Episode 4/Takin A Walk on Newbury Street with Vinny O‘Neill

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Taking a Walk, an excursion to converse, connect, and catch up at a cool location with some of the most interesting people you can find. Here’s Buzz Knight.

Buzz Knight:

Taking a walk and finding joy in the moment is a treasure to not take for granted. It’s the sight, the sounds, the people watching that all contribute to the experience. It can be the mindful moment a head clearing solitude or the time well spent with an old friend. Either can be a thing of beauty. I’m Buzz Knight and on this episode of Taking A Walk, my guest is my buddy Vinny O’Neill founder of Vinco Properties, and also co-founder of Wicked Dog Apparel. We’re in Boston on Newbury Street, as we’re taking a walk.

Buzz Knight:

So Vinny, what happened on the parking ticket as we start the taking a walk podcast?

Vinny O’Neill:

Well, double parked on Newbury Street is never a good thing when the meter maid’s around. So I think that was like $75 to $125, although she was very nice and apologized. And I wish I got to know them better, but they switch, they rotate the meter maids by neighborhood, so you can’t charm them.

Buzz Knight:

You can’t charm a meter maid? That is the most shocking revelation on this podcast that I think I’ve ever heard.

Vinny O’Neill:

Well, it’s not that I can’t charm them, it’s that I can’t find them. If I can find them I can charm them. That’s the problem. They keep them moving. Just slippery little buggers.

Buzz Knight:

So roughly how much income do you provide the city of Boston with your various parking tickets?

Vinny O’Neill:

Oh, $5,000 a year. At least.

Buzz Knight:

Really?

Vinny O’Neill:

Yeah. I know the guy who does the boot taking off on a name basis. As soon as I answer, he goes “Vinny?”

Buzz Knight:

Is that a business deduction?

Vinny O’Neill:

Officially? Do I find a way to make it one? Yes. Sorry.

Buzz Knight:

I would think so.

Vinny O’Neill:

I don’t know, actually. I give it to my accountants. I have them try and figure it out. I would think so. Yes.

Buzz Knight:

I’ll take that as a yes.

Vinny O’Neill:

Yes. And I paid my employees parking tickets too.

Buzz Knight:

So we’re taking a walk on Newbury Street with the one and only Vinny O’Neill but he goes by many names now. He’s a man of multiple names, Skinny Vinny being one of them.

Vinny O’Neill:

Yeah. Skinny Vinny has been with me for a long time. And then off of Skinny Vinny, you have the great Skincinzo, you got Skin Diesel, then there’s like Grinny because I had bad teeth. They used to call me Grinny, Grinny Vinny. Grinderella. Vinderella. It goes on and on.

Buzz Knight:

I like them all. Do they evolve over time? Depending on the person?

Vinny O’Neill:

Yeah, of course. Well like for my daughter, her new nickname is Bootsie but she was Lum Lum Cherry Lum Lum. My boys are Lump and Bobo D or Bolocas.

Buzz Knight:

Oh that’s awesome.

Vinny O’Neill:

Oh yeah. Lot of nicknames. And in fact I was at funeral this week. Because you said it maybe a Philly thing, but I went to school in DC and we were at the bar with like 20 people and it was like, Hey what’s, and I didn’t know my buddy [inaudible], it’s his last name, I’m like, “What’s your first name?” I don’t even know the guy whose funeral it was, his dad, his name is Fitzy. I knew him 20 years before I even knew he had a first name. So you just get to nicknames and you forget what people’s real identity is.

Buzz Knight:

Yeah. That’s been something I’ve lived with from my-

Vinny O’Neill:

Oh Bobby K, the killer.

Buzz Knight:

Come on. Many names, some of it witness protection related.

Vinny O’Neill:

So let’s go through the Bobby K nicknames.

Buzz Knight:

Well, so we go back in time and when we were… This isn’t about me. This is about you. And this is about taking a walk.

Vinny O’Neill:

Nice segue.

Buzz Knight:

On Newbury Street with Vinny O’Neill. Now one of the great things about taking a walk is people watching, don’t you think?

Vinny O’Neill:

Absolutely in the city. It’s the great, I mean top 10 reasons to live in any city is to people watch. I was in New York this past weekend. Yeah. Oh, at Pastis, by the way, great restaurant in New York. I could sit there and watch people all day long.

Buzz Knight:

It’s the best. It’s the best. There’s nothing like it. So is that your favorite part of taking a walk on a Newbury street? Is the people watch or?

Vinny O’Neill:

Yes. Multiple, there’s many degrees of people watching, but yes, indeed people watching is my favorite thing in Newbury. And I mean Newbury in particular, in any other street I prefer to walk down is beautiful.

Buzz Knight:

It is one of the great cities, one of the great streets.

Vinny O’Neill:

Some people, their whole life won’t walk down a street like this and we get do it every day. It’s amazing.

Buzz Knight:

Yeah. I don’t take this for granted at all. And I sort of look at this too and look, taking a walk can be clearing your head and having your own solitude and that can be extremely helpful. But on the other hand, taking a walk with a friend and just shooting the breeze is also one of the great things.

Vinny O’Neill:

And the other great thing is you never know what’s going to happen. The serendipitous of life. I always, as a matter of fact, [inaudible]. I was in Manhattan on Saturday night and my girlfriend and I are going to a restaurant and we make a wrong turn. And so I’m on the phone, trying to figure it out. And I literally walk, he didn’t see me, right into a buddy of mine who I haven’t seen in years. In lower Manhattan out of nowhere, just randomly. And then he’s like, “Hey, we’re having a party.” We’re all back at his house, place’s rocking, beautiful vibes, just serendipitous. I try to live my life, I call it the cosmos, there’s this, whatever you want to call it, religion, there’s a force field that connects everybody. And just the older I get shut off the brain, let yourself go into the cosmos and let it take you where it’s going. You know what I mean?

Buzz Knight:

And I think that’s the joy of walking. That’s the joy of where you live or where you go to visit, and just sort of just hang out and yeah, I consider myself very grateful for that. And also, by the way, the neighborhoods and the little hangouts. I mean, where we first met is a place called Sonsie on Newbury Street.

Vinny O’Neill:

Best bar in Boston.

Buzz Knight:

And what’s amazing about that is that’s a community of a bunch of people that all-

Vinny O’Neill:

With no prior connection and in some regards, no conceivable connection, right. That you would say like, “Oh, of course they’ll be friends.”

Buzz Knight:

Yeah. That’s the amazing part that I explain that to people and they think, some of them have never had that opportunity ever.

Vinny O’Neill:

And that camaraderie, right.

Buzz Knight:

Ever. And they sort of listened to this going, “That’s pretty incredible.” So yeah. So that’s how Vinny and I first met and now it takes us to where Vinny is today.

Vinny O’Neill:

Well, taking a walk, sorry to interrupt. But to me it’s a metaphor for life. It’s like, get out in the world, however you do it. And so many people today’s world in particular, A, the COVID stuff, which has been beat to death. So we don’t need to go in that. But people text, they don’t write.

Vinny O’Neill:

Getting out and mixing it up and feel, touch, taste the world around you, and it leads to great things.

Buzz Knight:

That’s right. Living, breathing.

Vinny O’Neill:

Yeah. Leads to happiness. It leads to opportunity it leads to success.

Buzz Knight:

So Vinny, as we’re taking a walk on Newbury Street, let’s talk about a couple of your businesses there. First of all, you have Vinco properties, right?

Vinny O’Neill:

Correct. Commercial real estate developers. We do office, biotech, retail, apartments, and warehouse. And then we have Wicked Dog Apparel, which we started a few years back, my college roommate and I really, with the original thought that Boston needed and lacked cool up and coming brands. And that Boston is such a great city and in itself a brand, that we really tried to wrap Boston and Wicked Dog into one. And we like making great feeling comfortable, good looking clothes for people. And we believe Boston needs that brand. We are that brand. And we want to take Boston the world, because we think everyone’s got a little wicked in them.

Buzz Knight:

I love that. And how’s business going these days?

Vinny O’Neill:

Great, great. We started as an online retailer and then doing popups all over the city at festivals and this and that. And now we’ve recently we moved into two brick and mortar locations that will be in through the holidays. One in Watertown, Mass at Arsenal Yards, one at 170 Newbury Street. And then for Christmas, we’re opening the Seaport in their popup locations. So by Christmas we’ll be in three of the hottest locations to be in the area. So things are good and the brand’s growing and our thought for the brand and it’s more byproduct of how I’ve done any of my businesses. I’m a grassroots guy, person to person. That’s how we’re selling our brand. And we’re coming right up from underneath. Grassroots, people to people and it’s really catching on. So we’re very excited.

Buzz Knight:

And don’t leave out the great work that you guys do as far as helping charities as well.

Vinny O’Neill:

Oh yeah, absolutely. We do a lot of work with Christopher’s Haven, which provides housing for families with children and cancer being treated in Boston who can stay with their whole family for long term. Various dog charities and clinics. Yeah. We believe in giving back. All sorts of sports programs, Charlestown basketball, South [inaudible] baseball. So yeah. We’re big on giving back.

Buzz Knight:

Hyper local.

Vinny O’Neill:

Hyper local. Hyper local, but with an international goal, I guess is the word.

Buzz Knight:

Yeah. To dominate the world.

Vinny O’Neill:

Yes.

Buzz Knight:

And you are. Well, so Vinny, so as we wrap up, I wanted to just ask you, you mentioned New York, walking in New York and how great that is. So where do you start? Just some of your other favorite places, whether it be in New York or in Boston to go taking a walk-

Vinny O’Neill:

Boston right at the bottom of our street, the Boston Garden is spectacular, not the arena.

Buzz Knight:

The public garden.

Vinny O’Neill:

Not the arena. Right. It’s special. And I live here and drive by, but I only get in and I’ve tried to say to myself, you don’t even got 10 minutes, pull over, walk through. It is the best, spectacular.

Buzz Knight:

Yep.

Vinny O’Neill:

Walking the north end.

Buzz Knight:

Oh yeah.

Vinny O’Neill:

Spectacular. And the Greenway, the Rose County Greenway. I mean you think about when I moved here that was some ugly looking crappy looking highway and now there’s fountains and there’s shows and there’s artwork and you can see the north end and the city, fabulous. I’ll tell you the other cool walk. There’s one that goes along the water, down the financial district. Oh, here we are. I don’t know what they call it, but it’s on the water and you go along by the Boston Seaport Hotel, not the Seaport, the Boston Harbor Hotel. Great. That’s another great spot. They do those outdoor movies. And then short of the neighborhoods, the south end, beautiful to walk through on a Sunday afternoon, hit brunch.

Vinny O’Neill:

I mean, Boston’s a great walking city. New York, Central Park. Any of the neighborhoods we were down in Meat Packing West Village. And New England in general or the Northeast, the best weather you can guarantee weather in September, October. It’s the best time to be out and about in the city and it’s alive and people are back.

Vinny O’Neill:

So I’ll tell you the arboretum, another great walk here. I don’t know if you’re ever out there. It’s beautiful.

Buzz Knight:

Yep.

Vinny O’Neill:

Beautiful. I’ve been taking a couple dates there actually.

Buzz Knight:

Beacon Hill too.

Vinny O’Neill:

Beacon Hill. Charles Street. Yeah. Oh not only that Charles Street, then you got to see Uncle Wayne and then you can bottom out of Charles street, go to Liberty, have a cocktail. And you know what I mean? It’s really cool.

Buzz Knight:

Oh, it’s great.

Vinny O’Neill:

That whole street, actually I tell people, you start at the Liberty and come up Charles right across the garden up Newbury. Like if they’re visiting. Or the other way around. Do that loop and then come back around even the Common’s cool. Not as nice as the garden, but beautiful walk.

Buzz Knight:

Well Vinny, thanks for taking a walk with me. So great to spend the time, brother.

Vinny O’Neill:

Bobby K, always a pleasure and my friend any time.

Buzz Knight:

All right.

Speaker 1:

Taking A Walk with Buzz Knight is available on Spotify, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

Buzz Knight is an established media executive with a long history of content creation and multi-platform distribution.

After a successful career as a Radio Executive, he formed Buzz Knight Media which focuses on strategic guidance and the development of new original content.