? Like, where are all the companies that are going to buy all the sky boxes? Are they in Baltimore? Are they in DC? You know, that’s why LA and New York and all this stuff. That’s why they can afford that. You look, if you
Nestor Aparicio 46:59
read the Peter principles, 2002 is when it fell apart, because all of the original sky boxes were 10 year deals at Camden Yards, they were 10 year deals. And in 2002 Peter had owned it eight and a half years. By then he had wrecked it. I mean, we’re talking Davey Johnson, John Miller, Albert Bell by 2002 the Ravens have won a Super Bowl and had existed, and had had their own 200 sky boxes that they sold into like and then Peter had to go 25, 30 million a year into his kitty to buy Jeff Conine and to buy lower shelf David sege. That’s what really happened here, and it’s never been fixed. It’s been 23 years since the or and now they have a baseball team in DC that took Northrop Grumman and took all of the DC money into their sky boxes, and they had a parade. Welcome to town. Katie Griggs, nice to meet
Bill Cole 47:56
you. I’m Nestor. Have to to participate in baseball, because there is no salary cap, you have to have an ecosystem right in your city that provides the income streams that are needed to support you know, maybe you can be smarter than everybody else and only spend 150 million in payroll and compete. But I don’t know. Man, I that’s a problem. But that’s to me, that’s not the core problem, the fact that there are $15 playoff tickets and there’s empty seats. That has nothing to do with corporate sponsorship, or, you know, like that has
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Nestor Aparicio 48:50
to do with the literal ecosystem of the city. To say you didn’t have 10,000 people on a Wednesday that wanted to go down there and spend 15 bucks to see your biggest game of the year,
49:01
right?
Nestor Aparicio 49:02
Like, and,
Bill Cole 49:04
8and what is that? Why? What
Nestor Aparicio 49:05
is why is that? And what is that? And I wrote a letter to that you can go now read, uh, Bill Cole is here, Cole roofing and Gordon energy. How have you been? I mean, it’s been busy time for you. I mean, I, I yeah, we’re full. We’re dear friends, and I haven’t seen you in a month. So, I mean, coming
Bill Cole 49:18
on the fall, just everything ramps up, right? It’s like you’ve got this little three month sprint to the end of the year and the holidays, and everybody goes in hibernation during the summertime, vacations, whatever, and then September hits, and it’s this never ending sprint until about Thanksgiving, and then everybody goes and hides again. So it’s how much can you squeeze in during that time period? And that’s, that’s how it’s been. You know, weather was really hard. First part of the year, we had a lot of weather. It’s been really nice. So we’ve been working really hard, work when
Nestor Aparicio 49:53
the weather’s nice, right? Right? Like, yeah, I, I have, for the first time in my life, I have no. Lights booked. I have no vacation plans. My wife has a little vacation plan with her sister, because they they like going to do with things together. I’m with the cat, and I’m putting the crab cake tour together. We have the oyster tour brought to you by Liberty, pure solutions and curio wellness, and I’m doing like a dozen crab cake tours the rest of the year. Get now we have an election coming up in a couple of weeks. I’ve lined everybody to vote and vote responsibly. I am being ducked by Larry Hogan and Angela also Brooks. She is canceled on me twice. Larry Hogan’s people wanted to get on. Wanted to get on. They want you. Part of me I haven’t heard from Wes Moore in two years, so, but all that being said, you know, Johnny Oh, stopped by a couple weeks ago. He’s running for things. We got people running for things. I see Kim classic signs all over the place. So it is an election season, and that’ll be over in three weeks. But for me, I am. I’ve never been more our tech services back. Brought to you by Cole roofing. I don’t know if you knew that or not. Did
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Bill Cole 50:54
you know about I saw a few of them. I’ve seen a few of those. Yeah. So to
Nestor Aparicio 50:57
6000 other people. So we’ve, we’ve got the tech service backup. So I’ve been working on work, and to be really honest with you, and this goes back to this, beginning of this conversation, the Northern Lights were my number one thing. And when it came time to like Mike Rosenfeld, our, our, our buddy, on Saturday of last week, sent me a selfie in front of Royal Albert Hall, seeing David Gilmore in London and Royal Albert Hall is on my bucket list, the Hollywood Bowl. I’ve never been to the Hollywood Bowl on my bucket list, and I’m trying to between now and Christmas, put the new bucket list together. I turned 57 this week because the Northern Lights was problem.
Bill Cole 51:37
That was number one. Like you gotta have a new number one.
Nestor Aparicio 51:41
8
What am I doing now? Like, literally, what do I do? I came in tears in my eyes with Jen, and we, like, at 745 we’re watching the baseball game, looking through our pictures, and we’re like, I guess we’re not driving to Westminster tonight, you know. Like, like, what do we do now? Like, there goes my trip to Finland. There goes my Quebec trip. There goes the reason to go to Alaska for me. Now, I would go to Alaska, probably on a cruise or something like that, later in life, when I’m really old and broken down, but like, while I’m vibrant again, I’m like, Alright, maybe Thailand and Vietnam are next. You know, maybe I need to get back to Tokyo. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m a traveler, and I’m a little bit like Johnny Cash. I’ve been everywhere, so I I’m just chilling
Bill Cole 52:27
work. The amusing, like, hard part to comprehend, is it bucket list, right? I mean, the whole implication is like, these are the things I need to do before I kicked the bucket, right? And here you are experiencing the number one item, and in true form of a bucket list. After that, you walk back in the house you’re supposed to say to your wife, Alright, I’m ready to die. Now, that’s exactly
Nestor Aparicio 52:56
what I said. And you’re like, that’s exactly what I said, right? But now exactly, I looked at my pictures before we even sat down. I said, I guess I can die now. I’m like, I literally said. I said, I think I’m I have been made whole. I have been made whole, right? Here we are. Had something to do with it, but that’s
Bill Cole 53:15
here we are a week later, and you’re saying, maybe not. Like, I don’t think I want to die yet, like, I just need to come up with a new number one, because now I’m still unsatisfied, and I still want to see more, and I still want to take more. And, I mean, that’s wonderful, right? That’s, that’s the amazing, I don’t know I get. I got to spend some time in Nashville a couple weeks ago. And Nashville is a wonderfully interesting place,
8
Nestor Aparicio 53:42
not growing up a little bit, hadn’t it? I mean, yeah, that’s
Bill Cole 53:45
like, not, not, I wasn’t there to just hang out on Broadway the whole time. So, you know, I got some behind the scenes and education stuff. And, you know, there’s just so there’s so much work to be done that pushes our civic pride buttons, you know, like they that’s, that’s where it is a lot for me these days. And, you know, making sure that the 150 families that work here, you know, like they can still provide for their families. And then how can I get 150 to 200 because we’re doing meaningful stuff for our people here in, you know, our area, so Well, I’m
Nestor Aparicio 54:25
saying this, we become a foodie community. My buddy, yeah, John Keller came in from Arkansas. He’s a foodie guy. He’s with me on the Pizza John show with Luke and childhood friend. And yeah, he likes traveling. He’s in the foodie Instagram world. And you know, he goes places. He goes Chicago for a weekend. He’s considers himself a foodie. He goes and eats. And so am I? I mean, when I go places, I eat food. People come to me for recommendations, because I’ve been everywhere, and I love good food, right? He, he swear, and I wouldn’t feel this in Baltimore being here, but he’s like, Dude, you have no idea. Like, people put Baltimore on their list, like, if they go to DC or. Earlier in New York, they’ll stop in Baltimore, because this crab cake thing that they talk about on the football games and like, that’s a real thing. And and Marcella would tell you that, and fadelies would tell you that. And Nick and Pete overcases would say, we have people every day that come right from the airport to our place because they heard about our crab cake, or our classes, or it’s a little thing that they can only get here. You can only get like, when you get off the plane in Austin, you go get barbecue. It’s what you do, you know. So my man, Bill Cole, is here. He does roofs. He does solar. We don’t get together in the real world, please. So I’m gonna do the show that molar told me not to do. I’m gonna do a Black Friday crab cake tour show because everybody’s bored that day. So I want to build you in on that. Because you were the you were the unwitting guests. You and Barry Glassman were the unwitting guests couple years ago. So I’m going to do a Black Friday show. So I want to get you in on that, so it’s like a holiday celebration for us. That’d be fun. All right, my wife makes really good cranberry sauce too. So I’ll bring some leftovers. We made some big vat of crab soup last week with Leonard raskins, leftover crabs. Oh, my God, I’m still eating crab super out here. And you know what it has in it? Okra, which means you won’t eat it. And every time my wife you pooped on her soup and so that lima beans, it’s delicious. Yes, does
Bill Cole 56:16
8
ebony? Does it have any chunks of beef? No,
Nestor Aparicio 56:18
no, no, it had, it had little, little pieces of bacon that flavored the the bacon. There’s
Bill Cole 56:27
no bacon in crab soup. What are you kidding me? You
Nestor Aparicio 56:30
grew up in the wrong neighborhood. He is Bill Cole. He is Cole roofing. He is still wrong. I am right or wrong. I am Nestor. We are wnsta of 1570 Towson, Baltimore. And I’ve always wanted to say this to you, no soup for you. No soup for you. I’m getting it all Baltimore. Paws.
