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Yung Lean Radio Interview Transcript
[UNEDITED]
I saw that many of you non-swedes wanted to be able to enjoy the recent interview he did in Swedish. I have not had time to edit the text yet so it will be filled with spelling mistakes and such but if I have time later on I might fix that. The interviewer is called Mats Nileskär and he alternates between asking questions and explaining stuff so that's why sometimes it's just him retelling things that lean said earlier. Anyways here is the transcript:
Mats: There was once a sixteenyearold full of love for screw, drill and Florida trap. Full of fascination for fantasy figures and the cinematic. He rapped honest, drowsy, tentatively and almost apathetic to strange, mind expanding beats. Music that didnt exist in reality. Yung leans journey from his laptop in his room in Södermalm, to sold out shows and rock star dreams in the country of Hip Hop. It is one of the most beautiful stories in the history of Swedish music. And like all beautiful stories it holds plentiful of darkness. Yung Lean could have ruined everything and been scarified on the emo rap scene. Instead he became the influential survivor. Yung Lean and the producer friends in Sad Boys changed the world and intertwined with something beyond their own existence.
Lean: I usually don’t sit and count who my influences are. Because I have always had a lot of my own influences that I have payed homage to. But sometimes I don’t think about stuff and then I get a dm on Instagram. Like I got a dm from Trippie Redd that read like “Shoutout to one of my biggest influences.”
Music break Ugly God. Like lots of rappers that I wouldn’t think were fans of me. Then there are these that are a bit more obvious like maybe suicide boys, Pouya. When they meet me at festivals, they are fans. And I don’t want to come off as bragging, it is the same way when, like I met young thug once in New York, and then I get star struck, I am a fan of him, nothing weird about that. But there is like, you know, group from group, it goes back. If you look at Wu Tang, and then it goes down, it gets weirder, like Odd Future and Asap Mob. And when we started, there was probably more people that thought like, like Yung Sherman, Yung Gud, Bladee, and all in Drain Gang and Sad boys and this is what we look like, we can also do this. I think we made it even more easy to access. And even more like, you only need a computer and internet. And less of, like maybe you don’t even have to skate, maybe you don’t even have to live in New York. More of like, you have a concept, and we were strict with that concept, we had a clear aesthetic, a clear way of making music videos, a clear message. It was easy to take things from that goth aspect, or the sad aspect, or like, people had purple hair like Ecco had. People dressed exactly like Bladee or Sherman, or rapped like me. And I still think that I see that today. And I’m proud, and I’m happy. I don’t see it as something negative, like, shit these boys are stealing or all these rappers are stealing, it’s more like, in that case I have also stolen. Everyone has been influenced by something, and as long as you are not ashamed about that, it’s okay, because that is how it goes. People can be like, I’ve never listened to Yung Lean, And I can see that they obviously have, and like…
Music break (Unreleased Lean) Lean: We got a lot of the autotune aspect from, like Bladee and Whitearmor started using it a lot, and me and Micke (Gud) used it a lot. For us that was inspired by Future and Atlanta. And Casino and the first FBG mixtapes with young scooter and all those. Like those were using autotune. But we were from Europe, like, we are from The Knife country, Håkan Hellström, Broder Daniel (Swedish artists), it is more like Kraftwerk when we do it. It is more monotone, a bit more dead, maybe a bit more ABBA english. It is a bit more depressing I think. And that is not something you try to do, it just ends up like that. And then I think that, a mix of that, we we got big during 2013, Hip Hop went more Nihilistic, dark, it was grim. The way Chief Keef rapped, everything after Finally Rich, Bang 2, Almighty So, it was like melodies but dark mumbling about killing people. Hip Hop was going that way. You no longer had to have a hook like “Woke up in a new Ferrari”. The whole song could be the same melody.
Mats: The bored and monotone mumbling turned into an anxiety lowering melody. And a manic flow of words. Yung Lean and sad boys, deeply uninterested in conventional song structures landed in the beginning of the start of a new era. Post Hip Hops surrealistic and psychedelic era. The new era was open for people that had not belong before. People that looked and sounded like Lean. A new sound, a new way to experience and listen to music. It was perplex and fascinating. Something Sad Boys happily utilized.
Lean: Yeah, it’s true. As long as you, like for us it was the natural thing to do. For us it wasn’t that we were exploiting this style of music or what they were doing in the US. For us it was more like, I have rapped since I was a kid, same for making beats for Micke. Drain Gang had a punk band. All of us made music. And when the time came it was just logical for us to take part. Same with rapping in English, it just came naturally. I actually lived in Vietnam three years before that. My mom is a diplomat so I was in the English school and spoke English so rapping in English came naturally. That the beats were slowed down, that, like everything was a bit weird, it came naturally to us. And of course the timing was perfect, it wouldn’t have been able to come at a different time. I think I’ve said that before. That if that had happened in 2009 it would have felt fake. I would have had to be more of a Paul Wall character or like Petter (Swedish Rapper). I was very lucky with coming up during that time. But after all I was just being myself to 100%. I think that if I hadn’t been, it wouldn’t have worked out.
Music break Lean: Except for you and some others it was typically Swedish, a prime example of how it is in Sweden. A Swedish artist comes up, something they don’t recognise. They think it’s embarrassing. A Swedish sixteen year old boy from Södermalm, a middle class boy. He shouldn’t be doing this, it’s embarrassing. They wouldn’t want to touch me with a ten foot pole. He can’t be included here blah blah blah. But the second that the US started appreciating it and when he was in the New York Times or when he collaborates with Frank Ocean or other big names. Then they are ashamed of themselves. Like “Oh shit, he is Swedish, he is with us now…” It’s typical for Sweden, the law of Jante, like you shouldn’t think that you are somebody. That was basically what I witnessed since I was sixteen. It’s sad that we can’t trust each other and support everyone. I really believe that there is room for everyone to make it in Sweden.
Mats: What did it do to you, experiencing this? The Journey from hate to understanding and in the end to love.
Lean: I think that it might have been easier with hate. To be completely honest, if you look back at a lot of rappers, when they were hungry, when they were still hated or underground, they had so much to give. And I had that kind of idea in my head. That it was more exciting when Sweden hated me and I was only famous in the US. I really thought it was interesting. But I have matured now, time has passed, six seven years since we talked. The music I make now is different. If I had not been loved and was still hated, it would have been a bit perverse. Maybe then I had only been provoking just to provoke. I don’t like that. Right now I think I deserve to be where I am. I wouldn’t want to be in any other position.
Music break Mats: What happened when you got to the US for the first time, as an unlikely star?
Lean: What happened? I can’t say I remember a lot. We were very young. Suddenly we were sitting in limousines. Lots of drugs, lots of illegal substances. We were very young, you know almost like a Metallica documentary, suddenly someone is sitting there with a knife in some group or something. No but a lot of things went downhill, but all the gigs were so much fun. It was some kind of friendship, like a family. You can’t take away all the gigs and the touring we did in the start. When we arrived in the US, it’s like, you know Femi, Emilios girlfriend, that has been with us since day one. She says it’s like we were all a part of Lost. Like the airplane crashed and when we meet each other now all of us know that we were part of that. Character wise I don’t remember anything that was any special. I remember us playing at Röda Sten in Gothenburg for 150 people. And when we got to New York we sold out Webster Hall twice, back to back. And rappers were contacting us, we were hanging out with artists. It was another level of respect. I guess I’m a bit like you there. I’m a hip hop nerd, always have been. When I started expressing myself through this music it was easier for Americans to understand what the fuck I was doing than for like a 40 year old Swedish man. So there’s nothing weird about that. But I wish I remembered more from the first tours (laughing).
Music break Lean: You are sixteen, you go to the US, you are living in some hotel, you get to meet some drug dealers from Florida whom are also promoters, they have a Cadillac, and someone is backstage and lots of different rappers are coming in and suddenly Travis Scott is there and blah blah blah. Things are happening all the time. You wake up in a bed there are people around and then you have to go on stage. (Lean starts talking about something else) Is that David Lynch? Sorry we are watching a movie, we are watching Dumbo. (Back to interview) I wasn’t really ready for that. That it was going to be so much work. You don’t think that but there is so much work. Now I can do many shows. Like the last tour that I did sober I was able to do like 70-80 shows and been able to do that but you are still tired. Like you have to workout and sleep. But back then, where did all the energy come from? Including all the drugs and the shitty sleep and all partying. I don’t understand it at all.
Mats: Let’s talk some more about Florida. How was it to meet spaceghostpurrp who sort of created the foundation for what you got your inspiration from, the do it yourself attitude, punk, the south, three six mafia meets other genres in Florida. How was it to meet him?
Lean: I-I have to be completely honest. Spaceghostpurrp is insane you know. He is crazy as a human being. I think he is bipolar and doesn’t take his meds. And the people who actually met him, I met Denzel Curry, Travis Scott and some other people from raider klan, while all the rest of Sad Boys met Spaceghostpurrp. Because I had a bad comedown. So I didn’t meet him that time but our old manager was a good friend of him and he is a misunderstood legend, he really is. But the whole thing about him is like Rocky, the pretty artist and the genius ugly duckling. We both know that Asap Rocky got more famous because he is prettier and it just fit better. The picture was prettier to give to the people than that of spaceghostpurrp who was kind of wacky. But yeah I hope that everything is good with him. I have no contact and don’t know how he is doing nowadays, I don’t. But blacklander was some of the best. I remember when that was released and I was in eight or ninth grade. First I was so into MF DOOM and madvillain and then suddenly I saw a picture of Odd Future and then spaceghostpurrp came and then that was what I wanted to listen to all the time. And via spaceghostpurrp, I remember he linked a lot of good artist that I started listening to. So then came Waka Flocka.
Mats: It must have been like heaven, but as time would tell also hell. Landing in Florida.
Lean: It feels good. We were there a bit too long but it’s such a special feeling. You can go to Everglade and see alligators and you really feel all that in fort lauderdale that is it like a swamp. We recorded at a place called pink house, pink mansion. They had a lot of brick that they had thrown down so that it became pink. Rick Ross had recorded there and it’s really Florida. People run around with machetes and it’s voodoo and all of that Haiti thing. Music break
Lean: And then we were there in the pink mansion and recorded all of Warlord. It was insanely creative and it was like, I guess like when you read about Black Sabbath recording it feels like you have like a demon in you and you just make so much music and don’t realise what’s happening and yeah it ended up bad. It ended up with me at the psych ward, smashing a balcony and covering myself in the blood and the same night my manager died and then I got back to Sweden and was in convalescence, like at the psych ward. After that trip a lot of things changed in my life. I remember after a while when Hoover was released, maybe two months after. All the boys, I remember Axel and Benjamin, Bladee and Sherman was like, this might be Jonathans last video ever. And I was sure of that as well for a while. My mom helped me write a CV and I walked around with that and was thinking about working at a kindergarten.
Music break Lean: I was so fucking tired, of all that had to do with music, and all that shit.
Music break Lean: It went down like this. Barron, may his soul rest in peace, me and Benjamin and Hunter lived in an apartment that was owned by Barrons father, who’s a lawyer named Stephen Machat. Stephen was a lawyer for Ozzy Osborne, Nate Dogg and his father, Barrons grandfather, was the lawyer that cheated Leonard Cohen out of a lot of money. So it’s a lawyer family. I had started to go into psychosis, or like drug related psychosis or an overdose for some days and I wasn’t feeling any good. Barron and Hunter was out to buy some paper, paper and soda. And while that’s happening, at the same time that Barron crashes, I’m smashing this balcony without knowing what had happened. And Benjamin calls 911. I was not in the car with him and the car did not catch on fire either. He crashed into a tree. There are a lot of weird versions of that story. But I have also heard a lot of terrible things from family members and people around that were sure that I was the devil and that I had evil powers and all that. If you think about it, I was seventeen eighteen how the fuck can you put the blame on a seventeen year old. It was tough for me as well. But I have no magic powers. Unfortunately. If I had I would use them for good things.
Mats: It was the father of the manager, Stephen, that accused you of being pure evil.
Lean: I wonder why it was me that got that since he has worked with like Ozzy Osborne and have told stories about when Nate Dogg ran into his office with an AK-47.
Music break Lean: Yeah I wonder how I ended up being pure evil. But I guess there was something there, Swedish folklore with midsummer powers.
Mats: The troll syndrome or something like that?
Lean: Yeah haha, exactly, the big monster, Näcken (Water spirit) haha.
Mats: But there is something provoking about it still right?
Lean: When it is about peoples lives. I knew Barron, we were with each other every day. It is not fun to be called the Devil or pure evil when I was just seventeen and ended up at the psych ward. It’s about real peoples lifes. You can’t just call young people those things. And of course I understand that someone is scared and upset because their child died, but you can’t put the blame on people or call them things like that, it’s sick. But if it had been in a completely different scenario I would probably have been more proud of being called that. If it had to do with my music. But when it’s about real things it’s just scary.
Music break Mats: Yung Lean took drugs, dressed up as a nurse and wrote an unreadable book about his life. Everything got out of control around the making of the dark album Warlord. Where Sweden and Florida in songs like the Billy Bragg sampled song Miami Ultras. Yung Lean took an overdose, experienced psychosis and ended up at a mental hospital. At the same time he lost his American manager in a car accident. Barrons father, the well known show business lawyer with ambitions to reach the American senate put the blame on Yung Lean. He planned to release an unfinished version of Warlord. Back in Sweden, Sad Boys could see how a version of the album had leaked.
Lean: Yeah shit I remember that. Yung Sherman was celebrating his birthday and we were out bowling, or maybe it was his old girlfriend who was celebrated and suddenly everyone was on their phone like shit, Stephen has released it all. Directly on band camp connected to his account. Unfinished versions of the songs, the song names were wrong. We had been working on that album since we got back home, it was all we had. Leaks can be the worst things. If you have been quiet for so long and so much has happened and you just want to release Warlord the right way, with the correct videos and artwork and then something like that happens. It’s like a fucking punch to your face. We lost a lot of hope that day.
Music break Lean: I think that the most crazy, for me, was a while ago, the had been at Fort Lauderdale at a large fair and I had bought a costume that was made for nurses and I wore that all the time. We were going to a hotel with an artist and he was buying weed from a stripper. And when we are at this hotel a man in there is arguing with the workers there and he has a large entourage and I recognise the voice. I’m like it’s Jim Jones, Jim Jones from dipset. I did not realise It by then but I had started living a little in my own world. I was begging to enter the psychosis. I was wearing the nurse outfit and took a picture with Jim Jones and we talk for a while. When I have looked at that picture years later I’ve been like what the fuck is this shit.
Music break Lean: Who was it, I think it was The Who, who met in a clothing store, and a guy was like you should make music. And then they made music. And it kinda felt that way, like yeah you guys should make this music.
Music break Lean: Sad rap, haha. Sad rap is quite a sickening term. It shouldn’t exist. We don’t make sad music. When you start going into the dark water you just want to go deeper and deeper. And you can only get back up when you are really hit by the waves. It was a mixture of destructivity, teenage anxiousness, and yeah, just how I felt back then.
Music break Mats: What for some appeared like a smart joke in the beginning, and for others like INAUDIBLE (he speaks danish accent Swedish) entertainment had in the middle of the 20th century attracted a dedicated fan base in the US. Something that no Swedish rapper had dreamt about. Yung Lean saw the opportunity to create surrealistic art and shabby rap. And history was written when Yung Lean was the first swede to enter the top 40 American R&B list. A list whose history goes back to Harlem Hit parade, 1942, where leaders like Louis Jordan and Lionel Hampton ruled. Yung Leans Unknown Memory entered at 36th place on the album list, right above Kanye West and under Migos. It was October 2014.
Lean: It sounds like a lot of fun now that you say it but the most fun was just if the songs and the album were great for me, like it goes so far. Prices and stuff comes but it’s so temporary compared to creating it, what you have gone through to create the music.
Mats: Yung Lean was a a part of the drug cult. The cough syrup drinking and pill popping that defined a depressed generation. Lil Peep with Swedish roots had just started building his emo vision, related (musically) to Yung Lean, and Juice WRLD stopped breathing after just a couple of albums.
Lean: The death that affected me the most among those is a person that I didn’t know that well. But it was when I met Fredo Santana and we were in the studio. Me, Fredo, Axel and some of his boys. He was the kindest. We were listening to get rich or die trying and made a song together. He was a really good guy. And the day after I got a message that he was dead. It’s not more than that. In the US and in Sweden. I have friends that have died from benzodiazepines in Sweden as well. I think that it has a lot to do with, like lean, it goes hand in hand with the sales. Lean, Codeine. First Actavis, and then it gets so expensive and after a while completely banned. Then people start drinking red, and it costs like a thousand dollars a pint. You can’t pay that much unless you are a rapper. If you are a rapper you get special prizes. And then you want to get cheaper stuff, you want to take the same things as the rappers you look up to. I guess that once everything was very weird. Around 2013-2014, there was ILoveMakonnen there was, like mushrooms and that stuff. Before it was all opioid based with Percocets.
Music break Lean: It felt like, I don’t want to be that guy but, the music often gets very interesting when people are trying different stuff. I think that’s the sad reality. Maybe not with my music. I feel as I can create more when I’m sober. I have tried most of the drugs so if I feel I want to channel some type of drug I can go back in my memories to get the feeling if I want to sound a special way. If you think about like Young Thug when he made I came from nothing, you could hear he was all fucked up. You can’t do that sober. Gucci Mane is also an example. But now Gucci mane is also an example because now he’s skinny, he looks good, he has a great body, he has his wife, I wanna give him that. I don’t want him to be fat and have a codeine belly, be constipated and on the brink of dying all the time. I want him to look like he does now. I will sacrifice the music for that. His music is not good any more. But fuck that I can listen to the old songs. I’d rather have him healthy. And with Future as well. That he is afraid of going public with having quit lean because his fans wouldn’t trust him no more. That’s sad. But the music is explosive now. There is more hip hop being created now than ever before. It used to be kind of a mainstream genre with Lil Wayne and people thought it was a joke and the underground stuff was much cooler. But hip hop now, the biggest artists, it is the most experimental genre right now. It is more experimental than experimental indie pop. They use more drugs than those who do experimental jazz. It is weirder than punk. It is the weirdest there is right now. And people just have to live with that. That so many people die on the way doesn’t have to be a part of that. It could continue to be this special without people dying.
Music break Lean: Much of the trap you listened to in the beginning was like, more voices, almost choirs, Siberian choirs. Gucci Manes adlibs are louder than the main track. One of Chief Keefs biggest hits, Citgo, you can’t even hear the instrumental. There’s like six different layers of “smoking on the gas, gas citgo citgo”. It’s amazing. It’s weirder than anything else and I think I saw it from my own perspective. For me, all the elements of hip hop ant trap, and the clothing, has been art. And my way of expressing myself, minimalistic, if it’s with an iPhone camera or if I get to direct a whole video, it will always be done my way. It’s a mix of movies I’ve seen, experiences I’ve had, colours I think about that day. I think that this timing. Luck doesn’t exist to put it that way. If I am allowed to leave it at that. Haha.
Music break Mats: When you got back to Sweden from Florida. Your dad picked you up right?
Lean: Yeah, I think both my parents were at the airport. You mean that my dad came to Florida and I walked around the mental hospital and I called my dad the king of California, because I didn’t recognise him. I just told him several times, “Are you the king of California?”. He became quite sad, but he has also been able to joke about it a lot now. There was one story that was quite scary actually. I kept saying that there was a doctor that was coming in and fucking things up for me. He was threatening me that I was gonna go to juvie and things like that, threatening me. And my dad asked me what the doctor looked like and I explained it to him. And he was like, that is not a doctor, it’s the guy who comes in to clean. He just came in to provoke me. And I was told that months later. It was quite scary. I have actually been at the psych ward in Sweden as well, much longer than in the US. 2017 I was at Danderyds (place outside of stockholm) closed section for a month. For psychosis as well, but not drug induced. But I have been sober now for two almost three years. I work out, I do boxing. I’m really happy and I’m more creative than ever. I think that everything that we’ve been talking about, me being a part of drug culture. Kids that say like, Yung Lean, I smoked my first joint for you, I took my first E for you. They would have done it to someone else’s music as well. I promise that. I’ve never pushed anyone to do drugs, I promise. I’ve just told it how it is, from my perspective. And you can do exactly the same thing and be sober as well. It is as much fun if not more fun. If I go out to club now, I can be out all night, I don’t get tired. I have much better relations now with everyone around me. I’m just a happier person. I think it’s much more fun for me to do this interview now compared to last time.
(They put in a clip from the interview they did way back)
Lean: It sucks to be in school but that’s also a way to be down to earth and not feel so like I’m so fucking special, which I’m not. In a way it’s nice to be in school. Like, I’m no superstar. I have a normal life. It’s nice to live out my teenage life before something crazy happens.
Mats: How old are you right now?
Lean: I turn eighteen this summer.
(Back to the interview again)
I was at the Mount Sinai (Medical Centre) in Miami. And I found out Avicii was also there when I watched his documentary. And when at the hospital in Danderyd. It was very nice I must say. I was fucked up, completely manic, but it was a very nice place. Big up to the Swedish health care. That they put up with all the people there.
Music break. Lean: Those hours. All the people who are there, who try to break out, or try to commit suicide, or are screaming. You are laying there and you hear screams all night. It’s like being in a nightmare 24/7, plus that your own head is a nightmare 24/7. I had plans of escaping, I had a map of the hospital that I took a copy of and hid under my pillow. It was like One flew over the cuckoo's nest. You walk around there.
Mats: Do you remember when you started making music after all this? The first attempts at getting back there musically.
Lean: I was still a bit manic and when I was allowed to leave for some hours I chose to go to the studio. So I was driven to the studio from Danderyds hospital. I recorded six songs and then had to go back. When I finally left and was convalescent and quite low because of all the medication I just chose to never listen to those songs)
Music break (Lean starting singing I’d rather go blind by Etta James)
Lean: I have no idea what I’m talking about there. I don’t really want to know. I just remember that I made a listen to your heart cover and I made a version of Etta James song because I had listened to that so much when I was at the hospital.
Music break (Lean continue to sing I’d rather go blind by Etta James)
Lean: In the beginning you just try. You are like Bambi on the ice, trembling. But then I finished Stranger. We had made that album before I ended up at the hospital. Me and Micke finished it in the studio and then Whitearmor and I did our own tape. We went out to Mariefred where a guy named Pontus has a studio. He produced Britney Spears Toxic. And there we were making Poison Ivy. It felt very nice to just clear my head and the music turned out great. Those days were nice.
Music break Mats: (talking about the upcoming album)
The adventure continues. The new album that follows up the anxiety filled milestone, Stranger, is punky millennium R&B, that can only be made by Yung Lean.
Lean: It’s everywhere. Some of the songs are almost like ballads and some are more to the classical witch house, others sound like some, you know SVT Play (Swedish national TV) intro with piano haha, it’s everywhere. But I’m very inspired by The Stooges, I wanna be your dog. That song, and R&B.
Music break Mats: Jonathan spend the first time of his childhood in Belarus.
Lean: You know you have some fake memories. You have a picture of an apartment. But I have one memory that I’ve been told so many times that It’s like I can see it. It’s when I was at kindergarten and my dad comes to pick me up. He asks for me and I’m not with the other kids. I had been bad so I was put in the corner with a large cone on my head. My dad walks over there and since he is Swedish he gets super mad and wanted me to quit going there. My mom was calmer and explained that that’s what they do, nothing weird about that, just some discipline. My mom is grown up in Soviet you know and went to a Russian school. Two different worlds. But I have lots of nice memories from there. I went to a school theatre and danced in snow and that stuff. I must have been a Pinocchio, somewhere around there I turned into a donkey. The cigar came. (Referring to
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCBjfgXg8A4) I had a very nice childhood, middle class, Södermalm. My dad’s a writer, raised in Söder as well. My moms raised in Russia, she’s a real boss. She has had a crazy life. One time she told me that she was a cleaner at an embassy, and that one day she would be in those rooms. Now she is becoming an ambassador in Albania. She has worked her way up. I’m very proud of her. We lived in Söder. I have been to a lot of schools, Södermalmskolan, Gamla Maria, Katarina Norra, Kärrtorp…
Music break Lean: When I got back to Sweden from Belarus I started going to a kindergarten. It is one of my first memories. I was still speaking Russian and I so badly wanted to be understood. I walked around speaking in Russian Swedish, can I have milk and bread, can I have milk and bread. I really wanted to learn Swedish so I forbid my parents to speak Russian with me. That was very stupid, I really wish I hadn’t said that. I wish I had learnt Russian as well. Music came into my life early. It was what made my life fun. It was always my thing and what I was good at. I think I said that last time we talked. When I was young I got a little bit famous with a song called Söder Söder. I was opening for Adam Tensta (Swedish rapper) when I was in fourth grade. Then I made a mixtape with a friend during a summer, and I made a lot of music with my sister. I dressed up and put on makeup. Went to school and listened to Green Day. You know, you wanted to, I basically dressed up the way I do today. I did the same thing back then as I do now. The only difference is that I make money now.
I think that they were worried a lot. I guess the drug aspect of it. When you get so interested in things, those things comes with it. When I was I seventh grade I was caught with some weed, petty shit, and yeah they were worried about all that. But in the end they have been very proud and they will come tonight to my show. They have been to so many of my shows and they are very proud. If I make a good song I want to show it to my mom. If she likes it then it will be released. Same with my dad. I don’t know if they understood if they that there was always something extra or something special that I wanted to do. I guess you will have to ask them about that. But I know that they are proud.
Music break Lean: I think it’s so much fun. That I’m Swedish and that there are not that many Swedes that like me. I means that I’ve made it. I remember when I went out to eat with my mom, she had got us Indian food, I told her that I had gotten a gig in Gothenburg. And she asked like for who, for yourself or what? She was just laughing at me. I had to convince her, showing the event. And she asked like, Yung Lean, is that you? And I showed her videos and she still didn’t get it. I finally had to call Emilio on speaker and have him explain it to her. My dad didn’t get any of it either. It was quite tough because someone had written an article where it said that I was the son of Kristoffer Leandoer, the horror writer. He was so mad, I came home from school and he was furious. He was like “What’s all this? My name, and this song, greygoose?”. But afterwards when he understood it he was proud. But no one ever understood how big it was. I was at my room all the time. We remade the basement into a small studio and I was always there. I was smart with that shit. I got like Lofty 305 and people from Miami and small underground people that I kept sending my songs to. I just sat home and we had this Tumblr that Axel created and we were like dolphins, we communicated directly to the fans, even if I had like 3 fans, and suddenly I had ten thousand fans, and we still communicated directly to them. They got to know all about us. They knew exactly what we were doing.
Music break (Again a clip from the older interview when Lean was seventeen)
Lean: I do not claim that I do all the things I sing about in my songs. I’ve never said that. That would be completely crazy. I wouldn’t be a good seventeen year old then. It would be insane. But I guess you should believe that Yung Lean doesn’t exist. That he is just some fucking seventeen year old that’s completely crazy, and then the real me comes in and say things and have real emotions and real lyrics. I guess the mix between those things are Yung Lean, that’s what Sad boys are. The mix of what’s real and what’s not. That’s what the listeners have to think about themselves, and decide what they want to believe and now. And what they like, is it the music or the person.
Mats: And it is when you balance that where everything becomes interesting.
Lean: It’s exactly that. And it’s so nice because you get to do that, while really you are not allowed to do it, it’s completely wrong, but if you really want to do it, do it, and then you do it. Everything that’s written should have to be thought of several times, nothing should be just straight forward. I get it, that’s good, now I won’t listen to it again. That’s no good. If it’s an album or a song where you get everything there’s no fun in it. It’s like watching a bad film. You want to see something that leaves an impression. It’s much more fun that people talk about me. Rather than that they just say like he’s such a good rapper. It’s not like I’m trying to be a weird rapper, I guess that what I feel like doing, that’s real. I make things from myself. I don’t rap about these crazy things because I want to be like that or because I want to build up an image. I do it because it’s what I feel like doing. I do it because it’s what I want.
Music break (Back to the new interview again)
Lean: I remember Charlie XCX saying that her and Robyn had been in the studio and she had shown her Ginseng strip and they had been like turn it off, turn it off. They hated it. And then some days passed and both of them had listened to it by themselves. And when they came back to the studio the just kept on listening to it. It’s like you have to hate it at first. It’s so provocative. Like he looks this way, or it’s so honest, or it’s just something. It’s too close, or I don’t know. Like it’s still a meme on all my YouTube videos. Listened first time, hated it, listened tenth time, my favourite song. It’s the Yung Lean effect.
Music break Lean: I would love to make film when I get older. I would like to make film of greek tales. There is a tale of a man called Geryon, he is completely red and has a red dog and lives on a red island. He is killed by Hercules. I would like to make a film about that but more of a psychological thriller. Kinda like pusher, Snabba Cash (Swedish movie) meets Greek mythology.
Mats: You have the John Ausonius (Swedish serial killer) project, you are drawn to darkness.
Lean: Yeah, yes I do. It’s natural and not at all an image. I remember my dad joking about that when I was small. I always wanted the orchs to win in the lord of the rings, and that Voldemort was much cooler than Harry Potter. I think it’s quite simple psychology really. That it’s just more interesting. If I had a history of real darkness. Like growing up in war or torture. I think I would be very interested in happy stuff. But now I am not. You are attracted to what you are not from, where you don’t think you belong. But where I am is where I belong the best. I am privileged where I do not belong any more. I think everyone wants to find a world where they don’t naturally belong. For me that has been music. No one in my family had anything to do with music. No one has been a rapper. I have always felt at home in front on a microphone.
Mats: When you found the darkness in Florida and managed to get out of it, was it mission completed?
Lean: I don’t know if it was mission completed really. Barron died so I would want to take back a lot of what happened there. I think I had the darkness within me before that. It is inside of you.
I Found a Kilo of Drugs on the beach while looking for Seashells (I can’t make this shit up)
So this past weekend in Florida is a Vacation I’ll never forget.. its like one of those stories you hear on the News where you dream that one day something like this could happen to you. We’ll start On Saturday. The day was lackluster at best, you know those awkward family vacations where you feel out of place especially around your family... to make everything worse, we were in a state where we knew no one and finding some good bud was near impossible. We managed to get 2 fat joints on the Plane, hidden very well of course, but after that it was CBD from then on. It wasn’t the end of the world but, FUCK when you go a week without pot it feels like an eternity. It truly does make everything better especially when your stuck with family for the entire week.
So I had the Idea to rent a Scooter. (I HIGHly Recommend Renting a Scooter while on Vacation in SoFlo.) We cruised all up and down the coast from DeerField Beach all the Way down to the beaches in Fort Lauderdale. On the way, we went down Hillsboro Mile (which is where the story gets Juicy later into the Story) where the entire Mile is Full of Homes that only the 1% can afford. I Loved it, what an experience it was. I know I won’t have that kind of money anytime soon, but hey it definitely got me MOTIVATED!!! As we were Scootin past these homes, I pulled into a Vacant Lot in between 2 Multi Million Dollar homes and drove all the way up to the beach and parked. Man, what a view, It got me thinking, “how often do these beaches get used?” I didn’t see a single person in sight, I knew as of then that I wanted to explore this area of the beach before I leave to go back to the boring Midwest... so we left and continued south until we were in Fort Lauderdale.
We stopped and had Lunch at a small Italian place called Kisses of Italy. I ordered Chicken Parm that wasn’t even on the Menu (Best Chicken Parm Sandwich EVER) and my Gf had a Hotdog Sandwhich (3 Hotdogs on a toasted bun with toppings.) After a great Lunch we went back home to relax after a great Scooter ride.
Scroll forward about 6 hours and we are headed to the Casino because we can’t seem to get her family to do anything other than sit at home.. (were on vacation, so we don’t wanna just stay home) when we arrived at the Casino, we each took out $60 (TIP. Only take out $60, if you lose it GO HOME, if you gain $60 back, pocket it and DONT TOUCH IT, continue to play with your winning, until you either lose what you had profited or are ready to be finished) and headed straight to the Roulette Table. I started with my $60 and it was gone within 10 minutes and she put in $20 and it was gone after 2 minutes. (It was on a Red Streak and I refuse to play Red) We went outside to smoke a CBD Joint and are prepared to lose the rest when we go back inside. So when we go back in (after about 30 minutes) we see that the tables have turned and my LUCKY number 33 has been hit twice as well as a slew of other black numbers. We then put in the last $40 and got up to $200 in a matter of minutes. I think we had a number get hit 5 times in a row with $2-$3 on the number plus $75 on black. Needless to say we made our money back and profited $800 for the night! We left at 12:45am and got to sleep around 2:00am.
We woke up on Sunday at 7:30 to spend our last few hours on Florida on the Beach. (I didn’t wanna get outta bed) After sleeping an entire week on a crappy blow up mattress and having little sleep the night before, my body was telling me to stay in bed. We got to the beach around 8:30 and stayed until 10:00. I made sure we had enough time to go to the Spot I mentioned the day before. So we get home and hop on the scooter and head for Hillsboro Mile. (There is only 1 public entrance to this beach and its at least a 1/2 mile walk in the sand to get to where I wanted to go, so we took the scooter to the very last Condo Building before the Row of Mansions on Hillsboro Beach. All the parking spots were numbered so I just parked in the covered area by a door to get inside. There was only 1 sign that said no Trespassing unless your a resident, and there was a Chain going across 5 posts about 3 feet high. We hopped the Chain and were to the Beach within a minute or 2.
There wasn’t a person to be seen in the area, which is something I have wanted for awhile. Technically all Florida Beaches are Public Property, so we weren’t breaking any major rules. We started walking down the beach toward all the mansions. (I Recommend this walk for anyone that comes to the area. It’s extremely peaceful, just make sure you respect the beach and make it look better than when you got there.) As I got to about the 3rd Mansion I saw an elderly man in the distance and he saw me eagerly looking for Cool Seashells at the beach. When he got close he took off his headphones and told me that he saw a package on the beach a little ways down that had appeared to be drugs of some kind. He didn’t want to have anything to do with it, but seemed like he wanted me to take care of it. So we keep walking another 500 feet or so until we see what the man was talking about. It was a vacuum sealed black bag that was wrapped in multiple layers of plastic to form that of a brick. It had the Sun of Uruguay on the front (the Cartel Logo) it appeared to have been in the Ocean for a very very long time, but also appeared to be sealed still. (Keep in mind our flight leaves at 5:00pm and it’s currently 11:30am) so my GF takes off her shirt and we wrap it in the shirt so it doesn’t look Suspicious and we start walking back to the Scooter. At this point we had already made a video of finding it on the beach and we took a few pictures of it. (At this point No one knew about this except us, the old man was long gone by this point too) we put the brick under the seat of the Scooter and start heading towards her dads house. (Yes we’re just cruising around with a 30k brick in a cheap $500 scooter.)
When we get to the house we pull into the Garage and show them what we found, and they literary Flipped! They kept trying to tell us we were going to get a possession charge or something even worse. They wanted us to go find a trash can and go throw it away. I didn’t agree with how rash they were thinking. (Technically we didn’t do anything wrong, we took the package from the beach so someone else didn’t get their hands on it, and at this point we were pretty set on going to turn it in) So we unwrap it from the shirt and put it on a Walmart bag and bag into the Scooter seat and we start heading to the Police Station.
The Scooter has to be turned in at 12:00, and I didn’t wanna potentially get held for questioning and get a late fee, so we pulled over and call 911, I told them the short version of the story and they send a BCS out to meet up with me and we opened the Seat and he opened the bag and said that’s quite the find!! We told him where we found it and what our intentions were and he was SUPER COOL, we had a few questions about the brick and he answered all of them and talked to us about it. He took our info and asked us about our local college football Teams. All in all it was the Craziest way to end a Vacation.
I’ve been back now for 3 days and can say we are moving to Florida at the end of April. I’m an adventurer at heart and after finding the find of a lifetime it has motivated me to move to Florida to start our Fun Filled Life. I do want to say that I have never done this Product and know nothing about it. I know this could have been the Best/Worst thing that could have happened to me. I have also imagined so many other ways I could have handled it. Either way I’m happy it won’t end up on the Street even though I potentially gave up 30-100k worth of Pure Untouched Product. If you read this entire thing, I want to Thank you and welcome you to the Crazy Life I’m Living in. Follow to stay up to date with when I move and start searching the Beach again. Until then... Peace and Love
submitted by worldsgreatestmarble to Drugs [link] [comments]
I Found a Kilo of Drugs on the beach while looking for Seashells (I can’t make this shit up)
So this past weekend in Florida is a Vacation I’ll never forget.. its like one of those stories you hear on the News where you dream that one day something like this could happen to you. We’ll start On Saturday. The day was lackluster at best, you know those awkward family vacations where you feel out of place especially around your family... to make everything worse, we were in a state where we knew no one and finding some good bud was near impossible. We managed to get 2 fat joints on the Plane, hidden very well of course, but after that it was CBD from then on. It wasn’t the end of the world but, FUCK when you go a week without pot it feels like an eternity. It truly does make everything better especially when your stuck with family for the entire week.
So I had the Idea to rent a Scooter. (I HIGHly Recommend Renting a Scooter while on Vacation in SoFlo.) We cruised all up and down the coast from DeerField Beach all the Way down to the beaches in Fort Lauderdale. On the way, we went down Hillsboro Mile (which is where the story gets Juicy later into the Story) where the entire Mile is Full of Homes that only the 1% can afford. I Loved it, what an experience it was. I know I won’t have that kind of money anytime soon, but hey it definitely got me MOTIVATED!!! As we were Scootin past these homes, I pulled into a Vacant Lot in between 2 Multi Million Dollar homes and drove all the way up to the beach and parked. Man, what a view, It got me thinking, “how often do these beaches get used?” I didn’t see a single person in sight, I knew as of then that I wanted to explore this area of the beach before I leave to go back to the boring Midwest... so we left and continued south until we were in Fort Lauderdale.
We stopped and had Lunch at a small Italian place called Kisses of Italy. I ordered Chicken Parm that wasn’t even on the Menu (Best Chicken Parm Sandwich EVER) and my Gf had a Hotdog Sandwhich (3 Hotdogs on a toasted bun with toppings.) After a great Lunch we went back home to relax after a great Scooter ride.
Scroll forward about 6 hours and we are headed to the Casino because we can’t seem to get her family to do anything other than sit at home.. (were on vacation, so we don’t wanna just stay home) when we arrived at the Casino, we each took out $60 (TIP. Only take out $60, if you lose it GO HOME, if you gain $60 back, pocket it and DONT TOUCH IT, continue to play with your winning, until you either lose what you had profited or are ready to be finished) and headed straight to the Roulette Table. I started with my $60 and it was gone within 10 minutes and she put in $20 and it was gone after 2 minutes. (It was on a Red Streak and I refuse to play Red) We went outside to smoke a CBD Joint and are prepared to lose the rest when we go back inside. So when we go back in (after about 30 minutes) we see that the tables have turned and my LUCKY number 33 has been hit twice as well as a slew of other black numbers. We then put in the last $40 and got up to $200 in a matter of minutes. I think we had a number get hit 5 times in a row with $2-$3 on the number plus $75 on black. Needless to say we made our money back and profited $800 for the night! We left at 12:45am and got to sleep around 2:00am.
We woke up on Sunday at 7:30 to spend our last few hours on Florida on the Beach. (I didn’t wanna get outta bed) After sleeping an entire week on a crappy blow up mattress and having little sleep the night before, my body was telling me to stay in bed. We got to the beach around 8:30 and stayed until 10:00. I made sure we had enough time to go to the Spot I mentioned the day before. So we get home and hop on the scooter and head for Hillsboro Mile. (There is only 1 public entrance to this beach and its at least a 1/2 mile walk in the sand to get to where I wanted to go, so we took the scooter to the very last Condo Building before the Row of Mansions on Hillsboro Beach. All the parking spots were numbered so I just parked in the covered area by a door to get inside. There was only 1 sign that said no Trespassing unless your a resident, and there was a Chain going across 5 posts about 3 feet high. We hopped the Chain and were to the Beach within a minute or 2.
There wasn’t a person to be seen in the area, which is something I have wanted for awhile. Technically all Florida Beaches are Public Property, so we weren’t breaking any major rules. We started walking down the beach toward all the mansions. (I Recommend this walk for anyone that comes to the area. It’s extremely peaceful, just make sure you respect the beach and make it look better than when you got there.) As I got to about the 3rd Mansion I saw an elderly man in the distance and he saw me eagerly looking for Cool Seashells at the beach. When he got close he took off his headphones and told me that he saw a package on the beach a little ways down that had appeared to be drugs of some kind. He didn’t want to have anything to do with it, but seemed like he wanted me to take care of it. So we keep walking another 500 feet or so until we see what the man was talking about. It was a vacuum sealed black bag that was wrapped in multiple layers of plastic to form that of a brick. It had the Sun of Uruguay on the front (the Cartel Logo) it appeared to have been in the Ocean for a very very long time, but also appeared to be sealed still. (Keep in mind our flight leaves at 5:00pm and it’s currently 11:30am) so my GF takes off her shirt and we wrap it in the shirt so it doesn’t look Suspicious and we start walking back to the Scooter. At this point we had already made a video of finding it on the beach and we took a few pictures of it. (At this point No one knew about this except us, the old man was long gone by this point too) we put the brick under the seat of the Scooter and start heading towards her dads house. (Yes we’re just cruising around with a 30k brick in a cheap $500 scooter.)
When we get to the house we pull into the Garage and show them what we found, and they literary Flipped! They kept trying to tell us we were going to get a possession charge or something even worse. They wanted us to go find a trash can and go throw it away. I didn’t agree with how rash they were thinking. (Technically we didn’t do anything wrong, we took the package from the beach so someone else didn’t get their hands on it, and at this point we were pretty set on going to turn it in) So we unwrap it from the shirt and put it on a Walmart bag and bag into the Scooter seat and we start heading to the Police Station.
The Scooter has to be turned in at 12:00, and I didn’t wanna potentially get held for questioning and get a late fee, so we pulled over and call 911, I told them the short version of the story and they send a BCS out to meet up with me and we opened the Seat and he opened the bag and said that’s quite the find!! We told him where we found it and what our intentions were and he was SUPER COOL, we had a few questions about the brick and he answered all of them and talked to us about it. He took our info and asked us about our local college football Teams. All in all it was the Craziest way to end a Vacation.
I’ve been back now for 3 days and can say we are moving to Florida at the end of April. I’m an adventurer at heart and after finding the find of a lifetime it has motivated me to move to Florida to start our Fun Filled Life. I do want to say that I have never done this Product and know nothing about it. I know this could have been the Best/Worst thing that could have happened to me. I have also imagined so many other ways I could have handled it. Either way I’m happy it won’t end up on the Street even though I potentially gave up 30-100k worth of Pure Untouched Product. If you read this entire thing, I want to Thank you and welcome you to the Crazy Life I’m Living in. Follow to stay up to date with when I move and start searching the Beach again. Until then... Peace and Love
Link to imgur in comments
submitted by worldsgreatestmarble to stories [link] [comments]
Red Roof Inn offering free lodging for HCW/ first responders
https://www.redroof.com/deals/national-deals/room-in-your-heart I thought this information could help those who want to use protective distancing from their loved ones.
stay safe! ❤️
Room in Your Heart: Opening Doors to First Responders
Red Roof®, the leader in upscale economy lodging, is giving back to our country’s first responders—dedicated nurses, doctors, firefighters, police and emergency medical providers—who are fighting tirelessly to combat COVID-19. Many of these essential workers on the frontlines need a place to self-quarantine away from their homes and families to protect their loved ones.
From April 3 – May 31, Red Roof is donating a limited number of available rooms to these brave heroes, giving them a place to sleep and stay in between shifts at participating locations across the country.
Many Red Roof locations are exterior corridor hotels where separate hotel room doors open to the outside of the building instead of an interior hallway. After check-in, guests can drive to their room instead of walking through the building, reducing contact with interior touchpoints. Rooms have free Wi-Fi, flat-screen TVs, a workstation and a communication package that includes free local and long-distance calls as well as free in-room coffee (in most rooms). One well-behaved domestic pet—cat or dog—is always welcome to stay at no charge.
Call a participating hotel directly to book your stay.
*Each guest must provide valid medical, firefighter, or police identification. Offer does not apply to guests staying under a current government contract and all rooms are subject to availability. Pet accommodations policy may vary at some Home Towne Studios by Red Roof locations.
RED ROOF INN MONTGOMERY - MIDTOWN 2625 Zelda Road Montgomery, AL 36107 HOMETOWNE STUDIOS PHOENIX - WEST 4861 W. McDowell Road Phoenix, AZ 85035 RED ROOF PLUS+ PHOENIX WEST 5215 West Willetta Street Phoenix, AZ 85043 RED ROOF PLUS+ TEMPE - PHOENIX AIRPORT 2135 West 15TH Street Tempe, AZ 85281 RED ROOF INN TUCSON SOUTH - AIRPORT 3704 East Irvington Road Tucson, AZ 85714 RED ROOF INN TUCSON NORTH - MARANA 4940 West Ina Road Tucson, AZ 85743 RED ROOF PLUS+ SAN FRANCISCO AIRPORT 777 Airport Boulevard Burlingame, CA 94010 HOMETOWNE STUDIOS DENVER - GLENDALE/ CHERRY CREEK 4850 Leetsdale Drive Glendale, CO 80246 RED ROOF PLUS+ JACKSONVILLE - SOUTHPOINT 6969 Lenoir Avenue East Jacksonville, FL 32216 RED ROOF INN JACKSONVILLE AIRPORT 1063 Airport Road Jacksonville, FL 32218 RED ROOF INN JACKSONVILLE - ORANGE PARK 6099 Youngerman Circle Jacksonville, FL 32244 RED ROOF INN PENSACOLA - WEST FLORIDA HOSPITAL 7340 Plantation Road Pensacola, FL 32504 RED ROOF PLUS+ GAINESVILLE 3500 Southwest 42nd Street Gainesville, FL 32608 HOMETOWNE STUDIOS ORLANDO - UCF AREA 12350 E Colonial Drive Orlando, FL 32826 HOMETOWNE STUDIOS FORT LAUDERDALE 3031 W Commercial Blvd Fort Lauderdale, FL 33309 RED ROOF PLUS+ WEST PALM BEACH 2421 Metrocentre Blvd. E West Palm Beach, FL 33407 RED ROOF INN TAMPA FAIRGROUNDS - CASINO 5001 North US Route 301 Tampa, FL 33610 RED ROOF INN TAMPA BAY - ST PETERSBURG 4999 34th Street North Saint Petersburg, FL 33714 RED ROOF INN ST PETERSBURG - CLEARWATEAIRPORT 3580 Ulmerton Road Clearwater, FL 33762 RED ROOF PLUS+ & SUITES NAPLES DOWNTOWN-5TH AVE S 1925 Davis Boulevard Naples, FL 34104 RED ROOF INN ELLENTON 4915 17th Street East Ellenton, FL 34222 RED ROOF INN FT PIERCE 3236 South US-1 Fort Pierce, FL 34982 HOMETOWNE STUDIOS ATLANTA NE - PEACHTREE CORNERS 7049 Jimmy Carter Blvd Norcross, GA 30092 RED ROOF INN ATLANTA - KENNESAW STATE UNIVERSITY 1460 George Busbee Parkway Kennesaw, GA 30144 RED ROOF INN & SUITES NEWNAN 590 Bullsboro Dr Newnan, GA 30265 US RED ROOF INN AUGUSTA - WASHINGTON ROAD 3030 Washington Road Augusta, GA 30907 RED ROOF INN INDIANAPOLIS SOUTH 5221 Victory Drive Indianapolis, IN 46203 RED ROOF INN ELKHART 2902 Cassopolis Street Elkhart, IN 46514 RED ROOF INN RICHMOND, IN 2525 Chester Blvd Richmond, IN 47374 RED ROOF INN LOUISVILLE EXPO AIRPORT 4704 Preston Highway Louisville, KY 40213 RED ROOF INN LOUISVILLE FAIR AND EXPO 3322 Red Roof Inn Place Louisville, KY 40218 HOMETOWNE STUDIOS LOUISVILLE 4540 Taylorsville Road Louisville, KY 40220 US RED ROOF INN & SUITES CAVE CITY 807 Mammoth Cave St. Cave City, KY 42127 US RED ROOF INN SLIDELL m 1662 Gause Boulevard Slidell, LA 70458 US RED ROOF PLUS+ SOUTH DEERFIELD - AMHERST 9 Greenfield Road South Deerfield, MA 01373 RED ROOF PLUS+ BOSTON - FRAMINGHAM 650 Cochituate Road Framingham, MA 01701 RED ROOF INN BOSTON - SOUTHBOROUGH/ WORCESTER 367 Turnpike Road Southborough, MA 01772 RED ROOF PLUS+ BOSTON - LOGAN 920 Broadway Saugus, MA 01906 RED ROOF PLUS+ BOSTON - MANSFIELD/ FOXBORO 60 Forbes Boulevard Mansfield, MA 02048 RED ROOF INN WASHINGTON DC - LAUREL 12525 Laurel Bowie Road Laurel, MD 20708 RED ROOF PLUS+ WASHINGTON DC - OXON HILL 6170 Oxon Hill Road Oxon Hill, MD 20745 RED ROOF INN WASHINGTON DC - COLUMBIA/ FORT MEADE 8000 Washington Boulevard Jessup, MD 20794 RED ROOF PLUS+ WASHINGTON DC - ROCKVILLE 16001 Shady Grove Road Rockville, MD 20850 RED ROOF PLUS+ BALTIMORE-WASHINGTON DC/BWI AIRPORT 827 Elkridge Landing Road Linthicum Heights, MD 21090 RED ROOF INN ST LOUIS - FLORISSANT 307 Dunn Road Florissant, MO 63031 RED ROOF PLUS+ ST LOUIS - FOREST PARK/ HAMPTON AVE 5823 Wilson Avenue Saint Louis, MO 63110 RED ROOF INN ST LOUIS - ST CHARLES 2010 Zumbehl Road Saint Charles, MO 63303 HOMETOWNE STUDIOS KANSAS CITY - INDEPENDENCE, MO 14800 E. 42nd Street Independence, MO 64055 RED ROOF INN MERIDIAN 2219 S. Frontage Rd Meridian, MS 39301 US RED ROOF PLUS+ RALEIGH NCSU - CONVENTION CENTER 1813 South Saunders Street Raleigh, NC 27603 US RED ROOF INN ASHEVILLE WEST 16 Crowell Road Asheville, NC 28806 US RED ROOF INN SALEM 15 Red Roof Lane Salem, NH 03079 US RED ROOF INN PARSIPPANY 855 US Highway 46 Parsippany, NJ 07054 US RED ROOF PLUS+ SECAUCUS - MEADOWLANDS - NYC 15 Meadowlands Parkway Secaucus, NJ 07094 US RED ROOF INN TINTON FALLS - JERSEY SHORE 11 Centre Plaza Eatontown, NJ 07724 US RED ROOF INN BATAVIA 8204 Park Road Batavia, NY 14020 US RED ROOF INN BUFFALO - NIAGARA AIRPORT 146 Maple Drive Bowmansville, NY 14026 US RED ROOF INN ROCHESTER - AIRPORT 155 Buell Road Rochester, NY 14624 US RED ROOF INN COLUMBUS - GROVE CITY 4055 Jackpot Road Grove City, OH 43123 US RED ROOF PLUS+ COLUMBUS - WORTHINGTON 7480 North High Street Columbus, OH 43235 US RED ROOF INN ST CLAIRSVILLE - WHEELING WEST 68301 Red Roof Lane Saint Clairsville, OH 43950 US RED ROOF INN CLEVELAND - MENTO WILLOUGHBY 4166 State Route 306 Willoughby, OH 44094 US RED ROOF INN CLEVELAND - WESTLAKE 29595 Clemens Road Westlake, OH 44145 US RED ROOF INN CANTON 5353 Inn Circle Court Northwest Canton, OH 44720 US RED ROOF INN CINCINNATI - SHARONVILLE 2301 Sharon Road Cincinnati, OH 45241 US RED ROOF INN CINCINNATI EAST - BEECHMONT 4035 Mount Carmel Tobasco Road Cincinnati, OH 45255 US RED ROOF INN DAYTON - FAIRBORN/ NUTTER CENTER 2580 Colonel Glenn Highway Fairborn, OH 45324 US RED ROOF INN PERRYSBURG 3555 Hanley Road Perrysburg, OH 43551 US RED ROOF INN OKLAHOMA CITY AIRPORT 309 South Meridian Avenue Oklahoma City, OK 73108 US RED ROOF INN & SUITES MEDFORD - AIRPORT 2111 Biddle Rd Medford, OR 97504 US RED ROOF PLUS+ PITTSBURGH EAST - MONROEVILLE 2729 Mosside Boulevard Monroeville, PA 15146 US RED ROOF INN WASHINGTON, PA 1399 West Chestnut Street Washington, PA 15301 US RED ROOF INN GREENSBURG 111 Sheraton Drive Greensburg, PA 15601 US RED ROOF INN PITTSBURGH NORTH - CRANBERRY TOWNSHIP 20009 US Route 19 & Marguerite Road Cranberry Township, PA 16066 US RED ROOF INN NORTH CHARLESTON COLISEUM 7480 Northwoods Boulevard Charleston, SC 29406 US RED ROOF PLUS+ MT PLEASANT - PATRIOTS POINT 301 Johnnie Dodds Boulevard Mount Pleasant, SC 29464 US RED ROOF INN FLORENCE - CIVIC CENTER 2690 David McLeod Boulevard Florence, SC 29501 US RED ROOF INN GREENVILLE 91 Vision Court Greenville, SC 29607 US RED ROOF INN HILTON HEAD ISLAND 5 Regency Parkway Hilton Head Island, SC 29928 US RED ROOF INN NASHVILLE - MUSIC CITY 2407 Brick Church Pike Nashville, TN 37207 US RED ROOF PLUS+ NASHVILLE AIRPORT 510 Claridge Drive Nashville, TN 37214 US RED ROOF INN CHATTANOOGA - LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN 30 Birmingham Hwy Chattanooga, TN 37419 US RED ROOF INN CARYVILLE 276 John McGhee Blvd Caryville, TN 37714 US RED ROOF INN KNOXVILLE NORTH - MERCHANTS DRIVE 5334 Central Ave Pike Knoxville, TN 37912 RED ROOF INN DALLAS - DFW AIRPORT NORTH 8150 Esters Boulevard Irving, TX 75063
HOMETOWNE STUDIOS DALLAS - MESQUITE 2544 US Highway 67 Mesquite, TX 75150
HOMETOWNE STUDIOS HOUSTON - WEST OAKS 2130 Highway 6 Houston, TX 77077
RED ROOF INN LAREDO 1006 West Calton Road Laredo, TX 78041
RED ROOF PLUS+ AUSTIN SOUTH 4701 South I-35 Austin, TX 78744
RED ROOF PLUS+ WASHINGTON DC - MANASSAS 10610 Automotive Drive Manassas, VA 20109
RED ROOF INN WARRENTON 6 Broadview Avenue Warrenton, VA 20186 US
RED ROOF PLUS+ WASHINGTON DC - ALEXANDRIA 5975 Richmond Highway Alexandria, VA 22303
RED ROOF INN CULPEPER 889 Willis Lane Culpeper, VA 22701
HOMETOWNE STUDIOS SEATTLE - KENT/ DES MOINES 25104 Pacific Highway S Kent, WA 98032 US
RED ROOF INN SEATTLE AIRPORT - SEATAC 16838 International Boulevard Seattle, WA 98188 US
RED ROOF INN CHARLESTON - KANAWHA CITY, WV 100 Trueman Circle Charleston, WV 25304
RED ROOF INN CHARLESTON W - HURRICANE, WV 500 Putnam Village Drive Hurricane, WV 25526
RED ROOF INN HUNTINGTON 5190 US Route 60 East Huntington, WV 25705 US
RED ROOF INN FAIRMONT 42 Spencer Drive White Hall, WV 26554 US
submitted by ciarrabobeara to nursing [link] [comments]
I Found a Kilo of Drugs on the beach while looking for Seashells (I can’t make this shit up)
So this past weekend in Florida is a Vacation I’ll never forget.. its like one of those stories you hear on the News where you dream that one day something like this could happen to you. We’ll start On Saturday. The day was lackluster at best, you know those awkward family vacations where you feel out of place especially around your family... to make everything worse, we were in a state where we knew no one and finding some good bud was near impossible. We managed to get 2 fat joints on the Plane, hidden very well of course, but after that it was CBD from then on. It wasn’t the end of the world but, FUCK when you go a week without pot it feels like an eternity. It truly does make everything better especially when your stuck with family for the entire week.
So I had the Idea to rent a Scooter. (I HIGHly Recommend Renting a Scooter while on Vacation in SoFlo.) We cruised all up and down the coast from DeerField Beach all the Way down to the beaches in Fort Lauderdale. On the way, we went down Hillsboro Mile (which is where the story gets Juicy later into the Story) where the entire Mile is Full of Homes that only the 1% can afford. I Loved it, what an experience it was. I know I won’t have that kind of money anytime soon, but hey it definitely got me MOTIVATED!!! As we were Scootin past these homes, I pulled into a Vacant Lot in between 2 Multi Million Dollar homes and drove all the way up to the beach and parked. Man, what a view, It got me thinking, “how often do these beaches get used?” I didn’t see a single person in sight, I knew as of then that I wanted to explore this area of the beach before I leave to go back to the boring Midwest... so we left and continued south until we were in Fort Lauderdale.
We stopped and had Lunch at a small Italian place called Kisses of Italy. I ordered Chicken Parm that wasn’t even on the Menu (Best Chicken Parm Sandwich EVER) and my Gf had a Hotdog Sandwhich (3 Hotdogs on a toasted bun with toppings.) After a great Lunch we went back home to relax after a great Scooter ride.
Scroll forward about 6 hours and we are headed to the Casino because we can’t seem to get her family to do anything other than sit at home.. (were on vacation, so we don’t wanna just stay home) when we arrived at the Casino, we each took out $60 (TIP. Only take out $60, if you lose it GO HOME, if you gain $60 back, pocket it and DONT TOUCH IT, continue to play with your winning, until you either lose what you had profited or are ready to be finished) and headed straight to the Roulette Table. I started with my $60 and it was gone within 10 minutes and she put in $20 and it was gone after 2 minutes. (It was on a Red Streak and I refuse to play Red) We went outside to smoke a CBD Joint and are prepared to lose the rest when we go back inside. So when we go back in (after about 30 minutes) we see that the tables have turned and my LUCKY number 33 has been hit twice as well as a slew of other black numbers. We then put in the last $40 and got up to $200 in a matter of minutes. I think we had a number get hit 5 times in a row with $2-$3 on the number plus $75 on black. Needless to say we made our money back and profited $800 for the night! We left at 12:45am and got to sleep around 2:00am.
We woke up on Sunday at 7:30 to spend our last few hours on Florida on the Beach. (I didn’t wanna get outta bed) After sleeping an entire week on a crappy blow up mattress and having little sleep the night before, my body was telling me to stay in bed. We got to the beach around 8:30 and stayed until 10:00. I made sure we had enough time to go to the Spot I mentioned the day before. So we get home and hop on the scooter and head for Hillsboro Mile. (There is only 1 public entrance to this beach and its at least a 1/2 mile walk in the sand to get to where I wanted to go, so we took the scooter to the very last Condo Building before the Row of Mansions on Hillsboro Beach. All the parking spots were numbered so I just parked in the covered area by a door to get inside. There was only 1 sign that said no Trespassing unless your a resident, and there was a Chain going across 5 posts about 3 feet high. We hopped the Chain and were to the Beach within a minute or 2.
There wasn’t a person to be seen in the area, which is something I have wanted for awhile. Technically all Florida Beaches are Public Property, so we weren’t breaking any major rules. We started walking down the beach toward all the mansions. (I Recommend this walk for anyone that comes to the area. It’s extremely peaceful, just make sure you respect the beach and make it look better than when you got there.) As I got to about the 3rd Mansion I saw an elderly man in the distance and he saw me eagerly looking for Cool Seashells at the beach. When he got close he took off his headphones and told me that he saw a package on the beach a little ways down that had appeared to be drugs of some kind. He didn’t want to have anything to do with it, but seemed like he wanted me to take care of it. So we keep walking another 500 feet or so until we see what the man was talking about. It was a vacuum sealed black bag that was wrapped in multiple layers of plastic to form that of a brick. It had the Sun of Uruguay on the front (the Cartel Logo) it appeared to have been in the Ocean for a very very long time, but also appeared to be sealed still. (Keep in mind our flight leaves at 5:00pm and it’s currently 11:30am) so my GF takes off her shirt and we wrap it in the shirt so it doesn’t look Suspicious and we start walking back to the Scooter. At this point we had already made a video of finding it on the beach and we took a few pictures of it. (At this point No one knew about this except us, the old man was long gone by this point too) we put the brick under the seat of the Scooter and start heading towards her dads house. (Yes we’re just cruising around with a 30k brick in a cheap $500 scooter.)
When we get to the house we pull into the Garage and show them what we found, and they literary Flipped! They kept trying to tell us we were going to get a possession charge or something even worse. They wanted us to go find a trash can and go throw it away. I didn’t agree with how rash they were thinking. (Technically we didn’t do anything wrong, we took the package from the beach so someone else didn’t get their hands on it, and at this point we were pretty set on going to turn it in) So we unwrap it from the shirt and put it on a Walmart bag and bag into the Scooter seat and we start heading to the Police Station.
The Scooter has to be turned in at 12:00, and I didn’t wanna potentially get held for questioning and get a late fee, so we pulled over and call 911, I told them the short version of the story and they send a BCS out to meet up with me and we opened the Seat and he opened the bag and said that’s quite the find!! We told him where we found it and what our intentions were and he was SUPER COOL, we had a few questions about the brick and he answered all of them and talked to us about it. He took our info and asked us about our local college football Teams. All in all it was the Craziest way to end a Vacation.
I’ve been back now for 3 days and can say we are moving to Florida at the end of April. I’m an adventurer at heart and after finding the find of a lifetime it has motivated me to move to Florida to start our Fun Filled Life. I do want to say that I have never done this Product and know nothing about it. I know this could have been the Best/Worst thing that could have happened to me. I have also imagined so many other ways I could have handled it. Either way I’m happy it won’t end up on the Street even though I potentially gave up 30-100k worth of Pure Untouched Product. If you read this entire thing, I want to Thank you and welcome you to the Crazy Life I’m Living in. Follow to stay up to date with when I move and start searching the Beach again. Until then... Peace and Love
submitted by worldsgreatestmarble to rant [link] [comments]
I Found a Kilo of Drugs on the beach while looking for Seashells (I can’t make this shit up)
So this past weekend in Florida is a Vacation I’ll never forget.. its like one of those stories you hear on the News where you dream that one day something like this could happen to you. We’ll start On Saturday. The day was lackluster at best, you know those awkward family vacations where you feel out of place especially around your family... to make everything worse, we were in a state where we knew no one and finding some good bud was near impossible. We managed to get 2 fat joints on the Plane, hidden very well of course, but after that it was CBD from then on. It wasn’t the end of the world but, FUCK when you go a week without pot it feels like an eternity. It truly does make everything better especially when your stuck with family for the entire week.
So I had the Idea to rent a Scooter. (I HIGHly Recommend Renting a Scooter while on Vacation in SoFlo.) We cruised all up and down the coast from DeerField Beach all the Way down to the beaches in Fort Lauderdale. On the way, we went down Hillsboro Mile (which is where the story gets Juicy later into the Story) where the entire Mile is Full of Homes that only the 1% can afford. I Loved it, what an experience it was. I know I won’t have that kind of money anytime soon, but hey it definitely got me MOTIVATED!!! As we were Scootin past these homes, I pulled into a Vacant Lot in between 2 Multi Million Dollar homes and drove all the way up to the beach and parked. Man, what a view, It got me thinking, “how often do these beaches get used?” I didn’t see a single person in sight, I knew as of then that I wanted to explore this area of the beach before I leave to go back to the boring Midwest... so we left and continued south until we were in Fort Lauderdale.
We stopped and had Lunch at a small Italian place called Kisses of Italy. I ordered Chicken Parm that wasn’t even on the Menu (Best Chicken Parm Sandwich EVER) and my Gf had a Hotdog Sandwhich (3 Hotdogs on a toasted bun with toppings.) After a great Lunch we went back home to relax after a great Scooter ride.
Scroll forward about 6 hours and we are headed to the Casino because we can’t seem to get her family to do anything other than sit at home.. (were on vacation, so we don’t wanna just stay home) when we arrived at the Casino, we each took out $60 (TIP. Only take out $60, if you lose it GO HOME, if you gain $60 back, pocket it and DONT TOUCH IT, continue to play with your winning, until you either lose what you had profited or are ready to be finished) and headed straight to the Roulette Table. I started with my $60 and it was gone within 10 minutes and she put in $20 and it was gone after 2 minutes. (It was on a Red Streak and I refuse to play Red) We went outside to smoke a CBD Joint and are prepared to lose the rest when we go back inside. So when we go back in (after about 30 minutes) we see that the tables have turned and my LUCKY number 33 has been hit twice as well as a slew of other black numbers. We then put in the last $40 and got up to $200 in a matter of minutes. I think we had a number get hit 5 times in a row with $2-$3 on the number plus $75 on black. Needless to say we made our money back and profited $800 for the night! We left at 12:45am and got to sleep around 2:00am.
We woke up on Sunday at 7:30 to spend our last few hours on Florida on the Beach. (I didn’t wanna get outta bed) After sleeping an entire week on a crappy blow up mattress and having little sleep the night before, my body was telling me to stay in bed. We got to the beach around 8:30 and stayed until 10:00. I made sure we had enough time to go to the Spot I mentioned the day before. So we get home and hop on the scooter and head for Hillsboro Mile. (There is only 1 public entrance to this beach and its at least a 1/2 mile walk in the sand to get to where I wanted to go, so we took the scooter to the very last Condo Building before the Row of Mansions on Hillsboro Beach. All the parking spots were numbered so I just parked in the covered area by a door to get inside. There was only 1 sign that said no Trespassing unless your a resident, and there was a Chain going across 5 posts about 3 feet high. We hopped the Chain and were to the Beach within a minute or 2.
There wasn’t a person to be seen in the area, which is something I have wanted for awhile. Technically all Florida Beaches are Public Property, so we weren’t breaking any major rules. We started walking down the beach toward all the mansions. (I Recommend this walk for anyone that comes to the area. It’s extremely peaceful, just make sure you respect the beach and make it look better than when you got there.) As I got to about the 3rd Mansion I saw an elderly man in the distance and he saw me eagerly looking for Cool Seashells at the beach. When he got close he took off his headphones and told me that he saw a package on the beach a little ways down that had appeared to be drugs of some kind. He didn’t want to have anything to do with it, but seemed like he wanted me to take care of it. So we keep walking another 500 feet or so until we see what the man was talking about. It was a vacuum sealed black bag that was wrapped in multiple layers of plastic to form that of a brick. It had the Sun of Uruguay on the front (the Cartel Logo) it appeared to have been in the Ocean for a very very long time, but also appeared to be sealed still. (Keep in mind our flight leaves at 5:00pm and it’s currently 11:30am) so my GF takes off her shirt and we wrap it in the shirt so it doesn’t look Suspicious and we start walking back to the Scooter. At this point we had already made a video of finding it on the beach and we took a few pictures of it. (At this point No one knew about this except us, the old man was long gone by this point too) we put the brick under the seat of the Scooter and start heading towards her dads house. (Yes we’re just cruising around with a 30k brick in a cheap $500 scooter.)
When we get to the house we pull into the Garage and show them what we found, and they literary Flipped! They kept trying to tell us we were going to get a possession charge or something even worse. They wanted us to go find a trash can and go throw it away. I didn’t agree with how rash they were thinking. (Technically we didn’t do anything wrong, we took the package from the beach so someone else didn’t get their hands on it, and at this point we were pretty set on going to turn it in) So we unwrap it from the shirt and put it on a Walmart bag and bag into the Scooter seat and we start heading to the Police Station.
The Scooter has to be turned in at 12:00, and I didn’t wanna potentially get held for questioning and get a late fee, so we pulled over and call 911, I told them the short version of the story and they send a BCS out to meet up with me and we opened the Seat and he opened the bag and said that’s quite the find!! We told him where we found it and what our intentions were and he was SUPER COOL, we had a few questions about the brick and he answered all of them and talked to us about it. He took our info and asked us about our local college football Teams. All in all it was the Craziest way to end a Vacation.
I’ve been back now for 3 days and can say we are moving to Florida at the end of April. I’m an adventurer at heart and after finding the find of a lifetime it has motivated me to move to Florida to start our Fun Filled Life. I do want to say that I have never done this Product and know nothing about it. I know this could have been the Best/Worst thing that could have happened to me. I have also imagined so many other ways I could have handled it. Either way I’m happy it won’t end up on the Street even though I potentially gave up 30-100k worth of Pure Untouched Product. If you read this entire thing, I want to Thank you and welcome you to the Crazy Life I’m Living in. Follow to stay up to date with when I move and start searching the Beach again. Until then... Peace and Love
I’ll post the imgur link to the comments
submitted by worldsgreatestmarble to offmychest [link] [comments]
Trump's shady financial ties. Have his failed dealings been a laundering front for stolen State funds?
Yes, a lot of what's in the Steele dossier can't be proven. But, Trump's shady ties can't be disproven, either. They are out in the open for anyone to see.
An
American Interest article,
The Curious World of Donald Trump's Private Russian Finance Connections, investigative journalist and economist, Jim Henry, looks into Trump’s Russo-Soviet business connections by researching published sources, interviewing with former law enforcement staff and other experts in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Iceland, searching of online corporate registries, examining court records, and analyzing offshore company data from the Panama Papers.
Why does this matter? Trump’s various unsavory Russia connections aren’t one-offs. Trump is likely to increase waste, fraud, and abuse by encouraging government contractors and private finance deals with our tax $$ and public infrastructure. If the "capital flight" patterns of his business associates are followed, we (the tax payers) will be bled dry.
Some extra thoughts:
- It's not so important (to me) if Trump has done anything illegal or not. Rather, he needs to disclose his tax returns and divest from his nebulous networks of companies. We have a right to know if he's financially beholden to foreign powers.
- Trump's connections to Russia go back to 1987 source
- The US has intervened overseas hundreds of times (which IMO is wrong), but three instances of "karma" have really come back at us: First, overthrowing the elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran in 1953 eventually led to the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Second, our decision to “give the Soviets their own Vietnam” in Afghanistan in 1979, which eventually led 9/11. Third is the 1990s neoliberal intervention in Russia. The IMF/World Bank restructuring, capital controls, capital flight, and general neoliberalism is of one of the most epic failures in our times — one for which the US bears a great deal of responsibility. As the Soviet Union collapsed in the late 1980s, Western powers did not require that Russia acquire a strong middle-class, which is necessary for democratic capitalism, the rule of law, and stable, peaceful relationships with neighbours.
- Here's a 1995 CS Monitor article on Russian money laundering. It's really not a stretch of the imagination to see a) Russian mobsters in early/mid 1990s were reported to be using shell companies to launder money into US. By 2000 no one would lend money to Trump, and the money he raised came from sources that look a lot like the patterns the CS Monitor article describes.
- The pattern that we're seeing with all this failed real estate development is that Trump licenses his name to the project then the shady financiers collect deposits and abandon the project. Baja condos, Tampa condos, Toronto condos, Daewoo Korean project. Trump Tower Pune allegedly on land acquired illegally (same source as previous), and Trump Tower Istanbul's local partner, Dogan, is tangled in smuggling charges (same source).
I've cut & pasted some key points from Henry's article below, and added other sources as noted:
- From 1992 to the Russian debt crisis of August 1998, the West in general — and the U.S. Treasury, USAID, the State Department, the IMF/World Bank, the EBRD, and many leading economists in particular — actively promoted and, indeed, helped to finance one of the most massive transfers of public wealth into private hands that the world has ever seen. During this period more than $1.3 trillion has left Russia. The pattern is similar for other former Soviet Republics. More deets here
- At this time Trump had just suffered a string of six successive bankruptcies. So the massive illicit outflows from Russia and oil-rich (former Soviet states) like Kazahkstan and Azerbaijan from the mid-1990s provided precisely the kind of undiscriminating investors that he needed. These outflows arrived at just the right time to fund several of Trump’s post-2000 high-risk real estate and casino ventures — most of which failed.
- Donald Trump has also literally spent decades cultivating senior relationships of all kinds with Russia and the FSU. And public and private senior Russian figures of all kinds have likewise spent decades cultivating him, not only as a business partner, but as a “useful idiot.”
Bayrock Group LLC (funding partners for Trump SoHo condo-hotel and Trump International Hotel & Tower in Fort Lauderdale)
- As of 2007, Bayrock and its partners reportedly had more than $2 billion of Trump-branded deals in the works. But most of these either never materialized or were miserable failures.
- Tevfik Arif (Kazakhstan) linked to prostitution, child trafficking. Bayrock started to receive millions of dollars in equity contributions in 2004, supposedly by way of Arif’s brother in Russia, who allegedly “had access to cash accounts at a chromium refinery in Kazakhstan.” Here's loads more info
- Tamir Sapir (Georgia) Tevfik Arif's equity partner in Bayrock. Likely the richest ex-Soviet in the U.S. His Sapir Organization, now headed by his son, Alex, already controlled over 7 million square feet in Manhattan in 2005, but lost hundreds of millions of dollars source
- Alexander Mashevich (Kazakhstan) part of "the Trio" with Patokh Chodiev and Alijan Ibragimov, Kazakh billionaires linked to money laundering, bribery, racketeering, and the Uzbek mob
- Felix SateSatter (Russian) professional criminal, with multiple felony pleas and convictions, extensive connections to organized crime, and CI to FBI and CIA. One notable incident is participation in a $40 million pump & dump securities fraud scheme. Father connected to Semion Mogilevich crime syndicate involved in trafficking nuclear materials, weapons, and more, as well as money laundering. more info
- FL Group (Iceland) FL Group had constructed an incredible maze of cross-shareholding, lending, and cross-derivatives relationships making it almost impossible to regulate “control fraud,” where insiders at leading financial institutions went on a self-serving binge, borrowing and lending to finance risky investments of all kinds. Iceland’s largest banks also made a series of extraordinary loans to Russian interests during the run-up to the 2008 crisis. Arif and Sater discovered FL Group as a veritable piggy bank, persuading it to invest $50 million in the Trump SoHo project and agreeing in principle to as much as another $2 billion in financing for other deals.
Seabeco (fmr investor was co-financer of Trump Toronto Tower and Hotel) - Boris J. Birshtein, was a close business associate of Sergei Mikhaylov, the reputed head of Solntsevskaya Bratva, the Russian mob’s largest branch, and the world’s highest-grossing organized crime group as of 2014, according to Fortune. Also connected to Semion Mogilevich and in 1993, the Yeltsin government reportedly accused Birshtein of illegally exporting seven million tons of Russian oil and laundering the proceeds.
- Alexander Mashevich and Patokh Chodiev allegedly met by working at Seabeco together
- Birshtein's (now reportedly ex-) son-in-law, Alex Shnaider (Russian) has long business ties to Birshtein and Mikhaylov acquired a Ukrainian steel mill as it was privatized and also has ties to FL Group in Iceland.
Trump Taj Mahal Casino Paul Manafort - One of Manafort’s biggest clients was the dubious pro-Russian Ukrainian billionaire Dmytro Firtash. By his own admission, Firtash maintains strong ties with a recurrent figure on this scene, the reputed Ukrainian/Russian mob boss Semion Mogilevich. In 2008, Manafort teamed up with a former manager of the Trump Organization to purchase the Drake Hotel in New York for up to $850 million, with Firtash agreeing to invest $112 million, to simply launder part of the huge profits that Firtash had skimmed while brokering dodgy natural gas deals between Russia and Ukraine. Appears in the Panama Papers in companies connected to Semion Mogilevich.
- The Russian puppet president that Manafort was paid to get elected in Ukraine, Yanukovych, was sued for funneling $$ into the US for laundering. Ousted from power in 2014 amid allegations of massive embezzlement, Yanukovych fled to Russia. Ukrainian authorities found a ledger showing $12.7m in off-book payments to Manafort by Yanukovych’s party, payments Manafort has strongly denied receiving. source
Trump Tower Tenants - Unlike most New York luxury buildings, the tower has no prying coop board and its residents have included “tax-dodgers, bribers, arms dealers, convicted cocaine traffickers, and corrupt former FIFA officials.”
- Russian diamond and real estate tycoon, Lev Leviev, is a close associate of Putin. He recently signed a $295 million deal with Jared Kushner and has been advocating for the lifting of sanctions against Russia. Leviev has come under scrutiny (link) by the United States government and international media for, among other things, both his partnership with a Chinese business group (88 Queensway Group) believed to have funded North Korea an facilitating corruption in Zimbabwe, and his possible role in developing West Bank settlements.
- Khrapunov family bought 3 apartments source Viktor Khrapunov, a former Kazakh energy minister and ex-mayor of the city of Almaty, and his family “conspired to systematically loot hundreds of millions of dollars of public assets . . . and to launder their ill-gotten gains through a complex web of bank accounts and shell companies . . . particularly in the United States”.
- Anatoly Golubchik, Russian mobster, went to prison in 2014 for running an illegal gambling ring out of Trump Tower (reportedly the entire 51st floor). He's also in the Panama Papers and linked to Semion Mogilevich
- Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov has the distinction of making the Forbes 2008 list of the World’s Ten Most Wanted Criminals, and whose organization the FBI believes to be tied to Mogilevich’s. Went to the infamous 2013 Miss Universe as special VIP
- Semion Mogilevich, lifelong criminal with a notable fraud of setting up a fraudulent magnet manufacturing company on the Toronto Stock Exchange and cashing out with $18 million. In 2003, Mogilevich was indicted in Philadelphia on 45 felony counts for this $150 million stock fraud. Brother of the magnet manufacturing company's CEO, David Bogatin, owned five separate condos in Trump Tower that Donald Trump had reportedly sold to him personally. ince the early 1990s, David Bogatin was considered by the FBI to be one of the key members of Semion Mogilevich’s Russian organized crime family in the United States, with a long string of convictions for big-ticket Mogilevich-type offenses like financial fraud and tax dodging.
- Vyacheslav Ivankov, another key Mogilevich lieutenant in the United States during the 1990s, also resided for a time at Trump Tower.
- Felix Sater had an apartment and offices in the Trump Tower. Pic with Trump
- Bank Melli Trump Organization rented Bank Melli several floors of New York office space from 1998 to 2003. The bank remained a tenant of Trump’s for years after the U.S. Treasury Department declared it to be controlled by the Iranian government in 1999. Bank Melli has been accused of helping to obtain materials for Iran’s nuclear program and funneling money to a unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that has allegedly sponsored terrorist attacks. source. In an interesting twist, Trump is the president of two Azerbaijan entities called OT Marks Baku LLC and DT Marks Baku Manaaina Member Corp. The partner in the deal is controlled by Anar Mammadov, the son of the country’s transportation minister, Ziya Mammadov. US officials believe Ziya Mammadov laundered money for the Iranian military. (source)[http://www.newsweek.com/2016/09/23/donald-trump-foreign-business-deals-national-security-498081.html]
Other Here are even more shady ties:
- Trump's Russian Connections as reported in the Financial Times
- Madhukar Tulsi, a prominent real estate executive in India & Trump's local partner. In 2010, Tulsi’s home and the offices of Ireo were raided as part of a sweeping corruption inquiry related to the 2010 Commonwealth Games, because Sudhanshu Mittal was suspected in playing a role in rerouting money earned from Commonwealth Games contracts through tax havens into Ireo’s real estate projects.
- Libyan dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi, yes that murdering terrorist... Trump made entreaties to Qaddafi and other members of his government, beginning in 2008, in which he sought deals that would bring cash to the Trump Organization from a sovereign wealth fund called the Libyan Investment Authority. The following year, Trump offered to lease his estate in Westchester County, New York, to Qaddafi; he took Qaddafi’s money but, after local protests, forbade him from staying at his property. (Trump kept the cash.) “I made a lot of money with Qaddafi,’’ Trump said recently about the Westchester escapade. “He paid me a fortune.” source
TL;DR Investigative journalist and economist Jim Henry researches Trump's financial ties to private $$ network coming from Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan etc, with heavy ties to Semion Mogilevich mob.
Edit: formatting, added more people
Looking for a place to stay this summer!
Hi all,
I'll be moving to the southern Florida (ideally Fort Lauderdale or Hollywood) this summer (May - July) to play poker full time at the Hard Rock Casino. I'm looking for someone to stay with (I'll pay of course). If anyone has an extra room or knows of somebody who is looking for a roommate, let me know!
More about me: I'm a 20 year old male college student. I play and study very seriously and have made 4 digits playing .25/50 online with a solid win rate. I've also played live multiple times and done well. I have built up a bankroll for 2/5 and want to take my shot. You have to be 21 to play poker in my state.
I'm a very easy guy to live with -- I'm social, I cook, clean, and am easygoing.
I've been to Fort Lauderdale and Miami before and I absolutely love the area. Hopefully I can find someone to stay with :). If not, does anyone have advice for resources to find what I'm looking for?
Thanks!
submitted by summerpokerplayer to SouthFlorida [link] [comments]
Planning a night out
Just looking for some ideas as to where to go?
I am from Ireland originally but moved to Indian River County in the last year or so - so am a Florida resident but do not know too much outside of my local area.
I have a friend coming over in a couple of months and we want to go somewhere for a weekend of drinking, essentially.
We were thinking Miami as there is 24 hours drinking, but it looks crazy expensive.
Does everywhere else close at 2AM or is there loop holes, like casinos etc? that we could carry on drinking?
We aren't massive into clubbing, maybe a dive bar or just a normal bar with cheapish drinks and some music in the background with a good crowd, 21-35, say! We want to be able to drink from the evening until the morning time, 5am onwards
As I say, not hugely into clubs but wouldn't be against going to some if they were cheapish and it meant we could carry on drinking.
By cheapish I mean, less than 10 dollars a drink. We'd preferably love a bar with 5 dollar or less beers and then as the night went on would be open to paying more.
As I say we are in Indian river county, so we could go to Miami, Orlando, Tampa, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach.
Does anyone have any experience or can they recommend a place for us to enjoy?
Many Thanks
TIm
submitted by timbotx to florida [link] [comments]
America’s 11 Most Interesting Mayors
America’s 11 Most Interesting Mayors
by POLITICO MAGAZINE via POLITICO - TOP Stories
URL:
http://ift.tt/2sa0c1J At a time when one yellow-haired, Twitter-happy personality dominates American discourse, it’s easy to forget how much political energy—and important new thinking—emanates not from the nation’s capital but from city hall. We surveyed dozens of national and local political junkies, and came up with 11 leaders who are compelling for the fights they are waging, their personal backstories and how they are transforming their cities, often without Washington. Plus: Seven more to watch.
Eric Garcetti | Los Angeles, California
The mayor who would be president
By Edward-Isaac Dovere
Back in 1984, when he was mayor of San Antonio and a rising star in the Democratic Party, Henry Cisneros got a final-round interview to be Walter Mondale’s presidential running mate. Mondale decided against it: It was a little too much for a local official to make the leap right onto the national stage.
It’s early still, but many top Democrats have started assuming Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti will skip that step entirely and run for president himself in 2020. Garcetti has helped fan that speculation, already talking to strategists and big donors about the prospect. And it helps that, as cities step up their resistance to President Donald Trump, Garcetti has been able to jump into the national debate on issues like immigration, health care and infrastructure.
“My main job, and my overwhelming job, starts with my family, my street, my neighborhood and my city,” Garcetti told Politico’s
Off Message podcast in May. “But I’m playing too much defense in my backyard to not get involved in the national discussion.”
If Garcetti runs for president, he wouldn’t just make history as a rare sitting mayor to do so. He also has the potential to be the first Hispanic and the first Jewish president. Garcetti is the 46-year-old grandson of an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, and the son of a former L.A. district attorney—Gil Garcetti, of O.J. Simpson trial fame—and a mother whose parents were Jewish immigrants from Russia. The mayor can order his bagel and lox, which he loves, in fluent Spanish. He was also a Rhodes Scholar and a Navy Reserve intelligence officer, and likes to tell stories about the time in high school when he traveled to Ethiopia to deliver medical supplies.
As mayor, Garcetti has successfully pushed for tax increases to fund a mass transit plan and more housing for the homeless, and he won a second term this year with 81 percent of the vote. His big project over the next few months is landing the Olympic Games in 2024 or 2028. The choice is expected in September, and Garcetti is putting off any decision about his political future until after that. There’s an open governor’s race in California next year, but people close to Garcetti don’t think that’s where his heart is, especially if he can go straight to a White House run. There’s also the chance of an open Senate seat if Dianne Feinstein retires, but that job doesn’t seem to fit Garcetti’s personality or his experience being the man in charge.
In the meantime, the mayor is firing back hard at Trump, at appearances all over the country, telling people to channel their rage into action—even if he’s also taking a cue from Trump’s “outsider” playbook. Gone are “the old rules of who can run and who should be president or vice president—and that reflects the American people’s desires,” Garcetti says. “They’re not looking for résumé-builders. They’re not looking for a set pathway or a set demographic or a set caricature. They want to go with their gut about somebody who they think has the guts to shake it up.”
Edward-Isaac Dovere is chief Washington correspondent atPolitico.
Hillary Schieve | Reno, Nevada
The re-inventor
By Megan Messerly
Tucked in the desert just east of the Sierra Nevada mountains, Reno is best known for its casinos, lax divorce laws and “Reno 911!” But these days it’s also becoming a hub for tech entrepreneurs and companies, pulling coders and data analysts from far more expensive Silicon Valley four hours to the west.
The woman now at the center of this transformation is Hillary Schieve, a 46-year-old political outsider who has her own remarkable transformation story. As a teenager, she was a figure skater elite enough to train with an Olympic-level coach. But she struggled for years before discovering that the fatigue she experienced was brought on by a serious kidney disease. Two years after a transplant—her sister was the donor—Schieve, then 27, was working in the Bay Area when her mother suffered a massive brain aneurysm and fell into a coma. Schieve put her life on hold again, moving home to Reno to care for her mother and become the family’s breadwinner. She had briefly attended Arizona State University, but never returned to college.
After working a few different jobs, the former figure skater without a college degree reinvented herself in 2007 as a small-business owner, opening a secondhand clothing store serving teenagers in a rundown part of the city. That’s where Schieve’s transformation story meets Reno’s. She shot a low-budget commercial to promote the area and lobbied the city to recognize it as a distinct district, now known as Midtown. Today, Midtown is a bustling center with wine bars, breweries, gastropubs and shops.
Schieve never pictured herself in politics. But her personal setbacks gave her a powerful sense of gratitude—“It makes you connect better with others, and I think it’s important really to honestly have a lot of compassion in your life,” she says now—and her work in Midtown convinced her that small-business interests needed a voice on the City Council. In 2014, after two years as a council member, she entered, and won, Reno’s first competitive mayoral race in more than a decade.
As mayor, Schieve hasn’t been immune to challenges. Even as Reno’s economy has boomed and the city’s population has grown by some 20,000 since 2010, it has struggled to promote affordable housing and mental health services, or to fight homelessness—issues Schieve says she is trying to address. In an age of intense partisanship, however, she stands out not just for her up-by-the-bootstraps MO, but because she’s a registered nonpartisan in a purple state, fiscally conservative and socially liberal. A wall in her office is covered in chalkboard material with a to-do list that ranges from cleaning up the blighted downtown to bringing back a gay rodeo that started in Reno in the 1970s. “Everyone likes the taste of beer, right?” Schieve says. “So don’t tell me we can’t find something in common.”
Megan Messerly is a political reporter at the Nevada Independent.
Kevin Faulconer | San Diego, California
The modern GOP executive
By Ethan Epstein
Of America’s 10 largest cities, only one has a Republican chief executive: San Diego, where Mayor Kevin Faulconer is straddling ideological and partisan lines to surprisingly popular effect.
Faulconer became mayor in this border city of 1.4 million during troubled times, after a sexual harassment scandal ousted Democrat Bob Filner. A pension scheme for city employees was also bleeding the budget dry, leading to cutbacks in basic services like library hours and funding for beaches and parks. A city council member at the time, Faulconer campaigned in English and Spanish, pledging to right the city’s financial ship, and easily won a special election.
He has made good on that pledge as mayor, pushing a high-profile legal case that let the city switch new municipal hires from its costly pension system to a 401(k)-style retirement plan. Library hours have been restored, too.
Faulconer has struggled at times with the Democratic city council, which overrode his veto of a bill to raise the minimum wage and provide private-sector workers with guaranteed paid sick days. But given San Diego’s Democratic majority, it’s not surprising that Faulconer, 50, has bucked his own party on several major issues. He speaks often of the city’s integration with its neighbor to the south, saying he views San Diego-Tijuana as “one megaregion,” and pledging that local police officers will not be used to enforce federal immigration laws. He also backed a 2015 plan to curtail San Diego’s emissions, and he has flown a gay pride flag at City Hall. “He approaches things from a pragmatic point of view and doesn’t publicly project his ideology,” says James R. Riffel, a longtime San Diego journalist.
For the most part, Faulconer’s policies have proved popular—he was reelected easily last year—perhaps because, unlike many national Republicans, he tries to eschew ideological labels. He’s quick to say he’s not a liberal. “Fiscal responsibility is a core Republican value,” he points out. But he has no qualms admitting that his conservatism differs from that of the national GOP—not to mention a certain denizen of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
“San Diego is not Washington, D.C., and I’ve done what I can to keep it that way,” Faulconer says. “My approach has always been to keep partisan politics out of governing and focus on what matters most: protecting taxpayers and getting things done for our residents.”
Ethan Epstein is associate editor at the Weekly Standard.
Greg Fischer | Louisville, Kentucky
The data geek
By Katelyn Fossett
At a 2013 conference in San Francisco, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer announced a new policy in which all his city’s records would be publicly available by default, and delivered a line that married the folksy simplicity of a political slogan with the message of a numbers geek: “It’s data, man.”
Fast-forward nearly four years, and Fischer has carved out just that reputation, defining his tenure in Louisville with high-tech and open-data initiatives that have cut costs and improved public health, as the city has added tens of thousands of jobs. In 2011, shortly after taking office, he named a city “innovation czar.” One result: a partnership with a company that vacuums up data from individual asthma inhalers so health agencies know what really triggers attacks. Fischer also launched LouieStat, a metrics system that in 2012 helped identify problems across municipal agencies—like the cause of 300 monthly inaccuracies in the fingerprinting process at city jails. It was improper staff training, not anything as tricky as software, and after the training was revamped, the number of inaccuracies came down to just 10 in following years.
Fischer, 59, is a Democrat, but in a deep-red state his track record fulfills the most fashionable of Republican beliefs: that a businessman, even with virtually no political experience, can deliver common-sense reforms. A Louisville native, he invented a beverage and ice dispenser and ran the company that made it; later, he started a private investment firm and Louisville’s first business accelerator. His previous life in politics was a single Senate primary, which he lost.
Fischer, who peppers his speech with corporate-sounding phrases like “de-optimizing potential,” entered politics with the same goal he had in business—to “serve as a platform for human potential to flourish.” Although he recognizes that business skills don’t always translate to politics, at a time of sky-high institutional distrust of government, he believes that cities are the best ticket toward earning back public trust, particularly with the help of data and crowd-sourcing. “It emphasizes to people we’re all interconnected,” Fischer says.
Katelyn Fossett is associate editor atPolitico Magazine.
Marty Walsh | Boston, Massachusetts
The union hall progressive
By Lauren Dezenski
Even his fans would concede that Boston Mayor Marty Walsh isn’t usually the most dynamic speaker. But his anger was on full display at a news conference in January. Flanked by dozens of city officials and aides, Walsh railed against Donald Trump’s new travel ban and anti-immigrant rhetoric as “a direct attack on Boston’s people.” Then, he went a step further, offering to house inside City Hall any undocumented immigrants who felt vulnerable.
The picture was striking: A white, blue-collar former union leader from Dorchester, the image of the Irish old guard in a city with troubled race relations, taking one of the most progressive stances on immigration—and making one of the fiercest critiques of the president—of any mayor in the country.
“It was personal,” Walsh, the child of Irish immigrants, said in a recent interview. “I have the opportunity to speak up, to speak against someone. I’m not afraid, and I don’t like bullies.”
A recovering alcoholic and survivor of childhood cancer, Walsh, 50, has always bridged two worlds: the hard-bitten and socially conservative landscape of Boston’s longtime white residents, and contemporary progressive Massachusetts politics. He got his start as the head of a local labor union—one his uncle had run, and for which Walsh had hauled building materials for two years. As a state representative, he was an early advocate for marriage equality. As mayor, an office he has held since 2014, Walsh recently hoisted the transgender flag over Boston’s City Hall Plaza as an anti-transgender “free speech bus” rolled into town.
Walsh admits that “to see a mayor from a blue-collar neighborhood [supporting] transgender rights, progressive policies—it’s a bit of a disconnect.” When he has spoken to union members about social issues, he says, “Sometimes people would look at me [like] I’m crazy.” And for those who object, he says: “What frustrates me about working-class people is: Why focus on social issues, why not just focus on work-rights issues? Be more concerned about your benefits and your health care and pension.”
Conventional wisdom says Walsh will coast to a second term in November—no incumbent mayor in Boston has lost reelection since 1949. But while he remains tight-lipped about higher aspirations, he rejects the “mayor-for-life” approach of his five-term predecessor, raising questions about his future. Last year, Walsh traveled the country supporting Hillary Clinton, and rumors swirled that he could be tapped for a labor role in Washington. But Walsh now says that he wouldn’t have accepted the job before finishing out his first term as mayor.
As for the current president, Walsh says that day to day, “I really don’t make big decisions based on Trump.” But he takes seriously the chance to stand up for Boston: “I’ll continue to do that as long as I’m mayor of the city, or whatever position I have. I did it as a state rep, I did it as a labor leader, I did it as a Little League coach, before I was into any of this stuff.”
Lauren Dezenski is aPoliticoreporter in Boston and author of Massachusetts Playbook.
Michael Hancock | Denver, Colorado
The cool-headed change agent
By Caleb Hannan
The day after Donald Trump was elected president, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock did something he almost never does: He left work early. He had stumped for Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama before her, and was so shocked by Trump’s win that he left shortly after lunch, only the second time he had done so in more than five years in office.
“I had to breathe a little bit and collect my thoughts,” he recalled recently.
Hancock hasn’t skipped a day since. Coming to grips with the shock of a Trump presidency didn’t take him long, a calm response befitting a low-key leader who has moved beyond his turbulent past and faces daily the growing pains associated with a boom city.
Being mayor has been Hancock’s dream ever since he decided, at age 15, that he wanted to be the first African American to lead Denver, whose population is only about 10 percent black. (Wellington Webb would beat him to that goal in the 1990s.) And Hancock’s path was far from clear. He had the kind of childhood that can be an asset only after it has been overcome: an alcoholic father; a brother who died of AIDS; a sister who was murdered by a domestic abuser. Before getting to the mayor’s office, Hancock spent a season as the Broncos’ then-mascot, “Huddles,” two terms as a City Council member, and then defeated the son of a former governor in his first mayor’s race in 2011. When he ran again four years later, he was virtually unopposed.
Perhaps because Hancock, 47, already has his dream job—he’s begun raising money for a second reelection campaign—he wields his powerful personal story with some subtlety. This spring, he created a new office designed to improve affordable housing options for low-income residents without dwelling on the fact that he and his nine siblings were often homeless.
That deft touch has come in handy as Denver has navigated hot-button issues like marijuana legalization. Hancock opposed the amendment that made weed legal in Colorado but worked hard to smooth the transition once voters overruled him.
Because of its progressive stances on a number of issues, Denver also holds, perhaps even more so than other cities, the potential for conflict with the Trump administration. But Hancock has navigated the new national politics with his signature understatement. A week after the election, he posted a two-minute video on his YouTube page meant to reassure Denver residents, but never mentioned Trump’s name.
Then, when the president issued an executive order threatening to withhold federal funds for so-called sanctuary cities, Hancock once again reacted without being reactionary. His response was to spend months lobbying to change local laws, rather than making confrontational speeches. And this spring, in a move that earned applause from the Denver Post, Hancock signed a series of sentencing reforms that reduce penalties for low-level violations in the city—minor crimes that in the past would have set off alarms at Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and possibly resulted in deportation.
“It’s easy to be emotional ... and to do things because it looks good politically,” Hancock says. “But if you’re not doing things that are going to protect and help your residents, then what’s the point?”
Caleb Hannan is a writer in Denver.
Jennifer Roberts | Charlotte, North Carolina
The embattled activist
By Greg Lacour
If there’s an embodiment of a mayor whose political challenges have taken on national import, it’s Jennifer Roberts.
The Charlotte mayor, a Democrat, flashed onto the national radar by facing down the Republican state legislature over House Bill 2, the 2016 state law that overturned a city ordinance protecting gay and transgender people. On September 19, having rejected a proposed deal to repeal the ordinance in exchange for possible repeal of HB2, Roberts walked into a City Council meeting to a powerful round of applause from members of the local LGBTQ community.
One week later, she returned to the chamber for another council meeting and faced a crowd with a very different message.
“Shut your goddamn mouth.”
“You should not be in office at all.”
“Fuck all y’all.”
The speakers were members of Charlotte’s black community, infuriated and terrified after the fatal police shooting of Keith Scott, a black man, on September 20. Roberts seemed at a loss. The night after the Scott shooting, she waited until a riot at the center of the city had left a man dead before signing a state of emergency proclamation that allowed the governor to send in the National Guard. She urged patience with the investigation, then wrote an op-ed criticizing the police department for not immediately releasing footage of the incident.
A former diplomat, Roberts, 57, was elected in 2015 with broad backing among disparate constituencies. But her ironclad support for the nondiscrimination ordinance and missteps after the Scott shooting have turned her, improbably, into a polarizing figure as she seeks reelection this year. She is struggling to manage HB2’s economic damage and a hostile legislature that blames her for it, and a perception among some in the black community that she will work for their votes but not their well-being. Roberts has two challengers in this year’s Democratic mayoral primary, both of whom are African-American, and in May, the local Black Political Caucus endorsed placed her in a distant third in an internal caucus vote—although a poll in late June showed her leading both of her primary challengers.
“Mayor Roberts does not have a consistent application of attentiveness with the African-American community and the Black Political Caucus like she does with the LGBTQ community,” says caucus Chair Colette Forrest. “We as African Americans have not seen that consistency on our issues, such as housing, crime and safety, economic development and transportation.”
Roberts says, with justification, that she has urged city action on all of those issues. But many Charlotteans, she says, fail to grasp how little formal power she has as mayor, since the city council sets policy in Charlotte and the city manager handles day-to-day operations. “I can’t really legislate or govern,” Roberts says—which puts all the more pressure on what she says and how she acts in the face of both local and state-level opposition.
“I don’t really think of myself as a politician. I’m an advocate,” Roberts says. “The civil rights movement needed white people. The LGBT community needs straight people. I want to be there when people are fighting for equality.”
Greg Lacour is a writer in Charlotte and contributing editor at Charlotte Magazine.
Tomás Regalado | Miami, Florida
The Republican resister
By Marc Caputo
The Argentinian real estate investor had a question that Miami Mayor Tomás Regalado hated hearing. “I’m investing in Miami. But I want to ask you if I should be concerned that I would never be able to go. … All these Trump laws could impede me and my family.”
This was one of the mayor’s fears during the 2016 election—that Donald Trump’s rhetoric could spook the foreign investors who are essential to Miami’s booming economy. Miami is both a big U.S. city and Latin America’s northernmost metropolis, and keeping its status as the latter requires Regalado to calm the nerves of jittery investors up and down the hemisphere.
Few major U.S. cities have as many reasons to fret about a Trump presidency. It’s not just that Miami has one of the country’s highest proportions of foreign-born residents and relies heavily on foreign investment. It is also among the cities most threatened by rising sea levels, at a time when Trump has labeled climate change a hoax and is withdrawing from the Paris climate accord.
That means that, at age 70, Regalado has fashioned himself as one of the most caustic voices of the so-called anti-Trump “resistance,” and from within the president’s own party—both men are Republicans.
For Regalado, opposition to Trump is almost personal. He was born overseas, in Cuba, one of the last of the old-school anti-Castro exiles who helped turn Miami into a Spanish-language mecca more culturally attuned to Havana than Fort Lauderdale. And he empathizes with the flood of immigrants and refugees, particularly from Latin America and the Caribbean, who populate Miami’s metropolitan area. At 14, Regalado was one of 14,000 Cuban children spirited off the island and settled in the United States without their parents. His father, a lawyer and journalist, was jailed by Fidel Castro for two decades.
Regalado went into journalism too, starting out in radio and local TV, before covering the White House. He traveled the world and says he was among the last foreign reporters to interview Egyptian strongman Anwar Sadat. In 1996, he parlayed his name ID into his first political bid, on the city commission, and won the first of his two mayoral terms in 2009. (His daughter is now a congressional candidate in Florida; one of his sons is running for city commission.)
Despite his calm demeanor, Regalado grows animated when discussing Trump. The administration, for instance, recently extended temporary protective status to more than 58,000 Haitians who fled the country’s 2010 earthquake—but only for six more months. “These are good people, hard-working people,” Regalado says. “Now we have this guy saying, ‘Get your things in order. You might go back.’ What the hell? What ‘things’?”
In the end, he says, it’s hard not to see racial overtones in Trump’s immigration rhetoric and policies. “It reminded me of when I was a kid, and the others would tell me, ‘Spic, go home,’” he said during the campaign. “I never responded to that. But I was like, ‘Fuck this. This is my country.’”
Marc Caputo is aPoliticosenior reporter in Miami and author of Florida Playbook.
Jackie Biskupski | Salt Lake City, Utah
The pioneer in Mormon country
By Erick Trickey
Her parents in Minnesota named her after Jacqueline Kennedy. But Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski didn’t turn to politics until she witnessed Utah’s 1990s anti-gay backlash.
“When I first moved here, I was a ski bum and a bartender,” Biskupski recalled in an interview earlier this year. Then the Utah legislature tried to stamp out a local high school’s Gay-Straight Alliance. That convinced Biskupski to run for office as an out lesbian. “By hiding, you were legitimizing the discrimination,” she says. In 1998, Biskupski was elected as Utah’s first openly gay state legislator.
If it shocks people outside Utah that Salt Lake City would have a lesbian mayor, given the state’s streak of Mormon-influenced social conservatism, it’s a source of pride to residents of the capital city, who favored Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump 4-to-1 and haven’t elected a Republican mayor since the 1970s. Today, Biskupski, 51, governs from Salt Lake City’s towering Romanesque City Hall, built in the 1890s as a secular counterpoint to the Mormon Church’s Salt Lake Temple.
During her statehouse years, Biskupski waged a near-constant battle against anti-gay legislation. She was sworn in as mayor in 2016 with her fiancée, now wife, by her side. But while her identity helped her get elected as a progressive, it hasn’t been much help with governing: Biskupski is struggling to deliver on difficult goals such as better homeless services and affordable housing.
Salt Lake City’s growing homeless problem, fueled by the opioid epidemic and a housing shortage, has roiled local politics. A thriving drug trade has grown around The Road Home, the city’s main downtown homeless shelter, near a revitalizing neighborhood and the Rio Grande train station. In her first year as mayor, Biskupski joined with the county sheriff to launch a crackdown on drug crime near the shelter that offered the addicted a choice: jail or treatment. About half of the defendants who chose treatment have stayed with it, early results show.
But a controversy over where to move the city’s homeless services has hurt Biskupski. She came to office as the community agreed to replace The Road Home with smaller homeless centers. Under Utah law, the job of finding the sites fell to the mayor. After a year of study, Biskupski chose four sites, and not-in-my-backyard opposition broke out, especially in the middle-class Sugar House neighborhood. Forced to back down in February, Biskupski, the City Council and the county government cut the number of centers from four to three, moved one of the remaining ones outside the city and set 2019 as the deadline to close The Road Home. Critics say the mayor’s decisions weren’t transparent and were sprung on the public. Biskupski says she tried to avoid a divisive debate and find a fair way to distribute the homeless centers around the city. “We did not want to pit neighborhoods against neighborhoods,” is how she often puts it.
In February, Biskupski delivered her long-awaited affordable housing plan, “Growing SLC.” She proposed requiring developments to include affordable units, changing city zoning to allow denser development in neighborhoods full of single-family homes, and buying hotels and apartment buildings to remake them as affordable housing complexes. Her ideas got a positive reception from the City Council and local advocates, though some are pushing for quicker progress. Biskupski calls her plan “bold but equitable.” That’s a good summary of how she would like to be seen herself.
Erick Trickey is a writer in Boston.
Bill Peduto | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
The Rust Belt rebrander
By Blake Hounshell
When a Nashville Predators fan was arrested for throwing a dead catfish on the ice during Game 1 of the Stanley Cup finals in May, a home game for the Penguins, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto responded with a barrage of fish puns. “This has turned into a whale of a story,” he wrote in a news release. “We shouldn’t be baited into interfering with this fish tale, but if the charges eventually make their way to a judge I hope the predatory catfish hurler who got the hook last night is simply sentenced to community service, perhaps cleaning fish at Wholey’s.”
It was vintage Peduto, and not just because of the goofy humor: The affable Democratic mayor has a knack for inserting himself into every story about Pittsburgh, a prideful city that has aggressively rebranded itself as a metropolis of the future during his three-year tenure. A self-described “student of cities” who rose to local prominence by championing a bohemian mix of indie art galleries and urban tech centers, Peduto, 52, represents the global aspirations of a city shaking off its smoky past.
There’s no better example of his media savvy than when Peduto seized on President Donald Trump’s speech announcing his decision to withdraw from a 2015 global climate agreement. No sooner had the president said the words, “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” than the mayor was pointing out on his lively Twitter feed that in fact, 80 percent of Pittsburghers had voted for Hillary Clinton. He followed it up with a media blitz positioning Pittsburgh as a leader in green technology, and co-bylined a New York Timesop-ed with the mayor of Paris calling on cities to fight climate change.
The flurry of positive press was good for Pittsburgh—and also good for Peduto, who has told friends he has wider ambitions. But he has kept them mostly to himself, just as he did in high school, when for months he hid from his strict, academic-minded parents that he had been elected student council president. “They loved the fact,” he later explained, “but didn’t understand why I wanted to do things like that.”
Blake Hounshell is editor-in-chief ofPolitico Magazine.
Dan Gilbert* | Detroit, Michigan
The shadow mayor
By Nancy Kaffer
Walk the streets of downtown Detroit, and Dan Gilbert is everywhere. The headquarters of his online mortgage firm, Quicken Loans, looms over the park at downtown Detroit’s center—thronged with Gilbert’s employees, eating at restaurants in Gilbert-owned buildings, traveling to Midtown on the QLine, a light rail line championed and partially funded by Gilbert, all under the watchful eye of a network of security guards and cameras installed and paid for by Gilbert.
Gilbert, 55, is not actually the mayor of Detroit, and in most of the city’s sprawling 140-odd square miles, his influence is negligible. But in the city’s now-thriving downtown—Gilbertville, some call it—this billionaire businessman wields the kind of power and boasts a résumé of civic accomplishment that most politicians could only dream of.
At a time of dire need for Detroit, what he has done is remarkable. But for some Detroiters, that doesn’t sit well: Because Gilbert isn’t an elected official, he has no public accountability.
In many ways, Detroit was ripe for Gilbert’s intervention. It had lost nearly two-thirds of its population since 1950; during the recession, it watched the implosion of the administration of Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, now serving time on federal corruption charges. The city declared bankruptcy in 2013.
Gilbert grew up just outside Detroit and originally built his mortgage empire in the suburbs. He announced the move downtown in 2007, hoping it would be “transformational,” and city and state officials applauded him. Quicken moved downtown in 2010. Today Gilbert owns more than 95 buildings there, and 4,000 of his workers have flooded the area. Many have also bought homes in Detroit with down-payment assistance offered by Quicken and other businesses. (Separately, the Justice Department is suing Quicken for improper underwriting of hundreds of Federal Housing Authority-insured mortgages during and after the recession. Gilbert vigorously denies those claims; he was not available for an interview for this article.) Dozens of businesses have opened to serve the influx of workers.
But not everyone is convinced what’s best for Gilbert is what’s best for the city. His security force, for example, isn’t required to release the same data as public police departments. And while Gilbert has brought thousands of workers downtown, they’re mostly suburban white transplants. The majority-black neighborhoods where most Detroiters live still languish. “It’s the feeling of, ‘Is it still our city? Are we still included?’” says Keith Owens of the Michigan Chronicle, a newspaper that serves Detroit’s African-American community.
Detroit has a real mayor, of course—Mike Duggan, elected in 2013 as the city’s first white executive since 1974—who has partnered with Gilbert on some projects. Duggan is perhaps more attuned to the contours of the city. The mayor—who has demolished thousands of blighted houses, among other initiatives—has ensured that razed land gets community input as it is redeveloped. (His press secretary did not respond to a request for comment about Gilbert’s work downtown.) Unlike Duggan’s, Gilbert’s job isn’t intrinsically tied to the city of Detroit, since Quicken is an online business. And that has prompted questions about what would happen if the billionaire—who owns the Cleveland Cavaliers and has other investments in the Ohio city—ever left Detroit.
“That’s been my biggest worry about Detroit’s momentum,” says Tom Walsh, a retired Detroit Free Press business columnist who covered Gilbert for more than a decade, “that it has relied on a small group of people.”
Nancy Kaffer is a political columnist and member of the editorial board at the Detroit Free Press.
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