February 16, 2024 • 47 mins
Watch this interview on YouTube: https://youtu.be/rufGyJyGhVo
I sit down with Juan Carcaño to discuss historic restoration on the island and what it takes to get it done. We discuss the impact that building restoration for historic preservation has on Galveston's economy.
Immaculate Painting and Construction: https://www.immaculatepaint.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/immaculatepainting
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/immaculatepainting/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
And you see some of these walls up, you're like man,
those bricks were from Europe,these bricks are from Chicago,
these bricks are from a fire andthey marry them all together
and they work and they hold them.
And it's the same thing withthe people on the island.
You drive to the west and youhave billionaires.
You have people in thisbuilding that are building
billionaires, and then you havesome guy that makes $13 an hour
(00:20):
and we all get along.
This should be.
I think should be a case studyfor how the rest of the country
should be ran, because whetherit's status, it's name, whatever
, this island seems to get alongreally well, welcome to
Galveston Unscripted.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
In this episode I sit down with Juan Carcáñez, owner
of Immaculate Painting.
For over 24 years, juan and hiscompany have specialized in not
only painting but therestoration of historic homes
and buildings around Galveston,especially some of Galveston's
most famous historic buildingsBack then 1911 Galveston Hotel,
(00:56):
the 1895 Celian HutchingsBuilding and many of Galveston's
historic churches.
What gave me the idea to haveJuan on the Galveston Unscripted
podcast is I was walking on19th Street and saw that first
Presbyterian church was beingworked on and, of course, I saw
the Immaculate Painting sign outon the scaffolding.
What really struck me as I waslooking at the side of this
(01:16):
church that was being worked on,is that we're pulling off some
of these bricks.
When I got to thinking thesebricks are the same bricks that
Galveston famous architectNicholas Clayton would have
ordered, approved and worked onwith his crew to build the 1872
Presbyterian church that we seeon Church Street in 19th.
And here this church is beingrestored right in front of us.
(01:39):
And how much work that actuallytakes.
In the late 1800s, galveston wasone of the richest cities in
Texas and the country and priorto the storm of 1900, galveston
was on the trajectory to becomewhat Houston is today, and if
that were the case, there wouldbe plenty of money for
maintenance.
But of course, the economy inGalveston shifted dramatically
through the 1900s and we aretruly still lucky to have so
(02:01):
many historic buildings inGalveston.
Today.
Galveston heavily relies ontourism and many people who
visit Galveston come to see thehistoric downtown area and some
of Galveston's most historicbuildings.
But if companies likeImmaculate Painting and other
restoration companies weren'taround to do the work they do,
we may not have these buildingsfor people to come see and enjoy
(02:22):
for centuries to come.
In this episode today, juan andI discuss a little bit about
historic restoration, thechallenges behind the
restoration process and why thislittle island of Galveston is
so unique when it comes tohistory and economics.
As you'll see, juan and I had alot of fun during this episode
and I really hope you enjoy it.
To further ado, let's hop rightinto this episode with Juan
(02:44):
Carcogno, owner of ImmaculatePainting, specifically hoping to
talk about renovation, kind oflike what you've been doing for
the past, however long you'vebeen doing it A long time, yeah
right, a long time and kind ofhow you got into it and like you
can't drive in the downtownarea without seeing something
that we missed.
Without seeing ImmaculatePainting somewhere you know, so
(03:07):
it's really cool.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
When you guys did the Presbyterian Church over there
Right.
And when I was thinking aboutit.
Well, I want to dive into thisa little deeper later, but I was
thinking about it, you'reworking on Nicholas Clayton's
architecture and when's the lasttime those bricks were moved,
because I know you guys weredoing a lot of work on that.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Well, when we do a lot of that plaster repair, what
happens is that the plastercomes unattached from the brick.
99% of the time it's a movementissue.
So whether the building issettling, moving, shifting, I
mean everything moves.
Semanticious products which areconcrete, stucco, plaster, all
(03:47):
that stuff is hard, so when itwants to move, all it can do is
crack.
And then, when you have cracks,you allow water to come in
there, and then when the watercomes in there, it creates stuff
to get bigger, it swells uplike wood and then you have
problems like that.
Like you have pointing behindthe between the bricks and the
tuck point that you have torepair.
You have to repair with theright plaster.
(04:08):
It's not an art, but there is alittle bit of a science too.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Yeah, dude, it's awesome man.
So let's start.
Can we start from the beginning?
I'm an immigrant.
I was actually born in Mexico.
Oh, you were.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
I was born in Mexico and I was brought over in the
80s on a work visa and now it'sbeen so many years I can
casually say we overstayed ourwork visa.
My dad started working withantique furniture.
He started working in Houston.
He got a job refinishingantique furniture.
So old stuff has been in myveins at all times and that's
(04:43):
how we got started in Galveston.
The guy that owned the peanutbutter warehouse, jim I forget
his last name and Nathan Sweden.
They're the ones that poachedmy dad from the place where he
was selling, where he wasrestoring furniture.
They're like we need you inGalveston, so they opened up
shop here.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Oh, okay, working for them, yeah.
And then that's back when itwas like the literal antique.
They had antiques in there,they had all those little shops
in there.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Yeah, yeah, that was in the 80s, and Galveston was
very different in the 80s andthe 90s.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Oh yeah, I want to get into some of those stories
too.
It was a rough patch.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah, but my dad started doing side gigs with
painting houses and he wasrefinishing furniture, he was
painting houses and then that'show we got into the paint
business.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
And this evolved into what it is now.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yeah, so did he start Immaculate, or did you?
Speaker 1 (05:29):
start?
No, no, he started a businesson his own in the early 90s and
then, he got sick in 91.
He had a brain aneurysm in Julyand then my mom passed away in
September of the same year.
So we were orphaned.
Essentially, according to thecourt system, we were orphaned.
So we moved to Mexico and whenI was living in Mexico because
(05:51):
my uncle couldn't afford it, myuncle, who basically took
custody of us, couldn't affordto have us two households here
his house and our house.
So he moved us to Mexico foraffordability and that's when I
started getting into thebusiness side of things.
My grandmother was a Mexicanmedicine woman, so she was
always hustling and she wouldmake anything, and so that's
(06:12):
where I got the business concept.
My uncle stays behind.
He starts with my dad'sfootsteps, also painting houses
on the side.
When I get out of high school,we start his business, which is
Triple C de Colores, and hepassed away in 04, I take over
some of his clientele and thennow we're here, 20 years later.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Man, what a story.
It's dramatic, it's verydramatic.
I like the abbreviated versionthough.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
That's great.
It's the clip notes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Okay, so for a little bit of context, you do,
painting you do.
I want to say renovation.
Is it renovation?
Or what all does immaculatepaint do?
Speaker 1 (06:50):
I think it's more restoration.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Restoration.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Okay, and it's not correcting you.
I think that's how, that's whatI feel we do yeah.
We restore older buildings.
We've always like I said, it'sin my veins, my parents restored
furniture, houses.
We restore buildings now, butwe also do an niche side, which
is waterproofing.
So a lot of these buildingsthat are older need to be as
tight from water as possible toavoid having more problems in
(07:14):
the concrete and your steel andyour wood, all that stuff.
That's one side of the that'sthe side of the business we're
talking about now.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
When I think about historic preservation and like
the effort that, let's say, yougo back to the 1970s the
Galveston Historical Foundation,they started like purchasing
buildings all over this island,yep, and you get into historical
preservation, restoration,things like that, and you just
think of it as like throwingmoney at it.
You don't really think aboutthe work that's done to preserve
(07:41):
these buildings, the bricks,the you know everything that's
kind of inside or behind.
You don't think about that.
So you know, and what reallygave me this idea to have you on
is when you, you guys wereworking on that Presbyterian
church and, like I said earlier,like it's a Nicholas Clayton
building design and he, you know, he was the one who put the
(08:03):
bricks there, but he was the onewho designed it, his guys, he
was there supervising it and andit's kind of a cool thing where
you guys get to put your handson the history.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
To me.
It's funny you say that.
To me it's almost a respectthing.
It's almost like I've beenaround the island and I've seen
what it's evolved into and it'sit's to me I'd rather.
There's an old saying that I'drather do everything myself
because I know I'm gonna do itright, but I know that I'll have
more respect and it's somewhatof a love connection to the
buildings.
It sounds ridiculous to a lotof people, but I have so much
(08:35):
respect for these buildings andthe preservation and what has
what has happened with Galibre,like I said, for the last 30-40
years that I think that youalmost have to be that
passionate and that crazy aboutloving a building, walking by
and touching, to be like, oh,what is?
that made out of yeah Is thatplaster or is that concrete
stuck?
Oh, I see a patch.
Did they seal those windowscorrectly?
(08:55):
You know, it's like I take itvery personal, yeah, and that's.
I think that's kind of thecrazy that you have to be, to be
in the side of the businessthat we're in.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Yeah, so what are some of the main, I guess,
prominent structures on theisland that you've worked on in
the past few years?
Speaker 1 (09:11):
We call it the Sealy Building over here on 24th and.
Strand, presbyterian Church,1st Lutheran Church.
We've done a lot of churches.
The I-Bands building werecurrently there.
Obviously, the Galvestre, thatwas a big one.
We had, I think, about 4,000gallons of paint going that bad,
but we painted it twice in oneyear.
That's a story in itself.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Can you tell us the Galvestre, because that's
fascinating.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Well, we were working with the Mitchells and they
were in the middle.
I think they were in the middleof restoring it to sell.
I think that's what I can saynow.
I didn't know what was going onat the time.
But they, they, they have abunch of windows that need
caulking and sealing and sealingthe outside, and we're going
blowing through it.
We've got about, I think, 600cubic feet of repairs on the
(09:52):
building.
Oh my gosh, we're doing a lotof stuff, yeah.
So we're exactly three quartersof the way there and they're
like, hey, the building isselling.
And I'm like, well, I haven'tfinished painting it.
Oh, don't worry, we're carrying.
The remainder of your contractis getting carried over to the
next, to the future owner.
So I say, okay, as long as I'mgetting paid.
You know, to me it's green, Idon't care.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
And we're pink.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Pink.
Yeah, that's where I was goingto start.
So come to find out, the guybuys it and he tells, and he
contacts me.
And Mark buys it.
And he contacts me and he says,hey, I want to paint the
Galvest pink.
And I'm like, okay, I've heardcrazier stories, but let's do it
.
I'll say, but we just finishedpainting it, I want to paint it
all over again.
And I tell people all the timethat the paint wasn't even fully
dry when we started paintingagain.
(10:38):
So we went around twice.
We caught a lot of grief fromthe locals, from the non-locals,
from the Houston people.
People were calling the officelike what are y'all doing?
Y'all should be ashamed ofyourself.
And I'm like it's pink, becausethe first pink color that went
up was literally Pepto Vismolpink.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Yeah, ugly.
Yeah, it was so ugly.
It was in fashion in 1911.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Yes, but the color that's on there now is actually
the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Oh really that crazy.
I give it to Mark.
He has a vision that is notunderstood by many, but the guy
went to the Beverly Hills Hotel.
He stayed in the room tried topop open a window so he could
get a sample, so he can do it.
So he sneaks all the way downto the maintenance dungeon and
(11:21):
he talks to the maintenance guys.
He goes I need the color, andhe sends me a picture from down
there with the picture with thelogo on it and the formula, and
we match it and that's the colorthat it is.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
No freaking way, that guy's wild From Beverly Hills
to Galveston.
That is wild dude.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
That's exactly how he did it.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Oh my God.
So you mentioned earlier howeverything kind of shifts around
here, like the ground shifts.
We're on a sandbar.
Things are moving around allthe time, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
If you have a structure that's made out of
concrete mainly, or hardmaterials like cementitious
products or like brick, whenthings shift in one corner it
has to give Like, there has tobe a flexibility.
So if there's not, back in thedays they weren't taken into
account movement, so there isn'tcontrol joints.
You'll see, if you see a tiltup wall building which is a big
(12:07):
think of an Amazon warehouse, ithas these creases in it and
those creases are actuallypoints that are flexible.
So they're filled with theurethane or an MP1 or a silicone
, and what that does is there'sa backer in there that's made
out of foam and what that doesis it allows for physics to do
its thing.
You know, in the summer theyget bigger, in the winter they
(12:28):
get smaller, so you have thatmovement.
These older buildings didn'thave that in place.
So when the building shift,you're going to have some kind
of cracking and then, like Isaid, that cracking allows water
to get in.
It allows moisture to standbehind between the brick and the
plaster or the brick and thestucco, and that's what you have
(12:49):
delamination of the product.
If you have solid concrete, likebeams or pier or something like
that, then when that moves youcreate a crack and the water
gets in there.
Same thing, but the wateraround here is corrosive, the
humidity around here iscorrosive.
So it gets into the steel.
Yeah, once it gets into thesteel, it creates corrosion,
(13:11):
which is what we call rust.
So when steel rusts, it getsbigger, it fattens up because it
creates these layers and whatthat does is that it separates
the steel from the concrete,which is called spalling.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Oh OK.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Yeah, so that's where and we're good at repairing
those, those kind of things.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Nice, yeah, you're the man to call.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
I wouldn't say that.
I've been in the business longenough.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
For sure.
Well, experience is key.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
I'll say that yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
So what is some?
What has been the mostdifficult restoration that
you've done here on the island?
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Difficult, I don't know.
I think that probably the backwall, which is the west facing
wall on the Clarkin Courtbuilding.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
OK, ok.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Because it has so much history and there were
three commissions built intothat commission.
There was obviously the HOAthat had to say so.
And then you have thehistorical commission, which
says what kind of material youcan use.
And then there's also I can'tremember if it was glow or Texas
land office, one of those bigones that was adamant that we
(14:18):
don't not touch the sign onthere and we don't restore it.
We don't touch it, we don'tdestroy it, I'll turn nothing.
So it was very intense.
There was a lot of eyes on this.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Yeah, and because that sign is painted onto the
brick right.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Yeah, so, yeah, so we work.
You're working around apainting on the brick that you
have to work on, yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
And then you are on top of a roof, hanging off from
another roof.
So axis is hard.
The weather was.
We got here with two hurricaneson that job yeah, two, I mean
the hurricanes were around us,but I mean we had to break
everything down, take everythingoff the roof.
Now, that has to be.
That was the one that's more.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Yeah, yeah.
When people think ofrestoration, I guess you don't
think about the kind of thataspect of it too, just
logistically.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Logistically.
Yeah, it's a nightmare.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Yeah, the different organizations you have to work
with during hurricane season.
You're going to be.
We got to stop this right now.
You know we'll start up nextweek when the hurricane passes,
I guess.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Well, and that all takes time, and time equals
money.
And you know, a lot of peoplesee these gigantic profits, the
gigantic jobs, that they thinkthey're gigantic profits and
they're not.
I mean you have to.
Sometimes you eat it and you'relike, well, here's a hurricane,
you have to eat a week of laborup, like week labor down, and
again you have to almost love itto be doing it, because I
(15:29):
promise you I'm not doing it forthe money.
I mean there's, there's moneyin it, but I mean yeah exhibit a
over here.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
I know, trust me, do you guys ever find anything
super interesting, like in oninterior walls or anytime you
pop something open?
Maybe the way a something wasconnected that you cannot do
today like engineering wise?
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Yes, just rebar alone .
Just rebar was I mean right nowyou just got schedule five
rebar.
That goes on.
Everything it's five, eight,seven inch, three quarters of an
inch and the rebar back in thedays an inch and a quarter.
Good luck trying to cut throughthat.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Same thing with concrete, old concrete.
I mean you take a chiseloutside and break a piece of
concrete on something new andnew, pour something the last 10,
20 years, but you get into thatolder concrete.
I don't know if it's just moredense, I'm not a chemist, but it
never ceases to fast to to us.
It amazed me how hard thatstuff is.
It's just hard and we, we runinto a lot of math on the walls.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Oh, yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
We run into a lot of math.
When we did the Henley building, there was all kinds of math.
When we did the inside of theHenley building, downstairs
there was.
I guess a guy had a running tabon people and he had.
He had numbers scrolling downwhere this guy owes me $2 and
this guy owes me $2.
And but he wrote it on the wall.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
So, yeah, never go away, dude.
That is fascinating, it wasreally cool.
So you worked on the Henleybuilding?
Yes, we did, dude.
So which side?
Speaker 1 (16:55):
We worked on the ground floor.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
OK, gotcha, gotcha.
Well, it's fast.
It's really cool because theHenley building is interesting,
because it was a played a majorpart in a major Civil War battle
, that a lot of people don'teven realize that we had Civil
War battles here in Galveston.
You're working on stuff likethat with that much history.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Ironically enough, my first job was at the peanut
butter warehouse, which myparents worked at as well, but I
worked in the candy shop.
So the peanut butter warehouse,to stay true to its name, had a
little shop that made peanutbutter.
We would ship it all over thecountry and they would have
these risk cracker treats, allkinds of weird stuff that we
would make in house fudgebrownies.
(17:31):
So that was my first job and Iwould.
I worked there and the Henleybuilding was kind of catty
corner from it and I saw thelast time I got hit by a, by
lightning, and always knew MrHenley.
I'm sorry it wasn't Henley, itwas Mr D Mac he had a produce
company there and the buildingwas half empty and I always
looked at it not knowing whatthe history was behind it yeah,
(17:53):
yeah, man full circle.
I'm working on it again.
I guess there's always so muchyou can go on an island, right
Like you can work on stuff againand again, yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Well, you think about it, business wise, right?
You're doing historicrestoration Right Now.
The restoration you're doing,no matter how good it is, we are
still living on a sandbar,hurricane prone sandbar, with
corrosive moisture in our air,so you kind of get to rotate
from building to building tobuilding, not to give away the
(18:22):
secret.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
But that is the secret sauce right there.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Right.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
And I don't do it with pride, I'm just like it's
one of those things where youlook at it as a long-term
relationship and you walk away.
You're like should be back.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Yeah, she'll be back.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
And I almost marry every job because I have dinner
here, I have my kid goes toschool here, I buy stuff from
here.
So if we try, we really try.
There's sometimes we drop theball.
We do things as best as we can,but we really try to keep a
good relationship with thebuildings and with the tenants
and with the owners and all that.
So that's hard in itself beingon an island.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Yeah, of course, yeah .
And then you get the experienceof working on that building and
naturally, if something goeswrong, you're probably the one
they're going to call first tocome back, because you have the
most recent experience on thatbuilding.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
We hope so.
Yeah, and that's the same thingwith the other side of the
business.
The other side of the businessis park restoration we do water
parks and all that.
So it's the same thing.
You know, by the time one rideis completely, we'll go through
five rides and then we'll startagain.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Yeah, so tell us about that.
How did you get into water parkrestoration?
Speaker 1 (19:26):
It was.
That one was a complete block.
They were looking for somebodyto help them paint some steel
out on a Schlitterbond and theguy called me.
I picked up the phone and wewent from there.
We're still to this day, we'refriends and we share a business.
That was 15 years, 16 years ago.
As we got more into it, we gotrequests to do more things and
(19:48):
we learned the hard way.
Like you don't do things thisway, you do things, but it's a
very, very, very small business.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
I mean not small as far as like the scale, it's just
there's not a whole lot ofpeople doing it.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Yeah, right, right yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
There's also some tricks of the trade in there,
and but it's the same way as itis with these buildings.
It's more about therelationship, the customer of
the relationship with you.
Know you walk away.
You're like, well, I would.
Would I let my kids slide downthis slide?
Is it safe?
Is it?
Is it?
Do we do everything right?
And that's what you know makesyou lose a little sleep, but I
(20:20):
wouldn't do anything, anythingelse.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Yeah, I love to.
Yeah, yeah, well, seems likeyou you care about what you do.
I try a bit like quite a bit.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
So a lot you love it.
It's really bad on yourrelationships and your health,
but yeah right, I know.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
So tell me about the guy.
I mean the team you haveworking with you.
So you got a pretty large team,I would imagine, to work on
these jobs.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
We fluctuate between 10 to 25 guys, so it depends on
the season.
Galveston a seasonal, so whenwe, when we man up we bring but
we don't, we were very selective.
So a lot of, a lot of our guysare Second, third generation
Masons.
Oh, wow, Okay so they are, theyare, they are.
They already know what to do.
It's just getting the rightformulas.
(21:03):
You know the brick mortarthat's between the bricks, it's
not you don't just go buy itback at home people or mix it
like you would anything there's.
There's a certain standard youhave to meet for it to, to
adhere to the next brick whereyou're not doing any repairs to.
And at the same time I kind ofhandpicked my guys just because
(21:24):
it's Galveston.
You know there's people walkingdown with you know Having a
vacation, and may they, theymight look at us and and they
might just say, oh well, wedon't care about your job,
they'll walk through it.
We want guys to be polite, wewant guys to be respectful, but
we also want guys to take pridein their work.
So it's it's.
It's been hard, but I think Itold my secretary the other day
(21:45):
I think we have the best teamI've had in 20 years.
That's amazing.
It is, it is that's anotherthing.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
With experience, too, you got to curate your team.
Yeah right, because these arethe guys you are working with
every day.
Yeah right, because you'reyou're going around from job
site to job site, but you'reworking with these guys every
day, so communication.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
I learned a long time ago that guys that are really
good or are really probablyproud of what they do and pride
has a direct correlation.
To just leave the guys alone,yeah right, so he's.
If the guy's proud and he'sgood and he's clean and he's
he's on time, oh, I don't eventell the guy.
I mean, this is what we'regoing to do from this day to
Wednesday.
Check in with me, I'll check inwith you and just kind of let
(22:24):
them do their thing.
And I Promise you, jr, asidefrom making the transition to
being Everything on paper, todigital, mm-hmm, that's the
hardest transition delegateReally when she gets to a point
where you're like I can't handleit all anymore.
Yeah, I have to delegate stuff.
Oh yeah, it's like letting yourkid drive.
It's just so scary hey.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
That's some good advice, some good business
advice.
I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
You'll be there, yeah , yeah.
Well, we're getting there.
So.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Got a two more kids coming soon, so it's gonna be a
little.
So, beyond buildings, you'redoing it.
Do you do homes as well?
Not anymore.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Okay, and the only reason and I would love to,
because I love Galveston homesand there's.
I go to other cities and I lookat the architecture and I'm
like, hey guys, what?
Speaker 2 (23:22):
what are you impressed by, like I'm?
Speaker 1 (23:23):
used to work walking in these houses where you know
they have like a secret cubby,or you walk and everything
squeaks and it smells like thehouses have a smell here that
you can't get.
You can probably get inCarolina's you know stuff like
that but to find it here inTexas it's just hard.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Um, unfortunately, because of the cost of doing
work on commercial stuff, theoverhead gets really heavy, get
really big.
So we become, we've gone to apoint where we can't compete
twice.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
I see, I see, okay, so it makes sense to specialize
then, yeah, yeah so it's not.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
It's not a selection.
I try to keep it alive as longas I could, because I painted a
lot of house on the west and alot of house on the east Then,
when I was still doingresidential, but it became just
it, just.
I couldn't make a profit.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Yeah, that makes sense I.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
I try to give them the same attention and love that
.
That I've given every job.
And once you start disconnectedfrom that, a Lot of people take
that as a sign of you're toogood for me or you've moved on
and blah, blah, blah.
But you get some criticism.
But I mean, it's part ofbusiness, yeah, have to have all
.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Criticism is part of business.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Yes, it's part of life, it is not getting
criticized.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
You're probably not doing much.
That's awesome, man.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Any any notable stories you have about that you
can tell about working on someof these historic buildings
downtown aside from aside fromthe traffic being weird, like
there's some days where you'llhave 10,000 people down in the
strand, of some days whereyou'll have two people I think
that the the the cool storiesare is is hearing the stories
(24:53):
from the owners, like how theyacquired the building.
Well, this was some X bar, orthis was some brothel, or this
was this, this was that.
But no, I mean, we were alwaysamazed of like I'm that guy, I'm
, I'm we call it a towel guy.
We get there, I'm like oh my god, I can't believe they did this
and we'll find.
We'll find lead on some stuffthat was supposed to be restored
(25:16):
and then we tested and they'restill lead on there.
So we have to shut the wholejob down and mask everything off
correctly.
But Other than that, no, I wishI had some cooler stories.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Oh man, I was thinking like busted a wall open
and, like me, like, oh my god,there's a safe in here, or
something.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Well, no, we were always there too late for that.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Maybe owners take over that part, yeah, so for
work on like big, a big,beautiful brick churches they.
I guess how long will that worklast?
Speaker 1 (25:47):
so standards, business standards say five to
ten years on something where weare and that you're taking into
account, I think we have thehighest solidity Solidity rating
in the Texas coast.
There's been I don't have thatright off top my head, but
there's been some of that socorrosion is huge around here.
Humidity is always 100%, evenright now it's.
(26:07):
It's pretty human.
So if we go above and beyond,we could probably get 10, 15
years out of it.
Once you start, once the paintstarts, dying is what we call it
.
There's solids in the paintthat are titanium dioxide,
glycol little elements that thatdie with the UV.
It's not that they die becausethey're exposed to the elements
(26:29):
is died.
They die because the UV orkilling them.
Once you rub your hand on onpainting it's chalking you can
bring the color with you.
Then that paint is dead andneeds to be restored.
Got you so usually the thoseguys say Five to ten years here.
So we like to aim for 10 to 15.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Oh, nice, okay, great , great.
Yeah, it's just, it's funny.
What do you think about?
You know, 150 years ago, 120years ago, when they were
building a lot of thesebuildings, you think about how
much work it takes to maintainsome of these buildings and
Galveston me in the city, it waswith so much money and and just
Money flowing through thisplace.
They're like, yeah, there'll beno problem to maintain.
(27:06):
You know no big deal.
And then you fast forward tonow, when you have it's a, it's
heavily a tourism economy here.
You think about, like, how hardit is to actually maintain
these buildings these days, thatup the age they are and
everything like that.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
So well, it only gets harder because because now
there's, it's like a human being, you know, as you get older,
stuff just doesn't heal us aswell, but if you have a
maintenance plan in place,there's a lot of people here
believe it or not the mentorsare one of them that have the
vision to where they.
They can allocate funds forfive, ten, fifteen years from
now, or they rotate funds.
(27:40):
I'm not sure how, how theirmoney gets managed, but I think
that, with it being a tourismhub, it also attracted some very
intelligent people, some peoplethat are they're willing to put
everything on the line topreserve things, and I think
that the funds are starting tomove in the right direction.
Compared to the strand in the90s, it was rough.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Yeah, yeah and what?
Speaker 1 (28:01):
what it's become now?
It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Yeah, it's unrecognizable from when I you
know, was born in the 90s, livedhere.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
It's unrecognizable for now as a kid.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Yep, and it's amazing to see.
It really is amazing to see.
But back to the economics of it, of it's a heavy tourism city.
Now, right, a Lot of people arecoming here for the historic
buildings that are here, or atleast to be in an area that is
deemed historic right.
So the downtown area and whatyou're doing is Extremely
(28:31):
important to the economy here.
It really is because you'rekeeping these buildings From
falling apart falling down, youknow.
So really is a huge economicdriver in that I guess I never
saw it that way.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
I really, I really didn't, because I've always seen
it from Kind of one of my whatservice I'm providing to the
customer, but I never saw it asthat.
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Yeah, I think that's why it's so important.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
It's why people are willing to pay you to do that
services, because if thesebuildings aren't here, you won't
have as much draw just I lovethe island and there's there's
people that criticize me forFriends, that criticize me for
living here, and I'm like I justthere's.
There's just a way of I get torun my business from here, I get
to live here.
I also get to party here, I getto have fun.
I've developed some goodfriends.
(29:17):
I don't I don't live in Houston.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Yeah, I agree, I agree in suburbia, in suburbia,
yeah, I just don't know.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Cut out for that no no, this is.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
It's just such a unique place yeah, it really is
and, of course, probably forthis audience as an echo chamber
, because they probably livehere, live near here, so like.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Exactly.
That's one thing that I can't.
I just can't fowl him.
As you know, you used to beable to pick up a house 5075k
yeah you can't touch anythingfor 300k around here, dude.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
It's nice.
When we bought our house in2020, we were like we were.
Why are we paying this much fora house?
Speaker 1 (29:52):
in 2020?
.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
And now you look at the home, prices are like, oh
wow, we might have gotten offcheap, but it's.
It's crazy to see and to seethe economy grow.
The economy and population inHouston expand and expand south.
You get more daytrippers here.
You get just more general foottraffic and traffic here in
Galveston which is directlyproportional to the economy and
(30:16):
the economic growth to this city.
Not to mention the cruise linesthat are coming through that
huge factor.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
I never saw the, the end game which I think we're
seeing now.
This is the end game where youknow, I think, what's second or
third biggest cruise.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Yeah, it's fourth, soon to be third.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Yeah just just the expansion.
I mean, there's billions ofdollars rolling, oh dude it's
whether whether you're, you'repaying $2 to park or $5 to
unload your vehicle or whateverit's.
The money kind of stays aroundhere.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Mm-hmm, that's fascinating to me yeah, it
really is.
Yeah, for my economics brainit's like no, no and really cool
.
Most people don't see it.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Most people don't see all the inner workings and
those.
You know that creates taxdollars and that creates jobs
and that creates, hopefully, abetter I don't know better
economics for the city, becauseyou could say whatever about
Galveston, but as far as theservices go, we've always kind
of been behind.
You know, to dig up the street,yeah, have to go 400 feet
underneath and pull out the castiron and, you know, put in new
(31:14):
stuff and then you hit a watertable every three feet.
You know 23rd Street.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
That was a fun one to watch, I was like holy.
The loss by you.
Someone found it.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
And there was no, no pot of gold or anything.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Yeah right, jean-lafey's trip is there, okay
?
So before we wrap up, is thereanything else you wanted to Talk
about?
Or maybe I didn't ask you aboutthe type of work you do?
Speaker 1 (31:43):
I don't, I don't think so.
I think it.
I wish there was more, maybearchitecture education, not that
the architects here don't knowwhat they're doing, I don't mean
it that way.
I think that people shouldrealize that some of these
bricks were brought in fromEurope in the holes of bolts to
Way down the boats, and thenthey were filled with cotton or
sand to weigh them down, to goback, and Some of these bricks
(32:06):
are, you know, came.
I don't know what the distanceis between here in Europe, you
know six thousand miles or tenthousand miles, and yeah,
they're still there.
Yeah, and a lot of solidity thatcame from Hurricane Ike is
still present.
If you walk into some of theseolder buildings, you'll see a
clear line where it's like thebreak is is dying because all
that salt.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Yeah, and it just ate it alive.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Yeah, there's a.
There's still a lot to do,though I hope that there's
Programs that can be extendedthrough a GHF or the General
Land Commission or whoeverwhomever to protect this,
because this is a one-shot deal.
I mean, you can't.
You can't rebuild these thingsyou, can't you can take them all
apart and put them backtogether, but you take the
essence out of yeah, yeah,exactly, I think that's what it
(32:48):
is.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Yeah, you know for you.
You mentioned, like bringingbricks over as ballast on ships,
the, just as one example, thest Mary's Basilica, the original
building, 1850s building.
They shipped all of thosebricks from Belgium see over
500,000 bricks see from Belgium.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
I think, I think there's a lot of people like you
and I that like those kind ofstatistics.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Yeah, or what yeah?
Speaker 1 (33:14):
I want to know more about it.
Yeah, I think that wouldattract a whole different kind
of group of people here.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Yeah, I agree, yeah, that architecture, architecture,
education architectureeducation.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
That is directly laced to economics.
Economics is really laced, andI think all these buildings are
beautiful.
I mean if you drive by at nightand not that you know that that
I'm Fixated on this, on thegalvest but if you drive by at
night Through the galvest andthen you make a left on 19th
Street and you see it lit up andthen you go down To 19th and
you come up to strand you seethese buildings and then you see
(33:45):
sure moody plows at the end,all lit up.
I mean this is a beautifulisland.
And then you go down to go seebig rad and you see the Sealy
building anything that you knowthat Clayton touched there's.
When I do inspections up anddown these buildings, I look at
them and I'm like and I'm goingup on a heart with a harness, on
a you know $100,000 machine andI'm going up and down and I'm
like this would take us a yearto fix this.
(34:08):
How long do you think it tookthem To build it?
Yeah, polish those stones byhands.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Can you?
Speaker 1 (34:14):
have grinders back.
They know some guy peddling orsomething.
He was just grinding those kindof those, those pieces stone up
and they put them on.
They all look good.
You know, hundred hundred,twenty years later, they all
look really good.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
I think I have a new girl.
Respect every time I go upthose buildings.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
It's amazing.
It's amazing to think about theconstruction.
Yes, of these buildings yes itreally, really is, and to think
about, like just the idea of itwas pretty crazy.
Yes, of course they were doingit in New York and of course
they were doing it, and you knowbig cities in the late 1800s.
But to think about Building acity on a sandbar in.
Texas, just around a port.
Here's what we're gonna do.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
So crazy guys went out there with a booze.
That's why some of thesebuildings don't line up
perfectly, that's the funniestthing too.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
It's like you see the home slightly off kilter.
Yeah, you know, and they'vemoved, I mean you think you
gotta think about it.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
There's been some big hurricanes.
I mean, you and I have probablywitnessed two or three of them.
There's been some bighurricanes that have lifted
houses and probably shift themaround and move them around, and
I think, I think that I'm glad,I'm I'm glad and I'm sad at the
same time that that Galvestonkind of went under the radar for
a long time.
Yeah and now that it's kind ofdiscovered TV shows and people
(35:24):
with big pockets, it's kind ofdriven out when made Galveston
real but it's also brought inpeople that have a huge respect
and hopefully have a little moreLove for what they're getting
into and restore it and maintainit and you know, yeah, and
money, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
It always say it takes money.
It really does take money.
So yeah, man you, what you'redoing is important.
Thank you what you're doing isawesome.
It's so fascinating.
I can't wait to come out on ajob with you sometime we have.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
We have one.
We have one coming up.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
I'm ready to come out customs house right now dude, I
would love to Film just some ofwhat you do like, just some of
it to kind of talk about therestoration process and how
important it is and howDetail-oriented you have to be
to restore.
That you know well.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Again, we take a lot of pride in our work and we
don't always get it, like I said, a hundred percent right.
This has been a lot of trial anderror.
This is kind of a we didn't goto, you know, be an apprentice
for a Mason that's been afive-year of five generation
Mason in the West Coast or theEast Coast.
We don't, we don't, we don'thave that privilege.
So we tried to do it asrespectfully as possible.
(36:31):
We research, we abide by thearchitecture rules.
When the architects involved hetells us we have to do things a
certain way, we do it that way,and I think that that might be
one of the things that keeps mebusiness.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Mm-hmm, so you mentioned you have fifth
generation mason's or thirdgeneration mason's from Mexico.
Mm-hmm.
I you think about Mexico, someof the cities, if people haven't
traveled to Mexico.
Some of the cities in Mexicohave wonderful architecture,
mm-hmm most of the most of thebig cities in Mexico.
It's unbelievable.
I've never traveled in interiorMexico, but you, you kind of
(37:04):
see it on on TV or on theinternet.
You're like, oh my god, I tellyou where to start Mexico City.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Oh yeah, that's simple just go to Mexico City
and just look at the buildingsthere and you'll be like how
they this stone is not naturalto here and you'll see a lot of
buildings tilting because it'salso sitting on this that one's
Sitting on the lake.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Yeah, that's so crazy how Mexico City is built on a
lake.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Yeah, that is nuts go up to Chep with the back and I.
We and I were interacting, wewere sending messages back and
forth when, I was there and Iwas looking at it from a
restoration Point, but I wasalso looking at it from a
building point and if you justsee the labor and detail that
went into the hinges to thedoors, you can't even imagine
(37:47):
what went into the rest of thebuilding.
It's just it's insane.
And, yes, some of that hastrickled down.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Yeah, yeah, isn't that fascinating, though, and
you're bringing that experienceback to Galveston, or to
Galveston right from, from theseMasons from Mexico.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Well, that's how, that's how far you could trace
it back.
I mean you, can you get intosome Uncomfortable conversations
with some people?
I'm open to it.
Well, if you look at it,mexico's native Mexicans, which
are the Mexicas, are really justtwo, three generations
separated from Slaves from beingslaves because when Mexico
(38:25):
finally declared independence,the states divided up and.
They were like you get this, youget that, you get that and the
help went with them and what youcall the help was really
Incomendable, so that's whatthey call it.
So these in commandos werepeople that were like, well,
I'll give you the ranch, but youget five hands with you and
those people don't get paid.
They were this is why you getgood food, because these guys
(38:47):
would take the food that theowners didn't want and they
would make stuff like menudo andpozole and all that, lots of
spices, yeah.
But there's a disconnect thereand it might be, and it might be
that history was erased or thatmaybe they told them.
I Don't know, there's a lot ofgoing, a lot of that going on
now, but there's there's.
(39:09):
There's an area where I wishthese people wouldn't know, like
why they're so good at it.
I think there's a geneticmemory installed.
Yeah like you look at me, likeoh yeah, you know I can do that
and they just naturally I'm likeI would have.
I Could never see it.
I'm sure they see some thingsthat I do that way, but I have a
lot of respect for these guysbecause you don't ever know.
Maybe five, six, sevengenerations ago they were
(39:32):
building the pyramids yeah, or Idon't.
Or maybe the four generationsago they helped build El Palacio
de Villas Artes or somethinglike that in Mexico City.
You never know.
And these guys are.
These guys are phenomenal and Ihave a lot of respect for them.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
What's fascinating is how close Galveston is to
Mexico geographically but howfar away it seems in a lot of
ways.
You know there is.
There is a connection, ofcourse architecture, the
politics over the past 200 years, like how I don't know it seems
there still seems like there'sa disconnect in some ways.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Well, there, there, a lot of these stuff's are in
parallel and this is how I foundout they ran parallel when I
was.
Again, I'm back to Mexico Citywhen I was in Mexico City.
I'm going to the top of theback and all of a sudden I turn
around.
I was like that picture looksfamiliar and like why would a
picture look familiar?
And you know 700, 800 miles?
That way Was a picture Bernardode Galvez, oh yeah, hanging in
(40:26):
the Castillo de Chapultepec, andI'm like, well, the island
where I'm from is named afterthis guy.
And now I'm seeing the originalpicture because you had a lot
to do with Chapultepec.
A lot to do with it, and Icouldn't spit out the history
like you do.
You're the pro at that, but youyou'll see a lot of
similarities, because they'removing, they're shifting, so a
(40:47):
lot of the restoration projectsare very similar to here.
So to me, to me, I think thatit's all correlated together, I
think yeah, spanish architecture.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's fascinating.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
It is, it is very fast, dude.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
I love it.
I could talk to you for hours.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
It's, it's hard.
Unfortunately, this kind ofstuff when I was growing up was
deemed Nerdy or uncool orsomething like that, and there's
so many people that are nowEngaging in it that I love what
you know.
People like your age, peopletalk about a lot about the
Millennials.
Millennials are very Educatedand they've got great parameters
(41:26):
.
They organize really well andyou got guys like you that are
actually pushing forpreservation, digging stuff out,
making Uncomfortableconversation a little more
comfortable.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
Absolutely.
Yeah, that's the goal.
Yeah, that is the goal.
That's, that's progress, in myopinion.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
Yeah, a lot of people don't like it, but it's part of
it.
Yeah if you don't, if you don'thave progress, you don't have
evolution, you're just gonna die.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
That's it.
Yeah, no fall for die.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
That's it period, absolutely, but well one.
Thank you so much for coming intoday.
This is 45 minutes already.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Yes, but no, thank you.
Great spaceman, every time thatI talk to somebody, I'm like I
know that guy you're, I'mcertainly got you.
I'm like fascinated about whatyou do and I'm always like
telling my, my friends like youshould really listen to some of
the podcast because they'reshort and they're very
Information.
They have a lot of informationin them.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
Well, thank you, I really appreciate that because
word of mouth is the way thingsTravel, especially in Galveston
too.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
So I've seen you go from three likes on a post of
7,000 or something.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
It's, it's insane, it blows my mind.
It really is.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Congratulations You're doing a good job.
I'm glad somebody took it uponthemselves to do this.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
Thanks, man.
It was a kind of a dream Tokind of see what would happen.
An experiment, becauseeverything that I do, every,
every post that we have, is anexperiment, just to see if it'll
work.
See if it works, you know, whatcan we improve every time?
To make it better, make itreach more people, at least make
it more digestible andunderstandable.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
Okay.
So question for you like whatwas it that one day you got up
You're like I think I'm gonna doa post or a podcast or
something.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
It was a culmination of a few different things.
So, I was listening to podcastsevery day probably two or three
a day Because I was driving toand from Houston every day and
even the jobs I had previouslyto commuting to and from Houston
.
I would be working at the port,on a dock, on a ship sometimes
and just have headphones andlisten to podcasts, depending on
the work I was doing, and Iwould mainly listen to history
(43:20):
podcasts.
So when I moved back here in2018, I was fascinated by the
history.
It always been, but I reallygot to dive into it, living in
the downtown area and startedreading all the historical
markers and I think I had justhit the right age where I cared
about history, because previousto that, I'm like, I'm working
(43:40):
you know, it was just yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I just kind of startedputting different pieces of
context, different pieces ofinformation together here in
Galveston, like, oh wait, thisis significant in New York, or
this is significant to Texashistory, or to why Texas was
founded in the first place.
You know things like that.
And then I started a littlerunning tour.
(44:02):
And during the middle of thepandemic I was like I'm just
gonna create an audio guide formy running tour as either like
promo or just to createsomething.
Honestly, I was just bored, hadnothing else going on and when
I started creating the audio itjust started, just started
growing.
And then I was like why don't Iinterview the people who
actually know what they'retalking about, you know when?
it comes to you know why am I,why should I be the one to sit
(44:25):
up here and talk about how theypreserve buildings, how you do
restoration?
Why would I do that?
I have no information besideswhat I would read on Wikipedia,
so it just made sense to sitdown with people who really know
what they're talking about.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
You've had a great success.
I call it, whether it'sfinancial or, but I mean there's
a lot of people listening nowand I think that this is what
you're the caveat of, what theisland needed.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
Well, thanks, I appreciate that, and what's cool
about it is, even if I quittomorrow, everything that we do
and discuss is evergreen for themost part.
For the most part, like a lotof the short little audio guys I
do or the podcast it's allhistory based.
So, you can listen to it 20years from now and it's still
relevant.
So that's kind of the idea.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
So your business is a .
You would consider it a COVIDbaby.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
Yeah, it's a COVID baby.
Yeah, it's a COVID baby.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
A lot of people have COVID.
I have two COVID babies.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
I got a real one and this.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
so yeah, you didn't lose any time, did you?
No?
No, we're talking to you, man.
You didn't tell me to need meback over here.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
Let me know For sure man for sure, I think I need
these brickworked on actually.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
I'll give you something a little more rough
than this.
This is amazing.
Did you get it out of thebuilding here in Gallister, or
did you just?
Speaker 2 (45:33):
order it.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
No, the picture.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
This?
No, it's.
I just got on Amazon Reallyyeah, Because the sizes are odd.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
I'm sorry.
If you ever go to, I think thatone of the ones that has the
coolest bricks is the ClarkCourt building.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
If you ever get to go and sneak on the backside where
the parking lot is at.
Yeah man, I don't know if itwas just scraps or if there was
a fire.
You know, these buildings, alot of these buildings, caught
on fire, oh yeah, and they justtook whatever fell down and they
put it back on the walls.
There's just a lot of characteron those walls.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
Yeah, you know, that's something I didn't ask.
You is like I'm sure you seehow buildings they would build
buildings out of bricks theyjust had laying around whether
it was after a fire, after ahurricane, and they're like oh
well, we got a 10,000 bricksthere, we got 50,000 bricks
there, we got 30,000 over here,we got enough to build this
building.
And I'm sure you see that yousee it all you got red, you got
brown, you got all thesedifferent mixes.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
I guess one of my not my punch lines is one of the
things that I say is there's aand I used this before there's a
thing called more in Mexico andI'm very proud of where I'm
from, so that's why I always usethat and more.
It takes about 40 ingredientsand when you marry it all
together it's weird.
It takes like chocolate andcacao and peanuts and like seven
(46:48):
different peppers.
When you marry it all together,you're like holy crap, it's a
fusion.
And you see some of these wallsup.
You're like man, those brickswere from Europe, these bricks
are from Chicago, these bricksare from a fire, and they marry
them all together and they work.
And the same thing with thepeople on the island.
You drive to the West and youhave billionaires.
You have people in thisbuilding that are billionaires,
(47:11):
and then you have some guy thatmakes $13 an hour and we all get
along.
This should be, I think shouldbe a case study.
I agree For how the rest of thecountry should be ran, because,
whether it's status, its name,whatever, this island seems to
get along really well.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
I agree.
I could not agree more man one.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
thank you so much, man.
This is awesome Pleasure man.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
Yeah, well, we're gonna have you back sometime
soon, I hope so.
Thanks, man, I appreciate it.
So what do I do?
Just walk away?
I'll fade to black on that.
And you see some of these walls up, you're like man,
those bricks were from Europe,these bricks are from Chicago,
these bricks are from a fire andthey marry them all together
and they work and they hold them.
And it's the same thing withthe people on the island.
You drive to the west and youhave billionaires.
You have people in thisbuilding that are building
billionaires, and then you havesome guy that makes $13 an hour
(00:20):
and we all get along.
This should be.
I think should be a case studyfor how the rest of the country
should be ran, because whetherit's status, it's name, whatever
, this island seems to get alongreally well, welcome to
Galveston Unscripted.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
In this episode I sit down with Juan Carcáñez, owner
of Immaculate Painting.
For over 24 years, juan and hiscompany have specialized in not
only painting but therestoration of historic homes
and buildings around Galveston,especially some of Galveston's
most famous historic buildingsBack then 1911 Galveston Hotel,
(00:56):
the 1895 Celian HutchingsBuilding and many of Galveston's
historic churches.
What gave me the idea to haveJuan on the Galveston Unscripted
podcast is I was walking on19th Street and saw that first
Presbyterian church was beingworked on and, of course, I saw
the Immaculate Painting sign outon the scaffolding.
What really struck me as I waslooking at the side of this
(01:16):
church that was being worked on,is that we're pulling off some
of these bricks.
When I got to thinking thesebricks are the same bricks that
Galveston famous architectNicholas Clayton would have
ordered, approved and worked onwith his crew to build the 1872
Presbyterian church that we seeon Church Street in 19th.
And here this church is beingrestored right in front of us.
(01:39):
And how much work that actuallytakes.
In the late 1800s, galveston wasone of the richest cities in
Texas and the country and priorto the storm of 1900, galveston
was on the trajectory to becomewhat Houston is today, and if
that were the case, there wouldbe plenty of money for
maintenance.
But of course, the economy inGalveston shifted dramatically
through the 1900s and we aretruly still lucky to have so
(02:01):
many historic buildings inGalveston.
Today.
Galveston heavily relies ontourism and many people who
visit Galveston come to see thehistoric downtown area and some
of Galveston's most historicbuildings.
But if companies likeImmaculate Painting and other
restoration companies weren'taround to do the work they do,
we may not have these buildingsfor people to come see and enjoy
(02:22):
for centuries to come.
In this episode today, juan andI discuss a little bit about
historic restoration, thechallenges behind the
restoration process and why thislittle island of Galveston is
so unique when it comes tohistory and economics.
As you'll see, juan and I had alot of fun during this episode
and I really hope you enjoy it.
To further ado, let's hop rightinto this episode with Juan
(02:44):
Carcogno, owner of ImmaculatePainting, specifically hoping to
talk about renovation, kind oflike what you've been doing for
the past, however long you'vebeen doing it A long time, yeah
right, a long time and kind ofhow you got into it and like you
can't drive in the downtownarea without seeing something
that we missed.
Without seeing ImmaculatePainting somewhere you know, so
(03:07):
it's really cool.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
When you guys did the Presbyterian Church over there
Right.
And when I was thinking aboutit.
Well, I want to dive into thisa little deeper later, but I was
thinking about it, you'reworking on Nicholas Clayton's
architecture and when's the lasttime those bricks were moved,
because I know you guys weredoing a lot of work on that.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Well, when we do a lot of that plaster repair, what
happens is that the plastercomes unattached from the brick.
99% of the time it's a movementissue.
So whether the building issettling, moving, shifting, I
mean everything moves.
Semanticious products which areconcrete, stucco, plaster, all
(03:47):
that stuff is hard, so when itwants to move, all it can do is
crack.
And then, when you have cracks,you allow water to come in
there, and then when the watercomes in there, it creates stuff
to get bigger, it swells uplike wood and then you have
problems like that.
Like you have pointing behindthe between the bricks and the
tuck point that you have torepair.
You have to repair with theright plaster.
(04:08):
It's not an art, but there is alittle bit of a science too.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Yeah, dude, it's awesome man.
So let's start.
Can we start from the beginning?
I'm an immigrant.
I was actually born in Mexico.
Oh, you were.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
I was born in Mexico and I was brought over in the
80s on a work visa and now it'sbeen so many years I can
casually say we overstayed ourwork visa.
My dad started working withantique furniture.
He started working in Houston.
He got a job refinishingantique furniture.
So old stuff has been in myveins at all times and that's
(04:43):
how we got started in Galveston.
The guy that owned the peanutbutter warehouse, jim I forget
his last name and Nathan Sweden.
They're the ones that poachedmy dad from the place where he
was selling, where he wasrestoring furniture.
They're like we need you inGalveston, so they opened up
shop here.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Oh, okay, working for them, yeah.
And then that's back when itwas like the literal antique.
They had antiques in there,they had all those little shops
in there.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Yeah, yeah, that was in the 80s, and Galveston was
very different in the 80s andthe 90s.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Oh yeah, I want to get into some of those stories
too.
It was a rough patch.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah, but my dad started doing side gigs with
painting houses and he wasrefinishing furniture, he was
painting houses and then that'show we got into the paint
business.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
And this evolved into what it is now.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yeah, so did he start Immaculate, or did you?
Speaker 1 (05:29):
start?
No, no, he started a businesson his own in the early 90s and
then, he got sick in 91.
He had a brain aneurysm in Julyand then my mom passed away in
September of the same year.
So we were orphaned.
Essentially, according to thecourt system, we were orphaned.
So we moved to Mexico and whenI was living in Mexico because
(05:51):
my uncle couldn't afford it, myuncle, who basically took
custody of us, couldn't affordto have us two households here
his house and our house.
So he moved us to Mexico foraffordability and that's when I
started getting into thebusiness side of things.
My grandmother was a Mexicanmedicine woman, so she was
always hustling and she wouldmake anything, and so that's
(06:12):
where I got the business concept.
My uncle stays behind.
He starts with my dad'sfootsteps, also painting houses
on the side.
When I get out of high school,we start his business, which is
Triple C de Colores, and hepassed away in 04, I take over
some of his clientele and thennow we're here, 20 years later.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Man, what a story.
It's dramatic, it's verydramatic.
I like the abbreviated versionthough.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
That's great.
It's the clip notes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Okay, so for a little bit of context, you do,
painting you do.
I want to say renovation.
Is it renovation?
Or what all does immaculatepaint do?
Speaker 1 (06:50):
I think it's more restoration.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Restoration.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Okay, and it's not correcting you.
I think that's how, that's whatI feel we do yeah.
We restore older buildings.
We've always like I said, it'sin my veins, my parents restored
furniture, houses.
We restore buildings now, butwe also do an niche side, which
is waterproofing.
So a lot of these buildingsthat are older need to be as
tight from water as possible toavoid having more problems in
(07:14):
the concrete and your steel andyour wood, all that stuff.
That's one side of the that'sthe side of the business we're
talking about now.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
When I think about historic preservation and like
the effort that, let's say, yougo back to the 1970s the
Galveston Historical Foundation,they started like purchasing
buildings all over this island,yep, and you get into historical
preservation, restoration,things like that, and you just
think of it as like throwingmoney at it.
You don't really think aboutthe work that's done to preserve
(07:41):
these buildings, the bricks,the you know everything that's
kind of inside or behind.
You don't think about that.
So you know, and what reallygave me this idea to have you on
is when you, you guys wereworking on that Presbyterian
church and, like I said earlier,like it's a Nicholas Clayton
building design and he, you know, he was the one who put the
(08:03):
bricks there, but he was the onewho designed it, his guys, he
was there supervising it and andit's kind of a cool thing where
you guys get to put your handson the history.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
To me.
It's funny you say that.
To me it's almost a respectthing.
It's almost like I've beenaround the island and I've seen
what it's evolved into and it'sit's to me I'd rather.
There's an old saying that I'drather do everything myself
because I know I'm gonna do itright, but I know that I'll have
more respect and it's somewhatof a love connection to the
buildings.
It sounds ridiculous to a lotof people, but I have so much
(08:35):
respect for these buildings andthe preservation and what has
what has happened with Galibre,like I said, for the last 30-40
years that I think that youalmost have to be that
passionate and that crazy aboutloving a building, walking by
and touching, to be like, oh,what is?
that made out of yeah Is thatplaster or is that concrete
stuck?
Oh, I see a patch.
Did they seal those windowscorrectly?
(08:55):
You know, it's like I take itvery personal, yeah, and that's.
I think that's kind of thecrazy that you have to be, to be
in the side of the businessthat we're in.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Yeah, so what are some of the main, I guess,
prominent structures on theisland that you've worked on in
the past few years?
Speaker 1 (09:11):
We call it the Sealy Building over here on 24th and.
Strand, presbyterian Church,1st Lutheran Church.
We've done a lot of churches.
The I-Bands building werecurrently there.
Obviously, the Galvestre, thatwas a big one.
We had, I think, about 4,000gallons of paint going that bad,
but we painted it twice in oneyear.
That's a story in itself.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Can you tell us the Galvestre, because that's
fascinating.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Well, we were working with the Mitchells and they
were in the middle.
I think they were in the middleof restoring it to sell.
I think that's what I can saynow.
I didn't know what was going onat the time.
But they, they, they have abunch of windows that need
caulking and sealing and sealingthe outside, and we're going
blowing through it.
We've got about, I think, 600cubic feet of repairs on the
(09:52):
building.
Oh my gosh, we're doing a lotof stuff, yeah.
So we're exactly three quartersof the way there and they're
like, hey, the building isselling.
And I'm like, well, I haven'tfinished painting it.
Oh, don't worry, we're carrying.
The remainder of your contractis getting carried over to the
next, to the future owner.
So I say, okay, as long as I'mgetting paid.
You know, to me it's green, Idon't care.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
And we're pink.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Pink.
Yeah, that's where I was goingto start.
So come to find out, the guybuys it and he tells, and he
contacts me.
And Mark buys it.
And he contacts me and he says,hey, I want to paint the
Galvest pink.
And I'm like, okay, I've heardcrazier stories, but let's do it
.
I'll say, but we just finishedpainting it, I want to paint it
all over again.
And I tell people all the timethat the paint wasn't even fully
dry when we started paintingagain.
(10:38):
So we went around twice.
We caught a lot of grief fromthe locals, from the non-locals,
from the Houston people.
People were calling the officelike what are y'all doing?
Y'all should be ashamed ofyourself.
And I'm like it's pink, becausethe first pink color that went
up was literally Pepto Vismolpink.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Yeah, ugly.
Yeah, it was so ugly.
It was in fashion in 1911.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Yes, but the color that's on there now is actually
the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Oh really that crazy.
I give it to Mark.
He has a vision that is notunderstood by many, but the guy
went to the Beverly Hills Hotel.
He stayed in the room tried topop open a window so he could
get a sample, so he can do it.
So he sneaks all the way downto the maintenance dungeon and
(11:21):
he talks to the maintenance guys.
He goes I need the color, andhe sends me a picture from down
there with the picture with thelogo on it and the formula, and
we match it and that's the colorthat it is.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
No freaking way, that guy's wild From Beverly Hills
to Galveston.
That is wild dude.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
That's exactly how he did it.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Oh my God.
So you mentioned earlier howeverything kind of shifts around
here, like the ground shifts.
We're on a sandbar.
Things are moving around allthe time, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
If you have a structure that's made out of
concrete mainly, or hardmaterials like cementitious
products or like brick, whenthings shift in one corner it
has to give Like, there has tobe a flexibility.
So if there's not, back in thedays they weren't taken into
account movement, so there isn'tcontrol joints.
You'll see, if you see a tiltup wall building which is a big
(12:07):
think of an Amazon warehouse, ithas these creases in it and
those creases are actuallypoints that are flexible.
So they're filled with theurethane or an MP1 or a silicone
, and what that does is there'sa backer in there that's made
out of foam and what that doesis it allows for physics to do
its thing.
You know, in the summer theyget bigger, in the winter they
(12:28):
get smaller, so you have thatmovement.
These older buildings didn'thave that in place.
So when the building shift,you're going to have some kind
of cracking and then, like Isaid, that cracking allows water
to get in.
It allows moisture to standbehind between the brick and the
plaster or the brick and thestucco, and that's what you have
(12:49):
delamination of the product.
If you have solid concrete, likebeams or pier or something like
that, then when that moves youcreate a crack and the water
gets in there.
Same thing, but the wateraround here is corrosive, the
humidity around here iscorrosive.
So it gets into the steel.
Yeah, once it gets into thesteel, it creates corrosion,
(13:11):
which is what we call rust.
So when steel rusts, it getsbigger, it fattens up because it
creates these layers and whatthat does is that it separates
the steel from the concrete,which is called spalling.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Oh OK.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Yeah, so that's where and we're good at repairing
those, those kind of things.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Nice, yeah, you're the man to call.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
I wouldn't say that.
I've been in the business longenough.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
For sure.
Well, experience is key.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
I'll say that yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
So what is some?
What has been the mostdifficult restoration that
you've done here on the island?
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Difficult, I don't know.
I think that probably the backwall, which is the west facing
wall on the Clarkin Courtbuilding.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
OK, ok.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Because it has so much history and there were
three commissions built intothat commission.
There was obviously the HOAthat had to say so.
And then you have thehistorical commission, which
says what kind of material youcan use.
And then there's also I can'tremember if it was glow or Texas
land office, one of those bigones that was adamant that we
(14:18):
don't not touch the sign onthere and we don't restore it.
We don't touch it, we don'tdestroy it, I'll turn nothing.
So it was very intense.
There was a lot of eyes on this.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Yeah, and because that sign is painted onto the
brick right.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Yeah, so, yeah, so we work.
You're working around apainting on the brick that you
have to work on, yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
And then you are on top of a roof, hanging off from
another roof.
So axis is hard.
The weather was.
We got here with two hurricaneson that job yeah, two, I mean
the hurricanes were around us,but I mean we had to break
everything down, take everythingoff the roof.
Now, that has to be.
That was the one that's more.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Yeah, yeah.
When people think ofrestoration, I guess you don't
think about the kind of thataspect of it too, just
logistically.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Logistically.
Yeah, it's a nightmare.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Yeah, the different organizations you have to work
with during hurricane season.
You're going to be.
We got to stop this right now.
You know we'll start up nextweek when the hurricane passes,
I guess.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Well, and that all takes time, and time equals
money.
And you know, a lot of peoplesee these gigantic profits, the
gigantic jobs, that they thinkthey're gigantic profits and
they're not.
I mean you have to.
Sometimes you eat it and you'relike, well, here's a hurricane,
you have to eat a week of laborup, like week labor down, and
again you have to almost love itto be doing it, because I
(15:29):
promise you I'm not doing it forthe money.
I mean there's, there's moneyin it, but I mean yeah exhibit a
over here.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
I know, trust me, do you guys ever find anything
super interesting, like in oninterior walls or anytime you
pop something open?
Maybe the way a something wasconnected that you cannot do
today like engineering wise?
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Yes, just rebar alone .
Just rebar was I mean right nowyou just got schedule five
rebar.
That goes on.
Everything it's five, eight,seven inch, three quarters of an
inch and the rebar back in thedays an inch and a quarter.
Good luck trying to cut throughthat.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Same thing with concrete, old concrete.
I mean you take a chiseloutside and break a piece of
concrete on something new andnew, pour something the last 10,
20 years, but you get into thatolder concrete.
I don't know if it's just moredense, I'm not a chemist, but it
never ceases to fast to to us.
It amazed me how hard thatstuff is.
It's just hard and we, we runinto a lot of math on the walls.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Oh, yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
We run into a lot of math.
When we did the Henley building, there was all kinds of math.
When we did the inside of theHenley building, downstairs
there was.
I guess a guy had a running tabon people and he had.
He had numbers scrolling downwhere this guy owes me $2 and
this guy owes me $2.
And but he wrote it on the wall.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
So, yeah, never go away, dude.
That is fascinating, it wasreally cool.
So you worked on the Henleybuilding?
Yes, we did, dude.
So which side?
Speaker 1 (16:55):
We worked on the ground floor.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
OK, gotcha, gotcha.
Well, it's fast.
It's really cool because theHenley building is interesting,
because it was a played a majorpart in a major Civil War battle
, that a lot of people don'teven realize that we had Civil
War battles here in Galveston.
You're working on stuff likethat with that much history.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Ironically enough, my first job was at the peanut
butter warehouse, which myparents worked at as well, but I
worked in the candy shop.
So the peanut butter warehouse,to stay true to its name, had a
little shop that made peanutbutter.
We would ship it all over thecountry and they would have
these risk cracker treats, allkinds of weird stuff that we
would make in house fudgebrownies.
(17:31):
So that was my first job and Iwould.
I worked there and the Henleybuilding was kind of catty
corner from it and I saw thelast time I got hit by a, by
lightning, and always knew MrHenley.
I'm sorry it wasn't Henley, itwas Mr D Mac he had a produce
company there and the buildingwas half empty and I always
looked at it not knowing whatthe history was behind it yeah,
(17:53):
yeah, man full circle.
I'm working on it again.
I guess there's always so muchyou can go on an island, right
Like you can work on stuff againand again, yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Well, you think about it, business wise, right?
You're doing historicrestoration Right Now.
The restoration you're doing,no matter how good it is, we are
still living on a sandbar,hurricane prone sandbar, with
corrosive moisture in our air,so you kind of get to rotate
from building to building tobuilding, not to give away the
(18:22):
secret.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
But that is the secret sauce right there.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Right.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
And I don't do it with pride, I'm just like it's
one of those things where youlook at it as a long-term
relationship and you walk away.
You're like should be back.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Yeah, she'll be back.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
And I almost marry every job because I have dinner
here, I have my kid goes toschool here, I buy stuff from
here.
So if we try, we really try.
There's sometimes we drop theball.
We do things as best as we can,but we really try to keep a
good relationship with thebuildings and with the tenants
and with the owners and all that.
So that's hard in itself beingon an island.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Yeah, of course, yeah .
And then you get the experienceof working on that building and
naturally, if something goeswrong, you're probably the one
they're going to call first tocome back, because you have the
most recent experience on thatbuilding.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
We hope so.
Yeah, and that's the same thingwith the other side of the
business.
The other side of the businessis park restoration we do water
parks and all that.
So it's the same thing.
You know, by the time one rideis completely, we'll go through
five rides and then we'll startagain.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Yeah, so tell us about that.
How did you get into water parkrestoration?
Speaker 1 (19:26):
It was.
That one was a complete block.
They were looking for somebodyto help them paint some steel
out on a Schlitterbond and theguy called me.
I picked up the phone and wewent from there.
We're still to this day, we'refriends and we share a business.
That was 15 years, 16 years ago.
As we got more into it, we gotrequests to do more things and
(19:48):
we learned the hard way.
Like you don't do things thisway, you do things, but it's a
very, very, very small business.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
I mean not small as far as like the scale, it's just
there's not a whole lot ofpeople doing it.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Yeah, right, right yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
There's also some tricks of the trade in there,
and but it's the same way as itis with these buildings.
It's more about therelationship, the customer of
the relationship with you.
Know you walk away.
You're like, well, I would.
Would I let my kids slide downthis slide?
Is it safe?
Is it?
Is it?
Do we do everything right?
And that's what you know makesyou lose a little sleep, but I
(20:20):
wouldn't do anything, anythingelse.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Yeah, I love to.
Yeah, yeah, well, seems likeyou you care about what you do.
I try a bit like quite a bit.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
So a lot you love it.
It's really bad on yourrelationships and your health,
but yeah right, I know.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
So tell me about the guy.
I mean the team you haveworking with you.
So you got a pretty large team,I would imagine, to work on
these jobs.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
We fluctuate between 10 to 25 guys, so it depends on
the season.
Galveston a seasonal, so whenwe, when we man up we bring but
we don't, we were very selective.
So a lot of, a lot of our guysare Second, third generation
Masons.
Oh, wow, Okay so they are, theyare, they are.
They already know what to do.
It's just getting the rightformulas.
(21:03):
You know the brick mortarthat's between the bricks, it's
not you don't just go buy itback at home people or mix it
like you would anything there's.
There's a certain standard youhave to meet for it to, to
adhere to the next brick whereyou're not doing any repairs to.
And at the same time I kind ofhandpicked my guys just because
(21:24):
it's Galveston.
You know there's people walkingdown with you know Having a
vacation, and may they, theymight look at us and and they
might just say, oh well, wedon't care about your job,
they'll walk through it.
We want guys to be polite, wewant guys to be respectful, but
we also want guys to take pridein their work.
So it's it's.
It's been hard, but I think Itold my secretary the other day
(21:45):
I think we have the best teamI've had in 20 years.
That's amazing.
It is, it is that's anotherthing.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
With experience, too, you got to curate your team.
Yeah right, because these arethe guys you are working with
every day.
Yeah right, because you'reyou're going around from job
site to job site, but you'reworking with these guys every
day, so communication.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
I learned a long time ago that guys that are really
good or are really probablyproud of what they do and pride
has a direct correlation.
To just leave the guys alone,yeah right, so he's.
If the guy's proud and he'sgood and he's clean and he's
he's on time, oh, I don't eventell the guy.
I mean, this is what we'regoing to do from this day to
Wednesday.
Check in with me, I'll check inwith you and just kind of let
(22:24):
them do their thing.
And I Promise you, jr, asidefrom making the transition to
being Everything on paper, todigital, mm-hmm, that's the
hardest transition delegateReally when she gets to a point
where you're like I can't handleit all anymore.
Yeah, I have to delegate stuff.
Oh yeah, it's like letting yourkid drive.
It's just so scary hey.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
That's some good advice, some good business
advice.
I appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
You'll be there, yeah , yeah.
Well, we're getting there.
So.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Got a two more kids coming soon, so it's gonna be a
little.
So, beyond buildings, you'redoing it.
Do you do homes as well?
Not anymore.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Okay, and the only reason and I would love to,
because I love Galveston homesand there's.
I go to other cities and I lookat the architecture and I'm
like, hey guys, what?
Speaker 2 (23:22):
what are you impressed by, like I'm?
Speaker 1 (23:23):
used to work walking in these houses where you know
they have like a secret cubby,or you walk and everything
squeaks and it smells like thehouses have a smell here that
you can't get.
You can probably get inCarolina's you know stuff like
that but to find it here inTexas it's just hard.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
Um, unfortunately, because of the cost of doing
work on commercial stuff, theoverhead gets really heavy, get
really big.
So we become, we've gone to apoint where we can't compete
twice.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
I see, I see, okay, so it makes sense to specialize
then, yeah, yeah so it's not.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
It's not a selection.
I try to keep it alive as longas I could, because I painted a
lot of house on the west and alot of house on the east Then,
when I was still doingresidential, but it became just
it, just.
I couldn't make a profit.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Yeah, that makes sense I.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
I try to give them the same attention and love that
.
That I've given every job.
And once you start disconnectedfrom that, a Lot of people take
that as a sign of you're toogood for me or you've moved on
and blah, blah, blah.
But you get some criticism.
But I mean, it's part ofbusiness, yeah, have to have all
.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Criticism is part of business.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Yes, it's part of life, it is not getting
criticized.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
You're probably not doing much.
That's awesome, man.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Any any notable stories you have about that you
can tell about working on someof these historic buildings
downtown aside from aside fromthe traffic being weird, like
there's some days where you'llhave 10,000 people down in the
strand, of some days whereyou'll have two people I think
that the the the cool storiesare is is hearing the stories
(24:53):
from the owners, like how theyacquired the building.
Well, this was some X bar, orthis was some brothel, or this
was this, this was that.
But no, I mean, we were alwaysamazed of like I'm that guy, I'm
, I'm we call it a towel guy.
We get there, I'm like oh my god, I can't believe they did this
and we'll find.
We'll find lead on some stuffthat was supposed to be restored
(25:16):
and then we tested and they'restill lead on there.
So we have to shut the wholejob down and mask everything off
correctly.
But Other than that, no, I wishI had some cooler stories.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Oh man, I was thinking like busted a wall open
and, like me, like, oh my god,there's a safe in here, or
something.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Well, no, we were always there too late for that.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Maybe owners take over that part, yeah, so for
work on like big, a big,beautiful brick churches they.
I guess how long will that worklast?
Speaker 1 (25:47):
so standards, business standards say five to
ten years on something where weare and that you're taking into
account, I think we have thehighest solidity Solidity rating
in the Texas coast.
There's been I don't have thatright off top my head, but
there's been some of that socorrosion is huge around here.
Humidity is always 100%, evenright now it's.
(26:07):
It's pretty human.
So if we go above and beyond,we could probably get 10, 15
years out of it.
Once you start, once the paintstarts, dying is what we call it
.
There's solids in the paintthat are titanium dioxide,
glycol little elements that thatdie with the UV.
It's not that they die becausethey're exposed to the elements
(26:29):
is died.
They die because the UV orkilling them.
Once you rub your hand on onpainting it's chalking you can
bring the color with you.
Then that paint is dead andneeds to be restored.
Got you so usually the thoseguys say Five to ten years here.
So we like to aim for 10 to 15.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Oh, nice, okay, great , great.
Yeah, it's just, it's funny.
What do you think about?
You know, 150 years ago, 120years ago, when they were
building a lot of thesebuildings, you think about how
much work it takes to maintainsome of these buildings and
Galveston me in the city, it waswith so much money and and just
Money flowing through thisplace.
They're like, yeah, there'll beno problem to maintain.
(27:06):
You know no big deal.
And then you fast forward tonow, when you have it's a, it's
heavily a tourism economy here.
You think about, like, how hardit is to actually maintain
these buildings these days, thatup the age they are and
everything like that.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
So well, it only gets harder because because now
there's, it's like a human being, you know, as you get older,
stuff just doesn't heal us aswell, but if you have a
maintenance plan in place,there's a lot of people here
believe it or not the mentorsare one of them that have the
vision to where they.
They can allocate funds forfive, ten, fifteen years from
now, or they rotate funds.
(27:40):
I'm not sure how, how theirmoney gets managed, but I think
that, with it being a tourismhub, it also attracted some very
intelligent people, some peoplethat are they're willing to put
everything on the line topreserve things, and I think
that the funds are starting tomove in the right direction.
Compared to the strand in the90s, it was rough.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Yeah, yeah and what?
Speaker 1 (28:01):
what it's become now?
It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
Yeah, it's unrecognizable from when I you
know, was born in the 90s, livedhere.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
It's unrecognizable for now as a kid.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Yep, and it's amazing to see.
It really is amazing to see.
But back to the economics of it, of it's a heavy tourism city.
Now, right, a Lot of people arecoming here for the historic
buildings that are here, or atleast to be in an area that is
deemed historic right.
So the downtown area and whatyou're doing is Extremely
(28:31):
important to the economy here.
It really is because you'rekeeping these buildings From
falling apart falling down, youknow.
So really is a huge economicdriver in that I guess I never
saw it that way.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
I really, I really didn't, because I've always seen
it from Kind of one of my whatservice I'm providing to the
customer, but I never saw it asthat.
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Yeah, I think that's why it's so important.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
It's why people are willing to pay you to do that
services, because if thesebuildings aren't here, you won't
have as much draw just I lovethe island and there's there's
people that criticize me forFriends, that criticize me for
living here, and I'm like I justthere's.
There's just a way of I get torun my business from here, I get
to live here.
I also get to party here, I getto have fun.
I've developed some goodfriends.
(29:17):
I don't I don't live in Houston.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Yeah, I agree, I agree in suburbia, in suburbia,
yeah, I just don't know.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Cut out for that no no, this is.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
It's just such a unique place yeah, it really is
and, of course, probably forthis audience as an echo chamber
, because they probably livehere, live near here, so like.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Exactly.
That's one thing that I can't.
I just can't fowl him.
As you know, you used to beable to pick up a house 5075k
yeah you can't touch anythingfor 300k around here, dude.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
It's nice.
When we bought our house in2020, we were like we were.
Why are we paying this much fora house?
Speaker 1 (29:52):
in 2020?
.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
And now you look at the home, prices are like, oh
wow, we might have gotten offcheap, but it's.
It's crazy to see and to seethe economy grow.
The economy and population inHouston expand and expand south.
You get more daytrippers here.
You get just more general foottraffic and traffic here in
Galveston which is directlyproportional to the economy and
(30:16):
the economic growth to this city.
Not to mention the cruise linesthat are coming through that
huge factor.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
I never saw the, the end game which I think we're
seeing now.
This is the end game where youknow, I think, what's second or
third biggest cruise.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Yeah, it's fourth, soon to be third.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Yeah just just the expansion.
I mean, there's billions ofdollars rolling, oh dude it's
whether whether you're, you'repaying $2 to park or $5 to
unload your vehicle or whateverit's.
The money kind of stays aroundhere.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
Mm-hmm, that's fascinating to me yeah, it
really is.
Yeah, for my economics brainit's like no, no and really cool
.
Most people don't see it.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Most people don't see all the inner workings and
those.
You know that creates taxdollars and that creates jobs
and that creates, hopefully, abetter I don't know better
economics for the city, becauseyou could say whatever about
Galveston, but as far as theservices go, we've always kind
of been behind.
You know, to dig up the street,yeah, have to go 400 feet
underneath and pull out the castiron and, you know, put in new
(31:14):
stuff and then you hit a watertable every three feet.
You know 23rd Street.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
That was a fun one to watch, I was like holy.
The loss by you.
Someone found it.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
And there was no, no pot of gold or anything.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Yeah right, jean-lafey's trip is there, okay
?
So before we wrap up, is thereanything else you wanted to Talk
about?
Or maybe I didn't ask you aboutthe type of work you do?
Speaker 1 (31:43):
I don't, I don't think so.
I think it.
I wish there was more, maybearchitecture education, not that
the architects here don't knowwhat they're doing, I don't mean
it that way.
I think that people shouldrealize that some of these
bricks were brought in fromEurope in the holes of bolts to
Way down the boats, and thenthey were filled with cotton or
sand to weigh them down, to goback, and Some of these bricks
(32:06):
are, you know, came.
I don't know what the distanceis between here in Europe, you
know six thousand miles or tenthousand miles, and yeah,
they're still there.
Yeah, and a lot of solidity thatcame from Hurricane Ike is
still present.
If you walk into some of theseolder buildings, you'll see a
clear line where it's like thebreak is is dying because all
that salt.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Yeah, and it just ate it alive.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Yeah, there's a.
There's still a lot to do,though I hope that there's
Programs that can be extendedthrough a GHF or the General
Land Commission or whoeverwhomever to protect this,
because this is a one-shot deal.
I mean, you can't.
You can't rebuild these thingsyou, can't you can take them all
apart and put them backtogether, but you take the
essence out of yeah, yeah,exactly, I think that's what it
(32:48):
is.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Yeah, you know for you.
You mentioned, like bringingbricks over as ballast on ships,
the, just as one example, thest Mary's Basilica, the original
building, 1850s building.
They shipped all of thosebricks from Belgium see over
500,000 bricks see from Belgium.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
I think, I think there's a lot of people like you
and I that like those kind ofstatistics.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Yeah, or what yeah?
Speaker 1 (33:14):
I want to know more about it.
Yeah, I think that wouldattract a whole different kind
of group of people here.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Yeah, I agree, yeah, that architecture, architecture,
education architectureeducation.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
That is directly laced to economics.
Economics is really laced, andI think all these buildings are
beautiful.
I mean if you drive by at nightand not that you know that that
I'm Fixated on this, on thegalvest but if you drive by at
night Through the galvest andthen you make a left on 19th
Street and you see it lit up andthen you go down To 19th and
you come up to strand you seethese buildings and then you see
(33:45):
sure moody plows at the end,all lit up.
I mean this is a beautifulisland.
And then you go down to go seebig rad and you see the Sealy
building anything that you knowthat Clayton touched there's.
When I do inspections up anddown these buildings, I look at
them and I'm like and I'm goingup on a heart with a harness, on
a you know $100,000 machine andI'm going up and down and I'm
like this would take us a yearto fix this.
(34:08):
How long do you think it tookthem To build it?
Yeah, polish those stones byhands.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Can you?
Speaker 1 (34:14):
have grinders back.
They know some guy peddling orsomething.
He was just grinding those kindof those, those pieces stone up
and they put them on.
They all look good.
You know, hundred hundred,twenty years later, they all
look really good.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
I think I have a new girl.
Respect every time I go upthose buildings.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
It's amazing.
It's amazing to think about theconstruction.
Yes, of these buildings yes itreally, really is, and to think
about, like just the idea of itwas pretty crazy.
Yes, of course they were doingit in New York and of course
they were doing it, and you knowbig cities in the late 1800s.
But to think about Building acity on a sandbar in.
Texas, just around a port.
Here's what we're gonna do.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
So crazy guys went out there with a booze.
That's why some of thesebuildings don't line up
perfectly, that's the funniestthing too.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
It's like you see the home slightly off kilter.
Yeah, you know, and they'vemoved, I mean you think you
gotta think about it.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
There's been some big hurricanes.
I mean, you and I have probablywitnessed two or three of them.
There's been some bighurricanes that have lifted
houses and probably shift themaround and move them around, and
I think, I think that I'm glad,I'm I'm glad and I'm sad at the
same time that that Galvestonkind of went under the radar for
a long time.
Yeah and now that it's kind ofdiscovered TV shows and people
(35:24):
with big pockets, it's kind ofdriven out when made Galveston
real but it's also brought inpeople that have a huge respect
and hopefully have a little moreLove for what they're getting
into and restore it and maintainit and you know, yeah, and
money, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
It always say it takes money.
It really does take money.
So yeah, man you, what you'redoing is important.
Thank you what you're doing isawesome.
It's so fascinating.
I can't wait to come out on ajob with you sometime we have.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
We have one.
We have one coming up.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
I'm ready to come out customs house right now dude, I
would love to Film just some ofwhat you do like, just some of
it to kind of talk about therestoration process and how
important it is and howDetail-oriented you have to be
to restore.
That you know well.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Again, we take a lot of pride in our work and we
don't always get it, like I said, a hundred percent right.
This has been a lot of trial anderror.
This is kind of a we didn't goto, you know, be an apprentice
for a Mason that's been afive-year of five generation
Mason in the West Coast or theEast Coast.
We don't, we don't, we don'thave that privilege.
So we tried to do it asrespectfully as possible.
(36:31):
We research, we abide by thearchitecture rules.
When the architects involved hetells us we have to do things a
certain way, we do it that way,and I think that that might be
one of the things that keeps mebusiness.
Speaker 2 (36:42):
Mm-hmm, so you mentioned you have fifth
generation mason's or thirdgeneration mason's from Mexico.
Mm-hmm.
I you think about Mexico, someof the cities, if people haven't
traveled to Mexico.
Some of the cities in Mexicohave wonderful architecture,
mm-hmm most of the most of thebig cities in Mexico.
It's unbelievable.
I've never traveled in interiorMexico, but you, you kind of
(37:04):
see it on on TV or on theinternet.
You're like, oh my god, I tellyou where to start Mexico City.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Oh yeah, that's simple just go to Mexico City
and just look at the buildingsthere and you'll be like how
they this stone is not naturalto here and you'll see a lot of
buildings tilting because it'salso sitting on this that one's
Sitting on the lake.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Yeah, that's so crazy how Mexico City is built on a
lake.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
Yeah, that is nuts go up to Chep with the back and I.
We and I were interacting, wewere sending messages back and
forth when, I was there and Iwas looking at it from a
restoration Point, but I wasalso looking at it from a
building point and if you justsee the labor and detail that
went into the hinges to thedoors, you can't even imagine
(37:47):
what went into the rest of thebuilding.
It's just it's insane.
And, yes, some of that hastrickled down.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Yeah, yeah, isn't that fascinating, though, and
you're bringing that experienceback to Galveston, or to
Galveston right from, from theseMasons from Mexico.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Well, that's how, that's how far you could trace
it back.
I mean you, can you get intosome Uncomfortable conversations
with some people?
I'm open to it.
Well, if you look at it,mexico's native Mexicans, which
are the Mexicas, are really justtwo, three generations
separated from Slaves from beingslaves because when Mexico
(38:25):
finally declared independence,the states divided up and.
They were like you get this, youget that, you get that and the
help went with them and what youcall the help was really
Incomendable, so that's whatthey call it.
So these in commandos werepeople that were like, well,
I'll give you the ranch, but youget five hands with you and
those people don't get paid.
They were this is why you getgood food, because these guys
(38:47):
would take the food that theowners didn't want and they
would make stuff like menudo andpozole and all that, lots of
spices, yeah.
But there's a disconnect thereand it might be, and it might be
that history was erased or thatmaybe they told them.
I Don't know, there's a lot ofgoing, a lot of that going on
now, but there's there's.
(39:09):
There's an area where I wishthese people wouldn't know, like
why they're so good at it.
I think there's a geneticmemory installed.
Yeah like you look at me, likeoh yeah, you know I can do that
and they just naturally I'm likeI would have.
I Could never see it.
I'm sure they see some thingsthat I do that way, but I have a
lot of respect for these guysbecause you don't ever know.
Maybe five, six, sevengenerations ago they were
(39:32):
building the pyramids yeah, or Idon't.
Or maybe the four generationsago they helped build El Palacio
de Villas Artes or somethinglike that in Mexico City.
You never know.
And these guys are.
These guys are phenomenal and Ihave a lot of respect for them.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
What's fascinating is how close Galveston is to
Mexico geographically but howfar away it seems in a lot of
ways.
You know there is.
There is a connection, ofcourse architecture, the
politics over the past 200 years, like how I don't know it seems
there still seems like there'sa disconnect in some ways.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Well, there, there, a lot of these stuff's are in
parallel and this is how I foundout they ran parallel when I
was.
Again, I'm back to Mexico Citywhen I was in Mexico City.
I'm going to the top of theback and all of a sudden I turn
around.
I was like that picture looksfamiliar and like why would a
picture look familiar?
And you know 700, 800 miles?
That way Was a picture Bernardode Galvez, oh yeah, hanging in
(40:26):
the Castillo de Chapultepec, andI'm like, well, the island
where I'm from is named afterthis guy.
And now I'm seeing the originalpicture because you had a lot
to do with Chapultepec.
A lot to do with it, and Icouldn't spit out the history
like you do.
You're the pro at that, but youyou'll see a lot of
similarities, because they'removing, they're shifting, so a
(40:47):
lot of the restoration projectsare very similar to here.
So to me, to me, I think thatit's all correlated together, I
think yeah, spanish architecture.
Speaker 2 (40:57):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's fascinating.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
It is, it is very fast, dude.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
I love it.
I could talk to you for hours.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
It's, it's hard.
Unfortunately, this kind ofstuff when I was growing up was
deemed Nerdy or uncool orsomething like that, and there's
so many people that are nowEngaging in it that I love what
you know.
People like your age, peopletalk about a lot about the
Millennials.
Millennials are very Educatedand they've got great parameters
(41:26):
.
They organize really well andyou got guys like you that are
actually pushing forpreservation, digging stuff out,
making Uncomfortableconversation a little more
comfortable.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
Absolutely.
Yeah, that's the goal.
Yeah, that is the goal.
That's, that's progress, in myopinion.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
Yeah, a lot of people don't like it, but it's part of
it.
Yeah if you don't, if you don'thave progress, you don't have
evolution, you're just gonna die.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
That's it.
Yeah, no fall for die.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
That's it period, absolutely, but well one.
Thank you so much for coming intoday.
This is 45 minutes already.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Yes, but no, thank you.
Great spaceman, every time thatI talk to somebody, I'm like I
know that guy you're, I'mcertainly got you.
I'm like fascinated about whatyou do and I'm always like
telling my, my friends like youshould really listen to some of
the podcast because they'reshort and they're very
Information.
They have a lot of informationin them.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
Well, thank you, I really appreciate that because
word of mouth is the way thingsTravel, especially in Galveston
too.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
So I've seen you go from three likes on a post of
7,000 or something.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
It's, it's insane, it blows my mind.
It really is.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Congratulations You're doing a good job.
I'm glad somebody took it uponthemselves to do this.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
Thanks, man.
It was a kind of a dream Tokind of see what would happen.
An experiment, becauseeverything that I do, every,
every post that we have, is anexperiment, just to see if it'll
work.
See if it works, you know, whatcan we improve every time?
To make it better, make itreach more people, at least make
it more digestible andunderstandable.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
Okay.
So question for you like whatwas it that one day you got up
You're like I think I'm gonna doa post or a podcast or
something.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
It was a culmination of a few different things.
So, I was listening to podcastsevery day probably two or three
a day Because I was driving toand from Houston every day and
even the jobs I had previouslyto commuting to and from Houston
.
I would be working at the port,on a dock, on a ship sometimes
and just have headphones andlisten to podcasts, depending on
the work I was doing, and Iwould mainly listen to history
(43:20):
podcasts.
So when I moved back here in2018, I was fascinated by the
history.
It always been, but I reallygot to dive into it, living in
the downtown area and startedreading all the historical
markers and I think I had justhit the right age where I cared
about history, because previousto that, I'm like, I'm working
(43:40):
you know, it was just yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I just kind of startedputting different pieces of
context, different pieces ofinformation together here in
Galveston, like, oh wait, thisis significant in New York, or
this is significant to Texashistory, or to why Texas was
founded in the first place.
You know things like that.
And then I started a littlerunning tour.
(44:02):
And during the middle of thepandemic I was like I'm just
gonna create an audio guide formy running tour as either like
promo or just to createsomething.
Honestly, I was just bored, hadnothing else going on and when
I started creating the audio itjust started, just started
growing.
And then I was like why don't Iinterview the people who
actually know what they'retalking about, you know when?
it comes to you know why am I,why should I be the one to sit
(44:25):
up here and talk about how theypreserve buildings, how you do
restoration?
Why would I do that?
I have no information besideswhat I would read on Wikipedia,
so it just made sense to sitdown with people who really know
what they're talking about.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
You've had a great success.
I call it, whether it'sfinancial or, but I mean there's
a lot of people listening nowand I think that this is what
you're the caveat of, what theisland needed.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
Well, thanks, I appreciate that, and what's cool
about it is, even if I quittomorrow, everything that we do
and discuss is evergreen for themost part.
For the most part, like a lotof the short little audio guys I
do or the podcast it's allhistory based.
So, you can listen to it 20years from now and it's still
relevant.
So that's kind of the idea.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
So your business is a .
You would consider it a COVIDbaby.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
Yeah, it's a COVID baby.
Yeah, it's a COVID baby.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
A lot of people have COVID.
I have two COVID babies.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
I got a real one and this.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
so yeah, you didn't lose any time, did you?
No?
No, we're talking to you, man.
You didn't tell me to need meback over here.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
Let me know For sure man for sure, I think I need
these brickworked on actually.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
I'll give you something a little more rough
than this.
This is amazing.
Did you get it out of thebuilding here in Gallister, or
did you just?
Speaker 2 (45:33):
order it.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
No, the picture.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
This?
No, it's.
I just got on Amazon Reallyyeah, Because the sizes are odd.
Speaker 1 (45:39):
I'm sorry.
If you ever go to, I think thatone of the ones that has the
coolest bricks is the ClarkCourt building.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
If you ever get to go and sneak on the backside where
the parking lot is at.
Yeah man, I don't know if itwas just scraps or if there was
a fire.
You know, these buildings, alot of these buildings, caught
on fire, oh yeah, and they justtook whatever fell down and they
put it back on the walls.
There's just a lot of characteron those walls.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
Yeah, you know, that's something I didn't ask.
You is like I'm sure you seehow buildings they would build
buildings out of bricks theyjust had laying around whether
it was after a fire, after ahurricane, and they're like oh
well, we got a 10,000 bricksthere, we got 50,000 bricks
there, we got 30,000 over here,we got enough to build this
building.
And I'm sure you see that yousee it all you got red, you got
brown, you got all thesedifferent mixes.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
I guess one of my not my punch lines is one of the
things that I say is there's aand I used this before there's a
thing called more in Mexico andI'm very proud of where I'm
from, so that's why I always usethat and more.
It takes about 40 ingredientsand when you marry it all
together it's weird.
It takes like chocolate andcacao and peanuts and like seven
(46:48):
different peppers.
When you marry it all together,you're like holy crap, it's a
fusion.
And you see some of these wallsup.
You're like man, those brickswere from Europe, these bricks
are from Chicago, these bricksare from a fire, and they marry
them all together and they work.
And the same thing with thepeople on the island.
You drive to the West and youhave billionaires.
You have people in thisbuilding that are billionaires,
(47:11):
and then you have some guy thatmakes $13 an hour and we all get
along.
This should be, I think shouldbe a case study.
I agree For how the rest of thecountry should be ran, because,
whether it's status, its name,whatever, this island seems to
get along really well.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
I agree.
I could not agree more man one.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
thank you so much, man.
This is awesome Pleasure man.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
Yeah, well, we're gonna have you back sometime
soon, I hope so.
Thanks, man, I appreciate it.
So what do I do?
Just walk away?
I'll fade to black on that.
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