Sevan Matossian (00:00):
A tombstone look in you. You got a little western look in you. I like that. Howdy partner. Yeah, you look a little timeless right now. You could be from any era. 18 50, 19 50 2050.
Tommy G (00:15):
Yeah. I’m going for the pioneer look with the little scummy mustache and I’m really enjoying it,
Sevan Matossian (00:20):
Dude. It’s great seeing you.
Tommy G (00:23):
Good seeing you too, man.
Sevan Matossian (00:27):
Have you just completely taken over that genre? Are you a one man vice? Are you a $3 billion company? Just one dude doing it? Is that what Yeah,
Tommy G (00:36):
I would say I’m closer to, I have 2 billion in the bank account right now. Definitely taking over that, but I would say it is me and about four other guys that are really in this niche that are really grinding and getting after it and we’re hitting the road man, and we’re trying to dive into the stories that show people what’s really going on in this world.
Sevan Matossian (00:56):
It is on a whole, I think the first time I had you on, maybe you had 400,000, then you had 800,000, then you had, now you’re up over a million. But here’s the thing, the content is on a practice makes perfect. You’re like watched. So the first time I watched your stuff, I probably watched eight of your videos in one night in the garage and I liked four of ’em. Then the second time I liked six. Then this time I was fucking addicted, dude, I couldn’t even stop watching them. It is nuts. You feel like you’re getting better.
Tommy G (01:34):
I feel like we’re definitely getting better. The team, we’ve been working with each other now for a year and a half, so we’re not totally new to this, but I think there’s still places to grow and we still have a vision of where we want to be, but overall I’m very happy with the growth and it feels like we’re getting just a little bit better every time.
Sevan Matossian (01:51):
Yeah, the thumbnails, are you just ecstatic about the thumbnails?
Tommy G (01:56):
Yeah. This random Russian kid emailed me one day asking if he could try and do some thumbnails. He did ’em and it’s like, whoa. He’s a game changer for sure.
Sevan Matossian (02:05):
Dude, these are popping. I
Tommy G (02:07):
Know. That’s something I’ve been thinking about is the minimalist view. There’s a guy named Andrew Callahan. It’s just a screen grab, a very basic title and it goes, and then I’m more on the superlative side where I’m trying to find the most extreme stuff and then I always think I deliver. So I don’t feel bad about doing a thumbnail like this, but I wonder is it overkill? Is it good? What do you think is a guy that looks at the channel, Sava?
Sevan Matossian (02:34):
No, they’re not clickbaity at all basically, to be honest with you. For me it’s something about the texture and the way you pop in them. It’s almost like three dimensional. Look at this one down here with the Muslim investigating the most Muslim places in America, it’s you and then the guy in the black shirt’s a little behind him and then the guy in the white Rob’s a little behind. There’s just depth to him without using bouquet, without using shallow depth of field, there’s depth to him. I don’t know what it is. It’s killer though.
Tommy G (03:04):
Yeah, guy does a great job.
Sevan Matossian (03:06):
It’s so good. Hey, do you know what he’s doing?
Tommy G (03:12):
I do not know. He sent me a picture of his setup.
Sevan Matossian (03:16):
Hi Jerry. Tommy G.
Tommy G (03:17):
He’s just an 18-year-old Russian kid that has a computer and I remember he sent me a picture of his bedroom setup of how he has his stuff in order and he just turns out fire every single time.
Sevan Matossian (03:29):
Does he speak English? Dude?
Tommy G (03:31):
Choppy English, but definitely you can tell he speaks English, but it’s not like there’s definitely some of the grammar’s a little bit off,
Sevan Matossian (03:40):
But he watches your stuff on the internet. I don’t
Tommy G (03:42):
Think he can completely understand the videos. He’s like, oh, from what? I can tell this video cool. But I don’t think he’s really picking up what’s going on.
Sevan Matossian (03:52):
Dude, I have this guest on the show pretty frequently. His name’s Josh Bridges. He’s a really good dude. He’s an incredible athlete, but someone’s saying You’re Tom Cruise playing Josh Bridges and you have to see this guy just get it. But it’s good. It’s a good comment. It’s a complimentary to both of you. It’s compli and the chat’s not usually complimentary to anyone, so that’s
Tommy G (04:14):
It. Well, that’s good. I feel a little bit better.
Sevan Matossian (04:17):
Hey Tommy, I feel like the first time you were on that there was some cats that you used to roll with and I may be confusing you with another interview, God knows it, but bear with me here if I’m dipping into something that makes sense to, you used to roll with some other cats who were on YouTube who had big channels, but they were in a completely different genre than you, but young prank world, what was it?
Tommy G (04:42):
Yeah, I mean you might be talking about Baylon Levine and the prank world, the kind of the practical joke space. I used to do more ridiculous public content where I would pull jokes on people
Sevan Matossian (04:57):
And there were some big accounts. This one kid, I think he was a 17-year-old kid and seventh and eighth graders were in love with him.
Tommy G (05:03):
Yeah, that’s Baylen. He’s got four and a half million subscribers. He just did a tour that was sold out. I went to his tour in Milwaukee to meet him and talk to him about it, and the kids love him, man. He’s got really positive energy, so he’s a cool guy doing what he’s doing.
Sevan Matossian (05:20):
Are they tripping on what genre you’ve gone into?
Tommy G (05:23):
They love it. Yeah. I think what I’ve discovered is
Sevan Matossian (05:28):
I’d be jealous if I was them. Here’s why.
Tommy G (05:31):
Yeah,
Sevan Matossian (05:37):
You have purpose. I don’t mean that as a dig to them, but you’re really like they have a place, their amusement, their entertainment, but dude, your shit is entertaining but has so much purpose. Everyone walks away. Anytime I watch one of your pieces, I’m like, okay, I have a new perspective on life. You’re changing me. Whereas someone dropping 12,000 pieces of bubblegum on someone and giving ’em a brand new car, it’s like,
Tommy G (06:11):
No, I see what you mean. I see what you mean. I think one thing that I’m learning is I think just I want to experience as many interesting stories as I possibly can. Every time we’re driving home from a video shoot with my crew, I want to be like, holy shit. For instance, I just got back from Phoenix yesterday and the two of the videos that were, I would say really notable that we were covering is we spent one day talking to different fentanyl dealers on the border and then in different Arizona cities and interviewing them and it’s just a wild world. That drug is taking over the country right now. And then the next day we were in a motel room with two prostitutes in a pimp as a prostitute’s in the mirror getting ready doing her eyebrows or her eyelashes and we’re talking to her as she’s getting ready to go out into the street.
(07:02):
And so getting into those situations to me is just really meaningful part of the journey. And then you also realized the line between good and evil is a lot more different than I would’ve expected. You talk to people, you’re like, man, this fentanyl dealer is a piece of shit, man, and they are doing bad things, but I just spent three days in Phoenix with a fentanyl dealer and this kid when he was 13, his mom kicked him out and chose a boyfriend that beat her. He’s out in the street surviving and he’s doing something that’s really bad, but he’s not a bad guy in a way. It’s hard to say, but you get what I’m trying to.
Sevan Matossian (07:39):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s not Satan out there peddling shit eating babies. It’s on one hand you’re seeing people selling fentanyl and then using the money to pay for their fucking, what’s that called that you feed babies? Formula. Formula, right?
Tommy G (08:00):
Yeah. I mean he helps his mom buy a car, his girlfriend’s staying in their rent for, he’s paying the bills and these guys are hustlers and I think a lot of times if they could sell hot wheels on the street and that people would buy them off, they would sell. It would be anything. Pokemon cards. If they could deal Pokemon cards and make a lot of money, they would do it. I don’t think they even really care whether it’s fentanyl or heroin or Pokemon cards, whatever’s going to be the quickest way to spring a buck and survive out there. A lot of these kids have just been from a young age have just been surviving in really tough environments and that doesn’t give ’em an excuse like a pass on what they’re doing, but it gives a perspective on what they’re doing that makes it feel more human.
Sevan Matossian (08:40):
Normally when I do podcasts, I just free flow the conversation, I have notes and then I free flow the conversation. And I told myself today, I was not going to do that with you. There’s some shit that I really want to talk about.
Tommy G (08:52):
Let’s dive into it, man.
Sevan Matossian (08:53):
So bear with me. I’m going to go a list. There’s some shit I really want to know. And then by the
Tommy G (08:57):
Way, I would say the kind of mullet you got going on, I would aspire to have that on my own one day. You look beautiful, very handsome. And dude,
Sevan Matossian (09:05):
This is not a fucking mullet dude.
Tommy G (09:07):
What? Give me a side profile real quick.
Sevan Matossian (09:09):
This is a man bun dude that I wore down for you.
Tommy G (09:12):
Well, it looks good. It’s all I’m saying. You’re
Sevan Matossian (09:14):
Totally backfiring on me.
Tommy G (09:15):
Oh, I would say keep it going, dude. You got Yes. That’s art right there, dude.
Sevan Matossian (09:21):
Look, look, look, look. I have this lesbian friend and she told me it’s the Viking die cut. She actually talked me into do it glint. She has a podcast too. She’s like, Hey, do the Viking Dke cut, shave the sides and then I pull it up into a man bun.
Tommy G (09:35):
I think it should be the new trend. If I had the hair for it, I would do it, but just God never blessed me in the way he blessed you.
Sevan Matossian (09:41):
What do you mean? What do you mean? You got a good hair, don’t you? That looks like a lot of hair.
Tommy G (09:45):
Speaking of lesbians, if I try and grow my hair any longer, I look like a lesbian and that’s not a look I’m going for
Sevan Matossian (09:51):
At the moment. Well, it’s weird sometimes when my hair’s long and especially as I get older and probably my testosterone’s dropping, I walk by the mirror and I think like, am I a tranny? I’m like, am I transitioning with this long hair? I definitely can’t shave the beard.
Tommy G (10:05):
I think you got a fantastic look going on. Okay.
Sevan Matossian (10:07):
Alright, good. Thank you. We’ll roll with that. I’ll leave it there. Mullet. I don’t want anyone. No, it’s not a mullet. Fuck off everyone. No mullet talk. Okay, here we go. When you go out now, since people see your YouTube channel, I’m guessing and people know you, it’s gotten safer. I’m guessing by that, I mean I can tell a lot of people are sussing you out. I’ve been in a lot of situations that you’ve been in and there’s assessing out period, but I’m guessing now that people are like, okay, he’s not drug enforcement, he’s not a TF, he’s not, you know what I mean? He’s not an undercover basically.
Tommy G (10:55):
In some ways it’s a lot easier to get contacts. I was in San Francisco two weeks ago and I was talking to you and I was looking for biters and boosters and vipers are the guy that smashed the car. Windows and boosters are the guy that goes into a store and takes a bunch of stuff and I’d probably 30 leads of people I could hit up. So my access to the underworld has definitely gotten bigger, but I also have more people. It’s a status thing too. So I was with this pimp in Phoenix and his buddies come up and they start videotaping us and posting and they start putting us on Instagram. And one of my rules, especially when we’re doing hood stuff, is don’t post anything until after we’re out of the area. The guys will say, oh, I got all this beef. And then they’ll post a video of you with them in an area that everyone knows and you have no idea who’s watching his story.
(11:41):
So that’s gotten a little bit more dangerous as it becomes more of a status symbol. Guys will be like, oh yeah, I’m bringing Tommy G to the hood, and they get credibility for that. And then you get all these people that are trying to dive in and take a piece. Let’s say I’m looking for a Fentanyl dealer in Tucson. I’ll have rappers that’ll pretend to be a dealer, but really just want to talk to me about music. So I have to find a way to vet people before I show up so I don’t have to just leave the situation, if you know what I
Sevan Matossian (12:11):
Mean. Yeah, it’s interesting because you’re going through a fine balance, right? You’re going from unknown to earning their acceptance to the opposite end, I guess is like what you just described, people trying to use you to build their shit up when like, Hey, you actually are a raw journalist, you’re an anthropologist, you’re an anthropologist.
Tommy G (12:37):
It’s become that too. It feels like I’ve gotten to dive into so many different types of subcultures in America that it’s been a road while traveled and it feels, it just funded that the job has turned into every little niche culture there possibly is. I want to try and find a way in there.
Sevan Matossian (13:00):
Tom Garrin. Hey, what’s up dude? Merry Christmas. Tommy g paychecks my paychecks brother. Thank you. Keep it rolling.
Tommy G (13:05):
Shout out. Shout out paychecks. That was a good starting point if it wasn’t. So he’s referring to a company that were at, I was at for my day job for five years and I thought it was a big waste of time, but I got assigned the worst zip codes in Milwaukee, and that’s actually what got me comfortable in hoods is my day job. And now if I hadn’t had that experience, I probably wouldn’t be doing what I am now. So if there’s anyone out there that thinks they’re in a dead end job or stuck, take what you can out of it. You never know what you’re going to take to the next chapter.
Sevan Matossian (13:37):
That also, but I think also your wrestling background, A BJJ background also has given you a stillness and a, when you’re there, you’re in your skin. You know what I mean? You’re not freaking out or acting weird or you’re not like a white dude who’s trying to act like a black dude. You’re just you. And I think, I think that settles everyone around you down.
Tommy G (14:08):
Yeah, I think just being myself, even if it comes off as nerdy or corny or
Sevan Matossian (14:13):
Definitely nerdy, you are ablo, but you’re a dangerous nerd. Everyone knows not to fuck with you.
Tommy G (14:18):
The thing is though, savanna is like
Sevan Matossian (14:20):
Elephants are nerdy, but no one’s fucking with elephants. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Tommy G (14:23):
In the no one’s fighting, no one’s going to punch me. It’s going to be some guy with a switch is just going to just swing by and it’s all my juujitsu goes out the window.
Sevan Matossian (14:33):
I don’t mean in actual violence. I mean you have a vibe that you take care of yourself. You’re not leaning on anything. You don’t want their money. You don’t want their bitches, you don’t want their money, you don’t want them to fight for you. You got you and you got that vibe. You’re like a dude that other dudes want to hang out with. You’re cool.
Tommy G (14:51):
Well, thank you.
Sevan Matossian (14:52):
Yeah. Yeah. You have integrity, but you also, you’re capable.
Tommy G (15:00):
I think the martial arts world gives people the ability to walk anywhere else you walk through in life, you feel pretty comfortable in that room because you’ve learned a lot about yourself all the days. Getting the shit kicked out of you or kicking the shit out of other people kind of builds you into I think a well-balanced person.
Sevan Matossian (15:18):
Balza seven. Is this a convo or a fluff piece? I can speak with two dicks in my mouth. Limit me to what I can do multitasking. Hey, how is the training going? How’s the jiujitsu going in any training? Are you doing any training? You look good. You haven’t gotten fat yet. I keep thinking I’m going to turn it on. You’re going to get soft. You got a wife now and money and
Tommy G (15:46):
Training’s going good. I need to get my cardio back up. There’s nothing like the college wrestling cardio where you feel like you could just do anything. You could run through a brick wall and go for miles and miles and I need to get back into just running outside more. But as far as the wrestling at the gym frequently feeling good, but I want to get that unlimited cardio back. But maybe as turn I just turned 30. So maybe that’s just a bygone era of a young man.
Sevan Matossian (16:15):
And when you say you’re in the gym, how often?
Tommy G (16:18):
When I’m in town, 4, 5, 6 days a week.
Sevan Matossian (16:20):
Okay. Okay. So it is routine for you?
Tommy G (16:23):
Oh yeah. That keeps me balanced. If I go a day or two without going to the gym, I think my wife would make me go. I’d probably start to annoy her too much.
Sevan Matossian (16:32):
I was going to ask you that your wife supports that.
Tommy G (16:34):
Oh yeah.
Sevan Matossian (16:36):
And she’s cool with you spending. Is she cool with everything so far? Just does she realize how much you work?
Tommy G (16:45):
Yeah, I have to balance it. There was a day I really messed up last week where I said, Hey, I’m going to stay home from jujitsu. I’m going to hang out with you before I go out to the trip. And I ended up just taking so many different phone calls that by the time the night was almost gone, I was like, fuck. I didn’t even spend time I was supposed to. I just was on the phone all the time. So I think guarding my time and knowing when to be present and when to take care of business, this is something that could occupy seven days a week if I wanted it to. So I to just have my boundaries up. Well,
Sevan Matossian (17:19):
The goal more than the goal, is it one a week? That is the reality. It’s one documentary a week,
Tommy G (17:29):
One documentary a week, and it’s a fast treadmill to stay on.
Sevan Matossian (17:35):
What about Tommy taking on someone else? Now I know it’s really hard to find. What if you found someone who was like, Hey, I just spent three days in, blah, blah, blah. Here’s my footage.
Tommy G (17:49):
Then that turns me into a network. And my goal is not to become the biggest, I think look at it like you look in the military. If you want to specialize operation, you send four guys that are well trained into an area, four to eight guys, and they take care of business. I don’t ever want to be the infantry where I have 3000 guys marching forward. Then it just turned into I’m a manager. Then I’d rather be hands-on and keep it small, have my hands on the craft, make sure it turns out really well every time. My goal is not to just grow to the point of maximum expansion.
Sevan Matossian (18:23):
So listen people out there, I’m going to tell you how you can get fucking crazy successful on the fast track. Listen very carefully. Very carefully. You’re going to make pieces and they’re going to be good and they’re going to be short and they’re tight and you’re going to make one every single week. And you’re going to send them to Tommy and tell them you’ll have them for free and you want nothing from him. And you’re going to plan to do that for one to three years.
Tommy G (18:51):
And then I will in turn say, I’m not going to take it, but post on your own channel and for one to three years you’ll grow.
Sevan Matossian (18:59):
And finally one day Tommy will bite and he’ll be like, he’ll be like, okay, I’m ready to grow. I’m only going to do one every other week because he needs to raise his kids and you’ll be in there. Don’t ask for money, don’t ask for anything else. Show him how hard you work. Be consistent. Don’t take no for an answer. I know there’s no one out there like that. The only two people out there like that in the entire world are me and Tommy. Well,
Tommy G (19:23):
I don’t know if I would give that advice. I’d say build your own platform. Why would they want to dedicate themselves to building what I got going on when they can build what they got going on? I would say owning your own platform is always the most powerful thing you can do. Then you’re your own boss. You make your own moves, you decide where you want to go.
Sevan Matossian (19:42):
More quality advice from Tommy g Balza. No one asked.
Tommy G (19:49):
Balzac is a pretty good username, don’t you think?
Sevan Matossian (19:53):
I love his mom. God, she sucks a main one. God, she’s so good. Do you have a baby?
Tommy G (20:03):
Yes, baby is, we’re almost eight months pregnant now. We’re over. Yeah. So we’re having the baby in January sometime and we’re really excited.
Sevan Matossian (20:13):
Are your parents nearby?
Tommy G (20:15):
Hour and a half away?
Sevan Matossian (20:16):
Are her parents nearby
Tommy G (20:18):
Five hours away? So definitely building the tribe locally is important.
Sevan Matossian (20:24):
Damn. Shit’s about to get real.
Tommy G (20:26):
It’s about to get real, real, but I’m very excited. I was just coming home the other day in a flight and seeing the mom carry a baby around on the plane and the baby’s wearing a onesie and the baby’s very cute and I’m excited for that. I’m very excited to show the baby the world. It’s going to be a baby boy. So taking him into the woods and falling down in mud and jumping into creeks, chucking rocks, and I really want to make sure my kid is connected to the earth and that’s going to be a big part of my role, my responsibility to do that.
Sevan Matossian (21:00):
Dude, Tommy, I wonder if you’re going to get any weird pathology’s, like you don’t want to fly anymore. You’re afraid you’re going to die and not be able to come back to your kid. Or if you’re going to pick some shit up. Now that I have kids, I used to ride bikes on the road all the time. Once a week. I’d go on a 20 mile bike ride. I don’t do that shit anymore. I don’t want to get hit by a car and not be with my kids. I wonder if you’re going to pick up any of that shit. You might be.
Tommy G (21:27):
I feel like it could happen, but I feel like our job is to become the fullest versions of ourselves for our kids. And so I think I’m going to keep doing that. Everything that’s within reason I’ll keep doing.
Sevan Matossian (21:37):
Yeah. John Clark. Is Tommy wearing a mustache disguise?
Tommy G (21:43):
It looks like it doesn’t it.
Sevan Matossian (21:44):
You can go to tommy g.com and you too can buy that disguise. They’re on a Black Friday sale right now, 93
Tommy G (21:50):
Small payments of 1999, and you can get this exact mustache.
Sevan Matossian (21:56):
Has anyone compared you to Vice that you’re like the non fascist, non-racist,
Tommy G (22:02):
Open the older Vice Vice, yeah. And to me that’s a great concept. I love Vice. They have some really amazing journalists. There’s this lady named Isabelle Young who did a piece on the Taliban about a year ago, and she was so brave and the questions she asked were all the questions I would’ve been terrified to ask. And she to me is like a AA level journalist. And so yeah, vice Vice is one man vice. I’m actually more of like a five man vice. I got some really great people on the team. But yeah, so Vice is a great compliment to me.
Sevan Matossian (22:36):
You always have the same camera guy. Always.
Tommy G (22:39):
Yeah. I got Miguel. He’s the main Cam. Keegan sometimes is the backup cam and it’s the three of us always roll out when we’re doing these videos.
Sevan Matossian (22:48):
It’s three of you?
Tommy G (22:49):
Yep.
Sevan Matossian (22:51):
Wow. Any of those guys ever freak out?
Tommy G (22:56):
We all come from pretty suburban safe background, so we’re throwing ourselves into really weird situations. We were at this very, very sketchy motel infested with fentanyl, and we’re interviewing a guy that has killed two or three people in self-defense, just got out of prison, has the teardrop tattoos, has a Glock with a switch in his pocket. He’s sipping on scissor and it just like, holy shit dude, what are we doing here? But they do a really good job and we’ve kind of acclimated as well. Things that used to be a big deal are not so much anymore, and I think we’re getting better at vetting the contacts and making sure we’re walking into a relatively safe environment.
Sevan Matossian (23:40):
Hey, do those dudes train? Are those dudes healthy guys?
Tommy G (23:46):
Very few gangsters I ever meet are healthy guys. They mostly, no,
Sevan Matossian (23:49):
Sorry, I mean your camera guys.
Tommy G (23:51):
Yeah. Actually as part of the employee benefit package we’re getting Miguel set up at the fight gym today and he’s going to start doing Juujitsu and kickboxing and Keegan joined Kickbox or Jujitsu a few months ago, so hopefully everyone on the squad will eventually will be even more confident.
Sevan Matossian (24:10):
Get some blue belts.
Tommy G (24:12):
Yeah.
Sevan Matossian (24:14):
Yeah. That is interesting. I watched probably, I don’t know, eight pieces in the last two weeks. And you never ask the boot girls, do those chicks train or stay in shape at all? They don’t look like they do. Do you ever ask?
Tommy G (24:28):
Here’s the thing I noticed with a lot of women that I meet in the more Trey areas, if they worked out and ate right, they’d all be tens. Dude, they’re so beautiful, but they’re beautiful without eating Doritos and not working out, imagine what they would look like if they did.
Sevan Matossian (24:45):
Yeah, no one. Do you ever ask ’em that? Is that ever a topic of fitness or health or,
Tommy G (24:54):
We talked a little bit about it. They’re like, oh yeah, I want to get back into it. But it’s just not a priority for
Sevan Matossian (24:59):
Yeah, marriage is strong. It’s good,
Tommy G (25:06):
It’s awesome, man. It makes everything in my life feel very stable. And so I always have a nice place to come home to. And we have a lot of fun and we have a nice routine. And I think marriage is, I think it’s becoming more valued again. But I think my generation saw a lot of the boomer generation, our parents, a lot of ’em get divorced and so we probably lost faith in the institution of it. But I think marrying a good partner is probably the most important. It’s up there with the top three most important life decisions you can make.
Sevan Matossian (25:42):
Did you ever think you would talk for a living?
Tommy G (25:46):
I thought I would entertain in some way. I didn’t know if it was going to be rapping or standup comedy or this, but I think I’ve always wanted to entertain. I always, always like the class clown trying to raise my hand and doing ridiculous shit to try and make the rest of the class amused.
Sevan Matossian (26:05):
When I first met you, I thought you were a foreigner because you have something going on with the way you talk. Sound different or I thought I have a
Tommy G (26:12):
Weird little dialect going on.
Sevan Matossian (26:13):
Yeah, you thought, did you ever have a speech impediment or anything like that?
Tommy G (26:17):
I had trouble saying my Rs when I was a kid.
Sevan Matossian (26:20):
And how did you know that? Did someone tell you that
Tommy G (26:23):
When you can’t pronounce your Rs in front of other kids, it becomes pretty noticeable quickly. They let you know
Sevan Matossian (26:30):
Because now I see your work and I’m like, wow, this guy, you’re not following any of the, you were one of the most serious journalists. I know I put you up there with Jorge Ventura. I just
Tommy G (26:54):
Spoke to him on the phone recently.
Sevan Matossian (26:55):
Okay, great. Yeah, you immersed yourself in the situation and you bring back the facts and you ask a wide swath of questions so that we can get the full picture. So you know what I mean? If you’re doing a fentanyl thing, you still would ask. I know you would ask the guy, Hey, do you work out? There’s a vignette. You try to paint of your characters. It’s just kind of incredible. And you knew that somehow you’d be doing something like this. This is just,
Tommy G (27:27):
It makes sense. I was always the guy that if I was taking a train somewhere or sitting next to somebody, I would always just ask ’em about themselves and have a long conversation. So it’s always been easy for me to go up to a stranger and ask ’em questions about their life. I’ve just always been inquisitive and curious and somehow some way this path collided. And now I think one of the things I pride myself in the channel is as far as getting deep into the underworld, we have got to be at the top of the list for doing that.
Sevan Matossian (28:02):
When you were doing the Atlanta Boot Girls, that piece was a trip because at first I thought that they were taking boots off. Can you explain to me what was going on there? Because at first I didn’t understand that piece and I was kind of hating those girls. And then when I realized what they were doing, I was like, oh shit, I kind of like these girls.
Tommy G (28:21):
So the city of Atlanta has a practice called booting in which if your car’s in the wrong spot or you’re in the wrong lot, a private company will put a boot on your car, which is basically a clamp on your tire that doesn’t allow it to move. And the only way to get out of it is to pay a fine that is escalating every single day that you let it sit there. And so these boot girls, they got booted when they were first starting out and they decided we’re going to do something about this. And now they have the keys and they just drive around and take orders. And so if they’re right next to where you are, they’re going to drive up to your car within 30 seconds. They get the boot off, they take their money and they bounce. And the city loves them, the police love ’em, the politicians love them, the citizens love ’em. The boot companies, however do not.
Sevan Matossian (29:07):
So basically it’s privatized, booting. So if I own an apartment complex, I can call this company and they’ll just start booting cars.
Tommy G (29:16):
Yes.
Sevan Matossian (29:18):
So how is that legal? I couldn’t get my head wrapped around that.
Tommy G (29:22):
I think it’s legal gray area because the way that they get out of it is if they don’t ruin the boot that they are technically doing it legally. But their lawyer said if boot, if they don’t mess with the way that Buddha is functioning, that it’s legal, but they are messing with the way the Buddha is functioning. So somehow there’s a little loophole or gray area or maybe there’s just a lack of will to enforce it because everyone hates the boot.
Sevan Matossian (29:47):
And the fact that it’s privatized is disgusting.
Tommy G (29:53):
It definitely did not, I don’t think it makes anyone happy when they walk outside and see a car booted. And I know that in the city.
The above transcript is generated using AI technology and therefore may contain errors.
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