¶ Introduction and Casual Chatter
So that area is one of the worst flooded. That's that lake only area. Right? So the biggest stormwater pipes in the city of Norfolk go underneath the Chrysler Museum. Underneath, you can access them through the basement, and that's where that water is backing up because it's nowhere for it to go. It goes into The Hague. Well, when The Hague's full and The Hague's already overflowing its banks, that water's not going anywhere. And that can flood at high tides sometimes. Right? You know?
It couldn't it might not even be raining. The good old days. The good old days. The good old days when, well, it's like Toys R Us' greatest tagline ever. Maybe the second greatest tagline of all time behind Nike, where a kid can be a kid. You know? Is it Toys R Us? Not anymore, man. Those days are gone. No. It's still around. Okay? Just like Circuit City. There's a there's a rebound for every company. Is Circuit City coming back?
I don't think it went away. I think it's online. I think Tiger Direct bought it or something like that. I don't know. I think if you go to CircuitCity. I think if you go to CircuitCity.com, it still it still lives. What's going on, man? I don't know. Dude, I don't know. Just as the world turns. Right? Episode two fifty five. Did you have any good, April fools day jokes? I mean, I feel like I fooled a couple people.
Nothing. You know, it's crazy. I I had a pretty busy April 1. And through all the people that I talked to, no one mentioned anything. But then I got, yeah.
Then, once I got home, jumped on X, scrolled through, and I'm like, dude, I can't be on I cannot be on x today because, like, this is just everything. You you don't know what you can believe and what you can't believe. And based on the current situation of the world, half the stuff is unbelievable anyway. So I was like, dude, I'll come back tomorrow.
I got at least two people. I told people that I was writing my third book, what are you watching on Hulu? Put out a new cover with the Netflix crossed out, the Hulu logo. Got a couple of text messages about that the day after, and I was like, oh, yes. It worked. Yeah. I haven't seen I put a link to the old book on there, the Netflix book. I don't I haven't looked at sales for that for that day, but it'd be funny if I sold some books that day for that.
Yeah. That yeah. That'll be a nice little growth hack for you. Yeah. Lie. Lie, kids. You wanna you wanna succeed in business, just lie. Make April Fool's Day every single day, and you will see the utmost Growth. So this is gonna be a fun episode because we we say this, and most of the time, I would think 90% of the time, at least one of us knows the guest. Correct. This time, neither of us know today's guest, and he's in a secluded room in a location that we cannot Undisclosed.
Undisclosed location that I've never seen before. Looks pretty awesome. But so it's this is literally gonna be, like, I set a coffee shop meeting for the first time and have a little conversation backstage. We've already gotten into some fun stuff. Probably won't talk about that here. But, you know, the suspense of that tease that will never be told on well Most people would just they
would just jump in and be like, hey, Nate. Welcome to the show. What what is it that you do for a living? But I think we're gonna start with, like, what are you watching on Netflix, Nate? Oh. Oh, man. I don't even know. I'm not, like, super, like, watcher of things just to watch them. I feel like there's an oversaturation of, shows, things that are not done with intention. They're just kinda done. Man. So Netflix. We all would agree with that. What if I watched I don't
what if I watched on Netflix? I've been rewatching old stuff, not necessarily maybe on Netflix. Okay. Just rewatch the wire. Okay. I watched that once. Pretty darn good show. I can understand why that's Yeah. That's a lot of people's favorite show. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's better than sopranos second second time through that one. I've been through I think Sopranos is pretty overrated, but I'm I'm not into that kind of stuff.
I I can I I get what you're saying, though? Like, when it came out, I think, like, it was what it was, but, like, how is it aged and things like that. You know? So we can we can think about like that. HBO, now Max, I think, whatever the hell it's called these days. Don't know why they would change. But, they seem to have very good intentional shows. Yeah. We're in Or Welch on White Orchid right now. A White Lotus? Or White Lotus. Lotus. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
And did that show was so bizarre, but, man, it captures my attention. And it just the yes. I we dig it. That's a good way to describe it too. Like, bizarre and captures your attention. Yeah, man. Just a a rinse and repeat. Right? Like, murder mystery. We're gonna show you how screwed up all these rich people are and, like, what stereotypes they kinda meet. That's a show every that's a every season's different show.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Same kind of concept, but, yeah, like, rinse and repeat, but, like, yeah, season three, they're they're in, Thailand this season, and there are a couple of two other places, the two previous seasons. With different cast every year?
The yeah. So the White Lotus Hotel is really, like, your character. Like, that's the kind of reoccurring character in the sense of, like, you know, all objects are are things, I guess, can can be characters. And then I think in this third season, there's a couple characters from the first season that have been, like, pulled in. So, yeah, there there's interconnections Yeah. For sure. I think that's what that's what kinda keeps it fun.
The best show I've seen recently in the year is a show that most people haven't heard of is called From, f r o m. It's on a platform that no one's ever heard of. MGM Plus, which, by the way, I don't know if you knew this, but I I learned this a couple months ago. MGM, the casino, is not the same thing as MGM, the studios. They are two separate entities, yet they have the same name.
Who knew? Because I was just just like, oh, yeah. It's just so weird. You know? But that's a show that many people haven't heard about, but, it's it's kinda like, lost meets zombies. And I'm not necessarily a zombie kinda guy, but it's just a hint of zombies. Okay. So if you liked lost and you want it's a faster lost, I would say.
Okay. I enjoyed Lost. I didn't like the last episode. It felt like a cop out, but, yeah, it's a that's me. It felt the last episode felt like what they would have done if they would have ended it in the first season.
And I didn't get any resolution about the island, which I felt was ultimately the main character of the show. I didn't ultimately came to the point where I didn't really care about the characters as much as, like, what was this indigenous race that was there? And, like, what were they do and, like, I wanted to know so much more about, like, the island as as a character than I think I did about, like, Jack or any of those other
other folks. I like closure. You know, when you end a series, there needs to be closure, and there was lack of lack of that. That's Yeah. I looked a little abstraction, but it was still I just felt I don't know. I didn't I didn't feel like I got my money's worth from all the the time I invested in in the show. Like, Lost, is that where does that rank for you? Two?
Probably two. I think Breaking Bad would be one. Lost was it for a long time, and then the reason Breaking Bad was it was not only was it a good show, but it was like, I never wanted to turn it off. I feel like there's parts of Lost that you wanna turn off. You're like, okay.
Like, this is an unnecessary episode here. Where are we going with this? There was a to some, there's a whole season like that, the sideways season. I think that's season five. I think that season is interesting because you're seeing a different world and how they could potentially get there, the pendulum swing thing.
I haven't lost that. I haven't watched that in a while. I thought about rewatching it again at some point, but I've decided that, you know, a 32 episodes and sixty minutes wasn't what I wanted to do, so I did it. I thought about rewatching lost myself, and it I think I watched, like, five minutes, and I, like, was like, okay. I don't need I don't need to do this.
Yeah. It is interesting how you can go back and watch something that was so great, but then when you go back, you're like, not as good as I remembered. They say this about the office. Right? I still still that would be my number three show. They're like, we can't make this show now because it's so. And you're like Yeah. It's it's quite funny. It's it is Yeah. If you've never seen it, Nate, like, it's definitely a
Took me a while to open up to it because of the British version. I'd watched the British version years and years before we had Steve Carell version. But Jervais? Is that what it is? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I did I enjoyed it. It it definitely, like, humor that sticks with you too. Right. Yeah.
So let's let's talk about some interesting things about you first just because we'll get into the business stuff. Obviously, that's a business show. But there's some there's some mindset things that I think are really interesting. And as I'm reading your your kind of notes that you've helped us with, there there's some some pieces in there that I think are really cool. So 04:30 wake up, a meditation grounding thing.
Are you, like, get outside, touch the earth type of grounding? Do you buy one of those mats? Like, walk us through all of these things because, you know, you hear a lot of these, like, health gurus that come up with, like, their 17 steps, and it's like, okay. Like, I'm sure somewhere in there, there's a thing. But, walk us through how you kind of figured this out, what it is, how it goes, etcetera.
Something I found that I did in college is I would get up and I would read every morning before going doing anything else, and it was it was personal reading. Like, whether it was magazine, whether it was a just a book, it wasn't school related. And, like, that was basically because I never knew, what the day would entail. With with architecture school, you never knew, like, you could lose twenty hours just boom, in the studio time. And so doing that, like, that that helped me just, like, be in a mental state where, like, I did something for myself today.
Whether or not I get to do anything else is for me, I got to do this. So, like, I always kinda had this sort of thing that I did. And I like to get up early and go for walks and things like that. It was, I read this book, The 5AM Club. It's there's some good info in it, but it could probably be about 10 pages.
There's, like, this weird story that they tried to tie in. It doesn't really make any sense. It makes it kinda difficult to read in in my opinion. But, he talks about in that book is, like, every morning, you dedicate, like, twenty minutes to exercise, twenty minutes to reading, nonfiction, and and then twenty minutes to, like, quiet contemplation. And so that's when I started adding in, more of the meditation.
I I was doing it previously when I would get to the office, and that was pre Orbis, pre our own company. I would get to the office and do it, but then people might knock on your door. They might it was disruptive. So it was like, let me do that first. Let me start my day here.
And like you asked, outside, I like to go outside. Sometimes I'll go for walks at 04:30, five AM. Just, you know, kinda clear your head, start your day with that clear head moment. But I don't like going for walks when it's cold, so I hadn't been doing too much of that lately. No grounding mats or anything like that. I haven't tried any of those. Don't know, you know, you read about Seems like a fad. It can't Yeah. It's like mhmm. Yeah. Tim is a big runner.
He's run, like, fifteen thousand days in a row, at least, like, five miles. He gets out there. He don't care about the cold. He doesn't like the cold. But Well, I don't like the cold. But, dude, it was boy, was it warm and humid this morning. Good night. Yeah. Like, where did this come? I don't and I would never ever call myself a runner, but I I don't mind doing a little bit every now and then.
Yeah. It's like you. I I mean, it just allow allows me to to set my day, get my mind right. I typically listen to a book or listen to a podcast, try to always surround myself around people that are smarter than me so I can try to learn a thing or two. And, yeah, I totally agree with you in this life. I if it doesn't happen first thing in the morning, like, the weight of the day just continues to gets crushes me, and then I get cranky. And then,
yeah. So I have to do it first thing in the morning. I feel like you also have a lot less excuses to say no, which is maybe even the biggest thing of that. Yeah. On that early stuff. Tim, have you read that book, the 5AM club? No. I haven't. But is it good? I can't remember when I read it. Oh, it's eleven hours long audio. Wow. I don't remember being that long. I remember it being good, but like you said, maybe 10 pages.
Right? So, like Yeah. But maybe that's a good thing, right, where sometimes it's, like, reinforcing some of those aspects of it in there. But I heard something a long time ago, and it was like, spend the fifteen bucks on a book and get at least a nugget out of it and implement that nugget. If you can't do that, then none of these things are worth it. Right? And so, obviously, it worked for you. Do you did you read, or did you listen to it? Like, how do you
I read mostly. Okay. Occasionally, I might listen to a book, but I'm, like, 30 to forty, fifty books a year, and it's kind of all over the map with that. You buy them? Do you go to Slover? Like, what's the how do you do that? Yeah. I usually buy things. I reread a lot of things too. I'm big into, like, art and architecture books in general, just like well made books, books as, like, product and art in and of themselves. And so have a lot of those types of things.
We we have developed sort of what we call the the Orbis library, which is kind of our art and architecture reference library. That's just been important to me. You know? Sort of fell fell back in love with reading in college. I'd read a lot in, like, middle school and things, kinda got away from it with high school. Had a when I was a freshman, I had a fifth year architecture student hand me a Kurt Vonnegut book, Cat's Cradle, and I read that. I gave it back to him the next day. Woah.
And then I proceeded to read, like, all the Kurt Vonnegut books in a row, and that sort of kinda got me back engaged. And then I just look at like like you said, like, if if there's gonna be something I'm gonna take away from everything. Right? Like, that's that's the goal. Like, look at everything as a learning opportunity and, like, there are some good things to take away from the five AM club, and there are some things that were silly, like these characters that they may that that the author made up to kind of, like, help sell the story.
But if you think about it in a sense of, like, maybe it's for people that don't really read a lot of books. You know? Maybe it it needs to, in a way, try to engage people and draw them in and and and get them interested in reading, you know, in general. So So you had mentioned the the Orbis library. What is Orbis? Oh, Orbis. Okay. Orbis is our landscape architecture firm. Orbis Landscape Architecture, we're founded in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic. Orbis is Latin for basically round.
Orbis terrerum is Latin for the world, and in that sense, it means the. Orbis kinda functions as the word the, and I I could be completely wrong because I haven't taken Latin, but this is what I learned from the Internet. So we look at it as, like, Orbis is, the world or Orbis is, like, the landscape architects in a sense. In landscape architecture, when we specify plants, we specify them in Latin. So that's sort of where the Latin kinda came from using that in our name.
And I kid you not, a lot of it is based on the fact that during the pandemic, we were working for a civil engineering company. We had created this thing called Orbis Terrarium, which was essentially us doing charrettes to keep our minds active and creative during the pandemic. And in May of twenty twenty, I was found out that, my business partner, Ariel, who was just working for me at the time, was gonna be laid off. So we requested that they both or that they lay us both off and dissolve the landscape architecture department at that firm, let us go out on our own. And so in seven days, Ariel had built our website and gotten our LLC set up and everything, and we just went with Orbis because we already had the name.
You know, it just seemed to fit. I dig the sense of urgency in this it's amazing how much you can get done when that sense of sense of urgency is there.
Oh, yeah, man. 30,000 emails I had to go back through to make sure there wasn't anything that needed to come with us because with them dissolving that department, they basically told us you can take all the work that's on the books. You know, we don't know who we might hire as a consultant moving forward. We still do a bit of work with that firm, but it's allowed us to grow in a way where we can now target people that we're inspired by and that we wanna work with that I wouldn't have had that opportunity at at the past firm.
And that was based in Vibe District Virginia Beach? No. It was off of Wichita Road. Okay. Civil engineering firm, over here in Jewish community center off of Wichita. So our our parking lot was pretty much right next to the on ramp.
So I could drive to town center, which was, like, a mile away or the oceanfront in just about the same amount of time if you think about, like, beach traffic and stuff. And so I would just go down there as kind of my my daily break, Getaway, that was in in kind of the beginnings of the Vibe district, like, twenty sixteen ish. Going down there, building relationships with business owners and things like that, and that led us to doing the first kind of three ships. So three ships coffee was in a small little space, and they had to move to their current location on Nineteenth Street behind WRV. And the owner was like, hey, man.
You know, we we don't have a lot of money, but we really wanna do an outdoor space. How can we do it? And so I consider that kind of like our first Orbis project even though there was no Orbis at that time, and I and I don't even think Ariel was working for me at the time. She was probably still in college. So it was just me and Brad Ewing, who owns three ships.
We drew the design on the asphalt out front with chalk, made a recording of that in a notebook. He had wood that he had, basically gone through the the the debris pile of every time they tore down a house in Shadow Lawn and just collected the old wood and saved it. That's what he built out the interior of that shop with as well as our first round of sort of outdoor space. It's on, like, its third evolution now. Brad is pretty much wants to be a landscape architect himself, and he likes to build outdoor spaces, and he does a great job at it.
But for that one, we didn't even have money to buy plants. So, WRV is their landlord. They gave us landlord. They gave us permission to dig up things in their parking lot and repurpose. So all the original landscape and even some of the grasses and other plants that are planted at their other two locations all came from that original sort of, like, we we call it gorilla landscaping.
You could call it stealing stealing with permission. But Inspiration? Sort of that's sort of how we started. We've since done a bunch of other little things in the Vibe District. Our probably favorite project down there is a small butterfly garden that we did again with with Brad for three ships and 50 or so members of the community.
We built a butterfly garden in undeveloped alley that's down there behind Java Surf. It don't you know, it's recorded on paper. It's City of Virginia Beach property, but it's it's never gonna be paved or at least it it never has been paved. It was a grass space behind an apartment complex, and we're like, hey. What can we do here?
Got the city involved. So it's it's pretty cool. So, like, a full cycle thing where the jailhouse workforce came out, and they did some of the initial, like, prepping of the landscape beds and things like that. The city landscape department, parks and rec, they they worked on it some. Like I said, we had 50 or so volunteers from the community come out for planting day, and we've continued to have people donate plants that go in the space.
There's now a nonprofit group that's kind of taken over the space, and they're they're helping to maintain it. And so it's sort of, like, checks all those great boxes of, like, what can happen when you can get the community engaged in, like, a project and, like, let them make it their own.
How does how does landscape architecture how does that evolve over time? Like, he can you take us through, like, the evolution? Like, how it's interesting to me because it it just seems like it would be something that's very steady state. But Yeah. So so landscape architecture essentially is the design of everything outside of the building. That's kind of the best way to describe it. It it can be as simple as, like, where are the sidewalks? Where are the parking lot?
How does the building fit on the site to, like, these very innovative things you might see in contemporary parks from, like, water features to, you know, capturing storm water, diverting it into stream beds, daylighting streams, things like that. So that's sort of, like, big, broad landscape architecture. So in America, we look at Central Park as kind of, like, the first landscape architecture project, although it's probably not. But Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of Central Park with Calvert Vaux, he's he's kind of the first person to call himself a landscape architect. So in that sense, you know, they were copying, like, Hudson River style paintings.
Right? These pastoral landscapes. You can actually relate them back to Claude Leron who was painting he was a French painter in, like, I wanna say, like, sixteenth century, where you'd have, like, a very idyllic nature, maybe some artifacts, maybe some constructed, like, ruins, you know, different things like that. The idea being the lungs of the city. Right?
Like, a place for all people. Little known about Olmsted is, like, during the time he was he was doing the park, and and before that, he was also a journalist. And he actually toured the South during slavery and was one of the only people that was writing about the conditions of slavery when it was happening, and he was doing it anonymously. He was sending his stuff back to a paper in New York, what ultimately became the New York Times. And so, like, he was experiencing human conditions in a way that, you know, no one else is really talking about or writing about.
So I like to think that that influenced his design as well. There's a great, practitioner down in Harlem, and she teaches at Harvard. And she's researching this, like, way deep. And so some of my info is coming from her lectures. Her name is Sarah Zodi. Super talented. But just thinking about, like, these spaces for all people. And then you have landscape architecture in the very private sense of, like, high end private residential gardens. They're very exclusive. Right?
So there's been sort of that era. There's the era of, like, modernism and suburban sprawl and all these things that kind of had very sterile landscapes. You think about just your boxwood shrubs, and they're always pruned to the same size and your green lawn, and it's always the same. And there's just this inherent sameness of this monoculture that doesn't serve anything to to nature, to to really, to people even. And so now we're in this kind of evolution where, you know, everything is is supposed to be native or everyone wants to use the terms native plants, and and we wanna we wanna design in a more naturalized style.
We think about designing not just for people, but for animals and wildlife and other other users like that. You know, climate climate change has become a big a big thing that we talk about a lot in in design or that some people talk about a lot in landscape architecture and design and how we are addressing that. I feel like as landscape architects, we've always kind of been trained to think that way and think in those innovative ways that address these sort of climate issues we're facing now. So making that the big talking point of of our national organization may not, in my opinion, be, like, our greatest thing. But that's what they wanna do, and we can support that.
So I don't know if I answered your question or not. I definitely ran it off. It's just it definitely is, it's one of those things. There's a lot more it's it's so much more intentional than what a lot of people, I think, give it, not I don't know if credit is the right word, but there there's a lot of intention behind it. And I think it's just funny, like, of me being, an amateur at best, but I think a lot of a lot of people, they travel somewhere. They get inspired because they see something.
They come back to their home. They wanna replicate the same thing, and it's just like, man, it's not meant to be like that. Or, like, animals and deer or whatever, they'll come and they'll just eat everything up because, you know, that's food for them, and you're just yeah. So it's just it's a it's super interesting.
There's this really interconnectedness of everything, and I think that's really where we're getting in design. And like you say, like, I can do a great landscape and the deer can completely destroy it. So, like, in that sense of place making, like, I have to think about what are deer resistant plants. And Right.
They still eat the ones that are on the deer resistant list anyway. You know? But we, in the interconnectedness is as as people, as as humans, we've encroached so much on their habitats that, like, can we really get too pissed off at them for encroaching on our habitats? Right? So, you know, maybe it's not necessarily a bad thing.
Maybe you can plant something at the edge of your property, at the edge of your woods that is more of a food source for them that keeps them less from coming into your yard. Right? So it's just, like, thinking more of, like, holistically about that instead of just being like, these were the cheapest plants at the nursery, so this is what we planted.
Yeah. Well, that's what I do. So I feel like I can't remember the time frame. A twenty fifteen, twenty eighteen. The city of Norfolk gets this Rockefeller grant, which I believe actually becomes the RISE thing that Paul I can't think.
He's in assembly does. Yeah. And if I recall in this, it was all about sea level rise. And so it's it's interesting to hear you articulate all this stuff and then be in an area that has been, let's just say, damaged by so much cement that actually impacts the sea level aspect of it, and the answer is more green. Right? So the answer isn't necessarily, like, what are those things in LA where, like, they have they create create their own little river and, like, the Oh.
Just The easement type of things. There's, like, still waves. So Right. So that that's not it's the answer is not something like that. The answer is, like, you have create these more green spaces so that the water can, I guess, go into the ground, do whatever, etcetera? Obviously, I don't know the terminal the the terminology. But doing what you do and then thinking about we're in an area that is, like, pretty damn low and it floods a lot, like, how do you incorporate that into, okay.
Well, we're fine right now because I'm here, but, oh, it's not high tide. Like, literally, you know, a hundred yards that way where I live, there's a river that for no reason to to the naked eye, it just floods literally up to people's houses. Right? And that's, like, six, seven feet high, and it's this this this very small creek that's back there, but it gets it gets obnoxious. It's like so how do you incorporate that kind of stuff into it knowing that we live in an area that's so you just don't know?
I love it. I love great question. So Norfolk in and of itself, You see all the flood maps. You know? Paul's group has they've got all these interactive flood maps they've developed.
If you look at those flood maps and you look at them compared to a map from 1800 of Norfolk, all those areas were creeks and waterways. So we have filled and filled I mean, if you're familiar with Ghent, the Ghent neighborhood, historic Ghent, that was all Smith's Creek. That was water and marsh, and there were some farmland over there, but they just filled it all in to build to build. And that's all over the city. So, like, we don't have anywhere for the water to go.
So we have the water that comes in associated with sea level rise. We have, you know, the concept of sinking. Norfolk is sinking a little bit. And then, you know, we also have, like, where does the water go that is falling on the surfaces and on all these surfaces? So that idea of creating more green spaces, versus popular concept now, sponge cities, where you're essentially creating places for that water to go, intentionally creating those places.
Now it's a whole another, like, level of difficulty to when you start talking about, oh, well, we don't necessarily have to have these places. They're not required by the stormwater design for this project, so that's just an added cost. And now we don't wanna deal do it because it's just gonna cost extra, and it's gonna affect our bottom line and our contractor profits and all of that. So sometimes we lose those things from the projects, but those are the things that are gonna help us as a city, as a culture by coming up with more innovative solutions to manage these things because these these issues aren't gonna just magically go away. They are gonna be things we have to address.
You know, there's a very contentious, floodwall project right now that the army corps has presented, that encompasses some of the Freemason District, 16 foot high flood walls. Like, how is that gonna affect people's properties and views and things like that? But that's keeping water out. What about the water that's in? Where is that gonna go? You know? Well, not to mention what's literally across the high or, you know, the the waterway, Portsmouth, what does that do to there?
That's a great question. I've asked that question being from Portsmouth. And You know what's I didn't I didn't know what talked about. Yeah. Because, you know, people people don't care about over there just like they don't care whatever. I'm Mhmm. Big decisions.
I did not know that about the the rivers and and creeks that they just, you know, built out of. That's wild. Have you ever seen, like, the old school pictures? So, like, where Waterside is or, like, where Main Street is in downtown, that was all man made. So they filled in there.
Mhmm. So, like, where my my office used to be basically right across the street from Hell's Kitchen. And my understanding is that the corner of there off to to where Waterside is, that was all built up so that they could have another street there. And so that's crazy, but it doesn't flood a lot there, which is interesting, even though they're right at the water. I'm sure there was a reason behind it.
But it it's this is very fascinating because, well, my favorite thing about the floods, is the idiots who then drive under the underpasses. It's like, come on, guys. Like, you're duh. Like, of course, like, if you can look in there and oh god. It's hilarious. And yeah. It's have you ever been in the flood in in Ghent, Tim? You're had to drive through Not while not while it was flooded, but I've seen Okay. The video footage.
So, Nate, I used to work in TV news for about three years, and I worked at a TV station that's right by The Hague. And so it doesn't matter. It just floods. Right? I think they call it Lake Olney. Right? Because they knew was just gonna flood. Like, it could be it could be just a random day. And that thing, I mean, it got actually, I made the front page of the paper because I drove my Jeep Wrangler through it because I thought it was funny. And it was probably four feet tall.
Like, I mean, it's just to be a random day. That thing just it's Yeah. So so that area there, you know, right right at the corner there of of Only and can't think of the other Cross 7 the the Exxon is? Where where the seven eleven is. Right? Yeah. So that area is one of the worst flooded. That's that Lake Olney area.
Right? So the biggest stormwater pipes in the city of Norfolk go underneath the Chrysler Museum. Underneath, you can access them through the basement, and that's where that water is backing up because it's nowhere for it to go. It goes into The Hague. Well, when The Hague's full and The Hague's already overflowing its banks, that water's not going anywhere.
And that can flood at high tides sometimes. Right? You know? It couldn't it might not even be raining. It's just that water gets pushed back up. They just built a new apartment there, so that'll be interesting to see see what goes on. But that but that's true. A lot of them a lot of the worst ones are not rain related, and I don't think people realize that. I mean, it's just that's like the the street on my house. It's just like my mom's like, well, did it rain? I'm like, no.
It's never about rain. It just it just magically is like Wind blows the right way. Yeah. You you know, we have a The moons. Tide. Something to do with the moons or something? The moons and the and the tides. So, you know, it's it's pretty wild to think about that we assume that, you know, like, this isn't gonna happen. Right? Like, if this didn't used to happen, this well, I I disagree. You know, we've seen photos from the twenties of flooding in Norfolk and and things like that.
So I think it's just something people have always lived with. We don't think about it because we have such a turnover. Right? Like, we have a lot of military. We have a lot of people that stay here after they retire from the military. So it, you know, it might just be be that. Like, oh my god. This flooding's gotten so much worse. I I think it just we we've always flooded. I mean, has it gotten worse? Probably.
We keep building. Right? We keep we keep building. That's the unfortunate aspects of of what we do as architects is is we keep building. And so now it's not up to us entirely because there's so many collaborators and big pictures and things like that, but, you know, we need to think about innovative and create creative solutions to these things because they're they're not gonna get better.
Not right not right now, especially in whatever this climate is. Ever evolving moving target of our federal government. So what's the answer? Like, is it due to to plant a whole bunch of water absorbing trees and landscape, or it'll create a lot of I think we need more wetlands. I think we need more wetlands. I think wetlands help with flooding. Where do we put them? I don't know.
Yeah. It's tough. There's there's there's not a lot of capitalism involved with taking an old built site and converting it into back to nature. Yeah. Not a lot of tax revenue generated. Yeah. No one's really profiting off of that. So it it is
But how much are you losing on the aspect of that because of other like, I wonder if we've looked at it from that perspective where it's, like, from a emergency perspective or or I don't even know how so many different aspects of having to close a business, people not being able to get somewhere. I I wonder if there's a number that's even remotely close to pushing back at that and saying, well, yes, but this is this is causing a bigger issue than you think. And then to your point about I think it's always been flooding. I'll I'll my pushback is always on no matter what. Like, what's the context of this?
Show me the historical data so that we can look at the new stuff and be like, okay. Like, actually, like, these are the same. You just aren't remembering that last year looked like that. Ten years ago, it didn't look like that. You just forgot about that in the last three hundred and sixty five, five years, ten years, whatever, but it hasn't really changed.
And I and I love that aspect that you said because I think that's a big missing piece in just the world where we're just like, oh, this stuff's all new. It's like, we have data. Let the data tell you if that's new or not because who knows? And if it is, then let's fix it. If it's not, I mean, maybe we still need to fix it, but at least have a real with context understanding, this is where we sit.
Yeah. I mean, I think I read I recently read a book on Ghent on the neighborhood. And someone in Name? And there's a what's that? What's the name? Oh, man. I'll look it up while we're on here and get it for you. But the there's a reference in it from, I wanna say, the fifties where someone who was already studying the the neighborhood was sinking. So seventy years ago, maybe more. Let's see if I can find this easily. It it's a it's an interesting book for sure.
You don't hear a lot of books about Kansas specifically. That's what I was like, well so do you get a lot of do you get a lot of Floodington in Yorktown? No. But the the thing that's interesting, as we're talking about this, I'm just thinking about how Pecosan continues to get built up and built up. And, I mean, that's just just like Ghent was always I think I think Pakosin is an Indian word for, like, swamp or something like that. So, yeah, the again, that water has to go somewhere.
So so the the book is Ghent, John Graham's Dream. John Graham was a civil engineer. So there we go. It wasn't there wasn't even a landscape architect involved. It it was it was all civil engineering, and, you know, they know the water goes in a hole. It goes in a pipe. It goes out, and, they do a lot of infrastructure stuff. You know? But, it's interesting. Ghent is Ghent is an interesting neighborhood.
I've been we're working on a project for Moray High School, this this big new Moray High School project. And I've done a few other projects in Ghent, which have kind of led me to, like, deep dive research and the history of Ghent when they were filling in Smiths Creek. So so if we think about The Hague, you know you know, The Hague is shaped kinda like a bow. Each of those ends continued up as creeks, and they met almost in a wetland where Moray High School is, more or less. So all of that all that was filled.
Right? And so we start thinking about these things and thinking about that flooding and thinking about that history and those stories. Right? Like, for us, we like to tell the stories of the site in our designs, and we like to mine mine for history. And so when The Hague was being filled in, there were some people that were opposed to it.
The only people that's were really opposed to it were the oyster houses. So this is where you had the oyster men, you had the shocking, the canning, things like that that were happening, went back when the Elizabeth River had oysters in it, before we destroyed all that. Right? And so these were kind of marginalized people that were likely, black people. Haven't gotten too deep into that history, but, basically, they used the health department to come in and shut them all down so they could fill in the creeks to build a neighborhood.
Right? So how these stories play out and how they get lost years later? Yeah. And and how they get lost in time. Right.
That's sort of our a big thing in our approach, in Orbis' approach is, like, telling the stories of the site. Right? Like, Smiths Creek was filled in at the end of the nineteenth century, beginning of the twentieth century, how many hundreds and thousands of years of history did it have before that? Like, Chesapeake tribe, you know, the Chesapeake Chesapeake people that were here, the John Smith John Smith interacted with were different from the Chesapeake people that were here when the Roanoke Colonists arrived in the fifteen eighties and that they interacted with because chief Powhatan had wiped out that that version of the Chesapeake tribe because they one of his priests told him that a tribe from the Chesapeake region would wipe out his empire. Now does that have to do with the fact that they had already met the English and that Chesapeake tribe may have had interconnectedness there?
And who knows? Right? But we have so many of these stories that ours our lands can tell. So we try to we try to pull those out, right, and tie them in through whether it's, like, incorporating patterns into the pavement or into the planting design or, you know, creating outdoor spaces with seating arrangements that can might create a disorienting feeling that can represent someone's story. So we look at, like, every site is, like, what was here in the past and, like, how can we mine for that, and then how can we apply that to, like, what this is gonna be in the future.
And so we think about that environmentally. We think about that culturally, And then there's always the the fight of of the financial implications of telling these stories when not everyone may be as focused on that as we are. But Very fascinating.
It is. Yeah. And one of the things that stands out to me is every time I'm going through the, Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel, I'm like, man, all the houses on Willoughby Spit, I'm like, that was formed because of a hurricane. You know? And I'm I just I can't help but think that that could be wiped out also because of a hurricane.
I don't know. It's just it's You know this area has never been hit with an actual, at the time, numbered storm? It's been it's a storm. It it's been a named storm that has been a numbered, but never actually hit dead on as it was a number. It's my understanding of that. We all we all work with Carolina. Yeah. That's a real freaky number to that real freaky thing to think about. You know? It's like, okay. So
It's mostly been like that because we we know from the history of the Roanoke Colony down in the the Lost Colony, right, in in North Carolina, part of why they could not get back to them was because of the storms. There's always these you hear stories of these storms down there in North Carolina. And, I mean, we we we we get remnants of them. Right? But it must be something about that shape and how that land sticks out.
Well, thank you, North Carolina. Come on and raise up. Okay. So you're connected with, I I think, like, the, you know, the the top dogs in the region for stuff like this. And it seems like when you, you know, you were working on a company less than a decade ago, you started the company, you know, during the heart of COVID.
Like, a lot of people talk about how networking and meeting new people is a challenge, but you've seemed to be able to just get up there and and and and communicate with people. What's your secret sauce on that? Like, do you have, like, an icebreaker question? Like, how do you get in front of these people? Because is it just an off phrase?
Like like, how do you do it? Fits in so perfect. Next week, I'm given a presentation at Virginia Tech on community engagement. And so I look at there's a traditional community engagement, and there's an untraditional community engagement. You need both of them for projects, but I'm gonna go on this untraditional approach.
So when we started our company, we worked in coffee shops. You meet so many people in coffee shops. You just you just talk to people. And if it's everyone's got five or ten minutes when they're getting a cup of coffee. You see them.
They're just waiting. They're looking at their phone. So if it's someone you know or someone you may wanna meet, go up and just introduce yourself. Right? Like, I'm pretty introverted for the most part, but if we're talking about landscape architecture, talking about architecture, we're talking about design, we're talking about things that I might be interested in, I I can just go, right, and go.
And so I say that what gave me the confidence and gave us the confidence to start the business was that we knew so many people, so many different business owners. And, like, kid you not, I went in three ships over and over and over again. That's how I started talking to the owner. He's like, oh, man. Landscape architecture.
That's what I wanted to do. I want I thought about doing that. And he's like, oh, you're from Portsmouth. I got a friend who just married a girl and, like, they live in Portsmouth. Oh, yeah? Who is that? Oh, I know her. I know him. Now, you know, boom. Hampton Roads, small town Hampton Roads, man.
There's, like, three degrees of separation from from just about everybody. And so, like, building connections that way, you know, telling someone that you're inspired by their work. Like, you know, I I know what your work is. It's really great. Like, this is what I do.
I'd love to find a way for us to collaborate. And, like, that's really how I go about it. You know? Like, I got hooked up with you guys through, like, Emmanuel, and him and I were just talking in assembly about, like, drawing, like, drawing on he was, like, doing doodles on his phone. We got to talk him about drawing, and, like, that led to me, like, talking to him a little bit about what we do and our storytelling.
And he was like, hey. You wanna do this podcast? So that's sort of how we ended up here. I I appreciate that so much. It's, Deag is at the bottom of of, Main And Granby. Have I already told you this story, Tim, of how I met Phil Decker from Deag? Yeah. It's been a while. I I couldn't Okay. I could not repeat it. It's, like, 2012 time frame. Had moved into Hatch, which was, you know, catty corner, basically. Right right there. It's when the plot was downtown. Oh, I worked on some of that too.
Okay. So maybe that's where I've seen you before. But well, downtown, like, on Granby Street, Main Street. Where the main is. Yeah. So for six months, let's say, I would go into, and I would just wait for exactly what you just said to happen. Right? Just wait for someone to come like Phil Decker, who I wanted to meet. I would just wait for him to do that.
That didn't happen. Then one day, he I guess he makes face and sees it, and he it's like, oh, I just read your article in the paper. And I'm like, I've been waiting for so long for for this conversation to happen because I'm being a wuss by not going up to you and just being like, hey. We ended up becoming great friends, but it's crazy how and I think people don't think I'm an extrovert or people think I'm definitely extroverted. I think I have a lot more introverted tendencies than people realize, so I'm not always one to just go up to someone and say hello.
But it's just like, if you if you want an action to happen, you have to, like, create that action. And I love what you said there, Nate, because it's like, I'm sitting here in this coffee shop waiting for this thing to happen, but I don't have the courage to do it. And, I mean, I basically given up on the situation. And then finally, it happened because he did it. It's just crazy how, like, you and that became a great, you know, a great friendship out of there and and probably a little bit of business out of that and and all of that.
And so it's just like, don't be you you can't be afraid because the worst thing that's gonna happen is already happening, and that's you don't know the person. But what happens if you that relationship's created because you had one little inkling of courage to just be like, hey. How are you? And the way that I tell people, I teach and coach people to do this now is, like, go to the grocery store and say hi to everyone. Go go on a walk and say hi to everyone because what you're gonna realize is not everyone's gonna say hi back hi back.
So you've already realized that that negative interaction is is just becoming the norm. But when someone does say hi back, you're like, oh, hey. That's cool. Like, I appreciate that. Yeah. You know? Say hi to your neighbors. Like, it's it's it becomes this routine, and it's do it in your normal days, and then don't look at it from a business perspective. Well, you know how much I waive when I run, Zach? You experience that. Obnoxious.
But, yeah, I joked to myself, man, like, around the the neighborhood. I I call it waveless Wednesday. It just I don't know if there's there should be a study. Like, maybe it's just by the middle of the week, people are just like, just just add and and and I like, did you they will not waive on Wednesdays. Fridays were good. Mondays were good, but, man
My neighbor is is moving, and I was on a run this morning. And he stopped me. He's like, I'm done. We sold the house. And so I talked to him for, like, five minutes afterwards. I tried to talk to as many neighbors as possible. He's about a street. He's actually on that river, that flooding suit that I was talking about. And I don't even know his name. It doesn't matter.
But if we see each other, like, we'll we'll talk, and it it it's cool to hear his stories. And we've had black bears in the neighborhood recently, and so he was yeah. He'll tell me about that. So it it's amazing what can happen when you just say, hey. Well and it's amazing too when you get a you know, when when you walk your dog in the neighborhood. I mean, like, that is the key to, like, knowing everybody. You know mean? Talk about really expanding your network.
Yeah. Yeah. What you've just described is, like, one of my favorite things from the the Rick Rubin's book, which is the universe never explains why. So, you know, like, there was something inside of you that made you not wanna talk to Decker, but you were still meant to meet him. That was still meant to happen. The universe saw that and then made it so that he initiated that. Right? Yeah. But it it was definitely meant to happen. We don't know why it was.
Well, dude, I'm a big thing a big big believer in the whole frequencies that people put off, man. And I think that that like frequencies, you know, they're attracted to each other, and and the opposite holds true as well. The creative act of a way of being that? The creative act of way of being there's a part in it where It's got a lot of ratings. Dude, it it's great. It's a great book for creatives in my opinion. It's really vague. It's kind of like a like a like a DAO almost.
Like, the the the DAO of Rick Rubin, if you will. So there's a part in it where he talks about, like, what if you read classic literature every day instead of reading the news for a year? Like, how would your perspective change? Right? How would you approach things differently?
How would you see things differently? So I I took that to heart. And last year, in instead of reading the news, which I used to do multiple papers and all of that. I read Rick Rubin's book every month. I read it 12 times last year.
I didn't read the news at all. I mean, I'd catch the headlines and things. I didn't completely disconnect, but that was it. Like, it it every time I read it, there was something else that jumped out. Like, whether it's where you are, like, working on specific project or feeling stuck or anything, just really kind of big picture abstract, like, advice.
And I just there's something there that's connected with me, and maybe it's my readings of a lot of the things that I feel get referenced into it, like like I said, like the Tao. So I don't know. But I've I've really enjoyed that, and that's one of the few books that I buy for people and give as gifts because it's hard to give people books for as gifts.
I think that's an interesting thought. Like, people say, like, what's your favorite book? And I think there's a different aspect of that. It's like, what's your favorite book to buy someone else? Those actually happen to be the same thing for me, but it is interesting how, like, there's a difference too.
Like, is your is your favorite movie the best movie you've ever seen? Right. And so there's, like, it like so I'm gonna I'm excited. I'm gonna buy this book today. But it's, and I'm actually gonna, I'm not gonna listen to it. I'm gonna actually read it read it. Here's the thing. For you. Oh, so now I should listen to it.
I I haven't listened to it, but I've heard that it's great to listen to because Rick reads it. If you've listened to his podcast at all, it's a very soothing, calming thing, his voice is. And so I I have heard it's good to listen to. He does different chimes and thing. Right. Right.
Authors have to narrate their books. As a guy who's written two books myself, there is no way I would never voice that. And I don't understand why people don't. It's like, I can go on these tangents. I do go on these tangents with them, because it's like, oh, this is this let's go a little deeper in this, and I I just think it's important. So maybe I won't buy it as maybe I will buy the audio instead, but I like to read, like, three books a year physical, a lot more audio ed. Yeah. Cool.
I'll have to relisten to it because I do have it. Oh, you've listened to it? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. He's a wrestling fan too, by the way. So Oh, huge, huge wrestling fan. Yeah. He references that constantly in his podcast too. Alright. Well, there yeah. Nate, this has been great. Anything we haven't talked about that you wanna talk about?
I don't know. Not not really. I think we kinda hit on a lot of fun stuff for me, and, you know, I I appreciate jumping in here and and getting to know you guys, and, hope to see you around assembly. I I feel like I've seen Tim before. Yeah. Yeah. Now that I know where you hang, I'll, I know where to look. Yeah. We're we're up here. We hide out in the corner in in Gro's office and some of their empty desk, and, we do a lot of projects with WPA who are Yep. Architects in
the They just won a big award through Fast Company too. So Oh, cool. Cool. So we we've been working with them a lot. That's been a great relationship to build. That's really happened because of Assembly. Mel was one of the being on our own.
Mel Mel Price was one of, she was a judge at the original Start Norfolk, which is an event that I hosted back in 2011, like, build a company in a weekend, competition. And, she was so I've known her for almost twelve, thirteen years now. Real she was real they were getting real they're real OGs back then. Right? Just getting started.
So to see where they've come. I don't know if you ever met any of those guys, Tim, but guys and gals, but rock stars, and it's cool to see you guys are working together too. I think
Mel's one of our biggest cheerleaders, and I've been trying to work with WPA for years, and they had no interest in working with the civil engineering firm where I was. And it was made very clear that they were not interested in that. And less than a year of starting Orbis, Mel called us to do her personal residence. So we assumed that was kind of, like, the test, you know, to to get started. And and we've we've built a really great relationship with them, and and they're some of the people that inspire us the most too.
I expect this question that Tim's gonna ask you to have phenomenal a phenomenal answer. I I just wanna know. Yeah. I mean, you're definitely super ingrained in the region, and you know it really, really well. So last question with every every show that we do, is there a food of the region, or if you were to, have guests from out of town come, where where is the place, the restaurant that you would take them? Oh, man. Can I give you two? Can we do, like, lunch and dinner? Sure. Alright.
Dude, lunch, we're going to Yorkies and just opened in the Vibe District some chef kit pool. Think of, like, a modern deli. I he's got some name for it, some type of deli, but just elevating the sandwich experience, but also doing, like, community events. He's he's host he hosts art shows. He hosts they have, like, DJ nights.
Just really, like, rethinking all in all what a what, like, a sandwich shop is, what a restaurant is. But the the sandwiches are incredible. For me, I'm gonna eat that at lunch, and I'm probably not gonna eat dinner. Big, fat, big sandwiches. And he's just an incredible human being as well. He's one of my oldest friends from college, so maybe there's a little bias, but he's he's doing it right. Oh, sesame seed rolls too? Oh, these look amazing, Tim.
Oh, dude. They've got their own baker. They're making their own bread. Like, he hired a guy who has his own company called Pilgrim Bread, Tyler. He's they're just they're doing so much so many things right at Yorkies.
And then if we're talking dinner, we're gonna do Codex, which is here on Grammy Street right across from Assembly. Ian is is killing it, and he does chef Ian Hawk. He's just really, really seasonal based. He's got his traditional things he does that he keeps on the menu, but he also has a lot of evolving things. But, man, it's hard to just pick, man.
We have so, so many good places to choose from, and, like, it's it's really, like, what are you in the mood for? You know? There's there's Blanco, which is kind of, like, French inspired. There's La Grande Kitchen, which is just everything there is awesome. You know, toast and and all of that stuff that they're doing, handsome biscuit for more of, like, the quicker things. So, like, I just I look at it as, like, hard to pick. It's really hard to pick. That's cool. Cool perspective. I dig.
Yorkies looks badass. I'm excited to check that out. I'm a big sandwich guy. I love a good sandwich. So, yes, last week, we heard about this place called High Street Pizza. Tim and I are actually gonna meet. We're gonna we're gonna be there. I'm excited to check that out. They're only doing lunch on a Thursday and Friday, apparently, so that's cool.
That's Tim Kenrick. And Okay. His younger brother and I went to high school together. I've known them for a long time. And before he opened High Street Pizza, we would all get together pre pandemic to watch Tottenham Premier League games, Saturday and Sunday mornings, and he would make us just, like, these killer breakfast. Just different things like that, man. High street pizza, you cannot go wrong. Yeah. Is Codex the old field guide?
Yeah. Yeah. He's in the old field guide. But when he opened originally, he was in pendulum. So, like, he he Oh, yeah. Interesting. Which is where alkaline started as well. Interesting. Ramen spot over on 20 First Street. Pendulum is the meat house, basically. Yeah. Butcher camp. And they do their own great lunches, man. Their lunches are really good. Sandwiches and burgers.
Yeah. Well, this was we have heard Codex before, so a little disappointed with that answer, Nate. Whatever. Just kidding. But Yorkies, bias or not, still open the door for a new a new shop that might check out by myself, maybe with Tim, maybe with my wife. Who knows? But I appreciate we appreciate the the knowledge bomb of that. So Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Cool. Well, thanks. Been fun. So much, Nate. We really, we appreciate it. Yeah. Me too. I had a blast.
Yeah. For everyone watching and listening, like, comment, subscribe, share, all that stuff. Help, help people like Nate share their story. Thanks for watching, everyone. Peace.