City Limitless - The Podcast: Recent Episodes
Visit Mesa
The Visit Mesa podcast is underway with a new name and format. The interview-style, video-recorded City Limitless podcast features interactive conversations with notable and interesting folks with ties to Mesa and beyond. Each episode focuses on a different aspect of the City Limitless® experience – arts, culture, events, entertainment, food, outdoor adventure and more. Tune in on our website and subscribe on your preferred podcast platform.
If you were in downtown Mesa on the third weekend in April this year, you certainly weren’t alone. Over three days, the seventh annual Mesa Music Festival drew thousands of people to see more than 250 artists on ten different stages. Enjoy this conversation with the Festival's creator, José "Indian" Anteo and Marcus Reardon, the front man for Mesa's hottest new band on the rise, This Modern.
Visit Mesa's partnership with Wheel the World, an organization that helps the disabled experience exotic locations - sometimes traversing world-class trails in a wheelchair - is helping Mesa on its own path to becoming America's most accessible city.
John Muir once suggested, “Come to the woods, for here is rest.” Two millennia before that, Hippocrates offered, “Nature itself is the best physician.” People have known for a long time that nature has the power to heal us. And it continues to happen today, everyday in Mesa’s back yard. It happened to Mandy and Lacy, and they want it to happen to you.
Actor Joe Mantegna and the city of Mesa have two important connections. Joe’s a Chicago native and a lifelong Cubs fan. Mesa is the Cubs' home for Spring Training. Mesa is also the first autism certified city in America, and Joe and his wife Arlene are autism advocates. Their daughter, Mia, born in 1987, was diagnosed with autism when she was two years old. Here's the story of the Mantegna family's autism journey and Joe's thoughts about the good things happening in Mesa.
Did you know you could visit a place in Mesa where vegetables are grown in towers without using an ounce of soil and 90% less water? Did you know the honey bee is responsible for pollinating a full third of the food we eat? And that Visit Mesa is doing its part to save the honey bee? There’s more than great artisan food on the Fresh Foodie Trail. You’ll also find sustainability stops that will inspire and grow your love for the natural world around us.
**If you’ve been to Organ Stop Pizza, you get it. If you haven't been there in a while or, heaven forbid, have never been there, put it on your list. Seeing the Mighty Wurlitzer at Organ Stop Pizza is like seeing King Kong in his natural habitat. This discussion with co-owner, Jack Barz, will land it on your calendar.
Pipes and Pizza article in Taste Magazine https://tastecooking.com/life-death-pizza-pipes/**
Knuckle Sandwiches has become a pilar of the community due to the hard work of owner, Roscoe Smith. Roscoe debuted his mighty sandwiches and delicious menu in June of 2019 and has been proudly serving the Mesa, AZ and surrounding areas for over 3 years now. Knuckle Sandwiches has become a familiar favorite and continues to make menu changes to accommodate our clients' taste buds.
Professor Harold Hill from the broadway musical, The Music Man, sold people on the idea that music would save their city. But Harold Hill was a fraud. Meet the real Music Man, Shain Shapiro of Sound Diplomacy, who swears music will improve your city's bottom line and its image as an attractive place to live. What he helped accomplish in Huntsville, Alabama and other cities across the globe could prove to be a template for Mesa's musical future. Interviewees include Shain Shapiro of Sound Diplomacy, Huntsville's Music Officer, Matt Mandrella, Arizona's Unofficial Music Historian, John Dixon, Kathy Norris-Wilhelm of Canyon Records, and Mesa's Manager of Downtown Transformation, Jeff McVay.
Anyone who lives in Mesa knows our desert is a gorgeous wonderland, filled with colorful flora and fauna and teeming with wildlife. "Mesa’s Desert Adventure" features a couple of folks who are really turning heads when it comes to desert fun. Heather Fetter of No Snow SUP and JJ Briles of Stellar Adventures.
Justine Siegal has made a career out of breaking down barriers for women in baseball! Her organization, Baseball For All gives girls and women of all ages the chance to train and compete in baseball tournaments all over the country! This year, the Baseball For All Nationals will be held right here in Mesa, AZ July 20th-24th at Hohokam Stadium, Bell bank Park and Fitch Park.
Mesa has partnered with its neighbors to create a surprising agritourism movement here in the desert. At the same time, Mesa’s restaurants and breweries are working with local growers and farmers to create a unique farm-to-table dining experience. It’s all part of Visit Mesa’s award-winning "Fresh Foodie Trail” campaign. Guests: Mark Schnepf (Schnepf Farms), Matt Tretheway (Beer Research Institute) and Michelle Streeter (Visit Mesa)
For the decades it was said that if a lame dog laid down in the middle of Mesa's Main Street, it had never been more safe. But that was then. Today Downtown is thriving. And surprisingly, the industry that’s exploding in this historically dry town is the craft beverage scene. In this episode, two guys who have their finger on the pulse of downtown Mesa and it’s unlikely world-class pub crawl.
Armani Williams is a 21 year old NASCAR driver. That, in and of itself, is noteworthy. But there's one more thing that makes it even more significant. Armani is on the autism spectrum. So why is a young man from Michigan being featured on a podcast about Mesa, Arizona. It's just one more thing that makes Mesa Mesa.
Long time Arizonan, Randy Miller saw a problem experienced by all parents of kids who play sports, stewed on it for thirty years, then fixed it in one powerful stroke - a world class, one-of-a-kind “stay and play” sports complex - Bell Bank Park. And it’s right here in Mesa.