A Better Life New York
Steve "The Judge" focuses on the art of enjoying yourself through food, fun and frolic. Steve conducts live Interviews on many popular and controversial topics. Steve has candid conversations about fine dining to BBQ, cigars to cars, history making events and everything in between. Recently, we added a special monthly addition ion collecting Antique Phonographs with experts Wyatt Markus, and Collector/Dealers Joe Hough and Tracy McKinney. Sponsored by Premium Botanicals the maker of Herbal Spectrum a line of full spectrum Hemp based CBD products. http://www.mypbcbd.com
A Better Life New York
Culinary Rhapsody: Flaky Pastries, Fine Cigars, and Vintage Vibes - From Tokyo to New York’s Dining Scene plus a little F1 Racing News
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Picture yourself biting into a croissant so flaky, each buttery layer dissolves into a delightful mess that's impossible to forget. That's just a taste of the culinary adventures we unpack in today's episode, as we jet from the vibrant streets of Tokyo to the heart of New York, comparing everything from pastries to sushi. We'll also dish about a local Italian feast that's got our entire town talking, and I'll let you in on my secret to making 'competition grade' oven-barbecued ribs that vanish faster than smoke.
Ever wondered what Rocky Patel and Davidoff cigars taste like when paired with fine dining? Pull up a seat at our table as we delve into an eclectic dining experience, where allergies are no obstacle to a good time. We'll also tackle the debate of bar versus table seating, and wrap up with a luxurious Davidoff after a steak dinner that's worth writing home about. The conversation might light up a few debates, especially when we get into the personal preferences that define the cigar-smoking ritual.
From cigars to phonographs, this episode captures the essence of a life well-lived. Join me as I reflect on the camaraderie forged over shared pastimes like golf, and how these experiences weave into my personal narrative, including late-night podcast edits and nurturing a growing collection of vintage audio. Whether you're here for the foodie tales, the smoke rings, or the sound of an Edison original, there's a story waiting to resonate with you.
Hello everyone, this is Steve from A Better Life. This podcast is brought to you by our sponsors, premium Botanical. They are the makers of Herbal Spectrum, which is a full spectrum hemp-based CBD. They make salves, liquids and they have a great mixed berry gummy. You can check them out at wwwmypbcbdcom. Now, our podcast the Best of the Best, the Best of the Best, the Best of the Best. Hello everybody, and welcome back to Season 2, episode 2. Welcome back Of A Better Life with George and Steve.
Speaker 2:I am back from a quick trip to Asia. I had a little business and a little pleasure, both mixed. I'm back recharged and couldn't be happier. I bet I don't know what did I miss? What did I miss here while I was gone?
Speaker 1:I'd like to know the answer to that question. I don't think you really missed much. I did go to a football party at the Segar Republic in Almsford. Oh the championships the divisional championships.
Speaker 1:Yeah, divisional championships, and the games were amazing, it was fun to watch. Smoked a couple cigars, perfect. He ordered in a lot of food from Castelletto and we've talked about that before and I have to tell you, castelletto did five different pastas and different dishes and they did heroes. They had the cold hero. They did sausage and peppers and it was great because he made the sausage like in patties, so it sat flat and it was like a 10-foot roll and it was like with red peppers not green peppers and really good onions and he did a great job and he did this pasta. What's the pasta? I never eat it because it's a little too creamy for me, but I had some. It was so good. Pasta Is it an Alfredo? No, it's a cream, but it has bacon in it. You're probably thinking carbonara, carbonara. He made carbonara and it was amazing and I was eating it and I was like I thought it was going to explode.
Speaker 2:Traditionally, no cream. I know A lot of people put cream I'm not sure an egg cream in it but maybe just the egg or whatever makes it creamy, but it's deceivingly heavy. You eat that. You have the fat from the guanciale and then the eggs there's a lot of eggs and then the cheese and all that's emulsified and just worked in with the guanciale fat. It's pretty heavy.
Speaker 1:So if you really want classic Italian food, really good, go to Castelletto and Elmsford.
Speaker 2:I'm there.
Speaker 1:We should really go. I told you he wants us to do a live podcast.
Speaker 2:That'd be fantastic.
Speaker 1:And he says I'll just keep bringing you food.
Speaker 2:And we just talk about it, and we just talk about it.
Speaker 1:Eating. Talk about it. I can do that, I know we can. So my friend Paulie, and the best guy in the world, that's all I could tell you. I wouldn't piss him off, but he's the best. He's got muscles on muscles, he has hands like sledgehammers and he works more than anyone at Human being I've ever met in my life.
Speaker 2:Really, More than my dad. There's those guys out there that just go.
Speaker 1:It's a big restaurant, they have tons of tables, they do great parties, they're takeout. If I was going to have a party at my house and do take-up, I would do Castelletto. I mean, he does I remember the American Italian Club in Elmsford as well and he does the catering for there. So, and we have a full blown commercial kitchen and he does all the catering Everything always turns out to be absolutely perfect, Absolutely perfect. The pastas, whatever the bread, was great. He did homemade potato chips. They were amazing Really. And then one of the guys I did ribs. So my challenge for this weekend was to I see if I can adapt my barbecue style for my smoker to an oven, and I know that's incredibly difficult. But I succeeded because 10 people told me that they were competition grade rips. I did four full racks and there weren't that many people there. Four full racks and they were gone in less than 20 minutes.
Speaker 2:So it probably didn't have the smokiness, but I bet you the tenderness was spot on.
Speaker 1:Correct. So when I made my homemade barbecue sauce, I added habanero.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And it had a kick to it. Oh man, I bet that was a home run. It had a kick to it. And then, as George knows, I had two extra racks that I couldn't fit in the oven and so I made a sauce and put it in that and made a pork ragu and I benefited from that just 30 minutes ago.
Speaker 2:It was fantastic, very good.
Speaker 1:So test a little. They always have parties. You go and the parties are great. I like to have business lunches there. If it isn't the stuff zucchini, flowers or the we show videos. You see them on Facebook or on Instagram where they're making homemade nookies, key, whatever. My grandmother said it one way, my mother said it another, my sister said it a third. So it's just an amazing place If you really want to have an old style Italian meal where you know you're going to get it. They have old style waiters, they do great food and they care about you being there. So I recommended highly. It's one of my favorite places to go. Having said that, yeah, we had pasta tonight with the pork ragu and it was really good. The pork, the sauce, gets absorbed by everything. You end up with no sauce at the end of the night. When I'm trying to cook, you try to serve it. Put a little sauce on the pasta. Sauce is all gone, but the ribs were great.
Speaker 2:And the style of sauce that you make is extremely rich and it's meaty without meat, so it's just so reduced, it's chunky. It's so much flavor all condensed and reduced. It's very nice, it's interesting.
Speaker 1:So I did it at old school. You take the ribs and you put a little oil in a pot and then you brown every side of the ribs, then you pull them out and then in that flavor you do a little merripois. And then I did a little tomato sauce, a little tomatoes, and then cooked that for a little bit and got some flavor, and then I used the immersion blender and got it real thin and then, once that was thin, then I added in more tomatoes. So there were some that were chunky, full tomatoes, and then I put the ribs back in and let it cook for a few hours.
Speaker 2:Tender fall off the bone. Flavorful, moist meaty. They were perfect.
Speaker 1:The only trick and you probably could take some of the pork fat app before you put the tomatoes in, but I like the flavor from the fat the only trick is that you should really take it and put it in the refrigerator overnight before you serve it, Because all that pork fat comes to the top and it all hardens and you can just skim it all off.
Speaker 2:So sometimes I think the next day pork rib is better For some reason. After you make it you have that glistening layer of pork fat. You chill it Now it comes off like glass. And then when you reheat it on the stove the next day I just feel that gentle cooling of the protein and then chilled overnight and now reheat it gently, that process of letting the muscle fibers lessen the tension and then reheat it the next day. It just seems to taste a lot better.
Speaker 1:It's great, and pork has so much fat in it, to be honest, that you really can never dry it out, so it was impossible.
Speaker 2:It was good stuff.
Speaker 1:So it was good and I'm really full at the moment. I know you just went to Japan and I know that one of our other conversations was about 7-Eleven. Did you end up going to any of those while you were there?
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely the conversation we had with Nicole and Ryan and the egg sandwich and whatnot. 7-eleven is heaven. You would never say that about the 7-Eleven here in the States, but it's just an old, different animal over there, the convenient factor, the freshest factor. It's just engineered with purpose and it's just fantastic. But this trip I went to do a little bit more research on a project I'm working on and in between visiting some stores and talking to some people in the industry and whatnot, I was introduced to, I guess, more everyday life in Tokyo.
Speaker 2:My girlfriend took me to this amazing boulangerie red store in the morning. You wake up, you walk down the neighborhood and you're able to smell your way through the streets. So you follow the butter Sounds like you're in Paris, yeah, and you know what I thought I was? Because biting into the freshly made croissant woke me up. What have I been eating? All this time I've heard people say it's not a proper croissant unless it's a mess on your shirt. It's just crackles like crystal and breaks and flakes apart. And surely this croissant was just that. You bit into it as gently as you could to make sure you don't make a mess of yourself. And you look down and there's about 20,000 pieces of beautiful croissant shrapnel just covering your belly and chest and you just smile because, wow, that was that good. You bite into it. It's crunching the outside, nice, and fluffy, airy in the middle, and it's the aroma of butter just wafts through your palate.
Speaker 1:There's a place in Southampton. It's a bakery and I don't particularly care for it. Everybody loves it, everybody. Not Southampton, I'm sorry. In Westampton Everybody loves it. I've never been crazy about it, but they have some good stuff. One of the things they make different is croissants. They make them, then they stuff them with jelly, then they deep fry them and then they cover them with sugar Okay.
Speaker 1:You want to talk about something that knocks your tail off? Wow, listen, if you have an issue with sugar, this is not the thing you should be eating first thing in the morning. That will throw your system off track and they're really unbelievable. I remember going there with my old father-in-law and pastor. My ex-father-in-law passed away and we went in there. He bought six of them and we sat in eight all six.
Speaker 2:Did you have milk with it, or I think I had a cappuccino.
Speaker 1:He never could do anything small so everything was overstated. What are you doing? Just have some, you're fine, it'll be good. He was the original extra, I thought it, it was always plus one with him. Perfect, always.
Speaker 2:Yes, the Japan. The weather probably in the 50s low, 50s high 40s so you can get away with a little vest, a little sweater, and every day I walked I took public transportation to train. The metro system is second to none it's affordable, it's efficient, it's on time, clean, safe. You do that and then you walk a few steps crossing avenues and a few so, on average, I think I walked 11 to 12,000 steps a day. So it was great you guilt-free eating Nice.
Speaker 1:Nice. Yeah, here and there Do you have any good sushi when you're in there.
Speaker 2:There was one meal that we went to what they consider I don't want to say fast food. It's not fast food sushi but it's more street food. It's called Sushi-zammai and for those of you who've been to Japan and have seen the president of the company on New Year's, his gimmick yeah, it's safe to say it's a gimmick it's a gimmick. His gimmick is he buys the most expensive tuna on New Year's Day at Tsukiji Market and he you know.
Speaker 2:He promotes it and says this is what we're serving at my place. Come to my place. We're getting the best tuna of all Japan, and you're right. And he's made a name for himself. We looked it up he has 40 restaurants throughout Tokyo just Tokyo, and I think the bill came out to maybe a hundred bucks for two of us and we ate two platters of sushi, this delicious crab miso soup, we had appetizers, we had tempura as well and, yeah, just we were full and it was quite good.
Speaker 2:And today here in the Mermanic you go and get sushi easy, easily, for 50 bucks a head. You're walking out with maybe eight pieces of nigiri and a roll and a soup and a beverage, maybe if you're lucky.
Speaker 1:And it's ordinary.
Speaker 2:And it's let's put it this way 7-Eleven in Japan would run laps over them. Calm down.
Speaker 1:I know it's true.
Speaker 2:That's the reality of, and it's potato, potato right. You can't compare, but I do, because I I try to manage expectations.
Speaker 1:I haven't. I haven't had good sushi in a while because there are none. I know that.
Speaker 2:I kid, there are plenty in the city, but you know what it is expensive. I was. A buddy of mine was asking me for some recommendations and I went through my ordinary list. I looked them up on Google and they've increased two X, maybe three X. This one place that I knew was pretty high end, top tier definitely. They used to charge 175 a head for the omakase. It is now 325. And there are quite literally 40 of those restaurants in Manhattan that are willing to charge 300 plus a head. I can't do that. Who in the right mind is paying? I guess plenty of people are, because they're open and thriving, but I don't see this being sustainable. I don't think this is. It's a little baffling.
Speaker 1:I used to like that place in Rye on the upstairs. I don't know the name of it Fagama, I think that's it. It's in the north side by the steak place. Yep, across the street, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I used to like it there, yeah, and then so I took my kids there, thinking oh nice ramen, some sushi, maybe some gyoza boom 200 bucks for lunch Come on yeah. I end up having making it at home. I go to the Daito Japanese grocery store in White Plains, which is fantastic. There's sushi sashimi section Couldn't be fresher. Right there on the by there's Dunkin Donuts. Yeah, right after the Dunkin Donuts.
Speaker 1:Right, there's a split off right.
Speaker 2:Bloomingdale's. On the other side and yeah, daito is fantastic there's another Japanese place called Oishinbo and Harrison. That's probably one-third the size of Daito and they have more Japanese fare, but I think Daito is the place to go if you're looking for some quick Japanese ingredients to make, and my offices are right around the corner from there and I used to live in White Plains for at least 15 years.
Speaker 1:They have lunch boxes. They've never been there.
Speaker 2:They have lunch boxes ready to go by 11 o'clock. You go there, it's nine bucks and you get basically rice, some pickled vegetables, a protein and a couple appetizers shoved into that bento box. Quite convenient.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I go there maybe once a week, Then there was a place in Greenwich, by the bottom, by the Apple Store, like across the street.
Speaker 2:Not a grocery store right, a restaurant yeah. There's a few Japanese restaurants in.
Speaker 1:Greenwich. That place was pretty good too. The bartender was really good. He made great drinks, but I don't drink so it didn't really help. But it was nice to watch.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in Greenwich food very good. I go to Miku when I feel like I have a few shuckles to despair.
Speaker 1:Where's that?
Speaker 2:It's Greenwich, down the avenue, and then I think there's sister restaurants. What you're referring to, hinoki, across from Apple Store. I think that's Hinoki and that.
Speaker 1:You go in. There's like stairs to go down.
Speaker 2:You go down and then the big bar is on your left, right, yeah.
Speaker 1:There's not a lot of tables. It's more bar than tables Right.
Speaker 2:And the same owners just opened up this Chinese restaurant I can't remember the name, but a lot of people are talking about it. They do a lot of more glitz and glamour dishes. You know what? I always give restaurants two, three months before going in and really putting a critique mark on it. It takes time to get the kinks out. Absolutely, restaurants. There's just so many factors that create havoc for owners and for operators and you just have to iron it out. So it's tough. It's a tough business. It's a hospitality business. I think nerves or patience is often forgotten. But yeah, it can't be too hard on brand new restaurants. I just hope and it's everyone's doing their best and it's hard to get everyone in sync that create that team.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm trying to remember there was someplace else I ate. It was really good. I ate in my marina class and the place was good. I know you're not crazy about the Nonna or whatever. It's gone a lot better. I'll be honest.
Speaker 2:There was a time where I thought, boy, this place is not going to make it. They had an opening, they're opening chef?
Speaker 1:What's the name of the place?
Speaker 2:Nonna Corolla. It's right in the corner right Right in the corner East Prospect and the Avenue. Very good, I think they really worked at it. They got a new kitchen crew. I think this is probably their third or fourth kitchen brigade that's gone through. I think they figured out what the market, what the audience, wanted, and they're serving it. They look pretty busy.
Speaker 1:I don't think it's ridiculously expensive. I think it was nice. I had a seafood appetizer and it was a half of lobster. It looked a little bigger than a one and a half pound or something Maybe right around one and a half pounds. It wasn't one and a quarter, I would say it was one and a half. And it also had the claw so they had to put the claw meat in on where the tail was. So that was nice. It had chilled.
Speaker 1:Then it had two big shrimp and then it had a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of the crab meat and then it had a leaf of lettuce full of crab meat jumbo crab meat. Okay, it was great. Then for a main course I had the New York strip and it was really nothing like any New York strip I've ever seen. It was big, it was thick, it was trenched in mushrooms and came with some vegetables and a couple of potatoes. I thought it was a great deal lowly around, that's. That's talking about numbers, but I thought it was really good, had a couple cappuccinos. They make some crazy drinks. I saw people having them, other than the woman sitting next to me with enough perfume on it to to help fight World War one. It was fantastic. You can't help that. I had an algae attack just sitting there. I was with my friend, kevin, and George knows, kevin, I was dying. I was dying.
Speaker 2:My allergies were off the charts Well, but it was. It was good, good time, that's all. Absolutely good meal, good butt company, that's, that's it was good.
Speaker 1:It wasn't that busy but it was good and everybody waits on your hand and foot, no matter what you want, I sat at the bar. No, I wanted to sit at the bar, but he wanted to get a table. So we sat at a nice table. We had a glass of wine and some kind of weirdo drinks and stuff.
Speaker 2:Kevin likes to eat, like that bottom, and I like to eat, oh he definitely likes to eat.
Speaker 1:He had the seafood platter, he had the veal cutler, parmesan, with an order of Brigatoni bolognese, come on.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 1:All right, he took some of it home. I took half my steak home, okay, and he took some of it home too, and dessert biscotti, biscotti and cappuccino. Yeah, it was great, I loved it. I would go back there in a minute. You know why? Food's good, it's easy and it's not really stupid expensive. Okay, you know what I mean. You like you could walk up the street and walk in and get in and they. It's fair, it's beautiful inside, it's nice people fall over you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I really like it, and it's up the street from the cigar lounge we go to, so you can wander in, eat and then just walk over and have a cigar location. I love that about that place.
Speaker 2:Oh boy, cigars. I didn't smoke, so when I travel overseas I Often just stop smoking. I don't know there's really. You have to carve out time to smoke right, and when you're busy you just either want to catch up on sleep or get to work. But Coming back I was a little jet lag.
Speaker 2:I went to the lounge the next day and sat down and Josh, the proprietor at Doc James. He pointed me to these Rocky Patel. What is it the? At the anniversary, something or other. I just had it on the tip of my tongue the DSR or something. Anyways it's.
Speaker 2:There's two ring gauges that he carries. One's like a 54, the others is 60 at the 60, and you know what it reminded me of, and this is the rocky. Rocky patelles have a very distinct Nicaraguan type of flavor profile. It's not if you enjoy, let's say, davidoff's or Fuentes, you're not a rocky guy, and if you're a rocky guy, you're opposite. Right, you're not a Fuente and a Davidoff guy, but this DRS, I think that's what it's called the rocky Patel DRS. It's a Nicaraguan blend and it reminded me of the Davidoff's 10 year Nicaraguan blend. Now, davidoff's Nicaraguan blend, 10 year anniversary. I think it's like a $45 thick and this rocky is maybe high 20s, really.
Speaker 2:Granted, it didn't start off the same, but probably a third in, definitely by a half Halfway through it changes and that's the thing. But cigars cigars have have this ability to change flavor profile one third. Where was I? Yeah, it just changes flavor profile every third or so. It's quite nice to see how it metamorphosizes. I just funny thing that you look at cigar etiquette like books or pamphlets written maybe 50 years ago or even longer, and they would say the proper gentleman will smoke one fourth of the cigar and put it out. And anyone who smokes cigars knows that the best part is at the end, the very tip, and when you have a great cigar you do not want to let that thing go. And in the end, but by the time it starts burning your fingers, you got to put it out.
Speaker 1:Last night I had the Davidoff Winston Churchill late hour after that meal. It was fantastic. The Churchill size, of course, and really just a phenomenal cigar. It lasts a long time, I think. I don't know if it's full or medium to full body, but it is a late hour.
Speaker 2:Definitely. I think Davidoff uses like a five dot system and I think that's a four dot Really, yeah, so it's on their heavier side, but Davidoffs are generally on the lighter side on the whole cigar spectrum. So it's probably a medium body on a maybe cigar aggregate.
Speaker 1:That was great.
Speaker 2:Delicious. I'm great after a steak. I would think that would be like a top five for me for sure, if I had to pick, it definitely was what cigar? It definitely was good. So I often see you smoke Davidoffs. What other cigars Do you go with Fuentes? Do you go with Plascencia?
Speaker 1:So I like, I like a plant Plascencia.
Speaker 2:Plascencia. That's so funny. Everyone at the lounge has a different way of pronouncing it and it just cracks everyone up.
Speaker 1:I love the Sun Grown, the VGS, those are the Ashton Ashton VGS. I really like that. They make whole different sizes. There's so many of the Davidoffs I love. I'm not really a padrone guy, but there are some other ones I like. I love the Lanceros by Oscar Balif, but the Mendoro Mendoros Very good.
Speaker 2:That's really it. What about Oliva Liga Pravadas?
Speaker 1:I do like Liga Pravadas, I do Oliva, I like the. There's a few of the newer ones the Special Edition, the Melanio.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the.
Speaker 1:Melanio, but there's like a Special Edition. That's pretty good, but I rather have a Davidoff.
Speaker 2:I think that's the gold standard, right and Davidoff is like the Mercedes Benz of cigars the quality control, the consistency, just everything is done with a lot of care, but they're pricey, I gotta admit they're pricey.
Speaker 1:They are, and I've gotten worse.
Speaker 2:I save them for special occasions. I can't, that can't be an everyday cigar for me.
Speaker 1:I think I have a couple right in that you're right there. We may have to take it with us when we're done. It's funny because I've also had a couple of the what's, the ones with the X on it.
Speaker 2:Opus X yeah, I'm a little tired.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so I got a whole bunch the other day.
Speaker 1:I don't think they're in there, I think I left them wherever I was and I really had some nice Opus X's. I don't like them all, but some of them are really good and it's the really ones that are, that are more rare, that are really good and they're expensive. So whenever you can get them on sale and there was a discount the other day like half time, 20% off, oh wow, and I bought a few and bought a few Churchill too Good for you, man.
Speaker 2:A good cigar, good time spent with friends chatting that's what it's all about. Are you into a cigar? Accessories, Lighters, cutters, cases umidors.
Speaker 1:There is a couple of lighters I really want. I have two umidors, one I don't use. This is my first umidor that's sitting next to on this table. I don't know how long it's been here, but it's been here for a long time. For some reason it's never found its place back to where it went, and I don't know how many fits, maybe 50, maybe a little less, I don't know. Try not to buy a real lot of cigars. I have some at Doc James, I have some at Cigar Republic, I have some at People Cigar Republic and I have some at Moms.
Speaker 1:I keep them there. And here's my problem. When I walk into a place I say to myself you know what I want to smoke, what I want to smoke. To buy them ahead of time it's almost a waste of my time because I can have a umidor full cigars and I feel like trying something a little different and I'm gonna go in and buy it anyway. So you know, I don't smoke enough to really keep a whole lot around. I know guys that smoke four, six a day. I'm lucky if I smoke that in a month.
Speaker 2:You smoke when you play golf.
Speaker 1:I do, and I lose a cigar almost every whole.
Speaker 2:You forget to pick it up again once you put it down, to hit your ball.
Speaker 1:I lay it on the cart and drive away.
Speaker 2:And then you have to find another one. Light it up and all right.
Speaker 1:I usually get a little cheaper cigar. When I play golf I keep a couple really nice ones, or I play with Joe and Joe's girlfriend is a cigar rep, so he always brings a whole bag full, yeah, yeah, and Joe loves golf.
Speaker 2:Joe, I met Joe maybe three years ago and I love cigars and love of golf got us talking and chit chatting and just nerding out on getting golf club Fitted and then talking about the little nuances between this cigar and that cigar. But I haven't seen him in a while. I hope he's doing okay.
Speaker 1:Yes, he's not a member of duck James anymore, oh he isn't. No, he found that it was. It went through that time when it was a little bit more smoky than it used to be. It's not as much anymore, but and he just left.
Speaker 2:I see, okay, you'll reach out to him. Give him a little text later.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I talked to him about his girlfriend, because my friend opened that play, a place in Tarrytown and Trying to make some introductions for reps and stuff so. We'll see what happens with that. There's other businesses and competing and all this other crap. It's so annoying.
Speaker 2:I've always been in sales. I'm always either repping food or in beverage. But I wonder what it's like to be a celibre for cigars. It's. It's never work if you love what you do, but Sometimes if you cross streams and you start doing things unless you're getting paid a lot of money.
Speaker 1:I think it would be annoying because you just close and smell possibly Visiting clients. Yeah, and you just reek of secondhand smoke and you have to wind and dine people because the the implication is that this is a Sophisticated Gentlemanly activity.
Speaker 2:What is it really? It's just a spending time chit chatting.
Speaker 1:It's just something to do, like everything else.
Speaker 2:I posted old pictures of my barbecue on Facebook yesterday that always gets people to to perk up and Right back. You get replies quickly.
Speaker 1:I must have got 50 replies before the end of the day.
Speaker 2:We're serious about you.
Speaker 1:Where can I meet you? Yeah, can I come over? Can you make me some? Can you cook at my party? Can you do this, Can you do that? And my answer is always no. But I'm gonna start cooking. I think again, but On a more.
Speaker 2:I feel like once the weather gets a little warmer, here you have that hitch.
Speaker 1:I do have that itch again, but I don't. The time is the issue as the time is the issue for me. In between my regular business, my monitor business, the CBD business, this podcast, surprisingly enough, takes up a little bit of time, just adding it when it gives him some times I'm out there two, three o'clock in the morning editing it, and then your your obsession with your new collections. Oh, my phonographs.
Speaker 2:Which is now peaking at what number?
Speaker 1:16?.
Speaker 2:That's fantastic.
Speaker 1:So I just bought one of the replicas made of the original. I told you this yes the original.
Speaker 2:Edison.
Speaker 1:Edison phonograph, the very first one, and it was made from the original blueprints with authorization from whoever. Matter of fact, I haven't picked it up yet, but that's what my inclination of what it is. It may even be better than that, but for now it's one of the original replicas made directly from the blueprints that came from Edison that were borrowed or bought from the Edison Museum in New Jersey. I've also come to know that the one that I had purchased, I believe, is the exact one Wow, that is sitting in the Smithsonian and the Edison exhibit. Geez, I'm very excited from that.
Speaker 1:I Am excited because I found a former collector, but I'm not happy about the circumstances. This collector is a Pretty well-known collector and he just passed away, unfortunately, and his wife is in the position of going through and selling off her when everything they have, but she wants it only to go to collectors and I've built a relationship with her and she knows I'm not looking to sell anything. I'm looking to Complete and tell a story. I am building a little museum in my back room there. That's soon to be it was studio 3j. It's soon to be the museum studio. I have a few good pieces and hopefully I have some average pieces and a whole bunch of good pieces. They all work really well because I've all had them restored. But I can't believe how much I enjoy it, whether it's playing it, whether it's searching for it, what's? It's buying the cylinders or the 78s, or now?
Speaker 2:You're just, you're so happy. The Edison Diamond discs. Saturday morning you could go over to one of these stand-alones and you start playing and you'll take a picture or you'll send me a clip. And I was, yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, that's happy zone. The Edison Diamond disc that I drove all the way up to nowhere Isville and Connecticut to buy is absolutely my favorite, I think, out of the bunch, except for one you haven't seen yet, but that one's really beautiful too. It just has an amazing sound. It looks great, this one. The wood is perfect. It's been restored mechanically at least greased, cleaned, spring, redone, and Everything I have is nothing's electric. Everything is wind up. Wow, do they have to?
Speaker 2:replace the spring, or is that they?
Speaker 1:are. They do get replaced, but not necessarily all of them had to be replaced, but you will break one from time to time. And what's really amazing about them and I've probably said this a hundred times these things are 120, 130 years old and they work. It worked well as shocking shocking, but soon I'll post. I Just finally had a clean on all the stuff in the back room and I'm almost there. I'm hoping to finish it this weekend and I'm and I bought some new tables and we're gonna I'm gonna start organizing and hopefully Take all my 78s and cylinders out of the boxes they're in and start lining them up and organizing them and created database of them and Just preserving your the origins of sound.
Speaker 1:And I think about the newest photographs that I haven't been brought in yet. Imagine that a bunch of men sat around and put tin foil it's called a tin foil, tin foil phonograph and they put tin foil on a, on a spindle, and Spoke into it and played it back and heard their voice for the first time. Never has anyone heard a recorded voice before. What was the?
Speaker 2:Mary had a little lamb. That's awesome. I don't know. I'm addicted, and I'm I wouldn't say addicted, but I'm a big F1 fan ever since the Netflix drive to survive came out a few years ago. And during my meeting today, I just happened to glance down on my watch because it gave me a little buzz. And it's Steve sending me this link Breaking news Lewis Hamilton departs from Mercedes, joins Scuderia Ferrari. Now that's earth shattering guys, earth shatter.
Speaker 1:when I read it, I was stunned, and I'm not even an F1 guy.
Speaker 2:So Lewis Hamilton, the most decorated F1 driver in the history of the sport, shatters Michael Schumacher's record by a mile. He has, I think is it over a hundred F1 race victories. That's insane. You win one Grand Prix and you can die happy. You win one Championship and you are a legend, and this man has eight, eight championships Insane, anyways, his move to Ferrari.
Speaker 2:I I just text back really quickly swan song, what else is it? He's shattered every record. He's driven those cars, which are basically spaceships on wheels, to to the nth degree. Today His Mercedes just can't compete well enough with Red Bull, powered by Honda, but they will be powered by Ford, I think, in 2026. And Ferrari is doing a really good job, staying in second place with was it McLaren, right behind on their coattails. So Mercedes has been a little bit sleepy and Lewis is a champion. He's a competitor, he's a fierce fighter and he wants to win and he can't win with the current machinery. And I think it's also every child who grows up to become a race car driver Probably has somewhere in their hearts of hearts Wanting to be a driver for Ferrari. And what's that saying? The Enzo Ferrari says you know, you ask any boy to Draw you a race car. It's gonna be a red Ferrari. I mean that.
Speaker 1:That's ingrained in their heads, every boy in the world, and you know the new movies that I haven't bought it yet to watch it.
Speaker 2:I mean there's so many versions and I this new one looks really good yeah and then it's the one about the car.
Speaker 1:Shall be okay, that's from a few years ago, where he takes on.
Speaker 2:Ferrari, all right. So that's a Le Mans, that's a Le Mans race? Oh, it is. And yeah, ferrari in Le Mans and Ferrari and F1 both incredible stories, but yeah, the Shelby is the Shelby and Steve McQueen's all that.
Speaker 1:That's all, le Mans.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right, so that a little earlier than my age, my period, but he looks like one of those guys that's just legendary and Never goes out of style, like a Paul Newman yeah, they both were real serious race car drivers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's. Steve McQueen used to race motorcycles too. That's how, in the Great Escape, he introduced the motorcycle. That was all his idea. And he jumps the fence and all the thing trying to get away From the cell. The true story of a German prison camp escape.
Speaker 2:So my correction Hamilton has seven world titles, not eight seven, and he has 103 race victories.
Speaker 1:What's the net? You have any idea who the next person is.
Speaker 2:I think Schumacher has six, but I think Schumacher also, instead of 103 victories, I think he's 82 victories. It's interesting, yeah, and I think max for stopping for Red Bull, he already has, I think, 30 victories in the last two years, so it's projected that he's the next. This guy's making millions and millions dollars, right? Lewis Hamilton's contract from Mercedes-Benz this year is $50 million. I Think. For stopping is gonna clear 75 million.
Speaker 1:They're gonna be billion.
Speaker 2:There's 20 racers right now because there's 10 teams. Each team has two cars, two drivers. The I Guess the least paid guy, I think makes like 1.5 million. So there is a huge disparity. Right, the, the previous champ is make pulling in 75 million a year. That just goes to show that that's how much revenue these teams can generate with a victory right the cars cost.
Speaker 1:Six no no.
Speaker 2:Estimated six million dollars, but the team is, yeah, billion dollars, right because?
Speaker 1:everybody that does it is the best. Everybody in the paint is the best.
Speaker 2:Right, the jack to take the tire off is the best. Yeah, kind of cool. There was an interview with Hamilton. He was talking about the team behind him, so he is the number one Mercedes driver. Then he has George Russell as his wingman number two guy. And then there's a fleet. There's an army of 1,600 employees working on those two cars, whether it's back at home at the headquarters, working on the engineering, with computer in the garage, all sorts of things procurement of pieces, the engineers, the mechanics, and it's not like you go down to the auto parts store and get parts.
Speaker 1:All those parts are all manufactured custom Right. You need designers, you need fabricators, fabricators, you need people to check the fabricators.
Speaker 2:You know aerospace engineers and wind tunnels working on your aerodynamics. You have guys Understanding thermal dynamics because once the tires get to a certain temperature, how much friction it's creating. It's so amazing. Out of a 1.6 liter engine it's a six cylinder and turbo and electric. The thing screams like 900, 1100 horsepower and it's like a drag racer but it runs on one tank of gas. The whole race, right, 50 laps, one tank of gas. Interesting, right and dangerous that's. Yeah, goes without saying. That Grozhan guy, right, you lit up on fire. Lucky to be alive. It's a miracle and yeah, modern-day technology, really 100%. It saved his life fire safety.
Speaker 1:Things are unbelievable.
Speaker 2:I'm happy I snuck in a little f1 today. You want to call it yeah, good episode. Thanks for listening, guys.
Speaker 1:It was thanks. We're gonna bring you something special next time. I'd love to tell you that I know what that is George is looking to be like. What are you talking about? But there's definitely gonna be something special next time. We look forward to it. Again, I thank you all for listening, keeping the faith we're moving forward.
Speaker 2:Yeah, god bless, 2024 is off to a good start and We'll see you soon.
Speaker 1:Oh, you'll hear us soon.
