Ordering Off the Menu: Eric Adams on Disability, Discovery, and Designing a Life on Your Own Terms

Eric Adams spent his childhood mute in the classroom and decades as the loudest, most electric presence in Los Angeles nightlife. In between: a path that refuses every conventional menu option. In this conversation, Eric traces the through-line from a traumatic childhood marked by PTSD and depression, to a 12-year-old's decision to use Disneyland as a North Star out of the dark, to producing Dapper Day for 40,000 guests, to a debilitating disability that became—unexpectedly—an upgrade.

 This episode is for anyone who has ever felt like the offerings on the table weren't built for them. Eric is living proof that 'ordering off the menu' isn't just a personality quirk—it's a survival strategy, a creative philosophy, and ultimately the reason his path found him.

🎧 Listen to “Path Found Podcast”
Real stories of pivots, side quests, and scenic routes that inspire new possibilities.

📅 New episodes drop every Thursday.

👉 Subscribe & Listen: https://www.youtube.com/@PathFoundPodcast

★ Follow, rate, and share if you’ve ever taken the scenic route.

Get Involved:
🌐 See the work we’re doing at Keystone Network - Web: https://keystonenetwork.org
💬 Submit your comments, questions for guests, or suggest new guests you’d love to hear from!
📷Instagram: @pathfoundpodcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Every single step in my life, I've just said, screw the rules. I have a better idea. And then I find the place who's amenable to the better idea. You can't just have a better idea. I've always found the partners who want to support that better idea. So that's the key. And the best way to find those partners is to talk about your better idea nonstop. And whoever reverberates with your good idea, you say, let's talk more. And it works.

SPEAKER_02 0:24

Hi everyone, and welcome to Path Found, the podcast about the real, messy, unexpected journeys that lead us to the work we love. I'm Monica Gandonia, and every week I talk with someone whose story proves there's no single right way to build a meaningful life. What does it look like to build a life entirely off menu? To ignore the job listings, the major requirements, the rules, and just say, I have a better idea. Today I'm joined by someone who's been doing exactly that since he was 12 years old. He grew up in Los Angeles, mostly mute, spending more hours in the library than in the classroom, and decided at age 12 that he would dedicate his life to the study of themed entertainment. Not because there was a degree for it, there wasn't, but because he saw Disneyland and thought, someone designed this, and I want to be one of those people. He designed his own college major, called it Escapism, through some of LA's most legendary underground parties, grew dapper day from 400 to 40,000 attendees, and was well on his way to a thriving career in live events when a single day of hauling equipment changed everything. A torn shoulder, a broken back, a wheelchair, and then a neurological disorder that briefly took away his ability to speak. And yet somehow that became the upgrade. From mute kid to keynote speaker, he is Eric Adams. So, Eric, thank you so much for being a guest on the show today. I'm excited to talk to you and kind of hear your background and how you ended up doing what you're doing now. So I always start with the same kind of question. What were you like growing up? Where did you grow up?

SPEAKER_03 1:56

So I have been through several, I would call them giant chapters in my life. And people are always surprised to hear about what I used to be like because I'm very gregarious and very talkative. And some might claim charming or or fun to be with. And when I was a kid, I was mute. I I wouldn't talk. And I knew how to talk. And I would talk when it was safe, like privately with my parents. But in general, I absolutely just refused to talk. I would answer questions of the teacher if, you know, if they said, you know, what's eight times four? I would answer that. But literally anything else, and I would refuse. I just, I just didn't talk. And people put, you know, so my mom would always say, Oh, he's really shy, or he's ultra shy. And I was I don't think I was shy. I just, me, me and verbal language just were like, nope, I just don't want to participate. It probably wasn't until I was about 16 that I started having regular conversations like a regular person. And it wasn't some monumental change, it just sort of happened and I just did it. And and so, but I didn't then become pocket. I didn't become like uh super gregarious. I was still known as that quiet kid, and I was voted shyest in the class in high school in the yearbook, and it was it was uh probably correct, you know, and and so then to have had the career that I ended ended up having, people the so the people who knew me in childhood who then saw my career and all the things I didn't know I were just shocked because they never would have predicted it.

SPEAKER_02 3:24

Did you have friends? Did you do well in school?

SPEAKER_03 3:27

I I would say no, I did, I I didn't. What I found out actually not that many years ago is that I'm autistic ADHD. And and yeah, I I didn't really feel a need for friends or I didn't get much out of friendship. So I'm like, yeah, why why invest in it? And so yeah, me and me and friendship weren't great. And then I found, you know, I'm really good at having friends for a few years and and that's about it. And then I'm not great at maintaining them over the years. Now, and now I now that I know I'm autistic AHD, I kind of know that's sort of built into the culture and and that you can do things to sort of react or change differently to maybe improve friendships. And I've been putting those to play. I really think my current set of friends are the best and strongest I've ever had. And I really do feel like they're gonna linger far longer than my prior sets of friends. I was hyperlexic, which means I was essentially addicted to reading. I always think of the story in I think it was fifth grade. The teacher was really trying to encourage kids to learn more and read more. And so we had a reading caterpillar. So every book you read, you made a little one-page book report, and it was a body segment of a caterpillar, and you would add it around the wall. And her goal was to, you know, to get each student to have five segments. And I think I did 300.

SPEAKER_02 4:41

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03 4:42

And so I think I got to the 30th body segment, and she's like, Hey, I want you to still keep reading. I think it's awesome, but no more, we're not gonna make any more caterpillar segments because you're taking up too much space. And and yeah, and she's like, But I won't I still want you to count it, document it. Like, I think it's really cool. And yeah, I think I read 300 books that year. Wow. And and she was she was really extremely supportive of it, but she also was all, you know, very clearly putting me in a different category. She was segregating me socially from the other students. And all and all my teachers did that. All my teachers basically said, Eric's gonna be over here in his own little world, in his own little corner of the classroom, and he'll be invited to participate sometimes, but otherwise he's off on his own. And then by third grade, I had an arrangement with every teacher from then on that when there wasn't an active lesson going on, that I was excused to go to the library for self-directed learning. And I did that for my whole childhood. So I spent I spent far more hours at the library than I did classroom.

SPEAKER_02 5:39

So when you're in high school and you're still reading, do you think you're gonna go to college? Is that a goal? Do you what do you think you're gonna do after?

SPEAKER_03 5:49

Every single teacher I ever had, every single adult I ever met said, drop us a postcard when you get to Harvard. And everyone assumed I was I was aiming for, you know, not just not just college, but probably research or professorship or something like that. Academic, they thought I was just uh this mega nerd and and they were, you know, usually kindly supporting that journey. And and so yeah, I always assumed college was a foregone conclusion. But Mohammed, we were also really poor. And so I was like, yeah, all right, I'm going to Harvard. I'll be able to get to Harvard. And then of course I learned about scholarships and they said, no, no, you might go to Harvard. But then by the time I think I got to high school, I learned about cultural elitism and classism, and Harvard became less and less and less appealing. But college stayed as appealing, and everyone just said, no, as long as you find the right college, the one that aligns with you, you'll be fine. And so I ended up applying and and also so one of the things people sort of know about me is that I'm an LA fan. I love the city of LA and Southern California all altogether. And so I I ended up saying, like, well, what are some of the best schools in LA? And I and I was also committed to state schools or or public schools. And so I found out UCLA had a really, really good reputation and applied there. And I ended up being it ended up being the only school I applied to, which I do not recommend. Please apply to many schools. And I had a 20 with my SAT and grades, I had a 25% chance of getting it. And I got it. And I got a great scholarship and I was pretty happy. And I went and they invited me to a special summer program before classes that was aimed at underrepresented students. And because I was a poor white kid, they said I qualified. And so I said, sure, that's not spot. And I didn't enjoy it. And I didn't think that the summer program was a strong academic program. And so I left and I sort of dropped out. And they reached out to me and they said, Summer program's different from the regular school. Please come back to the regular school. We don't want your bad experience with the summer program to reflect on the undergraduate program. So I went back to the undergraduate as a regular freshman and I kept changing my schedule every day. I would take a class and I would say, Oh, this is not for me. And I would cancel it, go to a new class. And I did that with about 10 or 15 classes in about a month while this while they still allowed re-enrollment class changes. And each time I was just really thoroughly unimpressed academically. And my fellow students didn't know how to read. The thing that really stuck with me, I was like, they're not reading it. Not only are they not reading at college level, they're not reading at high school level. And this was all my fellow students. I mean, and I was really trying to find people that were, I wasn't necessarily trying to find people at my level. And this, by the way, this sounds really, I don't know. I feel like I'm bragging and I'm not. I'm just, I wanted to hang out with other nerds. And I found the UCLA undergraduate program was not stocked with nerds. It was stocked with really average normal students who were fine and great, but I wanted nerds. And I talked to my advisors at the time and they said, Oh, well, let's get you into some upper class classes and try them. And so I did some senior level classes in several departments, and I had the exact same exact reaction. They were all very nice students and they didn't know their stuff. And these were majors. These are people who had named a major, apparently wanted to pursue a career in that thing, and they didn't know the first thing about their major. And I was so disappointed that I just dropped out again. And I was like, UCLA did not meet my standards. And I was really happy with my decision. And I was like, Yeah, that's fine. We're not a match. And I said, I've always been learning self-directed anyway, so I'm just gonna continue that. So I would hang out at the library a few times. I would I got a job, I got jobs that were fun that challenged me, and I continued my learning journey on my own, self-directed as always. And then this is personal, but I my mom had a uh they were proud to about the fact that they never got married, but they were essentially married. And so this is my stepdad, and he was 34 and he died of alcoholism, of of abusing alcohol since he was 15. And I was 24 or something like that, and it really struck me because he, I mean, he was a young guy, and um like all he accomplished was killing himself with alcohol. And I was like, wow, I want to make sure that that's not my pathway. And so I decided to go back to college again at at 25, and I ended up at a junior college at uh Glendale Community College, and at Glendale Community College, I was working in the writing department, the like writing tutor program that's tutoring kids in English. And the the head of that department worked at Occidental College as a recruiter, and she's like, You are exactly the kind of weirdo that will flourish at Occidental College. Have you ever heard about? And I had never heard of the school, even though I grew up within a few miles of it, because it's small, it's a small liberal arts college, 1600 students, I believe. And I I went, I took a tour, I I met the folks, and I happened to meet some random students, and it was real clear everyone there was nerds, and I applied and got in. And it was just night and day. And you know, talked about slotting into the correct school, making all the difference. And I just had the most amazing college experience at Oxy. So so much so that I became their poster boy, literally. So I think the first month I was there, they they wrote an article on me in the newspaper, and then my sophomore year, they they featured me in that all of their solicitations, their their catalogs and things going out to prospective students because they're like, hey, here's Eric. He's a weirdo. He designed his own major, which is a thing that they offered, which is unusual. It's called an independent pattern of study. And they said, and he studies theme parks and fun. And the name of my major was Escapism. And they just couldn't get over how cool that was. Because almost everyone who chose the independent pattern of study were essentially just double majors, and they were unusual double double majors combining. But mine was a collection of more like 10 majors. It was all of the social sciences, plus history, plus economics, plus art, all with the pathway of studying themed entertainment. And here, let me let me say the sentence exactly right. What I was doing was studying the legal and ethical ramifications, social and ethical ramifications of the leisure, tourism, theme park, casino, and nightlife industries. So basically, I was studying fun for a living and having a blast at it. And it was really a cross-cultural study of fun. And what I've now like, now that I know I'm autistic, I basically say my special interest was humans, and my special interest is humans having fun, is like the sub-interest of my special interest. So yeah, I that was my pathway. And I and I didn't stumble into that. When I was 12 years old, is when I had decided I I wanted to study a themed entertainment professionally. And and I started when I was 12. So I used the the Glendale Public Library and the LA Public Library as much as I possibly could to start my studies back when I was 12.

SPEAKER_02 12:16

Do you remember what? Like what did you go to Disneyland and just think Yeah, I was obsessed with Disneyland.

SPEAKER_03 12:21

I had been a few times. And probably by the time I I was 10, I realized, oh, this place must have a designer. This place this place had architects and designers and managers who who made choices. I want to be one of those people. I started not just going as a tourist, but trying to take pay attention to how things were built and how things were run. And that was definitely the right thing. And so I want to say, like, I I had a troubled home life. In in adulthood, I was diagnosed with PTSD, and we found evidence of my PTSD starting at two years old. And one of the things people tend to not know about PTSD is having PTSD tends to incur more trauma. Like trauma begets trauma. And so at seven, I had another set of major traumas. At eight, I had another set of major traumas. Nine, 10, 11. Although I had more traumas, kept happening, partially due to where we lived, partially due to you know the environment. You know, I witnessed a lot of horrid things without going into it. I witnessed my first murder when I was eight years old. It was strangers. It was strangers, thankfully. But just there was just lots of trauma trauma in my childhood. And and I was depressed. By seven, I was depressed with serious depression and and suicidal for most of my child. Sorry, I should have triggered why, but never committed, never attempted, never, never really landed, but really, really wanted to not be in the family and in the home I was in. So when I was 12, and when I said, like, I need to find a way out of this, I need to escape this present. I said, themed entertainment's the way, the trick out of here. And I was like, you know what? I need something to really, really, I need a North Star to guide me out of this. And for me, that was themed entertainment. And I was like, you know what? I think if I become really, really knowledgeable about this thing that people think is magical and cool, I think that's my ticket out of here. And making that decision really helped. It it really made my depression subside. I it gave me something to focus on. There were no books written on themed entertainment. And so what I had to do was study everything surrounding themed entertainment. And so that is the history of the carnival, the history of circuses. The first book I ever read, I remember we a biography of P.T. Barnum. I learned all about the world's fairs. I learned about cabinets of curiosities. I learned about museums, history of museums, proto museums, attractions, road ch roadside attractions, carnivals, boardwalks.

SPEAKER_02 14:36

So did you know what you wanted to do with that?

SPEAKER_03 14:39

I knew I wanted to just be in that universe. Um my role was very vague, and I was okay with that. I was like, I just know I want to be in this world. I just know that this is the universe I want to hang out in. I think I always knew I was generalist. You know, I knew I wasn't an engineer, I knew I wasn't an artist. I got my first job at 16 and almost immediately became a manager. And so early in my life, I found I had good management skills. And so as I got older, yeah, so management in general, but that's obviously a super vague notion too. What is a manager?

SPEAKER_02 15:09

So when you graduated, what did you do then?

SPEAKER_03 15:12

When I graduated from Oxy, so I had uh while I was at Oxy, I had gotten some amazing mentors at Walt Disney Imagineering and otherwise in the industry, the senior VPs of Imagineering, and they were extremely helpful and they were good mentors. And all of them said the same thing. Don't work for Disney. And and that had always been sort of, I thought I was gonna work at Walt Disney Imagineering. They're they're sort of the pop company in the field. So I I thought that was what I was aiming for. And all my mentors kept saying, like, no, no, no, Disney requires a certain kind of person, and you aren't that kind of person. And they're like, What I didn't realize at the time was they meant that as a compliment.

SPEAKER_02 15:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 15:53

That Disney requires a certain level of sameness. Like you have to fit a they really want you to be a cog that fits in a slot. And my mentors were like, You're you're too boundless, you're essentially too creative for Disney. And I said you'd be thoroughly unhappy at Disney, and then Disney would essentially get frustrated with you. So don't attempt it. Their advice was uh 100% correct. There, there's been no role at Disney that's ever opened up that I thought thought I would be a good fit for. And so I became inadvertently, I became a producer, a creative producer of things, of of live events. I I loved making things happen. My 22nd birthday. So this is before I went to Foxy, I threw a birthday party for myself. I invited 15 people and 30 showed up. And it that boggled my mind. I was like, wait, everyone else has told me that if you invite 15 people, five will show up.

SPEAKER_00 16:46

Right.

SPEAKER_03 16:47

And so I was expecting five people to show, and 30 people showed. And I was like, wait, this is weird. But it was I had told people it was a finger painting party. And we and we did. We did finger painting and had a normal birthday party plus finger painting at my apartment, and it was just this banging success. And so I said, Well, what if I did this again for not my birthday? Just because. So I so I then threw the next thing and the next. And I then I said, Hey, what if I I know these bands? What if I book a band and I know performers and I know comics and I know drag queens and burlesque dancers, and I ended up becoming an impresario, you know, a producer of live entertainment. And, you know, I think I had my first real professional gig. I think I was 23. And my first gig, I so that was the first time I charged, in other words, to get in. I charged five bucks to get into a Bastille Day party that I called Put a Little France in your pants, which was a nonsense title, but people loved it. I had 10 bands perform in in my friend's backyard over a 12-hour period. It was five bucks to get in, and I believe two to three hundred people showed up. But the big deal was Angeline showed up. So if people know Los Angeles history, Angeline is the model actress, singer person. So the first person to become famous for being famous is what she's usually cited for. She had these very busty and outlandish billboards of herself put up around the city that just said Angeline. She was just advertising her existence and she didn't sell a product. She wasn't really trying to act or sing, she was just famous for being herself. I remember those.

SPEAKER_02 18:15

I remember those billboards.

SPEAKER_03 18:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:17

And believe it or not, she's still alive. She's still around. I've met her several times since, but she she showed up my first party. And that was such a marker of, oh, you're doing the right thing, keep going. If Angeline shows up to your first ever real thing, you must be doing something right. So keep going. And and this is all pre-college. And so then college happened, and I kept doing it simultaneously. So I was essentially still a live event producer while I was having my regular college life. So most of my college career, I was working 20-hour days and just sleeping during the summer.

SPEAKER_02 18:49

All right. So you're putting on these live shows. Yeah. You're going to college. Yeah. So you're making some money on the side. You're gaining success. This was pre-social media. How are like, how are you getting the word out?

SPEAKER_03 19:02

Well, reputation is everything. In in in the nightlife, reputation is it's it's how you do it. And you have to support that reputation. Everyone has to know you and everyone has to like you. And you have to go out like six nights a week so that everyone knows who you are and knows your face and and falls in love with you, essentially.

SPEAKER_02 19:18

So this is the guy who did not talk until 16.

SPEAKER_03 19:22

Yes. And now that's that's why you're putting on these parties. And I'm a man about town, and I'm, you know, I'm this guy everyone knows, and I'm the guy that celebrities know, and everyone wants an invite. And, you know, the first thing everyone asks when my when they arrive at the party is, by the way, when's the next one? And so I realized I started having to plan parties two in a two and three at a time in order to keep the momentum going, which I did, and it was fine, and found that all of my especially my my themed entertainment experience was really, really valuable in the nightlife. So I could make special magic moments happen in a nightclub setting that no other nightclub promoter or producer ever thought of. The basis of all themed entertainment is storytelling. It's storytelling come to life. And so no one in the professional nightlife was thinking that way when I was entering the nightlife. No one was thinking we need to put special moments, immersive moments, storytelling moments, into our dance party. Like people are just here to dance and meet other beautiful people and couple off with them or or more. So I was the first person to really, I was not the first person. I was in the first wave of people who were adding a second layer to nightlife and making it more interesting and and more intriguing. And everyone would show up to my event saying, What is Eric How cooked up tonight? And they knew they wouldn't know. And they knew they wouldn't have been able to predict it. You know, I remember I had an event where I had competitive knitting on stage.

SPEAKER_02 20:46

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_03 20:48

You know, it just unpredictable things. And I would, and and the funny thing is I would always my I was obsessed with a space, whether it was a nightclub or a venue or a warehouse or whatever. I was really obsessed with controlling that space. And one of the things I insisted on was a quiet space that if there was an extra room or a place, and if there wasn't a quiet space, I would build a tent to create a quiet space within a warehouse, for example. And it was like a a must. I had to have this. And and people would always wonder why. And I didn't know, but I have sensory processing disorder. So I don't do well in knob environments unless I'm the DJ, then I then I can handle it. And I did DJ for 15 years as well. But I found that I I just needed a quiet space to think or to decompress or to deregulate or whatever. And the people always loved those quiet spaces too. So I didn't know it at the time, but I was actually accommodating difference as a producer inadvertently. I did I didn't know what I was doing, I just knew that I was doing it. And now that I study inclusion and disability and neurodivergence, having a a a sensory room is a really important thing for a lot of places now. You were way ahead of your time. I was I was I was doing that and I didn't even know I was doing all right.

SPEAKER_02 21:54

So how long do you do that? You gr and you graduate. Do you do it after graduation? Okay. So how long do you do that?

SPEAKER_03 22:00

Kept doing it. So essentially I I produced live events. So until so I became disabled at about 42, 43. I think it was 43, which is seven years ago. So I started my professional producing career. I usually say at 20 or no, 22. So 22 to 42. So 20 years. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:16

Did you work for other people? Did you or you just did independently?

SPEAKER_03 22:19

Occasionally. Occasionally. Occasionally I would partner with people. One of the big gigs I did was I was a producer on Dapper Day. So Dapper Day was is a big production that my friend started, having to do with Disneyland. He he was a former Walt Disney Imagineer himself, brilliant designer named Justin. And one of the things, if you study theme park history, you always will come across the original paintings by Herb Ryman of Disneyland. These were paintings that were made for investors to entice them into the idea. So it's, you know, beautiful paintings, oil paintings of the castle, Tomorrowland, Frontierland. And the paintings were always peopled by families who were dressed in their Sunday best. And this was actually the way people experienced amusements in the 1950s, is they would put on their Sunday best to go to the carnival or the circus or whatever. And so this was the very, very beginnings of Instagram and that and social media. He said, wouldn't it be fun if we recreated these paintings in reality? Let's go to the castle. Let's go to the entrance of Fontierland, but let's wear our Sunday vest. Let's wear as high fashion as we can. Let's be fashionable at Disneyland. And he took 40 of his friends and and they did it and it was great. And they came up with hundreds of photos, and it was really cool. And he did it every spring and fall to match the spring and fall fashion season. He was very fashion-oriented. And he did it a couple of years and went from 40 to I think 140 came to the next one, and then 400 came to the next one. And he approached me when it got to 400 and he said, I think I've stumbled on a really cool idea, but I'm an artist and I don't know how to run it. And I don't know how to do any of this. And he's like, But you're well known in as a creative producer. Would you help me? And I said, Yeah. And I set up set a price tag and he said yes. And I took it from 400 to we went to 1400 the next month or the next iteration and then 14,000. Well and then 40 and then 40,000. And then it's it's pretty much hovered at 40,000 ever since. I brought Disney into the fold because we were doing it essentially as a gorilla event. Um my first phone call was to Disney and say, hey, we're doing this gorilla event. Are you aware of it? And they're like, Yeah, we've been waiting for your phone call. We want to work with you. We love the idea of people dressing nice at Disneyland. It it's it's extremely photogenic and it's great. We love it. And so we started negotiating deals that made it more financially make sense. And then we launched the Dapper Day Expo. So we brought in vendors to sell vintage clothing and we brought in beauty experts to do 1940s hairstyles on people if they wanted to, or 1960s hairstyles if they wanted to. It ended up being this just amazing, amazing world. And I did that for several years. And then the bad news came. So we're producing this big thing. I'm hiring 20 people to execute the event. We're bringing in tens of thousands of pounds of equipment to make this thing happen. And a week before the final Dapper Day, he calls me up and he's like, Oh, we we can't afford roadies to bring in all the equipment. So you're just gonna have to do that on your own. And I'm like, I'm strong and I'm you know capable, but this is tens of thousands of pounds of equipment. I can't just do I need roadies. He's like, Well, sorry, I spent the money that you had allocated for the roadies on this other thing. And I was also the accountant for the production, so I knew we didn't have spare money. And and he's like, Yep, sorry, I spent the money. And and he was the boss, and so I didn't have much say in it. And so I loaded in tens of thousands of pounds of equipment by myself and tore my shoulder. I I tore some muscles in my shoulder, and so then I and it's a weekend long event, and so I did the the rest of the weekend in a in a sling and was like, okay, and just kept going at it. And we we sell a lot of retail during the event. And I said, Can I use the money from the retail sales to hire roadies for the strike? He's like, depends on how much we make. And I thought we had made plenty. I was I was also the accountant, so I kind of knew. I'm like, yeah, I I think we have enough for a roadie, so I'm gonna hire some people. And he said, No, we're gonna have some unexpected expenses that you don't know about. I was like, What? Anyway, so he he refused to let me hire roadies to strike, and so I had to then load up all these things with one arm. And I did beg some friends and got a little bit of friend help, but not enough. And then, long story short, I broke my back. I killed three of my vertebrae in my lumbar back, which then put me in bed every day. I was bedridden for six months because I moved too much over too short a period of time. So kids hire rodies when you kids.

SPEAKER_02 26:44

So, okay, so you you did this for 20 years.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:48

You and were able to make a living and having a good time.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:52

This fit yeah. And then it all comes to this abrupt halt because of this injury. Yeah. So where does that leave you?

SPEAKER_03 26:59

Well, so for the longest time, I thought I was injured, and I used the term injured very deliberately, meaning, oh, this injury is gonna heal. And, you know, I'll I'll be okay. And I was seeing doctors and they would use words like disabled, and I would, I would correct them and say, No, I'm injured. And my injuries basically got worse and worse. You know, I was bedridden, but then I sort of could walk around, but then my walking around got worse and worse. And I found a cane on the subway. And I was gonna, I was gonna take it to Lost and Found, but I started using it like, you know, I was like, oh, I wonder what it's like to use a cane. And I was like, I found it was helping me with my back injury to use this cane. I'm like, oh man, am I a cane user? And and then my my best friend at the time was a wheelchair user, and he every now and then gets a new wheelchair. And so I said, Can I test drive your old wheelchair? He's like, Yeah, sure. And I was like, Can I borrow your old wheelchair? He's like, Yeah, sure. And then I became a daily wheelchair user because it was better. Like it was, I was more functional in a wheelchair than I was without a wheelchair. And I kept calling myself injured. And then I developed a neurologic disorder. A year into me being in a wheelchair, I start developing tremors, like Parkinsonian tremors. So my neck starts popping back and forth, very similar to Michael J. Fox or Catherine Hepburn. And so I have these tremors that are just like these celebrities with Parkinson's, and I get checked out and they said, You don't have Parkinson's, but you have a Parkinsonian movement disorder. I'm like, what does that mean? Like, we don't know. You have a mystery neurological ail. Like, okay. And the longer, so that by the time that went maybe a month, it started. The weirdest part was that the tremors were triggered when I would speak. And the tremors are very painful. And so I would speak less and less and less until the point where I literally became mute because it was sort of like interacting in such a way that, you know, I was choosing not to talk for a long time to not trigger the tremors, but eventually it got to the point where I could not choose to talk. So there was there was a month or two where I was actually mute. So while that was happening, I'm seeing I'm talking to my doctor and I had been on California short-term disability. And I was asking him, like, hey, what do you what do you think I should do? You know, my injury is taking a real long time to heal. And he he looked at me, he's like, injury? He's like, You're not injured, you're disabled. And you know, I'm like, What? And and the look on his face was like, How do you not know that you are disabled? And so you really thought that you were gonna get better, and I was so deep in denial about how medically encumbered I was, and eventually found out there's a diagnosis for that called conversion disorder, where you just don't accept that you're disabled. And and I was in that for two years where I just said I was injured and that obviously I'm gonna be okay as soon as I'm not injured, you know. So I mean I'm I'm telling the story with with laughing and stuff because that's when real advancement began. When I started saying, like, oh, I am disabled. Everything changed and it really started improving. Because up until that point, I literally thought the video game was on pause and that I was just waiting to unpause it. You know, like as soon as I can walk a little bit better, I can unpause it. And by the way, like while I was that injured and disabled, I was still producing events without You hadn't stopped. I hadn't stopped. I was still doing it because the nature of events is, you know, sometimes you only need to put in two weeks' worth of work for an annual event. And I was producing an annual event, and I was producing it in a way that I was able to hire assistants so I didn't have to climb ladders and stuff like that. And then I started hanging out in disabled spaces online. I started signing up to hang out in disabled gatherings. I I was using the internet to basically become disabled. And there was an interesting story that I went to the Venice Community Resource Center, which is a CIL Center for Independent Living, which is these are federally funded programs that are essentially kind of like clubhouses, information resources for the disability community. There's 400 of them in the United States. They're a great resource if anyone has a disability. Check out your local CIL. So I went to Venice Community Resource Center's 40th anniversary party, and I was very still very trepidatious, very scared of being a disabled person. And I said, you know, how many people are gonna be there? And they're like, Oh, it should be about 200, 250 people. And I showed up, and yeah, there was about 200, 250 people, and me in a wheelchair and two other wheelchair users. And I and I was talking to the other wheelchair user, and I'm like, where's the other disabled people? I thought I thought this was gonna be 250 disabled people hanging out. And he looks at me like I'm stupid, and he's like, Everyone here is disabled, man. Like, what do you think? You think everyone who's disabled needs a wheelchair? And I was like, Well, yeah, that's kind of what I thought. That's the international symbol. And you know, he's like, You need you need to hang out here more. You need to talk to us more, you need to know. And and I then really just fully became a fan of the disabled community and really started hanging out, going to conferences, going to talks, signing up for webinars, learning about the disability community as a culture, learning about its subcultures, learning the richness of its history. And now I'm and I now I can't say I'm disabled enough. I love being disabled. I love how much freedom it's brought me. I love how much of a better man it's made me, better person, a better friend. Disability had I thought 100% was ending my life, and 100% I thought it was ending my career. It turns out, no, I was just getting a secret upgrade. I didn't understand it at the time, but this has 100% been an upgrade to me as a person and to me as a professional. And so the big pivot came about three years ago when some very lovely people in my life said, you know, because I was still absolutely 100% pursuing themed entertainment, even though I was producing all these live events, which are technically not themed entertainment, and some lovely people said, You've got all this amazing background in themed entertainment, and now you have all this real world live experience with disability. Can you not put them together somehow? Can't you marry them somehow and have my aha moment that yes, the industry is actually really bad at disability inclusion? And I know how to fix that. I know how to advocate for my people. And so I said, okay, I'm going to become a disability and inclusion consultant in the industry, and that I'm gonna hang my shingle doing that. And I just started talking about it. So there's there's a lot of sort of gatherings in the themed entertainment world, there's show social gatherings and networking events in the industry. So I started going to those and befriending people. And anytime someone asked me what I would do, I would say, Well, I'm disabled, but I have plans to become a disability and inclusion consultant for the industry. And I just said it with some confidence. And saying it with some confidence led to introductions. And this person's like, Oh, this person wanted to solve a certain problem with their escape room, and this person wanted to solve a problem at their water park. And could you talk to them? And within a few months, a really good friend of mine, Grace, said, Hey, they have an education conference every year. That the TEA, the themed entertainment association, has a conference every year where we talk about sort of best practices for the future of the industry. What if we put together a talk? Let's let's pitch a talk. And I'm like, I have nobody in the industry. I'm literally just this disabled dude. And she's like, Yeah, you're who they need to hear from. I'm like, all right. And so we we pitched this talk on how to make the industry more inclusive. Here, here are four specific ways to make the industry more inclusive. And the TEA came back and said, You're in. You're the talk is in October. It's at Knott's Bury Farm. You're gonna be on the same stage that Elvira and Snoopy made famous. And I'm like, what? Like, I'm in. Like, I'm like, do you know that I'm nobody? You know, so obviously the imposter syndrome is is roaring, it's it's ugly head. And they're like, no, no, no, you you don't understand. There were 80 paper proposals for about 13 slots, and yours is number one. Like, yours was the highest rated of all of the entries. Like, we are desperate to hear from you. We are so eager to hear from you. And I'm like, you've gotta be kidding me. Like this has to be a joke, right? And yeah, so that that talk was last October.

SPEAKER_02 34:49

So even though you had all the success with 20 years of live production, you'd worked with all these different people, you were honestly really good at networking, you still felt at that point like an imposter.

SPEAKER_03 35:01

100% because now I'd been living with disability and ableism for five years or more. And I can't tell you how pervasive ableism is in all industries. You know, at certain points, as I was getting more abilities, I I went on interviews. And I mean, you saw me at the class yesterday. I don't present as disabled if you just took a glance at me. I I have to verbally come out as disabled. But I have five disabilities, you know, and and any one of them alone would be disabling. But uh, I was in interviews and I'd be in second interviews, I'd be a shoe-in for a job, and I'd say, like, hey, I need to be upfront about my abilities because they're not obvious. Like, would you still hire me if I need accommodations? And every single person was like, We're not comfortable with that. Our insurance company will never let us hire you. You know, and this, I mean, it's just blatant discrimination. And then I talked to legal f firms because I believed that disability discrimination was illegal, and they're like, Oh, yeah, we don't, we're not gonna take that case. It's it's too hard to prove. And I'm like, Well, was I discriminated against? They're like, Yeah, yeah, you absolutely were. Can I do anything about it? Not with our firm. We are nowhere, we are in our infancy when it comes to including disabled people in in real life. And so the imposter syndrome was also based on evidence, you know, it it wasn't it wasn't just imposter. It was you had five. So these are these are true barriers between disabled people and jobs.

SPEAKER_02 36:21

So, how did the event go?

SPEAKER_03 36:23

The talk? It was amazing. So Grace and I gave the talk together. And one of the big things I'm about is for the industry, when I talk about inclusion, I'm not just talking about disability. I'm talking about all the things we currently don't design for. And that includes neurodivergence, that includes people who are larger than average, people that are taller than average, people that are older, people that are younger. And you know, kids under five are not designed for at these family-friendly theme products. They are hostile environments to children, they're hostile environments to elders, they're hostile environments to people with chronic conditions that don't rise to the ability to the level of a disability. You know, people who are pregnant are not designed for. There's just all these folks that aren't designed for. And so that's who I was advocating for. And so we gave this talk, and there the way they designed this this weekend conference was after every two talks, there'd be a 20-minute break. And we were on day two. And at the end of each break, the speaker would have, you know, three or four people around complimenting them and talking to them and getting their business card. After our talk, we got swarmed. But there was like 15 people surrounding my little, my little bistro table, begging for our business cards and wanting to set up collaborations and meetings, and it was just so affirming. Amazing, amazing, amazing. And but I've been able to set up amazing collaborations, meetings since we because essentially now the big gist of the talk was that I'm setting up a disabled uh a consulting firm basically for folks to deal with disability and inclusion issues, and that'll be that'll be a for-profit company. But one of the points in the talk that I made was we're never going to be inclusive if there's not an incentive program. It's been the law for 35 years for these places to be inclusive, and they've just dropped the ball for 35 years, and governments won't enforce it because theme parks are just too weird. They don't know how to penalize a theme park or a water park or things because they're so used to dealing with office buildings and banks and grocery stores, they don't know how to handle a roller coaster. And so they've gotten away with it. These these companies have gotten away with being non-inclusive for 35 years. So I said, okay, well, we're never going to get there without an incentive program. And I said, Who has done this right? And you're familiar with lead certification for buildings for sustainability? Lead gold, lead platinum, these are awards that were initially given just to award builders who used sustainable practices in their buildings, architecture firms and contractors. And I said, Why don't we just copy their homework? Why don't we just literally say, if you can prove that you're more inclusive than you used to be, you get a tax incentive? And before I made the talk in October, I cold called several legislators in the US and said, Hey, I've got an idea. I want to create an incentive program for themed entertainment entities to be more inclusive by giving them a tax incentive if they can show that they are more inclusive. And all four legislators were like, Oh my God, yes, sign me up. This is an amazing idea. And so that was very reassuring as well. And then one of the companies that I met with after the talk is a Canadian company and said, Oh my God, you need to talk to Ottawa. Canada's gonna love this, they're gonna eat it up. So it's clear I now also have to build that company. I need to build a global nonprofit. Essentially, the U.S. Green Buildings Council is the nonprofit that administers the lead program. So I need now also need to form this nonprofit that is the global administrator for this incentive program for disability inclusion.

SPEAKER_02 39:40

So that's what you're working on right now.

SPEAKER_03 39:42

That's currently working. I am starting my own consulting firm for profit. I have this nonprofit disability inclusion administration firm, but everyone's cheering me on. The TEA just recently invited me and Grace again to give yet another talk in October. Again, I'm consulting with individual companies. In other words, it's going well.

SPEAKER_02 40:00

What an incredible story. I mean, it is, you know, you went from kind of this obsession with theme parks and entertainment, design your own major, you make that into this career where you really kind of didn't fit in anywhere else. I mean, you you created something that fit you. And then even at this, what a lot of people would have taken as a setback, you have embraced. I mean, this is this is really incredible. I'm rooting for you too.

SPEAKER_03 40:30

Thank you, thank you. And the beauty of disability, you know, I I make next to nothing on social security disability. But it what that does, it allows me to volunteer and and focus my energy on all sorts of stuff. So I'm building a company, I'm building a knock rock, but I also get to do all this civic engagement. I get to volunteer and I get to dedicate many, many hours towards stop the gondola. And that has led to some of the best in friendships and partnerships. You know, every time I'm tabling at this farmers market, it's almost like office hours with Eric. You know, I have all these folks that want to stop by and talk to me about this project and they would talk to me about that thing. And it is so cool.

SPEAKER_02 41:10

Well, and just to clarify, so stop the gondola is the gondola project being put forth by Frank McCourt, who's Yes, this is a Los Angeles-based project connecting in theory, Dodger Stadium with with Union Station.

SPEAKER_03 41:23

Yes. It's a Bloondoggle project, it's a neighborhood killer that we've been organizing against for five years straight now. There is no leadership of the coalition, but I'm in the inner circle that sort of nudges it along its way.

SPEAKER_02 41:34

And to find out more about that, people can go to StopTheGondola website.org.

SPEAKER_03 41:40

Please do, or at Stop the Gondola on socials. We'd love to see you.

SPEAKER_02 41:43

And if and if you don't know a lot about it, that's a good place to find great information because there's a lot of misinformation out there about that project.

SPEAKER_03 41:51

There is.

SPEAKER_02 41:52

Well, you have created quite the life for yourself.

SPEAKER_03 41:55

It's it's pretty rad. All my all my able-bodied friends make fun of me because they're like, You're the hardest working person I know. You get more done in a month than I get done in a year. And you do it while being disabled. What the disability was never able to do was kill my ambition. And I think that's sort of what I've had since I was 22 is that ambition. And for five years, my ambition was slowed down, but not exterminated. And I was really happy about that.

SPEAKER_02 42:19

So, Eric, what advice would you give to people that may be similar to you, right? Just kind of struggled through childhood in different ways, you know, and kind of felt like maybe they didn't fit in. What kind of advice would you give to young people kind of going out there now?

SPEAKER_03 42:37

I would say that at every point in my life, I ignored the societal roles and expectations that were presented to me on the menu. So essentially I've been ordering off menu my whole. And it's but and it's always worked for me. You know, I negotiated with teachers to to go to the library instead of sitting through their lessons that I didn't need. All my earliest jobs in my 20s, I when I did have a boss, they would hire me for a certain role. And my first meeting with them would be like, here's why the role is wrong. This is what I'm proposing instead. You're gonna be happier if I do this instead. Every single one of those bosses said, Yes, your your version is better than artwork. And then in school, I threw away the major system, created my own major, and then in the nightlife, which said, No, no, you just hire a DJ and do the same. I'm like, no, no, no, I'm gonna put in a petting zoo because that's unexpected.

SPEAKER_02 43:26

Or a knitting competition.

SPEAKER_03 43:27

Yeah, or the comp competitive knitting. Yeah. Every single step of my life, I've just said, screw the rules, screw what's being offered. I have a better idea. And then I find the place who's amenable to the better idea. You can't just have a better idea. I've always found the partners, the supporters who want to support that better idea. So that's the key. You cannot just have a better idea. It has to be a better idea that's welcome. And I think that's why I've succeeded is I'm good at finding those partners. And the best way to find those partners is to talk about your better idea nonstop. And Whoever reverberates with your good idea, you say, let's talk more. Let's expand on it. And it works. It works. So don't be discouraged by the if you don't like the menu offerings, see if someone will remix the ingredients with you and make something you like.

SPEAKER_02 44:13

I like that.

SPEAKER_03 44:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:14

Eric, thank you so much. I really appreciate you sharing that story with us.

SPEAKER_03 44:18

Oh, it's my pleasure.

SPEAKER_02 44:20

Thank you so much for listening to Pathfound. If anything we talked about today connected with you or gave you a new perspective, we'd love it if you subscribed, left a review, or shared the episode with someone you care about. You can also find us on Instagram at Pathfound Podcast. To explore more stories, resources, and ways to get involved, visit Keystoneetwork.org. This podcast is just one part of the journey. At Keystone Network, we're helping young people and anyone figuring it out as they go build meaningful futures one step at a time. A huge thank you to my podcast editor, David Strutt. You can find him on LinkedIn for helping bring these stories to life, and to Elizabeth Minor at Silvermine Creative for the beautiful artwork and web design. And if you're on your own path, navigating the unknown, making a pivot, or simply figuring it out as you go, just know you're not alone. The route may not be linear, but there's always a way forward. I'm Monica Argandonia, and I'll see you next time on Path Found.