Episode 4

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Published on:

18th Apr 2025

Second Helpings #4 - Scott Ferriero feat. Jim, Kathy, & Michael Cafarelli

One of the original stars of 'Wicked Tuna' was also one of the original stars of Rustic Kitchen and House of Blues. This in-depth podcast with Scott Ferriero shares tons of true behind-the-scenes stories about building iconic venues with Jim Cafarelli all across the country. Hear all about the unions in Chicago, negotiations with Disney, innovations in Los Angeles, and even murder in Miami!

Transcript
Speaker:

Hello everybody.

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It's been a long time.

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Hey Scotty, how you doing?

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time, Kath, Michael, same to you.

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Jimmy's not been long enough.

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All right, so welcome to the podcast, Scotty.

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Episode #4, we have Kathy, we have Jim.

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So we're just gonna jump right into it.

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So, Scotty goes back to Boston days with Jim and Kathy in the mid '80s.

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You guys started Cafco Construction and shortly thereafter, Jim

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got introduced to Isaac Tigrett, who was one of the co-founders of Hard Rock Cafe.

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He was looking for a builder, designer, partner to help with his new concept, which

eventually became the House of Blues in Cambridge in '89.

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So by '89, you're now working House of Blues.

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And a few years after that, after the success of House of Blues Cambridge, House of Blues

#1 there's...

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New Orleans in the French Quarter on Decatur Street and then Chicago.

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And I think Scotty comes in the picture in Chicago.

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Is that right?

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Yeah, Chicago '96 is when I started.

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that story of how does Scotty come on the scene in '96 in Chicago building House of Blues?

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So it was - it's a funny story actually so, I was in between projects and I was looking

for a new company to work for and a friend of mine suggested Dodge Electric, they were

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looking for a guy to go on the road and work remote on nightclubs.

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I'm like that sounds interesting.

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I don't have any responsibilities,

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30 years old, you know hey, this could be fun.

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So, I went and met the owners of Dodge Electric and they hired me and three days later,

I'm on a plane heading to Chicago.

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I'm like, oh my God.

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met the guys, looked at the project, was overwhelmed.

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Quite honestly, this huge project.

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never been involved with anything like that of that size.

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So it took me a while to get acclimated.

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Big union job, had to join the union.

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Because in Chicago, if you're not part of the union, they'll bury you out back in the

bushes.

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So, the project manager from Dodge Electric

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had tell him, he telling me stories about this guy, this Jim Cafarelli.

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You got to watch out for him.

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He's really tough.

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He's, he's a prick.

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Be honest with you.

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He expects a lot.

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he doesn't take any crap and you know, just, just be, be wary, just be aware of him.

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I'm like, c'mon.

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So, I heard these stories and then I started hearing stories.

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You

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one day we're all down on the pit on the dance floor, bunch of guys, and looking at each

other going, what the hell is that smell?

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It got stronger and stronger.

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We're all looking and through the doors to the dance floor, walks Jim Cafarelli.

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I'm like what the hell is this guy?

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His cologne had broken in his bag on the air at the airport or whatever.

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And his clothes were soaked in cologne.

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He was like, who the hell is this?

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Guido mother!?

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It was, it was, we all start laughing and they say hey, no laughing.

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That's Jim Cafarelli.

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I was like holy shit.

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That was my first introduction to him, then he went on a tirade yelling started yelling at

people and I'm like, okay I gotta find something to do, so I kind of disappeared and that

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was my first introduction to Jim Cafarelli.

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Was it's a really cool story.

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Man

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to I have to tell you, Scotty, since that day, I've never worn a drop of cologne since.

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And I think I think I think I still have some of that on me 16 years later, 17 years

later.

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But that that was I, you know, I didn't really remember that story until you and I were

talking recently.

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But,

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you know, there is a little backstory here, Michael.

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The project was a very complicated project.

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It was a big project.

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think we had, I don't know, 120 men a day there.

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and we did sign these...

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It was more, yeah, probably was more than that.

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The steel guys were there.

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Sure.

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the water with the corncob condo with those parking garages.

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The Opera House.

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The Humpback Whale.

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Marina City, right.

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those two towers they call the corncob towers.

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They actually filmed a Steve McQueen movie when he drives a car off into the actual river.

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There was a Marina underneath the property.

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There was this whale looking building, but it was lead clad.

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That was actually a television studio where we ended up putting the House of Blues.

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So you had a very diverse project, had gone bankrupt, and this developer named John Marks

had purchased the whole thing.

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Was an underground mall because it's so cold in the winter.

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People don't even go outside.

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They walk in through all these tunnels and malls and the House of Blues had taken this one

building that looked like the whale.

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And we needed to put an entire live music venue and restaurant inside of this facility.

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so

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The other thing that complicated the project was this concept wasn't really completely

ferreted out.

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The first two had looked like Southern Mississippi juke joints, rusted corrugated metal.

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But the founder, Isaac Tigrett, when he saw this space, he said, we need this to be

something really special.

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And he had this idea of an opera house.

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And then I brought Si Teller, who someday I'd love to have on one of these podcasts.

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And he had a renderer come in and this guy actually the rendering is right there.

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That's the actual rendering yeah.

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And he drew...

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Cambridge is tiny.

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square foot venue.

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And this renderer, Weiss, captured exactly what I was trying to get across to him to show

everyone.

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And once we sort of had that rendering, we actually put it up on the job so people could

understand what we were trying to do.

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But that really complicated things.

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And we were still designing while we were building, which always is a challenge.

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Changes when they're made, they impact the mechanical trades more than other trades.

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So the electrical package there was a big package to begin with.

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And then we compounded the complexity of it by making so many changes.

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So Dodge Electric has a team that was traveling around the country with me.

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And the foreman of that team suddenly had to go back to Boston.

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There was a problem.

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He had to go back to Boston.

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So now I have this large electrical crew on a fast paced job.

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A union job and which means, you know, you're burning at a higher rate.

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The union rates higher than, you know, open shop rates in other parts of the country.

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and, I tell Steve [Dodge], we're gotta to get a guy in here and he's like, I've got a guy

coming.

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One night I go into my construction shack, it's built on the job, and there's Scotty.

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Hi, how you doing?

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And, know, some quick introductions, right?

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Yeah.

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Can we do this outside?

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So I take a legal pad of paper and I make a very lengthy list of all the areas, the

problems, things that need to be found out, decided, done, accomplished, things that were

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impacting other trades.

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We don't get these done.

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It backs up three, four other trades.

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And, you know, there could be a logjam caused by electrical problems.

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So it really was imperative that we get a handle on this.

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So I make this big, long list and I hand it to Scotty and I say,

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Don't come back and see me until you get this done.

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And off he goes.

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So the next morning I see him out there working with his team and I stay away from him.

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I'm dealing with a lot of other issues.

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I forget about him, then around seven or eight o'clock that night, I go back into the

construction shed and there's

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Scotty. And I said, oh, how'd you make

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out? He says, I'm almost

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set. I'm done with that

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list. What do you have

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Give me that thing.

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And I take a look at the list.

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I start going through it and this is done.

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This is done.

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This done.

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This can be done, but we need this information.

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This here we're waiting on that piece of equipment, but we'll have it done by Friday.

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And there's a list explaining if it's done or if it's not done, why or when it will get

done.

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I said, okay, well, I make another list.

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I send it off to him.

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But the next day I watch him, watch what he's doing and the guys all rally around him and

they're, they're just like worker bees all over the project.

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And we get together, you know, later on that day.

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And I realized this guy is the real deal.

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This guy is a no bullshit kind of guy.

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And he's, he's got that sort of

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get it done attitude.

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If people wouldn't or didn't do what he wanted, he would either go through them around

them, over them or remove them.

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And all of a sudden this huge problem that I had on this project to large degree was

solved because all I had to do now is just go to one person and say, Scotty, I need this

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done.

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And it would get done one way or the other.

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That's how we met.

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it really was just hard work and that grew into mutual respect and then that grew into a

long friendship, which, Scotty, I think we've now been working and have known each other

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and been friends for 30 years.

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30 years, yeah, it's been 30 years.

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you know, that Chicago project, Dodge Electric, we had a very narrow scope

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because Dodge Electric, we just, we had what we call low voltage license

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union permits.

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So we only had a narrow scope.

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couldn't actually do hands-on electric work.

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So it was always a challenge to work around the unions to get things done.

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You know, once you make friends with them and you show them you know what you're doing

then they work with you.

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I mean, it was a fast paced job.

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We ended up working 18, 20 hours a day to get that thing done.

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It was brutal.

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In the end, it was really fun.

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I had a really good time with that project.

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It was so unique and interesting.

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So many things that we designed and came up with on the fly.

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All the UV lighting that we ended up doing on the face of those balconies.

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It was really fun job, that was...

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I'll always remember.

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was interesting because we had, in order to create this opera effect, we had gone to a

fellow who I had found in Southern California, a company called Moonlight Molds.

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Very, very talented guy.

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At the time, had a small operation.

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It has since become very large.

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I think probably the largest mold manufacturer in the country now, but at the time, he was

very small.

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I went out to his facility in Gardena, California, and in order to make this room, which

was just a big steel round shell, look like an opera house, we had to be very smart about

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how we did the plaster work.

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His name was Paul Dreibelbis.

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And he said, you know, if you take this part and we kind of cut it here, we can then mesh

it up to this column.

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And when I learned how he was doing that, and I started to go through all of his different

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books.

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In those days nothing was online, there was no internet in those days, but everything when

using in these binders and he had all the molds on racks like you would see at Costco out

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in this shop and we learned how to fuse the different parts together to make the balconies

and to make the actual seating opera house look and he would then just modify the mold and

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make the parts for us and when you're dealing with plaster

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the money is in making the mold.

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Once you actually have the mold made, then you just reproduce so many parts out of that.

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And what we were doing is benefiting by the fact that he had all these molds and we were

just adapting them and making them fit together.

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And it was, it was magic.

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And we thought we had a good handle on the whole thing.

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And then the discussion was, what do we do about, you know, painting it and what color and

so forth.

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And Isaac said, wouldn't it be cool to have ultraviolet light so that

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all the wild colors that you normally have at a House of Blues are one setting.

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But with the flick of a switch, it turns into black lighting.

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It's a totally different color.

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Which is a great idea.

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But that had not been incorporated into the design.

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No provisions were made for where the lights would go and how to power them up and how to

control it all.

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It was just like, can you do that?

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So.

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Got together with Scotty and

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talked to Paul [Dreibelbis] and we started to figure out where these light fixtures would

go.

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And Scotty had to then figure out how to do controlling for it all and where it would be

accessed from.

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And through this project, which is running like a freight train anyway, a major design

change like that gets incorporated seamlessly, like nothing.

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And I don't think anyone really ever gave anyone, you or anyone, the credit of what it

took to pull that off without a hitch.

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It just, we just did it.

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Yeah, I we had a lot of support, I mean, we I had a lot of support from back home.

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But, you know, to source the source, the right size fixture to make the radiuses and those

molds and then find the black light tubes.

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And then the kicker was crap was falling off the balcony off the ledges of the of the of

the balconies into the into the troughs and covering up the lights.

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Then we had to come up with a like a cover, a graded cover to put over that, but not

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impact the lighting.

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So we had, I don't know how many samples of plastic that we tried.

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And a lot of it was UV blocking, which negated what we were trying to do.

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So we finally came up with something and, and in the end it turned out well and was really

happy with it.

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That was just one of the things that the one of the most unusual parts of that project was

Jimmy hands me this, this lamp, this

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This is a bar lamp.

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All right.

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This little wooden lamp with a funky, um, shade and had bottle caps on it.

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And then when he hands it to me, he goes, I need an outlet and a computer outlet in this.

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I'm like, that thing's only six inches tall!

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How am I going to do that?

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So who do I talk to?

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He goes, talk to Jim Kusch.

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Okay.

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So I'm on the phone with Jim Kusch, like, I need this.

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He started laughing.

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But yeah it came back and we were able to do it.

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It ended up being a little bit taller, but in the end we accomplished that task too so

that's what really made the project fun is he would throw these ridiculous requests at me

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and like okay how do we do that so but yeah Jim Kusch was the mill worker extraordinaire

yeah he was really good yeah

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think, I think, Michael, in my career, when you talk about truly exceptional people,

unique, one-of-a-kind people, best at what they do, you have Scotty, you have Jake Kassen,

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who we did a previous podcast with, we had Si Teller, I think, to me is the most creative

designer I've ever met bar none.

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And Jimmy Kusch, as a mill worker, he was a magician on on

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taking these crazy ideas and figuring out how to make them affordably.

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And he also traveled all around the country with us.

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He made millwork and would put it in containers and ship the containers to Florida or LA

or wherever we were.

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And then we'd peel them open and everything would be, you know, on a set of drawings and

numbered and maybe he'd send a guy out and then we'd assemble the whole thing.

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And there was a set of carpenters that also, Neil and Chris and that whole gang that

traveled with us.

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We found that it was better to

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take the talented team of the experts that knew the most about the real look and feel of

the venue that the customer experiences and just put them on planes and put them in hotels

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and have

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them work on the project with local tradesmen.

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them work on the project with local tradesmen.

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And it got things done

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And it got things done

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better, faster, and they all became friends.

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And, you know, there's some of these relationships that go on to this very day.

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The GC, by the way, who built

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Chicago is a fellow named Mike Brown from Crane Construction.

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He's since retired.

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We became great friends afterwards.

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I actually brought him down, yeah, and he built Orlando, House of Blues Orlando for us

because I couldn't get guys that would do the project affordably down there or they were

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intimidated by it.

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And I talked to Mike, we talked for a time and he said, I'll get down there.

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I said, you'll come to Florida?

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He sent the team down and did the same thing.

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So yeah, when you find the right people, you you tend to

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They migrate to you and you tend to stick together and protect one another and create

friendships.

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I have one last Chicago

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You have a basic idea of what this project was like.

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So, every week Jimmy would fly in and we'd have this god awful project meeting in this old

conference room of this office.

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And we're all packed in there.

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Had to be 30 guys in there.

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All the foremen and the GCs and everybody.

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And the screaming

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You

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and forth.

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"You're an asshole!" But the best part was is when Mike Brown stood up, took his phone and

threw it across the room and it smashed on the wall.

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And then another phone goes across the room and smashed on the wall.

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I'm like, what the hell is going on here!?

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So, that's what they were like.

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Those meetings, the project, it was so intense that it just it was it everybody was in a

lot of pressure.

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You

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Now, one thing I don't remember is when you first came out there, was it the summer or the

winter?

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It was September.

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Was September, okay, because, you know, once winter set in out there, Michael, it's the

coldest place I've ever worked with in this country.

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That place is just bone chilling.

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And, you know, yeah, I would.

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the rope to cross the plaza.

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a true story.

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That's a true story.

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and it was was it was miserable, yeah but still fun!

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So you come in Chicago.

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What's what do you think?

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So Chicago wraps up.

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But before Chicago even opens, Jim, are you already on the next site?

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Yeah, we actually ended up at one point we had three projects going.

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We were doing Chicago, Myrtle Beach, and LA.

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Myrtle Beach was in South Carolina on a property that was called Barefoot Landing.

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We had a local developer partner down there, a guy named Sam Puglia, a really nice guy,

talented guy.

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And that was on a site where the Alabama Theatre was right across the parking lot from us.

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And the alligator adventure farm was right on the main drag.

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And we took a spot in the middle.

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They knocked some building down there and we put a huge House of Blues, much more of a

plantation style where it was a building that had the live music venue, a separate

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building.

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was the restaurant.

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And then there was a sort of retail store in the front and the walkways that led through

them.

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And then there was a huge deck that oversaw this swamp area where the alligator adventure

farm was.

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And in Orlando, I'm sorry, and in LA, we were right right on Sunset Boulevard.

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And that was a

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what?

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8340 Sunset.

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I'm right down the street from.

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So, Scotty, do you go from Chicago to Myrtle Beach?

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Yeah, I went to Chicago.

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We took a plane ride before the project was complete

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Myrtle

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My God.

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So the South, the South 30 years ago...

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Yeah, it's not like now, I live in North Carolina.

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I'm on the border, North and South.

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So you have a pass, whatever you're about to say, you have a pass.

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Yeah, so 30 years ago, you didn't have the Northerly migration you have now.

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So it was, they hated Yankees.

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"No good fucking Yankees." "We hate you." "Go back North again." It was brutal.

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It was like they were still fighting the Civil War and fighting every day.

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My God.

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But, you know, again, once you get on a project and you meet everybody, start talking to

them and they understand you know what you're doing.

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You

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Yeah, that was the Myrtle Beach project is where I really sort of transitioned from doing

just

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electrical lighting and the design and the dimming systems and that I kind of transitioned

into more of a liaison between Jimmy and the project.

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You know I took on a little bit more responsibilities to oversee a lot more of what was

going on there.

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As far as all the systems, the computer systems, the Micros systems, phone systems, you

know, all that stuff, which was good.

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all the AVL, everything, yeah.

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you know, which was interesting too.

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kept me, you know, busy like all the rest of the project.

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North Myrtle Beach, actually, people get mad if I would say Myrtle Beach, but it's North

Myrtle Beach.

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But, you know, great people.

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Shep, he was awesome.

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Greg Hunt.

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yeah.

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been a good relationship.

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And then from Myrtle Beach, you think you go to Orlando or LA?

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LA was done before, prior to Chicago.

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So that was completed.

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I didn't have anything to do with LA, unfortunately, because that was really cool project

because of the hydraulic bar and all kind of the way that opened up and yeah.

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So this one, what made this one unique aside from being in West Hollywood on the Sunset

Strip, was it was new construction, but we want in the end, we made this look very old,

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but it was a steel superstructure building with suspended concrete slabs.

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And it would we had to shore the side of Sunset Boulevard because even though it looked

like a single story building on Sunset, it was actually three stories deep and it was a

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huge building was 48,000 square feet.

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But in the mid-level where the restaurant was, Isaac had this idea of he wanted the bar

somehow to open so you could see from the restaurant down to the club.

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And that was as simple as that.

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It was like, I'd like to see if you can make the bar sort of move so we can see down into

the club.

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So I took that, and I understood the complications of what that would be.

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And I went to a theme park ride manufacturer.

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a company called Ride and Show.

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They did a lot of work at Universal, did a lot of work at Walt Disney Company, which we'll

talk about later.

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fortunately, that idea was given to us very early on, so we were actually able to

incorporate what it would take in order to make these bars move.

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And what they really were, were these huge steel platforms.

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Each one was 40 feet by 18 feet, and they...

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were on hangers and there were curved rolled beams that we buried up in the superstructure

of the steel and they hung this platform.

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then ultimately on the press of a button, the platforms would swing out 90 degrees.

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So that's almost a hundred feet long.

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And you would look down into this club that was below, which was a 2,200 person club.

355

:

But while that was happening, there was a hydraulic stage that would rise out of the

ground.

356

:

So people in the restaurant didn't know

357

:

about the club, the people in the club didn't know about the people in the restaurant, on

the push of a button, everything would sort of expose itself.

358

:

While people were on, sitting at the bar or standing at the bar, we had these gates that

closed and there were safety devices so people couldn't get in the way of where it was

359

:

swinging into.

360

:

And it was an amazing event that one-of-a-kind, one had ever did anything like it before.

361

:

And we incorporated that in.

362

:

So that, I forgot Scotty, so that was done

363

:

before we did Chicago.

364

:

Okay.

365

:

Yeah.

366

:

But that's where I met Bob Ward, which is another great guy I'd like to have.

367

:

I was just on the phone with him last night.

368

:

Love to have a podcast with Bob.

369

:

executive

370

:

Love to have a podcast with Bob.

371

:

executive did all the theme parks.

372

:

So Scotty, you do go to, you build at Disney World for House of Blues down at, at the time

was called Downtown Disney?

373

:

Yeah, so we went from, again, half, about three quarters way through North Myrtle Beach.

374

:

We get on a plane, we go down to Disney World and talk about different worlds...

375

:

I mean, you go from, it's still the South, but you go from, you know, North Myrtle Beach

to, you know, Orlando

376

:

a dichotomy of whatever.

377

:

people.

378

:

One of the interesting things about North Myrtle Beach was so somewhere along the process,

somebody said, let's get a water tower.

379

:

OK.

380

:

So so we spent a whole day driving around South Carolina looking for a derelict water

tower that we could.

381

:

Buy and bring back to North Myrtle Beach and install it,

382

:

and light it and it actually worked out pretty well but that was we found one and he's

like okay how do we get it back well we got to cut it up okay so they cut it up put it on

383

:

a flat bed and brought it back and unfortunately that same thing happened in Orlando, but

that was a much more that was that was, the Orlando one, you have to understand in North

384

:

Myrtle Beach they they play fast and

385

:

loose with building codes

386

:

you

387

:

Ha ha ha ha!

388

:

Reedy Creek, at the time, now it's the Central Florida Tourism District, but Reedy Creek

had their own building codes.

389

:

great.

390

:

had really, really, really strict building codes, and that was that was a challenge.

391

:

yeah, the Orlando one hit again, a unique space.

392

:

lot of challenges.

393

:

Yeah, big, really big.

394

:

But, you know, similar, similar to North Myrtle Beach.

395

:

So kind of new we're getting into aside from the building codes you dealt with, because

everything

396

:

Anything that hung on the wall had to have a safety chain on.

397

:

So nothing could fall and land on the floor.

398

:

It could only fall like six inches before it stopped or arrested.

399

:

that went with anything, anything that was on a wall had to be arrested.

400

:

So it was, that was a challenge.

401

:

and you know, most of the people that traveled, the traveling crew really hadn't

experienced that level of, of,

402

:

code, to deal with.

403

:

Basically the

404

:

Mm-hmm.

405

:

Ha ha ha ha.

406

:

this, what was it called, Jimmy?

407

:

Yeah, but they had a name for it.

408

:

I forget what the name was, but they were building multiple, was a whole venue of

restaurants and clubs that were building all at the same time.

409

:

a Cirque du Soleil which was next to it.

410

:

Yeah.

411

:

was going, I mean, they're building probably 40 different complexes all at the same time.

412

:

And you had a sea of trailers in the parking lot that you had.

413

:

mean, those were your work trailers and GC trailer, our trailer.

414

:

And but it was a good what half a mile from the site.

415

:

So we had these gators that we drive back and forth to the site and radios.

416

:

It was a that was that was fun.

417

:

It was it was a project.

418

:

Orlando, itself,

419

:

it's funny, not much to do there other than Disney World.

420

:

So, you work all day and you go home and then you get up and you go back to work.

421

:

But you could, they gave us passes to Disney World, which you did that a couple of times

and that's enough of that crap.

422

:

so, food, it was unique.

423

:

They're all unique.

424

:

Yeah, that that was so originally that was Pleasure Island, Scotty.

425

:

And what we built was all called the Disney West Side which now is

426

:

it's Disney Springs the whole areas.

427

:

I think it's called Disney Springs.

428

:

Yeah

429

:

And I ended up, before I was done there, I ended up consulting with Bongo's, Disney Quest,

originally, before Cirque du Soleil, they were trying to put a Broadway theater right next

430

:

door to us.

431

:

I did some consulting for Wolfgang Puck.

432

:

Yeah.

433

:

Yeah.

434

:

that's going.

435

:

there, what happens is you have these contractors and you know, they think that you're, it

is, you are a captive audience.

436

:

So there weren't that many contractors that were approved by Disney that could even do

this project or were available.

437

:

They were very busy doing a lot of other things.

438

:

So the prices I was getting to do this project were just completely, you know, out of

line.

439

:

And at one point I went to the Disney guys and I said, look, I'd like to bring the guy

from Chicago who just finished up.

440

:

There's a great contract.

441

:

You can vet him.

442

:

But he's willing to come down here.

443

:

We'll work with local subs, but he'll manage the project for me.

444

:

Because I'm flying around not only looking for new locations, but overseeing building the

ones that we had.

445

:

There was a lot going on.

446

:

And once I was able to get Mike Brown involved in the project, it solved a lot of other

problems.

447

:

Like when we tried to buy wood flooring, which we needed, I don't know, 40,000 square feet

of Southern pine wood flooring, the prices were out of line.

448

:

So.

449

:

Because we had just finished at Myrtle Beach, we called our partner friend, Shep Guyton,

and they had a millwork shop.

450

:

And we said, can you produce 40,000 square feet of Southern Yellow Pine flooring for us

down here?

451

:

He said, if you give me enough time, I can.

452

:

And so what we would do is we'd select the pieces that we felt were overpriced.

453

:

And we would bring other people into do it.

454

:

Jimmy Kusch would do the millwork and Scotty and Dodge Electric, would oversee the

electrical.

455

:

And it kept people honest, you know, they knew that we had, you know, options and they

knew that we had the ability to do things and get things done.

456

:

So after a while, you know, we were validated.

457

:

We had sort of street credibility and there were and they'd be less to mess around with

you.

458

:

But one of those stories was the water tower.

459

:

So the water tower, which I had long negotiations with Disney and where I wanted to put

it, they did not want they didn't want the water tower, but then they didn't want

460

:

put it where I wanted to put it.

461

:

And when I proved to them.

462

:

into the logo of Disney Springs, you know, as part of the skyline.

463

:

it is part of skyline and it's major major component that you can see through three

viewing corridors.

464

:

And that's what I said to them.

465

:

I said, this is where the sign needs to be because you'll see it entering from this

parking lot.

466

:

You'll see coming down from the Pleasure Island area and you'll see it in the future

development someday over here, whether it's Broadway theater or whatever.

467

:

And then you'll see it from the water.

468

:

And that took an act of Congress, but we got it approved.

469

:

But once we got it approved, we tried to have a local guy make a water tower for us.

470

:

I think

471

:

the price was $350,000.

472

:

So, okay, we're not going do that.

473

:

So we call back to Shep up, and I Scotty was probably still in Myrtle Beach at the time.

474

:

And when you're down in Myrtle Beach and driving up and down the main drag there, the

Golden Mile, you could see water towers, rusted water towers that are abandoned

475

:

everywhere.

476

:

And there were landowners that would actually pay you to come and take it down just to get

it off their property.

477

:

So I said, Shep, we want a tower.

478

:

I told them the ones I liked around town.

479

:

And he went and negotiated a deal and they went over with a flatbed.

480

:

They cut this thing down, laid it on the ground, cut it up in pieces, put it on, I think

it was two flatbeds actually.

481

:

Shipped it down to Orlando.

482

:

And then I had a local welding crew reassemble it put it up with a couple of cranes.

483

:

We might've done that whole thing for $75,000.

484

:

And...

485

:

unfortunately, they cut it up in about 2,000 pieces.

486

:

I mean, instead of just, you know, cutting it up a few pieces, I mean, there's like 10

inch squares, cut it into 10 inch squares.

487

:

it's like, then it took the welders, I mean, a month to put the thing back together.

488

:

do test their welds down there.

489

:

They test everything down there.

490

:

And the craziest thing was they made it.

491

:

Excuse me, they made us build a footing.

492

:

That was incredible.

493

:

I'm like, why is this footing like this?

494

:

It doesn't have any water in it.

495

:

You're not holding up a water tower.

496

:

It's a decoration.

497

:

But the footing, it the footing went down 20 feet with solid concrete.

498

:

I'm like, yeah.

499

:

Yeah, yeah, it was just, you know.

500

:

And then do you, are you involved in House Blues Vegas at Mandalay Bay?

501

:

Now my tenure with House of Blues ended with Disney World.

502

:

So I think...

503

:

on the scene when Jim's consulting with restaurants in the Celebrity Chef era.

504

:

basically what

505

:

I came back home, well, to Boston, Boston area, and was working for Dodge Electric, just

doing various projects around bored out of my mind.

506

:

But because I had I had yeah, North Shore [of Massachusetts], Beverly, I'm yeah.

507

:

So, you know, having done that for a couple years, you know, it's fun.

508

:

But

509

:

Coming back and have to do regular electrical work was like, I'm gonna shoot myself.

510

:

Yeah, because by this time you're not really an electrician.

511

:

You're more of a lighting designer, foreman, liaison, as you said, yeah, project manager.

512

:

Whatever I needed to be.

513

:

It made it interesting.

514

:

So, you know, time went by and one day I got a call from Jimmy saying, hey, I'm involved

with this restaurateur and

515

:

we got these restaurants that we're going to do, I'm like cool.

516

:

I'm ready to make a move.

517

:

first one was Kingfish Hall, which was it was that was.

518

:

So that's Faneuil Hall in Boston.

519

:

yeah, that, I never seen anything like that before.

520

:

Well, except for one down, [in Miami] we did later, but, yeah, that was.

521

:

probably what, 10,000 square feet?

522

:

What do you think?

523

:

More?

524

:

I mean,

525

:

you know, that was was a hell of a concept.

526

:

lot of a lot of things going on, a lot of design elements, a lot of things to to work on

to the light and work and make things.

527

:

Yeah, lot of features.

528

:

The best one, this is the best.

529

:

So, Jimmy says, hey, we got this wood fired grill over here.

530

:

What?

531

:

I want the meat to spin around and go around circles and do flip flops.

532

:

Yeah.

533

:

I the fish to go around circles and wave at you and wink.

534

:

like, what the hell are you talking about?

535

:

I'm like, yeah, no problem.

536

:

Let's do that.

537

:

We got involved with a fabricator in Connecticut, Jay Frederick.

538

:

And he was doing the fish.

539

:

He was doing the giant fish, the kingfish, and he was doing some other things too I think

some other fabricating.

540

:

So I said, well, he's a fabricator.

541

:

Let's see what I can do.

542

:

So I gave him a call.

543

:

said, we have this wood fired grill, big centerpiece, big focal point.

544

:

We want the rotisserie, the rotisserie part of it spin round in a circle.

545

:

that's no problem.

546

:

Well, listen.

547

:

I want they also want the individual fishes to spend at the same time.

548

:

What?

549

:

So yeah, he said, well, let's see what I can do.

550

:

And a couple of weeks later, he comes back.

551

:

Well, I have this this hind joint thing and I've come up with the concept and I think

it'll work.

552

:

OK, so I sent him I got him in touch with the wood, the Ford fired company.

553

:

We actually sent the grill

554

:

down to him so he could fabricate the whole mechanism to make this work.

555

:

And he did one hell of a job because it was it did exactly what we wanted to do.

556

:

And we could control the speed too, which was unique.

557

:

So yeah, it went round and around and the fishes went round and round.

558

:

You could flip them up and back and down.

559

:

And that was people were mesmerized by that.

560

:

So that was one of the

561

:

right, with the step pedal that you could spin.

562

:

he did.

563

:

He did the, you know, the big clamshell booth that spin around, the hoods.

564

:

Yeah, he did a lot of work for us.

565

:

This guy, was nothing, there was nothing this guy couldn't do.

566

:

Michael, he was, he was just such a, you know, a great engineer, technician, manufacturer.

567

:

And, uh, we also became great friends and did a lot of different projects with him.

568

:

But, uh, yeah, he, but he, I mean, we spent a lot of money on that grill, but it still was

affordable enough to do it.

569

:

I think we might've spent.

570

:

was so much gold leaf, you could send someone to college.

571

:

think the, Holly [Mandot], every everything was gold or silver leafed or copper.

572

:

And then the staircase had the sea glass railings, waterfall.

573

:

And then when you went downstairs, you had old newspaper that we painted and we had a

picture of Scotty in the newspaper with a fish that was painted on the wall down the

574

:

bathroom.

575

:

There was like a Where's Waldo?

576

:

He looked in all the newspaper of Scotty.

577

:

Okay, so that's like 2000 probably, right?

578

:

I mean, we had there was a unique this is really one of the unique features was the open

from first to second floor, but we had a big mobile hanging in the center.

579

:

All right.

580

:

Yeah.

581

:

So the challenge was how do we light this thing and make it look like it's animated?

582

:

So, you know, 30 years ago, well, 28 years ago, you know, that that.

583

:

We didn't have the stuff we have today.

584

:

So, I had heard about a company in Boston on Milk Street called Color Kinetics.

585

:

All right.

586

:

They make, they were brand new out of the box.

587

:

Like six people work for the company and they make a product, a color changing product in

a controller.

588

:

thinking, maybe I can make the colors change to make it look animated.

589

:

And it was LED.

590

:

Now, back then people,

591

:

had no idea what that meant.

592

:

LEDs, what are those things?

593

:

I got those, you know, lighten up my display or my indicator lights.

594

:

They never, they didn't put out a lot of light.

595

:

Color Kinetics had come up with process and LEDs that actually put out a good, a fair

amount of light.

596

:

They still weren't great, but it did what we wanted to do.

597

:

So I got, I went down, took a walk down the Milk Street, knock on the door, said, hey,

598

:

I work on this project in Faneuil Hall.

599

:

Would you guys be interested in come look and see what we can do to make this this

animated with colored light?

600

:

They were like, yeah, let's do it.

601

:

Let's do it!

602

:

So we all walked back.

603

:

We're looking.

604

:

We looked at it and they said, yeah, we need four of these fixtures.

605

:

OK, and we'll give you this controller.

606

:

We're going to, this is the best part.

607

:

Jimmy's smiling about this part.

608

:

We're going to give it to you for free because it's a good advertising for us.

609

:

Okay, so the best part was over the center, you never had access it because LEDs had

50,000 hour life, length of life and you couldn't, you didn't need to get a ladder up

610

:

there and blah, blah, blah.

611

:

But in the end it worked because, you know, the color changes were subtle, but it made it

look like you were shimmering down through the water, which was the effect that we were

612

:

trying to come up with and it worked.

613

:

that was

614

:

my first go with Color Kinetics and, you know, that relationship grew to some projects

later on.

615

:

But yeah, I mean, that was, there was a lot going on in that project too.

616

:

But, you know, we had custom glass, custom, remember the shades for the bar lamps, Jordana

Korsen.

617

:

Yeah, we, you know, she was, she did the colored glass for, she came up and did the

colored glass

618

:

for the rails.

619

:

And she's a she's a custom glass blower.

620

:

Phenomenal, phenomenal.

621

:

And I said to her, hey, I got to come up with this lampshade with over the bar that kind

of looks like fish or some sort of abstract view of fish.

622

:

And she came up with a with a lampshade and they were beautiful.

623

:

And, you know, we

624

:

put those in, and they are unique features.

625

:

From that project, Michael,

626

:

launched Rustic Kitchen across the street.

627

:

We went to Coral Gables, Florida, which was the Rouse Company who we talked about in one

of our earlier podcast.

628

:

They were operating Faneuil Hall and they became a partner.

629

:

Yup.

630

:

They became a partner with us down in Coral Gables, Florida.

631

:

And they said, we want a signature restaurant here for this entire

632

:

mall that we're building.

633

:

And we came up with this seafood concept called Pescado, which roughly translated means

'fish when caught,' not pez, just...

634

:

When you drive around LA and you go to a fish, it's Pescado Mojado, wet fish.

635

:

You had a very gringo, it means fish that you eat.

636

:

It's fish.

637

:

You named your restaurant Fish.

638

:

Okay.

639

:

So if you take this project in Faneuil Hall and turbo charge it, you know, times 10,

that's what Pescado became.

640

:

So everything down there was done at, you know, a whole new dimension.

641

:

That's Miami.

642

:

And by then the Color Kinetics, of course the product, Scotty can talk about much better,

but it keeps advancing.

643

:

It keeps getting better, stronger.

644

:

That was the problem with the early Color Kinetics that they just weren't that strong.

645

:

Yeah, they were big and they weren't that...

646

:

was more gitchy you kind of stuff.

647

:

I they were still trying to find their way.

648

:

Output wasn't great yet.

649

:

I didn't realize you had them at Kingfish because my memory of Color Kinetics is when

you're running the job site for Rustic Kitchen, Stuart Street, when by now you're

650

:

basically just the foreman, you're running that site, you were telling me that we did the

whole bar with the strips.

651

:

I think they're probably on their third version of it by that point a few years later.

652

:

And you tell me about Color Kinetics and you're trying to explain to me how amazing it is.

653

:

And I bought stock in their company because I'm like 13 probably at this point.

654

:

And I'm like, okay, I trust Scotty on this.

655

:

And I'm like,

656

:

Two years later, Phillips, know, major conglomerate, buys them, and I made like a few

thousand dollars, it was like, my first good trade was on an tip from Scotty on Color

657

:

Kinetics.

658

:

Sorry.

659

:

Where's your vig, that's right.

660

:

Yeah.

661

:

Yeah, we, you know, well from Kingfish Hall, you know, with that same restaurateur we did,

you know, a couple of the restaurants, one in New York and one in Washington, D.C.

662

:

And, you know, the traveling show just kept going.

663

:

You know, they all were unique in themselves and you know, challenges, but we just kept

moving forward.

664

:

Then, you know, we.

665

:

We started that project, Pescado, and that was the fun project.

666

:

Yeah, was.

667

:

That thing was off the chart.

668

:

Yeah, I mean, if built anywhere else in the world, it would have been unbelievable.

669

:

you know, that mall just didn't do it.

670

:

So.

671

:

Yeah.

672

:

Speaking of fish though, your whole life has been not about being an electrician or light

designer.

673

:

It's fishing.

674

:

Is that accurate?

675

:

Or that's a big part of your life?

676

:

not

677

:

always enjoyed ocean fishing, fishing in general.

678

:

mean, growing up in Beverly [Massachusetts], we were surrounded by ponds and lakes.

679

:

And that's how, you know, as kids, we spent the day, we were fishing.

680

:

So, know, I've always had a love for that.

681

:

When I was working for another contractor and I just had got my electrical license.

682

:

Worked for a company out of Danvers and one of our big accounts was Salem Oil and Grease

and that owner, Salty Smith, he was a character.

683

:

He was he was about five foot six tall and about five six wide, he was was huge but great

guy.

684

:

He says he told my boss that time Brian Craney

685

:

I bought a boat.

686

:

want to go.

687

:

I'm going to go fishing.

688

:

Bluefin tuna fishing.

689

:

Do you have anybody who would like to go do that?

690

:

And Brian thought of me because he knew I liked to fish.

691

:

I used to go out in his boat a lot and he approached me about it.

692

:

I'm like, what the hell's a bluefin tuna fish?

693

:

No idea what it was.

694

:

I'm like, I know what a bluefish is.

695

:

Not the same thing.

696

:

We go out, I look at the boat.

697

:

And had it set up well, nice, nice 30, 34 foot.

698

:

Tierra, set up for fishing.

699

:

I'm like, this is cool, equipment that I've never seen before.

700

:

Heavy equipment, big rods, big reels, big line, big everything.

701

:

I'm like, what the hell are we fishing for?

702

:

Still had no idea.

703

:

You know, back then you didn't have Google.

704

:

You couldn't Google what the bluefin tuna fish.

705

:

I you had you had no idea.

706

:

He explains to me what a bluefin tuna fish is.

707

:

said, what?

708

:

Those swim off the coast?

709

:

Are you kidding me?

710

:

Yeah.

711

:

All right.

712

:

So that was my, that was my start in really deep sea bluefin tuna fishing.

713

:

We really sucked at it though.

714

:

Oh my God.

715

:

It was terrible.

716

:

Probably 2000.

717

:

Yeah.

718

:

I'll be 2000, 2001.

719

:

the North Coast of Boston, how far out do you have to go?

720

:

So we, we, the boat was in Beverly, at Port Marina, and we'd go out from there, out of

Beverly Harbor into the ocean.

721

:

It takes about an hour.

722

:

So the bluefin tuna fish actually run, off a Stellwagen Bank.

723

:

They run up and down the east coast, but, Stellwagen Bank, which is known for bluefin tuna

fish because it's a, has a very steep drop, on it.

724

:

And on that edge, that's where the fish like to

725

:

you know, eat.

726

:

Takes about an hour to get from Beverly out to Stellwagen Bank.

727

:

There's two seasons, there used to be two seasons for bluefin tuna fishing which was early

season which is trolling which you drag and baits across the surface of the water and

728

:

that's the water still cold so the fish are on the surface and you had better luck

trolling it's called trolling then

729

:

you do later in the season when the water warms up, they tend to go down deeper into the

water.

730

:

You're dragging bait on the top and there's a line.

731

:

Okay.

732

:

you have basically, well, you can have up to four rods.

733

:

Some guys have more, some guys have less, but we had four rods spread across the back of

the boat and set at different distances out from the back of the boat.

734

:

And you troll either mackerel or plastic squid or whatever bait might be hot at that time.

735

:

And you just do that for hours on end.

736

:

You know leave at four in the morning and you do it all day til five six o'clock at night

and you just drive around you drive around drive around drive around and hope something

737

:

bites.

738

:

So you do that for months on end and because just we was just we didn't know what we were

doing, we sucked basically, so one day though we got lucky.

739

:

My first bluefin tuna fish, it scared the shit out me.

740

:

The it the rod

741

:

when it hits the bait trolling, it's like an explosion.

742

:

And then this poor little rod, you know, you have to imagine 200 pound test line with 40

pounds of drag and it's, going out so fast.

743

:

You think the reel is broken.

744

:

It's going out so fast.

745

:

You think you're going to run out of line that fast.

746

:

But finally the fish slows down and then then it's just a battle after that.

747

:

You're reeling against the fish and trying to get them to the boat.

748

:

And I just was like, what am I doing?

749

:

And I'm straddling the gunnel, I'm doing everything wrong to get this fish to the boat.

750

:

The rod hold the brakes.

751

:

It was a horror show.

752

:

But finally, we get we get we get to the fish to the boat and Salty climbs off the bridge

and gets the harpoon and sticks it and we get the fish.

753

:

So we get back.

754

:

We get back to the dock.

755

:

You know, we so go into Gloucester because that's where you sell them.

756

:

I lost it.

757

:

from Gloucester Yeah, that's So we go.

758

:

We sell it because we're newbies.

759

:

We take a porking on it.

760

:

They just say, who the hell are these guys?

761

:

So the screw is on it.

762

:

And then we get back to the dock and,

763

:

I'm going to explain a term to you.

764

:

So it's a term we call what we were at that time.

765

:

It's called a Guggan.

766

:

I don't know where the term came from, but a Guggan is someone who's never done this

before and is like a weekender fishing.

767

:

Doesn't know what they're doing.

768

:

Gets lucky.

769

:

So we were Guggans.

770

:

So the Guggans pull into the dock and a Guggan will raise a flag, a tuna flag on on the

outrigger to show you caught a fish.

771

:

Now real fishermen don't.

772

:

Googans do, so as as Googans would do we raise the flag up we got a fish, so slip next to

us Billy and Donna Monte on

773

:

commercial fishermen to the core.

774

:

know, they used to bluefin tuna fish when they used to use hand lines.

775

:

No rod and reel.

776

:

I mean they've been doing it for ages and ages.

777

:

We pull in and they're right next to us and the slip next to us.

778

:

They see the flag, they start laughing.

779

:

I'm like, hey, we caught a fish.

780

:

Well, first of all, they never thought we'd ever catch a fish, neither did we, you know I

didn't ever think we would.

781

:

But we did.

782

:

And, uh, they laughed.

783

:

"Congratulations." And, uh, I really hadn't ever talked to them before.

784

:

Uh, cause you know, we were Googans and they don't talk to them.

785

:

But caught a fish and, uh, they talked to us because they wanted to know where we were at

what time of day was it was what we use for bait, wanted all the information so they can

786

:

go out and do the same thing.

787

:

Yeah.

788

:

That's the way that works.

789

:

So, um, you know, time passed,

790

:

Some things happened on Salty's boat and couldn't fish anymore.

791

:

So Billy and Donna Monte were looking for an extra mate.

792

:

So I went to fish with them and 25 years I fished with them.

793

:

All kinds of tuna fishing.

794

:

I mean, all kinds of fishing actually.

795

:

It was always weekends.

796

:

For me, it was just a weekend thing to get out of what I'm doing during the week to relax,

have a good time, catch some fish, make some money.

797

:

Fun and enjoyed it.

798

:

Enjoyed the hell out.

799

:

So, 20 years goes by and we moved the boat to Gloucester and we fished out of Gloucester.

800

:

Always from Gloucester.

801

:

So.

802

:

They're always from Gloucester.

803

:

One day, Billy Barth comes up to me and says, Hey, want to be in a TV show?

804

:

I'm like, what the hell are you talking about?

805

:

This, this, this company, Pilgrim Films out of California that wants to make a TV, a

reality TV show, about tuna fishing.

806

:

I'm like, shit.

807

:

Really?

808

:

Okay.

809

:

What the hell?

810

:

Well, I got nothing else to do, right?

811

:

Billy talks to the guys, they said, OK, we had to do auditions.

812

:

So what they did was they sent out disposable video cameras out from California, and they

gave us a script and a bunch of questions to read from it.

813

:

And we held the camera for each other and we read off these questions and the script and

we said, OK, we sent it back.

814

:

Didn't hear anything for months.

815

:

Then one day we get a call, hey, we're coming out from California.

816

:

We want to just sit down interviews with your crew.

817

:

Okay.

818

:

So much like we're doing right now, front of a camera, two and a half hours, you got a

producer, cameraman, sound man, in a makeshift studio, just hurling questions at you one

819

:

after another, after another, after another.

820

:

and just, just so that's it.

821

:

mean, it went off for hours sitting in that chair in front of that camera, lights the

whole nine yards.

822

:

Okay.

823

:

They leave, another couple of months go by.

824

:

And we're still tuna fishing.

825

:

It's now November.

826

:

I get a call from Mike Nichols, producer of the TV show, to say, Scott, you're going to be

a TV star.

827

:

What?

828

:

Yeah, we selected The Bounty Hunter as one of the the boats for the, you know, the initial

season of Wicked Tuna.

829

:

that time, was called Blue Gold.

830

:

They changed the name to Wicked Tuna.

831

:

I said, "you're shitting me."

832

:

Hahaha

833

:

And then it just went on from there.

834

:

You know, they came.

835

:

So we're in November, tuna season is just about over.

836

:

It only goes till the end of November to, you know, beginning of December, maybe because

the weather turns to crap.

837

:

Fish is still around, but you can't fish.

838

:

So we had to get six episodes in in a short amount of time.

839

:

So they all they all fly out.

840

:

Big production crew flies out from California.

841

:

There's five boats in the initial season.

842

:

so they had to set up each boat, wire each boat, cameras, sound, whole nine yards.

843

:

And then that's how Wicked Tuna started.

844

:

remember if you knew at the beginning it was going to be a National Geographic or were

they shopping it around?

845

:

so what happened is this was the pilot.

846

:

So they did the pilot six episodes for the pilot year.

847

:

And then after the pilot, they sold the, you know, they put out feelers and National

Geographic said, okay, we'll buy it.

848

:

And, and that's, that's when they got it.

849

:

And you got like $200 for the season one?

850

:

so,

851

:

I remember this, yeah.

852

:

Yeah, yeah.

853

:

You didn't have an entertainment lawyer look over it?

854

:

He sent me that he brought me the contract and you know, I read through this.

855

:

You have no rights.

856

:

You give up everything.

857

:

And I think they were getting maybe $500 per episode or something like that.

858

:

And that might've been just, that might've been the whole crew.

859

:

Okay.

860

:

was they were generous with the episodes, but you had to be in an episode.

861

:

So if you were out fishing and you didn't do anything and nothing happened and you didn't

fall overboard, you didn't create any action and you weren't in an episode, you didn't get

862

:

paid.

863

:

You had to be in an episode to get paid.

864

:

Right.

865

:

But, you know, when we talked about it, I said, well, Scotty, you're going out fishing

anyway.

866

:

So there's now there's cameras there and you're going to just do what you've been doing.

867

:

So what's the downside?

868

:

I don't understand.

869

:

It's not like you have to take time off your other jobs.

870

:

Well, no, no, no, no.

871

:

But it was for the exposure.

872

:

So anyway, you know, they, go and do this.

873

:

And there's a little bit of a backstory here, Michael, because I, my whole life, knowing

Scotty, he was a tuna fisherman and I never really understood what that meant.

874

:

And every Saturday he would do this.

875

:

So we would make sure that, you know, we worked around not needing Scotty cause we were

working all the time.

876

:

Because he, you know, some guys are golfers and Scotty was a tuna fisherman and you know,

877

:

every once in a while he would tell us some stories about things that went on out there,

but I never really could comprehend it.

878

:

I think the only boat I've ever even seen was a banana boat at the Dairy Queen.

879

:

just an inner city kid, just never had the opportunity.

880

:

I started to feel, I was like, why doesn't he ever invite me out fishing with him on a

Saturday?

881

:

I think it's like a bunch of guys getting together with a keg of beer and going out and

fishing in the bay.

882

:

Eventually, I actually, I think I might have said something to Scotty about that.

883

:

Look, why don't you invite us out?

884

:

And he said, you don't understand, Jim, it's not like that.

885

:

You know, this is not a charter boat with a bunch of drunk guys.

886

:

This is serious business.

887

:

And first of all, it's it's the livelihood of the people that are on the boat.

888

:

It's expensive and it can be dangerous.

889

:

And, you know, sometimes they would go out for like a whole weekend to be out on the water

overnight.

890

:

And I never understood that.

891

:

for a long time.

892

:

So I just said, okay, great.

893

:

I said, maybe just doesn't want me out there.

894

:

I don't know, because I'm generally not a nice person most of the time.

895

:

So when the Wicked Tuna thing comes along and I read the contract for him and I say, you I

would do it just because you're going you're doing it anyway.

896

:

What's the downside?

897

:

He says okay.

898

:

Well, I remember when they had the premiere in Boston was that the Wang [Theatre] I think

was that the Wang and that was a huge event.

899

:

I mean, dominated the media.

900

:

And I said, these guys are for real.

901

:

This is this is really something.

902

:

one point, I remember Scotty told me a story about his mother.

903

:

She must have watched an episode or a trailer or something.

904

:

And she said to him, you know, Scotty, if you keep doing this, you're going to be fired.

905

:

What do you mean?

906

:

She said, that's not you.

907

:

That's not the guy.

908

:

You know, you're not being

909

:

my son, you're not being that personality that we all know you have.

910

:

You're very stiff and you know, just don't, you're not, you're not doing it right.

911

:

They're going to, they're going to get rid of you.

912

:

So that must have had an impact Scotty because later on I saw an episode when Scotty goes

off on some guys that were supposed to be loading the boat early in the morning.

913

:

They weren't doing it fast enough.

914

:

He tears them up

915

:

and then it cuts to Scotty screaming to a guy on another boat and

916

:

giving a few choice words.

917

:

Yeah.

918

:

And, uh, and eventually what happens is Scotty just becomes the Scotty that we know.

919

:

He's highly intelligent.

920

:

He's got a great vocabulary, but he's got this demeanor that you, develop when you work in

construction, a lot of times you win through intimidation.

921

:

You have to have the knowledge, but you also, if you're a pansy, they're going to run

right over you.

922

:

So you learn to be a tough guy.

923

:

If you're going to run a crew and get things done.

924

:

And so that part of Scotty he had, but he turned it off.

925

:

And once he turned it back on, this great character came out that you see on Wicked Tuna,

I think you guys were on for the first three seasons,

926

:

right?

927

:

Yeah, yeah, three seasons and, probably would have been more, but I got hurt.

928

:

watching you years later when I was in Mexico.

929

:

We were building one of the rest of the kitchens in Mexico and he they had dubbed him in

Scotty's speaking in Spanish.

930

:

Portuguese, yeah.

931

:

mine from Portugal, my parents, my parents sent a video of me in Portuguese, speaking

Portuguese.

932

:

So that was, I learned something there.

933

:

Yeah.

934

:

Yeah, that was awesome.

935

:

Yeah, it was worldwide.

936

:

It was all over the world.

937

:

It was pretty cool.

938

:

It was fun.

939

:

Yeah, year, it was the last season.

940

:

Yeah.

941

:

a 10 year run?

942

:

About a 10 year run?

943

:

Longer.

944

:

10 year run.

945

:

Yeah, yeah.

946

:

it had a loyal following.

947

:

yeah, it went through a lot

948

:

of changes.

949

:

You know, the first year was the best year for us because it was just raw.

950

:

It was unscripted.

951

:

It was really raw because it was the pilot and there no rules.

952

:

It was, you know, do what you want to do.

953

:

When National Geographic bought the show, became a little more scripted, a little more

954

:

You know, family friendly, I will say.

955

:

There was as many beeps.

956

:

was known as Mr.

957

:

Beep.

958

:

Yeah, Mr.

959

:

Beep.

960

:

Long beeps, like...

961

:

there some crew of young guys, college guys, tie-dye something, or...

962

:

Pinwheel!

963

:

That's what I remember, yeah.

964

:

were good.

965

:

Yeah, he's a really good fisherman.

966

:

Tyler McLaughlin.

967

:

Yeah, he's outstanding fisherman.

968

:

But you know, his crew, drugs are a bad thing and some things happen there and loss of

crew, but really good fisherman.

969

:

Everybody in that show are good fishermen.

970

:

It wasn't a joke.

971

:

They were outstanding.

972

:

So one of the byproducts of this, Michael, when as Wicked Tuna was progressing, Scotty

would tell me some of the stories of when they would go filming.

973

:

And I said, how do they, you know, they come up with these ideas and these scripts and

then how do they get you guys to do all those different things?

974

:

And he said, no, no, no, it's not like that at all.

975

:

It's the opposite.

976

:

There's cameras everywhere.

977

:

There's mics everywhere.

978

:

And we go off fishing and whatever happens happens.

979

:

We don't catch a fish.

980

:

There's a storm.

981

:

We have a troller that pulls up next to us too close.

982

:

Whatever happens in the normal course of our fishing, they just record everything on

multiple cameras.

983

:

And they have different, they record everything.

984

:

And so you have these different crews on different boats that are doing this all over.

985

:

And then all the footage gets sent back to the production company and they watch it all.

986

:

And then they start to stitch together what the storylines.

987

:

boat a camera operator or is everything locked down?

988

:

It's just you guys.

989

:

You had a, okay, there were people on the boat, okay.

990

:

handheld.

991

:

Yeah.

992

:

He had a handheld, we had a producer.

993

:

Um, because the boats are relatively small.

994

:

Um, you, you, you had a producer.

995

:

He did the camera and the sound.

996

:

Uh, but you know, he had the handheld camera, but there were also seven or eight fixed

997

:

throughout the boat.

998

:

And you know, you couldn't, they got everything.

999

:

I mean, it's not, I mean, you pick your ass, you know, you do this, you do that.

:

01:06:49,851 --> 01:06:51,263

Everything you say.

:

01:06:51,263 --> 01:06:54,186

So it's like they don't miss a thing.

:

01:06:54,186 --> 01:07:05,032

you always have to be, it became, you gotta be careful what almost what you say because

you don't want to say, know, typically on the boat, you say a lot of things.

:

01:07:05,032 --> 01:07:08,273

and you really, you know, you can't, some of them aren't too good.

:

01:07:08,273 --> 01:07:13,555

So, you know, you kind of kind of scale back from that because they do they record

everything.

:

01:07:13,555 --> 01:07:18,540

You have a mic and, and they record every frigging word you say all day long.

:

01:07:18,540 --> 01:07:19,426

and the days along.

:

01:07:19,426 --> 01:07:25,434

then at the end of the season, you have to sit down and they try to just get a bunch of

VO, are you telling stories to match?

:

01:07:25,434 --> 01:07:28,317

what happens is at the end of the season, exactly.

:

01:07:28,313 --> 01:07:35,540

they made a studio in Gloucester, decorated it you sit down hours on end in the seat, just

like this.

:

01:07:35,540 --> 01:07:38,578

And, put together the, the episode.

:

01:07:38,578 --> 01:07:40,819

So questions, you know, what did you feel here?

:

01:07:40,819 --> 01:07:42,100

What happened here?

:

01:07:42,100 --> 01:07:44,101

And, you know, what was going on?

:

01:07:44,101 --> 01:07:44,521

Yeah.

:

01:07:44,521 --> 01:07:45,301

So.

:

01:07:45,301 --> 01:07:47,261

you know, they, just the backstory.

:

01:07:47,261 --> 01:07:49,401

Um, and you do that for every episode.

:

01:07:49,401 --> 01:07:52,539

So those, those sessions go three, four or five hours at a

:

01:07:52,535 --> 01:07:53,301

to fill in.

:

01:07:53,301 --> 01:07:54,001

that's everybody.

:

01:07:54,001 --> 01:07:57,061

mean, you think about 15, 20 guys, they got to do that to.

:

01:08:03,154 --> 01:08:05,870

um, yeah, that became, yep.

:

01:08:06,110 --> 01:08:08,630

That's a, it was really hard doing that.

:

01:08:08,970 --> 01:08:09,896

Um, yeah.

:

01:08:09,896 --> 01:08:11,834

you had groupies and fans.

:

01:08:12,867 --> 01:08:14,517

All our staff loved you, so.

:

01:08:14,517 --> 01:08:23,013

At that time, you know, you had a lot of, you you go to the grocery store and guys flip

out.

:

01:08:23,013 --> 01:08:24,875

that gets kind of embarrassing.

:

01:08:24,875 --> 01:08:27,637

You got to run.

:

01:08:27,637 --> 01:08:29,368

You got to run and hide.

:

01:08:29,368 --> 01:08:30,859

mean, the people are crazy.

:

01:08:30,859 --> 01:08:36,443

So that that happened for quite a while until we weren't on the show anymore.

:

01:08:36,443 --> 01:08:37,454

That kind of died off.

:

01:08:37,454 --> 01:08:39,681

But it's still, you know, to this day.

:

01:08:39,681 --> 01:08:41,001

It still happens.

:

01:08:41,001 --> 01:08:49,241

Occasionally here, I'll be out around shopping somewhere and some guy goes, hey, I know

you.

:

01:08:49,241 --> 01:08:50,601

We met somewhere.

:

01:08:50,841 --> 01:08:52,600

I'm like, I'll give you a minute to figure it out.

:

01:08:52,600 --> 01:08:54,216

to recognize you?

:

01:08:54,741 --> 01:08:57,468

Yeah, people's, yeah.

:

01:08:57,468 --> 01:09:00,468

So, I know Wicked Tuna, hey!

:

01:09:00,468 --> 01:09:01,328

OK.

:

01:09:01,328 --> 01:09:08,457

So when you would see an episode, you would see for the first time what storyline they

sort of laced this whole thing into.

:

01:09:08,457 --> 01:09:12,713

And I thought that was fascinating, Michael.

:

01:09:12,713 --> 01:09:19,650

actually, the premise of that helped us later with The Cooking Show on how we would sort

of tell our story with the cooking show, because I never knew that.

:

01:09:19,650 --> 01:09:21,362

is not real?

:

01:09:22,064 --> 01:09:24,236

Wait, wait, what, wait, what?

:

01:09:25,652 --> 01:09:29,564

Yes, there is nothing real about reality television.

:

01:09:29,564 --> 01:09:31,106

Yeah, that's true.

:

01:09:31,106 --> 01:09:36,368

Ours was real as far as the fish and catching the fish and all that stuff.

:

01:09:36,368 --> 01:09:48,878

All the crap behind the scenes was, you know, yet at some point you have to make it

interesting and you have to make it people, you know, what was really weird was the show

:

01:09:48,878 --> 01:09:52,340

was really popular from like the Mississippi West.

:

01:09:52,460 --> 01:09:56,494

So, you know, people who had no idea what tuna fishing was.

:

01:09:56,494 --> 01:09:57,350

Hmm.

:

01:09:58,266 --> 01:10:03,263

and weren't familiar with it and all the aspects of it, you know, that was something else.

:

01:10:03,263 --> 01:10:08,846

You know, the local people, you know, didn't really take to it much, but.

:

01:10:08,846 --> 01:10:12,788

So a fish that comes into Gloucester, where does that end up?

:

01:10:12,788 --> 01:10:14,144

Do you know what the life cycle looks

:

01:10:14,144 --> 01:10:16,096

ends up, so it's changed over the years.

:

01:10:16,096 --> 01:10:21,198

It used to be when we first started, you would bring a fish in the Gloucester and it was

two markets.

:

01:10:21,198 --> 01:10:24,779

There was the local market and the Japanese market.

:

01:10:24,779 --> 01:10:31,212

You would, would, and the buyers would, would give you a price for the fish and they would

pay you on a spot for the fish.

:

01:10:31,212 --> 01:10:35,785

You know, they test it and grade it and then screw you.

:

01:10:35,785 --> 01:10:38,626

And then, then, you know, you get paid.

:

01:10:38,963 --> 01:10:42,969

As the years progressed, it became, you send everything on consignment.

:

01:10:42,969 --> 01:10:48,765

So every fish you catch, if it's good enough quality, and by then you know what quality

the fish is.

:

01:10:48,765 --> 01:10:57,811

mean, you do it long enough to understand the color, the taste, not so much the taste, but

the color, the fat content, the shape, all those things play in.

:

01:10:57,811 --> 01:11:00,341

like a pipe in and it pulls out a little yeah

:

01:11:00,341 --> 01:11:05,142

they core the fish to see what the color is and the fat content.

:

01:11:05,202 --> 01:11:07,773

But you know, the shape, all that stuff matters to the Japanese.

:

01:11:07,773 --> 01:11:20,573

So, you know, you take your fish and you send it overseas and it goes on to the market,

the auction, and then you get paid minus all the expenses to send the thing over there.

:

01:11:20,573 --> 01:11:23,073

But yeah, you get paid per pound.

:

01:11:23,453 --> 01:11:23,893

Yeah.

:

01:11:23,893 --> 01:11:25,294

So that's what happens now.

:

01:11:25,294 --> 01:11:27,803

could go for $30,000?

:

01:11:28,211 --> 01:11:30,222

Yeah, not so much anymore.

:

01:11:30,222 --> 01:11:41,477

But in the early season fish when there's no fish on the market and if it's a super high

quality, big enough, I mean, has to it has to be a really a diamond to get that kind of

:

01:11:41,477 --> 01:11:41,788

money.

:

01:11:41,788 --> 01:11:46,490

The average, you know, you get eight, ten dollars a pound on average.

:

01:11:46,810 --> 01:11:55,042

You know, some of that's what we used to laugh about is, you know, on the show, you always

see, well, they got this much money for the fish.

:

01:12:03,455 --> 01:12:05,207

You

:

01:12:06,036 --> 01:12:16,336

But yeah, it was, it was, you you wouldn't had to do that because you would have no, you

know, correlation to what a fish actually was and how much it costs and that.

:

01:12:16,336 --> 01:12:21,076

So, you know, it made sense, but, um, yeah, that's really what the process was.

:

01:12:21,076 --> 01:12:24,954

Uh, and it price still today, no one buys fish locally.

:

01:12:24,954 --> 01:12:25,811

They all send them.

:

01:12:25,811 --> 01:12:26,718

We will send them all.

:

01:12:26,718 --> 01:12:27,899

Send them to Japan.

:

01:12:27,899 --> 01:12:35,786

Now I have a photo of you Scotty with a fish that is I don't know, an 11 foot tuna?

:

01:12:35,786 --> 01:12:36,666

that was a pounder.

:

01:12:36,666 --> 01:12:37,946

That's a thousand pounder.

:

01:12:37,946 --> 01:12:38,566

Yeah.

:

01:12:38,566 --> 01:12:39,866

123 inches.

:

01:12:39,866 --> 01:12:42,366

So a hundred and twenty three inches long.

:

01:12:42,366 --> 01:12:43,422

About a thousand pounds.

:

01:12:43,422 --> 01:12:46,670

That was the largest tuner that you guys caught?

:

01:12:47,570 --> 01:12:57,920

that's the largest fish I've probably yeah, well, I was involved with, some 900 pounders,

some 800s, but that's the largest fish overall.

:

01:12:57,920 --> 01:13:00,157

I mean, over 1,100 pounds.

:

01:13:00,149 --> 01:13:10,450

Scotty at one time we had him in on one of our cooking shows and he talked, talked all

about, you know, the process being on Wicked Tuna and catching the fish, then Liz

:

01:13:10,450 --> 01:13:22,158

[Bramwell], you know, made a whole tuna dish and that was a lot of fun, and there was some

guy in the back of the studio that was a rabid groupie, Wicked Tuna guy, that was like

:

01:13:22,158 --> 01:13:24,958

literally, you know, reeling in

:

01:13:24,958 --> 01:13:33,261

as Scotty was telling the story and we threw a camera on him and he was just beside

himself that he was in a show with Scott Ferriero from Wicked Tuna.

:

01:14:04,014 --> 01:14:05,706

you

:

01:14:05,706 --> 01:14:07,712

job is with Boston Light Source, right?

:

01:14:07,785 --> 01:14:09,957

After all the building and all the fun

:

01:14:10,125 --> 01:14:10,867

I needed a job.

:

01:14:10,867 --> 01:14:14,555

by that time, I had a little bit of reputation around town.

:

01:14:14,555 --> 01:14:20,351

So I had the guy from Color Kinetics who I had worked with closely on all the projects.

:

01:14:20,351 --> 01:14:24,303

was really good friends with the owner of Boston Light Source.

:

01:14:24,404 --> 01:14:28,665

And he made a recommendation to him for me.

:

01:14:28,766 --> 01:14:33,862

And I went in and interviewed with them and they hired me and I've been there 18 years

now.

:

01:14:33,862 --> 01:14:34,006

And

:

01:14:34,599 --> 01:14:35,399

it's not.

:

01:14:35,399 --> 01:14:47,654

some of our restaurants, we had people involved, you have Scotty, you have Jake, you have

us, have Si, we have people.

:

01:14:47,654 --> 01:14:57,028

So we're bringing this world-class team of people to do a restaurant for ourself, which

once we launched Rustic Kitchen.

:

01:14:57,028 --> 01:15:02,430

So we're putting a facility on the market that looks and feels and has the value of

:

01:15:02,430 --> 01:15:13,950

three or four times what it cost us to build, and you know, in the studios themselves

alone, we build a studio for $450,000 that someone else couldn't do for a million and a

:

01:15:13,950 --> 01:15:19,050

half, of course eventually we started building them for a million dollars, but they were

$3 million studios.

:

01:15:19,090 --> 01:15:19,814

But it was...

:

01:15:19,814 --> 01:15:23,401

ship of contractors and you guys put together.

:

01:15:23,401 --> 01:15:24,162

know,

:

01:15:24,219 --> 01:15:25,104

It's a very good point.

:

01:15:25,104 --> 01:15:36,623

Some of the best times I remember is you're working on his projects, so you know, for me,

and I always used to say this to him, when you walk into a restaurant, it's, it's your

:

01:15:36,623 --> 01:15:40,106

senses that are going to tell you if you enjoy your meal.

:

01:15:40,106 --> 01:15:46,530

So You walk in, first thing I always said to him is, it's the smell.

:

01:15:46,751 --> 01:15:48,272

How does the restaurant smell?

:

01:15:49,080 --> 01:15:49,920

Number 1.

:

01:15:50,961 --> 01:15:53,412

Is the, are you comfortable with the lighting?

:

01:15:53,412 --> 01:15:54,483

Is it harsh?

:

01:15:54,483 --> 01:15:57,204

Is it obnoxious to your senses?

:

01:15:57,585 --> 01:16:00,986

And then what do you hear?

:

01:16:01,767 --> 01:16:07,090

If any one of those things are off, it's going to change the way you feel about your meal.

:

01:16:07,210 --> 01:16:14,094

So those are the always the design, you know, guidelines we'd always think about when we

when we did our restaurants.

:

01:16:14,094 --> 01:16:18,168

So when you walk in there, you have to feel comfortable and and

:

01:16:18,168 --> 01:16:24,688

Everything has to be smell good and sounds good, look good.

:

01:16:24,688 --> 01:16:30,428

And that was always the best thing about Jimmy's projects is they are always like that.

:

01:16:30,428 --> 01:16:32,288

They always look great.

:

01:16:32,808 --> 01:16:40,928

They always smell good because they always had good cleaners and we always did a good job

lighting them and made it comfortable on people.

:

01:16:40,928 --> 01:16:46,428

That's that's that's some of the, you know, the the fondest memories I have about

restaurants we did.

:

01:16:46,428 --> 01:16:47,948

You know, it was always fun because

:

01:16:47,948 --> 01:16:52,487

You'd always have these unbelievable design elements that, how do we make this look good?

:

01:16:52,487 --> 01:16:53,919

How do we light that?

:

01:16:54,121 --> 01:16:58,247

You know, that's, that's, you know, some of the stuff that was really, I'll always

remember.

:

01:16:58,640 --> 01:17:02,467

Yeah, and you know, if it had been done before, Michael, we didn't we weren't interested.

:

01:17:02,467 --> 01:17:05,294

We really wanted to put things out there that hadn't been done before.

:

01:17:05,294 --> 01:17:08,856

those molds, remember when you were putting the molds up at one point and you realized

they spun?

:

01:17:08,856 --> 01:17:14,348

And you're like, what if these could be spinning the big, the molds in, think Scott

remembers what I'm talking about.

:

01:17:14,348 --> 01:17:27,996

The big molds in the bar cafe of Stuart Street, the bottom piece goes in and it spins

with, yeah, with the long iron screw and little things like that.

:

01:17:27,996 --> 01:17:28,736

could have done that.

:

01:17:28,736 --> 01:17:35,162

It would have been a very, very expensive detail, but yeah, we had a way to actually have

the finneals spin if we wanted to.

:

01:17:35,301 --> 01:17:40,266

When we were doing Boston Rustic, Rustic Kitchen at Park Square.

:

01:17:40,266 --> 01:17:43,969

and I, I wanted to sort of have something different on the lighting.

:

01:17:43,969 --> 01:17:54,209

Scotty would research and in those days, you know, he'd print different lights and put

them all together in a package and we'd meet on a construction job and we'd go through

:

01:17:54,209 --> 01:17:54,729

them.

:

01:17:54,729 --> 01:17:57,249

And he showed me this one light fixture.

:

01:17:57,249 --> 01:17:59,629

It looked like a big onion.

:

01:18:00,149 --> 01:18:01,429

I said, that's cool.

:

01:18:01,429 --> 01:18:03,549

He said, yeah, this is a company.

:

01:18:03,569 --> 01:18:08,761

It's an atelier in Israel and it's a company called Aqua Creations.

:

01:18:08,761 --> 01:18:11,685

Scotty, you found the Portobello mushroom light fixtures?

:

01:18:12,267 --> 01:18:13,309

Never knew that, wow.

:

01:18:13,309 --> 01:18:16,793

company and so he said, but they have different ones.

:

01:18:16,793 --> 01:18:18,293

10 feet wide.

:

01:18:19,359 --> 01:18:19,990

Yeah.

:

01:18:19,990 --> 01:18:26,175

And he said they have one these look like this one's called the Sam Sam.

:

01:18:26,175 --> 01:18:27,829

And I said, well, that looks like a shrimp.

:

01:18:27,827 --> 01:18:30,828

the one that looked like an onion, it's called a palm.

:

01:18:30,828 --> 01:18:32,085

I said, well, it looks like an onion.

:

01:18:32,085 --> 01:18:34,927

And then you showed me the one, whatever the name was.

:

01:18:34,927 --> 01:18:36,038

I said, it looks like a mushroom.

:

01:18:36,038 --> 01:18:43,523

said, so what we could do is we could, we could buy all these light fixtures and we could

say that we have them custom made for us as vegetables.

:

01:18:43,523 --> 01:18:43,854

Mm-hmm.

:

01:18:44,165 --> 01:18:46,411

And I'm letting the cat out of the bag now, but it's

:

01:18:46,411 --> 01:18:47,971

25 years, but it doesn't really matter.

:

01:18:47,971 --> 01:18:54,323

that was our storyline for the, well, no,

:

01:18:54,591 --> 01:18:58,732

it's, think it's called 'creative license.' We, we took creative

:

01:18:58,931 --> 01:19:00,011

license.

:

01:19:00,011 --> 01:19:08,391

We embellish and we took creative license, but I told people for years that we had a

company that made these light fixtures for us and they were all made to be like different

:

01:19:08,391 --> 01:19:08,751

vegetables.

:

01:19:08,751 --> 01:19:11,691

And they all looked exactly like the vegetable that I claimed.

:

01:19:12,251 --> 01:19:12,877

And,

:

01:19:12,877 --> 01:19:14,847

'creative license.' We, we

:

01:19:15,421 --> 01:19:17,369

eventually, and

:

01:19:17,369 --> 01:19:21,025

Aqua Creations didn't even have a distributor in the Boston area.

:

01:19:21,025 --> 01:19:23,620

I think we had to buy them out of New York originally, right?

:

01:19:23,620 --> 01:19:26,559

And then later on they had a company up in Lynn.

:

01:19:26,559 --> 01:19:29,839

they had a dealer in Boston,

:

01:19:30,665 --> 01:19:31,486

Yeah.

:

01:19:32,772 --> 01:19:33,494

Yeah.

:

01:19:33,494 --> 01:19:34,483

Well, that was the other things.

:

01:19:34,483 --> 01:19:35,943

to buy a lot of these.

:

01:19:35,943 --> 01:19:39,043

need to go New York and talk to the real people.

:

01:19:39,043 --> 01:19:39,741

that's what I did.

:

01:19:39,741 --> 01:19:43,201

a dish at Rustic Kitchen, the Scotty Salad?

:

01:19:45,761 --> 01:19:49,480

My memory is it either like the week before we opened or week after.

:

01:19:51,812 --> 01:19:53,332

that's right.

:

01:19:53,767 --> 01:19:55,453

I remember that.

:

01:19:55,782 --> 01:19:59,049

there was like the first ticket that was running into the kitchen and they didn't know

what to do.

:

01:19:59,049 --> 01:20:03,155

And so they made a calamari salad that turned out great.

:

01:20:03,155 --> 01:20:04,996

The aioli and the dressing.

:

01:20:22,340 --> 01:20:22,946

Okay.

:

01:20:22,946 --> 01:20:24,648

you know, to this very day, you

:

01:20:24,646 --> 01:20:31,393

you know, Scotty inadvertently did, you know, save a life because, well, you know what?

:

01:20:31,393 --> 01:20:33,242

Let's let Kathy tell the story.

:

01:20:33,242 --> 01:20:33,721

Go ahead.

:

01:20:33,790 --> 01:20:39,112

So you were in Coral Gables doing Pescado.

:

01:20:39,946 --> 01:20:42,434

I hadn't seen you in a while.

:

01:20:44,088 --> 01:20:54,118

I would call and you really sounded off and I don't know if Scotty called me or someone

called me and said, things are not going well down here.

:

01:20:54,780 --> 01:21:03,759

And I just dropped the phone, made plane reservations and I flew down and didn't tell

anybody I was coming.

:

01:21:03,759 --> 01:21:06,620

I showed up at, on the job site.

:

01:21:06,620 --> 01:21:07,099

and I.

:

01:21:07,099 --> 01:21:09,934

You had called Carrie and said, Carrie, can you watch Sara and Michael?

:

01:21:09,934 --> 01:21:11,036

I gotta go to Miami.

:

01:21:11,036 --> 01:21:13,017

Jim's about to kill someone.

:

01:21:13,698 --> 01:21:25,790

I showed up on the job site still with my suitcase in hand and I ran in there and I see

Jimmy like he's about to kill somebody.

:

01:21:29,390 --> 01:21:32,715

Yeah, there was there was towards the end that that was that was rough.

:

01:21:32,715 --> 01:21:33,856

There's no question about it.

:

01:21:33,856 --> 01:21:34,045

That,

:

01:21:34,613 --> 01:21:35,394

so much.

:

01:21:35,394 --> 01:21:37,047

They it was.

:

01:21:37,047 --> 01:21:39,104

it somebody?

:

01:21:39,104 --> 01:21:40,409

was this, so

:

01:21:40,641 --> 01:21:51,650

The problem was they were moving the goalpost and every time we would have another really

aggressive schedule, we had to be open for the grand opening of the mall.

:

01:21:51,926 --> 01:21:54,695

And my landlord is my partner.

:

01:21:54,771 --> 01:22:05,270

And, every time this inspector would come by, he wanted to have more steel put up for

bracing along the perimeter windows for hurricane requirements.

:

01:22:05,270 --> 01:22:13,493

Or he would want, you know, my structural engineers report on what I already put in, but

whatever it was, it never seemed to be enough.

:

01:22:13,493 --> 01:22:20,416

And all the while we're, you know, racing ahead towards this grand opening, the pressures

building and building and building and building.

:

01:22:20,416 --> 01:22:26,198

And on this particular day, he had come late for inspection and we're waiting around for

him.

:

01:22:26,198 --> 01:22:27,148

finally comes in.

:

01:22:27,148 --> 01:22:28,454

He doesn't like what we did.

:

01:22:28,454 --> 01:22:33,136

And he comes up with another whole set of bracing that he wants to see up there.

:

01:22:33,357 --> 01:22:37,461

and, and he starts to leave before I can even engage him.

:

01:22:37,461 --> 01:22:46,907

And as he's starting to go through the crowd and to go, he goes through all the

contractors working, saws buzzing, and you know, ladders and everyone hanging from the

:

01:22:46,907 --> 01:22:47,868

ceiling.

:

01:22:47,868 --> 01:22:50,710

He goes out the door to the patio where we have men setting tile.

:

01:22:50,710 --> 01:22:54,213

And I go out the door literally ready.

:

01:22:54,213 --> 01:22:57,855

I'm going to spin this guy around and I'm going to kill him.

:

01:22:58,996 --> 01:23:00,597

And as I reach,

:

01:23:02,119 --> 01:23:10,671

Kathy steps in front of him and she looks at me and she says, Hi Jim, how's it going?

:

01:23:10,812 --> 01:23:12,536

I said, hold up.

:

01:23:13,533 --> 01:23:16,313

And it started to hit me.

:

01:23:16,633 --> 01:23:19,953

In order for her to be here, she had to get a babysitter.

:

01:23:19,953 --> 01:23:21,173

She had to fly.

:

01:23:21,173 --> 01:23:22,713

No one knew about it.

:

01:23:23,033 --> 01:23:27,533

And I just, I calmed down and I forgot about the building inspector.

:

01:23:27,813 --> 01:23:35,333

And later I heard the whole story about her talking to Scotty and how things were going on

there: not good.

:

01:23:35,433 --> 01:23:41,653

And she took it upon herself to fly down and so at that one moment she literally

:

01:23:41,681 --> 01:23:50,992

Scotty and her they saved this guy's life because had I I was six inches away from

grabbing him by the throat it would have been all over so

:

01:23:50,992 --> 01:23:55,080

is if you just reach in your pocket and brought out some cash you probably could of be

taking care of the whole problem

:

01:23:55,080 --> 01:24:02,894

bottom line was is I wasn't paying, you know we never did that, I was not paying off any

official, any building inspector, any one of these guys, fire inspector.

:

01:24:02,894 --> 01:24:05,666

I mean, they're all, depending on what town you were in.

:

01:24:05,666 --> 01:24:08,948

New Orleans was at a whole different level.

:

01:24:09,049 --> 01:24:14,852

and the fire chief in New Orleans, yeah, he called me "a goddamn Yankee." So yeah.

:

01:24:15,253 --> 01:24:16,133

Yep.

:

01:24:16,514 --> 01:24:17,434

Yep.

:

01:24:17,815 --> 01:24:18,755

It was.

:

01:24:32,334 --> 01:24:33,019

you

:

01:24:33,019 --> 01:24:37,839

I'd just be paroled now, if, if not for good behavior.

:

01:24:37,839 --> 01:24:38,063

So.

:

01:24:38,190 --> 01:24:38,614

So

:

01:24:38,625 --> 01:24:40,949

Well, listen, Scotty, I can't thank you enough.

:

01:24:40,949 --> 01:24:46,052

It was so much fun talking to you and going back over the years and some of these

projects.

:

01:24:46,052 --> 01:24:46,793

And we really didn't.

:

01:24:46,793 --> 01:24:47,774

Rustic Kitchen family.

:

01:24:47,774 --> 01:24:55,030

think all the Rustic Kitchens you've touched in some regard built, designed, lit.

:

01:24:55,030 --> 01:24:56,821

get into the whole studio side of it.

:

01:24:56,821 --> 01:25:05,036

Maybe we'll do a backup call someday about Scotty's involvement and Jake's involvement on

building all of these studios over the years.

:

01:25:05,657 --> 01:25:07,039

but, you know, we're not done yet.

:

01:25:07,039 --> 01:25:09,802

COVID definitely turned us sideways for a while.

:

01:25:09,802 --> 01:25:11,923

But, you know, we're working our way back.

:

01:25:11,923 --> 01:25:13,685

And Michael runs the company now.

:

01:25:13,685 --> 01:25:14,566

It's his company.

:

01:25:14,566 --> 01:25:17,790

And I have a couple of things I'm working on that I'll be talking to you about.

:

01:25:24,390 --> 01:25:33,480

Thank

:

01:25:33,830 --> 01:25:34,687

you, Scotty.

:

01:25:34,687 --> 01:25:35,178

end this.

:

01:25:35,178 --> 01:25:36,519

Thank you, Scotty.

:

01:25:36,519 --> 01:25:37,622

thank you.

:

01:25:38,830 --> 01:25:39,875

It's fun.

:

01:25:39,875 --> 01:25:40,752

All right.

:

01:25:40,752 --> 01:25:41,621

Great talking to you.

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About the Podcast

Second Helpings
The Rustic Kitchen family discuss their 25 year journey making food, wine, and fine dining more approachable.