 Awesome. Well, good evening nerds and nerd followers. Yeah, that's me. And I'm here to talk to you about corruption, vice, sex, sin, all the fun things that make Everyville a great place to work and live. Let's get started. The Ron City. When Everyville was the center of corruption, vice in the Pacific Coast, asterisk, we still are. I just don't know that. Okay. Joseph Emery. Joseph Emery, born in New Hampshire, moved to California in 1850. He was a stone cutter. He's responsible for building the U.S. men's in San Francisco. He also built the San Francisco jail. He had a quarry on Europe of Wayne Island. He lived in San Francisco for a while. He kind of got bored like the most of us did going to San Francisco all the time. So he said, you know, I'm going to move to the East Bay. He moved to the East Bay. He bought a plot of land called the Joseph Emery tract in 1859. And in 1859, he relocated to Emeryville. It's named after him. So a little bit about Emeryville. How Emeryville was created, why it was always from day one, the place where vice was first. You got to have a background. So Emeryville has two parts to it. On the left is the north part. On the right is the south part. On the left is Butcher Town. Butcher Town was an area that was all stockyards and slaughterhouses. It was basically a place where you could find meat and entrails on the streets. On the south side of Emeryville was the gambling component. It's the race track. It's called the Oakland Trotting Club. They had a one mile race track that was located between Stanford Street and Park Avenue. And it had the biggest gambling outfit on the West Coast. Horse racing took place there. And times were good in Emeryville. Lots of bars on San Pablo. Only about 250-300 residents. Joseph Emery was quite happy. He built Park Avenue, a handful of streets along Park Avenue. If you ever go to Emeryville, you see Park Avenue where Town Hall is. All those side streets to go along it are named after all his children. True. His house was located at the corner of San Pablo and Park Avenue where the IHOP was located. I'm sure he'd be very happy to know that his mansion has been replaced by an IHOP. But that's the way it is. And at the far end of Park Avenue, he had Town Hall in a hotel. So how did Emeryville get created? Well, from the very first suggestion of its existence, Emeryville was always destined to be a city for bison corruption. Why? Well, because it had a couple neighbors. It was part of Oakland Township in the late 1800s. Oakland had become a city. It was growing expansively, extensively. Berkeley had become a town. And there was this little cluster of districts. Emeryville District, Golden Gate District, and then Temescal District. And the people who lived in those other nice fine districts were wealthy and moral and Christian, and didn't like people in Emeryville. Because we gambled, and we had prostitution, and we had barred saloons, and people did all the things you're not supposed to do. So they decided, hmm, how are we going to avoid being annexed by Oakland? Hopefully not just annexed what's now West Oakland. How are we going to prevent that? And how are we going to get rid of these assholes in Emeryville who are doing all this bison corruption? I have an idea. Let's actually form our own town. So the people in Temescal signed a petition in 1896 and said, we're going to actually create a city, and it's going to be made of the Emeryville and the Temescal District. Well, as you might imagine, the people who own the horse race track were not stupid people. They had a lot of money. And they said, oh, you know, I don't think that's a good idea. Why? Because, okay, we have a couple hundred people. They have a couple thousand people. As soon as we emerge with them into a town, they're going to abolish gambling and horse racing. Bad idea. Meanwhile, the people who lived in the Golden Gate District were like, oh, we cannot stand the smell of foul meat and fucking entrails on the goddamn streets of Emeryville. We need to get rid of these fucking assholes. So they conspired to do this petition to get rid of Emeryville by adopting it into a city. And so the slaughterhouse people and the people who own the race track got together in mid-1996. Sorry, it could have been 1986 if you've been to our town. But in 1896, they got together and they said, we're going to run our own petition. We're going to make our own city. And it's only going to be the Emeryville District. And so they did. And they won Joseph Emery's heart. They'd originally signed the petition. They won it over. And on December 2nd, 1896, after a campaign of love-sitting with people in Temescal said, if you allow the city of Emeryville to become a real city, it will forever be a scourge on the East Bay. It will be a no-near-do-well location. It will be a place where the type of people who help by race tracks will have a place to stand. That's literally the kind of shit that people said about Emeryville. And you know what, out of 150 to 27, Emeryville became a town. December 2nd, 1896. And, not to be said too loudly, the folks who go on the race track had all of their employees who were building the race track registered as Emeryville residents before they got there. So, anyways, moving on. There. Oh, I don't know if you can write to you yet. That's Emeryville. This is Emeryville. This is Emeryville Oakland Trotty Park, which as soon as Emeryville became a city, by the way, changed its name to the California Jockey Club, because as we say in Emeryville, we're not Oakland. No offense. But we're not Oakland. So, Emeryville begins. And up here you see the horse racing track. And a very popular place. Made a lot of money. The city made a lot of money. Made a lot of money. So, when they were drawing the boundaries of the city, they originally proposed to actually have it go all the way, all of San Pablo Avenue from the southern border to the Berkeley border was going to be Emeryville. The people in Golden Gate were just incensed. They were like, oh my God, the meat men's trails, the fucking cow-ed trails, blah, blah, blah. This is crazy. So, a compromise in this region of border was moved 730 feet to the west, which is currently Vallejo Street, along the Temesco Green Line, which is why you have Oakland, Emeryville, Oakland, Berkeley when you drive up San Pablo. The only reason it existed was to create a buffer zone for the very good people, moral, upstanding people at the Golden Gate neighborhood. I hope they're happy. So, anyways, moving on, we have Walter Christie. Walter Christie was the first mayor of Emeryville. He was elected the same day the city became a, the township became a city. It was incorporated. He served as the mayor of Emeryville for 40 years. If you ever drive through Emeryville and you would see Christie Avenue or the Christie Park, it's named after Walter Christie. He served for 40 years. He was only ever the mayor of Emeryville. He never served as a council member. Walter won most of his votes to serve as a council member by being friends with the horse track. So, probably a lot like how the city was incorporated. Walter was elected the same way. The city of Emeryville didn't just have horse racing. It's actually a place of innovation in the world of gambling. So, the Blue Star amusement park. Bites was flourishing in Emeryville in the early 1900s. In 1816, despite having a population of roughly 1,300 people, Emeryville, which at that time was 0.8 square miles, pre-put-insulate, mind you, we'll get to that, had 22 saloons, one liquor store, a beer garden, the Shell Mountain Park, multiple gambling establishments, and 20 nombrals. Wow. For 1,300 people. It's my kind of day. So, it was reported that the city of Emeryville was basically an event and a place for everybody on the west coast to come to if you basically wanted to get away for morals and Christian values. Prostitutes were in abundance. Emeryville was reputed to have the best prostitutes in the East Bay. Thank you very much. It drew itself a little bit of a reputation. So, the Blue Star amusement park was the very first greyhound racing track in the United States. It was put in Emeryville, it was on Park Avenue located between Holden and Horton Streets, and it has innovation in several ways. A gentleman who, by the name, I'm going to give his name completely or say like four names, his name is Owen or something, we'll find it later. Owen Patrick Smith. Owen Smith, I believe. Owen Brandon Smith, I think. Patrick. Owen Patrick. Patrick. Who said that? Thank you very much, Patrick. Right there, I'm looking. Oh. Everyone fly. Yes. So, Owen Patrick Smith actually was an innovator. So, greyhound racing had come from England, but England was a brutal place and they were like, kill the rabbit, eat the rabbit. So, the greyhound was like, all the rabbits are dead, and people in the United States were like, oh my god, we got the rabbit. So, he was like, I want greyhound racing because it makes a lot of money. So, he moved all the way to Emeryville to open a greyhound race track and he invented the mechanical rabbit. And the very first mechanical rabbit race happened in Emeryville in 1920. The very first opening day of the Blue Star amusement park and the dog caught the rabbit. And newspapers reported the dog act surprised at the odd and strange configuration of what he thought was a real rabbit. The park was a success. Greyhound racing was ultimately outlawed in the United States. But as you see here, Emeryville was a place to be, despite a small population on the left, you have the race track, the Jockey Club, which also doubled as a place for airline airplane stunts. So, after airplanes came into effect, these actually used the race track for runways where airplanes would do stunts there. And on the far right, you'll see, on the left is John Doyle, who was one of the original council members. On the far right is Walter Christie, the mayor of Emeryville. And in the middle is James Grant, who was the owner at the time of the race track. So, if you wanted to meet your council member, you generally spent your afternoon going to the race track to find them, hoping that they had scored on a trifecta. So, let's move along. Emeryville was more than just horse racing. It was Chinese lotteries, it was chants, it was all kinds of things. And so, Emeryville had a number of different pieces that were going on. I'm just going to explain why I noted that. We have a number of different pieces that were going on, and on the far left, you'll see something that might look familiar to a couple of you, minus the sign, the Carter Club, the Oaks Club. How many of you know how old the Oaks Club is? Yeah? On St. Patwell? 124 years old. But that's okay. 124 years old. It opened in 1995 as the Congress Room. And Jack Connors and Harry Tiffins opened it together. When Jack Connors left the business, it's now in the fourth generation of Tiffins family ownership. It's the single largest grossing tax revenue source in the city of Emeryville. It's the oldest, longest-serving, and continuous Carter Club in Northern California. It still exists at the corner of St. Paul where the original building was built. So, we had eight car clubs at one point. The bottom picture on the right is the Santa Fe Club, which was a popular place to go. It had Chinese libraries where you cast ice for a dime, and everybody in town participated. It was a known place that police authorized and allowed people to openly do their daily, even though it was completely illegal. Completely illegal. So, what's going on in the city of Emeryville? It's completely illegal. Well, in 1920, just to set the stage, we had 22 saloons, 14 Chinese libraries, eight car clubs. All of them were built on part of St. Paul Avenue, right around town hall. The population was about 15 hundred. So, every good story about ice needs a bill. And if you are a city of ice and you have a bill that means that's a good doing, law enforcement, lobbying, law, and deterrence. So, his name is Earl Warren. He's on the left. So, Earl Warren began his career as an Alameda County District Attorney. And let me just come out and say, the dude fucking hated Emeryville. He fucking hated us. He's like, this fucking little shithole needs to go away and he spit most of his career trying to obliterate Emeryville. No, he didn't. But, he tried really, really hard. So, in 1920, it was a big year for a dude like Earl Warren because his prohibition was like, oh no, you can't gamble, you can't drink, you can't do all this shit. All those things are bad and immoral. He was like, yes, let me get my hands on fucking Emeryville. Well, Emeryville was exactly how the people in town was called feared. We were a wide open city. The prostitutes were the best thing. Now, we had this going right for Emeryville if you were about Emeryville. So, Warren decided he was going to take us down. And in 1924, he got a grand jury to publish a report that stated, and I quote, gambling advice were rampant at Emeryville. The town's police department should be reorganized to keep them in check. Well, Emeryville ignored that report completely. So, in 1970, he sent a group of 75 men that were called raiders, not to be confused with our folks that's leaving at the time. Their patrons, they confiscated gambling machines. They broke windows, they demolished furniture. It was their law enforcement way of like, let me rough them up. Emeryville didn't give a fuck. Emeryville's like, we're still going to rebuild and keep doing this shit. So, he tried again in May 1928. But this time, he went and he actually took down a brewery during prohibition. He was looking at a 47th Street. Who's brewery was it? The police chiefs. But anyways, I carried on the brewery and the bar next to it. I'm 47th Street. And J.J. Perry, by the way, is on the right. He's on the one side of this page, so I think he's fucking hot as hell. But yeah, I'm totally J.J. here. So, he's up there for a reason. But anyway, they came here and they were like, okay, dude, you have $25,000 of illegal beer and liquor here. And they were like, arrest me. I'm a police chief. Oh, there's nobody to arrest me because I'm a police chief. So, Lord was very frustrated. He was very worried about these people. So, he went to a local media outlet and he got them to publish this thing that said vices flourishing in Everyville under the encouragement of city and police officials who are also getting their cut. Within a block of the police station, Everyville has 12 houses of prostitution and at least 20 bootlegging joints. Mary Christie, the dignified man that he was, responded, the good people of Everyville are all about his law of hiding as anybody in any community here. So, we returned to office the local officials for such record breaking periods, had they been unworthy of such consideration. Clearly, Mary Christie was in on a deal. But he wasn't going to say that. He was a very dignified man. So, Warren was the fed that said, I need your help. So, in 1932, the fed helped and Warren and the accounting people all raided the underpopulist department at 3,900 et al. Okay, here's the deal. They found the liquor fleet, let's just say, the liquor fleet which was 5 all 5 of the Everyville police cars had special compartments that contained 565 gallons of good people. Our police officers were placed under immediate suspicion investigation. And Chief Currie, with his son, Thakar said, I'm shocked. She's all I've said. Well, Everyville got lucky because in 1933 Provision ended. I was like, Everyville's there. Thank God. So, in 1933, Provision ended and Warren shook his fist in the sky and said I'll get you next time, Batman. But, a little side note about Warren before I move on to the next chapter of Irrigal History, which is, if you didn't know Earl Warren was a governor in California after that. And he actually became the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. And he got that role because he was viewed as tough on crime and as a person who tried to close down. So, I want to take credit on behalf of the fair people of my city for the fact that Miranda v. Arizona, where you're due process rights when you're arrested, Griswold v. Connecticut, where the permanent right to privacy was constitutionally enshrined and women were guaranteed the right to make choices for reproduction on their own and Brown v. Board of Education, where we did say we created schools, were all written by Earl Warren. And he never reached the Supreme Court and tried to close down Irrigal. For Music Park, the Johnny Club, it also was the home of the Oakland Oaks which was a minor league baseball team Pacific Coast in 1912 to 1955. Nothing to see here. So, let's move on to Alacost. Section 2 of my 4 sections, which is Alacost, who was the mayor after Mary Christie, Mary Christie was there for 40 years. Alacost served 40 years in the council, 26 years as mayor. Alacost was the first of two lacosts that we're going to talk about tonight. So, Alacost, as gambling started to fade, we're going to take you down, bitches. And so, people in Irrigal started to kind of close down and move around. So, to begin with, we're transparent in the 1950s, but not for a good reason. The guy in the bottom of the picture on the left side is named George Goodman, who's looked at the city council in 1952. George Goodman went to a couple of council meetings and he came out to the public one day and said, this is bullshit. He's like, they have secret meetings. I heard the minutes of the secret meetings reported in the minutes at the council meeting. And Mary Alacost, missing the point, said, we had no secret meetings for 16 years, we've never done minutes. I'm not going to start today. We get back for deals on a different night outside of the view of the public and nobody had even known, but Mary Alacost was willing to defend the status quo. And you know what? He had a lot of clout to do so. In 1954, Goodman resigned when he didn't go away. He said, fuck you, Alacost. I'm going to fuck you into your fucking car. So, he said, I've come to every city council meeting. I say everything I need to say. I'm going to take you down to Alacost. And you know what? The end is bitter fight. And it's like, they fight in an hour, and it's like, I tell you, I'll help the drama. But they don't. So, just imagine. So, in 1961, George Goodman shows up and he's like, aha, aha, aha. He's like, we call a bitch. And so, a few pros, like a recall position down and 100 people are like, oh, yeah, what's going to happen? And he's like, fucking fight you. And so, he did. He punched George Goodman in the face. He punched George Goodman in the face. There was a lot of drama. John's kids got involved. The police were pulling people back. It was like, don't punch me, bro. So, this whole thing happened. And George Goodman, like, gated up. He's like, I'm going to get rid of Alacost, the political machine of every vote. He's been here forever. He's old. And he's a political mob boss. And he's running this gambling racket. I'm going to get rid of him. Well, it takes a little more than the promise he had to do that, George. I'm going to get rid of Alacost and how it got there. But let's just put it this way. In the end, there was an election in September of 1961. And Alacost squeaked by. He did not get recalled. He found enough people to go door-to-door for him, even though police had to guard his friends because they were getting death threats and a whole ton of stories about that. He didn't get recalled. But, so what happened? Soon as he found out he didn't get recalled. Yeah, there he is. He didn't get recalled. I'm going to get rid of him so much. George got rid of an asshole. And I wanted him out of my life. So, on the day after he beat the recall, the day after he goes into city council and goes, here's the new rules. And so what are the new rules? Well, the new rules are pretty simple. You must submit a public comment that's only, quote, of a constructive nature. Such public comment must be, quote, submitted in writing. It must be, quote, 2 p.m. on the Thursday of the week preceding the meeting. Quote, it must be approved by the mayor. Your personal attacks upon council members or city employees will never be allowed. So he basically was like, bye, George Goodman. Goodbye. What do you think George Goodman took that? No, George Goodman did not take that. George Goodman was like, no, I'm going to do a recount. I'm going to recount this bullshit, because this is not the way government is supposed to be run. So he puts the county a couple of days later and he said I want to recount. The county is like, okay, I want to do a recount. So they call the city court an every bill. My bad. I burned all the ballots. He's 79 years old. He is the oldest and longest serving city court in the history of California. He had searched since 1950. The Duke was like, I burned the ballots. I'm sure we did. But he could barely walk. So he basically confessed that it was a grave or a horrendous mistake, that's what he said. But he happened to take all the ballots from the pre-college along with, quote, some rubbish. Like he's from fucking 1800s Britain. So rubbish. To the every high school incinerator. Accidentally incinerated. A lawsuit ensued. George Boone was like, that is crazy. That's not legal and I'm going to finally get my day with that across. And you know what the Supreme Court said? They were like, uh, yeah, so there's a loophole in the law that says you only have to keep the ballots for all these elections, but it doesn't have a rule about pre-college elections. So... So how would the bus remain the mayor? George Boone may remain on the outside. But you know what? George Boone thought, I'm going to see my day because what's going to happen? I have this trial, D.A.'s doing it about being punched in the face. So a month after, about two months, not even, after this recall election the mayor of Emeryville sat on a trial for battery. This is not an uncomfortable thing. Sorry. He sat on a trial for battery. He sat on a trial for battery. And two council members testified for George Boone. Oh, yeah, the mayor came down and he was like, clack. And two council members were like, one said, oh, it was more of a pact? And then there was like, two hours, five minutes later the jury was like, guilty of battery. Well, the judge was from Emeryville. So he asked Mayor Laplace, from the days would you rather pay a $25 fine or spend two days in jail? And then Al Laplace was like, okay. And so he paid $25 and he never went to jail. So we went through a couple of things here that happened. The two guys that testified against Mayor Laplace they were out for election next year so Mayor Laplace wasn't really having them. So he ran some people against them and guess what? There were three seats. The two people Mayor Laplace ran one of the two seats and those other two people, fate be told, they tied. They tied for 30. 428 votes each. So who would we count? Maybe we could beat somebody. And you know what? They both lost my vote and they tied. They tied for 427 votes. And so guess what? In Emeryville, what do we do? Well, we fucking gamble. So we roll dice. So the city jury is like, we have to actually have a dice game to decide what should we get selected. And then what's your choice? So they went to the court and went all the way from the court to the court so they basically let Emeryville roll the dice. The attorney of the city of Emeryville rolled one dice for one guy and one dice for one guy. And Fred Fraga beat Carl Crawford on a roll of five. And he became a city jury. And the map's correct. So after Elder Cross, he left office in 1964. He actually got beaten. He left after 40 years. He left office and these council members were so excited. They're like, oh, the mob boss has got, we need a new image. It's a new day in Emeryville. It's a new day. And so this is like, totally, I imagine it being like, like Rosie Chees and like, butterflies around him. This council member named Donald Neary, he was like, well, you know what? We need a new image. Let's come up with a great city seal. Let's incorporate something which would give the city prestige. Well, you're so hopeful, God. So that's what a good seal looks like. You know, the seal of San Francisco in the top, seal of Los Angeles in the bottom. They have all kinds of distinguished appearance where, okay, fuck it, that's Emeryville. Donald fucking Neary came up with. Right? And for a long time, I represented the city and I'm like, this is what happens when Cliffard fucks an Atari. I'm like, this is literally the stupidest fucking thing I've ever seen. And this is the seal. So I find the letter as mayor with the mayor's of San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose and Los Angeles last year. And it was like, the signature, the signature, the signature, what is that thing if they did the letter? I can't do shit. What is this? So actually I learned that it actually has some significance to me. Those four symbols are supposed to be quote, stylized E's to represent Emeryville. They come together as the four freeways doing Emeryville for the Bay Bridge, the 80, the 580, and the 80. And together in the middle it is an interchange. The fucking center of our local is an interchange. You cannot press how angry I am as a transit and active transit advocate that the fucking center of it is an interchange. So, the economic prosperity and environmental health and the blue is supposed to be the sky in the bay. Whatever. Okay, so I've been told that this is the 1966 general plan. It basically looks like, oh, we're kind of greedy and we don't like water. So the city of Emeryville attempted to double its size by filling in the entire bay. And I have to speak for this part of it because I want to get to the good stuff at the end. So the city tried to double the entire size of the bay. Okay? They planned an expansion at 10 office towers, 1800 residential units, all this crap. Okay? The city was just starting to fill in the bay. We just started filling in the bay. And the city was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. There's this thing called BCDC to stop Emeryville. And you cannot fill the bay anymore. There's a lot of lawsuits and bottom line is the city was basically told to stop filling in the bay. So the city was like, oh, we only did but one half of the plan. They're like, yeah, but we'll let you fill the giant Aztec Kermit will tell at the end of it if you stop. So, we've got a giant Aztec Kermit that never got built. I'm very upset about that. It's going to be about it right now. It has living restaurants and everything. Anyways, we were supposed to have that. Okay? It didn't happen. So there it is. Make sure that the bay didn't go. There's a guy named Edward Stefani. And Edward Stefani was a city engineer. And he basically said, okay, here's the deal. Hey, BCDC, we got through the boss. We're sorry. We're such bad assholes. So we kind of just built this, like, stick. And we just want a little bit of a curve. You see the tip? You know how that works, right? We just need the tip because we need a little bit of Korean hardware. And they're all like, all right, you're going to have something. You're going to have a tip. So I was like, there's a little bit. I was supposed to get. Okay? And they're like, bitch, you built 1,800 feet in 12 and a half acres. That's way more than we said we could do. So BCDC came to City Hall. We want to see the city engineer. You remember the city engineer built that general plan that was supposed to build the wall thing? That was his dream project, probably. So we want to see him. He said, in the kitchen, we don't know what he's coming back. Generally, in that story, they're like, we don't know what he's coming back. So City Hall is the only city in the history of the bay that has legally built the bay. Right? Random slide. Did you know that every bill had a hall of work? I didn't know that was kind of fun. I want to show you. The every bill of municipal hall of work existed in the 1970s on the peninsula before the current Channing building existed. Okay, bye. So wrapping up here, let's see. Every bill, okay, it's in format. Yeah, we had a city government where we decided we were going to actually have a city manager with the only city in the county that didn't have a city manager. We're going to have a city manager. We're going to have them and then eight months later they're like, we ate it. So we abolished the city manager, asked me on the side to tell you all about that story. Every bill tries to get itself clear. That's like a great headline in the newspaper. And let me just put it this way. It's like, this is my town. And I'm happy that it tried really hard and it failed for a long time. The great thing was there was those people who remember the Golden Gate folks. They wanted to get annexed by us. They looked back and were you on crap? What were you thinking? They're like, oh no, we were the Golden Gate people back in the 1800s but now we kind of like your town. You know it's corrupt and crazy and all this other shit. You have a lot of money and good schools and so can we be annexed by you? So we were going to annex or don't know. People always say to me, or don't know, can you annex us? And I'm always like, oh yeah, 1978, you offered that and your mayor said no. So Lionel Wilson actually vetoed every bill annexing the rest of the Golden Gate from the original period in 1978. Okay, so I'm supposed to wrap up. I don't have time to tell you the story of Jean Lacoste but she's actually, I got as far as I could get. It's the last story I can tell but I don't have time. So, come to the next show. I'm going to be the next to tell you the story about Jean Lacoste. Let me just put it in a nutshell. Jean Lacoste was the son of Alacoste. He was the police chief in 1974. He for ten years served as the political boss of every bill. He ran a prostitution ring out of the back of the townhouse. He was a lawyer for fine dining dinner. Never mind the fact that prostitution is to be there. And he did a bunch of other things like take tons of bribe. He gave council members in the late 70s and early 80s free apartments and condos in every bill. Like there's an entire story. I could do an hour presentation on Jean Lacoste. And then even his whole regime and the political corruption of our mayor was about to crack in 1984 when the last two people who he needed on council to prevent him from being fired were off from recall. And I just want to play one council member's response to KUED's investigative recording asking him, did you or did you not threaten some business owners to advertise in support of your campaign? But we were able to get an interview with council member Golden. What is your connection to the eagle, to the newspaper? I have no connection to it. You have none whatsoever? None whatsoever, no. Do you... You're not an advisor of any sort? No. I'm wondering, we recently talked to a guy named Leo Macias. I know Leo, yes. He's a businessman here in town. Okay, and Leo advised us that you were in his office and that you actually told him and pressured him to take an... No, I'm sorry, that's just not true. Leo and I have known each other for a long time and we were kidding around. That's all we were doing. There was absolutely no pressure. Leo indicated that he was going to stay neutral in the upcoming election and I told him that was just fine with me. And if he intimated anything else, it's just not true. You didn't in any way pressure him? No. Okay, it's... Maybe you could answer this. Has anybody else involved with the eagle to your knowledge, pressured Leo Macias? I don't think so. Can we stop? Can we stop? Yeah, in 1984 Jim Golden was recalled by a very large margin. So I'm going to finish here and you can ask me questions about it, but basically in 1984 the Lacoste regime that had run the city of Emery Mill for decades fell. Everybody was like, yes, it's over all. And by the way, it was three women who ran that grand call and it's women who defeated the corruption. You know, happy ending, Lacoste is gone. Oh yeah, not quite who ran for city council. But he lost both in 1985 and 1987 as my party bloated him. I would just let you know that he filed for bankruptcy and one of the claims in his bankruptcy was an unpaid $21,000 from the townhouse where he had held the court. So, John Lacoste left the end.