I thought you was a gopher snake at first. Some of his tree babies meet an untimely end, felled by pollution, city maintenance, or swerving vehicles. Santore: It's, it's like this, recently born into consciousness, species of primate is now able to figure out the world, dissect the world around it and figure out how it fits in. Uh, where you get summer rain. Joey Santore's path to becoming an unlikely YouTube star really is one of the most winding journeys you could imagine. The 23-minute videoreleased the week before the murals revealis the work of a tattooed, foulmouthed Chicago transplant who for the past few years has been quietly greening up Oakland. I'm not trying to harass you. I wasnt going to be able to make it there that day, so I figured I would take it Monday. Possibilities opened up. I think the video obviously it got a lot of hits I think it touched people in different ways. Like the most unofficial citizen scientist possibly you could think of is now one of the researchers,being noted on the, the government paper of record on this stuff. Earlier this month, WTTW Channel 11 profiled him (using the name Joey Santore) and though he does have a noticeable Chicago accent, it's not nearly as heavy as what you hear in his nature. Santore: And then I realized, I didn't know anything about the country I lived in and it was a big ass country, so why not travel? But as he told Jesse Will while they traveled around South Texas, once he hit his teen years he tended to get into trouble. Okay. Then, in 2012, he officially appropriated space in the park for rare trees, including Baker, Tecate, Santa Cruz, and Guadalupe cypresses, along with lodgepole pines, coast (aka California) evergreen live oaks, and incense cedars. It's just, there's something so inherently beautiful about that. Larsen: Joey made "Guide to Illegal Tree Planting" when he was living in Oakland, California, where a project to enhance the extra-wide median of parkway left him a bit uninspired. Chicago magazine newsletters have you covered. Santore: I thought you was a gopher snake at first. The Thick Chicago Accent Guy Addresses the Sad Fate of the Coyote Pup From the Video. But he also had this aside at the time, that was like, I get it, yeah of course you had to pitch the psychedelic angle. He's just borrowing. Hi, I'm Joey Santore, plant lover, botanist, and working class mook. it's still there. A knowledge of the relationships between living things and how we have all evolved to survive over time is a coping mechanism and a glimmer of hope in the age of increasingly dire predictions about the progress and effects of climate change. To see this whole thing being paraded around as a cute clickbait video kind of bummed me out. Larsen: And so, an ex-punk, former-train-hopper-turned-engineer who doesn't have a college degree is getting hundreds of thousands of people excited about botany using just a camera and his voice. Grew these both from seed. If it gets people to hate coyotes a little less and not demonize them, I'm down with it. It's an idea of the bigger picture, you know, instead of this human myopia, where I'm just I'm just concerned about, I view everything through the lens of my own life. Subscribe to one or more of our free e-mail newsletters to get instant updates on local news, events, and opportunities in Chicago. This plant has adapted to lie dormant in its underground rhizome for years until conditions are right. He started growing rare conifers from seed. You can follow Joey Santore on his YouTube channel, Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't, or on his instagram and podcast of the same name. The YouTube field botany videos came along later, when he realized that much of the habitat he was enhancing, and in some cases creating, merited documentation before it disappeared to make way for a futureless car-slum, as he puts it. She also warns that rehabilitating a lone coyote pup is a particularly complicated venture. Guerrilla gardener Joey Santore has planted more than 300 trees, encouraging a new appreciation of our habitatand one another. Santore, who hails from West Oakland, is YouTube's botany- and profanity-loving phenom by Robert Langellier July 11, 2022 Share This: Botanist Joey Santore. Makes the turd of, uh, uh, life in modern society easier through a swallow, helps it go down easier. He tried going to college, but while he enjoyed learning, it seemed like a waste of time and money since he didn't yet know what he wanted to do. Take it easy, buddy. My work has appeared in newsprint, magazines, websites, and the missed connections section of Craigslist, where I write personalized notes to drivers who cut me off in traffic. Shh, its ok. Im not gonna f with you. Listen to me. Add to that the threat of invasive buffelgrass, which is fast outcompeting this important little weed. It's a real weird cross section of people that are watching this stuff, it's like people that are propagating weed and they got like maybe a little bit more interested in plants than just weed, you know, they want to know more about it. Along his routes, he would stop at libraries and gain free access to academic papers with the help of pirate websites. You got a Tecate Cyprus, a Santa Cruz Cyprus, and a Guadalupe Cyprus. As his online handle suggests, botany doesnt cover the bills. And that's why he's lovingly bullying it out of the road, just like he did that rattlesnake. A lot of people [who] find that YouTube page seem really upset to find out that Elwood Blues is not really a botanist. That's just my personal take. He is diversity. Santore: The way my mind works, I just obsessed on fix that on something I probably got fucking add or some sort of neurological disorder, you know, that at one point served our species of evolutionary benefit. If there's one thing philosophically learning about natural sciences has done for me, it's to tell me that it's all going to be okay." Joey Santore I realize maybe I shouldnt have done that because it probably stressed it out, but again this thing was covered in parasites, he says. So maybe it'll be okay. Everything I know (about nature and botany) I basically learned myself, he said. So they kind of enter this wormhole that's talking about a whole universe, of natural life. All Rights Reserved. I got like 120 Facebook friend requests from middle-aged white ladies in Iowa. You're ob-, obviously a NorPac. Santore: So I found this astronomy textbook and then was reading it on a train once. Consider this your heads-up that there are going to be quite a few curse words in this episode. Jesse Will interviewed Joey Santore. All English Franais. He admits to being borderline contemptuous of maples and rosebushes. I guess I view all those videos as kind of a long-running piece of sketch comedy. I associate them with a place to like get away from people and, kind of open air playground. He has rather unexpectedly earned a bit of internet fame due to his passion for a far less adrenaline-inducing subject: plants. I obviously don't talk like that in real life I got an accent, but I don't talk like that. [laughs] And I had a pang of regret. And conditions are tough here, and getting tougher: high heat, poor soil, little rain. The Field Museum is great too. I kind of joke humans have like the king might've shit touch, you know, everywhere we go, even if the intent is good, there's enough of us. Personal Quotes (3) I just want people to take a closer look at the nonhuman world and ask more questions. Plants, Redwing boots, dogs. but I think there's other things happening there it's like in this time that we're in, which is like pretty, anti-science he's getting across these scientific ideas by not sounding like he's shouting at you from the ivory tower, right? If you like what we do here, please support our work on an ongoing basis. "I'm stuffing envelopes proper now," he advised me from his house in West Oakland. That's just the funny accent. I, of course, would let my common sense and care for an animal in need override their recommendation if it happened again, but I understand why they have to say that.. Well, first off, I'm not really trying to create YouTube fluff. I bet a bunch of illegal tree planting. A few months ago, Outside dispatched Jesse Will to tag along with Joey on a field trip to the backroads of South Texas. My yard now looks a little different from the neighbors next thing you know, it's going to be all milkweed. Come along. Join Outside+ to get Outside magazine, access to exclusive content, 1,000s of training plans, and more. He was kicked out of military school and got into graffiti and the punk scene. Per the sponsoring organization, a rendering of the Swedish teen as big as Washingtons face on Mount Rushmore is an effective way to honor and amplify a message of environmental stewardship for a warming planet. It's kind of funny. The Landscape Architecture Podcast. Over the course of 13 years with Union Pacific, he worked his way up to an engineer, reading about the latest updates in the field of botany whenever he could. Larsen: I first learned about Joey a few years ago, in a video titled "Guide to Illegal Tree Planting," which was sent my way by a friend familiar with my affinity for both botany and what's known as "guerilla gardening." So a lot of them just kind of look like shit, right. A few years ago I wrote about the Chicago accent and its near total disappearance from TV and film, though you can still reliably hear it on the radio: WXRTs Marty Lennartz has been doing his Going to the Show with a Regular Guy movie reviews since 1984; like Santore, he has a Chicago accent but its not nearly as thick as the one he uses in character. This is journalist Jesse Will, who profiled Joey for Outside Online. I just don't think what you're doing is safe behavior. We're, we're keeping it civil. I've had everyone from teenagers to suburban dads tell me, Hey, I saw your page. So a lot of them just kind of look like shit, right. When it comes to wildlife rehabilitation for coyotes, its extremely challenging for coyote pups, she says. Allying with Nature to Regenerate our Living Planet, Perhaps our favorite botanist to watch and learn from, Joey Santore offers us a bit of a different spin on the world of botany with his informative and hilarious (often PG-13) YouTube channel. And that's why he's lovingly bullying it out of the road, just like he did that rattlesnake. As a fellow phyto-obsessive personality, Joey is dedicating most of his spare time to not only understanding plant diversity but also sharing his passion for botany with the world. Add to that the threat of invasive buffelgrass, which is fast outcompeting this important little weed. I try to always encourage people to download Wikipedia andiNaturalistonto their phones as a resource. The Tribune did confirm his identity in a public records search but agreed not to reveal it. It makes the nausea a little bit easier to deal with. There's another one just coming up right in the middle of the road, it's a goddamned big prostrata. As Jesse points out, what makes Joey's videos different from so many of the strangely popular educational personalities found on YouTube, is that we rarely see much of Joey himself. So I said, fuck it, I'm just gonna be who I am. I don't know why. Listen to me. No, it's not like that. Who is the man behind an accent more commonly associated with a Chicago firehouse than an open expanse of mountains and grassland? Meanwhile, across the bay, Tony Santoros Guide to Illegal Tree-Planting debuted. Asclepius prostrata, the prostrate milkweed. As it happens, the particular species of milkweed that Joey wants to find here in South Texas is especially rare. And this is a problem. Got a tip? He would print out papers to read during downtime on the trains. Theophrastus, a Greek philosopher who first studied with Plato and then became a disciple But if it gives me a chance to get more people excited about botany and plants and viewing the world outside of this depressing human infrastructure in society that I think is killing so many of us slowly, then I guess its good then I guess the clickbait coyote video served a purpose and its all part of my grandiose plan to get more people interested in science and ecology and I guess, this sounds corny, the natural world in general.. She was really sick, I could tell. It makes life a lot more interesting. It's totally fascinating stuff, man. Theyre normally crepuscular or theyre out at night.". "I liked trees originally because they are so big. Real banger right there. You have to reach almost a critical mass, like a minimum number of coyote pups of similar age in a rehab situation to rear so that way theyre positioned for success when you release. Right now Im in Sonora, Arizona. Sorry. He didnt grow up in a traditional way and has not had the traditional jobs that bring you into this field. What drew you to making videos about botany? Jesse Will: Basically he stole the scooter or somebody handed him the scooter and that's your intro to the whole video, which just seems like appropriate. In addition we have many gardens here that are maintaining endangered plant species, especially Lotusland. Warning: The video above contains graphic language. He undoubtedly spurred people who'd never heard about milkweed to give a damn about the plant. Learn more about all the fun to be had across the state at visitmississippi.org. it's still there. Check out our Patreon page for more info. I would rather hear science communication spoken to me from someone like that, than from the super-vanilla, watered down NPR voice that you normally hear.. However, the downtime has allowed him to post more videos about botanizing the Bay Area. If you want to take a look at what I've been up to more seriously, check out my resume. All right. We dont value plants, we dont value habitat, often we dont value each other. And then I realized, I didn't know anything about the country I lived in and it was a big ass country, so why not travel? And then, uh, of course these are a couple of mine as well. Special interests: Conifers of California, Conifers of Cupressaceae, California Native Cypresses, Arctostaphylos. You can hit the Explore button [iniNaturalist] and see what grows around you and then just start learning plants by family and genus, which is how they're all grouped together. Tony Santoro is the online alias of West Oakland resident Joey Santore, whose YouTube channel Crime Pays but Botany Doesnt is a rebuff to conventional nature documentaries. You like the fuzzy stem. And despite his cynical-seeming exterior, Joey finds beauty in all of this, too. Every time it feels like an apocalyptic story with this plant. Right. That's a Crotalus Organus NorPac. He says that working as a freight train operator rather than spending his time in school has allowed him to pursue that passion. Well, hopefully people will hear this and, you know, chase down this stuff. This blend of well-informed science, minor lawbreaking, and humorous rants about the ills of society is what draws people to Joey's YouTube channel, as well as his Instagram account, and his podcast. Theres so many different wildlife disease concerns that have significant overlap with human health impact.. Larsen: And they did find some. The biggest population of it keeps repeatedly getting cleared by a well-intended, albeit somewhat oblivious, road grader. Joey travels around the world and takes you on plant walks, with "colorful" commentary. And so, an ex-punk, former-train-hopper-turned-engineer who doesn't have a college degree is getting hundreds of thousands of people excited about botany using just a camera and his voice. His appeal is all about sounding nothing like the stereotypical botanist. I have a friend that works at a wildlife rehab, and she told me it was good to keep it in a quiet, calm place, so I kept it in the basement. Guerrilla gardener Joey Santore has planted more than 300 trees, encouraging a new appreciation of our habitatand one another. Okay. I love getting people excited about these things I've seen. And they did find some. This episode was brought to you by Mississippi, a wonderland for outdoor adventurers. Behind the camera, the 39-year-old doesn't dress the part of your typical field scientist, instead opting for Oxfords, carpenter jeans, and a baseball cap. And this is a problem. But then Monday when I woke up and was about to head back down south and take her to the wildlife rehab, she had already passed that night., Santore says that although the coyotes death wasnt entirely unexpected, it still hit him hard. Will: It's the oldest psychedelic substance known to man. 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