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Short Stuff: Did Tippi Hedron start the Vietnamese manicure industry? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chucked Cherry's here too, and for Days and this
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: is short stuff one that ties into a recent episode
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: of ours raw.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: That's right, thanks to the following inside Fullerton website, National
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Museum of American History KCR dot com dot edu, and
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: a website called viet Salon. And if you're like that's
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: a funny sounding name, it's not, because we're talking about
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: the interesting fact that Vietnamese, American and Vietnamese women generally
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: populate the manicure nail professional system like no other group
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  Speaker 2: in the United States.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's one of those things that you just
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: know that in the United States, even if you don't
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: get your nails done, you just kind of know Vietnamese
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  Speaker 1: people tend to be the ones that run and own
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: nail salons. But it's one of those things that you
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: probably have never stopped to ask why. And this is
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: one of those great stories where there's actually a specific answer,
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: a specific date, specific people involved that answer that question why,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Like there's an answer to it, not just well that's
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: just how it turned out.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, I do have a stat for you here.
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  Speaker 2: The Bureau of labor statistics, and this is in California,
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  Speaker 2: but this is also true in a lot of the country.
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  Speaker 2: But they have the number at eighty two percent of
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  Speaker 2: nail salons in California are staffed by Vietnamese people, generally
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  Speaker 2: Vietnamese women, but some men are doing that thing too,
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: And it goes all the way back to nineteen seventy five.
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  Speaker 2: After the Vietnam War ended, Vietnamese immigration happened in a
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  Speaker 2: big way, and I think by the year two thousand
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  Speaker 2: there were a million Vietnamese immigrants had settled in the
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  Speaker 2: United States.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Yes, and not all billion, obviously we're working the nail industry,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: but enough of them did that. The Vietnamese immigrants and
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Vietnamese Americans who came to start, I guess essentially dominating
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: the nail salon industry transformed it from something pretty small
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  Speaker 1: and niche into I think an eight billion dollar global
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  Speaker 1: industry in just a few decades.
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: You know, before the nineteen seventies, if you got a
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  Speaker 2: manicure or a pedicure, you were probably some wealthy woman
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: who you know, was doing it as like a luxury service.
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  Speaker 2: It wasn't, you know, as routine as it is today,
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  Speaker 2: And the fact that it got routine was for a
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: few reasons. One was the electric file was invented in
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: nineteen seventy four, and then acrylic nails came along in
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: nineteen seventy nine, and that just sort of democratized the
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: whole thing. It made a lot cheaper to do and
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: therefore have done for you.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but even still, we haven't gotten to the reason
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  Speaker 1: why so many Vietnamese people have taken over the nail
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: industry and turned it into what it is. For one thing, though,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: like the reason that it became like primed for that
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  Speaker 1: to happen is that these nail techts realized, like, you
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: don't actually have to be like conversant in English, let
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: alone fluent. You just have to know a few words,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: and you can not only work in a nail slun
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  Speaker 1: you could pretty much open and own your own like this.
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  Speaker 1: It was a ready made way for recently arrived immigrants
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  Speaker 1: whose lives have been devastated by the Vietnam War to
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  Speaker 1: basically start over again and build like a life and
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: a nest egg for themselves.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
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  Speaker 2: So you know, we mentioned the here was nineteen seventy five,
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  Speaker 2: and the place was something called Hope Village, which was
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  Speaker 2: in Wymar, California, and it was the first non military,
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: non military refugee camp in the United States. And in
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  Speaker 2: nineteen seventy five there were about twenty Vietnamese women that
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: were there in Hope Village and at one point actress
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  Speaker 2: Tippy Hedron, who was the starbar and the Star of
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: Alfred Hitchcock's.
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  Speaker 3: The Birds, came through.
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  Speaker 2: She was doing a lot of humanitarian work at the
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  Speaker 2: time and went to visit Hope Village and during the
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: visit she noticed that these women were kind of gaga
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: over her manicured nails, and she had one of those
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  Speaker 2: light bulb moments where she's like, wait a minute, I
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  Speaker 2: bet I can teach these women and empower them to
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  Speaker 2: do this and become business owners here in the United States.
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  Speaker 1: And she reached up over her head and went on
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  Speaker 1: the light bulb with her nail and she said, I
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: got a great idea. Everybody. So she, having being a sta,
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: got her nails done quite a bit. She went to
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  Speaker 1: a place called the Nail Patch. Sounds a little hippie
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  Speaker 1: to me, but apparently it was a high end nail salon,
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  Speaker 1: like the first nails only salon because at the time
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  Speaker 1: there was no place to just go get your nails done.
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  Speaker 1: It was something you did at a larger salon. But
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Dusty Boots but Terra founded the Nail Patch and Thencino, California,
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  Speaker 1: which is the setting for the movie, and Sino Man
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  Speaker 1: and Tippy Hedron said, Hey, Dusty, do you want to
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  Speaker 1: come teach these women and Hope Village how to do
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  Speaker 1: some nail stuff because they're crazy about my manicure, So
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  Speaker 1: you want to just have a lark and come come
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  Speaker 1: show them what to do in Dusty six.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, She's like, I'm Dusty Boots but Terra. The
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  Speaker 2: answer is always yes. So Dusty Boots went up. Their
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: first training session went really well, and so Tippy Hedron
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  Speaker 2: flew her up basically every weekend over a few months,
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  Speaker 2: you know, while she was still running that nail Patch
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  Speaker 2: and Encino and just kept teaching them like new techniques
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  Speaker 2: and like kind of the all the ins and outs
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  Speaker 2: of the business.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. So there were I think originally twenty women who
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  Speaker 1: became the first class that Dusty but Terra essentially graduated.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: And this was also just he made to be adapted
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: to actual like beauty schools, beauty colleges in particular. The
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: first one was Citrus Heights Beauty College, which is well
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: known for also being the one that Frenchie dropped out
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: from in Greece. And yeah, no, I just made that.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: I just had to give a frenchy shout out, and
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  Speaker 1: that was the only way I could come up with it.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: I got you, and the owner, Becky Hambleton, was like, hey,
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  Speaker 1: let's figure out how to create a nail manicure curriculum essentially,
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  Speaker 1: so we can take anybody who wants to learn, especially
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: women from whole village, and train them how to do
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: this so they can go create a life for themselves.
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  Speaker 3: That's right.
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  Speaker 2: I feel like we should take our little break here, sure,
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: and we'll come back and get to As Paul Harvey
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: would say the rest of the story right after this, Well.
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: Now we're on the road driving in your truck. Want
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: to learn a thing or two from josh Am Chuck.
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: It's stuff you should know, all right, stop.
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: All right, So we're back.
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  Speaker 2: When we left, Tippy Hedron had gotten Dusty Boots Poterra
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  Speaker 2: on the scene training these women and then partnered with
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: Becky Hambleton of Citrus Heights Beauty College to get a
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: real nail curriculum going. The one thing I don't think
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: we mentioned, it's kind of cool. If you do a
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: little research on this, you'll see a lot of amazing
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  Speaker 2: photos of all of this happening in real time. And
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  Speaker 2: that's because Dusty Boots but Terra's husband, Massimo Massimo. Yeah, yeah,
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  Speaker 2: Massimo Butra was a photographer and like went up there
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  Speaker 2: to this refugee camp and like took lots of like
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: awesome pictures of this all taking place.
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  Speaker 1: So yeah, it was pretty well documented. So I think
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  Speaker 1: the first group of twenty women from Camp Hope underwent
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty hours of training. So when they graduated,
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: they knew everything there is to know about manicures, pedicures,
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  Speaker 1: all the cures. And they went out and basically spread
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  Speaker 1: this knowledge and started training other women essentially just enough
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: to hire them. And then, like those women gained on
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: the job training, you could also go to beauty colleges
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  Speaker 1: now to learn it as well. And this seed was
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: planted of this massive transition in the nail salon industry. Again,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: like this is really where the idea of nail salons
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  Speaker 1: kind of came from. Yes, there was the nail patch,
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  Speaker 1: but the ubiquity of them today they are everywhere. Sometimes
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  Speaker 1: if the strip mall is big enough, they'll have multiple
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  Speaker 1: nail salons in there, and like they're just everywhere. All
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  Speaker 1: of this came from this late seventies transition.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
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  Speaker 2: And just like any ethnic roop group that moves to
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: another country and kind of maybe from the outside weirdly
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  Speaker 2: becomes dominant over a particular part of you know, business,
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  Speaker 2: That's how it happens. You know, word goes back to Vietnam,
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  Speaker 2: like hey, you know you're on to your sister or
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: somebody or has gone over to the United States. They're
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: making a great living doing nails, so then they come
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: over and they get taught, and then it just sort
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: of the tendrils sort of spread out from there, right,
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  Speaker 2: and it became Vietnamese dominated. And one of the reasons
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  Speaker 2: I think Becky Hamilton reference was, Hey, it wasn't just
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: us in the curriculum and us teaching them, but she
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: was like, they had amazing work ethics and that's why
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: they were successful.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You ever get a pedicure or a manicure, Nah,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: not my thing there, man. You should treat yourself, at
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: least treat yourself to a pedicure once and I'll bet
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: you do it more than once.
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  Speaker 2: You told me to do that ten times now, and
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  Speaker 2: I just don't think it's my thing.
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  Speaker 1: All right, I'm taking you. Sorry, I'll kidnap you if
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: I have to and take you and you're going to like, Josh,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: thanks for this.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: No, I wouldn't because I don't like people touching my toes.
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  Speaker 2: It freaks me out. So you would actually be delivering
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: kind of a horror experience for me.
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  Speaker 1: All right, let me think about this then, So Chuck,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: this is not all just necessarily like hip hip hooray
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: for nail salons. There's definitely some downsides to it. If
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: you really kind of want to make it in America.
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  Speaker 1: In nail salons, you essentially have to own your own
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  Speaker 1: and most of the people who work at nail salons
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  Speaker 1: do not have any kind of ownership stake in them.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Actually, sadly, they typically make less even than minimum wage,
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  Speaker 1: So a lot of nail salon workers are being paid
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  Speaker 1: an illegally low amount of money.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, which is you know, even in California they have
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  Speaker 2: a thirteen dollars an hour minimum wage. This is from
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  Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, and I think that same year the
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: average for a nail salon worker was ten dollars and
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: ninety four cents.
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: So you know how they getting away with that? That's
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: what I want to know.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: I looked, Basically, someone has to report you, and from
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: what I understand, a lot of nail salon workers barely
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: speak English in some cases or just don't at all,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: so there's no way for them to report. And then
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: secondly they might not know where to start with reporting.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: And then also thirdly, this is their job and they
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: depend on this job as little as they're paid, so
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: they're probably not going to start causing trouble or rocking
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: the boat or whatever. And then the even worse, traditionally
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: or typically, when you are reported for this, basically nothing
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: happens to you as a business owner, all.
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: Right, So the TLD are is they're being taken advantage of.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it happens, and certainly it's not all nail salons,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: but it is something that is pretty rampant in that industry.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: And then at all nail salons there's a real health
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: risk with respiratory difficulties from all of the chemicals that
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: are used in there and just are in the air.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: It's just part of the air and the nail salon.
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so tip them big everybody.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: Yes, although they are often forced to split their tips
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: with the ownership, which is pretty crummy.
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: Well, that's why I get a tip them even bigger.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what you do. I've learned this from experience. You
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: show up with a twenty jam between your big toe
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: and your second toe, and when they take your shoe off,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: you just wink at them. They get it, they understand.
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: Okay, that's all for you.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: Yep, So you got anything else?
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: I got nothing else.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Short, Stuff's out, everybody.
• 12:43
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• 12:45
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