Kicking off our second episode of the Parks and Recognize Podcast, Datis Mohsenipour, VP of Marketing at Xplor Recreation had the chance to chat with Nick Shattuck, Recreation Coordinator for the City of Hermosa Beach, California.
With a career spanning over 20 years, Nick's commitment to parks and recreation is impressive. As President of the California Parks and Recreation Society's District 9, he leads a network of individuals and organizations committed to advancing the industry through education, advocacy, and community.
Beyond his professional accomplishments in the parks and recreation space, Nick is also an avid photographer and musician. You can explore his photography on Instagram, listen to his music on Spotify, and follow his personal social media accounts for updates on his upcoming album.
Tune in to the podcast or read the interview transcription below to learn more about Nick's journey in the industry. From his budding interest in parks and recreation in Wisconsin, to travel that ultimately led to him finding a new home in Hermosa Beach, Nick's story is one that we can't wait for you to hear!
Datis: Nick, I know you're very passionate about music, and we'll talk about your involvement in music, but I want to ask you a pretty loaded question here. What is your favorite band of all time?
Nick: You warned me this is the hard one, and it's definitely loaded. I don't feel like I am a person with the classic favorite band. You get asked that question a lot, I think it kind of changes. I have my favorite guys I like to go to. I like a guy named Ray LaMontagne. Who's this very soulful, folky, raspy voice singer, songwriter singing about broken hearts and traveling all over the place, but lately I've been listening to guys like Zach Bryan. I've been listening to some of my favorites, there's actually a Canadian artist that I've been following for 15 years named Donovan Woods, and he's a singer songwriter out of, I don't know, Alberta or something around that. I think it's somewhere out there, I probably butchered it, but he's an incredible singer songwriter from Canada, I've been listening to, I tend to listen to like the folky, the storytellers, the indie folk guys. But then on the opposite end, I like Notorious B.I.G, I like to 2PAC. I like hip hop as well, so it's tough to hit a favorite for me. I range from what my mood is, its what I'm listening to for that day.
Datis: Tell us a little bit about yourself. What do you do and where do you do it?
Nick: I'm originally from the state of Wisconsin, so the Midwest of the United States here, and right now I live in California. I work for the City of Hermosa Beach as a recreation coordinator and I've been working in rec in some form or another for 20 years, which is insane. I know looking at me, you can't tell, but it's been a long time.
Datis: What was your first job in rec?
Nick: So, I said 20 years pretty loosely, for the City of Hermosa, I'm about to hit my 13th year in this organization alone, but since I was 18 years old, I've been working in recreation in some form back in Wisconsin. I worked for the City of Oshkosh, which is a tiny little city on the east side of Wisconsin, and their recreation programs. I moved back to my City of La Crosse, Wisconsin on the western side, right along the Mississippi River and worked for the YMCA for a couple years and youth programming and after school programs. And then I actually ended up living on Catalina Island outside the coast of California, working at a residential summer camp called Catalina Island Camps for 2 summers before I finally hit the mainland of California. And within pretty much like a couple weeks of moving here, packing up all my belongings and driving across the country to California on my own with no job and no friends or family, I found this job for the City of Hermosa as a part timer, part time youth programs counselor in the program, I now direct and oversee, so it's been quite the journey in recreation. Clearly, I like it, so I just keep doing it and it's been incredible.
Datis: What led you to start your career in Parks and Rec when you first got involved in your hometown?
Nick: I think the career of parks and rec, it's not hidden, but people don't really put it together that you can have a career in it unless you have the right guidance and direction into it. I think a lot of us experience parks and rec throughout our entire life. Like you said earlier, whether it's just taking a blanket out to your favorite park and having a picnic, if a lot of kids are partaking in parks and rec, whether they know it or not because their parents are signing them up for after school programs and summer camps and soccer classes and swimming lessons. A lot of that outside of the private industry, is private or municipal here, which I'm in now, is obviously parks and rec. I think just as a kid and being part of the programs, going to camps, going to classes eventually led me to being 18 years old and looking for a job. When I was in school and college and I'm seeing a city post that, hey, we're hiring for our summer camp, I've always liked working with kids. I used to babysit and all that and I thought about getting into teaching, but I wasn't really thrilled about being in charge of children's education. So, I ended up going towards recreation. I'm like, hey, I can get outside and play dodgeball with these kids on the field, and that's just as impactful as teaching them some things in a classroom, in my opinion.
Datis: Nick, what does community mean to you?
Nick: I almost feel like community, obviously has its basic definition. But I feel like you feel community more than you can define community. So when you walk through your town and you grab a coffee from a little local coffee shop and that barista knows your name and knows your order. And then you walk down a little bit and that's your barber shop that you go to once a month or so. And then you walk and you get lunch later and you see some friends sitting at a table across from you and they say, 'Hi Datis, what's up, man? Good to see you. How was your weekend?'. Then later you're walking your dog around the block and you say hi to a neighbor or an old friend. Then at the end of the night, you take your significant other out for dinner and you see your favorite bartender and they mix your favorite drink. To me, that's community, that more than just the basic definition of people coming together and living in society together. Community is a feeling, more so than a defined term.
Datis: Can you share some of your proudest moments in your career as a parks and rec professional and what made them so special to you?
Nick: My parks and rec career has kind of spanned several states and several decades now. If I could piece it apart, there's several moments that kind of stick out as my proudest moments. I think one of them was my ability to leave my comfort zone of Wisconsin and my small town of Wisconsin. My proudest moment, this may sound weird, was maybe just leaving home and challenging myself and going to Catalina Island and working on this remote island for two summers in a row. Hiking and taking kids on kayaking trips and just seeing how much of those kids grow within a summer's length or even like the one-to-two-week session. That was one of my proudest moments in my career, just taking a group of eight-year-olds on a kayaking trip and camping out overnight on this deck open under all the stars and hearing the waves crash. Then working for the City of Hermosa Beach here in Southern California, just working here for so long, I literally watched these kids grow up to the point of now I'm hiring them, now they're coming back and working as counselors. They were 10 years old in my program, 9 years old in my program, and 13 years later, they're coming back looking for jobs and just seeing how they have transformed into these awesome young adults that are out there with their own chapters of life now in their own adventures and they’re in school, they're super proud to be from a pretty small area. We talked about community and watching these kids grow up and seeing their parents every single day as we grow up too is definitely one of my proudest moments in parks and recreation. That's that kind of an intangible thing that you can't really put on a resume, but you work somewhere long enough and you work hard and you treat everybody the same and you'd be a good person. That comes back tenfold in my experience.
Datis: Tell us a little bit about your involvement in CPRS District 9.
Nick: District 9 is part of the California Parks and Rec Society. Just a professional organization that pushes and strives to connect members, and you talked about community earlier. It's just a big community of parks and rec professionals, and at District 9, I am the President this year. It's my third year in a three-year presidential series. You work as Vice President, and the President elect in your third year is actually your presidential year. Before that I worked one year on the board before I decided to jump into the presidential series. Getting involved with CPRS is probably one of the smartest things I've done as a professional in parks and recreation and my only one regret is just not getting involved 6-7 years before I actually did, because I would have so much more experience in it. D9 is a really fun opportunity to connect with other professional parks and rec men and women in my area. I've been doing that for the last four years and we plan socials and trainings and we bring different organizations within our area together and you get to meet like-minded parks and rec professionals get to vent a little bit, we get to share stories about how crazy and random and wild this field actually is and how it's exactly like the TV show. If anybody ever asks, it's exactly like the TV show and we're looking forward to having a great year as my presidential year, we have a lot of fun planned.
Datis: Which parks and Rec character are you then?
Nick: I get asked that a lot and I feel like there's several, like obvious ones. I'm going to blank on their names, but I think I'm a combination of obviously, Andy, the goofy guitar player guy. And I definitely have some Ron Swanson in me for sure because I can come in as the ordinary old man as well. This place can wear you down, being a public servant can be very exhausting, and that's what you see in a character like Ron Swanson. Communities want and need a lot from their government, as they deserve. And there's just some days can be a little bit longer than others, so I'll just leave it at that. So, I’m probably a combination of those two specifically for sure.
Datis: When you're not busy doing these things, what can we expect you to be doing?
Nick: I'm kind of a psychopath in terms of after all the work, and the extra work through D9. I don't like to go home and sit on the couch. I mean, don't get me wrong, some days that's fantastic. But as you know I'm a singer-songwriter and a photographer. So, I have a creative side to me and for as long as I've been doing parks and rec, I've been pursuing music as well in some form. Either just by writing and recording and releasing songs, or playing some cool shows or trying to get songs onto television shows and movies, and all the side hustle that it is to be a singer-songwriter in this modern-day age where you can just get music for free. I'm releasing a new album this summer, I'm really excited about it. It's the best stuff I've ever recorded and it's going to be a fun time, just releasing those songs. So right now, I'm setting up single release shows and trying to connect and trying to get people excited about the music.
Datis: I'm sure there's a lot of valuable insights that you could share with other folks that are listening in today.
Nick: Like anything in life while I've been doing this for a long time, I'm still not the expert. There's always stuff to learn. There's always things to add to the tool belt, but the one thing I would stress and the one thing I stressed to my young employees that seem to be interested in parks and rec, is tying back into the community aspect that we talked before and just getting involved. Getting involved with D9 and CPRS, I wish I would have gotten involved earlier and so now I strive to be the supervisor and the mentor that teaches these younger professionals, that the quicker you get involved, the more you connect with other like-minded individuals, the more you grow together. Much like music and photography, there's room on top for everybody and we just can grow together. Get involved with California Parks and Rec, if you're in California. If you're in a different state or a different country, there's going to be similar professional organizations, when you're sitting there and connecting with a supervisor or a director of your local parks and rec departments and they see that you're spending time outside of work to connect with other like-minded individuals, it's going to help you and you're going to learn from them and you're going to grow your career farther than you ever think you would just by sitting there having a beer with another parks and rec person. I say just get involved, build your own communities and then help each other out and just keep growing.
Datis: Well, Nick, it's always such a pleasure connecting with you. I'm so grateful for your time today and, as always, really grateful for this friendship that unexpectedly grew out of our initial discussions around Xplor Recreation's involvement with District 9. So, thank you so much, it’s been a real pleasure.
Nick: Hey, thank you for having me and highlighting some of the parks and rec professionals out here, working hard to try to keep everyone having open recreation. And shout out to Xplor Recreation, meeting you all has been fantastic.
Stay tuned for more inspiring episodes as we continue to spotlight remarkable parks and rec professionals. Want to share your story on a future episode of Parks and Recognize? Contact xr_marketing@xplortechnologies.com.