I'm Rusty Komori and this is Beyond the Lines on Think Tech, Hawaii. I was the head coach of the Punahou Boys Varsity Tennis Team for 22 years, and we were fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championships. My books Beyond the Lines and Beyond the Game are about leadership, personal growth, and creating a superior culture of excellence, which is what this show is all about. My special guest today came super close to death, surviving a shark attack near the Lanikai beach area, and he's truly inspiring, and you'll see why. He is Tony Lee, and today we are going beyond adversity. Hey Tony, welcome to Beyond the Lines. Hi Rusty. Now Tony, I know that you grew up in Tennessee and you came to Hawaii around 10 years ago, but tell me about the sports you played growing up. Well, when I was growing up, my father's originally from Argentina, so I grew up playing soccer, and soccer was, you know, it was my whole being all the way through high school, and then I was able to go to door to tech and play soccer at door to tech. And so, up until even after door to tech, I had hoped to go, you know, to something beyond that, to try to proud for some proteins, but as soon as I got to door to tech, you know, Tennessee is a small state, and all through high school, I was, you know, I felt I was a very good player, but then once I got to door to tech and started to play with some of those Division I athletes, I started realizing that I had no chance of going pro, which, you know, so after college, I went on to a career in biomedicine, but yeah, soccer was my whole life when I was growing up. Oh, that's so cool. You know, I did soccer too.  What does that company do? So, Igenics, we have built a biosynthetic cornea. So, there are about 15 million people in the world who are blind due to only the corneas, and the only solution to restore sight to those folks is up until our company was transplant, but transplant has a lot of difficulty to it. You know, first of all, the corneas have to be harvested within one hour of death, and they can only be sustained for about a week, sometimes two weeks. But either way, because of that, there were only about 60 to 70,000 transplants available per year, and so you can see if there's 15 million people who need transplants, but only 60 to 70,000 available, that leaves a lot of people in the dark, figuratively and literally. And so what our company did is we found a way to grow a corneal lab. We're using recombinant gene technology, and we have built a scaffold of collagen and which we can plan to the patient, and the patient's own cells grow into it. So, this becomes a part of the patient, and the long-term results are very, very promising. Wow, that's super interesting. And Tony, you know, let's go right into that big, the day in October of 2015. Can you take me, tell me about what happened on that day? Sure. My friend, Maz, and I had, we were training for a triathlon, and so as part of our training, we would swim to the moat. The Mokolele is our two islands that are about a mile offshore from Lanakai Beach, and so we swam to the island, and we were on our way back. When you leave the island, there's a really good cross current, and so the key is you can't stop while you're coming off the island, otherwise you get washed downstream. So, you have to wait until you get to the middle channel. And so, Maz and I had gotten separated. We were probably about 100 yards apart coming off the island, and I made it to the middle channel first, and so I was just kind of hanging out in the middle channel waiting for Maz to catch up. And, you know, I was swimming at a really slow pace, and just kind of looking at the coral and hanging out when I felt just a very violent grab on both my legs. And at first, you know, I honestly thought it might have been Maz, you know, catching up with me and just grabbing my legs. And then I felt just a horrendous pain. I mean, it's hard to describe how it just shot through my legs, and I looked back and I just saw teeth. And the shark just hadn't pulled my legs in her mouth. And I remember I was trying to punch, you know, using my fist to punch behind me. And I grabbed a good breath of air, and she started to force me deep into the water. I remember my eardrums shattered because we just dove so fast. I didn't have time to clear my ears. And I kept punching and punching, but it wasn't doing anything.  And so it allowed me to turn around and face the shark. So I grabbed her by the snout and tried to keep her away from me while I was punching her and punching her gills. And I can tell you, punching doesn't really work. It's not going to stop a shark. And then I saw her eyes. And, you know, I told you about my business, we do by us at that corny is one of the things we do and when we have any prototype, we take pig eyes and we practice the surgery on the pig eyes and we practice inserting the corny is there. And the pig anatomy is very similar to the shark anatomy. They have what's called a nicotate membrane, which is a third eyelid. So the eyelid's closed and then there's a third eyelid that goes across. And this eyelid's for protection. That's why, like when dogs try to chase pigs through the brush, the pig is never hurt.  And so, and I knew that the nicotate membrane is very strong if you push it this way, but you can just slide it like this and it slides right off. So I did just as we did to the pigs. I just opened her eyes, slipped the nicotate membrane and pushed my fingers into the medial aspect here and the eyeball popped right out. So I just ripped her eyeball right out and then she left me alone. So I started swimming back to the surface and I, boy, I didn't realize how deeply we were. I just remember it taking, you know, I'm stroking and stroking and trying to get up, trying to get up and the surface was so far away. I, it's hard to tell how deeply we were, but when I finally got to the surface, I remember I was treading water and yelling for help and looking around and I couldn't see anyone. And all of a sudden a foot floated next to me and I thought, oh, somebody lost a foot out here and I realized it was my own foot. And so I just put it into my swim trunks and then started to, and I realized there was no one around. So I started to swim back to shore, but I knew I needed to, I knew I wasn't gonna make it because we were over half a mile from shore. So I needed to swim backstroke so I could keep yelling while I swam. So I swam backstroke and was yelling the whole time, help, help, help.  Julian picked me up and you can see from the picture that that's Julia, that's me on Julian's boat. And then Charlie went to go pick up my friend, Maz. And we're really lucky Charlie was there that day because Julian and I kept struggling with breathing and those boats are so tippy that, and I didn't have legs at the time. So we kept falling over, we kept capsizing the boat, but Charlie was able to grab Maz and they headed to shore immediately. Later on I heard from the paramedics that there's only a few ambulances on the whole west side, on the whole east side of the island. And the last ambulance had, or the second to last ambulance had been called out. And when they received that one call from Julian, they only had one ambulance there. And two minutes later, that ambulance was called to the North Shore. And so if Charlie hadn't made it to shore that much earlier, then that ambulance would have been head to the North Shore. And I would, I'd be dead for sure. So yeah, it's amazing. Charlie was only 14 years old at the time.  I mean, by getting to shore so fast. Tony, how much blood did you lose during that whole time and then during the time in the ambulance going to Queens? Yeah, as soon as I got to shore, they were able to put a tourniquet on me. But by that time, I was having a lot of trouble breathing. And the doctors in the ER said that a guy that's normally my size has about five and a half liters of blood in him. And they put nine liters of blood in him. So I guess I was almost completely desagminated by the time I got to the ER. You know, when I was in the hospital, when I was in the ambulance, I, you know, there's statistics out there that when you're in an accident, the minute the ambulance arrives, your chance of survival goes up to 50%. And the minute you make it to the ER, your chances of survival goes to 95%. And so I knew those statistics and I knew that the key to my survival is just to stay alive until I got to the hospital. And so the whole time, you know, when I was waiting for the ambulance or when I was in the back of the ambulance, I remember I just needed to stay awake and cognizant.  And so I just kept running Fibonacci sequences through my head because I knew I just needed to stay conscious and need to stay awake. As soon as I saw the awning at Queens, I just passed out then. And I just let the dark to stake me because I knew that I had 95% chance of survival at that point.  What was your mental state like when you're in that hospital room? The first two weeks were kind of tough. I had a lot of dudes running in and out of me and they were keeping me sedated. So I was just kind of in and out of consciousness. And then the next three weeks, they had done a lot of fixation. They had taken the foot that I recovered and they reattached it to my leg. And then they put metal bars in there to kind of fixated to hold it all in place. And so for the first three weeks, I had to stay very still because any movement would cause, you know, the leg to misalign. So that was by far the toughest time. Sitting there for three weeks, not being able to move at all. But once I got out of that, I was able to get into a wheelchair for the first time. And I remember after five weeks of just being in the hospital and, you know, looking at the roof or the ceiling there, it was so amazing to be able to see the sunlight. And it just, it was, it was amazing. Yeah. And what am I good? And so we got back to the hospital bed and one of my good friends, Del, he had met a guy a few years early, a guy named Tom Lee. And Tom was a soldier in an army in the army. And his Humvee had been hit by an IED in Iraq. And he had lost one of his legs and partially and his other leg was salvaged. And Tom walked into my hospital room and, you know, and he started chatting with me and then he pulled up his hand leg and showed me his prosthetic leg. And he said, you know what? It's not so bad.  You can too. And that was, that was so important to me.  And just wondering what my life would be now that I didn't have legs and seeing Tom that day and knowing that there was life after amputation. That was a really important day. Tony, you're the father and son that rescued you. They came to visit you in the hospital. What was it like seeing them again in the hospital this time? It was, it was great to see Julian and Charlie. And over the years, we've kept in touch. We've, you know, been a, oh, the person on the right of that photo, that's, that's, that's mad. That's the guy that was swimming with me that day. And Julian and Charlie are just great people. They live, they still live in Manukai. Well, I actually, Charlie's off to college now, but they're, they'll be seeing contact a few and a few months ago, we, we all went up to the North Shore and the Ocean Ramsey runs an amazing shark swim, swim with the sharks program up there. Her and her partner Juan are conservationists and shark enthusiasts. And they brought us up all up there. And we got a chance to swim with, with a lot of the different sharks. And it was really an amazing experience. And to be able to share that with Julian and Charlie was wonderful. Oh, you know, I had Ocean Ramsey on my TV show a few months ago. And yeah, what her and Juan are doing, I mean, it's, it's incredible. Just the education about sharks and how they're really not interested in humans. But what did, Tony, what did Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors do for you while you were in the hospital? Well, you know, it was, it was great that I was back in 2015 and was doing one of their championship seasons. And I've been a season ticket holder for a number of years and I've just been a really big Warriors fan. And when the, the Warriors heard of what happened to me, that was fantastic. They just sent me a jersey, a signed jersey, and he sent me a whole box of, of shirts and of your warrior shirts. And so I was able to spread them around the floor because it was right around the time where they were, the season was starting.  We'd all put on our shirts and it was, it was great that, yeah, I really appreciate the Warriors reaching out to me. And it was really nice to step to sign a jersey for me. Oh, that's so cool to hear that they did that.  And, and Tony, I want to ask you this, you know, while, you know, after being in the hospital, were you experiencing any PTSD at all? Yeah, right, right after, during, while I was in the hospital, my company's, my company was a startup and it was undergoing a funding round. And so we were, we were very busy at that moment. And immediately after the hospital, I had to get on an airplane pretty, pretty soon after that and, and go see some of my investors and try to, try to close that funding round. And so it was so busy that, that I really didn't have time to really kind of process a lot of it. And it wasn't until almost a year, maybe two years later that I started having some pretty bad nightmares. And, and, and, you know, I would wake up sometimes and just, you know, and just be stretched with sweat. And I could relive the shark attack in my, in my nightmares. And it took a little while to get over that. One of the things I tried was, was, was try, a friend of mine at Stanford had a program where they, they were using LSD to kind of try to look at or try to, to help people with PTSD come to terms with some of the, the memories and some of the bad feelings. And I tried it out and it actually worked very well. It's, it's really interesting how, I guess when it's properly used, it allows you to, to kind of separate you from the emotion and the, and I guess the panic and the, the fear that's, that's involved in that moment. And so it allows you to kind of relive those moments or remember those moments without feeling the emotion that's attached to it. And because a lot of times that emotion can, that emotion, that, that, that, that primal fear can really, really just overwhelms everything else. And so when you start thinking back on the attack, when I started thinking back on attack, that emotion would just overwhelm all the other feelings and it made it very difficult to kind of analyze what was happening. And so, so LSD really helped that. And we, we did it one time and it was, was very useful and it allowed me to kind of relive the, or we remember and relive the entire attack without having that, those intense emotions attached to it. And it really helped me process what happened. Well, that's fascinating to hear that. And, and Tony, I know that you just finished reading my book and what, what stood out to you when you're reading it, when you're reading the books. You know, I'll tell you, one of the biggest things that, and it was pretty early on in your book, you talked about the three cons. And I can tell you, one of the biggest things in the, out there is consistency. It's building daily habits. And when you're coming back from, from getting knocked down, and that's what I feel like when, with the shark attack, I feel like I was just knocked down pretty hard.  But what they don't see is, it's the day to day.  It's when your leg is hurting and it's, it's that day to day, every day that really leads to those big moments. And that's something that, that is not often seen. But that's what makes all the difference. And I'm, and it, it makes a difference not just in recovering from a, from an injury, makes a difference in sports and makes a difference in life. It makes a difference in your career. It's that day to day consistency. Get out there.  Try to be 1% better every day. And that is, that's a, that's a great thing. You know, I've never heard of put like that, but I think that is exact, that is a great way to put it. You know, you're just trying to be just a little bit better each day and, and keep striving, you know, I'm not into those big accomplishments. What I'm into is that day to day, you know, striving and keeping things moving, keeping things, keeping things going forward. And that's how those big accomplishments occur.  It's a little victories lead to big victories right there. Yeah. And then that's how you do it is through the 1% principle. I love that, that that stood out to you.   I'm probably asking me, I'm out of, I'm usually out of Queens or canoes. Mostly canoes, probably about three to four days a week. And now with the, with the swells on the North Shore. So we, we probably get up to the North Shore, Vannies or Chuns, probably once a week. It's a little bit of a drive, but, but it's really great to be out there.  It's, it's a part and part of my mental health. And so right away, you know, my background is as an engineer. So right away, I started designing different legs to be able to do different sports. I started realizing that the amputee community was all about being able to walk. And being able to walk is very important because it's, it's, it's really important for daily life. But I wanted to go beyond that. I wanted to be able to rock climb. I wanted to be able to surf. I wanted to be able to ski. And I realized that there really weren't legs out there for that. And so I started with a couple of engineering friends. We started designing different legs to do different things. And so, you know, in that surfing picture, you can kind of see it. It's a little occluded by the wave, but you can see that the leg, the surfing leg that I designed back there, you know, it's a, it's more of a bare metal kind of leg and allows me to turn the surf board and kind of turn that, turn the board into the wave. And then I have, I have skiing legs and legs for rock climbing. Yeah, it's been kind of a hobby of mine to kind of try to, try to make all these different legs. And, and, you know, and then I have other friends who are amputees and being able to share these legs with these, with my friends.  Well, for the last, you know, six months with COVID and everything, rock climbing week, we often go to Makapu around near the lighthouse over there. There's a, there's a, there's some anchors set up on the rock wall there and it's a great place to climb. Hiking, we hike all over the island, you know. I try to stay away from the really, really rough hikes. That picture there is from Antelope Canyon in Utah. I took some time. This was in 2019 before COVID hit up. And I just spent some time hiking and camping in Utah and Nevada and, and, you know, we're up on Bryce Canyon and, and Mount Zion National Park. It's, it's really gorgeous out there. I recommend to all your viewers that they get a chance. It, you know, it's, it's, cause I know everyone in Hawaii goes to Las Vegas and Las Vegas is great.  It is gorgeous. And if you just keep on another hour more to the east, you're going to hit Bryce Canyon. Another thing that's absolutely amazing. And so on your next trip to, to Las Vegas, hopefully you can take a day or two off and, and get up there and see some of God's wonderful creation. Tony, you mentioned earlier that, that you also did do skiing and how, how easy or hard was it for you to really learn how to adapt to ski again? Actually skiing was pretty easy because when you ski, you wear ski boots that, that fix your ankles. So my biggest problem is that, that I don't have ankles or anymore. My, so my, both of my, with my prosthetics, my feet stay at like a 90 degree angle. And I'm not able to, and so skiing, that's kind of perfect because, you know, having your ski, having your legs locked in one angle, actually benefits you. And so what I did is I removed, I took, that's one of the early prototypes, my newer prototypes, I've removed the boot completely. So I just have a leg that just clicks directly into the, to the ski boot. And that makes things lighter, it makes things easier, it makes me more agile out there.  And so I try to adapt to that by having, by, instead of being able to move my ankles, now I've moved my feet. And that's how I'm able to turn the board. It's a little bit slower, it's a little bit more cumbersome, but it still allows me to make turns and control the board. Oh, that makes sense. And, and I know that, that you also do cycling as well. Yeah. Yeah, they, you know, I, there's a great, the Honolulu Bike League, HBL has two great races every year. They do a North Shore metric century, and then they do a South Shore, a full century. And so that picture is taken from a century that was done. That's in Coffee Lining Park. And, and yeah, I trained for that. This was about two years after I got out of the hospital, 18 months after I got out of the hospital, I started training for that. And I developed a special leg that were, that allowed me to clip right into the cycle. The challenge there is with most people, if you look at the cleats on a cycle, they're put where the toe box is. And that's because cycling counts on a lot of calf muscle work. And if you look at like professional cyclists, they have huge calf muscles. And that's because the calf does a lot of work as you're trying to get up hills. But with amputees, you don't have that calf. And so the problem with having the cleat, the pressure point over at the toe is that you're pushing from here and the weight is being translated here. And so you're losing a lot in that. And so the key was to move the cleat underneath where your ankle comes down. And it's much more efficient, especially if you don't have calf, that's probably I think the most efficient way to ride a bike. And so I had to design my own leg for that. But my first few iterations of that leg were rough because it was just a cleat on the end of a stick. And it was like a peg leg, like the old pirates. But that turned out to be really slippery.  And so I had to develop a toe and a heel to go behind it. So every one of these legs that you have designed takes a couple of different iterations. You have to design one, play with it, test it out for a little while and then go back to the drawing board to make the changes you need and then bring out the next generation. But it's a lot of fun and it allows me to get out there and do things. Lucky thing you're an engineer. And Tony, I want to ask you one more thing before we wrap up. What advice do you have for all of us? Well, I'm just gonna say a few things that when I was in the hospital or when on the day of the attack, I had lost a lot of blood. And they put nine liters of blood in me.  And so if you get a chance and if you're able to, please donate blood because it really does save lives.  And on a side note, if you hear that ambulance coming on the road, get out of the way. I mean, yesterday I just saw some people just, you know, trying to erase that ambulance and get out of the way. There's someone in there that really needs to get to the hospital. But more general advice, I think a lot of the concepts that you laid out in your book, and I really adhere to the consistency and that 1% rule, the battles are always won before the war starts. And it's won because of preparation, because of all the things that you do on a daily basis that gets you to that mount point. It's not the glory moment. It's the moment that you're by yourself and fighting through your own issues as you need to. But it's those moments that win the day. And so that's the advice that I give folks. It's that day-to-day consistency. Tony, great advice. And I wanna thank you for sharing your story on the show with me today. Oh, I'm happy to do it, Rusty. And thank you for watching Beyond the Limes on Think Tech, Hawaii. For more information, please visit rusticamory.com and my books are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. I hope that Tony and I will inspire you to create your own superior culture of excellence and to find your greatness and help others find theirs. Aloha.


I have a rather persistent visitor today right outside my window. He watched me walk into my front door, almost walked in with me.  The day I moved into this house five years ago, there was a large egret who did the same thing. Almost walked right through the door with me and the people who were helping me move. We named him Stan. This is not Stan. I don't know who this egret is. But these guys come around every once in a while, not every day.    Don't know what they want, but they're very persistent and very patient when they do show up. The crows and the squirrels don't like sharing.


At Audiology Associates of Prestonsburg, you can live your life the way you want and find the freedom of better hearing. With 40 years of being in the hearing care industry, you'll experience patient care that is specific to you with exceptional follow-up care that ensures your hearing and balance needs are being met. Audiology Associates at 1428 North Lake Drive in Prestonsburg. Friends Drift In has been nominated for the 2023 Coolest Thing Made in Kentucky Tournament for their Strawberry Moonshine Jam. This is an online voting bracket style tournament to let Kentuckians pick the 2023 Coolest Thing Made in Kentucky. We were blessed to be nominated for the Coolest Thing Made in Kentucky by the Kentucky Manufacturers Association. Really a surprise to us because if you look at that list, we're one of the smallest companies on there by far. We're on there with like Toyota, a couple of bourbons are on there as well from the big bourbon companies. So, you know, we're blessed and happy to be invited and of course when we do our Kentucky product we're doing is the Strawberry Moonshine Jam. And the nice thing about that is it actually uses a local moonshine, the first legal moonshine made here in Pike County. It's Polly Hollow Moonshine made over at Polly Hollow on road or, I'm sorry, on Forest Hills at Belfry. So real good friends of ours and do a really good job with us. We use their moonshine. You know, we make it all at the Cane Kitchen over in Whitesburg, Kentucky, so everything's as local as we can be. Friends Driften makes over 15 varieties of jams and jellies and are one of the smallest companies nominated in the tournament. I mean, it's a huge honor to be mentioned with the likes of those companies. I mean, you know, we got companies like Toyota has been in Kentucky for a long time. We're competing against Toyota Camry. We're competing against at least two bourbons. So there's a lot of things on there. L8 has been around for years in Winchester as well. Yeah, we are, but we are very honored to be that somebody thought enough of us to nominate us for the coolest thing in Kentucky. To cast your vote in the 2023 coolest thing made in Kentucky tournament, go to coolest thingky.com. Reporting for Mountain Top News, I'm Brianna Robinson.


Popularity in video has grown hugely over the last few years thanks in part to vlogging. So in this video we thought we'd give you a few tips on key things to think about when creating the perfect video blog. When making a video, it's always best to be as prepared as possible beforehand. Be clear about what you're going to do and say in your vlog, including what points you want to get across and any props you will need to use. Even if you're not using a pre-written script, make sure that there is a logical thread to any points you want to make. It's always important to think about your audience and make sure that you pitch things at the right level for them to understand. If you want to talk straight into the camera, you must make sure the height of the camera is correct in order to get everything you need into the shot. You must also be certain that the camera is the right distance to be able to capture both the sound and the image clearly. Depending on what types of vlogs you'll be making and where you'll be filming, a tripod amount could come in handy. It can help set the correct height you need and make sure the camera is extra secure and steady, minimising any camera shake. Image stabilization is a key feature for a great vlogging camera that helps keep your video footage constantly smooth when you're moving around during filming. It will also minimise any blurring you may get when vlogging on the go. Autofocus and face detection is another great feature to ensure that the camera will automatically keep focused on the personal object you are shooting. Most vlogging cameras these days have a flip screen, which is especially useful if you want to use it as a screen monitor, so you can see yourself and monitor the footage while you're recording. However, it can also be used to help achieve some interesting angles to make the setting look more creative, especially if you're filming outdoors. Although not always obvious, another thing to think about is how you will shoot your vlog in low light conditions. Some cameras can struggle with this, so look for one that allows you to control the light settings to compensate. Cameras with a wide lens aperture and large sensor are also a good choice as they can capture more light. If you have some basic editing software, you have the advantage of filming small sections at a time and then editing them together on a PC or Mac when you're finished. If you want to spend time doing some creative editing, it may be a good idea to add some music and insert other images into the video blog, making it more interesting. To do this, it's best to first record the video onto the camera's removable SD card. Finally, you can remove the card and slot it into your PC or Mac to then use editing software. Alternatively, if you have no need to edit and the camera has Wi-Fi, you should be able to upload your blog direct to your smartphone or online platform such as Facebook and Instagram. Another great feature with Wi-Fi is that by downloading an app, you can remotely control the camera from a distance, giving you much more freedom of flexibility in the shooting. Beyond this, the highest video quality is 4K. However, it's worth noting that this quality can only be fully appreciated on 4K screens and will take up a huge amount of memory space due to file size. We hope you found these tips helpful. Happy vlogging!


Can we start? Hey, man. Open it up. Open it up. Yes, sir. What are you? You don't know what it means? What I mean, the market is open. The black market is open. That means there's a black money. That means there's a black people in here. That means, hey, come get it. Come get it. Come get it. Welcome to the black market. First of all, first of all, first of all, man, we got, man, us, them, respected bro, sit here with us today, and we're going to get right into it, because we got a whole lot of stuff to talk about. Do. So you say y'all started in his apartment? Yeah. I'll let Jared. Man, so, Jared. Introduce yourself. First of all. I'm Jared Patterson. This is my business partner, my brother, Jason Hawkins. I've got 100% of respected roots right here. Respective roots is a brand where you do a whole lot of things that we're going to get into, but primarily, we are a natural grooming line created for everybody that has skin in here. So people ask, who can use it? It's for everybody, but the main reason is because there weren't products for our people, for our skin, for our hair types on the market, right? So everything that we do is natural. We stay plant-based. We got everything from body wash, soaps, hair moisturizers, beer, conditioner, body butter, which is our number one selling product. Cold wash for your beard, and we brought gifts for all of you guys. So before we get out of here, we got gift baskets, and if I knew all of y'all would have been here, we'd have bought more, but I think we got you covered. You know where we at? You can always come back. All right. What are you smelling like? Man, that's what... That's what we're smelling like. That's what gets us hooked. Yeah. If you get that coming.  They smell real trough gloves. Yeah. So fragrance is big, man. If it don't smell good, I like we like to talk the example. The first thing you do when you wash your clothes is what? It's that one. Put them to your nose, right? So if it don't smell good, you're not going to wear it. That was a big issue, because products that was natural, they didn't have a good smelling fragrance. Sometimes it's very, very earthy. So like my brother, Jason, was saying, man, it started out a necessity. My family has a big culture of natural products. My mother rocked the hot top fade in the 80s and all of that. Your mama had one? She had one, man. She used to do all the natural medicine and natural oils and that kind of stuff, which was the inspiration for that first product, the beer conditioner. Hell yeah. So the beer conditioner is all natural, man. Shea butter. All black people love shea butter. Yeah, that's why I was messing with the little body butter. Like, yeah. My bad.  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the theme for everything, man. We got oils, beard oil, hair oil, rose hip is the main oil in there. Yeah. You want to be put together before you get through all them products, Los. Man, that's one of the ones right there. Yeah, man. Fragrance is amazing. Bring you back to life right here on the set. He can use all these together, right? Absolutely. He messed around in his beard catcher on fire. Two, four different things. You just use the beard oil. Don't touch the body butter. So that's actually a real popular question, man. People want to know, do I use the beer conditioner first or the beer oil? Yeah. Really? My preference is to use the oil last as a finisher. Okay. Use the oil first and then the beer conditioner. They are natural products, right? Okay. So you're good. I'll see y'all put the candle out right here. You ain't going to catch it on fire. You ain't need to do that. Right, right, right. We appreciate it. I ain't do it. Who did? Sure, I like it. Spray it on there. No, no, no. I got the body butter in the beard oil. That's plant-based, too. It's going to burn a long time. No. Yeah. It's dope. The culture, man. I do want to take a second to thank you two brothers. Marcus was just up here, awesome brother. We just always passing each other in the city of Atlanta. What you guys are doing for the community is amazing. I don't know if you realize it or not. I'm sure people are telling you, but sometimes when you end the doing, you don't like us. We moving so often, man. The people that tell us, we love what you're doing. I'm like, man, I'm just working. Right. So thank you guys for having your nose to the ground stone, being pillars in this community. Yeah. What you've done, you know, being on TV, man. The same spirit that we see coming through that television is here right here today, man. So thank you probably 10 years, 15 years, looking back from now. You know, you might be hosting a talk show wherever you want to take your career. Whatever you want to do. Remember, we was over on Maro, man. So thank you, brothers. Thank you all for coming. Thank you all for creating this product, man. Let people know where it's available. People are going to be watching and want to know they're going to want to smell the body butter and the oil that want the whole kit, man. So where can they pick it up? Yes, sir. You can purchase our products online at respectiveroots.com. We started out as an e-commerce business eight years ago. But we also have stores in popular malls like Lenox Square, the gallery in Houston, Pentagon City and D.C. We're very hairy, populated in our areas where our people live. What's the next step where y'all want to take the brand to? It's unlimited. Because we have two sides to our brand. We have the non-for-profit, which is our respective Brotherhood Initiative, where Jared and I go into the high school, specifically APS, where we work. And we work with the Phoenix Academy there with, you know, led by Principal Yusuf Mohammed. We go in there and we work with our young African-American males, 9th grade to 12th grade. Specifically, we teach them life skills. Things that we know they're not learning in school, things we know like to have financial literacy, how to deal with conflict. Instead of using aggression, how to use your head. Show them how to start a business. And entrepreneurship is one of the things that we teach. So it's a 15-week curriculum. Outside of our for-profit side, we've established the groundwork to what it is. And what we're doing now is trying to scale our business even more. But also being trendsetters in the industry, teaching people, because there's so many other people who's trying to make products of their own. And they really don't know what to do outside of making their products. And a lot of fields, though, the apex is going to the shelves of big-box retailers. You see what I'm saying? We chose opposite of that. We were invited to go to some of the top big-box retailers that you guys know of. And we went, we listened to their stories, but it didn't appeal to us. As I mentioned to you, we're 100% owners. And we don't have no desire and we're not sell-outs. We don't have to. Oh, well, check this out.  You've got a whole line of plant-based products. I got a partner right there. Everything he do is plant-based. That's actually it. Man, that dude right there. Great, you got some of this? Yeah. He's hitting it. I know if he uses it, it's really plant-based because he's going to look up all the ingredients. Yes, sir. He comes and visits at Lenox. I don't know how many times he done been through. Yeah, because he's a shopper. He's an avid shopper. He shops everywhere he goes. Everybody that support, man, we appreciate. It's not only him, but you know, all you guys, just for having us on the show, we appreciate that. That's what this whole platform is for, man. It ain't just about us, man. We got to open it up to everybody in the community and, you know what I mean, let people know who is dope amongst us so we can support. We glad you kept it independent, too.  Yeah, but if they want to buy it, sell it to them, then start another. A lot of times you can't do that. We got to get our own, we got to get our money out. We don't knock any other brands who've taken that step, you know what I'm saying? Because we also understand the process and the urgency sometimes.  You see what I'm saying? And you're competing in the market that is saturated with thousands of people who are trying to put something in the marketplace, right? So a lot of times when somebody's brands, they offer this money, you know, maybe $50 to $100 million. They see that because they, you know, their products are on these shelves that they big box retailers. And they may be moving 40, 50 million pieces, $40, $50 million globally, but they only receiving like $8 million of that. Those big box retailers is taking out. We opened up carts and malls. We get 100% of everything. I see what you're doing. I like it, yeah. This is a lot of stuff. We're showing our people how to do it.  So we've been approached many a times and we still say the same thing. Sometimes you've got to turn it down. The power is in saying no. So look, I know some people are going to be watching this and they're going to want to reach out about the program that you spoke about for the young men. So where can they look up more information about that? Yes, sir. Please go to rrbhi.org. That's respective Roots Brotherhood Initiative. You'll learn more about our mission, what we're doing, our initiative with the kids, how we interact with not only with our children, but also becoming a sponsor. We just had our first career fair for our kids. After the curriculum is over, we brought in about four to five different companies. IBEW, we are familiar with electoral workers here. We had local 85. Local 85. Right. So they teaching our young men trades. Right, right. So you can't take that from them. You see what I'm saying? So as they learn that business, they work within that business five, six years later down the road, then you start talking about entrepreneurship. Then you start bringing the people in. Y'all got any products that's like specifically for the ladies? All of our products are unisex. The ladies typically gravitate towards this product here, which is our hair and scalp oil. Okay. The ladies love the hair, right? This body butter, man, is great for men and women, kids, as young as two years old. They really love that product. The body wash has an amazing fragrance to it. We don't put any chemicals. A lot of ladies like how that works for them. No chemicals, no dyes, no colors in the product. And even the foam and cold wash, they use that. So my mother put me home game, really. She said that foam and cold wash that you have is amazing. I said, my, that's, you know, I didn't intend it for the ladies. Well, how are you using it? I use it to remove my makeup. She says water-based. It's very gentle on my skin. It's got olive oil inside of there, so it doesn't strip out of the natural oils away from your body, because God gave us what we need. Okay. And sometimes we get in the way, right? Sometimes we're like, oh, I got too many pimples.   Here goes some oil because you need some oil. As you dry your face. Right. We have problems that people are trying to fix themselves. We try to keep everything unisex. The only thing that's exclusively for men is what you see in that gold can, the beer condition. The ladies ain't trying to go to beer. There's some ladies out there. They might want it. You know what I'm saying? They might want it. I want to say this too, man, but I was just talking about our RRBHI.org. We got any golfers, man. We host the golf tournament every single year. We have a golf classic. I might not play golf, but I might pull up. Pull up, man.  We got to have it, man. We got you. You all got that on footage, right? Carlos.  He ain't going to do nothing. We got to be quiet.  This year we partnered with Shatoi Long. That's what they're doing. It was a weekend, is that right? Labor Day weekend. September 3rd and the 2nd. We'll have a mixer the night before where everybody's participating. Midnight, we're going to do rock the range where we do some long drives. Get surprises away. It's having fun venturing out into new activities. You know what I'm saying? But still keeping our swag with what we're doing because we focused on the young men. That's the bottom line. And RBHI.org? RBHI.org. Respected Roots Brotherhood Initiative. We need more volunteers. How can people help? We bring people in from the community that relate to our young men. We just recently had a young man that retired at the age of 24. He creates NFTs. So when he came in to speak to our young men you got to see how their eyes light up. You see what I'm saying? I know the younger generation, the millennials and the generation Z, a lot of times we're talking about them. Y'all ain't listening. Y'all in title. But let me tell you, they're the smartest generations. You see what I'm saying? They need what we have to get to them so they can push forward. They're the ones who's breaking these chains. They're the ones who's pushing these barriers down. So instead of talk about it, be about it. You know what I'm saying? So that's why we do what we do. The show, man. I want to shout out to our website. If y'all want to get any of these products I know y'all love y'all Amazon some people that order in Atlanta y'all typically get y'all products the next day or in two days. So we got awesome shipping here in the city and even if you're not here we get your products in the mail same day most of the time. That's of course water on a weekend or something. Our website is RespectedRoots.com that's R-E-S-P-E-C-T-E-D Roots. Our O-O-T-S.com and we even have more products than this. A wooden pick. A wooden pick for the beard and I'm supposed to use plastic and metal because it'll snatch your beard, snatch your hair out. We have a wave conditioner. Y'all was talking to Marcus about the waves and stuff. We have a wave conditioner. That's also natural. So check us out, man. We got subscriptions so you don't have to worry about re-ordering when you out of product. So we got everybody covered at RespectedRoots.com Well, there you have it. We out of here. I love it. That's dope, man. Appreciate it.


This is Brett with Summit Auto and today I'm at the 2020 Chicago Auto Show checking out all the vehicles here and just thought I'd stop and check this one out. It's on a spinner so it's nice to get a video get to see all the different angles of the vehicle on this 2020 Cadillac XT6. It's kind of a really cool blue metallic on there. We shoot all of our videos in 1080p 60 frames per second. So if you have HD capabilities on your computer tablet or smartphone device, turn them on right now because it's like you're right here at the 2020 Chicago Auto Show with me. And definitely your best way to check out the vehicles without actually being here. Looks like it has continental cross contact tires. Trying to see what size they are. I think they're 20s and those are 265 45 R 21 tires. Those are 21 inch rims on there. Kind of a cool looking car. It's got some good lines to it. Real sharp lines on the hood there. Anyways, thanks for checking out the video today and if you want to check out more HD videos you can go to youtube.com slash summit auto. Remember to like, subscribe, and share on this video and all the videos that you see there. In fact, in a second you will see a link to subscribe to our YouTube channel on your left. There's a link to more 2020 auto show videos like this one on your right and if you haven't been to our website on the bottom link to our website summitauto.com. Thanks for checking out the video and go check out some more.


I want to welcome George Mikowski to the Haydashbury video oral history project. My name is Rebecca Nichols and I will be moderator for this interview. Nice to see you. Pleasure. I love your hair. It's grown a lot of long. Which hair in particular?  Yeah, native. So where were you born? About three blocks from here. We're on Haight Street. Yes. About three blocks away at St. Mary's Hospital. On, um, Stanion. Amazing. And, uh, what are your parents' names? Felicia. And this is my mom. And my dad, um, is Joseph. He's, um, been dead for about ten years or so. And so... Could have worked with your father, too. He's a metal worker. His father was a sheet metal worker. His father was a sheet metal worker. He was from Poland. My parents are both from Poland. They're holocaust survivors. Wow, when did they arrive approximately in America? 1950. And I have two older brothers. They were born in Russia. And I'm the only one born in America with my family. What's your brother's names? Henry and Jerry. I know we're going to talk a little bit later about some of the work she's done. But I know you have a CD out about San Francisco. And I think there was a photo of your mother. Can we possibly take a close-up? Yeah, this is a CD I put out just a little while ago. It's called San Francisco. Just what the cover looks like. And it was done by Alton Kelly, a really well-known artist. My father's a Stanley mouse for many years. And Kelly probably did the first posters ever. And he created the family dog originally. And he's a legendary guy, a great guy. A sweetheart. Yeah, a great guy, a great artist. And so this album, San Francisco, is a musical soundtrack to the city. I wrote a song for every neighborhood and hopefully the music sounds like where you are. Perhaps she's the heart of the area. I know you did a little tribute to your mother this year and I think she's photographed somewhere. My mom is on the back cover. Wonderful. Tell us a little about that. Sitting anonymously next to me on this bench here. There she is. She's my best buddy. I know her too and she's a wonderful lady. Wonderful, wonderful lady. She's pretty cosmic. And here, you know, when I was a kid and had gotten grounded, the beam was happening that week and she wanted to go herself. So that's how I got to go.  So we both went. That was the first time she ever saw me smoke pot. I wasn't here. It was about 13 or 14. And I'm 52 now. But what was great was, see, I have two older brothers and they are a lot older. They're seven and ten years older. Henry is seven years older and Jerry's ten years older. And they'd already been smoking before that. They were a lot older. My mom had never seen me do it. She didn't even know if I did it. And we're sitting there, we're watching, you know, The Grateful Dead and Quicksilver and Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti and all this. And this guy, you know, next to me just passes me a lead joint. And my mom's looking at me going, what are you going to do with that anyway? I start smoking and what's she going to do?  What's she going to do? So that was a pretty amazing day. In many respects. So you didn't actually live in the Haydash Ferry, but you lived in San Francisco. You had a lot of time here. Well, for a lot of reasons. A, I wasn't home. Right.  And B, you know, for a little kid about 13 or 14, it's really cool all these girls with no bras on. It's like a really big deal for me. And that was a big attraction for me. And I'd be here every day after school. Sure. And also I like everything about it. I like the artwork, the music, the smell. I'll never forget. There was a certain smell. Everything smelled like patchouli and that vinegar on the fish and chips. Right. It's right. Yeah, because there was that place Foghorn, Fish and Ships up the corner for 25 cents.  Yeah. And pour like a, you know, gigantic amount of vinegar on it. Somehow that smell of vinegar and patchouli. It will stick with you forever. Well, the smell will stick with you. Well, you just, the timing was right. You were at the right age. And there was a playground right there. Well, I was a musician, but I was a serious classical pianist. And I was actually pretty well-known. When did you start playing music? When I was, I started, I gave my first concert at the age of four at the San Francisco main library. Wow. And a great story. My mom was so excited. Leaving the house, she fell and broke her leg. Oh my goodness. Didn't go to the hospital until after the recital. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. That's my mom for you. Amazing. I know one of these stories, one of these days when the legendary warlocks Grateful Dead pulled a plat bed from along the straighter and they closed the streets and there was a sea of people. You were there that day. Yeah. Luckily, I didn't know and I don't think anybody did. It was a spur of the moment thing and I just used to like to go hang out at the Grateful Dead's house because they were always, well, Jerry Garcia taught me how to roll a joint there.  And I still, to this day, roll on the table because Jerry had that missing finger. You know, he didn't roll them up like that. He did it like this and so I still do it that way. You still do it the same way. So that day, I just, you know, it was a nice sunny day and I woke up and went to Hay Street and there was a lot of activity around the Grateful Dead's house. That was 7-10 Ashbury. And a lot of activity and what happened was they were renting the flatbed trucks and the generators and they were, it was a guerrilla concert. They had no permits, no rights of any sort. They said, we're going to go play on Hay Street. Once we close it up, what can they do? So they put the two flatbed trucks together and created a long stage and just started playing. I had walked to the destination of the gig from their house with Pig. And I was a kid and he was a really scary looking guy. But he was like the nicest guy in the world. He was like, not scary at all when you started talking to him. And the dichotomy I thought was really great.  And here's this really tough guy just going, oh, I show up. I thought he was a great guy. And also that was the first time Jerry Garcia had ever wore glasses in public. And that was a big deal. He didn't have a beard at that point. So you was going through a book? Well, no. There were a lot of pictures. And photographers, Jim Marshall was there. And the Dead came out with an album called Live Dead a little later. It was a pretty famous album. And on the insert when you open up the album was this picture. And I'm looking at the picture and I remember I was there. That is the day you were talking about right now. And straight theater up here. Here I am right here. Right above my finger. How old are you there? There I am. There you are with the black glasses. All right. I was about 14 years old there. Amazing. And here I'm right in the front, watching the band. And that was a great, great day. That's a great day. And I see here the straight theater is all open. Yeah, straight theater right here. Charlie Musselwhite. And all the kids playing. There was hardly any way you could stop that. The street went all the way down. This is at Stanion. The straighter. And we're taking the view all the way back to Masonic. Yeah. Let's back up here on this picture here. And we did look at the street theater. Look at all the people. It starts at straighter and goes all the way back all the way to the top. And there's a cherry with his glasses on for the first time. Amazing. We'll do a close-up on the cherry. I was looking at pig pen. In the shot. But there's cherry. First time glasses. There it is. And maybe. That flannel shirt he was wearing. So many people can look at this and find themselves in there. I know a few friends that claim to be in this picture. I was there that day, so I just, I'm not going to get a magnifying glass. Right. It's like looking at an aerial shot of wood stock and trying to find yourself. Yeah. That is such a great shot because it's so typical of what it looked like when those days happened. And then the police would come around six o'clock and chase everybody away. Right. And the straight theater doors would open wide and everybody would run for refuge inside the straight theater. You know. I said that's an amazing shot. So through the, and that's what about 1967 is. So you were at the human being. Yeah. And any time there was a concert in the park. Everyone? Everyone. Probably. If I had anything, I would plan because the band's setting the planet. Sure. I would, you know, just by virtue of being there, you were there. Exactly.  Best playground? I mean, in the 60s, Hade Ashbury, this was a magical place at a magical time. And cannot be recreated no matter how hard you try. The innocence is the greatest thing that I remember. We were all like pioneers. We had no role models. Right. It was like we were all, everything we did was for the first time. Exactly. We were all jumping off the cliff together. Sure. And didn't know if there was a parachute underneath or a trampoline or a wet rag or anything.  You know, who knew what acid would do to you? Who knew what the whole lifestyle would do to you? Who was some, during that period, did you ever know any other musicians besides your dad? Did you know Grant Jacobs? A lot of people lived in the neighborhood. Oh. McSilver, Big Brother. Even a kid at that time, I didn't really know the big guys. They didn't want to hang out with me. Sure. You know, Jerry Garcia was about the only guy that was nice to me at all. The rest of them could hear a laugh, so I was just sitting away. Right. Well, as I got older, then, you know, then the age levels out. Right. Exactly. And it doesn't matter so much. Sure. You're all the same size, and your hair is all the same length at that point. Sure. You're all, you know. Doesn't matter. And so, then I would become friends with the musicians and the artists. But as a kid, I just looked up to them. Of course. And couldn't really get near hanging with them. Sure. I would say it was a normal day on H Street, and you were coming out of school, and you're walking down the street. You'd pick up some fish and chips on the corner. You might run down the street. And there were places like the Drug Store Cafe, the psychedelic shop, the boot hook. Any memories of walking down H Street in those days? Well, for me, I had a purpose. And that was, I love the posters. So I would come to H Street, and collecting posters was my kind of mission. Right. And while collecting posters, you go into all the shops. You meet everybody and blah, blah, blah. But as a kid, I loved them. And I would go into the stores and say, hey, you know, when the gig's over, can I call Dimms on that poster? Sure. And then I'd go there next week and take it out the way I know. And then I think it was on Tuesdays. Every Tuesday, at about four o'clock or so, a truck would come up to the psychedelic shop with the new Philmore and Avalon posters. And there'd be stacks of them. And so me and the other kids from school, we'd be sure to be there on that day. They had the little flyers. Yes, flyers. You know, let's say take one, we'd take a hundred. Sure. Do you ever take a poster off a pole? We took them off poles. We took them out of stores when we weren't supposed to. We took them out of, I mean, you know, if they were up, we took them.  When the poster came out and they pinned them on the poles, you always had a crowd of people standing around because everybody was trying to figure out what did they say. That experience where the poster art was great, but you could hardly read them at that time. That was kind of the fun. Yeah. It was like a secret code. Right. Like, we could only read them. Our parents couldn't figure them out. Exactly. That was great. This CD that you did has a, it's an amazing CD. I want to congratulate you on it. It's a wonderful piece. And every neighborhood is represented. This piece that you did on the Hade Ashbury, can you tell me a little bit about what inspired you to go the direction you did when you created that? Yeah. And then I'd love to hear it. Let me put this on here. The Hade Ashbury song. Hey, look at this. We're modern science here. We can, all of a sudden, now this thing is going backwards. Okay, here we go. All right, here comes the Hade Ashbury song. What inspired you to? This is a basic asset trip.  It starts out here with some nice kind of piano music. It's kind of early in the morning. I'm looking out the window. It's a really nice day. I think I'm going to take some asses and go down to Hade Street. Now I can go down to Hade Street. It's kind of mysterious.  Here comes the first rush. And this goes on here for a while. Kind of a meditative state. Kind of getting high. Coming to all the colors. You're getting a little bit brighter now. Everything's starting to get kind of goofy. I think I see David Nelson. I think I see George Mikowski. And what happens? This goes on for a bit. And it's in the high gear. This is one finest psychedelic guitar.  You do the North Beach. Beach with the flavor. Introducing the North Beach song of Lawrence Furling Getty. Sea Lions appear in 39. And the church bells of Mission Dolores are the missions song. The artists and all the musicians are all San Francisco. Everybody who appears is... I have a member of the charlatans. Richard Olson plays on the web song. Martin Fiero plays on one. Kathy McDonald appears. Lauren Rowan, Harvey Mendele. All San Francisco artists. Everything is San Francisco. Do you have a website? What is your website? George Mikowski.com George Mikowski. Can you spell Mikowski for us? Can you see? M-I-C-H-A-L-S-K-I George Mikowski. Dot is...you don't have to write D-O-T. Dot. Not C-A-L-M, just C-O-M. I want to lower that a little. That's an incredible treat. Thank you so much. I want to learn a little bit more of what you're doing now and what you've done a little bit in the past. We don't have a whole lot of time, but we don't want to miss some of this stuff. When you were... you had met Don Johnson and tell me some of the growing history of Don Johnson. In my L.A. years. Yes. Well, going to L.A. was a whole trip in itself because in San Francisco I'd been playing with Michael Bloomfield. He taught me how to play the blues, actually. And then I began recording with Blue Cheer and two-thirds of the original Blue Cheer and I went down to Los Angeles and we started a band called Foxtrot. We were the house band of the Whiskey of Go-Go and the Starwood and then we were the first white band to sign the Motown Records which was kind of a trip for us. What year was that around? 1973. Amazing. After that I teamed up with a partner, my Nicky Osterveen and we did a really nice album on Columbia Records but we gained a lot of notoriety for our songwriting mostly for Barbara Streisand who wrote a lot of songs for her. Anything that we know? I wrote a song for her called A Man I Love which is on her greatest hit album so if you're a Barbara Streisand fan you would probably know that song. Immediately. I did the music for a couple of movies whether I did a main event and Isolora Mars. Songbird? Yeah, I have a song on the Songbird album and then right around after that time I met Don Johnson who at the time was just a struggling artist not at all famous and we got along really well together why I don't know but we did. When I first met him he came in the room and he was wearing white tennis shorts and a tennis outfit, a sweater tied around his neck and I looked like I just came from an audition for Kiss or something. Exactly. But we got along really well immediately we ended up becoming best friends I did a lot of work with him musically because he was very musical then when he moved up here to San Francisco to do Nash Bridges he hired me as the music director for the show so that was a good six year run. He gave you some freedom in that show to be able to Well the best part was I was able to use San Francisco Axe and I used Unsigned Axe which no network show has ever done and I used 50 Unsigned Axe from San Francisco because I wanted the show to be authentic when you walk into a nightclub I wanted a real San Francisco band to play in there and real San Francisco music as often as possible so that was a great run. Did your show ever shoot through the hate at all?  Actually it was Cheech and Chong Perfect. and teamed up back together for that scene. Perfect. And I put the music to that and I used Gary Duncan from Quixote on the guitar because I wanted the authentic psychedelic sound for it. Exactly. And then you did some stuff for Fame and you also Kids from Fame did a song in the mind called Lock and Roll World it was a title song in their album it was a huge hit in Europe and I know you're responsible for doing some stuff with the famous mimest Robert Shields. Yeah, Shields and Jornel They're great. Robert Shields started, you know Robert and he started here in San Francisco in Union Square and yeah, I was their music director for about ten years we traveled around the world and we opened for Sinatra for a year and that was a great time. They're so talented. Very talented and then they got their own television show. Yeah, we got our own TV series. Exactly. I think they put us on opposite Laverne and Shirley they were like the biggest show at the time. Right. But it was a great experience I mean, God, Robert's extremely talented artist. It was, okay, so I also know that there was this national tour and a legendary group, Black Tie Oh God, yeah. Can you tell me? That was a great band. It was kind of cool, sir. I went and saw this band called Black Tie and they had Randy Meisner on bass from Eagles who wrote and sang and take it to the limit and Billy Swan was in the group who wrote and sang I can help if you got a problem and don't know what it is, I can help. And Jimmy Griffin, who was in the group, Brad and wrote all those great songs and sang them with David Gates and Blondie Chaplin who's now with the Rolling Stones he was in the band. He sang Sailor and Sailor for The Beach Boys and David Kemper on drums and he was with the Jerry Garcia band and he was with Bob Dylan for 10 years after that and I mean, so this was an amazing band and I went and saw them and I go, God, I would love to play with these guys and then two days later their manager calls and he says, well, they're going on the road and they need a keyboard player you want to come play and I go, I'm there. So we did a national tour and it was phenomenal. Four of the guys in the group sang a number one song. So it was amazing to sprinkle our set with, you know, these hits and we had amazing four-part harmonies. Oh, what a band it was. No, there's no way in this video to fit it all in but there's a few things I don't want to forget and we won't be asking. What's really cool upcoming is Mayor Gavin is in June we're in the middle of May right now in a couple of weeks is appointing me as the chairman of the music task force to bring back the music scene in San Francisco because since Bill Graham's died we have no music scene. In fact, we don't even have a BAMI Awards anymore. You know, San Francisco's always had a music award celebrating all of the musicians that's gone by the wayside. Musicians used to come here from all around the world. Now they're leaving here going to LA they're going everywhere else. There's no more concerts in the parks all the time the band shelves it's empty so I went to the mayor and I said why don't we do something about this so let's revitalize the whole scene and make it where people come from all over the world to come back here for the music and make it where young bands could have a chance to break and so we can showcase them in the band shell and a lot of people would come and see them and then they'll see what's going on somewhere and young bands can get a following and there's so much to be done. The politics out of the way so it gets happening. The politics gets in the way of everything and we should be embracing that we are the city of love and peace just as France is the city of lights Paris is the city of lights and New York is the big apple every city has a thing to grab onto and I said to the mayor I said why run away from love and peace I mean that's what we are and where the city the being was here the summer of love is here this is why run from that that's a great deal build on it so let's take that on with pride so he's given me the full city backing to do these events to have a summer of love so Chet doesn't have to walk around with his hand out asking people to back him to raise money so you don't have to like how you did your last event pay out of your own pocket go crazy to put an event together the city should be behind that because it's great for the city well it's going to be happening now and I'm very excited about that so we have a lot of great things upcoming I know this video is about the past but the past and the present and the future are all related exactly and had I not been in the hay to see what happened then I would not know what to do now exactly well I have a question having been here is very apparent let's bring it back if this video is watched 50 years from now some young people are watching this have heard some of your experiences if nothing more what would you like in other words the world we take your advice what advice would you give if people have just watched us in 50 years I would like for them to just be absolutely amazed that we had a hard time bringing music out to the streets to people everywhere all the time exactly I would hope in 50 years from now there's music everywhere for free and for people to enjoy it heals people it joins people if kids get into music they don't grow up to be who they look that's right that's right I want so much thank you for being here you've added your music alright where's my money yeah the music you've created and brought on board and has entertained so many people it's just the beginning for you we wish you the best thanks a lot I wish you the best too we're going to be calling you back with this project and in life and in health and how all the old hippies come out and talk to you about their experiences oh everybody we have an amazing someday you'll only be hearing rumors about what happened exactly you just had to be there but at least we've got to document some of it while we can tell it our way and thank you George Mcalsy thank you George my friend alright for being part of this and being part of our family thanks Troy okay


Okay, so I guess we'll get started. Thanks everybody for attending. This is the Automotive Grade Linux Birds of a Feather, Developer Birds of a Feather session. And so all the, I posted these slides maybe an hour or two ago to the schedule site so you can download them. There's a lot of links and resources at the end. So you can just click on them. They should all be hyperlinked. So just wanted to do a quick introduction and then we can get into more of a Q&A session. What is AGL? In case you don't know, we're basically an open source project hosted under the Linux Foundation. And our tagline is collaborating to build the car of the future through rapid innovation. We're focused on rapid innovation of in-vehicle software and that includes instrument cluster and in-vehicle infotainment and telematics. And we're focusing on a single code base called the unified code base. So everything that we do is built from a single source tree. We have a total of nine OEMs that are supporting HEL. You can see we have Honda, most of the Japanese ecosystem including Honda, Suzuki, Subaru, Mazda, Toyota and Mitsubishi plus Mercedes Benz and Volkswagen and Hyundai. I was told that I could announce today that we now have 10 OEMs as part of AGL. Ford has officially signed the paperwork. They are now silver members of AGL. So we have almost 150 member companies and you can see we're split up into Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze levels. Whoops, what did I do? AGL, Automotive Grade Linux, we're the only organization, like I said, that's really trying to address all of the software in a car that might run Linux. And our tagline, one of the things that we like to say is if there's a computer in the car or there's a processor in the car running Linux, it should be running Automotive Grade Linux. And we've already got device profiles and some reference devices and applications for infotainment, instrument cluster, telematics, SandCloud is working on a head up display and we're working towards eventually advanced driver systems and autonomous driving. And we're working with Alisa and some of the hyper-advisor vendors to on a functional safety solution. And we also announced, I guess with a press release, although it's been running for a while, we have an instrument cluster expert group, Haraki-san from Suzuki, who's over there, he heads up that expert group and as part of the press release we made today about both, Ford wasn't in the press release. There was two, the paperwork was signed too late for the press release, but we made a press release about the happy halibut release that was just made, 8.0, and the instrument cluster expert group being formed. So we've done eight releases now of AGL and they're named after Fish. So the happy halibut release was the eighth release and coming up we release about, well we have a major release twice a year about every six months and the next one will be itchy ice fish. I don't know if I have pictures of the fish here. So we started developing a single code base called the Unified Code Base. We started this effort in 2015. Basically for all of these different reference devices we're creating, we're working on the same Git tree and we're cultivating an ecosystem of developers and automotive suppliers and OEMs and expertise all using a single software platform and that software platform is all running on multiple boards. We have six or seven different boards that we support and if you came by yesterday to the tech showcase you would have seen the IVI system running on an Intel up-squared board and the instrument cluster was running on a Raspberry Pi 3, so. But those are also, we have those also running our typical big green machine if you've ever seen it that one of the shows runs on a Renaissance R-Car M3 for the IVI system and an Intel middle board max for the instrument cluster. So that's our schedule. Like I said, we just released 8.0. We also just made a patch release for Happy Halibut at the end of July 7.03. So you can see we typically do two releases, two major releases a year and we do patch releases for at least the next six months after that. Typically we've done four to five patch releases after the initial update. We're planning another Guppy release in September and we're planning the first Happy Halibut patch release in early September as well. So the AGL architecture at a high level it's microservices based. We've got security baked in using SMAC. We've got this binding binder concept where the APIs are all individual APIs are binding and then all of the APIs collected for a specific service are in a binder. It'll run on multi ECUs and in fact, IoT.BZH in France is working on a port of the APIs and the binders to Zephyr. So we would like to be able to show that we can run the APIs across different architectures. So like I said, this is more examples. We've got a documentation site with more information about these bindings and binders as well. It basically provides a standardized transport and integration method for all of the APIs. Available binders and bindings include all these on this list. In fact, I probably missed a few because we're always adding more. But these are the major ones including home screen, window manager, audio, a bunch for connectivity, location, media player and signal composers, what we use for CAN and for vehicle buses. We're also planning to use that same signal composer for adding sensors for ADAS or for automated automotive autonomous driving systems. We have an SDK. So a lot of everything that we're doing is based on Yachto. We're currently on Yachto 2.6, which is Thor, Thud. Thor would be better. Thud. And what we wanted is our application developers to not need to know anything about Yachto. So we created this SDK. We have both Qt apps and HTML5 apps available now. We have a web app manager that's available for HTML5 that was ported from web OS, open source edition. That was done by a combination of LG and Agalia. Before we get to the Q&A part, developer resources.  These are all hyperlinked in the presentation. Where our documentation site is, there's a good getting started guide. There's actually one on our Wiki page as well and it's linked from the Wiki page. There's a good getting started guide as well on the documentation site. We use JIRA for our defect tracking as well as project management. We have, for all of the releases, we have pre-built binaries and source tar balls available. If you don't wanna go download the code, you can download one of those. Build instructions, release notes are available on the Wiki. And we use Garrett for code review. And we use, of course, Git for source code management. And in terms of, if you have any questions, we have the weekly developer call on Tuesdays. We get about 30 to 35 people who call in. If there's something you're having trouble with and you need some help, feel free to pop in on the call and it lasts about an hour on Tuesday mornings, US time. But we get people who call in from Japan as well as Europe. We have an IRC channel. We have a weekly newsletter that I've kind of not done for a few weeks because I've been on vacation and we have a very active mailing list. And then finally, we like to get together, have developers meet face-to-face and we organize about every two months a face-to-face meeting. We typically get 20 to 40 developers at these meetings working on, we have an agenda, sometimes it's a hack fest, sometimes it's more of an architecture discussion, but there's always a variety of topics that are listed. They usually last two to three days. The next one is scheduled next month in Berlin at VW's site in Berlin at the Carmack facility. And then you can see we have two all-member meetings a year. The next one is coming up in October in Monte Carlo. And then finally, members can participate in our CES booth and we'll have a couple integration sessions for people who are working on CES stuff that they might need help with integration on. So because it's a BOF session, mostly I wanted it to be dedicated to Q&A. So I'll open up the floor to questions and I'll hopefully, we have some guys who are here in the front or spread throughout the audience who work on the code as well. So anything I don't know about, I'll make one of them answer. So any questions? So the question was, is there a recommended configuration for getting started? Are you talking about maybe hardware configuration? Well, you can use, I would say probably the easiest way to get, there's a QMU, Kimu, QMU builds that we do. That's probably the easiest way to get started. If you wanted to get started on actual hardware, we, most of the development's been for, most of the developers in testing are working on the Renaissance R-Car M3. Because that's what our green machine demo's been using. But I know a lot of people like using the middle board or the up-squared board from Intel. And the green machine itself is switching to the H3 board this year. We've also got Raspberry Pi support, although that's, Raspberry Pi kind of runs out of memory really quickly. What did I miss? Oh, we've got IMX6 support as well, but that's not officially through NXP. We're kind of doing that on our own. Uboot, we're using, the question was, what boot loader were we using? We're generally using Uboot. It's everything's based on Yachto, and I forgot, recently, SandCloud added support for their Beaglebone Enhanced board. We've also got the Beaglebone Max in there. Beaglebone Black, rather. And I think most companies have found it pretty easy if they have a Yachto BSP layer, pretty easy to slide it into AGL and get it building. Yeah, if you're gonna do the IVI side, you pretty much need to support Wayland and Weston. So if you have a BSP layer for a board that gets you pretty much up to date, Weston support, you should be able to just stick that in and build. There's, I think, instructions now. If not the mailing list, you can just ask, and it's relatively straightforward. I did the IMX61 in a couple days, like a month ago. So it's pretty straightforward for anything that has a relatively good Yachto BSP layer. Maybe you could use the mic, I can't. No, no, don't shout, because it's being recorded, so I'll have to repeat it anyway. Yeah, so you mentioned a couple of companies that are actively participating in the project, and I assume that at this time, there are no active deployment in any car. No, that's not true. So starting in model year 2018 that was in the Toyota Camry, and it's now gone into more of the Toyota line, some early versions of AGL, now it'll be going into some Mazda cars and Subaru cars, and hopefully, Suzuki's working on an instrument cluster, so it'll be getting in there pretty quickly. So it's actually been, so some of the members have been actively deploying it into their vehicles now. But what kind of product? Dan Koushi, our executive director, can, yeah. We had a RAV4 at the, yeah, the Mercedes Vans. We had a RAV4 at the CES booth last year. And what product are we talking about? The infotainment systems, or some? The initial deployments have been infotainment systems. Now, starting with Happy Halibut, or with Grumpy Guppy, I think it was rather, we now have an instrument cluster reference device that you can build, as well as a telematics reference device. And there's been a lot of interest from a lot of OEMs on instrument cluster. So we have an instrument cluster expert group that meets every two weeks. And we're actually driving a lot of the requirements into AGL now, and Haraki San from Suzuki has been leading that effort. I actually have a million of questions, but I'll hold, anybody wanna ask something? Cause, all right, so I'll proceed to another one. I mean, just because it's interesting, like speaking of like the IVI, how would you like compare the AGL against other things like the GNEV projects? Well, so GNEV, we have a single code base. Everything that we do is open and transparent. You can go to our website, our wiki page rather, and see everything that we're doing, see all of our meeting minutes. You can go to our JIRA page, see all the defects. Everything I do is completely open. GNEV does not have a single code base. They have different companies bring their own code base, and they claim somehow they're GNEV compliant.  So it's not transparent. So GNEV really is not an open, to my mind, they're not an open source organization. They're not really open and transparent like we are. But there are some working groups that they... But there's no single, but BMW might have their own version, and when River has their version, and MentorGraphics has their version. So you can download, you can go to our source tree and download the source code, and that is AGL. There's no debating like, is it a Bosch version, a Mentor version? GNEV compliance is kinda nebulous, whereas everybody, if you have a patch or you have something you wanna submit to AGL, you can submit, you know what, a lot of people will come to me and say, well, why aren't you doing so and so? Why don't you have a full up can message messages from the automotive makers? And basically I say to them, look, we're an open source project. If somebody is interested in doing that, they'll bring it in. And Leon's a great example. Leon was really interested in the Raspberry Pi and even the Raspberry Pi 4 recently. So he brought it in. GNEV tends to be more top down and being driven by their executive committee, or whatever they call it. Whereas we're basically, if you have something and you wanna bring it in and it's a good idea, we review it, we'll accept it, and then we'll maintain that. Okay, so I'll proceed. Yeah. So I don't work for GNEV, I did some help to some companies there, doesn't really matter. But there is a lot of like, obviously there is a lot of interest in combining several operating systems, and there is a lot of like work of several SOC manufacturers on providing iPervisors to enable to actually combine them. Usually it's going to be QNX and something, and usually it is going to be the interest of QNX plus Android, or stuff like that. Now, in GNEV in particular, they have some interesting project that have to do with how to deal with the dual- Oh yeah, by the way, oh yeah, by the way, they stole our way paper. So GNEV did. So we- I don't know and I honestly don't care. No, no, I'm just gonna tell you. I'm just gonna tell you what we've done. So last year we published a way paper. We had, we have a virtualization expert group. I don't know what that is. We have a virtualization expert group that has participation from a number of the hypervisor companies, as well as interested parties. So last year in June, we released a virtualization way paper which kind of laid out the AGL virtualized architecture. And you can go download that. I think if you go to our Wiki page, you could find the link to it. I should have put it on here. And then when GNEV started there, their new hypervisor group, one of the first things they did was they took our way paper and they dumped it into their Wiki. So they actually took a preliminary version of it. So yeah, so GNEV is working on that stuff but they're late to the party. And right now, so the hypervisor group is now focusing, we've been working with the Zen project very closely with Lars and with EPAM. Their EPAM is a member and they, we've had a number of demonstrations running both Zen, L4 and other hypervisors. People showing both, Suzuki for example at ALS, Automotive Linux Summit was showing more of a safety solution using a hypervisor where they had isolated the safety critical parts. And then other companies are showing AGL running in one virtual machine and another operating system running in a second virtual machine. So we've got a bunch of different people who've done hypervisor solutions for AGL. Okay. Yeah. Joanne, empty-handed, womp-womp. But like all the work and like the joint work are like organizations that have their representatives and there is some direction by the AGL project, right? I mean, you don't go ahead and like start a workforce and like a funded project to do, I don't know, virtualization, gameplay protocol. Okay, so we do have funded.  So if you go back to the slide, the platinum, gold and silver members contribute a significant amount of money to AGL every year. And we take a big chunk of that money, a significant percentage of that money we take and we plow back into developers. So I manage about six different contractors who are actively working on code for AGL. Now, what's top-down is the advisory board sets the priorities for what we're going to have those developers go work on. The virtualization stuff, we have not funded anything. The advisory board has not funded anything. So all of the work that's been done for virtualization has been done by companies on their own and by some individuals on their own. So we have the L4 support that's available out of the box or the KVM support, rather not L4. The KVM support that's available out of the box for renaissance that was contributed by somebody I can't even remember who. But a lot of all of the hypervisor work that you see done by people has been done by companies on their own and most of it has not been contributed back to AGL. On virtualization. But I will say that every time I go to one of these shows and this one has not been an example, this one has not been an exception. Every time I go to a show or a conference somebody comes up to me and says, hey, we're using AGL to do this. I had no idea. So last night at the tech presentation I had at least two different companies that said, oh yeah, we're using AGL. They're not members, they're just poking around. They've actually got some stuff running. In one case it was a virtualization company, in one case it was a company doing some package management type stuff. So yeah, so it's a combination. We are funding developers, including Scott from Consolco, Scott and Leon from Consolco to do some work. And then some of it is just people contributing. Either their own companies are funding it or individuals. Do you have like an active project that's like run Android side by side with a... No, we do not. This is something that is like on the agenda on the road? No, it's not. Completely not. We would not be able to do that. The Linux Foundation would not be able to sign agreements with Google to do that. So there are companies that have done that, again on their own. I've seen them running at trade shows, but we are not going to do that. What I would like to see is, and what I've asked our companies to do who have agreements with Apple for CarPlay and Android for Android Auto, is to at least verify that they can run it on AGL and then if there's any gaps, give us the gaps in the enablers, then upstream the fixes they need to do that. And so there's a few companies that have been doing that. Yeah, so one of the things that we're doing is helping some of the companies that do like a dashboard, IVI, stuff like that. We sell this protocol. So like one of... I was thinking of open sourcing like some of the things that this protocol has to do with running Android because a lot of our clients really are interested in it. And this brought a light bulb, but I'll just take it offline. I don't want to push anything. Just curious because I'm learning about it. Yeah, I think there was a question behind you. You mentioned some of the work being done around safety. I was just wondering what the scope of work there is. So who's driving it? It sounds like kind of some of the... So there's two paths right now. If you're familiar with ISO 26262, we're targeting ASIL level B, and there's really two paths. We're supporting the ELISA project, and they've got some very long-standing ongoing work that started with OSATL, and we've been attending their meetings and trying to help, trying to work with them to figure out what their path is for certification. But I think they're several years down the road. The other path is, which I think is the more pragmatic and faster and probably better path for us, is the instrument cluster expert group, some of the companies that are working there, will build, or they will basically build, they've started building an AGL-based instrument cluster, and as they work through what issues that they have, because you have to certify the whole device. You don't certify just the software. So as they work through their device and go to the certification authorities, they'll come back to us with a punch list of things that we might need to do in AGL to support them getting their device safety certified. So I anticipate that effort will go much more quickly than the ELISA effort, and we should see some announcements from some of our member companies that they've released devices that are safety certified using AGL in the next, hopefully 18 months. Yeah, thanks. So in my opinion, these specifications, like ISO 26262, they were created decades ago, and they were created at a time when code bases were counted into thousands of lines of code. And the whole approach of those types of specifications are basically you build a system, you pour some in on it, and you never change it. And that kind of mentality is so backwards compared to how we develop software today. And in fact, if you talk to a guy like Greg K.H., who maintains Linux kernel and long-term support, he has data that shows that it actually benefits the platform when you apply patches, apply bug fixes, apply security fixes. The platform actually gets better over time, not worse. So this cement model has to stop. So my view is on longer term, we as an industry need to go to the authorities and say, hey, you have it backwards and you need to change the way you look at software because if you don't patch things, you end up with a vulnerable system. So I think the industry needs to get all together behind Alisa, behind Agile, and get them to change the way they think about functional safety certification. And I think that's part of our agenda to push that concept along with Alisa project. So I was a little curious why, I mean, as an outsider looking at some of the stuff in the project recently, the push for more of this like HTML5 support, that kind of stuff in there, which seems to kind of add to the bloat of the code base in some ways. It definitely adds to the complexity and the size, yeah. I'm just curious, where the real motivation is there? Is somebody really... To not use QT or whatever, but it just seems like if I'm designing instrument clusters or things like that. An instrument cluster wouldn't use HTML5. Okay, so I'm just curious where the... So this is again, again, this is something that we basically, it's coming from our members. We don't do anything unless one of our members is interested in doing it. We're an open source project. So yeah, this has come from LG and then the WebOS or SE community. They had a web app manager. There's been a lot of interest for certain companies are very interested in HTML5 for their IVI systems. The ability to do like a Spotify app or a more commercial app using a web app is really enticing. And also there's not a good... Right now there's not a good open source alternative to QT, so if you wanna show something that's not using QT, it's a good quick and dirty way to get there. It's using the web apps, so. In response to the question about HTML5, the other reason why some places are interested in HTML5, not specifically in the automotive, but in the general display of control systems is because the external entities that they're communicating with are more and more commonly generating HTML5 output that you can then insert into your UI. So for instance, if you have an engine, that engine may put out some very specific metrics and tachometer, et cetera, and HTML5 that you can then embed into the overall user interface. So your IVI may be getting this from your external entities, or more importantly, your infotainment center could be getting that from your IVI as a data source that you're then able to embed inside your display without having to manage that information itself. Yeah, one of the things is, Gali has done some benchmarking on the M3 now, the H2, where it says M3, and there's almost no performance difference between the HTML5 stuff that we have and the QML stuff, so I think a lot of that performance gap has been, it's big, it's big. I don't think I see a vector up there, and I'm just curious, do you think that Autosar is a competitor to automotive grade Linux? I mean, I'm seriously trying to understand how far AGL will go, and do you see it taking over more of the gateway modules? So actually, that was kind of the question I got yesterday during the tech showcase, and that's the question I was discussing about our members bringing something in. So I think we could do that, but so far our OEM members have not shown an interest in doing that, which befuddles me, because I would think that they would be looking for a way to eliminate, we'll call it the vector tax. They pay a huge amount of money to vector. Every car, every, not only every vehicle line, but every vehicle they wanna do, they've gotta redo the messages. I would think that our members would be usually interested, our OEM members would be usually interested in pushing that, and so far they've not been. The CAN stuff that we've done has largely been pushed by Tier IIs and Tier Is, not by the OEMs. I cannot get, I've not been able to get an OEM to agree to give me a message library. I've, having worked for Motorola, Telematics, and Continental in the past, I know, and being very familiar with some CAN requirements in terms of factory requirements and programmability of message libraries, I've tried to push some of those requirements into AGL, but the fact is I'm not willing to really fund those with our development money, because if none of the OEMs are gonna pick it up, it's not really worth our development funds. I wanted to follow up, so I know you have CAN support, but what about like LinBus, FlexGray? We have Lin there. Oh, cool. So basically our HVAC app now runs Lin, and what you'll see coming up in our next version of our demo is, Suzuki has donated some steering wheels and the controllers, and we're adding a Lin controller for the steering wheel as well. So the steering controls that go into the IVI system. So we've got, we've got Lin support in there, we've got CAN, we've got most, but I think, I think for us to go to the next level with the CAN support to get to that vector type, we need that to be pushed by our OEM members. Yeah, it makes sense. All right, thanks. So regarding the AutosR, that question there, it's the AutosR consortium has something called adaptive AutosR now. It's adaptive AutosR is basically a set of libraries that is transporting all the AutosR functionality on top of Linux there. So basically this will be a concept of libraries that can be used for all AutosR applications. So the companies that still use in AutosR can actually reuse their applications without rewrite codes. Yeah, we'll see. I don't know if I believe their story. What? I don't know if I believe their story. We'll see. Yes, I see it running in my machines in my development there. It's not, it's not, it's really going to the prototyping right now. So it's not an history, it's happening, it's official. Sorry, that's a reality. It's my project, a big project right now inside BMW for next year. So it's not a joke. I don't think it's a joke, but we'll see. Yeah, it's there already. Again, it's a closed system, so it. AutosR is closed. Yeah. AutosR is not closed. It's depending on foundation. It's not a different thing. The completely specification is open. The specification, what about the code? Is that a yes or a no? No, the code, of course, each implemented, they actually. So it's not, it's not open source. You can be like, you can have an open spec, but without. And the implementation code is open. It's coming from Adaptive AutosR. If you want to do your implementation, that's usually what vendors do, tier one and tier two. Actually, that doesn't, then it's proprietary. But then, you have the implementation code as long that you're part of organization. It's basically the same idea you say this about Genevieve. So we'll see. Any other questions? I think our time is up, but anything else? Well, thank you, everybody. This was great.