CONFIDE - Secrets Men Tell: Kirby DarDar

Secret Talents

His name alone gets enough attention. Kirby DarDar: Former NFL running back for the Miami Dolphins. The Kirby DarDar KIDS WIN! Football Camp. DarDar, board member of organizations such as Syracuse University Athletics and Catholic Charities.


Kirby and I first met when I stepped into his cubicle at HSBC to discuss my first business account. I got as far as telling him that I researched grants as part of my business when our conversation and relationship took a friendlier direction.


DarDar was a good artist when he was young who never got the opportunity to develop his own abilities. He told me that he was too busy being a star athlete in his track and football days at SU. Those took him on to play pro football in Florida.


But he loved art and part of my business was art representation. A.B. Resource was my business name, and the idea was an arts agency / event planning company that had room to grow into a production company. I not only wanted to represent artists for gallery sales, but also provide them with grants opportunities and teach them how to persue that kind of funding.


And DarDar was looking for a grant writer. We got our things together and moved our meeting to an empty floor of unused administrative HSBC space. Our new meeting lasted over an hour.


Kirby not only had a love for football and kids, but of the opportunities provided through grants that NFL youth football camps could bring to the Syracuse locals. He showed me his business plan before I even got to mine.

He was linked to Catholic Charities and made a name for himself that way too, in tv and print. What he saw between he and I was such an obvious opportunity that I could not help to begin spinning my own wheels about it.


I remember telling him that I would help him with our first grant project for free, as a friend. After that, he reeled me in with a 20% cut of all grants I would ever write thereafter. It was too good to be true. Any grant worth writing would bring in two hundred easily. Three grants a week would not be a bad income for a single guy in Syracuse. 


Later I found out that none of it would be legal. But I liked hearing this guy talk to me about money in a private floor of the bank he represented. I also liked the ideas he was developing. All of this coming from the former pro player who was now sustaining his family as head of all Syracuse business accounts.


He told me that he developed the downtown courthouse himself; which was also a grants project. The courthouse was unique because it enforced community service instead of fines. It used the idea of rehabilitation over punishment.


The man had a great public conscious. Many months passed before we worked on something solid, but I always remember that spontaneous meeting and the personal things that we so easily trusted each other with. 

CONFIDE - Secrets Men Tell: Rick Destito

FOR THE SAKE OF ART

The Gear Factory, Artist Studios and Rehearsal Space. Owned by Rick Destito.
Facebook The Gear Factory Syracuse

I only write about my friends. In 2008, I began submitting stories to publishers about friends who were demonstrating leadership in businesses, city cultural affairs, politics and the arts. That's real news to me, and during that time, Rick Destito was a real man who was involved and invested in city developments in Syracuse, NY. 

Rick is a young, very good-looking and ambitious developer with his own construction company named Vibrant Spaces. He is not rich, yet owns property including a five-story warehouse that he is slowly converting into artist studios/rehearsal spaces. He is an artist who has produced large welded works in metal and who appreciates all art styles, especially graffiti and the cooler guy stuff.

The warehouse he owns is now called Gear Factory. I wrote about a very unique website that he set up for it, where anyone who is invited to join can drop ideas about how to finance, design and promote the place. Every so often a real meeting is held at the factory and better developed ideas are voted on so that the place really moves forward and those who are involved can become a real part of the development process.

Rick and I met at Redfield's, a hotel restaurant, and ordered the same lunch special - lobster bisque and filet minon open faced sandwich for ten bucks. And we talked about developing different neighborhoods and areas of the city. Then I interviewed him about the GF site.

In that interview, Rick told me that he spent every last penny he had when he purchased the building at auction. When it came down to him and only one other bidder, he gave the other guy the look of death that scared him away. So Rick won the bid.

The article appeared in the City Eagle soon after. It was a beautiful full-pager with a photo of a rendering of the finished GF location, created by a designer who contributed to the whole GF project. The actual warehouse at the time still looked undeveloped from the outside, with windows sealed up by cinder blocks and a sign that read something like "studio space available" and Rick's cell number.

People noticed the building but hardly ever brought it up. So I brought it up, and when I did, I mentioned Rick. He's not a guy who smiles a whole lot, but he's super nice, smart and vibrant in his drive to work together and accomplish great things. He has a stutter. 

In the summer of 2007, I met him while preparing a corner installation for a large group show in a huge exhibit space. He was helping Andrea Audi - as in Stickley/Audi furniture, who was producing shows named Floating Galleries in unused public spaces. 

We had our show, and then the work just hung there for a long time. So I called Rick and Andrea to complain about how all of the contributing artists, especially the young ones, were just being used and that nobody was trying to sell or represent them. I thought they were taken advantage of, for the sake of the producers, and not because anyone really cared about them. That wasn't the point of the show, but we all have our causes.

They both responded that the purpose of that show was to promote empty downtown buildings in order to make them appear useful to renters and buyers. And the art was just a very attractive way of doing that, but they weren't functioning as a retail operation. So I backed off, because I saw the bigger picture, and appreciated trying to help your whole city maintain its integrity. Currently, Los Angeles is full of dead store fronts and buildings in every neighborhood. It hurts to see your city that way. What they did was responsible and special.

Rick invited me to check out the Gear Factory that summer. I met Brian, one of his renters, a graf artist we called Boots who was full of ink and looked at you with huge angel eyes and mad energy. Boots was not sleeping for a week while cranking out yards of canvas for a group show that was to take place at GF. I exhibited at that show with dozens of other artists, and got kicked out of that party for being too drunk. In fact, Rick asked Boots to 86 me because we had become friends. Soon, Boots left Syracuse and I never saw him again.

But I saw Rick still. I rented the entire second floor from him in the summer of 2008. And one nite I got completely fucked up and pissed him off. He approached me and asked me for my key back. He was already a daddy then, but didn't know it yet. I remember him telling me that I was usually 90% awesome, but still 10% screwed up. After considering that I would leave soon, after a large exhibit that I was preparing for, he let me stay.

About a month later, I bumped into him during a public park meeting held at my rep's gallery. Lipe Art Park was having a new show and in the concept, they were going to use mannequins in the public park. Except they didn't have any dummies, so I offered to help them in that department. The meeting ended but Rick stayed with Mel (owner of OrangeLine Gallery) and I for a while. 

We talked about how slowly cities develop. When we thought about who was really responsible, Rick blamed it on bullshit and politics. "But who exactly?" I kept asking. None of us knew who, so we finally just guessed that the mayor was to blame. Later that week, I told him to x the mannequin idea and make silhouettes out of plywood instead. And that was the last of my friendship with Rick, because I left Syracuse and returned to LA.

We had a common cause. Art and city developments were topics we could go on about all day. He produced a show at Lipe Art Park where he used graf on a temporary installation to be provocative about street art. He liked to push buttons like I did. 

What I loved about Rick was that when we did talk, it was always to the point. I gave many people his phone number and trusted he could help in his way better than anyone else in Syracuse. That's how we were friends. He liked the article that I wrote about him and GF. I shook his hand and told him he had big hands and he said thank you.

MEN'S FRIENDS - I Can't handle You This Way, Man

WE"RE NOT GOOD FRIENDS ANYMORE BECAUSE YOU CHANGED

Eros - artist in studio

Eros performing at Encuentro

It's hard to handle big changes in your friends' lives. Dating, marriage, new group of friends, shift in attitude, financial states - there are some hard changes men try to stay away from when meeting up with other male friends for their usual buddy time. A quick, "so how's the new job/wife/thing you were doing.." is enough to demonstrate that you are aware, but really just want to see you to hang out like we always do.

Eros during our film project - overnite graf artist

My friend Eros is artistic, eccentric, passionate and very talented as a painter and performer. I was so impressed by him that I made a short film about him.

But he changed his personality too much for me during our shoot, and it really pissed me off. Was he just putting on a performance? Was he joking with me? Was he going through an artistic crisis and needed to force himself to work in some other direction?

The admirable and unique artist who I knew and thought I had a connection with, decided on the night of our shoot; after he saw and approved the script I spent time on, after we scheduled time and had a perfect location set, after I made my way miles to meet him with equipment; after all this careful pre-production and genuine concern for the project, decides to be a graffitti artist all of a sudden who wants me to tape him tagging on the streets and talking about the streets dressed a-la-hip-hop-artist hanging out by some other real graf.

"I have warrants," is all I thought, while he started climbing up a street pole in the busy evening expecting me to get it on tape. I don't think he could name a single graf artist and as he proceeded stubbornly to continue this act, my heart just broke for the real artist who I knew that was so interesting just the way he was, and would have given a perfectly inspiring interview in his own studio.

Eros Obregon is an exotic talent waiting to be discovered. He has been discovered by some local collectors, but his real ship hasn't come in yet.

I still must love him for his talent and for his charm. I saw his innocence when he pulled this stunt on me. But I knew at that point that I couldn't continue being friends with him anymore.

"Conquistador" by Eros

 However, I still would promote every scrap of drawing or even doodle he ever made if I could represent him.

Here is his website, review it yourself:

http://www.artedeeros.com/

The thread that keeps men's friendships together breaks easily when too many changes occur. I've seen this happen before, not just with me, but with other men who can't invest more than they already have in getting to know another person who keeps changing and expecting you to follow. It becomes a game, and then the game gets old.

Eros came from Mexico, and I was always sensitive to the kind of identity searching he must have been confronted with, living in Hollywood. He spoke to me in Spanish and cooked me Mexican food that my Mexican mom never made me. His work was very Mexican to me, in the sense that it was rough but natural, colorful and flavorful, dreamlike and confrontational. I really saw him in his work, but could not see him in front of a camera.

Everybody changes when you point a camera at them. I shouldn't be so upset. The movie was a school project and I aced it. If I meet him around town, I'm sure he is the same go-with-the-flow bohemian fella I met over a year ago. Maybe I'm too bossy. I don't need to talk about me.

My friend changed for the last time and I will always want to know him the way I liked to know him. Otherwise, we can't be friends.

CONFIDE - Secrets Men Tell: Benjamin

THE ONLY MAN FROM SYRACUSE WHO I MISS WAS NOT SO NICE

Howard Benjamin: Owner of Tiffany's Catering Company, specializing in pig roasts and more..
                               http://www.tiffanyscatering.com/

I left Syracuse in 2005 and then returned in 2006 to try to save an old marriage that was dying a slow, painful death. I responded to an ad for a catering job located right around the corner from my little love nest and Howard Benjamin hired me on the spot as head of sales. "I just want a job in the kitchen. Prepping would be fine," I said. There was too much personal stuff going on in my life and I just needed to lose myself in food all day and make some money. But Howard looked at my resume and decided something else for me.

My office was what used to be a meat locker of a former grocery store. I had a phone book, a phone, and regular mail to work with. My computer was an old PC, the printer was noisy and shook a lot. I made many connections but not a lot of bookings. Howard threw me leads but they never amounted to much.

He was very fat and spoke slowly, with a lisp. But he was full of energy. Howard threw the biggest fits and scared the hell out of all his workers; sometimes right on location in the middle of a job - like a wedding with 200 guests. When he yelled he was so loud and rude that everyone feared him.

I was nervous around him at first, but that all went away by 2008. He trusted me by then to chef and manage small parties with my own crew. I did three or four pig roasts and a fancy political fundraiser. I was comfortable around him all the time, despite his fits, and joked with him in his office.

He was a funny man. Howard was hilarious sometimes. He told me that I reminded him of Lionel Richie. We joked about a girl that told him he looked like Jaba the Hut. And he did!

The man could be such a crowd pleaser sometimes. He really was a great party planner. He was the type of salesman who told you what you wanted - not to take advantage of you, but to take care of you. I trusted him, and that summer of 2008 he really trusted me too. He told me that I was really good at that job, and looked at me with a sincerity I can never forget.

I even had his back when it came down to his workers slacking too much or talking trash about him. And Howard was very much a prick to his men, but I still took his side. Labor cost, food cost, doing things his way was important to me.

Once he asked me to get him a hot philly steak sandwich from Subway, with mushrooms. Well they didn't have any mushrooms and I remember getting so upset because I wanted him to eat a good lunch. Another time I remember we cooked six or eight pork butts for a big job the next day. They cooked for hours in our ovens and created an aroma that surrounded you like air and made you breathe flavor. I think there were four large ovens and over a dozen burners. When the pork was done and sitting out to cool, he picked at some of it and told me "there's nothing like that." There's nothing like that pork hot and juicy right out of the oven. He let one of the female hands take some home to her family. Sometimes he was so generous. But it didn't matter because people stole from him all the time anyway.

His office was light blue and small. He would roll around in an office chair back and forth from his computer desk to his paperwork desk. Howard never gave cash advances, even on days already worked when I was hard for cash and couldn't wait for the check. We all got paid after three o'clock on Mondays. If I ever asked for a front he would say something prickly like, "Do you even need to ask?"

It rubbed off on me because when I went on jobs I never cared about workers whining over shit. "Get to it" was my attitude, and pointing out their mistakes became easy.

Many times I told people that he was the only person I would miss when I left Syracuse. I guess I still think of him enough. I still use him as a work reference for food/bev jobs. I trust he'll say something positive enough about me.

The Best Book About Today's Men: A CHOICE OF HEROS

Mark Gerzon wrote A Choice of Heros in 1984, but I found it accidentally in 2008. I thought it was much more recent work, because it includes essays that sound like they could come from the pages of Esquire magazine, except they are even more daring and contemporary in their take on how today's man thinks and feels.

Gerzon's essays sound casual and told in an easy, conversational tone. Compared to other books in Men's/Masculinity Studies, this one is less of a Sociology textbook and more of a disclosure of secrets that he and other men in his life can finally reveal.


http://www.amazon.com/CHOICE-HEROES-92-Mark-Gerzon/dp/0395611520

The stories are best explained for what they are:
A member of his college Crew team they called Hulk because of his size suddenly disappeared from campus and years later found skinny and unhealthy-looking. What happened? He suffered from so much loneliness at school, apart from his girlfriend and family, that it physically changed him, and he never regained his strength.
A war veteran takes his sons to veteran support groups so they could hear real stories told by war survivors and make more informed decisions about enlisting.

They are brief essays that awaken a sensibility about real men today that confront tough experiences and then talk about them as a part of our history. Gerzon's stories are shameless because they are so honest and responsible to young men who need to access an example of that honesty.

I wish I could find more books like his. In the meantime, I will blog this month about men who have influenced my life with their stories.