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Max Filby
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Taking a closer look at a fluid difference
By Max Filby
FROM PLANT TO TAP
For Chad Johnson, water is typically his only company while on the job.
As Johnson makes his hourly rounds, the smell of chlorine and other chemicals is as constant as the sound of rushing water in each sector of the Bowling Green Water Treatment Plant on West River Road.
Johnson, a life-long Bowling Green resident is also the superintendent of the plant where he’s worked for the past 20 years.
During his time at the plant, Johnson has worked to keep up with the “extremely strict” standards of the Environmental Protection Agency, he said. While Johnson is focusing on certain EPA standards, his competitors in the bottled water industry are obeying a different set of standards by the Food and Drug Administration.
“You never know what you’re getting in one of those bottles,” Johnson said. “I don’t really see any sense in it.”
Bowling Green water is free of any contaminant violations in all categories including ones testing for traces of lead and chloroform, according to a 2010 water quality report. The plant has actually been violation free since 2003, Johnson said.
“It’s something we’re really proud of, just to be able to say that,” he said.
After being violation free for so many years, Johnson continues to root for tap water of a bottled alternative. Johnson carries a reusable water bottle as he prepares to start his rounds again.
Instead of not knowing what he’s drinking, Johnson prefers his reusable bottle because he knows what it contains.
“Purity.”
MAKING AN IMPACT
Johnson may work closely with what Bowling Green citizens are drinking, but a student group on campus is working toward a similar goal in a different way.
Every Tuesday night at 9 p.m. Gabriel Morgan leads a meeting for an organization called Net Impact in the creativity lab of the Business Administration Building on the campus of Bowling Green State University.
Net Impact has been around for a little over a year now and focuses on a World Water Week project to educate students on the healthiness of tap water and the wastefulness of bottled water in what Morgan refers to as a “global water crisis.”
“Drinking tap water is all around safer and it reduces waste, which is becoming a big issue,” Morgan said. “It falls into that first category of ‘the three R’s.’
Reduce, reuse and recycle is one aspect Morgan and his group of “social and environmental change-makers” emphasize while educating students with “dirty water bottles.”
In continuing its World Water Week project, group members like Alexandra Ordway are still trying to figure out how to make students understand that the convenience of water bottles doesn’t outweigh its lower standards, she said..
“I think it’s kind of unnecessary,” Ordway said. “I understand the whole convenience thing, but it gives people the false sense that what they’re drinking is sanitary.”
BOTTLING THE “BETTER OPTION”
While Johnson and the members of Net Impact are trying to bottom out the bottled water industry, a group of people in Virginia are trying to do just the opposite.
The International Bottled Water Association promotes itself as the “voice of the bottled water industry,” said Chris Hogan, IBWA vice president of communications.
“Drinking water is an excellent option when you are looking to stay hydrated, but we do promote what we think is the better option out there,” Hogan said, referring to bottled water.
IBWA and Hogan’s beloved bottled water is quickly becoming the second most popular beverage, right after soft drinks, according to the FDA’s website.
Although the tap water Johnson cares for is regulated by the EPA, the FDA regulates bottled water as a food item, putting it in the same category as a soft drink, according to the FDA’s website.
Despite talk of bottled falling short of standards similar to those of tap water, Hogan said that bottled water is held to a different set of standards that are still strict, even though they may not come from the EPA.
“That’s something we hear people talk about a lot,” Hogan said. “But, in some cases some standards for bottled water don’t exist for tap water.”
Hogan is referring to standards including certain traces of elements within bottled water, he said.
“It always seems if someone has a beef with bottled water, they’ll pull out the most inconveniently priced bottle of water from a hotel and compare it to tap water,” Hogan said. “The fact is that they’re two different things, they’re incomparable.”
BATTLING THE BOTTLE
At the water plant where Johnson works, him and his team of operators are working to continue bringing Bowling Green’s water qualities above or at the level of the bottles Hogan and the IBWA boast about.
In its battle against the bottle, the plant utilizes several large tanks of chemicals and machinery to get the city’s water up to one of the highest levels of quality in Ohio, Johnson said.
As Johnson continues on another one of his hourly rounds, he checks the filtration and disinfection systems, some of which date back to when the plant first opened in 1951.
Johnson credit’s Bowling Green’s high water quality to the latest technology installed in the plant in 2009.
“The newest equipment has been a big help,” Johnson said as he pointed to a small monitor attached to a series of tanks. “It’s taken the level of toxins in our water down to less than .03 percent.”
The improved treatment is just something Johnson associates as part of the everyday job of meeting EPA standards before pumping out between 3 million and 7 million gallons a day.
“The EPA is extremely strict, we’ve got all kinds of chemical testing and other requirements we have to meet and we do meet all of them,” Johnson said.
After taking care of Bowling Green’s water supply for 20 years, Johnson believes people just don’t know about the plant’s improvements in quality to what flows from each faucet.
“I don’t think that people understand,” Johnson said. “The water quality is extremely high here. It’s just fine.”
Understanding Jay
To most people, being a twin means everything is the same whether its being dressed the same, playing with the same toys or being interested in the same things.
At first that’s how it was with Jay. I remember the first time I noticed it.
My twin brother, Jay, didn’t talk like me, didn’t draw like me and I was beginning to think he didn’t think like me. At the age of three, I started to realize that Jay was Autistic.
Although we’re twins, always dressed the same way and given the same gifts, our lives started to go in very different directions early on.
When I went to kindergarten, Jay went to a different kindergarten.
When I learned to ride a bike without training wheels, Jay just started using training wheels.
Our father died when we were both eight years old. I was devastated, and it seemed like Jay didn’t know what to think.
After our father died from an aneurism one night, my Mother and I were never sure if Jay fully understood what happened, but we moved on.
Growing up with an autistic twin brother was difficult.
While other people become best friends with their twins, a communication gap prevented us from becoming close.
From kindergarten through eighth grade, Jay and I went to different schools, had different teachers and got to know different people. But, when we got to high school that changed.
Most people met Jay for the first time in high school when we were 14. I chose not to share much of my home life before then because I didn’t understand all of it. I didn’t understand Jay.
To some of my friends Jay wasn’t “normal.” To them he was disabled, special needs or even “retarded,” as some people called him when I wasn’t around.
Even though I didn’t completely understand Jay, there was nothing abnormal about him to me. Jay was the “norm” to me, because he was the only brother I’d ever had.
Instead of going to study hall, I felt more comfortable helping out in my brother’s class. It was then, when I started understanding.
Even though we could only talk a little bit, we bonded and at the end of high school my brother became my best friend. This time, when life started splitting us apart, we still stayed close.
When I graduated from high school, Jay stayed there for two more years.
When I started working at my college paper, Jay started working back home.
This summer I’ll be working in Chicago, while Jay will be back home relaxing.
Things are still changing, but now Jay and I aren’t just brothers, we’re friends.
Thirteen years later, I still take Jay to visit our dad’s grave, but he never wants to get out of the car. Instead he plays with his iPad in the car.
What’s different now is that I understand Jay and I now know that he’s understood everything the whole time.
Our mom thinks Jay still doesn’t fully understand what happened to our dad, but I disagree.
Jay still doesn’t like to think about how our dad is dead . It upsets him.
Jay chooses to act like it didn’t happen. So, he waits in the car.
Jay feels and understands everything. His company and personality allows him to be a good brother and friend, just like anyone else.
To me he’s not just one in 110 because his personality truly makes him one in a million.
I’ll be there to help Jay as much as he’s been there to help me understand everything in his world, because now I understand that he understands too.
I believe that over time, brotherhood can breech any barriers.
I believe in Jay.
BGSU rebuilds Falcon Heights for a new generation
By Max Filby
From the front lobby to the office where Jacob Raderer works, everything is new, giving the new Falcon Heights sort of a “hotel-like” feel to it.
“It’s interesting to hear the residents talk about it like it’s more of a hotel,” said Raderer, a hall director who also lives in Falcon Heights. “They seem to really like it.”
The hallways of the new Falcon Heights residence hall are quiet, with just a few students passing through on a Tuesday afternoon. Although the building may seem quiet to the ordinary observer, it’s become a big conversation at Bowling Green State University this past year.
The building’s name, Falcon Heights, marks the second time since 1945 it has been used as a type of housing on campus, but in a different way.
The old Falcon Heights was a temporary trailer park on campus consisting of 40 units. The trailers, located where Jerome Library now stands, housed veterans returning to school on the GI Bill, according to a 1946 Key Yearbook.
Come fall 2012, the lobby will hold a piece of the old Falcon Heights. Raderer and Sarah Waters, director of Residence Life, plan to hang either a large photo or plaque describing the history of Falcon Heights and how the new hall got its old name.
“It’s nice to see the starting point,” Waters said.
Trailers lined the field in rows where the old Falcon Heights was located, from about 1945 through the mid-1960s, said Dave Kielmeyer, BGSU spokesperson.
“I’m fortunate enough to have lived in this Falcon Heights,” Raderer said. “I can’t imagine what it would be like to live in one of those trailers, but I guess it was the best solution at the time.”
The sense of history the name brings to campus is what makes Falcon Heights special, Raderer said.
“There’s sort of a historical tinge to it,” Raderer said about the two Falcon Heights locations. “It’s cool that we’ve been able to maintain that.”
The new Falcon Heights, a residence hall on campus, is a little bit different than the Falcon Heights that once stood where Jerome Library now stands.
While the new residence hall pulls in an income primarily from its student residents, the old trailer park pulled in revenue from a single Coca-Cola vending machine, according to a 1946 BG News article.
Like the new residence hall, the old trailer park was headed by a council of students who helped to manage the revenue and activities within the “community.”
While the old trailer park may have been like its own community, the council in the new residence hall has been trying to keep that sense of community in a hall where some students have the luxury of having their own bedrooms and bathrooms.
“The hall council is very active over there,” Waters said. “Its definitely got a good sense of community.
Despite being named after a former trailer park, the new Falcon Heights has a few more amenities than its trailer predecessors of the 1940s.
Rather than one, the new Falcon Heights has multiple vending machines, as opposed to a single Coca-Cola machine in the former trailer park.
The new building also has more than 300 bathrooms, whereas the original Falcon Heights had no running water. It has multiple rooms, while a Falcon Heights trailer had one main room, Waters said.
Although population didn’t triple at the start of the 2011 school year, it did welcome in one of the largest freshman classes on record and along with it, a new Falcon Heights.
With its “hotel-like” feel, the new Falcon Heights may be a lot different from the old one, but the idea to name it came about when students started pushing for it back in summer 2010, Waters said.
“The difference in complexity of the two is just an interesting juxtaposition,” Waters said. “It was about resurrecting that name and bringing it back.”
When pushing for the name, students also didn’t realize a similarity between the two Falcon Heights. Similar to recent enrollment, in 1945 housing opened up to an increased student population, according to a 1946 Key Yearbook.
Such a similarity is another reason why the University was “reclaiming something from the past” in bringing back the name Falcon Heights, Waters said.
While the old Falcon Heights welcomed students with an open field rather than a new lobby, the new Falcon Heights does so with a fireplace and a balcony area, right outside of Raderer’s office.
“It’s funny, I don’t know if many students know, but this building has something more than just its hotel-like qualities,” Raderer said. “It’s got history.”
Bowling Green hot spots
By Max Filby
The new location of Mister Spots at 206 N. Main Street, in downtown Bowling Green, Ohio. Photo by Max Filby
Hot wings weren’t hot when Jim Gavarone opened his store in 1985.
Gavarone is a local businessman whose restaurant, Mister Spots, has heated up enough to boost his business into new locations and through an early rivalry with a big wig in the wing industry.
Gavarone developed the idea to open his original shops, and now his new one, after moving from Philadelphia to Bowling Green for college. Even after years of business, Gavarone says he “accidentally backed into,” his business.
“A few friends just double-dog dared me into it,” he says.
When Gavarone opened his store on Court Street on Feb. 17, 1985, his chicken wings quickly became one of a kind in the fast food market.
“We’ve done wings from day one,” Gavarone says. “We were kind of pioneers in that industry.”
Trying to wing it as a pioneer in the industry during the‘80s meant Gavarone was going up against another restaurant in Columbus, Ohio —Buffalo Wild Wings. At the time, Mister Spots and Buffalo Wild Wings were two of the only places in the area that regularly sold wings, Gavarone says.
“It really became an intense rivalry,” Gavarone says.
The rivalry heated up even more when Gavarone later opened another Mister Spots in Ann Arbor, home to the University of Michigan, Ohio State’s biggest rival. The move made Mister Spots and Buffalo Wild Wings even bigger rivals, Gavarone says.
After opening his second Mister Spots in Ann Arbor in 1986, Gavarome also catered at University of Michigan athletics events until about 2009.
“It gets to be too expensive after a while, they just keep wanting more and more of your profit,” Gavarone says. “It’s even harder to do when the teams aren’t winning anymore, too.”
Eventually, wings became more mainstream as Buffalo Wild Wings started to expand its franchise, Gavarone says.
Although he is still thinking about further expanding with the help of some Michigan alumni, Gavarone is just focusing on the new store in Bowling Green, for now. Gavarone still maintains Mister Spots’ Ann Arbor location by checking in with store employees at least once a week.
While hot wings may have been a rarity during Gavarone’s rivalry, about 33 percent of all wings are now ordered at “casual dining restaurants” such as Mister Spots, according to the National Chicken Council’s 2012 Chicken Wing Report.
“Wings used to be sort of disposable,” Gavarone says. “They used to cost 30 cents a pound, you know, and now they cost something like $3.30. They’ve just gotten so big.”
Although Gavarone may not be the man of a million locations or menu items, for the past 26 years, his sauce has been “spot on.”
“We make our own sauce,” Gavarone says. “It’s no garden secret though. We don’t have 82 flavors or any sort of nuclear sauce, but it’s pretty good. It’s basic.”
When Gavarone bites into a wing or sandwich at his shop, he’s so satisfied that the only word he can find to describe it is as basic as his sauce recipe.
“Deliciousness,” he says. “I truly eat this crap all the time.”
Although Gavarone’s sauce is “basic,” he won’t give away ingredients other than some peppers, pepper seeds and margarine.
At the original location, currently in operation, Gavarone tells his general manager not to give anything away, but he’s not talking about free food.
“Don’t give away any secrets,” Gavarone says as he laughs with Mark Koldan.
Gavarone nods and walks to the back of the restaurant.
“It’s great not just working with my best friend, but working for my best friend,” Koldan says. “My kids call him ‘Uncle Jim’.”
Koldan first met Gavarone when they played together on the club lacrosse team at Bowling Green State University back in the early ‘80s. When Gavarone played, Koldan was his backup goalie.
“Essentially, he’s my backup at Mister Spots, too,” Gavarone says.
Since being put in charge in 1986, Koldan has been “steering the ship” at Mister Spots, Gavarone says.
Although Gavarone is now more of a “behind the scenes kind of guy,” he sometimes still makes his own sandwiches and wings.
“Sometimes I’ll climb right behind the counter,” Gavarone says.
While Gavarone may not always be behind the store counter, customers such as five-year patron Michelle Crook still love his products.
“It’s on par,” Crook says as she finishes her dinner. “It’s local, casual and is pretty reasonably priced.”
As customers like Crook leave Gavarone’s old restaurant location, something similar will ‘mark the spot’ at 206 N. Main Street, his new location.
The doodle of Gavarone’s cat, Spot, wearing sunglasses, hangs on a sign above the doorway at each location. Gavarone did the doodle on the back of a textbook while sitting in a class at BGSU in the ‘80s.
“I caught a lot of flack for naming the business after him,” Gavarone says. “My land lord called it Mister Flops … he thought we wouldn’t last six months there.”
Beneath the sign at the new Main Street location, people peek in to ask if the new Mister Spots is open for business. They thank Gavarone as he sends them down to the Court Street location.
Gavarone nods
“Welcome,” Gavarone says as they walk away.
Inside his new restaurant in downtown Bowling Green, Gavarone plays around with Netflix on a newly installed TV as his electrician watches. With a few wires hanging below the screen there’s still some work to be done before Mister Spots officially moves to Main Street.
Gavarone nods as he talks with the electrician.
Everything inside the restaurant is new, from the pictures on the wall to the black table where Gavarone sits. Different from its Court Street location, the new Mister Spots is still “spotless.”
Although Gavarone never planned to settle down in Bowling Green, he’s glad his customers will continue to have the opportunity to taste something “authentic” at Mister Spots. Gavarone and his friends weren’t impressed with the edible options the city had to offer back in the ‘80s, a tradition he tried to break by opening his stores.
“I thought the food here was garbage for the most part,” Gavarone says. “If you want to eat pizza, then you want to eat pizza, but we were looking to offer customers something a little different and a little better.”
Gavarone sends another potential customer down to his Court Street location.
“The best part of all of this is the people,” he says. “At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about.”
Max Filby
12 years
by Max Filby
in Uncategorized
I’m Max Filby and I’m from Sylvania, Ohio, about 30 to 45 minutes North of Bowling Green.
I’m a junior studying print journalism at the University with minors in Italian and Political Science. I work at The BG News as the News Editor, a page designer and a reporter. I’ve worked at The News since I transfered to the University from OU in January 2010.
I’m interested in reporting on almost anything related to controversy. Some of the bigger articles I’ve worked on for The News include one about rats and other pests in the dining halls, one about University leadership related to the former USG president vomiting at an away football game and one about students who had PEDs to get into residence halls they didn’t live in.
I also do some freelance work for a magazine based out of Sandusky, Ohio called Health Matters. It’s a monthly magazine that just started this year.
Aside from reporting, I’m a big fan of movies and premium cable TV shows like “Weeds” and “Dexter” on Showtime.