Kenneth Best and Carla Bruni

[00:02] KENNETH BEST: Hi, I'm ken Best I'm 63 years old. Today's November 17th of 2019 in Chicago. I'm here today with Carla Bruni and we've been friends for about five years.

[00:15] CARLA BRUNI: Hi, I'm Carla Bruni I am 42 years old. It's November 17, 2019 in Chicago, Illinois, and I'm here with Ken Best And I've known Ken. We've been friends for about five years. So we just got here after I picked up Ken because his transmission went out in his car. Yeah.

[00:39] KENNETH BEST: So much for getting here on time.

[00:41] CARLA BRUNI: Right, Right. So. But yeah, so we made it. I think that you're like one of the most amazing volunteers because you still wanted to come and do this recording despite your. In spite of losing a car transition four miles away. Ye. Yeah. I mean, so how. I always forget how people found out about Community Glue. How did you. How did you.

[01:04] KENNETH BEST: Well, my wife was watching CBS Nightly News or whatever it was.

[01:08] CARLA BRUNI: C. Nightly News. Yeah, that one.

[01:11] KENNETH BEST: Whichever. I didn't even know she watched the news. So she's watching the program and she sees you and Ali so many places ago, I don't even know where. And she said, oh, you like fixing stuff. You ought to go join Community Glue. So I looked it up and sent you a few emails back and forth. And I can't remember what year I started. I think it was 2014. So I think you're only two years into doing it. And then I joined up and it's like, this is fun. I think, I think the first thing we were at the Jackalope Theater. The first person who came in, you knew, and she had a broken light fixture with tape all around the socket because it hadn't snapped in place of the light fixture. Socket hadn't snapped in. So I was like, oh, this will be easy. So I just kind of broadened it out a little bit, took all the tape off, snapped it in, took 30 seconds. She says, oh, it's been broken for years. You fixed it.

[02:08] CARLA BRUNI: Those are the Best Yeah. So you must have started. So we started at the cafe and then. Yeah, I guess a couple years in. Then we moved to Jackalope, which was really fun, random. And we never knew what our set was going to look like. And then. Yeah, then I guess we were right at Edgewater Workbench since then. So. But yeah, we start 2012, so. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I think I've grown personally very dependent on you because.

[02:38] KENNETH BEST: Cool.

[02:40] CARLA BRUNI: You're what, a pilot? A cpa, A former vacuum repair technician.

[02:48] KENNETH BEST: Yeah. And there's even more.

[02:50] CARLA BRUNI: An acquirer of, like, furniture and warehouse.

[02:53] KENNETH BEST: Did I tell you I just filed a patent. My first patent application. I'm going to be immortalized by the patent office for a pipe organ tremolo.

[03:06] CARLA BRUNI: I don't even know what that is. I have no idea what that even is.

[03:08] KENNETH BEST: Well, it kind of makes the organ go wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, kind of. That kind of. It varies the pitch of the.

[03:14] CARLA BRUNI: Like, the theremin of the organ world kind of.

[03:17] KENNETH BEST: Maybe it's like vibrato. A singing. Somebody singing vibrato.

[03:20] CARLA BRUNI: Okay.

[03:21] KENNETH BEST: So anyways, yeah, I just came up with this. I was at a church that had an organ tremolo that was broken. Looked at it, tried to mess with it. Went to high school with a guy who now is a. One of the preeminent organ builders in the United States, John Buzard, and took a class with him in high school that he was. That he sponsored. And it's like, I've always been interested in pipe organs. So when I joined this choir, he told me this wonderful story about how he, the choir director, bought the organ for $25,000. It's valued at about 1.3 million. Whoa. And he says the tremolo is not working. So I diddled with it, and I just thought about it for about three months on and off. Whenever I went to church, I got to figure this out. And I'm sitting in a traffic light next to a semi, tractor trailer truck, and at the top of the exhaust stack, there's a little metal thing that's going up and down. And that was my flash of inspiration. I could just use a simple tube with something to pulse the air in and out, and that would create the tremolo. And it's really simple.

[04:29] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah.

[04:29] KENNETH BEST: And it's. It's. It was fun to do. And filing a patent application can be really expensive, but I did it myself, and it was about 400 bucks.

[04:39] CARLA BRUNI: Huh. All right.

[04:40] KENNETH BEST: Hey, bucket list. I'm gonna be eternalized with the patent society anyways, but we've kind of gotten a little off topic. But, yes, many of the things I've done. Quite a few different things.

[04:54] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah. But I mean, it's not off topic because it's like, you know, how do you fix stuff? I mean. I mean, there's like, a thousand different ways to fix a thing, and that's the. I mean, that's where the fun of it is, frankly.

[05:06] KENNETH BEST: Many things I've said in my career in real estate, fixing things, because it's always been property management is My dad likes crossword puzzles, so his way of engaging his brain and doing stuff is to do crossword puzzles. And fixing stuff that's broken has always been mine. So where I get my challenge, the interest I have in doing Community Glue is I get to come in, figure out what's wrong, how to fix it. Sometimes it's simple. Sometimes you have to be really creative. And I love the creative part of it. You'd never guess from an accountant that there's any creativity in that kind of a brain at all. But I enjoyed it and I still enjoy it.

[05:48] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah, me too. I think one of my favorites was, like, when I was like, whoa. Ken's hardcore was when we had. Because, you know, we'll get a lot of, like, broken fans in. And it was about the weight of the fan blade being slightly less because one of the fins had broken off. And so he was like, drilled a hole and put like a screw or something in there to weigh it down slightly to get the balance right. It was like. I mean, I'm a pretty clever person, I think, but I just like, would not for some reason, like that to me was like revelatory.

[06:23] KENNETH BEST: It's just natural. When you're a pilot, you have to think about weight and balance.

[06:26] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah.

[06:27] KENNETH BEST: And one of the things about flying a plane is you can carry a heavy load at the center of gravity, but if, you know, like the front seat of the plane. But if you want to put somebody in the baggage compartment, they have to be a whole lot lighter because it's like being on a seesaw, a teeter totter. And the further you get out, the more impact you have on the balance. So. And it's.

[06:51] CARLA BRUNI: It's probably why they always want me back in the baggage section because I'm so light.

[06:55] KENNETH BEST: You are. Or it was something you said to the pilot. I'm not sure.

[07:00] CARLA BRUNI: I don't know. Yeah.

[07:04] KENNETH BEST: I don't think there's any of that. But yeah, I've also balanced a couple of ceiling fans and you end up putting weights on the top of the blade where you can't see it to try to get it not to wobble.

[07:15] CARLA BRUNI: Mm.

[07:16] KENNETH BEST: And yeah, I figured it was the same sort of thing.

[07:19] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I really enjoy this stuff. I mean, one of the issues with being the, you know, co founder person who's sort of like, you know, you know, I've done a fair amount of interviews, you know, so is Allie, but, you know, like, write ups and things like that for places and that, like, every person thinks I can fix all the stuff myself. And so I get this, like, constant stream of people wanting me to come and fix things for them. And I'm like, oh, honey, no. Like, I can't do a lot of that stuff. Like, like, I'm an organized. I mean, I think I'm a relatively handy person, but it's like without the crew of regular volunteers, I mean, there's no way I could do this thing myself.

[08:00] KENNETH BEST: You know, I figured you started it because you had a lot of broken stuff around the apartment, Right.

[08:04] CARLA BRUNI: And you wanted to suckers to come.

[08:06] KENNETH BEST: And I'm willingly gonna be one of those.

[08:10] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah, no, it was nice. It was also like a way to, I don't know, you know, I feel like the older I've gotten, the more I feel like communities become a little more elusive in some regards. And so that was really adamant about, like, the community glue workshop, you know, like, that was a really. You know, I sort of had hopes that these mentorships would spring up. And they did, which was amazing between, you know, fixers and, you know, people just coming every month and being really regular about bringing their broken things in, which there seems to be sometimes an endless supply of certain people.

[08:42] KENNETH BEST: But I keep asking people who come be sure to break something and come next.

[08:47] CARLA BRUNI: Right, right, right. Well, I mean, that dual side of things and like, none of us really knew each other before, which I still think is pretty remarkable. I mean, in the beginning, like, I had some folks I knew a little bit, you know, but only really then one or two. And now, I mean, everyone I only know because, you know, you guys have seen the ads or things that have come out, stories about us. So I think that's pretty rad.

[09:11] KENNETH BEST: What's great about it is. And as I've gotten older, I've really gotten a kick out of finding like minded people, because I'd rather be around like minded people than people who don't think like I do, because it's a whole lot more fun. Oh, people who want to keep stuff out of landfills, fix broken things, frankly, meet other people, be around people who think the same way I do. This is a good thing. You know, Choir, I sing in a choir. Well, they all like to sing. H. Okay. That's a good group to be with. Community glue, fixing stuff that's broken, trying to figure it out, even collaborating. You know, Jason will come over or Becky and say, hey, do you have any idea? Have you ever seen anything like this before? Or, you know, I may have something.

[09:58] CARLA BRUNI: Right, right.

[09:59] KENNETH BEST: One time there was a Broken fan. And I said, okay, well, I, I have to do this to it, or I actually, I couldn't fix that fan. And I thought, yeah, a couple of interesting parts in here. So I took the pan fan apart, threw the rest in the garbage. We gave it, I gave it a time of death and we had a ceremony and that was the end of it. But then somebody came in a year and a half later and said, oh, my fan doesn't work. It was the exact same fan. And I had the part she needed, so that was cool. Kept that one out of the Landville.

[10:28] CARLA BRUNI: Right, right, right. Yeah. And I think it's like, different. I mean, I think all of us are kind of on the same page in terms of like, caring about the planet and caring about planned obsolescence and what an issue that is and, and stuff. And we, I think, also just genuinely like each other or we wouldn't give up our Sundays now for the last, you know, seven years, but. Which is pretty amazing. But, but it's, it's, it's like the hive mind thing that I also find sort of brilliant and fun to watch.

[10:58] KENNETH BEST: I've always thought you were hive minded. Oh, high minded. Wait a minute. Whatever.

[11:02] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah, I, I don't know. I, I love that. I love, like, I mean, sometimes it's just me being like, hey, Ken, this is an electronic thing, so I don't want to deal with it. Yeah, well, it's really nice when, you know, you can sort of have two people come up with a solution or three. Actually. I feel like three is actually pretty common. Or three of us will have to come together over something. So. And that's just like, when does that really happen anymore? You know, it's like everything's like through like a work environment, even if it's somewhat creative. It's like, for me, it's an email process where it's like, I have this thing, I email it. Whenever you have a chance. You get back to me with that. You know, you're not in the room together in that same way. Just like getting it done. Like, we fix a lot of crap in three hours. Like, there's a lot of stuff that, yeah, absolutely would go in the landfills otherwise.

[11:48] KENNETH BEST: And what's neat is people are seeing the flyers coming in and preventing stuff from going to landfills, getting things fixed. You know, here's something I've had for 40 years. It's never worked, right. Oh, let me look at it. And it's not that hard to fix.

[12:01] CARLA BRUNI: Right.

[12:02] KENNETH BEST: It's like, well, I'm glad you hung onto it. And now it's working. Also.

[12:07] CARLA BRUNI: Some people must have just been living in, like, literal darkness for the last decade. Who will bring in, like, a certain, like, six to seven, like, lamps that have been broken.

[12:16] KENNETH BEST: Just walking around the house in the dark with flashlights.

[12:19] CARLA BRUNI: I know.

[12:20] KENNETH BEST: Okay, your light bulb burned out.

[12:22] CARLA BRUNI: Maybe we don't get more flashlights in to fix, but. Yeah.

[12:28] KENNETH BEST: What are the.

[12:30] SPEAKER C: Can you name some of the things that come in or, like, the most popular things? Obviously lamps, but.

[12:37] KENNETH BEST: Well, there's a place in Wilmette. When I was growing up, and really my first decent job was as a repairman at Adams Electric and Wilmette. And it was set up so people would bring in broken stuff and I'd get paid to fix it and fixed a lot of Hoover vacuum cleaners. So I'm the vacuum cleaner go to guy. And it's not that hard. Hoovers are made almost indestructibly. At least the older ones were. Now there's a whole lot of plastic, and that's another challenge. You have to be really good with epoxy.

[13:14] CARLA BRUNI: Mm. Yeah. Plastic makes it much harder.

[13:18] KENNETH BEST: Yeah. And getting plastic to stick to plastic. I brought actually some of the plastic epoxy I've got because I just had a key fob for my Honda, the one that just unceremoniously died. And it's like, this wasn't made right. And then I took my working one apart and realized, oh, there's a piece missing. Hmm, plastic epoxy. And so I'm halfway through fixing that.

[13:43] CARLA BRUNI: But, yeah.

[13:44] KENNETH BEST: My God, a fob can be 200 bucks.

[13:46] CARLA BRUNI: Oh, my gosh. I know. They're insane. They're insane. We fixed one before, too. When we were at the plant, we fixed a fob. I can't remember. It was like somebody who's.

[13:54] KENNETH BEST: Lara had a bad father.

[13:56] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah. Maybe it was Lara's, but. Yeah.

[13:58] SPEAKER C: Yeah.

[13:59] CARLA BRUNI: That's a whole biz.

[14:01] KENNETH BEST: Yeah. And anyways, yeah. So I'm curious what got you inspired to do this with Ally?

[14:10] CARLA BRUNI: So, a few things. So it was. I was. I. I had a fellowship I was, you know, involved with at the time through the New Leaders Council, and we had to come up with a final project of some sort. You know, sort of a culmination of something we cared about, whatever. And I. At around that time, I read this article in the New York Times that was talking about a woman in Amsterdam who had started these repair clinics, and they took off. It was really interesting to me because my background is historic preservation and, you know, there's this. I don't know, it's really easy to get frustrated that people don't want to live in and save older buildings because they're so wonderful. But the reality is people don't know how to fix things anymore. So I figured instead of starting with, you know, a Queen Anne, maybe people could start with a toaster. And so it just really spoke to me. So I read this article. I was really inspired. It seemed like exactly the kind of thing I should do for this final project. And I posted something on Facebook, and Allie offered up her space for it, and we start talking, and it was like, why don't we just do this together? Because there's a much better chance it'll actually happen, so. And it worked out really, really well. You know, we both knew a lot of people in the neighborhood, and we both felt really strongly about community and environmental issues. So we just worked out, and we didn't really know how it would go, obviously, and who our volunteers would be. Anything we had planned kind of went out the window because, again, people just, you know, we had a ton of press in the beginning, which is amazing. I mean, local and national.

[15:48] KENNETH BEST: Oh, yeah.

[15:49] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah. We were the first, I think, in Illinois, possibly even the Midwest, to come up with a repair cafe, repair clinic like this.

[15:57] KENNETH BEST: So how did you get word to NBC? How did that connect?

[16:02] CARLA BRUNI: I don't even. I don't even know.

[16:04] KENNETH BEST: Does he call you up?

[16:06] CARLA BRUNI: I don't remember. Let's do a show. I did stuff on WGN and stuff, so maybe they heard from that. I'm not really sure.

[16:14] KENNETH BEST: Innate PR skills that a lot of.

[16:17] CARLA BRUNI: People don't have been in the city my whole, you know, I mean, city or around it my whole life. So, you know, knowing people, I think both Ali and I know a lot of people, which has been a big part of why things have worked out pretty well. But. But, yeah, so that was exciting and fun. Someone was telling me they're in New York in a cab. And our NBC Nightly News clip was kept coming up on their little cab screen. I was like, ooh, you know, so cool. So, yeah, it just kind of worked out that way. It's all of the passions and stuff kind of combined into one. And it's just been pretty easy because all of our volunteers show up. I mean, you guys come. It's been years. I don't have to. I don't have a strong arm, anybody into showing up every month. And so that without that, I mean, forget it again. I can't fix all this stuff. You know, like, it's so. It's.

[17:14] KENNETH BEST: It's.

[17:14] CARLA BRUNI: It's been one of the easier things I think I've done.

[17:17] KENNETH BEST: And you know what? It's easing and it's working. Well, it. As a cpa, most companies die after five years. Some survive. If you make it past five years to seven, you've got something that's working.

[17:30] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah.

[17:31] KENNETH BEST: And I think a lot of it, frankly, is you, because your energy comes across, you appreciate the people coming in, and it shows. And I'd rather be around people who appreciate what I do. And that's what's so fun about it, because you're not a grump. You're not sitting there going, oh, here's another broken thing. Who the heck's going to take care of this one? Let's just dump it on Ken. I was like, okay, that would last about a week, maybe.

[18:01] CARLA BRUNI: Well, it's funny you say, because oftentimes. Because we always do this on Sundays, and I'm, like, usually exhausted from the week, and it'll be kind of like, okay, doing this, going to Community. And by the end of it, I'm like, I'm in such a good mood. Like, I feel. I feel so good. I realize how much energy I exert being there, just talking to all the people who come in and seeing all the things, like, it really pumps me up in a way that I mean in, like, every time, you know, that really resonates.

[18:31] KENNETH BEST: Because what I've found in my checkered history of doing trade work, accounting, real estate, and whatever the future may hold is if you're doing something you like, that you really love, I don't know about you. I've got some stuff I do where I forget everything else in the world, and I'm in the moment right here at Community Glue fixing stuff, and I walk out, it's like, hmm. I might have had my car break down in my transmission go. But I'm. I'm like, hey. And here's Carla and she's got a smile on her face. We got broken stuff. I made people happy. I fixed it. And I'm like, I'm in a much better mood than when I started.

[19:15] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah, totally, totally.

[19:17] KENNETH BEST: And that's.

[19:17] CARLA BRUNI: I really still can't believe that you're here with your transmission having gone. That really is pretty. That really is a testament to your.

[19:27] KENNETH BEST: Well, it reflects on you.

[19:28] CARLA BRUNI: Dedication.

[19:29] KENNETH BEST: It reflects on you, too, because I'd rather be around you than the tow truck driver. We'll take care of that some other time.

[19:37] CARLA BRUNI: I guess that's A compliment. Yeah.

[19:39] KENNETH BEST: Oh, it. Even if it didn't come out as one, it is.

[19:42] CARLA BRUNI: Oh, thanks.

[19:43] SPEAKER C: About how the clinic has changed over the years.

[19:47] KENNETH BEST: I think over the years we've gotten more and more sewing people.

[19:51] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah. We have a lot more sewers now.

[19:54] KENNETH BEST: And for a while we had a woman who did jewelry, but I think she moved to the East Coast. And just about the time I finally convinced my daughter to bring in her broken jewelry, she'd already moved.

[20:03] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah.

[20:03] KENNETH BEST: Yeah, but that was pretty cool. She had all the stuff.

[20:07] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah. Kara. And she had like a little torch she'd bring with bricks and all the things. Yeah, that was, that was a bummer to lose her. But that's. You know, most of our fixers, like. And she came for years too. And most of our fixers who've left have moved, like, far away, and that's why they've left. Which, like, you can't argue with that. You know, you just hope that when.

[20:28] KENNETH BEST: You start franchising this, then the people who've moved away start their own and it spreads like, oh, whatever.

[20:36] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah, yeah, that's. That's an interesting point in terms of, like, how do we. So my first job out of college, I worked for the Cultural affairs department in Chicago and this program called Gallery 37. And part of what my job was was to talk to people from other cities who wanted to replicate that program.

[20:54] KENNETH BEST: Good idea.

[20:54] CARLA BRUNI: Arts training, arts program for youth. And so, you know, a lot of people are like, why doesn't Community Glue come here and come here and come here. And I was like, eh. Like, we're really a local initiative, but I talk a lot about replication with people, and some have done it. A lot of people are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're gonna do it. And they don't, but that's okay. You know, it takes effort.

[21:17] KENNETH BEST: And it, it, it seems like in this world there's 90% of the people who say, hey, that's a good idea. Then there's the 10% who actually make it happen. And you can't expect that from everybody. But occasionally you run into somebody who's a go getter, who'll actually get something done and get it started and rolling and keep it going. My wife's a baker and people. I worked for a guy once, and he said, is she on the Internet? And I said, no. And he says, she's doing it all wrong. I said, no, you don't understand anything. She hates working with other people. She likes baking, so she bakes. And all her business is word of mouth. She doesn't need to advertise. She's got more than she can handle. And it's like, no, she doesn't need the Internet.

[22:09] CARLA BRUNI: Right.

[22:09] KENNETH BEST: You know, she's got it. One little bit of baking, and it's really great stuff. But she has absolutely no idea in becoming a manager of Worldwide Bakeries because she likes to bake.

[22:23] CARLA BRUNI: Right.

[22:24] KENNETH BEST: And I. When I was originally out of college, I had a. Worked with a house painter and the electrical company, a couple of different jobs in high school. And the painter was really good. I said, why don't you expand? He says, I like to control what I'm doing. And I'm thinking, gosh, this guy emigrated from Germany. Immigrated. And he's built up a little practice here, and he's living in Wilmette, and he's got five kids. I think he's doing okay.

[22:50] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah.

[22:51] KENNETH BEST: So why change what works?

[22:53] CARLA BRUNI: I know.

[22:54] KENNETH BEST: So that's the toughest thing is, do you want to branch out? It'd be good for the world and all the rest of it, but it also detract you from people like me. And you wouldn't be coming in. You'd be doing management. And if you want to do that, that's great, but if you don't, then you just try to do it more organically, I guess.

[23:11] CARLA BRUNI: And frankly, like, I think the reason that volunteers stay so long, it's like, I don't personally ever want you guys to feel like you have to travel all over, like, you're already giving up a Sunday. You know, like, I don't expect you to schlep all over the city if something cool comes up, you know, then I'll be like, the plant. Yeah. Then it's like, hey, are you guys interested in this? Does everybody want to do this? And if you do, great. But, like, I think having been a volunteer and working with volunteers for my entire adult life, I think that's where people really screw up, honestly, is like, people need to feel appreciated. They need to feel seen. They need to be, you know, but also not over. Overly taxed.

[23:49] KENNETH BEST: Yeah, it's like, it's a. It's a tough line to draw. Like, I was late for choir today, and it's like, yeah, Christmas is coming up. You want to be on time. But, you know, my wife thought her bank account got hacked, and it's like, okay, well, that kind of takes priority.

[24:03] CARLA BRUNI: Kids are having a rough day, even.

[24:04] KENNETH BEST: Though that's kind of screwing up choir practice anyways. But we are volunteers, and you want to be. You want to have dedicated Volunteers without twisting their arms and being overbearing. It's a tightrope walk.

[24:19] CARLA BRUNI: Right. And if people are late here, I mean, like, you're volunteers. I mean, I think it's just important to remember that. I've seen that go wrong a lot. I'm like, you do understand I'm giving up my time here for free, so, you know, take it easy. So, yeah, I. I don't know. And that's, I think, where the community comes in, too, and people like. I was supposed to pick up Michelle today, but I was worried I was cutting it too close with recording and stuff.

[24:44] KENNETH BEST: So you picked me up instead.

[24:47] CARLA BRUNI: You were in the midst of it. But, you know, Ann, I didn't even have to ask. Anne was like, I'll pick up. I'll pick up Michelle. You know, I mean, just like, no problem. Where does she live?

[24:56] KENNETH BEST: I mean, people who volunteered to do stuff. That's great.

[24:59] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah.

[25:00] KENNETH BEST: I mean, I was an Eagle Scout, so. Yeah, just one more thing.

[25:04] CARLA BRUNI: Right?

[25:04] KENNETH BEST: And it's like, you know, being helpful. That's. That's right up there. And I've always have been, you know, I don't get people who aren't helpful. I have a hard time getting my arms around them.

[25:15] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah, yeah.

[25:15] KENNETH BEST: I'm in a pinch. I need help. Like this poor guy. I'm sitting there waiting for you to come pick me up. And he says, hey, could you jump my car? And I said, I thought. He said, you have jumper cables? I said, yeah, I've got jumper cables here, but I can't help you. My transmission just died. He said, oh. So I said, but if you need cables, I'm happy to lend them to you. And he's, like, pulling out money. And I said, well, we could push my car to your car and we could jump it because the battery's fine.

[25:41] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah.

[25:41] KENNETH BEST: And the engine runs, just not the transmission.

[25:44] CARLA BRUNI: Right. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm trying to. Like, I think we had a lot of. Just to go back to the question of, you know, how things have changed over time. And in the beginning, we had a lot of plans about, you know, oh, we're going to grow this into this and this and this, and we're going to start a tool library, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, But I think that goes back to also not spreading volunteers too thin, including those of us who are organizing. You know, we also tend to have a million jobs, Allie and I, and, you know, through the years. So. So it's. It's interesting. I do think it's Still. I think it's still working pretty well, though, the way it's going.

[26:27] KENNETH BEST: Oh, and you can't ignore the fact that here we are just helping out with our own tools. Then you had to deal with Sears, and next thing you know, we've all got hundreds of dollars of free tools. I go, oh, this is great.

[26:38] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah, that was pretty sweet.

[26:40] KENNETH BEST: Oh, that worked out.

[26:41] CARLA BRUNI: Thank you. Craftsman tools. Really well.

[26:42] KENNETH BEST: Yes.

[26:44] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah, that was. Well, that was, like, a really nice. It was like, I can finally, like, give back something to the volunteers because, you know, I mean, we do this for free. And, I mean, we'll get some money in the change jar and use that to replenish whatever. And, you know, there's. There's some discussion about doing a holiday karaoke party. We'll see how that goes. But. But, you know, it's not. It's not enough.

[27:05] KENNETH BEST: We could do a duet.

[27:07] CARLA BRUNI: What's that?

[27:07] KENNETH BEST: We could do a duet. Do you sing?

[27:10] CARLA BRUNI: I suck.

[27:12] KENNETH BEST: Oh, okay.

[27:13] CARLA BRUNI: I suck at singing.

[27:14] KENNETH BEST: Okay.

[27:14] CARLA BRUNI: But I can. A couple of beers and I. I forget.

[27:18] KENNETH BEST: Okay, then we'll be all right.

[27:19] CARLA BRUNI: I forget that I suck at it. So I'll just.

[27:22] KENNETH BEST: I'll call it harmonizing.

[27:23] CARLA BRUNI: Right, right. I'll sing, and then you just harmonize with me and.

[27:27] KENNETH BEST: Well, actually, I figured I'd sing the melody line and you'd do. Whatever you did. We'd call it jazz.

[27:32] CARLA BRUNI: Right, right.

[27:33] KENNETH BEST: Okay.

[27:33] CARLA BRUNI: Exactly. Word jazz. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. What else?

[27:45] SPEAKER C: So what have you noticed about people and the things that they bring in, in terms of. People tend to bring in things that are special.

[27:56] KENNETH BEST: An interesting mix of people coming in not too long ago. Okay. I'm a pilot. I know people who sail in the Mackinac race. Big race. A lot of people sail up, and then they want to get back to Chicago really quickly because a sailing crew is much bigger, A racing crew is much bigger than a regular cruising crew. So I'll fly up. Like I like to tell people. I said, oh, I go up to the docks at Mackinac island and pick up sailors. Somehow, they misunderstand that. But anyways, when I bring them back, I've gotten to know a lot of sailors and a lot of boats. And one guy came to Community Glue, and his automatic rudder control for his sailboat was broken. And so he had a little bit of trouble because I couldn't find a battery. And it's like, well, what's the voltage on this? 12 volts. Okay, let's go out to my car. So he took the boat rudder to my car, flipped up the hood got some wires out, hooked it up and got the thing operating and did a little bit of soldering and fixed it up. And I said, okay, this is working. So I never would have expected a automated sailboat rudder to come into community glue, right? Apparently it worked.

[29:05] CARLA BRUNI: Right.

[29:07] KENNETH BEST: But we've had a lot of interesting people come in. Sylvia came in, and I modified her vacuum cleaner with a wall switch, and it still works fine. I said, it's indestructible. Many, many things out there are indestructible, but one little piece breaks, and it's like, what are you going to do now? I was like, scrape out a little bit of plastic. Yep, yep. A little. An old, disparate switch from the 1950s, which I've probably had for 40 years. I go, oh, I've got this at home, Sylvia, bring it next time, and I'll rebuild your Eureka hand vacuum cleaner. And she subsequently had a cord issue and brought it back. And I said, still working fine, except for the cord. Yeah, it works great. So she's.

[29:53] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah, she does her homework, too. She's always like. And I went online and I looked up this and I looked up that, and I tried this already, and I bought a part for this. And she's like, yeah, she. She does the work before she comes and brings it a lot of the time. And she bakes us muffins, which is really great.

[30:08] KENNETH BEST: She gave me pickles once. What's great about it is you're looking and honest to God, everything in the world is on YouTube. If you've got the nerve to try it, that's where a lot of people fall short.

[30:19] CARLA BRUNI: Right?

[30:20] KENNETH BEST: But it's like, on YouTube, if you look it up, you probably see what broke. And then if you look, you could probably find the part. So if you can find the part and bring that next time, we'll just put it in. That'll be a piece of cake.

[30:35] CARLA BRUNI: But to me, that's the point. It's like, you know, telling people, like, you know, bring your stuff. A lot of people are like, but I can't fix things. I can't fix things. You know, you don't have to know how to fix anything. Like, that's the point. We have this really great crew that can actually figure out most things. And, you know, I think just seeing that something can be repaired is, like, revelatory to people, truly. If you didn't grow up in an environment where that was kind of like, you know, par for the course, especially younger people. But not only, I think, just, you know, Opening up the hood and watching something tinker. And then, you know, again, there's like this, like, resurrection experience that comes from that. It's just this unbelievable. So even if they haven't put their hands on, you know, any of the parts themselves, they tend to watch pretty closely and be curious about stuff.

[31:24] KENNETH BEST: Oh, I like to talk to them as I go and say, here's what I'm doing, here's why, here's what I think should happen. Or the next thing I do may not do anything, but it's broken anyways. Why don't we just go forward? And they're like, yeah, yeah, it was broken. So if you can fix it, whatever, and we'll take our chance, we'll roll the dice and see if it's going to work. Because I don't always know.

[31:46] CARLA BRUNI: Right? Right.

[31:48] KENNETH BEST: I once worked for a woman when I was at itw, and she said, okay, we need a new hard drive for the PC. This is back in the dark ages, like 86. And said, Ken, I want you to put it in, but show somebody how to do it. It's like, okay, I've never done it before, so I can't really show somebody how to do it when I don't know how to do it myself. And she wasn't incensed about that. It's like, I'll show somebody how to put in the next hard drive because now I know what to do.

[32:18] CARLA BRUNI: Right.

[32:18] KENNETH BEST: That was back in the dark ages when nobody knew anything about.

[32:22] CARLA BRUNI: Right? Yeah, yeah. But it's, it's. It's interesting because even though we have all of this information available to us now, you know, there's guides. You always get these instruction, man. You know, like, there is just still a fear around repairing things. Like, I don't know what we think if things are. I mean, and I still am a little bit. I'm guilty of this. With electronics sometimes, you know, if it's like a toaster issue, anything with a heating element, like, terrifies me. Although, to be fair, were you there when we were at the theater space and we did have a small fire, possibly, I can't remember, it was a toaster oven. It was on concrete floor. So it was okay. It was all fine, but. But, you know, but it was like I had to fix a toaster last. The last clinic, and, and it was just mechanical. Like, mechanical stuff I'm good with. But, you know, I still have some fears around it, which is, you know, I've seen it done a million. You know, it's just a matter of Getting people used to it. And a lot of the people keep coming back. I mean, we have so many repeat people. And not only. I mean, it's nice to. With anything. Like, I've done educational programming for years, too. And you always, you know, like the familiar faces and the audience to see that they're coming in and watching these lectures and stuff. But you're, you know, I always like to ask, who here has never been here before? And you see those hands go up and you're like, good. Then we're growing. We're. We're still getting the message out to new people. And so there's the nice mix. I think that way.

[33:43] KENNETH BEST: And what's fun is words getting out. One guy came in with a Christmas scene with like a. A ski tow, rope, rotating.

[33:56] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah, that came up in my Facebook memories actually yesterday.

[34:00] KENNETH BEST: And I'm talking to this guy and it turns out he knows a guy I worked with at the time. And I hear from Eddie at work and he says, hey, Mike came with that thing. And he said he was. He. He thought it was hard to believe that all it needed was a little spray with WD40. And that's all it needed. Here's where I put it. So you can do it yourself.

[34:22] CARLA BRUNI: Right.

[34:23] KENNETH BEST: And that's all it took.

[34:24] CARLA BRUNI: Right?

[34:25] KENNETH BEST: Funny.

[34:25] CARLA BRUNI: Right?

[34:25] KENNETH BEST: I was thinking it was going to be much more involved. It's like, let's just give this a squirt and see what happens. And that was all it needed.

[34:33] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah.

[34:33] KENNETH BEST: And then word gets around to Eddie and Eddie mentions it to other people and, you know, hope it turns into more business.

[34:40] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah, I. It's also fun, I would say, to watch people, though, when they. They're like, afraid and then they kind of start looking more closely and then they kind of can't help but want to try and like, do some of the work themselves. I love that. That's.

[34:53] KENNETH BEST: Always make sure to slap their hands when they do.

[34:57] CARLA BRUNI: Not at all the Best My. My favorite moment last month was so Imogene, who's been coming since she was like, in diapers. We did a co fix of one of her toys last week or last month that was. I mean, she really did, like, legit help me with that, you know, like, she was really, really into it, I mean, and had ideas and, you know, some of it was more about force than, you know, but, like, she definitely had a hand in that. And she was so excited and so proud of that afterwards and, like, posing with it because you can be shy despite having known us all for so long. But you know, five years or whatever. Now four years.

[35:42] KENNETH BEST: I know it's been a while. Jason first brought her in in his arms, and now she's up and walking around and doing. How old is she now? Four or five. She's five.

[35:53] CARLA BRUNI: Like, five. Yeah. So, yeah, she were. Yeah. Like a little jean jumper with a community glue pin on the first time she came and I about died. Yeah. So that was, like, really her first. Yeah.

[36:05] KENNETH BEST: Jason, we can't fix that.

[36:07] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So still incredibly rewarding, honestly. I know you have a bouncer, Margie. You didn't used to have a bouncer, right? Yes, I've gotten bigger. Yes, yes. So we often have a wait. It tends to be like, the first half of the session. We'll have, like, a wait list. And so now we have. Yes. We have Margie at front, who's writing down all the things that need to be repaired and trying to sort of stem the flow of people. We also have a waiting area at Edgewater Workbench, which is nice. They can actually sit instead of mill about anxiously. But. Yeah, so we've definitely sort of grown our structure in this regard.

[36:53] KENNETH BEST: Yeah. Yeah. And it's nice that Abby can provide that and has even when she moved away and now that she's come back, that we had that available to us because it's been good space.

[37:03] CARLA BRUNI: Oh, yeah. No, Edgewater Workbench has been. I mean, our lighting, like, our task lighting was a nightmare before. Trying to actually see.

[37:11] KENNETH BEST: Yeah.

[37:12] CARLA BRUNI: Like, we had people, like, wearing headlamps because it was so hard to see all the little parts and stuff. So bright lights, a sink, a bathroom outlets. I mean, Stu has, like, the Best clamp collection also, so.

[37:29] KENNETH BEST: And being at Edgewater Workbench has been great because these, they. I'll say, stu, do you have this? And a lot of times he does, which is fantastic.

[37:37] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah. Or it's like, do you have a giant jar of random screws by chance? Why, yes, you do. It's very helpful, for sure. And it's right off the train. So when people do come in, you know, by public transportation, I always find that to be a nice perk.

[37:53] KENNETH BEST: I was managing a retail center on the south side of Chicago, and Staples was there, but moved out. And it was my responsibility to clear out all the stuff. It was on the landlord to clear everything out. And I hired people to do it. And I went in afterwards and I saw screws and fasteners and washers all over the floor. And it's like, you know, maybe I'll spend a little Bit of time with a magnet and I sucked them all up and I came away with 40 pounds of screw nuts and bolts. They go, okay, I'm going to bring some. Maybe we can use them at Community Glue.

[38:26] CARLA BRUNI: We really scored when you walked through those doors.

[38:30] KENNETH BEST: Well, thank you.

[38:31] CARLA BRUNI: So great.

[38:32] KENNETH BEST: I appreciate getting appreciated.

[38:34] CARLA BRUNI: Well, and it's nice. I mean, like, I love the different backgrounds from everybody too. It's like you have like an editor, a pilot, you know, a marketing person, you know, I mean, like the range of careers. And we had a subatomic physicist. When Jason St. John comes in. Yeah, I mean, I just, I don't know, I love that. It's just people who like to solve problems, you know, and, and what's cool.

[39:00] KENNETH BEST: Is you've got like minded people from way diverse areas. When would you meet a subatomic physicist?

[39:07] CARLA BRUNI: I know, right?

[39:08] KENNETH BEST: And actually I've met two, but that's okay. And when in a completely different venue, it's like you're here and you're doing high energy physics and you're going to work at the CERN lab. I have an uncle at Los Alamos who's just retired many years ago, so I've always been interested in that stuff. And so.

[39:26] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah. Wow.

[39:27] KENNETH BEST: And here's somebody I can actually talk to.

[39:29] CARLA BRUNI: Right, right. And I mean, and I don't know, and I. Again, it's also the mentorships. Like the sewers are always like teaching each other new tricks. And you know, I just love that we do have this like crew sewists. Sorry, Sewists. I learned that is the term, the preferred term, a sewist. Yes. Well, seamstress is so dated and well, you know.

[39:49] KENNETH BEST: Yeah, that makes it neutral too.

[39:50] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah. And so if you write it out is spelled like sewer.

[39:55] KENNETH BEST: Not so good.

[39:56] CARLA BRUNI: Problematic when you're doing better. Can tell you having written a few articles. Uh, but yeah, I think that's part of like the fun community aspect of it. And also go to like nerd nights now that, you know, Jason St. John runs and stuff like that. So there's all these. There's a lot of broadening experiences. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

[40:16] KENNETH BEST: And getting into stuff you never would have expected and it's been really great.

[40:20] CARLA BRUNI: Right, right. And also Becky, who's leaving us to go and do her Van Life expedition, she said Community Glue gave her a lot of confidence around. She interviewed me when she was a student at IIT is how I met her.

[40:34] KENNETH BEST: Yeah.

[40:34] CARLA BRUNI: And then she said she actually feels much more confident going on the road because she was terrified of Fixing things before.

[40:40] KENNETH BEST: True.

[40:41] CARLA BRUNI: So I thought that was amazing. One last question.

[40:46] SPEAKER C: Do you have. Have you chronicled the things that you've fixed or like a list or a record of all the things that you.

[40:55] KENNETH BEST: I think Carla's got a massive photo library of repaired stuff.

[41:01] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah.

[41:01] KENNETH BEST: I think it's found most of. Most of its way onto Facebook. At least I've seen. I don't go there often, but I did. Yeah, it's like, oh, there's me, there's me. Oh, I remember that. Oh, yeah, her, huh?

[41:12] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah. We have. When people sign in now, too. Margie has it where they write down what they've brought in. Whether or not those are all written out and compiled is another matter. Afterwards. Time is short. I try, but we have an extensive photo record. Absolutely. I'm constantly like, between fixes or during them running around trying to snap everything you guys are working on too, because it's just cool to see the innards of things and what people are fun, I think, for folks.

[41:42] SPEAKER C: And how would you. Lastly, how would you describe or quantify or qualify, I guess, the impact that the clinic you think has had in over the years, all the things that you've fixed.

[41:57] KENNETH BEST: And also community wise, I think people walk away having had something fixed, maybe feeling better about everything. You know, I mean, there's so many things where you just throw it in the trash and go out and spend more money on something else. Just from a strict monetary point of view as a, you know, without the lofty goal of avoiding stuff going into landfills, it's like it's hitting their pocketbook. And it's a pretty good group of people. I don't know any grumps there at all. And when people come in, they're probably like, oh, that's a pretty nice group of people. And hey, they fixed stuff. This was really nice. So it's. Let's see. The word I know from high school is lagniappe. It's actually Delaware. Lagniappe means a little something extra. So out of life, you're getting a little something extra out of it. You weren't expecting much. Gosh, another segue. I went to Warren Buffett's 50th anniversary with Berkshire Hathaway and Charlie Munger is a sidekick. They run that company extremely well. And somebody from the audience said, charlie, what advice do you have for someone who wants to get married? And he said, which I love. And there's if this fits, marry someone with low expectations because you'll make them happy. And people come into community Glue. It's like this thing's broken. My expectation is it's going in the trash and they walk away and we've exceeded their expectations.

[43:29] CARLA BRUNI: Right, right.

[43:30] KENNETH BEST: Makes me happy.

[43:31] CARLA BRUNI: Right, right. And it's beyond just. Yeah, it's, you know, there's a million reasons why it feels good, but it also, I think it just feels good to be like, oh, this group of people gave up their time and collaborated and worked together and was really creative and thought about this thing I brought in, whatever it is. And sometimes that thing is like, I mean, it's, it's, it's not really worth much of anything. They're just kind of like, I don't know, can this be fixed? Like, I mean, there's really very little monetary value to a lot of what we see. Right.

[44:00] KENNETH BEST: But you're attached to it and you want to see if it gets. Somebody came in with gardening gloves once and said, is there some kind of a coating we could put on the palm of it? And they were beat up, ratty looking gloves. And I used some of the liquid electrical tape. She says, oh, that's perfect. Probably spent more on the tape than the gloves were worth.

[44:18] CARLA BRUNI: Right.

[44:19] KENNETH BEST: But hey, she walked away happy.

[44:20] CARLA BRUNI: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean in terms of impact, I mean, like, so. Well, for me personally, I would say for my career doing historic preservation, like architectural preservation stuff, it's amazing how relevant the story is. I also teach and I've given talks at conferences in different places for, you know, for a long while now. And preservationists really love hearing about community. Like, you know, so, like all over the country I've talked about this initiative and people are always inspired by it, always think it's cool. My 20 something, your old, you know, grad students are like, love it. They want to, you know, like, it's really a cool. It just speaks to everybody and it's sort of a core issue of like, we just need to demystify things. We need to work together more. We need to, you know, feel good about what we own and appreciate things.

[45:18] KENNETH BEST: Community glue kind of fits well, that's.

[45:21] CARLA BRUNI: Why I named it.

[45:21] KENNETH BEST: Yeah. Yeah.

[45:23] CARLA BRUNI: Not to pat myself on the back too much there, but. Okay. Well, that was very.

[45:27] KENNETH BEST: I'll pat your back later.

[45:28] CARLA BRUNI: Thanks.

[45:28] KENNETH BEST: That's okay.

[45:28] CARLA BRUNI: It was very much about both repair and community, and I think we really, we really have been nailing that.

[45:35] KENNETH BEST: Yeah. Yeah.

[45:39] CARLA BRUNI: Well, thank you. Thank you so much for doing this. I know we have to go and fix a bunch of stuff for the.

[45:42] KENNETH BEST: Next few hours and I love talking with you.

[45:45] CARLA BRUNI: Great. Awesome. Thanks, Ken.