Ep. 492: "The Naked Beach"
John: Hello.
John: Hello.
John: How are you?
John: Hello.
John: Hello, Merlin.
John: Hello.
John: Hello.
John: Hello.
John: It's a podcast.
John: It's a podcast.
John: Hey, it's a podcast.
Merlin: Starring Merlin Man.
Merlin: Hey, everybody.
Merlin: Today, I want to talk to you for real about an issue that's affecting a lot.
John: Yeah, tell us more.
John: Tell us more, man.
Merlin: Yeah, man.
Merlin: A lot of things out there ain't what they seem right now.
John: Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
John: You're so right.
Merlin: Yeah, man.
Merlin: You ever meet a puppet and it turns out it wasn't a puppet?
Merlin: A lot of fake puppets out there.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: What?
Merlin: Keep your head on a swivel.
Merlin: Oh, man.
Merlin: Oh, man.
Merlin: False puppets.
Merlin: Oh, man.
Merlin: I'm still... Whoa!
Merlin: Oh, man.
Merlin: I have a liminal space somewhere between sleep and not meditation, worry.
Merlin: It's a practice.
Merlin: And sometimes I just like to sit with that for a minute.
Merlin: And then that makes me late.
John: To be in the liminal space.
Merlin: Huh?
John: To be in the liminal space.
John: Well, if I've got some fresh limbs, yes.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, earlier today, you sent me a message.
John: that said let's uh no no what it said was it was four total five characters four numerals and a question mark that's right what i interpreted it let's not put this in a fancier box than it needs 11 30 to say it was hey man can we push push the recording of our show till 11 30.
John: But no, it just said 1130.
John: 1130.
John: And I saw it when I rolled over at 1045 and looked at my phone to see what time it was.
John: Fucking Merlin again with this.
John: I was like, 1130.
John: I got it bullshit.
John: And so what did I say?
John: What was my reply?
John: I'm sure my eyes are still crusty.
Merlin: Let's see.
Merlin: I think you said no punctuation because we don't do that anymore.
Merlin: You said sounds good.
Merlin: Sounds good.
Merlin: Did I capitalize S?
Merlin: You did.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Maybe that was an auto.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You're probably.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I think you're also supposed to include an emoji that doesn't confuse or concern me.
Merlin: No, no, no, no.
Merlin: Sounds good.
Merlin: Sounds good.
Merlin: Or you're just not supposed to say OK or K, I think.
John: Oh, did I tell you this?
John: No.
John: I have a friend.
John: I have a friend who works for a couple.
John: That's right.
John: It's a girl.
John: Works for a founder-led startup.
John: And the founder is from an Eastern European country.
John: Is this going to get that person in trouble?
John: No.
John: And when my friend would send messages to the CEO.
John: The leader of the startup.
Merlin: The leader of the startup.
Merlin: It's been founded.
John: Often they were letters.
John: Did we talk about this already?
John: Where he would reply, he would reply,
John: Oh, maybe.
Merlin: Hang on.
Merlin: It sounds like more of a Ken, but it could be me.
Merlin: We've had at least three episodes where we've talked about control words.
Merlin: Oh, sorry.
Merlin: It was at least five where we talked about founder-led startups.
Merlin: And listen, I don't want to take you off this critical act issue, but I would never work at a startup that wasn't led by a founder.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: That's how you know it's good.
John: But no, he would reply every time there was a message that had some information that might not have been what he was hoping for, some, you know, not bad news.
John: Oh, wait a minute.
John: And did we make a joke about Kathy?
Merlin: Because I was thinking just now I wanted to make a joke about Kathy.
Merlin: And I thought to myself, I'm pretty sure I've made that joke at least twice on here.
John: Yeah, you know, Yukon, who's following us from the far, far, far north,
John: Does Jochen know Kathy's boyfriend, Irving?
John: He doesn't.
John: I don't think he's familiar with Kathy or Irving, but Jochen definitely is familiar with instances where we make the same joke more than once.
John: Because I think he has a database just devoted to like, oh, they made that joke again.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I thank you for listening.
Merlin: No, no, no.
John: Hang on.
Merlin: I actually mean this to come out nice, which is I appreciate you not calling us on making a joke twice.
Merlin: Let me tell you why we do it, Jochen.
Merlin: Thank you for noticing we did a joke twice.
Merlin: You caught us at nothing.
Merlin: This is what the show is.
John: Yes.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: You there.
Merlin: You there.
Merlin: Sorry.
Merlin: It's really more of a comment than a question.
Merlin: Hey, you can pump the brakes.
John: I think a lot of people are probably wondering if we keep most of the Roderick on the line money in Silicon Valley Bank.
John: And I want to assure people.
John: What's going on with these tinglings in Congress?
John: Who's coming up with this stuff?
John: I want to assure people that we're fine.
John: You call that a jumbo?
John: Shh.
Merlin: More like military intelligence.
Merlin: Shrimps can't be.
Merlin: Anyways.
Merlin: Let's take a minute.
Merlin: As we say in improv, let's take a beat.
Merlin: Whoa.
John: Wait, John.
John: John, did you put all of our... Give me a wild animal.
John: Give me a city on the Mississippi.
Merlin: okay uh let's see uh city on the mississippi uh slavesberg i just stole a joke from i'm pretty still a job i just stole a joke from that very funny mo brook show no um okay hang on improv so let's work out our improv routine real quick no no i won't either there once i
John: Just say, yeah, once I got out of the improv trenches, I felt suddenly liberated to say no all the time.
John: Now I just say it.
Merlin: John, John, did you put our money in Silicon Valley Bank?
Merlin: I burned the roast.
Merlin: Let's see, you can't be in the show.
Merlin: I'm not going to do the voice.
Merlin: Cucked by Fred Mertz again.
John: I had a brownie for breakfast.
John: Bow now, now, now.
John: Bow now, now, now.
Merlin: Bow now, now, now.
Merlin: I... Oh, I used to be able to do that pretty well.
Merlin: Hang on.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: I can make a pretty good bong sound and a pretty good throwing up sound.
Merlin: You can do a bong sound?
Merlin: I can...
Merlin: And I think the thing is, it's really, it comes down to it being all about developing your own little way of communicating with people.
Merlin: I think we kind of, we have that, I feel like.
Merlin: In some ways, it's always evolving, but it's when, if a person in power is doing it very differently, that can be a problem.
Merlin: If anybody's group of people start doing it, you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Oh, I see, I see.
Merlin: If ACK is okay, then it's okay.
John: Yeah, yeah, ACK is okay, it's okay.
Merlin: I'm sorry, should we go back to the improv bit?
John: No, no, no, I...
John: Do I go, do I go, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, a lot?
Merlin: No, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: You only use it when you're obviously hoping I'll be done soon.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: No.
John: No, no, no.
Merlin: No.
John: I think, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
John: No, no, but.
John: No, I think that's, I think that's a, I think that's me very, very much like in the, in the swing of it.
Merlin: Well, maybe, maybe Yoken can go check the glossary and find out what this one, for example, Yoken, what this one.
Merlin: You didn't mean to throw Yoken under the bus?
Merlin: See, I'm acting like it's real when it's actually part of that same bit.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: What about this one, Jochen?
Merlin: Look this one up in your Jochen Lossery.
Merlin: Yeah, Jochen.
Merlin: How about this one?
Merlin: Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.
Merlin: Does that one mean the same as uh-huh?
Merlin: No, but there's uh-huh, uh-huh.
Merlin: Let me ask you a third one.
Merlin: And then what does this one mean?
John: Oh, I do that a lot.
John: No, no, I do that a lot.
John: I know you do.
John: Maybe I took it from you.
Merlin: You can't take something that was given with love.
Merlin: You can't take it.
Merlin: I can't take it no more.
John: You took that from me.
Merlin: And C. These guys got up there and used some bullshit for three minutes and then died, man.
Merlin: It's really weird.
Merlin: Thank you, Otto.
John: That sounds like a very good show.
John: Only 40% of our listeners have punched out of this episode.
John: Not coming back.
John: Yeah, the rest know that, you know.
John: This is the good shit.
John: By the end, we're both going to be crying.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, Cedric Diggory might be dead at the end, but, you know, if you can save a sister, start swimming.
John: Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
John: Did you watch the Oscars?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: We dipped for, we had it on, as we used to say, taping.
Merlin: We had it taping.
Merlin: God, my system for taping last night fucked up.
Merlin: And unlike my TiVo, which would always figure out that this thing is longer than it should be.
Merlin: um my electronic taping yesterday uh we lost a whole bunch at the end and i didn't my kid took a shower so he didn't get to see like all the awards that we didn't wait to see because we you know we dipped over to watch uh uh last of us but yes we um came back and yes i i watched i watched the oscar awards are people i thought the shots of people with the mic were too tight that's my that's my main thought
John: Do the people who listen to your other podcasts know all about your digital recording setup, or is that a thing that you keep under your hat, kind of like Dan keeps his personal hat under his hat?
Merlin: They don't know about the one that you're talking about.
John: Oh, okay.
Merlin: The one that I'm talking about is totally legal, and it's part of the –
Merlin: hundreds of dollars i spend every month on media that i do not consume literally yes anybody how many how many y'all out there got hulu and fubo how many out there how many you out there got the best fubo package and the best hulu no ads quote unquote unquote unquote package isn't fubo like really big basketball pants yeah yeah yeah it's it's for us by one of us i got nothing on that uh
Merlin: I think that I pay for a lot of things.
Merlin: Do you want to hear some of the things I pay for, John?
Merlin: Just in case anybody ever feels like shooting a shot over Cyrano's bow, let me just make it clear to all of you.
Merlin: My nose is rather large.
Merlin: Well, let me tell you, my friend.
Merlin: Netflix movie criterion.
Merlin: Are you laying out your eels?
Merlin: Some of them.
Merlin: But no, it's just to say that- Let's hear it.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: I had the Fubo recording it.
Merlin: And then, no, I should have told it, like, record for an extra hour.
John: No, no, no.
Merlin: Tell me the things you pay for.
Merlin: I'm really curious.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Oh, you mean for, like, streaming stuff?
John: No.
John: You were about to say, do you want to know- No, it's not even about to say.
Merlin: You said- Oh, because the thing is, it's an open secret that a lot of us have progressed to a new level of ethics.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Where sometimes we say to ourselves, you know, if you want me to buy it, why don't you put it somewhere where I can buy it?
Merlin: If you want me to buy it, put it somewhere I can buy it.
Merlin: If you don't put it somewhere where I can buy it, I can't buy it.
John: So what are some examples of things that people want you to buy that they have put places that you can't buy them?
John: I don't know.
Merlin: sorry i can't say no no oh no no but this is real this is real like i get i get all those things and um but but no criterion collection no criterion channel is what it's called but it's terrific i mostly i mostly get it for the you know people you see i read playboy for the stereo reviews yeah i i honestly do mostly look at i subscribe to criterion because i like watching trailers for criterion things wow
Merlin: But I do watch movies on there, too.
John: A lot.
John: What is the thing that you subscribe to that you use the least that you think of?
John: Every time you think of that thing, you're like, oh, I should cancel that.
John: I never use it.
John: But then you don't.
Merlin: Not only in a million years, because you never guess it, but probably I would never be able to guess it.
Merlin: Do you remember on, I guess it was on, not TV, yes, on USA on the weekends.
Merlin: Remember Night Flight?
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: I subscribed to Night Flight.
Yeah.
Merlin: It's a thing?
Merlin: Yeah, I've looked at it like five times ever.
Merlin: It's a thing you can subscribe to?
Merlin: It's a lot of like Z movies, wackadoo stuff.
John: Does it have Jack Black and Radboy?
John: Wait a minute.
John: Are you talking about the pilot?
John: No, Jack Mac and Radboy.
John: The Jack Black show?
John: No, no, no.
John: Lizardbeam and Jackhead or something like that?
John: No, Jack Mac.
John: Jack Mac and Radboy.
Merlin: I'll check.
Merlin: I don't remember that.
Merlin: I mainly remember stuff like stoner shorts.
Merlin: Was that where Ian Flux started?
Merlin: No, that was MTV.
Merlin: But I used to be Night Flight and Friday Night Videos.
Merlin: That's what I'd watch when I'd come home from being a busboy.
John: Friday Night Videos.
John: Jack Mack and Rad Boy was a stoner short.
John: Yeah.
John: And it was about two dudes, like a hillbilly dude and a punk rock kid, and they set off a nuclear war.
John: Jack Mack and Radboy.
John: And I highly recommend it.
John: If you Google it and watch it, it's not going to make sense the first time you watch it.
John: And so like a lot of things that require that you be stoned, you need to watch it.
John: Between six and 60 times.
John: And until all of the things that they say become catchphrases between you and your friends.
John: That really does.
Merlin: That sounds like me.
Merlin: Jack back.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: I love things that eventually become catchphrases.
Merlin: I don't seek it out, but it's the wand chooses the wizard.
John: So every once in a while, still, I'll be in a room full of normal people.
John: And I'll say, get the lead out, rad.
John: Oh, because that's from the program.
John: That's from the program Jack Mack and Radboy from 1985.
John: Oh, wow.
John: And there's only three people in the world that if I said that would go, ha, ha, ha, they'd say the appropriate response.
John: Right, right, right.
John: But you'll find them someday.
John: Get let out, rad.
Merlin: I enjoy things like that.
Merlin: And, you know, it's like I say, I used to say to my little baby, we wait to cross the street.
Merlin: We cross the street when we're ready, not when other people go.
Oh.
Merlin: And I feel that because that's who we are.
Merlin: And I think also I make those references because I like those references.
Merlin: And some of you someday will, somebody will.
Merlin: You don't need to get it.
Merlin: It doesn't matter.
Merlin: If you're confused, consider that it wasn't for you.
Merlin: There's somebody out there who knows what Jack Black and Radface is.
Merlin: Jack Black and Radface.
John: Oh, John.
John: There are quite a few people in my life who believe that we have catchphrases.
John: Oh, my God, John.
John: You're talking about the show on the show a lot.
John: No, no, no.
John: But it's a thing where it's actually a catchphrase that I brought in from somewhere.
John: Oh, I see.
John: And then they start using it because I use it all the time.
John: And then they're using it.
John: And then they think it's one of their catchphrases.
John: But they don't know where it's from.
John: And then pretty soon other people are using that catchphrase.
Merlin: That is something about catchphrases, especially in the post-internet age where you'll be using a catchphrase and you may not even sort of exactly know.
Merlin: When I say where it came from, what came from where it came from?
Merlin: Whatever.
Merlin: However, it's fine.
Merlin: It's not important that you know.
Merlin: Oh, God, we ran into one of those literally last night.
Merlin: i'll give you another one bud um i don't know why i've been going to the mall so much my kid and i went to the mall get him some pants uh uh i was looking at i didn't buy a lego but i was looking at lego and uh what else did we get oh yeah we got some uh we got some uh blueberry muffins at the whole foods you know you can afford legos if you're in there looking at them why why don't you just get them
Merlin: well legos yeah no you're right you're right what did you want what did you want did you want i was wearing my van oh no we had that we never finished it i've got the um i've got i'm wearing vans with laces yeah and uh we're walking along and i'm carrying a bag and the bag's got our pants it's got all the stuff in it and uh i we're walking down the mall and i said my kid
Merlin: What a father says to their kid, pull over.
Merlin: Pull over.
Merlin: And that means we'd pull all the way over to the window by a place that probably used to be a store.
Merlin: And I tie my shoelaces.
Merlin: I said to my son, you know, some people, they think it's keep moving or get out of the way.
Ha ha.
Merlin: And I said, it's really important to know that it's keep moving.
Merlin: And he goes, yeah, I know, I know.
Merlin: And get out of the way.
Merlin: I said, yeah, but do you understand that you have to be, see, but people keep thinking.
Merlin: Is this a bit between you two?
Merlin: Well, no, it's a bit with the world.
Merlin: We've changed everything.
Merlin: But it's a bit between you and me.
Merlin: Some people think.
Merlin: Well, a bit, I mean, it's a bit in the same way that the better angels of our nature is Abraham Lincoln's bit.
Merlin: it's a it's it's a truth about trying to access a part of us that is better than yes and and then forcing ourselves to do that even if it's not convenient yes other people don't don't worry about your convenience worry about you do both so if i'm gonna time my goddamn shoelace i'm not gonna just you guys here be walking let's just say it at the supermarket and somebody literally just stops
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: In the middle of the aisle?
Merlin: Now, at the Uniqlo, one reason I like the Uniqlo is you can move pretty freely in those aisles, and the pants are cheap.
Merlin: The pants are cheap.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: So anyway, yeah.
John: I bought a pair of pants there once, and I wish I had bought six of those pairs of pants because it's the best pair of pants I ever had.
John: I misunderstood Uniqlo, I have to admit.
John: What did you think it was at first?
Merlin: I thought it was, I knew it was cheap clothes, but I thought it was like this kind of like comical clothes that don't really fit when you try them on, put them on and then they fall apart.
Merlin: It's actually not too bad.
John: No, they last.
Merlin: But that's an example of something that could be construed as a bit.
Merlin: If you weren't in my life as that became an instrumental practice.
Merlin: In the, you know, mid to late 2000s or whatever that was, whenever that was.
John: Yeah, sometime in there.
Merlin: Sometime in my life.
Merlin: And, you know, and then that became a thing on our show.
Merlin: And sure, sure, I've sold you a shirt with that phrase on it.
Merlin: You know why?
Merlin: Because it's important.
John: Yes.
John: Yeah.
John: When you and your dude go buying pants.
John: Pants.
John: I got a Mickey Mouse shirt.
John: I'm wearing it right now.
John: Are you hip to the high waters?
John: Are you wearing high waters now?
John: Because everybody's wearing high waters.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: You get high waters?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: For example, yesterday, when I was wearing my Vans with laces, I was also wearing Dickies.
Merlin: And because I have a short rise, and this is a country full of ableists, it's difficult for me to get pants that I like.
Merlin: I end up cuffing the bottom.
John: Sure, of course.
Merlin: I'll often do a single cuff.
Merlin: And then if I feel the schlicka, schlicka, schlicka while I'm walking, I'll do a little small.
Merlin: I'll reduce the size of the cuff to a double cuff.
Merlin: But I'm not even showing sock.
Merlin: Now, do you do high waters?
John: Well, what I've found recently is that there's a lot of pants in the slim fit variety that intentionally end at the ankle.
John: And honestly, they get so narrow at the calf that I don't know if they could continue on that path.
Merlin: and be a normal length like they they're petering out basically as they get down into the lower leg oh you're like don't even show me the last third of the graph i know how this ends yeah it's just it's going to go down it would cut it would cut off your circulation if it mentioned this before but but but people like jean kelly jean kelly would make a pant a pant of wearing let me start again hello jean kelly would make a point jean kelly would make a pant okay okay you can't no making up bits
Merlin: okay go on uh you get a dark pant you get a dark shoe you get anywhere a light sock but you make sure that the sock is showing and that gives and the same reason a lot of dancers you look at a bob fossey dancer while you're wearing gloves and a hat because it looks cool but also really helps to find the ends of your body in ways that make the movement more interesting and honestly easier to see
Merlin: Oh, yes.
Merlin: Yes, yes.
Merlin: But in your case, you can't even get yourself all the way through the calf.
John: No, I've embraced it.
Merlin: I've embraced it because- You're still wearing tight pants, John?
John: Well- This is a thing you did a few years ago by design.
John: You started wearing tight pants, you told us.
John: Well, there's a little bit of a thing where if you're me and you buy a thing, you expect that thing to last forever.
John: for two decades.
Merlin: You might want to update that eventually.
John: I want it to last for two decades.
John: So if I make a fashion choice, if I turn a corner...
John: You know, I'm going to be the guy that's going to be the guy.
John: You buy a counterfeit Night Ranger shirt outside the concert and think this is going to last me for 20 years.
John: It's going to last me for 20 years.
John: That's why I wear preppy clothes because they always are the same.
John: Yes, that's true.
Merlin: And you can't buy the preppy clothes.
Merlin: You can buy polo shirts at Uniqlo.
Merlin: And if you had an alligator with you, you could put it right on there and look like all your other shirts.
John: You could buy a polo shirt in – I pronounce it Uniqlo.
John: But if you want to say Uniqlo, that's fine.
Merlin: I called it Uniqlo until about two months ago.
Merlin: And then I was told by certain members of my family who despise me.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Actually, it's Uniqlo.
Merlin: Chili.
Merlin: Eichmann.
John: So you could buy one of those polo shirts.
John: You could go back in time.
John: Yep, yep, yep.
John: to 1920 and say anybody for a game of tennis and you'd be invisible, right?
John: Or not invisible.
Merlin: If you time travel and then hung out with, say, a Bill Tilden, Bill could lend you a shirt.
Merlin: And in your case, it might be a little bit, you know, you might want to ask for one like his, not to say his fat shirt, but you're not.
Merlin: But, you know, there's a slenderness to tennis players.
Merlin: But you could be lent a polo shirt to then go out onto the ISM grass.
John: Yeah, they're the same.
John: They're the same shirt.
John: The problem with the shirts of the last decade was the men's shirts.
John: Their collars were so small.
John: Tiny little collars.
John: They had button-down collars, but the collar was only like three times the width of the button.
John: You can't wear those.
John: Those have to go into the garbage.
John: They never should have been made.
John: They never should have been sold.
Merlin: Oh, I'm literally on my feet right now wearing an example of exactly what you're talking about.
John: Yeah.
John: And I can't, I never bought them.
Merlin: Gold toe socks.
John: Oh, gold toe socks.
Merlin: For years, I would just order another six pairs of white gold toe, not tube socks, but you know, they're socks.
Merlin: They're just like the socks you could get for a kid.
Merlin: You could get it for a grandpa.
Merlin: Like it's just those white socks with a literal gold toe.
Merlin: And, you know, so there's been all these articles that I think have been fascinating about, like, how people buy more clothes, they buy cheaper clothes, they wear them less, like, all that kind of stuff.
Merlin: Like, all the stuff that's an anti-pattern to what you're describing.
Merlin: But you can also, like, hey, is it just me or is everything getting shittier?
Merlin: And it's like, hmm, there's a lot of shittier.
Merlin: And one of those, for example, is cold-tooth socks.
Merlin: They change the way they make the socks.
John: Oh, no.
Merlin: No, I'm only providing, I'm not asking for sympathy, but just to provide an example of like, you know, when there's an article of clothing, let's set aside Levi's for a minute, because they're made in so many different countries.
Merlin: And it's, you know, Levi's are Levi's.
Merlin: They're great.
Merlin: But, you know, I'm talking about like, if you went in and bought, like, Philson is probably a bad example.
Merlin: I need to cough.
Merlin: But anything where you're like, I think a classic example today is the Instant Pot, where people talk about I've had this Instant Pot for all these years, and it died, and I thought I needed to get another one, but I fixed it, and it was fine.
Merlin: Or I did buy another one, and guess what?
Merlin: It's exactly as good as the one I bought those years ago, right?
Merlin: You don't mean to sound like an old man about stuff like that, except it is frustrating when there's something that you've always been like, okay, this is my version of this from now on.
Merlin: This is one less piece of bullshit I have to have on my mind in life.
Merlin: Because I mean, oh, you're a consumer.
Merlin: Yeah, I'm a consumer.
Merlin: I need something to put my feet in for shoes.
Merlin: Yeah, you need your feet in.
Merlin: And I'd rather not think about that.
Merlin: But they changed something.
Merlin: I've always kind of wondered how you make a sock, like how many parts there are and stuff to it.
Merlin: But like some socks are more comfortable than others.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And I think they changed the formula of gold toes.
Merlin: Yeah, for sure.
Merlin: And by which I mean, I think they changed the way that they are.
Merlin: I watch enough fashion reality shows that I should know the name for this.
Merlin: But like, you know, it's the wolf.
Merlin: If you get the wolf of the pile on it the right way.
Merlin: But if you change the formula, you make the pieces bigger or smaller.
Merlin: Or my guess is require fewer materials, but maybe very importantly, also require less of any kind of labor or construction.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And so, but like they changed.
Merlin: My kid and I, my socks and I, it's a really job.
Merlin: My kid and I have been wearing the same socks forever.
Merlin: We just buy them and split them up.
Merlin: And then like, but it's like, wait, okay.
Merlin: So this thing that was done, it was a finished product.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: The white gold toe or gray gold toe, the gold toe sock.
Merlin: So I'm just giving one example.
Merlin: They were done.
Merlin: It was fun.
Merlin: It was great.
Merlin: Everybody was making money from it.
Merlin: I was getting socks.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And now,
Merlin: They're just not as good.
Merlin: And I'm sure there's reasons, but isn't that kind of what we're talking about a little bit?
Merlin: If you skimp on, I mean, let's start, you're talking about a men's wear shirt, not an Oxford necessarily, but a button-up dress-ish men's shirt, yes?
Merlin: Right?
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Well, and so, like, think about in the Hudsucker Proxy, where, not to spoil the movie for you, but where Paul Newman's life was saved because that guy put in extra stitches on his pants just because he wanted Mr., what's his name, his Huntsberger to have good pants.
Merlin: Well, you know, the...
Merlin: It just drives me a little bit crazy that I have to keep monitoring that stuff.
Merlin: I do understand it.
Merlin: If you had that men's dress shirt, right?
Merlin: So let's start at the beginning.
Merlin: First of all, maybe it doesn't have extra buttons.
Merlin: Maybe it doesn't have good extra buttons.
Merlin: Remember when pants would come with like extra, like sometimes an extra little bit of cloth if you had to mend it?
Merlin: You ever run across that?
John: Sure.
Merlin: But you know what I'm talking about.
Merlin: I'm not trying to be silly.
Merlin: You know what I'm talking about, right?
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: And so you understand on some level, we can't afford to give extra pants with our pants.
Merlin: We're going to cut back on that.
Merlin: In the case of a shirt, I bet you it does not fit as well.
Merlin: I bet the tailoring's not as good.
Merlin: The same reason that you would get an expensive garment is that, like, it's made to fit your body versus, like, it's a bunch of pieces we put together.
Merlin: In Malaysia, no offense.
Merlin: And now, like, when you skimp on that, John's not going to like his shirt.
John: American, famous American humorist Tom Baudet once said that something to the effect that the 1967 Ford F-150 was a perfect truck.
John: And at that point, trucks were done.
John: You didn't have to do anything else to them.
John: You didn't have to add anything or take anything away.
Merlin: I feel like at least in my head, Canon, there are, I don't want to say products, but there are goods like that.
Merlin: It's true.
Merlin: Like this is as good as it got.
Merlin: And then it stayed that way.
Merlin: And again, this is separate from the strictly old man conversation of they don't make it like they used to.
Merlin: I do think this is a really a different thing because we all adjust.
Merlin: They probably made nicer shirts before we were born, John.
Merlin: That's one reason vintage stuff is great.
Merlin: That's one reason that in the 1980s, you could buy vintage clothes for $1, $2 that would still last you another 30 years.
Merlin: I have them.
Merlin: I have them in my closet.
John: I'm looking at one right now.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Whereas today you're going to go in there and it's going to be like the kind of things, you know, like the, like the people who didn't win the Superbowl shirts, they give people in like, you know, South America, just not good stuff.
John: So I was just recently in Charleston as, as I, uh,
John: as i described i think the last last episode maybe and and you know you and your family went on a little trip it had a business basis but did you and your kid um you did some adventures in the yellow zone but the um the the the the thing about the thing about charleston you know we talk a lot about uh these things these declining standards and so forth and
John: And how things blend, Blarf, and Seattle and San Francisco, blah.
John: We do that.
John: And going to Charleston was a real eye-opener for me.
John: And in Charleston, people still dress fancy.
Merlin: In that way, it is like North Florida.
Merlin: If you're in the white people culture in North Florida that I was in, you don't dress like a hillbilly.
Merlin: You do dress like my friend Mike's dad, who's a lawyer.
Merlin: You wear chinos with a seam.
Merlin: You wear stuff that you could, you know what it is?
Merlin: It's like almost everything that men in the South wear, you could wear, men of our station, you could wear to a golf course.
Merlin: Which you can't say necessarily probably in Seattle, right?
Merlin: I've never been to a golf course.
John: At all?
Merlin: you never had lunch or anything i don't think there's a real feel that you can guess that it's resort where adjacent but like there is a certain sort of a look to it again succession you think about the kind of thing that like frank or you know would wear to a meeting like nobody dresses below that in public in at least in like tallahassee and in charleston the people i met at that real estate conference they were all in sharp suits
John: Yeah.
John: Well, I've never seen succession.
John: So that's a reference that passes me by too.
John: But no, I've never – if you can believe it, I've never ever been to a golf course except –
John: In high school, we used to have cross-country running meets, and we ran around a golf course.
John: Maybe I should say country club.
John: Would that change it at all?
John: I've never been to a country club.
John: Okay.
Merlin: Your dad never had events at a country club?
John: Well, the thing is we live in the West, and so country clubs, there aren't golf courses, but most of them are public golf courses.
John: And country clubs, I don't even know.
John: if i don't there are tennis clubs here but i don't know i don't know if i even know where there is a country i take your point though people in charleston you wait what is a country club tell me first of all what one is in the most is it just like it's in the country are you are you having fun with me no no no i just want to know how to respond
John: I know that country club is a thing that people used to say on 50s and 60s sitcoms.
Merlin: Well, I think for the reason I said country club as against a golf course, a country club, in my estimation of it, is a usually, almost always, private club.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And with all that that implies, meaning it costs money to join.
Merlin: It's probably costly to be a member once you have joined.
Merlin: And usually you need somebody to sort of sponsor you.
Merlin: It's all that kind of stuff.
John: But why do you go?
John: Is there a pool or...
John: What is the purpose of it?
John: Oh, my God.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I honestly can't tell if you're screwing with me.
Merlin: The country club at which my family had a restaurant for a year and a half of my life, for example, was a very low end as country clubs go country club.
Merlin: But the idea is you have a place to go.
Merlin: You think about when somebody talks about in England about in Britain old shows going to their club.
Merlin: It's a place where you can go and you can hang out.
Merlin: Now, in the country clubs I know about, you've usually got a pool.
Merlin: You've definitely got at least one golf course and probably a putting green and probably a driving range.
Merlin: You've got things like and then the sort of infrastructure around that of the people who take care of that.
Merlin: You can get golf carts.
Merlin: You can get a caddy.
Merlin: You can get all those things.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: You usually also have tennis.
Merlin: You usually also have at least one pool.
Merlin: Oh, it's a caddy shack.
Merlin: It's a caddy shack.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's a Caddyshack.
Merlin: And then you, what's it called?
Merlin: I forget what the place is called.
Merlin: Gosh, I can't believe I forgot the name of that club.
Merlin: All I know is that Al Servic's ruining the place.
Merlin: I've never been to one of these.
Merlin: But they also have things like they have a lot of rules.
Merlin: because people with money love rules sure and so like you know no golf cleats in the um dining room usually like you can wear golf shoes here but not there then there's locker rooms and and then you could have things like spa or massage type services all that kind of stuff but i mean in one cynical version of this it's the ability to say yeah i belong at seven springs country club i'm a member there i can bring you as a guest sometime if you want to go
Merlin: But that means also then if you're a big city lawyer, you go with the other big city lawyers.
John: So we do have that here, and it's the tennis club.
John: Oh, no.
John: I honestly – I did not know that.
John: That's incredible.
John: And the tennis club here in Seattle is a thing where you –
John: I think the wait list is supposed to be something like 15 years long or something like that.
John: To join.
Merlin: To join.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: And it's very expensive.
Merlin: Can't they build more?
Merlin: I guess that, you know, it's a Veblen good.
Merlin: It's supposed to be expensive, I bet.
John: Yeah, well, and it's on Lake Washington, so they're not giving that real estate away.
John: Like Will Rogers says, they're not making any more Lake Washington.
John: Exactly.
John: Although its position on Lake Washington is kind of underused in the sense that
John: What could be like a 300 – A big natural hazard?
John: Well, no, like a 300-foot wide beach, sandy beach with – because people do swim in Lake Washington in the summer.
John: But here, the tennis club, it has a tiny little beach for the children.
John: But most of the stuff that's built along the coast, along the shoreline of the lake is just –
John: it almost ignores that there's a huge, beautiful, and very expensive lake there.
John: Right.
John: That's some serious white people shit.
Merlin: Isn't it when you think about it?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You ever go to somebody's house?
Merlin: You've been to somebody's nice house, and you're like, oh my God, the view back here is incredible.
Merlin: And you're like, yeah, it's just hard to carry stuff here from the kitchen.
Merlin: We don't go out there very much.
Merlin: It's like, oh my God.
Merlin: I would sit out here every morning.
Merlin: You know, those little dumb things where you're like, oh my God, I don't even crave your whole life.
Merlin: I crave your access to this one place where it would be nice to read a book.
John: There are a few spots at the tennis club where you have a view out over the lake where it's like, oh, that's nice.
John: But mostly the club turns its back on the natural beauty.
John: And oddly...
John: There's no place at the tennis club which costs an enormous amount of money to join, an enormous amount of money to continue to be a member there.
John: There's no place there where you would want to be except on the tennis court.
John: Everywhere else, all the big house, the facilities, the food, the lanai, the drinks, the swimming.
John: There's not even a swimming pool, is there?
Merlin: Like I say.
Merlin: You mean it's not like a place where you go and you park your car and you play tennis and leave?
Merlin: yeah except so i'm sorry i'm like but tell me tell me if that's not true it's not a place because usually these places do have this a lot of components of like uh i mean i'm leaving out a million things because i still can't tell if you're messing with me but like there's a reason a place like mar-a-lago exists and people want their wedding there you know what i mean like you can get you can have events like that was a big part of what we did at our terrible restaurant was uh you know uh people have events at the country club
Merlin: But you're making it sound more like an urban get in, get out, more like a why, a fancy why.
John: Well, no, because it's meant to be that which you're describing.
John: There's a giant old mansion that's kind of been added on to six or seven times over the last 110 years.
John: And it's rambling and you kind of, in order to go in the front door, you have to walk across a parking lot down a very long flight of stairs and
John: And then when you walk in the front door, there's kind of a desk there, but it's not like there's not a grand hall or anything.
John: You just kind of walk in and it's like, well, there are the bathrooms.
John: And then you wander in.
John: It's like, I could have a meeting in this space.
Merlin: Can I ask when you feel like it was – let me ask you this.
Merlin: Rather than asking when was it built, let me ask you this.
Merlin: When does it feel –
Merlin: uh, what decade or period reflects the decision making that went into how the buildings were put and put, put together, like the buildings and how they relate to each other.
Merlin: Does it feel like, Ooh, sixties boom.
Merlin: Does it feel like forties leftover money?
Merlin: Does it feel like seventies cheap out?
Merlin: Like what's the feel to it?
John: So my family was, uh, my family, they were members of the tennis club from the very inception.
John: And my dad grew up there and my uncle Jack grew up there.
John: And, um, and,
John: Then the family continued to be – so we're talking about the 20s and 30s, at which point I think it was just a giant mansion on the lake and a couple of tennis courts.
Merlin: Would it be – I'm sorry.
Merlin: I'm trying to figure this out on my own.
Merlin: To use a Colin Molloy word, would it be ghost for me to ask – I see Inglewood, Sandpoint, Rainier, Lakeview.
Merlin: Would it be ghost for me to ask which one it is?
Merlin: It's okay if it's ghost for me to ask.
John: It is the Seattle Tennis Club.
Merlin: Okay.
Okay.
John: And if you Google it, you will find it there.
John: It's perched on the... See, I like that name.
John: I like that.
Merlin: That's almost like a German kind of cleanliness.
Merlin: So if you look at... What is this place called?
Merlin: This place is called Seattle Tennis Club.
John: Seattle Tennis Club.
Merlin: I understand that.
Merlin: It's a club for tennis in Seattle.
Merlin: I like that name.
Merlin: If you look at it, the best views- Oh, my goodness.
Merlin: I see what you're saying from the tennis court.
John: How are they not utilizing this?
John: The best views are from the tennis court, a place where you are- Looking at a ball, literally.
John: You're doing something else besides looking at the view.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: And then if you see over, there's a giant parking lot.
John: Well, that's built over the top of a indoor tennis facility-
John: And then if you go over to the left there, you see the rambling mansion club building that has absolutely no – there is no – it is an architectural abomination.
John: Let's call it that.
John: It has no center or –
John: It's not even center is not the word.
Merlin: I'm trying not to be a creep and map view this.
Merlin: Well, no, it's the Seattle Tennis Club.
Merlin: Everybody can find it.
Merlin: I don't like using Google.
Merlin: It makes me uncomfortable.
Merlin: No, no, but how would you describe for our listeners who maybe don't have Google?
Merlin: How would you describe the sort of feel of the building?
Merlin: What does this building want you to think or feel about where you are?
John: I think what happened...
John: um was that yeah it was a it was a building that was built in the in the 1910s and then it got added on to in the 1940s and then in the 50s and then in the 60s and then in the 80s and at no point was there a comprehensive view of like what is this what are we building what are we trying for and um you know my dad was
John: uh like it was a place that they really did go it was in their neighborhood right my dad just lived this is east seattle it looks like is that what you call it uh well no you call that madison park but my dad you know this was part of their turf uh just their neighborhood turf and he eventually i think um
John: made a big show in the 1960s of renouncing his membership to the tennis club because they wouldn't let in blacks and Jews.
John: So he made it like a public announcement.
John: I hereby, you know, leave the tennis club because of your... John, it sounds to me, if I could say, it's your dad, but it sounds to me like he really, he renounced his membership.
John: He did.
John: He did it in a big way so everybody knew.
John: That he was filing, he was lodging a protest, but the rest of my family, not, rather, rest of his family.
John: I can still get in as a guest.
John: They didn't – they continued to have events there and they continue to have events there to this day.
John: I was there just the other day.
John: They must at some point have eased up on their policy I'm guessing.
John: Well, they do allow blacks and Jews now.
John: That's nice.
John: Yeah, it was nice.
John: It was nice.
Merlin: Can they go into the public spaces?
John: absolutely absolutely they can be full members absolutely women too is it safe is it safe for them to be in the public area yeah i think so generally generally so uh a lot of another place a lot of them are probably on the 20-year waiting list because it's only been open for about 20 years please could i buy a t-shirt tennis was the big thing here for some reason they all grew up playing tennis tennis was very popular in 1920 in seattle
John: Um, you know, this, this probably did, I don't know.
John: Anyway, I, my sister and I have gone there our whole lives and every single time from the time she was five and I was seven, we stood there looking out at the lake.
John: And thinking to ourselves, why isn't there a beach here?
John: Why isn't there anything?
John: It's like a sporting club.
Merlin: Why isn't there anything for kids to do or any reason to be here other than... Especially when you're a kid, you're constantly seeing all the things where somebody won't let you do something or hasn't realized something cool that can be done.
Merlin: that is implicitly denied to you.
Merlin: And there's so many times in childhood and then onward, if you can keep some of your youth where you're like, it's crazy to me that they're not using at least part of this area to do X or to allow people to do X. And obviously there's going to be some people say, oh, that could be a dog park or that could be, you know, a green space for public use or whatever.
Merlin: But there are times where you're like maybe reflecting where you are in life, but sometimes you're like, how do you own that tree and not have a tire swing on it?
Merlin: How do you have a tree that's over a very slow ramping, kind of not a cliff, but you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like if you've got an oak tree with an area, well, like my friend Kenny's family had this giant tree.
Merlin: You can tell this is where this comes from.
Merlin: They're almost like jutted over where their hill suddenly, sorry, their backyard, their large, like one acre backyard suddenly started going downhill.
Merlin: And it was a fun, but safe enough way that with a truck,
Merlin: tire on a chain, you could swing out over 15 feet in the air and then land back on the solid ground where you're intended to be on.
Merlin: And if they had not had that there, I can tell you, anybody who moves into that house, you see that tree, you're like, why is there not a swing on that?
Merlin: Because that's how a kid's brain works.
Merlin: It isn't like, how do we keep out all the nature and jewelry in a way that we can maintain our clean golf cart path?
Merlin: It's just your brain is so different.
Yeah.
John: Well, there's a beach that's maybe a half a mile from the tennis club that is kind of one of those between two mansions sort of, oh, this is public access, and no one goes down here except for the people that know it's here.
John: You have to push your way through a Blackberry bush to get here.
Merlin: They're probably not going to make it well-marked and easy for people to find.
John: Yeah, the mansions don't even want it there, but it's been there since the original platting.
John: And the community, the whole town just all agreed that this was going to be a clothing optional beach.
John: What?
John: Okay, that's surprising.
John: It was never, nobody ever wrote it down.
John: It was never announced to anybody.
John: What it was was people would go down to the beach and then pretty soon they started wearing fewer and fewer things.
John: It's like using, it's like squatting.
John: Yeah.
John: And the first time you went down to that beach and saw a naked person there, you went, oh, I guess this is a naked beach now.
John: And depending on how you felt about that, you either turned around and went to a different beach or you were like, yeah, finally, there's a naked beach.
John: And in the 90s, it became – because it was the naked beach, it also became the alternative like cool go down there and smoke weed beach.
John: Because the nakeds aren't going to yell at you for smoking weed and nobody else is going to come down there because the nakeds are there.
John: Got it.
John: And so we would go there all the time until it became the creep beach because the nakeds realized.
Merlin: Oh, the sex people discovered it.
John: Well, because all the alternative girls were down there smoking pot.
John: So then the naked dudes would go down and be very – So you could see the side boob of a stoned teen.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: Oh, no.
John: It was much more about like I'm naked and you have to look at me type of – Oh, I see.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: I see.
John: So then the alternative kids stopped going down there because it was like, you know what?
John: There are a lot of places to smoke pot.
John: But if a town can agree –
John: Just by mutual acclaim, like, oh, this is the beach where it's just like, first of all, it's going to be nice nudists.
John: Then it's going to be like cool kid hangout.
John: Then it's going to be lame nudists.
John: Like, why they don't, why the tennis club can't have a beach for kids, you know?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know?
Merlin: Well, yeah, I do.
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: And not obviously, but just in passing also, famously unfriendly kind of to kids, except as a way, understandably, right?
Merlin: It's not for kids.
Merlin: You know, these spring out of a different...
Merlin: out of different generations where kids were supposed to be doing something different from adults almost all the time.
Merlin: And there's usually some, every culture has a rite of passage for when you're in between those two stages.
Merlin: And then once you're an adult, you're fucking, you have to golf with everybody else.
Merlin: Oh, you have to golf.
Merlin: But the, um, uh, what you were saying though, um, the stuff about, uh, wait, are we saying about teens and, or about, uh, kids and a beach?
Um,
Merlin: I think the place where, so it's a long story, but I'm not trying to really establish bona fides, but the thing that brought us to Florida from Ohio was my stepfather and this restaurant that he was starting at a country club in what would become the place where I spent junior high and high school.
Merlin: What was the country club called?
Merlin: I mean, I know, should I say?
Merlin: Seven Springs Country Club.
Merlin: And it was real downscale.
Merlin: I mean, I'm really not trying to drag anybody.
Merlin: You have to understand that in 1980, 79, 80 is when we moved there.
Merlin: I've told you this before, John, that I lived in Florida.
John: Yes.
Merlin: And in Florida, I lived in Pasco County.
Merlin: You have mentioned this.
Merlin: And in Pasco County, I lived in Colonial Hills.
Merlin: And Colonial Hills had the oldest median age of any neighborhood in the United States.
Ha!
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: When I moved there, within a year, it was the median age where I lived was 58.
Merlin: So if you lined up five people, the third person would be 58.
John: There are a lot of lakes, like ponds and lakes in the area around Seven Springs.
Merlin: Yeah, but it's, I mean, I'm really not trying to drag.
Merlin: All I'm trying to get is this, even just take, please let's just take it as red.
Merlin: This country club that was actually owned of all things by U.S.
Merlin: Steel was very, it was mainly about selling these villas, which are mainly like old people duplexes.
Merlin: And you become a member of this club.
Merlin: You live at Seven Springs.
Merlin: And this is where my family had like, you know, 595 Tuesday night prime rib night.
Merlin: It's that kind of country club.
Merlin: And yet they maintained everything we were just talking about.
Merlin: It's very hostile to kids mostly, except as a way to get the kids that were there.
Merlin: But here's the thing.
Merlin: You were not allowed.
Merlin: This is the first place I had ever been aware of.
Merlin: Certainly the first place that I've ever, quote unquote, temporarily lived at, where to be a homeowner, I think you had to be at least 50.
Merlin: And to be a resident there, I think you had to be at least something like 20.
John: Oh, you couldn't even be a kid that lived with their grandparents.
Merlin: I don't remember exactly what I... I do know that we temporarily rented a villa there because we had... I remember 79, we had a Christmas chair, not a Christmas tree.
Merlin: It was around the time that I watched... Christmas chair?
Merlin: Whenever... Let me put it this way.
Merlin: If anybody out there can find out when...
Merlin: Salem's Lot aired on TV, because I'll never forget that.
Merlin: That's where I remember watching it there.
Merlin: But everything we're talking about, John, I mean, it was all just really cheap, nasty old people.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, the point I was going to make was that at that point, 58 years old, most of the people, almost everybody you encountered where I lived was from the tri-state area
Merlin: Well, really, especially New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and had bought houses, starting making payments in the 60s on a $20,000 house, and then moved there to be cheap in Florida and not pay taxes.
Merlin: But even more so, maybe, that became the retirement rot.
Merlin: Everybody there was awful.
Merlin: They were just terrible, terrible people.
Merlin: It was not fun at all, and it was mainly about...
Merlin: enforcing rules.
Merlin: It was like out of Seinfeld with Jerry's parents.
Merlin: It was all about enforcing arbitrary rules on your friends and maintaining the order of the Seven Springs Country Club.
Merlin: But no, and part of that mission was you've got to keep kids out of there.
John: What's weird is that in the Northwest, the Northwest that I grew up in was so jumbled and it only became more jumbled
John: In terms of there not being any clear – like the social strata out here that people were very interested in, certain people were very interested in, that was – those were southern people that had immigrated here.
John: A lot of them after the Civil War.
John: And they came here and they tried to bring their southern... Union, probably, right?
John: No, no, no.
John: People from the south.
John: Confederate veterans and their wives who came up here to get away from...
John: the fact that they'd lost everything or just, they moved West, you know, they moved.
John: I think some people just had a real tough time looking at any aspect of reconstruction.
Merlin: Oh yeah.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I mean, it was not, it was not easy for anybody, but like, I bet that seemed especially galling to some of the Scots.
John: They wanted to come, they wanted, they came, they came out here and they tried to get that going, but the, the, or not, not tried to get it going.
John: They just bring it with them and, and establish it everywhere they go.
John: Right.
John: You put, you put four, uh,
John: uh, Southern women in a place.
John: And all of a sudden it's a club.
Merlin: Um, everybody's Martha Mitchell.
John: But the problem is there were also a lot of Norwegians out here already.
John: And there were a lot of totally different head, John.
John: Yeah.
John: And there were a lot of people that just didn't totally different head.
John: There's a, there's a, there's a reference.
John: Square peg, square peg, square.
John: They did not, they did not, uh, the people in the town did not naturally gravitate to nor obey any of the rules that the, that the,
John: that the four Southern women who started a tennis club were trying to impose.
John: So there was always here, there was never a, there was never a monoculture.
John: There was never a white people culture because there were white peoples from all over and they didn't like each other or socialize with each other at all.
John: So there was never a way of dressing here.
John: There was never a way of socializing.
John: There was not a kind of unified like high class, low class.
John: There were people just coming at it from all directions.
Merlin: Does that lead to a kind of, when I say friction, I don't mean like, but like a little bit of friction, like an ongoing basis, like we're all still figuring out how to deal with each other here?
John: I think one of the things that it built here culturally is a mind your own business culture.
John: Um, it's why people are like, well, that's why people think that Seattle's kind of unfriendly.
John: Everybody's polite and very friendly, but nobody wants to invite you.
John: Nobody's up in your business.
John: Well, nobody's up in your business and it's very hard to get people to like actually come over for dinner.
John: They will tell you they'd love to come over for dinner and they're going to have you over for dinner.
John: I get it.
John: No one's ever really going to come to dinner unless you are.
John: That's that Bellingham influence, isn't it?
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: But what, what happened, what happens to me when I go to a place like
John: Charleston or Savannah is seeing it in action where we arrived on a Sunday and we went down and drove around and then walked around all downtown right when church was getting out and seeing all the people in their church clothes and realizing even in 2023,
John: they were more in their church clothes than anyone in the West Coast I had ever seen in my entire life.
John: I had never seen an entire church of people empty out
John: in their church clothes.
John: Because in the West, there's always going to be somebody in their fishing booth.
John: Are these mostly black folks?
John: No, not at all.
John: This is Charleston.
Merlin: It's still a very segregated place.
Merlin: I'm sorry, I was having a brain fart.
Merlin: Yes, I see.
Merlin: But like that whole, it's like the opposite of a country club or something.
Merlin: But like everybody is there putting some effort into it.
Merlin: And it's like a half day thing.
John: And for somebody like me who has kind of
John: you know, spent a lot of time thinking about dressing nice and a lot of time thinking about class and status in America and what, what that all represents and what, you know, and, and how, how much of that.
John: And then, you know, and we spend a lot of time as like, Oh, standards are declining and all this stuff, but living in the West, like your experience in Florida is completely different and it adds so much to you, your,
John: you come to San Francisco and you can see San Francisco, but you've got all this.
Merlin: An old fashioned word.
Merlin: I mean, wherever you go, I used to say this, you know, wherever you go, you're in the suitcase.
Merlin: I think you bring your sensibility with you.
Merlin: That's the best word I could think of.
Merlin: Just the general sort of sensibility that encompasses things like expectations, mores, all those sorts of things.
Merlin: And you go, Oh, this is, this is different from what we've experienced.
John: I've had before, you know, and, and, and growing up, growing up in the West and living almost,
John: all of my life in the Northwest, and in some ways perched on the edge of the Northwest.
John: Where have you lived that wasn't Washington or Alaska, except for a brief stint in New York a couple times, right?
Merlin: Yeah, brief stint in New York.
Merlin: That's it.
Merlin: But if we put it on a timeline, it would be like Seattle, Alaska, back to Seattle, right?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Born in Seattle, moved to Alaska.
Merlin: I have to admit, I have trouble keeping it all straight, like which years exactly, but I'm pretty sure you spent some high school to high school in Alaska.
John: Born in Seattle, moved to Alaska when I was...
John: moved two and a half moved back to seattle when i was four and a half moved back to alaska when i was nine and a half jesus john and lived there until i was 17 and a half
John: And then moved back to Seattle.
John: And then I spent, you know, whatever, that half a dozen years where I was traveling all around.
Merlin: Travel, travel, travel.
Merlin: You haven't lived in Alaska since you were 17.
Merlin: Right.
John: I mean, my folks kept living there, so I would go home for Christmas.
John: Sure, sure, sure.
John: But, you know, I lived for four months in Washington, D.C.
John: I lived for four months in New York City.
John: And other than that.
John: It was all, all my experience was traveling, right?
John: Come stay for a week, go, come stay for a week.
John: No intention of putting down roots.
John: No, or certainly not.
John: I never did.
John: And then always, always back here.
John: And so, so I, so, so looking at, at other places is favorite, uh, favorite of mine to go places and look, uh, to, to do a, to do a check and see, uh,
John: but I have zero experience personally or culturally of being in any kind of environment where there's a, where there's a, well, anything other than the Northwest culture that I grew up with, which is a very perched on the edge of the world culture.
John: And so being in Charleston and realizing like, Oh, all of the, the, the symbolism of these bow ties on these, these bow ties and these, um,
John: and these horn-rimmed glasses that I in some ways have fetishized because those appear in all of the 1950s CIA movies that I love and they represent in black and white photographs to me.
Merlin: You're talking about Atticus Finch.
John: I'm talking about a lot of that.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I'm not saying just Atticus Finch, but like that immediately calls to mind for me, Gregory Peck with the suit and the glasses and the like, and the solid spine of decency and, you know, church going people and doing the right thing and that sort of thing.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Exactly.
John: Exactly.
John: And I have not, there was not, uh, none of that existed out here in that way.
John: And it, and it's not that it, it didn't exist because it got,
John: Papered over or because times have changed, it never existed here.
John: It was never present here.
John: It was everybody here.
John: It's not the most fertile soil for that kind of seed to grow.
John: Well, it's just that in 1865, there were 10,000 people in Seattle.
John: Everything that happened here happened post-Civil War, basically.
John: Okay.
John: And so there wasn't any...
John: And people were coming here from everywhere at the time.
John: So it was a, it was not,
John: There wasn't a white culture here that was getting overrun.
Merlin: They say that if you've got a cat and you're going to get a new cat, I've heard this of many different kinds of animals, but especially with cats, if you've had a cat at home and you're bringing in a new cat, it's critical to introduce them to each other.
Merlin: I'm going to say this carefully because I think this is so brilliant.
Merlin: You have to go take both cats separately to some place that neither one of them have been.
Merlin: And let them meet each other there because they will in their own cat way, my understanding is that in their own cat way, they will each assume that it's the other cat's home base.
Merlin: And they won't feel threatened.
Merlin: Whereas if you take it somewhere either of them has been to at all, it'll feel like the other one is coming in on their turf.
Merlin: I don't know if that's true, but I think it's a good analogy.
Merlin: It's weird when everyone would almost be like trying to make a basis for society at a train station or something where everybody there is passing through, but brings with them their own sensibilities, their own expectations.
Merlin: And you've got to kind of like figure out how we're going to deal in this public space together.
Merlin: And even if it's a train station in Vancouver versus a train station in Manhattan, like there's a lot in common, but they also do have their differences.
Yeah.
John: Well, and on all of the different kinds of resource extraction cultures and all of the different, you know, people came out here and they were not, there was, it was not hospitable to plantation farming for sure.
Yeah.
John: Um, and so what you had was the Scandinavians were like, look, we'll handle the fish.
John: Let's try looking under the ground.
John: And well, and there, you know, and there were people that were like, well, we'll do coal mining and lumbering.
John: And there were other people that were like, well, I know how to build a lumber mill, but I, you know, and then there was the gold rush, but it was all about, um,
John: being perched on the edge of the world.
John: There was, it was not a, if you, if you built a tennis club or a country club here, it was kind of a laughable, like we're going to build a German deli to remind us of Germany.
John: Uh, like we're going to build a club because that's what we had back at home.
John: And it doesn't really function here, except we, except we still need it.
John: You know, we still need a place where we can keep other people out and
John: It's just that here, nobody was trying to get in.
John: Not until now.
John: You know, now there's a 20-year waiting list.
John: But in 1950, there wasn't.
John: You know, in 1950, it was like the only people that wanted to be there were the people that were there.
John: So going to the south and seeing the Atticus Finches actually walking around still not just in their Atticus Finch clothes...
John: But carrying around all their Atticus Finch history and – My host in Charleston looked so much like that character.
Merlin: I saw 50 a day walking around where you're like – I don't think he was wearing a seersucker suit, but he might as – but he wasn't comical.
Merlin: It was less Andy Griffith and more Atticus Finch.
John: Well, there were no seersucker suits being worn because it was March, and everybody there knew better than to wear a seersucker suit in March.
John: I mean, all that stuff they still are thinking of, right?
John: They are not going to wear white shoes before Labor Day.
John: Oh, boy.
John: And all of that out here, my whole life, it's always been cosplay.
John: And I'm an American, and I have history all over, and I feel like I partly own or have some kind of proprietary –
John: Ownership of the American story, but really and I've known this my whole life.
John: It's just that keeps being reinforced When I left Anchorage at 17 and came down to the United States I was in that weird position of being an American who had really never been to America and everything I knew about America was
John: was a cosplay.
Merlin: You guys might as well have been in another country.
Merlin: Every time I would see the Sears commercial where it said, prices are slightly higher in Alaska and Hawaii, it would always underscore how much... No, I'm serious.
Merlin: And I appreciate and want to thank you for saying you came down to America.
Merlin: Because, guys, it only became a state...
Merlin: like almost in my lifetime.
Merlin: Those, Alaska and Hawaii became, they became states around the time that the last Confederate veteran or the last Civil War veteran died.
Merlin: That's how, that's how America works.
Merlin: We've had a real short amount of time to do all of this.
Merlin: And really, it must have felt apart even visiting.
Merlin: But then coming down here, it must have been almost like how I felt first going to Canada.
Merlin: Like, oh, it's so close, it's weird.
Merlin: But the differences are unavoidable.
John: Well, except we all very much identified as Americans.
John: So it was like coming home from the moon or coming home from...
John: from, yeah, like a, like a space colony where I was like, now I'm in America.
John: Now look at them.
John: Look at those Americans.
John: They're me.
John: I'm hello.
John: Hello.
John: Like, hello.
John: Are you from the South?
John: Hello.
John: Nice to meet you.
John: Hey, Betty Grable.
John: Hey, hey.
John: And I did this all the first time I heard somebody, the first time I went to New York and heard somebody go, Hey, get out of here.
John: I was like, no way.
John: Look at it.
John: You're amazing.
John: Wow.
John: America.
John: And
John: And I continued to feel that way until I felt like I adopted enough of a jaded like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've been everywhere.
John: But going to Charleston, a place I'd never been, to a kind of deep south situation where I wasn't playing music, so all I had to do all day was just sort of walk around and look in people's windows.
John: I realized I still have it.
John: I'm still like, oh my God, look at you.
John: Look at you.
John: You're so cute.
John: You're so, this is so amazing.
John: And also like, wow, all the history here, like, whoa.
John: And, you know, and I'm listening to every word people say as they walk us around and kind of go like, well, now this is the, this is the house where the enslaved people lived.
John: And I'm like, hmm, interesting.
John: Like, you know, I'm watching them as closely as anything.
Merlin: This is where we chose to house our guests.
John: Well, what I've discovered is that everyone in a forward-facing role, tourism-wise, in those two cities says enslaved person.
John: No one says slave anymore.
John: And it was an example of a kind of language change that the first time I heard it, I was like, interesting choice of words.
John: And then as the 10 days progressed...
John: I was like, oh, of course, that is a tremendous shift, a tremendous shift.
John: I think that's an example of people trying.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Because what you're saying is, I mean, like, I know we don't all agree with this and including me, but I do see if I had to look at this, there's a pattern in general, which is let's stop
Merlin: calling people what we've always called them that we think they quote unquote are and let's first start with the fact that these are each people and they're people that then may have some sort of an adjective that describes their situation with them but like whereas we used to say you know a pretty unkind word for people who had any kind of
Merlin: we used to call people cripples we don't do that anymore right that's kind of gross and you could you can say disabled disabled person like there's somewhere like one house person i understand why we say that out of respect but it does sometimes feel like an unuseful euphemism but i i could see i can see why there are sometimes you would want to say enslaved person another time where you might really want to say slaves oh
Merlin: If you're pointing out the shit you did, I think it's okay for you to call them slaves.
Merlin: Hey, you know what?
Merlin: You know how we were able to sell this woman and her son?
Merlin: Because they were slaves.
Merlin: They were enslaved people.
John: It's a difference between a noun and an adjective, as you said.
John: Big difference, yeah.
John: And every person that gave me a tour of an old house or of an old fort or whatever in those two states...
John: Very definitely said enslaved person and they said it very comfortably.
John: They did not – nobody tripped over it.
John: They were choking on it.
John: It was absolutely like – it was a thought technology that people down there had adopted.
John: Like, oh, right.
John: This actually is a meaningful difference and it's important to make that distinction.
John: And that resonated with me in a way that unhoused person feels like a West Coast affectation that is not actually doing the same heavy lifting, right?
John: That enslaved person is doing heavy, heavy lifting, not just in the people that are hearing it said, but the people that are saying it.
Merlin: These people weren't born – well, some of them were eventually born slaves, but they were born human beings.
Merlin: It is we who enslaved them.
Right.
John: Well, just realizing that a lot of the symbolism that people attach to all that stuff that I recognized in – that I've always recognized in theory, right?
John: But not in theory.
John: Like reading about American culture, I've always been in the –
John: I've always read it both as an American and also as someone who has never felt really any of it, like felt the real feeling of waking up in a town that has history where my, where, and that's not, that's not true because, because, um, I have a lot of history in Seattle and, and Anchorage, but both of those places, it really felt like living history, right?
John: Like my,
John: My father and uncle were the people that were, that were making the history.
John: It wasn't five generations ago.
John: It wasn't, you know, we didn't live on any particular side of the tracks because there weren't any tracks.
John: Right.
John: And, and trying to understand the importance, the significance of the,
John: of those deep, deep, deep traditions in places and how those traditions are still manifesting in these people that are dressed like Atticus Finch at a church?
Merlin: You might identify yourself as more of a South Carolinian.
Merlin: Well, there certainly was a time on this continent, let's put it that way, where people thought of themselves much more as a South Carolinian than obviously as an American.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And I'll bet there are people who think of themselves more as a, I don't know the word, Charlestonian.
Merlin: Like, I bet the thing is, do you see yourself as an American over everything else?
Merlin: Do you see, you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like, do you feel like you are an expression of a national or state culture?
Merlin: Or do you feel like you're living in a place that reflects what your people built?
Merlin: I mean, there's a lot of different ways to think about that just situationally all the time.
John: And what was tricky was I was comfortable in Charleston.
John: I liked the fact that people were dressed up.
John: I liked the fact that there were – that when you went into a restaurant on a Tuesday night for dinner, people were wearing jackets.
Merlin: I was actually warned about that.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Merlin, I know you're from San Francisco and you dress a little bit kind of casual, but when we go out tonight, you might want to just kind of wear a tie.
John: Well, and I brought a blazer and a tie with me kind of suspecting it, right?
John: Like I'm going to the South, I'm going to these cities, I'd better have a blazer.
John: And I was glad I did.
John: And I liked it because here in Seattle, you can go to the nicest restaurant in the city and nobody's wearing a blazer.
Merlin: Well, you called it cosplay.
Merlin: And I think that's true, but it's also a funny way to put that.
Merlin: But the truth is, sometimes it's fun to dress up.
Merlin: And there are places, could another one, I don't know if it's still like this, but last time I was in Manhattan, if you were going out to a steakhouse at night, you'd wear a jacket.
Merlin: Oh, for sure.
Merlin: I mean, like that sounds, well, I'm saying that because I live in San Francisco now.
Merlin: And it's not like you can walk in looking like a total chode.
Merlin: You still have to wear clothes that look nice, but no shoes, no shirt, no service is not a sign that's needed on most steakhouses.
Merlin: Right, right.
Merlin: If you're there, you know.
Right.
John: But what I was conscious of in being down there and being like, I'm comfortable here.
John: I'm happy with this.
John: Am I comfortable?
John: Why?
John: What part of this formality do I like?
John: Well, or what about this that I'm comfortable with is something that now I need to think more.
John: I need to really think about what it is I'm comfortable with or what it is about this that I'm looking for.
John: Why is everybody so nice here?
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: There's a thing that I walk away with a feeling.
Merlin: That feeling came from an action, or in this case, usually interaction.
Merlin: But like, oh, how should I tumble that over in my little mental rock tumbler to realize the basis for why I got treated that particular way?
Yeah.
John: And what – I'm always – I think a lot of us now in America are thinking, is there a last best place?
John: Is there – it never used to feel like the good places were –
John: were few and far between in the United States.
John: It felt like the good places were everywhere and you picked a good place and then you were from that good place and people were from that other good place.
John: And now more and more it feels like, God, I'd really like to find a place where I felt at home, right?
John: And do I feel that way in my own place anymore?
Merlin: You know, do I feel a lot more of a crapshoot?
Merlin: And I'm not doing this to be the way that this sounds.
Merlin: But, you know, a lot's changed, especially over a period of time.
Merlin: But like the thing is, it's always been somewhat unkind to say things like, oh, flyover states and blah, blah.
Merlin: I mean, that seems like flyover states seems like the kind of thing somebody in a flyover state would make up to feel wounded.
Merlin: Doesn't sound like something I would ever say, but whatever.
Merlin: I know what it means.
Merlin: I've used it.
Merlin: But coastal communities, you have a better, your batting average will be better at randomly choosing from a large coastal community than from choosing the large amount of space in between in a way that did not probably used to be the case.
Merlin: I think, I suspect.
Merlin: I bet, I mean, like, I don't know.
Merlin: I mean, a place like St.
Merlin: Louis, a place like, you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like some of these cities that are like, they call it the Midwest, but it's really kind of getting into the South.
Merlin: I was watching the NASA channel yesterday and thinking about how much stuff in NASA goes on in Alabama.
Merlin: And I wonder if there has been a point or will be a point where people who work at NASA, you know, people who are very esteemed scientists might, but there's times when it's been kind of uncomfortable to live in Atlanta and work at NASA.
John: Well, NASA is almost entirely... Atlanta, I'm sorry.
Merlin: Alabama, I apologize.
John: NASA is almost entirely based in Florida, Texas, and Alabama.
John: Like, it's a... Yeah.
John: It's not... It's like Houston.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: Yeah.
John: It's not like a thing that there's a lot of NASA stuff in Minneapolis, although I'm sure we're going to hear immediately... I would have put it in St.
John: Paul, but... I live in Minneapolis and I work at NASA.
John: What are you talking about?
John: Hey!
John: You guys don't know anything.
Merlin: Let me clarify a couple issues for you, Mr. Roderick.
Merlin: Um, and, and in the process of what was the, we used a good verb as I was interrupting you for how you're thinking about that.
Merlin: How do you process that?
John: I'm still processing it.
Merlin: You know, I'm still, I'm still going to the part of the part about like trying to remain circumspect about, Hmm, like maybe I shouldn't love this too much.
John: Well, or, you know, or maybe before I went down there, I would have, I would have been, been very comfortable saying that there was nothing in South Carolina for me.
John: And going to South Carolina, then I'm confronted with, oh, well, there is stuff here for me.
John: What is that stuff?
John: And I'm not predisposed to immediately say all the stuff that's here for me is weird and liking it is weird and I need to go back to school in order to
John: in order to make sure that I, that I know how, how bad I am and how bad the world is.
John: Um, so being there and saying like, okay, this is, this is a lot more complicated and interesting than I thought.
John: And what, what am I going to take away?
John: Right.
John: It is a choice.
John: You do have a choice to take away what you want to take away.
John: And there isn't – you're not actually obligated to get out your little red book and flip to the appropriate page and see what you're allowed to take away from an experience like that.
John: But if you're responsible to yourself –
John: You're going to try at least to, to figure out like, what, what are the, what are the takeaways that I don't want to.
John: Absolutely.
John: That aren't my like happiest takeaways.
Merlin: It's one thing to just keep kind of searching around for a place where you always feel welcome.
Merlin: And I feel like it's quite a different and deeper thing to go like, well, is there why turn it completely?
Merlin: And this is not saying you, but like for me, sometimes it has been instrumental after years and years and years ago.
Merlin: Well, okay.
Merlin: I didn't like that place when I like that place.
Merlin: I didn't feel welcome there.
Merlin: oh, is that a place where I thought I would feel welcome and what made me not feel welcome?
Merlin: Because if I sit with that for a while, sometimes that can be really useful.
Merlin: It's skillful.
Merlin: It can be skillful to go, well, maybe there's a reason I didn't feel welcome.
Merlin: I'll give the best example I can think of, Hawaii.
Merlin: I felt incredibly unwelcome in Hawaii.
Merlin: And it did not take long for me to figure out why I felt welcome and for it to make complete sense.
Merlin: Well, right, right.
Merlin: It's like almost everybody I encountered in Hawaii really hated that I was there.
Merlin: And I think if one has had a difficult time understanding that, one has probably not thought about it very much.
John: Well, right, but then...
John: Then the question is, you know, there are a lot of questions that follow from that.
John: Absolutely.
Merlin: I'm just trying to say that if you go into it, not you, but if one goes into an environment and immediately feels welcome and has never had to question, think about process, any part of, oh, I'm welcome here because I rule, rather than is there any other reason why I feel welcome here?
Merlin: Whereas I love being in Hawaii in some ways, apart from having all my shit stolen.
Merlin: But I also learned something about it where I was like, oh, the food here is weird and the people are kind of mean and enough with the shave ice.
Merlin: And it's like, well, yeah, dude.
Merlin: But like, can you learn anything from that?
John: Well, I think the primary thing you learn is that Hawaii is not for you.
Merlin: And the people have their reasons for being a little bit cranky that people come in there and like, you know, want to run the joint.
John: Well, yeah, but that's kind of that's that's exactly what I'm talking about.
John: Like there's a there's a there's a thing that that in particular people like you and me in the West who are who have been through many, many processes of education and reeducation.
John: that go into those situations and go, oh, well, I don't have a right to feel good in Hawaii because of all these historical factors and because of race, class, and other.
John: And so I felt uncomfortable in Hawaii, and I deserve it.
John: Or I felt uncomfortable in Hawaii, and that is just, and that's just.
Merlin: But you can walk into a bookstore, a record store, any city.
Merlin: There's so many places where you could walk in, and somebody as dumb as me, my entire life,
Merlin: worldview, my entire lighthouse of dreams that I've created in my head about a place falls apart.
Merlin: As soon as I meet somebody who's super cool and I don't want to say just nice, but who like I realize is in my, at least my grandfaloon, if not my caress and then go like, Oh, you know, that was kind of shitty of me to be like that.
Merlin: Like this person rules, you know?
John: Yeah.
John: And, and those, those, those places, Charleston in particular, but Savannah also, I, I needed to spend more time in Savannah, but I,
John: you know, all the things that are troubling about those places then and now can all be true.
John: And, and, and yet it can still be a very surprising place.
John: You know, very, it was, it, it defied my, uh, stereotypes.
John: It defied my expectations.
John: And I don't mean to say all in a good way.
John: Um, it just, I wasn't prepared for it.
John: And a lot of this stuff had to do with this sort of,
John: race class stuff, but also little stuff.
John: Like I really, really, why does everybody here dress like Atticus Finch?
John: I didn't know that ever existed, let alone still exists.
John: And I'm attracted to that because I see it as a thing out of space and time.
John: I see it as a, because I don't have all the, the cultural backstopping.
John: I'm looking at it in some ways just aesthetically like my daughter does when she looks at a Disney princess.
John: She's not looking at a Disney princess and going, well, this really has echoes in Austro-Hungary in the 1810s.
John: She hasn't read Roland Barthes yet.
John: No, she just looks at the outfits and likes them.
Merlin: But you know, the elephant in the elephant, John, as the dumb guy, I'll point it out.
Merlin: It must be really bracing, invigorating to know that travel still has something, not merely to offer you, but it has a way to change you and make you think.
Merlin: That must still feel really good.
Merlin: Because you love that experience, I think, or you crave that experience of like, bring it on.
Merlin: Bring me the new thing, and it must feel good.
Merlin: It must be somewhat renewing, personally and civically, to go like, you know, that was cool and I learned something, and travel still has things to show me.
John: What's weird is you think, at my age, I've felt very strongly like, well, I've never been to India, and I need to go to India
John: And, you know, you start to work up all the things, all the reasons you need to go to India, all the things that if I've never been to India, then how can I possibly have a sense of the world?
John: But to find that, because, you know, going to Charleston was enough of a shock, but what it did was remind me that
John: When I go to Yakima, that experience is available.
John: That's a really good way to put it.
John: Yeah.
John: When you go to Stockton, I mean, there are places in California that are less than an hour from where you are that you can go and have a cultural shock.
John: Absolutely.
John: Absolutely.
John: We're just not prepared.
John: You never know.
Merlin: Well, you're going to walk in one of those doors or through some kind of a threshold and you're going to have an experience that's very different than what you had in your mind.
Merlin: And it's easy for me anyway to forget that that's part of what makes going anyplace interesting is, yes, you do bring yourself along in the suitcase, but there's a you carrying that suitcase who can decide how you deploy how you are.
John: Right, right, right.
John: Well, and the fact that the thing is only an hour and a half from here doesn't mean I know it.
John: It doesn't mean I know it any better.
Merlin: Dude, you know this area, one of the best things about this goddamn godforsaken stupid fucking city is it is actually legit incredible that I can ride my bike.
Merlin: First of all, it's incredible that I can ride my bike across the Golden Gate Bridge and then just go up that little hill to the left.
Merlin: And then I'm in the Marin Headlands.
Merlin: I can look down at San Francisco, as everyone should.
Merlin: Or I can look out at the water.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying, though?
Merlin: Like Muir Woods.
Merlin: My kid is considering an internship at Muir Woods.
Merlin: Like, that's not that far away.
Merlin: All that stuff is right here.
Merlin: There was snow on Mount Tam last week.
Merlin: There's all that kind of stuff where you're like, you know, travel is whatever you want it to be.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, I mean, just going when we were in San Francisco, uh, this fall and you know, we were driving up from, we were driving up from, um, whatever,
John: down there and we came up along the that's what john calls los angeles and san diego down there we came up along the front we were on the front side yeah and then all of a sudden we're in the sunset you're in you're in the good third i was i was in i was in the sun the sunset your neighborhood yeah and a place i've been many many times and driving along the beach there been there many many times
John: And then kept going along the coast in a place that I had never done because usually we turn up at Golden Gate Park and we head into the city because that's where things are happening.
John: Yeah.
John: You don't continue along.
John: You're seeing all of the places that I ride my bike a lot.
John: I know.
John: And I was texting you and you were like, I go there all the time.
John: And all of a sudden I'm in a part of San Francisco that in all the many, many, many years of going there, I'd never been.
John: And it's not that I'd never been because it was crazy.
Merlin: because of any reason i had just never gone no it's like when people ask me why i didn't watch tv show or finish watching a movie and it's like there's less than a reason there's no reason it's just because of life yeah you know say you know golden gate park it's kind of cooler than you think you know it's cool you can go and see bison oh my god look at the bison that's amazing but you know what no almost nobody knows
Merlin: Right, literally across the street from the bison is what looks like a private club, but you can kind of walk in back, and they have these long, beautiful lanes of water for practicing fly fishing, and it's the most serene place in the world.
Merlin: So there's places inside of places, and you don't have to move your car.
Merlin: You could park and go look at the ladies, because just so you know, John, Brady's bits, all the bisons are ladies.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Because if you bring in men, it becomes complicated.
Merlin: Oh, sure.
Merlin: But literally, you could park your car right there, go look at the six bison, or whatever, and then go across the street to this place, nobody ever goes, and
Merlin: But that's the whole world.
Merlin: I mean, the whole world is, you made me think, when talking about country clubs, you immediately made me think of that Christopher Alexander book, Pattern Language, which is just an amazing work.
Merlin: I know you know this, but for our listeners, it's just a book this team, a series of books this team has written about ways to build communities, houses, everything, all the way down to, it's nice to, in your house, it's nice to have an area where you can hang out and read a book and have sunshine.
Merlin: Like, that's a pattern.
Merlin: Use that.
Merlin: The thing is, if you remove all those patterns and turn it in to drive your car here and get out, and then get back in your car and drive back, you're going to miss a lot of the good little patterns, the good nooks and crannies.
Merlin: You're going to miss the fly fishing pools of life.
John: I really feel during the pandemic that I had a new...
John: way of seeing, um, yeah, like a renewed appreciation.
John: Yeah.
John: That a lot of us did because all of a sudden you're, uh, so many of the distractions are gone and now you really are like, there's nothing for us to do today except go.
Merlin: I can't believe how much I missed going to the library or walking through Stern grove.
John: Right, right.
John: I mean, my kid and I spent so much time turning over rocks on the beach and looking at crabs because that was the most action that we were going to get.
John: And it was great.
Merlin: I mean, as I said before, I really missed all the things.
Merlin: I'm sorry to bring it back to this, but like going to the library, which the dumbest thing in the world, as you know, it's very near our house.
Merlin: It's closer than our Walgreens.
Merlin: And we used to go there all the time.
Merlin: And I got to see what it was like to have a little kid at different points in that person's life being with me in a library.
Merlin: And I missed a year and a half or two years of that.
Merlin: And I'll always be kind of bitter about that.
Merlin: Something as dumb as going to the library was taken away from us.
Merlin: And not by anybody, but by the...
Merlin: universe and that bummed me out but we then I became even I started missing things like I was watching Brazilian I never know how to pronounce the word Brazilian Steakhouse videos last night and I was like it's been so long we used to go like twice a year my kid and I would go to the Brazilian Steakhouse and
Merlin: you know, kind of near Valencia.
Merlin: And I don't know, there's just like all those kinds of things.
Merlin: And you start to like, not just that you have to dig up new things to make memories of, but that like, don't you re-appreciate things like, oh, you know, we have this backyard that's kind of cool.
Merlin: And it's like, that's all its own kind of travel.
Merlin: If you're going somewhere you don't usually go with open expectations, I think you're beginning to travel well.
John: To keep that in mind every time you walk out the door.
John: I wrote a little group of friends last night a text, and I said, I was just in Charleston and Savannah, and every night we went to a different nice restaurant that was on the list of, when you're in Charleston, you have to go to the blank.
John: And so the, none of them were that nice, you know, but they were all the, the places that you're supposed to go.
John: If, if you're in town, you have to go to, to this place.
John: And I, so I, you know, my little, my little gang of, of it's like so much shrimp and grits, a lot of shrimp and grits, but I also made the mistake of going to steak houses where it's like, why am I good?
John: It's, it's like, it's like getting barbecue in Austin.
John: It's like, don't get barbecue, get, get tacos.
John: When you're in New York city, get steak.
John: But so I wrote this little gang and I said, I have no idea what restaurants there are on Capitol Hill, my former neighborhood.
John: Yeah.
John: I've got to be 50 that I've never been to.
John: Like when I lived up there, there was not a ramen place in Seattle.
John: Now there are probably 15 ramen places just on Capitol Hill.
John: In a Pacific Rim city like Seattle.
John: Because we were the teriyaki capital.
Merlin: We were not the ramen capital.
Merlin: What's that kind of food?
Merlin: Remember those green noodles?
Merlin: What kind of food is that?
Merlin: What's that cuisine?
John: Well, that's like Sichuan.
John: Okay.
John: But –
John: So I wrote them and I was like, look, we're all dudes in our 50s.
John: This is going to sound really pretty sus, as the kids say.
John: But why don't we start a food gang where we just go to the restaurants in our own neighborhood that we've never been to that are on the list of places that if we were visiting Seattle, we would feel like we had to go.
Merlin: That's a really...
Merlin: i used to be in a an ad hoc organization for a few years and this this it's just the the name that existed for this before i was even part of the group was called the gentleman who dine and at the time back when we were all young and we had a little bit of money and not kids uh once a month or so we would go out to a nice restaurant together wearing jackets and ties and stuff and you know whether you do that you know
Merlin: once a year or whatever there's so many benefits to that john first of all you're making sure you check in with your guys or your who's whoever's right but also that doesn't that kind of fit what you're doing here you like you're not strictly playing tourists you're saying like let's go to like but this is about our friendship this is about rediscovering our city like there's a whole number of small projects that could coalesce around this
John: Yeah.
John: And one of the big projects was that one of the people I had on the list on this group, this text group, I had only just recently gotten to be friends with.
John: And in the course of our conversation, he had mentioned these other friends of mine that he also knew and liked, but didn't really get didn't really know.
John: And so I mentioned him to these other friends in passing.
John: And each of them said, oh, I've always wanted to get to know that guy.
John: He seems really great.
John: Oh, John, this is a win-win-win-win-win.
John: So I was like, well, why don't we do this then?
John: Why don't we all have a gang?
John: And we'll all get to know Mr. Guy that we all think is great.
John: And we'll get to know each other.
John: We'll really get to know ourselves.
John: And we'll start to be – we'll start to – well, I'm tired of driving through a neighborhood that at one level I feel like I built or helped build.
John: You were there, John.
Merlin: You were there before it was cool.
Merlin: You were Capitol Hill before it was Capitol Hill.
John: That's right.
John: And I'm driving by and it's restaurant after restaurant after restaurant that I've never been in that I have no reason to go to because I'm not, you know, if I'm hungry, I'm going to go to the place where when I walk in the door, they go, John, I'm not going to go to a place where I walk in the door and somebody's like, sorry, you know, five, 10 minutes.
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