Pushkin. The other day I drove up from my home in Long Beach to a restaurant called Alta and the historic West Adams neighborhood of LA. This is a beautiful space you have.
I thank you, thank you. Have you been here?
I have not?
I gotta I gotta put you on? Did we get that?
Great? Were opening with that?
My apologies, man, you can make here for the interview.
Keith Corbyn, the man you just heard grilling me, grew up about ten miles south of here in another LA neighborhood called Watts. In the nineteen eighties. Watts was pretty much the epicenter for the War on drugs, and like many others growing up in the area, hustling became a
way of life for Keith. But it was also in Watts where through his grandmother, Keith developed a love of cooking, and as you'll hear in our interview before becoming the trendy restaurant tour he is today, that love of cooking saved him when his hustle landed him in prison. This is started from the body hard earing success stories from
people like us. Keith and I jumped right in to talk about what it was like building this black owned restaurant in West Adams and how people in this quickly gentrifying neighborhood reacted when Keith first opened All TOA back in twenty eighteen.
Yeah, it was ugly the beginning.
How so, I mean when we first came in here, we first came into West Adams, I got a lot of slack for, you know, from our own people, for being the quote unquote face of gentrification. It was only on Instagram and you know, and it was just like in my what I was trying to do was elevate our food. I wanted to represent it and present it in a way that it hasn't been done. I wanted
to bring a restaurant into a community like mine. I wanted to provide opportunity, jobs and training to kind of like infistrate this industry that doesn't have a lot of black and brown influence in it. So I was very intentional on what I was coming in to do. No one asked me, it's just like part of the gentrifying
the community. Bullshit, excuse me? Yes, So, but you know, it passed and now people see what the mission is, to see what I'm about and understand it, and has been very very supportive, but it was hard in the beginning, you know, like it was it was eating at me.
What do you think it says about as black folk, like our relationship with success, that when one of our own opens up, like a restaurant like the one like Alter that you've opened in our own neighborhood is viewed as betraying the community.
You know that.
I mean, I don't know, you know, I try not to be this believer in black folks pulling black folks down. You know, I don't come at our folks like that. You know where they say black folks pull black folks down, White folks lift each other up, and this, that and
the other. I just think it's years and years in years of trauma and experiences, right, it's brainwashing, Like it's America has a lot to do with the way black folks think, you know, from our ancestors and what we've been through to get up to this point is going to take a lot of healing, you know, it takes a lot. It's gonna take a lot of healing and that, you know, I don't think that we intentionally want to pull each other down.
I don't wake up to pull another black person down, you know.
But I can't say that ten o'clock at night and I'm on the street, you know, and I got my eye out, you know what I'm saying, Like in certain communities, you know, if I'm turning the block and it's kind of dark and you see the like your own fellas on the block, like you might you know, fly past or busty you or whatever. Right, Yeah, but yeah, that's going down a whole other lane.
Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
You had an interesting I mean, plenty of trauma in your life, plenty of trauma. How have you managed given all that to become comfortable with success?
So for me, success changes with my goals. I don't look at it as monetary or buying a house in Westwood or any of that.
But you did, But I did.
When I first came on from prison in twenty fourteen, I had a conversation with my daughter where she was made whare of my lifestyle, and in that moment, I realized I wasn't proud of the lifestyle I was living.
And if I died in that moment, you know, I was.
No longer proud of the conversations that people have, you know, and about me. So I set out to change my narrative and my legacy and the narrative that people were having around me, right, conversations, and we're having different conversations today, Right, my legacy has changed. So I'm successful in that I've
accomplished that, right, So that's a level of success. So then once I accomplished that and I had an opportunity to open my own business, my goal changed, right, and my goal became to provide opportunity to people in similar situations in which I came from.
Right, So maybe we should start at that first moment coming out talking to your daughter. Yeah, your goal was really just to create a different narrative for your life. That's it than you've been given.
That's it, And that one not the one I've been given, the one I've created. Right, So, both the circumstances were created before me, Right, I was born into these circumstances. But the narrative of the gangster and the drug dealer and all that, even though the choices were limited for me, so it was kind of like a forced path for me, I still own responsibility and accountability and choosing to go that route, right, So I created the narrative the drug dealer,
the gangster, the shooter, the X, whatever the case may be. Like, I own some responsibility in it. Yeah, So I created this narrative about myself because one I had pride in it, and I set out to have this larger than life reputation in the streets and then the drug trade. That was my goal, in my mission, my aim, my objective. Right, So I own that. Right, I own that. But then I sought to change that.
So to change that. So when you come out, what are your thoughts about how you can change that? After that conversation, I had no idea.
I absolutely had no idea, right, I just took it day by day, and when I found myself in situations, I just made the best of it, just like when I was in my youth, you know, when I found myself in situations at seven and seven world on wheels, locked in with all these street dudes throughout LA and the squabble time come up. I just made the best of the situation. And as things as those opportunities presented themselves and I stood up and stayed down, the reputation began to grow.
So I just followed that same model.
I had no idea, no path on how I was going to change my legacy or how I was going to change the narrative.
It's just I.
Knew I didn't want to do that anymore so and avoiding that it put me on another path. And as the opportunities presented themselves, right, I made the best of it. When I got my first job at local restaurant, I had no idea where that path was going to take me.
Did it seem like a good opportunity to you?
Oh?
No?
Like work man, please, nigga, I've been hit selling dope my whole life, like hustling entrepreneur. I ain't want to work for nobody, you know what I'm saying. Like it was so uncomfortable. It was so uncomfortable to be to come up into projects and to go to and lift this whole lifestyle of with no authority, no respect for authority.
To then have this white man yelling at me in.
The kitchen, Daniel Patterson.
Man, that shit didn't work. It just didn't work, like you feel me. So I tried to.
Quit numerous of times, but Daniel supported me in the role.
So hold, look you walk me through that. So will you when you go in? Would you just go walk in and be like yo, I'm done, or he might yell you and be like I'm done.
You got to understand that the restaurant right in the hood. So I just walked out of the door. Yeah you feel me, like he we yelling in the kitchen. Fuck that, man, I'm out of here. So I walk out. Then here Daniel come behind me. She let me talk to you, you feel me and like guide me back in, Like, man, I know it's uncomfortable with it. To get comfortable, it
just takes time. And in my mind, I'm like, man, you just want me here to yell at me, fool like you know, but I'm seeing it one way and he seeing it another way.
He like, you know what I mean.
But at the end of the day, that job, I didn't treasure it, but I explored it because I had a goal.
I didn't know that working at Loco that so it this way.
There was no representation at the mountaintop or at the end of this road saying if you take this path, you're able to accomplish these thing.
There was no example for me.
No, there was no representation, nobody, no example, no one exemplifying that for me. Right, I was carving a path on my own you know what I mean. So with not knowing what I can accomplish at the end, I didn't treasure it, you know what I.
Mean, trust the process because you didn't know it was a process.
I didn't know what the end result was going to be. For me.
In my mind, is just a job in a check And if it's just about the money, then I know many ways to get money. But I was committed to the change. I was committed to the change. And I think that commitment to the changes would allow Daniel to tap into to guide me back into the restaurant, because if I wasn't committed to the change in yourself and myself, then I would have been out. Yeah, but he was
able to tap into that. And I had a purpose, like I was doing it for a reason, and so I went back in and you know, now I'm comfortable.
Was ill.
How did Daniel and Roy Troy find you for local to be men?
Well, they came down there. I was still in prison when this process started. They came down to the community and kind of like really did the best research they could. They got with a bunch of the older gentlemens in the community, which I call my big homies, well some of them. Some of them are just older dudes in the community. You know, we'll keep that separate. And they spent almost a year in the community and so they were aware of some of the.
Conflicts, the traumas.
They kind of got an understanding about what the community culture was like. And one of the things that they did was really important when they opened Local was they brought in a counselor. Wow, so we had access to counselor. That's brilliant, you know what I.
Mean, and like paid counselor.
Like you'll have a you'll be working in a restaurant and like I'll go have a session if I chose to, and then I'll come back and tell Tim or whoever. Now your session up, Like it's your turn and you're still on the clock getting paid to go deal with some of your trauma. And then we had group settings, right, And so that was how intentional Local was. We're coming into the community and really being intentional on helping.
The folks that they hired. And that's what I experienced it.
So they found you by talking on the old heads on the block.
No, I'm sorry I didn't answer that question. I had got fired at the OI refinery, and I got a call for my mother.
You working at the refinery in.
Else So, yeah, I was working there.
I came on from prison, got a job there, labor job, because that's the only job I thought X cons can get, And so I got a labor job, worked my ass off, got a promotion. At the time I got hired, they wasn't doing background checks, and then by the time I got the promotion, background checks has been implemented. So in order to get the promotion, they had to run my license to drive company equipment. Running my license brought my background up, and so they walked me to the gate
and terminated me. They didn't say damn, like, man, he really worked hard to the point that we want to invest in him and move him up in the company. No, they overlooked all that and said background, Oh, yeah, you out of here. So for a couple of weeks, I just really felt that the system and society was so unforgiving, right yeah, that I considered going back to hustling. And then I got a call from my mother saying, boy, you better get over here.
They just build a restaurant in the.
Hood and they hiring on the spot and I was getting off the freeway and watch on Womenton, the Womenton exit off the one oh five, So I just shot over there.
They's show enough.
They had an application with like four or five questions first name, last name, birthday, phone number, email, like, no, do you small? Have you ever been in prison? Are you black or brown? None of that general information. They hired us on the spot.
Without even knowing your ability to cook?
Are my inability Do.
You feel you had an inability at the time for restaurants? Absolutely okay, because cooking that home.
And cooking dope, the's two differents, like it's but however, there are skills in both of those that's transferable that I didn't understand until I got comfortable in the restaurant industry, right, and then I was able to see and understand that, Wow, I didn't have to forsake all this knowledge I've learned cooking drugs. There's some things there that I learned that actually it's transferable. Because when I was cooked drugs, the main star was the product, right right?
How do I make great product?
And that's what's starting with a proper base, A great base, great keilo or cocaine, right right?
So that's like a rue or something like.
So No, it's like when you have an option of vegetables where you getting it from the liquor store or the farmer's mark. Starting with great product and the base of the product has to be great, yes, right, and then that translates how the end product. So if I have a bad kelo or coke, then what do I think the crack is going to be at the end result? If I have shitty vegetables that's out of season, that's been on a frozen truck traveling for two months.
If I have avocados.
That's coming and that's getting picked off the tree too early to equate for travel time opposed to going to the farmer's market and grab an avocado that was just picked yesterday. So that's what I'm talking about. Like there's things, and so the product is one. And then when you think about hustling, it's like, Okay, I had a dope house and you got all these young dudes on the block that also have dope sexes.
Like how do I.
Get the customer to walk past the convenient guy to come to me every time?
Right? How do I distinguish my product? You know what I mean, and so.
All these things start coming back to me, like, oh, man, I can utilize that shit in the restaurant, like focus on the product, like the base. And then when you have that, how do you distinguish your product from everyone else? At least full of restaurants? So how do you separate your product and your business from everyone else? And so those lessons that I learned in the streets I utilize and the restaurants, but just cooking, I had a whole lot to learn.
When we come back. Keith Corbin talks about how being exposed to fresh foods and learning to cook professionally helped him understand what his community needed, access to healthier meals. What did you learn at local about cooking properly?
Seeing me full timing shit. I learned a lot of vegetables. I learned a lot of herbs. I learned a lot of stuff because you know, growing up, a lot of of the ingredients came out of can garlic powder, onion powder, lowriesy. You know, like you didn't really work with raw product, so loco, I learned that how to deal, how to work with raw product. And then another thing, how to properly cook vegetables. Like in our community, we overcook vegetables.
We make everything into mush, right, we boil the heat, We boil the hell out. So what I'm saying, so no color. Yeah, So I learned a lot of that, you know. I learned a lot about how you know, steaming is better than boiling because through the baill you you boil broccoli and then you see the water's green.
That's because all of them nutrients is in the water now, right, Like, So I learned a lot in Loco.
Incredible. How long were you there?
Ultimately I started in twenty sixteen, probably a year and a half because I opened this restaurant in twenty eighteen, so just over.
A year, just over your half. And then you get it. Then you go up to then that shutters, that closes.
No Local Wats, and Local Wats was the last one to close.
So six months, not even six months, less than six months into Loco, I was actually join the executive body and be part of the expansion of Local and so I moved to the Bay Area and opened one in downtown Oakland, one in West Oakland, and then we circled around.
And open one in San Jose.
Amazing.
I flew to Jersey and met with Mayor Barock, now Barack Obama.
I was gonna say, wait, wait, wait a second man, Brock.
Yeah, Barock in Jersey because that was going to be a stop. I had a deal in place with Nipsey and Fats to open the second location in La off of fifty fourth in Crenshaw, right there by Krinshall High School, whereas you got the gas station at church and then the structure. So we was going to open one there and then unfortunately we was Fats untimely death kind of like ended that because it was his space, and then we lost nip So so.
You got asked him move, what do you think it was about you that made them think this is the right person to come up to the Bay area? And Daniel Patterson's like, you know, he's like a big deal. What do you think he saw on you to pull you up then to his to his restaurant group up in the Baby I'm.
Asked him that question all the time because at the time I was a game, banging coke, had of alcohol, putting in work, straddling the fence, like you know.
You still were you still in the streets?
I mean it was it was in a sense.
It wasn't an even in the desire to change the narrative in the legacy. It wasn't like I walked through a magic door. Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean. Like, it wasn't like you walk through a magic door. A lot of the mistakes that people make when they leave the street culture is how they exit.
Your exit can be your demise. You can't leave right away.
There's roles, you know, like people still depend on you, your leadership, your guidance, the relationship.
The love.
You know, you can't abandon, yeah, because then it's like you're turning your back, right, And so I still deal with my folks, you know, absolutely, just in a different capacity. You know, you go from putting in work with people to counseling people.
Guidance, and you know, you go to and it's just layers. Yeah, right, and so.
So you come out and you make this decision you want to change your life. First opportunity, You're gonna take whatever opportunity you can, and soinery then there's local absolutely, the next opportunity is running this restaurant group. And you're not sure what Daniel saw on you. What did you learn though? Going up to Oakland I imagine, did you you never probably never live in the Bay No.
I had.
Up until then, I had been to about twenty cities. But like selling drugs, you see a different part of the city. You know, people say they come to l all the time, but I'm like, which part? Right, La has two faces, It's two sides. So it's like, and that's what every city. So depending on what you're into, what your what your goal is, going into that city, like, you'll see one side of the city and then there's
a whole other side. So I traveled a lot selling drugs and been to a lot of cities, but I've seen a certain part of the city. But then through local I was able to see these cities in a different light. And so going to the Bay Area, it was for me it was like decompressing.
Right.
I was able to ship go to the stores. I was able to walk to the stores, you know. I was able to walk the blocks.
You know.
I was able to come outside with slippers on, you know, the simple things of.
Life without without without fear of.
Running into an violence. Not to say that Oakland didn't have his own shit going on.
Part of the equation.
I wasn't part and that's what people don't gather.
It's like, well, Oakland's still tough, and they're just yeah, but they not looking for me.
I don't look like them. I don't walk. So when that guy spinning the block looking for hisself, he's not going to see me.
Yeah, right past.
You know what I'm saying, Just like when I was spinning the block looking for someone who looked like me, the.
Guy with the backpacked the glasses. This that I'm that guy in Oakland.
Yeah, you know, I'm the guy they're gonna pass by like it was that weirdof I love it.
Yeah, yeah, let me read my pringles and shit.
That's a lowless man must have been. It was a release.
It was absolutely a load off. Absolutely a load off. But I was thirty four when I came on from prison.
By the time I moved to Oakland, I was thirty six going on thirty seven.
Bro. That was the first time I ever went walked into a whole foods. Wow.
The other first I've ever been to a farmer's market was in the Bay Area, and that was the first time I seen food come pre loved, pre loved, pre loved, man pre loved. Yeah, you wonder what I mean by that acidamn.
Questions free loved.
My mama was running the.
It's just you know at the farmer's market, you know people like literally put their hands in the soil growing it's food, cultivating this, picking this and bringing it to you. It's like, uh, it's a relationship with the food all the way through. They love it like you can like the love they're pointing to. They're caring for it. It's a child, right right, they're raising from they're raising up and then their gift.
They're bringing this to you. And then you have Whole Foods the food.
The same way like you got them in there, and they're in comparison to food flescing Boys Market. I mean, it's still a supermarket, right, and I choose Farmers Market over supermarkets all day.
But when I'm.
Shopping at Ralfs and Boys Market back in the day, and which is now food for less the quality or lack of quality that we had access to compare to what Whole Foods have to offer, Yeah, it's it's a drastic difference.
What was I like walking in the Whole Foods.
Man, you know those big old white barrels. I thought that was all free so man, I stuck my hand in there and was walking through whole foods popping turtles like the cheese is because you know how they you know, I'm used to ship being in cages. Yeah, you know, like you don't really have as wrapped up in rappers so things, you know, so what you just got, like you just got chocolate, I can just lift the lid up and I'm thinking they samples yeah you.
So, yeah, but that was my experience.
But I was looking, you know, just going through them, like damn, man, I wonder what my granny could have created if she had access to this, you know, if our community had access to this, what what can be created?
And what would our health look like?
Boom, that's what alto.
That's what the men you and the design you just asked the very question. Then I want to think and like they say that our number, the number one contributed to our health problems is our culture's food. And I am seeing the farmers' markets and the whole foods and what these other communities has access to.
I said, goddamn it, it's not our food.
It is the lack of resources and access we have on our community and the ingredients.
My grandmother had to start with.
So those can goods that's full of preservatives and salts and all that for cure and pickling and all. That's the shit that's unhealthy. Yes, but my grandmother will slave over the stove probably a bad term, would labor over the stove and tease all the love out of that food. She will pour love into that food, cooking it for hours and hours before we ate it. Right, But that didn't take away the unhealthiness of it, right, But what made it delicious was the love she poured into it.
And then here I am up here in the barrier, like, goddamn food come loved already? Yeah, what can she could create with this?
Wow?
And so that's when I started dreaming up a menu, you know, along with working in these various restaurants that Daniel had and learning techniques and seeing what the other chefs are doing and seeing exotic ingredients, and then I started to realize how diverse California is, the multicultural influences. And then I started thinking about California soul food, man, you know, like what that looked like. So taking something that I inherited, food that I grew up with, and
just keeping to the trend of our ancestors. Soul food in New Orleans is not the food that they made in West Africa. So on their journey, wherever they stopped, they created a dish. They created food from what they had based on what was available there. So we've been
doing farm the table, Doctor table. So when I started thinking about California soul food, it's like, I'm gonna just deframe and reframe what's already there and showcase the beautiful bounty that California has to offer, because that's what they did everywhere they stopped.
After the break, we get into how Keith was able to turn his hustling skills into becoming a successful restaurant tour How did you get into So you're in the Bay Area, Yeah, party you think you might do Alta in the Bay or did you know you had to come back?
Well, I la to do Alta.
I talked to Daniel when I started thinking about these these dishes and this concept, and I just asked him, like, you think by the time I'm forty, you'd be willing to open a restaurant with me partner?
And did you feel nervous asking that?
You just was like, oh no, I'm for nervous. Yeah, No, I'm for nervous at all. I've always been a guy to shoot my shot.
Yeah.
And so Daniel was like, sure, that's we can talk about that right up with three year business plan right there and hopes and dreams going.
Down the dream business planning.
Write no business plan, man, I ain't No, I don't know how to know where to start.
You know.
At the time, I'm like, man, I don't know where to start. You know, I don't write no business plan. I go to a nigga, get a sack.
I go to someone. Man.
Let me get a quarter piece right up. A business plan? No man, man, let me get a pound of weed right up? A business plan. No man, you get that and you figure it out, you know what I'm saying. And that's I just kept saying, how different things operate, Like you want to open a business, drop a plan. Let's go over the plan. No, I'm used to man, I got this house, he got some weed. Let me get a pair. Man, I'm gonna just take it to the house and selling figure it out, you know what I mean.
But business plans some kind of deterred me.
And so about two months later, Daniel walked into the restaurant in Oakland. It was like, man, remember, let me talk to you. So he put me out the kitchen and he was like, you think you want to go back down to La. Like of course, he was like that concept you were thinking about I may have an opportunity to do it in LA. We found a building and someone's giving the money to open a restaurant, and I think your idea will be great.
There you ready like hell yeah, but like, hell no, ain't no way if you ask for things. I think sometimes we ask for things knowing that we can't get it right, and then when they.
Say sure, you're like, oh shit, what have I stepped into? But yeah, I wasn't going to say no to an opportunity to own something I don't know.
This is kind of like the same getting out of prison, wanting to change things, not exactly, not knowing the exact steps. It's like now you're in that same boat, like you've been given an opportunity. You don't know the exact steps necessarily open a successful.
Restaurant, not at all all.
So what was the process? Then?
It was a long process.
We definitely invested in hiring people to work alongside me.
You know different chefs to you know, one came in and helped teach me through the opening process, lining up vendors and setting up accounts and all this stuff.
And then when we opened, you had one work alongside with me too, you know, hiring, which I knew how to do, but hiring and managing and prepro to all this stuff right, And then Daniel and I worked together on a design and the concept and it was just like it was a lot to learn.
I had to learn the facts.
Did you do the business plan?
No, didn't do the good round plan? Man, I did it my way. You know the plan I know that works. Did you get in there? You figure it out?
When did this place open?
This place open October eleventh, twenty eighteen.
What is this part of your journey? Tire you?
You know, Daniel and I talked it over, and it's like, how would it feel to take folks that has come in work theirself up? And then when you have another opportunity to open another restaurant, you take those leaders in your restaurant and you give them ownership in that next project, and then you keep doing that. Right, And now this industry or this path where I didn't see no, example becomes full of examples for people that that's trying to
make a change. Right, can see this industry or this path that I've taken as a way out, as a way to rise above right, and not just me being an inspiration, but now feeling you know what I mean. It's like I'm standing here, but depending on your struggle, you can be so far away that I'm a blur, right, But if I continue to put people alongside me, then it becomes this brick wall that no matter how far away you are, you can see us. You're going to see it, right, and you can look down and say, damn.
I can like I can do it.
It's incredible.
That's what my purpose and goal is now. And I can say that I'm dis close to success on that right.
Why that close?
Because we have a lease in place that's going back and forth with the lawyers where I will be well, not I, but out to the team me being included, where be able to take three of our managers and they will own this next restaurant that we're opening.
Wow, So the owner along with you guys to.
Become an employee to an employer, a partner with us. So that will be dope and so continuing to do those type of things.
That's why I measure my success.
How did it feel for you to be part of an ownership team? I mean.
It changed my life, Like it led me to be able to write a book, to build a house, not just buy a house, damn to build a house. It's been allowed me to be able to travel. One of the number one contributors to crime is poverty. You get rid of poverty, you get rid of crime, right, And I've learned that because shit from where I said, Nigga, you couldn't get me to sell a rock or to rob a bank. Yeah, you take it all away and I'm starving. Might be some missing persons, said, I'm just
getting one on it, right. So if you can remove people from poverty, bro, yeah, remove them from poverty and set them up for some type of generational wealth, we slowly began to make change things, you know what I'm saying. So for ownership for me was big and very important. It gave me a pride in myself. It gave me something that I can leave and I want to share that.
Feeling because they don't know what their pactice.
Man, how many folks I've seen that from my projects that didn't run the streets, went to college, just stayed in school, went to college, and then wounded up right back into projects because there's no network or no infrastructure in place for them to tap into nothing.
There's nothing.
Dog. That's why I started the show. I went to college. You know, my family about a Eujima village not too far from Watts. Oh yeah, no, that's a gun and yeah. And you know my dad was like, and my mom especially, gotta give her credit to You're going to college. The's no question, like you're going to college whatever. When you get to college, you think you made it. Anybody's like, oh a lot, everyone's getting banking, like they're getting Oh
they're they're gonna go to Bank of my Marrie. Oh they're gonna go to New York to do with chase banking. I didn't even know, like what.
Because I think we chase after what what success looked like for white people. Yeah, like their kids going off to college and getting in law firms and all that. You gotta think great great grandfathers set that shit up long time ago, right, set up this infrastructure a long time ago for their siblings and for their future generations to be.
Plugged in and tapped in.
We don't have that infrastructure and place, and so it's a small part that we do for for me to go to trade Tech, because I'm at trade Tech next week speaking and teaching and looking to hire.
Right.
So, so we're infrastructure that's in place that can catch you when you come out, so you don't got to spend time going to college and then go right back to the block and infiluational time.
Right And while you're doing that, meanwhile, one day you're gonna be that great great grandfather. That's because you're giving your daughter a different look at life.
But I'm gonna be yes.
But I want to be that great great grandfather for my community, for my folks. It's not even just about my kids.
You want me, you need it immediately now.
You want to see I want. I probably don't even see the change. I probably don't even see the change, but I'm gonna start it now. Though I'm gonna start it now, I may not witness what it become, but that don't mean I'm not gonna start it now. Like giving folks entrepreneurship and ownership, giving folks opportunity, giving people jobs, going back down, talking and encouraging, being tangible and showing
you what success can be coming from here. I'm not going to not do that because I can't see the results, right. I just hope someone picks it up. You know, in any event that I leave deserves someone picks it up, right. And that's the only thing the great grant grandfather did was start setting it up for his kids, and then they can pick it up and pick it up and pick it up right.
I just wouldn't do that for my community. Do it now?
Look, man, I know you got to open this restaurant, so I want to keep you too long, but it's till more. I want to ask you. So when the next restaurant opens, let's do it again.
Man. Yeah, we never got to the book.
Look to it. There's so much. Look, there's a lot to get you. We're gonna reference it, don't We're gonna reference the California Soul. You know what I'm saying.
Did you read it? I didn't read it because you keep looking over there getting the next.
Now you keep looking at it because it's cool. It's right there. I've been looking at it. I came in here and it's amazing.
It's some promotion.
Yes, sir, I loved it.
Man, do you relate to it?
I relate to it a lot. Man, there's a lot of you.
Didn't even grow up in the streets, did you No, but you can relate to it from it.
Yeah.
I just was what a lawyer friend and he literally was talking to me and he was like, man, this book needs to be like some part to educate people.
You know.
He's like, he read it and they helped him understand would his clients be going through in the county jail? And I just hope that this book at some point people just realize it's for them.
Your story was great. Is you get a little bit of everything. You get that and you get the redemption. You know, it's the redemption arc man, And it's a beautiful thing. And you've built a beautiful place singing and yeah, this is I mean really, when you think about the steps, it's like you're at the beginning, like it's crazy, like at the beginning, man, like.
I started late, but at the beginning.
You're shamed me. Man, I'm coming in. I'm gonna I'm gonna come, bring the family, I'm gonna come somepport man, I'm gonna come support man. Please, We're gonna be in all right. California Soul is Keith Corbin's book. Let me repeat that again. California Soul is Keith Corbin's book out now wherever you buy your books, you hear that, Keith. I'm plugging your book, California Soul. Since the interview, I have eaten at the restaurant and let me tell you,
it's incredible. The food, the ambiance, location, it's all amazing. And to think it all came from the hands of someone's society would normally have counted out. It's a beautiful story and I'm so glad Keith put it down in a book and I'm wax with us. California Soul, Thanks Keith. Started from the Bottom is produced by David Jaw, edited by Keyshaw Williams, Engineered by Bentaliday, booked by Laura Morgan
with production help from Lea Rose. The show is executive produced by Jacob Goldstein, who's not all of in the videos for Pushkin Industries. Our theme music's by Bent Holliday and David Jaw featuring Anthony Aggs and Savannah Joe Lack. Listen to Started from the bottom. Wherever you get your podcasts and if you want, ad free episodes available one week early sign up for Pushkin Plus. Check out pushkin dot fm or the Apple show page for more information.
If you like your show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. I'm justin Richmond.