Episode 521
with Jon Mooallem, Jenny Nguyen, and Laura Veirs
Host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello talk dream businesses; writer Jon Mooallem (The New York Times Magazine) discusses his newest collection of essays Serious Face and why you shouldn't tell your friend they look like a 1940’s Spanish bullfighter; chef Jenny Nguyen chats about opening her Portland bar The Sports Bra, which exclusively televises women’s sports; and singer-songwriter Laura Veirs performs "My Lantern" from her new album Found Light.
Jon Mooallem
Writer
Jon Mooallem wants you to take a chance on an electrifying story that has slipped through the cracks of history. In his new book, “This is Chance! The Shaking of an All-American City, A Voice That Held It Together,” he tells the turbulent tale of the 1964 “Good Friday” earthquake in Alaska – and how a part-time radio reporter, Genie Chance, helped to hold the community together in its aftermath. Mooallem is a longtime writer-at-large with The New York Times Magazine and a contributor to outlets like “This American Life” and Wired, where he tells intelligent and compassionate stories about the lives we live and the world around us. He’s also the creator of the WALKING podcast, which was named a best podcast of the year by The A.V. Club. We dare you: take a gamble on this American story about a single catastrophic weekend and the collective strength that emerged from calamity. Website • Twitter
Jenny Nguyen
Entrepreneur
Jenny Nguyen is the chef, founder, and owner of The Sports Bra, the world’s first sports bar showing only women’s sports. A basketball player from an early age, Jenny turned to the culinary arts after an injury ended her sports career in college and worked her way up in kitchens for the next 15 years. The Sports Bra, which opened in Portland in April 2022, raised over $100K on Kickstarter, received press coverage from around the world, and continues to draw attention to gender inequality in sports. Website • Twitter
Laura Veirs
Singer-songwriter
Laura Veirs is a singer-songwriter from Portland known for inquisitive, literary lyrics and an intricate chamber folk sound. She has a dozen albums to her name, many of which she released on her own label, Raven Marching Band Records. A prolific collaborator, she has worked with such artists as Sufjan Stevens, Bill Frisell, and Bela Fleck, as well as Neko Case and k.d. lang in the supergroup case/lang/veirs. In 2018, she created the podcast Midnight Lightning, about musician parents, and that same year she published a children’s book, Libba: The Magnificent Life of Elizabeth Cotten. Her new album, Found Light, written in a period of post-divorce self-rediscovery, comes out in July. Listen • Twitter
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Luke Burbank Hey, Elena.
Elena Passarello Hey, Luke! How's it going?
Luke Burbank It is going very well. It's nice to see you. You are somewhere in America at a writing event, right?
Elena Passarello That's right. I'm at a kind of a writer's camp in Vermont.
Luke Burbank Are you feeling especially ready for this week's "station location identification examination"?
Elena Passarello I really hope it's a city in Vermont.
Luke Burbank It is not. I mean, to give you that one hint.
Elena Passarello Ahh, okay okay.
Luke Burbank There's 49 other states, it could be from. This, of course, is the part of the show where I quiz Elena on a station in America where Live Wire is on the radio and you try to guess where I'm talking about. So, this place is known as the toilet paper capital of the world. The company that would eventually become Quilted Northern invented the first toilet paper here that would come without the risk of splinters.
Elena Passarello What!?
Luke Burbank So the takeaway from this is early production methods of toilet paper sometimes left wood splinters in the rolls. This was this place. Their claim to fame was they were producing the toilet paper that probably didn't have splinters in it.
Elena Passarello Okay, well, northern. So it's somewhere in the north and then toilet paper, there's got to be a lot of trees around so...
Luke Burbank Let me give you another clue. I like how you're thinking but this might help too the French explorer Jean Nicolet originally named this spot. And now apologies for my French La Bay de Ponce or the Bay of Stinking Waters because of the smell of the algae. But they later renamed it in favor of the color of the algae.
Elena Passarello Is it Green Bay, Wisconsin?
Luke Burbank [Bell Rings] It is exactly. Green Bay, Wisconsin. On the radio on W H I D radio. I'm really glad they changed the name.
Elena Passarello Yeah, yeah. Good, good rebranding there.
Luke Burbank I have been to Green Bay and it is a wonderful place and I'm glad it's not called the Bay of Stinking Waters anymore. All right.
Luke Burbank Shout out to everyone listening in Green Bay. Should we get to the show Elena?
Elena Passarello Let's do it.
Luke Burbank All right. Take it away.
Elena Passarello From PRX. It's Live Wire! This week, writer Jon Mooallem.
Jon Mooallem Every time I see a new dentist, it's the same. They get like archeologists before a dig. Eager to know what sort of ruined structure is hidden under there.
Elena Passarello Chef and women's sports advocate Jenny Nguyen.
Jenny Nguyen Here we are where space that is dedicated to showing women sports. Right. But there isn't any possible way that we're able to show 24/7 content.
Elena Passarello With music from Laura Veirs and our fabulous house band. I'm your announcer, Elena Passarello, and now the host of Live Wire Luke Burbank!
Luke Burbank Hey, thank you so much, Elena Passarello. Thanks to everyone tuning in all over the country, including in Green Bay, Wisconsin. We have a great show in store for y'all this week. Of course, we asked the Live Wire listeners a question for this week's show. That question was, "Describe your dream business". This is because one of our guests, Jenny Nguyen, kind of went out and made her dream business, this place called the sports bra in Portland. You're going to hear about. We're going to hear those listener responses coming up. First, though, it's time for the best news we heard all week. This is our little reminder at the top of the show that there is, in fact, that despite how many of us feel a lot of the time some good news happening out there in the world. Elena, what is the best news that you heard this week?
Elena Passarello Well, I have some pride month news, but as any good working drag queen will tell you, Pride now kind of stretches from May to August. There are so many different festivals. I love the world of drag. I just love it. And, you know, unfortunately, one thing I don't love is that lately there's been this trend of people showing up to protest the more family friendly drag events like drag story time, because of course, there's lots of different types of drag. There's nightclub drag, but then there's like drag storytime at libraries where somebody dresses up and reads to kids. And that's what happened when there was a planned drag event in Billings, Montana, at Zoo Montana. And a senator and a representative let people know that they weren't a fan of it and 50 people showed up to protest it. But this is the best news we've heard all week. Okay. This isn't the worst news we've heard all week. The best news is that 700 people showed up to the drag queen story hour at the zoo in support of one queen named Anita Shadow, who read a book about wildlife. Of course, because it's a zoo and read a book about people coming from diverse identities. She looked amazing. She looked kind of like Sally, the farmer's daughter, with this great yellow Dolly Parton wig. And there's all these kids in front of her enjoying the story time. And, you know, I think the story hour proved that there were over ten times as much support than there is detraction, which gives me quite a big jolt of hope.
Luke Burbank That's a good reminder because the news has been so dark of late and it's very easy to feel hopeless and overwhelmed. And then you hear something like this where you're like, No, there's ten times the people in the world who actually like nice things happening.
Elena Passarello That's right.
Luke Burbank Like kids having stories read to them. Then there are these people that have something going on where they want to, you know, make a scene. So that's actually a nice little reminder here.
Elena Passarello And this is in Billings, Montana, too. It's not in like New York or L.A. It's in places like where we live, the heartland. So everywhere that support is coming out in multitudes. Hooray!
Luke Burbank I also have a best news story I saw, Elena, that involves a queen. The queen of Walt Whitman Boulevard, also known as Claire Bauman. Claire Bauman retired from crossing guard duty in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, recently, after almost 60 years of helping students from Horace Mann Elementary School across the same street.
Elena Passarello Oh, cool.
Luke Burbank Yeah, they call her the queen of Walt Whitman Boulevard. She's 94 years old, by the way. She's just been out there taking kids safely across the street, which this story jumped out to me because, you know, my Aunt Cathy in Philadelphia was a crossing guard for decades.
Elena Passarello Oh wow!
Luke Burbank And I didn't realize this until I had an aunt in the crossing guard industry. But they really bond with the kids and the parents of the kids. I mean, of course, it's an awesome responsibility to help keep these kids safe. Well, Claire Bauman has been out there for almost 60 years. They brought her to her last shift in a limo that some of her favorite students were in the limo with her. It was a whole thing. They celebrated. The local media showed up. Her daughter in law said she was advocating for Claire to retire because she felt like she couldn't retire the daughter in law until Claire retired. And she didn't want to work, she said, until she was 94. So she had to get Claire out of the crossing guard game. I was a crossing guard for exactly one shift in grade school. I was like a student crossing guard and I wanted to. I wanted the gig because at the end of the year, they would take all of the crossing guards for a day at the amusement park called Fun Forest in Seattle.
Elena Passarello Okay.
Luke Burbank I was out there on my crossing guard duty for exactly one shift. I got bored and I asked this person named Terry Wolfong to Where am I crossing guard uniform and cover for me. And I was immediately cut from the crossing guard team. I lasted I lasted roughly six decades, less than Claire Bauman, the the queen of Walt Whitman Boulevard. But shout out to Claire. Good job. Thank you for your service of getting the kids in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, safely to and from school. Anyway, that's the best news that I saw this week.
Luke Burbank All right. Let's get our first guest on over to the show. He is a writer at large for The New York Times magazine. And he was the person behind the surprisingly listenable podcast, The Walking Podcast, wherein he would just record himself walking around Bainbridge Island in Washington, where he lives. What we want to talk to him about, though, is his exceptional new book of essays. It's titled Serious Face. It covers everything from monk seals to the former skydiving entrepreneur who's been building his dream city in the desert of California, calling it the center of the world. John Mooallem joined us onstage at the Alberta Rose Theater back in May. Let's take a listen to that conversation.
Luke Burbank Hello, Jon.
Jon Mooallem Hi.
Luke Burbank Welcome back to the show.
Jon Mooallem Thank you very much.
Luke Burbank How have you been?
Jon Mooallem I've been all right.
Luke Burbank This book series Face is just such a absolutely wonderful read. It's a collection of essays on a variety of different topics and things that you've reported on in your life over the years. One of the questions that you pose in the book is: why are we not better than we are? Do you see that sort of a question that you've been trying to answer in one way or another throughout your career? What do you exactly mean by that question? Why are we not better than we are? What are you trying to explore?
Jon Mooallem Yeah, well, first I'd say so. I kind of borrowed, well I didn't borrow it. I stole that line from a from a poem by a poet named Eric Trethewey, which I had read like 25 years ago and just kind of still rattling around my head. And yeah, I think that's when I had to sit down and think about, you know, what tied a lot of these pieces together. It did seem like that was a question they were all driving on one way or another, not necessarily like in a moral sense, like why are we not, you know, perfect angels all the time, but just even like as functional machinery? Like, why is it that I was supposed to check that my water heater wasn't leaking before I left the house this morning and I didn't do it, you know, and
Luke Burbank Did that really happened to you today?
Jon Mooallem Really that's a true story. But yeah, I just think that we're in some ways it's like when you when you really can step back, you see, like a lot of us are kind of bumbling around and more inept than I think we generally realize and that. But the problem is, is like we can imagine better, you know, better ways of doing things. We can imagine sort of the perfect way to do everything. And so a lot of the stories in the book are about this kind of breakdown between theory and practice, when people are really trying to accomplish something great and kind of just can't. Just can't get there. Mm hmm.
Luke Burbank One of the early essays in the book involves you and some buddies heading out to Alaska for a kayaking trip. And things did not sort of play out the way you were expecting. What happened?
Jon Mooallem Yeah, we were kayaking in Glacier Bay, which is a really remote part of Alaska, and had been rained in one day. We weren't able to get in the boats that day because the water was too rough. So we decided to just kind of hike around after the rain had died down and a very large tree fell over and landed on my friend and knocked him into a river. That's the short version of the story.
Luke Burbank But I mean, the what makes it so compelling is, first of all, your friend was, it turns out, injured very sort of gravely. And you're also in the absolute middle of nowhere. And also, like no offense, but one of your friends was sort of an outdoor guide. But the other two.
Jon Mooallem Exactly. My friend, whose name is also Jon, was the one who was injured and he was the one who had all the experience and know how. You know, we were his guests. I mean, I should say he's he's okay. We got we got him out.
Luke Burbank Yeah.
Jon Mooallem And the Coast Guard came through a kind of freak series of coincidences. We were able to get word to the Coast Guard. But, yeah, I mean, that's a perfect example of this of discussion is like, you know, somehow everything worked out. But it was not because we were, you know, perfectly capable, you know, competent people. It was it was a lot of luck. It could have easily gone different ways. And it was just sort of like repeatedly, kind of just like trying to not let the current emergency, you know, take us all under and then getting to the next emergency.
Luke Burbank You turned, as is so often the case, in emergencies to poetry.
Elena Passarello Your first aid kit was poetry. [laughs]
Jon Mooallem Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, you really want me in a crisis.
Luke Burbank Yeah.
Jon Mooallem Yeah, there is there is a moment in this in this whole adventure where my one friend had had gone back to our campsite to try to get hold of this radio and reach some help. And I and was left alone with my friend my friend Jon, who was just laying on the forest floor completely immobilized. And, you know, I had this sense, like probably mostly from movies, you know, you're supposed to talk to the person who's kind of going in and out of consciousness and just kind of try to pull them back. But, you know, I didn't have a script for that, right? Like you actually need to say things. And I initially started kind of like bumbling around. And at one point I apologized because I thought I'd overstayed my welcome with his family at Christmas one year I was sort of like cleansing myself of my, you know, and I realized, Oh, this is messed up. Like, I don't want him to think. I think he's dying, right?
Luke Burbank So and that's also not how that's supposed to work. It's the person who's dying who's supposed to get some stuff off their chest, not the other person who's basically fine.
Jon Mooallem You know, that's a really that's a really good point. I'm going to add that to the list of things that did not go right. Um, but yeah, so I had these professors in college who had insisted and required us to, to memorize poems. And so, yeah, so I, the first one I reached for was the Shampoo by Elizabeth Bishop, which is a love poem she wrote for another woman about washing her hair. And so there I was reciting that to Jon. And, you know, we went I went through some more hits, some Robert Frost, some Auden. And I didn't realize it at the time. I would not have been able to tell you that. I thought it was maybe a matter of minutes. It turns out for an hour and a half. John and I were there before anyone came back to, uh, to help us and. I think I was doing poetry most of that time.
Luke Burbank And and he told you later that that that actually was really great for him in that moment? It was really helpful.
Jon Mooallem Yeah. I mean, that was that was another really surprising thing about being able to talk this out all this time later was I had this image of myself as, you know, pretty helpless. And. And yeah. And I think John was really grateful for it. He told me that if he had to almost die on the floor of a forest, he'd love for me to be there next time too. So, yeah.
Luke Burbank This is Live Wire Radio. We're talking to Jon Mooallem. His new book of essays is Sirius Face. We got to take a quick break, but we'll be back with much more in a moment from the Alberta Rose Theater.
Luke Burbank Hey, welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. We are at the Alberta Rose Theater here in Portland, Oregon. We're talking to John Mooallem. His new book of essays is Serious Face. The essay that you've written about your face and the face of a famous Spanish bullfighter was actually in the New York Times Magazine. I'm sure a lot of people here got a chance to read it. It's a really incredible piece of writing. And I was wondering. Could you maybe read a little bit from that particular essay in the book?
Jon Mooallem Sure, yeah.
Luke Burbank Now, friends of yours started sending you photographs of this particular bullfighter that they would see photos of in Spain. And what was his name?
Jon Mooallem His name was Manolete, although I didn't know that at the time. It was. It was two friends who had been at a restaurant and seen this photograph on the wall and sent it to me immediately because the guy looked just like me. They were really freaked out by it as I as was. I saw it, too. You don't often not only see this about yourself, but I couldn't deny it. He looked exactly like me.
Luke Burbank And then. So you wrote about it and maybe we could hear some of that?
Jon Mooallem Sure. Yeah. Well, so I'll just say that my face is very crooked for the listening public at home. My jaw is kind of going in one way, my nose and the other. I say in the piece, it's so it's I'm never kind of really looking straight at you, no matter which way I tilt my head.
Luke Burbank I think it's beguiling for the record.
Jon Mooallem Thank you. This is all just a trick to get people to tell me I'm handsome. All right. So this is a part of the piece where I stop talking about the bullfighters face and start talking about my face instead. "No one appreciates my face with more uncontrollable gusto than dentists, though more than once I've endured one calling a colleague from the other room to come have a look. They peer at my X-rays with giddy concentration as though pressing open a fresh book of Sudoku and sometimes asked me to get out of the chair and stand against the wall so they can get a few shots with the regular camera too. I was in my mid-thirties before I realized that these demoralizing portrait sessions were in a standard part of a dental exam. Every time I see a new dentist, it's the same. They get like archeologists before a dig. Eager to know what sort of ruined structure is hidden under there, imagining all the physical dysfunction and pain that I must be living with, and the many diagnostic tools and specialists that could be gathered behind the project of setting it all right. They aren't wrong. My jaw is so misshapen that I can feel it wriggle out of joint whenever I open wide enough for a hamburger or yawn and then bonk back into place. And the gums on the left side of my mouth are wearing away at a distressing rate, since those teeth apparently clamped together long before the ones on the other side can connect and therefore do most of the chewing. But my only serious complaint has been the headaches, the small genus of pains that have wracked me periodically since childhood. There's a particular kind of dull headache that sprouts under an above my eyes like mold. There's one that presses and holds its weight against my face from inside, like a tantrum. A toddler squatting against her bedroom door to keep the world out. There's the throbbing one that hangs around diffusely for hours and only produces pain when I focus on it like a pang of guilt. Maybe none of this makes sense. These headaches smolder at the periphery of language in a nonsensical cloud of synesthesia and memories. Purple pain, newsprint colored pain. Pain that has the turgid heft of Greek yogurt or smells like the inside of an umbrella. Pain that funnels me back to one gloomy Sunday afternoon from my childhood, splayed on the carpet watching Steve Martin in The Jerk on Channel 11. Does anyone truly comprehend the pressures roiling inside their own head? As far as I understand it, the source of my headaches is probably my sinuses, which over time were narrowed and crushed like a plastic straw as the bones of my jaw and nose grew into them out of alignment. But I can't say for sure. And a couple of different points in my life. I've gotten motivated to better diagnose and even fix these problems, shuttling around for exploratory scans and consultations. Doctors have proposed plastic surgery to straighten out my nose or surgically breaking my jaw and resetting it after walking me through the complete cartography of the human face in an anatomy textbook. One postulated that perhaps my flattened sinuses could be bored open wider with lasers." I actually didn't even know that's a real thing when he said it to me. I didn't know until the other day that that's a real thing.
Luke Burbank Really?
Jon Mooallem Yeah. I thought he was. I was like, Well, let's look at this guy anyway. "But to be honest, I've never earnestly considered pursuing any of these doctors recommendations. Just nodded along, and certainly with my misshapen face as they spoke. Somehow every intervention has felt so pointlessly ambitious, so laborious, so dramatic. For better or worse, these problems feel normal to me. And the truth is, I started to identify so deeply with the peculiarities of my face that the idea of correcting those imperfections eventually became unthinkable. Looking in the mirror, I try to imagine every part of me pointing flawlessly forward and wonder, who would I be then? When I was younger, I worried I was ugly. But by the time I turned 30, there was even a measure. Ah of perverse vanity involved. I'd come to appreciate my face so much that I was willing to live with the pain of having it attached to my head. And that's why reading the first nonetheless autobiography on my kitchen floor the night it arrived, it didn't upset me to learn how allegedly grotesque my doppelganger was and how unrepentantly and universally this face we shared was ridiculed. I was able to brush it off and even rest some wry amusement from the discovery. And that felt good. Good to feel unthreatened. Good to recognize that a kind of genuine acceptance and equanimity had apparently been growing inside me from an odd angle all those years. In short, that night I felt myself freely loving who I am and was proud. But then I read the rest of the Manolete biography."
Luke Burbank It's Jon Mooallem here on Live Wire.
Luke Burbank The story of Manolete and his life is fascinating, as detailed in this book. Also, you point out the science right now is that really our sinuses serve no functional purpose other than ruining our lives. If we have sinus problems.
Jon Mooallem Yeah, I kind of. I got really curious about sinuses. Like, what are these things? Why do we have essentially these empty spaces in our heads? And yeah, as it was explained to me, it's this sort of case of, you know, not everything in evolution does a job, right? Some things just happen. And then they're not hurting anyone and they kind of stick around. And so we've got these things in our head just clogging up with snot all the time, and there's nothing we can do about it.
Elena Passarello That's what I think is so cool about this book, though, is because it seems like you got the photos of Manolete years and years ago, but the essay itself takes us to all of these different places. Like, I don't know, I'm assuming you didn't think you were going to be spending this much time in the I can't say the annals of sinus study, maybe the sinuses of sinus studies.
Jon Mooallem Yeah, it's true. I mean, well, the first thing was I got this photo. I mean, I think it was it was almost 15 years ago now. And I got this photo and I just had this photo on my phone and I'd show it to people and I'd be like, Check this out. And everyone would laugh. And it took me years before I even thought like, Well, who is this guy? Maybe I should figure out who this guy is. And so, yeah, I say the book, I finally got this biography of him and and it arrives in a rip it open. I'm sitting at my floor and the first sentence I read, literally, I open up the book, I crack the spine and I look and the first things I read it says he has a face that's as dreary as a third class funeral on a rainy day. And and what I realized with this bullfighter, who is my exact twin, apparently was just renowned for his ugliness. Like people just could not stop talking about how ugly he was. Even people who really loved him, they would always tack on some cheap shot about, you know, call him old big nose or something. So so then I had to sit with that for a few years.
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Jon Mooallem And you know, then I was like, Well, how can I write about sinuses? No I'm joking
Elena Passarello Right. (Laughs)
Jon Mooallem But yeah, no, you're right. I think, like, in, in many ways, it's like, you know, even though I think having done this kind of work for so long, I kind of go through the world like thinking that everything is potentially a story. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's a story like right then and there, you know, there's a there's a lot of stuff sloshing around that that kind of has to wait for the right moment.
Luke Burbank I'm wondering how it feels to you to have the reaction that this piece has had lots of people and talking about it, not the least of them. Jamie Lee Curtis apparently is now your new like PR person. What is going on? What is happening with you and Jamie Lee Curtis?
Jon Mooallem JLC. You know, I just I got a really nice note from Jamie Lee Curtis. And, you know, it's fun when she's celebrities, you know. But yeah, so she's been kind of championing the book online, which I'm very grateful for. And it's I don't know what more to say but thank you jamie Lee Curtis.
Elena Passarello Yeah!
Luke Burbank I guess I guess the nature of my question is, you know, you have written a lot of really incredible essays, but they're often about other people, a guy who decides to build a town that he's calling the center of the universe in Felicity, California, named for his wife. When you write a piece like that and people say, hey, that was a great piece, that feels good. But when you write a piece that's literally about the inside of who you are, and they say, this really moved me. That must be an intense experience.
Jon Mooallem Yeah, it's really it's really special. I mean, I think it's like I don't really understand how to how to interact. I mean, it's nice when I get an email, like I've gotten some really beautiful emails from people and that's always great. And yet I know better than to like kind of go actively seek the feedback to the piece online.
Luke Burbank When I have finally saw a Manolete's picture, I thought he was quite handsome, kind of got a little Vincent Gallo type situation going, which as your twin by extension means you are also a handsome person, Jon Mooallem.
Jon Mooallem Well, thank you.
Luke Burbank And more importantly, my phone and computer autocorrect. Many words now to Mooallem.
Elena Pasarello Same what?! Same!
Luke Burbank I don't know how you did that. Like, that's the mark of success.
Elena Pasarello That's Jamie Lee Curtis.
Luke Burbank That's the JLC.
Jon Mooallem That's the JLC difference right there.
Luke Burbank John Mooallem everyone in the book is Serious Face. That was John Mooallem right here on Live Wire, recorded at the Alberta Rose Theater. His latest book, Serious Face, is available now. Live Wire is brought to you in part by Alaska Airlines. Alaska Airlines offers the most nonstop from the West Coast, including destinations like Hawaii, Palm Springs and San Francisco, and as a member of the OneWorld alliance. Alaska Airlines can connect you to more than 1000 destinations worldwide with their global partners. Learn more at Alaska Air.com.
Advertisment This episode of Livewire is supported by aspiration dedicated to making a difference to combat climate change with aspirations. Zero the credit card that plants a tree with every swipe. To date, 75 million trees have been planted. Aspiration.com. Aspiration Financial LLC.
Luke Burbank This is live wire, as we do each week on the show. We have asked Live Wire listeners a question this week in honor of Jenni Wyn, who we're going to talk to about starting her dream business, the sports bra. We asked the listeners, Describe your dream business. Elena has been collecting up those responses with you. I see you're already laughing. What are the people saying?
Elena Passarello Three words from Mark in terms of Mark's dream business. Hot tub testing.
Luke Burbank Hot tub testing.
Elena Passarello I mean, let's think this through, Mark. Like, what do you. You go to people's houses and get in their hot tubs. Is that worth talking about or are you in like a a quality control like warehouse?
Luke Burbank Right. And then the other problem is that, sure, if you're in the Goldilocks zone, that's great. If you only get to test hot tubs that are the right temperature. But, you know, they also to figure out what's too cold and what's too hot.
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank You know what they have here in Portland and I'm sure some other places, too. Now are these hot tub boats you can rent and they go up and down the Willamette and you are sitting in a little motorboat in a hot tub. The interior of the boat is itself a hot tub.
Elena Passarello Sign me up. I'm ready.
Luke Burbank That is the height of decadence. All right, what's. What's another dream business that one of our listeners would like to start?
Elena Passarello Oh, this is a pretty good idea from Erika. Erika says, I want to start a business where people upload pictures and stats on their dogs. And then when I feel like having a companion on my nature walk, I will select and borrow their dog for the afternoon.
Luke Burbank That is a great idea, right?
Elena Passarello You could be like, Oh, I really need like a long walk. Pick a Rhodesian ridgeback. If you just kind of want to take like a small straw, maybe like a cavalier King Charles. I don't know.
Luke Burbank Right. As a dog owner, throughout my life, of course, I loved walking my dog. But there are also the days when you just don't have time for it. Maybe you're not feeling well, you're too busy. And it would be a huge favor if somebody wanted to take your dog, run them through the woods for ten miles and bring them back all tired and content.
Elena Passarello I've told you about the dog bus that used to go around Corvallis and pick up dogs to take him to the woods and exhaust them and then bring them home. And the dogs would jump on the school bus and they all knew their assigned seats.
Luke Burbank That is adorable. But that's a business. This sounds more like a volunteer organization, which would be even better because you don't even have to pay for this. It sounds like somebody who wants to walk a dog and somebody who has a dog that needs walking.
Elena Passarello It's like a dating service.
Luke Burbank Yeah, exactly. It's like hinge, but for pet owners. All right, one more dream business idea from our listeners.
Elena Passarello Okay, here's one from Maggie. Maggie wants to open a soup restaurant with rotating daily soups and a ton of side options garlic bread, salads and fries. It sort of sounds like the soup counter from Seinfeld. Only people are nice and maybe you can sit down.
Luke Burbank I'll tell you what, I eat a lot of soup even in the summertime. And I don't think there are enough dedicated soup restaurants. Yeah. If Maggie was able to start this business, I would be the first customer.
Elena Passarello What do you call it? Soup… souperstars?
Luke Burbank Soup… Souper bad at coming up with restaurant names. That would be my contribution to it. I always wanted to start a restaurant that would also you could eat in a recliner and then when you were done, you could recline and take a nap.
Elena Passarello Mmhmmm.
Luke Burbank Because I feel like a lot of times if I'm having if I have a big bunch of food, all that blood goes to your stomach to help digest you. Get sleepy. Be nice. If there was a restaurant that also allowed for napping like they built that into the system.
Elena Passarello The immediate nap that follows. Yeah. And you just peace out.
Luke Burbank Like ten, 15 minutes to sleep this off, then I'm ready to go. No, I will not leave this Denny's. I am napping. All right. Thank you to everyone who wrote in with responses to our listener question. We've got an audience question for next week's show, which we're going to reveal at the end of today's program. So stick around for that. Speaking of dream businesses, by the way, our next guest had the courage to completely defy her parent's advice during the pandemic when they said, do not open a sports bar in Portland, Oregon, in the midst of a pandemic. But this was not just any sports bar. This was the sports bra, the world's first sports bar that we know of anyway that exclusively shows women's sports on the televisions. It's already been a huge success. They raised over $100,000 on Kickstarter to get it going, and they've gotten all kinds of news coverage from all over the world. And in the process, they've been able to draw attention to the gender inequality in terms of which sports are getting televised. Her name is Jenny Wynn, and she joined us on stage at the Alberta Rose Theater back in May. Take a listen to this. Jenny, thank you for making some time in your schedule to be here. I live not far from the sports bra and I drive down Broadway every day and there is a line out the door. And I just think. I think this has been too successful. You might need to shut it down. It's just it seems like a lot of work. I mean, that place is a hit.
Jenny Nguyen Yeah, it's been pretty incredible. I'm overwhelmed. Really.
Luke Burbank Let's kind of go back to for the four people in America who haven't heard the story yet of the sports bra. It's an amazing one. So you and some some friends and your partner were out watching an NCAA finals game in the women's bracket. And it was a great game. It came down to the wire. But there was one thing going on in your experience was that the audio wasn't on in the bar because this was women's sports, right?
Jenny Nguyen That's correct. Yeah. So, I mean, I think it's a really common experience for anyone who's a women's sports fan that goes out to go try to watch it on TV. And it's like, okay, you go to this space and there's a million TV's on. None of them have your game on. So it was the same in this particular case. And when you think about the NCAA finals, like to me, I mean, basketball's my jam. Yes. So it's like the biggest game of the year. And so we roll in and there's like a dozen of us and the game's not on. Something else is on the main screen. And so we just asked to have the one of the TV's changed and they kind of put us over into the side and it's like a small TV in the corner and we, you know, are kind of used to that. So we watch the game, we have a great time and ends up being like one of the best games ever. And afterwards, you know, we were just out in the parking lot milling around, talking about how great a game it was. And then somebody was just like, Yeah, it would have been better if the sound had been on you know?
Luke Burbank Right.
Jenny Nguyen And it was at that moment where it just clicked where I was like, I didn't even notice. So had I gotten so used to, you know, watching women's sports in, like, a compromised way. Yeah, and that's what that's what stood out to me.
Luke Burbank So then you and your friends started referring to this mythical sports bar that you were going to start someday. That was like where none of the lame sort of like, you know, sexist gendered norms of the regular sports bar existed, right?
Jenny Nguyen Yeah. I mean, it wasn't it wasn't so blatant as that as as more of a place for us to just go and hang out and watch games and feel comfortable, you know, like for my friends and I. And it was never going to be a place that I was planning on opening up. It was just like this fictional place that was just like, Oh, you know, like this game would be on at the sports bra or at the sports bra. We'd have a vegan version of this, you know, like just random stuff.
Luke Burbank Yeah, it was like, it was this, like, idealized version where everything was great.
Jenny Nguyen Yeah, the toilet paper would never run out.
Elena Passarello And it sounds like you named it early. It was the sports bra, even when it was still just a figment of your imagination.
Jenny Nguyen I'm pretty sure that, like, maybe a day or two days after that 2018 game, you know, it was just like the little seed was living in my head and was like, if there was a place, you know, what would it be called and what would be cool? And, you know, the thing that kind of stuck out to me was that it's just a sports bar, and all you're doing is you're changing the channel, which is real simple, right? So you just take like sports bar and you just changed it changed the letters and sports bra. Yeah.
Luke Burbank You do have that trademarked, right?
Jenny Nguyen I do, yeah.
Luke Burbank Okay, good. Because that is $1,000,000,000 idea. The other thing to actually, Jenny, that I've heard you say before is the sports bra is not a quote unquote women's sports bar. It's a sports bar that happens to show women's sports on the television. Why is that an important distinction to you?
Jenny Nguyen Oh, man, it's I mean, I get it all the time. Are men allowed in there? It's just like, uh yeah, it's not a sports bar for women. You know, it's a bar for women's sports. And so, like, statistically, a majority of women's sports fans are men. So the thing is, if you like sports, you don't care who's playing it. You just like sports. Yeah, but what happens is that, you know, 96% of all sports that are on TV are men's sports. So that's what people identify with and that's what they are cheering for most of the time.
Luke Burbank But I mean, something that I didn't realize until I started looking into the story was that there are lots and lots and lots of of women's sports happening all the time. The issue is they're not being televised or they're streaming somewhere. So it seems like a big part of your work along with creating the menu and the cocktail list and all the normal things about running a bar restaurant. Sure. In addition to that, you've become this sort of like content merchant who's trying to actually get the stuff to put on those TV's. Right. What is that been like?
Jenny Nguyen Absolutely. I really like if there's anybody out there that is into that, I really think that is somebody else's full time job is to find women's content so that we can play it at the bar. Yeah, it's it's really intense, you know, because one interesting thing is that there are, you know, dozens and dozens of streaming services. And they know that there are people out there who are interested in these women's sports and they want to access it. And so they're willing to pay, you know, 499 a month or whatever it is. But there's there's so many. So even you have something as huge as the WNBA and it's playing on seven different channels. I mean, that's a huge league. And then you're talking about things like bowling or surfing or any of these smaller, like lesser known sports or whatever. How are you going to watch those?
Luke Burbank So is it that they're not even being filmed right now and you're trying to get people to get out to do that or it's they're being filmed, but you don't have the rights as a bar owner to show the stream. Like, what are the impediments?
Jenny Nguyen The second thing.
Luke Burbank Okay.
Jenny Nguyen So with streaming services, they pay very little money to get that content. And that's why, you know, it's for $4.99 for me to watch it at home. But there's no way for a business to show it in commercial because that those rights cost a lot more. But what has happened is people who have heard or the streaming services who have heard have reached out and they're like, you know, we can see the benefit in giving you access to this stuff because it's it helps us to promote ourselves and to promote these leagues and these sports. And you're drawing attention to that. And so you're helping to grow it. And so it's like a, you know, scratch your back, scratch my back kind of thing. Yeah. And that's that's what we need, I think, to get it started. Yeah.
Luke Burbank We are talking to Jenny Nguyen, the owner and founder of the Sports Bra here in Portland, which is a sports bar that exclusively shows women's sports on the televisions. Now, when you and I talked, I don't know, a month ago or so when you're opening the place, you said that during the times of day when maybe there wasn't any content involving women's sports, you were considering leaving the TV's off as a way of pointing out this kind of lack of coverage. Where have you landed on that now that you've been open a month? What are you doing?
Jenny Nguyen Yeah. I mean, part of it is kind of tempering expectations. A lot of people expect, you know, they walk into a sports bar and TVs are blaring 24 seven and that's the expectation. And so, like, what I wanted to do was just to make sure that people know that here we are, we are a space that is dedicated to showing women's sports. Right. But there isn't any possible way that we're able to show 24 seven content. You know, there's not like running commentary. There's not tons of replays. There's not like, oh, the 1976 Arnold Palmer Classic special.
Luke Burbank For men’s sports. There's just so much of it has been televised. It's a mind numbing amount of content that you could always put in a VHS tape of Dorf on golf.
Jenny Nguyen Or somebody is always talking.
Luke Burbank That's where my brain went. That's Tim Conway doing a sketch. That's not even real sports.
Jenny Nguyen Yeah, I mean, with men's sports, there's always, like, commentary. You know, I wanted to temper expectations. I didn't want guests to come in and expect what they're used to for a regular sports bar to be what we have access to. And then another thing is like, you know, 90, 95% of all sports bars are probably streaming things that they shouldn't be. And, you know, we can do that. But one we're one entity that maybe a lot of people are watching. And two, super visible and two. Like, why would I want to do that when the point is to kind of drive home the idea that we need more representation, we need more access, we need more of Women's sports.
Luke Burbank If you're feeling broadcast to be women's sport, that's not.
Jenny Nguyen Yeah. And then people would come in and be like, oh, there's plenty of women's sports on T.V.. Right. You know, so.
Luke Burbank This has been such a success. And also just something that the community has really rallied around. Mm hmm. Has that sunk into you, or are you just thinking about intellectually but not able to fully wrap your mind around it? I guess.
Jenny Nguyen You know, I think it comes in waves. There are moments and it's like these are the small moments that sneak in when you least expect it. You know, whether it's like 1030 and things are starting to die down and I'm having my shift drink and, and I like sit back and I watch the bartenders do what they do. I watch my servers do what they do. And everybody is moving in the pieces that they should be. There's people sitting at the bar watching a game and those quiet moments where I'm able to sit back and be like. You know, this is a space that I've always wanted. This is the space that I've always wanted to be in. And now that we're here, like, I can kind of create that for other people, and it sinks in in these little moments. Yeah. And then, you know, there's messages and letters that I get daily that are very impactful. And it's a great way to slow down and remind me of why I started to do this.
Luke Burbank The real question is, has this completely killed your ability to play rec basketball?
Jenny Nguyen 100%
Luke Burbank Which ironically was a huge part of your life before this.
Jenny Nguyen Absolutely.
Luke Burbank And now you created this thing that makes it so you can't play basketball with your friends.
Jenny Nguyen 100%. So I signed up for a rec league like right before I knew I was going to open. I was just like, okay, I'm going to commit to one hour a week. Like, it'll be good for me to get physically out there and like, sweat it out while all of this other stuff is happening. And immediately, as soon as the doors open, I was just like, You guys got to find another point guard.
Luke Burbank (Laughs) Well, we're glad your talents are being used over at the sports bra. Jenny Nguyen, founder of the Sports Bra right here in Portland, Oregon.
Luke Burbank That was Jenny Nguyen, recorded in front of a live audience at the Alberta Rose Theater back in May. If you're in the Portland area, make sure you check out the sports bra and tell Jenny hi from Live Wire. This is Live Wire. I'm Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. We've got to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere because when we come back, we will hear some music from Laura Veirs.
Luke Burbank Welcome back to Live Wire. I'm Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. All right. Our musical guest this week is a singer songwriter known for her inquisitive and literary lyrics. She's released a dozen albums, many of them via her own label, Raving Marching Band Records. She's also collaborated with a whole range of artists, including Sufjan Stevens, Neko Case and also k.d. lang as part of the supergroup Case/Lang/Veirs. Her new album is Found Light. Laura Veirs joined us on stage at the Holt Center for the Performing Arts in Eugene, Oregon, back in April. Take a listen to that. Hello, Laura. It's so nice to have you back on the show.
Laura Veirs Thanks for having me.
Luke Burbank How have you been?
Laura Veirs I've been all right. How have you been?
Luke Burbank We've been all right. I don't know if you heard last couple of years. Got a little rough.
Laura Veirs Yeah, there were a couple of things that happened.
Luke Burbank I was I was reading a quote from you about this latest album. I mean, you have made a lot of records in your day. And you said that this album in many ways kind of feels like your debut album. Why so?
Laura Veirs So the first one that I have produced myself and I produced it with a friend named Shahzad Smiley from New York. And my ex-husband was my producer for 20 years. And so when we broke up, I had to rediscover myself as a musician independently. And it took a little bit of searching, but I'm happy with what I found.
Luke Burbank Wow. So that's a whole new way of making your music.
Laura Veirs Yeah.
Luke Burbank Did you? You know, I don't want to get you to talk about anything that you don't feel particularly comfortable with. But did you find as your own producer or co-producer that you made different decisions and that you liked some of the decisions better because now you were sort of driving that bus?
Laura Veirs Yeah, in certain ways. I mean, Tucker, my ex, is a great record producer and we made a lot of music that I'm proud of. But being in my own producer driver's seat, I made some decisions that I felt happy with, like only doing a couple takes and not really doing a lot of edits, just going with the raw feeling of the music and also limiting ourselves to just a few instruments per track so that the songs themselves really came to life in a way that I felt was fresh and new for me. So yeah, it was a really difficult experience in terms of figuring out how to parse out myself, you know, from my ex in that long relationship, which was really collaborative for so many years. Also, we have kids and houses and studios and all this stuff that we had to disentangle over a long period of time. And then I had I wanted to be really authentic in the way that I told the story of how difficult this is, because especially when you have kids, a divorce is very painful. But also the reason people do it is because it's leading you to something better. So I did want to try, in my most authentic way as a writer or a songwriter, to express the depth of that situation.
Luke Burbank Well, it would appear that the music is really finding an audience. The New York Times is What to cook. This week, newsletter instructed its readers to listen to your new single while they're cooking this weekend. This is a real thing. Do you know about this?
Laura Veirs You know, someone mentioned it backstage. I had heard that it was like recommended on the New York Times playlist, but I didn't realize it was a specific cooking playlist.
Luke Burbank Yeah, it's "what to cook this week". You're supposed to. People are supposed to listen to the new single. And according to The New York Times, cook cheese enchiladas.
Laura Veirs Okay, well, I should try that. Sounds fun.
Luke Burbank Is that the song that we're going to hear?
Laura Veirs That's not one. That's like, like pretty hard rocker. Okay. It's called Winter Windows and it's out on YouTube. I did a video I would like self made a video in my basement with my iPhone and it was like doing a weird, insane dancing. So it's on YouTube. You can check it out.
Luke Burbank This is Laura Veres here on Live Wire.
Laura Veirs This is one of the songs off. My new album is called My Lantern.
Laura Veirs Diamond eyes burning bright. In the sun in the park you are / Wonderful you are / My lantern in the dark / Feet on the street / Fist in the sky / I watch your poetry arc / You give me hope you are / My lantern in the dark / My lantern / My lantern / As night stitches night / With a thousand question mark / You bring me peace, you are / My lantern in the dark / and the whole world blue / Roving like a dead eyed shark / Restless as the sea you are / My lantern in the dark / My lantern / My lantern / Diamond eyes burning bright, in the sun in the park you are / My lantern in the dark / My lantern / My lantern. Thank you.
Luke Burbank That was Laura Veirs right here on Live Wire. Her latest album, found Light, is out now. All right. Before we get out of here, a little preview of next week's show. We are going to be talking to Cecily Strong from Saturday Night Live. Her memoir that she just released touches on some serious stuff grief, relationships, COVID, which might come as a bit of a surprise, considering she's also created some of the funniest, most memorable characters on SNL over the last nine seasons. She's going to tell us about having to film herself on her cell phone and make her own props so that she could create Saturday Night Live at home during the pandemic. We're going to hear how Cecily got through all of that next week on the show. We're also going to talk to the Toronto rapper shared about what it's like to be known as the nice guy of hip hop. That's a space you don't see a lot of hip hop artists inhabiting. Well, that's kind of somewhat Shad's reputation. He's going to talk about that. We're also going to hear a song from Shad and also find out how nervous he was to meet some of the biggest hip hop legends ever for this Netflix TV show that he's done. Plus, we're going to be looking to get your answer to our listener question, Elena. What are we asking the Live Wire listeners for next week's show?
Elena Passarello We want to know something that people would be surprised to learn about you.
Luke Burbank All right. If you have something surprising, something people would not expect about you that you want to share with us. You can send in your answer via Twitter or Facebook. We're at Live Wire Radio. All right. That's gonna do it for this week's episode of the show. A huge thanks to our guests, Jon Mooallem, Jenny Nguyen, and Laura Veirs. Live Wire is brought to you in part by Alaska Airlines.
Elena Passarello Laura Hadden is our executive producer. Heather de Michelle is our executive director. Our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Our assistant editor is Trey Hester and our marketing manager is Paige Thomas. Our house band is Ethan Fox Tucker, Sam Tucker, Al Alves and A walker Spring, who also composes our music. Molly Pettit is our technical director and mixer. Our house sound is by Daniel Blake and very special thanks this week to the Hult Center of the Performing Arts.
Luke Burbank Additional funding provided by the Oregon Arts Commission, a state agency funded by the State of Oregon and the National Endowment for the Arts. Live Wire was created by Robin Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week, we'd like to thank members Alana Lake of Portland, Oregon, and Heidi Spafford of Vancouver, Washington. For more information about our show or how you can listen to our podcast, head on over to Live Wire Radio dot org. I'm Luke Burbank for Elena Passarello and the whole Live Wire crew. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.
PRX.
