September 11, 2025 • 31 mins
The cost of expanding L.A.’s Convention Center keeps growing. Can the city afford it? LA City Council endorses Proposition 50. LAPD Looks to improve 911 system for non-emergency calls. Michael Monks and Gary look back to where they were on 9/11.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI
AM six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on demand
on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
There was a shooting at Evergreen High School in Colorado.
Two kids we were put in the hospital, one of
them said to still be in critical condition. The shooter
ended up shooting and killing himself. Today happens to be
the twenty fourth anniversary of the September eleventh attacks. There
were memorials that were held. There will be commemorations held
around the country, but there were memorials held today Shanksville, Pennsylvania,
(00:32):
New York City, and the Pentagon. Of course, the President
was involved with the one in the Pentagon. The Vice
President was actually supposed to go to the one in
New York City but changed his clients. He's on his
way to I believe, Utah to hang out with Charlie
Kirk's family. So there's that going on. We'll get into
If there's developments in any of those stories, we'll bring
(00:53):
him to you today. Strange Science is going to be
a little bit lighter this year, perhaps later on in
the show. The more personal story is to update everybody.
Shannon's out this week but she'll be back on the
show on Monday. She's hanging out with mom. Mom had
surgery yesterday and she said everything went great, So that's
(01:13):
fantastic news. Michael Monks from KFI News has joined us.
I wanted to ask you about September eleventh, but we'll
do that later. Let's cleanse our palace a little bit sure,
and talk about some of the stuff that's going on locally.
I've heard about this convention center expansion for a very
long time, and every time I hear about it, the
expansion expands, and so does the budget. And we say
(01:36):
this over and over again, the City of la can't
afford to pay for in certain name of project here,
especially one that gets bigger every time we mention it.
And they may do it anyway, this is no way
to manage the pocketbook. And every time I cover a
city meeting, I leave scratching my head wondering how they
reach the conclusions that they do, the decisions that they make,
(01:57):
because it's basic map. We're talking about a city who
just closed a very significant budget gap before the new
fiscal year started on July first, where upwards of fifteen
hundred city workers were facing layoff because the fiscal picture
was so bleak. They managed to close that by moving
(02:18):
some money around and changing some people's positions. Nobody really
got laid off, maybe a handful of folks. But that's
just this year. During the same budget process, we already
knew that for the next several years they were going
to be facing similar financial dynamics. And so here we
are with the project that was originally supposed to be
(02:38):
about one point one billion dollars. Last month it was
reported that it would be two point four billion dollars.
Three weeks later, Gary it shot up again to more
than two point seven billion dollars to expand the La
Convention side. Could the city, I don't know if this
would I don't know if they could legally do this,
Could the city play power Ball? And I mean I
(03:01):
know that they would have to pay taxes and it
would be you know, they'd get half the cash now, etc.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
They'd probably screw.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
That up somehow, but that would cover at least part
of this. I know on Saturday night when I host
the show here on Saturday nights, as the big power
Ball drawing was coming.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
In, it's not time for a plug, but go on Michael.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Munks reports Saturday Night seven to nine here on KFIM
six forty and on the iHeartRadio. Indeed, as I was
holding my ticket, I was hoping that Mayor Bass was
also holding a ticket. Because the city needs it. They
need an infusion of cash.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Now.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
This project was presented as one that will bring in
more revenue directly to the city and also indirectly through
all of the more visitors that would be coming in
the surrounding business, thousands of construction jobs over the course
of this multi year project. It would be a significant
immediate economic boon per the projections. But the revenue not
(03:49):
just the conventions that come in. One of the main
revenue sources that the city had been pitching as they
consider this is digital advertising all over this convention center.
Billboard's are allowed to face. I know billboards are allowed
to face the freeway.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
They're not.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
There's certain regulations about where these digital ads can face,
right because they're a giant distraction and they cause massive
Even when it's okay, you're gonna start me on this thing.
The Coltrans signs that say silly things like slow down
and save a life, well we all know that instinctively
or buckle up, stay safe. Don't you have anyhing in
mid say, just shut up, stop putting words up there,
(04:25):
because the morons amongst us who have to slow down
to read it, then cause problems for the rest of us.
The idea that you're going to put a giant, flashy
lots of images, flashy images that close to the freeway,
that is an awful idea, no matter how much money
it generates. Indeed, and apparently it's a bad idea to
have them facing elsewhere. So the projection was originally we
(04:46):
could bring in sixty one million dollars a year off
of these digital ads that would be at the Convention Center,
which is in downtown La around La Live, a lot
of foot traffic, a lot of activity going on down there.
But there's a state bill that would allow for a
lot of that change and where these signs can be placed.
They now don't think Governor Newsom is going to sign
this bill, and so the projections on that have been
(05:09):
reduced down to twenty.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Seven million dollars.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
And why is that important, Gary, Because this is a
two point seven billion dollar project that they planned a
finance like you would a mortgage over thirty years. They
think they would have to pay a little more than
two hundred million dollars every year to pay for this
convention centergy expansions, right, just the debt servicing, you know,
and eventually pay it off. This isn't a city that
(05:32):
currently has that much wiggle room and its budget. They
were a hair away from a fiscal emergency declaration because
of how low their reserves had gotten. We already know
that the budget picture at Elle City Hall is bad,
not just last year, this year as well and for
the next several years into the future. So what we
heard at this week's budget committee was some concern from
(05:54):
council members about we've already had to make some cuts
to some departments that are very publicly facing services, animal services,
those sorts of things. If we have to, if we
commit ourselves to two hundred million dollars more every year
and we don't have the revenue coming in that we
will need more cuts are going to be necessary. And
there's another component here related to time. Why do it now? Well,
(06:18):
the Olympics are coming in twenty twenty eight. This is
an Olympic venue, and this is this is an Olympic
venue they want to have. I think is it phase one.
I mean, I don't know what is entailed and what
phase one entails, but they want to have it done
before twenty twenty eight. Last year, when they first pitched
this project, they wanted the whole thing finished. If they
were going to do it, they wanted to start it
(06:39):
and get it finished by twenty twenty eight. The reason
they balked on it last year was because they weren't
convinced they could get it done, and then it would
be a construction zone when gymnastics are supposed to be
that that's one of the marquee summer Olympic events. So
they were like, well, let's not do the whole thing
because we're not completely confident that we could get it finished.
They would do it in a couple of different phases.
Do they think they can get the first phase done?
(07:01):
Apparently the answer is yes, But how much.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Do you believe that? Yes?
Speaker 2 (07:07):
But yeah, and they needed to decide. The city administrator
Matt Zabel was telling the Budget Committee, I could really
use an answer today whether you want to move forward
or not on this, because then we need the full
council to make a decision and let's start digging. The
Budget committee punted and decided they would have another meeting
next week. Of course they did, because they don't feel
the same urgency. They don't feel the same they don't
(07:31):
feel the same fear. If you and I looked at
our household budgets and had something like that hanging over
our heads, we would be papooing in our pants, and
there would be an urgency to fix the problem. If
you had something hit your checking account last spring to
where you knew that your spending was going to have
to be significantly cut and the lifestyle that you were
(07:53):
living was going to have to change for the next year,
you probably would not be looking through the catalog for
the next big major purchase. I say saying, but not
don't put your vision board together. Go ahead and think
about what you want, but to actually be and talk.
By the way, they've already spent fifty four million dollars
on consultants. That's real money, fifty four million dollars. Well,
and it's not as if the City of la can
(08:14):
call an old college buddy and crash on the couch
for a couple of months to save on rent. No,
they might be calling Long Beach soon enough, though. I'll
tell you this. I know we got a run, but
I'll tell you this. Everyone seems to be an agreement.
That's a necessary project. But whether it should happen now
is the question. Downtown civic boosters, business owners, residents even
came to this meeting and said please. They come to
(08:35):
all the meetings saying please do this for us. We
need this. The convention center is dated, it's losing out
on major conventions to much smaller markets. City officials believe
it's necessary. The question is when up next? The LA
City Council's getting involved in the jerrymandering fight.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
They are.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Indeed, Gary and Shannon will continue. Michael Munks has joined us.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand kf I
am sixty.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Specifically, that song reminds me of Dollywood.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Have you been? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (09:08):
I was there almost exactly a year ago. In fact,
probably a year ago, within a day or two. A
year ago. It was at Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
It's beautiful there. I listen. My wife and I were
going to go. We were told by friends, you should go.
It's it's not what you think, and I thought, of course,
it's what I think. It's exactly, but when we went,
(09:31):
we were going kind of ironically so that we could say,
at some point, you know, we've been to Dollywood. We
had such a great day. It was so much fun.
It turned out to be so it was such a
pleasant surprise, and to to to go to this place
that we thought was going to be super.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Cheesy and run down, it was really great. It's a
real amusement park, real with real roller CoA coasters, but
real roller coasters.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
And Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, those are great vacation towns.
We have a lot of those great cities here in California,
but those are really really cool, and you get the
seasonal change if you're there at certain times of the year,
you see, you know, the mountains are there, the trees
are there. We went just a few years ago. I
still lived in Kentucky, so it was just a short drive.
But it was just a great long weekend we stayed.
(10:25):
I was telling somebody, Oh, I was telling Stephanie Lyideker,
she filled in on Tuesday's show. I was telling her
that I went when we went to Pigeon Forge in Gatlinburg.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
We stayed for three nights, two.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Nights in a treehouse in the in the Smoky Mountains
up above Gatlinburg, a treehouse as part of the Airbnb.
Dolly is truly who we need in this country right now.
She's the one person that it seems everybody can just
agree on, like yeah, she's fine, or I love her,
like nobody says she sucks, like she's the one hate
(10:58):
nobody hates Dolly Parton. Interest that was we walk down
the aisle to Dolly Parton's Here you Come Again.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
That's not funny. It is romance.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
I'm yes, I laugh at romance, so I ask my wife,
I'm not good at that.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Michael Monks has joined us.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
We're talking about some of the stuff that's going on
downtown LA and this downtown LA plus Sacramento. The city
council is now getting involved with the fight over Prop fifty,
which is the redistricting slash jerrymandering issue that.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Is going to be on the ballot in November. Yeah,
that's right.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
A lot of times you see the local government's various
city councils, but particularly the Los Angeles City Council, the
LA County Board of Supervisors, they have these on the
agenda regularly where they just pass a resolution in support
of a piece of state legislation. A lot of times
it's pretty inane. We support wearing your seatbelt in the car.
Sometimes they are much more significant pieces of legislation. And
(11:56):
this has started as or, i should say, is part
of a conversation take place nationally. So the La City
Council voted unanimously fifteen to zero to support Proposition fifty,
the Election Rigging Response Act that Governor Newsom has been
pushing as a way to send more Democrats from California
fewer Republicans to the Congress, which he says is in
(12:19):
direct response to President Trump and Texas Governor Greg Abbott
colluding to do the same in Texas, except on behalf
of Republicans.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
So this.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Doesn't mean anything. I mean, they endorse a proposition, it's
just a symbolic thing. It's not going to throw any
weight behind it, or more importantly, it's not going to
throw any city money behind the proposition, well, not necessarily really.
What they do with these endorsements of legislation is that
it will now be included in the county does this too.
It will now be included in their any lobbying efforts
(12:54):
that the city does, or the county does. In Sacramento,
they also do the same for a federal legislation. So
there's anybody lobbying in Washington, d c. On behalf of
the local governments, this would be added to the list
of things that they may approach lawmakers about. So this
is an official city position, and if anybody is arguing
the official city position to people in positions of power
(13:15):
where this will be considered, they'll have this document.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
What's this sound from Nazarian?
Speaker 2 (13:18):
So Adrian Nassarian, who is one of the new members
of city Council. He replaced former councilman paulker Corian representing
North Hollywood and that part of Los Angeles. He was
pretty dramatic in his endorsement of this. He held a
press conference outside city Hall before the vote and then
spoke on the council floor.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Here's part of what he had to say.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
The danger is real and unfolding before our eyes. We
cannot and will not stand by while federal overreach undermines democracy.
As leaders, we.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Need to fight back.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
I know firsthand the cost of allowing autocrats to dismantle democracy.
Many of you know that as a child, my family
fled Iran to escape authoritarian rule. We must not let
our country, the most diverse democracy in the world, slide
into dictatorship.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
So this is an issue of dictatorship. According to Councilman Nizarian,
it was about a two minute speech that he gave
in support of this piece of legislation and got the
full support of the rest of council. Now, whether the
stakes are as high as he frames them to be,
everyone else at City Hall seem to agree.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
It's true. Tired of these things.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
It just feels like this is we're gonna this is
the authoritarian, dictatorial push that's moving and then and then
something else happens and we go the other way. No,
they're the ones who were being the dictators and the authoritarians.
I think there was a time, and we've been in
the media long enough to know references to pendulum swinging. Sure,
and you know, sometimes conservatives would take charge, the pendulum
(14:51):
would swing, they would get some pretty significant accomplishments, and
then it would swing back the other way and democrats
or liberals would get some policies. It feels like it's
swinging rapidly, you know, like you're getting complete whiplash, especially
when you have state versus state where they're not subjected
to whatever federal legislation is taking place. They can do
(15:12):
what they want in California, they can do whatever they
want in Texas, and they got Missouri and Indiana, maybe
Florida and all these other states. It's getting kind of
weird up. Next, trying to improve our nine to one
to one system, specifically for the non emergency calls, for
the ones that are a little bit less acute when
it comes to the problem, not cute, less acute.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
What did you call me? Never mind?
Speaker 2 (15:33):
I wasn't even looking right at you. Gary and Shannon
will continue. Michael Monks has joined us, and Deborah Marx
is live in the KFEMP.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Deborah, yes, Mike, Yes, Gary, Sorry, Sorry, I everybody was drunk.
I was talking about Michael Monks. I had Michael Monks
on this. Oh I don't like that. You shouldn't.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
A bunch of stuff that's going on.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Americans marked twenty four years since the September eleventh attacks.
There were solemn ceremonies that took place today. Back East
there was actually ceremonies throughout the country. Today, people are
volunteering for work other tributes to honor victims. I heard
a comment today from a woman who lost I think
(16:22):
it was actually on wake up call this morning. In fact,
Amy was interviewing a woman who works with Bloomberg and
knew some people that were in the buildings that day.
She also lost a cousin who happened to be a
firefighter that day. Because a lot of people have a
lot of connections, and I know that a day like
this is difficult, even you know, twenty four years later,
And just Chris, focus on the memories of that morning
(16:50):
because even though I was on the West Coast, I'm
working earlier, I was up early, and you know, saw
the whole thing. So we'll talk about that with Michael
actually in just a couple of minutes, but some more
local stuff. LAPD is trying to improve its emergency call system,
specifically for those non emergency calls, you know, the less
urgent ones that they need they need to keep an
eye on.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Yeah, we want to be careful.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
I think with that official term, which is non emergency,
there's a non emergency line, there are non emergency procedures
when somebody calls in. But think about what is classified
as a non emergency. Let's say you get home after
work today and let's say nobody's there, but somebody had
been age who wasn't supposed to be there. Oh right,
let's say your home like my wife's yoga instructor or something. Well,
(17:32):
that's a different topic. You want to talk about that
something going on now? And well John Redcorn situation. No,
but let's say somebody broke. Let's if you and your
wife are out, you come home, the door's been kicked in,
stuff is gone. Clearly somebody has been there. Your home
has been burgled. Okay, that, but they're not in the house.
They're gone. They're God, they're gone. Got it feels like
(17:54):
an emergency to you, doesn't it? Sure, but it's not
under this classification. So you call nine one one Los
Angeles and you may be waiting a very long time.
Councilwoman Nithia Rahman brought forth this motion to the city
Council yesterday. I think you got some sound from me
over there. Here's part of what she said.
Speaker 5 (18:13):
Fifty seven percent of our emergency calls are addressed within
fifteen seconds, which is our state standard and response times
have recently been improving, which is great, but non emergency
calls are still taking much longer, and average wait times
there are over three minutes, almost four minutes, but sometimes,
depending on call volume, non emergency calls can take over
(18:35):
an hour to get picked up.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
And we've heard that from folks whose houses have been burglarized,
and we've seen this rise in the number of burglaries
and specific parts of the community. Think about Encino in
that part of the valley and what's been going on there.
So if you're all ready on edge because your neighbor's
house got broken into last week, and then you come
home and you find the same situation, you may think, police,
get here, somebody was just here. You can, you know,
(18:59):
go it's not an emergency, and you may be waiting
that long. I don't know if you've ever called nine
to one one in Angelis before. Yeah, I did. Once
I saw that it was technically a non emergency. I
suppose it felt an emergency to me, but it was
a fight. There was a fight breaking out in the
middle of the street and a lot of people just
standing around video recording it. But it looked like it
(19:21):
could have been very dangerous. It could have fallen into
the road where cars were going. I called and said, hey,
this thing is happening. No one ever came. I never
got to talk to I talked to a dispatcher, but
then when they called me back about forty five minutes later,
they said, we couldn't find it.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Of course you couldn't find it. It's over.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
I thought somebody could have been killed, you know. So
it felt like an emergency to me, but it wasn't
treated that way. So what the city council has done
is they've approved you've covered government. They asked for what
is called a report back, which is very common at
any of these governments. They basically tellarious departments come back
to us within this amount of time and tell us
(20:03):
what the plan is. So they've asked the LAPD a
couple other departments to come back in thirty days to
tell us what staffing looks like in the communications division.
They want to know what the impact is on We
may just commonly refer to them as dispatchers, but here
in the city they're called police service representatives. What kind
of training do we need, what kind of supplies do
we need, what kind of equipment do we need, how
(20:25):
do we increase this because they do recognize that it
is not just an inconvenience, but it could be dangerous.
You don't know if the person who burglarized your home
is going to come back, you know. And again, if
it feels like an emergency to you, it should be
treated that way by the authorities.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
Yeah, I'd be curious to see if there's a way to.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
And there are hundreds, if not thousands, of police agencies
around the country, and they're probably dealing with very similar issues,
especially the larger ones. If there is a sort of
a creative lab that exists in other agencies where they
have been able to address this problem in LA. And
it's never going to be perfect, I mean, that's right.
La is so big, geographically big, it's also densely populated,
(21:11):
It's it's shaped strangely, you know, and there's always something
going on. And the police department itself has said for
years now, we don't have the number that we feel
like we should have to better patrol the city. So
there are a lot of challenges facing Los Angeles that
may not face other cities I know, back home, smaller city.
Of course, if I call and say, somebody was just
(21:32):
in my house and burglarized. They're not on the scene anymore,
but something happened here. The police are there. Yeah, you know,
they treat it with seriousness, they treat it with urgency.
That's not to say that the police service representatives answering
the call don't understand what you're feeling, don't have empathy,
or that the police department does not understand how you
feel as well, and that they want to do something
(21:53):
about it.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
They can't.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
There is an aspect though, I will say this, there's
an aspect of it's happened to you once in your life,
where your house gets or whatever that that seems massive
to you. You're the forty second call of the day anga,
So I mean there is some of that as well,
and that can work against it. It's great for like
a contractor's coming into tyle your bathroom. It's not great
for a police surface rees PSR who's like yawning while
(22:22):
while you're reliving this terror that you you know. Yeah,
I mean if you call in and say, hey, somebody
just burglarize my house, like okay, We're going to get
there as soon as we get the bad guys out
of this jewelry store and that they just braned up exactly.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Commemorations today, by the way, of the September eleventh attacks
from twenty four years ago will include President Trump at
the Yankees game. Yankees are taking on the Tigers, and
that is that's going on tonight. If you want to
take your mind off of some of this stuff, there
are other sports events going on. Anders played the Packers
tonight for Thursday night football NC State against Wake Forest
(23:04):
and college football Angels are actually in Seattle to take
on the Mariners tonight. They beat the Twins yesterday Dodgers won.
They ended up completing the sweep of the Rocky, so
they take a day off before they head up to
San Francisco to take on the Giants. Michael Monks has
joined us, and I was mentioning before the break that
very crisp clear images in my mind from what I
(23:29):
was doing the morning of September eleventh, on that Tuesday,
I guess it was, and I was working morning radio
up in Seattle. Not like this, as we literally have
seven giant screen televisions in this studio We had one
little tiny cathode ray two TV that you'd find like
(23:50):
in a camping trip somewhere, and it was up in
the corner of the studio. One of the other news
people came by and knocked on the window of the
studio door and pointed over my shoulder at the TV screen,
And when I turn and looked, I obviously saw a
smoke coming out of one of the Trade center towers
and started the conversation of, oh, it looks like something
(24:12):
has happened in New York. And you know, while we're
sitting there watching this, we see the second plane fly
into the second tower and started what became, you know,
the infamous.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
Day that we all know from that point on.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
And then going home to a wife, pregnant wife with
you know, a baby in the highchair kind of thing,
and just the numbness of what what we just witnessed,
where we were going as a country, this sort of
the feeling almost a free fall of we don't know
what's coming next in the next few hours kind of thing.
(24:48):
Before I then went back to the station later in
the afternoon, did some more coverage and all that sort
of stuff. But where were you, You said, you were
in college at the time. Yeah, I was still an
undergrad studying to be a radio star like you. So
it's still working on that, yeah, but yeah, it was.
It was a day that I you know, when you
get up to like your third year, you can have
some days during the week where you didn't have to
(25:08):
go to class. Sure you would work or something and
manipulate your schedule exactly. And I had a job at
the Mall in down I went to Northern Kentucky University,
which is in the Cincinnati metro. So I fighting tigers.
What's their mascot, The Norse. Okay, that's not as good,
but go on a D two basketball powerhouse at the
time now at D one perennial power in the Horizon Lake. Yeah, absolutely,
(25:30):
you know Northern Kentucky and the Norse. Yeah. I worked
at the mall in downtown Cincinnati, which was in a skyscraper. Okay,
So I was selling incense and soap at this store
where you could go in and buy that sort of thing.
It was a great gig because nobody ever shopped there,
and so I could do my homework and it was
fantastic and it all smelled like anti Nspretzels.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
It was a great gig.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
But before I had left, I had worked out do
you know the workout P ninety X.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Yeah, before he did P.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Ninety X, he had a our analog version of that
called Power ninety and I had the VHS tapes and
I had just done one of the workouts in my
apartment and flipped off the you know, the VHS after
I was finishing jacks, and boom, you got one on
a Today Show or Good Morning America or something was
on the screen. My roommate was asleep. I woke up said,
(26:18):
we've been bombed. I mean some of this, said, we've
been bombed. You know, we're kind of stoners. I didn't
know what the heck was going on, and so my
boss at the mall called and said, I do need
you to come in today, but we don't know what's happening.
And the reason was because think about how scared we were.
Thought is des moin next, you know, like any other
(26:38):
place in America was a possible target going for financial
marketing exactly and financial powerhouses. And I sell soap at
the tallest building in Cincinnati. I'm definitely on the list.
So eventually they closed the mall and sent us all
out downtown. Cincinnati's fleeing. I'm trying to get back into Kentucky.
It was an absolute mess. But we recorded on VHS
(27:02):
tape my roommate and I she was notorious for recording
stuff on VHS, and we kept that. She still has
this footage of the various. Obviously you can pull it
all up on YouTube now, but it was something to
have all of the various. We were new students, so
we were recording this stuff and watching it and glued
to it, and the campus was, you know, all shut down.
(27:23):
Everything was just shut down, and we sat there pretty numb,
waiting to see what was to come. And here we are,
all these years later, and you can still still feel
the ramifications of that day. I think it's it's led
us to where we are now politically. Well, I mean,
there's there's there a lot that was a watershed moment
in terms of culture in the United States for a
(27:45):
lot of for a lot of us, and a lot
of us that remember my kids, like I said, my
son was an infant, daughter wasn't even born yet. They'll
they don't know what life was like before that. I mean,
one of the aspects of airport life. For example, when
I was a reporter, is I could I could drive
up to the airport at Sea Tac Airport. I could
(28:06):
park my car on the curb, I could run in.
I'd tell the whoever's out there, I'll be right back
in like fifteen minutes. Run down to gate, you know,
before the Governor's getting off a flight from China. I
could do a quick ten minute interview with the governor
right there at the gate, run back to my car,
jump in and take off, you know.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
And I mean that would just be un heard of
in a day like today.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
We used to have field trips to the airport, you know,
when you could go in and watch planes take off
and all of this. And so I mean, certainly you
can understand in the immediate aftermath why everything was locked down,
But we are still you know, there's I think it
feels like they're phasing out a lot of it now,
but it's been a long It's that we're.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
Getting used to it, and that's it.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
It's like you forget how open airports were, but beyond
those physical inconveniences or security clearances that we all the
pass now just culturally and politically I think that was
obviously the beginning of whose side are you on? And
it's only well I don'nt did I mentioned in the
in the first hour, the cycle of something bad happens,
(29:13):
we all come together, and then we break it down again,
like the societal hate comes back in. I don't think
we get to come together anymore. Well, the cycle is
so tight now that even if you say something neutral
like Charlie Kirk was a family man, No, no, you are.
You know you're making excuses for a guy who was
(29:33):
filled with hate or something. No, no, no, Hold on
a second, There's got to be a moment where everyone
can agree that that kind of violence is unacceptable. I
don't even know if it would be the death of
a president, you know, forbid, you know the way that
the Kennedy assassination. Sure, we're just too online, We're too
connected to whatever we already believe to have places to
(29:56):
reinforce that to where we are lacking empathy, We are
lacking connection, and I don't know, it's pretty scary. A
quick note also, you mentioned your roommate's propensity to record
everything just for posterity reasons. My parents had this habit
of on a big day like that, or the Loma
Priator earthquake in nineteen eighty nine, or the Challenger explosion
(30:18):
from eighty six. They would take the next day's newspaper
and they would put it in the bottom of our
laundry basket and it would stay there for a decade
or more. Wow, so that we're always reminded of these
horrific tragedies when we're folding cloth. I like that kind
of trauma. I know, good trauma. Why they would do that. Yeah,
that was a thing, A little ink stain and trauma
(30:41):
to transfer onto your white T shirt. All right, Michael,
thank you, my pleasure. A quick swamp watch. We have
a bunch of light other light stuff. When we come
back to Gary and Shannon. You've been listening to The
Gary and Shannon Show. You can always hear us live
on KFI AM six forty nine am to one pm
every Monday through Friday, and anytime on demand on the
(31:02):
iHeartRadio AP
This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI
AM six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on demand
on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
There was a shooting at Evergreen High School in Colorado.
Two kids we were put in the hospital, one of
them said to still be in critical condition. The shooter
ended up shooting and killing himself. Today happens to be
the twenty fourth anniversary of the September eleventh attacks. There
were memorials that were held. There will be commemorations held
around the country, but there were memorials held today Shanksville, Pennsylvania,
(00:32):
New York City, and the Pentagon. Of course, the President
was involved with the one in the Pentagon. The Vice
President was actually supposed to go to the one in
New York City but changed his clients. He's on his
way to I believe, Utah to hang out with Charlie
Kirk's family. So there's that going on. We'll get into
If there's developments in any of those stories, we'll bring
(00:53):
him to you today. Strange Science is going to be
a little bit lighter this year, perhaps later on in
the show. The more personal story is to update everybody.
Shannon's out this week but she'll be back on the
show on Monday. She's hanging out with mom. Mom had
surgery yesterday and she said everything went great, So that's
(01:13):
fantastic news. Michael Monks from KFI News has joined us.
I wanted to ask you about September eleventh, but we'll
do that later. Let's cleanse our palace a little bit sure,
and talk about some of the stuff that's going on locally.
I've heard about this convention center expansion for a very
long time, and every time I hear about it, the
expansion expands, and so does the budget. And we say
(01:36):
this over and over again, the City of la can't
afford to pay for in certain name of project here,
especially one that gets bigger every time we mention it.
And they may do it anyway, this is no way
to manage the pocketbook. And every time I cover a
city meeting, I leave scratching my head wondering how they
reach the conclusions that they do, the decisions that they make,
(01:57):
because it's basic map. We're talking about a city who
just closed a very significant budget gap before the new
fiscal year started on July first, where upwards of fifteen
hundred city workers were facing layoff because the fiscal picture
was so bleak. They managed to close that by moving
(02:18):
some money around and changing some people's positions. Nobody really
got laid off, maybe a handful of folks. But that's
just this year. During the same budget process, we already
knew that for the next several years they were going
to be facing similar financial dynamics. And so here we
are with the project that was originally supposed to be
(02:38):
about one point one billion dollars. Last month it was
reported that it would be two point four billion dollars.
Three weeks later, Gary it shot up again to more
than two point seven billion dollars to expand the La
Convention side. Could the city, I don't know if this
would I don't know if they could legally do this,
Could the city play power Ball? And I mean I
(03:01):
know that they would have to pay taxes and it
would be you know, they'd get half the cash now, etc.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
They'd probably screw.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
That up somehow, but that would cover at least part
of this. I know on Saturday night when I host
the show here on Saturday nights, as the big power
Ball drawing was coming.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
In, it's not time for a plug, but go on Michael.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Munks reports Saturday Night seven to nine here on KFIM
six forty and on the iHeartRadio. Indeed, as I was
holding my ticket, I was hoping that Mayor Bass was
also holding a ticket. Because the city needs it. They
need an infusion of cash.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Now.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
This project was presented as one that will bring in
more revenue directly to the city and also indirectly through
all of the more visitors that would be coming in
the surrounding business, thousands of construction jobs over the course
of this multi year project. It would be a significant
immediate economic boon per the projections. But the revenue not
(03:49):
just the conventions that come in. One of the main
revenue sources that the city had been pitching as they
consider this is digital advertising all over this convention center.
Billboard's are allowed to face. I know billboards are allowed
to face the freeway.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
They're not.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
There's certain regulations about where these digital ads can face,
right because they're a giant distraction and they cause massive
Even when it's okay, you're gonna start me on this thing.
The Coltrans signs that say silly things like slow down
and save a life, well we all know that instinctively
or buckle up, stay safe. Don't you have anyhing in
mid say, just shut up, stop putting words up there,
(04:25):
because the morons amongst us who have to slow down
to read it, then cause problems for the rest of us.
The idea that you're going to put a giant, flashy
lots of images, flashy images that close to the freeway,
that is an awful idea, no matter how much money
it generates. Indeed, and apparently it's a bad idea to
have them facing elsewhere. So the projection was originally we
(04:46):
could bring in sixty one million dollars a year off
of these digital ads that would be at the Convention Center,
which is in downtown La around La Live, a lot
of foot traffic, a lot of activity going on down there.
But there's a state bill that would allow for a
lot of that change and where these signs can be placed.
They now don't think Governor Newsom is going to sign
this bill, and so the projections on that have been
(05:09):
reduced down to twenty.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Seven million dollars.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
And why is that important, Gary, Because this is a
two point seven billion dollar project that they planned a
finance like you would a mortgage over thirty years. They
think they would have to pay a little more than
two hundred million dollars every year to pay for this
convention centergy expansions, right, just the debt servicing, you know,
and eventually pay it off. This isn't a city that
(05:32):
currently has that much wiggle room and its budget. They
were a hair away from a fiscal emergency declaration because
of how low their reserves had gotten. We already know
that the budget picture at Elle City Hall is bad,
not just last year, this year as well and for
the next several years into the future. So what we
heard at this week's budget committee was some concern from
(05:54):
council members about we've already had to make some cuts
to some departments that are very publicly facing services, animal services,
those sorts of things. If we have to, if we
commit ourselves to two hundred million dollars more every year
and we don't have the revenue coming in that we
will need more cuts are going to be necessary. And
there's another component here related to time. Why do it now? Well,
(06:18):
the Olympics are coming in twenty twenty eight. This is
an Olympic venue, and this is this is an Olympic
venue they want to have. I think is it phase one.
I mean, I don't know what is entailed and what
phase one entails, but they want to have it done
before twenty twenty eight. Last year, when they first pitched
this project, they wanted the whole thing finished. If they
were going to do it, they wanted to start it
(06:39):
and get it finished by twenty twenty eight. The reason
they balked on it last year was because they weren't
convinced they could get it done, and then it would
be a construction zone when gymnastics are supposed to be
that that's one of the marquee summer Olympic events. So
they were like, well, let's not do the whole thing
because we're not completely confident that we could get it finished.
They would do it in a couple of different phases.
Do they think they can get the first phase done?
(07:01):
Apparently the answer is yes, But how much.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Do you believe that? Yes?
Speaker 2 (07:07):
But yeah, and they needed to decide. The city administrator
Matt Zabel was telling the Budget Committee, I could really
use an answer today whether you want to move forward
or not on this, because then we need the full
council to make a decision and let's start digging. The
Budget committee punted and decided they would have another meeting
next week. Of course they did, because they don't feel
the same urgency. They don't feel the same they don't
(07:31):
feel the same fear. If you and I looked at
our household budgets and had something like that hanging over
our heads, we would be papooing in our pants, and
there would be an urgency to fix the problem. If
you had something hit your checking account last spring to
where you knew that your spending was going to have
to be significantly cut and the lifestyle that you were
(07:53):
living was going to have to change for the next year,
you probably would not be looking through the catalog for
the next big major purchase. I say saying, but not
don't put your vision board together. Go ahead and think
about what you want, but to actually be and talk.
By the way, they've already spent fifty four million dollars
on consultants. That's real money, fifty four million dollars. Well,
and it's not as if the City of la can
(08:14):
call an old college buddy and crash on the couch
for a couple of months to save on rent. No,
they might be calling Long Beach soon enough, though. I'll
tell you this. I know we got a run, but
I'll tell you this. Everyone seems to be an agreement.
That's a necessary project. But whether it should happen now
is the question. Downtown civic boosters, business owners, residents even
came to this meeting and said please. They come to
(08:35):
all the meetings saying please do this for us. We
need this. The convention center is dated, it's losing out
on major conventions to much smaller markets. City officials believe
it's necessary. The question is when up next? The LA
City Council's getting involved in the jerrymandering fight.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
They are.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Indeed, Gary and Shannon will continue. Michael Munks has joined us.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand kf I
am sixty.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Specifically, that song reminds me of Dollywood.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Have you been? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (09:08):
I was there almost exactly a year ago. In fact,
probably a year ago, within a day or two. A
year ago. It was at Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
It's beautiful there. I listen. My wife and I were
going to go. We were told by friends, you should go.
It's it's not what you think, and I thought, of course,
it's what I think. It's exactly, but when we went,
(09:31):
we were going kind of ironically so that we could say,
at some point, you know, we've been to Dollywood. We
had such a great day. It was so much fun.
It turned out to be so it was such a
pleasant surprise, and to to to go to this place
that we thought was going to be super.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Cheesy and run down, it was really great. It's a
real amusement park, real with real roller CoA coasters, but
real roller coasters.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
And Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, those are great vacation towns.
We have a lot of those great cities here in California,
but those are really really cool, and you get the
seasonal change if you're there at certain times of the year,
you see, you know, the mountains are there, the trees
are there. We went just a few years ago. I
still lived in Kentucky, so it was just a short drive.
But it was just a great long weekend we stayed.
(10:25):
I was telling somebody, Oh, I was telling Stephanie Lyideker,
she filled in on Tuesday's show. I was telling her
that I went when we went to Pigeon Forge in Gatlinburg.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
We stayed for three nights, two.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Nights in a treehouse in the in the Smoky Mountains
up above Gatlinburg, a treehouse as part of the Airbnb.
Dolly is truly who we need in this country right now.
She's the one person that it seems everybody can just
agree on, like yeah, she's fine, or I love her,
like nobody says she sucks, like she's the one hate
(10:58):
nobody hates Dolly Parton. Interest that was we walk down
the aisle to Dolly Parton's Here you Come Again.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
That's not funny. It is romance.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
I'm yes, I laugh at romance, so I ask my wife,
I'm not good at that.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Michael Monks has joined us.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
We're talking about some of the stuff that's going on
downtown LA and this downtown LA plus Sacramento. The city
council is now getting involved with the fight over Prop fifty,
which is the redistricting slash jerrymandering issue that.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Is going to be on the ballot in November. Yeah,
that's right.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
A lot of times you see the local government's various
city councils, but particularly the Los Angeles City Council, the
LA County Board of Supervisors, they have these on the
agenda regularly where they just pass a resolution in support
of a piece of state legislation. A lot of times
it's pretty inane. We support wearing your seatbelt in the car.
Sometimes they are much more significant pieces of legislation. And
(11:56):
this has started as or, i should say, is part
of a conversation take place nationally. So the La City
Council voted unanimously fifteen to zero to support Proposition fifty,
the Election Rigging Response Act that Governor Newsom has been
pushing as a way to send more Democrats from California
fewer Republicans to the Congress, which he says is in
(12:19):
direct response to President Trump and Texas Governor Greg Abbott
colluding to do the same in Texas, except on behalf
of Republicans.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
So this.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Doesn't mean anything. I mean, they endorse a proposition, it's
just a symbolic thing. It's not going to throw any
weight behind it, or more importantly, it's not going to
throw any city money behind the proposition, well, not necessarily really.
What they do with these endorsements of legislation is that
it will now be included in the county does this too.
It will now be included in their any lobbying efforts
(12:54):
that the city does, or the county does. In Sacramento,
they also do the same for a federal legislation. So
there's anybody lobbying in Washington, d c. On behalf of
the local governments, this would be added to the list
of things that they may approach lawmakers about. So this
is an official city position, and if anybody is arguing
the official city position to people in positions of power
(13:15):
where this will be considered, they'll have this document.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
What's this sound from Nazarian?
Speaker 2 (13:18):
So Adrian Nassarian, who is one of the new members
of city Council. He replaced former councilman paulker Corian representing
North Hollywood and that part of Los Angeles. He was
pretty dramatic in his endorsement of this. He held a
press conference outside city Hall before the vote and then
spoke on the council floor.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Here's part of what he had to say.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
The danger is real and unfolding before our eyes. We
cannot and will not stand by while federal overreach undermines democracy.
As leaders, we.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Need to fight back.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
I know firsthand the cost of allowing autocrats to dismantle democracy.
Many of you know that as a child, my family
fled Iran to escape authoritarian rule. We must not let
our country, the most diverse democracy in the world, slide
into dictatorship.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
So this is an issue of dictatorship. According to Councilman Nizarian,
it was about a two minute speech that he gave
in support of this piece of legislation and got the
full support of the rest of council. Now, whether the
stakes are as high as he frames them to be,
everyone else at City Hall seem to agree.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
It's true. Tired of these things.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
It just feels like this is we're gonna this is
the authoritarian, dictatorial push that's moving and then and then
something else happens and we go the other way. No,
they're the ones who were being the dictators and the authoritarians.
I think there was a time, and we've been in
the media long enough to know references to pendulum swinging. Sure,
and you know, sometimes conservatives would take charge, the pendulum
(14:51):
would swing, they would get some pretty significant accomplishments, and
then it would swing back the other way and democrats
or liberals would get some policies. It feels like it's
swinging rapidly, you know, like you're getting complete whiplash, especially
when you have state versus state where they're not subjected
to whatever federal legislation is taking place. They can do
(15:12):
what they want in California, they can do whatever they
want in Texas, and they got Missouri and Indiana, maybe
Florida and all these other states. It's getting kind of
weird up. Next, trying to improve our nine to one
to one system, specifically for the non emergency calls, for
the ones that are a little bit less acute when
it comes to the problem, not cute, less acute.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
What did you call me? Never mind?
Speaker 2 (15:33):
I wasn't even looking right at you. Gary and Shannon
will continue. Michael Monks has joined us, and Deborah Marx
is live in the KFEMP.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
Deborah, yes, Mike, Yes, Gary, Sorry, Sorry, I everybody was drunk.
I was talking about Michael Monks. I had Michael Monks
on this. Oh I don't like that. You shouldn't.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
A bunch of stuff that's going on.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Americans marked twenty four years since the September eleventh attacks.
There were solemn ceremonies that took place today. Back East
there was actually ceremonies throughout the country. Today, people are
volunteering for work other tributes to honor victims. I heard
a comment today from a woman who lost I think
(16:22):
it was actually on wake up call this morning. In fact,
Amy was interviewing a woman who works with Bloomberg and
knew some people that were in the buildings that day.
She also lost a cousin who happened to be a
firefighter that day. Because a lot of people have a
lot of connections, and I know that a day like
this is difficult, even you know, twenty four years later,
And just Chris, focus on the memories of that morning
(16:50):
because even though I was on the West Coast, I'm
working earlier, I was up early, and you know, saw
the whole thing. So we'll talk about that with Michael
actually in just a couple of minutes, but some more
local stuff. LAPD is trying to improve its emergency call system,
specifically for those non emergency calls, you know, the less
urgent ones that they need they need to keep an
eye on.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Yeah, we want to be careful.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
I think with that official term, which is non emergency,
there's a non emergency line, there are non emergency procedures
when somebody calls in. But think about what is classified
as a non emergency. Let's say you get home after
work today and let's say nobody's there, but somebody had
been age who wasn't supposed to be there. Oh right,
let's say your home like my wife's yoga instructor or something. Well,
(17:32):
that's a different topic. You want to talk about that
something going on now? And well John Redcorn situation. No,
but let's say somebody broke. Let's if you and your
wife are out, you come home, the door's been kicked in,
stuff is gone. Clearly somebody has been there. Your home
has been burgled. Okay, that, but they're not in the house.
They're gone. They're God, they're gone. Got it feels like
(17:54):
an emergency to you, doesn't it? Sure, but it's not
under this classification. So you call nine one one Los
Angeles and you may be waiting a very long time.
Councilwoman Nithia Rahman brought forth this motion to the city
Council yesterday. I think you got some sound from me
over there. Here's part of what she said.
Speaker 5 (18:13):
Fifty seven percent of our emergency calls are addressed within
fifteen seconds, which is our state standard and response times
have recently been improving, which is great, but non emergency
calls are still taking much longer, and average wait times
there are over three minutes, almost four minutes, but sometimes,
depending on call volume, non emergency calls can take over
(18:35):
an hour to get picked up.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
And we've heard that from folks whose houses have been burglarized,
and we've seen this rise in the number of burglaries
and specific parts of the community. Think about Encino in
that part of the valley and what's been going on there.
So if you're all ready on edge because your neighbor's
house got broken into last week, and then you come
home and you find the same situation, you may think, police,
get here, somebody was just here. You can, you know,
(18:59):
go it's not an emergency, and you may be waiting
that long. I don't know if you've ever called nine
to one one in Angelis before. Yeah, I did. Once
I saw that it was technically a non emergency. I
suppose it felt an emergency to me, but it was
a fight. There was a fight breaking out in the
middle of the street and a lot of people just
standing around video recording it. But it looked like it
(19:21):
could have been very dangerous. It could have fallen into
the road where cars were going. I called and said, hey,
this thing is happening. No one ever came. I never
got to talk to I talked to a dispatcher, but
then when they called me back about forty five minutes later,
they said, we couldn't find it.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Of course you couldn't find it. It's over.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
I thought somebody could have been killed, you know. So
it felt like an emergency to me, but it wasn't
treated that way. So what the city council has done
is they've approved you've covered government. They asked for what
is called a report back, which is very common at
any of these governments. They basically tellarious departments come back
to us within this amount of time and tell us
(20:03):
what the plan is. So they've asked the LAPD a
couple other departments to come back in thirty days to
tell us what staffing looks like in the communications division.
They want to know what the impact is on We
may just commonly refer to them as dispatchers, but here
in the city they're called police service representatives. What kind
of training do we need, what kind of supplies do
we need, what kind of equipment do we need, how
(20:25):
do we increase this because they do recognize that it
is not just an inconvenience, but it could be dangerous.
You don't know if the person who burglarized your home
is going to come back, you know. And again, if
it feels like an emergency to you, it should be
treated that way by the authorities.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
Yeah, I'd be curious to see if there's a way to.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
And there are hundreds, if not thousands, of police agencies
around the country, and they're probably dealing with very similar issues,
especially the larger ones. If there is a sort of
a creative lab that exists in other agencies where they
have been able to address this problem in LA. And
it's never going to be perfect, I mean, that's right.
La is so big, geographically big, it's also densely populated,
(21:11):
It's it's shaped strangely, you know, and there's always something
going on. And the police department itself has said for
years now, we don't have the number that we feel
like we should have to better patrol the city. So
there are a lot of challenges facing Los Angeles that
may not face other cities I know, back home, smaller city.
Of course, if I call and say, somebody was just
(21:32):
in my house and burglarized. They're not on the scene anymore,
but something happened here. The police are there. Yeah, you know,
they treat it with seriousness, they treat it with urgency.
That's not to say that the police service representatives answering
the call don't understand what you're feeling, don't have empathy,
or that the police department does not understand how you
feel as well, and that they want to do something
(21:53):
about it.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
They can't.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
There is an aspect though, I will say this, there's
an aspect of it's happened to you once in your life,
where your house gets or whatever that that seems massive
to you. You're the forty second call of the day anga,
So I mean there is some of that as well,
and that can work against it. It's great for like
a contractor's coming into tyle your bathroom. It's not great
for a police surface rees PSR who's like yawning while
(22:22):
while you're reliving this terror that you you know. Yeah,
I mean if you call in and say, hey, somebody
just burglarize my house, like okay, We're going to get
there as soon as we get the bad guys out
of this jewelry store and that they just braned up exactly.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Commemorations today, by the way, of the September eleventh attacks
from twenty four years ago will include President Trump at
the Yankees game. Yankees are taking on the Tigers, and
that is that's going on tonight. If you want to
take your mind off of some of this stuff, there
are other sports events going on. Anders played the Packers
tonight for Thursday night football NC State against Wake Forest
(23:04):
and college football Angels are actually in Seattle to take
on the Mariners tonight. They beat the Twins yesterday Dodgers won.
They ended up completing the sweep of the Rocky, so
they take a day off before they head up to
San Francisco to take on the Giants. Michael Monks has
joined us, and I was mentioning before the break that
very crisp clear images in my mind from what I
(23:29):
was doing the morning of September eleventh, on that Tuesday,
I guess it was, and I was working morning radio
up in Seattle. Not like this, as we literally have
seven giant screen televisions in this studio We had one
little tiny cathode ray two TV that you'd find like
(23:50):
in a camping trip somewhere, and it was up in
the corner of the studio. One of the other news
people came by and knocked on the window of the
studio door and pointed over my shoulder at the TV screen,
And when I turn and looked, I obviously saw a
smoke coming out of one of the Trade center towers
and started the conversation of, oh, it looks like something
(24:12):
has happened in New York. And you know, while we're
sitting there watching this, we see the second plane fly
into the second tower and started what became, you know,
the infamous.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
Day that we all know from that point on.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
And then going home to a wife, pregnant wife with
you know, a baby in the highchair kind of thing,
and just the numbness of what what we just witnessed,
where we were going as a country, this sort of
the feeling almost a free fall of we don't know
what's coming next in the next few hours kind of thing.
(24:48):
Before I then went back to the station later in
the afternoon, did some more coverage and all that sort
of stuff. But where were you, You said, you were
in college at the time. Yeah, I was still an
undergrad studying to be a radio star like you. So
it's still working on that, yeah, but yeah, it was.
It was a day that I you know, when you
get up to like your third year, you can have
some days during the week where you didn't have to
(25:08):
go to class. Sure you would work or something and
manipulate your schedule exactly. And I had a job at
the Mall in down I went to Northern Kentucky University,
which is in the Cincinnati metro. So I fighting tigers.
What's their mascot, The Norse. Okay, that's not as good,
but go on a D two basketball powerhouse at the
time now at D one perennial power in the Horizon Lake. Yeah, absolutely,
(25:30):
you know Northern Kentucky and the Norse. Yeah. I worked
at the mall in downtown Cincinnati, which was in a skyscraper. Okay,
So I was selling incense and soap at this store
where you could go in and buy that sort of thing.
It was a great gig because nobody ever shopped there,
and so I could do my homework and it was
fantastic and it all smelled like anti Nspretzels.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
It was a great gig.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
But before I had left, I had worked out do
you know the workout P ninety X.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Yeah, before he did P.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Ninety X, he had a our analog version of that
called Power ninety and I had the VHS tapes and
I had just done one of the workouts in my
apartment and flipped off the you know, the VHS after
I was finishing jacks, and boom, you got one on
a Today Show or Good Morning America or something was
on the screen. My roommate was asleep. I woke up said,
(26:18):
we've been bombed. I mean some of this, said, we've
been bombed. You know, we're kind of stoners. I didn't
know what the heck was going on, and so my
boss at the mall called and said, I do need
you to come in today, but we don't know what's happening.
And the reason was because think about how scared we were.
Thought is des moin next, you know, like any other
(26:38):
place in America was a possible target going for financial
marketing exactly and financial powerhouses. And I sell soap at
the tallest building in Cincinnati. I'm definitely on the list.
So eventually they closed the mall and sent us all
out downtown. Cincinnati's fleeing. I'm trying to get back into Kentucky.
It was an absolute mess. But we recorded on VHS
(27:02):
tape my roommate and I she was notorious for recording
stuff on VHS, and we kept that. She still has
this footage of the various. Obviously you can pull it
all up on YouTube now, but it was something to
have all of the various. We were new students, so
we were recording this stuff and watching it and glued
to it, and the campus was, you know, all shut down.
(27:23):
Everything was just shut down, and we sat there pretty numb,
waiting to see what was to come. And here we are,
all these years later, and you can still still feel
the ramifications of that day. I think it's it's led
us to where we are now politically. Well, I mean,
there's there's there a lot that was a watershed moment
in terms of culture in the United States for a
(27:45):
lot of for a lot of us, and a lot
of us that remember my kids, like I said, my
son was an infant, daughter wasn't even born yet. They'll
they don't know what life was like before that. I mean,
one of the aspects of airport life. For example, when
I was a reporter, is I could I could drive
up to the airport at Sea Tac Airport. I could
(28:06):
park my car on the curb, I could run in.
I'd tell the whoever's out there, I'll be right back
in like fifteen minutes. Run down to gate, you know,
before the Governor's getting off a flight from China. I
could do a quick ten minute interview with the governor
right there at the gate, run back to my car,
jump in and take off, you know.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
And I mean that would just be un heard of
in a day like today.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
We used to have field trips to the airport, you know,
when you could go in and watch planes take off
and all of this. And so I mean, certainly you
can understand in the immediate aftermath why everything was locked down,
But we are still you know, there's I think it
feels like they're phasing out a lot of it now,
but it's been a long It's that we're.
Speaker 3 (28:49):
Getting used to it, and that's it.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
It's like you forget how open airports were, but beyond
those physical inconveniences or security clearances that we all the
pass now just culturally and politically I think that was
obviously the beginning of whose side are you on? And
it's only well I don'nt did I mentioned in the
in the first hour, the cycle of something bad happens,
(29:13):
we all come together, and then we break it down again,
like the societal hate comes back in. I don't think
we get to come together anymore. Well, the cycle is
so tight now that even if you say something neutral
like Charlie Kirk was a family man, No, no, you are.
You know you're making excuses for a guy who was
(29:33):
filled with hate or something. No, no, no, Hold on
a second, There's got to be a moment where everyone
can agree that that kind of violence is unacceptable. I
don't even know if it would be the death of
a president, you know, forbid, you know the way that
the Kennedy assassination. Sure, we're just too online, We're too
connected to whatever we already believe to have places to
(29:56):
reinforce that to where we are lacking empathy, We are
lacking connection, and I don't know, it's pretty scary. A
quick note also, you mentioned your roommate's propensity to record
everything just for posterity reasons. My parents had this habit
of on a big day like that, or the Loma
Priator earthquake in nineteen eighty nine, or the Challenger explosion
(30:18):
from eighty six. They would take the next day's newspaper
and they would put it in the bottom of our
laundry basket and it would stay there for a decade
or more. Wow, so that we're always reminded of these
horrific tragedies when we're folding cloth. I like that kind
of trauma. I know, good trauma. Why they would do that. Yeah,
that was a thing, A little ink stain and trauma
(30:41):
to transfer onto your white T shirt. All right, Michael,
thank you, my pleasure. A quick swamp watch. We have
a bunch of light other light stuff. When we come
back to Gary and Shannon. You've been listening to The
Gary and Shannon Show. You can always hear us live
on KFI AM six forty nine am to one pm
every Monday through Friday, and anytime on demand on the
(31:02):
iHeartRadio AP
Gary and Shannon News
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