- Hey out there, Akronites, welcome once again to "Around Akron with Blue Green."

And wow, do we have an amazing show ahead of us again today.

I'm gonna go over to Kenmore and learn all about just a dad from Akron.

Then it's over to Pure Intentions to learn all about wheatgrass.

I'm also gonna head over to Sam's Emporium.

Now to kick this show off, today I'm gonna learn about a new journalist in town covering the beat of Akron.

Let's go see what Journalist Shay is all about.

(mellow music) - When I was in the third grade, I used to sing and do plays, and just like one morning I walked in, I don't know what it was about this morning, so special, but I was like early, bright, ready, sit at my desk and everything, and I wasn't doing anything.

And the teachers caught me in the hallway, so I thought I was in trouble.

I'm like, "What's going on here?"

But no, they actually asked me to write a piece on my music teacher and it was gonna be displayed in the hallway, and that's literally the first time I ever wrote about anybody was the third grade.

Ever since then, that upcoming Christmas, my aunt, she bought me a diary.

I've been a writer ever since then.

I just started writing, I mean, not writing on people, but I had a passion for just writing, period since then.

(mellow music continues) I went to Akron University first till COVID hit.

Then I switched over to Stark State because COVID kicked everybody off of campus.

And then I went to Stark State.

And then once I went to Stark State after that, I wanted more hands on and I went to Ohio Media School, after Ohio Media School and before I graduated I already had signed the contract with "Beacon" and that's how I got my foot in the door to actually become an official journalist.

So they gave me a freelance contract to learn the city.

I'm from Youngstown, I'm not from Akron, I'm from Youngstown, Ohio.

So I didn't know the city quite well.

For me to just go out there and be like, "Oh, you got a story?"

People already think it's weird when journalists walk up on them.

So if they see this girl with this hair walking up, like, "Who is you?

You was just trying to be nosy."

They gave me the freelance contract.

Ever since then, I started becoming a part of multiple organizations in the city to see what they can use with me as a freelance journalist.

And I just took off from there and just start doing what I can with multiple organizations.

So I'm just connected to a lot now.

(upbeat music) I grew up in Youngstown and Akron and Youngstown's two different places.

So it was very welcoming.

I met some amazing people my first time, but I'm still friends to the girls to this day.

Very first friends, they accepted me.

We've been cool ever since.

I was lost because it's not my city.

I'm still lost to this day.

It's a lot of people I don't know.

I'm still learning who's the who's, who's who I should be connected to, who's important, who's trouble, but overall, Akron is a great city.

It is that they up and down, it's like every other city, but it has been welcoming so far.

And the people in Akron has been so amazing to me in my journey.

I mean, so much support.

So I'm forever grateful for being out here.

(mellow music) I feel like local journalism is important 'cause we don't have the big news outlet stations, so we have to get the news from somewhere out here.

We don't have, we have the "Beacon"," we have "330ToGo," and I'm part of both of them.

We have Shay Tuned, my own organization.

I feel like it's very important for people to trust, trust us to get the word out.

We don't have nothing major like "Cleveland 19."

We don't have the look at cut on our channels and just watch the news every night.

We don't have them organizations.

So I feel like it's very important for us to continue to try to get the word out, whether digital, print, anything, it's just, it's very important because Akron been on the road, like Akron been having some stuff going on, the events, the protests, Akron been having some stuff going on and people wanna know what's going on in the city.

And then that's when I try to step in like, all right, let me tell y'all what's going on in the city the best way I can.

But they, people is used to their organizations, I should say.

So I'm just kind of new stepping into trying to have people trust me on my platform.

But people are used to what they go to as far as news outlets.

So I just feel like it's very important that no matter what, people get the news.

(mellow music) I'm on all platforms.

Journalistshay, everything is just journalistshay.

I make it easy for everybody to find me.

Well, well, my media page is Shay Tuned, but I'm journalistshay.

If you go to journalistshay.

you'll eventually go find Shay Tuned.

It's connected to everything.

So on all platforms, I am journalistshay, except for, except for LinkedIn, I think still then I put that in the little quotation journalistshay.

So I'm that on all platforms.

(upbeat music) Be yourself.

Don't change up anything about you.

If somebody say you gotta have a certain look about yourself to be in a certain position in the job, don't listen to it.

Be yourself, people are going to love you for just completely being you.

You do not have to switch up the way you talk, the way you walk, the way you dress about nothing.

Just continue to be you and continue to learn.

Knowledge is never, never, not too much knowledge you can talk along that you can't have with a topic.

Just continue to research and read.

People don't read, just read.

Please, read my people, read research and write.

That is my only advice.

Read, research and write and take care of your mental 'cause that may play a major part in any job in the world.

Take care of your mental and just like I said, stay true to who you are.

That's all you, that's all you can do and be in the world.

There's nothing else.

There's no secret.

Just stay true to who you are and what you wanna do.

If you got a passion that whatever you wanna do, stick to that and just be yourself.

Don't switch up nothing about you.

(upbeat music) - Now it's over to Kenmore to see what Just a Dad from Akron is all about.

- So I grew up here in the Kenmore neighborhood.

As a kid, you know, I ran the streets, did a lot of stuff like that.

Skateboarding and baseball was like my two favorite things as a kid.

From a very early age that's like all I mentally obsessed about.

I mentally obsessed about skateboarding when I wasn't skateboarding or baseball when I wasn't playing baseball.

And that became like an, you know, like addiction behavior type thing, right?

So I'd always felt full of fear, full of anxiety, stuff like that.

About 16 years old, I got introduced to drugs and alcohol and that led me down a very dark path, drinking periodically to drinking every day, to dropping outta high school, doing computer school and drinking, you know, just partying out 24/7.

From there, it led me down to every single drug, every drug that's ever existed, you know, for the most part, trying those and trips in and outta jail, collecting felonies along the way and burning bridges.

Lots of bridges with my family, friends, loved ones, multiple trips to jail.

Yeah, I just, you know, I struggled for about 15 years, 12 to 15 years with addiction until it led me to the point of being homeless.

At that point, you know, my daughter had been born, she was nine months old.

And I remember in those times that I wanted to be the dad that she deserved, right?

I knew I could be a better dad.

I knew I could be a better human, a better person than the person I was, but it was not possible while using drugs and alcohol.

I ended up homeless, praying to God that if I had a purpose to put me in jail or to gimme the courage to commit suicide.

And from that point, I ended up in jail.

And from there I went to treatment out in Warren Ohio.

I just surrendered everything and the willingness that I had was the willingness to do anything, to stay sober and to build a better life.

(mellow music) So I did treatment out there for 30 days, came home here in Akron, became a full-time dad, you know, so hanging out with my daughter all day, every day, taking her to meetings with me, taking her to sober living houses to pick up guys and take 'em to meetings, church, rubber ducks, games, fireworks.

Those were, you know, like the key monumental, like beginning of sobriety.

So about two years into sobriety, I had worked different jobs.

I did welding, I did excavation, I was a line cook, all these different things.

And I'm continuing to grow as a dad, as a human, as a positive member in the community.

And I knew that my ambition and drive was greater than just being, you know, that, just working at a normal nine to five job.

So I prayed and figured out, you know, like I wanted to do clothing.

That's what I've always been passionate about.

So I wanted to create a clothing brand that was a positive impact in the community, but also like lifted people up, gave people hope, inspired them through apparel and designs.

So in 2020 I launched a company and for like six months prior to that, I just wrote down notebooks and notebooks and notebooks full of stuff.

You know, ideas, visions, ways that I could give back to the community, different stuff like that.

Launched it in 2020 and then it was in March, and then two weeks later COVID happened, right?

So I'm like, you know, I was like asking God, I'm like, "Why did You give me this vision to do this?"

You know?

And two weeks later for like every, the whole world to be shut down, you know?

And literally did I know that's what really fueled and brought the company up, you know, like got it awareness and gave me the opportunities to give back in a time that was very desperately needed, right?

And I just didn't see that in the beginning.

And I just held on with that mustard seed of faith.

(upbeat music) Growing up, my mom had always told me as a kid, like, it only takes a mustard seed of faith.

You know, like, you just have to have that little mustard seed of faith.

And I never understood it as a kid, or even as a young adult, I never understood that 'cause I'm like, that's so tiny.

Like how does, that doesn't make sense to me.

Like all I have to have is something this big and things will work out until I truly believed in it, you know?

And had the hope that things do get better.

If you're willing and you put in the time and the effort, your life can change forever.

You can find a version of yourself that you've never dreamed or knew was possible to exist.

If you're struggling, you know, like, just don't give up.

For me, it was having that hope and knowing that the person I was at that time in my active addiction, if I were to pass away or die, who would Kenny Lambert be remembered as?

You know, like, who would my daughter say, "Who was my dad?

What was my dad like," right?

And the person I was in that moment was not somebody I wanted to be.

I knew that I could be better than what I was.

And just by holding on and never giving up and losing that hope, that's what's got me through and got me to where I am today.

(upbeat music) So the store's located at 937 Kenmore Boulevard.

I'm on the corner of 13th Street in Kenmore Boulevard.

When I first opened up the store here, I think there was only, it was 2021.

So I think there was only about seven businesses on the Boulevard.

Over the past two and a half years I've been here, it's grown to 21 businesses.

Kenmore has really shifted from what it was like when I was a kid in the neighborhood growing up here to what it is now.

I feel that the Kenmore, especially like the Boulevard neighborhood, is a lot of business owners or community people coming together and making this place home.

You know, making it a safe place for people to come and to feel comfortable and enjoy and have a good time.

But it's the support that really keeps the doors open.

You know, the support of people coming in, shopping, coming in and just checking out and spreading the word.

You know, like if you just, if you tell someone like, "Hey, go check out this store," like that helps just as much, you know?

And yeah, I just, I've only seen it grow since I've been here.

- Next up, it's Pure Intentions to learn all about wheatgrass.

Let's go see what Pure Intentions is all about.

- This building was Bell Tire.

There's like two sections.

There's the front of the building and the back of the building.

This front is about 2,000 square feet.

And it was once the showroom for the tires, what used to be Windows are now walls, but the whole front down North Street was windows and you know, like the old tire shops and the back is where they did the tires and the work and the garage work.

And when we got this building, it was completely empty.

A lot of these walls weren't here.

We built the grow room, we built the garage just by adding walls and transformed the building.

We've been here 13 years and it has just developed and transformed into this really lovely gathering space out front that the local musicians have made good use of.

(gentle music) I lived out west for about 10 years in my 20s.

So I worked with a girl, I had a sore on my gum, I worked with a girl.

She came back and she was just like, "You won't believe how great this stuff is."

And our little health food store in Sedona had wheatgrass juice.

And this was in the late '80s and she went down and got me some and I just put it on my mouth and it was gone the next day.

And I was like, "Oh my God," you know, that was just so amazing.

That's how I started drinking it.

And I drank it in Sedona for years.

And then when I moved back to Ohio, nobody had wheatgrass juice.

Nobody even heard of it.

Hardly anybody.

I think the Mustard Seed had heard of it.

And I had started a little herb farm with my mom and dad and sister down on Akron Peninsula Road.

So we were doing that and I started growing wheatgrass for myself in my basement.

And then I started growing it for a couple of people at the New Earth Health Food Store in Cuyahoga Falls.

And then I started growing it for like the Web of Life out in Westlake.

And once I reached 70 pounds a week, I moved out of my basement, which that was for three years.

I went from zero to 70 pounds in three years.

And I got that building down in the valley.

And we stayed there for seven years.

And then we moved here.

We've been here for 13 years.

(gentle music) So yeah, I started growing it for myself and then other people wanted it.

And then I'm like, every, and then it just seemed so easy to get healthy without having to do anything.

I never changed the way I ate.

You could just, the results of drinking wheatgrass on a regular basis were unchanging and undeniable.

The truth about wheatgrass juice never changes.

You're gonna feel it within a couple of days in your digestive system.

It's going to give little scrubbing bubbles to your colon, clean you out.

It's going to increase the oxygen in your blood.

It's going to give you energy and it just does it every time.

You don't.

There's so many benefits to it.

I started growing it because it was really good for me.

And I'm not much of a cook.

I don't, I don't spend a lot of time in the kitchen and something, if I can drink an ounce of wheatgrass and get two and a half pounds of nutritional value, the size of a two pound salad, that's awesome.

And that's what I'm gonna do.

(gentle music) We have a 12 day cycle and it starts every Thursday with soaking the seed and mixing the dirts, preparing the soil, and putting it in trays.

Fridays we plant the seed.

Saturday and Sunday we put it in the dark.

Monday, we uncover it and put it under lights and water it.

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday it grows and we water it again on Friday, Saturday, Sunday it grows and we cut it on Monday, fresh cut.

So it's 12 days from Thursday to Monday and we cut every, so it's always fresh cut on Monday.

Anybody that wants it as fresh as it can be, otherwise you can get it all week, you know.

But in our fresh cut pound bags.

(gentle music) And I found after 25 years of believing you had to drink it the same day, I found and believe that it is still fresh for three days.

And so that's why we're doing these jars of juice, three days of freshness to make it easy.

So people, it's the easiest way to get healthy.

You don't have to do anything else except drink the juice every day or at least four times a week, you know, two to four ounces.

And you'll be able to tell me in three weeks how you feel about it.

And I'm not worried, 'cause I know the truth about wheatgrass never changes.

- Now to wrap this show up today, it's over near the University of Akron to Sam's Jewelry Emporium, which has been a staple at Akron for as long as I can remember.

Let's go see what Sam's Jewelry Emporium is all about.

- We were actually on Howard Street in 1946 and we were there until the early '70s before we moved to Exchange Street.

And back then it was more of a pawn shop where we catered to the rubber workers and helping them, you know, from payday to payday.

They needed help with, you know, money to pay their bills.

You know, it was kind of a tough time back then.

And that's, we originated as a pawn shop and evolved into a very nice jewelry store, retail jewelry store that offers custom jewelry and repairs.

And one of the largest selections in the northeast in Ohio.

Loose diamonds, lab grown diamonds.

When we moved here in the '70s, this used to be a people's drug store, but it was a, there was some other businesses here too, but that was the main business as people remember this building, it's a pretty large building.

There's terracotta design on the outside of the building and blue and red tiles.

It's gorgeous and we spent a lot of money to make it look like it did before and keep it, you know, kind of like a historic type place in Akron, but kind of an institution.

A lot of people know us just from longevity and being consistent with what we do here.

(mellow music) Well, when I first started 27 years ago, I look out the windows.

There's not one building that's there that was there when I was here.

We have the InfoCision football stadium was built.

The dorms, all the existing businesses that were here across the street and on the side have been, you know, just knocked down and kind of cleaned up.

It's kind of nice around, you know, much nicer around here.

Just they're redoing the streets now as part of a new thing that they're doing right now.

New streets, new sidewalks, new lights.

It's gonna be, you know, by the end of next year it's gonna be beautiful on Exchange Street and we're excited about that.

(gentle music) We have a fantastic in-house, onsite repair center here.

John Jones is our jeweler.

It's been in the business for 30 years.

So we are super excited to have him in the store that to be able to do repairs.

Our repairs usually take about a week and nothing leaves the store.

So if you have your mother's, your grandmother's jewelry, a very special, important piece of jewelry for you that you've inherited.

It's real important that it stays in the store.

It gets done within a week.

It's not shipped out.

You lose control of where it is.

You wanna make sure you get your jewelry back.

And we have a lot of customers that drive hours just for repairs.

People come in from Cleveland, they come in from Columbus, they send a lot of people who leave Akron and go to Arizona and different places.

They send jewelry in for repairs.

You know, I mean that's what a compliment that someone would, you know, trust us to do the repair when they can just go down the street to a local jeweler.

So in this business it's all about trust and that's number one, integrity.

And that's what we, you know, we try to create a comfortable atmosphere here.

We don't work on commissions, we don't have fancy showcases.

And our customers feel that.

(gentle music) We have a custom design center that we're lucky to have Eddy Escudero here.

And he's in charge of our custom design center.

So he inputs information after conversations with customers and he has pictures and he inputs the information into the CAD/CAM design program and produces a wax prototype of the item for the customer to come back and review and make sure that's what they want.

And you can actually look at the item that's going to be made for them.

And once it's approved, you know, if there's changes that need to be made, they can be made at that time.

But once it's approved, then it goes to our casting room here.

We do everything from start to finish here, which is pretty incredible, 'cause a lot of places subcontract out either the design part of it, the casting part of it, and we do it all in this building from start to finish.

And you get to talk to the person who's actually going to be doing the designing of your piece.

So usually it's an owner or a salesperson that gets the information, they relay it over to somebody else.

So you kind of lose a little bit that way.

It's not as awesome as, the end result is just incredible when you can talk right to the person doing the work.

(gentle music) We do very little advertising.

It's word of mouth.

And the future is so bright, it's always busy here.

People always are gonna want to give a special gift of jewelry.

What they're able to afford may, you know, depending on the environment and the economy is changing constantly.

What's great about here is that we have anything from a couple hundred to, you know, as you know, 20, 30, 40,000, we can fit all price ranges.

But I think the fact that we're viewed kind of as an institution, 'cause we've been here since, in business in Akron since 1946, we have that level of trust, which as long as we provide the service and make people feel comfortable and satisfy their needs when they come in and the future is bright.

(gentle music) - Thank you once again for watching this episode of "Around Akron With Blue Green."

If you have any questions or any comments, you can catch me online.

Thank you.

And have an amazing day.

(upbeat music) I have a shoot, I have a few shots at Wheat.

(Blue stutters) (Blue laughs) It's like I've been.

Wheatgrass, not whiskey.

And I don't drink whiskey, it's wheatgrass.

It sounds like I've been drinking whiskey though.

Geez.

Okay, take two.

(upbeat music) Thank you once and.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (Blue snapping fingers) (Blue laughing) I am gonna head over to Kenmore.

I'm gonna head over to Kenmore to learn all ah.

(upbeat music)