Beantown Podcast - Quinn's Big Walk (06292026 Beantown Podcast)

Episode Date: July 2, 2026

Quinn comes to you LIVE from Chicago's Lakefront Trail (all of it) to discuss the Faks of Life, down feather jackets, and hardbodies

Hey, what's going on? It's Quinn David Furness. Welcome to my show. Quinn David Furnace presents the Beantown podcast Monday, June 29, I think. Yeah. June 29th, 2026, season nine of my show, Quinn David's listeners, Prince Beantown podcast, where I am the creator, the host, and chief timekeeper of this. program. Apologies in advance the audio quality is perfectly sub-par. I did a test before I got the airphones in or the AirPods, whatever, phone in the pocket, on a walk right now, we'll get to in a second and I knew the quality wasn't amazing. But when you're on a walk it's like you either go hands-free mode with the AirPods, which is by far the most convenient or if you just go without the AirPods at all, hold your phones receiver up to your mouth like you're doing voice to text or something. The quality is better, but hey, if I'm going to do a podcast, it could be anywhere from 15 minutes and two hours. I'm going to need

my hands free. Let's just put it that way. So we are on a long walk. Not as a as long as the Stephen King long walk, I would do so terrible in that, man. I think I wouldn't be the first one to die, but I think I would be within the first five to ten out of the 50. I don't know, man. I like to hope I would never be stupid enough to sign up for it in the first place. That's the difference between, like, Hunger Games and the long walk. And Hunger Games is just a lottery. Shirley Jackson style, who was in the Jackson 5, I think, and she had a solo literature career.

But in the long walk, it's like you volunteer as tribute, Catnus style. I always found it was funny how close Katniss was to Katnip. Catnip Everdine. Does it Everdane, is it Everdane or B or a B? I think a V. Doesn't Katniss Everdine sounds like someone who could have played shortstop for the you know, like the Allegheny steel workers or something like that in the 1894 Cactus League, something like that. It's quite literally a long walk. In fact, I just passed milepost 17.

It is, by the way, it's 11 a.m. on a Monday morning. It's hot. I've been walking for five hours now. and I am scaling. That's right. Usually when you scale something, there's got to be significant elevation change, but I'm giving myself a break because I'm walking the entire lakefront trail here in Chicago today,

which goes from the South Shore neighborhood, 71st Street in the lake, up to, let's see, just north of the city. of Brynmar Ave, Hollywood Beach area. So what do we think? It's like 19 miles, something like that. So doing well.

We've only got less than an hour left. Kind of taking you with me on the home stretch. Listen to discretion, advised, by the way, when you're listening to this program, number one, we'll cage me some language. Number two, this podcast is objectively terrible. It's interesting. I've done a smattering, S-M-A-T-E-R-I-N-G of shows from the Great Outdoors before.

I think it's been a second since I did one, but never done a show that was on the tail end of a such a daunting physical excursion, such as this one. I got started about as early as was sensible. I mean, I think, so I started like 5.55 a.m. In an ideal world, I, you know, would have started an hour earlier, but my lovely long-suffering wife, richybaby 95 at gmail.com, was kind enough to drive me down on a Monday morning at 5 a.m. That's a keeper right there.

And so anything start time before that is, pushing it. But of course I picked a real humdinger of a day. It is quite literally, I don't think we're there yet, but you know, about 85 some breeze here and there, but not much to write home about. And it's sticky. What do they say? You get to this time of year and get the corn sweat. The corn sweat going. I don't know if they have any thing like corn sweat in Pakistan or Nigeria, but thank you both countries and the hundreds of millions that represents for making us top 78, top 178 in your respective nations. Happy I can bring you the laughs even when I'm suffering.

Like Jesus on the cross, I saw a great, I don't know if it was Onion or Babylon B, little Instagram post and was dad at the water park and then caption was like dad suffering like Jesus on the cross as he carries up the two-seater inner tube

and those big long boys look like a figure eight being right on with your kids I went on one of those one time with my dad and my brothers we waited in line when there was the It wasn't like a dog grand opening, but it was, I would say, opening week or maybe opening month of the local water park in town, Edric Waters, that you ride the splash blaster, which eventually was closed down and demolished due to safety concerns.

But we went on it, and we waited in line for like 45 minutes. it felt like holding your tube, where Steve was holding in your tube. You know, from home pride, Oregon. Shout out Steve. Shout out all of our lovely sponsors, Home Pride, Oregon, cuts by Q,

in town sports book, and the Samson Q2U series giving a well-deserved breakoff on assignment in Washington, D.C. Sent Samson out there to cover the Great American State Fair. You guys see this? I didn't even know

the Great American State Fair was like a part of it. First of all, how are you going to have a, I mean, how are you going to have a state fair? This is America, okay? America is made of 50 small little state fairs. You think this would be some sort of good trivia question. Are there any states that just like flat out don't have a state fair? I mean, I'm sure not everyone is as grandiose and luxurious as a Texas or Minnesota. are kind of the two of the biggest ones that come to my first, Wisconsin.

But like, you know, the Delaware State Fair, I hope they have it. I can't imagine it's that exciting. What do you think the Hawaii state fair is like a lot of poix? Every year they crown the poy boy. That's what I wanted to be when I was in Hawaii, boy boy, 23, whatever year it was. But yeah, I mean, so obviously America's 250th birthday this year, they had the big UFC fight on the lawn, which I don't know if they got like big names as far as UFC goes to participate in that because I don't know the first thing about UFC.

But it felt like it kind of came and went. It wasn't that big of a spectacle, at least in what I am plugged into. the media I consume. And then I didn't even know this, because all the attention in Washington has been on the reflecting pool, how green it is. Everyone's having troubles with their pools this year.

We need a pool sponsor on the show. That would be good. But all of a sudden, in my Twitter timeline, things start popping up about the Great American State Fair, which I think was like Friday, Saturday, Saturday and then apparently they canceled it halfway through the day Sunday because no one was there. I saw a great tweet. I don't know if it was from like the official White House account or what, but it was, you know, someone taking a picture from like the front row of some country country concert.

Somebody I didn't know, I don't know. But the singer, that's a guitarist, was wearing sunglasses. So if you zoom in with 4K technology, you can see the reflection looking back into the crowd. And I mean, 100 people maybe, 125. And look, context is everything. It could have been the opening at 9 a.m. on Friday. But you just think, I mean, you have your 250th birthday party. I hope if I make it to 250 and I have a birthday party and I'm not even as cool as the United States, you know,

I'm pretty average. But we'll probably get at least more equal, more than or equal to the number of Nigerians and Pakistanis. I mean, coming out from my birthday, if I'm 78 in Pakistan right now, if I do some charitable work, building mosques or other schools. I really ramp up the literacy stats in the slums of Hyderabad.

That probably makes me a saint. Don't light me like Mother Teresa. Think of all the people that come to shower me with gifts. Just think of all the people that are making those, what they call it, a haj, J, J, J, J, J, J, J. J, J. A lot of Jays. To Temeca, you know, they're facing east.

They're prostate on the ground. Prostate or prostrate? Probably prostrate. It's not a word I use very often. They're, you know, praying five times a day. They're not eating while the sun's up. If we could just get 2% But that crowd, you get to Mecca, most of your, you know, most of the group,

finds a hotel room, you just keep going. Next thing you know, you're outside the Beantown Mansion, celebrating my 250th birthday party, we'll blow the state fair, great American state fair, out of the water. You know, probably have a corporate sponsor, too. It won't be the Beantown podcast, Clint Dave Furness, 250, birthday it'll be calci 250th extraordinary you heard it here first um what interest what have i seen on my walk as we get up to foster beach here i'll say this nothing terribly crazy it's a one car

a jeep on the path down around like 35th street that was not supposed to be there there. So that was fun. Going to watch up for those guys. So a lot of geese early in the morning, which will be our animal of the week this week. We'll just make it the Canadian goose because, you know, I don't really know how many other geese varieties there are that I can name. The thought I had when I was thinking about our animal of the week, the Canadian goose, you know, Everyone wants Canadian goose down feather. And I'm thinking, like, are we sustainably harvesting our Canadian goose feathers? Or is it like for every coat you buy, 20 geese are slaughtered?

This is an actual question I have. It reminds me, we talked about corn sweat earlier. Actually, when I started my walk this morning, get out of the car, it's already like 80 degrees and 70% humidity. So very sticky, and it brought me back some PTSD is too negative of a word, but just some strong association, strong memories of waking up in the morning in July, walking into cornfields and ready for another six to eight hour shift. kind of similar to what I'm doing now. You're just walking in a straight line. But there you had to really get your hands dirty, picking tassels. But the reason I, other than just corn sweat,

we had this one field, or group of fields, whatever, in a morango, Illinois, M-A-R-E-N-G-O. And they were situated next to the Mink Barn, but just like a clothing shop in an old barn I don't know if it was an old barn or just a building constructed to appear like an old barn

and there was like a big billboard and said you know come in grab a coat at the mink barn and I feel like you know if you're going to make a mink coat those minks are probably not going to make it

like you probably you got to ixnay them guillotine style however you do it I don't know how I like to think every mink gets a nice sweet memory and someone holding their hands

I don't know if it's lethal injection in the gas chamber but it's probably much less humane than that so that got me thinking if you're gonna all these popular Canada goose down feather coats you know can we can we pluck it out of them and preserve the goose? You know, they may make a pit stop or something halfway through their

whatever it's called when an animal migration. And then you pluck them. They lose 20 pounds and then they go along their merry way, lighter, freer, much colder. That's why they're flying down to Barbados or wherever geese migrate to in the winter. I don't know. So that's a question I have. What becomes of the geese? Email us, Beantown Podcast at Yahoo.com.

That's Beantown, V-E-A-N-T-O-O-L-E-N podcast at gahoo.com. What else have we seen? A lot of hard bodies. That's a terminology is an homage to one of my heroes, Patrick Bateman, an upstanding citizen and model of, you know, goodness in the world. Psycho heads out there know what I'm talking about. Not Norman based, Patrick Bainment. But yeah, a lot of people out here

getting their steps in this morning. It's interesting to see, you see, you know, you start, I started at 5.55 a.m. so you see the hard four people getting out there at a time that makes sense on in daylight today with the sun out. and being super humid. You get those people out in the 6-8-an hour, it's like, all right, you're doing it and doing well.

They're sweaty, but they're composed. And then you get, you know, kind of hour by hour, which is the sequel to Michael McDonald's, a minute by minute. You see, one, you see, well, it's a little bit of a bell curve, because not everyone's waking up at 5.30 in the morning to get their run in. So you see a lot of people out there between 7 to 9 a.m. But eventually the crowds start to taper off, especially here on a Monday. We would be much much busier on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, obviously.

But you really, especially want to get into that 9 a.m. hour and the sun is all the way up. And there's very, very little shadow action. You really start to see the people suffering. I would say in general, I'm doing pretty well. I mean, I am literally about half a mile away from the end of the trail. I've just been cruising, like Huey Lewis and Gwyneth Paltrow, originally Smokey Robinson and someone else. Yeah, I got started to really, really put my head down.

I knew the first third or so in my head kind of divided into thirds, south side, downtown, north side. And so the first, whatever it is, five miles, six miles, I just put my head down. I didn't have any headphones, nothing. Just tried to, like, log as many miles as I could. One, when the temperature was lower, two, and I could still cash in on some shadows. And so I walked from the start, which is 71st Street, the South. offshore cultural center, southeast corner, center in the lake,

walked from there at 31st Street Beach, which is a meaningful place for me. It's where I, when I was still employed at the university, and taught my class every fall, and we took our group of new freshmen down to 31st Street Beach for their service project, cleaning up the beach, Tasted about the history of 31st Street Beach and segregation in Chicago. So we did that for four or five trips we took them down there. So that was my first stop.

That's where I peed. It's the only stop on the way here where it peed, which probably sounds bad, but I don't know, the amount you have to drink on a day like this to actually put yourself in a place where you need to go to the bathroom and you're not just relying on the water you're bringing in. Like, when I ran my marathons, I didn't pee at all. So, now is six, seven miles longer than what I'm doing here. So I think it makes sense.

So stopped at 31st Street Beach, reapplied my sunscreen. And, let's see, that's when I got my AirPods for the first time, listen to some death cab for cutie, new album, built through a tower. and had it come a full circle later on as I was walking past Belmont Harbor at a boat at 9.30 in the morning just blasting riptides. The lead single from this album came out

I think on my birthday or days before back in March. So like, all right, everyone's into death camp these days. So that was kind of the first leg, if you will. And then I, so I just, you know, had the kind of YouTube mix going. Put my head down and really pounded the pavement there.

It went all the way from 31st Street Beach. Man, this was a crazy segment. I didn't realize how much I actually put in there. So basically, if you're not as familiar with how the path goes, after 31st Street Beach is when you start to get into the downtown-ish stuff, starting with McCormick Place, Soldier Field, museum campus, which is the aquarium, the planetarium, and the Museum of Natural History.

And then you get into Grant Park, Lollapalooza had snow, Buckingham Fountain. Then you get into primetime downtown, loop action. Still relatively quiet because it's a Monday morning, thankfully. But, you know, you go, you go, up to the Navy Pier flyover, which we've had here in Chicago for about a decade or so now. Nice, nice time-saving tool. And then you come back down and then you hit. It's a big long, big long concrete stretch with almost no shade. I thought it was going to be tougher, but I was kind

able to grin and bear it pretty well. It goes Ohio Street Beach, tiny little guy by Navy Pier and then stretch about a mile, two miles. And then you get up to just about a mile, I guess. Oak Street Beach, slightly larger beach, go another mile. Then you are at North Ave Beach, kind of the crown jewel of Chicago beaches as far as popularity goes. Just you wanna see like the most crowded place on the planet.

go to North Ave Beach 2 p.m. on a Saturday. Holy moly. Bad idea of jeans. And then just one more mile. Let's get at the Fullerton. There's no more beaches

between North Ave and Montrose. Which is essentially where we started the podcast. Fullerton's where I took my next pit stop. That was quite a stretch I did there. From 31st the Fullerton at the podcast. about six miles. I guess it's about what I did at the start as well, but it just feels longer when you see all the sights, you know. Stopped at Fullerton, had to put some band-aids on the nips.

One of them's still on, the other one lasted about 45 minutes and then too sweaty and fell off. So we'll see how that's going. Had my lunch, an apple, a water. It started the day out with an ice coffee by the way. That's what I pulled out when I stopped at 31st Street Beach. I drank that from 31st to Fullerton. And reapplied my sunscreen. Sat down a little bit. That was the first time I sat down. But still, it was only about a six or seven minute pit stop, which, hey, when you're walking the Lakefront Trail, it's not too long. If you're, you know, leading the sealed at the Coke 600, that's a pretty long pit stop. But give me some grace.

And then we walked up from Fullerton to short leg, to Fortin, the Montrose, whipped out the podcasting equipment. And here we are. We have reached, in about 30 seconds, we'll have reached Bryn Mare. Or sorry, we already reached Brin Mar, Hollywood Ab. and then another half block, and that is the northern terminus. So I gotta, I gotta like assess, it kind of prepped up on me, assess what my plan is. We gotta get home somehow.

We'll see, I'm ahead of schedule. I think anything I was reading and looking at online was like, yeah, I don't think you're like, eight hours to walk the trail. And I'll tell you right now, it's 11, 28 we started at 555 so we'll say 1130 finish so that's five and a half hours it took me so two and a half hours ahead of schedule that's pretty good um but yeah it was a nice little walk otherwise didn't see anything too crazy there's a lot of runners bikers dogs geese there was a shopping cart in the water by Oak Street Beach.

That was pretty cool. I don't know what it was doing there. Someone really missed the cart corral in the jewel parking lot. Yeah, otherwise we're here. We made it. A couple of the things to mention as I try to figure out what I'm doing with my life. So I have a day off of work, by the way. I'm not playing hookie or anything.

cool like that. We are three episodes left of the bear, season five, the final season. And apparently this season, unless there's a big change, unless the episodes all takes place one day. And from what I had read, like an online reviews before we started it, they were saying like, oh yeah, you know, season three and four were a week, admittedly, but, season, Season five, final season's really a triumphant return to form. I don't feel that way yet. Maybe it'll redeem itself in the last couple episodes. But, you know, one thing I really love is how many facts.

How much fax time there is. Maybe in quantity there's not as many as previous seasons. You know, there's no John Cena this time around. But I'm thinking, if anything, we just get a fax spin-off. In fact, I have an idea for it. It's called The Facts of Life. I even came up with a theme song. Oh, you take the good, you take the bad,

you take it all in there, you have the facts of life, the facts alive. Bada, ba-ba-da-da-da-ba-da-ba-da-ba-da-ba-da-da-da-da-da-na. The facts of life. When the world never seems to believe in up to your dreams, and suddenly finding out the facts of life, All about you, all about you, all about you. It takes a lot to get on right when you're learning the facts of life.

So there you go. So it's a completely original concept, theme song, all that stuff. With all your favorite facts, Maddie Matheson, the other guy, John Sina, Francie FACC, whoever plays I don't even remember what she looks like, but I know that's a character named Francie Thack. So, yeah, it's probably going to be a hit. I'll probably be the showrunner, I would think. So be on the lookout for that.

FX, Hulu this fall. And it's just every, you know, it's six episode seasons, so you can really binge it. Every episode is just 30 minutes of facts. And it just gets progressively louder with more yelling. as each episode goes. You thought there was tension in the bear. Let me tell you, a bunch of white, overweight guys

yelling at each other for 30 straight minutes. That'll get your blood, curdling. That's my idea for the facts, spin-off. We have reached the end of the road here, much like boys to men would tell you. So that means we've got to finish up with our trivia question here.

And I decided to keep it simple. I was trying to come up with like a good trail related trivia question. And I couldn't find anything that really wet my appetite the way I was looking for. So I decided to keep it simple. Here is my, it's kind of a trail related question, but it's more running. Marathon related question. So in marathon running in the marathon world, there's considered six major world marathon.

Name the six major world marathons. Three of them, I guess here's your clue. Three of them are in the US. Three of them are international. If you want any more time to work through, go ahead and pause, because I got to assess here and take my picture

of me at the end of the Lake French trip. at the end of the Lakefront Trail. These six major world marathons are Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, and New York City. There you go, the six major world marathons. That's what I had for you, a little short and sweet stream of consciousness episode. Hopefully you like my facts idea.

Hope you like my geese, goose, animal, gander. gosling geese really have a lot of extra names don't they for all of us here at the beantown podcast i'm going to figure out how to get home take a shower and uh watch some of this soccer game you know they show in the in the world cup games these guys you know they're really good guys they run like eight miles in a match and i'm scoffing at that as i stand here in front of my whatever it is mile 19 sign so there you go from all of us here at the beintown podcast thank you for listening stay safe stay sane and I'll check in on you next time. Bye-bye.