Pickleball Shut Down & Thanksgiving Fails | Mike “Sleeves” Sliwa w/ Senior Pickleball Report

 We’re coming in hot with:
 🔹 A city cancels pickleball
 🔹 Potatoes catch fire 
 🔹 Black Friday memories 

Plus, Mike “Sleeves” Sliwa from Senior Pickleball Report joins us from his solar-powered yurt to talk off-grid content, senior court life, and how he landed in a Hollywood pickleball doc.

🎧 Listen now—before your casserole combusts and the Civic Center shuts you down.
#BigDinkEnergy

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Chapters

• 1:14 Sponsor Ad
• 2:00 Kitchen Talk - Hot takes, weird news, and what’s on our minds this week
• 12:10 Fan Mail (Shout Outs, Comments, Love)
• 12:52 Just The Tip - Pickleball Wisdom
• 13:40 Pickle Pals - Deep Dive with a Pickleball Court, Club or Influencer
• 26:31 Dink or Destroy- This-or-that debate: Love it or trash it?
• 33:49 News You Can Use
• 36:14 Wrap-Up & CTA - Final thoughts, shoutouts, and how to engage with us

Transcript

Speaker 4 (00:00.564)
I was ballin' the potatoes. Go ahead.

I don't know what she was doing with the potatoes.

Boyo-ling. Completely forgot about them. They caught on fire. On the stove.

Sorry.

How does something catch on fire when it's in water?

Speaker 4 (00:16.0)
the water had boiled out of the pot and then the potatoes caught on fire in the pot.

This is Big Dink Energy, the pickleball podcast that's half insight, half nonsense, and all entertainment. If you love pickleball, don't take yourself too seriously and think a little trash talk makes the game better, welcome home. This is the place where life and pickleball intersect. We celebrate the chaos, call out the nonsense, and put the fun back in dysfunction. You're either in or you're out. And if you're still listening, you're in. So let's go.

Big Dink Energy starts now. I stay out too late and I got nothing in my brain. That's what people say. But not about this podcast. This is the Big Dink Energy podcast coming to you right now. Now listen.

Gobble gobble.

Okay, there we go.

Speaker 2 (01:06.742)
Yeah, thank you. Play that if you're catch turkeys out there. Play that on repeat. Listen, this episode is brought to you by The Pretty Pickleball Company. We love them. And they're coming in hot for this Thanksgiving week with something special. We can't spill all the tea yet, but let's just say your court style is about to level up. Be sure to check out their socials at Pretty Pickleball Company for the new drop, the colors, the chaos.

all your fit, all your drip, and all the holiday pretty headed your way. Because if you're going to serve sass on the court, you might as well look good doing it.

I'm so excited to see this stuff.

I love what they do over there. They've got so many amazing things going on over there.

All right, so it's the week of the biggest cooking time of the year. And paddle princess.

Speaker 2 (01:51.364)
Valentine's Day

wanted to talk about kitchen fails.

So not kitchen pickleball or kitchen pickleball? okay.

No, kitchen as in cooking. I have a pretty interesting one for Thanksgiving time frame. When my husband and I were newly married, it was just him, myself, my daughter, and he had had one of his Air Force buddies come over and I was cooking Thanksgiving supper for everybody. Mind you, I am not a good cook at all. It's horrible.

and I know I'm about to get made fun of a lot for saying this, but I was bowling the potatoes. Go ahead.

Speaker 1 (02:34.862)
She's not saying bowling.

I don't know what she was doing with the potatoes. Boiling the potatoes.

P-O-I-L

boiling. was bowling the potatoes, completely forgot about them. They caught on fire on the stove. I forgot that.

Sorry.

Speaker 1 (02:51.178)
I was talking! How does something catch on fire when it's in water? Yeah.

the water had boiled out of the pot and then the potatoes caught on fire in the pot. It was a whole thing. And so then my husband, like all of the stores were closed. We lived in Cheyenne, Wyoming. All of the Albertsons, everything was closed. So my husband and his friend went to all of the gas stations and they bought the TV dinners that had mashed potatoes in them. And we scooped out the little mashed potatoes.

from the TV dinners so that we would have some kind of mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving.

So that's probably how it got started because remember when we had a pool party and I said, need to bring. Yeah. So I said, Hey, you could bring chikootery and your husband went to a gas station and bought a lunchable. maybe that's where his gas station shenanigans began.

We're thinking small scale.

Speaker 2 (03:48.814)
Like little tiny round ham has never tasted so good.

I was like, that's not a shakootery.

He was, well, in his defense, I didn't tell him for how many. I just said, like.

Shakootery means more than one otherwise. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so.

It means more than one.

Speaker 2 (04:07.182)
That's one of my favorite Paddle Princess memories. mean, there's so many. There's so many. That is definitely one of my favorites.

I've also caught hot dogs on fire doing the same thing.

Your kid has spilled Top Ramen and burned pizza rolls.

Yes, he...

You guys are not gonna get on Top Chef any time

Speaker 1 (04:26.113)
Tonight.

So with the pizza rolls he meant to put it on like two minutes and he put it on for 20 and they were on a plastic plate and he took it out of the microwave and the plate plastic like melted all over the floor and with the ramen he took it out of the microwave and the bowl spilled on him and he got bowl and hot water all down his chest and stomach and he had these big burns. I mean this was a long time ago, but

It happened a while ago. He doesn't have any scars or anything. It all healed very nicely. I mean, obviously I have some pretty big kitchen fails. So I wanted to see if y'all had any that were similar.

Well, we didn't. Like, for the first couple years of our marriage, our stove was, all intents and purposes, a storage location. I don't think that stove ever was used in our house. Has your mom brought food over or we went over to their house? I know that's where the pots and pans were. They had never been used. We were exclusive to the countertop oven. Yeah, it was just us two.

Yeah, it was just us two though. Yeah, I the only fails like I can really think of is like when guy cooks brisket and says it's gonna be done at a certain time. that. It's gonna be done at it like eight hours later? Now it's eight and then 1030 rolls around.

Speaker 2 (05:51.16)
Do you want crappy brisket or you want done brisket?

I try

Hi, Mokr, turn off.

Yes, that's happened as well. Those are not fails, those are learning points.

I want to talk

Speaker 4 (06:03.786)
I remember a whole bunch of hungry people waiting for that brisket.

Good, guess what? They got fed though.

At 10 30 everyone's like already they're lunchable.

So yeah, have one that every Thanksgiving I remember it pretty well I was at my apartment and my pager went off and that tells you how long ago this was aging yourself So no pages back in that day for me was for the SWAT team So we got a call out and we all showed up to the briefing room and we're doing a joint warrant with the FBI There's a house in our city that these people had went to Waco and robbed a bank that day. yeah

Obviously, you know, I'll always have a job because criminals are dumb. They came right back to the house. Right. Someone got their license played and it was like they didn't steal a car and and ditch it and then get to another second car, go into a parking garage and get another car from there. The airship couldn't see. Now they just drove back to their house. So the FBI got this warrant. Now, there's a little bit of buildup where we're doing all the planning and for a federal warrant like that, it takes a little time to wake up a federal judge and get the warrant. But eventually it came.

Speaker 2 (07:07.026)
And so this is Thanksgiving Eve that we're doing this. Yep. so we go, we make our plans, and we get over to the house. And man, we hit that front door harder than I've ever seen us hit a front door before. We all flowed into the house. And there in the kitchen were these two ladies making and preparing Thanksgiving dinner. The turkey was out. It was ready. It was dressed. It was stuffed. And there's a lot more that went on in the house at that time. I almost shot my own

reflection, which is another story. We ruined a classic car, but we scared the heck out of a dog. I don't even know if that dog ever came back. But I will never forget Thanksgiving Eve, we came up. And it always sticks out because the guy who was supposed to ram the door also...

He slipped in the driveway, so he has the Ram. He's supposed to be first at the door. I thought, I watched it all happen in slow motion, but the guy who is secondary, because you always, two is one, one is none, he picked up the Ram and just moved, and we all stepped over that dude. I don't even know if he ever made it in the house even.

So, did they not know?

They knew, I think they just thought they got away with it, because all the cash was there, and there was three other dudes in the house, they were hanging out with the money. my yeah, guns and everything. Thanksgiving always has a special place in my heart, just from that, because...

Speaker 2 (08:31.488)
I know that turkey did. Everybody went to jail and we just, we finally locked the house up and secured it and that turkey just sat there. So I don't know if they ever bonded out. I don't care about that part of it. So I don't know how long that turkey sat there.

Bless him.

I don't really have any because I'm not a cook and I'm not great and I don't measure.

Okay, well what about what happened what last week? What happened with your chicken pot pie? Yes.

Yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 1 (09:00.846)
Okay. I was putting, cause I like to put protein, like cottage cheese and yogurt in to make sauce. So I did that with some cream of broccoli. So I was dumping it into the Ninja to blend it all up, but I was also talking to my son. So I poured it all, all the stuff in there, put it in and I went to go blend it and I hear just this horrible, horrible noise, like a garbage disposal. I turned it up.

When you can tell.

Speaker 1 (09:30.72)
I turned it off and I'm like, what the hell was that? So I pour the sauce into the big, whole food dish. We're talking like two pounds of chicken, all the vegetables, everything. And then I see this crumpled up piece of aluminum and I realized it was the lid to the can of the broccoli soup. And there was a quiet moment that I thought,

onto the whole food dish.

Speaker 2 (09:47.093)
into the

Speaker 4 (09:53.234)
no.

Speaker 1 (09:59.214)
I could still feed this to my family.

There was a quiet, yes, there was a quiet moment where you got on chat GPT.

I said, can I feed this to my family? Because it was like $40 me. Yes, no, I asked chat first and chat said, absolutely not. And then I was like, can I feed it to the deer outside? Absolutely not. Dispose of it. Wash the blender completely. Take it apart. Do all of this stuff. And I was like, well, damn, I tasted it.

After you came and asked me.

Speaker 2 (10:27.086)
Take it apart.

Speaker 2 (10:32.846)
And you wanted a second opinion, a more adult opinion, you came to me and I'm like, heck no, hell no, we're not eating that.

We call it chat GPT, call chat guy PT because he always has the answers. But so then I asked him and he said no. and then so what I did, I took a picture of my pantry and of the fridge and I was like, okay, then make me another meal chat because I done had to throw this away. And it literally was like, okay, with the ingredients that you have, you can make it chicken pot pie. And I was like,

just making it was all great. You have enough for two. was like, I don't want to make it again. I was like, damn it chat. You are not being helpful. Yeah. was like, well, you can't see it. yeah. there's that. That was just last week.

I forgot

I feel like sometimes in our kitchen Morgan Freeman's just gonna come in. I'll just make a version of Scratch. They could not.

Speaker 1 (11:34.354)
Yeah, needless to say, I did throw out the whole $50 damn meal and make a whole nother one. than my earned, right? This time without aluminum shavings.

I'm sure your family really appreciated that.

But I did taste it and then I felt like I had like hyperchondria because I was like, my mouth is kind maybe it's my throat. Yeah. was like, what's

going on. Get up in our comments, let us know anything you've screwed up, a meal, what you got going on for Thanksgiving. Show us your plate, show us your dinner, show us your family. Get up in our comments, our DMs or all the places. I don't know wherever you find us. That's not my job. My job is just to bring you the best podcast you've ever heard.

Speaking of that, we have our fan mail. And this one is from Nikki Maldonado. She says, hands down, this is my favorite Pickleball podcast. One of my favorites in general. Just fun to listen to this crew. They share some great Pickleball insight, have amazing guests, and you can tell they always have a good time. Super fun to listen to. And we love iTunes reviews. iTunes reviews are so helpful for us.

Speaker 2 (12:12.978)
And meh

Speaker 1 (12:36.974)
If you have time, please swing on over to iTunes, give us a review. You can also give comments on YouTube and on Spotify. Give us a five star. It takes literally half a second.

You give it to your Uber driver, go to us.

Thank you, Nikki.

Just

Just the tip, quick pickleball wisdom in and out before you know it. Today's tip is to move with your partner. Think of doubles like a dance. Stay even with each other. Don't wander off and leave gaps. When one moves forward, the other follows. When one moves back, both do. When one person moves to the side, pretend you're attached at the hip by a string and move together. That's your tip.

Speaker 1 (13:18.958)
This is hard.

It's really hard. I think of it like an umbilical cord. Belly button to belly button. Okay. There's another tip. It's for your marriage, fellas.

ever.

Speaker 2 (13:35.433)
It's time for Pickle Pal!

Speaker 2 (13:41.57)
Buckle up, buckle up wherever you're listening from, even if you're in a yurt. We'll talk about that. So today's guest runs one of the most respected pickleball shows in the game. I have to say that for sure. He's been featured in a Hollywood documentary about billionaires battling over our sport and plot twist. He does it all from a yurt in the middle of nowhere with his wife, Karen.

He's the voice of the 50 plus pickleball community. I'm a champion of that too. The guy who's interviewed everyone from Super Bowl champs to paddle engineers and somehow he's made senior pickleball sound way cooler than it has any right to be. Sleeves, Mr. Sleeves, I don't know what you want to go by today, Mike, but you tell us. Sleeves. Okay, well then that obviously leads to the first question. Tell us about Sleeves.

Please, this fine.

Speaker 3 (14:24.14)
Yeah. So my last name is Sleva, Curtis Sleva out of New York is the guy who started the Guardian Angels. My name is spelled the same way. He pronounces it Slee-wah, but I've always pronounced it Sleeva. I'm a Polish heritage. And so my nickname has always been a play off that Sleaze. And it just rolls off the tongue a little, a little better than Mike's senior pickleball report. Sleaze senior pickleball report.

Yeah, I like that name. Yeah. Do you get to ride with the Hells Angels with having that last name? kind of slip in. mean, they probably would notice, right? Right. Okay, you really segued us into Senior Pickleball Report. Tell us a little bit about that. How'd that come to be and what it's all about?

Yeah. So in 2022, I decided I like anybody who'd been playing pickleball for like three months. I was going to start a podcast, because I know nothing about the game. And I had a buddy who I had done video production with for years and he was running a sort of a news channel where he'd take different pieces of news and sort of a Huffington post type thing, but kind of benign news. And he wanted to drive traffic to it. So I said, I'll start a pickleball channel. And then people started sending me stuff. Cause this is

Pretty early on, wasn't a ton of content out there like there is now. And, you know, started getting some paddles in four months into it. I got called by a Hollywood producer and asked if I would be willing to be in this movie about the tour wars. So things happened pretty quick and I'm like, well, I'm kind of stuck in this now. I guess I'm going to do this and here I am coming up on four years.

Yeah, okay, so I really feel personally attacked in that first part where you're like, you know, been playing for a little while and then you just start a podcast. So thank you for that. But it was it was so natural for us because like you, we saw a gap too, because so many of the pickleball things out there, they follow the tournaments and follow the big names. So where's the rec player coming in? You know, what do I need to know as a rec player to get into this and how to have as much fun as possible?

Speaker 2 (16:16.182)
So absolutely love that. So what have you seen challenge wise, I guess, in the older versus the younger community, or have you seen kind of the same thing we have where it's like, it's just a great blend of everybody. It's kind of a mixing pot out there in the pickleball court.

Yeah, I mean, you know, I did pick a niche that is in the age group of 50 plus, which the argument was in the beginning is like, why are you starting a channel where the your audience doesn't know how to use the Internet? And I'm like, oh, well, yeah, that's a good point. So that's that's been interesting to kind of deal with not only living in a year, not grid and not having the ability to always just instantly post something or upload something, but dealing with an audience that really is sort of the foundation of the sport in the seniors.

and I don't think they get a lot of love. And so it is, it's been a nice mix. don't exclusively just interview seniors. I interview entrepreneurs and people who are trying to make a space in this game. And so it's been all walks of life and everybody's been super welcoming to me. And I've gotten to meet some really cool people out of it. And like you said, it's a big community, whether you're an open player or a senior player or rec player or a player, and I've talked to them all.

You know, mentioned a documentary already, The Dream Breaker. Tell me a little bit about that. What were they trying to get from that?

Yeah, so I was contacted by Ashley Underwood, who's married to Larry David. Okay. And she said, I've done some production work in the past. I've worked with Sacha Baron Cohen on some the more rad stuff. I met a guy, was writing an article about kind of the tour wars of pickleball and pickleball in general. I was just writing about pickleball in general. One of the first pieces for people to write about it. Yeah. And his name was Craig. I can't remember his last name, but he's actually married to one of the Bush daughters, one of the twins.

Speaker 3 (18:01.87)
And she kind of got together with him and they came up with this idea that they wanted to do a film and they wanted to do it not just about something, you the general theme of the sports, but something specific. And since the professional game was ramping up and there were different entities kind of struggling for power, they thought it would be a great story. And I think they sort of pulled me in a little bit because it was a bunch of talking heads who had a lot of money and I was a guy who lived in the middle of nowhere. So I would sort of be the ginger.

of the story, know, all these people talking and it would cut to me to sort of sum things up like what the heck's going on. But that was a process. That was something that, you know, she first contacted me in June of 2025 and I really wasn't working on the film until December of that year. And mainly it's because they were sort of figuring out how they wanted to approach the film. And then ultimately I did videos for them for six months where I just sent in footage off my phone with different ideas that they sent me. And I think they were, it was,

They didn't tell me this, but it was really one sort of a long tryout where they eventually came to a point where they showed the executives a cut version, rough version with me in it and a rough version without me in it. And then they ultimately decided to go with me in the film. And then once they decided to do that, they're like, okay, we're actually going to come out to you and film for a few days. then that's what happened.

So was that like a big thing in the area where you're living, the whole production and all that?

Yeah, I live in a community of about 13 people on a roughly 20 acres. And there's a reason people live in the middle of nowhere by themselves because they don't like visitors. Yeah. Little movie crews. we had strict strict sort of guidelines of the sort of just stay with me, stay on that property and not hassle people too much because people had no interest in being on film other than me. yeah, it was an interesting it was was filmed in September.

Speaker 3 (19:53.259)
and it was about 90 some degrees out when they were filming. So it was brutal for two days of stuff.

Yeah, so now is that you're self-imposed or are you in a WIPPRO program that we should know about or maybe shouldn't know about? Are you running from the mafia or anything like that?

No, so what I did was I taught high school for a lot of years, my wife and I, and then we just decided we wanted to learn how to do things with our hands and didn't want to be in a profession for the rest of our lives. So we went out and worked on homesteads throughout Europe and the Southwest for about four years. And it was kind of one of these programs where they put you up room and board and you kind of work on the property. So we did that in Italy and Ireland and in the Southwest. And what we figured out, we initially met our jobs. Our goal was to just live in the middle of nowhere by ourselves.

We ended up working on properties where people had done that and they needed us to help them. And so we're like, well, we're in our late forties here at that point. It's a lot, it's a big workload, considering the small skills that we have at this point. And so we kind of came across these intentional communities and we had one that was down the road at one of the places we worked at. a long story short, we ended up living there. We've been there 10 years in the earth and one solar panel, it's all up grid. We got running water, but it's outside. compost our toilets. It's basically just.

Regular toilet looking seep and underneath instead of porcelain and water. Yeah, it's a five gallon bucket with straw. Yeah, yeah, I stuff once in a while

Speaker 2 (21:13.728)
Yeah, I love that because it reminds me, not so deep, but I grew up in Vermont and we are log cabins, side of a mountain kind of thing. We bartered down at the general store at the bottom of the mountain. So I love that. love how you're living. I don't know if I could wish I could do it right now with the kids and all that and all their activities and stuff, but that more simplistic getting.

disconnected, being able to figure out every day who I am and who, and of course my spouse, figuring out who she is and who we are together. And then like you said, intentional community, I think that's so wonderful that you're able to do that. Let me switch over to the SPR brand a little bit. What's been sort of your biggest challenge in growing that?

the internet. mean, I'll just tell you what I, right now I'm at a friend's house because what I've been doing for literally four years is using my neighbor's wifi, which is like one bar from where I live in. And when I had to upload stuff for the movie, they wanted it in 4K. So when I would upload a three minute video in 4K, would take one hour per minute. once in a while I get a upload failed.

my-

Speaker 2 (22:25.839)
Yes, of course, yes, of course

That's the biggest thing is posting is because whether I'm downloading something off zoom or uploading it online that process takes forever and sometimes they fail and so that's been the biggest challenge is so I am in the middle of probably in the next month or two of getting Starlink myself. My posting will be much more regular. I think I can do things that are guess beneficial to promote the brand because I've been pretty random over four years.

Yeah, I mean, there's a give and take with that. Starlink, I've heard a lot of great things about that, so I think that will definitely improve that. Any memorable guest interviews so far that you've had that stuck out to you or any that you'd want to do?

Yeah, I interviewed Vito Sartapori, the guy who was Vito on the Sprano. Yeah. And he was, he's, mean, he's, he is who he is. Like there's no pretence about him. He's that guy. And he's the only interview that I was ever on call for. Like, I'll let you know when I'm ready. And I did some random call, like, you know, 11 at night, you want to go? I'm like, I got to walk down to get some wifi.

my god

Speaker 2 (23:32.93)
Yeah.

So I was like, I was on call. was, it was the, I've never had that. So, but it was, it was a great interview and he's a fantastic guy. I've got to interact with him. And so that's probably the most, most memorable. I would like to interview Andre Agassi. He's in the pickleball. He's in my, you know, obviously our demographic age. And I think what he's doing is I think he's one of the best ambassadors currently that pickleball has in the way he's going about it.

man, yeah, right?

Speaker 2 (23:58.943)
Him and and of course McEnroe, you know, that's that's our generation too. You know, he's not breaking as many paddles as I thought he would

Right Ashley Underwood who directed the film Mac John's in their pickleball group with Larry in them and she's like he plays pickleball with us all the time and every time he plays he talks about how much he hates it.

Yeah, do. You that's the, you know, the PPA and the MLP. like the MLP because I'm waiting to see a paddle get tossed out into the audience. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, for sure. So future for SPR or anything that you're doing, what's going to be some of the things on the horizon.

A lawsuit.

Speaker 3 (24:34.094)
For me, once I get my internet straightened out here, I want to do a lot more things live. I play in a court, courts that we call the world's worst pickleball courts. And they are six miles from my house and they are in from 1970 tennis courts, which have never been resurfaced, which are full of cracks. And I think it's kind of a cool, we have a very cool, unique group because if you live out here and you play pickleball, you're an oddball to begin with. So I think I'd like to do some live feed stuff from there. And then.

Yeah, okay.

Speaker 2 (24:59.47)
That'd be awesome.

Also, because I'm working in partly doing some travel stuff too with pickleball, maybe doing some again with the live steak thing, doing some live stuff for some of the cruises that I will be doing maybe next year. that just to be more, you know, more, I guess more present on the screen and having my face up there more often and not so random.

Yeah, I love it. I love it. I think you're gonna figure that out. We love following you. I follow mainly for the hair and all the haircare tips.

Split ends. Yeah, man, I got you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So how are people going to find you, Mike? Where are they going to go? What's all the socials they need to go to?

Speaker 3 (25:34.476)
Yeah. So you can go to TikTok or Instagram is at senior pickleball report. The best way to really find me to get my full sort of videos is if you just go into the YouTube search and just type in senior pickleball report. And those are generally the places I post the most. Same with Facebook. You put senior pickleball report, or you can add me. My name is Mike. And my last name is S L I W A.

Yeah, after you disconnect from this and get to the end of the episode, go like and follow and subscribe to all of Mike's stuff. You're gonna love it. He's, I'll just put that out there in the universe right now. He's one of us. He's part of the Big Dink Energy Nation. Let's keep growing the nation. So Mike, thanks for being on Sleeves. Thanks for being on the Big Dink Energy Podcast. Love having you brother and anything we can do for you, we're always gonna be there right by your side.

I appreciate you guy and I love what you do as well. And hey, this is fun. This is what we get to do. How cool was that?

Yeah, no kidding. This is awesome. Thanks so much.

bed.

Speaker 2 (26:34.414)
Yes, yes, Dink or Destroy, something we say thumbs up, thumbs down to whatcha got.

Well, since it is Thanksgiving week, I figured... could Dink or Destroy you doing that again.

I don't know how to do a, I can't do a pilgrim sound, so that's about it.

So I thought we would do Black Friday shopping. So are we still doing this or did Amazon kill the thrill? Dink or destroy Black Friday shopping. So for me, the original Black Friday was like a sport. Like it was so much fun. Like you would go at 3 a.m., you'd put your hoodie on, you'd mentally prepare to throw down, throw down if you had to just to get your $29 DVD player. But.

Black Friday, thumbs up, thumbs down.

Speaker 1 (27:18.338)
I mean, it was also like you'd share coffee from your thermos. You'd stay out at Best Buy. Like it was super fun to get these deals. And I just don't know if it has that anymore. It's more like enter your coupon code. that's expired. Like that's Black Friday now, it seems. So I just don't know. Like, are we still doing it?

So you brought up the Black Friday, is it just Amazon killing it? But Amazon has Cyber Monday right after that, right?

And all the Black Friday deals are like starting now. Right. You know, and it's like, I remember it just used to be like you'd get the newspaper and it was just so exciting. we would just go out and have such a great time. Now my sister and I do Black Friday shopping and we just go at like 11 and we go eat lunch and then we have coffee and then we just stay out away from the family.

Such a touching moment. Yeah, I'm going to let's let's your side paddle princess. I already know this. gosh. She's amazing. know this. gosh, but gosh.

It's so nice. That's nice.

Speaker 4 (28:18.894)
Black Friday for me is an event. I create spreadsheets for every person that needs gifts and what gift I'm purchasing them. If I don't have an idea then obviously I put whatever comes to us kind of thing. And then I scour the, well this is what I did, let's say five years ago. It changed last year, but like five years ago I would scour the internet for the best deals that were coming.

I would also scour for early bird specials because like Best Buy, Wilson's Leather, other stores.

You

Let me tell you a little sidebar. One time, this is a couple years ago, I said, yeah, we're gonna go Black Friday shopping at Swadows, really. And she was like, me too, me too. So first on the list, we're gonna go to Oshkosh. I'm like, what the, what? And then after that, she was like, and then the next stop is gonna be Baths Pro, and then Wilson's Leather. I said, holy shit, that sounds like torture. Like, who goes to one, if not all three?

the only person keeping him in business.

Speaker 2 (29:24.464)
I think you can get all that now on Bucky's.

I'm like, I'm like-

I got really into it because I would scour the deals. I would scour who had the early bird, who gave the military discounts, when they gave them, and if we had extra coupons. One time I left Wilston's leather with them giving me a gift card. That was how it worked with the deals and the discounts and everything else that we had. So it used to be a whole thing. Now, like last year, we found that most of the deals are better online. Yeah.

They just really are.

I mean, are people really waiting in line still for a flat screen? I'm like, flat screens are...

Speaker 4 (30:01.326)
I will not. I mean I remember going to Bell's on Thanksgiving night because they had boots on sale for $20. So we would go starting at like 10 o'clock at night we would go to Bell's then we would go to Walmart because their Black Friday deals started at like midnight and we would wait in that big ol' long line.

Considered a deal. I was always just big electronics like when our kids were little and the iPads first came out Yeah That was the only time we really waited in line and we got an iPad for like 200 bucks when they were like 700 and we needed to yeah Yeah, that was really cool. We waited in line and yeah gave you a ticket. So then

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:38.552)
They were only selling so many. Yeah.

You had to get in line for the ticket.

I remember that. And then I was like, okay, well then I don't even have to do anything else. So, I mean, that made it nice, but I don't know if people are doing the camping and stuff like they used to.

I don't know that they are either. I I feel honestly that it's more of just a tradition at this point. It's a time for myself, my mom and my daughter, we get together. We get excited, we get matching shirts, we go out. And it starts early in the morning. We have a nice lunch together. And we do get some deals. There's still some that are in store, but for the most part, the big deals that we get are online now.

Yes they do.

Speaker 1 (31:18.432)
And I think it's more tradition now. just, like I said, my sister and I just go out and laugh and have a great time. And it's just...

Yeah, when remember, a lot of Black Friday for me is nostalgia, number one, I'm not going out and doing it. I'm the stay at home dad. I'm the single dad at that time, which is great, because I run a daycare a lot of times. had the cousins come over and all that. Yeah, absolutely. I don't want to go out. There's no need for me to be able to three. I'm not Neo. I'm not shopping for my new leather at Wilson's Leather.

fun for you too.

Speaker 4 (31:49.59)
have really nice jackets and purses.

But I also remember when I was working for Walmart on the logistics side, I had to fly out to Shakopee, Minnesota. Shout out to Shakopee. In the week before Black Friday, and I guarded the Black Friday app.

Yeah, when you did that, I was like, where are you going for what?

To guard the ass

Yeah, that's where they would print it. They printed in a special. yeah. I mean, so that's how important it was because your competitor wouldn't know your prices and you would have you would want to have the best deals and someone would try to get I mean, we vetted all the people we did background checks on all the people we had line I put.

Speaker 4 (32:29.646)
I love that. Yeah, I'm here for it

Yeah, I mean we would paper up the windows so nobody could see them when they were bringing it off, when they were getting it off the computer and putting it on the printing. yeah, it was only certain people that could be in the factory at that time.

this year I'm just gonna put my list into chat and say find me the best deals.

I'm just gonna be like

Plus the nostalgia of watching the fights on TV. was like, that was right there.

Speaker 1 (32:52.366)
It's not really happening anymore. are just fighting in general.

Like the real UFC

I never experienced that. I never experienced fights on Black Friday or Thanksgiving night, anything crazy like that. But we would. We would go out to Walmart and I remember getting those big old Tupperware sets where you would have Tupperware for the entire year just ready to go. I loved getting those.

Ready to get stained with spaghetti sauce.

Yeah, but I mean, I'm a big...

Speaker 1 (33:19.214)
There's a ton of pickleball deals going on right now. Selkirk has some big deals.

Yeah, I've been seeing some of them come out, which are super exciting. Yeah.

Go out. I'm a dink for Black Friday. I like the nostalgia of it.

I'm a dink

Speaker 4 (33:32.451)
It's just fun and it's a good time. I love it.

Tell us about your Black Friday stuff. If you are going to go out, wear a body cam. Send that in to us as well. Let us see how that goes in some of the major cities.

Speaker 1 (33:48.43)
News you can use.

you live from the Big Dink Energy News Desk.

So speaking of people fighting, the city of Rocky River Recreation, the Rocky River, due to ongoing behavioral concerns, all indoor pickleball activities at the Civic Center have been suspended until further notice. Wait, what? They said, we appreciate your understanding as we work to ensure a safe and respectful environment for all participants. So they have shut it down at their Civic Center because there's too much arguing over rules for pickleball. Wow.

These are not children. These are adults. This is Ohio, I believe, because Sean Paul was also talking about it on one of his lives, about them shutting Pickleball down. And I'm thinking, why does everybody have to suffer because there's a bunch of asshats?

state.

Speaker 4 (34:28.206)
Come on, people.

Speaker 2 (34:39.244)
Yeah, why can't we just get rid of the asshat?

Yeah, I'm like I feel like that's a management problem like fix your culture kick those people out and Continue to have pickleball like people are up in arms about this because they've been going there and now they just shut it down so horrible because adults can't adult I guess

Exactly.

See, that's one of the things I about Texas. I don't know how Ohio runs their stuff, but there may be an issue where you can't just kick out the problem people. In Texas, you're out.

Well, that also it's a city run thing. So if it was a private business, mean, I would be like, GTFO, but I just, I'm like, this really sucks for those people. Cause it's their recreation center. They've been playing pickleball there and they just shut it down.

Speaker 4 (35:24.182)
Well, I mean, you know, the actions of the few ruin it for many.

That just sucked.

In the army days we would have solved this. This would have been solved with a pillowcase and a bar of soap.

This goes back to our conversation a couple episodes ago where not enough people are just getting punched in the face. Yeah, no. It's not that serious. Move on. Quit acting like a child and be the adult that you are. You don't agree with it. Okay, well let's just keep playing. Like move on. It is not that

It's rules, it's recreation. Why are we not just like, okay, yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:56.854)
serious. Yeah, that's the only reason to keep that wooden paddle you bought at Walmart, right? To solve problems like this. That's it for this episode. Unless you've got something to say, think we got it wrong? Have a better take. We want to hear it.

Find us at bdepodcast.com or at bdepodcast on the socials. Drop us a message. We might just feature you in the next episode. If you had a good time, well, same z's. If not, maybe try again. We grow on people. So you know the deal. Follow the show, tell a friend, and leave us a review. Or just pretend this never happened. Until next time, keep the dink soft and the energy big.