Episode 001: Quincy’s Annie Dow Helps Us Kick Off the Podcast!

Annie Dow, a proud Quincy native is a member of the Karson & Kennedy Show on Mix 104.1. She spends her mornings giving the people of Boston the traffic reports, sharing stories about her life, and talking about the latest celeb gossip. She started her radio journey down in St. Augustine, Florida at Flagler College, and has been in love with radio ever since. Annie is a born and bred Quincy girl. You can find her at the local Quincy dive bars, or running Wolly Beach.

In This Episode Annie Shares

• Her Favorite Thing About Quincy
• What Makes Quincy So Special
• How She wound up doing Mornings on Mix through Another Quincy Connection
• Her favorite Hangouts
• The Green Pylons on Quarry Street
• And Much More!

Speaker 1: From the city of presidents, it’s the all about Quincy podcast. This is your host, John Melley. Join me as we explore the history, hidden gems and highlight the businesses with great stories that all tell the tale why Quincy, Massachusetts is a great place to live. Hey, there it’s John, how are you? Thanks for spending some time with me today. I do appreciate it. This is the first episode of the all about Quincy podcast. So let me tell you a little about why

Speaker 2: I decided to do this podcast. I have been in Boston radio for 27 years. If you’ve listened to Boston radio at all, you have more than likely heard me. Voice commercials starting with, Oldies 103.3 way back in the day in the nineties. and then moving to Mix 98.5, which became Mix 104.1 I’ve been on WBZ,AM sports hub magic 106.7BIG 103.3 AMP 103.3, all of those stations for many, many years. And the pandemic hit a little over a year ago and I have been working from home and I have to tell you, the reason I live in Quincy now is I’m married to someone who grew up in Quincy. I also have a couple of dogs, Zoe, the wonder dog and Quinn the Jackabee, a Jack Russell beagle mix and Quinn is short for Quincy Adams.

Speaker 2: I’ll have, you know, there are a lot of fun and you can usually find me up in Faxon park in the mornings with both of the dogs. but at any rate I was walking around the neighborhood with the dogs and all of these stores were closed. All these restaurants and barbershops and nail salons and hair salons, and you name it, everything was shut down. I don’t need to tell you. We all lived it. And I come from a small family business background. I’m very involved in advertising. I said, you know what Quincy is a cool city. I’ve gotten to know it because I’m a big history buff. And we are the birthplace of two former us presidents, John Adams, and John Quincy Adams, and Quincy. Center’s a really cool place. And I thought, you know what I’m going to take my love of history, my business background and my marketing background and my love of podcasting.

Speaker 2: And I’m going to put this altogether for the city of Quincy. So that’s what the all about Quincy podcast is about. It’s about exploring the neat history that we have in this city from obviously the revolutionary war, the granite, the Navy ship yards, the first railroad, all of that stuff is here in Quincy, but we also have such a variety of businesses here. And so I wanted to explore all of that and I want to share this with you. And so I kind of took the easy way out for my very first episode. And my first guest is someone who I work with, but is also a Quincy native. And that is Annie Dow. Annie Dow grew up in Quincy. She loves Quincy. And that’s one of the reasons why I had her on is that the people that I know who are originally from Quincy, they are passionate about Quincy.

Speaker 2: And so let’s, jump on over to my conversation with Annie Dow. And I’ll talk to you a little bit at the very end,

Speaker 2: Annie Dow. You are the first guest ever to the all about Quincy podcast. And I have to say, Annie and I have worked, how long have we worked together Annie Three years, three years. Three years. Yeah. So, and one thing that, you know, created this bond between Annie and, and me instantly was the fact that I live in Quincy. Yeah. And there’s one thing that I’ve learned because my I’m in Quincy now because my wife is a Quincy gal. She’s an OJ she’s O G and she’s like a fourth generation Quincy resident. And I used to work with another woman who grew up in Quincy. And there’s one thing that is common amongst all three of you, women about Quincy is that you’re very proud of being from Quincy. And you’re very proud of Quincy in general.

Speaker 3: Yeah, I don’t, I don’t know what it is. I don’t know why. Cause everybody says this to me. You know, when I started working at mix there’s people from the North shore, the transplants, there’s all these kinds of people. And I think just growing up here, it’s such a community like your wife, fourth-generation you hear that all the time. You’re once you, once you’re Quincy, you’re Quincy for life. You know, my, my parents both went to Quincy public schools. Well, my mom went to Archie’s for high school. We, we forgive her for that. But so, you know, they chose to raise their three children in Quincy, all my dad’s brothers and sisters, they still have that Quincy pride, just, you can feel it and equal. And I think there’s just something to be said for the city. We have everything here, everything

Speaker 2: There’s an awful lot. And if it’s not right within the city limits, it’s within an arm’s length. Right.

Speaker 3: And just like, just speaking from experience, because I think a lot of people, when they look for where they want to settle down, you look for what’s in the community. You look for the schools, you look for the restaurants, you look for the park department, all of kinds of things. And I can’t say enough about the city of Quincy. I don’t think I would be who I am if I didn’t grow up here.

Speaker 2: Yeah. No, that makes sense. That makes sense. What are some of your favorite things about Quincy

Speaker 3: So my absolute favorite thing is the Quincy rec department. and I don’t know if a lot of people know this, but Quincy actually has an amazing rec department where every single park around the city, when you’re a kid in the summer, they basically have a free summer camp. So they set up a couple of different leaders at each park, depending on how many kids there are. So when I was growing up in Squantum, there was three rec leaders down the park and you go and you, your parents sign you up. And there’s 50 kids down the park, you’re playing four square or you’re playing Dodge ball, there’s arts and crafts. They do field trips, all of these amazing things. And it’s free there’s options in the rec department where you can do like a basketball camp or other sports or stuff like that. But I think just having that at all of these parks around the city, to give these kids an opportunity to you, make friends for life, you can start when you’re eight years old and you can do that. And for parents to not have to break the bank on summer camps, it’s right in their backyard.

Speaker 2: Yeah. That’s, that’s nice. I didn’t, I wasn’t aware of that, but also just seeing kids outside, playing rather than watching videos, playing video games and being inside, surfing the web and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 3: I was just driving home today. And, the middle school central had a half day and there was like kids walking home, like pushing each other. And I was like, nature is healing. This is what we do.

Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. You know, I mean, that was one of the saddest things with the COVID pandemic was last spring. They had just put in a new playground near my house and they had to tape it all off and they couldn’t let the kids play. And then they put trash bags over the basketball hoops. I couldn’t, I mean, there was zip time and nuts. Yeah. And I was thinking, Oh, you can’t even do that. I mean, it’s no wonder that people were going crazy and things got as nuts as they did because there was literally no outlet. There was no, I mean, unless you could, I go up to facts and a lot with the dogs. And that was nice to me, thank God for that. But, you go out and walk and stuff like that, but that was the saddest thing to see that all taped off and the kids would come along and want to get on the swings, but they were tied up and they couldn’t do that.

Speaker 2: And then they finally let people into the park and they had parked monitors and these young women who work for the park department and they beat a path around the park is one of them just walked and did lapse to keep herself occupied through the thing. I think there’s still like a, you know, how like a path, whereas in it it’s say it was a divot that goes the length of the bark, but to see that open up and all that, that was, that was really nice. The rec department. So that’s cool. I wouldn’t have expected you to say that, you know what I thought you were going to say restaurants. So you and I always talk about restaurants when we were at the station together, by the way, I don’t know if we said this up front, but Andy and I worked together at mix one Oh four one and Annie is you’re on the morning show and you do the traffic with Carson, right

Speaker 3: I do. And, yeah, it, you know, working at the radio station has been such a blast. Unfortunately, I don’t get to see Melly in person yet. It’s almost better because I would go down to Molly’s office and we’d talk about something. And I would look at my watch and it would be an hour later. So

Speaker 2: We jokingly said, we’d, we’d spend like an hour working on like two, 10, second scripts, but we were just tossing around and we would riff on a theme

Speaker 3: So the park department, I think was just so important to me as a kid. Cause that’s how I grew up. But being an adult in Quincy, and now I’m living kind of more near Quincy center where I can walk through all of these things, the restaurants in Quincy, you have something for everyone, you have Italian, you have good bars, you have such good Asian food. Like there’s just some, whatever you’re in the mood for. They have it.

Speaker 2: Yeah. They do. The thing is a reason I bring it up is the, Annie was always busting my chops about how come you haven’t been to such a place. How come you haven’t been there How can you I’m like, I don’t know. I think part of it is that I would spend so much time in traffic going to work and then coming home that by the time I got finished at home, the idea of like, you know, and I have dogs, I gotta walk and all that kind of stuff. And by the time I get done with that,

Speaker 3: And you’re really good about you make your own food, you’re very aware of, you know, your gut health. You’re very aware of what you put into your body, which I love talking to you about that kind of stuff too. But unlike Nelly, if you live in Quincy. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Oh, of course. Yeah. I mean, you know, and we have, we really didn’t obviously with the pandemic going on. Cause we couldn’t. But now that that’s things are starting to open up or they have open governors. Got it. So as it can be at full capacity now, right.

Speaker 3: August 1st, everything will open up, but no restaurants. Yes. Restaurants. Yeah. Yep.

Speaker 2: At any rate. so restaurants, rec department, we’ve got two RS, anything in the B category for Quincy or better yet Q I’m kidding. I’m kidding. With a queue.

Speaker 3: You know what I will say though, please Quincy wants to know when I was a kid Quincy center, wasn’t the best spot. it was a little rough around the edges and seeing what the city has done, you know, rebuilding the center with the fountain right around city hall. It’s beautiful down the walk. It’s so nice. They keep, they keep it so clean. And they’re putting all new restaurants in there as well, which has kind of been wild for me. So there used to be this really divey bar that we used to go to called clash of the Ash and they shut down and we were all devastated when they closed. We were like, nothing will ever be the same. And so they just made it into this new bar called Idle Hour. And I was kind of being like, we can’t go in there. It’s not the same. I don’t know. I don’t know how I’m going to feel about it. I’ll tell you. I went in there. It was awesome. The service was awesome. It was beautiful. It was, it’s so weird to see a place that you knew as one thing completely transformed into another, but it was awesome. And it’s so cool to see the city kind of revamping to in a way.

Speaker 2: Yeah. So shout out to the idle hour. It must be 21 or older just to keep it legal.

Speaker 3: Hey, I’m like mostly buys mostly bars that I go to.

Speaker 2: No, that’s fun. That’s fun. the heck was I going to say what Quincy center Quincy center. Oh, I know what I wanted to ask you. And this is on topic on some of the Facebook groups on Quincy. Have you seen quarry street with the green pylons up and down quarries

Speaker 3: Oh yes. We’re the new bike lanes are. Yes. What do you think

Speaker 2: I don’t like them.

Speaker 3: I don’t really understand. So I get the bike lanes and for bike safety, but I just don’t see how that’s necessary

Speaker 2: All the way up. It’s only on the way, you know, it’s only on wonder one side of the Hill. It’s weird. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bike on quarry street. No. and I, I know they want to protect it. My biggest question is two things. I think they’re probably removable so that when the snow comes, the plows aren’t slaloming through the violence. But the other question is what happens if like an ambulance or a firetruck or a police vehicle needs to get by You can’t pull over to the right. Not safely. I just, I think that could be a problem. I don’t know.

Speaker 3: I don’t understand it either because the bike lanes that they put in are big. I mean, I run that route all the time and I try not to step in. I mean, obviously if I’m going to, I look and see if there’s a bike coming, but I try not to step into that bike lane, but it’s huge. Yeah. A bike, a cyclist would have more than enough room and like that road’s pretty wide anyways. A car’s not,

Speaker 2: I’m just waiting for the time and I’m going to plant this and then somebody is going to say, you should never have said this, but I’m just waiting for some kid on us, a skateboard to start going in and out of them for the challenge, they probably already have, you know, whatever. I don’t know. There seems to be a lot of discussion about the green pylons on quarry street. So I just thought I’d

Speaker 3: Some of those Facebook groups, people just have too much time. Wow.

Speaker 2: I think Facebook is and social media. I call it anti-social media. It’s way too easy to, for people to get nasty, really fast

Speaker 3: Melley. Do you know that there’s a skate park in Quincy over by a Goodwill Yeah. By a Quincy point. So if you’re going towards like frozen Freddy’s or Rag’s or any of those places, awesome skate park. There’s kids there all the time. I always wish I was a skateboarder. Every time I walked by, I’m like, I wish I was them.

Speaker 2: Now I’m going to reveal my ignorance. Quincy point. Is that’s over by, Southern Artery

Speaker 3: Yeah. So if you’re going towards the Fore River bridge,

Speaker 2: Yeah. I drive by that because I go to the Pet Supplies Plus little plug for pet supplies, plus I’m there all the time with the, for stuff for the dogs and true. and Goodwill almost said true value. What is a true value True value hardware store. They’re not so big around here, ACE. Curry ACE hardware. There’s a shout out for Curry ACE hardware all free, but this is all about Quincy. So, anyway, what else, what else do you love about Quincy

Speaker 3: I really love and for like, I’m just keep going back to my experience. But when I went, I went to school in Florida. And when I came back, you go through this really weird period where you’re come home from college where you kind of feel like an alien and you don’t exactly know where you fit in or what you’re going to do with your life. It’s just this weird transition period. And everything kind of feels upside down. The only reason that I felt somewhat okay is because I was in Quincy and because I still have so many of my friends here, I still have so much of my family here. There’s still, you can still, so growing up in Squantum there’s this little Italian deli and I can still walk in and Carmen who owns it, he greets me. Like I never left. It’s those little things, those little interactions with people around Quincy that I think make the city what it is.

Speaker 2: Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s kind of like a small town, but it’s still a city. Yeah. I mean, it was about a hundred thousand people

Speaker 3: And you don’t realize it until you’re here, but to get from one side of Quincy till the other can take you 20, 25 minutes sometimes.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And you know, and then we got the blue Hills and the ocean, you know, on either side of it. So it does have quite a bit, people want to know how did the whole morning show adventure for Annie Dow happen

Speaker 3: Okay. Actually, this is because of someone from Quincy. Cool. All roads lead to Quincy. There you go. So I went to North Quincy high school, proud Raider. I was the captain of the girl’s basketball team, my senior year. And I got asked to go on the public access television show, which is QA TV. And it was just like a round table discussion, whatever nice conversation move on with my day. I’m at lunch probably a week later. And this guy comes up to me. He says, I saw you on QI, QA TV. You’re really great in front of a camera. You’re really great at controlling your conversation. Have you ever been interested in anything in the industry, specifically radio And I was like, actually I am, I think I’m going to do radio in college. And he was like, great. Keep in touch, Rick Radzik from 95. I go down.

Speaker 2: Well, another proud Quincy man. Yes.

Speaker 3: I, I go down to school in Florida. I do my school’s radio station fell in love with it. And when I got back, I was sending him some of my tapes and cause I originally really wants to do sports radio, big Boston sports girl, whatever. And so I was sending him my tapes and he actually took me for a tour around the station when I came back from school and he was like, let me introduce you to someone. And he introduced me to Mike Mullaney, who is the music director for Mix 104.1. And he was like, someone about you. I like you. And so they hired me. I was doing overnights. So I was doing the street team. I was doing kind of whatever job they needed me to do at the station. I was,

Speaker 2: I remember seeing you around the station. I think I remember seeing you at a Mix-Fest once backstage.

Speaker 3: I was everywhere. And so I continued to do that. I did a couple events with Karson and Kennedy and got to talking with them. And one of the girls that was on the morning show, she got a job in Baltimore and they were looking to fill a position and they were like, would you like to try out Karson was like, this girl’s crazy. I’ve worked events with her. She needs to try out. So I auditioned for the role. I spent two weeks with them, I think auditioning and I just never left.

Speaker 2: That’s great. That’s great. You definitely, have a knack for it. And I think one of the first events you did shortly after you went full or got the full-time gig, was that what the Steve Perry and the Erin O’Malley interview

Speaker 3: Event was amazing. That was very helpful to me. That was one of my favorite moments.

Speaker 2: We’re talking about Steve Perry from the band Journey,

Speaker 3: Erin, who was recovering from breast cancer. and we just had this amazing event and Steve ended up donating a crap ton of money, like $50,000 or something. And he was the most gracious kind man. He was, it looked like him and Aaron were old pals up there. And obviously, I mean, I didn’t grow up with Johnny. I didn’t have as big of a connection, but watching Kennedy was bawling her eyes out when she saw him watching, it was, it was a really, really magical event.

Speaker 2: It was, I mean, they were, you know, so, you know, older, you know, that I’m in my fifties and their big breakout hit album, the escape album with don’t stop believing and who’s crying now and keep on running and all these big, songs that came off, that album that came out in 1981. And where was I in 1981? I think I was in high school, freshmen in high school in 1981. So that, you know, your high school year has really formed a lot of your music interests and they were huge in the eighties. And, to be able to meet a musician that you enjoyed listening to for so many years, I can remember the first time I heard that song. I was in my cousin’s bedroom and he had this killer stereo system with, a turret. My I’ve got my turntable and cassette player and receiver over there on the Y I cannot get rid of them, but is to hear that song for the first time. And you just like, I like this song, this is a cool song. And it’s a simple song, but it’s like the number one download. So for folks, our age to get to meet Steve Perry after he’d been away for so long with such a big deal. So what, how did that all evolve for you I mean, did they just say, Hey, you’re going to do the Q and a or because you were up on the stage for a little bit worried.

Speaker 3: Oh, I be doing fan questions. I thought about that good memory. Yeah. I think because Kennedy was so shaken up because it was Steve Perry, she’s obsessed with journey. I think they were like, Annie, go out there with her. And I was like, okay, sure. Oh, fun. Okay. Yeah. And, but again, like watching people react to Steve in that moment, similar to what you were just saying was so cool for me. Yeah. And I got to have one of those experiences actually during quarantine. you know, the real silver lining was because these artists weren’t touring, they were available for interviews. And I got a chance to interview Miley Cyrus and Miley Cyrus is like my Steve Perry. Like she, I grew up, she was on the Disney channel show, Hannah Montana. And that’s like, what I grew up on. And I just, I remember those albums. I, I was speechless. I saw her speechless, which if you know me, I’m,

Speaker 2: That’s gotta, that’s doing something I know. I know. Well, you’ve been very generous with your time. Is there anything you want to say I mean, do you feel like I’m giving you the bum’s rush right now Get out of my studio,

Speaker 3: Melley. I need you to try at least five new restaurants in Quincy. Oh, that’s okay. We can do that. Okay.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I don’t want this to turn into the Phantom gourmet because they’ve got that Wrapped up.

Speaker 3: Well, yeah, but we could do Melley’s Phantom gourmet. That’s what I really want to hear.

Speaker 2: Melley’s Menu always use a little alliteration. That’s what I say.

Speaker 3: So I am part of the Karson and Kennedy program,

Speaker 2: Funny story about Karson and Kennedy. The first week they were on the air with mics, they had just replaced Lander John Lander in the Lander in the morning and that anyway on ZLX was Carlson and Mackenzie. Yes. And so I did something. It was their first thing. And I didn’t even realize it until the next day when Kennedy said something, but I said Carlson and Kennedy, because I was used to saying Carlson and Mackenzie join Carlson and Kennedy for something. I think Oprah Winfrey was doing her soups because what Kennedy said the next day was like, she said, we were going to say, Hey, could we have some sloop Because I had put an “L” in Karson’s name. She says, well, we didn’t want to do that because we don’t want to upset you. I said, okay.

Speaker 3: Oh, you totally should have done it a little laugh my head off. Sorry. I did. Oh, that’s amazing. That is amazing.

Speaker 2: Carlson and Kennedy …. uhh, wrong station. John.

Speaker 3: Wow.

Speaker 2: Karson and Kennedy Karson with a K anyway. All right. Well, Annie Dow one last thing you want to say about Quincy -Quinky?

Speaker 3: There is no greater city on the earth in Quincy, Massachusetts. We are the birthplace of Dunkin donuts. I might even say where the birth place of the revolution.

Speaker 2: Well, I was going to say we are the birthplace for John Adams and John Quincy Adams, which is like our

Speaker 3: Whole nation

Speaker 2: Is our whole reason for being, Quincy, Quinsy. You can always tell when somebody is not from Massachusetts Quinsy, that’s in Illinois and they copied us.

Speaker 3: He went Z Y that’s how you should say it.

Speaker 2: Q, N Z Y Quincy. All right. Well, Annie, this is the first episode of what I hope to be many episodes. So I will let you know when this is published, share with all your Quincy friends, let’s generate some buzz, some Quincy, and, we’ll have fun. Thanks for doing this. I really appreciate it. I know you’re busy. You’ve got a, an appearance. I’m getting my hair done. Oh, that is my appearance appearances. You’re going to do an appearance for an appearance. So your appearance is apparent or your appearance is appealing. That’s better. Yeah. That’s better. All right. Well, I hope everybody’s been able to put up with this witty banter between the two of us and, and if you’re listening and you want some, you got ideas for guests or, Oh, who should I interview on the show Hmm. That’s a good question. We’ll put them on the spot. Go ahead. And let’s say one of my roommates is on the planning committee for the city. He might be interesting. Who’s you Who’s on the planning committee. My roommate joking. He’s the best joking. Maybe we’ll have him on. All right. You said he knows everything about the city. What we should do that it’s all about Quincy. That’s what, this is all about. Talking to interesting people that make up this little municipality.

Speaker 1: Beautiful Quincy, Massachusetts. Here’s beautiful row. All right, Annie. Thank you, Mel. You are so welcome. Whatever you need. I appreciate it. I’ll talk to you soon. Yeah. I’ll bring you a copy soon. Darn well better. Well, I hope you enjoyed this first episode of the Oliver Quincy podcast. If you, or you know, someone who would be a great guest for the podcast, a great business, a great historian, a great person in the community, the unsung heroes of Quincy. We want to know about it. So how do you get in touch You go to all about Quincy podcast.com. You click on the guest suggestion box, enter your name and email address and who you think should be a guest on the show and why. And we will try to make that happen. So thanks for listening to the alibi Quincy podcast. Please share it with your friends who were originally from Quincy. Like it, give us a review. That’ll help get us up to the top of the list and the podcasts and the search engines and all of that. So thanks for listening. And I’ll talk to you real soon. Take care.

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