Stirrups, Smorgasbords, and St. Louis Park

In this episode

• Minnesota March weather and the false promise of spring
• Why baseball and spring were inseparable growing up
• Meeting before kindergarten at Elliott Elementary
• Little League, Cub League, Babe Ruth, and neighborhood baseball memories
• Kite flying across from Elliott and the legend of razor-blade kite wars
• Opening Day rituals, stirrups, and looking right in a baseball uniform
• St. Louis Park restaurant memories, including:
• Shakey’s Pizza
• Yangtze Restaurant
• David Woo’s
• Perkins
• Embers
• Mr. Steak
• Jolly Troll
• Bridgeman’s
• Farrell’s
• Carriage House, bowling, pinball, and Saturday hot dogs
• How food places become part of a town’s identity
• Listener callout: favorite St. Louis Park restaurants, past or present
• Sponsor mentions and Carlos’s upcoming novel, The Ghost of Lake Osakis

Notable moments

• Mike and Carlos realizing they forgot to actually introduce themselves
• The case for proper baseball stirrup height, argued like it’s constitutional law
• A wonderfully chaotic detour from restaurants into MSG, hot dogs, and marijuana policy
• The reminder that old neighborhood places were never just businesses—they were landmarks in people’s lives

Mentioned in this episode

• Elliott Elementary
• St. Louis Park baseball
• Sols 
• Koch’s Sporting Goods
• Shakey’s Pizza
• Yangtze Restaurant
• David Woo
• Perkins
• Embers
• Mr. Steak
• Jolly Troll
• Bridgeman’s
• Farrell’s
• Carriage House
• Foot Pain Authority
• The Ghost of Lake Osakis by Carlos Figueroa

Sponsors

Foot Pain Authority

If your feet are barking louder than your opinions, check out Foot Pain Authority for insoles and relief. Mention that you “heard about it on the bench.” 

https://www.footpainauthority.com

From Carlos

Carlos also shares an update on his upcoming psychological thriller, The Ghost of Lake Osakis, and talks briefly about his Substack writing on institutions, technology, and change.

Join the conversation

What St. Louis Park restaurant do you remember most? Drop a comment and tell us which places still live rent-free in your memory.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Hi, and welcome to this episode of Park Bench Perspective, where two lifelong friends sit on a virtual park bench and discuss what they see in the world today. Join my co-host Mike Hammer and I and grab a seat on the bench. Helping me to win the fine, welcome to Park Bench Perspectives, where two old friends sit on a virtual park bench and talk about the community we grew up in and what we see in the world today to better understand it. Michael, what are you thinking about this Minnesota March weather? We're gonna approach 80 degrees today.

SPEAKER_04 0:56

Well, Carlos, I should it's interesting. I know you can look back in time and there's been dates this early that got warm, but it seems to be more and more when we were young. It was once you got to this point in your mind, winter was done. There's no more sliding, there's no more stuff you want to do. You want spring. And we like baseball, so we wanted to be able to play outside and play baseball. Springtime meant baseball season when we were kids. And you couldn't wait till it dried up and it got nice and it stayed nice, and then the old something would come, the cold snap would come back and then put a reminder on it.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

And I'm gonna do I'm gonna do something that's really smart to do on an audio podcast. We're talking about what we're wearing. We both are wearing baseball. You're wearing a St. Louis Park Town team shirt, and I'm wearing a Minnesota Twins, a jersey. So we still are uh our brains are wired to spring means baseball. Good, good part.

SPEAKER_04 1:45

I don't want to call you out on here, but people that have listened to us assume I'm Mike Hammer, but I'm gonna tell the rest of the new listeners that when you say, What do you think, Michael? I am Michael Hammer. Okay. Because we you didn't cover that at the beginning.

SPEAKER_02 1:58

No, we did not introduce ourselves, and maybe we should do that. I think we should because the people want to know? Is that what you said? The people want to know, and they have the right to know. What was that? Was that Baron von Roschke when we were kids that on wrestling where he would always end his thing, and that is all the people need to know. And there's a funny story in another episode about dealing with Baron von Roschke in real life. I look for I look forward to hearing that story. That's what's called in the business a tease for future episodes. People are coming back for sure to hear that story.

SPEAKER_04 2:27

It's an interesting one. But okay, so yes, I'm Mike Hammer, and we are two old friends that we don't say old longtime friends, seasoned. Long time and seasoned. And many spring times we've seen together.

SPEAKER_02 2:40

We seem to just have conversations that might entice others to listen. I'm not sure about that. My name's Carlos Figueroa. I think I met you on the playgrounds when we were four before our first day of kindergarten at Elliott Elementary School. Shout out to Eagles and Eagles fans.

SPEAKER_04 2:56

Oh, we were tough Eagles.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

We were tough Eagles. But yeah, it was, and then we played Cub League Baseball, Little League, Babe Ruth.

SPEAKER_04 3:05

A coach, I want Carlos and Michael. You can't take two, he's not your son. And I don't, I'm not coaching. And they're like, okay, you can have Michael.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

That's one of the things. I never got a chance to face you. I never got to face your wicked fastball alive. And you've suggested that we go out and do that now.

SPEAKER_04 3:22

And yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:24

I don't know about that.

SPEAKER_04 3:25

I might have to throw left-handed. B, there is some really good equipment that you can protect that side of your body where the ball's coming in because I wouldn't know where it's coming from.

SPEAKER_02 3:38

Well, that would actually, my old man, Carlos Figueroa Sr., I think my dad forgot more about baseball than most people will ever know. He knew the game from a child, and he always thought that one of your best gifts as a pitcher was nobody was 100% sure where the ball was gonna go. So nobody dug in on Mike Hammer. You knew that it could be at your knees, it could be at your shoulders, and nobody knows. Or behind you. Or behind you.

SPEAKER_04 4:02

I said a lot of sorries to the catchers in my time. And then when I developed a curveball, and the goal was just to get it right in the dirt, right past the plate. And you had a catcher that Tom Ferry was the best. But I apologize to Tom many times for he had to play in the dirt all game long.

SPEAKER_02 4:19

But shout out to I like to call St. Louis Parks Tom terrific, Tom Ferry. Tom Ferry. We lost way too young.

SPEAKER_04 4:25

Right. But yeah, nope, we spray time. It was great. We were talking about this before we started. And I've always gonna have a few Mary Poppins quotes from time to time. Let's go fly a kite. There you go. To the highest heights. Great song, end of the movie. And we would fly kites across the street, because well, across the street from me was Elliot and the playground in the field. And it was a great, it was an east-west win.

SPEAKER_02 4:57

You didn't know it as a kid because only you had a I did not know it until I was just now, but thank you for sharing. You got a meteor meteorological background there, Mike? I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 5:07

You and Ed Crayling. You bought the Ed Crayling kit, and you had a you had it hooked up on your backyard. You had the thing spinning.

SPEAKER_02 5:15

I did have as a little kid, I don't know, like nine or ten. I had this weather station I was so proud of. I got for Christmas, and it had all kinds of wind speed gauges and everything else, and I had it outside. Oh, so then my friend Mike Hammer, my friend Kenny Benning decide let's sabotage the weather station. Let's try string to it so it doesn't show the right direction. Like, why would you do that?

SPEAKER_04 5:41

Why would you do that to your friend? Let's back up here. We would, yes, it was 10 feet out your bedroom window. And sometimes we'd go over there and ask Carlos to come out and play. And we we needed a fourth because we'd make his brother Doug play. And he Carlos would say no sometimes. I would say, I'm not going to put it on Kenny, but he had more of a mischievous minds at times. And we go back there, and this is our you don't want to play? These are the penalties that occur with that. But yeah, I remember it was had totally forgotten about the sabotaged weather states. We did that, yeah. But so that field was east to west. It was great, especially with a good spring wind. You didn't have to have a remember you had to have somebody hold it, and then you'd run the other way for as long as you couldn't to get it up there.

SPEAKER_02 6:28

So you were telling me a story earlier that I did not, I was not aware that there were some hardcore kite flyers over there. Rumor had it, because there'd be some rumor, rumor. Okay, this is rumor.

SPEAKER_04 6:41

Sometimes there'd be 20, 30 kids flying kites there. There'd be a bunch in the air. And if people remember, sometimes they came out with these balloons that you blew up and then put up there. I'm gonna say okay. Oh, but you look back in the mid early middle 70s, late 70s, and there was balloons that you blew up, and then you flew them. And supposedly the older tough guy kids would take their and they'd get those when the kites came out, they had more of that Batman look to them, and they would supposedly tape razor blades on the tip. No, they would try hard to pop those other ones, and you're in as a boy, you're in between that. Wow, that's cool. And then that's not very nice, and then that's terrible. You destroy someone's kite. Yeah, never got the courage to put a to see if that really worked, because that wouldn't be nice. Springtime means baseball and kite flying. Baseball and kite flying. Remember little league? Yeah. Opening day, the opening day ceremonies. Oh, yeah. Remember that? We talked about this last time about you had your stirrups right. You wanted the new, you wanted brand new sanitary. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 7:54

You wanted to look at it and mom had to do some surgery on the stirrups. She had to cut, and then she had to sew in some elastic so you get the proper height on your stirrups. Because you can't, you know. I'm sorry, kids today, you wear your baseball socks wrong. This is objectively wrong. And I will die on that hill. I don't even have stirrups anymore. I know, I know.

SPEAKER_04 8:18

But yeah, you because you think you find it later on, you're not getting a brand new uniform. It was used two, three, four, five, whatever. How many years kids didn't destroy them? So the sanitaries, sometimes though the sanitaries you had to buy, and sometimes the stirrups that you say go to the store and you go to Kokish. Kokish?

SPEAKER_02 8:35

Kokish and Hopkins was the source for all things sports back in the day. That was fun. So I bought my football helmet there, I bought my mouth guard there, gloves. Oh yeah, gloves. Oh, I got my when I was in junior high, I got my St. Louis Park windbreaker.

SPEAKER_03 8:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 8:51

That was a big deal. It was cool when you got a little older and you knew somebody that worked there. You're like, this is the best job in the world. You need to work here, but the Yeah, yeah. You get the stirrups just go up high enough, and and you always wish it was a nice day. Because all the teams, because there were six teams in the league. There's six in the majors, six in the minors. Minors, yeah. And opening day, everybody had a game. Oh, yeah. And you just wish it was a nice day. Because if it was cold, I don't care what level you're at. Yeah. Aluminum bats, cold weather, and hitting the ball.

SPEAKER_02 9:24

Not it's so flipping unpleasant to be out on the field. Or when you have somebody that's not throwing strikes and it's miserable and it's cold, and you're just out there, and yeah, it's not fun. But the rest of the day, you know, you're chasing foul balls because you could trade those in for a bag of popcorn.

SPEAKER_04 9:40

Bag of popcorn.

SPEAKER_02 9:41

To me, that's one of the best deals in town.

SPEAKER_04 9:43

It was a place where you all hung out, and it was right behind Saul Superat! Which is on who's Mount Rushmore? It's on Carlos's Mount Rushmore. Listen to episode one. Yeah, it right behind Saul, so you could run over there and get something if you had money back then.

SPEAKER_02 9:56

You know what I would do for a super big treat? This was like special day. This was even before I became a total fat ass. But I would ride over to Litsky's Baker. Oh, and I would spend, bring some sometimes change, and she and actually the old lady would yell at me for saying you can't come in here and buy stuff with pennies. Illegal currency, ma'am.

SPEAKER_04 10:15

I like it. And back then you were crossing Cedar Lake Road on your own.

SPEAKER_02 10:19

Oh no?

SPEAKER_04 10:19

Yeah, uh big stuff. Crosswalks, kids made it.

SPEAKER_02 10:23

Oh, and you know what? I didn't even wear a helmet. Didn't even wear a helmet. You know what? No light. No light on my bike. No light on your bike. No, no helmet, no reflective wear. And I'm not saying if you have kids, don't give them helmets. We were dumbasses. So don't go by what we say. A lot of people like, oh look how tough we are. I'm like, no, okay, part tough, but part stupid.

SPEAKER_04 10:43

Yeah, part stupid. But I still ride a motorcycle without the helmet, and I get people like to say, shouldn't you wear a helmet? I go, it's debatable, but I'm not gonna make you ride on a bike and not, so let's just keep it where it is.

SPEAKER_02 10:57

I gotta tell you, truth be told, I wish you that you had not picked up the motorcycle habit again after many years. And I wish you wore a helmet just because I love you and I don't want anything to happen to you, but you are you and nobody uh nobody's gonna tell you what to do.

SPEAKER_04 11:10

Yeah, we're just some things you just I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 11:15

You enjoy joy.

SPEAKER_04 11:16

It brings you joy. I enjoy it. I must tear fate in the face. A lot of times I don't even think about it. Just say, you know what? I'm not gonna fall down.

SPEAKER_02 11:22

But let's just you know what? As they I will give you the same greeting that a high school teacher I heard of does on Friday. She says, Don't take a life, don't make a life.

unknown 11:32

Oh, that was a good one.

SPEAKER_02 11:33

Which is, I think, some solid advice for all adults.

SPEAKER_03 11:36

At any age.

SPEAKER_02 11:37

At any age.

SPEAKER_03 11:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:38

Alright, Mike, I think you and I talked about food. Because food growing up was a big deal. And St. Louis Park had lots of fun food places. And so I thought I had fun with our draft that we did for Mount Rushmore, St. Louis Park. Yeah. So do you want to do a draft on restaurants at St. Louis Park or do you just want to talk about our favorites? We can do it however you want to.

SPEAKER_04 11:58

Fortunately or unfortunately, a lot of ours are gonna gone, but they're going to be that was on my list too, which I guess is. Oh, yeah, so we can yeah, say one.

SPEAKER_02 12:09

Go ahead. And then you start. Or you want if you want to put me, I will be on the clock. However, you decide. Okay, if we started and just gone probably from proximity, shaky's shaky's shaky's even down the road from us. I tell you, a shaky's Canadian bacon pizza was the greatest thing ever. Because first of all, shakies was not anything in my life that we got very often. It was pretty much the end of baseball season.

SPEAKER_04 12:30

And whose birthday party?

SPEAKER_02 12:32

And birthday parties. My birthday party. Your birthday party. After sledding. After sledding.

SPEAKER_04 12:35

It was during winter break. It was during Christmas break, because it was December 27th. And we'd go there, and yeah, that was. And then you keep going there, and then you end up working there, and then you end up seeing the water.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

Yeah, you would.

SPEAKER_02 12:47

And that way you used to be able to watch people make the pizzas behind the window. So at a certain point in time, we were in high school, you and Kenny were behind that window, weren't you? Like sister got us her job there.

SPEAKER_03 12:56

And at first you were a little kid standing on that bench with watching the people through the oval window with their hats on.

SPEAKER_04 13:04

And then later on, you're that person standing on the other side of the window with a hat on. And let's just say sometimes we got in the mood certain ways to make pizzas at Shaky's.

SPEAKER_02 13:17

But that's a solid pick. That's a solid pick. I'm actually going to take one that I think exists and came along in our adulthood. Just because it's some damn good food. I'm taking Yangtze. Because that's some solid food right there. I very few places in the Twin Cities where I've had better Chinese than at Yangtze.

SPEAKER_04 13:34

Yangtze, and it still rocks. They don't put that MSG in it. It's stupid. And I don't know. But they make it there in the wall. And I'm always under the impression they were somewhat in the same ownership group. Yeah. But I have an MSG story. Okay, segue into it. Let's go.

SPEAKER_02 13:53

All right, from my restaurant days. So I in high school, and this may be a pick by somebody, it may not. I worked at TGI Fridays through most of high school. I did work a lot of hours, and I had a lot of fun with the money I made. But one of the things that they would do, and this was the 80s as Statute of Limitations run, is you would have the big 55-gallon drum of salad, and you'd have a garbage bag in it. And so you would start the day in the morning, you would take the bag of salad from yesterday that's left in the barrel, you wouldn't throw it away. You would fill up a big sink, throw some MSG or what they would call like something like potato white, I think it was called. Something to make the vegetables fluff up, and you'd throw them in the sink with some water and that stuff, and then you'd make the new salad, and then you'd toss this stuff on top, and you were ready to go. And as far as I, at least the managers told me, we've never received a complaint ever. 60 Minutes did a story on potential health issues with MSG. They got seven calls the next week of people complaining that they were feeling the effects. I'm not a scientist, but that strikes me that's all psychosomatic and not real.

SPEAKER_04 15:03

What can you do for my bank account? We heard the story, or maybe we didn't, but Mr. Polad used to re redo the hot dogs. Yes. Three or four days, they'd last. Take them out of the a lot of times the reason they didn't have them, the vendor would come by and put the hot dog in the bun while you're sitting there. Yep. Because those hot dogs weren't thrown away. Yeah, no. And probably there's hot dogs in all our intestines somewhere.

SPEAKER_02 15:27

Well, first of all, let's all be real. If you grew up in Minnesota, there are forever 3M chemicals in your body right now that will be there forever. And nobody really knows what's going to happen. We have our own creoso plant in St. Louis Park. I I lived for a while in Oakdale and I drank the 3M water, this and that. I think the ship has sailed. I think we are basically science experiments at this point.

SPEAKER_03 15:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:48

But we're not getting eaten by wolves as much, and we're not dying of diphtheria. This is true.

SPEAKER_02 15:54

You know what? You are right, because I'm a firm believer in better living through chemistry. I think I'm glad that we're able to preserve food and not die on the regular.

SPEAKER_04 16:03

I just think where we've come with the evolution of the Wild West when it comes to THC. Yeah, that's true. We'll have an episode on that because that's a that would be fun one to dive down in our lifespan.

SPEAKER_02 16:15

Yeah. It's totally not, I mean, under George Bush's administration, so this is not our childhood, this is Bush Sr. Tommy Chong went to jail for selling bombs.

unknown 16:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:26

He went to not pot, glass pipes. He went to prison for it. And what, 20 years later, you can get weed delivered to you in LA with an app.

SPEAKER_04 16:38

Yeah. And in that episode, we'll talk about Mr. Duca Decas. Yes. The art teacher. Yeah. Pottery class. A lot of things we made there that never made it out of the kiln. But we'll get to that. But the history of marijuana runs our timeline from it does.

SPEAKER_02 16:58

Actually, I was showing I was talking to Pam last night. I was looking at a chart and it shows drug use of high school seniors. And actually, it did not peak in 84. It peaked in 82. And then, but it is drug use. I did not read the footnotes to see the study, but drug use is about two-thirds of where it was for high school seniors when we were. Now, we're not making an apples to apples comparison because the ditchweed that we smoked wasn't all that good compared to the PhD scientist-created stuff that exists now.

SPEAKER_04 17:33

That's the same thing. I've heard.

SPEAKER_02 17:59

But but it was common, common, not even blinked at for parents to buy kegs for kids' graduation parties.

SPEAKER_03 18:05

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 18:06

Nobody was worried about lawsuits or going to jail or anything. No, they didn't have registered keg numbers or anything like that.

SPEAKER_04 18:14

That's just what you did. If you were a senior, if you were a junior, you had a ditch, junior or sophomore, let's not say this really happened, but say, and you were at some senior's party and the coach walked in, you had a you had to chuck that glass pretty fast.

SPEAKER_02 18:28

It was a little easier for us because the drinking age was 19. So it wasn't like you needed to hang out in front of a liquor store to find somebody to buy you booze. It was pretty much somebody at the party was gonna handle that.

SPEAKER_04 18:40

And not much before that, it was 18. Yeah. And Adam Branito would always tell the stories. The reason they changed it, one of the reasons they changed school. Well, let's just say for lack of a better term, three martini lunch, come back just pie-eyed, walking to school, going in. So I'm 18.

SPEAKER_02 18:56

But I'm not a restaurant. I'm gonna try to put the toothpaste back in the bottle. I find it a little bit ironic that we went from food to marijuana. We might want to explore how that connection happened, but let me think. I, you know what? I'm gonna pick one that the food wasn't as good as Yankee, but it was in my hood, David Wu's. Oh, so easy and quick and fast, and you get like that$4.99 lunch special. And you had David, and he was a character. Yep. And my mom, Maria, worked there for a little while, and it was the height of comedy to hear my mom with her quick accent and David Wu with his quick accent arguing, because David Wu would argue with Maria that her English wasn't good enough as a waitress. And Maria would say, Your English isn't very good either, and I would give anything to have that conversation on videotape. Well that one was that would have been that would have been good.

SPEAKER_04 19:50

Okay. This comes back to uh with you and your dad. Perkins. Oh yeah. And the funny thing is, when you went out to a restaurant back then, it was not like no, it's not like I don't feel like cooking. I'm going out to the restaurant. It's like we have it on our budget. It was more than it was an event. It was an event, and it was more that mindset. It we have it in the budget to go out to eat, and you're like, oh, McDonald's was a treat.

SPEAKER_02 20:16

Oh, it was this one is I don't know about you guys, but when it was a we're gonna go out and celebrate something. This is gonna be a treat for us. Not technically St. Louis Park, but just across the border. Mr. Steak. Mr. Steak was oh, we're celebrating big time.

SPEAKER_03 20:33

It was uh not just a steak, it's Mr. Steak.

SPEAKER_02 20:36

It's a Mr. Steak, yeah. It wasn't Mrs. Steak. That's different. It was Mr. Steak.

SPEAKER_04 20:39

But no, it was a big deal. Embers, and I remember getting the plate-sized pancakes. And they served it all day long. So you go for dinner and you go a couple, I think they were stacked too high. It's a big pancake. That was good.

SPEAKER_02 20:52

I worked at Embers for a good couple, three months. When I got fired from TGI Fridays for having an earring that I wouldn't take out because it needed to stay in six weeks, and so I was making my stand against the man to say no, I'm not taking it out. And then I worked for like three weeks at a place in St. Paul that I think is still there called Plum's Saloon. Plumst when it was first opening, and the problem was that they didn't want to have a lot of people, and so they were running me 70 hours a week while I was full-time and high school, and that did not work. So after 17 days, I quit there, and then I started working at our local St. Louis Park Embers. I was gonna bring up Embers. I worked there for four shifts, and it was on the night shift.

SPEAKER_04 21:34

Four shifts. Yeah, I kept getting the night shift, and I'm like, oh that was like 14 way before any lost mounted. And I'd fall asleep in the booth because nobody's in there, nothing to do. And they're like, you can't sleep in the booth. So I'm like, I can't stay awake doing nothing.

SPEAKER_02 21:49

That was a job that no longer exists. So you were a bus boy, right? Busboy dishwasher.

SPEAKER_04 21:54

Two titles paid for one. Other restaurants, the iconic ones we know about. Or we like to do that.

SPEAKER_02 22:03

When you think back to your youth in St. Louis Park, what restaurants come to mind?

SPEAKER_04 22:07

I never heard of any other place having a thing called the Jolly Troll. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:14

There's some if you and I ever create an after hours uh version of this that with the explicit rating, maybe we can tell some stories about the jolly troll.

SPEAKER_03 22:23

There, if you think about it, these little creatures, figures, people, whatever, small people when you're walking up, but they're moving and doing whatever. And I worked there for four shifts, and I told them this is before way before I drove, and it was.

SPEAKER_02 22:37

And the thing is, that was before. That wasn't a buffet, my friend. That was a smorgasbord.

SPEAKER_04 22:42

That was a smorgasbord. So many, how many end-of-season sports had their end of season party?

SPEAKER_02 22:46

Or you know where you would go that was right next to there on birthdays? You would get yourself a Lollapalooza at Bridgeman's. Bridgeman's, yes. Brisbane's was good. And remember Ferrell's?

SPEAKER_04 22:58

Oh yeah. Farrell's. They come out and they'd do your birthday. Farrells did it first. I think Brisbane took it over. But no, Farrell's did it where they had the big bass drum personal come out and it's easy.

SPEAKER_02 23:08

It's easier if you describe it than do the drum motion that doesn't really work. It's that's for TV. And I have a face for radio, so we the video version of this is never gonna see the light of day unless you get a new coat. Yeah, Jolly Troll. After four days working there, I tell my mom, don't ever bring me back to the manager.

SPEAKER_04 23:24

It was disturbing, and those who work there will know. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 23:27

And then any details beyond that we can save for an after show or so. Those are some of our favorites. I mean we would we would we would love for people to provide some comments, or you looks like you've got some that are just diving out of your mouth. So why don't you share what additional ones you have?

SPEAKER_04 23:41

Well it's funny too because we looked at because this was the 394 quarter.

SPEAKER_02 23:45

Yeah, yeah, we live we grew up on the north side of St. Louis Park, so our we are definitely biased.

SPEAKER_04 23:49

So it's funny when people, when they talk about it, you see it on, I don't know, Facebook or something, and they talk about the criterion or but then Anchoran.

SPEAKER_02 23:58

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 23:58

Was that the one where I had all the crab legs on Sunday or something?

SPEAKER_02 24:01

Yes, all you can eat crab legs.

SPEAKER_04 24:02

And then remember Amalgamag?

SPEAKER_02 24:03

Because ex-wife number one and her sister were not quite booted out of there on all you can eat crab leg night, but they had a lot of people coming out in awe. Ah, interesting.

SPEAKER_04 24:12

I I so the restaurants on that side we didn't get to know as much until we were in high school and had covers and stuff. But remember the amalgamated mind? I do not. That was actually that was not quite in Zenlow's Park, but it was where Shallard Theater was in the Shallard area.

SPEAKER_02 24:28

I don't know. But there used to be actually kind of I was too young to ever participate in it, but you know that Shallard Park that kind of used to have a nightclub for lounge at called the Hippodrome. Yep. I remember in there.

SPEAKER_04 24:40

Real quick on the amalgamated mine was like a mine back in the wood. And it was Shallard area? It was a Shallard area, it was a standalone place. And uh what did it become after that? I'll have to look back and remember, but you got in this, and it looked like a mine elevator. It was gonna go down because you were mining whatever minerals, gold, silver. And the door thing, and the thing shook.

SPEAKER_03 25:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:02

Oh my god. You get a little older, you realize they ain't going anywhere. The door shuts, it shakes, you go through the other door. But uh that was it.

SPEAKER_02 25:10

This is not St. Louis Park, it's a little base down, you know, what I will call as an old man old Highway 12 or 394. And I think it became a Maurice Mazda dealership for a while. It was a restaurant called the Pearl Diver. And they had like basically a fish cage with women as mermaids swimming in it. Am I misrepresenting what it was? You're right. That was interesting. And I think that was a 70s, 80s thing.

SPEAKER_04 25:34

That one comes up in interesting dreams about places for whatever reason that stuck out going. Huh. Okay, this is not really a restaurant, but you can get food there.

SPEAKER_02 25:45

What's that?

SPEAKER_04 25:45

And we hung there a lot on that three night highway 12 corridor, still in St. Louis Park, but right on the northwest corner. And we would go there many times.

SPEAKER_02 25:58

Lupian, because you could get the hot dogs on Saturdays at Lupian Olds? That's where we go do stuff. Ridgedale. Food court. No. Oh, Carriage House. Carriage House. Carriage House was awesome. And you know what? I think if I remember my geography, in some strange way, Carriage House was Golden Valley and Shallard was St. Louis Park, which I still can't figure out how that map worked, but I think you might.

SPEAKER_03 26:23

I think you might be right because my sister lives just across County Road 18, as we used to be. Now it's 169. But the pond, and that's part of St. Louis Park. Everything else is it was weird that we did it, but we because of Kenny's mom. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:36

And my mom, Kenny's mom worked there, and my mom Maria did she would babysit kids while moms were in the bowling league. Yes. And that gave us the right to play pool anytime a table was open for free.

unknown 26:49

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 26:50

And that was awesome. We can bowl for free too. And it had my favorite pinball machine that is if I win the lottery, I will get one, the eight ball deluxe machine.

SPEAKER_04 27:00

We'll do another one on pinball because that's making a huge comeback. It is. And it has for the last 15, 20, 10, 15 years.

SPEAKER_02 27:06

Alright, you and I drifted there a little bit, Mike, but I do want to encourage folks, because as you mentioned, we have a bias towards the north side of St. Louis Park, the kind of the 394 Louisiana area where we grew up. But there are a lot of other great areas of St. Louis Park. So put in the comments a restaurant that you remember from your youth, or from now, if there's a great one in St. Louis Park, and let us know what you think. And should we talk real quick about our sponsors? Yeah, absolutely, Mike. Why don't you uh start us off?

SPEAKER_04 27:33

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SPEAKER_02 28:01

Do you have the power to do that?

SPEAKER_04 28:02

Yeah, we know people in high places and liter literally and figuratively.

SPEAKER_02 28:08

So all they gotta do is say, I heard about you on the bench.

SPEAKER_04 28:10

Yep. Foot pain authority, I heard about you on the bench. Alright. And I just write in bench and the promo code. Alright, cool. We'll get real technical. Do you have any others you want to throw out there today or hammers handyman? But we'll dive into that more later because we got some stuff going on with that. And you?

SPEAKER_02 28:27

So I've been doing some writing on Substack, which is fun, but I've got a novel that is close. I think I told you I said, Hell or high water, I'm gonna I'm gonna finish it and get it ready for publication by the end of next week. But I've got a novel coming out called The Ghost of Lake Osakis. It's a psychological thriller. Just got the cover design back this last week. Looks awesome. I I'm looking forward to having folks read it. I think it's a lot of fun. I will tell folks it's not a ghost story, even though the ghost is in the titles. It's a psychological thriller, but I'm excited for it and I'm excited to share it with people when it's ready for purchase. I am very interested in listening and reading it. You also write articles. I do. I write some essays on Substack, try to look at institutions like NASA or what was the one you just wrote? I actually wrote one on on my industry, the e-discovery industry, which the effect of AI and venture capital on the industry. And ultimately the conclusion is the same for most industries, which is machines can't replace competent, experienced individuals. And that will never happen. And as long as you are competent and experienced, you will always have a job. In a heartbeat. If you have a heartbeat. Exactly. Yes, that helps. But there are some there are some folks like Sam Altman who think that humans are way too expensive to deal with, that the data centers are cheaper, and AI can just do it. Those might be topics for the future. But Mike Hammer, I've once again I've had a wonderful time on the bench with you talking about our life and look forward to doing more of these.

SPEAKER_04 30:10

Till next time. Enjoy.

SPEAKER_02 30:12

All right. Thank you, my friend.