Kyle’s Danbury Travelogue | The Ryen Russillo Show

Hey, Rosillo listeners, you can find every episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Something big is coming. On September 2nd, DraftKings Game Day arrives with massive deals, exclusive deals, and an all-day celebration built for sports fans. The countdown has begun. All roads lead to Game Day. The DraftKings Sports app is now live in all 50 states. That means from Texas to California to Florida, every fan is in on the excitement. One app, every sport, all 50 states. DraftKings Game Day is yours. Get ready to celebrate. New DraftKings customers sign up with code BSS. Spend $5 to get $200 in rewards within 21 days. That's code BSS. In partnership with DraftKings, the crown is yours. Event trading offered by DraftKings Predictions, a CFTC-registered introducing broker. Trading involves risk of loss. Market availability varies. 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Danbury was settled in 1685 by eight families of colonists from the now Stanford and Norwalk areas. The land was bought from the Pahkioki. Oh, man. I looked up the pronunciation. I looked up the pronunciation earlier, but that was like 30 minutes ago. The Pahkioki. I think it's the Pahkioki. It's an Algonquin-speaking tribe. Became a formal town in 1702. Was an important supply depot for the military during the Revolutionary War. Another fun fact, the mineral Danburyite was discovered there in 1839. So that's something. It is the seventh largest city in Connecticut, clocking in at about 86,000. And it was the number one city on Money Magazine's top American cities to live in, in 1988. Cited for low crime, good schools, and location. Probably the proximity to New York City. It's also known as Hat City, which was once the center of the American hat industry. We can run through that really quick. Danbury's first hat shop opened in 1780. They were doing like 12 hats. I think maybe there were 18 hats a week. Sounds right. By 1800, the city was pumping out 20,000 hats per year. By 1887, 30 factories were pumping out 5 million hats per year. There were kind of lots of problems with mercury poisoning during the felting process. If you've heard of the Mad Hatter's disease. But locally, it had a fun little name known as the Danbury Shakes. Doesn't sound as bad, right? There were some union disputes and lockouts and lawsuits. In the 1890s to the early 1900s. By the 1920s, the industry was facing a decline. But the big blow became after World War II. As a lot of returning soldiers went hatless. Which kind of sparked a trend that accelerated in the 50s throughout the country. Danbury's last major hat factory closed in 1964. And the last hat, I'm sure there's a little smaller dad hat companies there. But the last hat was made in Danbury in 1987. When the last small hat factory. Closed. Some attractions for Danbury. It was, I will say, there's not a ton. But the John Ryder House. He was a carpenter during the Revolutionary War. And the house was built in 1785. And that's it. Now it's a museum. Maybe I'll check it out. There's a, I was looking, Heartstone Castle. Was finished in 1899. I'm not actually a really big castle guy. If we're talking 1800s, 1900s. There's a couple of those. The Northeast, but I don't think it's going to be on my list. Just doesn't seem like it's got the same magic of a medieval castle. But it was commissioned by a photographer who moved out five years later in 1905. And then it changed hands one more time. And now it's owned by the city of Danbury. All right. I think that's all I got. Let me see. Oh, this is another thing. Danbury's federal prison was one of the main housings for conscientious objectors during World War II. And I think that's the extent. Of the non-Danbury Mall things I have for you. All right. Let's move on to the mall. So it's not, I mean, we call it in my area, the Danbury Mall, but it's actually the Danbury Fair Mall. And that's because the first Danbury Fair was held in 1821. It was more of an agricultural deal. And it didn't become an annual event. It was kind of sporadic until 1869. With a little help from the manufacturers of hats, Rundle and White. I think they formed some sort of society that. You know, did stuff, including having the Danbury Fair every year. The last fair was in 1981. Pretty good run. After that, the site was cleared for the Danbury Mall, which opened in 1986. Today, there are currently 192 stores and restaurants in the Danbury Mall. And some of them on my list are going to be Brooks Brothers. Champ Sports. A revamped Abercrombie & Fitch. Shout out to Cerruti. L.L. Bean. You know, I was under the impression that was a catalog, which I would leaf through. Had a lot of L.L. Bean backpacks because I wanted the Jan Sports, but my mom said L.L. Bean was more of a. You could put more stuff in an L.L. Bean. Macy's. We have Macy's here, but it's kind of a declining Macy's. So I always pop my head into a Macy's. Lucky Brand. Love Lucky Brand t-shirts. I was under the impression that they were closed, but there's Lucky Brand. There's a Love Sack showroom. Always been a joke. I dream to have a sectional couch, so I'm going to sit on some Love Sacks. And I'm not really sure why, but I'm definitely going to go to Williams and Sonoma. Williams, Sonoma? Yeah. And I'll pop my head into the AMC just to see what we're working with there. We've got Regal Cinemas here, but I just want to see what kind of movies they're watching over there. I think that's it. We're going to go with my sister and her fiancee, who said there's a bookstore not far from the big mall there. And yeah. It's an hour there, an hour back. I think actually 52 minutes is what it's suggesting. So, you know, not a huge trip, but something I'm going to knock off my list today. I will report back after we cross back over the border into New York. All right. See you guys. Okay. It is Sunday, July 12th. 8.45 in the morning. And I can tell you off the bat, my allergies are kicking my ass. So, sorry in advance for the handful of sniffles you're probably going to hear. Ended up doing the postgame today because life got in the way a little bit. I thought we were going to have a really, it was ended up being pretty cool sports night, but not as cool as it was built to be. And that's sort of like what's going on with Danbury today. So, I got to the mall around 1230. It was like a 50-minute trip. Parking lot. were full. That's a good sign. I was excited to see a mall like, you know, of bustling outside of the christmas season uh the second we walked in it was clear that something was wrong it was way too hot in there stagnant air sky was like oh maybe it's the skylights and we just as we moved through them all it was like yeah something something is off some school some of the uh stores had their own cooling systems uh others didn't when i saw the box fans i was like i don't think we're going in there uh one of those box fan stores was uh the bones of a jc pennies i mean this was i thought they were all gone i thought it was sears and jc penny out the window but um yeah they had like walls in there dividing what used to be the whole store with you know there's like the lights were down and they put fake walls up um walked around there for as long as i could stand it so that was that was crazy i thought they were done um well yeah once i was there for a minute you realized there was kind of only two stores i really wanted wanted to see that i couldn't really get in poughkeepsie and one of those were it was ll bean which was awesome would highly recommend um there was like five or six sort of like sports stores you know sports apparel stuff which actually was like oh wait i'm in connecticut there was i had like a nice pick of patriots stuff there so i got like i had a couple patriots items which you know in new york and la it's just like good luck there's like one basic you know navy hat that sucks uh so yeah that was cool that was a nice thing about being in connecticut um was there we met my sister and her fiance there uh everyone seemed to like have a couple of stores they wanted to hit and then when it came time to eat it was like we're just gonna go to the food court there's a couple things you know we don't have a chick-fil-a here i know crazy we got most of the other big ones but chick-fil-a we do not have so we're like oh maybe we'll go get some chick-fil-a it was just so hot we decided we couldn't eat in the food court i think the food court was probably the hottest part of the hot mall so um there was a cheesecake factory attached to it every i got outvoted on that which i'm glad i did because um i had a great meal at the cheesecake factory you know i think doing a lot of time in la made me think like don't go to franchises or chains because you should go to these one-off places that are you know only doing it the way they're doing it and as i've moved back there's nothing wrong with chains go to a chili's get that three for me um so anyway this now has taken quite a bit of time again don't regret it but um there's a difference between a food court meal and a sit-down cheesecake factory meal anyway so this this is now done it's like 4 30 i'm like all right we did it we should we should go our separate ways now and uh my sister had wanted to go to this bookstore that's i don't know two miles away she she'd heard it's what did she say let me i got the quote here it's like the best in the tri-state she goes it's not the biggest but it's the best in the tri-state and i'm thinking about the norway game it's 4 30 i'm thinking about norway england i'm like all right we're 50 minutes away it's 4 30 if we just leave after this cheesecake factory thing maybe i'll get to watch most of this game and uh my wife my sister and her fiance were all like we're going to this and this is a non-stop mall excursion by the way this is like i said two miles away so i'm like okay uh outvoted on that i'm not i'm not beating three women uh when it comes to choosing what we do next so we we drive to this thing it's it's in this place called the summit at danbury and i just saw the movie back rooms kind of recently and it was like uh you know it was like a flashback of some sort it was like this old hospital we had to drive around like a hundred miles trying to get in because it's like it's like a converted i thought it was a hospital like an 80s hospital but reddit says it was just a you know mixed use office buildings but they have changed it into several different residencies uh and i've been on reddit this morning and the people who live there are like this is why you don't turn offices into into buildings like the there's no the ventilation's bad the uh the windows are all sealed it's impossible to heat and cool blah blah anyway um so we drive around like four times trying to get to this bookstore which we end up having to use the website to get actual directions because apple and google maps are all fucked up they're using the office building days of this this place uh so we get there it's like built into you know the bottom floor of this building in a parking garage we get we get in there it's probably now five o'clock good news is this place closes at six so i'm like all right maybe we'll catch the end of there air conditioning's fucked again like no way uh this bookstore was not great uh shout out to brian curtis and the press box i don't want to shit on bookstores but it was just funny that i looked dead at my sister i'm like best in the tri-state huh and i had to be quiet because it wasn't big at all um really unorganized um but use bookstore so the prices were right i got a from john crack hour i did get the wager because it was a used copy even though it was a hard copy five bucks really good condition and uh this other smaller book on uh american indians so i hope i'm actually going to read one of those it seemed like stupid not to i think i paid like eighteen dollars for three books like hardcovers too uh yeah so i my sister gave it her best shot i think i bought those books after 20 minutes and just sat outside because it was the same fucking temperature as it was inside my wife and i were sitting outside i think they had like a they had like this wooden tic-tac-toe game that was missing the one o piece uh so we did that for about 15 20 minutes then my sister and her fiance came out and we made it back so all in all danbury mall better than the poughkeepsie gallery i always knew that but not much better not or not way better so probably not going to go back there we are thinking about woodbury commons even though it's a bury it's not in connecticut it's in uh sort of nyack lower new york area so i heard there's a polo outlet there that your boy is titillated by so yeah that was fun it was like 45 minutes when i told my friends that what i was doing they were sort of like ryan and they were like why the fuck would you do that i had to explain it was sort of a spiritual journey just never got to do that trip back in the day in high school and stuff so yeah it was cool um would i recommend it maybe if it's cool or out maybe if it's cool maybe it was just a bad day on the on the hvac but that was tough definitely took me out of the experience a little bit all right first travel see you guys , thank you, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye.