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
Bar Harbor's Scenic Wonders, AI Advances, and Gripping Sports Updates: A Journey Through Maine's Beauty, Technological Changes, and Financial Missteps
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Can a vacation change your life? Join us as Steve recounts his breathtaking trip to Bar Harbor, Maine, a journey filled with stunning landscapes, hearty local cuisine, and thrilling adventures. From the awe-inspiring views atop Cadillac Mountain to the invigorating hikes like the Precipice Trail, Steve’s tales capture the essence of this beautiful destination. He also shares mouth-watering details about local culinary delights such as fresh lobster and blueberry pancakes, while offering practical tips for future travelers. Whether you're planning your next getaway or just love hearing travel stories, this segment has something for every wanderlust-filled heart.
Shifting gears, we dive into the latest in sports, technology, and food industry news. We offer you an insider’s look at the playoff runs of the Knicks and Rangers, the emerging potential of the Timberwolves and Mavericks, and the challenges ahead for the Celtics. Our discussion then transitions to the fascinating world of AI chatbots and their growing influence on social media. In a surprising turn, we dissect the financial blunders leading to Red Lobster's bankruptcy. Finally, we explore the heated rivalry between PGA and LIV Golf, along with a deep dive into the history of the Masters and Augusta National Golf Club. Don’t miss our insights into Westchester County's restaurant scene, with promises of future reviews of the newest hotspots.
Hello everyone and welcome back to our podcast. This is Steve again. George is still working on his project. Hopefully next week or the week after we'll have him back and I'm sure we're going to hear all about it. So it's been about a week or so.
Speaker 1:I took a five or six day vacation in Maine. It was an amazing place. Maine is an amazing place and if you've never been there, you really need to go. It's different than anywhere you've ever been. I'm lucky enough to have a family member.
Speaker 1:My sister and my brother-in-law live in Bar Harbor, so I was up there visiting them for my birthday. I was about five days up there. Bar Harbor is a great place, great town, great food. I ate lobster until it was coming out of my ears breakfast, lunch and dinner. They also live practically inside Arcadia National Park, so it is a visually beautiful as well as socially rewarding place To walk along the ocean. There is an amazing view the rocks, the colors, the green trees set on the backdrop of the Atlantic Ocean, which seems to have such a different view or color than the ocean here in New York. It has this green tinge to it and it really is a beautiful place.
Speaker 1:You could just drive around in your car. If it's a beautiful day, drive around your car. You drive along the ocean, you go into the park in Arcadia National Park. If you get tickets, you have to go up to Cadillac Mountain. It gives you an amazing view. Now there's not a lot to do at Cadillac Mountain. You have to get a reservation. The daytime reservations are fairly easy. The nighttime reservations like for sundown or sunup, which is a beautiful sight, and I've done it many times it's a little more harder to get. You have to do it ahead of time and on Memorial Day weekend it's a little trickier.
Speaker 1:We went up there in the daytime. It's beautiful to sit there, you take some pictures, you hang out for a few minutes and then you leave pretty much. But if you're a hiker, there's some amazing trails with amazing views. If you're a real hiker and you don't mind heights and you don't mind hanging onto the side of a cliff, the precipice trail is an amazing thing to see. But you're climbing hand over hand up rebar steps and the way up can be challenging and so can the way down, because you're constantly looking for a place to place your feet. But if you're scared of heights I wouldn't go anywhere near it, but the harbor's an amazing place Great lobster, great breakfast.
Speaker 1:You could just go downtown and sit on a bench and just admire how everything looks, watch the ships come in and out. They have cruise ships there, so you'll see these huge cruise ships and they have to tow everybody back in on a smaller boat. But you see these huge cruise ships just sitting in the middle of the bay I think it's called Frenchman's Bay in the center of Bar Harbor and they're just sitting against the beauty of the rocks and the water. And they're just sitting against the beauty of the rocks and the water. It's quite a sight. There's so many great breakfast places there. We ate the Great Main Breakfast, which is a great place. They have great jellies and homemade bread. Also, jordan's is a great place to eat there in Bar Harbor. They're known for their blueberry pancakes and their blueberry syrup. Of course, if you want real blueberry syrup or real Maine syrup, you have to pay extra for it. They just give you the bottled stuff, probably the same stuff we have in our refrigerators all over the place.
Speaker 1:Also, if you've never been before, it's also great to go to Jordan Pond. There's an inn there. They're known for their popovers. Frankly, I don't think their popovers are as good as mine, but they're known for their popovers. The food's just okay. The popovers are great. With a little homemade blueberry jam on, they're fantastic.
Speaker 1:It's something you should at least do once and take the trail. There's a beautiful trail that goes around Jordan Pond. It's a great view the entire time. It's not that bad of a hike. I don't remember how long it is anymore, but it is a great place to go and there's always trips to some of the local towns. Also great shopping walking around have lunch when I was there. It's just a great view. If you go in I don't know if it's Northwest Harbor, northeast Harbor, north there, I can never remember which one's which. If you go in there, you go on Sargent's Ave or Sargent's Road. It goes right along one of the little teeny coves that come in from the ocean and it's just a beautiful sight.
Speaker 1:I recommend to anyone who's looking for a place to go for a few days. I would definitely recommend Bar Harbor Me. I live in New York so it's a little bit of a truck. It's seven and a half hours without stopping. We had some wicked thunderstorms on the way up that stretched for about an hour and a half. I drove in pure you can't see your hand in front of your face pouring rain on the main turpike. It was a little bit of a challenge, but very enjoyable time. It's really, really a great place to go. Please, please, back to it.
Speaker 1:I also wanted to mention one of the new features we have at the Better Life with George and Steve is you're able to text us now. So when you listen to our podcast, you will see when you log on to our podcast or when it comes up on your app, whether it's your phone or your computer. However you listen to it, you'll see, above the description of the episode, a sign that says click here. And what that is? A fan it's. They call it fan mail. It's a certain kind of software that you're able to click and send us a message. So we'd love to hear from you. We'd love you to start using it. We'd like to hear what you want to hear from us. What you don't want to hear from us is probably me talking by myself, but it's a great way to communicate to us. Please let us know what you think. Give us comments, leave any info you want If you want us to reach out to you, please, we'd appreciate any feedback you give us. So look for it on every description of every episode you look for. So look for it on every description of every episode you look for. At the top of the description it'll say click here, and that is a way to message us directly. Please, we'd like to hear more from you.
Speaker 1:Just to get back to our regular last program, I spoke a lot about the Knicks and the Rangers and obviously we're a little bit later in dates. The Knicks have ended their run for the playoffs. It was a great time for me to watch the knicks with so much heart and so much fight, and that's exactly the way they went down. Unfortunately, they ran out of players. People would were so many people were injured coming into this, where they really didn't have anybody off the bench, and then their major players got hurt even more. It's easy to criticize them that they weren't deep enough or whatever you think, but I think they're a team of the future. I think there's a lot of teams out there that are teams of the future. Certainly, both the Timberwolves and the Dallas Mavericks are teams that are on the up and coming. So when the Celtics get to the playoffs, they're going to have their hands full, which either team ends up winning that battle.
Speaker 1:Of course, as I talked a lot about Hart and the New York teams, you can't say the word heart in New York teams and not bring up the New York Rangers. The New York Rangers have been fighting and fighting in hockey like I can't believe. They will not give up, even when they're down, which is the other night they were down. I want to say three goals they came back, even when a team scored another goal. Three goals they came back. Even when a team scored another goal, they came back. And it was the first Ranger in history to score three goals for a hat-trick in the final period of a playoff game. It was quite an amazing feat. The other two players to do it were Gretzky and Messier. How's that for good company? So the Rangers are playing again tonight. They're up two to one in the playoffs. They've had two overtime victories back to back. They're fighters, they're a tough team and I have to say the Florida Panthers are a pretty tough team too. If I was totally unbiased, I would say the Panthers are a better team as far as skill and fight. But I don't think the Rangers are going to give up. I just don't think they're going to their will is going to carry them through to the finals, and whatever happens in the finals I know that's an ongoing process of course to see the Edmonton prevail in that and the Edmonton fighting the Rangers in the finals would be quite a feat too.
Speaker 1:Another thing I spent a lot of time looking at while I was on vacation is these AI chat bots. Have you seen them on social media? Ai chat bots? They're these guys taking over our known world. When we cannot tell any longer and if you're not aware of this, you should be aware of it is that AI has become so sophisticated that we don't even realize that they're not humans anymore. I use it in the podcast when, obviously not for speaking, but the descriptions are helped, crafted by AI. It comes with the service of posting it. I would say I write almost 50-50 as much as the AI bot puts out in the description. They do an amazing job. That makes me scratch my head. Sometimes they talk about things in the description more descriptive than I would be about it. Of course, I spoke it, so that may have something to do with it, but these bots are out there and sometimes you're having communications with them, if you're chatting with something you saw online, whether it's Facebook, whether it's Instagram and you don't even realize that you're chatting with a computer program. So I tell you all it's not something that I particularly care for, but I did want to mention it because I wanted you all to be aware that this is going on out there and for us that are not from the AI generation, you should be aware that sometimes you're not really talking to a real person. We know that those chatbots exist, with some of the chatboxes online when you're looking for help, whether it's a computer program, whether it's a service, whether it's your cable service, whether it's your cellular service there's all kinds of chat bots to have out there, but usually you can tell they're not as sophisticated, but it's a new world and they're becoming more sophisticated Every single. So that was one of the things in the news I saw.
Speaker 1:Another thing that brought my attention was I read that Red Lobster filed for bankruptcy. Red Lobster filed for bankruptcy, and the cause of their bankruptcy, I find, just makes me want to scratch my head. They're either the stupidest group in the world or the best liars I've ever heard, and that is. We've all seen those commercials. All you eat shrimp. All you can eat shrimp at Red Lobster. All you can eat shrimp at Red Lobster All you can eat shrimp at Red Lobster. You see that commercial over and over again. So the reason for their malfeasance, as you may say, the reason they haven't been able to keep the money in their company, is because they went bankrupt.
Speaker 1:From All you Can Eat, it cost them more to run the program than it did they got in revenue. How could that be? Are they not in the fish business? Do they think we're fools to believe that? That a company whose entire restaurant served seafood? They've served seafood as far back as I can remember. I remember taking my girlfriend in high school there and you're going to tell me that they weren't aware that the shrimp was going to cost more than they make. They weren't aware that people would come in and eat plates and plates of shrimp.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I don't even know what to believe anymore. It's hard to know what the truth is. When you read the paper and this is something I touched on in the last episode it's hard to know who's telling you the truth. I don't even know what to keep saying about that. Everywhere I look, I see it and they say it with a straight face.
Speaker 1:Yes, we're in the seafood business for decades and we didn't realize the shrimp cost more than we were collecting and we continued to do it. It's not like they did it for three months and it put them out of business. They've been doing this all-you all you can eat shrimp for a long time. Now, all of a sudden, they realize that they're losing money and it put them out of business. I don't know. Listen. We all know the restaurant business is challenged. It's always been challenged. You had to know how to do it. It looks easy, it's not.
Speaker 1:Food's expensive, and more expensive than ever, and ever since COVID it has become incredibly difficult to run a restaurant. Food costs are through the roof and, frankly, people don't want to pay it when they go to a restaurant. They don't want to pay the increase in food costs. They just don't. They'll spend it in the supermarket, but they won't spend it in your restaurant unless it's exceptional, and by exceptional I don't mean fancy. Exceptional means good. Exceptional means you're doing something different than others do or you're giving them a quality. I mean, look at, barbecue has gone through the roof.
Speaker 1:And, as I don't know if I mentioned it in the last set, I did a fundraiser barbecue. I have a commercial smoker, if you listen to this program all the time, and we did a barbecue boil a seafood boil, which I didn't have any part of, and I did ribs, pork belly and chicken wings. So I smoked, I want to say, 15 full racks of ribs, baby back, and about 30 pounds of pork bellies, along with 20 or so pounds of chicken wings, which literally took me two and a half days to do Preparation making the rub, making the homemade sauce, prepping all the meat with the rub because I dry brine it overnight and then cooking the ribs. The ribs take I don't know, with so many ribs it takes a little longer. Wrapping them, cooking them Takes about six hours, maybe seven from the beginning. Starting the fire, the pork bellies took about four hours and the wings took about one and a half to two, let's say two, and the smoker's only so big. But we fed 55 people. I want to say I told them 40. They said 60. And that's the way it goes when you cook for people. I have to say I was pretty physically exhausted afterwards but everything worked out well.
Speaker 1:The club that I cooked for made some money. It was a beautiful day. People enjoyed themselves. The seafood boil, which was crawfish, was fantastic. I'm not really a crawfish guy. I know I'm a lobster guy, but not a crawfish guy. I don't like all the work. That's really why I don't eat crab, because I really don't like all the work to it. But it was good. I ate the corn and the potatoes. I ate a couple of crawfish. They were great, really a great time had by all.
Speaker 1:So for those of you that know me in the real world not in this podcast world, I used to work retail. I put myself through college working retail and I used to work for Nordstrom's. I put myself through college working retail and I used to work for Nordstrom's. I started there as a shoe salesman and manager and through the ranks over there and almost chose to work towards being a buyer instead of going to law school, which I ended up doing. But I kept my focus, thankfully, and went for my law degree and I read in the paper Bruce Nordstrom had passed away and he's one of the elder statesmen of that company. I want to say his father and his uncle started the company and it was an amazing company to work for, I have to say there wasn't a day that I can recall that the elder statesmen the original in my column, my original Nordstroms didn't have their hand in everything that was going on there.
Speaker 1:They were leaders in every sense of the word when they came to the store and there were many stores I worked mostly in Paramus, new Jersey, but also in Short Hills and also in Westchester a little bit. When they came to the store they spoke to everybody. They walked around alone. They weren't led by the hand by everybody and shown what the people on the ground wanted to see. They went and walked around themselves. They would come into the stock room and speak to the stock boys, stock men, stock girls, whatever. They would speak to the salespeople. They would find out from the people on the ground what they needed, what was important to them, what made their jobs interesting, what would make their jobs better. They were hands-on. Hands-on is something lost in today's world. I think In the world of this AI chatbots. They knew everybody's name. They would come and speak to me all the time and they always knew my name and they always put the customer first. I remember and I don't remember.
Speaker 1:I want to say it was John Nordstrom's one of the originals, one of the customer service people. A person had brought in a $10 gift certificate that expired and they didn't want to give him credit for the $10 because it had expired many years ago. It was really old and John Nordstrom's got wind of it and he called that person up. He goes, listen, you give him credit. He came and had a store meeting and he says listen, somebody put $10 in and there's this old gift certificate. He goes. What's the difference? He goes. If I thought a $10 gift certificate we're going to bring new customers to our store, he goes. If I thought a $10 gift certificate we're going to bring new customers to our store, he goes, I'd be having people fly up and down the East Coast throwing them out a helicopter. The cost of acquiring new customers is expensive. Advertisements discount. If $10 brings a new customer into your store and that makes them a customer, it's well worth the acquisition. But that's the way they looked at everything. No matter what you brought in, you got your money back If it wasn't right. The customer was always right. And I'll be honest with you. Historically I don't know what to say about the Northeast. Their customers respected that. Their customers only brought back things, in most cases, that were bad, and the way they ran their company was few and far between things that were bad. I want to know the passing of a giant, one of the giant families of the retail industry, the Nordstroms and the passing of Bruce Nordstrom. His integrity and devotion to his craft and his business will certainly be missed by all of us.
Speaker 1:And just to jump back to sports for a minute, if any of you watched the PGA a couple weeks ago, really, the winner gets arrested two days before for running through a police roadblock. Shifley is his name. He thought his start time was more important than the person that had been killed on a street corner there in a car accident and had the road closed. For those of you who don't know, they had the roads closed. He was on the way and it wasn't even his tee time was yet. He was going there to hit balls before his tee time and he's the number one player ranked in the world and, yes, he's a great player. But there had been an accident and a person was killed and they had the whole street blocked off on the way to the golf course in Kentucky. Okay, so he ends up in a confrontation to the police officer tries to go around the roadblock. I don't know the whole story in every detail, but he ends up getting arrested and the day he's going to play there's pictures everywhere in America of him in an orange jumpsuit. He, of of course, ends up getting released, everybody intervenes and but certainly a not good look.
Speaker 1:Certainly not a good look for the pga which has been running their problems of good looks between them and Liv, which is, for those of you who don't know, a Saudi-based group, started their own golf association and basically bought up a lot of the major players for ridiculous amounts of money Certainly life-changing money even for golfers, when someone pays you $100 million just to come play golf. So a lot of the great golfers, the competitive golfers, have gone over to live. Then, when the PGA realized their mistake with all this, they tried to merge them together, but I don't think that really ever happened. Now the live golfers come over and play just in the majors. They tried to not let them play in the majors but at the end result they ended up playing in the majors and they are competitive. So these live golf events, we don't even see them. They're on somewhere. I don't have any idea.
Speaker 1:I've never watched them and I love to watch golf. I watch it every weekend, somewhat. The majors I watch completely. The masters I start watching on Thursday. I have it out of my office while I work, it's on where I go somewhere and watch it later in the day and out of the office earlier than I would normally.
Speaker 1:The masters, to me, is one of the pinnacle sporting events, along with the Kentucky Derby. Saratoga Racing is fantastic World Series. But even more than that, even more than the World Series, it's an amazing blast from the past and, for those of you who don't know, the Masters was started by a famous golfer, probably the greatest golfer ever, as some people think. Even though there's arguments today that tiger's better, jack nicholas is better, bobby jones is the father of them all. He was the first person to win what's called the grand slam and people do the lifetime grand slam, which they won every one of the four events, which is the PGA, the US Open, the British Open and the Masters. Years ago there wasn't a Masters, it was an amateur championship. So those were the four and to win the British Open was impossible for american for a long time, but american started to do it sporadically before bobby jones won the grand slam event when he was I want to say it was the 1930s and he was probably in his 30s at the time.
Speaker 1:He was a great golfer, bobby Jones, and he bought the property to build Augusta, which used to be a nursery, a farm for flowering plants and trees, and he carved this course out of the middle of this land and built one of the great courses of America. Of course nobody could play there because it's a private club. It's ridiculously private, not like the private clubs that we see around in our neighborhoods that we can't get into either. But this club's important. The richest men in the country can't get into it. It's all by, I believe, invitation and it's invitation by committee. For years they didn't have any, obviously, minorities. They do now. They didn't have any women, they do now. And if you watch the Masters this time, you've seen that Condoleezza Rice, who's the former head of the NSA and other things for the government under, I believe, bush Both Bushes, I think, was in their administration is a prominent member of the course. Now it goes Eisenhower was a famous player, was a famous golfer, general Eisenhower, and after he retired from the military in the 1950s, the story goes that there's an Eisenhower tree and there's an Eisenhower cabin.
Speaker 1:I'm guessing he used to stay in the cabin when he visited the course back in the day, because there are some cabins around. They're not really places people stay now but there was a tree that he used to hit every time he played and he begged. He asked them to remove it. They told him no, that's how difficult they are. Even when he was president of the United States. He asked them to remove it and they said no. So apparently he was never going to run for president. All the bigwigs brought him in and convinced him on that course of running for president and that's how his presidential campaign and ultimately his presidency started out.
Speaker 1:Usually at the end of the session, I like to do a restaurant review Because I've been away. All the restaurants I ate at were in Maine or somewhere else. I would like to mention and it's been prominently in the local papers and things there's so many restaurants in West District County that have been closing. The newest one on the list is Town Dock, which is in Rye, and it's been there, I want to say, almost 30 years. It's a very casual restaurant. They have the normal things burgers but they also have had fish. It's been a very local place to go the Town Dock Tavern and I have to say I'm a little surprised. But that just underlines what I said before the difficulty it is to run restaurants today that it's really changed. I don't think the profits are there, I think it's difficult. There's a lot of other restaurants have been closing the Archie Grand and White Plains, epstein's and Yonkers. There's so many restaurants that have been closed but there's some new ones opening up.
Speaker 1:I'm hoping to do reviews of some new restaurants. I definitely want to go to Saigon Table. I love Vietnamese food and I'm looking forward that's opened recently in Rye. I do love to go for Pho at Saigonese, which is in Hartsdale on Central Avenue, and a new steakhouse in Eastchester opened up Peter's Steakhouse, which is supposedly opening up in the same spot as the old meat market was there on East Post Road. I don't know, but I'm looking forward to try their steak. It's supposedly being run by very experienced steak people, for lack of a better explanation. So we'll have more reviews in the future.
Speaker 1:Hopefully George will be back next week. Please, I ask you, go on and send messages to us. Send us a message. Click on that new link on every description of every podcast we do and send us a message. Hopefully next week we'll be back with the full crew, with a full agenda, hearing about trials and tribulations of George's new project. Hopefully we'll have some restaurant reviews. Until then, thank you for listening. We both appreciate it immensely. Any questions, please click us and let us know.
Speaker 1:I also wanted to just take a minute and talk about our sponsor, premium Botanicals. We're running a special promotion at Premium Botanicals especially for our listeners here at A Better Life. Right now you can get an extra 10% off on all products purchased at mypremiumbotanicalscom by putting in the code at checkout a better life one word, no spaces. Please check out our products. We have great salves, great results and getting great feedback from everyone. The gummies are great for inflammation. Help you sleep. Those have been a very popular product. We also have stronger liquids If you prefer a liquid rather than a gummy. We also have a pet liquid. If your pet has anxiety or those kind of, or has pain, you will find that our pet liquids are very effective. Please check us out at mypremiumbotanicalscom. Thank you all for listening. Talk to you soon.
