Welcome to the Monday, June 8th, 2018 meeting of the Montpelier Design Review Committee. I will let members and staff introduce themselves. Hannah Smith. Liz Critchett. Stephen Everett. Meredith Crandall. Staff. Eric Gilbertson. Benjamin Cheney. We are advisory to the Development Review Board. We will listen to each of the applications and move them forward. And if nobody has any other questions or suggestions, do I hear a motion to approve the agenda? Yeah, I'd like to add, under other business, that I want to report on the Historic Preservation Commission work on the new design review regs. Okay. Just going forward, not as fast as we might like. Well, progress is good. Yes. Otherwise, I'd move approval. Okay. Do I hear a second? I second. All in favor of the agenda, raise your hand. And we can move to the first application for 17 Court Street. Court Street Associates. Hannah Walder. That must be you. We're signed. We're signed. Go ahead and tell us about your application. So we've got three buildings on two parcels that are part of the same kind of property company that are signed in H4. We have entrance signs to direct people to the parking lot and then each building is going to get a directorate. Are they split up? Do you need a copy of that? Sure. I actually gave all of my application away. I didn't even make a copy of myself. So they had me split up the two applications. They didn't know it was all. It's all the same project, but because they're two different parcels, that's why I like the seminar crossed out. I think they split it up between 17 and 19. Yeah. And then 19 and 21. So we'll start with 17 and 21. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I won. Okay. We've had the four 달 and 15 and then 19. Yeah. And then 19 and 21. So we'll start with 17. So for 17 we just have the new well directory site. So the ones in blue is the final. We first went with kind of a black, which掉ers that were on originally, but I think everyone just changed up a little bit. have a color chip for the? I don't. I don't. Is it a dark blue? It's in light white colors. It's like a baby blue color. And it's not a paint, it's a composite. So it will be, you know, just like the coating is a certain color. Okay. So it's blue, white background, black letters. Okay. My only suggestion just for readability is the darker it is, the more contrast you're going to get between the white and the blue. If the baby blue is too light, it's going to fade in. The white's going to fade into the baby blue. So again for readability, the darker it is, the better. Right. The better it reads. When we have a red patch to the colors, you know, it's a new project. So. Again, that's just a matter of, I've had experience with contrast and the more contrast you have, the better it reads. That's probably why there were black and white. Is it, Charlie? The black and white's good, but the contrast for the 17 court street against the blue. So consider that when you're picking your food. Any other questions, comments, suggestions? Size is okay. Yes. So I will go down through. I'll have to do this for 17 and then again for 1921. There's set of standards, design review standards, and I'll just read down through them. Number one, a preservation reconstruction of the appropriate historic style of the proposed projects in the historic district involves an historic structure, acceptable. Parmint of exterior design with other properties in the district, acceptable. Compatibility of proposed exterior materials with other properties, acceptable. Compatibility of proposed landscaping, not proposed in this application. Prevention of the use of incompatible designs, buildings, color schemes, or exterior materials, acceptable. Location and appearance of all utilities. Is there any lighting on the sign other than ambient from the porch? Nope. Okay. So that'll be not applicable here. Recognition of and respect for view quarters and significant vistas, including gateway views of the city and state house, acceptable. Conformance with city skate placement and design recommendations, acceptable. Compatibility with subject property and adjacent properties, acceptable. Show not obscure significant architectural details, acceptable. Consistency and uniformity of multiple signs in CB2 and OP districts, not applicable. Illumination, not applicable. Penits and banners, not applicable. Individual letters of fixed painted or engraved directly on the building or structure are encouraged. The sign is acceptable. And again, the only, I'm just for optional changes. I'm just gonna say applicant. Select darker blue. Again, this is your option. Darker blue background. And again, that's your option. You can select a darker blue than what you're showing here. If you choose that for better contrast and readability. All in favor of the application that's proposed raise your hand. And I'll have you sign right here above my name. You have a pen? Okay, the next application is for 19 and 21 Court Street. And this for the ground sign and three wall directory signs.  Okay, same color. I saw the note blue, but it picture showing black. So I just wanted to make sure. So again, all these signs are blue as well. Again, I was saying, reading this black aluminum, aluminum composite down here. So I just wanted to make sure that how easy are art to change names? For the company screws, if you just take the name off of these blank spaces indicate empty offices. Yes. It looks like you're changing the location of the one at 19 Court Street. So there's an existing sign, right? But it's kind of really high up above the under the board. So you can't really see it very well. So we're gonna place that. Yeah, we're just going to move it to the side of the building. So two signs, two sides of the building, one for 19 Court Street and one for 21. That's in the back. Thank you. 21 and attachment to that building. It's a separate building behind. Okay. So the one on the side of 19 is the one that's pointing to 21 in the back. Yep, with the names. Okay. Comments, questions, suggestions. Again, think about the readability of the signs that darker color gives you a better contrast. So again, through the same set of criteria, design review standards, number one, a preservation or reconstruction of the appropriate historic style of proposed projects in the historic district involves an historic structure acceptable harmony of exterior design with other properties acceptable compatibility of proposed exterior materials with other properties in the district acceptable compatibility of proposed landscaping proposed prevention of the use of incompatible designs buildings color schemes or exterior materials acceptable location and appearance of all utilities no lighting on any of the signs including these freestanding up front. Not applicable recognition of and respect for view quarters and significant vistas including gave reviews of the city and state house acceptable. Informance with cityscape placement and design recommendations acceptable compatibility with subject property and adjacent properties acceptable does not obscure significant architectural details acceptable. Consistency in one of uniformity of multiple signs in CP two and OB districts not applicable with illumination applicable penance and banners not applicable. Individual letters of fixed painted or engraved directly on the building structure are encouraged acceptable. All in favor of the application is proposed. Letters. What was the last thing was interesting is encouraged. Well, that's it depends on the building and the location. Like downtown somebody sometimes people put individual letters like an assigned band. So it says individual letters of fixed painted or engraved directly on the building or structure are encouraged. But on the side of a building where you've got a collaborative building assigned like proposing makes more sense. It just it's a matter of what the building looks like whether there's a signed band, whether it's downtown or different neighborhood. I'm not sure it'd be easy to attach individual letters to a building and then you've got a lot of moisture issues at the same time. So again, you can sign this one above my name in the middle there. No, you don't have to stay. Okay, thank you. Okay, thank you very much. Good luck with your project. Next application is for 27 School Street. He turn up properties when he's not here. Okay, Chris. Okay, Chris Pierce. It's me. Okay, for the record, I should probably recuse myself in that I was at one point involved in this project. Okay, that's fine.  Okay, so I'll just go give you the complete history of what happened here. So we started out with this building over a year ago. My client purchased the building and then asked me to go in and change some heat and pull up some old carpets and expose the old hardwood floors. And we started doing that.  So we found a lot of things and immediately went into repair mode. And then that morphed into calling an architect to change the walls and interior change. Then we did some exterior changes because of the interior changes that happened. And kind of missed the ball on the zoning permit. So here we are. And so now we're trying to do it the right way. There is some work that's already been completed. We've tried to do it tastefully. Hopefully find the same. There was some siding we had replaced after we we've actually lifted the rear end of the building and put a whole new frost wall underneath it. So in doing that, we have to expose the sills. Doing that you have to tear off a lot of lower part of the building. They had a very unique siding and had a has a little contour to the clabber. It's got a little bead on the bottom of it. So we did replace that. I actually milled each one of them to make it match. So I'm trying to do it that way. I like to do things the right way. I don't do them half, half. I like to do it all the way. A couple of things that we are doing is adding that we'd like to add is a couple of modern touches, which would be there's a secondary egress that we would like to put in the rear. That would be a metal spiral staircase. The reason we want to do that is we've gotten approval to add a six apartment and attic. And they've given us a pass on putting sprinklers in if we can do a secondary egress, which would be coming out the rear of the building. That's the spiral staircase that we want to do. To get to the staircase, we have to add a deck or a way to get to the staircase can't just be a walkway. So we decided we should make a nice space. There's nothing you can see from the street, but you can see it from your buildings. Yes, I've been watching the progress of this thing going on and on. At this point, we would like to get bodies in there as soon as possible. So I'm sure I'm missing some stuff. I know you probably have some questions, but that's basically the job in a nutshell. There are some ads that we would like to do that are on the application, including a solar parking area, which probably realistically won't be done until next year if we get to it. We wanted to jump on that though, because the solar credits are up at the end of the month. So we've already put in for CPG for that project, which doesn't matter much to the town. We do have it in the works. And this stairway that we put in, which is so there's back part of the building that was had to be removed in order to fix the sills because it was actually built on dirt. The stairway that was in it didn't be code. And there was no way to actually put a stairway back there without extending it beyond the footprint of the building. And so with it maintaining the footprint of building we had it there was an actual like a shed roof that someone put on in the past 25 years, I assume that wasn't built very well and was falling off and the snow hit and actually took most of it down. And that's where we built that that rear staircase. You can see that actually if you look at the picture of it. Yeah, right. So that was within the shadow of the original building. But it's now a staircase instead of a shed room. And now it's access to that second floor apartment. Underneath there is where you're thinking about putting the laundry. Yes, which wasn't a small rotting part of this decks. I don't know what you call it was like a flat landing area deck type system that had that was again built on dirt and had to come off to do the to do the sale work. So it's tucked back underneath. Yeah, it's underneath. It's still in the same exact footprint that was originally there. It's just we want to build it into a laundry room for the tenants use instead of making it a public space or a deck space. You're talking about the Sierra in here? Yeah. Actually no, that that's original that that's just being replaced because that again, I have pictures of when we lifted the building, but that all had to be torn out in order to get under those posts. Now we're just rebuilding us the way it was. That's an entry deck four feet wide. Yes, we recognize him from earlier projects. Parking structure. Yes. Back. Does that have a schedule? Yeah, a shed roof. Have you been to the co pop here? Yeah. So we want to build something similar to that. There are budgetary constraints that may make it a little less fancy than that. But that's basic idea to be a carport type system. And then we have a solar roof instead of a wooden neck or shake the back for a lot. Yeah. Very into the driveway. The laundry room be under here under this. No, actually, here. Yeah, right. You can see where the siding ends. That's kind of right where we were. It's pretty small. Don't see seven feet by. Oh, yeah. It's very important to pad. So pretty nice. To the side. But there's room under the stairs. Just a little walk down. So the building actually bumps out for the upper apartment. Yeah. Okay, I can see that. Yeah. So the laundry room was eight by eight seven by eight. So it comes out a few more. There's a space in between where the stairs go up. Okay. And the wall is the wall of the upper. We would fill that space in with a roof that matched the stairway. You looked at it. So the wall, the wall, the back wall of the laundry area would be adjacent to that window casing. Yeah, it'd be right along that casing. Yeah, come out from there. Right. What do you put a coin up in there? Double stack. So you can maybe rent them. I said, no, I was talking to Will Coglin from Neckie. You know, Will. Yes. Say you can actually rent them. I didn't know that they're really expensive. Yes, they are. And the big deal is saving the whole building. I mean, it was going underground in the back. Nothing could touch for 30 years. I looked at it. Oh, yeah. I mean, it was in hindsight, I wish I feel like we're doing like anyhow. It's been incredible here to the extent of just what you don't see. Just to keep the building. It's amazing that it didn't burn down. It was my number two extensive. So I'm glad we can get to the details and make it pretty again. But a labor of love. That's great building. Not anymore. It's a great build to the finish. It's a great building and it's a nice lot. Yeah, it is. It's pretty painted. I did farm up with the building. I mean, the building itself is pretty color. I think it's always been either really hated. And then there's a few minority of people, maybe five out of 100 that say I don't mind it. I actually find it interesting. But it's pretty, most people do not like that color. So we were, I don't know, it's in there will be really like to do the same colors as the Unitarian Church, the gray and white, very traditional colors. I think it was really beautiful. That looks nice. And a darker, a little darker gray body color will hide the dark that you get with a lighter color building. So that's a good maybe some, maybe some black little detail. So many details that would be nice to actually accentuate those. What maker of the windows you're using for the replacements? Two over two. They're called Harvey. Harvey's area. Trying to maintain that not have to mess with any of the exterior. Not only is there a lot of lead paint on it, but it's nice to keep the old woodwork, not have to replace it. If you do new windows, it's pretty expensive. You start taking that apart. Re-doing replacement.  Right. You're restoring some of the windows on the front. You already did. A lot of them have been re-glazed. There are a lot of cracked ones. You know, keeping the old glass as best we can, but a lot of cracked new weights. We put in new weights of cords. Are you using the historic preservation tax credit or on this one? So we will for, I would just say, for electrical safety. Or the downtown. Fire safety, yeah, whatever it is, but a couple of things we couldn't do. Yeah, it's a couple of historic stuff that we couldn't done that before, but that's a good question. Just curious. So there's a federal investment tax credit as well. I think we're doing that for the old retro again. Yeah, if you filed your application and everything. And we've worked with the woman who's from the state. Caitlin. Exactly. I worked for the state for 30 years, so that's. That was Chris Cochran. You're thinking of Chris Cochran. It's good to see you, right? Yeah, good to see you, too. You're in there. This, so this roof is, it looks like it's pitched. How are you putting it back on? It would be, you know, it would be carried to the front part would be higher than that point, you know, in terms of foundation, in terms of foundation, but you know, it's those decks are done. Yes, so this door, no, that one will be a door and then there's a difference from this corner to about where the threshold of that door would be of a foot and a half. So we would bring it up to that level and level it off. And this is where we would bump this out and put a spiral stair on it. I'm kind of surprised they let you use the winder. Yeah, the spiral stair. Well, there's a certain dimension of capacity. Yeah, four of those kinds of things. They were really, really trying to work with us because of the, not only to get out into the middle of school street, the expense to go under the heating system and put in the proper size feed line of just to get water into the building to run a sprinkler system would exceed like a year's worth of work on of carpentry. So they wanted people to hook up sprinklers.  And then I think people would be much more able to do it. But if you're not doing it in the partnership that you pay for everything to get underneath it, I do that. And I'm hoping already at non-elk street that it's really expensive. Would they require a four or six inch pipe? Four. Four. But you know, they could have that feed like when they're doing the work and they're under there at that time. You know, at least to the show, that would be great. It's just something to think of for the future. This is the second time I've sort of gone through this. And I don't know why I, you know, you're just not, I don't know in this building, but if they want buildings to be sprinkled with the city might think, okay, which where are we going next to dig up the streets? How can we make it easy because they're going. And nothing more. You could put a piece of six inch PVC from there all the way inside the building and then you could thread it through. That's all I'm saying. They could just set it up and then same with the heating plant. Like this building would have been primed to set up with city heating, but it has three quarter inch pipe coming in. You know what we're talking about? The feed for the sprinkler system is just too hugely expensive. So that's been great. Chris and I can't remember the captain's name. We're working with us to get that. That's why they allowed that. As long as we meet their specs. There are other towns that actually live. You have a landing. It's called the rest of the landing or whatever because we have a ladder truck that's a fortune to in the city. You know what's in other towns like you have outside the window? Yeah. Refuge. And you know, we had pictures of that, but they really wanted something more elaborate here. We have the same truck. And I serve on here for less people. Close. If anything, is there any additional? First of all, what is the black lines coming down here? What is that? Oh, that I'm sorry. That was showing that the posts that we would put in to add the additional 15 square feet where we would land the spiral staircase. So they'll come out. We have to put in some six by six posts to land. So to put in the spiral stair, we need to we need to give enough space coming out of that doorway out of this doorway. Not the upper one. The upper one. Yep. So we need to bump it out. So we can put the land, we can land the stairs further out on that deck, that upper, upper deck. The deck itself isn't large enough to carry. It's not larger. News spiral staircase. Okay. I did that in Audra's office. She said, you need to show me where those are going. So, okay, grab the Sharpie and sorry, it's not for elaborate. Some of this was done literally within like 24 hour period I drew my little spiral stairs and things like that to try and get this in so that we can get approval so that we can get bodies on the building. How far back do you have to return this railing? Because you have to have a return on it back right here. The upper railing, when you come out, have you seen it? I think it would go all the way around the whole deck. All the way around the entire, this entire deck up about. It's a six-pitch roof, so it would almost be flat. So you'd have the same spindle railing design as you're using here? Yeah, that would, that's the way I would like to do it. Okay. And last week, some of this, one caveat to that is that some of this is in bid right now. We're trying to figure out what materials are affordable, what, you know, what we can use what's too heavy to put up there, what meets all the criteria that we need to build it and stay within a budget that works. So I'd love to hear suggestions if you say that you should do what you think you would because you steal, you can't do steal handrails up to a certain length. But I propose doing the same as what we did because I doubt it. Essentially you're not going to need to make change for materials, but you're not going to change the design. No, I don't, no. Materials is the one thing that I can't, we can't totally put our finger on because we're not fully sure what's affordable, I mean, I have, we have things we'd love to do, but some of it is out of each, so that's why there's not as much detail as we could possibly be. But we'll try to carry that same book. Right. Wouldn't want to mix, mix too much. Yeah, because by the way, stair would be metal, right? Yeah, I just throw it one down and it makes the most sense and easier to adapt to be any other changes like to the front of the building. I noticed that you have that picture of the impressive like your front railings here. Any proposal to change those? Or is that you could stay just trying to restore everything? Okay. A lot of that was because of the, you know, the historical people we were working in, so they didn't want us to change. Anything front facing? Nothing that you can see from the street. But it doesn't need it. It's all actually pretty shape out front. Okay. No, I was talking more specifically about the little iron railings that are done right here. They're not historic. I've had thoughts on that. Unless insurance says we have to. No, I mean, that's something, it was a more of a design thing rather than a structural or a safety or okay. How many units proposed for the building? So six total one or two on each floor in the front? Not exactly. Two, two, and three with this efficiency board and then one up with the add. So two, three, one going up. Okay. And then in the back section. Well, that includes the back. That includes the back. So we did really change. Yep. Too much of the, I mean, we changed the footprint in some ways. Upstairs, but downstairs, nothing to speak of. And we don't know what makes it nicer. We're going to change it. And we do turn the walls down. Yeah. Just try to open up the bottom of everything and be straight and straight for everything. Like even knowing we're going to have to have this roof dead and put framing members right down to the foundation. Yeah. It's all prepared inside for all the exterior. Prepared for the exterior roof. So when we open that shed roof up in that of, you know, where that deck is going, you need to prepare the inside for the load. It's very like that. We did all the energy efficiency upgrades while we were in there. Spray foam. Spray foam, dense, dense back. So are we all spray foam? All the walls are spray foam. The basement's been spray foamed. There will be some dense back in the attic space or the crawl space above that rear section.   This building was days of Chris working. He knows electrical really well. And they're out of code right now. That's, you know, everything in this building. There's a code violation of the feed coming into the building. It's attached. It's not where it should be. So, you know, that has to change. Because we would have to save a new pole right here. You mean it needs to be eight feet or more above any horizontal surface. That's like about five and a half feet. So it has to be rectified and then, but it's our expense to rectify that. So obviously I propose to go underground and to get underground. Let's say, you know, it's incredible. So we're going to leave it the way it is. We have to raise the code to raise it. But we're trying to make it pretty. Who wants to see power lines on the front of a nice building? What are you going to do? Just to put a new pole in to tell you to the social services people. Oh, yeah. So shared services. Where's the closest pole that should come from for underground? Well, there is a pole in the front of the building, but it's from 1930 or somewhere around there. It needs to get replaced, has too many wires on it. So they can't really tap into that. Can't go underground because the Social Security Building has already got a four inch steel condo up there. And we don't want to go near that. So we'd have to actually put our own pole in.  And so we put it on our own pole and then everybody wants to tap onto the pole. And then they charge you for, you know, changing the wire to the new pole. That's an example. Yes, where we'd like to do it right, but the costs are phenomenal to do it right, given the circumstances. And we've run through that with all the scenarios. Every time we try to see this improvement of light, it's really the face of it. And we've tried to do it as much as we can. So probably just, I just can't. Is there any lighting added back here that wasn't there before? Yeah, by the door. By this door? Yeah, and also by the door above, on the deck. There's the light. Oh, right, on that. Yes, right. We did add that. That was... Is there light outside too? That was already there. We left that. So just in lighting, that was in use. We left it because we've met code. Anything new. So outside the door, that upper door we did add, you can see a little right up here. Right there. Yep. And I landed it on just a little wall mounted. Yeah, I haven't actually picked any pictures yet. Probably match everything that's already there. Unless there's anything we can't do. It would be tasteful. I don't know where the other one is. I don't know where the other one is. And then we did put security. There's security lighting on there. We added one so that you can see those stairs at the back part. Right now there's just a wire whip setting. Maybe I'm actually out of the light. Did you get any idea of the shrubs? Is that part of your screen? That's right. Okay, thanks. Yeah, so we'll figure that out. It's a similar building across the street. It might have been built by the same architect. See that one, I think, is it the glares? The glares, it looks pretty similar.  Yes. It really looks like a period. There's a lot of that. I actually did count. There's a lot of the same features. A lot of design features that are included in those buildings. It's very nice. I mean, when you finish this and paint it and get that contrast between the trim body color and maybe some accent color, it'll look really, really nice.  Design, we want. Just at some point, you've got to just stop telling how to try to just get some tenants. You get to a point you need to win the lottery to do what you'd really like to do. It'd be great to take those off. There's a building on Main Street across from the middle school, that's gray. There's a similar window that are up to the top, and they're really beautiful. They have like this, I think it's like a stained glass that you know what I'm talking about. Love to do that kind of thing, but you know. Is that the wing mansion? I think that's what it's called. It's art. I think it's a purpose. I know. It's really beautiful. It's to damage. Yeah, it's right up there. Yeah. I love that. Very cool.  I just threw in the security lighting and the fixtures beside the doorways at the rear of the building. You know, you can add fixtures there designed at which to just match the other existing fixtures on the building. I'm just trying to cover the basis of anything you've got about the main one I had or change your narrative as to the lighting. Yeah, they're super simple. Any other, did you have anything you wanted to add? Sent you. No, I wouldn't. OK. I wasn't sure if you were involved in deck planning or any of that other stuff. OK. OK. Very minimally involved, but it felt like it was. Any other comments, questions, suggestions? No. OK. I'll go through the criteria for what you're proposing. Preservation or reconstruction of the appropriate historic style of the proposed projects in the historic district involves an historic structure acceptable. Harmony of exterior design with other properties in the district acceptable. Compatibility of proposed exterior materials with other properties in the district acceptable. Compatibility of proposed landscaping non-proposed in this application. Prevention of the use of incompatible designs, buildings, color schemes, or exterior materials. Acceptable location and appearance of all utilities. Acceptable recognition of and respect for view quarters and significant vistas, including gateway views of the city and state house. Acceptable all in favor of the application as proposed, which we have. I'll let you sign above my name in the lower left-hand corner there. That's a lot. You don't see the video. Is there a phone? I keep it. No. It's a good example. It's a lot of good information. Yes. I'll never forget. Nothing continued. So you can keep them if you want. I'll take them all back. Mm-hmm. Now, it's hard to not move to the store. You know, they had us match the roof. I mean, they had a match. They had us match the roof to the building. Look, it's totally like non-functional. All the snow and ice and everything turns right into the handicap graph. So now I'm really, you know, interested in making sure things just work. Yeah. Sure. Yeah, the exterior stairs are ramps. It's helpful to have it just in a place where it's not going to dump on it or some kind of cover or at least a metal grid. There's more systems upstairs for that. And we've done that everywhere. Yeah. Longevity, those galvanized trends. Galvanized. That's what we use. That's what we use. Yeah. Thank you all. You're going to have to shovel it either. I know. It saves a lot. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good luck. Good luck with your continuing project. We do need that. Okay. Yeah. Okay. We have the minutes from May the 21st. I'll move them. Do I hear a second? I second it. All in favor of the minutes from the 21st. Raise your hand. I'll move us up here. The minutes are approved. And our other business, do you want to fill us in on the... Yeah, I will fill you in. It's the Historic Preservation Conference. It's really interesting. The speaker is named Gar Williams. She just put a book out in a thousand towns. She's been in a thousand small towns singing. And during her talk, she talked and then she sang a song. Oh, that's great. She was great. I couldn't go. Yeah. And a couple of the concepts she talked about, small communities, is where history joins with the present. I think that is a concept for looking at Montpellier and saying, okay, we're an active, real town in the present, but we're also respecting our history. Another concept I really like is honoring a town's past keeps it vital for the future. And I think that both of those things kind of exemplify Montpellier as being a vital community because of its historic character. And that's sort of inspiring. So it was a good conference. Yeah, the other thing, when we have, I think, a better draft, I'll send everybody a draft of the new works. I've got some stuff. I want to review it, but I'll send it. I'll probably send it to you, Meredith, and you can send it out. And June 26th is the next Historic Preservation Commission meeting. And we had trouble for two meetings getting before them. But you guys are all welcome. It's at 6.30. And usually we have it up in the manager's conference room, the little conference room. What was the date again? June 26th at 6.30. And on July 12th, we're having a public hearing and meeting. And it's going to be a kind of an informal thing where people can go around and talk. And then we'll have a formal presentation. That's July 12th. It'll be, I think, 4.30 to 7. That'll be up in the memorial room. So you're all invited to that. It's been going slower than I would have liked. But... Well, it's happening. It's happening. It's good. I'm designing you to look at it and see, you know, does this work? I took the application for the 27th School Street. I'm going to take it to the... I think that's sort of an extant of a thing as we usually look at in downtown. Most of what we look at is signs. And I'm going to probably call on you, Steve. And if anybody has an idea, I want to help with the regs. We're going to do a list of types of applications so our regs address... Well address the most common kinds of applications that we have.  We've got a whole bunch of stuff on new construction, which happens every five years. You know, we don't... It's actually a lot easier to do the criteria for new construction than it is for rehabilitation. So any projects that you think of, just get them to me. I'm going to go through the agendas on the website and pick out projects. Just try to get an idea of how many projects do we get that are as extensive as the one on School Street that we looked at.  I mean, I think of the projects that... What's the name of the outfit that's done? Doing all the buildings on Berry Street. Oh, the house? Yeah, the house. Downstreet. Downstreet housing. I think of those, they're some of our more extensive projects. You know, windows in downtown. We've probably done pretty double done with those. But I want to sort of get, if any of you have any ideas if some of you need me or something, categories of projects so that I want to make sure the rigs kind of fit in there. The whole thing is in pain. Well, I think they've been around for a long time. I think they need some tweaking and stuff like that. But people are convinced that design review is a terrible burden. Some people, a few people are convinced that design review is a terrible burden. Now, look at what we went through tonight. Yeah. We went through a really extensive project that's doing a lot of work on the building. And, you know, it passed in this, you know, the sign stuff. Well, all it has to do with the sensitivity of the owner and whoever's the contractor. I, you know, to make whatever the changes are compatible and, you know. It feels like they went after it a little willy-nilly, though, that they just sort of started in on that thing. And there's, like, staircases all over the place. And that bumped out. They didn't have a thoughtful plan when they started. I understand that that sometimes happens. That makes it hard. Well, the initial plan was just to sort of repair what was there, and it just kept going deeper and deeper and deeper. And actually, had they partly demolished and rebuilt exactly what was there, there's really no change. If they're, technically, if they're making some improvements to it by changing the design, tweaking it so it fits the building better than what was there that was done, you know, 50 years ago or whenever.  If they could buy Caitlin for the tax credits. Yeah, so that's, she has reviewed the stairs and everything. I was a little unsure about that. I don't know. Well, they are in the back. How picky do they get? Well, Caitlin can be pretty fussy, but it's not visible from the street. It's not that big. It's actually more visible from the state street than it is from. Oh, okay. When you're coming down the street, when you're above 32 and between 32 and 28, you see the street through. Oh, really? Yeah, well, a little ways away. Let's be by looking out of the sight window when they're driving. Yeah, true. That's dangerous on the state street. Okay, well thank you for, and with that, I'll move adjournment. Do I hear a second? Second. All in favor of adjournment, raise your hand. Meeting is adjourned.


The streets of India's northern Gurugram city were flooded on June 21st after receiving the first rain of the monsoon season, leading to major traffic disruptions. Residents criticized local authorities for not implementing measures to prevent the flooding. Many were waiting through flooded streets of the city, which is around 30 kilometers southwest of New Delhi. The Indian Weather Office predicted more rain in the region later this week. India, with 1.3 billion people, relies on rainfall to support its population, many of whom live and rely on farming. However, excessive rainfall can cause floods and water logging, especially because of poor drainage systems.


Welcome to MAPCRO, the RPG art show. My name is Kyle and this video is brought to you by my newsletter. That's right, if you head on over to KyleLatino.com today and sign up for my newsletter, you too can get a map of the Wine Dark Sea. Check the description below for details while I serve up some hot takes today on Worldbuilding. Now first, I want to make a disclaimer, and you can basically put this at the front of any of my videos. If you disagree with this, if you want to keep doing what you're doing, by all means, do so. Make the things that make you happy and keep you making. Your own journey for creative joy is far more important than any of my busted opinions, so keep that in mind. But tell me if this sounds familiar, or if this sounds like something that you've said. A Game Master might lament and say, I put all of this effort into this world building and making sure that it all makes sense, and my player characters are not curious, they don't investigate, and they don't find out about any of the stuff that I've been writing for the last two months. Well, I have a theory why that is such a common refrain in our hobby. In my lifetime, I believe I have not only seen the usage of the word Worldbuilding Skyrocket, but also basically the coining of the phrase, which really wasn't used that way until like around the year 2000. I have a theory about this that authors historically have not really cared about what we have come to know of as Worldbuilding. This term has been used to describe oftentimes retroactively books or comics or movies that have a rich and detailed explanation for why the world is the way it is.  The Worldbuilding exists only to serve the character's journey, and the character's journey only exists because you, the reader, exist and the author feels like they have something they want to share with you that they think is important. In our time of trailer analysis and lore videos and Wikipedia's, we really think of Worldbuilding as something that is altogether separate from characters, and I think this is much to the detriment of how we understand stories, and it really comes to a head at the gaming table. This is why Game Masters have this oft-repeated lament that nobody cares about my Worldbuilding. Well, that's because your Worldbuilding doesn't care about the characters in it. That is to say, the player characters, the main characters, your protagonists are not at all involved in the Worldbuilding. Now, there are several reasons for this, and most of them have to do with the idea of selling adventure modules separately from people's actual play experiences. The need for this to be a product that has all of this information that's just ready to go means it's necessarily completely disconnected from the players at your table. This is why I find discussions about Session Zeroes and getting that kind of understanding and buy-in early is so important now. It's a way of including your players in deciding on what challenges are going to help bring out their characters in play, and sometimes that just means kind of explaining the adventure module that you want to run and saying, does that sound interesting? And if they say no, find a way to compromise, or just say maybe skip out on this one because I really want to run this module that I just paid for. Some Game Masters love to brag about how they don't do any prep at all and more power to them, but if you're like me and you kind of enjoy kind of planning out what some of the things could happen and what some of the characters they could meet are, my suggestion to you would be make sure that your Worldbuilding is at the character level. Make sure that they all come with verbs or hooks that come with them for the players to interact with. This is why, for my money, NPCs, non-player characters are the richest vein of Worldbuilding that you can put in your game. NPCs come with so many verbs attached to them. You can talk to them, you can barter with them, you can spy on them, you can fight them, you can apologize to them, they will reveal the world and their own point of view through this non-linear activity with them. When your player characters take a left turn and start talking to, let me check my notes, Herkimer, the farmer at the end of the tavern, you didn't think that anybody was going to talk to and was only named Herkimer when they asked, what's your name? That is revealing world, what are his problems? What are his troubles? What is his view of the characters at the bar with him? This is revealing world and you don't even have to have a plan for it, just let the world reveal itself for your characters and don't worry about keeping a binder full of all of these consistent notes until your player characters show an interest that they want that kind of depth or have that kind of curiosity for what's in front of them. The characters are the world building and the world is only interesting because the characters are in it, both your NPCs but also your player characters so that world building these characters need to be pointed at your player characters and NPCs very naturally fit that utility and if you're still not convinced I would suggest to you that it is easier for a story to have great characters in it but terrible world building and still be enjoyable than it is for a story to have excellent world building but terrible characters and still be enjoyable. Alice in Wonderland for instance really strikes me as a book that has wonderful characters but really no world building to speak of. I can feel myself wanting to go on and on and on about this so I think it's time to end the episode. If you have any stories about your game about some big world building payoff that actually worked at the table please share it in the comments. If you heard something that was thought provoking but you didn't necessarily agree with it maybe leave a like and if you want to hear a more naval gazing commentary while I draw things subscribe to the channel or to my newsletter that's where once a month I'm going to make announcements about ongoing projects and new merchandise and you can also grab yourself a 22 by 17 inch of the wine dark sea. I promise all the world building is on the map there's no lore you can just get going and have fun. Well the old roads is all proofread and the pdfs are ready to be emailed maybe this weekend so maybe I will see you on the old roads. Until next time, farewell.


Today we're opening 20 of the rarest Yu-Gi-Oh blisters. What's up guys, we're back with an insane old-school opening. We have 20 of the rarest Yu-Gi-Oh blisters ever. This contains nine of the first 11 original sets. We're missing pharaoh's servant and dark crisis, but we have all the other ones. So we're talking about LOB, MMFC, IOC, all these crazy ones. We're gonna be opening them in this video. Before we hop into it, we have a giveaway. I'll be giving away these two structured X. We have a cyber strike and an albast strike. Some really good staples. And of course, albastrike's one of the best, you know, structured X we've ever had. All you have to do is like the video, be subscribed, turn on notifications, let me know your favorite card we pull, or your favorite blister that we open. Lots of good ones in this video. I'm excited, let's go. First we have, this is probably the rarest blister like in this opening, because it's a double blister and you rarely ever see these. It's two of the same pack. They actually did this for a lot of different sets, but you pretty much never see them. So we're gonna start with the ancient Sanctuary double blisters, see what we can get. Let's open it up. It is pretty beat up, so I don't feel too bad opening it up, but it is rare. So probably not the best idea to open it, but that's how we roll on this channel. Double blister has been decimated. What can we pull from unlimited ancient Sanctuary? Here we go. Can we get a nice dark magic attack? Here we go. Ancient Sanctuary, bring us some awesome pulls. Our first pack of the opening. I think we have 20 blisters, so 21 packs since we had the double blister. Weapon change, protector of the Sanctuary. We've got an order to charge. That stack almost knocked it over. Mermaid Knight, Nubian Guard. Backfire, we are recording the mic, which is very important. Second sarcophagus, three oomph Lakuta, and we have a Grave Protector. So nothing in that first one. That's okay. We have a second pack. That's why the double blister exists. You got two chances. Will it be a foil? Let's see how many foils we get out of 21 packs. Let's see how much money we make back from all of these. It's not gonna be a lot. We're gonna lose quite a bit on this because these are rare items. They're really expensive sealed, not so expensive when you open them. We have Dora Fate, Mystical Shine Ball, Delta Attacker, Elephant Statue of Disaster. We've got a ruxen special with the absorbent kit from the sky. Desert Taper, I think is what it's called. Goblin Thief, 2000 Needles, and we have a special hurricane, especially zero foil, zero out of two so far. We're gonna alternate a little bit. Let's go to Ferranic Guardian. We are 0 for two so far. Ferranic Guardian Unlimited. We are opening some stuff. This is unlimited, so you really should definitely not be opening these. At least first edition, you can get some pretty big value cards. Unlimited, not so much. We're just looking for the cool cards. That's what we want. The value is now aware about in this video, so if you're enjoying it, you like seeing the old stuff, make sure to subscribe because that helps out, and we will be doing more of this in the future. One, two, three, four. Let's see if we can get a metamorphosis trap to shoot anything like that. Cry you well, nice. Buster Rancher, what a name. Poison Mummy, very nice. We've got a ruxen special with Call of the Mummy. Gravekeeper's Curse. Banner of Courage. Curse of Aging. Yomi Ship, and we have... Ooh, there's a foil, a dark room of Nightmare. So let's say, well, we didn't get any of the good commons, but we did get a foil. I feel like we pulled this last time, the dark room of Nightmare. Pretty cool, we'll take it. AST, probably the worst set we'll open today. The other ones, I mean, a lot of these are pretty high end. We're talking Metal Raiders, IOC, MFC, even Unlimited, those are pretty crazy. Let's see what we can get. We have one, two, three, four. Let's pull something amazing. Knight of Salem, that's pretty amazing. We'll take it. First good comment of the opening. Dora, Fate, Mystical Shineball. Delta Attacker, Aswan Apparition. Armor Break, Judgement of the Desert. Absorbing Kid from the Ski-A. And the Thousand Energy. Oh, I don't really remember this guy. I've not pulled that card very often, so Thousand Energy, pretty cool. Now we're onto Labyrinth of Nightmare. This one's actually not in that bad a shape, so I should probably shouldn't open it, but there we go, we've opened it. I can't go back now, here we go. What shall we pull? Will it be Magic Cylinder? Will it be Last Warrior from another planet? So far, one foil. Not too great. Let's see if we can pull another one. Crimson Century, Collected Power. Miracle Day. Lighting Conger, Grave Robbers Retribution. Very nice. Fairy Guardian, Gadget Soldier, Offerings to the Dude. And a Nuvi of the Weekend. Just a regular old Nuvi of the Weekend. All right, Ancient Sanctuary. I'm losing my voice a little bit for some reason. Probably recording too many videos, but I want to remind you guys, if you guys want to check out my TCG playing eBay affiliate links, you guys can check those out down below. If you buy anything through there, you might as well use my link because it doesn't cost you anything extra. It supports my channel, so reminder for that, here we go. Chain of Fitting Room, let's go. Sand Gambler, let's pull something good. Wall of Revealing Light, Rocket Jumper. Soul Array, Goblin King, Mystic Walk. Emissary of the Oasis, and here we go. What will we pull? Final card, will it be a foil? Soul Absorbing Bone Tower. This was a money for a while. It's not now. I don't think so. Maybe it's a dollar, I don't know, but still not that great. Lavender Nightmare, here we go. We still have three of these left. So we'll open one of these. We have some pretty big ones coming up, but we only have like one or two of all the really big ones. So we're gonna save those toward the end. Let's do this. We have a, oh, we got a Ruxen Special, almost. Let's see if we get a foil. Hysteric Fairy, we've had a good look with Eloinn recently. Headless Knight, can we get a Secret Rare? Lady Panther, Grand Tiki Elder, pretty cool. We got the Emperor's Holiday. The Gross Ghost of Fleded Dreams. Love to see his dreams fleeting. We've got the Lady of Salem of Flamas. Dragonic Attack, and is this it? Is this our final card? I think it is. We have a Dark Spirit of the Silent. Another Super Rare. Very cool with the black text. Not, I mean, it's technically an error, but they're all like this, but still pretty, pretty awesome. Ancient Sanctuary, you have returned. We are only down to two of these left, don't we just got that open pretty easily? Will there be an Epic Pull inside of Ancient Sanctuary? So far, let no foils out of Ancient Sanctuary. AST kind of letting us down. Let's see if they can change that here. One, two, three, four. We have Wall of Revealing Light. Formerly had one and recently became unlimited. Rocket Jumper, Monster Gate, pretty good for those, what am I trying to say? Not dual links. Goat Format Decks, Nine of Salem. Speaking of, we're probably gonna be doing some Goat Format tournaments in the next year, like 2023 for members of the channel. So if you guys wanna check that out down below, become a member. Order of Smash, I think it's gonna be pretty fun. Maybe some Edison tournaments as well. Kickman, Sword of Soul Eater, Nubian Guard, and we have a Thebin Nightmare. This is like the cover card of Ancient Sanctuary with how often we pull it. Thebin Nightmare. Don't worry, Ferran and Guardian will save us. Let's go. Let's see if we can get a good pull out of Ferran and Guardian. Metamorphosis, Trap Dust Shoot, Maiden of the Aqua, Dice Jar. I mean, there's some great options here. Let's see if we can pull them. We have a Banner of Courage, Cursed Day Aging, Yomi Spirit, Maiden of the Aqua. Yes, this is one of the most expensive cards. I'll let you guys guess why. Yeah, okay, there we go. Very nice. A Claw Scorpion, Swarm of Scarabs, Narrow Pass, Molten Behemoth, and here we go. Will it be a foil? Let's go. Dark Designate, Jack Atlas is at it again. All right, we're officially down to where we have two of some of these and one of them is Invasion of Chaos. This is a pack that we should definitely not open, but you know how this goes, guys. We are opening it. We are destroying the pack so we can see what is inside. Invasion of Chaos, this is unlimited. I think because it's in a blister, it means no CED. So we're really looking for the Democ or the BLS. Let's see, one, two, three, four. I would be happy with either of those. That'd be really amazing because this is original, IOC, not reprint. Curse of the Red Spell, pretty crazy card actually for back in the day. Gigantus, even now. Multiplication of Ants. Terror King Salomon, he got a recent retrain. Pretty cool in Darkwing Blast. Griffin's Featherduster, awesome. Inferno. DNA Transplant, and is it next? No. Sea Serpent Warrior of Darkness. He has battle prowess indeed. Oh, fighting prowess, I should say. And finally we have the Stratelamps. This is not the card we're looking for. All right, not bad. Let's go to Legacy of Darkness. Let's see what we can get. Oh, that thing just really opened up very easily. These packs are flying everywhere. We're digging corners. Let's pull some big, one, two, three, four. Come on, LOD. We have the Dragon Dwelling in the cave. Check out that centering.  Spirit Invitation, Twin-headed Wolf. Gradius' Option. Well, a lot of rucks and specials. Super Rejuvenation. Went up for a long time for a while. For a short time, it went up for a lot. Went up a lot for a short time. There we go. Battle Rexxus Sumochi, Robo Lady. Serpentine Princeus. And is this it? Is this the foil? No, it's a Sousa soldier. Okay, so far, what? Two foils? Two foils, both supers. We're looking for an Ultra or a Secret in one of these. All right, I think this is our last pack that we have two of. So, Labyrinth and Nightmare. Oh, check this out first of all, $199. Two dollars, so pretty cool. We opened some of these recently and we pulled okay. We didn't pull anything great. Can we get a Secret Rare? I would love it. It would be awesome. We have the Rock Spirit. Flame Dancer. Fire Sorcerer. Curse of a Mized Beast. Garuda, the Wind Spirit. The Emperor's Holiday. Gross Ghost of Led Dreams. Lady Ascendant Deflames. And we have another magic card. No! Not the Spirit Message, L. Why? Why do you do it to us like that? Come on. All right, we've been hit with the L Curse. Not looking good, but we are heading into some of the best blisters. We have one more Ancient Sanctuary and then we have like MFC coming up. We got one of those. We got Metal Raiders. So if we get some big pulls out of those, that'd be big. So let's start off with Ancient De Sanctuary. Let's go. Can we pull something good from the Sanctuary? Piranha Army, we're gonna be farming and duel links after this. One, two, three, four. Here we go. We have a Blessings of Denial. Legendary Jujitsu Master. Pretty good card. Beckening Lights in here for the Lightsworn. It's pretty cool. Vampire Lady. Piranha Army to farm. Human Wave Tactics. Solar Flare Dragon. The Law of Denormal. And here we go. What will it be? The final card. It looks like it might be a foil. It is the Ancient of Forest Mars. Let's go. A Super Rare, three supers now. Looking for an Ultra or a Secret, but we'll take a Super Rare from Ancient Sanctuary. So we have like five packs and got one foil. Seems about right for Old School Yu-Gi-Oh. All right, next Invasion of Chaos. Here we go. Our second pack of IOC in this video. Let's see what we can pull. Oh my goodness, that pack just fell apart. Can we pull the Democ, the BLS, or the Balloon Lazard? I'll take that. Chaos Grade. The Thing in the Crateur. Energy Draunei. Molten Zambiei. Sol Tigre. It's a bit of a primal seed. I'm losing it. Good Maju Day, Isa. And we have it. Do us to it. Do it to us like that. That's what I'm trying to say. This is not going well. This is what happens when you record too many videos in a day to get ahead for Christmas. But that's what happens. Magician's Force, 399. Anybody want to MFC pack for 399? I'm talking $3.99. I do. This blister is blister. I cannot speak.  I hope it's not. But yeah, blister is what I was trying to say. Oh my goodness. Magician's Force. Here we go. What can we pull? Dark Magician Girl? I don't think we can because it's a blister, but I don't know. Who knows anymore because after that last time when we pulled it, I'm not sure. Dark Paladin should be available no matter what. Let's see what we can get. Breaker as well. Relent Barrier. Let's go. Let's get some cool. United Resistance, the people that gather to swear to fight their oppressors. A revolution is coming. Let's go. My body's a shield. This is a great card. Cure you. Also pretty good. Actually, okay, I don't know if that's good. I just was saying for some, I don't know why I said that. Second goblin formation unit. We have a freezing beast. It looks like the card in the back is not damaged. That's a good sign compared to our last MFC opening. Here we go. Will it be a foil? Let's go. Let's pull something good. It's a trap card. Spell Shield, tie bait. Honestly, this is not a bad card. I use this in my Relinquished Goat deck. It's really not that bad. Another super rare. I want something besides a super. Is that too much to ask? I guess it is. I guess it is. So right now we got four super rares. That's it. I would love an Ultra. I would love a Seeker Rare, especially would be awesome. PGD, Phyronic Goddy, the seventh set in Yu-Gi-Oh history. Let's go. Come on, let's pull some good comments. Grave Keeper's Curse, Curse of Aging. Yomiship, Giant Axe Mummy. Servant of Catabolism. The Disturbing Strategy. Grave Keeper's God. Hyroglyph lithograph. And is it the next card? It is. A reckless Goddy. The greed is reckless. Also a pretty good card. Wait, what? That was first edition. I didn't realize that. So I just saw that. That was a first edition pack. Looks like it shifted up a little bit. Kind of cool. All right, that was a first dead pack. I didn't really realize that. That was the only one of the whole video, I think. Legacy of Darkness. Definitely not first edition here.  I think one, two, three, four, five packs left. What can we pull? There's a train outside. Is that a good thing? I hope so. I hope it's saying something. Can we get a Seeker Rare? Injection fairy lady. That would be a cool, unlimited one. I'll be down for that. We have Life Absorbing Machine. That is creepy. That is like, it's like Paris in Pokemon. Emergency provisions. The Elusory Gentleman. Wearing old fashions. This gentleman is very fickle. He sometimes saves people and in other times commits crimes. Okay, I feel like that guy's based off of like the Fervendetta or something. A Legendary Ocean, pretty cool. Riyukishin Clown. Hard of Clear Water. Even though that came out after that. So probably not. Ominous Fortune Telling. Or is that made after, I don't know. Ominous Fortune Telling. We've got Mysterious Guard. And here we go. Will it be a Seeker Rare? Let's go. No, it's another Susa soldier. Susa, why are you all of these soldiers in my packs? I don't like it. Get out of here, man. I'll win. I just want one Ultra and a Seeker. Well, one of these should be great. But how about one of any of them? Of either of them. An Ultra or a Seeker. Lavender of the Nightmare. Come on, give us a good pull, man. I mean, I would prefer it being these other four packs, but I would like if you gave us one as well. Let's get a Seeker Rare Radix Cylinder. Soul of Purity and Light. Pretty cool. Deal of Phantom. Also nice. Flying Fish. The Wishes are granted to those fortunate enough to see this monster in flight. I love it. Crimson Century. Swordsman of the Land Star. Batet Doll. We've got a Forgiving Maiden. Saint June. And we have a jam-breeding machine. Another rail. Three packs to go. The first three sets ever made in Yu-Gi-Oh. This is an original Magic Ruler pack, actually in great condition. Should definitely not be open. For some reason, this one's like mint. Wow, I shouldn't have opened this. Oh, well, here we go. Okay, and that opened the easiest out of all of them. That's hilarious. All right, can this be the Secret Rare we've been looking for? How about an Ultra Rare? Either one would be really, really cool. Magic Ruler, man. These look really nice. One, two, three, four.  We have a Twin of the Hungrods. He's at it again. Chorus of Sanctuary. Pretty cool card. Mechanical Snail. A Cyborg Snail that still travels at a slow pace.  What's the point of that? I don't understand. Go right into the Throne Room. That's the little brother. Where's the big brother? Greggle, these are definitely warped. Final Destiny. Very nice. Penguin Knight. All right. Eat Gaboon. Also pretty cool. Is it the next one? Is this the foil potentially? We have a Invader of the Throne. Let's go, and this one's not warped. What's up with that? I thought the foil was supposed to warp. I don't know. Super Rare. I was not expecting that. Super of the opening. Five Supers. No Ultras or Secrets, unfortunately, but pretty cool. We'll take it. Two packs to go. Metal Raiders. My favorite set. This thing is about to open up. So this one is one that we should open because it's halfway open at this point. Metal Raiders. Original. Can we get that Picanium off? Any of those Ultras or Secrets would be amazing because they have absolute best cards in Metal Raiders. One, two, three, four, let's go. Big Eye. His eyes are big.  It's very weird. Big Eyes, right? Ring of Magnetism. Unless that's just his name. Big Eye. It's like, this is the guy, what he goes by. Mushroom Man Numero Dose. Wasn't this the card that got expensive for a while? I think it is. Blast Juggler. Oh, Ruxen Special. Be careful. Blue Wing Crown. Okay, pretty cool. Tongue. He's got a tongue. Lava Battle Guard. I think we got another card. Morinfan. And finally, will we get a full... No Picanium off, unfortunately. Here we go. Sengan. That's a pretty good Rare. I mean, that's the Rare you're looking for. Sengan is a great card out of Metal Raiders. We'll take it. We'll take it. All right, so so far we have five foils out of 20 packs. That's the correct ratio of what we should have, but they're all supers. Can we get our first Secret Ultra out of Legend of Blue Eyes? This, even in a limit, is like a 300 plus dollar blister I think last time I checked. So here we go. Let's ruin it. All right, $300 blister has been ruined. We now have Legend of Blue Eyes, White Dragon. Can we pull something from the first ever Yu-Gi-Oh! set? Here we go. Original Legend of Blue Eyes pack. Not first edition, but it's still pretty amazing. Let's see what we can pull. Will it be the Blue Eyes, White Dragon? We have Sogen, The Field of Grass. Mystical Sheep, Numero Dos. Tripwire Beast. The Skull, Red, Bird. Come on, Blue Eyes, White Dragon. Skulls serve at the most classic common in this set. Green Phantom King, come on. Hitotsumi Giant, played by Kaiba in the first episode. Laser Cannon Armor, and finally can we get a foil in the final card of Legend of Blue Eyes blister. That's like 300 bucks, something like that. Oh, it's a fusionist, it's always a fusionist. All right, well, that was a big loss. That was an extremely fun opening. Unfortunately, we didn't get anything above a super, so nothing too crazy to talk about. But I hope you guys enjoyed at least seeing the old cards. And if you did, make sure to subscribe to the channel for more epic content coming up because 50% of you guys are not subscribed. I actually haven't checked, but I think it's actually like 57% of you guys are not subscribed, so. I mean, what are you doing? Might as well do it, right? I don't know. It's up to you guys. A photo show, Daxter, Tomato Juice, JT Show, TCG Trust of Cards, Puffins of Doom, Ernesto DeAnda, Dizzy, Flexi Boy, Hoppus, Choice333, Miss Cycle, James Jantz, Frankie Martinez, An Unitized Show, Christopher Ward, Ian Musa, Junior Barting, Mike Nance, Mimegeko, Shadowfall, and Thomas McClain. Thank you guys for supporting the channel. I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.


I recovered, I recovered, I recovered, I recovered, I recovered Let's go I'm on a journey to discover the truth Living life and recovery is lovely You got the power in you Surround yourself with positive energy Judges hitting people with provocative penalties Need to make a change, advocate to change the laws Through the people that it's not insane When you stand behind the cause I'm here to speak about the pain Recovered loud to normalize the disease That's been killing all my friends Hit my family, the time is now To let it all go and recover loud The benefit is healthy people, family and friends They never have to overdose Ever again, never have to plead out To a lesser defense, I'm proud to say that I recover loud I never thought I could, but I'm so proud that I discovered how To live my life again, controlling my own destiny I needed recovery, I still needed desperately Addiction never defined my identity I recovered loud here to tell my own story I recover proud, save a life of like 40 I recover loud, yeah, I recover loud I recover loud, yeah, I recover loud I recover loud here to tell my own story I recover proud, save a life of like 40 I recover loud, yeah, I recover loud I recover loud, yeah, I recover loud I recover, I recover loud I recover, I recover loud I recover, I recover loud, I recover, I recover loud. Hi, welcome to another episode of Recover Loud. I'm your host, Mike Paddleford, and I Recover Loud. Tonight's guest is my friend and director of Recover Loud, Ryan LaMere. Ryan, it's really great to have you as the director of the show. I think you're doing some great work, and I appreciate you wanting to share your story. You're in recovery. How long has it been? 5,219 days today. Yeah, and that's an amazingly high number. And, you know, many people out there keep track of how many days they've been doing it. You know, we do it one day at a time, and those days add up. So, how many years is that? Fourteen and some months, sir. Yeah. So, when you went into recovery, you know, what was your life like before that? What did that look like? Well, when I went in to recovery mode, my first daughter was about to be born. It was actually like her due date, August 1st, 2008. And so it was like a frantic kind of thing, you know, and we were living downstate. And my wife is from Arista County and had more supportive family from her side up here, you know, and down there. We didn't really have too much for support. So just kind of leaving that and coming up to Arista County was like my way of getting away. So that's kind of when I entered into recovery, August 1st, 2008. And I did it by using, I guess, other substances as a crutch, you know. I would still smoke cigarettes and drink, and I smoked weed and stuff. And I felt like, in 2008, there wasn't a lot of talk about arm reduction then. But when you look back at it, it's exactly kind of like what it was. Not knowing, but feeling like, hey, if I cut this other stuff out of my life, you know, and I just do this, I think that's a lot better. You know, that was my outlook, kind of how I looked at it. Yeah, and of course, I mean, it's really difficult to just stop using every coping skill that you're used to using, that you've got in the habit of using. And for a lot of people, you know, the only thing they know that helps them get through. So to cut everything out at once, you know, is pretty difficult. So the idea of arm reduction is to make a positive change towards sobriety, possibly, if that's what you want to do.  What was your life during use like? Use for me kind of started, I mean, I guess in middle school would be the first time I ever really did anything between, well, even further back. Fourth grade tried my first cigarette, nine, ten years old, something like that. A friend of mine at school said, you know, thought cigarettes are cool.  I didn't really, I wasn't one way or the other on it. He said, hey man, let's hang out after school and smoke some cigarettes.  Right. And yeah, then in between seventh and eighth grade, I remember drinking for the first time, a ridiculous amount. From there on, it wasn't like an all the time thing. But yeah, you know, in the eighth grade and ninth grade, I ended up through high school, a lot of drinking. And I got to smoking weed, going into ninth grade. Yeah, I actually remember, I moved to Caribou from Massachusetts, my freshman year. And at the end of my freshman, it was March, actually, of 1991, I moved here. And, you know, I didn't make a lot of friends right away, but towards the end of the year, during finals, you know, one of the other kids looked at me and said, you want to go to the cake party this weekend.  You know, so yeah, I get that. You know, the... Yeah, I moved around a lot, too. I was a kid, almost every year I'd be at a different school. Until I got to, like, the sixth grade, where we kind of settled in one place. But all up until that, you know, and then getting there was kind of a similar thing. Like, I didn't know any of those people, so I had to make friends. And I was kind of trying to be like, you know, the cool kid, do whatever. Yeah, be the chameleon and try to find a group that accepts you. You know, and that's what we look for, we look for acceptance. So where would it be growing up that you would actually call home?  The Tri-City area, which is like Bitterford, Sokka, Oluja Beach, is where I moved around when I was a lot younger. A lot of family there. And then my mother and stepfather moved to Arundel, which is basically the Kennybunk same zip code. Yeah, just next to the water. But I lived there from sixth grade onward until my mother had moved away after I moved out. So I spent a lot of my time there. I went to Kennybunk High School. I was in a bundle school from sixth grade onward. So that's why I've met a lot of my friends and did a lot of my exploratory, you know, usages. And a lot of it, like I said, was drinking to begin with. So did you have a lot of police involvement in your life? Not a lot.  Not showing up to court or not paying fines was the biggest thing. Some driving without a license at OEY in 2007. So there's the drinking part of everything, you know. But most of my police involvement was little. I did spend some time in there for, you know, saying I was somebody else one time when I got pulled over and drunk. You know, saying I was somebody else, a friend of mine I knew. And, you know, so that severed ties with that friend, you know, when he found out about that, obviously, that's part of the burning bridges along the way. Oh, yeah. We do some crazy stuff. Yeah.  I got a possession charge in 2007. So 2006-07 was a rough time for me. I spent some time in York County Jail, Hamilton County Jail, but never too, for too long. And then right back to the same stuff, you know. Yeah. And, you know, I myself, I've been to prison when I was 19. I did 10 months in prison. And that was really my first experience, the first time I was ever arrested. And it led to a prison sentence. And I was 19.  But once I got into substances, you know, the risk is always there. Yeah. So even though you didn't get caught, didn't spend much time in jail after that, were you still doing risky things? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I did a lot of risky stuff. My, you know, my ascension to using the heart of drugs took a little while. You know, like I said, cigarettes early on and alcohol, and it wasn't until senior year, I started experimenting with other things like mushrooms and MDMA, cocaine, stuff like that. Pretty quickly went to that.  So I usually say from 1718 onward to about 23, it's a lot of things that were questionable. There's a short time frame, but I did a lot of things. I burned a lot of bridges with people that I probably shouldn't have. And I did a lot of things, didn't always get caught, you know. So there's definitely times I look back now, things that I did then. I'm like, I'm damn lucky that something didn't happen because I could have been in there 10 months, a few years. Some of the stuff that I did to get by, if you'd have it, whatever thing, you know, live this certain lifestyle or whatever. Yeah, and, you know, my whole point with that is, you know, the risk, we never really consider that. I mean, we always know it's there. But we're not going to stop doing what we have to do. And I always say that, you know, the use led to us doing these things, and then these things led to us using, you know what I mean?  You know, but there's just a lot of stuff that goes on. When I was 18, kind of fresh out of high school, in that summer, I linked up with a guy who was pretty big in Maine, making music at the time and showed him some of my beats and he introduced me to his manager and he saw me as a management deal and then it was kind of, it was a downhill spiral from there because the guy who was a manager, little did I know, was into coke and drinking and all he was doing, you know? And so was I. So it was like when we linked up, it was just like a tornado and it spiraled really quickly into about, so that was like 2003 by 2005, 2006. That's when I was starting to get arrested. Things were really bad. But in that timeframe, we were at the studio every day, every other day, or we're running to get drugs and we're trying to flip stuff for money and it was just always living that lifestyle and like sleeping on the couch, sleeping in Deering Oaks Park. Like I'd sleep wherever, people's front entryways. Like in Portland, just walk up and down the street till I find an entryway and go in it. You know, apartment's important. Sometimes they got the entryway to get it downstairs or an upstairs apartment and they might not be locked or laundry rooms I've been in.  And it was all because all I was living for was, was the drugs or drinking and just keeping the party going at that point. That was what was around me. Like that's what I surrounded myself with. Like I was like, if I keep certain artists, I know they're into doing drugs, I'm gonna keep them around, keep them around so I could use them however I wanted to use them for my own personal benefit. It wasn't because, you know, yeah it was cool to make music and everything at that time, but I wish that I wasn't doing that because the connections would have been more real, you know? Yeah, and you know, I was kind of the same way. I had a business going, taking care of four ghost houses and I used to hire people that I knew used so that I didn't have to hide it. And you know, the other thing was I could get away with, you know, giving them a little bit of stuff to pay them for the day instead of having to spend my money. Yeah. You know, and so where did your, your deal take you? Did you get some big record so make a bunch of money? Not really, I mean, I did some, I think I made some good music with some people along the way and stuff that some of it I could be proud of, you know? Yeah. But nothing that really ever materialized anything, you know? Yeah. I would be literally, at some point I would be in the studio, not even mine, just someone else's place, you know, I'm there taking over and I'm making beats and I'm only making beats so that I could get Coke, you know?  Yeah.  Right. And he'd be like, all right, bring them over and then, you know, it was just, that was my lifestyle and that's how people viewed me. So, in that frame. Yeah, instead of the music it became about the drugs. Right.   So, last year when I came up for the Recover Loud acoustic event Ryan Page was up here speaking for me and you guys decided to shoot a video while he was here. Yeah. And that was the first time I really met you and I got to see your work. And so then this past summer, of course, when I decided to come to caribou you were the first person I thought of to help me direct this show. You know, so I've always appreciated that connection. You know, and the work that you do is really good. You're still making beats today. Oh, yeah. Working with artists. Yeah. Yeah. Like a lot more selective of what I do and who I work with, whatever. But I do, I still work with people. I like making music videos. That's kind of like my thing now. Because making music so long it's just not that it's boring but sometimes it gets stagnant. Yeah. So I got some cameras. That's how the song got started. I was asking around who's going to make music videos because I was asking for some artists in 2019 working with some people and they wanted to make music videos. You could do it, right? I'm like, I don't know. I don't have a camera or anything. So then I found someone who had a camera and I kind of took direction on videos that we went and shot and then I would take and edit the footage, you know. And then in 2020 or 2021-ish when the pandemic was going on I was like trying to expand what I was doing and I'm like, I'm going to get some cameras or I'm going to get a camera and I'm going to try to put together some of my own stuff and that's where it kind of sparked the whole video thing because looking on YouTube I was like, you know, watching people in the editing programs for videos and I was looking up how to do it like before I got the camera. I was like, do that like with everything. I was like, it's almost like editing music in a way. Like the way it's set up I'm like, it's almost just like editing music so it shouldn't be too much different and that really sold me. I'm like, that's it. I might as well get a camera and then the rest is history basically. I started making music videos like crazy. I think I made like 20 something now at this point. Yeah. Which is awesome because I mean it's one of my favorite things to do. So in the first season I was able to use music from my friend, the real young swag. I used it for the intro and the exit of the show and when we first got started up here Facebook was not a platform that I shared the show on last year. Facebook was added by you as an additional platform to share the show but there was an issue with copyright claims on the music because Facebook has difficulty doing that. So we were discussing it and you had told me real quick that you could use some of your beats for the intro and then the next day you said, I wrote a theme song. Right. And I was actually blown away. The idea of having our own song for the show I didn't think that was real. I never expected that. So I mean you've actually brought a lot to the show and just that gives me great appreciation for you and also your recovery and just listening to what you shared you're able to focus on the work now because it's not the drugs we're chasing. Right. You know. And I think you're doing great. Yeah. And the song was just like I was bummed out. That's how it came about. I was bummed out that we had to change it at all because I liked how it was too and I didn't want to you know I might have differences with Young Swag you know but I wanted to use the song. You know that. Yeah. And so I was like really bummed out and I'm like because I was like I could throw a beat on there and it will sound okay but if we actually take time to write something out and then once I started writing it it just flowed out you know. So I was happy to put it together and I was glad that it came together so quick. Yeah. It was a surprise. I never wrote a theme song for anything so it was totally new for me. Yeah. And to do it so quick you know on the spot you know a lot of music takes you know inspiration, creativity and sometimes we just don't I have a lot of that. I have a lot. Yeah. Yeah. It's brewing around all the time. Yeah. Yeah and it comes out in various ways and different things. It's not always like recording a song or making a beat or going taking photographs or recording a show which is all to me that's all art. Of course. Yeah. Everything is no matter what it's a digital art and I make flyers or I make composite photos that's one of my favorite things to do. Yeah. So when I first started the show it had nothing to do I had a message I didn't have any ability really or knowledge or skill on how to produce a show and you know Portland Media Center thankfully they have programs where you know they teach you the class and then they allow you to use studio. We didn't focus on you know the aesthetics of it it was you know let's get the message out there. So the second season you know you've brought that for us and you know it's made it a whole new show for our viewers the views are way up there. Well the most important thing is the message though I just like to present it you know like a more heartsy way if I can. And everybody likes opening a prettier box you know what I mean so you know that has helped us you know reach further because it's important to get the message out there you know I'm just I'm proud to be able to get it out there for people to hear. You've also been able to make the TV ads for us the commercials for our sponsors and you know that's something that another fun thing that I did that was something I've always wanted to try yeah and you know they come up great and they love it you know and you know we're always looking for more sponsors more opportunities to make ads yeah I love making ads so yeah the more I can make the better yeah and one thing if you go to cable station yeah you use the ad however you want yeah so it's you know a little different than the local stations where they make the commercial and you know it's theirs yeah they want to put on the YouTube, Facebook whatever it is yeah I mean free to do that yeah so if anybody's interested in sponsoring the show you know Ryan would be happy to come out to support recovery and by supporting Recover Loud they're actually supporting the recovery community here that we're trying to build so by bringing people together to share their stories here you know from around the county we're getting to see that people are recovering here whether they come together to do events as the rest of the state does or not you know there's plenty of people here that have found a path for families and to try to show the community that we are out here to touch on harm reduction too I mean you know it may not work for everybody that method of doing things some people are that's it I need to stop completely whatever I just know it worked for me because I went from doing hard drugs to I was smoking cigarettes drinking and doing weeds still right 2011 came along no more cigarettes you know and now I'm just you know medical marijuana so it's like that's all I do now and that's harm reduction to a T oh absolutely and I feel like maybe not everybody that works for but if we keep that open as an option and people are open to that especially medical marijuana or whatever suboxone methadone that kind of thing if that's helping people we'll live a normal healthy life there should be no argument against it in my opinion yeah the basis behind harm reduction is once you suffer fatal overdose there's 0% chance of recovery 0% so you know any positive step forward is going to keep you alive and recover a lot we share as many different paths to recover yours was you know a hard decision for an important event in your life and you change locations and you found support you know and that worked for you that doesn't necessarily work for everybody but for you you found what you needed I never had a treatment program or plan or anything my daughter was being born and this is what I can use to make the change yeah so that's basically what it was if that would have never happened I can't say what would have happened to me honestly and I'm sure the love of your wife helps obviously for a long time but she didn't even know that I had a problem with drugs it was four years into our relationship I finally told her and a lot of things started to click at that point and she'd never been around it you know so without her without my kids none of it would have been possible at all now probably you wouldn't be talking to me right now probably yeah be honest yeah and I'm glad I get to yeah same dreams of making music you know but their focus isn't quite there because they're stuck somewhere else you know is there anything you'd like to say to them um I would just probably say that you know if you are struggling um trying to make that decision just reach out it doesn't mean you have to commit to anything but if you reach out to somebody um they can offer some advice I think that's helpful because I know um you know I didn't reach out because no one ever said to yeah you know what I mean so if someone had said that reach out like you know you know she's not looking right for you right now you know yeah something ain't up or whatever if anyone would have said that I probably would have done it so I know that you know by doing this show and being able to have this platform people watch it and just maybe hearing that email and um I mean there's tons of resources not only in the county but in the state of Maine and as the days and weeks go by more and more resources are popping up more and more nonprofits more and more volunteers um are helping with everything so the stigma is still there you know it's there but it is there's ways that we're kind of eliminating it and it's going as well as I guess we could have expected tonight Ryan um I'm glad to have you on the show yeah I'm glad to be here you know and uh you know keep producing good work for us and you know I think we're going to go places oh yeah definitely um yeah so if you want to check out my work uh you can go over to alibiaudiomvisual.com we do weddings realty photos videography music videos event videos um I'll try anything and I got drones cameras whatever always looking to try new things and if you're into you want to check out the music head to obsteprofen.com and uh yeah 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