Welcome to Park Bench Perspectives

Welcome to Park Bench Perspective: Old Friends, St. Louis Park, and Making Sense of the World

Carlos Figueroa and Mike Hammer introduce their show, “Park Bench Perspective,” describing it as a thoughtful conversation between two lifelong friends rather than a hot-take format, starting with memories of growing up in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. They discuss the town’s sense of community, diversity, and how people were judged by character, while noting how memory is reconstructed rather than replayed. They share nostalgic examples from childhood media and parenting perspectives, and reject simplistic “generation wars” and horoscopes. The hosts begin a “Mount Rushmore of St. Louis Park,” naming Sol from Sol’s Superette, Lyle Hanks, the Coen brothers, Mark Rosen, Al Beugen, and Carlos’s father as influential figures. They close by introducing their current work: Carlos in law, Substack writing, and a novel, and Mike in construction/handyman work, insoles/foot care, a home maintenance guide, and a product-authentication project, plus family details.

00:00 Welcome to the Bench

00:58 Meet the Hosts

01:22 Growing Up St Louis Park

02:25 Friendship and Community

03:45 Nostalgia and Time Travel

04:35 How Memory Rewrites

05:50 Simpler Times Then

06:58 Beyond Generation Wars

08:14 Earliest Childhood Memories

10:06 Mount Rushmore of SLP

15:01 Mentors and Coaches

17:29 Neighborhood Watch and Lessons

19:29 Who We Are Today

20:49 Insoles and Side Hustles

22:58 Wrap Up and Sign Off

You can find Carlos Figueroa's writing at systemsunderpressure.substack.com

Check out Mike Hammer’s massaging insoles at https://www.footpainauthority.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Before we get into today's conversation, I want to set the tone for what this show is all about. This isn't a hot take show, and it's not about pretending we have all the answers. It's just two lifelong friends sitting on a virtual park bench trying to make sense of things. What we're seeing, what we're questioning, how it differs from our experience growing up. If that sounds like the kind of conversation you're interested in, grab a seat on the bench and welcome. Helping me to win the and welcome to Park Bench Perspectives, where two old friends sit on a metaphorical park bench and try to make sense of the world. My name is Carlos Figueroa, my co-host.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Mike Hammer grew up two and a half blocks on the left from Carlos, known him since we were knee high on the 4th of July. And we are early mid-80 graduates of St. Louis Park. That's all the people need to know. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

No, we grew up in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, which was a great town to grow up in. I think we're gonna start out our first few shows and talking a little bit about the town we grow up in and what our memories are. And our goal then is to expand out and maybe talk about our perspective on the world and how we've seen it change. Our goal is not to be guys screaming at clouds, but be engaged in real conversations because I think that we got enough people out there saying, These darn kids today.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

These darn kids. But I've said more and more as time gone on and seen more of the state country world. We grew up in, I'm gonna say an iconic, class, top-notch, classic uh community which was right on the edge of the big city, but a first-tier suburb, and we were a melting pot, and we were 10 minutes from everywhere. We didn't know that term back when we were there. We just knew that we had a lot of stuff around us, a lot of opportunity. And I don't say we took it for granted because we didn't know what we didn't have, but I look back, I had a blast in school. I had a blast in St. Louis Park. It was a fun growing up there.

SPEAKER_02 2:25

It was, and then people forget that what is it you always used to say is I'm a white kid in St. Louis Park, but my best friends are a Cuban and a Native American.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Exactly. And you could say stuff like that because it was true. It was a fact that nobody saw anything. You weren't looking through rose colored glasses, you were just looking at what you saw, and this was just what it is. You didn't have to be PC compliant. If you're a good dude, you're a good dude, be a good person.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

I don't even think it was a question. I don't think we had that filter. We I at least the most of the people that were my friends are good human beings and they judged other human beings based on who they are, how they behave, which is the way to do it.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

Yeah, we had fun. It was kind of like one of those, yeah, come on in, how are you doing? We'll see if we have enough in common, we'll be friends, otherwise we'll be acquaintances, and let's go with that. I think I knew everybody in our class, and I see people that go, Yeah, I didn't know him, most of the people in my class. And you're like, that's too bad.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

Mike Hammer, let me tell you, you're very similar to my father because you're the only two people I've ever traveled with, and we can be in some other state on the other side of the planet, and you guys will bump into somebody. I know three people, and one of them's dead. But that's what you're around. You're my social ambassador.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

It uh it's it people fascinate me and it's fun, and the gift of Gab comes easy, but that's probably why we're sitting down here doing this. Yeah. It was just when we hearken back, I'm not longing for the old days. I don't want to live in the past or go back in time. But I do say this if I could time travel and I could take two days or three days from when we met, maybe, or when we were in fourth grade, just to see what the mind of Mike Hammer was thinking about every day, because right now we have thoughts in our head all day long when we're awake and then someone we're sleeping. We had them back then, but we couldn't catalog them all. So it'd be fun to go back at different times of our life, not to relive it, just to see, dude, what the hell was I thinking? Or wow, cool. But because when we look back, we all have different perspectives of how it went.

SPEAKER_02 4:26

My uh sneak that in there. And then that's what we do. We get on the bench and we share those perspectives, and we hope that people will enjoy sitting on the bench with us and talking about things. But my wife accuses me on occasion of being Cliff Clavin. I want to go a little Cliff Clavin on you now, if you'll permit. Um, because we often remember the good old days. But I've actually been doing some research for a book I'm writing about memories and the way memory works. People think that their memory is like it was recorded and you're playing back the tape, but that's not. Your brain recreates the memory. And so you are not remembering the good old days. You are thinking about the good old days in your modern today mind putting it together. And so I like to say that what people hearken back for never existed. It only exists in your brain right now, because it never existed. It was experienced differently than what your classes from I'll admit it, age 60 remember happened.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

Yeah, maybe that's part of what I guess my thought to go back for a couple days just to not think of how I thought it happened in today's day and age, but see it because we talk about pets and we talk about music. That's the I feel like those are the triggers that put us back at the time because we think about the dog we had or the song that song, so it recreates more, maybe more of a a truth timeline. Yeah. But yes, we want to make it look like I was probably gonna be this or that, but we do know.

SPEAKER_02 5:49

But didn't it didn't it seem simpler? I don't know. And maybe I'm recreating it from my perspective now, but honestly, there were days where my biggest goal was how I can come up with two dollars so I could get a keg cup that night.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

And that's about it. And then earlier in that, and you think about the Sunday, uh Saturday morning cartoons. Yeah, the commercials bug you. Yep. Did the commercials bug? They didn't bug you because you didn't know anything different. So now you have to watch something on Peacock or something, and you're like going, Really? They even put the they even put the time there. 90 seconds. I gotta wait 90. What am I gonna do with myself? But when we were young, it was simple. You just wanted to go play.

SPEAKER_00 6:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

And you didn't really not want to go to bed because TV turned off. Basically, the networks turned off the TV.

SPEAKER_02 6:34

Did you ever share that if a piece of information with your kids, TV ended at the end of the day?

SPEAKER_01 6:39

Yeah, no, I was like, and once in a while, like on channel 45, they'd play the late night thing, and you're like, wow, this is weird. It didn't date. But yeah, you're like, it was like something out of family there. Some the bars come on, that's it, we're done.

SPEAKER_02 6:51

Oh, and you know what? They would hit the national anthem, and then it would be the screen was off until the morning, and that was just the reality. But I don't want a baby. You know, we all had a babysitter. Old guys talking about old people stuff. Yeah, no, I'm more interested in okay, here's a 60-year-old guy who grew up in St. Louis Park's perspective on what might be going on in the world. Yeah, let's hear some different voices. I'm anxious to hear some of the things. You sound like you have some really great debates with your kids and good conversations. And I'm not exposed to people from prior generations beyond my workplace. So frankly, I try really hard not to play the generation wars. You know, Gen X, we're the best, Gen Z is horrible or whatever. To me, those are as silly as horoscopes, right? Everybody born the same month is exactly the same. Everybody born the same year is exactly the same. Bullshit. Sorry, that's it.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

You know, it's funny about horoscopes. I do write read the if it comes across a paper and I read the first two sentences. Uh, first of all, it's got two stars. I'm not reading it because that's lying. If it's got a five or six star, I'm like, spot on. This guy's smart. But the other thing I don't even know. I'm gonna say this, I do know, but I I I don't remember because I don't know what we weren't we were something in there, and I'm like, who cares? Why do I care? I was born this day. Yeah, I'm grouped in with people like you that were born in the same era. What's your early? I'm just early.

SPEAKER_02 8:16

I never asked you that before because I honestly don't have much of a memory before kindergarten.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

Yeah. Two things I remember, I guess maybe because the snow out here, I do remember my grandpa on my dad's side. And really young, and it snowed. And I two things weird about him, but went out to the garbage can, took the lid off, he did, and we walked over to Powderhorn Park, and he put me on it and pushed me down the hill. And I remember him sitting there going, Come on up, and I'm like, this garbage can was the size of me, basically, at the time, lid. Then at his cabin, peeing in a Folger's can because he didn't want to go out to the outhouse. And then I remember this is a funny one because that that the prayer, the Lord lay me down to sleep. I hope, you know, if I whatever, would I wake? It was we'd wake up in the morning going, I made it through the night. This is a challenge. I thought going to sleep was a risky business, going, I don't know. And then I'd wake up going, I good. I remember that being interesting, you know, the comment, if I die before I wake. Yep, I know exactly what you're talking about. I'm like, why would they put why'd they put that in there? Let's just say tomorrow we're gonna have a good day.

SPEAKER_02 9:23

There's some religious stuff, it's scary to kids. It's like I wouldn't want like a six-year-old reading the old testament because there's like stoning and stuff in there, man. That's not cool for kids.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Cool, dude. Not cool. No, it's it's and you're right. The impressions, when we start remembering, what do they say? Three years old, basically, because I don't remember being coddled. Zero recollection. When one of my kids says something, I'm like, dude, stop it. I kept you alive when you were a freaking infant. I didn't bang your head into the wall. I said your life.

SPEAKER_02 9:55

As you're an attorney, I may want to end this conversation at this because uh the statute of limitations may not have run. Let's just say that you were a good parent and move on, shall we? We had fun. Okay, uh, is it okay if we talk about our hometown a little bit? Because I am proud of having grown up in St. Louis Park. I thought it was I thought it was a Goldilocks zone. I think I couldn't have asked for a better place to grow up and a better time to grow up. And so you and I think highly of St. Louis Park, as a lot of people do. Yeah. One of the things that I think about is all of the wonderful characters that we encountered while in St. Louis Park. So as a way to talk about it, do you want to maybe say if let's put together a Mount Rushmore of St. Louis Park and see which individuals we can do it later on on sports and media and this and that, but overall, who would you put up there to represent St. Louis Park? And I'm happy to start if you want, or I'll give you some time to think through it because I hit you with that. Yeah, you start. All right. My first pick is going to be an individual that if you grew up in St. Louis Park in the 80s, you absolutely know. And that would be Saul from Saul Superet. Saul was an institution for decades in St. Louis Park. His little store was right there by the Little League Field. And I remember going in there and he'd be singing. He was the singing grocer. I'm going to throw up there on our Mount Rushmore St. Louis Park, Saul.

SPEAKER_01 11:13

It's an icon. Those sandwiches were to die for. But yeah, he was always there. You knew where to get it. You know who you'd see there.

unknown 11:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

I'm going to say, thinking about this just a little bit, there's a lot of people that come to mind. But one of the first ones that comes to mind all the time, and maybe that was just because I spent a number of not long amounts of time, but on a many day basis in Lyle Hanks' office. There you go. And uh he just had a way of putting things the way a perspective. You could see he was experienced and grizzly, didn't look at the kids like, I'm not trying to be a hard ass anymore. I'm just trying to push you in the right direction a little bit. If you're funny and cooperative, we're not gonna get you in a whole lot of trouble because or put a whole lot of penalty, but whatever on you for getting in trouble because that's not gonna do anything.

SPEAKER_02 12:00

But he just and he always had time for you, it seemed like here's my Lyle Hanks story, which is embarrassing, but I'm gonna tell it anyways. So in my sophomore year, freshman year maybe, I was dating someone who was a little older and was really thought hickeys were the coolest thing. Already her and her friends were just describing, oh, let's do this shape like this and that. And so I had hickeys, I had a pretty much a burgundy knack. So I'm sitting in class. Classic. And uh the high school security guards say, Hey, down to the office, and I go to Lyle Ags' office. And he honestly cannot keep a straight face. He is laughing you said, Carlos, we've received reports, and I'm obligated to see if you are anybody have any troubles at home or anybody is hurting you. And I said, No. He goes, I didn't think so. I just heard about it, had to for myself. That's good. That's my Lyle story. So good pick with number.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

I got, yeah, I'd go down there. I'd have to go down there for not being punctual in the morning. And it was fun because we'd you he coached a lot of things and winding out his coaching time when we were there, but he's still uh JV ninth grade coach. And he would we'd start talking about the game or sports or something. He'd say, Why are you down here? I go, I have no idea. I just wandered in. But he got funny too towards the end. He would be like, You just thought either get better or don't play. And you're like, Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 13:23

So with my next pick, I think I will take, I'm gonna do a two for one and take Joel and Ethan Cohen, since everybody always refers to the Cohen brothers. I've been doing some writing that I think we'll talk about and some script writing. I've developed a new appreciation for the art. And they're two of the most unique voices in filmmaking for the last 30, 40 years.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

I'm gonna say Lewis Park high school alums, Joel and Ethan. Classic. What's interesting? Growing up, I didn't know anything about them. And I probably it was 25 years ago, the first whatever pulp fiction where you first started going.

SPEAKER_02 13:57

Raising Arizona. Raising Arizona was their big movie there where they broke out.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

And you know what's fun always when you heard St. Louis Park? You like you did this, nobody's watching, but you did this fist pump, like when they came out of the End of Breakfast Club. Like, yes, I went there, so somehow metaphorically, I have that shines well on me. Good for me.

SPEAKER_02 14:17

You got another pick there, my friend?

SPEAKER_01 14:19

I'm gonna go with one I listen to here on the radio all the time. I remember back when he was running for president on the KQ morning show with uh Dan Cahane. Was it Bernard and Cahane or was it whatever it was?

SPEAKER_02 14:29

Yeah, Tom and Dan.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

Tom and Dan. And they uh you had Marky Rosen running for president way back in high school.

SPEAKER_02 14:34

I remember listening to Tom and it was around the World Series time when that call came out.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Yeah. And uh we but when that part, but I remember in high school listening to it.

SPEAKER_02 14:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:44

And just thinking, wow, listening to the KQ morning show has been almost a lifelong institution, and now it's over, but he's listening to him on K-Fan a lot. He's just he's just I bump into him every once in a while and I uh chit-chat about throwing up in the hood. Yeah, all the fun stuff.

SPEAKER_02 15:01

I will take, I'm actually gonna go a little bit, someone who's less known to folks unless they were around in the sports in our era. I'm gonna take Al Bugin. Al was my coach. He was also a mentor to me. Al did a lot of things that people aren't aware of. Like, for example, when my dad was involved with youth baseball, there'd always be several families that couldn't afford the fee, particularly if they had two or three kids. And Al would always write the check for those families and never sought any publicity or gratitude or anything else for it. And he was a mentor to a lot of us, a pseudo-father. So shout out to Al and and appreciation for everything he did for us kids.

SPEAKER_01 15:39

I you didn't steal my thunder because there's a lot of thunder out there. But at a young age, my dad left and whatever became the band of the house, whatever that means. And I didn't back then we didn't break things down looking for a male father for you. You just live life and things happen naturally, and we didn't label it. But the first one, uh my mount rushed for there is someone that shares the name with you. The only thing they have in f at the end of theirs was senior. Your dad was grew up, he was two and a half blocks from me as well. And he was my first and longest coach in baseball, and he had faith in me all the time, no matter who I beaned or whatever. He just the first time he saw me pitch, he said, You're our pitcher next, and went on. And but he and L too was up there on the Mount Rushboard because I had some pseudo-father figures that A kept me involved, B, in a genuine interest, and then it happened because being friends with their kids, you and Todd and whatever. But yeah, the your dad picked me up all the time for all the sports. Because my mom was mother of three, no no man or whatever. And he was fun about it because he'd most of the time dropped me off two or three houses down, and he would say, Mike, get the blank blank out of my car in a joking, humorous way. A bit. But half the time was because he forgot that he passed my house.

SPEAKER_02 17:00

That's actually the reality of the source, is he just would forget he was heading home and he's like, stop, and it's like get out.

SPEAKER_01 17:06

But these things are my hall of fame from when it came to so I didn't have necessarily my dad, but I had a lot of dads that were on my side and pulling for me. I don't know if it still happens as much anymore with it takes a community to raise a child. But when they started using that term, I think it lost the validity of how it was really.

SPEAKER_02 17:28

Yep. Our neighbors watch stuff, man. If I uh I'm sorry, Kenny, but when you were out there with the uh BB gun in the yard shooting squirrels, my grandma called your parents and said, He's your son's BB gun shooting squirrels. And so that was it. We had neighbors that that that kept an eye out for us, and that doesn't mean that we didn't get in trouble, but we had our parents typically found out things through the grapevine.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

Yeah, and it was funny too. You know what I realized a lot more when I got older? They picked and choose what they let us know they knew. Yes. I remember one time, and this was when I dad was around ding dong ditch. We all remember that, and they hit a corner house right by mine, and I didn't know it, but they had this mesh with on the on the thing. I ran into it and it got knocked down, and because you do it at night. And my dad and mom had to come there, and I told the story about I was running from some bad guys, and I just thought I'd take the corner house and cut the corner and get it farther ahead. And I remember my dad sitting there and I agreed to come fix it, put it back up, but I knocked down and all this. And walk out of there. My dad goes, someday you're gonna tell me the truth, but let's go home. I'm tired, I want to go back to bed. And I was like, You guys know stuff. Think back, and I'm like, you knew a lot, and then uh I became a parent. You're like, I know things, I'm just not gonna bring it up either. I don't have the mental uh wherewithal that challenge.

SPEAKER_02 18:48

You learned that skill when you had the kids, and uh, I'm sure you said, Okay, kids, don't try that on me. I invented that shit.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

No, pick your battles type thing, or you want to say to them, just tell the truth because what a wicked web we weave. And and when you tell the truth, you don't have to remember the story because it doesn't change. But you don't know that until you get older, till you try this lying thing out, because you're like, I I can't, and then you're like, I'm gonna get in trouble. Then you think you start realizing I'm gonna get caught in trouble for this, and then I'm gonna get in trouble for lying.

SPEAKER_02 19:22

I did it, but that was although the lesson of Nixon is like it's not the crime that gets you, it's the cover-up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

Alright, so go on. We got more.

SPEAKER_02 19:29

Oh, you know what? I really I think that we'll come back to talk about St. Louis Park more in future episodes, but right now I think people want to know a little bit about each other. So I can start or you can start however you want to do it. You're on a roll. It's a roll. My name's Carlos Figueroa. I grew up in St. Louis Park. This law for many years, found myself in a very obscure area of the law called e-discovery, and I'm now trying to transition into writing. I've been doing some writing on Substack, on some organizational systems under pressure. And then I've also been working on my first novel, uh, The Ghost of Lake Osaka, which I hope to be able to provide a link to here coming up in the next month. And we will have in the show notes links to where you can find out what I'm up to. A Mike Hammer? How can people get a hold of you and what are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 20:17

I'm gonna say touche from for you. And yes, I grew up in St. Louis Park, as we we've established, and I've done a lot a lot of things and thinking back on it, going, oh fun. But started ran a lot of businesses currently, though, I'll start from the newest. Right now I do construction work, basically a glorified handyman doing things that people don't want to do anymore, and finding that there's more people out there willing to pay someone to do some of these things than do it themselves. And some kids don't know a difference between a screwdriver and a butter knife. But I don't judge them, I just do the work. Plus, I have a foot care company, it's mostly insoles and the best insole out there. And I've been selling those, getting those under people's feet and in their shoes for the last 12, 13 years.

SPEAKER_02 21:02

Not a paid spokesperson. I don't make any money off the insoles, but I gotta tell you, they make my feet a lot happier than they are without them. And they're not that expensive considering how much time I spend on my feet.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

Yeah, yeah. Ask me the question: how did you get into that insole business?

SPEAKER_02 21:18

Hold on. Hey, Mike Hammer, something I've always been curious about. How did you get into the insole business? I walked right into it. But um boom, shh. Wow. You know what? I'm gonna I guess when I pitch, I just lob it over the plate and you hit it out.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

Yeah, like softball. But it's funny, is nothing says I love you like a pair of insoles. And when your feet feel good, the world looks better. I got a lot of foot puns, but we'll get on the pun later on.

SPEAKER_02 21:42

At some point, we'll create a discount for people that say that they uh they heard about your massaging insoles from park bench perspectives. How about that? Yeah, giving away Mike's money. How about that?

SPEAKER_01 21:52

I like it. I like it. We're just saving souls here, one foot at a time.

SPEAKER_02 21:56

Hey, one other thing I didn't is that you've got to. Little kind of home maintenance handout that folks can find. Yeah. Program to keep your house in shape. And we'll provide a link for that as well in the show notes.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

Yeah, there are 20 points of what's common and what people a 10 of what's common and should be done or what's commonly overlooked. We'll put it out there for you to do, or if you don't want to do it, we will send somebody out there for a small fee to do all those things. But yeah, that's part of what I do. Another thing we're working on is another genuine marketing group, which is a platform teamed with IBM to authenticate and make real all the products, groceries, food, everything out there to make sure that people know what it is exactly what it is, and it hasn't been messed up and stuff like that. But we can get into we'll do a show on some of these companies and how they're operating, how they're working. And that's about it. Three adult kids, two dogs, and a partridge in a pear tree. Absolutely. And that keeps me busy.

SPEAKER_02 22:58

I'm so looking forward to hanging out on the park bench with you, talking about the world we live in. And we hope people have enjoyed listening to us, and we'll come back for future episodes. And with that, I'm Carlos Figueroa and Mike Hammer.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

Watching all the world go by now, underneath the hazy sky now. Got my ticket for the long ride. Yeah, from my bench perspective. Got that one view.