Ep. 513: "Mayor Jabberwocky"
hello hi john hi merlin how's it going good i haven't talked to you in a long time no you've been busy i was busy i was busy with covid yeah oh man oh
You want to talk about COVID?
Yeah, I never had it before, and then I got it.
Okay.
I finally got it after almost three years.
That's how they get you.
That is.
That's how they got me.
I was so embarrassed when I got COVID.
Not as embarrassed as Marco Arment, because Marco Arment got it really early.
Back when we were all really trying really hard not to catch COVID, and then he felt guilty about it, and I was like, oh, poor son of a bitch.
I'll never get COVID, because I don't go anyplace, but I guess my family does.
Yeah, I thought I was never going to get it, because it had been so long.
Yeah.
And then it got in.
Well, can we, and this is not, hmm, we missed a couple weeks of recording, just because it worked out that way.
The second one was because you had COVID.
Yeah.
Are you open to discussing why we didn't do the one before that?
Because was it related?
Well, so the one we didn't do before that was because I was in Disneyland.
Which is awesome.
It was great.
Disneyland is great.
Everything that they say about Disneyland being hard to do is also true, but...
Totally worth it.
Totally great.
And we had a wonderful time.
Matt Howey is there right now, and he just posted something that said that he learned two things about Disney World.
Something about the best hurricanes, I guess the drink hurricane, the best hurricanes are in New Orleans Square, and that the Golden Gate Bridge has an earthquake every five minutes.
No, it does not.
Really?
Well, you know, what did he say?
Laughter plus time equals comedy?
Or tragedy?
I don't know.
Tragedy plus time is comedy?
Yeah, that's just why I don't have friends.
I keep getting it backwards.
I know.
You're like laughter.
Does anybody remember laughter?
On 9-11, I was killing.
I bet.
Oh, it was way too soon.
Yeah, you had a lot of good material.
Oh, it's so much good material.
And the thing is, a lot of people were like, oh, I'm sorry.
I'm busy.
I'm crying.
Rainbow Room is where my parents met.
And I'm up there doing like a solid, you know.
I was like Bernard Shaw that day.
I just showed up and did the work.
I think I still have some writing I did on 9-11 or probably 9-12 where I was...
Really digging into it, you know, really thinking it through.
Oh, you were already like kind of getting in front of it.
Oh, I was thinking it through.
And I had a lot of, I had some deep thoughts.
And it turned out none of my, it turned out a lot of my deep thoughts were prescient in the sense that I saw the coming storm.
My 9-11, in terms of the first couple days, was defined largely by – I don't know if you know about this.
I know you've had jobs, but I don't know if you've ever had a lot of this kind of job.
It was something where I had to help my boss, who was helping his boss, because she couldn't get a flight out of town.
Yeah, help your boss help their boss.
Oh, yeah.
A lot of what we did was like sitting around in her hotel room talking about how this inconvenience this all was for her.
Oh.
Because she couldn't get back to Tallahassee.
Oh, I know.
Tallahassee.
It's a capital city.
It's right there.
You got to rent a car.
Capital's got balls.
No, I was a member of the whole like, well, what if we didn't do anything?
There were a lot of deep thoughts, it's best, that probably were not widely shared amongst all of us.
A lot of us had a, as we say in England, a lot of us had reckons about what was going on and why.
Yeah, a lot of reckoning.
That's right.
Did you find yourself by the 12th?
And I would like to get back to COVID.
We haven't talked at all about Hitler.
How were you feeling on the 12th?
Were you feeling...
Were you insightful?
I was, yeah.
I was doing quite a bit of Reckoning.
I was doing some Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy.
I was thinking it all through because... Were you thinking laterally?
Because if I know you, and I think it was before I knew you, but I bet you were thinking laterally.
I bet you were making... Well, and you were making the kind of...
Coming through the side door type connections.
That's right.
That's one of my things.
You know what I mean?
You found monk holes, political, cultural, faith-based monk holes.
That's right.
Well, you know, one of the first places I went that wasn't Western Europe or America was Morocco.
Morocco.
And I'd spent a month there really kind of living.
This isn't going to be a sad one, is it?
No, no, no, no, not at all.
We'll come back to something funny after a while, right?
But the thing about it was that I felt a connection.
One of those connections that you get when you're a young traveler, I felt a connection to Islam.
And to the Muslim world.
Because it was the first.
It's going to be a very, very beautiful faith.
Well, it's got a lot going for it.
You know what?
It's a beautiful faith, Merlin, as you say.
Well, see, you don't want to say anything.
Because then people, you know, like John Syracuse is going to go, meh, meh.
People believe in things suck.
You know?
And people are going to yell at you.
But, like, it's a, it's, I, there's a lot to value in it.
And boy, that was not getting a lot of airtime on the 12th.
No, it wasn't.
And that's the thing.
If I had gone to Thailand for my first trip, as I meet people all the time, the first time they ever left the country, they went on some adventure to Thailand.
It used to be famously pretty inexpensive, but also really my friend in college always insisted you could live in Thailand on $3 a day, which is, I don't know, might be true.
But also, isn't it just extraordinarily beautiful there?
It's very beautiful, although I don't think you can live there for $3 a day anymore.
It was in the 80s.
It was in the 80s.
Yeah, and I think there's a lot of, you know, I think Bangkok's very polluted now.
But I've never been.
But a Pixies album was $8 then.
I don't have a connection to Thailand, except that I love their delicious cuisine.
You do, and never mention the royal family.
But that's true in Morocco, too.
I got kicked under the table one time, sitting at a table.
I was a big group of people.
We were all sitting, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And I said, so what do you really think of the king?
And somebody kicked me so hard under the table, like, zip it.
That's called the Moroccan reminder.
And I was like, oh, oh.
And everybody's giving me big smiles.
Yeah, the first time a newbie walks into a Thai restaurant and going, who are those shows in the panties?
Look at this guy.
Hey, we're talking four eyes.
Hey.
Hey, four eyes.
The 80s called and they want their eyes back.
So anyway, all my lateral thinking that was happening was like all based in this feeling that I had like, hey, I understand the Muslim world a little bit because of my two months over time that I've spent in Morocco.
And, you know, the Muslim man is my friend.
I am their friend.
Isn't there a way?
Can't we all learn to live together?
Can't we all just get along?
Right.
I'm afraid that those essays are at the bottom of a drawer somewhere, never to be published.
But I didn't see – who could have foreseen – I watched a movie last night with –
With the kid who was in Donnie Darko.
Yeah, Jake Gyllenhaal.
Yeah, that's right.
I watched a movie where he was a special forces guy.
I feel like I remember that.
Yeah, and I'm watching it, and the underlying plot is like, we've been at war in Afghanistan for 20 years.
I was like, wow, 20 years.
That's a long war.
Woo!
Well, now, you know, you're getting to the age where the people who were born at that time are, you know, having kids.
And when it becomes almost generational, where there is any possibility that there is a generational overlap, like happened in World War II, that's, you know, that's not great.
That a father and a son could both be serving, for example.
You know, World War II only lasted five years.
Hell, that stuff in my fridge is five years long.
In America, it did.
Went a little bit longer in your beloved Europe.
That's a good point you just made.
Yeah.
Could have gotten early and really made a difference, couldn't it?
It went one more year.
What?
What are you talking about?
It was practically 1942.
1942.
New York City!
This is the end.
My only friend, the end.
Can't land on a fraction.
Merlin, let me stop you there and insert this pre-recorded ad that I'm making for The Long Winter's vinyl reissues.
That's right.
I'm putting an ad in my own show, which is a thing it's never occurred to me to do.
And now that it has, I feel like I should put one in every single episode for whatever.
For whatever the hell I'm doing.
But this one...
This ad is for an incredible reissue of the entire Long Winter's catalog on colored vinyl by the company Bandbox.
It's now the 20 year anniversary of our 2003 record, When I Pretend to Fall.
And to commemorate that, all four of our albums are being re-released on special colored vinyl.
We remastered them for this occasion.
And Pretend to Fall is a double record.
And the company Bandbox, who's putting it out, has, at least so far, seemed to be a great company to work with.
So it's a pre-order situation.
The colored vinyl is only going to be available to people who pre-order it.
And then it's one of these, you order it and then they make as many as are ordered.
So that pre-order period is kind of, we're already more than halfway through it.
I'm sorry I hadn't mentioned it before, but we haven't recorded in a couple of weeks.
Anyway, go to Bandbox, well, just Google Bandbox Long Winter's Vinyl.
There's a way you can order all four of them.
Every time I log on to the Bandbox site, I get a 20% off offer.
And I think there's a discount if you order all four records as a kind of box set.
So let me encourage you all, if you are a Long Winters fan, if you're a vinyl fan, if you're someone who just loves vinyl as a piece of display art, go to Bandbox Rocks.
I guess that's their website, bandboxrocks.com, and pick it up.
It's a great thing.
It's an honor to have made these records, and then 20 years later, there's still enough interest in them
that, uh, that the, the reissue would be happening.
So thanks again.
And now back to the show of me talking to my friend.
Oh, I don't have long COVID.
My daughter's beloved mother and my cherished partner likes to say, oh, how's your long COVID going?
Because I still have a cough.
You know, it's been a couple of weeks.
Yeah.
And I get mad every time.
I don't have long COVID.
And then she laughs because it's hard to get my goat.
Well, I mean, I don't know about that.
No, that's not true.
I think your goat is pretty well exposed.
It's pretty easy to get my goat, but she's been getting my goat with this long.
Yes.
I don't want it.
I don't want the long.
You said that you thought you had a little long COVID.
Well, you know.
There's a phrase.
One time my friend Sam and I asked his dad about the orientation of their interior designer.
And what we said to him was, do you think, I think his name was like Rudy.
Do you think Rudy might be gay?
And Ken's dad, in a very, not mean, but very funny way, said, well, if he's not, he's missing his best bet.
Oh, isn't that well seen?
Isn't that kind of a funny thing to say?
If he's not, he's missing his best bet.
If I don't have long COVID, I'm missing my best bet.
Because my brain is... I don't know.
I'm still pretty sharp in some ways.
And then the thing I'm reading now in the headlines is what they call the long cold.
Where after COVID, you may not have strictly long COVID.
There are people who are fucked.
Fucked.
from COVID they got in like March of 2020 still.
And of course they're made to feel crazy because that's how the fucking medical racket works.
Well, and anytime you have a lingering or chronic illness, you're always up against people that are like, really?
Why don't you just get better?
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, before we even get to the emotional, mental, that kind of stuff, just literally the physical stuff, whether that's, you know, I mean, it's had different names over time, but there are a lot of things where eventually 10 years after everybody's been made to feel like they're a crazy person, somebody goes, oh, yeah, well, that was actually a thing.
It turns out we don't know why IBS happens, but people do still have it.
It's not a made up thing.
People don't just go to the doctor because they want to be probed, you know.
Well, some do.
I don't know if you go to a doctor for that.
That would be more like a cosplay kind of thing, I guess.
I don't want to get into it.
Those people get so mad.
I don't know how you scrub the fur.
I guess they do.
But, you know, what are your – and so that was – you were a pretty sick guy about a week ago.
Yeah, I mean, I missed last week's episode in a kind of unprecedented fashion, and then I just slept through it.
Those are both well-precedented.
Well, come on.
Well, I think that's one of those.
That's one.
It was cruel of me to laugh like that.
I'm glad that I had the microphone on my chest for the startup of that.
Everybody got a real sense of it.
Oh, you get the proximity effect.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
What are your – so do you – okay.
So I told you when I got it, I felt stupid.
I felt pretty bad.
Like all these people who were like, I just – I kept working at the construction site or whatever.
Like all these like West Virginia coal miner types.
And I'm like, um –
Dude, okay, here's another example.
Okay.
The last, excluding yesterday, the last like four days have been really hot here, unseasonably, even for October warm.
In California.
In the Bay Area and then in San Francisco in particular.
I see.
So, I mean, it's not unusual for it to get warm, but we get maybe usually, I don't know, I'll just say it feels like we get about five maybe-ish days in San Francisco, in the western part of San Francisco.
We're talking about a crazy climate here.
You know, the coldest summer I ever spent was a winter in San Francisco.
That's true.
That was Jonathan Swift.
Abraham Lincoln.
Yes, just long enough to reach the floor.
But it's been over 80 every day.
The problem isn't, again, we're not hooked up for that.
It's like, everybody in Atlanta drives crazy when it rains.
Well, yeah, that's because it's a really big deal when it first rains in Atlanta.
It's like...
Get a clue.
People are selling such hillbillies when they're like, it's not like that here.
And you're like, yeah, it's almost like they're different places.
The way people, friends of mine on a podcast, including John Cercusa, keep saying like, oh, it's a joke, but it's like, California has no weather.
You can just leave all your important papers outside.
It's like, ha, ha, ha.
It's funny how you keep thinking the East Coast is better at everything.
Ha, ha, ha.
Yeah, it's very funny.
It's really funny how you cannot be fucked to learn other people's time zones.
It's very, very funny the way that you do that.
Because I've been living it for 24 years, and it's still funny.
It is funny.
But if you're not hooked up for that, right?
I mean, if you're...
I don't know.
I'm just, like, I was telling Madeline how, like, I lived in several places in Florida that had no air conditioning.
And over time, you know, things for poor and young people.
Yes.
Accommodations.
Yes.
But, you know, here, I described it as feeling, you ever seen those photos of, like, when it gets really hot and a squirrel just, like, spreads out somewhere, opens up its entire body?
Yeah.
I said to Madeline the other night, I was practically hallucinating, I'm laying in our bed at, like, 6.30, right?
Everything, all the windows are open, all the fans are on, it's still 84 degrees in our bedroom, which is not really my ideal sleeping weather.
And I always say, I say what I always say, which is like, it's kind of uncanny how many years I spent with this being the norm for me, from the ages of 12 through 30-something.
And, you know, honestly, yeah, most places were air-conditioned.
But wait, if that air-conditioning wasn't working, or if you're someplace that didn't have air-conditioning,
If the air conditioning broke, like, every building there is, it's either tuned for not having air conditioning, and therefore it's extremely inefficient to have air conditioning, or it's made for air conditioning and you can't open the goddamn windows at all.
And I was just laying there and I was like, I feel like I'm wearing a fur coat right now.
Like I feel I'm laying in bed face down and I feel like I'm wearing fur when in fact all I am wearing is my underpants.
Your normal fur suit, your Merlin suit.
Merlin.
Furlan?
You're Furlan.
No, please don't make that happen.
I'm a member of the Furlan community.
No.
Oh, he's a Furlan.
And the other thing I said was something like, I really think that, you know, like when you get stressed out, you get a stress bump.
It's your body's way of like, it's not your body.
Your body doesn't want a cold sore.
But a cold sore is a way of saying, okay, Tex, you now officially need to calm the fuck down.
Wow.
You've been doing, you know, you get a cold sore, you've been doing too much, staying up too late.
In my case, I feel like one of those squirrels.
And I feel like my body gets this over 80 degrees for more than a few hours and my body gets this signal to shut down.
I don't know.
I watch things like Survivor, you know, these shows and I'm just, I don't know how people could be outdoors all day.
I'm sorry, that went on a long time.
But what I'm saying is that I'm sensitive to certain kinds of things and not that sensitive to other kinds of things.
And I think everybody's like that.
We all differ.
And so we look at other people and go like, ah, you live in California and it's 80 degrees.
Boo hoo.
And it's like, okay.
I hate those people that say boohoo in a funny voice.
Oh, they're the worst.
Oh, those boohooers.
The East Coast booers.
Yeah, boohoo you, my friend, is what I say.
Oh, must be tough to pay $5,000 in rent.
Do you know what my mortgage is like?
It's why I need this job that I hate on the East Coast where it's always the right time.
And then they do that.
Oh, those people.
Oh.
That's more like kind of mid-Atlantic.
That's the kind of thing you say in Maryland, probably.
You know, I haven't been anywhere in a while, so I forgot that there are other kinds of people.
I mean, that's not true.
I went to Disneyland.
Yeah, but there used to be more kinds of people for sure.
There did.
There were so many kinds of people.
There were a lot of kinds of people, and now it seems like there's not.
No, there's probably – I don't have the time or the interest to get super into it today.
I've got to get ready for Madeline's birthday.
Oh, sure.
I know.
You've got stuff to do.
Oh, it's Madeline's birthday?
Well, yeah.
The Jubilee starts today, so I've got stuff to do.
And as always, I'm a little – I'm always behind.
Sure, sure, sure.
Because I'm not that kind of guy.
You've got an eight ball, and you're on this side of the eight ball.
Here's the eight ball, and then there's the stuff you have to do on the other side.
I haven't even bought the eight ball yet.
Yeah, Amazon says it.
I should call them back if it's not there in a couple days.
No.
Oh, what?
No, no, no, no.
You've got an Amazon Platinum account, don't you?
Don't you have Amazon?
Amazon Prime.
On the climb!
Now, that doesn't even sound like Louis Armstrong.
Every time the person comes with a new order of toilet paper, aren't they like, Merlin!
And you're like, ha-ha, my friend!
That's me in paper towels.
Where does he put them all?
Does he just put them right in the trash?
Yes, I get much of my future trash from Amazon.
Do you people there in California recycle?
well in air quotes yes uh-huh we and we heavily in air quotes recycle and do you compost yes we heavily quote-unquote actually compost is closer to something real the trash recycling thing is very funny right now do you um when you are going through paper towels which i know you do in in profusion oh yeah do those paper towels get composted
Do you compost them?
Do you make an effort to imagine them going back to the soil?
I do, and you did not ask for this detail, but this is one reason I wish that all—I mean, my wife is a person and a grown-up, so we have things that close.
As soon as you cover anything where trash goes, you're going to create resistance to using it as much as you'd like.
So I would love to be able to shoot.
Oh, you want an open-top garbage can that you can just... Because I hit a surprising number of three-pointers.
Okay.
And I'd love to do that with my paper towel.
I'm not going to go always walk over and do it.
No, to answer your question, though, in answer to your query, the questions are written down for me.
And what I do is, yeah, I'm a recycling boy, but that's partly... We can't get into this.
But partly because, you know, recycling is bullshit right now.
Yes, of course, of course.
They just take the cardboard and put it in a room.
They put folded cardboard in a room in case someday someone wants cardboard again.
Now, that's not true.
Oh, it absolutely is.
They put folded cardboard in the room in case one day someone wants cardboard again.
There was – I learned this from a podcast.
I speak English very well.
I learned it from a book.
But what I learned was that there was beyond a perfect storm.
This combination of – this is a very good turns-out story.
There were three things that happened in the 90s that created – you know, like most of us walk around today going, oh, we've got to recycle this, right?
Right.
Well, that's good.
It's very good.
It would be nice if we could... But the thing is, if something's got oil in it, you can't really recycle it.
It's not really recyclable.
Plastics, yes, kind of, sort of.
But there was a unique moment in the 90s where I think it was... A couple, three things happened.
One was that fuel...
for big ships barges was super cheap another was that china was uh china in particular was actually interested in getting recyclable stuff that they could turn into something else anyway it created what ultimately was a pretty if not false at least temporary economy of us getting used to putting all of our crystal geyser and i know you love dasani that's your favorite the raccoon water bottles putting all those on a barge and just sending it to china
And then eventually, understandably, China's like, hey, you know what?
The fuel's not so cheap anymore, and we're sick of getting yogurt out of your fucking plastic.
There's no money in this.
So now there's a very small number of things that are actually, in an according-to-Hoyle way, actually recycled.
And then at the other end of the spectrum, there are things where like, look, we don't want to break this habit we've got people into.
In our case, we've got a half-size garbage can, a half, you know, landfill, if you like, half-size compost, and full-size recycling.
So it just makes sense to quote-unquote recycle because you get more trash space.
But then a bunch of it goes to the dump and it just goes in different piles where it's just basically bespoke, sorted garbage.
this is this is known it is known yeah yeah I think it is I think it is and like I mean I I think I understand all of that and I would like to be better about those things but um you know used to be time was they would they in the in the light of the garbage truck they would be going through our five ten years ago they would be going through the trash and give us like a nasty gram if there was something in there that wasn't supposed to be in there we don't get that anymore
You know, I spend a lot of time thinking about what I would do if I had a billion dollars.
Do you spend any time thinking about that?
No.
If you had a billion dollars, you don't sit and when you're on a drive, you don't think like, if I had a billion dollars.
I think about other things that won't happen, but not that one so much.
I mean, there's a part of me that feels like I would like half a million dollars.
Oh, half a million dollars.
That's a manageable amount to have.
That would be awesome.
And if I had a half a million dollars, I think, you know what, Merlin?
I think all my problems would go away.
Yes.
One half million dollars in all my problems.
If you have less money now and you aren't as happy, you have to assume that when you get a ton more, literally everything will be better.
And if you get that full B, if you're in the Trescomas Club, you're going to be out there helping a lot of people.
When you thought about this while you're driving.
The thing is, my two fascinations, I think, when I think about if I had a billion dollars, I have a couple of fascinations.
You're the most ready-to-be-interviewed man I've ever met.
Actually, thank you, Tom.
Actually, thank you, Tom.
I do have two concerns that are really just interested over the years.
Two things.
One of them is, what would I do?
Well, Mr. Roderick, we haven't begun an interview yet.
Okay.
If you could buy my pain for $500,000, but if I had a billion dollars, I would create more pain for myself.
And there's a couple of things, a couple of fascinations I have.
And one of them is, is there a way...
That we can make recycling real.
I don't mean, I don't mean.
This goes back to kind of an old theme on the show, John.
Yes.
Can we make it real?
Can we build a train?
Yes.
Can we get us to the future?
I think if I had a billion dollars, I could at least say whether or not recycling could be real or not.
I also am increasingly interested in building a sin city.
So a lot of people, it's funny because they've been talking about, there's been several headlines about things happening.
And I've seen several things about Nevada recently.
I saw a really good video about what the problem with West Virginia is and how much of it you would love this video about how it's especially, it is the most pound for pound, the most hilly.
place in America.
It's very hilly.
And every place where you can build something, they've built something.
Any place, all the flat.
Yeah, yeah.
So basically the turn of a river gives you this area.
If you look, there's all these little towns that are built up in like the curve of a river because it's all between mountains.
It's all the stuff you love talking about, I think.
Well, maybe you have a third thing now.
But they were saying how Nevada, like, you know, it's unharable.
It's just there's too much desert.
I've been hearing about, I heard about you two playing a concert there.
I heard about the Large Eye or Basketball.
That's right.
Seems interesting in there.
And so, but you know what's funny?
I used to.
But when they say Sin City, I mean, is there really that much sin?
No.
Because I feel like in the 90s it got pretty – are you talking about a place like a – is it a Sodom, a Gomorrah?
Is it a Gamera?
It is.
It's one of those.
Sodom and Gamera would be a good movie, by the way.
And what, there are two detectives and one of them is a sheepdog?
Yeah.
Wait a minute.
Gamera, wasn't Gamera like a spinning turtle?
Oh, Gamera, the spinning turtle.
No, who am I thinking of?
Was that Totoro?
Totoro?
No.
Totoro was a bear or something.
Totoro spins on the top of the tree.
Was he a Pikachu?
No.
What is a Totoro?
Totoro?
A Totoro is, it's a word, I think it means it's Japanese for like troll, but you should see it.
It's a very good movie.
It's called My Neighbor Totoro.
I've seen it.
It's got a bear in it.
It's got three bears, but they're not three bears you're thinking of, it turns out.
So you're going to create number one, wait, is that number two or number one?
Well, I think number one right now is to see if I could determine whether or not recycling could be real.
Oh, sorry.
Recycling in Sin City.
Got it, got it, got it.
But Sin City, I feel like there's a couple of things.
And one of them is there are a lot, or at least there used to be a lot of decommissioned military bases.
no like treasure island kind of has that they've kind of turned treasure island from like first it was they built a fake island for an exposition tore down all the buildings and then made like it was like a big brutalist shit which is a terrific ted leo album the brutalist shits but um yeah and now but like that was like a practically a navy base for a while you could probably pick a lot of that stuff i bet a lot of it your biggest problem is going to be environmental remediation
Well, but this was true, I think, a decade or two ago when all of those bases were getting closed down and everything was getting consolidated in these joint bases.
Oh, like Joint Base Andrews is the name of one I know.
Joint Base Andrews, right?
What does that mean?
Andrews Air Force Base, and now it's Andrews plus combined with some other base.
That's how they do you.
You should ask Lieutenant Colonel Mike Milligan about this.
There were all these bases out there.
And I think cities were getting them for pennies on the dollar because of this mitigation you're talking about.
And also like, oh, let's just build some bike trails around them.
And there's probably, I mean, like probably I'm repeating what you're saying probably, but I bet there's also like, you know, probably like tax benefits in some cases or some kind of like low interest loans to be able to like, if you pick up this thing that used to be a warehouse for moms and you figure out a way to turn it into a flea market, like you don't have to pay taxes for two years or something.
But there's stuff like that out there.
Yeah, I wonder.
I haven't really researched it because I don't have a billion dollars or even $500,000.
And then there's also the entire Midwestern United States where young people don't want to live anymore.
So you've got all these towns, big towns, some of them, that just don't have anybody in them.
Old people are still moldering away there.
But I feel like you could buy them for pennies on the dollar.
Okay.
You're talking about, like, okay, so here's the thing.
Like, there's a term I remember learning in the 80s, megalopolis.
You think about something like the eastern – sorry, the east coast of Florida, where you can go kind of basically from, like, Fort Lauderdale down to Miami.
It's almost like a contiguous –
Yeah.
You know, seriously, you can probably I bet there's and with all respect, I bet there's places in Oklahoma that are like pretty well developed.
You could look you could probably just use the strategy of like where dollar stores have been built because dollar stores will tell you a lot about bargains to pick up.
Bargains.
I think there are definitely places in the plains, what we call the prairie states, where they didn't even get around to building a dollar store because there wasn't even enough audience for a dollar store.
I'm going to send you a video about dollar stores.
Oh, no, no.
I know the story of the dollar stores.
They're bad.
They're a bad thing.
They are bad, but they have a unique, one thing that's unique about them that even Walmart can't touch is that they find places that are exactly like, places that have like a gas station, just a gas station, will also have a dollar store.
Because they have this strategy of going into places where poor people can't drive very far, but it's still a destination out in the dust.
Economies of scale, John, this is the kind of thing Supertrain was built for.
It's all a lie because it's not a 99-cent store anymore.
It used to be at a 99-cent store.
Time was.
Do you remember that, John?
There was stuff.
You'd go to the nickel store, and everything was a nickel.
Remember that?
Well, it was a five and dime.
Well, they called it Nickel Joe's.
They called it, yeah.
But I've got this, I've got this, I'm running it all the time.
I'm running this script all the time and not script like a play, but I'm talking about a script.
You guys talk about them in computers, right?
Isn't it a script?
So I'm running the numbers, right?
I've got the ones and zeros coming down in big cascades, big chains in green light.
And I'm thinking, what is the perfect way, what is the perfect place where you could build
You could get a 10-mile square piece of property, let's say.
And it's got some towns in it already.
Let's say 100 square miles.
It might be a little bit of infrastructure, because there might be some... It isn't like you're going to go, I don't know, go making a murderer where you've got to go dig your own turlets and stuff.
There's probably some infrastructure.
Shit dog, you could come to San Francisco and get Westfield Center for a song.
See, there you go.
300,000 square feet.
And they're talking about knocking it down and putting something else there.
And I'm like...
Oh, my God.
People have already been talking about old malls as generation X retirement homes.
This is all Jason and I talk about.
The mayor's big plan was, we're going to knock down.
So you've probably been there.
There's a mall in San Francisco.
Oh, I've been there.
Called Westfield Center.
They have great food down in the food court where my kid and I used to go.
We used to go there almost every weekend, see a movie, and give mom a break.
And that was, you know...
And so basically Nordstrom's was 100,000 square feet of that.
And they bounced.
Have you heard about this?
Is Jason keeping you up to date on this Pounce on Koran?
No.
300,000 square foot, like five-story mall.
It's where we used to go to see Santa.
It's got like a cupola.
It's this gorgeous place.
And one of the – because the mayor just like every week comes up with some new bullshit thing that she hasn't really thought through with all respect.
And one of those was – one that was pretty recent was we're going to have a soccer stadium downtown because we can finally fill all that demand downtown for soccer.
That doesn't make very –
But you know, it'd be great.
I don't even live there.
But you know, exactly.
And it's sort of like, I don't know, I guess if you get some kind of a weird unsightly growth, you hope that that makes you an interesting character actor and will change your career.
Her plan is like tear down Westfield Center.
Now, I want you to understand, this is a high end Westfield.
It's a name you've heard before.
They're nice.
We have one of those.
Of course.
300,000 square feet.
So what we'll do, why don't we go ahead and tear that down.
We'll hire people to tear down 300,000 completed square feet of full infrastructure, right?
They got nice turlets.
They got HVAC.
The whole place is done.
It's built.
This becomes important.
Especially you guys that are thinking about buying five Rivians instead of your current Honda Accord.
You know what's better for the environment?
Stop buying new things.
No, no, no.
Five Rivians.
You tie them together and it powers a whole neighborhood.
Oh, like a Voltron.
Yeah, exactly.
And then the question becomes like, so excuse me, Mayor, once you've torn down 300,000 complete and like finished square feet of infrastructure inside the middle of San Francisco, what'll go there?
And there's not a place for that.
A soccer stadium.
Well, it could be the soccer stadium if you build it vertically.
No, but what should go there is a sin city.
I think what we need... I want to get over this one hump, John, because I think you're fucking right.
Yes.
Do you also know that's the only... You've been there.
We've gone there together, I think.
It's the only place in San Francisco that does something other cities do that's special, which is Bart and Muni have an entrance into the fucking mall.
Your subway pulls up and you walk in the door and now you're inside the mall.
mall yep like do you understand what people would do what people would kill for that in like other cities and south korea man you know what it would cost to do something like that jesus fucking christ but what i'm getting is oh boy john this i i have to say my heart is softening three sizes this day yes you could save san francisco not that you should
Can you imagine what would happen if you go in, turnkey operation, you say, get some people in there, sweep the place out, flush the toilets, and give me a few weeks because I'm going to make some changes to the currently former Westfield Center.
Sin City.
Sin City.
Sin City.
Sin Santra.
I think Sin City is the, I think it's the future of Super Train right now.
Yes.
Because I really, I believe that, I believe the children are our future, as you know.
You know, you said that for so long.
I know.
I know.
It really is one of my core beliefs.
I believe the old people are past.
I think people need a cheap, easy, accessible place to do sin.
Thank you.
And then get on a board and you can be back in Antioch the same day.
Well, but also maybe not.
Maybe you stay in Sin City because you want to live in sin.
It's living in sin.
That's our tagline.
Could it be like Gangs of New York where there's like different areas inside of it?
You know, the beginning of Gangs of New York where there's all the structure and that's based on a real thing in New York where people used to live in these crazy buildings that look like Barbie's dream house, but hellish.
Could it have different areas?
Could it have maybe gangs?
Would it be sexy?
Would it be dangerous?
All of those things, you see.
It's a city of sin.
There's the problem, right?
We've got the one thing that conservatives and liberals have always agreed on is that people that are living in sin—
Or are poor, which a lot of people... Or miscegenating.
Do you remember the miscegenations?
People hated that.
A lot of people think that people that are poor are living in sin already, because otherwise, why would God have cursed them?
Well, they're certainly not living in the light of the Lord.
Exactly.
Especially if you're living in a prosperity gospel situation.
Well, this is the thing.
They go to Dollar General.
I'm Dollar General.
What happens is that conservative people believe that people living in sin need to be punished.
And liberal people think that people living in sin need to be reformed or helped, right?
Re-educated.
Yeah, or just, yeah, like either.
Why don't they get into treatment?
Why don't they get into a program?
Get into treatment, get into program.
But also the reason they're living in sin is because they had very difficult childhoods or maybe generational trauma.
But, you know, a lot of black people, the father's gone.
That's what they used to say in the 80s.
But one thing that liberals and conservatives always agree on is that no one in their right mind could legitimately...
If I voluntarily choose to live in sin as a decision, as a conscious adult decision, this is what I want to do with my life, which is be high all the time and not answer to anybody.
But you're saying, like, this is a space that's become kind of a co-opted word, but this is an area where you're allowed to be fully committed to your version of sin.
There are a lot of people out there.
I'm just going to come out and say it, Merlin.
There are a lot of people.
I wish you would come out and say it, because I think this is going to cover all the things a lot of people aren't talking about right now.
There are a surprising number of fully grown adult people in their right minds who just want to be high all the time and not answer to anybody.
And it is if you are on either side of the political spectrum and you truly do want to give human beings agency and say these are adult people and they have actual agency over themselves, you have to confront the fact that a certain percentage of them and not an insignificant percentage of them are going to say, actually, with my full agency, what I would like to do is be high all the time and not answer to what I want.
What I want is the ability to commit.
Now, the thing is, I'm interested in this idea of what they call harm reduction.
And I know it's something that's a very complicated idea for a lot of people or a bad idea.
You're saying here, like, maybe you go down the street, you go over to Mission Street if you want some harm reduction.
This is potentially harm amplification.
Yeah.
Well, but I mean, in the sense of like, but if you decided to fully commit to smoking, like, don't worry, you're never going to run out of cigarettes here.
It's going to be kind of like Pinocchio Island, right?
When they take him to Pleasure Island, and he smokes cigars and plays billiards.
Oh, man, it still sounds so fun.
It was scary at the time, but now I think it's a little sexy.
Cigars and billiards with a fox?
The fox is wearing a top hat?
He should be the concierge.
Yeah, when you get the concierge, that's your chance to talk?
No, I'm saying that in a situation, a lot of the problems that we have in our lives now are about not accepting.
Timidity and fear, John.
Timidity.
Not accepting that people could legitimately want to stay high all the time and not answer anybody.
And then somebody says to them, are you sure that's what you want?
And they go, yes.
I've thought about this.
I want this.
We spend a ton of time either trying to regulate them, trying to get them into treatment, trying to get them into affordable housing and get them a job when they don't want a job.
And they just want to be high.
And so what there needs to be in every region is a sin city.
where you can go and just fuck off.
And the thing is, it's much cheaper to just give drugs to people that want to be high than it is.
If you buy, think about the way Walmart works, John.
It's economies of scale.
It's economies of scale.
Drugs don't have to be expensive.
But also, drugs aren't expensive at all to produce.
What makes them expensive is that we make them illegal.
Middleman.
Then you can't find them.
Yeah.
And then when you do find them, you got to pay for them.
And so then you got to do robberies and then you've got to do, then you got to do bad things.
You got to go into stores and shoplift, uh, uh, toilet paper and cause you can't afford it.
All the, all the things where really, if you just want it and you know, and there's a whole language around this about warehousing people.
The thing is, if you want to get high and not answer to anybody, you're really not a threat to anybody.
You're not intrinsically dangerous.
In fact, you're the opposite.
You're very manageable.
I would be practically docile.
Everyone would.
If you had drugs, if you were a drug person, and you wanted drugs, and you had those drugs, and you had a warm place to watch television,
There's no crime in you.
Is this because it's you and 50 people inside of what used to be a Michael Kors accessories store?
Yes.
That's fun.
I mean, the thing is, I'm not going to name her name, but the mayor's going to knock all that down.
Where's all the Michael Kors go?
That's what Michael Stipe asked him.
Well, the Michael Kors is going to find a place to live, but I'm saying there are others.
But you've got an empty store there.
Well, it could be Bed Bath & Beyond, or it could be the store where they're used to sell regular stuff and now it's autographed bobbleheads.
Well, here's one thing that you're doing that I'm not sure Sin City even needs, which is thinking about it.
Sin City just needs to be a place.
It will think it through for itself.
It's not Think City.
It's not Think City.
This is what liberals do, right?
They go in and they're like, oh, the Michael Kors is going to be for these people.
The gap is going to be for these people.
The call was coming from inside the Michael Kors.
Yeah, the people that are in Sin City are going to determine who the Michael Kors is for.
Ah, self-govern.
Sin governs itself.
Sin governs, I'm writing that down.
As long as the natural resources of sin, which are drugs...
And tobacco and alcohol.
Whoopie cushions.
Whoopie cushions.
Privacy.
A flashlight.
There's got to be, as you say, working toilets.
It's always nice to have working toilets.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then, you know, there will be an economy, of course.
The problem with the Sin City, and here's, you know, I think about this a lot.
Sin meets the road.
Because the problem is, at one level, in order for it to fly with the world, you have to contain it, right?
You can't just have Sin City with open borders.
But as soon as you put borders around the thing, then all the people that don't want to have to answer to anybody are up against the fact that there's a wall.
And so anytime you've got people who are like, all I want to do is be high and not answer to anybody.
And you say, that's great.
Just go through this gate and you can do whatever you want.
You're going to have a certain percentage of them that are like, I'm not going through your gate.
I didn't come here to fill out forms.
I'm not going to go through some gate.
And so how do you manage a situation where it's got to be a discrete area?
One in, one out?
Well, the appeal of it has got to be strong enough and the truth of it in the sense that within it you don't have to answer.
It has to be powerful enough that you're willing to go through the step first.
of registering.
You know, registering to... Yeah, and what you're describing, just to repeat what you're saying, what you're describing here is people who want to get high and just be left alone, and not the kind of people who want to get involved in going to meetings about zoning.
They don't want to do that, right?
But they don't want to go to meetings of any kind.
They want to get high.
But also...
They want to get high and ride their machines.
But there's also an element – Without being hassled by the man?
Exactly.
Okay.
But they don't want – they don't – and I think a lot of organized crime is going to be gone because organized crime is feeding on shame, right?
But also availability.
And our availability heuristic here is that – I've always felt like the first step to Sin City is –
Is basically like – what's the kind – it's a generic beer.
Remember generic beer?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So what we're talking about is an entire culture based around Repo Man beer.
Ordinary fucking people.
None of the stuff, that's right, none of the stuff in Sin City is going to be, it doesn't have to be nice.
Now, there's probably going to be a corner, probably up there by the Michael Kors, where there's the nice corner of Sin City, right?
Where the people up there are like, we're at a higher level.
It feels like I'm interrupting you, but I'm holding my tongue, John, because you know what you need here?
You need Judge Dredd.
You need Snowpiercer.
Let's talk about what this is really going to be.
Let's do it.
Which is, if it's Westfield Tantra, it's going to be, let's just say arbitrarily, five stories.
And do you think the rich sinners live on the bottom floor by the Korean barbecue?
No.
They're up in the cupola.
Yeah, you can see the smoke-filled sky up there.
That's where Santa used to be.
And a really nice Chinese restaurant and an autograph.
But again, now you start getting autograph stores.
The thing is, human beings are going to take care of that, right?
There's always going to be the people down at the bottom.
There's always going to be the last car in the snowpiercer where they're eating bug slime.
That's unconscious knowledge.
What we're trying to do... I don't know what that means.
What we're trying to do... What we're trying to do is build a sin city that runs itself.
A sin city where people are free from both...
the conservative impulse to punish them for being poor and the liberal impulse to reform them and make them into whatever, the angels of their better nature, and just let them be high and not answer to anybody.
I swear to you.
Kind of like a little bit Hamsterdam from The Wire.
It's fully Hamsterdam.
Yeah.
Because in Hamsterdam, remember, the cops were there.
Hamsterdam was so beat up, it kind of looked like Safety City where you learned to ride your bike as a kid.
You know, remember it was all with the boarded up, all the boarded up buildings.
And oh, God.
But what you're seeing right now is Hamsterdam in the mission.
It's basically Hamsterdam.
It's not even Hamsterdam.
If you were on the calls with Jason and me, you would know about the open air drug markets and the organized theft of Walgreens in particular.
What they're doing to Walgreens in this town.
They're just.
Oh, my God.
Oh, poor Walgreens.
Walgreens is having.
Oh, oh, oh.
You know what?
For Walgreens.
You know, and just in that spirit, let me just tell you about when.
I'm going to cop to something.
I'm going to cop to something I don't feel great about.
Go ahead.
Sometimes I've had a sort of fraught relationship sometimes with advertisers on podcasts where, like, for the longest time, it was stuff I would take... Because you keep talking about Hitler.
Yeah, there were two Squarespace spots in a row where we talked about Hitler right before.
But anyway, I'm just going to say, there was a time where we had a show that was sponsored by this company that makes air filters.
And it's Molecule with a K.
And I was like, damn, send me one of these $800 molecule – $800, John – molecule air filters.
Is it really great?
Well, as it happened, I was in receipt of one of these the week – that one week three or four years ago where we had the terrible, terrible, terrible smoke and orange air and –
It's hard in California.
You guys with your 80 degrees.
Ooh, boo-hoo.
Yeah, we keep all our paper outside.
Here's the thing to know about this.
It's very costly, okay?
And I have the tools to do things like, for example, measure air quality independently of the device that's doing the supposed air quality stuff.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and I've got meters for that kind of stuff.
And I can measure how that's going.
And my $120 co-way works a lot better than this $800 one.
Why do I mention it?
Because you know they're going into bankruptcy.
And this is admittedly a pound sign cron.
This is an SF Chronicle headline that I'm going to miscar a little bit here.
But they're basically blaming homelessness.
The company for why they're going bankrupt.
Oh, sure.
So the company that made $800 air filters that didn't work and they bought good reviews and stuff like that, in my opinion, it happens.
Yeah, they're saying they had to abandon the building where they had a whole building downtown.
They had to abandon it because of homeless people.
So you homeless people are what ultimately brought down the $800 air filter startup.
How about that for an excuse?
That is quite an excuse.
Walgreens and Target.
Oh, we're not closing this because we took a little bit of a, it was a little bit of a gamble to build a store near where pours lived.
And honestly, it was not really as profitable as we needed it to be, even though we're having one of our most profitable.
So we're closing a whole bunch of stores that are near pours.
But we can't say it's because they're near pours.
So why did they say they're closing them?
The weather.
Oh, it's the organized crime.
It's the retail theft gangs.
That's the hot story here now.
Retail theft gangs.
Out of control.
Yeah, they're just putting out a portcullis over all of Market Street.
It's coming straight down.
You can't get anything at Walgreens anymore without somebody taking it out of the jail for you.
Oh, well, that's how it always should have been.
It should have just been one of those banker things where you go up and there's a little door and somebody behind the glass says, can I help you?
I want toothpaste.
Did you have those places where you drive through a giant garage?
It's kind of like a pony keg.
You go through a giant garage, drive through, and they'll give you your beer, your ice, your Coke, whatever they'll put in the car for you.
Did you ever go to those?
No, we never had those.
That was a Florida thing.
Yeah, that sounds very Florida.
Do you think there's a role, though?
Is there a role for saving San Francisco for Sin City?
Is there a way that it maybe could be a nice closed-air drug market that's over near where the lobster roll place was?
That's the thing.
So the real project of Sin City is not about San Francisco or Seattle or New York.
Because those situations, that's not what my billion dollars is all about.
I think eventually in the community they'll refer to those as old cities.
Those are trillion-dollar problems.
Old cities.
What I'm talking about is a bespoke sin city built on the prairie in a place where no one's doing anything anymore.
All the farms, all the combines are driven by GPS now.
You're going to pick up that land for nickels on a dollar.
Yeah, it's just GPS combines going around in giant gyres pulling up soybeans or whatever it is.
Just turn into Lewis Carroll briefly.
Maybe, maybe.
It's a little Jabberwocky.
Maybe that should be your persona in Sin City.
Mayor Jabberwocky.
I wear a white trench coat and fingerless gloves.
Oh, it's just so hot today.
I think I'll have some crack cocaine.
But we're going to build a magnet city.
It's going to have a giant eyeball just like Vegas.
Uh, but it's going to be all about once you're in here, except we make it into like a titty or like a giant titty, right?
Or Marty Feldman's eye.
Like we make it fun.
Really, really bloodshot eye.
But you know, there's like going to be, it's just going to be a full time party.
And, you know, no rules.
It's going to be just like an Outback Steakhouse.
Just right.
It's going to be fun all the time.
And we're going to supply a certain low level of generic beer and like watered down fentanyl.
It's actually safer.
You'll like it.
It's going to be safe.
Exactly.
And people are going to say, you know what?
This sucks.
I'm out here fighting the city of San Francisco, living under a tarp.
When I could be in Sin City, and sure, maybe they're harvesting my blood, or maybe at the end of the day, I'm turned into Soylent Green.
But for the mid-period of my life, when I just want to get high and not answer to anybody, this is where I want to be.
Maybe they're using parts of my brain as some kind of a cyber hard drive.
But I'm getting those Marlboro Lights I enjoy.
They'd be doing that anyway, right?
And the thing is, I wouldn't be consenting, whereas now I am.
And I do think this is the, you know, and it's a mental health story, too, because, of course, we closed down all the mental health facilities in America.
And there's a lot of there's a lot of people out there that and again, from the liberal standpoint, all they need is treatment.
And from the conservative standpoint, all they need is discipline.
But this is the thing about agency, right?
There are a lot of people with mental health issues that also still have full human agency.
They can choose.
Maybe they're sick.
Maybe if they were on medication, maybe their lives would be better.
But do they have agency or do they not?
It's just another version of, are you pushing them with a stick or pulling them with a stick, right?
That's what big city does.
And this is the problem with the sociological left, which is that on the one hand, you want everybody to have agency, but on the other hand, you want to say, well, they're not capable of making that decision because they're not well.
And it's like you can't have both.
They need to have good agency.
And if these people don't have agency, then they need to be what?
Institutionalized, which nobody wants to do.
So what you do is let them do what they want.
And to a certain extent, what people want to do is get high.
And not have to answer.
That's right.
And there need to be places in our society.
What about Rumspringa?
You know, like where the Amish boys go and they have to like go and be in the world and then make an assertive decision to come back and live in the community as an Amish adult?
So this is one of the dangers of implementing a Sin City is that, yes, there's going to be constant influx of 18-year-olds who are like, I want a Sin City.
Yeah, baseball caps.
But then that's fresh meat.
You don't want to put a bunch of young 18-year-olds in Sin City where there are a lot of people in there who are just hungry.
Yeah, there's a lot of guys on the second to the highest floor who are going to be very happy to see those folks come to Sin City.
Exactly.
They want to get their blood transfused or something.
There's got to be some kind of recognition of like, well, first of all, when you go into Sin City, you sign it away, right?
You sign a piece of paper that's like, look, I'm not going to call.
I'm glad we got lawyers working on this.
I'm not going to call like a medevac.
When we say you're not going to fill out a form, it's more like we'll scan your face.
And in Sin City, that counts as a signature.
So, well, there's that.
By entering Sin City, you agree that you have no right to sue us.
There's got to be, I think, there has to be an import-export office.
There's got to be customs.
Oh, I love that.
You can't just bring anything in, and you can't just take anything out.
I totally agree.
It's like, I'm not going to spoil any movies, but you know, maybe some, it's a little bit like tenant.
Maybe it's a little bit like, um, what's the one where, uh, JK Simmons meets his, uh, meets his alternate reality.
Oh, counterpart.
Great.
Great TV.
Right.
But the idea of like, you pass through this, like, or like an arrival where you got to get hosed off before you're allowed back in the tent.
What do you call it, John?
Like not, not an airlock exactly, but a, um, containment facility.
Okay.
Containment facility.
You're between sin and the world.
Sin and the city.
This is the problem of people that are like, well, I don't want to have to answer to anybody.
I don't want an ID card.
And it's like, well, do you want into Sin City or not?
Because you can't just come in here with a truckload of cats unless we know...
Like, oh, you're bringing in 50 cats.
All right.
You can hear it when it's just at 4th.
You can hear it at, like, maybe it's 6th Street.
It's coming toward the Westfield Center.
Here come cat truck.
Come the cats.
Well, because the thing is, this is one of those problems, right, where it's like, oh, we got these bugs, so we're bringing in these worms that eat the bugs.
Oh, now we got to bring the worms that eat the worms.
Playing God in Yellowstone.
You want to get rid of the wolves, but you get rid of the wolves, you get too many rabbits.
Right.
Yeah, you got to fill this thing up.
Is that what's going to happen in Sin City, John?
Will there be a concern?
The game of life, fill it up with monkeys or cats?
Well, it's a situation where you go, is that a real snake?
And then the stripper says, could I afford a real snake, you know?
Right.
You're talking about that.
What's the guy's name?
Taffy.
Yeah, Taffy's like, hey, if I could afford a snake, would I be here?
Yes.
But at a certain point, it's Sin City.
I'll see her hair dries backwards.
It's very foxy.
So there's somebody out there right now that's got too many monkeys.
You know what I mean?
Like there's somebody here.
Oh, my God.
Can you imagine every day that you have too many monkeys?
Every day is a little more desperate.
There's not a day where it gets better.
There's so much regulation in this country right now.
So much regulation about what you can and cannot do with a monkey, right?
So there's somebody who's like, we're closing down the lab.
You know who that's hurting?
It's hurting people and it's hurting monkeys.
We've got 40 monkeys.
We're closing down the lab.
But what can you do with these monkeys?
These monkeys all have hepatitis B. Yeah.
But...
Sin City welcomes your hepatitis B monkeys.
Or maybe it doesn't.
There's got to be somebody at the front door.
See, John, you know, I like the fact that you're not overthinking this.
Right, exactly.
You know what I mean?
It's very organic.
Comparison is the death of joy and thought is the death of sin.
That was from Leviticus.
Thought is the death of sin.
Okay.
Well, what did I say?
Thought is the death of sin?
To a certain extent, you have to seed the Petri dish with the right... With Rob Petri.
With Rob Petri.
And from then, it's just the whole thing is a situation comedy.
If you just... Talking about evolution.
You have to manage it just enough.
The problem, of course, is that you've got to build a fence.
Somebody's got to buy a Petri dish.
Yeah.
Well, and that's my billion dollars.
My billion dollars goes into the Petri dish and presumably building either a fence or a moat or both.
A nubliate.
Build something around it that makes it harder to get there.
There's already a hole in Westfield Center.
There's a dome, a cupola, as I say.
Because this is an old, you know, before they made that place in the 90s, but before that it set empty for, like, if you ever look up the history of that building, it used to be this, like,
glorious, gorgeous building.
Oh, it's an old building.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
If you look at that beautiful dome in it, but that's a kind of oubliette.
You could just drop somebody and have a fun slide on an airplane, and people would slide into there.
There's a lot I don't know about this, but I'm trying to join you in not overthinking this, because I have big city brain.
Yes.
Not big city as in I live in a big city, but big city as in like, you know, like Big Bank or Big Capital or Big Spoon.
You know, the industries that, you know, President Eisenhower warned us about in his last speech.
So anything industrial complex, really.
Yeah.
I do have questions, but it's really not mine to answer.
It's my job to get out of the way.
It's a lot like being a parent except with a mall.
I feel like importing Sin City technology into cities is going to be – It's coming from the other direction, right?
We're not used to looking out to the plains and finding innovation there, right?
People in San Francisco, your mayor is used to thinking that ideas have to be generated in San Francisco.
That's the idea factory, but it's not.
The idea factory in this situation is going to be out in the prairie.
If there is thinking, it's going to be some very plain space thinking.
And then people are going to say, well, would this work in San Francisco?
What if it has to work?
Failure is not an option, as they say.
Like, could you make Sin City, if you tied together five old aircraft carriers, could it be a sea Sin City?
Technically, I think that's international waters.
Sin City Sea.
Sin City Sea.
Well, you know, you've got Disneyland, and then in Tokyo, you've got Disney, they call it Disney Sea.
And it took me a while to figure out why that's clever, because I'm not super bright.
But they have the best, purported to be the best, not just the best Disney property, but the best theme park in the world is Disney Sea.
And you're talking here about like a Sea Org type situation.
A Sea Org.
What do they call him?
The Commodore?
What do they call him?
The Commodore.
Ron Hubbard.
They call him the Commodore.
Ron Hubbard.
Old Ron.
All Ron Hubs.
We could write it down on a piece of paper right now.
What do people want?
They want to get high.
They want to get high.
They want to ride their machines.
They want, they want, without being hassled by the man.
They want to have a little sex.
I think what he says is that we want to be free.
They want to be free.
He'll remember the way that song begins.
They want to be free.
They don't want to be free to write our machines without being hassled by the man.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, man.
And they want to have dinner.
And they want to... We want to be free.
And they want to watch a movie.
We want to be free to get a nanny's pretzel and get our portrait taken.
We have so many people listening to this show right now who have money.
And what do they do with their money?
They have dinner...
They watch a movie.
Put it where Big City tells them to spend it.
And they want to get high.
I'm going to get into cornholing.
The thing is, what do they get high on?
They get high on some red wine.
Fucking bullshit.
Starbucks is already closing 7% of their locations in San Francisco.
Well, you know, this is the world's smallest violin.
But, you know, they want to have these little gummies.
Right.
What are people doing?
All anybody wants to do.
Half-assing.
They're half-assing their set.
They want to watch a movie.
They want to eat dinner.
They want to have a little unsatisfying sex.
They probably haven't even jerked it to something they're embarrassed about in weeks.
And the issue, I think, for most people is they think, when they think about a Sin City, they think, why should those people get to have all the fun while the rest of us...
You know, John, I don't know if this is true, but in my head, I distinguish envy from jealousy.
In my head, I think of envy as I wish I had a thing that I don't have that somebody else has.
And I always think of jealousy personally as I envy that, but I also don't want them to have it.
Yes, right.
You know what I mean?
As in, like, when you're jealous of someone's love.
And in that case, what you're saying is, and really, dude, John, I hope you realize how much you sound like fucking everybody I know.
All the people who are like, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Contrary to that.
You're giving, so when you're doing, hey, you're talking like this, hey, I'm this guy.
Like, that's everybody I know.
Because they're always like, ooh, I have to do all this bullshit.
Because 20 years ago, I committed to a mortgage, and that's my excuse for all the shit in my life now.
Meh.
Meh.
Right.
The thing is, you can't fight City Hall.
So maybe build a different city.
And that was made of sin.
Well, and this is the this is why it's got to be.
This is why it's got to be a working man's beer.
This is why it's got to be cheap beer, because it's got Sin City's got to be just scuzzy enough that lazy people who work, who are also scaredy cats.
Yeah.
Don't envy it.
It's got to be just sleazy enough that you don't want to go there.
There's going to be so much vaping, John.
Unless you really want to vape, right?
Because the thing is, everything you do in Sin City is going to attract people who vape.
There it is.
It's going to be the vape capital of the world.
It's not smoke.
It's vapor.
Until I was 30 years old, I would have wanted to be in Sin City.
Now that I'm 55, I don't want to go anywhere near Sin City.
I don't want to see it in the rearview mirror.
But I do want it to be there for 25-year-old me.
Because you love people.
Because I want people to be happy.
Yes.
And the thing is, all the vaping that happens in Sin City is all that much less vaping that's happening on the corner out in front of your Walgreens.
See, now you're talking like somebody, like a cop in Baltimore, and I kind of love that.
A little.
I mean, a little.
I mean, no.
I mean, like, everybody's happy.
If you're going to a place where you can vape and wank,
Vape and wank.
Vape and wank.
That's the name of our coffee place.
That's what they're going to call the Michael Kors.
They're going to call it the vape and wank.
I mean, I'm not telling them what to call it.
No, you're not.
They can call it whatever they want.
We had a pioneering project here in Seattle where they built up a housing project.
And they said this building, it was right down by the off ramp where I used to work.
It's still there.
This building is going to be for chronic alcoholics and we're going to let them drink.
We're going to build an apartment building.
Chronic alcoholics move in here and they can just sit in their rooms and drink and we're gonna have a little Medical facility on the ground floor so that we can treat them without having to call an ambulance
And it's we're not going to try and make them go to meetings.
We're not going to try and heal them.
They can just sit here and drink.
And it's been enormously successful in the sense that it's amazing how many how many things in the world improve when somebody has a place to live.
That's right.
And the thing is, like, they were going to sit and drink either way.
And it costs so much more money to have them not have a place to live.
It drives people nuts, though.
It's a fucking fact, and it still drives people nuts.
As with more traditional harm reduction, it just makes people so angry.
It makes them angry, right?
And you can point to it and say, this person last year cost the city $900,000.
Literally, practically.
It costs less money.
$900,000 in fire department costs.
Yes!
This year we paid $50,000 and they lived in in a warm dry place where they could sit and drink and we didn't even give them good booze It was just shitty booze.
It doesn't matter to them.
Yeah, they were already drinking working man spirit.
It's a working man spirit So what what so sin city is just that building?
which I've been watching for 20 years and going, you know what?
It's so much cheaper and more humane and simpler to just have a building where people can drink because that's what they want.
That's not some Byzantine system that you assume works.
They're alcoholics.
They don't want to not be alcoholics.
There's no amount of sending them to meetings that's ever going to make them the vice president of a company.
The part of that word, a holic, is a tip.
It's a holic.
That's right.
It's a holic.
Sin City is for holics, and there are going to be a large number of holics.
Holic citizen.
But here's the other thing.
Yes.
A lot of – and this is a conviction that I have that, you know, like most of psychology, I don't know how you would go about proving this.
Okay.
But I think that a certain fairly significant percentage of junkies –
If they were given all the junk that they wanted, cheap junk, but enough to stay high, they would get so fucking bored of being junkies.
because you lose some of the dopamine thrill of scoring all of the thrill is not just scoring but living outside the the culture being against the world being make it boring and see if they still like it make it fucking boring that's exactly right if you make that is lateral thinking my friend and
If you make being high so mundane.
Your dad makes you smoke a pack of cigarettes.
You like that?
That's right.
You're like, here you go.
Here's your drugs for the day.
And there's the television.
And here's a comfortable chair.
Like some kind of German Nazi.
Good luck.
Oh, you want double your allotment?
Uh-huh.
Sure.
Just fill out this form.
I'm fun, dad.
And it's like, there's going to be a certain percentage of people that are like, you know what?
Maybe I should go back to college.
Maybe I should not, maybe I shouldn't do this.
Maybe I should just not there.
You know, Sin City is always going to have a little spot outside where it's like, would you like to join the army?
Because we do have a table for that.
And we will experiments would be, we can make a lot of money off of that.
Oh my God.
You want, you know, one extra allotment of dope.
Then let us take your fingernails.
Nailed it.
Oh,
Oh, that's horrible.