I’ve Moved —
After nearly 13 years of calling Venice Beach, California my home, it is no more. I’ve moved to Nashville, TN.
Venice has changed over the years. Snapchat Global HQ moved within a few blocks from my place and exclusively occupies apartment buildings as offices. This displaced all of the folks that once lived there, creating vacant weirdness and sketch at night and obtrusive low talkers (there is nothing worse than a mumbling low talker) that do not interact with the native community during the day.
So the neighborhood changed, but so have I. My interests are different today than when I moved there. I was ready for a change of scenery.
Plus, I work in the music business and am from the south, so a move to music city was a natural fit.
***
Since as far back as I can remember, I have been interested in real estate.
I like that it’s such a unique tool to build wealth – brokerage, wholesaleing, flipping, development, repurposing, … airbnb.
I like that it’s such a malleable canvas to create – structures and landscaping come to mind initially, but creativity and inginuity can/should be considered in most systems complimenting real estate – plumbing, HVAC, electricity, roofing, flooring, windows/doors, the ‘feeling’ of a space, how sound impacts the experience, light, a body of water, ability to host friends and family, a work shop to build art and more.
While I have been involved and consulted on many a real estate deal (I was a licensed California broker for 10 years) and studied many thousands of potentials deals, I have yet to own my own dirt, until now…
***
Where The Wild Things Are Secret Camp is an old house on a fair amount of acres outside Nashville proper. The property has a year round stream, several verdant springs, a small pasture, an old Airstream, and a quirky old home that was built from wood and a bit of stained glass salvaged from a very old church.
There is plenty of room to camp and guest space a plenty for folks visiting. There are animals everywhere, but the only hunting will be for ginseng.
I am so excited to be the steward of this forest and home and welcome friends, old and new, to enjoy it with me.
All that to say, you may rest easy knowing that if you ever need a place to be, you’ve got one in Tennessee.
Thank you LA
There are so many people that have helped and taught and befriended me during my time in Los Angeles, but a few really went above and beyond…they gave to me completely unselfishly. Much more than I deserved. And they did it even though I’m me! Quirky, strange, odd me…they still helped me over and over and over again.
Aaron Blatt
Robert Knox
Chris Kelley
Chris Cowan
Simon Jones
Dale Rogers
Rene Merideth
Dan Busby
Dallen Stanford
Sherrijon Gaspard
Richard Stearns
Whakapainga Luke
The Venice Breakfast Club
and Santa Monica Rugby Club.
I penned this on my day of departure and I think its good to share again.
***
Thank you, SMRC!
It was a fateful afternoon at the top of 2005 at JFK, having just taken a job in principle on Wall Street..
An unknown number on my cell contained the growly voice of Coach Krohn. Bluntly after “Hello” a statement of my past experience with the Maccabi’s and a question about my plan for life.
Sure on the first. Not so sure on the second bit.
He invited me to join the boys in Austin to see how I played and whether I could get on with the boys. I think I faired alright on both accounts.
I quickly returned to North Carolina to explain to my world that I was moving to Los Angeles.
SMRC made it happen.
Dreyfus gave me a job first. Then Knoxy. Then Blatt. Then Putterman.
Then Merideth.
Dominic and Chris and Nathan put me up first. Revel put me up second. Then I moved into this Venice apartment with Ross and Lucky that was gifted to us from Simon Jones’ wife’s sister. CK lived here for a time. As did Cowan. And many others on visits to town or as I let out across the earth. Aaron and Ed and Enrique and Regal helped me pack up and out just this past weekend.
The team took me in and have become my family in this strange Los Angeles city.
Riaz turned up the missing link. Paddy flopped from the back to the front and back again. Jeremy didn’t say a lot, but he didn’t have to. Killian was just getting started. Stu made us good and hard. Doug was the voice of reason from the sideline and Danny kept the engine humming. He would always share this his thoughts, but no one ever knew what he was saying, but he was nice, and Ross was a damn good player. Nathan took the fight with his demons to opponents and hurt more than their pride. CK was as patient as a stone and had shoulder of one too. Jerry Banks had a hard time catching the ball, but if ever did was hard to tackle. Stampy had twinkle toes for a big man and Carl always looked so focking good. Matthew was the sleeper that embarrassed more storied men. Dom always had a plan. Knox was/is unequal. Blatt led with cool way and an iron fist.
All the boys were humble servants that gave more than their share when called to task.
The Green Wave supported us across town and across the country. Over and over and over again.
I’m embarrassed I can’t remember today more of the men that most certainly gave their heart and soul and money and body to SMRC that first year I arrived and since. Please forgive me.
The Gods were kind to us and the ball bounced our way more often than not.
We lived together and worked together and chased women together and played together and lost together and won together.
And we won it all. We won the Division I National Championship in 2005.
Then we did it again the next year.
Went off a little like flash paper. Hot. Quick.
Those accomplishments and friendships forged have been the more proud one’s of my life.
By that third year the mojo faded and the band broke up. Boys moved away. Or moved on. Got married. Had kids. And then more kids.
It was fun to turn up to training and a B side test and share a laugh. Having only one foot in the stirrups was alright. As the years swept by.
And that’s the way it goes sometimes.
I’ll never forget Blatt reminding me one day at the yard after he’d landed a solid account. “This to will one day go away. So I expect it and then it doesn’t suck as bad when it happens.”, he said and smiled. Then he got back to work.
I know this now so it’s not so tough. It doesn’t suck as bad as it could. I guess.
Their have been so many women and men over the last 12 years that treated me kindly and helped me along the way. I am ever grateful and you will forever be my family.
I thank you with all my heart for everything.
I write this from the Pit. She’s clean and smart and I’m ready to go. William and I have a flight at 4pm one way to Nashville. I reckon that if I intend to work in the music business, I might as well go all in.
I hope you’ll come visit. I hope that I’ll be back soon.
And I’ll be missing you in the mean time.
Dolphins,
AD
2,147,483,647
I’ve always been fascinated with prime numbers. They have all sorts of cool properties and behave interestingly, relative to most non-prime numbers.
This past week I learned of the eighth Mersenne prime number, 2,147,483,647, by way of Ghangnam Style.
From the Wikipedia:
The number 2,147,483,647 (or hexadecimal 7FFF,FFFF16) is the maximum positive value for a 32-bit signed binary integer in computing. It is therefore the maximum value for variables declared as integers (e.g., as int) in many programming languages, and the maximum possible score, money, etc. for many video games. The appearance of the number often reflects an error, overflow condition, or missing value.[9] In December 2014, Google initially claimed that PSY’s music video “Gangnam Style” exceeded the 32-bit integer limit for YouTube view count, necessitating YouTube to upgrade the variable to a 64-bit integer.
InstantDomainSearch.com
I had a fruitful conversation with a fellow entrepreneur this past week regarding registering a web domain name…about why it was exciting and felt good and how we both own entirely to many domains than we will ever utilize.
We came to the conclusion that registering a domain is a very small investment in the promise of bigger things and exciting adventure ahead. Whether for a new business or idea or journey…owning a domain is a blank canvas for creating something from scratch that can easily impact humans one has never met, nor will ever meet.
My go to resource for finding the perfect name is instantdomainsearch.com. Its super quick and filters results in real time to allow for really dynamic ideation.
MICRO
Friends doing amazing stuff alert!!!
Amanda Schochet and Charles Philipp founded MICRO – The World’s Smallest Museum
Here is an awesome write up about them from the Washington Post.
Go here to inquire about having a museum installed near you and/or make a donation. Just think…you could the person responsible for bringing a MUSEUM to your community!? Reread that one more time. A MUSEUM! So dang cool!
The wise money isn’t betting against them. Go go go!!!
What I’ve been listening to —
I’ve been listening to Buena Vista Social Club on repeat the past week – https://youtu.be/JNYOVEXJBBM