Latest / Your Dark Companion Podcast / The City Hall Wars as Sports Teams Flee Downtown Dallas | Jim Schutze | Ep 230
Transcript
- Nobody would have thought that I would be the Wanda. Ryder, sports talk. Baseball. Baseball. Baseball. Baseball. Baseball. Baseball. Oh, with the big mic. Oh, okay. Alright. Yeah. Okay. Now I get it. We got a lightning strike, boys. What happened over there, Grego? We had a little lightning strike right outside the window. Alright. Alright. Here's a tip for all these Americano League teams. Don't wait. You said tip. Yeah. Tip. Okay. With a p. I would Keep jamming. The ticket the ticket colon. Nothing but a big Gen X jerk off sale. This is a cool night or what? I thought somebody would hear that and go, bullshit. I'm back, bitches. Hello again, one and all. It's good to be here. Good to have you with us. Good to be on with another episode of your dark companion. Let's see. Today is Wednesday June 3. The June 3. And this would be episode number which? 02:30. Number two thirty today. And, I can scarcely think of anybody better to have on today than the guy that we've got because than me? Dang. So exciting. Because, there's a lot of chaos going on here in our Fairburg. I don't know if you noticed this or not, but there is. And a lot of it involves large outfits, large outfits that acquire things like arenas and stuff like that. And I can scarcely think of anybody better to talk about this than a guy who has plied his craft in the newspaper game for many, many years. A 100. A 100, he says. And, it may not be quite a 100, but, believe me, every year has been well spent because he has been a pain in the ass for a lot of people. He is the great Jim Shoots. Now you knew him at the Dallas Times Herald. Did you ever do a stint at the old gray lady? No. No. They wouldn't have me. And you did the Dallas Observer, I believe? Yes. Is that correct? Yes. And today, if you want to find out what Jim thinks about stuff, he puts it up on Facebook pretty much. Yeah. Is that because you just can't quit? It's bulimia. I told my wife the other day, it was like 11:00. I said, I've written two observer columns sitting in bed and I'm not getting a nickel and I I need to find a life. So No. No. You don't you don't need to find a life. The life has found you. You just can't give it up. That's all. I guess. But that that's there's no doubt about look. Same for me too. Yeah. You know? Well, I you know, I I mean, apparently I should quit this stuff and go off and never be heard from again, but something keeps me from that. Right. I can tell. Yeah. Today, we got a lot going on out there, And this calls for a guy like you, and I'm very happy about you doing stuff on Facebook because so much of it I read and I just go, man, there he is again, just like he used to be in the paper. He's just spot on. He is just all over this. He's not gonna let the bastards get away with this. He's at least going to put them up in front of everybody and say, look. Here's what go what's going on here. Yeah. Here's what they're trying to do. And we have seen no better example of that than what's going on this week and in weeks prior because we got a lot of thing a lot of things that are moving, a lot of parts that are moving, and and I don't know where it's all gonna wind up. But yesterday was such a red letter day that we started to get some indication of it. We have two sports teams who both share an arena. They've decided, number one, the arena that they share is outdated and, doesn't suit them anymore. I would say it is not outdated. It may not suit them, but it's not outdated. I find it a very good place to watch either of the things that they do, which are basketball and hockey. We're speaking of the stars and Mavericks. But no. No. You gotta have more than that. You can't just have a good arena. You gotta have more. You gotta have special areas for special people because it's not about the game anymore. It's about the scene. And they want a place where the scene will hold forth. But the thing is, instead of doing this together like they've always done, they don't like each other anymore. And I never have gotten to the reason got to the bottom of the reasons why, but for whatever reason, they just do not see eye to eye on anything anymore. So they're going their separate ways. That means arenas for both. What do you think about all this? Oh, you you know, in some ways, I should just keep my mouth shut because No. No. Don't do that. Or if you if you gotta start doing it, do it after we're done here. I surely don't know, Jack, about professional sports. I'm not a fan. I haven't followed it. There are a lot of guys, you, Walonsky, lots of people in town who actually do know this ground, and don't what I what I do know is City Hall. I mean, I've watched that for a number of years. Yes. And I'm sort of cursed with this knowledge of the past because I can see them doing the same stuff all over again as they've done before, and I can't keep my mouth shut about it. Well, alright. Let's start with city hall a little bit. Now city hall is a player in this because there's a lot of back and forth going on. In fact, more back and forth going on over what to do with city hall than anything that I think we've seen around here in a long time. People want to tear it down, but other people say, no. No. It's an architectural landmark Mhmm. Because of I'm pay and all that. But the people who wanna tear it down say no. On the inside, it's dilapidated. It no longer works anymore, and we need new. If so way back to ancient history, I I go back to the Trinity's toll road project. It always seemed to me that if the the powers that be had said to people, we wanna build an expressway down the river. We think it would be a good thing. Mhmm. I bet most people would have said, yeah, you're probably right. Okay. But instead, they said, oh, we're not building an expressway. We're building sailboat lakes for you. There we're we're building whitewater kayaking features. They had to offer this phony baloney story that was insulting to people. You can't hide an expressway. So in this case with City Hall, you tell me, It seems to me that if they had said in the first place, we really want to keep the Mavs downtown and we want to knock down City Hall because we think it's a place that would be good to put a basketball arena. I wonder if a majority of people in the city wouldn't have said, Yeah, that sounds pretty cool. Instead, they say, Oh, City Hall is falling down. It's going to fall on us. It's gonna cost 70,000,000 to fix it. Yeah. And everybody says, well, million, you got a $5,200,000,000 budget. Fix it. So that's not enough. So then they say, well, we no. We made a mistake. It's 300,000,000. And people say, yeah, that's a lot, but fix it. So then they say, well, no, we really meant it cost a billion. And at that point, I don't know how many, I can't tell you how many people I've met just walking my dogs who said, now I don't believe a single word they say. You know? You you just can't be that flaky about it and expect people to believe you. So against that backdrop, we have two sports teams that are looking for new arenas. And the initial thought would be that one of them, and it seemed most likely that would be the Mavericks, would wind up going to a new arena built where city hall is now Yeah. When they tore it down. That would lead the stars to fend for themselves, but that's okay. They had a number of options there. And that seemed to be a workable solution, save for the fact that it did mean knocking down city hall. Yeah. And I gotta tell you, I was a little bit shocked by that at first because I've always liked city hall. Uh-huh. I think city hall is kind of a part of the fabric of the city, and I don't wanna see it go. And it's city hall. I mean Yeah. Doesn't that mean anything? Is the ceremonial gathering place of the city. It And they seem so casual about it. Now we're gonna knock that down. Yeah. The the other thing is that it never I wonder now, you know, for a long time, were blaming this on the Mavs. Oh, they're those gambling people from Vegas. You know? They're a scary bad. They're making us do this. It sounds to me like it was never their idea in the first place. Boy, it does. I mean, now it seems like they're almost the good guys here. You know? How did that happen? Yeah. Because, I mean, that's just an assumption that everybody had. I have never heard, and you can say what you want to about about the Adelson's and the people that own the Mavs. Now you can say what you want to about them. Yeah. And Patrick Dumont and all the rest of them, but I have don't think I've ever heard or read anything where they said that that's what they wanted to do, that they wanted to tear down City Hall, and they wanted to put a casino there. No. Like, everybody assumed. As a guy it wasn't Dumont. The other guy I'm not thinking of his name. Weltz or anyway. Rick Weltz? Yeah. He's he's the Mavericks. He said a long time ago, kinda out of the blue, he told this business group, hey, the city manager brought this up to me. I didn't say this to her, she suggested this to me in a meeting, kind of like he was signaling, This ain't our idea, folks. Don't put this on us. I think they said it a couple times, which just makes it all the more remarkable. The whole thing of City Hall not being maintained. So you own a great big huge office building downtown called City Hall, I think it's something like 700,000 square feet of office space. You gotta have a maintenance budget, don't you? Have to keep it Would like? Yeah, You gotta, you know you have to keep it up. Yeah. And they have no maintenance budget. And now, I've been listening to them today, they've been saying, Well, we don't know where we would find funds for maintenance. Well, you gotta find the funds, Jack. Yeah. You've you've got a budget. You gotta carve out a little bit of that budget in there somewhere for Yeah. Maintenance. But are we we to believe that this just hasn't been going on all these years? And there have been, it has been chunked into some bond programs in the past, but they didn't do it. They had the money in the bond program to do maintenance and they simply didn't do it. They reprogrammed the money to spend it on something else, which they do all the time. I mean, it's crazy. Yeah. That's probably just another day at the office down there. Yeah, a guy who wrote something really smart about this is Miguel Solis, the former president of the school board. He said, The trouble with maintenance is there's no ribbon cutting for maintenance. The city council can't get in front of the TV cameras for maintenance. Maintenance is boring. Oh, you're just fixing those boilers, you know. And so they wanna spend the money on stuff that where they can have a party and be stars. Crazy. Yeah. Do you think this might've played out differently if city hall were not still standing and or was the whole idea to just get the teams out of town and get them to the burbs to begin with? You think that's what the teams really wanted? To just get out of here? Yeah. Just get out of here and get to the to the Northern suburbs. Well Apparently, that's what's gonna happen. Yeah. Somebody told me, pretty good authority, that 75% of the Mav season ticket holders live North of Valley View. Mhmm. So they're just moving toward their customer base. Yeah. And that that makes sense. That's probably the way it's always been for the Mavericks, though. You know? The vast majority of their fans live, you know, not in the city, but out in the Burbs and probably mostly in the Northern Burbs. And a thing that I find kind of heartbreaking about this, there's been this direct appeal to Southern Dallas. It's an attempt to just get votes on the council. I think the Mavs have had, maybe since St. Marshall was there, a pretty effective community outreach to Southern Dallas. School events, the mascots showing up, doing stuff, and that stuff counts, you know, that works. And it's basketball. So I think culturally there is a connection between the Mavs and Southern Dallas. It's so sad that in the end the Mavs say, Well, nah, we're going the other way. And I think that's because basketball on TV may be for everybody, but sitting in the stadium, isn't that pretty much you tell me. Isn't that pretty much a rich person's pastime now? For the most part. Yeah. What is it? For the most part of you, you gotta be fairly well moneyed to do it. Especially if you're gonna get it on some kind of season ticket action or anything like that. You know? If you wanna save up a few bucks and take your girl to a ballgame, you can do that. But those people are probably gonna be sitting up pretty high anyway, and the Mavics don't really care about them. Yeah. Right. Their priorities are in order here. Yeah. Yeah. There there is another piece of it downtown, which is all these people who own real estate around City Hall Plaza. It's parking lots, apparently their vacancy rates are really bad now. So a lot of those buildings are, some of them have gone into receivership recently, some of them are on the edge. And so they're hoping that this thing would come, this big party called the Mavs, and that that would juice up their land values and they could do things, instead of a parking lot they could have a high rise hotel or something. So I think they've been a lot of the source of pressure for this thing. Yeah. And it seems like they have a lot riding on this. Yeah. Because, I mean, downtown is something very near and dear to me. Mhmm. I lived there for, like, ten years. And at times, I would see downtown seem like it was on a little bit of an upswing. Yeah. But then something would happen, and that would go away, then start throwing rocks through the windows at Neiman Marcus and just knock the whole thing flat again. Yeah. But Same same thing with Deep Ellum? Yeah. The cyclical thing, and I mean, I'm originally from Detroit. I was a reporter there in the seventies. And it was like being a reporter at a new funeral service every day. Something bad would happen and plywood would go up in the windows of the ballet, next day plywood in the windows of the symphony. And it was always bad scary stuff on the street. You just can't survive that stuff. Yeah. Nobody can. Where do you think downtown's headed right now? I mean, I go down there and and I get kind of a strange vibe. Nothing like the vibe that was there when I lived there those years. Strange. Strange, like, kinda scary. A lot of indifference. You know? That's that's what I was gonna ask. How would you feel about just moseying around downtown, let's say, at two in the morning? Not good. Not yeah. That's the thing. And I used to do it all the time. That's what people tell me. I don't know. There's 16,000 people living downtown. There are a lot of people who will swear that downtown is happening, because there's a scene there, that there's action. I'm not I'm in bed by then. I'm not a judge. I don't know. I haven't been haven't been down there at night very much lately. But like I say, in those years that I did live there, it went back and forth. Sometimes it seemed like there was a little bit of good positive. We're gonna make something out of this thing type momentum there. And then other times it seemed like there just was not. Yeah. You know, I I worked downtown when the observer was there. I think they're back now, not too far from where we were. I was mad at everybody at the place because they were complaining about being downtown and saying there was too much panhandling and stuff. And I remember heading out to my car in broad daylight and this young guy, maybe early thirties, kind of well dressed, comes up to me and says, I need $10. And I said, well, I'm not giving you $10. And the guy follows me all the way to my car, more and more aggressive. And I finally said, are you panhandling me or is this what we call more of a mugging? And he said, Well, it's a matter of interpretation or something. And I got in my car and I thought, No, This ain't acceptable. There's gotta be some way to control this. Well, it sounded like you did a pretty good job of controlling them. If he if he just let you get in your car and go. I jumped in kinda fast and and locked it up and puts the pedal to the metal. Yeah. It's pretty well played. Yeah. Right. Pretty well played for a downtown scenario. Yeah. Alright. So do you think that this actually would have played out differently if city hall were were down were not still standing? Or do you think that the whole idea here for Mavericks and Stars both was no matter what, get to the burbs? Oh, do do I think that city hall being there ran them off in a way in a sense. Yeah. Maybe because Alright. But what if it wasn't there? Do you think that it's still gone? Yeah. Or would it Yeah. I did too. I think their demographic is up there. I mean, I think that the I think they're just reading the room here. Yeah. And when you read the room for the Mavericks and Stars, it tells you very, very clearly where their fans are Yeah. And who they are. And they're just going to them. You know? Yeah. And and, you know, where do their fans feel where is it more convenient? Where do they feel more comfy? Well, you know, where is it gonna work better for them? Yeah. Would they rather go to a Mavs game at, like, North Park or go to a Mavs game at Redbird Mall? The fans, I think, are headed to North Park. There's doubt about that. Yeah. And I don't think you can blame that on city hall. Also, there's been a lot of really interesting I mean, I think the pushback on saving City Hall has been just wonderful. There's been a lot of great thinking and a lot of creativity and a lot of it seems to come to people saying, Hey, what if you did something with the 11 acres? Something interesting, cool? What if you made How about thinking about making things happen there that would draw people there? Back to downtown, don't you think that when there are lots of people walking around that just makes it safer? It sort of runs off. When I was there, I would go out by myself anytime day or night. Wow. And I never had any kind of bad run-in there. I never saw anybody have any kind of bad run-in there. And it it just seemed very safe. You know, occasionally, I'd think, you know, you are downtown here. You better be careful. Yeah. And then I'd look around and go, well, why? You know? You you yeah. You gotta be careful, but you come out you do this all the time, and you never are in any kind of danger. And it can change. When we moved into our house in East Dallas, we hadn't been in it a week when I saw an armed stick up right out in front of the house. And we had so many con artists coming to the door. We would walk down the stairs. We have a glass door where we could see what was out there. We'd come downstairs saying, we are calling 911, before we got to the door. And so we have that stuff all the time. We never have it now. It's a completely changed scene. Anybody could live there. The And same thing can happen with downtown. I don't see why it can't. Yeah. I don't either. But every time, like I said earlier, every time downtown seems to be on a good track Yeah. Something happens. Right. And then sometimes it's something that's right in front of you. Right. Sometimes it's something that is in the background somewhere, something Right. A little bit more business ish perhaps. But all of a sudden, that vibe that was pushing it forward leaves. Yeah. Yeah. And I can say that our back to old East Dallas in our neighborhood has had its ups and downs. I mean, the real estate market goes up and down. Mhmm. Economy goes up and down. But the long arc has certainly been to the good. Everybody seems to agree that the future of downtown is as a neighborhood. I hear a lot of people saying it's not going to be an office center in the future. And if there's a way to enable that, push that, make that happen, that'd be wonderful. That that's what it needs. I doubt that it would have been sticking a basketball arena in the middle. But what look. What if they said to you, because you live on this beautiful street, what if they said, hey, Mike. We're we're lucky you. We're gonna put a basketball arena on your street, and you might even get a casino. How would you how would you feel? How would the neighborhood feel about that? Well, on the one hand, I would be kind of excited to have basketball nearby. But on the other hand, I think that would be outweighed by the fact that it it just wouldn't fit here. You know? No. I mean, you couldn't put you couldn't possibly do that here without raising one side of the street or the other. Oh, yeah. You'd have to eliminate a lot of people. Yeah. You would. Right. Yeah. So what do you think is gonna become of city hall? Well I mean, how's this all gonna end up? I don't know because I thought maybe when the man so when the man's made their announcement, I foolishly thought, oh hell, it's over. That was the game. We're gonna they were gonna do all this for the Mavs. Mavs don't want it. They're going elsewhere, so we saved city hall. And instead the reaction from the people pushing it has been just the opposite. I don't know if you saw the mayor's statement today. He issued this statement that was so pissy, so angry, and angry at City Hall, we cannot worship decaying buildings from another era, is blaming City Hall for this huge defeat that he's had. I did see that. So so it looks to me like the people pushing it are still gonna push it. And there is still this significant gang of people who own the office towers downtown. I didn't get this. I was a slow student. I didn't get this until late in the day that a lot of this was coming from people who wanted the city to be evicted from its home so that they would have to come rent in these semi empty towers, fill them up and pay rent to these guys. I wondered when they said it, okay, you're gonna knock down City Hall, so we're gonna go buy some land and build a new one, right? And there's no, no, no, we're not doing that. And I thought, well, how come? When we own City Hall now, it's tax free, it's paid off, so we get some money for it and we build a new one. No. No. That that ain't in the cards. You have to come rent. And I realized late in the day that desire for the city to be forced to go rent in the aging towers downtown, I think is a big part of this. Wow, that idea is hard for me to even get my head around. It's pretty sick. Yeah. We're gonna make the city homeless so that it will have to pay us rent. But apparently, you know, they're saying that with AT and T gone and some of the other people who are vamoosing, Dallas is about to have the highest vacancy rate of any downtown in the country. And Neiman Marcus has gone now? Yeah, yeah. Okay. So how do you fix that? I don't know. I had a I just heard from a friend today. She went into Neiman Marcus last week. She's walking around the store. She can't buy anything because there's nobody behind any of the counters and there's hardly anything for sale. And so she figured, okay, this place is gone already. I don't know how you fix that. You have to do something different, something new. Do think we're ever gonna have another mayor A real mayor? That is strong enough to be proactive on these things? I don't know. I think they gotta change the setup. I don't think the setup works. I think we need a strong mayor system where maybe you let the mayor hire and fire the city manager, take him off the council. I think the single member districts are good for their districts. It's just that it's nobody's job to look out for the whole city. And the mayor can't he has no power to do anything. So I I I think we need a mayor that can be a mayor that has some power. Have we ever had one? Not for a long, long time. I'm trying to think when the last really effective mayor was in office who got stuff done. Yeah, Mayor Mike said the biggest thing he was gonna do was the Trinity River Project and none of that got done. You know who was pretty interesting to watch was Ron Kirk. He had a lot of force of personality and I'd watch him down there, they'd get going on some topic and Kirk would say, Okay, we've heard enough of that. We're moving on to the next item. And they would all say, Okay. I thought, Wow, that's pretty cool. Plus, Kirk, I didn't see him doing this because I wasn't in there, I was told, you know, the council, they have their offices, their city council offices all in this wing of City Hall. And then Kirk, the mayor's office is off elsewhere. But Kirk apparently was constantly in the city council offices going around politicking those folks, bending their arms, know, getting them, lining up votes. Yeah. So I think he had that ability to make things happen. This guy doesn't even come to city hall. I don't know. That I I think there's some personality issues there. Is there anybody on the scene now that you look at and you think that guy might have the right stuff to be a good mayor? Yeah. I think there are a lot of them out there. Think, you know, our people forget our school board used to be like a vaudeville show. It was so crazy. It was just wild all the time. Miguel Solis, young Hispanic guy, he gets elected president of the school board. He could do what Kirk did. He went around and politicized people. Everyone said the school board is divided by race and that is and we'll never get past it. The racial division cannot be overcome. I don't know. Solis seemed to get past it in a couple months by talking to people. I think there are other people like that out there. Why we don't elect them, I don't know. The powers that be put all their money behind the guy we got now. I hope they're happy. Is it I mean, you know how these things work. You understand them far more than me, so this is this is a dumb guy asking you about this shit. But is this just a matter of finding guys who play the political game the right way, or do these guys really have ideas that they that they want to advance? Or, I mean, hell, it could be both. That's a It could be. That's a poor way of asking No. No. I think it's the right question, and it could be both. Somebody said to me just recently, people run for office for two different reasons. They run for office because they wanna do something or they run for office because they wanna be there. And it's the people who want to do something who are actually capable of getting something done because they mean it and they want to make it happen. And I think Kirk was like that and I think Solis was very much like that. If you can get somebody who actually, I almost don't even care what his ideas are, if he says, I think we should have a monorail that runs to every house, okay that's nuts, but if at least you mean it and you want to do it, that's better than It's an idea, it's not a great idea but it's an idea. It's way better than, well, really, I just wanna be on camera. You know? I wanna be noticed. But I think there are people out there who do have ideas and who mean it and who have and they do. It does require a set of skills. We always have this idea in Dallas that politics is bad and we don't want to elect a politician. Well, actually, in politics, politicians are who you want. You want somebody who's a good politician. Somebody who can persuade people. You don't want a sleazebag. No. No. But if you're in politics and you're gonna elect somebody, then you're gonna elect a politician. Get somebody are. You get something done. Yeah. Yeah. Think we're ever gonna have another mayor strong enough to to be proactive on these things? I wonder, because I as I was saying a minute ago, I think a lot of great stuff came out, has come out of this city hall battle. People always want to say, Oh, Dallas has no soul. I don't think that's true. I think we've seen a lot of soul coming to the defense of that building. Just between you and me, don't tell anybody. I've said this, okay? It's okay. Nobody watches this. I've never liked that building. It always looks like it wants to fall down on me. But the fact that people have come to the defense of it as our building, that's our building, that's our palace, that's where we gather. Think it's been really moving. And I I'm encouraged by it, and I hope we'll see more of that. I will say this for it. I don't have any real strong feeling about it one way or the other, but I will say this for it. It is different. And it serves as kind of a Yeah. And, you know, in a certain way, it serves as kind of a logo for the city. You know? So their idea is we're gonna scatter the city functions out in all these different towers downtown. For a while, when they were redoing the records building for the county, they had scattered stuff around. And I had this weird thing I had to get done with a car that I inherited that, I can't even explain it, I had to have it retitled. There's some But that's fun. Yeah, no there's some special bureau of retitlement that you have to find. And the county was scattered all over in all these buildings. So it was real hot out and you gotta walk from building to building. Finally, I find the damn office of retitlement, which is stuffed away in some basement. And I feel- Office of retitlement? No, no, that's not the real name. I forget what it's called. I was gonna say, man, I've never heard of that one. Yeah, no. But A, I felt so sorry for the people working there because it was such a crummy place. And then I thought, this does not make me proud of my county. This makes me feel like I live in a bad county, like this county's going downhill or something. Why would we want to do that with our city? Why would we wanna scatter the city out in all these crappy, worn out office buildings? Didn't work in office. They moved permanently. Yeah. Didn't work anyway. Five, and they had to redo that building, and then they turned around and sold it. What keeps you going on this, man? I mean, you've had a you had a great career. You were an opinion shaper. Yeah. You were a difference maker, and there were probably a lot of city politicians who feared the sound of your shoes walking down the hall. I you've done everything there is to do, and now you you're putting up stuff on it. Can you just not give it up? I get people ask me that around the house, sometimes. Yeah. I give it up in periods. I just, I really think, okay, I did spend my early reporting career in Detroit. Mhmm. I love Detroit, I think, and now we say Detroit's coming back. And I think there are really interesting, exciting things happening, but the Detroit I worked in ain't coming back. That was a huge international center of wealth and activity and that Detroit is gone. And so here I am in Dallas and this is a city with all this potential and drive still and stuff happening. And I can't stand the idea that people wanna steer it off into these into these detours and these dead ends that I just know aren't good. You don't want to do stuff that diminishes people's pride in their city. You want to increase their pride. You want to increase people's sense of personal investment. Want people come to relatives come to visit? Well, let's go downtown. I'll show you city hall, you know. Y'all's never been very good with that, though. I know. We I mean, that's just something that that, for whatever reason, we just don't do. But it it it it could be, it's there, so much going on. My wife and I, we got married when I hadn't been here that long. So she takes me to see the, it's not the house we're in now, the first house we bought after we're married, says this is the house we need to buy. I look around the neighborhood and based on my experience in Detroit I think, oh, I've married a suicide. I mean, why would anybody buy a house here? We're not gonna last a month. And that's a great neighborhood now. All the stuff that I've seen go south elsewhere has come up here. I just see a lot of good and positive. And I also have a certain eye, I admit, for these sort of main chance soap salesman guys who want to say, I've got a great idea, tear down your city hall and help me fill up my building. We don't want to let those guys derail the future. Yeah, the guys with the agenda. Yeah, Yeah. There's always somebody like that. It's part of human nature. It's part of life. But you gotta have an eye out for them. If they were to tear down city hall. Yeah. Which they might. Well, yeah, they might. That that's still on the table. Right. It's not moved one way or the other yet. Right. What happens? Where do they go with it? I mean, will they build will will we have another city hall? You know, the place where the city government happens at, or will they scatter it around like you were saying earlier in these tall buildings that are mostly empty now? Well, they'll have to scatter around for a while. If they tear down city hall, nothing good happens unless we tear out that city council. If they tear down city hall, we have to get rid of all those folks who are sitting there who did it and replace them with a better crowd. And then if we have a crowd of people who care about the city and who are civic minded, then we can talk about other wonderful things to do, like maybe build city hall back. Are there people like that out there? Yeah, absolutely. I think there are a ton of them. I do. I think they get kind of suppressed and pushed out. I don't think we pay city council members and mayors enough. I think we ought to pay them enough that the job is attractive to people who could get other jobs. Yeah. You know, it needs to be competitive. I wish more people voted. I think people would vote if there were more interesting people running for office. But yeah, the city is full of all kinds of creativity and activity. We just gotta steer more of it into city government. That seems like a pretty hard ask. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. Wow. It's been a amazing chat with you just like I knew it would be. You're very well connected, man. How did a guy from Detroit come down here and get right into the to the mainstream of things and figure out who's who and And why would anybody hire a guy from Detroit? That was my question at the time. It's a long story, newspaper business, the LA Times bought the Times Herald, friends of friends of mine came down here and went to work for the paper. And boy, did I have a learning curve. The only thing I didn't know about being here, because I was from Detroit, I didn't really get the manners thing, having manners. And I remember going to city hall and their mayor Bobby Folsom was talking to a group of reporters, and I had a question for him. So I kinda elbowed my way through the crowd and I say, hey. I gotta what about this? What about this? There's this long silence and mayor Folsom and all the reporters are staring at me. And Folsom says, who are you, sir? And then I learned, oh, you have to introduce yourself. You know? So I did have a learning curve culturally being here. Was it a long, lengthy learning curve, or did you No. I Did you catch on pretty quick? I got this brutal coach called my wife. She's a Dallas native, and she hustled me up a lot on the manners thing. So Were you married when you came down here? Did you meet her here? No. I met met her here at the Times Herald. Ah. That was back when newspaper people were only allowed to marry other newspaper people. We married within the tribe. But that made for some interesting situations with some. It did. It did. Yeah. Well, man Wait. Hold on. We got a question. What we want a question. We got a question. Yeah. Oh, all right. But is Frisco being a huge new rich or the new Dallas sports fans there? Is that why they're I think they're asking if that's kinda why they're moving that way. Alright. I would say that they've always been up there. But, I mean, sports fans around here are everywhere. You know? I never thought you could could, you know, say that all such and such team's fans are here or all such and such teams fans are here. You know? I'm surprised there's so many Mavs fans in North in the North Dallas area. That surprises me a lot. Well, that doesn't surprise me. I mean Is it ticket holders for Mavs? Yeah. For all of them, they're everywhere. You know? That's I've always thought that was one of the neat things about it. There's no real cowboys pocket or rangers pocket or But they but anything. Everywhere. He had given a number earlier that now more of their season ticket holders are north. People who can afford to go to the stadium. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Seems different to me. It will we're just hard about, you know, people who can't afford to go and are actually going to go, then, yeah, they're probably up north and and, you know, just You have a ton of wealth in uptown. You have a ton of wealth I know. I know. But most most of them most of them are probably up north, and that's probably just from the standpoint of them going to where their their people are. That's probably the best play for them. But that said, fans of all of these teams are everywhere. They're all over the place. And I I don't like thinking of this area or that area as being a Rangers area or a Mavericks area or anything. They're just fans of the game. Then why wouldn't you want your stadium more centralized? Well, I'm I I do. Yeah. What I want doesn't matter in this. Yeah. And it's still a question of who can buy a ticket, who, you know, who can afford to be there. Well, I know where they where I am, there's plenty of money and plenty of season ticket holders for all the major sports. Which is what area? Uptown. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Sure. Sure. And the people that Yeah. That what's actually gonna happen to Uptown Yeah. The vacate vacation of both of those teams from the AAC And Uptown change Uptown's demographics drastically. It is. Uptown is an interesting thing to discuss in terms of downtown also. Somebody said to me, there's all this complaint about downtown's dying, downtown's dead, what's happening to downtown? And this guy said, well, I thought downtown was really great. It just moved to uptown. You know? Yeah. Maybe it did. I mean, when I was there, like I said earlier, it did seem like it was on a pretty good rise and a pretty good upswing, and it's like it had a chance to turn into something. But And and that huge building on the other side of the park now is Bank of America. They're leaving. Yeah. And what? America's Plaza. When I'm in uptown like in in the evening, at night, oh man, it's like a European city. It's so much. Stop. Action and it's a it's an exciting place. So, what's wrong with that? Why not say great? We have a downtown. Yeah, there's nothing wrong. Nothing wrong with it. It would be nice if it could continue over into downtown more proper. Right. What's happening south and in that that Victory Plaza area with a lot of that new Goldman Sachs construction is gonna change a lot of stuff. Right. I don't know that it's gonna replace the the what would be lost with the teams leaving. Yeah. What will Victory what what happens there? They I wanna suggest just to irritate people. I wanna suggest that they turn Victory into a great organic vegetable farm. Nice community. Yeah. Don't you think that would be great? Yeah. I think that'd be great. Or change the name of Victory to Defeat. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. Right. I mean, I'm making jokes here. This is this is not funny stuff. No. This is not funny stuff. You can get in trouble for saying stuff like that. Yeah. I will. Well, Jim Shoots, it's been a pleasure having you on here, man. I really appreciate you coming over and doing this with us, man. I love your stuff. I love your point of view. I've been a fan of yours since the days of the Times Herald, and and it's just a thrill to talk to you. Well, I've been a fan of yours, and of course a lot of people think you are me if they read or listen to The Accommodation. That's right, they do. No, no, I run into people and I start talking and they look at me like, what's the matter? Why are you talking like that? I'll tell you, that was one of the thrills of my career. Well, we should explain that. You did do the accommodation. Yeah. That you Yeah. Explain, though, what you did. I did the audiobook of it. Yeah. And it was very, very cool. I mean, I love the book, and and when I got tabbed to do it, I was just, okay, man. This is great. Was it your book? Yes. Yeah, yeah. And I think it added, it made the book persuasive for him to be reading it. But I really do run into people sometimes and I get this disappointed look like that's how you talk. Well, it was a thrill for me to do it, a thrill to have you here with us. We appreciate you coming down. Well, it's great to be here. That is the great Jim Shoots. Now don't forget what we need from you out there. What? We gotta do house of healing. Oh, we gotta do house of healing? Yes. Okay. Alright. What we need from you is if you were roaming around this world in pain, try this. This is the full spectrum SAV stick from the CBD house of healing. 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