Episode 23 - Faro de Ajo

0:00 Hi everyone, I'm Emily. And I'm Vince. And this is the Lighthouse Lowdown. Welcome to a Sunday morning in the podcast. We're in the RipRap studio. And today we've got our Starbucks coffee and we're gonna tee things off. I had a free one with my star accumulation and that's why I always get a large with an extra shot of espresso and almond milk. Tell everyone what your order is in case they want to send you one. Oh my gosh. Well, if you want to, you should go to our Linktree link that's in our show notes.

0:43 You can send us a coffee. But it's actually a coin in our treasure chest. It's the way that we have it written out. Yeah. But that coin will go towards coffee. Oh, another fun thing having to do with coffee is that Captain Cecil Coffee is sending us a couple bags of their Ground Atlantic coffee, I think. Nice. We'll post their information on the episode where we do this. But Vince and I are gonna go ahead and give it a try and tell you guys how it is. And then we'll be doing a giveaway for a bag of their Atlantic coffee. So you guys won't want to miss that one. I think it's, their branding is very on par for us. Yeah, I've never had Captain Cecil's coffee, but their Instagram.

1:27 No matter what, you gotta check their Instagram out. It's really cool. First off, it matches our theme, Nonicle Lighthouse. But they have very good photography. I don't know if they all have one person that does that. I don't know. We've been a fan of Captain Cecil's Instagram for a while. Yeah. The first time I made it on Instagram, actually, they were one of the first people I followed. So we're happy to be doing a little collaboration with them and get to give you guys a free bag of their coffee. So much fun. And they have new packaging, so you guys will get to see it all. Our other sponsor for today is Newegg.com. They're a standing sponsor with us. So anytime you need something computer related, tech related, check out our link. That'll take you to their website. And then anything that you purchase on there, we get 3% of that back.

2:10 So I actually used that link yesterday. And I ordered a ergonomic, upright mouse. So I'm excited to get that. A little bit of cash back in our lives. A little bit of cash back. So we appreciate Newegg's support. We appreciate your support as well. Yes. And now we're going to dive into our episode. So I do have a history buoy. It has nothing to do with lighthouses, but it is a little bit nautical. And I'm actually really excited to talk about it because it's something I always knew about but discovered recently because I went to Hawaii and actually got to collect some. So my topic for the history buoy is sea glass. Oh, it's pretty. I know. It's a little bit of a blurry picture, but you know.

2:52 We do see pictures. We'll have Instagram as well as YouTube. Oh, yeah, yeah. YouTube, we do a screen share. So you see everything that we're seeing the whole time. Yeah. And we've kind of, I don't like this as much, but I feel like we're making it harder for people to just listen to the podcast and not watch it on YouTube. Because I'm like, oh, yeah, see, it's over here. It's over here. And it's like no one listening to the podcast would be able to know what I'm talking about. So I'm just trying to, I got to get back into the mindset of describing things first and that you and I can look at it. But you know. I'll try to do that as well. Keep everybody in the loop. In the loop, dude. Yeah. Right. OK, so sea glass. OK, these are seen commonly when you go to beaches, very specific ones that I'll talk about as well.

3:34 And actually highly sought after by local artists that live around lakes and oceans. Because they're common in jewelry and some colors are extremely rare. And so it's kind of like hunting. You know, you're doing sea glass. Collection. Yeah. And we actually talked about that recently is that people that look for sea glass, it's like a big thing. It's like a community of people that look for sea glass. Same thing as people that look for shark teeth and stuff. Oh, yeah. Yeah, like while I was in Florida, people were just looking for shark teeth in the morning. I would walk by someone, any shark teeth? And I'm like, oh, I found one. But that was the moment that I realized that everyone was out there looking for shark teeth and not just for seashells.

4:17 Because I was looking for seashells and I just happened to find a shark tooth. And I was like, oh, cool. That is cool. Yeah, and then they asked me as I'm walking by. And I'm like, yeah, I did find one. And they're like, oh, it's like a rejuvenation of searching. They're on the trail. They got it. I found a little bit of sea glass in Hawaii during Christmas time. And the beach was actually full of them. They're really small pieces. And I'll talk about the rarity and importance of the color of sea glass that you find. So I was finding pieces that are deemed very common. Didn't find red or orange or anything like that. But that's kind of what people are looking for is those rare colors. What is this? What is sea glass? Sea glass is, a lot of people think that it's a naturally occurring object.

5:00 But it's actually just broken glass that spends anywhere between 20 to 200 years being tossed around and then comes back up on shore looking like this, this tumbled rock. And any glass that you find that isn't as tumbled is not really deemed sea glass because it needs to spend at least 20 years tumbling around to get this effect. And can show up anywhere after 200 years as well. A minimum of 20 years? Yeah. So glass from land. Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah, so it could even be like windshields and stuff break. And then the thing is if they show up earlier than 20 years, they don't look like sea glass.

5:43 So they're not sea glass. So the 20 years is kind of like the minimum cap of when it could wash up on shore and you'd say that's sea glass. Yeah. I wonder, well windshields today are made of safety glass. Mm-hmm. Which is like high stress. So when it breaks. Yeah, little pieces. It shatters. But I wonder, yeah, yeah, sorry to interrupt. The size, I don't know what size these are, but the size that comes up, I wonder how big the glass was that started to make that piece. Yeah, well most of the sea glass that I found in Hawaii were like little pea sized. Oh cool. Yeah, very tiny or like a fingernail or something. But some people find some pretty big pieces. But since it's glass, it's like for it to be large, it would be large and thin because it came from like a bottle or something.

6:25 But the older it is, the thicker it can be because glass, like bottles back then were a lot thicker than what we have today. It's like glass pieces are physically tumbled by waves and stuff and then chemically as well because of all the salt in the water. And there's- Seyenne did salt. Yeah, and there's actually beach glass, which is freshwater glass. So that would come out commonly from like the Great Lakes. It's a lot less frosted because there's no salt aspect coming in. Interesting. Yeah, so you can tell the difference between. Sea glass is also called drift glass. They're interchangeable. And actually a lot of the glass we pick up can come from shipwrecks. So it's kind of a cool thing. That's gorgeous. We're looking at a photo. I can't tell the scale, but it looks like a collection of pebbles, blues and pinks and red and green, clear.

7:12 It's a big variety. Somebody's proud of this collection a bit. Well, sea glass can also be like pottery pieces or like porcelain, like from China or something. Ceramic, yeah. I have on here that the beach glass, I was talking about freshwater, it's common from the Great Lakes and more commonly is embossed with labels. It's like larger pieces that aren't ground down so far. So you can still see like if there are labels on it, which makes it easier to trace its origin. Sea glass is most often found in places like Scotland, Hawaii, Bermuda, Southern Spain, Australia, Northeast England and Northeast US. And all of those are noted for having an abundance of glass.

7:54 So like you can find sea glass anywhere, but you'd be most likely to find it in those areas. Okay. And it's getting harder to find since plastic is taking over the world and people are, it's becoming more popular to look for sea glass, like while you're on vacation or local artists use that a lot. So it's just getting harder and harder to find. But the colors are the best part about looking for sea glass in my opinion, makes it the most fun. And obviously the color comes from its origin and colors are common or uncommon depending on the likelihood of the origin being in the ocean and how old it is. So the most common colors are Kelly green, clear, brown and white.

8:35 And these can come from beer bottles, juices, just normal glasses like plates or water cups or something and windshields. And then one in every 25 to a hundred pieces are Jade, Amber, which comes from whiskey, medicine, spirits and early bleach bottles. Lime green, which come from soda bottles in the 1960s. Ice blue, which is also medicine bottles, soda bottles, Inca bottles and fruit bottles from 19th and 20th centuries. So pretty cool. And then one in every 50 to 100 pieces are a specific type of green, I didn't look it up, but I think it'd probably be recognizable that are from Coca Cola and Dr. Pepper bottles from the mid 1900s.

9:21 One in every 200 to 1000 pieces are purple, citron, citron, citron? It's like a yellow, right? Yeah, like a orange yellow. It's like citrus. There's opaque white, which comes from when milk came in glass bottles and cornflower blue, which is from early milk of magnesium bottles and poison bottles. Of course. I was like, oh cool. Also from early vapor rub containers. Okay. And also aqua, which are from certain bottles in the 19th century and ball mason jars. And then the most rare colors, and this is one in every 1000 to 10,000 pieces of sea glass that are found can be gray, pink, which is from Great Depression era plates, teal, which is from Mattius wine bottles, which I looked up and they're actually pretty cool.

10:16 Black, which is actually a very dark olive green that you can't see just by like finding it on the sand. So a lot of people mistake them for just like normal pieces of rock that come up. They look exactly the same until you get a bright light under it and you can tell it's kind of olive. But these are from 18th century gin, beer, and wine bottles. So very old. There's also yellow, which is from 1930s Vaseline containers. Red, which is Schlitz bottles and nautical lights. Schlitz. Schlitz. It's a beer. Yeah. I saw the bottles that they made that were red from the 50s or something, I think it was.

10:58 And then the last one's orange, which I think would be hard to tell from like amber. Red, orange, amber, yeah. But that one's apparently the most rare. That's the one that's won in 10,000 cases. So and they didn't have anything listed for where that could come from. So I think that's probably where the rarity comes in. Orange glass. There was some weird orange glass item that was broken. The glass all has its original color by manufacturer. Yeah. And then the sand and salt, if it's ocean bound, are what give it the finish, but the color doesn't change. Is that true? I think maybe the color is a little bit muted. In the picture that we have up for people to look at, the red is still pretty vibrant.

11:42 And so I don't know if that's common for the rest of them that you can trust that the color is going to be exactly the same. Considering that black glass exists and it's not gray by the time you find it. And it's like this dark olive that you can't see unless you're really looking for it. I think probably the color is pretty much the same. Just has a frosted appearance. I wonder if there's people out there making it. Like you could use, like there's tumblers people use for cleaning ammunition. There is artificial sea glass now. Cause people like to use it for decorations. And when people fill glass containers with rocks and seashells for decoration, it's stuff like that.

12:23 They definitely have artificial sea glass. It's cool. I've never thought about, I guess I have thought about it some, but I didn't think about the ocean. About the environmental impact of using glass containers versus plastics. To where 20 to 200 years you'll get an artistic pebble. Right? Versus I don't know the plastic impact. Maybe that's something we can look into. But I'm sure it's worse from what I've heard. But there's probably no harm to having glass in, I mean, or it's probably a relatively low harm. Glass particles that are all dissipated into new sand. I guess. I don't know. It's beyond my knowledge, but it's interesting.

13:04 Yeah, but that's what I got for sea glass. Cool. That is a fun little thing to cover. It's gorgeous. Do you have any sea glass? I do. It's in my glass room. I was thinking about putting a couple in some of the coasters that I'm working on. What? You have a glass room? Why don't you tell us about that? Oh my gosh. I do stained glass. I have a small business. It's called Blue Glassworks. You can find me on Instagram. And I mostly make panels, some jewelry. I'm working on coasters and some propagation stations. If anybody's a planty type. Yeah, check me out. Cool. At Blue Glassworks. And so we're gonna move on to the lighthouse. This one is very special because of its appearance.

13:44 The lighthouse we're covering is in Spain. Oh, go ahead and put it up. Let's pull up a photo. Pull it up, Emily. It is the Faro de Ajo Lighthouse, which is translated to Garlic Lighthouse. Can you pull that up for me? Oh yeah. For us, it's on a 65 inch screen. That's about two feet away. But for you all, much better. Cool. That's gorgeous. I like the pure white. It's very neat. Yes, it is neat. And I like the double gallery we've got going on. I'm not, I don't really know the meaning of having a double gallery, especially for viewing purposes because you're not allowed to climb the lighthouse or take a look at it.

14:25 And we'll talk about the history, but this lighthouse was built later than the original design and so I'm not sure why the second gallery is there. You think they just had extra room in the budget? Maybe, they were just like, oh, it was accidentally copy and pasted on the blue beam. You know what, they probably, it's a drawing mistake. They probably went ahead and installed the lower one and then they're like, oh no. We'll just put a ladder between the two. So this is located in Cantabria, Spain in Cabo de Ajo, which is just Cape garlic. It's an active guide to navigation. So it's being used today for navigating around this Northern coast of Spain. It's a white light and has a flash pattern of G, you know what, I'm just gonna show you what this looks like, because we talked about this.

15:13 Flash patterns? Yes, the flash patterns. This is one that I have never seen before listed and I'm wondering if it's because the US doesn't use it, but it took me a long time to figure out what the heck this. Spain's got their own flash patterns. Yeah. I guess everybody probably would, right? Yeah, and you know, this is listed as a possible one and so it's not like we have never used it. It's definitely not common for us to use this in the US. Here's a stupid thing to say, but the ocean looks huge. I know. I know it. Characteristics. Yeah, here we have light characteristics. Maybe I'll do another history buoy about it, try to explain it a little bit better. Or now that we have pictures available, anyone who can't see this, it helped to see it visually, what I'm talking about, but the flash pattern for the garlic lighthouse is group occulting, which is kind of like that whole, is a zebra black with white stripes or white with black stripes?

16:09 It's like normally we see flashing light, which is listed, or group flashing, which is basically periods of darkness that are interrupted by periods of light. And the flashing is usually shorter than the darkness periods. But a group occulting is the opposite in which we have larger moments of light interrupted by moments of eclipses that are shorter. The group occulting just means that you have these moments of darkness in groups of some number, usually three, which is what we see on the screen, and what's also true for the garlic lighthouse. So it's anti-flashing. Yeah. It's constant light that's interrupted rather than darkness that has a flash introduced.

16:51 Interesting though. But yeah, I haven't seen group occulting before, so it's kind of special for this lighthouse. It's also white, but since we're in Spain, white is blanco. Blanco. But then the flash pattern is GPOC3, which is that group occulting three. And then B, and I was like, it's not blue because it says it's white. So it took me forever to realize that we're talking about Spain here. So of course it's gonna be. Yeah, you would have thrown me off if you didn't give me that hint. Yeah, it says that the group occulting period is a total of 12 seconds, and it has a range of 17 nautical miles. So that's what we're working with. Pretty good. Yeah, pretty good. It is the last lighthouse to be built in Contabria, so it's kind of special in that way.

17:33 And starting in 2020, it became a masterpiece, which I'm glad to know. Starting in 2020? Mm-hmm, the year of COVID. Is this the newest lighthouse we've talked about? Like the most recent? I think so. It's definitely. I mean, other than Paradise Island. It's interesting because you think about. Being restored. The last lighthouse built in Spain is going to be a lot, like America is very young. And the very first lighthouse to be built there is 1716, it's the Boston Light. There were lighthouses built in Spain in the first century. Talking about a Roman lighthouse in the first century. So any thing that says this is the last lighthouse to be built in Spain could be a lot longer ago than a lighthouse, the last lighthouse built in America.

18:20 We have lighthouses that were built in America in the 2000s. So I just thought it was interesting. The 2020, there's a change coming, but where is, so this is on the north coast of Spain? Yeah, do you wanna see a picture? Yeah, is it near a port? Or is it just protecting? Because Spain, obviously it's a long coast. I don't think this is near a port. This is, the location of this lighthouse is in someone's farmland. So you see like lots of cows and stuff around. So it's not near a large city. And I know looking up on the map, you can kind of see this area is super rural. Maybe it's just a, I mean, if it's rural, it would really suck to shipwreck there. Let alone anywhere, but. Yeah, that's true. Like you're pretty far from help. Someone's got a port somewhere because there's a sailboat out there.

19:02 Oh, I do think the port. Santander, I don't know if that's the right way to say it, but I did actually read about that. I'm gonna mention it later. Here is a Google map. Looking at the northern edge of Spain. And here's like a nearby port. We got an airport coming in. It's a big inlet, yeah. Santander, I have something to say about that later. But Ajo is right over here. So it's kind of close. So if you're, for some reason, if you're following the coast, you'd maybe be able to use it. Yeah, and there's also this entrance, La Sorozuela. Uh-huh, mm-hmm. It doesn't look like a main, it doesn't look like a main port, but it definitely looks, maybe kind of bougie. Maria de Ajo.

19:44 Okay, Maria, you said onion? No, garlic. Oh, garlic, yeah. What? I don't know. Is this like, do they grow a lot of garlic here? I don't know. It's a gorgeous, Cantabria has a gorgeous Google photo right there. Oh, it does, yeah. Trees. Look at the water. Old buildings right up against the water. Mm. Gorgeous. Honestly, it's like a place to visit. Google does a good job of making me want to travel. They're like, what do you think we were built for? Okay, really cool. All right, it's hard to derail, but. No, no, it's good. It's pretty white. It needs a little paint on those guards up there. That's another thing I'm gonna mention, is that this lighthouse needs a little bit of help. 2020. So, the history. Let's go, okay, let's go way back, but not very far back because.

20:26 Yes. Way not very far. All the way back to 1907. So, it's still over 100 years ago. The government of Spain planned the construction of a 59 foot tower, an engine room, and a two-story rectangular cottage to house up to six keepers, which is a lot for just a little tower. It was projected to be one of the most important to be built on the Bay of Biscay in 19, oh, and in 1909, the plans were approved for this lighthouse to be built. And the Bay of Biscay is just the body of water that rises up against. Oh, okay. In 1914, the nearby Cabo Mayor lighthouse was electrified, which was a lot bigger than this one. Kind of like one that was built a long time ago, very necessary for this area.

21:11 And it was electrified, which gave it a more powerful light, which they decided deemed this one unnecessary, which would not be true because three shipwrecks occurred shortly after that, which kind of put this lighthouse back on the map. So, yeah, garlic was back on the map and approved again in 1924, building plans approved in 1928, and then they completed the lighthouse two years later in 1930. Okay. It wasn't electrified until 1962, which kind of goes hand in hand with me talking about this being a very rural area. Like there's a chance that rural areas didn't get even electrified until the 60s anyway, because we're talking about the Cabo Mayor lighthouse being electrified in 1914.

21:52 So that's a lot. That's almost 50 years, half a century before this lighthouse is electrified. Well, all these electric places that are off on their own either need cable run to them or they need solar power. Solar power wasn't really developed until 70s, 80s. Well, do you think even telephone lines wouldn't go to farms and stuff for a long time? Long time. Yeah. So not that surprising, but a little crazy considering a close lighthouse of this one was electrified 50 years earlier. So definitely says something about its location, I think. Okay. In 1980, Fernando Rodriguez Perez designed a new cylindrical concrete tower a little over 52 and a half feet tall.

22:35 And so that's the one that we're seeing today because the original, the new one was built next to the original and the original one was destroyed. I'm not sure why this happened. I did look it up. Why was the original lighthouse taking down and nothing came up for it? And so it's not, it's maybe that it was just left alone for so long, but by 1980, so they had electrified it in 62. So why, I don't know. I think maybe it's just that it hadn't been touched in so long that they found it cheaper to build a new one rather than to restore the old one. Interesting. So it being the youngest lighthouse in Spain could be referring to this one, which was I think completed in 1985.

23:19 Okay. Or it could be the one that was completed in 1930. I didn't check. So that's- Both, yeah. In long history, they're not that far apart. Exactly. In our lives, long way. But yeah, so that is all the history that I found on this lighthouse. It's kind of the new stuff is what's big news for this lighthouse. So 2015, the city council of Barreo requested a grant from the ministry of public works of government of Cantabria to make a perimeter fence parallel to the cliffs to protect people and a pedestrian path that's 10 feet wide to increase tourism around this area. So in this picture, you can see some people walking. Well, you can see people walking on the pedestrian trail and then further in the background of it, you can see this parallel fence that they're leaning up against.

24:05 The cliff edge just past the, okay. They put $70,000 towards making this like a tourist designated area. Yeah, just with this walkway. So you can't go up to the lighthouse, but you can walk around it. And actually it became pretty popular. Like it put it on the map, you know, like a place to go visit. Yeah. I think they had 35,000 people visit here in the three years before, you know, before the thing I'm gonna talk about. Yeah. So it had some visitors. Basically what they wanted to do was bring tourist money to Ajo. They just wanted more people. It's more rural area.

24:46 There's not a lot to see. So they wanted to put something on the map for people to be like, oh, we should go see that while we're passing through the area. And it used to cost just one Euro to come in and walk around the lighthouse and look out over the cliffs. It's very pretty. You know, there's reasons to visit. That's very cheap. Yeah, I know. And now it's free. Nice. That's even cheaper. Visits for this lighthouse were about to increase significantly though with the very controversial idea to paint the lighthouse, but not just paint. We turn it into, we transform into a work of art. And I'm gonna pull up a photo to go with my dramatic statements. Every lighthouse has a work of art.

25:26 That's the energy we wanna bring to this place. Boom. And also a nice view of the cliffs and a nice beach over here. Gorgeous area. But look at what we've done to this lighthouse. It looks smaller from further away. Whoa. It's only 52 feet tall. Although if you look at the people in comparison, it's pretty tall. Yeah. Okay, yeah. That's a better photo. The magnificence, the colors, just very dramatic. We've transformed this lighthouse into some artwork, some custom artwork. Some geometric rainbows for everyone who can't see. Yeah, people really need to look it up.

26:07 What's so cool about this lighthouse is its visual-ness. Contabrian artist Okuda San Miguel, I think. I'm gonna do my best, but I think it's Okuda. Was commissioned with a budget of $40,000. So that is a ton of money. That's kind of part of the controversy around painting this lighthouse instead of restoring it. We saw that picture just before it was painted where you're like, oh, it could use a little bit of work. And this money instead was going towards painting the lighthouse. $40,000 to paint it. Yes, so that's part of the controversy. I'll go more into it. There's a lot of bullet points. But he completed the paintwork, which he called Infinite Contabria in three days using over 100 colors.

26:51 Although I saw some people say it was 70 colors, and maybe the 100 is just being dramatic. Fuel the fire. It depicts local fauna. So if you look closely into it, you can kind of see some animals. There's birds. There's a tongue hanging out. We got lots of colored squares and triangles and some anchors. So lots going on. I don't know if this was free-handed, if he just kind of came up with it as he went along. But this is very classic. This is his style of artwork. You can see, well, let me look up. It's very pretty. So you can see his artwork. It's very, it works along with it. Known artist, a lot of the same style.

27:33 Yeah, and I saw that some of the things that he did, he has a, you know, 1800 tequila. He has a bottle. He did a collab with them, and he has a limited edition bottle for $180. Would you mind looking it up? Yeah. Or just put in 1800 up in your search. That is cool. Isn't that awesome? Oh, why did I think it was $180? You know what it was? I was looking it up on Bing, so they probably just betrayed me. 180 proof. Team Google. That'd be something else. Are you 21 or older? Yes, I am. Don't you lie. Oh, it's a series.

28:13 These are essential artists series. Essential artists, that must be fun. Oh, I like the koala, is it? Panda bear. Oh yeah. Those are cool. There's a nice skull here. $210 for six bottles, maybe? Yeah, what size are they? That's really neat. Okay, apparently it doesn't want me to reborn. Oh well. They're like, aren't you doing a podcast? It's pretty neat. You're gonna focus? Yeah, just thought those. I don't think I've ever had 1800 tequila, but that'd be cool. I haven't either. I'm not a big tequila person. Or like margaritas, I'm not a fan of margaritas. Anyway, so here's the whole controversy that surrounds painting this lighthouse.

28:55 There's a couple of different things. I mentioned that a lot of that money could have gone towards fixing up the lighthouse, and so it feels kind of like a shame. You're covering up problems that actually need to be fixed with paint. Yeah. The page that I was reading, I'll link it at my show notes so you can read it too. It has a lot more information than what I'm just gonna kind of quickly cover here. Cleans that lighthouses by regulation have to be black and white. That's not true for everywhere. It could be true for Spain, but I also couldn't find that anywhere. Okuda remedied that by making the back of this lighthouse appear purely black and white from a distance, and you can kind of see a sliver of it from this photo.

29:37 Oh. Let me try. I thought you were gonna say he used so much surface area as black and white and calculated it all. Oh no. That would be cool. I don't think I saved a photo of it from the back. It was a pretty cool picture. See if you can pull it up. Ah, here it is. Okay, here's a good photo of it from the back. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, so from really far out to sea, which you can see that the cliffs are so high up that even if you're close to the shore, this would probably still look like a white lighthouse with a black stripe. Like obviously there's a lot of other colors going on, but he kind of took into consideration, apparently, that by regulation it has to be black and white to be an active guide to navigation and made it appear if this was black and white.

30:22 I thought that was pretty cool. Yeah, if you can see the colors, you're too close. Yeah. If you're on a boat. What is the whole point of this lighthouse? That's funny. Yeah, so that's one of the things. Another was gentrification, which I had to ask you about this morning. What did you say? It was urbanizing? Yeah, to gentrify without Googling it, I think it means to modernize, to make popular, to make urban an area that becomes gentrified, changes from what it was to become busy and typically progressive. So I guess that kind of, I get that a little bit. Yeah, no, I get that.

31:02 We're lighthouse people. We can just. Like classical versus modern artistic. Exactly, yeah. So I can kind of see both sides is that by painting it, you're making it something really unique that people come to see specifically, but also you hope and wish that people would be able to appreciate the natural lighthouse itself, but that's just not really true. People aren't like us where the lighthouse, just being a lighthouse with all of its history and cool facts and its location and everything would be enough for us to go and visit it. It's just people aren't like that. Well, people will take, like resto mods is a controversy. So resto mod, you take a classic vehicle, like people will take a 1969 Camaro.

31:49 Oh no. If you had a 69 Camaro, it's an awesome car, but it just performance wise, it just doesn't compete with like a modern Camry. Like, you know, it's just not a, it doesn't keep up. So you could take a 1969 sports car, muscle car of the day, and then put new tech in it, you know, a Tesla battery, and it's all of a sudden, it's this awesome performing car. And some people love that, but it's not what it was. It's a modern take on what it was. So that's kind of the same. People looking at this lighthouse. Another thing is that they're taking so far into account the interest of the visitor and not the local people, because there wasn't a poll to decide if people were gonna be okay with painting the lighthouse.

32:32 It was just paid, done, and then people were like, hey, look at this. So it was kind of like, okay, we know we're focusing on tourism. We know we're trying to get more people to come here, but nobody asked what the locals felt about painting this lighthouse. It was just, visitors will come here more likely if we paint the lighthouse. So that's another thing. There's lots of things. And Okuda says, he has a lot to say about this as well, because he's straight up in the middle of it. And he's painted things like churches before, and so he's kind of like, why are people throwing a fit over this lighthouse when I've painted a church to be black and white, or not black and white, yeah, you know, colorful, and there's drips coming down the walls and it has something to do with 420.

33:20 I saw that in the title of the coverage. So he's like, I don't understand that. He says that the Spanish are mad at him for it because they don't appreciate art from their own country. So there's a little bit of bitterness. It's like, oh, wow. And this was during COVID. So he says a lot, it's like keyboard warriors coming out. Well, I think he's right about that. Everybody got online and everybody continued to. COVID thing is totally right. You're like seeing it happen from far away. You can say whatever you wanna say about it. Okuda claims the point of art is to quote, make you feel and not leave you indifferent, which he is accomplishing by this lighthouse, regardless of how you feel about it, unless you're indifferent and then that's not.

34:03 Yeah. It's pretty. He says Port Authority has decided he gets eight years before they paint it white again. I saw a lot of sources that said eight years would be about how long it would take for the paint itself to degrade. And so they would just paint over it. And they were saying they would do a touch up in four years, but then after eight years, they'd be done with it and paint it white. But Okuda says that Port Authority decided he gets eight years and then they were gonna wipe it out. So I don't know, I've seen both. Well, so he did this in three days. Yes. So there's no way, it's gotta be spray paint, right?

34:46 Yeah, it's spray paint. I guess I actually have photos of that. I'm guessing spray paint doesn't last as long. Nice. Oh, look at him. Yeah, he's really pushing his brand there. Yeah, I wonder if he designed his own clothes there. Oh, absolutely. This skull is actually one of his signature designs that he does. He's even got the six panel hat. Oh yeah, oh my gosh. Very hippie, very hippie, definitely smokes. No, that's really cool. Yeah, he's got this. Oh, he's got his lift. Yeah. Yeah, so he can get up. So I like those panels as well. There's probably a little light inside. So eight years is the contract, if you will, before it's repainted.

35:26 Right. And they're gonna paint it white. That's already been decided? Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. Well, so this is done in 2020. Did they have numbers on visitors since this? Did it work? Yeah, I'll say that in a second. Okay. Okuda is hoping that after those eight years, whoever is the person that decides to recover his artwork will choose differently. It's kind of like, it's decided, but hoping after eight years, there'll be different feeling around it once it's been integrated a little bit more. But he's also a graffiti artist. That's kind of how he started out, was doing graffiti. Okay. And so he says that he's used to his work having a small lifespan. He's like, he's used to painting something, and within days, it's covered back up.

36:07 So he's like, I can understand and appreciate the having my art having a lifespan, but in my heart, it will always live on. Yeah, eight years for some spray paint is more than the average, I guess. It's quite nice, actually. You never know, they can decide to keep it. Yeah. He's actually been offered more lighthouses to paint in Spain, but doesn't give any details about which ones those are. He said it includes one that's on an island, which I didn't see any prominent island lighthouses in Spain, except for, it could be the Isla Moro lighthouse, which is also in the Bay of Biscay, which is Cantabria. And he's a Cantabrian artist, so I think it would be more likely for him to paint another lighthouse where it's culturally, would plant some meaning back into its location, and not just some rando painting a lighthouse somewhere.

37:00 There's not a concept, but a, I guess a program. It's asset of cultural interest. It's kind of like us making the national protected places. Gosh, I can't remember what it's called. It's like every lighthouse is under this. Historic. Historic places. Oh, we talked about this. I know, every time. We talked about East Brother Light. National something of historic somethings. You guys know where we're talking about. It means you can't touch it. It's like that in Spain, where they have protected places. Historic. Yeah, culturally protected.

37:41 And there's only eight lighthouses in Spain that are on this protected list, which would prevent it from being painted the way that he paints lighthouses. So any culturally well-known lighthouses that would be on this list would not be painted, so I think that's probably why I had a hard time finding an island lighthouse because it wouldn't pop up as easily as these lighthouses that are protected, that are an asset of cultural interest. Okay. Anyway, it has a couple layers of varnish on it, but he said, like I said, there was gonna be like a touch-up in four years, and around eight years it'd be decided if it'll be white again, so you have to visit before 2028 to definitely see his artwork on this lighthouse. It's kind of the fun thing is it has a lifespan.

38:24 So if you're a visitor, it makes it more likely for you to come and visit here pretty soon. I even thought about it. I was like, oh, we're gonna be in Spain. We should go out there, but it would be a whole excursion. Pretty far away from where we're going. We'd definitely have to fly there, I think. In only 11 days, his art brought 28,000 visitors to this lighthouse. So probably within two weeks, we saw as many visitors as we saw in the past three years of the life of this lighthouse. That is crazy. I know. So it's definitely working, but it's also free. And so people that are against it say, what is the point of bringing people to see this lighthouse if they're not actually putting any money into the lighthouse or the environment or the city or anything like that?

39:10 I think they're assuming that a lot of people are Spanish and are coming to see it like, oh, we'll just drive up there for a day and then go home. But people like us would be staying in Ajo. Visitors, yeah. So kind of has both ways. There's some people who don't want visitors. I lived in Colorado for a short period. And everyone loves to visit Colorado. I still like to visit there. But being someone who was a Coloradan, it was kind of, didn't really love the tourism. Because people would bring their, I don't know, they come up and treat your place like a playground and then they leave. That's true. Yeah, it's part of half and half of tourism.

39:52 It can be something your community relies on, but it would also be pretty annoying. You don't wanna cater to tourism if you don't want tourism. So that might also be a problem with this is that nobody said we needed tourism, but all of a sudden they're putting money into having people visit. And they're like, why would we do that when we can just enjoy it ourselves the way it is naturally? Well, at least there's not like, Toby Smith, we talked about Paradise Island in the Bahamas. And he was saying, his idea of developing that lighthouse into a beach club and having locals be able to have local land be accessed by them, not just tourists. Some other corporations that were nearby didn't share that.

40:36 So it was like, well, we don't really want locals here. We're for tourism. Locals have a special rate on the days that we're not open to tourism. It's just weird. Yeah, and Toby's not saying like, we don't want tourism, so this is for locals only. He's just saying they would employ locals only so that there's some money going back and forth there and then tourists could come and visit and it would be a reason to go and see it. Benefits for everybody. But don't let the controversy scare you away from this lighthouse. It's still, I know I just talked about it a lot, but the lighthouse itself deserves to be visited regardless if it's painted or not. I think it would be cool to see it while it's painted before 2028.

41:17 That new white paint though, that's gonna look good. It's really bright and nice. So if it's gotten this many visitors, why not, I'm sure they are open to it, why not entertain the idea of having him or a different artist put a new exhibit on for the next eight years? Wouldn't that be cool? I think that would be awesome, but I think it's the fact that this lighthouse wasn't built to have paint. Like, it's not built to be a gallery of artists. It's just to be a lighthouse and can be appreciated just as a lighthouse. But instead, in their eyes, they're turning it into this debacle where it's like, oh my gosh, do we really have to make it so out there and so modern and everything for people to come and appreciate it?

42:00 Or can it just be the way that it is? I can appreciate that. But I wanna see it, I'm not gonna let that deter me. I wanna go see it the way that it looks now because it's the most colorful, visually exciting lighthouse that I've seen. Whoa, walk that back. Not the most visually exciting I've seen, but the most visually unique lighthouse that I've seen so far. That's gotta be true, yeah. That's all I got. The hours are 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., so just this short little four-hour window on weekends only during low season, which is any time other than summer. But during the summer, they're open from 11 to two and then they have a two-hour break and then four to nine.

42:40 And people that have visited and write blogs and reviews and stuff say that the best time to visit is sunset because you get to look out over the water and see the sunset and it's all. The golden hour. Yes, the golden hour. That's apparently the time. It's weird that they're open and closed, to be honest with you. Yeah, well, you got people probably volunteering to keep it open. Some facility nearby. You gotta have people running, it's like the gates open. There are gates to get in because it's somebody's private property, so I can understand that. Hope they get paid something. Yeah, right, I know. Yeah, that's neat. It's very pretty. I like the black top.

43:21 I know that's pretty common, but it's a nice contrast to all the other. It's nice that he didn't touch the top, I think. I think so too. Gorgeous cliffside. I know it. That's in a really nice location. That is the Faro de Ajo Lighthouse or the Garlic Lighthouse. Garlic. I think Faro is lighthouse, so it's just the Faro de Ajo. And I'm like, Faro de Ajo Lighthouse, Garlic Lighthouse Lighthouse. It's like saying ATM machine. Oh. Automatic teller machine, machine. I was like, wait, what? Is that wait, automatic teller? Yeah, like a bank teller anyways. You came up with that example extremely fast. People say it sometimes.

44:02 It's a thing. It's funny. Well, I have all of the links I used in the show notes so you can kind of read about it yourself. There's a lot more detail I didn't include in my bullet points. And you can look up Sea Glass and Faro de Ajo, all that stuff. You can take a look at it. I got some blog posts and stuff in the references. So read up in our show notes. Also gonna link where you can see us on Instagram and YouTube and LinkedIn and all of that in our link tree. So just one link to take you anywhere to do with our podcast. Good work. Thanks for presenting today. Yeah, thanks everyone for listening. We hope you had a good time and you're ready to visit us again.

44:44 He gets worse and worse every time trying to remember it. We'll see you next time on the Lighthouse Logo. Come in and take a look.