This is a podcast about a small town in the center of CT named Berlin. Despite its size, there’s always a lot going on in Berlin, and word gets around quick about even the smallest change to the town. Join Dylan as he tries to piece together what makes this small town, and its people so interesting.
Audio transcription:
Hello, I’m Dylan Richards, and this is the Berlin Insider Podcast, a podcast all about the town of Berlin, Connecticut, a small but somewhat interesting town. I’m here with my special guest for today, Xander Gabor. How’s it going? Xander, tell us about yourself and your time living in Berlin.
Yup, I wasn’t initially from Berlin. I’m from New Britain, which is literally the next town over, like a minute away from where I live right now. I moved to Berlin in 2013, so that means 12 years now, lived in Berlin 12 years, basically grown up here, made friends here, made people I’ve considered family, as friends here. A lot of good times, a lot of bad times, and yeah, I guess I consider myself someone who knows a thing or two about the town.
For some context for our listeners, how would you, like how fast would you say that gossip gets out in our town, like information in general, just how fast does that stuff spread?
Well, I mean, I’d say that that kind of stuff spreads pretty fast, because, well, first things first, we’re a very small town. I mean, I don’t know the exact population size. I feel like our town has a, well, at least the people in our town know that there’s a lot of Karens who like to gossip, and you can kind of, there’s a hub for that. We call the Berlin Buzz on Facebook. It’s an actual Facebook group. I’m not sure if this has been discussed yet, but yeah, it’s where all the gossip kind of shows up. It’s not always gossip, because, I mean, some people are just like, oh, who’s a good real estate agent? Yeah, no, things fly around. It’s a windy town, you know, rumors blow around.
So just a funny little thing. I know where this comes from, but where did your nickname, the Golden Boy of Berlin, come from?
So I guess for some background context, Mr. BHS is a, it’s almost like a talent show slash contest, where there’s like a group of senior boys, and they all compete presenting like their skills in something, like singing or dancing, playing an instrument, or they do like a challenge that the hosts set up for them. And you basically practice with these guys, you do like routines and dances, it’s almost like a game show kind of thing. And our theme, our senior year was like a 80s theme. So I think, yeah, I guess when I was past the mic, I actually said, I remember what I said, I said I was Berlin’s golden ray of sunshine. I said that as I was wearing my vibrant pink tank top and teal short shorts with my long jerry curl wig, not jerry curl, but something looking like someone you’d see from the 80s, looking like Weird Al Yankovic, more like. Glad Weird Al. Shout out to Weird Al. But yeah, I think that’s where that nickname comes from.
Our town is somewhat very close minded, though, and like change is somewhat hard to come by, and people have somewhat controversial, and dare I say bigoted views on things. Yeah, actually, I know some people, some very close people in my life who’d actually be able to speak on this very well. But yeah, I know the bigoted nature of a lot of the people in the town has driven some very important decisions in the people in my lives. Especially like choosing to stay in the town for education, just thoughts on people in the town. I think this is something characteristic of a lot of small towns that are predominantly white like ours, predominantly conservative. There’s a lot of MAGA in our town.
Yeah, for some even more background here, you can’t really go that far across our town without seeing a sign for certain political candidates like Trump. There are some people in our town that are ballsy enough to put signs up for different political candidates, and they usually get stolen. People are weird like that. Or just straight up vandalized. I remember years ago someone put up, and actually the election Trump lost, someone put up a Biden sign and itgot graffitied over on Worthington Ridge, I believe. Yeah. I don’t remember what they did, but I think they just put some profanity. Do you think that anything in our town has really changed over the past 10 years, or is it just still the same, like stagnant? Has it changed? Well, I mean, I think a lot of business has actually been flowing into town. We’ve been getting a lot of new businesses. I think there’s, what, two new Starbucks. There’s a Jersey Mike’s. I feel like, or no, one new Starbucks, but you know what I mean.
I feel like, I don’t know what has changed politically, because I don’t really pay attention to our local politics. I’m more infatuated with the federal scheme, but, yeah, I feel like there’s been a lot of business flowing into town, but socially, I’m not sure really what has changed. I mean, you still see it. I remember when I was a kid, politics actually played a lot into the sports team you get on because, conveniently, in air quotes, because it’s ironic, the coaches for all the travel teams usually grew up in Berlin. The assistant coach is also probably a friend of theirs from high school, and their team might not … I’m not going to say any specific sport, but their team might not actually have the best players at the sport in the town, but it’ll just have their kids in it and their friends’ kids who they all grew up with from Berlin. Town politics play a major role in that, and I feel like it’s discouraged a lot of people for … a lot of kids growing up for even trying to apply themselves in certain fields of athletics.
I guess … I never played baseball, but I heard that was a big problem in baseball. I heard it was a big problem in basketball. It was also a problem in lacrosse, which we were both on the team at one point. Yeah. Yeah, and I think … not as much as not in the high school levels. This is usually stuff- Only in the travel. Yeah. Basically, from third grade to eighth grade, this is the plot. This is the structure. Yeah, it’s kind of disadvantageous for a lot of kids, and I think I don’t really need to go really in-depth into that, but that’s something that’s never changed, and I don’t think it’s something exclusive of Berlin, because I’ve heard of similar situations in other towns such as ours.
So let’s take a look more at the education side of things, because our school was kind of also an echo chamber that didn’t have much of control over anything, like our high school, for example. Do you think that the Berlin public school system enables the behavior of Senators Allen? Is the education good enough? Is there enough empathy taught to people, or is it just they’re fostering us to send us out into the world with nothing?
That’s a good question, and I haven’t really thought too much about that, to be honest. I think a lot of the teachers do a really good job. There’s been some teachers who’ve touched my heart. There’s some teachers that have made a really positive impact on my life. I think the education quality was decent, but I mean, of course, there’s not like every teacher that’s going to be perfect there. I’ve had some bad experiences. We’ve had some bad experiences in classes together with teachers.
I’m not sure. I think this is just something that takes more time. I think that it just takes more time for our town to evolve more socially, become a little bit more progressive, because I feel like a lot of kids who are queer, a lot of kids who are part of the LGBTQ community simply don’t feel extremely safe in high school, or in Berlin high school, at least from the people that I know personally. I know, I’m not going to give any names or anything like that, but someone who’s really close to me actually completely decided against attending high school in Berlin because of their experience growing up as a member of the LGBTQ plus community in Berlin. And they were just like, nope, I’ve had enough. I’m going to a different high school. So they’re actually doing that now, and they’re actuallysucceeding in academics better than they ever have before. So, well, what do I know about the quality of academics in Berlin, right? But yeah, I feel like the town’s got some work to do on the social level. I feel like we could be a bit more accepting.
I think, too, back in our days in the high school, it was very noticeable when a teacher would vocally state what they thought about things and not just let the kids roll over them. Like, with most of the teachers involved in Upbeat, they were very vocal about the issues they supported and stuff that they wanted the kids to be educated on. I appreciated that, yeah. I definitely appreciated that. I feel as if there’s some great teachers in Berlin High School, or at least there were. I don’t know how it is now because, I mean, it’s been years.
Yeah, especially, I don’t think you know this, but Upbeat has been going through some changes since we left the school. I’m aware there’s been some change in leadership that I question personally.
Yeah, for context for our listeners, Upbeat was a community service, well, still is, a community service program at our school. And the leadership has been changed because they have had issues with budget and planning things. So, they fired the coordinator, which was a unique position to the role, and gave the power back to the teachers. Now the program is unsure of the future, of what’s going to happen to it.
So, how do you think that programs like Upbeat are being affected by the town and change and how people view things here?
The Upbeat programs change? I haven’t really heard much about that from other people, honestly. I think you might be the only person I’ve ever talked to about this. But I actually think that Upbeat plays a crucial role in our town. I think the community service it does is amazing. The tree sale, I think, is probably one of the most well-known things that Upbeat does, other than organizing the picnic, the spring picnic, and our town fair, of course. I think those are just examples of how Upbeat gives to our community. And I think budget problems aside, it should always be something that our town prioritizes to keep. Because I think it makes our town look good, too. I know other towns I’ve heard of Upbeat, too, because of the work that the organization does. I was very happy to be a member of the organization myself. And not to go on too long, but yeah, I really hope that this town puts urgency in making sure, or at least the right people put urgency in making sure that this program can prosper.
Yeah. So this is something that I’ve been wanting to ask someone for a while in our town. So what do you think there is to do in Berlin besides leave? Is it just a big thing to leave the town and just go off somewhere else and be bigger? Or is there a point to stay here and keep coming back?
You know, I’ve seen both sides of this coin. On one hand, I’ll give an example of someone who’s left and doesn’t want to come back. I won’t say their name. You’re going to know exactly who I’m talking about, though. We have a good friend, a really dear friend of mine, who I consider family. He went off to a prestigious university that’s at least six hours from here. And he comes back to Berlin the least amount he possibly has to. And I think he experienced some bad things growing up. A lot of bullying. A lot of bullying for who he was. It was super, super unjustified. And I actually understand completely why he likes to stay where he is.
But then again, I also have plenty of friends and plenty of people who’ve grown up in Berlin and don’t ever plan on leaving or have never left and have started families. I know people who have multiple homes in Berlin and they’re like, well, my kids can have this house so they don’t have to leave Berlin. But you know, I feel like there has to be some sort of alignment between beliefsand the town itself at that point. Because I can’t see how you want to stay in a town like this if you don’t think that you can. like this if you don’t think that you can co-exist with the stigmas. I mean, you probably wouldn’t even see it as stigmas if that’s what your belief is, huh? Yeah.
Which this is more of a question for you now. Do you think that you would leave and never come back if you had the choice or is there something about this town that would keep bringing you back? I mean, I have friends who live here who some I don’t imagine are going to leave, so I guess that would keep me coming back. But you know, I think this is a really typical and uninteresting response, but I’m just going to go wherever work is. I mean, I plan on going to law school and wherever I can find work after that point. I mean, if it’s convenient, I’ll move. If it’s not, I’ll probably stay, but I imagine houses in Berlin aren’t very cheap. So we’ll see how that goes. Although there’s condos, but I’m not that desperate to live in Berlin, you know.
Yeah, things keep on changing. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not. Yeah. The mayor says that second McDonald’s is going to save the town. It’s on the turnpike though, so don’t take anything for granted. Yeah, the Berlin turnpike, that touches more towns than ours. Yeah, that’s a great thing.
All right, that’s it for this episode of The Berlin Insider. Thank you, Mr. Gabor, for your time.
Of course. Thank you for having me. See you guys next episode.
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