#395 - Thermal Reactive Umbrella

0:00Evan Troxel: Do we ever really know what we're talking about? Debatable. So, real-time follow-up, not real-time follow-up, slow follow-up. I've heard from a little birdie that the next AIA conference is actually going to be Los Angeles, not Philadelphia. No, no, no. It is Philadelphia first. Oh, okay. Then it will be Los Angeles. Oh, interesting. Which is still, like you said, probably too far away from me. You know how it ping-pongs back and forth between East Coast, West Coast, East Coast, West Coast. You're right. Now that I think about it, that did say 28 or something like that. What is the – what's the – LA 28, West Coast, Best Coast.

0:39So we've got – what's the version of East Coast for that? Is there East Coast, Beast Coast? What is it?

0:51Evan Troxel: Oh, it's just East Coast meaning that we've got like all of the history and, you know. No, like what's your call sign, though? Come on. No. You don't know. What kind of East Coaster are you? Oh, my gosh. Jesus. So, yeah, they ping pong back and forth, and that makes sense. Okay, so it's going to be bloods. Look at you. Gangster. Gangster Cormac over here. You have a very gangster-sounding name. Cormac Phelan, yes. That's very gangster. Maybe it's gangster in the potato famine from Ireland or something. Right. So LA 28, same as the Olympics. LA is firing on all cylinders. Wait, Summer Olympics in LA?

1:46Evan Troxel: LA 28, right? I believe so. Oh, my Lord. That's going to be a nightmare in L.A. if they're even remotely close to the same. What are you talking about? What are you talking about? I mean, just being in L.A. in its own right. There's no traffic in L.A. No, no, no. There's nothing that could. All right, so now I'm going to have to look this up. Well, here's the interesting thing. They're not, from what I understand, L.A. is not building any new venues either. Why should they? Unlike. Well, and I think this is a good idea, especially when you've only got a couple of years left. But that was an interesting decision that I think most cities think they have to, right?

2:27Evan Troxel: The thing that I love stuff, I will say this, the thing that I did love about the U.S. hosting, you know, basically North America, but, you know, predominantly the games were held in U.S. venues. but the U.S. hosting the World Cup is, they used all of our, you know, like stadiums that were already, you know, built for, you know, in and around. So there didn't have to be like this purpose-built, you know, venue, you know, kind of like what we had with, you know, in Dubai when we had it in, you know, Brazil, and they were like mowing down rainforests and stuff to build these things. And then it was just like this would be the only time that would ever really be used because of the area that they put it in.

3:13Evan Troxel: And that was the thing that I did appreciate about the fact that we already had 1 ,001 stadiums for... Which one do you want to choose? I mean, even my university hosted a World Cup event, one of the early friendly games. I mean, they had Argentina played at Auburn University. So that was actually pretty cool that we have those things. The L.A. area has lots of venues to be used, right? But it will also mean that it is very spread out. The thing that I love about the opening ceremony, because I'm looking at it right now, is in the L.A. Memorial Coliseum, which the L.A., for those of you who know L.A.

3:55Evan Troxel: Memorial Coliseum, Rose Bowl, whatever you want to call it. No, those are two different things. Sorry, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right. Real time follow-up. The word came right out of my mouth. You're like, no, dummy, they're different. But L.A. Memorial Coliseum was built for an Olympics. It was. Yeah, like when? In the 60s? Hasn't it... Isn't like the... Where's Wikipedia when you need it? I'm about to find out right now. Quick. It was built for the Jeopardy theme music up during this part. L.A. Memorial Coliseum was built open in May 1st, 1923. Okay. And it was built for the Olympics, huh?

4:37And it was built for, if Wikipedia would hurry up,

4:43Evan Troxel: Exposition Park. I thought this information was supposed to be at your fingertips. Come on. I know, right? It was built as part of the Exposition Park.

4:56Evan Troxel: This is not fast. This is not what you, you know, but it has hosted. So it hosted 1932, 1984, and 1910. Oh, that's right. The 84 Olympics. Mary Lou Retton, right? She was the star in my young years. According to this, it was commissioned in 1921 as a memorial to the Los Angeles veterans of World War I, which was kind of interesting that there was there's across this would be something that you know for like maybe a nerd history lesson later on down the road when we actually do some research instead of just reading it on the fly out of wikipedia but you know there was some there was a lot of different war memorials created um you know both after world war one and world war two and some of them were created as like stadiums a thing yeah like a venue yeah place you would go Yeah, not just a standing memorial kind of a thing.

6:00Yeah, that's interesting.

6:04Evan Troxel: Every time I see the Memorial Coliseum, I always just think of, like, chariot races because of the way it's designed. Yeah, yeah, right. I've actually never been there for anything. I have been to the Rose Bowl, which is, yeah, like we'll say it again, a different place, not the same place. Yes. So I saw you, too, play at the Rose Bowl. That's my Rose Bowl Hall of Fame. And I've gone to swap meets there, so that's a fun thing. Which tour? Oh, that was probably what came after the Elevation tour. What was the? Yeah. Where's Wikipedia when you need it?

6:46Because I saw the Elevation tour at, back then, it was like the Honda Arena. It was more of an arena tour. It wasn't a stadium tour. And so they went back to the stadium tour after that. And that's when I went to the Rose Bowl. The few. So I went to the Joshua Tree Tour. Yeah, I missed that one, man. That's a bummer for me. It also shows how old you are. It does show how old I am.

7:11Evan Troxel: And let's see. And I went to the Zoo TV Tour. Elevation Tour. That would have been the Vertigo Tour. Yeah, okay. So then what's after that one? Is that what you're saying to Vertigo Tour? Is After Elevation. And After Vertigo is the U2 360 Tour. Yeah. Which one did you go to? I want to say it was the Vertigo Tour. I think it was Vertigo. Yeah. And who opened for them? I want to say, okay, so yeah, like this is back in the Elevation Tour, I think it was No Doubt of all bands, right? Local band to Anaheim, which is where they were playing, which I think was kind of interesting. And then at the Rose Bowl, it was the Black Eyed Peas opened for them.

8:02They always have a very different kind of opening act. And not just the Black Eyed Peas, but the Black Eyed Peas did a cover song of Welcome to the Jungle by the Guns N' Roses. The Guns N' Roses. The Guns N' Roses. Not Guns N' Roses. the Guns N' Roses and Slash was in the Black Eyed Peas playing the guitar solo of course it was fun, it was super fun

8:32Evan Troxel: the ZTV tour that I went to was Big Audio Dynamite and Public Enemy oh nice, see yeah I like what they do there that's unexpected right so I'm going to tell you So this was Birmingham, Alabama at Legion Field in Birmingham, Alabama. When Public Enemy was coming out, Stadium Goes Dark. You guys can look it up. If you don't believe me, you guys can look it up. Is it on video? Is it on YouTube? It might be. I don't know. I mean, this was 92, so, you know. YouTube wasn't around yet, but somebody might have had their camcorder with them. Somebody might have had their camcorder on. So then a spotlight shines up into basically the rigging up above the stage.

9:26Evan Troxel: And slowly but surely this figure starts lowering down from the rafters. And once you see what it is, you're just like, holy shit. Oh, I think you've told me about this before. I think it was a hung Klansman. Yeah. Yeah. Making a statement. That's how you open your act. That's how you open your act in Birmingham, Alabama. You know, basically making the statement saying, we see you, we know who you are. It was so incredible. You just stunned everybody in the crowd from the beginning. Everybody was in shock. Absolutely. Wow. Absolutely. So I'm looking at the main set list, and then there was like four on course.

10:18The internet as an archive machine, I mean, I think it's kind of getting ruined, but it is kind of cool. Like that's a thing. It's actively being ruined right now by AI because it's just making shit up.

10:31Evan Troxel: Well, I will say one thing. It did remind me when I actually, it's just like I couldn't remember when exactly did I go to the Joshua Tree Tour. And thankfully, YouTubeTours.com here can tell me that when they came to Tampa, Florida, was in the third leg. I'm looking here. Why am I blanking on it? Yeah, it's like actually more information than you need. What leg of the tour was it? I was 17 years old. It was December 5th, 1987. I was 17. Tampa, Florida at Tampa Stadium. That's when I went to that tour. The rock and roll show. The rock and roll show. Nice. Very cool. But this is actually, if you're interested, just do actually go to youtubetours.com.

11:32Evan Troxel: And what they've got is they, what they also have is like what releases were represented, you know, for that particular thing. You know, it's got links to all the different, You know, like either videos or whatever. And, you know, yeah, that would be, it's kind of cool. I mean, for, you know, a very generic looking, you know, thing. So all of this to say the AIA 28 is going to be back in Los Angeles. Yes. And so the, back to, it's the Olympic Games Open. Opening ceremony is July 14th, 2021. Okay. So this will be before that. They're usually in June. Yeah. So it's at both LA Memorial Coliseum and SoFi Stadium.

12:23Evan Troxel: And see, that's the thing is like with, you know, SoFi now being there as well as the Coliseum, as well as the Rose Bowl, as well as all of the university venues and things like that. Does LA really need to build new facilities for this? Yeah, they have built. SoFi is not that old. So, okay, so this is an interesting, I guess this is the episode of Random Facts, because that's where we're at so far. I just saw something recently, I didn't know this about SoFi, and I've seen some really cool talks about SoFi and about how they did the dome. and like I went to a facades conference and they talked about the dome.

13:05It was very cool. And if it's not a fully enclosed dome, it's got a big hole in the middle. But did you know that that stadium is sunk 100 feet? That's what I read. So I haven't fact-checked this.

13:20Evan Troxel: I think one time when I was out in the area and had driven past it, the thing about like, you know, some of these, So if you go and look at the Meadowlands in New York, that looks, it sits at grade and it sits up so high. It looks monstrous. Yeah, yeah. But then you look at some of these like SoFi and it doesn't look as imposing because it's actually lowered into the ground, which makes a lot of sense if you can do it. Oh, look at this. Wikipedia has a dark mode. It's fantastic. I didn't know that. That's great. Okay, so back on Wikipedia. This is our companion. Everybody, if you're listening, please pull up Wikipedia and you can follow along.

14:10Yeah, so HKS. Let's make this architectural. HKS is the architect of record for this. And so the canopy is made up of 302 ETFE panels, and 46 of them can be open to provide ventilation. Okay, I didn't know that. I thought they were open the whole time. But the interesting thing about – we'll get back to the 100-foot thing in a minute. It's a cable net, okay? And I think – interesting. Like, this was a structural presentation about that and how they figured this out. But did you know, like, because of thermal expansion and contraction, like, the cable net is the solution. It actually just sits on top of the structure.

14:49It's not fastened to the structure. I'm sure it goes through, you know, guides. But it just sits there and like a tennis racket in different climates would feel more tension or less just depending on, you know, how much moisture is in the air or whatever. That's kind of the idea behind this roof is that it expands and contracts. And you can actually, I guess, hear those cables kind of moving across the structure sometimes because they're moving, right? They're not tied down.

15:19Evan Troxel: So it's sort of creating kind of like this thermal reactive umbrella. Yeah. It hovers over the top. That's how they should have described it. Thermal. Write that down and trademark that. You should buy thermalreactiveumbrella.com right now while you still can register the domain. And that's going to be the episode name, too. Yeah, exactly. Okay, so it has a 70 ,000 spectator capacity for most events. And so coming back to this 100-foot sunkenness, do you know why it is? Because if you drive by it on the freeway, it's a low-slung. It doesn't appear like other stadiums, right? Other stadiums are sitting on top of the ground, and they're enormous.

16:12And this is 100 feet down. It's because of LAX. It's because of the flight path.

16:16Evan Troxel: Oh, really? Yeah. Well, I mean, honestly, that makes sense. I mean, one of the interesting things about, let's just throw Camden Yards baseball stadium for the Baltimore Orioles. It's kind of bowled into the, you know, the surrounding ground. Doesn't seem as high as other baseball stadiums. And in a way, when you're inside and you're kind of like staring out, you're some of the locate, you know, some of the locations where you're sitting, like, say, like the second tier deck or the upper deck. Like, it doesn't feel like you're way, way up in the sky. You're actually, like, more, you know, you're closer to street level than otherwise.

16:57Evan Troxel: That looks a little bit more rigid than a thermal reactive umbrella. I got to get in there again. I always thought it was very interesting because, you know, you're right. It kind of feels like it's an open air, you know, stadium and everything. Since we're shouting out architects and all that other stuff, we might as well go ahead and shout out John and Donald Parkinson, who were the original designers of the Coliseum. Oh, okay. And then DLR Group did the renovations. All right. Shout out. Look at these L.A. architects. Yeah. Yeah, very cool. Very cool. Yeah, so you're going to do another cross-country road trip to L.A.

17:54in 20 years? Now I'm going to have to figure it out.

17:59Evan Troxel: If I go, I'll fly. No. Here's what we should do, Cormac. I'll go to the East Coast ones, and you don't. Okay. You go to the West Coast ones, and I don't. And we're like ships passing in the night every other year. Like, yeah, we'll just miss each other at each event. We'll represent the podcast, but just one of us. And we never have to see each other in person. I had a conversation with somebody in our office who she's part of. She works on a couple of different volunteer stuff for the AIA, both the AIA and the conference. and we were kind of lamenting the fact that this is like yes philly did just have one la i mean i think it's been a while since la had one right i don't remember the last time there oh it was supposed to happen during covet but it did oh okay it got canceled yeah okay um but it was it just seemed as if you know there's other cities that we can start to you know showcase You know, I don't know if anybody's ready for Detroit yet, which I don't know why not.

19:14Is it the AIA's not ready for Detroit or the people going aren't ready for Detroit? Who's they? Who's they?

19:22Evan Troxel: I don't know who they is, but I mean, it would be really interesting to have a, you know, a second, whatever you want to call it, a second tier city or whatever, hosting one of those. What's the attendance like now? I've read widely varying numbers this year. I read somebody posted like 6 ,000 and somebody else posted 15. And I want to say, you know, it probably can't be that hard to find venues that host that many people. Oh, yeah. Yeah. They've got to be in more places than the eight cities that the – According to this – According to Wikipedia. According to, well, AI overview, it surpassed 13 ,000 architects and design professionals for the 2026.

20:13I thought six sounded super low, but 15, I mean, that might include all of the event people and vendors and everything. I don't know. So I'm more interested in the attendance by architects than -

20:28Evan Troxel: Well, yeah, what's funny is that Boston says 13 ,000. The AIA 2024, which was in D.C., was 13 ,000. It's the exact same 13 ,000 people. Well, yeah, exactly. Let me go to 23. 15 ,000 people in San Francisco. Okay, so here's a question for you. let's look at the current state of the economy and hiring and layoffs and, you know, just inside baseball kind of stuff with, you know, the Billings Index and stuff. You keep your eye on that, right? So what do you think that that does? Because we're definitely in kind of, you know, a downward trend, right? We are right now. We are in a downward trend. And so what does that do for events like this?

21:19I think that also puts the brakes on attendance because it costs money. It costs quite a bit of money to go to these things.

21:28Evan Troxel: And the interesting thing about that is I think, you know, this was even something that was discussed as with one of our friends of the show and our friend, Evelyn, last year's AIA president, talking about the, I guess, how much money people spend for the conference and traveling to the conference and everything else, and the bang for the buck, plus also our memberships and all this other stuff, and how very out of skew that is with the reality of what's going on in the profession. So you bring up a good point. It's like where is the job markets right now? where is the um the um i'm looking right now it's like career companies index oh yeah yeah yeah good good call and um we're we're doing lots of real-time info searching today we don't normally do this i mean this is kind of a completely different show this is like We actually have focused on architecture type stuff.

22:40Evan Troxel: Well, kind of. Oh, you can subscribe to the AIA Deltec ABI, the Architecture Building Index, for$384 a year. You got there quicker than I did. Jeez. Because that is a weird bedfellow there with old Deltec. And now that I think, doesn't Deltec own the specs now? Yeah, yeah. What is it? I can't remember the name. It's not Spec. Is it SpecLink? I don't know. It doesn't matter. So, you know, a friend of the show, Jeff Potter, won't like that. Who works there. But Dell Tech, you know, because they do the timesheets, they do the lots of firms are running on their software. They have, I would assume.

23:29I don't mean to say they're grabbing everybody's information, but they do have some insight into that side of the story. I'm sure they have a way to survey their people out there, their users, to get that kind of information. Yes. Yeah, so from every once in a while, you'll see a screenshot of the chart, the graph go in a certain direction. It'll show up on LinkedIn or something, and that'll give everybody kind of a clue, but it doesn't have all the depth of the report. Right.

24:08Evan Troxel: Yeah, I was trying to find a more current.

24:15I have a very clicky keyboard.

24:17Evan Troxel: You do.

24:21Evan Troxel: what i'm finding right now unfortunately is all data from the past year and not um anything anything current but you know what's interesting is it shows like the the downward trend as of december you know the abi score um december 2025 was 48.5 And I can only just assume that it has, you know, trended south from there because we're seeing it in the practice. So, yeah, I'm looking at this chart that I found on LinkedIn, and it just says that firm billings remain soft. So billings are – You can attest. They're either above 50 or below 50, and a score of 50 means what? I don't know exactly. But it hasn't been above 50 in a year.

25:25Yeah. Yeah. May it was down quite a bit, and then June it was still down. But the blue line design contracts did go up in June. So anyway, you know, there's what's the word? The word is uncertainty. This is what everybody keeps saying. The word is definitely uncertainty. The word is definitely uncertain. Buildings remain weak at architecture firms, according to the AIA, in July 22nd of this year, which is only two days ago as of this recording. You can't. So it says that the ABI was 47.3. so it's higher than the may score but still still yeah may may score was uh 44.5 yes it was three three points higher so and with the with the big bold uh headline says

26:26Evan Troxel: business conditions worsened at architecture firms in may there you go yeah can you attest to that I can attest to that, yes. Yeah. And I can attest that to, like, several different firms with other friends that I know who, you know, just feel worried. Feel, you know, that going back to that job, the job confidence, which seems very low. Yeah. And it is below 50%. for their job confidence. So, I mean, the whole thing right now, I mean, is very worrisome. And it's, you know, as we know, current economic conditions aren't really helpful in all of that. You know, there's the scare of things like tariffs and things like that.

27:28Evan Troxel: Then what's the impact on the building construction industry and the building materials and the availability of the building materials, because people will, you know, very, very similar to what, you know, conditions that we saw during COVID, where, you know, people would either because of, you know, certain economic things back then were just closing shops down. But now everybody's like making a run on purchasing things to lock in prices now, which basically puts the stress on the manufacturers because they're trying to sell things that they haven't built yet. Oh, wow. And so that's a crazy concern in its own right.

28:13Evan Troxel: And then you see this like, oh, well, if everybody's out here rushing to buy things, then obviously we've got something for them. We can still say, yeah, you can buy it, but remember when I said it was going to cost you$15 ,000. Well, now it's going to be$50 ,000, and it's still going to take you X amount of time to get it. Or it's going to take you longer to get it. You're like, well, crap, you know, it can only go up higher. And so, you know, we'll go ahead and pay this massive premium, but you're still not going to get it any faster. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can feel it in really normal ways, too.

28:48For example, my wife and I went to Trader Joe's the other day just to pick up a few things. literally at checkout it was half of a bag of groceries half of a bag of groceries was 50 bucks half a bag it used to be like you could basically estimate like a full bag of groceries was like 20 25 dollars yeah right yeah and at the end because you could say okay there was four bags of groceries it was 100 bucks now it's half a bag for 50 bucks obviously it depends what you're buying right but But things have gone up. I bought a slide for a drawer in my refrigerator one year ago, and it's already failed.

29:28I went back to look to see how much I paid for it and how much it's going for now. It was$21. Now it's$31. One year, same part, probably made at the same time. Right? Not even – this is just inflation. That's just inflation.

29:48Evan Troxel: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I mean, I went to, you know, we've got a graduation party coming up for the girl who went on the road drive with me. And so we went to Costco. Woman. She is, I mean, she's my child, so. Oh, she's going to be my baby. But now I will admit that I don't necessarily, you know, shop at Costco too much. But this was just one cart, one cart. And it was just filled with food. It was filled with food and stuff. But those are big carts, let's be honest. They are big carts. They're Costco carts. Do you want to venture a guess? $300. You said close to$500. You're right. And it wasn't like any, it was just like, what extravagance did we put in here?

30:43Evan Troxel: Yeah. You know, and you're looking at it and you're just like, there's no extravagance here. And just since we joined Costco, which hasn't been that long, to now, I mean, the cost increase of just some things that normal things that we've purchased there over the year have gone up pretty dramatically. I mean, hell, my go-to, which here is, in my own personal opinion, here is my metrics for inflation and the impact on inflation is Aldi. I love going to Aldi. Aldi's very inexpensive. Dude, remember that Aldi that we went to in Boston? Oh, my goodness. That was a different... See, that was... Wasn't that like the first time you've been to an Aldi?

31:29Evan Troxel: No, it wasn't. That's why I was so shocked. Oh, my gosh. That Aldi looked like a war zone. It looked like a war zone. Yeah. Thank you. I mean... Was it Jinx? Yeah. It was. That was an experience in that zone. um but okay so you you love going to aldi how much love going love love going to aldi and i can say that i could fill a grocery you know i used to be able to fill a full grocery cart at aldi um for roughly around like 200 dollars and we're you know two to you know maybe 250 and we're talking about like a whole lot of bags completely filled and more recently you know it's been in the 350 range and you're just like this is insane because like people are using aldi as like you know the cost you know effective you know shopping to be able to go and get food and when even all these becoming not cost effective i mean there's there's there's something wrong with it and that's the impact that we're seeing on on even um you know on our industry you know um because that what what's What's the most recent mortgage interest rates?

32:37Oh, my gosh.

32:42Let's go look at Bankrate. Bankrate.com. That's a good, solid website to go look at. We are at 30-year fixed, 6.74%. Yep.

32:56Evan Troxel: 6.74%. Yeah. man i was looking to see because i so a lot of times people will use in my position you know able to use uh you know the va backed you know mortgage uh mortgage loan for a more affordable and lower rate and their their current rate right now is 6.8 to 6.36 wow and the standard conventional i guess this makes sense is 6.66 so so yeah so they're pretty close i i was i said mine mine chose 6.74 which is even a little higher and then you know the sneaky way around this is um like with auto rate auto loan rates right now now the rate you can you can pause it if you need to yeah okay we'll pause it hey i'm recording where's your recording sign you need to have a recording sign on come on red light Rochelle I'm recording she didn't know no she didn't alright so let's see I thought they were gone they didn't even hear them come back yeah what are auto loan rates right now

34:39new car loan rates 3.39 I don't believe that I don't believe that at all. I don't believe that. Yeah, so the trick that I was seeing with auto loan rates is like it used to be this percent for three to five years, but now it's just like defaults to seven years to make it look like the car payment's affordable. So it's like seven years. Just pay a little longer. Yeah. Gad.

35:09Evan Troxel: So according to AI overview, it is 6.8 to 6.9 for a standard 60-month financing for new cars. Yeah. Yeah. With promotional or credit union rates starting as low as 4.5. I mean, that's not unreasonable. That's not 80s rates. No. Rates, 80s rates. Well, now according to LendingTree.com, if you want to start doing it based off of your credit score, which we can talk about that scam, it gets pretty disastrous. It goes from 6 to 22. Yeah, you only get to see the number for people with 800s, right? Right, right. Yeah. You get to see that number for free. If you have perfect, stellar, absolutely amazing credit, this is what you're going to get.

36:08Evan Troxel: But you? But you? No. Not you. You don't actually get the point at me. I actually do have a perfect credit score. All right. But there you go. I've got one thing going for me. Somehow. That's nice. There you go. Pay it off every month, every month forever. Just do that. There you go. You're in the sixes. Mm-hmm. All right. So you got any architecture for the audience today? I don't think we do. I don't know. I mean, we talked about some architecture, right? We did. Stadiums that housed stuff. Barely. Stuff? Yeah, that's true. Whatever. Barely. Sometimes, you know, you need to kind of just take your mind off of it.

37:07I know. It's just good to have like a regular conversation, right, that just goes wherever it goes. So, I mean, that's basically how this podcast works anyway, people.

37:16Evan Troxel: Yeah. So, what we're hoping for is to see all of you in Philadelphia. Oh, are you making a commitment now? Probably. Probably not, you know, Evan, because he'll be cultivating his poison oak at that time of year. It is weird, though.

37:42Evan Troxel: It is actually much earlier than it has been in the past, which is weird. It will be May 19th through the 22nd. Oh, really? Interesting. Which is, which is. I'm going to put it on the calendar right now as we speak. May 19th. Yeah. That's crazy. So it is, it is very odd to be that early, especially since, you know, this is also, you know, around the time of like, you know, commencement time and other things. Oh. You know, there's all sorts of stuff going on. Right. um so like you know you know i might as well go ahead and look up and see when the um my commencement for the school i'm teaching at will be you have to go to those you don't have to go to those i don't have to go like to like you like to go sure yeah i mean they just put in a whole lot of yes you get to wear one of those fancy robes with all the extra decorations if because because you're a professor so funny enough i could if i actually like let them you know know in advance or something that i wanted to do that uh but my favorite thing is actually like i will the last two times that i went i stood um kind of like on the path as they were like leaving you know as the students are kind of like filing out and you know um once they like catch you know catch me in the corner of their eye and stuff and then they start like pointing at me and waving and all that other stuff and that's so cool you know it's just like you get to stand in that spot that's a good i get this i get to stand in that spot um so you know like i can't i can't like you know not do that no i'm still trying to figure out when the uh see if it collides it probably will it probably will i mean based on what you just said because you just jinxed it it's gonna be there at the same time you're gonna have to pick who's more important students i mean that's easy because it i mean it funny it really does it ends it ends

40:11Evan Troxel: it ends in May January through May for that one and I'm looking to see if I can find it no that is 25, 26

40:35Evan Troxel: where's my music you're gonna have to put that in yourself dang it oh it doesn't say when commencement in the spring is are you typing Cormac to add music yep cool no it doesn't say but I guarantee it's probably going to be in the at the same time which will really suck because you know because we actually already um there it is there we are

41:19commencement oh no may 1st wow that's oh that's early that's way early dang

41:32Evan Troxel: because the classes start on the 11th of January and the last one is April 30th. Interesting. Well, all right then. I guess I'll have to go to that. Oh, you're going to have to be there. You have to be there so I can stop answering the question, where's Evan? Okay, so back to this idea of how much it costs to go to one of those. We don't even have to pay to get in, right, because we're press. I want to say it still costs each one of us like$1 ,500 to go to that, to go to one that's somewhere, right, that's not in your own hometown. It's never going to be in my hometown. It's probably not going to be in your hometown.

42:25So you're talking$1 ,500 just to go, and then you've got to, if you want to do all the other fun stuff, you've got to sign up for tours, and those cost money, and you've got to pay to get into the thing, and that costs money. I mean, you really could look at it as an expense versus an investment. so it is interesting what that show is competing with it's competing with a lot of things in a lot of architects minds because a lot of architects look at that as an expense or you know if they're going there to get their CEs for example or whatever

43:08Evan Troxel: they could get those CEs for a heck of a lot cheaper than going to a free yep so yeah I don't know I don't know how they do it when the economy is the way that it is. It is more of a nice to have, not a need to have kind of a thing. Right. And what will be interesting is to see after this year, you know, this billing cycle this year, just see if there is the impact. You know, because obviously, you look at the, you know, so I started looking at the past attendance and at least just what was published. And the biggest attendance was Chicago right after the, after COVID, you know, when all of the restrictions started lifting.

44:00Evan Troxel: And of course, thanks Chicago. It's where I got COVID. Exactly. I went through the entire, I went through all the entire COVID and both you and I got COVID from that. Right. Yeah, nasty architects. But, you know, that was because everybody was just looking to get out, you know, and, you know, a good architectural city to, you know, go and visit. It sure was, yeah. It was great.

44:31Evan Troxel: But, you know, oh, and apparently, you know, it's going to go back to New York as well. after yeah i think after la um which you know you and i already know that but but anyway so so back to that you know it's it's it it peaked high and now it's sort of like you know like going slowly back down um to kind of like they were on the 13 000 range um and that's like you know all attendees and stuff and so that's not necessarily just architects so it would really be interesting to just isolate that for by just architects um but you know based off of you know like right now you know there was a strong billing um index last year so that if you know people were still kind of like riding that um that's why you know there was still the 13 000 you know and that you know will should get some accurate numbers to be quite honest with you but with this one I think you're right I think you're right that you know it will be very very interesting to see you know is you know Philly an architectural draw you know for people to go to I mean I think so I like Philly but that's just because you know it's familiar to me but you know I felt like it was that I felt like it was a great draw architecturally I mean obviously there's a lot of historical stuff there but there's a lot of great newer stuff as well, right?

46:00Yeah. We got to really spend some time at the Barnes Foundation. And there's many examples. Here's what my idea was, and I told this to my wife. She was actually interested in this. Because she said, you know, it would be really great if we took some of the kids and went to the East Coast and did like the whole, you know, battlefield tour, the historical stuff. I said, well, the AIA conference is going to be in Philadelphia. like what if we had a reason to go but then you know combined all that and and did that stuff and she was actually interested in that so we might do an extended trip next year if we if we can pull it off i'm still gonna throw in some asterisks because i'm not gonna commit to anything

46:47Evan Troxel: should i fuel up the old uh 12 passenger van to give you guys tours yeah if you can be the tour guide, that would be amazing. You know I would. Yeah, that'd be cool. That'd be very cool. So that's a possibility, I think, for us. We'll see how it works out. You know, and I know that you and I have done it in the past, and many people have done it, and hooked up with a handful of people in this last one, where going to these, they trying to make it more of an event just above and beyond just you know the three days of the architecture you know convention and try to like actually see more than that like i know that there was probably some tours um specifically to um uc uh san diego for um the sulk but you know just doing some like really cool in-depth like campus tours would have been really cool because like you know that was it wasn't i mean i went and toured the campus um and it's a it's a really interesting and really nice campus so interesting environmental responses from from the buildings you know there's just some cool stuff going on there yeah yeah nice yeah well have we exhausted all of the things we could talk about instead of architecture all of the Wikipedia searches I think we have.

48:16Evan Troxel: Thank you all for bearing with us. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Thank you.