Long story made (somewhat) short...
Several years ago I was intrigued by someone I met through another business endeavor who owned a company called Beach Recovery. As the name implies, the company has rights to technology that reverses beach erosion. This technology guy has a 40 year track record that can be verified by before and after shots, many sites of which are in the Great Lakes area in addition to the ocean (see web site below). One day, government bureaucracy kicked in and the technology guy went ballistic. His attitude was, wtf does it matter how it works so long as it works and I can prove not just that it works, but that it's a permanent fix. My analogy is a baseball team unwilling to sign Mariano Rivera until he can explain scientifically why his cutter cuts. Thus began a long, slow process to figure out how to commercialize something that requires the approval of multiple local, state, and federal governments at a cost of millions. beachrecovery.com 
Truly, Beach Recovery would make a great penny stock. If the technology can my learned and commoditized, the company would be worth billions. Otherwise, it's worth zip. There's really no middle ground. If I was part of a group that sold stock in such a company and it was a bust, would I be a scammer? Even if I knew I did things in good conscience, could I live with myself for making a living off something that made someone else nothing? That's why we are trying to do things privately, and overseas, which is a whole other can of worms. But I digress...
Anyhow, in the mean time, as my partner in this endeavor's family owns the mall, and as the mall has a popular movie theater, Bed Bath Beyond, etc. we decided, for fun, we'd create a themed coffee shop there. The coffee is direct trade (one better than fair-trade), we used recycled and drift wood, and so on. It took two years and two iterations of the place to get here. I broke my back cleaning out the video store that used to be there. On Christmas day we opened the place up to everyone for free for fun. It's really a goof.
As a further goof, I just proposed we set up numerous cameras in the place and several nights a week have a live stream that we can later edit into a reality show format. If people want to watch it, great. If not, well, at least we tried. Yes, I'm a bit nuts as well. If I start logging into SI from a a cardboard box under an abandoned overpass, warmed by a fire in an old oil drum, you'll know why!
- Jeff |
