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Tim Fulton 00:13
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the confluence cast presented by Columbus underground. We are a weekly Columbus centric podcast focusing on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment and people of our city. I’m your host Tim Fulton. This week, Columbus has a lot of character to it. From caamfest. To cosine, there are a myriad of topics, issues, inside jokes, and even memes that every Columbus age should be aware of. 614 enthusiast Doug PAO Haida, the man behind the satirical Twitter account fake dispatch, Grace’s us this week with a high level survey of what makes the city great and sometimes not so great. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at the confluence cast.com. Also, the confluence cast is on Patreon. Find out how to support this podcast on our website the confluence cast.com Or at patreon.com/confluence. The confluence cast is sponsored this week by the gateway Film Center. Gateway Film Center is a nonprofit cinema committed to supporting storytellers and amplifying the impact of their work in our community. Join them at the film center this season as they celebrate these artists with a retrospective of unique stories from their partners have a 24 a new independent stories premiering this summer. To play on your next visit, visit gateway film center.org. Enjoy the interview. Sitting down here virtually with Doug Powell heida A Columbus enthusiast and I’m gonna go ahead and refer to him as our resident expert on all things, memes and conversation topics. And issues that are unique to Columbus and sometimes not so unique
Doug Powhida 02:06
to Colombia expert that’s you know, you’re going out on a limb here
Tim Fulton 02:09
I am I am the authority that he brings here is Doug is the curator and personality of the Twitter handle fake dispatch, which was previously an anonymous that account, Doug, first of all, how did you get started with the fake dispatch
Doug Powhida 02:27
account? Oh, you know, it was I was for years, I was under the handle holy wine. And I had a blog and some other things and whatnot. And then I had a friend one day, say something about the Columbus schools. And I was like, oh, it’d be great if there was an account where we could say things very similar to how the onion might but have it be Columbus centric. So I think I my very first tweet was something about Columbus schools being out. And except your school. I should pick that up. But but then it just started from there. And I always back in the old days back when there was only 140 characters. Everything started with the word breaking, and a colon and that like at that age into how many characters I could use. And each tweet was like, professionally crafted. And I was so happy. And the people were like, Why are you starting? Everything was breaking sucks.
Tim Fulton 03:21
And you are so give us your background?
Doug Powhida 03:24
Who aren’t you? So I grew up, you know, close to Columbus, I’m from Lancaster, Ohio, went to Ohio University. I came up to Columbus when I started working for CO sai and I had what was the greatest job in the world because because I had a traveling exhibit called Science of sports. And I traveled with that from town to town across the United States, Boston, Denver, Omaha. And that was that the exhibit was known because it had rats that played basketball and you can go still see to cosine and see rats or play basketball. And I came back to Columbus came off the road, worked for cosine and I was part of the team that built the cosine on the riverfront. I even that team kind of broke off and became a company called roto at a Dublin and they do hands on exhibits for you know, children’s museums and science museums in the UK where they do a lot of different fun stuff. Work for them for a while. And now I’m in the financial institutions of the world right now. So,
Tim Fulton 04:29
okay, you’re in banking. Yeah, it’s your job. Yeah, it’s your day
Doug Powhida 04:32
job. Friends love to say, oh, you’re a banker. Great.
Tim Fulton 04:36
I think a lot of this is going to be opinion based. Is the old cosign better than the new cosign. I would say as a correcting I would say
Doug Powhida 04:43
that the answer is that is in our memories, a better place. You know, we most of the people that you know, go to new co science, it’s nothing like the old coast is there absolutely correct. Old cosign was this very fun, new He’s kind of you know, everything was crammed together, you know, you couldn’t turn without running into something that you know, another exhibit or something else. It was an old building, there were weird stairwells. I mean, it was just it was a very unique experience. And then, you know, and I can’t speak for the whole team but you know, as we were moving the from the old building to the to the riverfront, we needed more space. And so you know, we’ve got that nucleosides got a lot of space, and some people would say it’s empty, and you know, they’ve spent the last boy 23 years new cosine is 23 years old. Oh, Lord, yeah. Okay. So that’s the, that’s the other thing when people are saying old cosign, it’s like, well, which old cosign are you talking about now like when cosign first open, because they spent a lot of time and energy, trying to fill those empty spaces, you know, make the hallways a more exciting place. So I would say that, you know, old cosign was was was great. New cosign is very good. And you know, just a different experience. And I can absolutely see why people like the old cosine and I still say, new cosine should build a stinking coal mine just build.
Tim Fulton 06:05
I was another coal mine. Yep. So, yes. So there’s that. So you have provided this is not just me off the top of my head, you have provided a list of things that you did a brain dump of like, here are the Columbus things and I want to punch through them. Yeah. What is the noon? God Oh, so
Doug Powhida 06:29
noon, God, as we all are aware, in Columbus and surrounding suburbs and counties and throughout the state of Ohio. Wednesday, you have the tornado siren. And for some reason, it just felt like everybody was always scared. It’s like, oh, my gosh, noon, it’s noon, I forgot. And it’s like noon guide is the perfect, you know, that that tornado siren. Also, I think other people call it the big Whoo. Everybody is aware of it. And it just seems like the perfect opportunity to base a religion around this, you know, siren, that, you know, that that comes out once a week, like a lot of other religions. And then you know, when you need them the most, there they are for you. And that people forget about them until they, you know, until they absolutely need them. So, yeah, fake dispatch posts, a noon guide, you know, not as noon God noon guide as noon guide.
Tim Fulton 07:21
Right, but a reverence of reverence. Absolutely, yes.
Doug Powhida 07:25
It’s just like, you know, let’s let’s pay noon, God, the respect that it deserves, the
Tim Fulton 07:30
character that it sort of changed, at least in my mind, and maybe I’m unique in this during the pandemic, that we were all in our homes, and so we were all much more attuned to the environments around us. And you’re absolutely right, I think that’s true. And then it became kind of more significant, like, it was almost like, okay, every day we’re going to do wine with the wine. And at noon on Wednesdays, we have something else we can depend
Doug Powhida 08:00
on. Yeah. And I think that you know, more people would probably home with their pets, you know, mainly their dogs and it’s like, oh, God, the dogs barking, or you’ve got if you’ve got a noon meeting and curse you people that have noon meetings, you know, that it’s like, Oh, I gotta wait till the sirens stops before I can continue. So,
Tim Fulton 08:14
absolutely. And a lot of this is going to be things that everyone is mostly aware of. But what is Columbus pizza? Like? How would you define
Doug Powhida 08:25
so I mean, you know, again, this is something that’s all across the United States is everybody’s, you know, what is the best pizza? And obviously, you know, it’s like, you know, whose mom is the best mom? It’s like, of course, it’s my mom is the best mom, your mom close second, but you know, but like Columbus has, you know, has a nice wide variety of pieces. Now, obviously, anybody coming to Columbus moving to Columbus for school or for work, you know, will be like why the hell is all this pizza flat and cut into squares? And it’s like, right was that you know, I think that St. Louis styles how that technically would be defined. It’s like I love I grew up in Lancaster and we had fatcats pizza, which I don’t think exists anymore. You know, but, but like that pizza was so good cracker crust and you know, Columbus has a great number of locations for for that kind of pizza but then you’ve got like, you know, Adriatic goes and hound dogs and like there’s a ton of different pizza in Columbus. It’s good and it’s just, you know, I love to see this a stand back and watch people fight about things because about pizza because you know, what else are you going to do? You’re going to say no, sorry, you’re wrong because I’m right about my pizza. So
Tim Fulton 09:34
exactly. Getting into a little bit more negative of a topic you had wrote down, CPD helicopter. Oh, here Yeah. It should be noted that Columbus is is unique in that we have more helicopter more police helicopters per capita than I believe any other city in the country. The conversation topic here though, is not that
Doug Powhida 09:59
no at mean, it’s just that like, we used to have where I live up in Westerville, the Columbus police hopped the pilot or somebody knew somebody in my neighborhood and would fly over, you know, once a week, and like you could see him waving out and it’s like I if I could remember correctly, I could probably put it on the calendar that was always like, you know, Sunday afternoon at three o’clock, that it’s just like, oh, there’s a helicopter. And for most people in Columbus, when you hear the helicopter, you see the bright light shining down, it’s chasing a car. Right. You know, it’s like he was always flying up there. We recently had the, you know, the helicopter pilots that were, you know, using the helicopters to draw the initials for the CPD rake. Yeah. And, you know, in downtown Columbus over, you know, disadvantaged neighborhoods, it’s like, you know, they don’t need you to be flying over top of here for fun, you know? Yeah, seems like oh, well,
Tim Fulton 10:50
this is not what we gave you the asphalt. Yes. So yeah. That, yeah, there’s that. Columbus driving.
Doug Powhida 11:00
Columbus area,
Tim Fulton 11:01
there’s a sub list here, of just everything that you’re like, what happens when it rains? People that don’t have license plates? Oh, yeah. Like, there’s just let, let’s just go off.
Doug Powhida 11:13
I think, you know, the number one thing is that the people that think Columbus has bad traffic, obviously, you have never lived somewhere where the traffic can be very bad. We definitely have spots that are bad. And people are you know, then there’s the whole like, Hey, can’t we just add a couple more lanes to fix this? And I would say that Columbus has done a pretty good job in some areas of, you know, fixing some traffic areas, but some places, you know, anywhere that 270 intersects with 70 or 71. It’s going to be a mess. No matter what.
Tim Fulton 11:47
Right? Why’d I think I know why, but you wrote am 820 bumper stickers? Oh,
Doug Powhida 11:54
my good here. Yeah. So that’s, you know, that’s a stereotypical make fun of a group of people. Because if you’re driving on a road that has a 55 mile an hour speed limit, and you come upon somebody whose blinker is on, and they’re going 40 miles an hour, more than likely it’s been, you know, they’ve got an AMA 20,
Tim Fulton 12:12
radio, religious radio station, I think they have done a fantastic job distributing bumper stickers, possibly only second to CD 92 Nine, which we all still, and I think rightfully so referred to as CD 101. From a branding perspective, that’s not great. Sorry, random. I’ll have you on your on my list. Additionally, you know, the potholes that are in the city, the fact that, you know, the first snow of the year happens, and everybody forgets how to how to drive. Yeah. And it’s just, you know, it can be it can be a mess. And I
Doug Powhida 12:52
would say that, you know, I think that people even more recently have complained that it’s like, it feels like drivers are getting worse. And you know, it’s just like, I don’t know if Columbus is that bad. I mean, there are bad drivers, potholes can definitely be a problem. But you know, it seems like that they fix them pretty quickly. There’s always that like three days of potholes where they first emerge, right? And everybody seems surprised that has happened but you know, I def I saw this year there was a friend of mine, boy, they hit a pothole that gave them a flat, and they pull over to fix their flat. And there’s four other cars there that all have heights as well. And it’s like, yes, fortunately, was the emergency, the emergency pothole and it’s like there should be there should definitely be some kind of warning system for that. Because you’re not going to be on Twitter and see that there’s a pothole somewhere, you know, it’s like you find you come home and come to Twitter to complain about it.
Tim Fulton 13:40
Absolute. And so that’s hence what Pete, what you hear about you aren’t hearing about, like, I had a very pleasant smooth drive to work today. You put here, people saving their spots for fireworks, both red, white and boom and neighborhoods. And while that may be true, I think that there was one community in particular, that on the Fourth of July, puts out chairs, or excuse me, ahead of the Fourth of July, puts out their chairs for their parade before any other and so I would like to give a hat tip maybe this should be like the Columbus awards. Upper Arlington reserves, their, you know, four by three sections for their for lawn chairs. A week, a week ahead of
Doug Powhida 14:32
time. Yeah. Well, someday you’re gonna go out there and you’d be like, Oh, I see you’re a month out. reserving your spot for the parade is like no, no, no, this is for next year’s parade. Right. Really? Digging in.
Tim Fulton 14:45
Absolutely. So number of breweries that we have.
Doug Powhida 14:48
Oh, yeah. It’s I think it’s great. I mean, I think you know, it just at some point, it feels like I don’t know what that what the economic term for that is. But at some point it feels like we’re going to reach a tipping point and then like, you know, the breweries are just gonna all close down and then they’ll just be one. But no, it’s great. I mean, there’s just a ton of craft brew in the city. And that’s the other thing is, it’s like, I feel like someday the the names are gonna run out, they’re gonna, you know, it’s like, how many funny names can you make with hops? And it? You know, it’s like, I think everybody’s testing the limit, but it’s just great that you can, and I haven’t done it myself, but there’s definitely like, you know, these, the brewery trails or whatever, where there’s, you get a stamp when you go to one of 12 different breweries? Yeah. And like that. That’s very fun. You know, I love it that when, you know, local businesses, can, you know, do something that involves alcohol, but, you know, it feels like that there’s, you know, definitely a community with that. And that I’m, you know, I say more than merrier.
Tim Fulton 15:46
You have here on the list, Ohio against the world, semi colon, Columbus against Ohio,
Doug Powhida 15:51
right. So I think, you know, everybody is in Ohio likes this idea, because it feels like, you know, Ohio gets a bad rap, you know, we’re a flyover state. It made fun of, but like people that live in Ohio know that Ohio is a great state. And we’ve got some great things here. And screw all you guys, you know, we’re will stand up and face all of you in a fistfight, all the other 49 states, just because, you know, we’re, I think we’re very proud of Ohio. But then once you start taking, once you, you know, get in the room, and you’re just having Ohio, it’s like, then it feels like it’s Columbus against Ohio, because, you know, it’s like Columbus, you know, it’s like, you’ve got Cincinnati and Cleveland, they get some of the bigger concerts. It’s like, come on, Columbus closes right here. We got a great music scene. You know, besides the basement, we’ve got some great places to have. You know, and it’s like, yeah, and sadly, you know, we don’t have to, you could put the show in itself. But like, you know, it’s like, we don’t have, you know, a professional football team. And we don’t have a professional basketball team. And, you know, it’s great. We’ve got the blue jackets in the crew. But you know, I mean, it’s like, sadly, you know, you get the cred when you’ve got, you know, some other major sports team. And because we’ve got the Ohio State football team, it’s like, you know, it’s like, everybody’s like, you know, what, we don’t need any, any other professional teams, we’ve got, you know, we’ve got the buckeyes, and we’re happy with that. And we’ll do
Tim Fulton 17:20
well. And by extension, I think that a lot of, you know, certainly the new stadium helps for the crew. But our teams aren’t that great. Other than Ohio State,
Doug Powhida 17:33
now combined with the crew, just one, you know, two years ago.
Tim Fulton 17:37
That’s fair. Well, I sorry, let me rephrase the, the attention given to Yes, our professional sports teams is not necessarily at the level that we give to Ohio State. Right.
Doug Powhida 17:52
And I can you know, as much as I say that, you know, I’m a big fan of Columbus and everything asked me how many crew games I’ve been at to the new stadium.
Tim Fulton 18:01
How many 00 That’s my greatest ages, mice. Great.
Doug Powhida 18:05
And, you know, I do need to get over there. But you know, I’m one of the I’m one of the problems when it’s like, you know, you got to fill the stands, you got to sell tickets, you know, I definitely need to get over there. I don’t know if they’re, like, you know, priced for me or if they had some kind of buy ticket get three beers free that might help me get in the door. But right, but yeah, so I think you know, it’s I love the teams and I’m I’m supportive of them outside of the fact that I’m not supportive because you need to buy tickets to really support the team. So
Tim Fulton 18:37
absolutely. You have written here counting down until Jim Kunal,
Doug Powhida 18:41
we’re tired Oh, my God, shouldn’t gonna he just needs to go. Now, and the only reason I mean, Columbus, Columbus new stations, sadly, I think just because the nature of television, you know, we, as a kid, it was like, you watch the local news. And it felt like, you know, you’d watch Yeah, you’d watch the six o’clock news or the five or whatever. And then the national news would come on, and then like the 11 o’clock news, because you had to watch that because that came on before the late shows. But it was like, you know, I remember. Oh, God, Doug Adair. Mona Scott. You know all these like, like way back when and Jim Kunal, he was way back, you know, with them long time ago.
Tim Fulton 19:20
I met Jim Goodall when I was in fourth grade. Yeah, like, and I am not a young man anymore. I will dispute the idea that he just needs to go I don’t agree with that. But yeah, he is. I will refer to him as a mainstay. Yeah. And this is a shout out. My positive shout out Yeah. For him.
Doug Powhida 19:41
I would just say I lost my faith and Jim Kunal when he said that global climate change was caused by solar flares. And I was just like, Oh, come on. Do Did that really happen? Yeah, you can look that up. I think, okay, solar flares. It’s something to do with the sun. He definitely you know, it’s like,
Tim Fulton 19:57
well, it is something to do with a So let’s acknowledge that
Doug Powhida 20:03
right? But like, you know, it’s like, you know, to your man of the community, you’re a man of people consider you a scientist. And he’s like, you know, just a kind of a doubter. And it’s like, oh, man, chimp come on
Tim Fulton 20:14
couches on porches, which is not a thing that they can do anymore, right? Or am I wrong? I don’t know if they, yeah, if we used to have them. And then, and this was primarily around the campus area. And then there was a couple of years where there was a couple of riots after Michigan games. And I think I will, I will fact check this, that the city outlawed couches on or like couches that are meant to be inside from being on front porches anymore. Yeah, I mean, but it is a thing we dealt with, if that’s the worst. Now,
Doug Powhida 20:51
you look at when you drive down the you see, you know, the yards that are all stomped flat and muddy. And there’s a beer pong table out there. That’s, that’s yes, that’s what they used to they liked, let’s sell the couch and, and buy as much fire on the table and cut it in half. We are
Tim Fulton 21:05
known I think nationally for the Arnold Sports Festival. I think many folks I actually went this year, I think the first time and what a spectacle it was. But what it does to the restaurants in the area. And you know, hopefully most of its positive, right that like this is a weekend or a week rather, that’s going to have basically guaranteed revenue for these folks. Our chicken breast industry does really well, at that time. But it should, you know, we’re basically just sort of noting it here. Yeah,
Doug Powhida 21:40
I mean, just tons of people coming in. And I think you know, and that’s the other thing is, I would say that Columbus is very welcoming. I’ve seen you know, I know that there’s you know, some some bad players out there sometimes. But even you know, when visiting people coming down for the, you know, for the Arnold Schwarzenegger, for, for that fest for, you know, Ohio State football games, it’s like, you know, it seems like most of the time we’re very welcoming. You’ll see people wearing different jerseys in a restaurant, you’ll say hi to them, ask them where they’re coming from, you know, I’ve seen them on a lot of different occasions that were a very welcoming place. And, you know, it’s I think that, you know, that’s what most people are like, we’re just kind of friendly folk.
Tim Fulton 22:20
Yes. And we could probably spend an entire episode on this, but let’s talk about caamfest
Doug Powhida 22:26
Oh, yes. I was at calm Fest this year. Uh huh. And I mean, it was just great to be back out there. I think that it’s, you know, a number one, it’s in its own right. I don’t know the history of it. But it seems like you know, that it’s just like this very interesting gathering of like, like, whoever runs caamfest Very interesting collection of like, who gets what, what band is going to get picked to be on this stage? And at what time and that there’s a lot of, you know, politics or there’s politics in though Yeah. And then like, Absolutely. They stopped allowing people to bring their own coolers and stuff one here, because obviously, you know, you want to get your, your cup and I was, Oh, I was extremely disappointed this year, because they changed the size of the caamfest mug. I mean, I think previously it was probably well, that was four years was it for you? Okay, because I haven’t been I probably haven’t been for about six years, including, you know, the
Tim Fulton 23:21
friend of mine made rest in peace. 32 ounces, t shirt. The brief history is the compass was founded in 1972. Very similar format, but it was actually held at UN. I don’t think it exists anymore. Wait, yes, it does. Because the church is still there. It was held at basically 16th Avenue, and about half a block east of high street. So they’re basically behind where the old burnings was. And this is we’ll have a fitting Trent transition for me here in a minute. But that’s where it was originally held. And, and when I was younger, that space was used for anti racist action festival. But then it moved to Goodale park at some point, and I do actually have on my list to have candy walk and one of the organizers of compost on here just sort of give give the high level history. Let’s note a couple other things just so that it ends up in the transcript. Our turkey legs gone from caamfest
Doug Powhida 24:25
See, that’s the thing I did not I don’t I could I don’t think I got
Tim Fulton 24:28
my pad Thai. I got my corndog but no, I didn’t see any. So the transition there then is OSU Can’t you what you wrote is OSU campus used to be better when it was off? As someone who grew up on north campus? I absolutely agree.
Doug Powhida 24:48
I mean, the fact that we used to have to have thick steel cables running down the sidewalk to keep people from walking into traffic or being you know, accidentally tripping drunkenly into traffic with paddy wagons at you know, every every other block there would be paddy wagons, and you would never you couldn’t walk by one without seeing some drunk person in the back of there. You know, just like, oh God, Why did I steal that bowling trophy?
Tim Fulton 25:15
And it’s wasn’t just and we’re not just talking about football Saturday, like this was like every Friday and Saturday night, specifically where those guardrails were was South Campus, which let’s talk about that really quick. And get into the fact that like, all those bars, I believe, through eminent domain, we’re all torn down. At the same time. We then got the the desert for exactly four years. How long is the normal person in college, four years so that no one remembered what these old campus bars were. And now we have the South Campus gateway there. And you know, that sticks and bricks, has slowly moved north. And I think we’re now up to lane and Hi. And I can only imagine it’s going to keep going. Yeah. And so
Doug Powhida 26:12
I’ve never been I’ve never been pepper sprayed in a Starbucks but I definitely was pepper sprayed. In a in mean, Mr. mustards, one night when a fight broke out, and they and I was like, What are you doing? Everybody was like, you know, heading for the door and coughing and it’s like, that just doesn’t happen anymore.
Tim Fulton 26:29
Yeah, the good old days, the battle. You have a list here of Columbus art public art. I’ll let you work your way through
Doug Powhida 26:39
the list. Oh, yeah. So I mean, I think that Columbus is is awesome for art. I mean, the CCA D is a wonderful art school. And I think they’re probably like, you know, top three, top five in the United States for art school. So you know, you got a lot of extremely creative people. But you know, just outside of CCD, they’ve got their giant sculpture that says art, obviously, you know, in Dublin, you got the concrete corn. The other world Museum is stinking awesome. And like, we’ve got, like fun, weird things like the bronze deer, down on the riverfront, the giant gavel, the stainless steel gavel that’s out in front of the courthouse. So I mean, you know, and I think that there’s, you know, giant murals in places we got that big electronic head, or like that you can, you know, get scan your face and see your convention center. So, I mean, I love, you know, the local artists, the little shops, you know, that there’s just a ton of art, and you know, even with, you know, it, it’s it, most of it is pretty cheap, too, you can pick up some, you know, something from a local artist that you can, you know, be proud to have in your home. And it’s just like, it’s everywhere, and it’s just wonderful.
Tim Fulton 27:48
You have a sub list here of things that are I think, basically from Reddit mean, oh, yeah.
Doug Powhida 27:54
And that’s, that’s, you know, it’s like any, if you’re in Columbus, you know, you should at least, check out the subreddit only because, you know, so it’s reddit.com, and they have sub Reddits, or, you know, these sub subsections. And one of those is Columbus, a lot of interesting things on there in sort of two different formats. One is if you go to the wiki page, endless links to things in Columbus from, you know, restaurants and bars and calendars of events and everything and looks like that is a mecca of like, if you don’t know what to do get in there, click around and find out. The main half of that, though, is basically the interactions of people posting things about Columbus, you know, and it’s like people, you know, either complaining about stuff or people bringing things to our attention that we should, you know, that we should be putting, you know, putting effort into changing, but then you got a lot of stupid stuff that goes on down in there. But like, you know, the, it’s got its own sub memes of Columbus, like everybody is always there’s a Burger King on fourth. That is traditionally like, I don’t know how it’s not shut down. But it’s got the worst service ever. Don’t like, you know, the lights will all be on and there’ll be eight people in line and nobody will be serving food. Or there’ll be a handwritten sign up that’s poorly misspelled that says this
Tim Fulton 29:12
is the Burger King on Fifth.
Doug Powhida 29:14
I think it’s even on Fourth. Fourth, it’s like in rod Graham near Grandview.
Tim Fulton 29:20
I think it’s fifth. Okay. I think we will verify Yes.
Doug Powhida 29:23
But then they’ve also got like there’s a car and probably a couple of men Columbus where somebody will go around and recycle pallets and they don’t have a lot of a truck. They’ve got a car and they’ll have you know, six or seven. So people love to take both photos of that. Big rust there’s a guy that has a license plate that says big rust and I’m not 100% sure who big rust is I’m not sure if it’s like if he’s a if he’s a rapper, or if he is a celebrity in some way, shape or
Tim Fulton 29:47
form or just a personality. This guy like the Buckeye guy. Oh, yeah,
Doug Powhida 29:51
it’s like this. Big Russ has Cookie Monster painted airbrushed on his on his truck and so people will post sightings of that It’s always fun to be like, you go to the subreddit, you see people complaining about stuff. And then you’ll see like, one of these fun memes. And you can be like, ah, life is life is whole again.
Tim Fulton 30:11
Absolutely. I want to make sure I don’t know if you listen to the podcast, I hope that you do. But I end every episode by asking folks what they think Columbus is doing well, and what they think Columbus is maybe not doing so well. I so go ahead. I, you know, you’ve got an opinion, let’s go God,
Doug Powhida 30:32
I don’t know if I have an opinion. I mean, I think that, you know, Columbus, I would say that Columbus does a pretty good job of supporting the LGBT Q community, I would say, then, you know, I feel that people are supportive. I, you know, I would hope that, you know, the, it feels like a safe environment. And then a lot of companies will definitely stand behind the needs of that community. So I really feel like, that’s great. Especially because, man, that dude operators still around. And that is, like, one of the most fun things. And you know, that we got our yearly for Pride Month, you know, we’ll have the Pride Parade, which I was my receipt came back, I think it was gone last year. So, you know, I think that’s what we’re doing a pretty good job of.
Tim Fulton 31:19
And then what aren’t we doing? So well? Oh,
Doug Powhida 31:22
gosh, getting that professional football team? No. You know, I don’t want to beat up the politicians, but it just feels like, that doesn’t matter who the mayor is, it doesn’t feel like you know, it doesn’t matter if they’re Democrat or Republican, it just feels like nothing ever happens. Or if things are happening, it feels a little backwards. You know, it’s just, it feels like again, it kind of stinks because we’ve got all these outside Columbus, politicians coming into our downtown area, and you know, their opinions don’t really match how I think I feel, um, how a lot of folks in Columbus feel, but, you know, it’s just, you know, it’s too bad that things it feels like that Columbus, if we could, you know, if we actually ruled the place, things would be a lot better, right. I could be doing a better job at a lot of things, but instead I just complain,
Tim Fulton 32:11
right? Absolutely. Doug, I appreciate your time today. Hope to have you on again so that we can talk about everything that is that is Columbus unique or not.
Doug Powhida 32:21
Awesome. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
Tim Fulton 32:34
Thank you for listening to the confluence cast presented by Columbus underground. Again, you can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at the confluence cast.com Please rate subscribe, share this episode of The confluence cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite Reddit user. If you’re interested in sponsoring the confluence cast get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info at the confluence gas.com Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Philip Cogley. I’m your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.
