Category: Lifestyle
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On the Road Again: Episode1 Hells Kitchen, Fanatics Fest, coming home…
I’ve spent the last couple of weeks in New York working Fanatics Fest, and every time I come here I’m reminded why this city has the reputation it does.
The headlines usually focus on celebrities, athletes, and million-dollar collectibles. Mine start a little earlier—before sunrise, with steel, forklifts, coffee, and 30,000 steps a day.
This wasn’t a vacation. It was work. The kind of work our industry understands.
I stayed in Hell’s Kitchen, and it was probably my favorite part of the trip. Not because it was polished—it wasn’t. It felt gritty, loud, crowded, and alive. Walking those streets, I couldn’t help but think about all the stories I’d heard growing up about New York decades ago. Whether that’s exactly what it was like or not, the neighborhood still carries a rough-around-the-edges character that feels authentic. It’s a place where you keep your head up, keep moving, and mind your business.
That same attitude carries over into the convention business.
Inside the Javits Center, thousands of people are doing jobs most attendees will never notice. Carpenters, electricians, freight teams, labor crews, account teams, project managers, operations—everyone pulling in the same direction so that when the doors open, the fans think it all just appeared overnight.
MSG. It didn’t.
It was built.
Some days topped 30,000 steps. Between the July heat, long shifts, and constant movement across the building, it almost felt like New York itself was part of the workload. Then, in true NYC fashion, a tornado warning rolled through and changed everyone’s plans, adding another day to the trip.
That’s live events.
You can have the best schedule in the world, but eventually reality gets a vote.
One of my favorite moments was simply walking the city after shift. Grabbing dinner in Hell’s Kitchen, watching people from every corner of the world moving in every direction, then waking up a few hours later to do it all again. It’s exhausting, but it’s also why people fall in love with New York.
Fanatics Fest is an incredible event, but what sticks with me isn’t just the athletes or the displays.
It’s the people building them.
The fans see the show.
We build the experience.
#RunTheDamnDock #RTDD #FanaticsFest #FanaticsFestNYC #FFNY26 #BehindTheScenes #EventProfs #TradeShows #LiveEvents #EventOperations #ConventionCenter #JavitsCenter #NewYorkCity #HellsKitchen #BlueCollar #BuiltNotBought #BuildTheExperience #SportsBusiness #Vlog
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America250
America Is Family
I am one of these I think… That newspaper clipping isn’t about a record.
It’s about a legacy.
As America celebrates 250 years, I don’t think about famous families. I think about mine.
My dad was the youngest of fourteen children. They worked a farm in rural Georgia that wasn’t theirs. My grandmother died when he was 17. Some of our history disappeared with her. We can’t even say for certain my dad’s birth certificate is accurate. That’s what happens when families spend more time surviving than documenting.
My trail begins in Georgia. That’s enough for me.
On my mom’s side, my grandfather became a Teamster after the family left Kentucky. One brother went to Chicago. Another settled in St. Louis after the coal mines slowed down. Different roads. Same work ethic.
I call myself a child of Highway 41. My heart has always belonged to Georgia, but the Southeast and the Midwest raised me. Those highways carried generations of working people chasing the next opportunity, the next job, the next chance to build something better.
DA got it. My guy. Trade shows have been part of my family’s story for three generations. Since 1979, there has been a Mitchell helping build the events that bring industries together across the Southeast and Midwest. We weren’t the keynote speakers. We were the people who unlocked the dock doors before sunrise and made sure the lights came on before anyone walked through the front entrance.
Dock shack vibes… That’s America.
Not the headlines. Not the boardrooms. The builders.
Somewhere along the way, the American Dream changed. It used to mean earning your paradise. Building it one day at a time. Today, too often, success is measured by obtaining it as quickly as possible.
I think we’re entering a new kind of divide in this country—not between North and South, not between red and blue, and certainly not one that should ever be settled with violence.
It’s a divide between collars.
Blue collar. White collar.
Not because one is better than the other, but because somewhere along the way we forgot they need each other. Ideas don’t build themselves. Products don’t move themselves. A company isn’t complete without the people in the office or the people on the floor.
Run The Damn Dock has always believed the dock isn’t the end of the process. It’s where every process becomes reality.
America was built the same way.
By families.
By labor.
By faith.
By people whose names will never be in history books but whose fingerprints are on everything we touch.
Happy 250th, America.
Here’s to the builders.
