February 28, 2025 • 44 mins
Live Call/Text (815) 669-9942 - Voices Cary Illinois Live with Randy Scott February 27th 2025
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
The next Metra train approaching your station will be a Metra Express train and will not stop.
(00:27):
Welcome to Voices Carry Live. My name is Randy Scott. Thank you for joining me this evening.
We are here broadcasting to you live from the beautiful village of Carry, Illinois.
This is an independent venture podcast of mine to try to bring the conversation from social media to talking with your neighbor.
And we can have a little bit of both, I think, but I think there's a happy medium there.
(00:52):
And if you watch regularly, which the viewing hours, I see that there are a lot of you viewing and I'm trying to get more engagement.
I want to hear what you have to say about Carry. So that's why I'm doing this regular nine o'clock broadcast to hear what you have to say.
You can call in and ask about anything. You can sound off about anything you want.
(01:18):
And if you like I said, if you tune in regularly, you hear me say all the time, social media to talking with your neighbor.
And that's not that's that's not just a spiel. That's not just a I'm not giving you lip service.
That's actually what I firmly believe in. I think we need more of that.
(01:40):
I think once we got away from talking with our neighbor and having gathering points just to where we all talk together,
I think one of the biggest things that brought that brings people together, at least when I was younger, was sport sporting events.
Like when you have kids and you have a sporting event, you kind of all talk.
(02:06):
But now we have something called cell phones and we don't necessarily do that a lot.
And I see like a lot of good things happening on a national scale to where I don't want to just wait 20 years for that to trickle down to a local level.
(02:27):
And when I say national scale, I mean like like a mass awakening of like, hey, we need to start paying attention to this stuff.
I think I heard somewhere yesterday that if if the if the checks stop coming into the state, we have a month of operating abilities.
(02:51):
And me with my firefighting background, I like to keep the cupboards full.
And I think that's something that everybody can sign on to.
I'm a big fan of having that generac generator, metaphorical generator, always at the ready with the green light on it to be ready for whatever happens.
(03:13):
You know, it could be like a severe weather or or whatever to where we have the ability to operate.
And I think it's kind of clear.
If you look at if you look at how many accidents have happened at that Crystal Street 14 in West Main and the inaction.
(03:39):
And that's something I'm going to dive into is start poking around with with IDOT and not necessarily to come after IDOT.
I'm sure there it comes back to you can only do as much as the people allow you to do.
And if there's funds going other places, you can't you can't focus on stuff that directly affects it.
(04:02):
And that's not only at a local level, that's at a state level, too.
So I want to start poking around and see what the holdup is to where is it necessarily just you know,
my understanding is that if you if this whole podcast is not going to be about that intersection, but it's just an example of we can't necessarily rely on other people other than you know,
(04:38):
we need to position our town to our our village to where we're strong spiritually, we're strong financially, we're strong.
You know, we take pride in and our children and our streets.
And when I say streets, it's not just paving, it's you know, the safety of our streets, having the ability to tell your kids, hey, you can maybe go a little farther this time
(05:16):
and be confident that that strong police force that we have and that strong fire department that we have is able to do their job and not afraid to necessarily get out of the car and investigate something.
(05:37):
Just because they think that oh, they're it could you imagine how hard it is to see like on a national level, like some of the backing, like we just need to to back them and to let them know that we have their back for the sake of our residents and our children.
(06:03):
And that that's powerful.
But sends it sends a strong message.
And maybe doesn't happen overnight but with the right positioning and the right messaging and the right morale.
It's, it's powerful, and that equates into stronger streets.
(06:24):
But yeah, you can't really rely on external forces to always be there. So that's why I keep the cupboards full.
And, you know, that's something I want to dive into specifically with that intersection is to just see if I dot had any plans.
And to see how many formal requests have been sent by us. And to see what sort of responses were given.
(06:55):
Last show, the last three shows were kind of like really research intensive.
I, I, they're, they're lengthy.
And they're just as entertaining as this one is going right now.
But there's a there's a lot of good nuggets in there to where I'm trying to bring to you by going through documents by going through public meetings and just to try to unravel all that to where it's digestible for somebody that is like you at home is just as busy as I am.
(07:34):
To where you can be involved with your community. And I that's something I really look forward to is making it more or making it less intimidating to be involved and I think a lot of that goes away.
When you stop
(07:57):
running.
When you start listening to your residents instead of big banks or private partnerships or other things.
That, that kind of seamlessly happens, but then if you also have somebody in there that is willing to sit alone in a warehouse and set up a studio and wanted want to try to bridge this gap, I think, and then also have that backing of the community of like wanting to have that for their village.
(08:34):
It's, I see great things happening.
The last three shows were kind of really intensive to put together, and to bring to you so we went over like a budget workshop.
And I showed you, there was a lot of good things in there like about street and roadway conditions.
(09:03):
And we also did a lot of fun things too.
Like we talked about Veterans Park.
And there was one specific, we talked about the old carry sign.
There's something about that old carry sign that I like and then we went through a few postcards
(09:26):
from the area.
One thing I wanted to tap into was, I think we can learn a lot from our past. I think we have the blessing of, if you're a parent, and that kind of guarantees that you're of a certain age to where, or just if you're, if you're a grandparent, it kind of guarantees that you've had that life
(09:52):
experience.
There's something called tribal knowledge. Like, and if we don't storytell, and if we don't share stories of our past, they disappear. And, and what better way to control the destiny of, of your future than to make history disappear, which is what we've seen quite a lot of.
(10:14):
And Crystal Lake has a really robust historical society of Crystal Lake, and they kind of provide a little bit of resistance when they start to see their city kind of start tinkering around with stuff that might be of, of, of note to where they get, it gets their attention, and then they provide a little bit of resistance
(10:39):
to try to keep that history. And it's quite effective. And we don't have that. We don't have that sort of that pushback to where we want to keep the history alive, and not keep our both our feet planted in it, to where we were afraid of progress, but we want to still respect it to where
(11:00):
we're not just turning over a ball of rubber bands and high tension, high stress cell phones, laptops, and who knows what the future has in store for us for that.
To respect the past, like there's, I remember going to Circuit City to buy my own, my first cell phone and Mike, my kids are growing up with, like they, we've introduced them into the world, and just say hey watch, you can watch Bluey on this thing.
(11:39):
And we're never going to have that experience to remember that first time going in the Circuit City in Crystal Lake to buy their first cell phone and kind of subconsciously understanding that this is progress.
And then you get to see that roll out over the course of your life.
(12:00):
It's just going to be dumped on them.
And it really falls on your parents' shoulders, the parents' shoulders, to kind of introduce that to them and to show that there's a lot of good progress going on right now, but it's not as visual, it's not as going from a StarTac cell phone to an iPhone.
(12:27):
And it's really going to, for our future generations, it's going to be more of an inward looking thing to know that progress and be able to see it.
And that's why I wanted to just, instead of having like a clean cut show for you with a whole bunch of fun graphs and papers.
(12:57):
I wanted to take a stroll down memory lane with you and I have this book, it's called, Meet Me by the Fountain.
I forgot who wrote it, but it's a book about the old mall culture.
(13:18):
We used to have malls in pretty much within a 15-20 mile driving distance of any populated town.
And there was one in Crystal Lake called Crystal Point Mall.
And the book touched on, it's called Meet Me by the Fountain, and it's about how we used to all gather at the mall.
(13:41):
And now it's kind of all isolated.
You have, literally, a great example is Crystal Point Mall.
They just cut, they sectioned off the mall, and now it's stores.
So you could literally just go in to Five Below in Crystal Lake or Coles and then walk out.
(14:05):
And there's no running into your neighbor.
There's no, I mean, you might, but the likelihood has gone down a lot.
And I want to try to tap into that.
I want to try to maybe, you know, our Kerry Commons is a little rough.
(14:26):
And even if you look at Algonquin Commons, it's kind of cold.
There's no, it takes a conscious effort to try to make something to where you want to naturally come and talk together and have conversations.
(14:54):
One really good example of this, which I saw as like forward-looking, was Chili's, of all places.
Chili's in Crystal Lake.
They did a remodel during COVID.
(15:15):
And during COVID, everybody was turning up all these plexiglass things and everybody was building high between booths and stuff.
And they did the exact opposite.
They put, they took down the barrier and they made it low.
And I think somebody might have been at the wheel that gets it and has, and then knows where things are going.
(15:43):
Because they know that people are going to want to never experience that again.
They're going to want to talk with each other.
They're going to want to meet new people.
And they're like, okay, let's not skate to where the puck is.
Let's go, let's skate to where the puck is going to be.
And I think that's why they lowered literally every booth.
(16:04):
And I saw that and it made me think, I was like, this is where it's going.
Like, we're going to be building shopping malls again.
It's just like fashion.
It goes in circles.
And I want to have that.
It doesn't mean that we need to build a shopping mall in Cary.
It just means that we need to give some care and some TLC and welcome the fact.
(16:31):
And it shouldn't just be about, let's put a bar up here and call it that.
It shouldn't just be around alcohol.
It should be like we have a skate park.
It should be like to where it's welcoming for everybody.
(16:53):
Pretty much every one of our strip centers has some sort of, I'll just say, like a vice shop.
And one of the reasons why we don't see a lot of national retailers come into Cary is
(17:14):
because a lot of national retailers have brand standards.
And I'm not saying that all of these vice shops, when I say vice, I mean like addiction,
things that you're addicted to and you need to go in there to get.
A lot of brand standards of national brands include not being adjacent or in the same shopping center as those.
(17:47):
And quite literally, every one of our shopping centers now or at one point had one of these vice centers in it.
So we just we don't need to go in and be like, hey, you got to leave because, you know,
just because it's an addiction place like that, it doesn't mean that it's with ill intention.
(18:14):
It's like still probably a family ran business.
But we just need to encourage that mentality of togetherness and then eventually everything else will follow.
And it'll be less.
(18:38):
It'll be to where we can congregate and talk together and meet me by the fountain pretty much.
So I wanted to show a video from Crystal Point Mall, and I believe it's from the 70s.
(19:07):
And this is before you can always you can always notice that it goes back to like what our kids will never experience.
Like now, if you videotape somebody, they're completely offended.
They're like, get that away from me.
I don't want anything to do that the majority of the time.
(19:29):
And in here, this was pre this was before YouTube.
This was before cell phones.
And you'll see the reactions.
And it's it's a different reaction.
It's more of a special reaction.
You might have seen this like the old video of it was some street in another country.
(19:55):
But it was very early on.
It was like early 1900s before anybody or late 1800s.
And somebody had a video camera and everybody's properly dressed in like vests and suits.
And they're all looking at the camera.
(20:19):
Some are trying to figure it out.
Some are smiling and goofing off.
And now we've just become acclimated to technology and jaded by it to where it's going to take a conscious effort to try to not necessarily walk it back and bring everything back in time,
(20:47):
but to just have that sense of community again to where we don't live. I can't I can't tell you how many times I was firefighting and I would go on.
I would go on a call and it'd be a call for a fall.
And they didn't want to be transported.
(21:09):
So we're like, hey, do you have a neighbor? Do you have family that like that lives close that can come stay with you or come check on you?
And they're like, no. Do you have a neighbor that can come say hi to with you or check in on you?
No. And then I find out that they've lived that that's addressed like their entire life and they know no neighbors.
(21:37):
That's that was probably 80 percent of the time that that's happened to where if we ask for somebody to stay with them or come check on them, they didn't know any neighbors.
So it's not just lip service. I'm trying. I'm trying here.
(22:06):
Hold this and.
(22:36):
All right.
Give me one second.
(22:59):
And we'll watch this together and go down memory lane together.
Of course, it's working seamlessly.
(23:31):
And the phone lines are open text messaging is open. So if you have something that you want to talk about or you want me to research or dive into or if you just.
Want to sound off.
(24:03):
Let's pull it in.
There is music. Hold on.
(24:33):
I feel like the crystal like strip.
This is crystal point.
Can you see Minnesota fabrics.
(24:54):
Let's go in the ball and fail. Okay.
We're going to go in the mall and film the shops.
Here we are.
We finally made it.
(25:25):
Yeah. Yeah.
We're scouting for the my dad's a producer.
We're seeing where we should film the movie.
Hey, how's it going?
And would you like to try these on?
(25:48):
Lovely.
You're not good looking.
It's the game already.
Game art has everything from food.
(26:09):
And syrup.
And yes, whatever it is.
Yeah, we finally into the mall area.
What a lovely couple.
Little boy.
(26:32):
Center.
Hi.
What type of bird are you interested in?
I'm interested in the bird.
Bird are messy.
He just loves it in there.
Look at him.
Let's go scuba diving.
(27:04):
Yeah.
Okay.
Here we have our Joseph Spee shopper.
He's found.
What's it now?
Here we have our faithful.
This is not for me.
(27:25):
Do you like to model for your Joseph Spee zone?
Why are you doing this?
I don't like pictures.
Are you kidding?
I'm not.
That's perfect.
You didn't say hi.
(27:46):
You gather the cards and connect them together.
Sort of like trains.
And then you proceed them over to that side of the building.
Are your hours good?
No, they suck.
Do you take your money right from the work into the bank?
Yeah, every time.
I'm not a car truck.
Okay.
Thank you.
(28:08):
Thank you for shopping a jewel.
There we have it.
Found a new toy.
Don't you just hate it when you get those cards
and have those wobbly wheels?
Here's the aisle I usually normally get first
(28:29):
because this is where all the bargains are.
I need some cat food.
There we go.
Make sure you get the magnetic door.
Mike, slow down.
Help me looking.
(28:50):
I don't know.
The guy's in the window.
Do you need durable food?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Look at this.
He's touching.
(29:20):
Pestroyer.
Destroyer.
Come on.
Hello?
Okay, I'll call him right away.
You gotta call someone when you place up.
Marlboro.
(29:44):
Look at those wheels.
Oh, no.
You're a little son.
(30:09):
Always the cash register open.
Get out of here.
Oh, beautiful.
You guys are great.
Hello.
Hi.
Aw, I feel shy.
(30:31):
Emily, keep that fella.
It's so much less.
X-A-V-A-Y-R-E.
Oh, yes?
Oh, Zare?
Oh, I couldn't live without it.
I just could not live without Zare.
I mean, all my family shops here,
and it's just been a comfort to our family, you know,
that Zare has been with us throughout the years of shopping
(30:54):
and the deal.
What?
Oh, time's up.
Okay.
I couldn't live without it.
And then the hijinks continues.
I think that kid is undiscovered talent.
That's comedy that you don't really see anymore.
Like, that was like cutting edge of what he was doing there,
of like he was showing off, but it was funny.
(31:21):
And now everything is just so commonplace with cell phones
and YouTube.
It's like our generations are going to be born into this,
and they're going to have a hard time navigating it if us
as not only parents, but in the way that we operate a village
(31:46):
to where if it's not, I often say like if we don't conduct
ourselves outside of school, like how we expect our kids
to conduct themselves while they're at school,
and when I say that, I mean conducting ourselves
outside of school, like what we allow into our town,
(32:10):
what we accept, they're going to have a hard time.
And I want to create that atmosphere of togetherness.
It's not for everybody.
I understand that.
But it's something that is worth a shot for.
(32:34):
I view it as an obligation to at least strive for and try for.
And I see an opportunity to do it,
and that's why I'm here speaking with you.
(32:55):
And I want to have, it's really, it's a layered issue,
but it's not just like when you come in,
I think most of us think as village officials as just,
(33:25):
it's not all spreadsheets.
You need to see the people in the spreadsheets.
And I look forward to doing that and having fun with that,
(33:46):
to where we look after our own and make sure we're all strong,
safe, and inspired.
I think inspired is probably the biggest word there for me.
(34:09):
It's like, it's a way to get to where you're excited.
Like as soon as you become self-aware of your surroundings,
(34:36):
that's the point in life where I'm at right now.
But as soon as you become, I'm running out of runway with my oldest,
to where when she gets old enough to realize that, yeah.
(35:06):
You go to Jewel and when she stops seeing the car toys,
and she starts being subject to the very well-orchestrated subliminal
and product placement of alcohol, tobacco, vaping,
(35:31):
and not just in Jewel, but just everywhere, video gambling,
and the devil's lettuce, you're not operating as you expect them to.
(35:52):
You're putting that glass ceiling really low to where,
I always run it back to like, you,
I think the word village to me is just really tribal to me.
(36:22):
Like I mentioned that earlier, tribal knowledge.
And tribal knowledge means that it's used in business a lot,
and maybe the best way to think of it is like KFC's secret recipe,
11 Herbs and Spices, that would be considered tribal knowledge,
because only that tribe of KFC knows that.
(36:51):
So if you don't story tell, they're not going to appreciate that.
So if we, and the word village to me, I run it all the way back as like this,
and it's not just about how much money can we spend on completely dismantling
(37:16):
what this place used to be, to just keep the clipboard warriors happy
that are trying to dictate where literally every one of our towns go to,
that are like in the US, like you have to do this, you have to do that.
(37:40):
Those are strong forces.
And that's one of the advantages we have is a village is like a,
I run it back all the way to that tribal knowledge,
like a village is a powerful word.
And when everybody comes together and they're on the same sheet of music,
(38:04):
that's a powerful thing to have, to where, for instance,
I showed this, I unveiled this a while ago.
I bought this from a place in Cary, and it's for putting a CO2 cartridge in.
(38:31):
You have two things in here.
You put the CO2 cartridge in, you twist it all the way up,
and then the CO2 comes out the top, and it's essentially laughing gas,
and you're supposed to, yeah.
So I bought that for some of the reasons why I keep letters from the past,
(38:57):
kind of like from the home rule insert and the electrical aggregation.
We know what's best for your household.
We're going to switch you.
Hopefully you don't notice and switch back.
And then ultimately your prices get raised because the fees,
the electrical price stays the same, but the fees go up over time.
(39:21):
And this was the change from that purchase.
I purchased it with cash because I didn't want to use a credit card.
And the change, I keep with it because this shall change one day.
(39:43):
And that's, and this is just, you know, this doesn't fall on the shoulders
of that shop owner, that falls on the shoulders of that the village allowed this,
(40:04):
and not just with rules and laws, just that our village screamed so loud
that it wasn't strong enough that they thought that this was okay to bring in.
So I keep the change from it because it's going to change and with your help.
(40:28):
So if you parallel with any of my thinkings and thoughts here today,
I ask you to start talking with your neighbor, bring up this podcast,
bring up some talking points, send a text message in,
you can always call and leave a voicemail or email me at voicescarry at proton.me.
(40:49):
And I broadcast this every day at 9, every weekday at 9.
So to give everybody an opportunity, I'll be touching on other subjects,
but the show gets more interesting when people call in.
So I'll keep doing it until that happens.
And I'm sure as time goes on, there'll be more.
(41:10):
But I can't wait to get the conversation started.
So thank you for joining me today.
And you know what?
I would love to stop sitting like Larry King and just talking.
I would love to have some dialogue.
I would love to answer questions.
(41:31):
I would love to have laughs and have fun.
But this, we got some work to do.
So I'm OK with this show being how it is now.
I don't need to knock on any doors of other podcasts or anything like that.
(41:56):
I need to do my work here.
And even if it means me sitting like Larry King, our next caller.
So talk with your neighbor, talk with any groups you have,
let them know what I'm trying to do here, and let's do it.
(42:19):
Thank you for joining me this evening.
Have a wonderful night.
And I will see you tomorrow on Voices Carry Live at 9 o'clock.
Have a wonderful evening.
You're confirmed at T minus 10 seconds.
(42:43):
Reach for the sky.
Huh?
This town ain't big enough for the two of us.
What?
Somebody's poisoned the water hole.
It's busted.
Who are you calling busted, Buster?
That's right.
I'm talking to you, Sid Phillips.
(43:05):
We don't like being blown up, Sid.
Or smashed or ripped apart.
We?
That's right.
Your toys.
Mama.
(43:28):
Mama.
Mama.
Now, you must take good care of your toys.
(43:50):
Because if you don't, we'll find out, Sid.
Your toys can see everything.
Go play nice.
The next Metra train approaching your station will be a Metra Express train and will not stop.
(00:27):
Welcome to Voices Carry Live. My name is Randy Scott. Thank you for joining me this evening.
We are here broadcasting to you live from the beautiful village of Carry, Illinois.
This is an independent venture podcast of mine to try to bring the conversation from social media to talking with your neighbor.
And we can have a little bit of both, I think, but I think there's a happy medium there.
(00:52):
And if you watch regularly, which the viewing hours, I see that there are a lot of you viewing and I'm trying to get more engagement.
I want to hear what you have to say about Carry. So that's why I'm doing this regular nine o'clock broadcast to hear what you have to say.
You can call in and ask about anything. You can sound off about anything you want.
(01:18):
And if you like I said, if you tune in regularly, you hear me say all the time, social media to talking with your neighbor.
And that's not that's that's not just a spiel. That's not just a I'm not giving you lip service.
That's actually what I firmly believe in. I think we need more of that.
(01:40):
I think once we got away from talking with our neighbor and having gathering points just to where we all talk together,
I think one of the biggest things that brought that brings people together, at least when I was younger, was sport sporting events.
Like when you have kids and you have a sporting event, you kind of all talk.
(02:06):
But now we have something called cell phones and we don't necessarily do that a lot.
And I see like a lot of good things happening on a national scale to where I don't want to just wait 20 years for that to trickle down to a local level.
(02:27):
And when I say national scale, I mean like like a mass awakening of like, hey, we need to start paying attention to this stuff.
I think I heard somewhere yesterday that if if the if the checks stop coming into the state, we have a month of operating abilities.
(02:51):
And me with my firefighting background, I like to keep the cupboards full.
And I think that's something that everybody can sign on to.
I'm a big fan of having that generac generator, metaphorical generator, always at the ready with the green light on it to be ready for whatever happens.
(03:13):
You know, it could be like a severe weather or or whatever to where we have the ability to operate.
And I think it's kind of clear.
If you look at if you look at how many accidents have happened at that Crystal Street 14 in West Main and the inaction.
(03:39):
And that's something I'm going to dive into is start poking around with with IDOT and not necessarily to come after IDOT.
I'm sure there it comes back to you can only do as much as the people allow you to do.
And if there's funds going other places, you can't you can't focus on stuff that directly affects it.
(04:02):
And that's not only at a local level, that's at a state level, too.
So I want to start poking around and see what the holdup is to where is it necessarily just you know,
my understanding is that if you if this whole podcast is not going to be about that intersection, but it's just an example of we can't necessarily rely on other people other than you know,
(04:38):
we need to position our town to our our village to where we're strong spiritually, we're strong financially, we're strong.
You know, we take pride in and our children and our streets.
And when I say streets, it's not just paving, it's you know, the safety of our streets, having the ability to tell your kids, hey, you can maybe go a little farther this time
(05:16):
and be confident that that strong police force that we have and that strong fire department that we have is able to do their job and not afraid to necessarily get out of the car and investigate something.
(05:37):
Just because they think that oh, they're it could you imagine how hard it is to see like on a national level, like some of the backing, like we just need to to back them and to let them know that we have their back for the sake of our residents and our children.
(06:03):
And that that's powerful.
But sends it sends a strong message.
And maybe doesn't happen overnight but with the right positioning and the right messaging and the right morale.
It's, it's powerful, and that equates into stronger streets.
(06:24):
But yeah, you can't really rely on external forces to always be there. So that's why I keep the cupboards full.
And, you know, that's something I want to dive into specifically with that intersection is to just see if I dot had any plans.
And to see how many formal requests have been sent by us. And to see what sort of responses were given.
(06:55):
Last show, the last three shows were kind of like really research intensive.
I, I, they're, they're lengthy.
And they're just as entertaining as this one is going right now.
But there's a there's a lot of good nuggets in there to where I'm trying to bring to you by going through documents by going through public meetings and just to try to unravel all that to where it's digestible for somebody that is like you at home is just as busy as I am.
(07:34):
To where you can be involved with your community. And I that's something I really look forward to is making it more or making it less intimidating to be involved and I think a lot of that goes away.
When you stop
(07:57):
running.
When you start listening to your residents instead of big banks or private partnerships or other things.
That, that kind of seamlessly happens, but then if you also have somebody in there that is willing to sit alone in a warehouse and set up a studio and wanted want to try to bridge this gap, I think, and then also have that backing of the community of like wanting to have that for their village.
(08:34):
It's, I see great things happening.
The last three shows were kind of really intensive to put together, and to bring to you so we went over like a budget workshop.
And I showed you, there was a lot of good things in there like about street and roadway conditions.
(09:03):
And we also did a lot of fun things too.
Like we talked about Veterans Park.
And there was one specific, we talked about the old carry sign.
There's something about that old carry sign that I like and then we went through a few postcards
(09:26):
from the area.
One thing I wanted to tap into was, I think we can learn a lot from our past. I think we have the blessing of, if you're a parent, and that kind of guarantees that you're of a certain age to where, or just if you're, if you're a grandparent, it kind of guarantees that you've had that life
(09:52):
experience.
There's something called tribal knowledge. Like, and if we don't storytell, and if we don't share stories of our past, they disappear. And, and what better way to control the destiny of, of your future than to make history disappear, which is what we've seen quite a lot of.
(10:14):
And Crystal Lake has a really robust historical society of Crystal Lake, and they kind of provide a little bit of resistance when they start to see their city kind of start tinkering around with stuff that might be of, of, of note to where they get, it gets their attention, and then they provide a little bit of resistance
(10:39):
to try to keep that history. And it's quite effective. And we don't have that. We don't have that sort of that pushback to where we want to keep the history alive, and not keep our both our feet planted in it, to where we were afraid of progress, but we want to still respect it to where
(11:00):
we're not just turning over a ball of rubber bands and high tension, high stress cell phones, laptops, and who knows what the future has in store for us for that.
To respect the past, like there's, I remember going to Circuit City to buy my own, my first cell phone and Mike, my kids are growing up with, like they, we've introduced them into the world, and just say hey watch, you can watch Bluey on this thing.
(11:39):
And we're never going to have that experience to remember that first time going in the Circuit City in Crystal Lake to buy their first cell phone and kind of subconsciously understanding that this is progress.
And then you get to see that roll out over the course of your life.
(12:00):
It's just going to be dumped on them.
And it really falls on your parents' shoulders, the parents' shoulders, to kind of introduce that to them and to show that there's a lot of good progress going on right now, but it's not as visual, it's not as going from a StarTac cell phone to an iPhone.
(12:27):
And it's really going to, for our future generations, it's going to be more of an inward looking thing to know that progress and be able to see it.
And that's why I wanted to just, instead of having like a clean cut show for you with a whole bunch of fun graphs and papers.
(12:57):
I wanted to take a stroll down memory lane with you and I have this book, it's called, Meet Me by the Fountain.
I forgot who wrote it, but it's a book about the old mall culture.
(13:18):
We used to have malls in pretty much within a 15-20 mile driving distance of any populated town.
And there was one in Crystal Lake called Crystal Point Mall.
And the book touched on, it's called Meet Me by the Fountain, and it's about how we used to all gather at the mall.
(13:41):
And now it's kind of all isolated.
You have, literally, a great example is Crystal Point Mall.
They just cut, they sectioned off the mall, and now it's stores.
So you could literally just go in to Five Below in Crystal Lake or Coles and then walk out.
(14:05):
And there's no running into your neighbor.
There's no, I mean, you might, but the likelihood has gone down a lot.
And I want to try to tap into that.
I want to try to maybe, you know, our Kerry Commons is a little rough.
(14:26):
And even if you look at Algonquin Commons, it's kind of cold.
There's no, it takes a conscious effort to try to make something to where you want to naturally come and talk together and have conversations.
(14:54):
One really good example of this, which I saw as like forward-looking, was Chili's, of all places.
Chili's in Crystal Lake.
They did a remodel during COVID.
(15:15):
And during COVID, everybody was turning up all these plexiglass things and everybody was building high between booths and stuff.
And they did the exact opposite.
They put, they took down the barrier and they made it low.
And I think somebody might have been at the wheel that gets it and has, and then knows where things are going.
(15:43):
Because they know that people are going to want to never experience that again.
They're going to want to talk with each other.
They're going to want to meet new people.
And they're like, okay, let's not skate to where the puck is.
Let's go, let's skate to where the puck is going to be.
And I think that's why they lowered literally every booth.
(16:04):
And I saw that and it made me think, I was like, this is where it's going.
Like, we're going to be building shopping malls again.
It's just like fashion.
It goes in circles.
And I want to have that.
It doesn't mean that we need to build a shopping mall in Cary.
It just means that we need to give some care and some TLC and welcome the fact.
(16:31):
And it shouldn't just be about, let's put a bar up here and call it that.
It shouldn't just be around alcohol.
It should be like we have a skate park.
It should be like to where it's welcoming for everybody.
(16:53):
Pretty much every one of our strip centers has some sort of, I'll just say, like a vice shop.
And one of the reasons why we don't see a lot of national retailers come into Cary is
(17:14):
because a lot of national retailers have brand standards.
And I'm not saying that all of these vice shops, when I say vice, I mean like addiction,
things that you're addicted to and you need to go in there to get.
A lot of brand standards of national brands include not being adjacent or in the same shopping center as those.
(17:47):
And quite literally, every one of our shopping centers now or at one point had one of these vice centers in it.
So we just we don't need to go in and be like, hey, you got to leave because, you know,
just because it's an addiction place like that, it doesn't mean that it's with ill intention.
(18:14):
It's like still probably a family ran business.
But we just need to encourage that mentality of togetherness and then eventually everything else will follow.
And it'll be less.
(18:38):
It'll be to where we can congregate and talk together and meet me by the fountain pretty much.
So I wanted to show a video from Crystal Point Mall, and I believe it's from the 70s.
(19:07):
And this is before you can always you can always notice that it goes back to like what our kids will never experience.
Like now, if you videotape somebody, they're completely offended.
They're like, get that away from me.
I don't want anything to do that the majority of the time.
(19:29):
And in here, this was pre this was before YouTube.
This was before cell phones.
And you'll see the reactions.
And it's it's a different reaction.
It's more of a special reaction.
You might have seen this like the old video of it was some street in another country.
(19:55):
But it was very early on.
It was like early 1900s before anybody or late 1800s.
And somebody had a video camera and everybody's properly dressed in like vests and suits.
And they're all looking at the camera.
(20:19):
Some are trying to figure it out.
Some are smiling and goofing off.
And now we've just become acclimated to technology and jaded by it to where it's going to take a conscious effort to try to not necessarily walk it back and bring everything back in time,
(20:47):
but to just have that sense of community again to where we don't live. I can't I can't tell you how many times I was firefighting and I would go on.
I would go on a call and it'd be a call for a fall.
And they didn't want to be transported.
(21:09):
So we're like, hey, do you have a neighbor? Do you have family that like that lives close that can come stay with you or come check on you?
And they're like, no. Do you have a neighbor that can come say hi to with you or check in on you?
No. And then I find out that they've lived that that's addressed like their entire life and they know no neighbors.
(21:37):
That's that was probably 80 percent of the time that that's happened to where if we ask for somebody to stay with them or come check on them, they didn't know any neighbors.
So it's not just lip service. I'm trying. I'm trying here.
(22:06):
Hold this and.
(22:36):
All right.
Give me one second.
(22:59):
And we'll watch this together and go down memory lane together.
Of course, it's working seamlessly.
(23:31):
And the phone lines are open text messaging is open. So if you have something that you want to talk about or you want me to research or dive into or if you just.
Want to sound off.
(24:03):
Let's pull it in.
There is music. Hold on.
(24:33):
I feel like the crystal like strip.
This is crystal point.
Can you see Minnesota fabrics.
(24:54):
Let's go in the ball and fail. Okay.
We're going to go in the mall and film the shops.
Here we are.
We finally made it.
(25:25):
Yeah. Yeah.
We're scouting for the my dad's a producer.
We're seeing where we should film the movie.
Hey, how's it going?
And would you like to try these on?
(25:48):
Lovely.
You're not good looking.
It's the game already.
Game art has everything from food.
(26:09):
And syrup.
And yes, whatever it is.
Yeah, we finally into the mall area.
What a lovely couple.
Little boy.
(26:32):
Center.
Hi.
What type of bird are you interested in?
I'm interested in the bird.
Bird are messy.
He just loves it in there.
Look at him.
Let's go scuba diving.
(27:04):
Yeah.
Okay.
Here we have our Joseph Spee shopper.
He's found.
What's it now?
Here we have our faithful.
This is not for me.
(27:25):
Do you like to model for your Joseph Spee zone?
Why are you doing this?
I don't like pictures.
Are you kidding?
I'm not.
That's perfect.
You didn't say hi.
(27:46):
You gather the cards and connect them together.
Sort of like trains.
And then you proceed them over to that side of the building.
Are your hours good?
No, they suck.
Do you take your money right from the work into the bank?
Yeah, every time.
I'm not a car truck.
Okay.
Thank you.
(28:08):
Thank you for shopping a jewel.
There we have it.
Found a new toy.
Don't you just hate it when you get those cards
and have those wobbly wheels?
Here's the aisle I usually normally get first
(28:29):
because this is where all the bargains are.
I need some cat food.
There we go.
Make sure you get the magnetic door.
Mike, slow down.
Help me looking.
(28:50):
I don't know.
The guy's in the window.
Do you need durable food?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Look at this.
He's touching.
(29:20):
Pestroyer.
Destroyer.
Come on.
Hello?
Okay, I'll call him right away.
You gotta call someone when you place up.
Marlboro.
(29:44):
Look at those wheels.
Oh, no.
You're a little son.
(30:09):
Always the cash register open.
Get out of here.
Oh, beautiful.
You guys are great.
Hello.
Hi.
Aw, I feel shy.
(30:31):
Emily, keep that fella.
It's so much less.
X-A-V-A-Y-R-E.
Oh, yes?
Oh, Zare?
Oh, I couldn't live without it.
I just could not live without Zare.
I mean, all my family shops here,
and it's just been a comfort to our family, you know,
that Zare has been with us throughout the years of shopping
(30:54):
and the deal.
What?
Oh, time's up.
Okay.
I couldn't live without it.
And then the hijinks continues.
I think that kid is undiscovered talent.
That's comedy that you don't really see anymore.
Like, that was like cutting edge of what he was doing there,
of like he was showing off, but it was funny.
(31:21):
And now everything is just so commonplace with cell phones
and YouTube.
It's like our generations are going to be born into this,
and they're going to have a hard time navigating it if us
as not only parents, but in the way that we operate a village
(31:46):
to where if it's not, I often say like if we don't conduct
ourselves outside of school, like how we expect our kids
to conduct themselves while they're at school,
and when I say that, I mean conducting ourselves
outside of school, like what we allow into our town,
(32:10):
what we accept, they're going to have a hard time.
And I want to create that atmosphere of togetherness.
It's not for everybody.
I understand that.
But it's something that is worth a shot for.
(32:34):
I view it as an obligation to at least strive for and try for.
And I see an opportunity to do it,
and that's why I'm here speaking with you.
(32:55):
And I want to have, it's really, it's a layered issue,
but it's not just like when you come in,
I think most of us think as village officials as just,
(33:25):
it's not all spreadsheets.
You need to see the people in the spreadsheets.
And I look forward to doing that and having fun with that,
(33:46):
to where we look after our own and make sure we're all strong,
safe, and inspired.
I think inspired is probably the biggest word there for me.
(34:09):
It's like, it's a way to get to where you're excited.
Like as soon as you become self-aware of your surroundings,
(34:36):
that's the point in life where I'm at right now.
But as soon as you become, I'm running out of runway with my oldest,
to where when she gets old enough to realize that, yeah.
(35:06):
You go to Jewel and when she stops seeing the car toys,
and she starts being subject to the very well-orchestrated subliminal
and product placement of alcohol, tobacco, vaping,
(35:31):
and not just in Jewel, but just everywhere, video gambling,
and the devil's lettuce, you're not operating as you expect them to.
(35:52):
You're putting that glass ceiling really low to where,
I always run it back to like, you,
I think the word village to me is just really tribal to me.
(36:22):
Like I mentioned that earlier, tribal knowledge.
And tribal knowledge means that it's used in business a lot,
and maybe the best way to think of it is like KFC's secret recipe,
11 Herbs and Spices, that would be considered tribal knowledge,
because only that tribe of KFC knows that.
(36:51):
So if you don't story tell, they're not going to appreciate that.
So if we, and the word village to me, I run it all the way back as like this,
and it's not just about how much money can we spend on completely dismantling
(37:16):
what this place used to be, to just keep the clipboard warriors happy
that are trying to dictate where literally every one of our towns go to,
that are like in the US, like you have to do this, you have to do that.
(37:40):
Those are strong forces.
And that's one of the advantages we have is a village is like a,
I run it back all the way to that tribal knowledge,
like a village is a powerful word.
And when everybody comes together and they're on the same sheet of music,
(38:04):
that's a powerful thing to have, to where, for instance,
I showed this, I unveiled this a while ago.
I bought this from a place in Cary, and it's for putting a CO2 cartridge in.
(38:31):
You have two things in here.
You put the CO2 cartridge in, you twist it all the way up,
and then the CO2 comes out the top, and it's essentially laughing gas,
and you're supposed to, yeah.
So I bought that for some of the reasons why I keep letters from the past,
(38:57):
kind of like from the home rule insert and the electrical aggregation.
We know what's best for your household.
We're going to switch you.
Hopefully you don't notice and switch back.
And then ultimately your prices get raised because the fees,
the electrical price stays the same, but the fees go up over time.
(39:21):
And this was the change from that purchase.
I purchased it with cash because I didn't want to use a credit card.
And the change, I keep with it because this shall change one day.
(39:43):
And that's, and this is just, you know, this doesn't fall on the shoulders
of that shop owner, that falls on the shoulders of that the village allowed this,
(40:04):
and not just with rules and laws, just that our village screamed so loud
that it wasn't strong enough that they thought that this was okay to bring in.
So I keep the change from it because it's going to change and with your help.
(40:28):
So if you parallel with any of my thinkings and thoughts here today,
I ask you to start talking with your neighbor, bring up this podcast,
bring up some talking points, send a text message in,
you can always call and leave a voicemail or email me at voicescarry at proton.me.
(40:49):
And I broadcast this every day at 9, every weekday at 9.
So to give everybody an opportunity, I'll be touching on other subjects,
but the show gets more interesting when people call in.
So I'll keep doing it until that happens.
And I'm sure as time goes on, there'll be more.
(41:10):
But I can't wait to get the conversation started.
So thank you for joining me today.
And you know what?
I would love to stop sitting like Larry King and just talking.
I would love to have some dialogue.
I would love to answer questions.
(41:31):
I would love to have laughs and have fun.
But this, we got some work to do.
So I'm OK with this show being how it is now.
I don't need to knock on any doors of other podcasts or anything like that.
(41:56):
I need to do my work here.
And even if it means me sitting like Larry King, our next caller.
So talk with your neighbor, talk with any groups you have,
let them know what I'm trying to do here, and let's do it.
(42:19):
Thank you for joining me this evening.
Have a wonderful night.
And I will see you tomorrow on Voices Carry Live at 9 o'clock.
Have a wonderful evening.
You're confirmed at T minus 10 seconds.
(42:43):
Reach for the sky.
Huh?
This town ain't big enough for the two of us.
What?
Somebody's poisoned the water hole.
It's busted.
Who are you calling busted, Buster?
That's right.
I'm talking to you, Sid Phillips.
(43:05):
We don't like being blown up, Sid.
Or smashed or ripped apart.
We?
That's right.
Your toys.
Mama.
(43:28):
Mama.
Mama.
Now, you must take good care of your toys.
(43:50):
Because if you don't, we'll find out, Sid.
Your toys can see everything.
Go play nice.
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