Guinness Adjudicator. Now there's a job for you.

I have a post coming up in which I pinkslip about a young woman (an influencer) whose company specializes in running over-the-top travel and events. One of the recent events she came up with made it into the Guinness Book of Records for the largest champagne bottle service presentation. Who even knew this was something one would compete for? 

There are, of course, dumber records than number of champagne corks popped. Like walking on beer bottles. Stuffing matches up your nose. And wearing the most ever pairs of socks put on in 30 seconds. (I've put on two pairs, which may or may not have taken 30 seconds to accomplish, but for the record, the record is 28 pairs.) 

But what I found interesting in doing a bit of poking around regarding Guinness, is that there is a professional position involved in all this record setting, and it's the job of Guinness Adjudicator. 

Based in 15 countries and speaking 18 languages, our 69 adjudicators are accomplished public speakers and are fully media-trained. They also create a highly effective focal point for photo opportunities and audience engagement.

If your event is taking place online or needs to reach multiple audiences in more than one location, our remote adjudicator services and video announcements are ideal for creating an air of prestige and positioning your online event as an authentic Guinness World Records attempt.

As well as verifying and announcing the record results, the adjudicator performs many other important roles including:

• Explaining the record guidelines and answering any questions ahead of the event
• Checking all measurements and any equipment required for the attempt
• Briefing stewards and carrying out spot checks (mass participation events only)
• Assessing and verifying the record attempt on the day
• Engaging the audience
• Participating in media interviews

Source: Guinness World Records 

Adjudicators are either staff members or contractors, and the pay doesn't sound all that great. According to the latest from ZipRecruiter, staffers make an average of about 62K (in Boston, $67K), but there's a pretty wide range of actual salaries. Contractors are paid by the gig, and can stand to make more. 

But what a strange job.

They make money because Guinness makes money from corporations who pay to have an adjudicator on hand so that they can make a backed-up claim in their marketing materials. E.g., Russell Stover set the record for the largest box of chocolates. For whatever reason, HSBC Global Procurement wanted to set an employee participation rate for "most people in a Mexican wave video relay." Lenovo? They set the record for "most laptops toppled in a domino fashion." What will they think of next?

Rather than ask what they would think of next, I tried to come up any records that the companies I worked for might have had a reasonable shot at setting.

While surely the record would have been broken by now, for its time, the product launch for Genuity's Black Rocket web-related services might have set the record for largest high-tech product launch expenditure that yielded nothing in return. (I believe that was the year before the company had its failed IPO - at the time the largest failed IPO in history - and started to descend into bankurptcy. Talk about bragging rights!)

One company I worked for had a product centered on IBM's OS/2 technology. (OS/2 was an operating system.) I think we could have set a record for how many times sales and marketing employees sat around pissing and moaning about our dependency on OS/2. Especially in the days after the cover story for one of the premiere tech magazines was about the demise of OS/2. The cover itself showed an Boot Hill style coffin labeled OS/2, with a lily on its top. Sigh.

I'm sure I could come up with a few more record setters that I was personally involved with back in the wayback of a day. Sigh. Sigh. Sigh.

I do know that I never would have had the interest, let alone the budget, for hiring an adjudicator to adjudicate a record for us. 

I'm sure that at some point Guinness will figure out how to replace its adjudicators with AI, setting some sort of record in the process - "most Guinness adjudicators laid off by an AI in 60 second time slot" - but for now I'm guessing their jobs are safe.

So if you like to travel, measure, promote, and adjudicate, there might be a job for you out there.

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Image Source: The Smithsonian

Nothing wrong with these paper roses

I almost always have a bouquet of fresh flowers in my living room. Unless I'm getting a gift for someone, I rarely go to one of the expensive local florists. (For me, those would be Rouvalis or Winston.) No, I buy my fleurs at Trader Joe's, where you can get a colorful bouquet for about $15 - a colorful bouquet that (however TJ's manages to do it) will last over a week. And once the bouquet's time is up - the flowers drooping and wilting - as often as not there are a couple of stems I can salvage and put in a small "satellite" vase in my kitchen.

Although I can usually keep a Christmas pointsettia going until July, and my St. Patrick's Day pot o' shamrocks until April at least, I don't have a ton of luck with plants. But I love having fresh flowers in the house. They just cheer me up.

I've never given much thought to where those flowers come from, let alone the environmental impact that the fresh flower biz has. But the founder of FreshCut Paper has. 

In 2021, Peter Hewitt read a New York Times article reporting that nearly 80% of cut flowers sold in the US are imported, traveling thousands of miles. To be kept fresh, they require airfreight and refrigeration - both huge contributors to climate change.

Peter got to work developing a new concept for flowers; a Pop-Up Paper Bouquet. The design aimed to bring beauty without the maintenance, making it a perfect solution for for those looking to conveniently send love. With a simple "pop up", the flowers unfold into a delightful display, making it a memorable gift that is sure to be fondly remembered and long-lasting. (Source: FreshCut Paper)

I had seen their wares around in gift shops, but hadn't given them much notice. Other than thinking that these paper flower "arrangements" were pretty enough. But sort of goofy. Who'd want paper roses when they could have the real thing? Who'd enjoy one-dimensional dust catchers? Who doesn't want to use all the vases they've accumulated over the years to hold actual flowers? 

I tend to rotate vases - of which I have plenty - for my weekly/biweekly Trader Joe's flowers. I also have a couple of vases full of dried flowers - it the Japaneses lanterns in my grandmother's cookie jar, or those pussy willows in the wonderful vase I got at Crate & Barrel decades ago, technically count as flowers, dried or otherwise.

For FreshCut Flowers, you don't need vases. 

They come paper vase with.

And, as noted, I had given nary a thought to any environmental concerns surrounding fresh real flowers.

But, as noted, Peter Hewitt has. 

FreshCut Paper, as it turns out, is a local company, located, in the classic spirit of New England, in an old mill in Concord, Massachusetts. I learned this while watching Chronicle, a program on WCVB Channel 5 that focuses on stories about off-the-beaten track people, places, and businesses in New England. I rarely watch it, but do find it very interesting when I stumble upon it.  

And as a complete and utter sucker for local businesses, I was more than interested in learning about FreshCut Paper.  

Naturally, I ordered a couple of bouquets. They haven't arrived yet, and I don't know if they'll replace or supplement my weekly/biweekly grocery store bouquets. I'll likely gift one to my cousin who's in senior living, hoping that the flowers will indeed be "fondly remembered and long-lasting." We'll see how and if I end up deploying the one I keep for myself.

However that turns out, I'm delighted to know that FreshCut Paper is serious about the environment:

At FreshCut Paper, we are committed to making a positive impact on both people and the planet. Through our partnership with veritree, we’ve helped plant over 5 million trees, restoring vital ecosystems. 1% of sales of our Grande Bouquet Line are donated to 1% for the Planet, supporting environmental initiatives that drive meaningful change. Your support helps us give back and make a lasting difference!

I did not order from the Grande Bouquet Line, as they were just a tad bit too grande for me. I don't want my flowers - fresh cut real blossoms, or fresh cut paper - to overwhelm my living room. While I do have a small container of my husband's ashes on my mantel, I don't want the place looking like a funeral parlor. (Wouldn't mother be please with those gorgeous gladiolas Cousin Bertha sent?) 

Anyway, I received my FreshCut Paper arrangements, without having to worry about the delivery guy leaving them on my front steps to freeze to death. There was, I was told, a tree planted for each bouqet I ordered. 

The very pretty bouquet in the picture is one I ordered for myself. The other one is going to my cousin in senior living. It'll be cheery and low maintenance for her!

As always, I am happy to see a quirkly little business making it in Massachusetts. 

Teddie's going bigtime

I don't remember when I discovered Teddie Peanut Brother. Although Teddie has been around for 100 years now, I didn't grow up with it. We were a Peter Pan PB household, and we ate plenty of it. 

Peter Pan was by no means the most popular brand back then. That was Skippy. But buying Peter Pan was definitely in keeping with parental preference for the oddball. Prince Spaghetti? Fuggedaboutit! We ate Mueller's. Why eat B&M baked beans when you could have Friends instead? Not that I liked baked beans in any way, shape, or form, but this was a particularly galling choice because B&M can labels could be turned in for mission money. Fortunately, the tea brand that worked was Tetley, so I did have an occasional Tetley box lid to contribute to saving pagan babies. 

I don't know if these brand choices were economically or personal idiosyncracy driven, but we also used Ipana toothpaste (not Crest or Colgate), played Easy Money rather than Monopoly, and Keyword rather than Scrabble. 

Of course, whenever we complained about some family weirdness in comparison to what "everyone else" could buy or do, my parents were quick to respond with "but you're not everyone else." Which was abundantly clear to the Rogers kids, that's for sure.

Today, Jif is the number one peanut butter brand in terms of market share, but Jif, the choice of "choosy mothers," didn't factor into my early childhood, other than for this one event. I remember that I was in third grade, so eight years old, and it was a cool early spring day and I was out of school, sick. But not so sick that I couldn't be out riding my bike around our empty street. I'm thinking this must have been when we'd been quarantined with chicken pox and, while I had pretty much recovered, the quarantine fatwa still applied to our house. (My sister Kath had what the doctor - who, by the way, made house calls - characterized as the worst case of chicken pox he'd ever seen.)

Anyway, while I was bicycling around, I met a man going door to door delivering small samples of Jif. My mother took at sample, but we did not convert. (I googled, and there was a nationwide launch of Jif in 1958, which foots with the chicken pox on our house.)

I didn't stay brand loyal to Peter Pan, but as an adult went over to Skippy and once in while to Jif. 

I did stay totally loyal to peanut brother, however. And somewhere along the line, 30+ years ago, I discovered a local brand, Teddie, and that was it for me.

Peanut brother is a staple chez moi, and you can pretty much guarantee that at any given time, there'll be a couple of jars in my cabinet. (Just checked, and I currently have four jars, once of which is pictured here.) 

Teddie is not, of course, to everyone's liking. (My sister Trish is not a fan.) For one thing, it's not homogenized, so you have to stir it up to get the oil mixed in, and you sometimes end up with dry clumps that are difficult to spread. And Teddie isn't sweet, either. Only two ingredients, peanuts and salt. No sugar or anything else added.

Teddie was the brainchild of Michael Hintlian, an Armenian immigrant who opened a candy shop in Boston's Quincy Market in 1925, and a few years later started making peanut butter. 

Now, 100 years after he started his company, that simple food, which he called Teddie Peanut Butter — it’s named after the son of an early employee — has fed generations of New Englanders, developed a cult following among foodies who love that its “all natural” ingredients list consists of just peanuts and salt, and become so in-demand that his grandsons are overseeing a hesitant expansion outside of the region.

After a century as a New England secret, Teddie, our Teddie, is going national.

Over the past two years — driven by an extremely loud insistence from New Englanders who have settled elsewhere in the country — that familiar glass jar with a green lid has made its way onto the shelves of Whole Foods and Publix.

 

It’s a cautious expansion, said Jamie Hintlian, the CEO who is part of the third generation to run the company (his son also works there). If anything, the sales team has found hundreds of ways to say no to retailers who want to carry the brand, Hintlian said, wary of straying too far from its core. (Source: Boston Globe)

I hope that Teddie's is successful in not "straying to far from its core." This is a brand that inspires local loyalty - tees, caps, hoodies, tattoos - near-equivalent to that of Harley-Davidson. And if the comments on The Globe article are any indication, the biggest fear among the faithful is that Teddie's will replace their glass jars with plastic. They did this for a short while a couple of years back, and it was not well-received, but if Teddie's starts shipping all over the country, there'll be pressure to switch to plastic to lower shipping costs. There's also concern that the company will be pressured to add sugar, as some folks/some regions prefer their PB on the sweet side. Not us tough New Englanders, but years ago my sister worked for a company that did marketing research for consumer products companies. I don't remember which specific brand of PB it was, but the formula for peanut butter used by this brand added more sugar than elsewhere to product sold in the South.

There is absolutely no reason to change the Teddie's recipe. The Wircutter, which does product reviews for the New York Times, has twice rated Teddie as the top creamy peanut butter (including a couple of months ago). My preference is crunchy, but I'm sure if they rated the crunchies, Teddie's would again be top of the heap. 

I wish Teddie's a successul nationwide rollout. I love seeing local companies make good. A few years ago, visting friends in Dallas, I was delighted to find Worcester's-own Polar Soda in the grocery store. 

As long as Teddie's keeps the same formula, and keeps its wonderous peanut butter under glass, I'll be happy.

Flutes 'r' Us. (Who knew?)

I knew that, with Zildjians being made here, Greater Boston is the hub of the U.S. cymbal industry. Kind of like what Pittsburgh once was to steel. Just lower scale in terms of the economic value it yields. But until I saw a recent article in the Boston Globe, I had no idea whatsoever that Boston isn't just the hub of the universe, the hub of cymbals. It's also the hub of the flute industry.

I do associate Boston with music - BSO, the Pops, Berklee - just not necessarily with flutes. Other than the fifes played by ye olde colonial reenactors. What's flutes got to do with us, do with us?

Plenty, it seems. 

The US auto industry isn’t what it used to be, but if it were, Greater Boston would be the Detroit of flute making — home to a host of world-class manufacturers. And unlike Detroit, the Boston area has retained its crown, as artisans trained at well-established companies have continually launched new firms of their own.

William S. Haynes of Acton begat Powell Flutes of Maynard, where Abigana, an award-winning flutist, works as sales manager. But the region is also home to Brannen Brothers Flutemakers of Woburn, Nagahara Flutes of Chelmsford, Levit Flute in Natick, Di Zhao Flutes of Westford, Burkart Flutes and Piccolos in Shirley, and Emanuel Flutes of North Andover. (Source: Boston Globe)

I began racking my brain trying to come up with the names of any famous flautists, and came up with three: James Galway, Lizzo, and Jethro Tull. (Or course, Jethro Tull isn't the name of the flute player; it's the name of the group. I was never a particular fan of this 60's-70's band. That would be my brother Tom. Given his incessant playing of the album, I was quite familiar with the innards of Aqualung. But I had to look up the name of the group's flute guy. Ian Anderson.)

My wandering took me to wondering whether James Galway, Lizzo, and Ian Anderson play Boston flutes.

Well, two out of three ain't bad.

Galway plays a Nagahara: Chelmsford, Mass. Anderson plays a Powell: Maynard, Mass. Lizzo mostly plays a Japanese-made flute, although she does have one from New Hampshire flute-maker John Lunn. Given NH's adjacency to Massachusetts, it's almost three out of three for the flute players I'm familiar with having local ties.

You might be thinking, just how much goes in to flute making. After all, isn't a flute a hollowed out metal rod (or wooden stick) with some holes in it? That and the thing you blow into (which is called a headjoint)?

The answer is, of course, of course there's a lot.

Local flutes, many custom-made, are available for a wide spectrum of prices, from a couple of thousand way up to the six figure range. And there's an awful lot of complex precision work that goes into the making of one. Plus technology.

There’s a lot of advanced technology in a modern flute. Powell Flutes invented a way of bonding sterling silver and gold to create a lighter, less-expensive flute that still conveys the warm, rich sound of a 14-carat instrument. Some companies use parts created at local machine shops. Here the parts are fabricated in computer-controlled milling machines to tolerances within a thousandth of an inch, much thinner than a human hair.

The technology angle is interesting, given that Maynard, Mass. (Powell) and Chelmsford, Mass. (Nagahara) were both tech hubs of yore. Maynard was the home of Digital Equipment, and Wang Labs was in Lowell, right on the Chelmsford border.

Anyway, there's a lot of detail in the Globe article on the history and the precise manufacturing process of local flutes, but one thing that struck my eye is that the making of a silver or gold flute produces a lot of dust.

Haynes recaptures gold and silver dust worth hundreds of thousands of dollars by sweeping the floors, benches, and chairs.

Thar's gold in them thar sweepings! 

“I’m surprised they let me wash my clothes at home,” [David Schipani, Haynes’s director of product design and development] said.

Well, I'm just a sucker for anything that's made in Massachusetts. 

Not that I know a damned thing about fluting, but YAY, MASSACHUSETTS FLUTES!

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Image Source: Emmanuel Flutes

Tell me a StoryFile.

One of the corniest things I've ever seen in my life was the Talking Mr. Lincoln exhibit at Disneyland. This was more than 50 years ago, so I'm a little vague on the details, but I do remember thinking it was a bit ridiculous and a bit embarrassing. (Not as ridiculous and embarrassing as It's a Small World, but still, it was no Matterhorn, no Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, no Mad Tea Party.)

I believe that Abe is still out there in Anaheim talking up a storm, but the current version is more teched up and "realistic" than the weird thing I saw way back in 1972. 

I hadn't thought of Talking Mr. Lincoln in a while, but he (it?) came to mind when I saw an article in the NY Times on Story File, a company that's part of the emerging grief tech industry. (The grief tech industry? Man, if that's not a topic for another day.)

StoryFile: Authentic Interactions is "an AI-powered video platform that allows users to create and train conversational AI interactions, making AI conversations feel more human."

Well, I'd say "authentic interactions" is a bit of a stretch, but what Story File does is create an avatar that you can make eye contact with and ask questions of.

The Times article focused on the Listro family of NYC. Peter Listro is 80, and he's dying. His wife Joan and son Matt, who's 39, got Peter to agree to be videod answering questions about his life. One of the reasons Matt wanted this done is so that his future children - Peter's hypothetical grandkids - would get to know something about their grandad.

The family was taking advantage of one offering in a growing field known as Grief Tech, which ranges from chatbots trained on the communications of a person who has died to a program that uses virtual reality to create a 3-D avatar of a deceased loved one — a remarkably lifelike presence. The Listros decided on something in between: StoryFile would create an avatar of Peter that could converse through a video screen, as if his family were reaching him by Zoom. (Source: NY Times)

Matt came up with the list of questions about his father's childhood; building his business success; what advice he would offer Matt on the day he introduced his husband to his father; what he would say to those twinkle in god's eye grandkids. There was also advice for Joan to move on through her grief. Peter spoke about how he wanted to be remembered.

In addition to the questions Matt asked, they had Peter say "Hello," "Hi," "I love you, too," "Bye." They also had him record the response "I don't have an answer for that right now." That answer would be used it someone asks AI video Peter a question that he hadn't recorded an answer to. Because the Listros had opted for real - authentic as it were - responses that Peter had given. A more advanced Story File option lets the avatar go freelance. It combs through a person's social media, emails, and any other background content, so that the loved one's avatar will supply an answer to a question that the person behind the avatar hadn't actually answered in real life. 

Look, I'd give anything to have a video of my father answering questions we had for him. Would that this had been a thing when he was sick and dying. But that was in the dark ages, grief tech wise. My father died in January 1971 (a year and a half before I saw the Talking Mr. Lincoln). I believe that my sibs and I would all get a kick out of hearing what my father had to say, as would his granddaughters. 

But I have such vivid memories of my father, that I really don't need a video. It would just be a nice to have. 

It would also be nice to have a video of my mother answering questions. To have a video of my husband.

Maybe because I had the two of them for so much longer, it's my father whose video I'd most like to see. 

Sigh...

But making eye contact and pretending it was an actual convo - as opposed to just a video recording of an interview - is to me a step too far.

Not that I blame the Listros. If this helps them work through their grief - and lets Matt introduce Peter Listro to those grandkids-to-come - I'm all for it. Whatever gets you through the night. And the days...

Having the avatar answer questions that weren't asked, however, is a bridge too far to me. Too creepy. Too weird.

As someone who - I'm sorry to admit - occasionally looks at AI generated answers, I know that AI doesn't always get it right. The information that comes back is out of date, misleading, contradictory, stupid, or just plain wrong.

Imagine asking the avatar of a late loved one about something and getting an answer that makes you feel terrible, that has you questioning that late loved one and your relationship with them. 

"I would have voted for Trump....If you'd brought a Black woman home, I would have disowned you...You sound like a moron...I always liked your brother better..." 

Be careful what you wish for when you're asking questions that the late lamented can't actually answer, and can't explain. That you can't do any follow up on.

A bit ridiculous, a bit embarrassing. And just plain god-awful.

A canned video is one thing. (Yay!) An AI'd up video that you can make eye conact with. (Not for me, but yay!) A freelance avatar. (NFW!) Seems to me that this use of grief tech can definitely cause more grief.

The Pencil Mine

I see that among the other daffy things he wants to do, the current occupant of the Oval Office wants to bring back coal mining. Which is interesting, because there haven't been all that many coal miners since, like, forever. It's almost like wanting to bring back buggy-whip makers, overlooking the fact that buggy-whip makers don't die of lung disease or get crushed in cave-ins. And buggies and whips don't cause all sorts of nasty old pollution, so there's that.

Anyway, at its peak a bit over 100 years ago, there were nearly 900,000 coal minors in the US. As natural gas and oil became more prevalent, and as mining became more efficient, there were fewer and fewer coal miners. By 1950, there were fewer than 500,000; these days, there aren't even 50,000. 

I understand that coal dying out as the fuel of choice did mean the loss of good paying jobs (albeit miserable and dangerous ones) and the hollowing out of communities. But bringing back coal mining and the handful of jobs that come with - however you position coal as "clean" - isn't the answer to restoring economic health to struggling areas.

But reading about Trump's desire for more manly, tough-guy coal-mining jobs got me thinking about other forms of mining. 

And while I was thinking about other forms of mining, what to my wondering eyes did appear but a story about a graphite mine in my home turf of Worcester County, in the town of Sturbridge. 

The mine has all sorts of history embedded in it. 

Originaly, the Nipmuc tribe had used graphite to make paints. But in 1644, John Winthrop Junior, son of Massachusetts's first governor, bought the mine. I guess this made him the first nepo baby in American history, but, alas, Junior didn't quite make the fortune he anticipated - "the mine's supply dwindled," and in 1784 the Winthrop family sold their stake. 

It's not clear who took the mine off of the House of Winthrop's hands, but in 1928, Frederick Tudor of Boston bought the mine. And here's where it gets a bit more interesting.

A fellow named Joseph Dixon worked for Tudor at the time. Dixon went on to found the J.D. Crucible Company. Maybe the word "crucible" was not great branding - who knows what a "crucible" is? So J.D. changed the company's name to Dixon Ticonderoga. As in the Dixon Ticonderoga yellow pencil, an item which we've all had in our possession at some point of another, what with college boards and Sudoku. 

Dixon's timing was good:

With the start of the Civil War, the pencil quickly began replacing ink and quills on the battlefield, as soldiers wrote to their family and friends at home. By the end of the war Dixon's company was making some 86,000 pencils a day. (Source: Worcester Telegram)

The mine in Sturbridge was not yet played out, but it's not clear how much graphite they contributed to the lead in the Dixon Ticonderogas. But there are ties to Dixon and the mine through Tudor. 

Tudor, by the way, employed men who "were direct descendants from slaves and Indigenous peoples," including the mine's foreman, Guy Scott. Not the main part of the story, but worth penciling in. 

As is the fact that the revival of the Dexter series - Dexter: New Blood - was filmed in part around and about the Sturbridge lead mine. 

The mine makes several appearances in the 10-episode series, including as a potential place to dispose of a body and home to a hibernating bear, unhappy to have been woken from slumber.

Quite a history for a little Worcester County mine. Wonder if they'll start trying to revive the lead mining industry here. Sure, we're a blue state, so Trump's not that interested in reviving squat for our ilk, but most of the lead in Dixon Ticonderoga pencils comes from Sri Lanka. Can't let those guys keep showing us up! Let's slap a 200% tariff on them and see how we can get back in the penicl mining game. 

"The world’s greatest online impersonator of professional basketball players." Talk about a niche profession.

As AI takes over more and more jobs, people are going to have to get more and more creative when it comes to making a living. 

And it looks like one Maxim Peranidze - "who may be the world’s greatest online impersonator of professional basketball players " -  has gotten a jump on the game. Or is it a jump ball?

Whatever. Peranidze, an LA guy originally from Moldova, has certainly carved out an interesting professional niche for himself. And I guess it's working out for him, as his Insta account has one million followers, a cadre that I've read he has figured out how to monetize quite nicely.

Who does he "do?"

The greats. The near greats. The current. The former.

Peranidze impersonates Larry Bird. Shaquille O'Neil. LeBron James. He's gotten a request from Dennis Rodman to do him. (No surprise that showboater would want in on this.)

The New Yorker reporter caught up with Peranidze when he was praciticing his Ivica Zubac moves. 

“Zubac easy,” Peranidze said, referring to Ivica Zubac, the seven-foot Croatian center. “I’m good with slow white guys.” He noted his mastery of the reigning M.V.P., Nikola Jokić, and of the likely future M.V.P. Luka Dončić. He noted his mastery of the reigning M.V.P., Nikola Jokić, and of the likely future M.V.P. Luka Dončić. Peranidze pulled on his Zubac jersey and a white sleeve. (Source: The New Yorker)

He'd also been working on his James Harden. (That's who's in the picture.) 

For one thing, Harden is left-handed and Peranidze is better with his right. For another, it’s difficult to grow a beard like Harden’s, which overtakes the face. Peranidze had ordered a fake one from Amazon. “Like, nine dollars,” he said. Soon, he’d put up a new post on his Instagram account, @MaxIsNicee (a million followers), captioned “Harden Floaters Be Like.” Peranidze nailed Harden’s loping and off-kilter lethality, which he described as “He nice.”

As an aside: Peranidze may be good with slow white guys, but Harden is not exactly a speed demon but, rather, a slow Black guy. Having successfully captured Harden in motion, he can add that to his repertoire. 

He also remembers the ladies, and has done impersonations of some WNBA superstars. Chicago Sky's Angel Reese was apparently not amused - wearing a wig, he had her in heels and a skirt - but Breanna Stewart of the NY Liberty got a kick out of his impersonation of her. 

For the NBAers, he buys knockoff jerseys:

....which he alters with scissors and safety pins if needed. “When guys are traded, I arts-and-crafts their names onto the new team’s jersey,” he said. 

Enterpising young man, that's for sure.  

I'm quite sure that as long as there have been celebrities, there have been impersonators. Elvis has been dead nearly 50 years and from AI-generated Google I saw that, worldwide, there are an estimated 250,000 to 400,000 Elvis impersonators. (They can't all be making a living, can they?)

Years ago, my husband and I were having a drink in a hotel bar when a whole slew of Chers came in. Turns out we had crashed a convention of Cher impersonators.

What Max Peranidze does is, of course, more complex in that he doesn't specialize in just one person to impersonate. And he has to rely on his movements, rather than just doing a look-and-sound alike (even if he does wear those knockoff shirts and don wigs and beards as needed).

Anyway, whenever I read about someone like Peranidze, I'm reminded of something my father would always say when there was some circus act on Ed Sullivan. A plate spinner. A guy who juggles bowling balls. A fire eater. "How does someone figure out that they have that particular talent?" Good question then, good question now.

And a question for Max Peranidze: can you do old-school Celtics like Bill Russell and Bob Cousy?

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And speaking of my father, today is his 113th birthday. (He only made it to 58...) Still miss you, Al!

Most likely to...

There's an insatiable demand for content. There's an insatiable demand for info on celebrities. There's an awful lot of content about celebrities floating around out there. The maw of the people must be kept fed!

As it happens, growing up, I didn't know anyone who turned into a celebrity. But just think, if Michael C. had become someone that people wanted to know about, I could report that, in first grade, on the day when the boys all got their pants wet sliding in the slush, and Sister Marie Leo made them take their pants off to dry on the radiators, and had them put on girls' coats - which were longer than boys' jackets - so that they could sit there with their underpants covered while the radiators did their thing, Michael C wore my red and green plaid coat. A coat that I loved. In his underpants. Ewwww. 

This is certainly the sort of tidbit that someone obsessed with a celebrity would have loved learn. Maybe it would show up in a profile of Michael C describing how parochial school shaped his future life as a celeb. Or, if I'd become the celeb, maybe someone else in my 1st grade class - who? Paul M? Ginny B? - would have provided fodder content for a profile on me, noting that I seemed to have been more icked out than the other little girls whose coats were worn by boys that infamous day. And what was wrong with me that this little incident turned into such a trauma that, nearly 70 years later, I was still icked out by it. (Note to self: it's pretty late in the game, so it's not gonna happen, but DON'T BECOME A CELEBRITY.)

And if someone in my high school class had become a celebrity - maybe one of the other Maureens: Maureen D, Maureen O, Maureen Q - I could have sold my yearbook to Seth Poppel. 

The first floor of Poppel’s house, in Seattle, is home to some eighteen thousand yearbooks; he and his wife, Danine, advertise their holdings as “the original and largest library of high school yearbooks of the stars.” (Source: The New Yorker)

And not just the stars. Sure, they've got the yearbooks of Patti Smith and Leo DeCaprio, of Marlon Brando and Sharon Stone. But they've also got Ruth Bader Ginsburg's. Which is how I now know that Ginsburg was a high school "twirler." (Sure wish she'd twirled out of the Supreme Court at the right time.) And Harry Truman's - Independence (MO) High School, Class of 1901.

And it's not just the yearbooks of celebrities - be they stars, pols, athletes - but also the yearbooks of those who manage to grab their 15 minutes in the limelight for their infamy:

In September, it took Poppel and his son Jared only a few hours to locate Ryan Wesley Routh’s—Routh is the alleged foiled golf-course assassin of Donald Trump—and sell his adolescent portrait to the Daily Mail for about a hundred bucks. 

Seth Popell, who's now 80, has always been a collector. As a toddler in Brooklyn, he collected bottle caps. Once he could read, it was baseball cards.

Then, nearly 50 years ago, at a baseball card show, he came across a copy of Mickey Mantle's yearbook, and found that, although there were only 41 kids in The Mick's class, Mickey Mantle wasn't chosen as the "Best Athlete." Who could have been better than a future Hall of Famer? I guess he could take solace by having been voted "Most Popular."

My high school class didn't have superlatives. We were woke before there was woke, and didn't want anyone to get left out or have their feelings hurt. We also didn't list activities under the picture, as was generally done back then. Again, those of us on the yearbook staff didn't want anyone with no activities to list, or just one pathetic activity, e.g., Intramural Basketball, 1, look like a null. 

This was, of course, noblesse oblige on the part of the yearbook staff, largely composed of my friends. (I'm still friends with the editor.) We were the girls who would have had a ton of activities. As in Glee Club 1,2,3,4; Student Council 2,3,4; Student Council President, 4; Academy Star (newspaper) 1,2,3,4; features editor, 4; Everyman (yearbook) staff; National Honor Society, 3,4; Literary Society, 1,2,3,4; Latin Club 1,2...I may have been a class officer freshman year, and I played intramural basketball for a couple of years.

We did have pages at the end of the yearbook - called Everyman, a story worthy of its very own post - with chirpy little words and phrases. "Notes to Remember." Mine were Tinkerbell...lines ahead in Latin!...12-year product...merit charts..."great stuff"...SIC VITA...sincere leader. 

Most I remember. I played Tinkerbell in some class skit. My costume included black tights, saddle shoes, and bright green pettipants with silver kangaroos on them...I did my Latin translations (without a trot, so they were tortured and nonsensical) but I liked to get those lines translated well in advance)...By the end of my senior year, I was a 12-year product of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. Four years later, I was a 16-year product...I have no idea what merit charts means, although I believe that when I was on Student Council we were instrumental in getting rid of demerit charts. (Demerits were "awarded" for things like talking between classes. If you "earned" enough of them, you had to stay after school.)..."great stuff" and SIC VITA were words I used ALL the time...sincere leader. Well, yes. Yes I was.

Above is my yearbook picture. If you're wondering what those artful lines are, I just blocked off my part of the page so you wouldn't run into Mary Jane R's section above me, and Joan S's space beneath mine.

Back to the Popells. 

Over the years, the yearbook info business grew. Even pre-Internet, magazines wanted celeb content. Then the Planet Hollywood restaurant chain decided to feature celebs' yearbook photos on their placemats. Gold for the Popells' business! And there was enough business that the Popells' son Jared could join it, and by the mid-1990's, things were booming enough that Seth Popell could quit his day job. 

The Popells finds their yearbooks - the latest demand is for Trump cabinet picks (those ought to be good: White Nationalist Club, 1,2,3,4) - through Internet search and through a freelance network they've built up that scouts antique stores and other sources of old junk.

It may not be the business that's Most Likely to Succeed, but it's got to be in contention for Most Niche.

Me? I've picked up a few old yearbooks that have nothing to do with celebs, and I find them fascinating. Maybe I'll dig up a few more. And who knows? I might run into someone interesting.

Jump rope pro? Who knew?

If you don't count jacks, at which I truly excelled, but which may be more game than sport, the only sport I was ever any good at was jump rope. As kids, we played it for hours - in the schoolyard, in the street in front of someone's house, wherever there was pavement, a long rope (typically a hank of clothesline), and a few girls. 

All in together girls, mighty fine weather girls...

Apples, peaches, pears and plums, jump out when your birthday comes...

High, low, medium, wavy, walkie, talkie, slowly, peppers...

Blue bells, cockle shells, eevie, ivy over...

Teddy bear, teddy bear, turn around...

Jump rope could involve a lot of girls, or as few as two if you had a post to tie one end of the jump rope to. (You could actually jump rope by yourself, but that just wasn't as much fun.)

I was very good at jump rope, maybe because I got more practice in, as I had to stay in the "jump out when your birthday comes" song until December. And I just loved it. The only part of it I never wanted to end up with was "steady ends," where you had to just turn the rope and didn't get to jump. I can't remember how anyone got stuck with steady ends, unless they called it because they had a sore ankle. Or just didn't want to jump. But for me? I was fine taking my turns turning, but steady ends was a big BOO.

I loved regular jump rope, including the fast-paced peppers. I loved Double Dutch. For a while, Chinese jump rope was the rage, and I loved that, too, although it didn't involve much jumping. 

Not that jump rope is an Olympic sport (not yet, anyway), and I might not have been Olympic caliber jump roper, but I was pretty darned good at it.

What I wasn't aware of is that there is such a thing as professional jump roping, but it appears that there has been such a thing since the 1990's. There's an American Jump Rope Federation, a U.S. National Team, and a national championship being held in Sioux Falls, SD this summer. Who knew?

Well, I sure didn't, and wouldn't have found out if I hadn't come across a piece in The Guardian about David Fisher, a professional jump roping trainer and performer. Fisher even writes kids' books "about a rope-wielding hero." And this past December, he became his very own "rope-wielding hero" when he saved a man and his dog from drowning in an Indiana ice pond. 

Authorities say Fisher sprang into action after his son, Felix, heard a man screaming for help. They realized a neighbor’s dog had gone on to an ice pond while chasing geese, causing him to fall in the water. In turn, an 18-year-old man went after the dog to try to save the animal – but ended up falling in, too.

That’s when Fisher grabbed his jump-rope bag, pulled out his double-Dutch ropes and bravely – if gingerly – stepped on to the ice, he told WRTV.

“I just instinctively went,” Fisher recounted. “I could hear the ice cracking underneath my feet.

“When I finally did arrive, I slung the rope to him, and he grabbed one handle, and bit by bit, we pulled him out of the ice pond,” said Fisher, whose son helped him complete the rescue.

The Fishers then took the neighbor and his dog into their home so they could warm up and wait for first responders to arrive, officials said.

Fisher had the tool to save the day on that occasion because he travels the world as a professional rope jumper, WRTV [Indianapolis] reported. (Source: The Guardian)

Fisher's the Rock 'n Rope Warrior, and he's got the website to prove it. Why he's even performed for Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin!

The only men I've ever seen jumping rope are boxers, but I'll be on the lookout for David Fisher.

Professional jump rope? Who knew?

If only this had been a career option for fifties kids. Maybe I could've been a contender...

Bar pizza, anyone?

My sister Kathleen used to live in Hull, a small, funky beach town on Boston's South Shore. I spent a lot of time in Hull over the years she lived there, but none of it was spent in any of Hull's bars of which - given Hull's general funkiness and blue collar vibe - I'm sure there were a few of. But come to find out that, when I was sitting with Kath and Rick on their porch, drinking wine and watching boats float by and planes cruise into Logan, I could have been drinking beer and eating bar pizza, a food item I have just recently become aware of.

But bar pizza is, I have learned, a thing on the South Shore. 

It's been a thing for a good long while, but it became a thing-thing, a known thing, a few years back when Kerry Byrne, a food writer from Quincy (which is on the South Shore) "began identifying and celebrating 'bar pizza,' or 'bar pie,' as a singular dish."

In February 2020, just as COVID-19 was beginning its global havoc, Byrne created a Facebook group, “South Shore Bar Pizza Social Club,” to review the iconic spots and promote the businesses as restaurant traffic slowed. By the end of the first day, he said, the page had thousands of members and took on a life of its own, quickly becoming the central place to answer the question many were asking themselves as the world shut down: How do I make bar pizza at home? (Source: Boston Globe)

Bar pizza, by the way, is not all that fancy. It's a thin crust pizza (made with cheddar, not mozzarella), slathered up to the edges of the pan with red sauce and cheese. So no crust handle to hang on to when you fold and shovel a piece into your mouth. But it sounds plenty tasty, especially if you're half in the bag, and I can see how South Shore folks would want to make their own, especially when they were cut off from their supply during covid.

And, of course, to make the real authentic deal, why not make it in the real authentic deal pan from Bay State Restaurant Products, an outfit founded after WWII and now being run by the third and fouth gen of Owenses, Bobby Owens and his father "Big Bob." Bobby Owens estimates that Bay State has supplied "like 99 percent" of the bars that make bar pizza. 

Byrne's Facebook group turned out to be a real boon for Bay State:

And overnight, the 36-year-old Owens became, in the words of Byrne, “America’s first and only celebrity pizza pan salesman.”

The “Bobby Owens Pan,” as it came to be known, became a phenomenon with the Facebook group, which now has 75,000 members. Diehards swore they were the only way to make authentic bar pizza, and loved everything about the Owens story: a family business, run out of a concrete building on a side street in Brockton. They don’t do online ordering, so you have to call and actually talk to the Bobby Owens to order them.

Owens has now shiped pans ($17.99) to "all 50 states and several countries." And thousands have showed up at the shop in Brockton for a brick and mortar in person shopping experience. 

The origin story for the pizza pan is a good one:

The story [Big Bob Owens]’s always heard is that bar pizza started at Brockton Café after the war, when a cook took a steel waitress tray that Coca-Cola used to give to its restaurants, burned off the paint, and used it to make the first “bar pie.”

As the pizza became popular among factory workers looking for something to wash down with their after-work beers, there weren’t enough Coca-Cola trays to satisfy the demand, so the Owenses — who already sold and serviced most of the ovens used to make bar pizza, as well as just about everything else in the kitchens — started having the pans made for their customers. 

It may or may not be 100% true but the whole thing makes me hungry for some bar pizza. 

Maybe this summer, on a nice day, I'll take the ferry down to Hull's Nantasket Beach, make my way to a dive bar, and order me a bar pie. If I like it, I may have to call Bay State and order me a pan.

When things gets unbearable

The Lake Tahoe area is one of the prettiest places I've ever been. The mountains. The pine-covered hills. The too-cold-to-swim-in water. The clear, sharr air (when there aren't wildfires and/or insane traffic in the vicinity...). It's just lovely. 

West Virginia was "almost heaven" to John Denver. To the great naturalist John Muir, Tahoe was "a kind of heaven." It's also been overrun by tech bros who took up permanent residency during the pandemic, and tourists, who flock there for the breathtaking beauty of the area: the mountains, the pine-covered hills, the too-cold-to-swim-in, etc., and who are widely considered "tourons" (a portmanteau of tourist and moron). Of course, where there are humans, there is food. Which happens to be something that black bears really like. (And, of course, when there is human encroachment on the wilderness, the wild things need to go somewhere, and that somewhere is going to be what humans have turned into human habitation.)

The Tahoe basin is also home to one of the continent’s densest populations of black bears, Ursus americanus. The species flourished after its chief predator, the grizzly, was extirpated there, in the early twentieth century. Grizzlies are not to be fucked with. Black bears, which can be brown, reddish, or blond, are defensive and lazy, smart and resilient, ravenous and opportunistic. All they really want to do is eat. They lived mostly on grasses, berries, and insects until humans showed up. Why spend all day dismantling a yellow-jacket nest for the paltry reward of larvae when there’s dumpster pizza to be had?

Even if something is not edible, bears will try to eat it—scented air fresheners, cherry lip balm. The black bear is the terrestrial equivalent of a shark, the sharpest nose in the ocean; its sense of smell is seven times better than a bloodhound’s, several thousand times better than a human’s. A bear that detects so much as a Tic Tac will remember the location of that score forever—and teach it to her cubs.(Source: The New Yorker)

Fifty-plus years later, I still recall all the notices posted in the National Parks warning campers against sleeping in the clothing they cooked in, leaving any food out, and covering their hands with fragrant lotion before they popped in to their sleeping bags for the night. On one memorable night during our cross-country camping trip, my friend Joyce and I were in our sleeping bags, in our tent, in Shenandoah National Park. We had gone through our checklist: we weren't wearing our cooking clothes, food was safety stored, no handcream on. (A ranger had come by our campsite to warn us of bears in the area.) Before we drifted off, we heard a loud sniffing noise around our tent. We reached across the space between our sleeping bags and clutched each other's hands, not daring to make a sound, barely breathing. The headlines about two young girls eaten by bears flashed into both of our minds. Then, by the light of the silvery moon, we saw that the aggressive tent sniffer was a skunk. Not that getting sprayed - which didn't happen - would have been so great, but it was better than being clawed.

In Tahoe, the black bears have been marauding around, coming into town, raiding dumpsters, stealing food from picnickers on the beach, and breaking into homes to raid the fridge with an appetite and ferocity far worse than that of the growingest teenage boy. Bears have been known to grab groceries out of grocery bags while folks are unloading their trunks. When they find their way into empty houses, bears knocking about have been known to turn on burners and faucets. And, in case you're wondering, bears not only shit in the woods. They'll shit in your house if they're on a forage.

In this environment, it's no wonder that a robust bear-protection industry has sprung up around Tahoe. 

Ryan Welch is an electrical contractor who used to fix hot tubs. Then he started noticing a lot of bear break-ins. And a lot of "home remedies" that were failing to keep the bears out. So he invented something called a bear mat, a.k.a., an unwelcome mat, a device that gives a bear enough of a jolt to have them stay away from your doors and windows. Bear mats cost a few hundred bucks, and Welch has sold about 5,000 of them. The company he founded, Bear Busters, also sells electric fences and inpenetrable "bear boxes" for storing your trash. And if you've suffered damage from an ursine B&E, they'll fix your place up. 

Kathi Zollinger is a volunteer with the Bear League, a pro-bear non-profit that focuses on keeping bears safe (and wild) and does a lot of education of the public. 

“I heard someone say, ‘We shouldn’t have to turn our houses into fortresses because of bears.’ To me, yeah—if you want to live in Lake Tahoe, you need to secure the home so that bears don’t come in. That’s the responsible thing to do. We live in the forest! People call and say, ‘I’ve lived here thirty, forty, fifty years and I’ve never had a problem with bears.’ I’m, like, Well, now we have fires, and they have no habitat anymore, and we continue to develop.”

And so it goes...

If you're Bear Busters, the unbearable is plenty good for business. 

Something strange in the neighborhood? Who you gonna call? Bear Busters!

ASDF ;LKJ

A couple of letters on my laptop keyboard are obliterated, worn through. B. S. M. No surprise that S is a goner. It's no E. It's no A. It's no T. But it's still used more frequently than most letters. And M? It's no R, but it is the first letter of my first name, so I likely end up using it a lot. But B? B! Why would B wear out?

Anyway, it's a good thing I learned touch typing on a qwerty keyboard back in the day, so I know where all the letters are on the keyboard without even having to look!

I learned to type the summer after my freshman year in high school. My school didn't offer typing, so for six weeks, I took the bus downcity to take touch typing at Classical High School. You had to take two courses, so I also took Civics/Political Science with some old grouch named Mr. Smith.

We learned - typing, not Civics/Political Science - on manual typewriters, which was a good thing because that's what we had at home: a heavy duty, clunky Royal.

Other than for typing papers, which began when my sister Kathleen started high school two years before I did, I don't know what my parents had a typewriter for. Make that my mother. Using the typewriter was definitely her jam, not his. (Although she'd won a scholarship to a Catholic liberal arts college - the now defunct Mundelein College in Chicago - my grandparents had forced my mother to go to secretarial school instead, where she learned short hand, stenography, and - of course - touch typing. A source of endless childhood fascination was my mother's steno machine, stowed away in our cellar storage closet along with her unused violin and her Nelson Eddy scrapbook.)

Anyway, I don't remember her using that clunky old Royal. (I can imagine her using the typewriter for formal corresponence like a complaint letter or something.) But I remember Kath and I using it.

For starters, I used it to practice my homework. The first exercise was familiarizing yourself wiht the central row of keys on the keyboard. ASDF ;LKJ. Gradually, I grew into r-u-g j-u-g r-u-g j-u-g. And, finally, the pinnacle. A sentence that used every letter in the alphabet. The quick red fox jumped over the lazy brown dog. 

Not only was I able to type my own papers, but knowing how to type opened up all sorts of swell job opportunities. Like the Christmas vacation temp job I got working in an insurance company where all I did all day long was type the letter B on forms. 

When I graduated from high school, I was given a Royal Portable in a spiffy blue carrying case, to bring to college - the same typewriter that I'm guessing 95% of my classmates had.

Manual typewriters were slow. The key arms that swung the type slugs onto the ribbon jammed all the time. Correcting - even when you used those fancy black and white ribbons and corrasable paper - was painful. And who can forget whisking away eraser crumbs with the tiny green whisk-er end of your typewriter eraser. Wite-Out, when it came around, was a revelation. But you had to have the patience to wait for it to dry. And you had to be able to line your paper up precisely to the right spot so you could evenly type in your fix.

When electric typewriters became more common, my mother got an IBM Selectric which she used - among other purposes - to type papers for my brothers, a service that was never provided to me and my sisters. 

Me? I stuck with my Royal Portable to get me through business school, at which point personal computers, word processors, and home printers were becoming a thing.

Although I still know how the rollers and the carriage return works, although I bet I could still unstick the key arms if they got all jammed up, I haven't used a typewriter in years. (It goes without saying that I can touch type to beat the band.)

But there are still folks around who actually prefer using typewriters. 

For them, alas, the last typewriter shop in the Boston area is slated to go out of business. Cambridge Typewriter (which repaired and sold typewriters and supplies) is closing on March 31st, and Tom Furrier, the store's proprietor, is retiring. Tom recently posted the news on his Facebook page:

“We are no longer accepting any new repairs but are still selling typewriters up until the end. I’ll be giving updates over the next couple of months as to how we are going to close it out. We will have a big party towards the end of March. It will be a Type-In disguised as a retirement party.” (Source: Boston Globe)

Tom Furrier had had a succession plan in place, but the apprentice he'd mentored backed out a couple of months before he'd planned to retire last year. So he tried to sell the shop, but even at the low, low price of $35K, he couldn't find the right buyer. So now it's everything must go, then close the doors. 

I'm in the getting-old process of de-accumulating. Sure, I still make occasional acquisitions - most recently from the fabulous things that my sister Kath is de-accumulating. (Thanks so much for the cherry breakfront, the painting of the three decker. They look great in my living room.) But mostly I'm thinning the herd of stuff that a) I don't want or need; b) no one I know wants or needs. Every couple of months, I find myself Ubering over to Goodwill to hand off a couple of shopping bags full of perfectly usable items that someone else will be happy to pick up for a buck or two in their store. Honestly, how many clear glass flower vases does one woman neeed?

Yet I still wouldn't mind having a vintage typewriter around, just to look at. 

No, I won't give into the impulse to acquire one. A vintage typewriter (accompanied, in my mind, by an ancient Victrola with listening horn, another item I have long had a hankering for) would be swell to have, but what would I do with it? Where would I put it? 

This doesn't, of course, stop me from feeling a bit weepy about the end of Cambridge Typewriter.

Not that I ever stepped toe in the place, but I'm missing this little gem of a shop already. 

ASDF ;LKJ...

How could you NOT love this story?

I love, love, love this story, which ran as a heart-warming non-Christmas tale in the Boston Globe on Chrismtas morning.  

Tim Almeida is a barber, but he doesn't operate out of neighborhood storefront with a striped barber pole on the sidewalk outside its doors. 

No, Almeida owns The Clippership, a "mobile barber shop, [which] was renovated to resemble a cozy wooden sailboat cabin."

First off, props for the clever name! Love, love, love...

Here's how his thriving business came about: 

When covid struck in 2020, the barbering biz pretty much dried up. Who wanted to risk death for a fade? 

I know what I did hair-wise during covid. I let my hair go gray. And when I saw my hairdresser for a trim, it was in my sister's backyard, where Rita came to give me and Kath haircuts and my brother-in-law a trim beard. We all wore masks.

Like Rita, when covid came along, Almeida began making house calls. And then:

He saw a YouTube video about a mobile barbershop and decided to piggy back off the concept by starting one of his own. To stand out, Almeida, a self-described “boat guy,” wanted the inside of his van to resemble a sailboat cabin. (Source: Boston Globe)

He found a guy to help him figure out how to kit out his van, and he was soon on the road. 

One reason for Almeida's success is that he specializes: men's fades and straight razor shaves. He also specializes in a certain Cambridge market: life science campuses. When he realized that a lot of his clients were in the life sciences, he "set up contracts with several campus management companies for weekly walk-in periods."

Tim Almeida just seems like a naturally smart business man and entrepreneur, attributing:

...part of his success to his ability to figure out the logistics of a mobile business. He maps concentric routes around the city, starting close to home and building out the route to maximize the number of daily appointments he can schedule. He learned how to be his own handyman, repairing things like frozen pipes and reinsulating the van after his first winter.

According to his clients, it helps that he's a great barber with a very likeable personality. But underneath that talent with the clippers, his likeable personality, he remains a savvy business guy who hopes someday to franchise his business. I hope he succeeds. And I hope he also franchises his concept to hairdressers, not just barbers. 

Go, Tim Almeida!

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A link to The Clippership