by Jeff Kramer
The Post-Standard (Syracuse, NY) - October 7, 2005
Until last week I'd never met Robert Congel, the visionary behind the world's largest unbuilt not-a-mall. That changed this past Wednesday when I entered his palatial headquarters at 1 Clinton Exchange bearing a gift -- two foam containers of deep-fried animal testicles.
What a door-opener.
What turned into my first-ever summit with the uber-developer was frank, friendly and unexpected. It included the following high-level exchange:
Congel: "Would you like one of my cookies?"
Me: "No thanks."
Congel: "Go ahead. Have one of my cookies. I had one of your testicles."
Some culinary context is in order.
For the past two decades, Riley's bar on Park Street has been hosting an October Testicle Festival because it can. Clientele are treated to complimentary sheep, steer and pig testicles. The chewy delicacies known as Rocky Mountain Oysters are served with ranch dressing or cocktail sauce. The consensus is they're "not bad." The sheep variety compare favorably to Chicken McNuggets in this critic's view.
"We play it pretty straight," Riley's proprietor Terry Riley told me. "They're testicles. They're free. If you want to buy a T-shirt, fine."
What's the connection to Destiny and Congel? In brief, I wanted to thank all the talented people busting their rears to create $60,000-a-year jobs for every man, woman and child in CNY. So I asked Riley's chef extraordinaire Brian Girard to fry up jumbo servings of sheep and steer testes. Then I rushed them to the gleaming Pyramid Mother Ship and handed out free samples.
People couldn't have been nicer. It was as if they'd been waiting their entire lives for someone to offer them deep- fried reproductive organs on a toothpick. Eventually, I ran into receptionist Linda Lewis, who politely told me to stop roaming the building but graciously allowed me to use her desk as an emergency testicle distribution center. That's where I spotted Bob.
"Excuse me, sir," I shouted as he headed up some stairs. "Would you like a testicle?"
Congel came down and helped himself to a delicious sheep testis. He liked it. He asked me if I had five minutes to talk about Destiny, so I grabbed a steer testis and followed him into a conference room.
During a 20-minute chat catered by a manservant, Congel stressed that CNY is a great place to raise a family, that America is a great country, that freedom of the press is a great thing (though he doesn't read the paper), that Mayor Matt Driscoll is a "great guy" who "ran a bar" but doesn't grasp the complexities of Destiny and that he could build Destiny anywhere in the country, but he wants to do it here to "give back" to the community.
I asked him for a $60,000-a-year job. He implied I'm not qualified, so I offered to prove myself by robbing a liquor store. It was all in fun.
I left the Pyramid with a smile on my face and with far fewer testicles than when I went in.
I hear that happens a lot down there.
Jeff Kramer's humor column runs Mondays and Fridays in CNY. Reach him at features@syracuse.com.
