Max Weiss and Ron Cassie of Baltimore Magazine return to the Maryland Crab Cake Tour at Koco’s Pub with a long-form chat about the reinvention of “Nasty Nestor” as well as their “magazine” brand and their annual selection, soiree and salute to the “Best of Baltimore” businesses, ideas and what makes the Charm City go and evolve.

Baltimore Magazine recognized Nestor for his recent “reinvention” award and used the conversation to explain how Best of Baltimore is selected and what the publication aims to celebrate.

Why Chosen

• Ron said the selection came from year-round tracking of strong local media and community work, and that Nestor’s interviews and ability to connect people across Baltimore made him stand out.
• Max said editors keep notes throughout the year and build the issue around notable Baltimore people, places, and experiences rather than insider favoritism.

Shared Mission

• Max and Ron described the magazine as a long-running Baltimore institution focused on celebrating the city’s culture, diversity, and civic energy in print and through the Best of Baltimore party.
• They said Nestor’s show fits that mission because it brings together residents, artists, nonprofit leaders, and elected officials without treating status as a barrier.
• Open question: How can Baltimore better overcome negative outside perceptions and get more people to experience the city directly?

• Produce and air a 28-week series of ‘favorite music memory’ stories on the radio show over the next 14 weeks leading up to the 28th anniversary. (@Nestor Aparicio)
• Ensure that Nestor receives a Best of Baltimore award plaque by following up at the magazine’s desk after returning from the event.

Best of Baltimore Recognition

• Nestor discussed receiving a recent Best of Baltimore award for reinvention.
• Ron and Max explained that the recognition reflected the quality of his interviews and his role in connecting people across Baltimore.

Selection Process

• Ron said he keeps a running list throughout the year of strong work in media and related storytelling.
• Max said editors track candidates all year and shape categories and winners around what best represents the city’s standout people and places.
• Both emphasized avoiding favoritism toward friends or familiar figures.

Baltimore Magazine Mission

• Max described the magazine as a civic institution and argued that print still matters because it offers a tangible, trusted record.
• She said the publication’s mission is to celebrate Baltimore and encourage support through readership and advertising.

Baltimore Identity and Community

• The discussion broadened into Baltimore’s diversity, cultural richness, and the value of bringing different communities together.
• Ron and Max said both the magazine and Nestor’s show help counter negative stereotypes by highlighting people, neighborhoods, arts, and civic work.
• They noted that the Best of Baltimore party reflected a wide cross-section of the city rather than a narrow social scene.

Nestor Aparicio 0:00
Welcome, all. We are WNST AM 1570 Town, Baltimore. Baltimore positive. We are positively in one of my favorite places. Anytime I get to wear my floral shirt and have best of Baltimore bestowed upon me by people I genuinely like and respect, it’s going to be a good day here. It’s all brought to you by friends at the Barrel Lottery. I will have scratch-offs for Ravens. I don’t know if it’s gonna be good luck, bad luck. I don’t want to talk to Luke about that later on. We’ll figure that all out. We were at Koco’s Pub, another Best of Baltimore winner. I did take the picture right, right at the door, right in the front door. When you win Best of Baltimore, it’s not the biggest award. They have other things, but like it’s a big award. It’s right at the front door. Come see them at Koco’s. Also, our friends at GBMC and Farnin and Derver put us out doing this crazy thing that we do. And Ron, good to see you. Everything good. Orioles, maybe, maybe not. Max, good to see you. Hello. I saw you both at the the best of. And this is this is my photo op. I won. I really want. You love me. You like me. I don’t know. Um, you guys do a nice party, and and I wanted to get you out before you get the next magazine out. Right. I mean, Moller was here to be ripping out the little mailer things in there and help people fill it out. So best of all, am I late to the party on best of all, or is it still okay? No, we just

Max Weiss 1:15
put it online, so it’s it’s great, and you can access it online. Probably harder to find in stores because we’ve moved on to the September issue, but you can read it online and read all about Nestor winning. I’m on

Nestor Aparicio 1:31
page 54. I don’t even know. I don’t even. Do

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Max Weiss 1:33
you want to hear my theory? Okay.

Nestor Aparicio 1:37
Hold on. You are the editor in chief of Baltimore Magazine. Ron

Max Weiss 1:42
is the senior editor. Senior

Nestor Aparicio 1:43
editor of Baltimore Magazine. I I knew when I won, and I’m gonna. I got a text in the after. He tell you like I I’m friends with the Baltimore band of Chris Forma, and he had won the APSE Award, Associated Press Sports Editor. Which when I was a young man, I was the one that filled out all the applications, did all the cutting and pasting for Ken Rosenthal’s story on Teddy Murray or something like that. So he won. I feel like, hey, congratulations on your winning this big award. I know what this award represents, and he wrote me back with congrats on your award. And I’m like, what are you talking about, dude? You know, you’re kidding me, right? And he sent me a picture of it, and he had gotten the magazine. I guess had just come out, so I had a news. I had a journalist telling me. So like, it was an incredible source, you know, that moment.

Ron Cassie 2:35
Let me just say that’s the problem for the magazine more bigger than than maybe the thing. What are they? This movie for the Walter Banner Jewel to Prime Minister, and I said there that she’s winning awards. Their teams, story on transportation. I said it’s not like winning being a finalist for a few months. She’s like, oh my God, I will hear from way more people about the best of Baltimore award than I ever will

Nestor Aparicio 3:02
hear. you’re about to hear a couple from me in this segment. I’ll tell you that right now. Not to cache locally.

Max Weiss 3:07
Okay, here’s my theory.

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Nestor Aparicio 3:08
Go ahead, give me your theory. You

Max Weiss 3:12
kind of wish you had not won a best double because your favorite thing to do is complain about the fact that you have not won a Best of Award. You read my social. So the fact that you-I don’t know what I’m going to do today. I don’t know how to handle this. This is like when the Red Sox won the World Series. Your entire identity isn’t being a loser. Is in being a loser. And now that you’re a winner, you’re like, who am I? You’re having an existential crisis. I feel.

Nestor Aparicio 3:40
Well, I brought my bag of stuff here. I’m glad that you brought this up. I’m glad you brought this because I brought my. This is my best of Baltimore award from 1997. It was on my wall in the radio station for many many years. I still have my party ticket here. This was not the party where your buddy from BAL said something very funny. Uncle Ali, Uncle Albernaz beat me up. So I won the war 29 years ago, and I won. Look at that kid. Look, look at that good-looking kid. My name is Neighborhood, right in the middle of Stadium, Ron, for you, right? That’s how I was so proud of that that I took the cover of the magazine out, and I won City Paper, which you were City Paper 96, right? No,

Max Weiss 4:30
I was already at Baltimore.

Nestor Aparicio 4:32
So I have to kiss your ass for giving me this too.

Speaker 1 4:33
That’s right. Ah,

Nestor Aparicio 4:34
jeez, I don’t want to. I didn’t want to. I don’t want to do any of that. He was not there yet. No, you weren’t there. He has nothing to do. So you know, I’m going through the pipe

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Max Weiss 4:41
mess. This is

Nestor Aparicio 4:42
my. Did you have anything to do? It was a city paper 2000. It was all long gone. They called me best. I would

Max Weiss 4:50
have done everything in my power to convince them not to give

Nestor Aparicio 4:53
you. Ron Reed from 1997. What was I in 1997? What was I best of up here? Ready

Ron Cassie 4:59
to talk show hosts. Sports, nasty Nestor aparicio’s W L G A M. I will say, I didn’t have stations. Like Nestor, I was working my way through Towson at the time, and I would hear you like not in my class one up there. Pretty good, wasn’t I? I was best of Baltimore.

Nestor Aparicio 5:13
Pretty good. Goes, you

Ron Cassie 5:14
know what I mean? Yes.

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Nestor Aparicio 5:16
So this was before the station. I didn’t have a station or any of that. This was I. I had the station and lost the station, and I was on this crappy station, and I won sports free. Sports free.

Max Weiss 5:29
Okay, how do you feel about that? Good.

Nestor Aparicio 5:31
I don’t know. I’m just saying these are the things you gave me an award. What what was my award? It was I was reinvented, correct?

Max Weiss 5:38
That’s right. Fast reinvented. Reinvented,

Nestor Aparicio 5:40
right?

Max Weiss 5:41
Right,

Nestor Aparicio 5:41
and then from a freak

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Max Weiss 5:42
to a respectable member of society.

Nestor Aparicio 5:46
This here was in 2003. City paper. Yeah, I won best local radio, TV, sports freak. Okay, sports freak. That

Max Weiss 5:55
stuff. The the freak. I don’t know,

Nestor Aparicio 5:57
dude. But I’m I’m looking in here.

Ron Cassie 5:59
The

Nestor Aparicio 5:59
idiom. I I. hold on, hold on, hold on, Baltimore, best of Baltimore. My wife will be very disappointed to hear this, but she knows this. December 2001, I was one of Baltimore’s hot saints.

Max Weiss 6:13
You were. Now I probably wasn’t in that.

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Nestor Aparicio 6:17
See, you forgot how hot I was now that I’ve been married for 23 years, but I I was um let’s see I’m between Chris McAllister was one of them Chris McAllister yes Debbie let’s see here me what did I look like then Graham from WHFS Bonnie Downing I love you Bonnie how are you heard from her this week who else doing her Amy Hammond. I did not know her. Joel Katai knew him a little bit. Andrew, I swear I’m in here somewhere. Hold on, did I pass the page? Maybe I wasn’t really a hot single that year. But there I am, right there. I’m with Chris McAllister. So, so there I am. I was a hot single, right? Nasty Radio, Sun, Fast Times, The Fonds, YouTube, Jimmy Buffett, Celebrity Dream Date, Kerry Russell. You appreciate that, sure.

Max Weiss 7:03
Great

Nestor Aparicio 7:04
taste. So I’m just going through my BMag accomplishes, but nothing made me prouder, and nothing I heard more about. And it might have been before you got there. This is ’96. When did you get there? ’96.

Max Weiss 7:14
Probably about nine years. Why was

Nestor Aparicio 7:16
he broousing and not doing the world? Because I’ve been here 35 years, and I’m on every year. It’s been 29 years since I’ve won. 29 years. All right. All right. Now,

Speaker 1 7:28
don’t be a freak about

Speaker 2 7:29
it. See what

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Speaker 1 7:30
I said there? Don’t be a freak. Okay.

Nestor Aparicio 7:33
I’m trying to figure out why you picked me. So anyway, I was in this magazine here, right next to Miss Marilyn. As have you ever seen this spread?

Speaker 1 7:43
I love that.

Nestor Aparicio 7:44
This was this was my Baltimore Magazine come coming of age. You look like

Max Weiss 7:49
Mike Mussina in that picture.

Nestor Aparicio 7:51
Okay,

Max Weiss 7:52
right?

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Nestor Aparicio 7:53
I tapped this picture above Burks in a studio, and the guy actually cut out the N A S T Y T. cut it out and put it on a mirror, reverse backwards, and I had to look at the mirror like this to not. And now AI would just do this in like 10 seconds.

Max Weiss 8:16
That looks really good, and I never realized that you look like Mike Christina, but you definitely do in that situation.

Nestor Aparicio 8:21
And this thing went through how I was never going to win Best of Baltimore, and then I won five. And who wrote the Did I read that? Doesn’t know.

Max Weiss 8:26
I mean, I do not remember Jim

Nestor Aparicio 8:28
Duffy.

Max Weiss 8:28
Jim Duffy, the man, the man, the myth,

Nestor Aparicio 8:31
the legend. Yeah. All right.

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Max Weiss 8:33
Okay.

Nestor Aparicio 8:33
What? When you do Best of Baltimore, I don’t know what got

Ron Cassie 8:38
you.

Nestor Aparicio 8:38
That’s all I got. 35 years, I show five items, and I’ve reinvented myself. I guess that’s my point: is that like at some point you all put these things together and decide like categories, things. It’s always been creative in regard to categories and things that you do. Give me the genesis of your because you’re recreating this every year. I don’t. I’m very happy. I won it. I kid him, whatever. But I am shocked that like when I heard, I’m like, that’s really nice to be acknowledged. So I am appreciative of that. But you guys go out of your way to try to not just acknowledge people like me, you know, but like give good advice to people in Baltimore and say these are the things that are really cool about Baltimore. That’s what BMAG’s about. I think.

Max Weiss 9:23
Yeah, I mean, the fact that we have been on this show and we know you is almost to your detriment. I know because we will go out of our way. I came out wrong, but you know what I mean. We will go out of our way to not acknowledge our friends, our family, stuff like that because we don’t want to make it seem like a little shady. But the truth is, what you were doing here was too good to ignore, right? Broadcasting. Did

Nestor Aparicio 9:49
you guys work this out together?

Ron Cassie 9:52
No, no. No, I. I have to say that the best of Max knows the whole issue and the history of it. She can talk in like all the different categories and how it’s. As far as the news and media, I mean, I keep a running list throughout the years of stories, of podcasts, of films I’ve seen, of everything that just looks, you know, like really high quality, the highest quality type work, and then kind of try to sort it out again, and still go through all the awards, the Emmys, and the EP awards in Maryland, Delaware, DC Press-they try to really do a whole, but it’s all year long. It’s a shrinking

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Nestor Aparicio 10:26
medium. Try

Ron Cassie 10:27
to well, it’s not with film and documentaries and podcasts. Podcast essentially, but it used to be about

Nestor Aparicio 10:32
Jerry Turner and Albernaz. You know, used to be easier. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just a broadcast

Ron Cassie 10:37
TV and print journalism, but so it’s a home running thing, and you know I think you know I did realize honestly during the year there was a couple stories I think one was the Frank Rosaline story where I listened to your interview with Dan Roderick’s and I was so I know there’s just the one with Chris Van Hollen. So there was a couple times throughout the year I’m listening to because I’m doing a story related to somebody who talked about coverage. So in part of my research, I’m uncovering some folks who’ve talked with. And when I have been a guest on the show, you’ve introduced me to a wide range of interesting folks. You know, the sea can be here in a little while. Yeah, I mean some other folks who actually led the stories, like him. Why

Nestor Aparicio 11:19
she live here? I go neighborhood to neighborhood and collect people, and sometimes I phone the poor people behind us at the table, and sometimes I make new friends at the bar. But like, I love the city, man, and like I love the fact that you have roots at at City Paper and here and there, and I have the Sun roots and the BAL thing, and I’ve I was out with her last year, and she’s like, “Oh, Al and I go to movies, you know, like no. And then we watch the movie together. And so when I won the award, I thought same thing too. I’m like, “Oh man, they’re gonna say this is fixed, and it probably kind of is, which makes it even, I guess, funnier to me to some degree. But I am flattered beyond belief that you hate that highly.

Ron Cassie 12:00
You bring people together who don’t know each other. You make me cry. Don’t don’t do it. Don’t do that. Don’t do that. You had people on Chris Wheel, right? Oh sure, yeah. Well, you know Chris is mr. Baltimore.

Nestor Aparicio 12:24
He does the tourism thing.

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Ron Cassie 12:26
Chris, director of the play, was there as well. And then you know Anne Mannix showed up, who I know, and so it

Nestor Aparicio 12:33
was like he blew my mind into art knowledge. By the way, do you know what she knows about art? I did not. Wow! Go over to BMA with him and just hang out with like Amex. John Shield shows up. I got to get back over to go through to the show there, and and I got to get her on. You on my, I had an art class in high school. Joyce Gucci, you can look this up on the plaza. She had a band called Beyond Words that you know love as Love Ride. Oh, right. They’re back

Max Weiss 13:01
together, apparently. Right,

Nestor Aparicio 13:02
Lisa, who’s been here doing the show, and Michael Kell, who were milkshake if you had kids of that age, right? All that. I’ve known them since I was the news critic at the at the News American in 1985 because Joyce was my art teacher in 10th grade. She also created the logo for Child’s Play, Don Allen’s Band and Nestor, because she taught us both at Dundalk High School, and her husband George was the bass player in Gina Shock’s original punk rock band in Dundalk. So we’re talking like so. Joyce comes out. Joyce knows Ann extremely well and knows art. So like I want to do like an art far show where I bring people that you know way more about art, including you, because you sort of brought it to life to me. Like, how can you know this much about the guy and the punchulism? You know, I mean, I remember what I was taught in 1984, but like you’re Von Devon. That’s what I say about you. I would give you some sort of weird award if I gave you

Max Weiss 13:57
Renaissance man.

Nestor Aparicio 13:58
Renaissance man is what I said. Did I say? I mean that. That’s probably what I said. The

Ron Cassie 14:03
only thing I’ll say this is after this came out. I used your podcast with John Allen for the mall clothing, which was great, right? Which happens this

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Nestor Aparicio 14:13
week. You’re going to make me cry, man. I I’ve been emotional lately about a lot of things. I won Best of Baltimore for reinvention, right? So that was it, and you guys did a lot of different categories about how do you how do you put this together, Max? I mean, honestly, I feel a month late on the BMag thing and having my fun with you, breaking out all this stuff that I had in the bag that means a lot to me. But I’m hanging this up. I’m going to brag about this for a year, and anybody that wins brags. But like, as much as we joke about the fix being in and me giving you a hard time, you really have killed my shit. I mean, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t bust your chops anymore about this. But it is, it is a thing. It’s a go-to for me to say when you say “Les Maison by Cafe Dear Little

Max Weiss 14:55
Man. I’ve stood lying down around the

Nestor Aparicio 14:57
square, and I’ve gotten a little like so. I like hearing of new places, old places, and that’s one of the things I love promoting.

Max Weiss 15:03
So you know what I always say is like this issue does not sneak up on us. We do it every single year, so we’re saving the spring all year. You know we have files, we’re keeping notes, we’re making making mental notes like this could win, and then people who sort of cover a particular beat, generally speaking, are the ones who edit the individual sections, and then you know we’re just basically saying this is the cool stuff that was in Baltimore this year. Like we love Baltimore, we love celebrating Baltimore. That’s one of our missions, basically, and we want to make sure everybody else knows about the cool stuff. It’s like the opposite of gatekeeping, which is what I put in my little intro. Like we don’t date this stuff. We shout it from the roof. We want you to know about Sandy Point Donuts, which was featured in the TV show Pluribus, by the way. Which oh, you don’t do pop culture, but Pluribus. I only do a lot of here. Yeah. So Pluribus, one of the great shows. Vince Gilligan. Vince Gilligan. Right, racy horn. So, so he’s part of a

Nestor Aparicio 16:04
Renaissance man. He’s got to be my barometer. He just, he just. If he hasn’t heard of it, I’ll prove it a bit. Fleurus.

Max Weiss 16:09
Everybody listening has heard of Fluribus. And he told

Nestor Aparicio 16:11
me about Pete Alonso before anybody. Really?

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Nestor Aparicio 16:14
What, mr. Met? mr.

Max Weiss 16:16
Mette. Yeah. Well, we we were talking about Pete Alonso. Let’s. It could just be a big love fest. Anyway, so so that’s what this is. Check it in. You got

Nestor Aparicio 16:23
all the good stuff. It’s all the good stuff. We’ve been

Max Weiss 16:25
saving string all year on it, and we’re just happy to share it. And then you know the party that you went to is such a wonderful celebration in Baltimore. I mean, it fits right into your wheelhouse. What you do, that really was hot. You did okay.

Nestor Aparicio 16:38
It’s hot though, man. It was hot. It’s always all good. It’s always hot.

Max Weiss 16:42
I know, and and that new Raven space is like indoor outdoor town. Yeah, the town, yeah. It’s and everybody was just hovering indoor. That’s where the air conditioner was. We were all like packed into the AC. I was like this. The VIP area was empty. Everybody was in the AC, but no. But it was a really fun party. I’m

Nestor Aparicio 17:03
on VIP too. Yeah, sweat like everybody out there.

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Max Weiss 17:06
Right, even VIPs sweat.

Nestor Aparicio 17:08
We had a great time, and it was like great people. Look, I went to that party all the years I didn’t. Right. How many days am I going to get into you guys? You know. Well, this is the interesting thing for the reinvention thing. Lick it, take it back.

Max Weiss 17:25
Correction. Correction. The August issue, we missed. We dare.

Nestor Aparicio 17:30
We dared. Polder magazine regrets. Apologize for the air. I’m trying to keep a straight face, and I’m trying to like lure you in on this reinvention thing because I think it’s a fascinating thing that you think I collect the best people, kind of story, best of best people collector is kind of like what I’m taking out of it, and I think from my heart of hearts, like, like, and I don’t want to get too Sally Field here, but say you sort of see me in that way, and I do this in the same way. Where I did my 27 favorite places to eat. By the way, today in my belly, last day for my number one item, and the reason it’s number one, Eclipse number two. The coconut shrimp up here was top 10 as well. It’s peach cake. You take it away. You only get 60 days of it. Tomorrow it’s gone, so I made it number one. So I am the same way, like where John Harbaugh would say comparisons to death, jewelry, whatever. Like I’m comparing stuff, crab cakes, scrap soups, this, that, neighborhoods, experiences, all of that. But like my favorite thing in life is pub, and this show’s turned into like, if you’re on my show. You like me enough to want to come over and have something to promote, or something to say, or some joy to bring me, or I have it to bring to you. And once I master AI, what I’m going to do is create an AI comedic avatar where I get to be funny and get to be the jerk I always wanted to be, but without having to be because making people smile. And was that

Max Weiss 19:00
your transition into AI? I know people smile

Nestor Aparicio 19:03
and like bringing people together. It’s sort of what your magazine does, man. It’s what Koco’s does at the bar. It’s the glue that makes us human after having masks on to say like, what am I going to do for shtick now that Nasty Nestor’s over and all that? It’s like, want to do this crab cake tour, and I know Marcella and Iron Kof is that I’m gonna put and one day the governor’s gonna come and he might be black he might be white he might be Republican he might be Democratic and they all do right and I I’ve loved this part of my life because of the people I’ve got to bring together because it’s a greatest six of people every time I do a show I mean Dave Shine is coming next for six coming next so like I got great people coming by, but this is what this is. It’s saying there are great people in this city doing amazing things. Go support them. Go check them out. It’s a very democratic show as well because you will bring in you know your buddy that you know from the neighborhood, and then you’ll bring in Chris Van Hollen, and you don’t make any distinction.

Max Weiss 20:00
Between the two of them, and that is a very Baltimore sort of approach. You know, there’s just a sort of democratic approach to conversation and who your guests are. You’re never going to be like, “Oh no, you’re not famous enough or big enough to be my guest. Well, people like people

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Nestor Aparicio 20:14
don’t come on. People don’t come on. Don’t give me a chance to like them. Right? I mean, you know what I mean. Like, all right. So

Max Weiss 20:20
who has said no that you want to have on this?

Nestor Aparicio 20:23
Oh man, you know, like there’s too many here.

Max Weiss 20:25
Okay, because it’ll

Nestor Aparicio 20:26
it’ll sound like a hate list. You know, everybody with the orals, everybody three, just start there. So let’s go down. So, but just I’m talking Republican, Democrat. I’m talking about people that don’t want to talk to me about whatever their key issue would be, politically or not, socially or not, I think that’s a shock because I think we got to get together. And you know, can we talk talk about it? All that and AM radio became such a sort of a wasteland for bad things in a lot of ways. And I just felt like when my wife got sick, this whole thing started. My wife got sick, and I had bad things going on 12 years ago this week, and I said, you know, I need to just like put something on the air that I want to be a part of, something that’s worth my time to create, and I think that that’s what I think. And you guys have been a huge-I mean, you and I-I found pictures you and me and Alan together, and you and me and John Hodie. Like you guys have been a part of the show and making it fun. So I do feel like

Max Weiss 21:24
oh Alan Alan McCall. I love Alan McCallum, but did you know Alan Frell also? Because that was my that was my mentor, my radio. No, he

Nestor Aparicio 21:34
said the funniest, nastiest thing to me. That was he said it to me at the best of Baltimore party. It was in the parking lot at the Bohager’s Bo Dome, like you know what I mean. It was outdoor. You remember that? Yeah. So I, I think I won. I mean, it might have been this year. Was it? I think I had won because I had like a. You gave us like a fun badge to wear or whatever, and and I never. I didn’t even know what. Do you know who Albert is or was? Yeah. You were here at that meeting. Where’d you kind of call it? You’ve been ’90s, right? No, I came in like ’86, ’87. But I was Kevin Barr then. Okay, so Alan Prell was very famous, probably kind of fun. A servant? Would you call it a servant? I

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Speaker 1 22:13
don’t know. To me, Alan Crowell had a vaudevillian audience about him. Yes, he was a sort of old-fashioned style funny guy. He said

Nestor Aparicio 22:25
the funniest thing to me ever on that. Don’t say one thing to me as well, and it was so funny and mean. I was 28 or 29. I’m nasty Nestor. I did not have hair down here. I had kind of blonde in my hair, whatever. And and I’m at the party, and he came up to me, and he had his badge said, you know, and I’m like, and I think I was like, hey, you’re Uncle Ally, Uncle Ally, I’m Nestor Apisou. He says, oh, I’ve heard you’re a real a-kle, and he walked away. That sounds like

Max Weiss 23:00
Uncle Ally.

Nestor Aparicio 23:01
You said that the last time I called you.

Max Weiss 23:02
Probably joking, like he had that kind of a certain sense of humor, you know. And if you couldn’t hang with that kind of joke, if you were going to be delicate and offended by that, mr. Jersey, so you absolutely could have come with Uncle Lally. That is somebody using that now. Yeah, icebreaker. It was

Nestor Aparicio 23:23
definitely broke my eyes for sure. Max Weiss is here. Ron Cassie’s here. They have bestowed upon me best of designation. Do I get like a plaque or something, or I just get the VIP tickets? What do I get? They get a two tickets to the show, anything like that. Should have

Max Weiss 23:39
gotten a plaque. You know what? Did you ever give his email to the powers that made him? Okay, well you got a ticket. You absolutely. So

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Nestor Aparicio 23:48
listen, 29 years later, when I wear the next.

Max Weiss 23:51
Yeah, no, no, no. We’ll get you. Why am I on reading by myself? This is the real reason he has his arm because he hasn’t gotten his plaque and he wants it. And by the way, that is going to be taken care of when I get back to you know my desk. I

Nestor Aparicio 24:03
want to talk more about you picked me in this sort of weird category. What are some other things that you picked that you that might not be as mainstream as let’s say you honor Jerry Sandusky right next to me? Yeah, people. Thanks to Tom Marty, obviously, right? Tom Hall.

Ron Cassie 24:18
A bunch of people were stepping down this year. You know that. I mean, a little bit. What you do is like what Tom Hall and I think is beloved, and I think Mark Stiles and the guy from Laptop. It’s kind of around the show. You know, it’s kind of a time people tune in and have something to talk about together. If you run into somebody, you did the show. I went to YPR. If you ever knew Missy get a website? I think that’s next kind of loss. Now maybe the next host of the day is probably or I think it is a loss not to have that kind of you know thing that we’re all kind of listening to and talking about, and it is one of those new forms of fabric and blue for a city. You know, I.

Nestor Aparicio 25:00
Me out when the Bay shut down two weeks ago. I picked my wife up in the airport last night. She’s out of town two weeks with her family. Since she’s been gone, the Bay went away. And like on our preset, she pushed number 219. rocks don’t be out. I’m number six. I’m only number two with my cat. But she pushed number two, and I’ve already reset it to the rock station up in Andover, Pennsylvania. That I lose like sort of like anywhere south of like the Beltway. I mean, you make a right turn on Harford Road, it’s gone. No,

Ron Cassie 25:32
it’s 25.

Nestor Aparicio 25:35
You gotta get this.

8

Ron Cassie 25:36
Yeah, you can get it from Eastern Baltimore County. Definitely once you get over the Bay Bridge,

Nestor Aparicio 25:41
man, I own a radio station, so like I did. The high school

Ron Cassie 25:44
kids are-it’s the strongest high school station in the state, one of the strongest in the country.

Max Weiss 25:48
Signal once?

Ron Cassie 25:49
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and it’s-I believe

Nestor Aparicio 25:51
in radio. They have classes and

Ron Cassie 25:54
everything, and then they have a song of shows at night and the weekends, and they do a lot of plastic rock because that that music’s available for sale, not right. They can’t necessarily put on Taylor Swift, right? Right. Plus a lot of money. Right. They can get a lot of classic kind of stuff. So you get a lot of. When I drive to my brothers in South Jersey, when I have to buy the water off a ticket, it’ll get me from like TMD to like XPS. Yeah, I appreciate you’re not talking serious

8

Nestor Aparicio 26:20
XM or any of that, right? Because people, John Allen, my dear friend, he’s got a Tesla. There’s no AM in the in the car. They’ve taken it away. So thank God for podcast. Thank God for you guys. I mean, you still print this now. Your policy. When I was bragging about all this, people are like, “Oh, I don’t want to see it. And I took a picture of it and I put it up and I goofed around in my chiropractor’s office, stock director Steve, I saw it for the first time. I got to hold it up the next day. How

Max Weiss 26:46
about this beautiful cover? My wife

Nestor Aparicio 26:47
went, but my wife went to the store to buy it and couldn’t get it right away. Yeah, and then we got it. But you put this online the month after, right?

Max Weiss 26:54
Yeah.

Nestor Aparicio 26:54
All right, the cover. I want to talk about. Designed

Max Weiss 26:56
by our wonderful creative director Amanda White Heistly, and

Nestor Aparicio 27:01
that is egg costume.

8

Speaker 1 27:02
Isn’t it beautiful? Yes, that is

Ron Cassie 27:04
on top of the snowball.

Max Weiss 27:04
The snowball. I am

Ron Cassie 27:06
not. I’m just a snowball for you. You are. I’m not a. Brilliant.

Max Weiss 27:10
You don’t like the marshmallow. I’m

Nestor Aparicio 27:11
anti marshmallow. You’re

Speaker 1 27:13
anti marshmallow.

8

Ron Cassie 27:14
Antis don’t cap.

Speaker 1 27:15
I’m sitting between two men who are anti marshmallow.

Nestor Aparicio 27:18
I’m a snow cap guy. I like that condensed mouth on top, mom.

Max Weiss 27:21
Okay, that’s that’s why the marshmallow is like the reason you get the snowballs, in my opinion. I like them. Sorry, but they

Nestor Aparicio 27:29
from around here. Even though you know you guys, you guys were not born. You’re not like the Baltimore. But I don’t like the Marty Basses and the people here, and you all. Once you were 40 years, you’re kind of here. I mean, I’ll even say that about Garcia. But for all of you who came here and made a life here to continue with books about this, and you spent your life’s energy just exploring Baltimore moment after moment with this this magazine every month in mind to say that was really good. They deserve attention. They deserve to be lauded in some way. You’re one of the few places, other than like mr. Polls or whatever. But like your thing carries weight. I don’t know about. I don’t know of any other. I mean, it’s on the front door here. I got a bag full of stuff that I. It’s it’s meant so much to me. 29 years later, I’m still carrying around? You always

Max Weiss 28:22
carry it around, or was that just for today? Been

Nestor Aparicio 28:24
in my truck since ’97. Where the hell you been?

8

Max Weiss 28:26
No, but I mean, we our motto is a great city deserves a great city magazine, and we really, we really do believe that. And you know, you’re right because it is printed. Because this

Speaker 1 28:38
magazine was created in 1907.

Max Weiss 28:41
You know, because you can hold it in your hands, it’s an

Speaker 1 28:44
institution.

Max Weiss 28:45
I literally think of the magazine as an institution in the same way the BSO is, the BMA is, the Baltimore Orioles. To me, it’s like we are, you know, we are the guardians of this institution while we’re here, and we hopefully will take good care of it, and then we’ll hopefully hand it off to the next generation of editors and writers. Like that is our our fondest deal, you know. So you know, we think magazines in this in this age of AI everything and digital everything, and you don’t know what’s real. This is real, you know, and it’s also like beautiful, beautiful to look at and read. So you know, we always encourage people to support it by subscribing, because you should be proud of this magazine. And then you know, we we want people to advertise in the magazine as well, because that’s what keeps the lights on.

Nestor Aparicio 29:35
Ron, if you anyone ask, because I’m going to change the subject, but keep going. You you you have it. People quiet down there. He says, “Amen. You fight down. You you’re always you’re overwhelmed when she’s on the show, aren’t you?

Ron Cassie 29:47
No, I’m just giving given. This is really Max’s baby. I do a part of it, you know. And I did a feature story on Erica Bridgeford, founder of the Baltimore Peace. Okay. Also, I will say on air because I’ll probably put this on social media later. New York Times has been in the area of the story this week. The Wall Street Journal, CBC News, about Wall Street reduction and homicide, right? Praising the mayor, praising Ivan Beaf.

8

Nestor Aparicio 30:07
Let’s talk about it on the third year. Yes,

Ron Cassie 30:09
deservedly, city state attorney, praising safe streets. But Erica and the Walton Breakers have been seeing change in the city for more than a decade. For a decade now, they’re really cultural, boots on the ground, grassroots change, and so we get a feature on. So essentially, it’s a same homage to one of the most special people you will ever meet in your life. To me, oh yeah, she did on the show, right? Oh, you should. Yeah, you should. She’s she is, and I don’t mean this lightly. See, here’s where I’m speaking the best of

Nestor Aparicio 30:58
Baltimore award to you because you say to me that I bring people, good people, together, and then you’re telling me who your good people are? That’s that’s the get that’s that’s it right there. That’s that’s where that’s where you find somebody in my world to go to a movie. I find a great guest on the show. We create a message. We find somebody that wants to support their organization, the good stuff that they’re doing. Because I feel like the city’s getting better. I would sit in front of anybody, and I would say you can defecate upon it inside, outside. I’m not. People do it in front of me every day. I was down in Eastern Shore two weeks ago. I walked up to the guy who’s doing the Chesapeake once you see from Maryland. You see this this guy? You see this guy? He’s got one of his bunkies with him, and I went up to him. It reminded me of a character like Sergeant J. W. Pepper in the James Bond movies, as an example, and when I’m told, I’m like, “Hey, my name’s Nestor Albernizo. I’m from Baltimore. I’m sorry to hear that. And I’m like,

Max Weiss 31:54
“How dare you? Hi,

Nestor Aparicio 31:56
nice to see you too. You know, what’s what’s the next thing? What do I say to someone when that’s what literally that’s what he said to me? I’m sitting in a pool at a tourism event at Mako, 30 feet from the ocean, and I’m thinking I like the Eastern Shore too, dude. But you don’t have to, you know, defecate upon Baltimore, and certainly is not going to make a fan of me, of you, of what you’re. Have you been there lately, or you know, do do you spread shit about Baltimore everywhere? This is where I am, right? No, I’m just saying, like it’s not for me. I don’t.

Max Weiss 32:30
We confront that. We see it a lot, obviously.

Nestor Aparicio 32:32
And I and you know, for any of us, you do best of all, which is nothing good about ball. Like I, dude, I shut that down immediately, and I think for people that are trying to shed a light on that, it’s good people. I got Adam Bates on the show. You know what I mean? Like, like it’s people talking about the issues and with solutions instead of criticism, especially unfounded criticism, right?

8

Ron Cassie 32:55
Yeah, and you said I biked here, and I think my downloaded transportation because you get to get the second type of bike, chat, see something, explore, right? It’s a second, you run away at one time, get to all these different meals without this big 2,000-pound piece of a propeller. How long

Nestor Aparicio 33:13
take you to bike here? Work out there, by the way. 30 minutes. Okay. All right.

Ron Cassie 33:17
Nice ride. Pass. Click the parking here. What’s going on? These unbelievable. you see boots when you see it because I’m riding my bike by it, so that’s great. I, you know, I think you know I don’t get. I love Southern Maryland, since you’re in Western Maryland. Western Mary, especially Pennsylvania, and people occasionally say stuff. I mean, whatever. I mean, I I grew up, you know, in Albernaz, like much like Dundalk, which would have been 1981 when I graduated, right? And to come to Baltimore and to live here and to be surrounded by all the diversity and culture and opportunities and art and people from all different walks of life, right? It’s been extraordinary for me. An extraordinary experience for me. Still is all these years later. That if I had stayed in Allentown, I wouldn’t have had, you know, the authors, the painters, the family, the school teachers, the social workers, all the food, the diversity, all of it would not have had, you know. So I think people want to say

Nestor Aparicio 34:24
you’ve lived a richer life because you came. Well, of course. I mean,

Ron Cassie 34:27
where else would I met you know Amy Shell or Devon Allen or Dean Watkins or or radio show host or and listen, I I ran by a great street muralist the other day on my bike. He was just on a weekend, not getting paid for. He just worked on the bridge. Locked up my bike and we chatted. Like these are just not experiences. You know where I live in Upper Falls is very diverse community. Used to live in Highlandtown. You know all the ethnic Salvadorian. Almost actually, I’m really Latino now, so actually.

Nestor Aparicio 35:00
So does Dundalk, but

Ron Cassie 35:00
yeah, so very right. In Native Americans, you have a community in Dundalk, right? So I was the

8

Nestor Aparicio 35:05
only one there 50 years ago.

Ron Cassie 35:06
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s affordable, and you got a house near the water. I mean, but yeah, where else would you have that kind of experience? The

Max Weiss 35:14
only people who don’t like Baltimore are people who don’t know Baltimore, right? Like they just they just hear about it. They read about it. They’re afraid of it for some reason. Come spend a weekend in Baltimore, and then tell me you don’t love it. Because what I see more often is people coming to the city, like an actor maybe playing at center stage, falling in love with the city, and we sort of like it that way. Like we kind of want to be the best kept secret in America, even as that sweet spot where, like you know, we want to bring in tourism, but we also don’t want to like we don’t even know how great we are. I wish

Nestor Aparicio 35:48
we could blank and fix the harbor. I mean, just yeah, from that. I mean, I you know I lived down there 19 years, so like my heart is there and all. You’ve got to

Ron Cassie 35:56
go to Harvard Point and Point Park. I hope you can write it out. It connects. Fells Point to Harbor East. Of

Nestor Aparicio 36:06
course, yes, I’ve been through that.

Ron Cassie 36:07
Right, it’s a beautiful new green space. It’s the most natural landscape interacting. You can walk literally from Canton all the way around to the Balkan Museum of Industry, all the way around to Domino’s along the water where you’re like beating the water. Here’s wherever to a comment. I mean, I walk around like where do you beat? How do you beat that? How do you how are you richer than that? You know.

8

Nestor Aparicio 36:35
Well, playoff team maybe. Last thing for you guys, and this is my this is my compliment to you because you talked about diversity. I know. I think he’s right though. Like yeah, you talk diversity and like all that stuff. What’s your party? And I’ll be honest with you, I’ve been going for years and years and years. Like I, before I won awards. I mean, when I was the hot single, when I was the not single, like all of that, right? It’s always hot, even if you’re not the hot sandwich. Yeah, you mean hot. That’s all. Supposed to

Ron Cassie 37:05
dance and sweat at a good point. I did

Nestor Aparicio 37:07
sweat and dance, and I libated. I celebrated. I did all. I did all the. When you were

Ron Cassie 37:11
young, you leave a nightclub and you just like drenched. I

Nestor Aparicio 37:14
did. I all the. I ate it all. I did it all. So I would just say I lost much of thought. See, you guys. You guys crushed me. The diversity at that party, and when I walked around from age groups, people I did not know a lot of people to be honest with you. Like I didn’t know half the room. It felt like current new Baltimore. It felt like a really more, I don’t want to say modern take than a magazine would have. In the same way that I would win an award for you guys not being an AM sports radio guy, but like for you guys, I think there’s been a renaissance for your community. That I went to that party that night, and it wasn’t the same people that were at the party 30 years ago that aged out, Florida out. I don’t go to the city now, or they, whatever it would be. It feels like you backfill people who care about your brand in a lot of ways and the importance of winning a bus to Baltimore. I mean, I would have been at the party either way because I love the car. You know, I come on.

Max Weiss 38:20
I always love places that look like Baltimore, and Baltimore is this incredibly diverse place.

Nestor Aparicio 38:25
Felt that way, and we felt

8

Max Weiss 38:26
that way about the party. That like

Nestor Aparicio 38:28
look

Max Weiss 38:28
around, and that’s just what I like. That’s why I like to go to art school. You know, I like to go to places that look like Baltimore, where it’s black and white and young and old and and Latin and the the richness, the fullness of what Baltimore. My favorite

Nestor Aparicio 38:42
night was the tree lighting down at Mount Vernon. Every year we went out. That was the night where it was like, oh my God, family. Now you know we saw that at the park the other day. We lived in the city, Sarah, the city, so for 20 years. Shining’s here. He lives off Patterson Park. You guys are neighbors, you know. So like, I mean, I have Megan on all the time. I love City Life. You owe me a damn shirt. Keep telling her. I want one of the I love City Life shirts. City shirt. But you know, there is a point where like that party with me. My wife and I both got in the car because we hadn’t lived downtown in four or five years, and we were like, “Well, I said, what was your observation? Says my observation was like we didn’t know everybody and everybody didn’t know everybody else and it was like a real melting pot of like it was a different kind of room than what I was used to involved in. How about that?

Max Weiss 39:33
I saw BTS, the Korean K-pop fan at MIT Stadium, the bank, and the the RM, who was like the leader, the spokesperson of the group, he looked around the crowd. It was packed, literally a full house, and he said, “This is the most diverse crowd we’ve played in front of. You know, old, young, black, white, everything. And you know, Korean boy bands are noticing that. So this is a good sign. That, by the way, was the most fun. That stadium was shaking.

Nestor Aparicio 40:02
Do you know the music? You know your fans. You sing along, or like

Max Weiss 40:05
absolutely. I told my friend I I might cry. I did not cry. I held it together. But I was

8

Nestor Aparicio 40:12
told me unless you choose a

Max Weiss 40:13
K-pop. I was screaming, and I had a sore throat the next day, and the collective energy and excitement and positivity. I mean, it was. I brought a friend who was not a K-pop fan, and she became a PTS convert. But RM specifically noticed that this is a really diverse crowd. It was like, hell yeah, it’s Baltimore.

Ron Cassie 40:33
All I just about diversity is institutions in Baltimore has included certainly. You have to push outside of silos on a daily basis. It has to be daily practice to push outside. Well, everything in this thing is designed to keep you in the same exact same move. Everything designed to keep you the same 25% with all friends on Facebook. And you know, depending on where you being originally based on the college or workplace, all these continually being segregated by all the things outside ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender-it’s just a constant. You know, every story, like I do the conference or hearing the magazine, I’m always thinking like, well, living in this neighborhood, is this new? Is this somebody? You know, you always practice, and I think every institution, and some good brothers in Baltimore. I think Baltimore has largely most of the leaders I know, especially civic leaders, you know, and nonprofit leaders, do that today.

Nestor Aparicio 41:47
Well, we’re sitting in the middle of one of my favorite places in Baltimore, Koco’s Pub. I don’t even tell you, we love Baltimore. That’s the Baltimore Magazine. There’s awards. She said to me when he came in, and this is a humble brag for Coco. She’s like, we can’t put them all up on the wall. Like you know what I mean. So they pull them down. So I pulled the last time I won from 29 years ago down off the wall, and I brought it with me here. So here’s, do I at least get like a blue ribbon? Like I want one of these.

Max Weiss 42:15
You know,

Ron Cassie 42:16
document your own life better, like your career, your public life, and you have photographs you pull on social media from cons of you.

Nestor Aparicio 42:24
It’s funny you bring that up. That’s what I’ve got. I’m like, oh, say that again. What did you say? I’ve got

8

Ron Cassie 42:30
many of myself. Like you saw Van Halen some year or something, some show. Like this,

Nestor Aparicio 42:37
the cellist thing. You will appreciate this. You’re you’re a turnip. The BTS.

Ron Cassie 42:42
That’s what we see. We do that to you when you retire. Best archive. Self archive. You don’t document

Nestor Aparicio 42:50
your own life while you’re living it. No, I mean serious diaries. Like what are you doing?

Ron Cassie 42:55
Diary Journal. I get that part. So I had a

Nestor Aparicio 42:57
friend about three weeks ago say to me that they’d seen the best concert ever. It was Death Cat for q1, of Alan McCallum’s bands as well, and said to me, “What was the best concert I had ever seen? And that was a long, pregnant pause to say, “I’ve seen 1000s of concerts, and the person said, “1000s, and I said 1000s, and I’ve gone to great lengths over the last three weeks with my AI to go into a huge rabbit hole because it’s my 28th anniversary. The bow tie says so, but in December it’s 35 years I’ve been on the air today for 35 years. So I’m going to be in the 35. Well, I’m doing stop stalling. I’m doing my 28. My 28 favorite music memory stories over the next 14 weeks, and then when the 35th anniversary happens, because there’s no baseball next year, right, right, right, right. Baseball guy, baseball guy. You’re gonna drag yourself for four months and shows to get the number one. No, no, no. I’m going to do next year. I’m going to do my, you know, homage to you. I’m going to do my list of 35 favorite different things. I remember my favorite 35 concert ticket stuff, memories, international, national bar, boy band, artist, dead artist, live. Then there’s the interviews. My 35 David Bowies and Robert Plants and like like that Billy Joel’s about, so I’m doing different stuff. But it’s all music because a I’m alive. It’s our 35th. I’m not as into sports as I used to be. Shine and I will talk about that next. I mean, I’ve done an hour a year. I haven’t talked sports at all, and that’s you and I could do baseball. So she and I can do baseball. But I’ve learned music is something. He is an unbelievable musician. He’s got an incredible album. He has serenading people. He’s an opera singer. He’s blushing, but it’s true. It’s really true. He doesn’t like reading in the Blowfish, but he would go out of his way to sing REM with me, which would put two REMs. You got REMs here. You guys were more HFS nerds. I was a little bit more a little more, yeah, a little more ’98 rock. I mean, I grew up with. By the way, we lost Alan Ford as well. This was Beauty Rock. So you are an incredible cellist. You are a music lover. You are a musician. The music thing to me, it won’t, it shouldn’t piss anybody off. I’m going to be able to tell stories, all the stories that you don’t know about how I got that picture with Stevie Tyler when I was 15 backstage at the Civic Center. I’m going to tell stories. So that’s I’m I’m a raccoon too. Is that right? Nice, excellent, good job. You like that? I love that.

Ron Cassie 45:42
Zelick.

8

Nestor Aparicio 45:46
So when so these music stories they’re going to come out and they’re going to be cool but the number one thing is trying to figure out exactly when they contest and this person said to me what’s the over under and I’m like 3000 I think it might be 2800. It might be 3500. It’s more than 2000 for sure, but not as much as 4000. Those

Ron Cassie 46:09
times as a teenager, I wouldn’t have remembered the next day. I have the tickets.

Nestor Aparicio 46:12
Self archive this right here.

Max Weiss 46:16
That’s right. In fact, he has them in his trunk. All right,

Nestor Aparicio 46:18
I’m going to show you guys something, and Shine will appreciate this because when did you start at the post? What year is it? Interesting in 90, and then 90 back in 90. So this happened in 90, right? 9091, 92. I worked at the Sun from 86 to 92, and this got me through college. It’s the reason I’m a graduate. You can tell Kurch wrote this that you did. I’m missing a finger. I wasn’t very good at typing, Backspacing white the white stuff that we used on typewriters. At that point, no one had laptops. There was no internet. There was no one had a computer. No one had a home. I mean, that was more 95, 6, 7 in that range where CompuServe, AOL, you’ve got mail happen, right? I worked at the paper, and it was such an incredible benefit to me that I had like files, pub files, where I could type memories, type things, save them, type and save things without printing. We had to print everything then. You guys were old; you know all of this.

Max Weiss 47:11
Dot Matrix.

Nestor Aparicio 47:13
Thank you. Here we go. All right. Now you just said the you just said the word. Let me get through my peach cake here. I got to find it. But this is honest to God, this literally exists. This is the dot matrix from the evening from the Sun. The day I left, 1986 is when I was in the file. May of 90s when I closed the file, but I printed in 1992, the day I left the Sun. It is literally every concert I had gone to, beginning with Sticks and the Ravens and ZZ Top in 1980, I listed every concert in Dot Matrix printed out. And you want the AI, and we’ll do the AI next. Picture of this, I put it into my AI, and it created a spreadsheet of all 289 concerts as of 1987. I’m pretty Mary Lou Henner, so I don’t know why. Like, and you say document my life. Yes,

8

Ron Cassie 48:04
I as far as Max knows. I have a hard time keeping track of what I need to do this week. But the I will say there are times when I go on the internet to look up concepts like who played the Allentown fairgrounds, what you what they set with what my buddies and I have a reunion coming up. Like, and we, oh, that was this show. This is who. But you don’t have any of your ticket stubs. You

Nestor Aparicio 48:28
don’t have anything. You didn’t keep a box. Nothing. I’m stunned that other people have and like other rascals. You’re weird. You have every Capitol Center ticket stub, and I’m like, yeah. I thought everybody did that. I saved them.

Max Weiss 48:41
I saved them, and then like a year later, I’m like, “Why do I still have this? How many press

Nestor Aparicio 48:46
pass? Did you throw your? You have every press pass you’ve ever had, right? Not every. You have all your World Series press.

Ron Cassie 48:51
I have my grandfather’s clarinet, you know, and I have a few things in my parents.

Max Weiss 48:56
He leads a Spartan existence.

Ron Cassie 48:58
Austere.

8

Max Weiss 48:59
Austere. He

Nestor Aparicio 49:01
lives his life on a bike, biking vacations and bike service. No table, TV, no gym members. Ron Cassie, my favorite Bon Vivan, and it means the world to me that you guys you picked me as best of Baltimore. Max Weiss, editor in chief and senior editor of B Mag. Go get it. By the way, new magazine. Proverb this real quick so I can shine in here. I want to talk to folks.

Max Weiss 49:19
Okay, well, we’ve got a story on Dan Deacon, the wonderful boozer, the Pied Piper of music, electronic artist, and just really one of the leaders of Baltimore’s underground music scene. He has now hit the mainstream. I mean, he’s doing sound scores for Marvel films, and he’s just this incredibly thoughtful, likable, cool guy who’s like very invested in Baltimore. He’s not going to leave Baltimore. So Lydia Wooliver, our other fantastic senior editor, she wrote about him, and he’s just-he’s inspiring. He’s cool. He’s a-he’s a fascinating cat. Do you want to read about him?

Nestor Aparicio 49:57
Do you remember Night Shift with Mike? Yeah,

Max Weiss 50:00
I do. Do

Nestor Aparicio 50:01
you remember when Michael Keaton would talk into his his his tape recorder? Yeah. What if we feed the tuna? What if we feed the tuna mayonnaise? That was million dollar idea here this year. So I talk to my friend right now on my whisper flow, and I’d say, steal every guest from Baltimore Magazine, Dan Deacon. Make sure you get him on. Make sure you get matched. Max hooking up with the BSO orchestra, dude, Jonathan. He can’t get a hold of us. I can’t find his email. And make sure we get Ron Cassie to get that really cool guest song, the Bonvivant Lady, that was there from from Baltimore. Okay, that good. That’s good. I put it all in. That’s how. Yes. That’s my new production assistant. Just so you saw my new AI there. Talking to my. So next

Max Weiss 50:39
time we’re gonna talk. She’s so pissed at that AI. She’s so mad at me about AI.

8

Nestor Aparicio 50:43
What is wrong with the ultra liberal progressive people who are reasonable about almost everything to be so unreasonable about the best technology that I’ve ever learned?

Max Weiss 50:52
AI is not smart. AI steals other

Nestor Aparicio 50:56
because you ain’t making it smart. My clone knows everything.

Max Weiss 50:59
AI steals art, music. My clone knows whether I like Zephyr Neil and

Nestor Aparicio 51:05
Bruce Springsteen. It’s insane.

Max Weiss 51:09
Your clone is not a real. It’s not a sentient being. You realize that, right? I love my clone. Oh no! It’s really creepy, by the way. I know. If you have a clone, one

Nestor Aparicio 51:20
day I will win a Best of Baltimore Magazine Award for having this conversation with you about how AI can use. One day I will use AI to help Koco’s finally get the coconut shrimp further up than he. See, he’s already

8

Max Weiss 51:35
moved on from this win, and now he’s campaigning for the next one. He knew it was inevitable.

Nestor Aparicio 51:42
Listen, I knew I was sunk for any more awards the day that I won this.

Max Weiss 51:46
See you in 25. This raises

Ron Cassie 51:49
the bar for you, by the way. Just so you know, going forward, have to reinvent myself again. No, the level, the guest, the show, the work that you do now, the expectation is higher for you. All

Nestor Aparicio 51:58
people have to do to get on this show, is say yes. It’s a great Bodine song. I can look that one up. Ron Cassie is here. Max is here. Dave is checking his phone. Like I don’t know. Are you okay? You nervous? I’m sorry. I’m late. Are you okay?

Ron Cassie 52:14
No, no. All

Nestor Aparicio 52:15
right. He’s wearing his vanity hat. He’s being cool and calm. And I’m here. We’re having crab cakes. I had delicious creamy crab soup. Best of the city year, no lie. I had a Greek salad here with those crispy little red peppers and yellow and orange peppers, and I had oh, I had the coconut shrimp and the raspberry. So good, Koco’s

8

Max Weiss 52:34
gave you one. That’s how you know he likes me.

Nestor Aparicio 52:38
I like yeah. I

Speaker 1 52:40
mean, if I admit that

Nestor Aparicio 52:41
I like you, then it’s going to put a whole cramp on how I won best to Baltimore. So we’re going to be like the Smithering song “Strangers” when we meet, when we get together now. Like none of this happened anymore, so I can be eligible to win again.

Max Weiss 52:54
I know how precious those butterflies were.

Nestor Aparicio 52:56
Everybody out there knows the fix is in that I won you over with that attack last year.

Ron Cassie 53:00
I saw Smitherine now in South Pennsylvania. By the way, I kicked her after that. Little bar, especially for yes, they did. Hope Oak in New Jersey, and they just got on 120 minutes MTV. Can I tell a story?

8

Nestor Aparicio 53:13
You got a minute? Can I tell a story? So Smitherines are my still water to my almost fingers. Okay, so I rode on their bus. I partied with them. I was up late, upstate, up all night long. We shut Tatanizio. We shut the door. We locked the door at the Lead Betters one night. Eddie Lauer was there. We sang Beatles songs and new songs all night long. We got ripped out of our mind. We came out. The sun was up, and we went down to the diner at the diner in Captain the diner by your house. No, yeah, but what’s the capping bit? Sipping by. Thank you. Sipping by. So we we went there afterwards. The buttery was still open then. All right. So everybody, everybody knows the buttery. So that not that night, but around that time, 8788, 8990, Around the 11 Dream Thoughts era, I was very close with the band. I was the news a critic of the Sun. I hung out with them. Mike Mazzeras, the bass player, huge sports nerd, baseball guy. Jack McDowell was in his band, stick figure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jack McDowell was in the band with Mike Mazzeras. So look it up, Blackjack. Yes, that guy. So anyway, smithereens were playing at Johns Hopkins University at Schreiber Hall. They were my guests at Bo Hager’s. Imagine this eating crabs. This is the real Bohangers, not the dome. This was the four walls. This was when the crabs were out on the deck. This is when the stage was in the corner. They had moved the bar down, and there was a band playing. It was a Thursday night. So the original played on Friday night. It was just me, Mike, and Jimmy. Pat was doing whatever Pat was doing, and Dennis never came out and party. He’s not. He wasn’t that wet. So we were. Eating crabs, and a guy comes over to the table and he says, “Hey, you guys are in the Smitherines. We’re the band that’s playing tonight. You think you could get up and do a couple of songs? And Jimmy’s like, “Up to here. We got beer. He’s like, “Yeah, man. You know any stones? And the kids are like, “No. And he’s like, and Mike’s like, “Well, you know what? Who? You know, play who song, and they’re like no, and and this is the drummer in the band, and he’s a listener. He stole in my life somehow in Bel Air. I don’t really know him, but he’s written to me because he witnessed it. Witnessed one of the greatest nights of my life. Like literally, we’re talking about top 10 other than child being born and things like that. This was when I tell you I did this, they’re going to be they’re witnesses. So we’re out there, and the dude says, “Well, I play drums. Can we do a smithereen song? And the bass player and the guitar player there, and now we got a drummer, and they’re like, “We don’t have anybody to sing. I said, “I’ll sing, and Jimmy and I had played together a lot. Jimmy and I have sang songs together. He knew I could sing, and Jimmy’s like, and Mike had never heard me. And Mike and I were the buds, and he’s like, “Okay, let me clean up. 20 minutes, we’ll come out. What songs we doing? Drummer sat down. We did “Behind the Wall of Sleep. We did “A Girl Like You, and we did “Blood and Roses” because the drummer knew the songs. I’m with Mike and Jimmy, and I knew the words, and they knew I knew the words. They knew Jimmy knew I could sing. Mike didn’t know I could sing. We got up on stage, different equipment. Jimmy took the guitar. Mike comes over, and the place is packed. It’s 945 on a Thursday night college night, packed. And I went. Mike came over to me. He says, “You better be, you better be able to do this. Place went that pub, and I did three songs for Smith and Rangers. That is the that is that’s not number one. It’s number two or three, but it’s like that really happened. Documentation of this. There are witnesses. I don’t think there’s any pictures. No picture of video. It was it was

Max Weiss 57:05
90 suspicious. Considering you documented everything else.

Nestor Aparicio 57:12
I have no picture of anybody. How about this? Yeah, I’m gonna put a. I’m gonna put a. I’m gonna put a bounty on this, okay? I’m gonna do crab cakes for a year. Be reasonable. Crab cake dinner for a year at Koco’s on me. If anybody has any documentation, I’m putting. Is that a good bounty? Is that fair bounty?

Max Weiss 57:38
It’s it’s way too much money. Are you kidding? I’ve received the price of crab cakes.

Nestor Aparicio 57:44
I’m talking about a crab cake dinner.

Max Weiss 57:45
Just one,

Nestor Aparicio 57:48
one dinner. Okay,

8

Max Weiss 57:49
because you said all a

Nestor Aparicio 57:50
month, a month, a year.

Max Weiss 57:52
Okay, for a second you said, I’m putting a

Nestor Aparicio 57:53
real bounty on this. It’s a $2,000 bounty.

Max Weiss 57:56
Okay, all right. If anybody has read your call,

Nestor Aparicio 57:59
if anybody has a

Max Weiss 58:01
photo, a video, photo. was before anybody. Believe if any of this existed, I wouldn’t share. I’ll

8

Ron Cassie 58:09
ask Dave. I think in the drums we need two people to collaborate. I gotta find a drummer. Right,

Nestor Aparicio 58:14
right. I know two girls that were 100% Somebody

Ron Cassie 58:18
in the band.

Nestor Aparicio 58:19
Oh, that’s already happened. I had Jimmy on last year.

Ron Cassie 58:21
That’s one. And also

Max Weiss 58:23
that you were good. See, the the fact that you were good. Well, we would have stopped

Nestor Aparicio 58:27
after the first song if I saw. Believe me, they wouldn’t have had any part of it if I didn’t. I caution.

8

Max Weiss 58:33
That’s very Cameron Crowe needs to caution. That’s a good story.

Nestor Aparicio 58:37
And I and I Beth Popper was there. Kruz’s dad was the longtime coach. She just lost her dad. Beth was there, and her friend. I’ll leave it at. I know people that were there who witnessed it because whenever I run into them, I’m like, I just want.

Max Weiss 58:52
It’s irritating with so much that we’re talking. No,

Ron Cassie 58:56
it wouldn’t top 10 moment for anybody. Well, there’s quite a

Nestor Aparicio 59:00
rock and roll store. I’m going to talk much more.

Max Weiss 59:02
Wow. Okay. I told you one

Ron Cassie 59:04
better than that. All right.

8

Nestor Aparicio 59:06
The late great Steve Cochran was there that night because I kind of shocked him too. After the show, I couldn’t believe you were going to do it. It’s a lot of balls to do that. And he was an old radio guy. Oh, mixed one in six. Oh, Steve was a legend. He was running college.

Speaker 1 59:19
Okay.

Nestor Aparicio 59:19
Damian Bahager might have been there. I’ll find him. All right. It’s all brought to you by Science and Bear Lottery Storytelling. 28th anniversary. That’ll. That’s not even going to be my top. It’s going to be low in the stories because, like, I’ve talked to Paul McCartney. I’ve asked him questions. Do you know this? I’ve had lunch with Robert Plant. Do you know this?

Ron Cassie 59:36
No.

Nestor Aparicio 59:37
See, this is what, and you love music.

Speaker 3 59:40
Yeah.

Nestor Aparicio 59:40
Gosh, great. Tell some stories. All of it brought to you by friends at GBMC and Far in the Derma. Where Koco’s name’s coming on.

8

Ron Cassie 59:50
Be on stage, man, and you know have that moment.

Nestor Aparicio 59:56
I didn’t tell you at the time I got on stage and meet Will for messed it up. He didn’t let me on. I messed it up. That’s another story. I got shot by the bass player. He brought me in to do the film Rizzuto part and told me I couldn’t do it, and I could meet that right. Meet’s like you’re not gonna do it, and he’s like you’re not gonna do it, but I’m gonna have you come down. And I did. I spent the afternoon. Mark Messina was doing my show that day, and I called in, and I failed miserably. It was terrible. I could not. No script. You

Max Weiss 1:00:26
have to do my memory. He would not.

Nestor Aparicio 1:00:28
He wouldn’t give me prompt. He wouldn’t give me the promise.

Max Weiss 1:00:30
That’s a check. Only you would have the customer to think that you could pull that off without a script.

Nestor Aparicio 1:00:35
The true story is, I saw a guy do it. No, at the at the ’96 Super Bowl, first year in the Ravens, hadn’t played a game yet. Was in Arizona, and I knew Meatloaf from my music critic days. And this was a tour bus story. He was playing in a parking lot at a Super Bowl party. He was a big. He was back on the charts at that time. He’s a star again with the second bat of the hell, and I knew him. And he came back to the tour bus, and on that show, there was a radio guy, a rock guy, not a sports guy, but a rock guy, who had Meatloaf on the show promoting it, and told Meatloaf that he wanted to do it. Meat said, “Come down. He rehearsed. He nailed it. And I saw the show, and this guy nailed it. This guy nailed it, and he nailed it. And I’m like, “I want to do that. And I saw him do it. I was with me on his tour bus afterwards. Said, “Tell me the story about that guy doing this. If you can’t do that, and I’m like, “Well, I try. He’s like, “I’d let you try, but you can’t do it. And he’s like, “I’ve never, like, that’s amazing that guy could do that. No one’s ever been able to do that. I let him do it. He was unbelievable. He said, “I’ll let you do it if you can do it. We’ll make it stick. I’ll come on your show. Like that’s how meat was, And we made it stick, and I came on, and I went down. I just completely-I mean, it was embarrassing. I’m on the stage at Merriweather doing sound check, and every one of the bands looking to be like, “So there’s the other side. I want to crawl under the table telling that story.

Max Weiss 1:01:56
This lends more credibility to this kind of reason. I didn’t have to sing.

8

Nestor Aparicio 1:01:59
I had to remember a script.

Max Weiss 1:02:01
Yeah, right. Yeah. Did you do the Phil Rosudo voice? Do you have a voice? I

Nestor Aparicio 1:02:06
was just trying to remember the damn words. Yeah. No, he’s safe, safe, safe. Oh, oh, wait a minute. He’s like that was a really hard thing to do. So I grew up listening to Phil Rizzuto and Bill Wyatt WPIX. I don’t think I could do it. You can’t do it. Never tried, but very difficult. Rizzo is played by one. guys. I’ll tell Shiny about the time I nailed it with with with Mike Peters in the Amarna, which is probably my number one. Dave’s coming on. Ron is leaving. I’ve lost my. They’ve already rescinded my award. They’ve already ripped the page out of the magazine. So thank you. It means a lot. It means a lot to me. It really and it does, and you damn near made me cry. And I, you know, so thank you. You made me think a lot, and I appreciate that. I appreciate

Max Weiss 1:02:48
something AI can’t do. I’ll

Nestor Aparicio 1:02:49
have you back on for Oscar, and I’ll have you back on when the Orioles win. I’ll have you back on sometime soon. We’ll go to the art gallery and do that together. Day Shine is coming next. We’re back for more with Koco’s, and it’s because it’s fun. It’s my anniversary, and I want to take the lead