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Emily Knapton

Mark6AML1025_2024-10-25-06-48-43

Well, we made it to Friday time for Main Street, Connecticut when we head to our local cities and towns to showcase all they have to offer. Well, today we're in Bridgeport News. 12 Connecticut's Mark Sudal is at Crown Cafe this morning. What are you playing a little cards there? Mark, uh, you know, Becky, you know, you're not having a good day when you can't even win it solitaire. I mean, come on. Uh, oh, well, I'll get back to this a little bit. Hey, I'd like to introduce the man behind it all here. Craig nio. Thank you so much for being with us this morning. Thank you, Craig and his brother have run this place for the last six years or so. And, uh, you know, one of the things that, that made us laugh when we came in, there's a sign out front here that says best damn coffee in Bridgeport, which you got your own bl Right. Yes, I do. Yeah. Came out, um, take care of, um, we got, uh, our own blend of, of regular coffee and decaf and we got espressos and, uh, we do pretty good. People are liking the taste of the coffee here. And we got pastries and all that kind of good and sweet stuff for them and muffins for the mornings if they want to heat it up and a little butter on them. And, uh, then we got the sandwiches, egg sandwiches and all that kind of stuff. And you got a great little cafe set up here. You said you get a lot, a lot of students, I guess. Sacred heart UB, they all come down here to do their studying or they grab their breakfast or coffees, iced coffees or the girls love the ice coffees, you know, with a little flavor in them. Um, what else? Um, and of course you make a lot of your own stuff too. I mean, tell me about some of your soups. Now we got the clam, the new England clam chowder make that up last week. I think it was, uh, the noodle, the chicken noodle vegetable soups go good here. So even in the summertime, believe it or not, you'll have to get a little New England clam chowder for the road. I guess you got the, uh, you got the usual, the Cubanos. We, we make a Cubano here. We make a, um, we got pork cat and my brother Rosa, uh, the, the, the bat and he seasons it up and cooked it and then, you know, that's how you make your Cubano or, or, uh, other things. We got, uh, Rubens Craig. Thank you so much for, uh, for your time. You got a great spot here in Bridgeport, right on Madison Avenue, Becky. Come check it out. Uh, in our next hour we're gonna have a visit with the Bridgeport Islanders. Yeah, season started once again. All right, Mark, thanks. Looks like there's a lot of nice offerings there. That's great.

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Mark7AML1025_2024-10-25-07-16-58

Ok. It's Friday and it's time for Main Street, Connecticut when we go to our local cities and towns to showcase what they have to offer today. We're in Bridgeport News 12, Connecticut's Mark. Sudal is at Total Mortgage Arena this morning. He's got more for us. Mark. Good morning, Becky. Yeah, the Bridgeport Islanders are the big ticket in town and joining us this morning is Joe Dolan, uh, with the Islanders and their business operations. Thank you so much for being with us. Thanks for being here. He's got the hockey hair. He has spent a little time with the, the Philadelphia Flyers organization as well. And, uh, you know, we're just talking about, you know, some of the glamour, you know, of course, of, of this business, you know, the bus trips and everything else in the middle of nowhere, right? But, uh, you got a lot of, uh, you know, the season is, is still young yet. You got a lot of great events coming up. Tell me about what's going on. Yeah, for sure. So we started our season on October 12th. It was a great home opener. We're really excited. We've, we've rebranded to a new logo that's kind of a remix on an old New York Islanders logo. We've gotten a tremendous response from it so we're really excited about that. There's a new energy uh in our building with our events. Uh and we've got a lot of great promo nights coming up. We've got uh November 9th. We have Military Appreciation Night camo hat uh giveaway for the 1st 2000 fans. Um On the 20. uh also on the ninth, we have, uh hockey and hops pregame from 430 to 6. We have some local breweries come out some live music, so a really cool pre pregame event. Uh and then we have uh hockey fights cancer night on November tw 23rd. So a really important night for our community, uh our partners, uh really honoring, um you know, what's really important to us, which is our fan base and, and, and the people who, you know, deal with that disease, uh every day. So, for us, it's about honoring our community, welcoming people to all kinds of different things that we have going on here. Um You guys are gonna be hitting monster jam in a minute which we have in the arena today. Uh So the teams on the road this week, but we're, we're really excited. We're up and running. Our season is, is off and started. We've got some great new shows on sale. Uh So we're really excited and what's great about the Islanders and the league is, you know, these guys play a great style in hockey and, and there's a good chance you might see these guys move up to the big leagues. Right. Yeah. And we, we have some, we have some players on the team this year that, that were in the NHL last year. Uh, and, and we see that often where, where, where guys come up and down. So it's an exciting brand of hockey. It's an exciting team. Um, you know, they, they, they're hitting the ground running this year and, and I know that we're really excited about what they can do the ice and we're excited about the experience that we're gonna be able to provide to all of our fans off the ice as well. Joe, thank you so much for being with us. Thank you, Becky. Coming up in our next hour, we're going to be on the other side of this wall with some big monster trucks that are here this weekend. Oh, the kids are gonna be excited, Becky. Oh, I bet they are. This is gonna be fun. Thank you so much, Mark.

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Mark8AML1025B_2024-10-25-09-12-38

All right, we made it to Friday time for Main Street, Connecticut when we go to our local cities and towns to showcase what they have to offer today. We're in Bridgeport News. 12 Connecticut's Mark Sudal is the Total Mortgage Arena this morning. Oh, that's a big tire behind you there, Mark, that is a big, big truck monster jam coming to Total Mortgage Arena this weekend. He got five shows. In fact, this weekend we got tonight two on Saturday, two on Sunday. Tickets still available too. If you go to the to Total Mortgage Arena website, the guy is here. He's the driver. Tyler Meninga takes care of this baby right here. Grave digger. What's it like to drive this one? Huh? Yeah, it's a lot of fun. I don't know if I really take care of it necessarily, but no, man, we have a lot of fun out here at Monster Jam and I'm excited for this weekend. It's been, you know, I don't know, probably three or four years since I've been to Bridgeport. So excited to be back and see all the fans here this weekend. One of the cool things you do is this pit party. Tell us about that. Yeah, so Saturday and Sunday both from 1030 to noon. It will be a separate ticket from the ticket to the event. But uh, yeah, man, it's a lot of fun. All the kids and families, everybody can come down on the dirt, see the trucks get their pictures, autographs with the drivers and it's one of our favorite times to be able to connect with our fans. Yeah. What's it like to see their smiling face? It's awesome, man to see them, you know, see the truck on TV. And then come maybe for the first time and see it in real life, see them light up and you know, we're like real life superheroes to them. So it's really awesome. So as a kid, did you think you were going to be doing this there, man? I don't know, I just, I had a passion for motorsports growing up and, uh, you know, just loved anything. So, uh I had a big passion for monster trucks and off roading and all, all sorts of stuff like that and didn't really know what path I was gonna take until, you know, right after high school and ended up in a monster jam truck. So here we are about nine years later and uh it's been a blast now, I know it's complicated to get into this thing. But what's it like to drive, man? Honestly, it's not much crazier than driving. A vehicle on the road besides, you know, you're jumping like 60 ft in the air sometimes, you know. It just depends. But doing all the crazy stuff, you know, back flips, sky wheelies, everything, man. I love all the tricks and now you got these huge shocks too. Absolutely. Yeah, that, without those, we wouldn't be able to do like half the jumps, half the tricks that we do without, you know, being injured. We, uh, Monster Gym has the best safety equipment in the world. Uh, not only inside the truck but, you know, shocks outside the truck, taking care of everybody involved. Now, luckily you have, uh, what, like headsets on, right. So, I mean, because these, these babies get loud. Oh, yeah, I got a helmet and my crew chief Logan, he's, he's able to talk to me. I can talk back to him and it does, it muffle it muffles the sound a little bit in there. All right. Let's, let's hear what it sounds like. I mean, Becky, you're not gonna be able to hear me at all once this baby starts off and that was it. Wow. And, and I think I can still hear now. Becky. All right. So it's gonna be a fun event and a loud one too.

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News 12 is checking out all of the best spots in Bridgeport.

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