Welcome to the first episode of Santa Monica Next’s new podcast What’s Next hosted by Damien Newton. And we’re doubly proud to introduce our first guest: Santa Monica Councilmember Jesse Zwick!
A full transcript of the interview with Jesse can be found below the audio embed. We’d like to give a special thank you to Jesse for being brave enough to be our first guest and all of you for giving us a listen.
Transcript of interview with Jesse Zwick by Damien Newton
Damien
Our first guest is the one of Santa Monica’s new city council members Jessie Zwick. Jessie, welcome to our What’s Next Podcast, thank you for agreeing to do this site unheard so you have no idea how good or bad I am at hosting one of these.
Jesse
Thank you for having me. It’s, it’s an honor to be the first guest of of anything, I guess. And I’ll do my best here to launch things with a bang.
Damien
So as I mentioned, in the pre show: we’re, at least for this episode, we’re planning on sort of three segments. Someone that’s as old or older than me might remember the first version of the Daily Show when it was called like the The Late Late Show or the Super Late Show or something like that. That is similar second thing: we’re going to talk about a current event something going on in the city. then we move to literally, whatever Jessie wants to talk about. And I will say that we talked about this ahead of time so that I’m not completely flat footed. And then last is sort of five questions that are supposed to be fun, and maybe informative, too, that are were tailored for Jesse by some of our readers.
One of the things that has been discussed and has been part of the discussion in Santa Monica at least as long as Santa Monica Next has existed, and I’m sure for decades and decades before that is the status of the Promenade, the Third Street Promenade. It’s one of the things that people around the country know about Santa Monica. Probably outside of the Pier, it’s the most famous thing in the city. A January 30 article that appeared in the Santa Monica Daily Press by Scott Snowden, discuss some efforts that are “targeting the future of the city’s flagship street” I’ve never heard “flagship street” before. So I was hoping maybe you could tell us what the city is trying to do with the promenade. I know that there’s probably some changes in the new economy and the new world for what is essentially one of the giant outdoor mall, and what the city is trying to do and where we can go from here and sort of what your thoughts are.
Jesse
The promenade, as you mentioned, it’s been a hot topic for for months, if not years, if not, not decades in Santa Monica. But it’s definitely come under increased focus during the pandemic. We’ve seen greater vacancies, commercial vacancies. We’ve seen it sort of decline in terms of it being the lifeblood, and the center of ourour community. During the campaign, I heard this from lots of people saying that they used to go down there a lot, they have less reason to feels a bit like a ghost town, it’s sad to see vacancies. And it’s something that I think every member of the council is, is very eager to find a way to, to turn things around, frankly. You mentioned something about how essentially the promenade while while unique is is in many ways a mall, a special mall, nonetheless. While a lot of things are being attributed and fairl, to issues around what is termed in Santa Monica as “clean and safe.” A lot of downtown business and property owners say that if we could just make it more clean and safe, we can turn things around down there. And I don’t disagree. And I want to get more into those issues a bit later. But I do think it’s worth starting with the fact that sometimes we focus all on that. And we don’t think about some of the other major Titanic shifts that have happened in society over the last five years that are also contributing to some of these challenges, namely, around these Titanic shifts in the retail sector and in malls in general. And of course, a global pandemic between a pandemic, which which really cratered tourism and touriests being the lifeblood of the Third Street Promenade, and then with a small company called Amazon, which really gobbled up the retail sector in a way that, while long foretold, really came to fruition during the pandemic. We’ve had these Titanic shifts in society. And I think we see them all bearing out in different ways on this particular shopping district. And so, so So while I want to get into issues around clean and safe, I think there’s no question that that we were hit by a real one two punch of a global pandemic and a real shift away from traditional retail stores that were the anchors for so long, whether it was the the Macy’s or if you were going to the Promenade places like Barnes and Noble or Banana Republic that frankly are struggling nationwide In terms of their brick and mortar. Those are the trends that I think don’t get mentioned in a lot of the pieces that I see written currently about the promenade. I will admit, I went down there, maybe six months ago. I am not a suit wearer that often. But I needed to invest in a new suit. And I needed one quickly, and hopefully with not too much expense. So I went to Zara on the Third Street Promenade. I found a great suit, and I went to try it on. And they told me that the dressing rooms were closed, presumably due to shoplifting and other issues that they’ve been encountering in their store. In talking with all the downtown business owners and otherwise, there’s no question that the downtown has become a slightly less hospitable place for locals and for tourists alike.
That specific action that council took, was around trying to just sort of put all our heads in one room between Downtown Santa Monica, local property owners, businesses; to say what new ideas can we throw out there. Some of that is ideas around what kind of new stores and businesses should we be attracting that are immune to the shift online retail. And then there are other frustrations around the fact that outdoor dining had been ONE of bright spot on the Promenade. There were a few restaurants and bars that had parklets. And that had really added life during the pandemic.
And that’s become more difficult as we’ve shifted to a permanent ordinance to allow for those parklets. Because the Promenade, despite it being a walking place, is actually still designated a street, and it has a curb. And with that comes ADA restrictions, and all sorts of other things around fire code and access, that have really made it really frustrating when council is trying to just do a small good thing for a single business or a group of businesses as they keep their parklets open. You really start to run quickly into the weeds of of city bureaucracy . And the legal landscape, of course, around very important issues like the Americans with Disabilities Act, when it comes to really implementing small changes that could hopefully be breathing fresh life in the in the short term.
Damien
I will admit that I have not been to the Promenade since I took my daughter to see Frozen 2. think that was pre-pandemic 2019. Fall Winter. One of the reasons I got sort of really excited about going back and covering Santa Monica again is I jog in the city, I don’t know, five, six times a week. Even though I live in West LA, I spent a lot of time on foot in Santa Monica. One thing I’ve noticed is that along the corridors, there’s a lot of activity and the beach is just as crowded as it’s ever been if you’re jogging on there during the day. And so I wonder when we talk about a mini recession happening along the Third Street Promenade; how much of that is just the macroeconomic forces versus what is it we’re calling clean and safe?
Jesse
Clean and Safe in one of Council’s three overarching priorities right now. And that’s what has definitely hammered home to us as the cause by a lot of the property and business owners down there. I already spoke a little bit about ways in which that isn’t the entire story. But I will say that you know that it’s very much is a part of the story. I live in Sunset Park. I patronized shops mainly around Ocean Park Boulevard and Pico. As you said they I went to try to get a pizza on a Friday night and there was a line out the door. These businesses on Ocean Park Boulevard are doing very wel. They’re not hurting right now, post pandemic. People are not wrong, but there’s been a bit of an inversion when it comes to the Promenade. Some of it has to do with the fact that frankly, these were traditionally the most desirable retail locations in the entire city and commanded very high rents. There was a bit of a standoff during and following the pandemic I believe between tenants and landowners in terms of landlords holding out for for high rent they were used to. You’re seeing some movement on that. And I think you are going to see some new tenants moving in. Another challenge that I’ve heard is that the retail spaces on the Promenade are huge, the actual commercial spaces. They don’t work perfectly well with every tenant that we might be trying to bring in. And we might need to look into subdividing and other things like that. When I go down to the Promenade and when I go down to the downtown area, do I believe that that things have gotten particularly less clean and less safe? No. I think that the Third Street Promenade in the downtown has always struggled with with with issues around cleanliness and homelessness. But the crime statistics don’t don’t bear out a lot of the specific claims around safety. But we’re clearly in a county wide crisis around homelessness and issues of homelessness to overlap with perceptions of crime, and occasionally actual crime, petty crime or otherwise. In many ways is that in some ways, it’s a victim of its own idealism. And what I mean by that is that the Promenade is simply a reflection in many ways of the broader malaise that LA County politics and policy are having in terms of dealing with our homelessness policy, and terms of dealing with that crisis, and through no fault of its own.
Simply by virtue of the fact that the Promenade was founded as a public space as an outdoor mall, on a street that was that was owned by the public, as opposed to a a Caruso village in the Pacific Palisades, or in Glendale, or some other walled off Potemkin village where you can visit and you can sort of perceive a version of Los Angeles that is devoid of some of those larger macro scale crises. And the frank truth is that the promenade has less options of walling itself off, because it’s a truly public space. So the only way on a macro scale, we’re going to be able to engage with those really tough issues around homelessness, it is to deal with the issue of homelessness at large. It’s not a space that can be partitioned off, nor do I believe it should. So, so for me, in many ways, I think the struggles of the promenade around clean and safe aren’t unique to the promenade, they’re quite widespread across LA County with the crisis we’re facing. The Promenade just has less options in terms of walling itself off from some of those factors that we’re dealing with, as a city and as a county.
Damien
All right, so we are going to move on to our second segment. Now, unless you have a wrap up thought.
Jesse
There’s a certain perception that certainly followed me and other candidates during the campaign that that there were candidates that cared about issues of cleanliness and safety, and that there were candidates that didn’t. When you look at Council and what they’ve been doing, we are meet trying to meet the Downtown Community halfway on every issue. Short of calling in the National Guard or Sheriff Villanueva, or whoever his new successor is, we want to help, we want to help on every front. We’re starting to see real real progress. And we’re going to have new money flowing in through measure CS, that I do believe is going to be devoted to a number of things around mental health safety and homeless outreach that will undoubtedly be targeted in that area. And, and I’m excited as a council to name the members to that board and to hopefully, see those revenues start flowing and see the effects of them. Hopefully, by mid year when when we’re able to start spending that money.
Damien
Well, in here in the wrap up, you’ve hit on one of my favorite pet peeves, or least favorite pet peeves. The idea that candidates that don’t support the strategy that involves the most money going towards the police don’t care about it as much as other people. When you were talking about homelessness, you’re talking about macro level solutions, not just, you know, policing solutions. And that’s important because with a lot of candidates, especially on the west sidme there’s a perception that a lot of these problems are easier than they are. I appreciate the spot that you and some other candidates were in. Thatm k said I might be a reporter but I do have my own opinions and this is a podcast so there they are.
Jesse
Here you get to share, that’s what it’s all about.
Damien
So moving on to our second and I’m going to say that every other person that we interview on this podcast is going to be put to shame by this because this is supposed to be the whatever you want to speak about section. And you came up with the idea of talking a little bit about public processes and a discussion that is happening throughout the country about the best way to get input from the public. You didn’t just leave it as, you know, that as an open topic, which incidentally, I covered on the other podcasts I do for Streetsblog LA. So I was all ready for this one. But you sent me two articles out of scholarly journals last night to push through. So whoever’s next, like, you’re gonna have a lot to live up to to try and match this level of preparation on our second question.
Jesse
Well, it’s something that as a public elected official, is a really bedeviling issue. And especially as an as an elected official, who cares deeply about public goods like housing; public input and community planning processes have been an issue, since we began those processes I didn’t necessarily mean for you to have to read the studies in their entirety.
But, but I was really struck when I was doing research on the subject by the fact that when academics study our traditional process of gathering input, which, I think, for time immemorial, has been for, say, a city or a planning department to: decide that they’re going to look at a particular part of the city street, or an area or a whole zoning, section like the downtown or otherwise, and say, “What should we do with it?”
They decide that they’ll host some public meetings. They’ll typically be open to the public. They’ll be six or seven in the evening, and they’ll say,” anyone’s invited, and people will get a chance to speak for one to two or three minutes.” And sometimes they’ll get angry and just yell at the same time. And, and often, that’s the only form of public input that we get as a city on these really important planning questions. And when these processes are studied by academics, the basic thing when they match the speakers to to the census tracts and other public information sources for the cities in which they’re studying is: they just simply don’t accurately track in any representative way the the population that they claim to. People who decide to take time out of their day in the evening and attend a public meeting, and wait, and speak on an issue of relative obscurity are not the average person. They tend to be richer. They tend to be older. They tend to be more likely to own property.
And interestingly, the second study I sent you was one that was I was struck by because it was the same researchers that decided to go back during COVID and look at the public process now that had been opened up online to zoom participation and and other online forums and say, “Is this expanding participation?” There’s a lot of ways in which we could imagine in theory that it does. Maybe it’s easier if you are car poor, or time poor, or anything else, to attend a meeting online, quickly. You’re a caregiver to a child, but you could still zoom in, perhaps, or to an elderly person or disabled; this would open more doors. But the interesting thing, and the vexing thing, is that they find that these online zoom meetings are equally bad, and equally unrepresentative of the community as a whole. And as a public official, who, who, again, is very interested in engaging the community and especially engaging the community around issues around housing. It’s a huge challenge. And I can go into, you know, we can talk about why that is and what can be done. But I just wanted to start by laying out that problem.
Damien
It’s something we see a lot of, you know, either at Streetsblog, or…I was on one of Los Angeles’ neighborhood councils. We were during the Venice road diet debate of 2016 2017, where the whole city of Los Angeles suddenly had really strong opinions about one bike lane on a mile and a half of street in Venice Boulevard. One of the things that city of LA did, which I thought was interesting, but I don’t know that it produced better results as far as the input that it got is it started to do public meetings. You would show up and they had the various experts on the various thing with with boards, and it was more of a one on one or group discussion. And then there were places where people could write down things and there were surveys in that and so that people could actually hear what was going on in a less contentious format. I don’t know that they got more representative views out of that because you still had to have people that had the time and resources to go to a 7pm meeting in a gymnasium somewhere. But at least we didn’t all leave angry at each other. So that was an improvement.
Jesse
Yeah, Definitely mediation and or novel meeting formats can can certainly help. But as you said, there’s this, there’s this broader issue of who chooses to go to a meeting, versus how do we as a city or as a planner, or as a process, come to people and do that work for them and not kind of put the onus on someone to have to do that in the first place. If we think about why this is a problem at all, I do end up relating a lot of things back to housing. Housing is a classic example of this problem, because it’s a, it’s a thing that everyone needs. And it’s a thing that when it is built actually benefits the community as a whole and in a number of ways, but the benefit to every individual is relatively small and diffuse. But if you live on a certain block, with a new housing project coming in, or with a bike lane coming in, or anything else; you might have a very specific and very intense concern about that. And you will be much more drawn to go to that meeting, because of your specific sort of deeper level of impact; versus the person who could stand to benefit. but maybe it doesn’t even live there yet, or bikes along that corridor. But doesn’t live there and know that there’s this particular debate going on, or has many other avenues that they could bike down, so they have less of a stake in that particular bike lane in that particular place than the person that lives there. And it’s that kind of mismatch between the benefits being really widely spread out if some of these issues like housing or bike lanes, and you know, the potential impacts of traffic or parking or otherwise being very localized. That sends the draw out the same, you know, 10 to 40, people who are really angry, and more often than not opposed to something as opposed to in favor of it. That seems to be the like, macro issue that you’re dealing with, when you ask people, “Hey, come to a meeting.” You expect…you can kind of predict who is going to come more likely. And it’s going to be someone who lives nearby and is very angry about some very specific impact to them. So the process needs to somehow evolve in a way where you bring in someone who would just wouldn’t normally go to a meeting, frankly. And I think the discussion has to be not only to how do we better mediate these meetings? But how do we find these people? How do we, how do we contact them? How do we pull them into the process and make it as frictionless as possible for someone to participate in that way.
Damien
Now, on the last episode of our SGV Connect podcast for Streetsblog, I was talking to the team doing outreach for the Puente Hills landfill park out in well out in Puente Hills. Now granted, they’re literally turning a landfill into a park, so there is almost nobody in opposition to this. But still, they’re using this as a way to try out and be innovative, the LA County Parks and MLA architect’s name dropping here. They’re trying to use it as a way to be innovative though in their outreach.
They’re doing hikes around the park, they’re doing bikes…neighborhood bike trips in the neighborhood, they’re visiting other parks, and they’re bringing constituents out to see this. It’s more of a visioning process. And I’m not sure that that would work for a new housing project, but it shows that there’s other ways to do this. They talk about how they got they’re starting to get different feedback than what you would expect to be the feedback.
They’re starting to see different things happen, different types of comments roll in, different people getting involved, then then you would with the with a more traditional outreach. Again, I don’t know that a bike ride around an area where we’re talking about a new housing project would would really work. But I think post COVID We’re starting to see a little more creativity. And so it’s going to be interesting to see what what sticks.
Jesse
The biggest planning issue that the city of Santa Monica, and we have many, but the biggest long range planning issue that the city of Santa Monica is looking at is around the Santa Monica airport, which is this unprecedented blank space. In Santa Monica. It’s 227 acres of prime West Side, real estate that we get to reimagine now that the airport is set to close in 2028.
And one issue that I brought up at a recent council meeting when I was talking about this very topic was an idea that have been brought to me. It goes by a number of different names. Sometimes it’s called democratic lotteries. Sometimes it’s called lottery panels or community panels.
There’s a nonprofit I’ll reference as well called healthy democracy, which is a nonpartisan nonprofit that has been pushing this idea and facilitating and helping jurisdictions with with the implementing it. The idea if I was going to summarize it as simply as possible, is it sort of like jury duty for planning…cool fun jury duty where the goal is to get a random cross sampling of people that that you reach out to…the true first version is that you create a lot of different random cross samplings.
And then there’s a lottery process to pick which panel of 12 or 20 members or whoever throughout the city… and you’re talking about every resident of the city as a potential member, and then you do a randomized process to select them in, and then you really try to make it as as likely as possible to get these people who are selected to participate. One of the many things that that that generally is best practices, is you compensate their time for that. One of the many reasons why you get over representative samples of people is some people have more time than others, some people have more financial flexibility to do volunteer work or to be community activists. It’s both the randomization, and then it’s the the compensation of people’s time that I think, as has helped certain jurisdictions where we’ve tried this get more true sample.
You can run algorithms and, and use statistics to make sure it’s random, but it could also be the case that each potential panel would have members of the community that would be relatively reflective of the community as a whole. Whether it’s socio economically or racially,or age wise, or otherwise; you could make sure that the community is represented in each of these potential panels. The nice is, and this references back to what you were talking about, Damien, is the idea that this is not a one time thing. This is a body that you would surf on over a certain period of time: for a week, or a month, or a year, once a week, once a month. So you have to learn to work with each other. It’s small enough that you can have a real conversation, you have access to city experts, or independent experts who can come in and talk to you and provide you with information as you do your adjudication process. And, and I think, because of that repeat process, it forces people with very different viewpoints to kind of reach consensus points over time, as opposed to just showing up once and, and yelling at each other in this way. And it’s really just one idea.
They’ve tried it in Toronto, Japan, Ireland. Closer up home, up north in Sonoma, they implemented this for a fairgrounds that they were reimagining. And I don’t know whether this is the answer either. But this is just the new shiny thing that was that was introduced to me that, that I presented to city staff, because they were soliciting feedback as to how to do their outreach process. And my feedback was, this is one idea, don’t take my word for it. Let’s research as many of these as possible. And let’s, let’s do a real mixed methods approach that that doesn’t just rely on that traditional community meeting.
Damien
So we’re going to end our podcast with some things I said. It’s inspiration from the original version of the Daily Show with Craig Kilbourne, not even John Stewart, which was a segment where we ask five questions that are submitted by readers. As I explained, we don’t have readers yet. It’s our first day. So it is it is people though, that are supporting the website that are kicking in for this kicked in the question. So are you ready for five fun-ish questions? Maybe?
Jesse
I’m ready, I’m ready.
Damien
The next time we do the podcast, if we don’t have this segment; you’ll know your answers were so bad that we had to ax it. All right. So our first question is what is your favorite reference to Santa Monica in some sort of larger national pop culture?
Jesse
Okay. This is uh, this is a reference non reference, I guess. But, I grew up listening to Nat King Cole. Great, great jazz singer. And we would always listen to the song Route 66. Route 66 famously ends in Santa Monica at the at the Pier, essentially, or very close to it. It’s at the end of Santa Monica Boulevard. I think there’s there’s a sign there in Palisades Park that that I’ve seen people posing next to, but the song is about the Route 66, which goes from Chicago.
And it says to LA, which, which I think is a bit of an oversight of Santa Monica because it really ends in Santa Monica. And it mentions all these routes along the stops along the way. Gallup New Mexico, Flagstaff, Arizona, don’t forget Winona, Kingman Barstow, San Bernardino. I’m kind of offended that Santa Monica isn’t explicitly mentioned in it. But when I think of Santa Monica, I do think of Historic Route 66: Santa Monica Boulevard, which still features all those terrible car dealerships. And you know, just the history there in which we were really the end of the road for people who were dreaming of, of the West Coast and the beach and California. California Dreamin’ for over 100 years.
Damien
You can tell your kid is not older yet. Because when you have to watch the movie Cars 200 times you will have all of those cities and be able to just pump them right out in order because that song is common in that movie.
Jesse
Lightning McQueen. That’s all I know. My nephew is pretty into Lightning McQueen.
Damien
Yeah, yeah. Now, Route 66 is in the opening credits, and you will you’ll get to hear it many, many times.
All right, question two, if you could magically put a bus or a bike lane on any street in the city. And people would like it. I’m gonna say this. It’s not it’s not you’re not going to be putting it in. Everyone’s gonna be mad at you. Would you magically do it? And if you wouldn’t do it, where would you put it?
Jesse
I would 100% magically do it. And if I could magically have everyone love it, that would that would be like a wish come true. I think bike and bus lanes are one of those things that I think are generally always loved in the retrospect but in the implementation, obviously people are, are often furious.
I really have two that that are just like obvious for me in many ways. Lincoln. Lincoln is a really tough street. It’s also our connection to the South Bay to the airport. We do have some hours now where a bus can drive in certain sections, where typically you’re allowed to park. I really yearned for like a real bus lane. You know, like, like a bus only lane that could really allow people to fly up and down Lincoln. I think it would help with the congestion that people really complain about. In the morning in the evening. People coming to work in the morning and moving, migrating back down south in the evening. And I think it could help beautify that street too.
While I’m at it, I want to put like a little vertical park or some linear park in the middle.
Damien
You’re getting greedy.
Jesse
Yeah. Well, you said that everyone would like it. So I’m just gonna go for that and say, say Lincoln. You know, a close runner up is Wilshire which will hopefully in our lifetime connect to the end of the train line that will stop at the Veterans Administration just just east of the Santa Monica’s boundary. And if we had a rapid bus that could get people from the end of the line and t all the way to the beach. That would be that would be great, too.
Damien
You don’t have to wait on that one. There is a bus only lane that ends right. The Wiltshire bus only lane ends right at the Santa Monica border too. So you know, your to do list. I had to look up why in the world. Someone sent me this question, because it seems super random. And then I looked it up and it made more sense. What is a better television show Nashville or Parenthood?
Jesse
Yeah, this is very specific. These are shows that are probably never been compared before. And only by virtue of the fact that I did write episodes of television for both of them. It’s hard to choose among your children. There’s a lot of lovely people I know that worked on both of those shows. But if forced: Parenthood was my first job in the television writing world. It was created and run by a man named Jason Katims, who also created the show Friday Night Lights, which I had been obsessed with personally. So it was kind of a dream to work for him and to work on that show. And I have very fond memories of it. I guess the tie goes to Parenthood.
Damien
Is there anything on television you’re watching now that you enjoy more than watching either of those shows? Which I’m gonna guess you’re gonna say no out of loyalty, but maybe I’ll be surprised. And if there is one, of course, what is it?
Jesse
There was a big hiatus that I kind of took from being able to watch anything when I had a child recently. But we did manage to watch a few things I’m trying to, I’m trying to recall. We did enjoy the second season of White Lotus recently. I enjoy shows about sort of wealthy miserable people. It’s always a fun, fun genre.
And one show that I’m gonna plug, which we watch, because I think it’s probably less well known. And I get to sound very cultured, is a show called Le Bureau. It’s a French spy drama. And it really captured my wife Megan and I, our attention for all five seasons, we got very pulled in. It’s like an American spy show, but more subtle and interesting and specific and nuanced in every way.
Damien
And maybe I should have asked the question about Parenthood…so the last question was tell us one thing you’ve learned about parenting that you don’t mind sharing on a podcast that anyone can listen to?
Jesse
Yeah, he’s old. He’s closing in rapidly on a year. I feel like we’re, I’m excited for that year marker. And I feel like it’s more a celebration of me and my wife for having made it. Then for him. He didn’t have to do much, frankly, we had to do a lot.
Damien
I mean….he’s had to learn how to situp. That’s something
Jesse
it’s true that he’s learning at a rate that that says adults couldn’t fathom. So that that is true. But something that I was taught for sure is another level of patients that don’t think I had for really anything or anyone
Damien
You’re ready for any public meetings, then there you go.
Jesse
Exactly. Exactly. And then, but kind of like maybe as a sort of the sub sub category of that. I’ve learned, especially recently as he becomes more opinionated and willful about you know, wanting something or doing something at a particular moment, or really often wanting to get his hands or be somewhere that is dangerous, or get his hands on something that is dangerous.
The power of distraction. It’s a very powerful thing. It works very well on children, you you just sort of grab the nearest object and shake it in front of their face and do a dance and more often than not, you can make them forget the thing that they were really angry about, like 30 seconds ago. A lot of politicians actually employ that to very good effect as well. So that’s that’s what all that’s what I’ll land on.
Damien
That is how we wrap this up. someone suggested in our thing that I should let you ask me one of the five questions, but I’m going to save that for second podcast and you did well enough that that whoever next is gonna get the do the five questions too. So if it goes away I’m glad. Yeah. All right. Um, hey, thank you so much for being willing to do this. I said you had to do it, sight unseen, so to speak, sort of trusting that it was going to work out. And maybe you’re listening to it now going? No, it didn’t. It didn’t work out. But it seems so good when we recorded it.
Jesse
Well, I always I always kind of kind of kind of cringe at the sound of my own voice. But I but I do look forward to hearing it played back and I wish you continued success in this new endeavor.
