(upbeat music) - Hey out there, Akronites.

Welcome, once again, to "Around Akron with Blue Green," and, yes, we have an amazing show ahead of us today.

We're gonna learn all about local farms and local farming with Julie Costell.

I'm gonna head to Downtown Akron to the Oh Snap Photo Lab.

Then, I'm gonna head over to the Northside Cellar.

Now, to kick this show off today, I've been on a quest to find a natural deodorant, and I've found a company that makes 100% natural deodorant here in Akron, Ohio.

Let's go see what Victory Pose is all about.

(blues music) - I've always embraced my blue-collar roots.

You know what I mean?

My Midwestern.

You know, my pa, he worked at the lumber yard.

And when I was 19, and I was in trouble, and a fugitive running from the law because, I mean, it was just like, you know, I got caught smoking weed.

Still, they dropped the hammer pretty hard on me, and I was in trouble.

At about 19, I took a job at the lumber yard, and it saved me.

It got me out of trouble, and I just started working the blue-collar life, you know?

And, honestly, I still do it.

I still, to this day, I'm a concrete mixer driver, and I do that full time in Downtown Cleveland.

And, yeah, so, I love it.

I love working hard.

But, nah, I never really was a maker, honestly.

And, in fact, story was I was using homemade deodorant, and I'd run out of it, and it was right around Christmas time, and I was like, "You know, if I could pull this off, "I will appear to be crafty, "and I can have something to give away "to some friends and family."

Mostly, I needed some for myself, and so that's when the whole making things... Aside from making records.

I've made plenty of those.

So I guess that is making something.

We're looking to hire our first employee, finally.

We've paid some people to help us along the way, and that's been...

I celebrate anytime I can hand somebody, even if it's 20 bucks or 40 or 50 or 80 or 200, like, for helping me produce product, or give people money to help do things here locally.

That's just the greatest reward.

We've created a product of real substance here.

I mean, this stuff lasts a long time.

And we source all of our ingredients and all of our supplies, oils, baking soda, corn starch from Bulk Apothecary is the nation's, one of the nation's, if not the nation's leading supplier of all of our products, coconut oil, shea butter, beeswax.

And they're in Aurora.

(energetic music) Just by accident, by making this stuff at Christmas time for friends and family and realizing that this was shockingly effective.

Like, I felt and I smelled amazing for days on a single application of this deodorant, and it blew my mind.

And the pandemic hit right at the same time, and I thought, "Gosh, let's try to sell stuff from home "'cause people don't wanna go out and shop."

And that was the catalyst.

That's how this all started.

And it was crazy by accident.

But also I had an accident at work where I had to take five months off, and I poured all my energy into this every day.

And so, within six months, I was selling thousands of dollars, not many thousands, but a couple thousand dollars of product, and I had sold it to local marketplaces, like Krieger's in Cuyahoga Falls.

They bought it, like, on the spot.

I was just like, "Hey, check out my product."

They're like, "I'll buy 24 units."

you know, Because they said it smelled better than anything else that was on their shelf that was coconut oil based, and they had just lost their coconut oil based deodorant or whatever.

Then, I went to the Mustard Seed, and they agreed to buy it.

And this all was within six months, and I'm like, "That's awesome."

And, all the while, it was just the most fun project to build one block at a time.

'Cause you gotta take a picture of something, put it on the website, build the website, secure the, you know, all the pieces and components, and start up the social media, and actually find a designer to do the label or do some yourself.

I mean, I've done like Photoshop.

I've done Illustrator now.

I've done Final Cut and stuff, just messing around with content, creating content.

I mean, it's just a fun thing to do where there's always something to do.

You're never bored.

There's never a dull moment.

And I found myself in that position where I just thoroughly loved what I was doing.

You know what I mean?

Not so much like mixing, I mean, even though making the deodorant and slapping labels on containers and packages is fun.

And so, yeah, I just love it.

(mellow music) Here's an early prototype.

And so I'm using this now.

This is how, you know, without getting too graphic and naked, I'm just going to demonstrate how this amazing product is, smells awesome, and it massages right there into your pit.

And we're a full-body deodorant, so a lot of people are experimenting with, where else can I apply deodorant to my body?

So pits, cracks, crevices.

We're good for all of it, no matter what you do, no matter who you are.

- Next up, the problem is the supply chain is breaking down.

The solution, local farms.

Let's go meet up with Julie Costell and learn all about Akron to Farm.

(dramatic music) - I think people are starting to pay attention.

All the news media is telling us that we're going to have food shortages soon.

We see it on our news articles.

We're seeing it on the newspaper.

Things are happening around the country with a war going on.

We just had a worldwide pandemic.

We have fuel prices raising, shortages in the grocery stores.

We're seeing it every day.

Now, it's more in our face.

We're becoming more and more aware.

And it's kinda scary.

I don't wanna be a doomsday person, you know, and say you better be ready tomorrow, but the reality is we could run out of food tomorrow, like, really fast.

We learned, like, within two weeks, our shelves went bare.

And a lot of us can't afford food right now.

When I drive up past the food bank, there's lines all the way down the road.

And if we can somehow connect ourselves here in the city to people who are growing food around us, we're not gonna have to rely on this flimsy system that we built.

My mom used to always say, "I don't cultivate a garden.

"I cultivate friends who garden."

So we need to do that, and then maybe some of us, when we see other people doing it, will be inspired to do it on our own.

Whether we start a business, whether you grow some food in your backyard, share it with your neighbors, feed your family, teach your grandkids something, we've got to be a little more self-sufficient when it comes to our food supply and start now, not wait until the shelves really do go bare, or, God forbid, we actually have a catastrophe happen.

And I don't know if everybody realizes this, but, without government subsidies, our milk and meat and dairy and food would cost so much more.

And we have this perception that local food costs more, but does it or doesn't it?

When you add in the cost of your gas, the cost of the gas to get the food there.

We're missing varieties of food that you can grow, but you're not gonna buy in the grocery store, which means you're missing nutrition, right?

There's a lot of problems that can be solved by growing even a small percentage of your food.

Herbs for tea.

Then, you don't have to buy tea that comes from all the way across the globe, you know?

There's just a lot of ways to save and make our health better in the process.

Plus, it tastes better.

Our food tastes better when you grow it, when it's here.

Hundreds of varieties of tomatoes and broccolis, and just different things that you don't see all the time at the regular grocery store.

(upbeat music) Through the last 30 years, I have been cultivating people who garden and also cultivating my own gardens, and, over the last, I don't know, couple of years, just so many people are moving into that job realm, right?

They're creating their own jobs.

Self-sufficient, entrepreneurial, and yet community-minded.

They're feeding us.

But I couldn't believe when I started looking, like really paying attention.

I've always tried to pay attention.

I thought I was paying attention.

Anyhow, I figure, if I didn't know all of these farmers were around us doing all these awesome things, I figure a lot of us don't know, right?

Even some of my farmer friends, when I started sharing onto a group page on Facebook everything I've found locally happening, were all just like, "What?

We didn't know.

"I didn't know you existed.

"I didn't know you were doing that."

And now, we're starting to pool ourselves together.

And I think people have been trying to do that for a long time, not that I'm anybody special.

I think I've just been around the block a few times, and I'm a little older now, so I'm in a good position to try to facilitate some more conversation and bring people together and try to connect some people who don't know.

We tend to preach to the choir, no matter what it is we care about, and I wanna reach people who don't realize that it's strawberry season in a few weeks, and we have probably 30 farms around us growing strawberries that we can go pick them.

We can can them.

We can make our own jams and jellies.

That's gonna save you a little bit of money, right?

But it's also gonna be a great experience.

You can take your kids, your grandkids.

You can go to the farm, spend a day outdoors.

Pick the strawberries, freeze the strawberries.

I just want people to experience that, you know?

Everybody deserves to have good quality food, and it's not that far away from us.

♪ To lay my money down ♪ I laid my money down Somebody said to me recently, "Julie, "you're asking people to drive a country mile "to go get their hamburger."

Well, no, not necessarily, because a lot of these farmers are driving a country mile to bring the food closer to us.

So there are farmer's markets happening all around us, but there's also some farms you can go to that aren't super far, and you buy the food right there at the farm.

All the farmer's markets around us are starting to take EBT.

They have WIC Incentive.

You can use your EBT card.

You could literally be a farmer's market shopper and go to three or four a week and get extra Carrot Cash every time you go.

That's a win-win situation.

You can ride the bus, and it's not that far.

It's not that hard.

It's just a mystery, right?

And just like anything that's new to us, we have to remove a little bit of the mystery.

And when you see something happening, you realize, "Oh, all right.

Well, I can do that.

"That's not so hard.

Now, I want to go do that."

So I wanna encourage people.

I wanna show them how this actually works, right?

'Cause it sounds like so... You see it on television.

It's so glamorous.

You know, "Ooh, they shop at the market."

You know, and the kids running around.

And, yeah, it's fun.

It's a fun day, but it's also a reality.

It's economy, it's groceries, it's food.

You can go in there and buy everything and come back out and stay away from the grocery stores and not participate in that supply chain that is so weak.

The more money we throw at it, the weaker it seems to get.

We're not helping anything by building up this system that could collapse.

- Now, let's go to Downtown Akron and take some selfies at the Oh Snap Photo Lab.

(upbeat music) - So Oh Snap was actually a dream that I had.

I woke up and I told my husband, "We've gotta do this.

"We've gotta make this happen."

And I knew it had to be right Downtown Akron, just because, in Akron, it has to be centralized for it to belong to everyone.

So it's not a Westside thing.

It's not a Northside thing.

It's an everybody thing.

So, when we started to look for space, I knew it had to be Downtown.

We worked with the Downtown Akron Partnership.

They were pivotal in us being able to locate this very spot.

And, as soon as I saw the layout, and I saw the view of Lock 3, I knew we had hit the nail right on the head, so I was really excited about this location.

Lock 3 is right across the street from us.

Our Emerald Lounge, our event space, actually overlooks Lock 3.

So the view is absolutely stunning.

You can even see Lock 4.

You can see the water streaming and the colors down here.

It's right next to the Peanut Shoppe, which is one of my childhood favorites and still one of my favorites as an adult.

Lockview is downstairs, and then right across the street is the Civic.

So, when you're talking about an evening out, Oh Snap just fits right in with entertainment and things to do in our city.

So, when we came up with the concept of a lot of the backdrops, we wanted to keep in mind the youth in our community first and foremost because, anymore, there's no arcades, there's no skating rinks locally, but they always have their phones with them.

They love making videos.

They love making TikToks.

We have to have space for them to be creative and to thrive.

So, when we came up with a lot of backdrops, it was really about, okay, what do the youth in our community wanna see?

And then, once our doors opened, we found that it's really not just like a teenage thing.

It's a seven-year-old thing.

It's a 60-year-old thing.

And it really is what you want it to be because you're immersed in the art that we have here.

And it looks like you're having a ball in all of your pictures, so we're excited about that.

(energetic music) So, when you come into Oh Snap, we always tell people that the Oh Snap couch is your first stop.

And that's where you're getting like your album cover.

We encourage everybody to follow us on our social media pages.

And then, when you go into the Lab, I always give everybody a mini tour of how to pose, how to get the best lighting, how to get the best angles, because that is what I've become really good at running a business like this.

And then, instructing them on, you know, how to get really cool hashtags, or how to use really cool hashtags to get the attention that you want.

And we've got a lot of very Instagramable moments in Oh Snap that you wouldn't expect, little surprises, like the restrooms.

Everybody loves a good bathroom selfie.

So we paid a lot of attention to every single corner and every single wall.

So we actually host Teen Talent Night, and that's one of my favorite things that we do here at Oh Snap, and that's bringing in local teen artists.

They could be musicians, singers, rappers, performers of any kind.

And what I found with our Teen Talent Night is the kids are, they're phenomenal.

They're so talented.

How can we really create a space for those specific kids to hone in their craft and to really get it out to the world?

So, in the future, I would love to have some sort of music studio for the kids to come and record and really give them an opportunity to grow and develop their talents because they are just truly gifted, and we're really grateful for some of the kids that we've met.

And they love coming here, and they come back over and over again.

(bright music) One of my favorite parts of putting Oh Snap together was not only meeting the artists in our community, but seeing how their brainchildren were going to manifest in our space.

And so we might've given them an idea of, hey, this is what we wanna see, but to see them execute it in the way that they've done so many of the creative things that are around Oh Snap is something that is exciting, it's engaging, and everybody has something positive to say about what they see here.

And it's not just about paintings.

I mean, we've got 3D clouds.

We've got resin art.

We've got bubble room.

It's just anything.

We've got an artist who takes old things and turns them into art, so we've got that recycling piece too.

So nothing in here is commercial.

Nothing in here is mass-produced.

It's all organic, and it's all local artists who, they needed a chance, especially in COVID.

It was really important for us to pay them for their time and their talent, and so a large portion of our startup budget was for the artist to make sure that we could employ them to practice their craft here.

And it's turned into a beautiful space.

We've got 6,300 square feet and no corner has been left unused.

So we're making great use of our space, and we continue to grow and expand and come up with new ideas and change things and shift as the community demands.

So I'm here for it.

- Now, to wrap this show up today, we're gonna head over to the Northside to the Northside Cellar.

This has something for everybody in it.

Let's go see what the Northside Cellar is all about.

(energetic music) - Well, this is the first time I've ever had my own business in the clothing industry, but I've had my fingers in it my whole life.

I worked at a boutique when I was a teenager and used to, I can't believe the owner used to let me write the copy, and I'm not a good copywriter, for the fashion shows, and choose the outfits for the ladies, and run a fashion show at 16.

I don't even know.

It was so much fun.

Thought I wanted to be a buyer.

That's another story.

Many other careers later, here I am.

I don't even know how fortunate I am to get to do the thing I love the most.

It's absolutely a dream come true every day.

It's my salvation.

(laughs) Truthfully.

It started out to be really small and nothing to this magnitude.

This was not my original plan.

I had too many clothes, and I have always taken them to consignment shops and enjoyed that process, but it got to be so cumbersome because I had so many.

I thought, "Well, I should open my own consignment shop."

And then, it led to new clothes, and then I found that buying the new clothes and going on buying trips was the most fun you can have with your clothes on, if I can say that.

It's bad.

I definitely have a problem.

So, yes.

So there's new clothes in the front room, and then there's consignment, and we also have alpaca products and another lady who has clothes in the back, plus all the other gift and locally made things.

So, yeah, like I said, little something for everybody.

(jazzy music) And I try to keep aware of what other places locally are carrying so that we're not overlapping because Akron is a small town, and you don't wanna see your friend wearing the same thing.

And, if at all possible, from a vendor, I can find a vendor that will sell me one or two of something, that is always my favorite thing because you're assured that you're only gonna see two of 'em in all of Akron.

So I do like that.

And then, the consignment.

That's a no-brainer.

Somebody might find a dress maybe from the '80s, and they'll say, "Oh my gosh, "I remember, I had this outfit back in the day.

"If only I'd have saved it."

I'm like, "Well, here it is.

"If it still fits you, it's yours now.

"You'll be one-of-a-kind now."

(mellow music) I can't say enough how much joy I get from this and the people that I have met.

I should've wrote a book.

Again, I'm not a writer, but if I was, I could've written a book with the beautiful, heartfelt things that people have shared.

It's like your hairdresser.

The stories that people have shared about their lives, or maybe they confide in me, 'cause it's not going any further.

What happens at Northside Cellar stays at Northside Cellar.

And the friendships and real friends that I have made just from shoppers, and the connections.

It's just, again, it's just...

I thought at one time that, from another career, that people, I was kinda done with people, and I was so frustrated, and people were mean.

And everybody's like, "Why are you going into retail?"

I said, "I don't know."

And I have found that completely the opposite is true, that I love people, and I love hearing their stories and sharing the experiences and bringing them the outfit for that special occasion or whatever it is.

And it's really about the people, and the feelings, and the joy, and the connection.

The clothes are just icing on the cake, and the, or the gifts that you help them find for that special somebody.

I hear more and more people say, "You know, I don't wanna just buy something to buy it.

"I wanna find that special thing."

And I hear that a lot that they've found something that brings them joy to give to somebody else.

So, yeah, it's really not about the clothing.

It's about the people and the connections, and, again, it's about the joy.

(lively music) Well, it's happy.

It's gonna be happier because I think that DORA, where you can walk around with your cocktails and go from establishment to establishment, that's gonna be great with summer.

And we have the beautiful art on our green out here, which is just, how fortunate are we to have that, that bit of beauty?

And you've got bars and restaurants, and more shopping, and a hotel.

Gosh, and Luigi's, of course.

Who hasn’t - I've been going to Luigi's my entire life.

We won't say how many years that is.

So it's very artsy, and people come here to feel good and enjoy life.

And I find it very interesting.

You know, we go to Cleveland to explore different neighborhoods and experience those neighborhoods, and I get really excited, again, when I hear people.

I say, "What are you guys up to?"

And they'll say, "Oh, we were just down from Bay Village "or Rocky River, and we wanted to check out "this Northside district area.

"We saw it on TV or something."

And I'm like, "Wow, they're coming to Akron!"

(Wendy laughs) - Thank you, once again, for watching this episode of "Around Akron with Blue Green."

Now, if you have any questions or any comments, you can drop me a line at www.AroundAkronWithBlueGreen, or you can catch me on social media.

Thank you, and have an amazing day.

(upbeat music) One, two, three.

A, B, C, A, B, C. Hey, out there, Akronites.

30 years.

No.

Next up is a... Next up.

And local farm movement here in Akron.

(sighs) I'm gonna head over, I'm gonna head to Downtown to the Oh Snap.

And then, it's gonna be over to the... Then it's, then I'm... (exhales) This month...

This month on "Around Akron."