This post was adapted from my book Here Lies America, which is about how the United States has memorialized its past tragedies as tourist attractions. (You can buy Here Lies America here.)
I wandered alone down a shady side lane at Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, a staple tourist stop where some 70,000 of the city’s favorite sons and daughters have been buried for more than 150 years. Margaret Mitchell went there after giving the South some currency with Gone with the Wind. So did former mayor Maynard Jackson, who was permitted to be buried in the white section a a few scant years after desegregation.
Often at these cemeteries, you see lots of grand graves that belong to people who are of no permanent distinction, although their elaborate carved vaults try in vain to argue the opposite. Maybe a Southerner from 100 years ago would have known the names around me, but most of them meant nothing to me. The march of stones intended to memorialize actually absorbed the identities of the thousands of their occupants. Browsing the names registered nothing, like scanning a box of yellowed and pointless used books in the final desperate moments of a picked-over garage sale.
Just as the monotony of reading non-famous names was diminishing the intrigue of a visit, a plot caught my eye. (more…)
Shark Tank is far from fake. Up to now, if an entrepreneur appeared on ABC’s Shark Tank, they also had to agree to the following clause, which appeared in the end credits of seasons 1 through 4:
This requirement, which I talked about in a popular post here earlier, has solicited derision from many, including from the entrepreneurs themselves.
Scott Jordan, the owner of Scottevest (Season 3) explained on a post on his site, “merely appearing on the show, whether a deal is made or not, I have to give 5% of my “business” or 2% of the profits forever to the producers. So, my appearance was not free. … Free? They make money out of every deal I make from here forward.” Losing that much of your business is something that kept many entrepreneurs from signing up to appear on the show.
Apparently no more. The following screen shot was posted in a Facebook group for people who have pitched the sharks on Shark Tank. It purports to be from a post by Mark Cuban, who says his continued association with the show depended on the equity or percentage clause. The typos possibly hint that it was composed and posted on the fly:
I have turned in the last chapter of Frommer’s EasyGuide to London 2014, the first guidebook to be edited and published by Arthur Frommer since the 1970s. He created the brand in 1957, and he asked me to be the first author of a flagship book when he retook publication. Of course I said yes.
Reinventing a guidebook under the supervision of the man who defines them has had me thinking about what makes a worthy one. I found myself dipping into the archive to look at what Arthur himself did in the 1950s.
Here’s a nugget from the very first guide he wrote, 1955’s The G.I.’s Guide to Travelling in Europe:
“In most of your encounters with British food, you’ll feel that you’re shoveling hay into your mouth.”
Times have changed and that is no longer an appraisal I can agree with, but I instantly loved his pointedness in telling it like it was. One might call it refreshing honesty. But in the framework of writing a guide, it’s what I call telling people what they really want to know.
When he reported from Berlin’s Revi telephone bar, he essentially told male readers if they stood a chance of getting laid: (more…)
Spotted in London at Foyles (which is moving into a newly constructed building next door in early 2014): Penguin UK’s brilliant and audacious reissue of Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four.’ It’s designed in the classic orange and white bands as mid-century Penguin paperbacks were, but it’s embossed and redacted.
No American publisher would have the courage to let a book’s theme drive the design so confidently that the title of the product would be obscured.
Hi Jason. — It’s been brought to my attention that you have been curious to who has been leaving the rock smileys on the celebrity graves… That would be me!
I also leave them on other graves that catch my attention, next to street art, and anything else that catches my attention in the Los Angeles Area. — Also as the commenter on your blog mentioned, Pittsburgh. I just came back from visiting there where I spent a lot of time visiting their cemeteries and leaving my rock smileys.
If you go to my Facebook page, you will see several albums of pictures of where I have left them.
It all started with my friend Tamra finding a little rock with a face on it, and how it made her smile. Then a few of us thought we’d leave some rock smileys around for others to find, sort of like a pay it forward type of thing. — And well, I’ve gone a little crazy with it.
And I am totally flattered that you made a blog entry about my rock smileys… 🙂
I stopped at a New York City monument for lunch. Although thousands of people visit it every day, it was never a popular attraction. Near the northwest corner of Madison Square Park, in an concrete traffic triangle bordered by Broadway, Fifth Avenue, and 25th Street, a squat obelisk is encircled by an iron fence.
It was built in 1857 as the central feature of one of the city’s most important intersections. Today, everyone who rides the N train slides right under it. Every tourist who photographs the Flatiron Building would be staring at it if only they’d turn around. Around back is a hatch.
Inside, General William Jenkins Worth’s corpse rests quietly in the middle of one of the busiest traffic interchanges in Manhattan.
I spoke today about how to avoid travel scams at the New York Travel Festival. If you missed my talk, Spike the Baby (And Other Rules for Dodging Travel Scams), you missed a lot of detail about various scams both tried-and-true and newfangled.
One element of my talk was a brief list of resources for finding out the latest scams and knowing how to ward them off. Here are some key links for doing your own country-by-country research before you set off on your own.
Recent travelers keep warnings current on the many excellent travel sharing boards such as Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree and BootsnAll (although beware that some people think that voluntarily overpaying for an inferior product qualifies as a “scam” — it doesn’t), here are a few additional links that you should keep in your bookmarks. Be warned that the State Department’s Travel Safe mobile phone app is not updated with the speed of international events, so it’s best if you avoid using that and stick to the Web-based warnings pages, which are updated more attentively.
Because the U.S. State Department doesn’t have the good sense to create easy-to-use URLs for its most important travel update pages, I have taken the liberty of creating shortlinks that you actually stand a chance of remembering at the moment you need them most.
Get a second opinion from Australia: www.smartraveller.gov.au
Travel advice>Country>Safety and Security
My NY Travel Fest talk was about avoiding scams while you’re on the road. I gave a separate talk, with its own list of prescriptions (click here for that), at the recent New York Times Travel Show, and it covered ways to protect yourself when you’re still at home, booking travel.
As I said during my talk today, if you should fall prey to a scam, don’t beat yourself up. Stuff happens, and there are professionals who devote every one of their dastardly brain cells to devising new methods of outwitting you. The happy fact is that major scams are fairly rare. Don’t be afraid.
From my travel photo files: The 443-foot-tall London Eye is erected in the fall of 1999. It was assembled flat, lying on barges in the Thames, and had to be slowly winched into a vertical position, 2 degrees an hour, while London stood by and wondered what millennial folly this would turn out to be.
It turned out to be a landmark for our age. It has been called the Millennium Wheel, the British Airways London Eye, the Merlin Entertainments London Eye, and the plain old London Eye. Today, it is known as the EDF Energy London Eye.
The London Eye begins life as a sort of wink, fall 1999.
It has been a while since I wrote about Shark Tank here, but that doesn’t mean I don’t often still get questions about the show.
The most common one? It’s whether I can connect people to Mark Burnett. (If you think I can, perhaps you aren’t ready for the intellectual rigors of pitching the Sharks. Here’s the general application link.)
But there are other things you didn’t know that I could tell you.
Producers get a percentage even if no deal is made.
If you pause the end credits of every episode, you’ll see this:
Scott Jordan, the owner of Scottevest (Season 3) explains, “merely appearing on the show, whether a deal is made or not, I have to give 5% of my “business” or 2% of the profits forever to the producers. So, my appearance was not free. … Free? They make money out of every deal I make from here forward.”
Jordan posted this scan of the pertinent contract clause:
Jordan says he went to great lengths during his segment to speak only about his product, but to make no mention of his brand name that would trigger perpetual equity ownership of his brand by Sony and ABC.
Entrepreneurs who agree to be taped by the show do it because thy think the national television exposure will compensate for the percentage. They may have a point. Most entrepreneurs report their websites are slammed following every broadcast. KissTixx, a lip balm product, saw its Web traffic skyrocket by 3,000% when its segment aired. Rackspace, the server host for Villy Customs bikes, reported 3.2 million hits in a span of just 25 minutes. Litter, a jewelry brand, sold more than $250,000 in goods within 72 hours.
With ratings steadily rising — Shark Tank is now Friday’s #1 show on any network, with more than 6 million viewers per episode — exposure will only lead to even more conversions. Is that worth a 2% royalty of losing 5% of future equity? Many businesspeople think so.
Update: Just before Season Five, there was a huge behind-the-scenes fight over this clause, and it would appear one of the Sharks threatened to quit it it wasn’t removed. I cover the rebellion in this post.
Each pitch begins with 30 seconds of silence.
The entrepreneurs never meet the Sharks before their pitch (this has been true since the pilot, when Tiffany Krumins struck a deal for Ava the Elephant, then called ‘Emmy’), nor do the Sharks know who is coming down the hall once the doors open. All the Sharks know is what the stagehands have pre-set on the oriental rug in front of them.
Then the Entrepreneur is released into the Tank while hand-held camera operators trail their progress down the hall. The visitor is instructed to wait on a spot on the rug and not to speak. This gives Production a time to clear the hand-held camera operators from the set and to get a few static shots of anticipation between the Sharks and the Entrepreneur. Finally, after an adrenaline-drowned, Wild West-style standoff, a cue is given and the business owner/s may commence their pitch.
The nickname for this long, painful pause is “the stare-down,” and it’s edited out for the broadcast, although the havoc it plays with the nerves frequently pays off in TV-ready dividends.
The Sharks are wired.
The control room can prod them to ask questions that need answering or wrap up the negotiations, if necessary. IFB earpieces are common host crutches in the reality show world, but take note that the Shark Tank pre-show title card confirms that the Sharks “invest their own money at their discretion.” You’ll notice, however, that Kevin O’Leary (always in the center chair) is usually the guy who applies pressure at key moments. It would be a dangerous drinking game to swig every time he asked, “What are you going to do?” because he often issues recaps so the editors will have a logical place to stick their commercial breaks.
Kevin’s hidden earpiece: “Mr. Wonderful, now say, ‘So what are you gonna do?'”
O’Leary is the Shark who prompts tension because the control room has given him the role of segment narrator. He is a veteran of Canada’s Dragon’s Den, so he knows the format well. His role as the subtle pacemaker is a large measure of his value on this show, since few of his offers are realistic enough to be accepted by most of the Entrepreneurs. He also reliably embodies the soul of venal greed that drives the ethos of the Tank.
This makes O’Leary both the de facto ringmaster and the spoiler who compels the Entrepreneurs to make choices. Is he a plant? All the Sharks are. But whether by forcing decisions or lobbing spoiler offers, O’Leary is almost always the Prompter Shark.
Many deals fall apart.
Just as Judge Judy isn’t performing as a true judge but as a binding arbitrator, the buy-ins we see on Shark Tank are not done deals but actually good faith agreements. Due diligence kills many deals after they are shot. It could be that the patents aren’t airtight, or there’s irregularity in the books, — anything, really, can excuse either party from consummating their union. Nothing’s firm until everyone signs on the dotted line, and that happens off-camera much later.
“From what I’m told, only about 50% of the deals you see made on Shark Tank actually officially get DONE,” writes Fleetwood Hicks of Villy Customs Beachcruiser Bikes. “As a guest on the show, you have the right to pass on the deal and the Sharks have the same right. The deal made on TV is simply a “good faith” agreement that you will begin the due diligence process. I’ve heard that some companies just go on the show to get PR, but my intentions were to close our deal. ” He did.
The weekly “update” usually shows you the deals that went right. But lots go wrong and you’re never told about them.
Daymond John has called out a plus-size designer named Gayla Bentley for taking his and Barbara’s money and then vanishing. “They’re not going to tell you they’re going to disappear. They’re not going to tell you they’re buying a Mercedes-Benz. They’re not going to tell you that type of stuff. They’re not going to tell you they have tax liens or their wife really owns the company.”
Here I am interviewing Bentley. Tell me—does she look like a scammer to you?
For many reasons — timing, mood, variety, legal concerns, telegenic performances, complexity — some segments don’t make it to the final broadcast. How many? As many as 40% to half. When I shot on-set interviews during Season 2, several Entrepreneurs interviewed with me that did not make it to the final show edit. (Out of respect for the businesspeople and the show, I did not release those interviews.) For Season 3, the reported ratio was 52 used but 82 shot.
Likewise, some negotiations can go on for an hour or much longer, but the key moments are edited into palatable acts for television. Everything you see is true, none of it is re-taped, and the elements that are crucial to the outcome are included. But rather than drowning viewers in a Shark Tank that subjects viewers to, say, long minutes of going over sales numbers and distribution plans that don’t amount to much, the editors compress events.
Daymond John says the longest interrogation was for a product called Plate Toppers, which went on for 2 hours and 45 minutes. By the end of the segment, the entrepreneur is so tired of standing he’s seen rubbing his legs. But he got the deal.
The pitch for the Nubrella Hands Free Umbrella aired and an update was filmed on location with Daymond John, but that update was yanked from its scheduled broadcast when the deal ran aground. I’m sorry that never saw the light of day. It was pretty funny watching Daymond walk down a public street wearing a plastic umbrella bubble hat on his head.
The ‘stew room’ is on separate sound stage.
The area where Entrepreneurs are interviewed after their pitch is not on the same sound stage as the Tank. The filming location is on another stage nearby. This is mostly so the talking won’t interrupt the filming of the next incoming pitch and also Entrepreneurs can be kept away from the people who are next up in the Tank. After all, nothing will unnerve a pitchman more than seeing the person before them fleeing in tears.
Yes, the Sharks fly into Los Angeles several times a year (often in July and October, if not more) and shoot several marathon days in which 20 or so business pitch, one after the other, with time in between to set up for the next one and get make-up touch-ups. Then the segments are mixed and matched over multiple episodes — which is why Barbara Corcoran and Lori Greiner wear the same outfit week after week. They have to for continuity, so the look will remain the same no matter when the segment airs. The guys are wearing the same clothes, too, but few people seem to notice that. Sexism!
The set, by the way, is on the Sony Pictures Studios lot in Culver City, California. It was once the M-G-M lot, where The Wizard of Oz and countless classic musicals (Easter Parade, Singin’ in the Rain) were filmed. The Tank (click here to watch my tour of it) is not on the same sound stage for every season, but it is on the same lot. If another major picture (like Spider-Man) or TV show (Jeopardy! or The Wheel of Fortune) is shooting, it can slip into just about any size stage.
The real sharks aren’t real, but they are from Reno.
The sharks you see swimming on either side of the corridor into the Tank are not there. They’re on video.
More surprising is where they come from. The end crawl credits the 1,635-room Peppermill Resort and Casino for them.
Maybe the sharks were downloaded from its Bimini Steakhouse, where “you dine in the surrounds of a virtual aquarium.” The fact they come from a casino means that like their human counterparts, Shark Tank‘s sharks are gamblers, too.
“ABC sent in a psychiatrist to our room to make sure I was ok,” wrote Hicks. “I think they do that to make sure you aren’t depressed or freaked out, but, I was good because I was excited.” Then the network reminds you that if you breathe a word about the outcome to anyone before your air date, it will sue you to a crisp.
Now if it would just make sure some of those crackpots passed the psych test before they hit the Tank…
Update: I’m often asked how much the Sharks earn per episode. Until recently, there were guesses, but no proof. But now we have a paper trail that reveals a Sharks’ salary: It’s in my post How much do the Sharks make per episode?.
I get a lot of press kits on USB drives. A decade ago, when they replaced paper kits (thank goodness), they were uninspired and utilitarian, and they often stored as little as 256 MB of information, so they didn’t hold much interest even in re-use. Now, even a standard stick drive can contain 2 to 4 GB and they compete to be memorable. Even though they publicize American attractions, nearly all of them are still made in China.
I saved a few of my favorites.
Who knows — maybe I’ll add more cool designs as I run across them.