Unknown Host (22:50)
We're back. Hey, how you guys doing? All right. Okay, good. There we go. So I'm from here. I'm from New York. Growing up, I spent a lot of time in my family's local bar. And it was owned by my Uncle Sal. And not to scrimp on description, but he was just exactly what you think and Uncle Sal would be. And so the bar was like, you know, it's like a local dive, you know, like a working class working guys bar. You know, the kind of place like where we had, we had regulars, you know, and all the regulars had nicknames and they were just like, you know, like they were cool. But it was also, you know, you realize they kind of like boil the person down to their most base physical quality. Right. For example, my favorite goiter, Eddy, who actually just as easily could have been called Oxygen Tank Eddie because not only did he have, like, this giant goiter under his chin, but he also had an oxygen tank. He, like, wheeled a fucking oxygen tank into the bar with him and, like, put it down next to his bar still. All right, so we had other guys, you know, we had, like, weird guys that were like, you know, we had, like, Big Joe, you know, who was big, and we had Black Joe, who was black, and we had one Armed Joe who actually had one fucking arm, right? And there was a bunch of guys who also given nicknames, kind of like, based on the work that they did. So, you know, you had, like, you know, Jimmy ice cream. He sold ice cream. And, you know, like, Vinnie the Fish, he sold fish. He worked at the fish market. Now, obviously, there's a lot more to these guys than, you know, their jobs or their goiters, but getting to know them wasn't exactly easy. And even though you kind of, like, didn't know the first thing about these guys, people judge them. And by people, I mean me. So I'm working a day shift, and since 10 o'clock in the morning, it has just been me and a guy named Joe Bird, regular, right? And now Joe drank Budweiser. Nothing but Budweiser. Never short of a case, with or without the help of his brother Billy, who was a lot shorter and a much worse drunk, but who had a little more front teeth. And at this point, I am, like, in college, I'm 21 years old, and I just kind of think that I am better than these guys that I have grown up with. I'm basically like a little fucking shit. Joe was. Joe and his brother had both come from South Boston, right? And they had these, like, you know, these like, South Boston accents. They always wore work boots and jeans and they had, like, flannels. And I kind of like, figured that they were in construction, but I never actually asked. They never actually offered. All right, so two hours go by. Joe still sitting there drinking Buds. I'm still bartending. I order up some Chinese food. Chinese food delivery guy comes, and I end up getting into a fight with the guy because they had overcharged me. Guy doesn't understand. We just keep going back and forth. It's getting, like, really, really heated. He wants me to pay, I won't pay. It gets so big that we get into such a big fight that Joe actually comes around the bar and he gets in between us, right? And at this point, I kind of wince. I kind of look away because Joe is like this super tough guy. I'm like, he's just gonna fucking clock him, right? And I wince. But what I hear next shoots my eyes right back open. Jobird is speaking to this guy slowly and calmly and completely in Chinese. This guy, all right, this guy who just a fucking second ago was, like, drinking a bottle of Bud and eating a bag of Fritos for breakfast, okay? This guy who I have known for, like, years and years on end, this guy who's like a fucking toothless Wahlberg, all right, this guy is, like, rattling on and on in fluent fucking Chinese, right? I mean, it is like. It is unbelievable, right? And they seem to be, like, patching things up, and they're, like, you know, patting each other on the back and they're doing whatever that thing, you know, like, they're saying, like, everything is cool, bro. In Chinese, it looks like, right? And the guy trots on out, and Joe sits down at the fucking bar, and he takes a little sip of his beer like nothing's ever happened. And I'm in a fucking state of shock. Like, I can't say anything. I'm just. I'm just staring at him. And so finally, Joe does. He goes, all right, I sell pigeons. My mouth says nothing. My eyebrows say, what the fuck? He goes, in Chinatown. I still don't say anything. He goes, a couple of years back, I expanded the business. I started selling them in Hong Kong, too. And, you know, my brother, he doesn't speak Cantonese, and it really holds him back. I still don't say anything. And then finally he goes, listen, listen. I know it's all weird, but my father started the business years ago, and it was all just an accident that did it. Joe. I go, how the fuck do you accidentally sell a pigeon, right? So Joe tells me, all right, here's how you accidentally sell a pigeon. His father, like, 50 years earlier, is driving through Boston with a pickup truck full of cages of his racing pigeons. He raced pigeons, right? And he stops at a light in Chinatown in Boston, and a Chinese woman approaches him in the car and asks to buy one. And he's kind of caught off guard. And he sort of explains that he's, like, trained them himself, and this is his hobby. And, you know, he hasn't really. They're not really for sale. And she's like, no, no, no. I don't want to race them. I want to eat them. And a little. A little light bulb goes off. Wait for it. Street pigeons. Street pigeons are fucking talentless. But they are edible, and more importantly, they are completely free. Presuming you can figure out how to catch one of these motherfuckers right? And so they figure out exactly how to do that. And I can tell you how it is done because Joe showed me later. It is unfucking believable. It is an amazing thing you do. It's like this one fluid motion. You basically go up to said street pigeon and you get about a foot away and you sort of do this thing. It's like. It's one really quick motion. You stomp, they fly, you clap. Bam. Pigeon. Sounds easy, but it really isn't. Anyway, they got this whole shit down to a science. And so the family business was born, right? Now, of course, all of this is, like, completely illegal, right? So the, like, Bird boys, like, kept the business a secret anyway while it was the father that got the whole thing started. It was like Joe that took it to the next level, right? It's like Joe. It's like, you know, like Joe did, like, what McDonald's did for the hamburger Joe Bird did for the street picture, right? Guy's a fucking mogul, right? He, like, took me to his apartment later, and it was filled with, like, jade Buddhas and, you know, antique bamboo furniture and all this shit. Anyway, the point is, I guess that. The point is that I am an idiot. And for two reasons. Up until this very moment, I thought that Bird was his real last name. And two, you know, here I was, like, working in my family business, but also sort of like, you know, thinking I was better than everybody because I was in college and oh, man, didn't that fucking make me ambitious, you know, Only to find out that these people I thought I was better than, you know, actually like, taught themselves Cantonese to be secret international criminal pigeon dealers. How's that for ambition, you know? Anyway, Joe was kind of like. He was a pretty hard living guy. So I think that as far as where he is today, it's like there's an equal chance that he OD'd as much as, like, he's heading a department for Google, you know, it could go either way, but without him, I don't think I ever would have had this sort of thought one day. And it's important, so I'll end it with this. I was working the shift one day early in the morning, about like, nine in the morning. And there's only one guy in the bar, and he's sitting in the last stool right by the window. And there's a guy walking to work, and he's in a business suit and he's got his briefcase and he's obviously walking to work and he's staring in the bar window and my bar regular is staring right back at him and they're just looking at each other and I'm looking at them and I don't think they realize it, but I realize it for the first time that they're both thinking the exact same thing. And that is. Poor guy. Thank you.
