By Don Urquhart, Times Chronicle
Positivity and an intractable entrepreneurial spirit are what will carry the big man with the big heart forward after the catastrophic loss of his Loco Amigos business on Main St. in Osoyoos.
Ted Brooks, who poured his heart and soul, not to mention a tidy sum of money into the “bucket list” oriented outdoor leisure business is still a bit understandably emotional about his loss when Times Chronicle spoke to him a few days after the March 2 fire.
The catastrophic fire wiped out much of his business with Brooks estimating losses totalling some $250,000. But while the fire may have destroyed material things, his indomitable spirit survived intact.
Ted Brooks says he will return to the Similkameen River with Loco Amigos at a new location near Cawston.
“I have to start all over again. I lost the half a million dollars in Red Deer, I moved out here broke and I got this going again and then the bastard burned on me.
“I’ll make it, I’m a tough guy, I’m a manifester – I can make things happen,” he says. He will have support in this from his sons (one is here in Osoyoos already) and a daughter coming from Alberta to help him get back on his feet. “That’s what I’m focusing on now,” he says.
This isn’t the first time adversity has come knocking. In fact, it’s neither the first nor the worst that Brooks has had to overcome. The unimaginable happened when his 17-year old son took his own life and then in a cruel twist of fate, his brother also ended his life barely a month later.
To overcome these tragedies Brooks literally took to the road (to recovery) with his little black school bus. “I went around and I was spreading positive energy,” at music festivals and bike rallies, he says.
It was around this time he got into community work including fundraising, raising substantial sums for different charities including a cancer charity in 2020.
“It was doing very well and then I had this big dream of opening a wellness center outside of Edmonton.” To support the endeavour Brooks organized a music festival in Red Deer featuring 25 bands over five days called “Loco Amigos Mayhem Drive-in Music Festival”.
It was a clever idea as a way of holding an event while still adhering to COVID-19 restrictions but unfortunately, it happened to coincide with rising provincial COVID-19 case counts and he had to pull the plug after just two days because of poor attendance numbers losing up to $500,000 he says.
“I shut my [motorcycle] shop down four days later and I moved to BC. I was just heartbroken,” he says
He then ended up in Osoyoos because he had been contacted by Netflix who he says had been “following what I’ve been doing for a few years”. The idea was to do a trailer ultimately for a pitch on a new reality show.
“The craft a knife, restore a car, storage wars – they’re all getting old,” he observes. “With the “bucket list” it would be something different each week, skydiving, kayaking and off to the race track. And they loved it, I was just trying to get finished up with the shop and make my pitch to them.”
But moving to Osoyoos wasn’t quite a bed of roses with many in town being judgemental he says. “I’m a big guy and I’ve got head tattoos and I’m a big boy. And I used to be, I don’t know, an outlaw I guess you would call it but I got out of that lifestyle in 2000,” he says.
“I’ve raised eight kids and I am a law-abiding citizen, but when you move to a town like this, no one knows you. I’ve been here almost three years but a lot of people didn’t know my story. They just see this big rough dude in town.”
“Now that it’s burned down they’re all sympathetic, but I needed them to support me more instead of judge me when I first came to town. Like they were saying laundering money and all that stuff. It’s crazy.”
He cites the example of he and his son working at a local construction site, where they spent a year and a half siding some 15 houses, the money from which all went into the Loco Amigos shop.
“A lot of the town never got to see it because they judged me before they came in the front doors, but now they’re all like ‘oh beautiful’ and I just want them to know that I am going to rebuild and I’m about the people and about the good stuff.
“They watch TV and get this Sons of Anarchy think that we’re all gangsters and bad guys but the origin of motorcycles is not about that,” he says passionately.
The conversation turns back to the fire where Ted says last year he had full insurance but when he finally opened his shop this year – because he had such a variety of business under one roof – night kayaking, river kayaking, e-bikes all this stuff, tattoo shop, ice cream store – the insurance company had a hard time working out coverage.
In the end he went with a company that deals with recreational tourism but it was heavily focused on liability. “I’m heavily insured for liability if somebody gets hurt, but I had very little insurance on my possessions in there so I lost everything and I had a lot of money in art, he adds.
I’m not quitting, he pauses, caught by his emotions. “Sorry, I get choked up. I’ve got a good team behind me and this is about the people,” he says.
The idea behind the budget list came from the pandemic period he says. “When lockdowns were on everyone was saying if they let us out we’re going to do all this stuff and get off our phones and enjoy our families more. So the idea behind the bucket list is what I what I built here.”
Previously he also did mortorcycle-themed vacation packages in Mexico.
Brooks also has a couple of product lines, one called “Life on the Road” that enables someone to live off their Harley – wiener sticks and little cookstoves etc. He’s got his products in a handful of Harley Davidson shops, he says. And he recently developed a new product line – the Loco Amigos beard elixir, beard waxes and such, the first batch of which arrived on the Monday after the fire. Timing is everything.
Brooks is already well into planning his recovery with a return of Loco Amigos, but this time it will be centred on the river outside of Cawston.
“It’s going to be on the river, it’s going to have a communal garden, it’s going to have a teepee tent, it’s going to do weddings, and I’ve already got a place picked out, he says adding that he will get financial help from family in Alberta.
“I’m building it and we’re going to be open and have a party on Canada Day,” he says adding that he’s working on getting a “bagpipe rock and roller” from Nelson to come down for the party as his mom, who died on Canada Day, loved bagpipes. And it will be a family event, he adds.
“People showed me in this town that they will back me in the right stuff. I’m gonna put on a show that everybody will come to.” If one thing is clear talking to Brooks, he lives by his company moto – “Forever Forward Loco Amigos!”
