Rick Olsen - Pyrotechnics

Rick: 0:00

This is Rick Olsen with Pyro and Fire Effects, getting ready for One Hour to Doors.

Jon: 0:14

This is One Hour to Doors, a podcast about the business and soul of the festivals and events industry. I am your host, Jon Stone. Every episode of One Hour to Doors explores the people, issues, insights and trends impacting the enterprise of bringing people and communities together in common cause. Our guest today is Rick Olsen, a licensed pyrotechnician and owner of Pyro and Fire Effects, a leading provider of all things pyrotechnic and atmospheric in Washington State. Odds are high that you are familiar with Rick's work. Whether you realize it or not, His pyrotechnic smoke and fog effects set moods and punctuate moments at events throughout the state and across the country. His clients have included every professional sports team in Washington State and he has worked on the grand opening of Atlantis in Dubai, as well as the New Year's Eve ball drop in Times Square. Most of us never get a peek behind the scenes to understand the specialty business of pyrotechnics. I'm excited for this conversation. Welcome to the show, Rick.

Rick: 1:25

Thanks, Jon, appreciate you having me. Thank you.

Jon: 1:28

Have you heard any good pyrotechnician jokes lately?

Rick: 1:32

I get asked do you have a light? That seems to be the most common one, and you know I'd like to have a dollar for every time. I've heard that one, I could probably retire by now. But or do you have all ten of your fingers? That's another one, excellent. But, no, I don't smoke, so I don't have a light and I have all ten of my fingers.

Jon: 1:55

How old were you when you decided you wanted to play with fire for a living?

Rick: 1:59

Well, I actually came upon this industry in a different way. I started out in the early 80s. I got hired in the fire service and I was a firefighter up until 1999. And during that time, back in the mid 80s, I ended up getting certified as a pyrotechnician because our department decided to host a show trying to get families in the community together and not out doing their own thing more of a safety thing and just kind of a PR thing for the fire department. We did that for a few years and then we kind of outgrew the area and decided to quit hosting the show.

Rick: 2:44

And then our real good friend of mine was a retired state patrolman and he was doing all the shows in the kingdom for the Seattle Mariners, a guy by the name of Jim Sammons. He had been doing the shows there for quite a while after he retired. He came to me and wanted to have a couple of weeks off to go hunting and asked me if I would be willing to do a couple shows at the kingdom for the Mariners. And I said sure, love to come in and learn that industry and see what the indoor fireworks were like versus doing outdoor stuff. I went ahead and did those shows for Jim.

Rick: 3:23

Then the next thing I knew I was doing basically every show during the week for the Mariners I hired another guy that was a Tacoma medic and got him trained. We covered all the week ones during the week games and then Jim would cover the weekend games. That turned out to become a thing where we started doing stuff for the Sonics, the Portland Trailblazers, seahawks and it just kind of exploded. At that point, literally figured Jim. At that point I decided in 1999 to go off and start my own career doing pyro and fire effects we target towards. Sporting events is our primary client and then the concert industry as well and corporate yeah, so you've been doing it on your own since 99.

Rick: 4:13

Yeah, actually I was doing it before that. I started doing it when the Mariners won the playoffs and I believe that was in 1994 or something like that, when they clenched that division. I was doing that whole year of that. That was when I first started. That was when I really started doing the indoor stuff. So things have changed dramatically in the years that I've been doing it.

Jon: 4:40

I presume you must still find a lot of joy in doing it. Keep doing it that long.

Rick: 4:45

What I do and a little side note on this is one of the reasons why I left the fire service to do this full time. I had taken one of my kids to a Seattle Mariners game one year and we're sitting up in the King Dome. We do all the stuff up in the Coppola and the top of the King Dome. We do it when they hit home runs or during national anthems or wins. I'm sitting there with one of my kids and this little boy he's probably four or five stands up in front of us. When Griffey got up to bat he said Griffey hit the ball and make the fireworks go off. I thought, okay, what we do does have an impact to people. They do enjoy it. We're not just up there pushing buttons and having fun doing what we enjoy doing, but it's a great impact to the people that were coming to those events.

Jon: 5:42

Absolutely King Dome. I only worked in the King Dome. I was only in the King Dome a few times in my life, but I remember working a gig there once and seeing the bucket truck, the lift that they would use to go up to the top, and I'd never seen a boom that long. How high was that? Do you remember?

Rick: 6:03

400 feet up to the very top of that.

Jon: 6:06

And was that the only way to get up there is on the actual lift, or could you no?

Rick: 6:10

you actually had to climb up the stairs and then there was a ladder that went up inside the dome to the edge of the roof. Then you would go outside of the dome, climb the stairs across the top of the dome outside and then another stairwell up and then drop into the top up on the very top of the dome.

Jon: 6:29

Yeah, now I remember looking at that boom and even just I mean I swear if the person up there coughed, you know, just a free play at that kind of height, was going back and forth what looked like 10 feet or I think the highest I'd ever been up in a boom was maybe 100 feet or something like that, and even at that it's like wow, man, that's an experience.

Rick: 6:48

Yeah, it was always a good hike to go to work.

Jon: 6:53

When you think about your pyrotechnic career. If you could do it all over again, would you do it any differently?

Rick: 7:00

Would I do it any differently? No, when I got into it. There's different pyrotechnics. There's the shows that you do on 4th of July for cities, that kind of stuff, and there's companies that do that kind of stuff. We try to primarily stay with what we call close proximity fireworks. Where we're with athletes, we're performers. Our regulations are different. We have some different guidelines that we have to go under versus the outdoor firework shows. Storage handling, it's all different. It's two different types of things technically and I primarily started out doing the outdoor 4th of July type shows and then started doing indoor stuff and built that into what it is for the Northwest, because we were really one of the first people that were ever doing indoor stuff in the area.

Jon: 8:03

Sure, yeah, I understand. So what? Let's talk about the business a little bit. What kind of credentials do you and your staff maintain?

Rick: 8:11

Majority of my staff are licensed pyrotechnicians through Washington State, through the Washington State Patrol. With that they're required to do an apprenticeship, have so many shows that are under a licensed pyrotechnician and then go and take a written test down in Olympia to pass that that test and get a state license. Our company also has a license through the State Patrol and then we have all the other business licenses like any other business would have. We also I have a ATF license as well, which is through the Alcohol, tobacco and Firearms for our company as well.

Jon: 8:53

So are pyrotechnics in the United States generally licensed on a state basis.

Rick: 8:58

Some states require it and some don't, so I can go. Anybody can apply for a permit in, say, montana. They do not require a local licensed person to be on site. Washington State anytime you have pyrotechnics you are required, according to the RCW and the WACS, to have a licensed pyrotechnician on site.

Jon: 9:24

A Washington State one. So if I'm hearing you correctly, then a pyrotechnic company from out of state can come in. They can bring older people, but they have to have a Washington State licensed person on site. Correct?

Rick: 9:37

And we provide that to a lot of the companies that come through. The majority of the concerts that come through, it's one of the people that's with us that does do that.

Jon: 9:49

Do you ever do any theatrical productions?

Rick: 9:52

We do some I've actually been. One of the funniest ones that I think I ever had was I got asked to go and do stuff for the Wizard of Oz for a high school in Oregon and I thought this is kind of weird, but okay and we gave them a price and they said okay and so we were down there for like three weekends doing the Wizard of Oz for the high school production and we do some theatrical stuff. But, like I said, primarily we're doing the concerts and sporting events.

Jon: 10:29

I was going to ask you about if you've done any touring. I know, anecdotally, you worked with Robbie Knievel, didn't you?

Rick: 10:37

Yes, I guess we did.

Jon: 10:39

Can you talk about that?

Rick: 10:40

Sure. So this would have been probably 15 years ago 20 years ago now, I guess, probably. I got a phone call I didn't recognize the number, I let it go to voicemail. And I get this phone call from Robbie's manager and he asked if I would be willing to do a show for Robbie coming up in a couple of weeks. And I said sure. So I called him back and told him that I would be happy to do it and I said you know, I need to sit down and meet with Robbie and kind of figure out what accent points that he wants highlighted in his show.

Rick: 11:20

You know, this was before YouTube, where you could look up something and see what this person did. I just knew he jumped a motorcycle from one point to another. So I met with him and his comment to me was you're a professional, I'm a professional, so you do your thing and I'll do mine and we'll figure out how it works. And we ended up when that was all said and done. I talked to him afterwards and, long story short, he comes up and gave me a hug and he says you got a job as long as you want, buddy. So you know he passed away on the 13th of January last year. He's one of my best friends, and it was hard. It was hard, he was one of my clients, but yet he was one of my best friends too.

Rick: 12:13

So how many years altogether with Robbie 16, 17, that we knew each other and worked together.

Jon: 12:22

That was all road work. Was it usually like one show per city or was it like a music tour?

Rick: 12:29

We did. He had his TV show Knievel's Wild Ride. That was on A&E. We were a part of that. We would do a show one weekend. It would be in Tucson, arizona, the next week, it would be at Six Flags in St Louis the next week and it could be at Texas Motor Speedway. So every weekend I was somewhere. For you know, I think there was a run of like 15 different jumps every weekend or so. Every couple weekends Did a lot of traveling with him and some really fun times.

Jon: 13:05

I could imagine.

Rick: 13:06

And his technical director is a gentleman. I've probably heard of Spanky Spangler. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's a world famous stuntman and Spanky's a really good buddy of mine, the nicest guy you'll ever meet in the world, the three of us. I was down in Vegas here, I don't know, probably four years ago. The three of us went and had dinner and good evening together. And so yeah, they're both great guys and Spanky's still around.

Jon: 13:38

Wonderful memories.

Rick: 13:39

Yeah, wonderful memories yeah.

Jon: 13:43

About how many licensed pyros are there in the state right now. Do you have any idea Like how big is the field?

Rick: 13:50

There's an average, I'm guessing. Somewhere in the state of Washington there's probably about 200 licensed pyro technicians and probably 90% of them maybe do one show a year the Fourth of July show in a different city in the state.

Jon: 14:07

They have their license just for the sake of one show.

Rick: 14:10

Fourth of July yeah, interesting, and so there's others that do a few other shows, here and there, some New Year's things or something like that.

Jon: 14:21

Are there continuing education requirements or once you get your license, are you pretty much good to go? How do you stay current?

Rick: 14:28

With the state of Washington. Once you get your license, you are required to have one show a year to keep your license.

Jon: 14:35

Oh, I see Interesting.

Rick: 14:37

Yep, and then? If you don't do that, then you have to start back at ground zero again.

Jon: 14:44

Are drones impacting your business?

Rick: 14:49

Drones and fireworks. I, probably 10 years ago, said something to people that I know that do outdoor shows that I think drones are going to be a thing in the future that we are going to be competing with as far as dollar for dollar, and I think there's more and more drone shows coming up and, like I said, we're competing for the same dollars. They have their advantages. I know some of the outdoor fireworks shows are actually getting into the drone business as well. I think that there's two different worlds there. You've got people that want to see the bang and the boom and the different elements of a firework versus a drone. Then you have the drone end of it, which it's amazing what they can do with them. Oh yeah, and I personally kind of enjoy being involved with the drone and firework combo of the two shows, where you get both elements of it. I think that you have the bang and boom and people like that, versus just hearing a buzz from the drone.

Jon: 16:07

Yeah, absolutely.

Rick: 16:08

You know, there's kind of two different worlds there.

Jon: 16:12

You know what you just made me think of. So for the listeners in Seattle, for over 50 years there's been a tradition called Seafar, which is an umbrella term for a summer long series of events. The highlight, the grand finale of those events are boat races, hydro races out on Lake Washington. And what you just made me think about, rick, is as a child I always looked forward to the hydro races every year. Some years we'd go down there as a family and watch it on the shores of Lake Washington and it was spectacular. What was spectacular about it was just the roar. That was back when the hydros were all piston driven engines and they were just loud. They'd shake your bones. They call them the thunder boats.

Jon: 16:57

And then life went on. I'm an adult and I just kind of tuned out of the whole boat races thing for decades. And then about maybe 10 years ago, just to happenstance, I got a gig for a couple of summers running a stage at the hydro event and I was shocked by how different the experience had become, because now it wasn't the piston driven boats anymore. Now these are all turbine boats Instead of the thunder boats, shaking your bones and giving you a sense of fear. But it was an enjoyable kind of fear. Now it's more like watching and listening to some mosquitoes circling around somewhere out there on the lake. It struck me as just not being nearly as fun as it used to be. So I understand what you're saying about. The physicality is what the difference is, I think.

Rick: 17:48

Yeah, and that's something else too. Like with the fireworks, the outdoor fireworks shows. I have clients come to me and go oh, we have this budget, we want a 30 minute fireworks show. And I go well, you know what? Here's the thing Time isn't what you want on this. You want to shorten your show up and give yourself more for the show, because the majority of the people that go to a fireworks show are families that come and see those and they're sitting on the lawn with their little four or five year old kids that have an attention span of about 10 minutes Good point. And so after 10, 15 minutes, these kids are starting to lose their interest. They've seen things go up and boom. Okay, now what's next? Oh, there goes a fire truck, right, right.

Rick: 18:40

You know, it's kind of like the attention span is gone after about 10 or 15 minutes and I always tell my clients I would rather take that same amount of money and do less time and do more, because you want them to walk away with the wow factor, not the snoring effect. And then you know Totally get it.

Jon: 19:02

I worked for years on the Lake Union Fourth of July show. Did you ever work on that one? Yep, I did. Were you like a local hired as a local shooter?

Rick: 19:09

Because I remember we Yep with Eric Tucker and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, tucker and those guys.

Jon: 19:14

We've probably actually met back then. I just don't remember it that way. Kase and that whole you go back to the Kase's?.

Rick: 19:21

I do.

Jon: 19:22

Wow, wasn't that special. Yep, yep. That was such a learning experience for me, so for the listeners, this particular show. A long time ago we decided to do something that was actually kind of controversial for a Fourth of July American Fireworks show, but we brought in the kind of the first family of Japanese fireworks to design these and present these shows for us.

Jon: 19:49

And the traditional Japanese style is very different than American style fireworks and I describe the difference simply as American fireworks it's a constant right. You're usually synchronized to music or something like that and it's just this constant show of whatever your total duration is. The Japanese shows they're painting pictures in the sky, they're painting portraits and messages in the sky, and they do it by just like throwing up 100 shells all at once and boom, and they just literally make the sky come to life with this portraiture abstract portraiture in a sense and it dowses you for like five seconds and then it fades out, and then they allow blackness, just empty space, to kind of cleanse your palate, and then they boom, they throw up the next picture. I had never seen anything like that before, but it was beautiful.

Rick: 20:42

Yeah, and you know the American culture is you don't want to have any black skies.

Jon: 20:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just a very different approach, two different approaches. They're both really cool, it's just very, very different. I was going to ask what's the largest shell you've ever put up, and from Lake Union, I can't remember exactly when this was, but I remember one year Eric managed to scrounge up a couple, two or three, fourteen inches, so that was the largest I've ever seen. How about you?

Rick: 21:10

Largest I've been involved with was you mentioned Eric Tucker. There's two people that I would consider in the US the best pyro designers around, and Eric Tucker being one of them. I think he's an amazing at what he does and I learned a lot from Eric and he was one of my mentors years ago. And the other guy is a gentleman, phil Gruchy. They have fireworks by Gruchy out of Long Island. They do a lot of shows. You had mentioned the Atlantis that was in Dubai that I was involved with Gruchy and that family, another amazing person that knows the industry and choreograph amazing work Just totally incredible. Him and Eric are my two mentors that I look up to over anybody. So the largest shell that I've actually been involved with was at Salt Lake City for the Olympics the Winter Olympics and that was a 24 inch shell Holy crap yeah.

Jon: 22:19

Did it launch successfully? Yes, wow.

Rick: 22:22

There was, I think, four or five of them.

Jon: 22:25

I'm imagining that. My little 14 experience was pretty phenomenal. I can't even imagine 24. What's the rule on shells like that is, for every inch it goes up 100 feet and breaks 100 feet, is that?

Rick: 22:39

Yeah, I mean that's, that's a good rule of thumb. You know there's different shells that do different things. You know you have different breaks in some of them. So you know, it all kind of hinges on the shell as well.

Jon: 22:51

But, yeah, good rule of thumb, so that 24 had to go up a quarter mile or so.

Rick: 22:56

Yeah, it was way up Wow.

Jon: 22:58

Yeah, what's your favorite type of aerial shell?

Rick: 23:03

I like the palms that. You know they come down and come back down to the ground. You just got to have the. You know obviously can't be in Eastern Washington in those in the middle of the field. But you know they're a beautiful shell and you know you got to have clearance and make sure you have a good yeah, you got to know what you're doing.

Jon: 23:21

I'm a chrysanthemum kind of guy myself.

Rick: 23:23

Yeah.

Jon: 23:24

I've seen some pretty spectacular iterations of chrysanthemums. I remember in the last years I was doing the Lake Union show there were two I don't know if they were new at the time or simply just new to our show. One of them was I called it a jellyfish. I don't know if that's the actual name for it, but it would literally move and go up and then kind of come back down and then go up again and come back down like a, just like a jellyfish. I mean it had like a 30 second lifespan. That was beautiful, and then I also remember them.

Jon: 23:55

This is an example of what we probably could have used some better judgment on this, but it was simply a flare on a parachute.

Jon: 24:01

That was super cool and it was part of again as an Eric Tucker design so elaborate, very deliberate soundtrack and trying to make all these feelings and emotions come to life. And so one of the key parts of one of these sequences was this flare on a parachute. But when the show started that night the winds were relatively calm and then pretty quickly the wind started to pick up and then the wind shifted on us about mid-show and all of a sudden the winds were blowing from the lake from the barges right back towards Gasworks Park and so it got pretty smoky and then the flare on the parachute went up and it literally floated right back towards us and over us and into somewhere into the neighborhood and I was sitting right next to the fire marshal in control At the fire marshal I remember he had a big old frown on his face, but it was all good. I think I read somewhere that you actually have trained fire departments or fire department staff in how to manage or handle pyrotechnics in their community. Is that correct? Yeah, what?

Rick: 25:14

Years ago I had the indoor thing started coming more and more to light and being more prevalent out there in the industry. I had a lot of fire officials coming to me, knowing that I had the fire service background, and coming to me and going, hey, what is this? So what I ended up doing was I felt that I didn't want to, as the industry being the one teaching the fire service, I wanted to make sure that they had the training available to them. So I did a whole bunch of research through the American Pyrotechnic Association and people that I knew in the industry and found a fire official out of Cedar Rapids, iowa, a guy named Scott Beamer. He was a fire official that actually was one of them that did part of the investigation in the great white show in Warwick, rhode Island, and he taught fire service people on indoor fireworks, flame effects and outdoor shows. I actually hired him and brought him in and we did a day at the Tacoma Dome trying to remember where else we went. We had like three different days that we would do classroom for fire officials, then go out and do demonstrations for them as well on what different things did and what to look for and that kind of stuff. So that was back.

Rick: 26:39

I'm going to say 2002, somewhere in there. This industry comes down to and I just touched on it just real lightly a minute ago about the fire at Warwick, rhode Island, with great white my goal in the industry and my goal as a former fire official is public safety and that's first and foremost. That was why I did that. I wanted the fire officials to know what they were looking for, not to have the industry tell them this is what you need to be looking for. You know, it's kind of like the cat, you know telling.

Jon: 27:21

Yeah, exactly what you're saying.

Rick: 27:22

So I wanted them to hear from the fire service, the fire service hearing from the fire service. We did those classes. I had people actually from Las Vegas come up from the fire department down there and took the class. Scott's now retired, no longer doing his program. I would love to have something else like that, just with the changes that have evolved over the years, you know, and we get new people all the time in the fire service that are either retiring or going into different divisions or, you know, going back out on the engine company out of an inspection program. So there is a turnover in that. And you know it's hard to be proficient in everything when you're inspecting everything.

Jon: 28:09

That's a really important point. I've seen this play out so many times in so many different ways. It transcends power techniques. This is just public safety as a whole.

Jon: 28:19

But I know in the city of Seattle for instance and maybe this is true on a broader basis in the city of Seattle, if you're a career fire department employee and you aspire to a higher and higher rank, then it's part of their program or at least it was for a long time where everybody has to spend at least two years, like in this function or that function or the, and the fire marshal's office is one of those.

Jon: 28:46

So everybody, if your career path, if you got your designs on whatever XYZ along that journey, is mandatory, you have to spend two years as a fire marshal basically, and I totally understand why. That's great. But it generates a lot of turnover In that department. Seattle's been very fortunate for a long time in having some folks that choose to just stay there and that continuity. Frankly that's a big part of how Seattle's special events industry has flourished in the last 20 or 30 years because of that continuity. But the vast majority of folks just spend their two years and then they're back on going to wherever they were heading in the first place.

Jon: 29:26

It can be real challenging, and I think about the great white disaster and I'm really I'm grateful that you have been thinking that way and offering that kind of training, because that's another thing I've observed in all manner of special events as I travel from one city, one jurisdiction, one region to another. Sometimes you have highly experienced local folks and that's great. But oftentimes you don't, and I've seen two ways that that manifests. One of them is not great. It's for lack of that local experience. They just say no to all sorts of different ideas, right, and that you know that's unfortunate. Even worse, I've experienced that in some places. Sometimes they just say yes and they don't. And I know that they don't necessarily understand the full breadth and magnitude of the decisions that they're making, and that's even like. It's like the more that I know, the scarier that becomes. Yep, I haven't seen historically a lot of middle ground like what you're describing. So the idea of training from within the industry Right, that's fantastic yeah.

Rick: 30:41

You hit the nail on the head. I've seen it both ways as well, where you have some fire officials that will just say no because they don't know, and I'll look at that and go. This is pretty simple and it shouldn't be a big issue. But OK, they're the authority, have it jurisdiction in their house, right? So if they say no, then it's no. Then I've had other ones that have said you can do that and I'll go. No, I Wouldn't do that and you know I have to work in this town or that town or whatever Another time and and I want to sleep at night knowing that, yeah, somebody didn't get hurt. Or again, my, my bottom line is public safety and you know, to make sure that in the end that we don't have an issue. The fire that happened in Warwick, rhode Island and I and I bring that up because that always sticks in the back of my mind it was 21 years ago was it that long already?

Jon: 31:43

Yeah, February.

Rick: 31:44

February was 21 years ago and that fire sticks in the back of my mind because it was actually lit by a pyrotechnic that is the size of a roll of dimes. That's how small the device was. It killed a hundred people, you know. People look at and go out that small little thing, you know. But that small little thing can do as much damage as that big shell.

Rick: 32:12

Yeah, oh yeah and you know that's. That's what I've always told people that work for me, done stuff for me. As soon as you let your guard down on the smallest thing, it's time to get out of the business and move on absolutely you know it's 20 years, that still feels like it was yesterday to me. Yeah, february of February 20, 2003, 21 years ago, yeah.

Jon: 32:42

What kind of trends are you seeing in your field these days?

Rick: 32:47

Biggest trend I see is just the whole thing we touched on was with the drones. That's the biggest thing that I see. It's kind of interesting in the concert end of it. For many years it's been pyrotechnics and then it became the flames, became big in the concert stuff and so now you see a lot more flames and you do the pyro and and you know CO2 because you know cost-wise that you don't have the permit cost that it does for pyrotechnics. So I mean there's been kind of the same things but it just kind of is switching around a little bit.

Jon: 33:25

I Can remember what a disruption to the outdoor display industry 9-11 was, but according to your timeline that's kind of the same period where you're kind of just getting into it. So it might not have changed your world enough, but all of a sudden it became a lot harder to get the bigger shells and because they're all being imported right, it's a whole lot of new barriers popped up. That it changed the nature of our 4th of July show. We had to downsize shells and redesign around smaller shells. I think the limit was like that, I want to say was tens or something like that was the biggest that we could get Without having to, without having to jump through An insane amount of hoops.

Rick: 34:10

Yeah, it's changed. And then you know the whole thing with COVID and trying. Now the manufacturers for the stuff that we do indoors is manufactured in the US, you know from For the concerts. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, so most of your shells for your outdoor shows are, majority of them, are out of China, are made overseas, and then the stuff that we do indoors is all made in the US. But with the COVID thing and trying to get people back to work and running again, they're finally getting back to where they were pre-COVID. You know it got for a while, right after COVID, that we'd call and they got here. I'm not gonna get anything.

Rick: 34:57

Supply and issues, and I think that was kind of when what I was saying earlier if how Kind of went from pyrotechnics to flame effects, because the pyrotechnics weren't available and then more people were doing cryo because you couldn't get, you know, the pyrotechnics itself, yeah, so it's, it's been kind of a weird swing of things and I see the pyrotechnics coming back, but it's gonna kind of go full circle. I see, I suppose everything goes full circle if you're around long enough.

Jon: 35:30

Yep, what advice would you offer for someone, a young person, who's thinking about looking into a career and pyrotechnics? Well, if you're looking for it in it as a career, it's it's kind of hard to get into A lot of it is somebody that you know Ideal a lot.

Rick: 35:47

When I Get people that are involved with me as far as somebody that I feel comfortable with them as a person that they're responsible, you know it's common sense a lot of that. I evaluate more of that than I do if they have a college education or whatever Understand. You know I want somebody that has common sense. That's a really good point.

Jon: 36:21

That's a really good point that you bring up. Your trade is in the same category in my mind as a couple of other trades like Rigors and such to, where the responsibility is enormous. The responsibility is beyond what the layperson will ever even think about, and so, yeah, you have to surround yourself. It's all about the relationship, it's all about the trust.

Rick: 36:43

You know, I've had some very top-notch people that I've worked with been very, very fortunate in that and I appreciate it each and every one of them along the way. What do you think of when I ask you what was your greatest hit? What's your greatest display or performance that you ever pulled?

Jon: 37:02

off? Well, probably, I think it's a little bit of a challenge.

Rick: 37:11

Well, probably being involved with the ball drop in Times Square for the millennium.

Jon: 37:18

Say more about that.

Rick: 37:20

You know John Berson. You've worked with John Berson for years. John asked me if I would help them the year prior to the millennium and do the ball drop at Times Square in New York, and so I shot one of the sides of that, and having it on the front page of Time magazine the next day was pretty impressive, wow. So that was. That was pretty fun.

Jon: 37:44

I can't even imagine how many people watch that like live in the street.

Rick: 37:49

I couldn't tell you how many people, but I remember looking off the rooftop and all you could see was just Pins of people where they had bike rack and they'd put them in they'd put them in like groups so they could run golf carts through there and and. You know, be able to treat people if they got hurt medically or whatever. But, um, yeah, it was, it was amazing.

Jon: 38:10

I know, I know tens of millions of people Watch it around the world, if not, if not more than that, yeah, wow, that's a big deal. Rick, I want to thank you for your time today and welcoming me into your home.

Rick: 38:23

I appreciate you coming by, Jon, and it's good to see you again after all these years, and I've always enjoyed working with you over the years and appreciate the opportunity to have me on. I'll call one hour, two doors.