One Good Adam Deserves Another

I got hit for a real doozy after Christmas: A YouTuber I had been watching for over a decade had passed away. In case you aren’t subscribed to my blog, I wanted to repost it here with a few extra goodies, because this writing was very meaningful and cathartic for me. I’d like you all to read and reflect with me, and reach out if you have insights.

Main Story: Remembering Adam the Woo

I wrote and posted this on my blog, Two Second Street [dot] com, but I’ll copy and paste it here for you lazy bastards:

I can't imagine many of you who read this website/blog will know who Adam the Woo is, but he recently passed away (December 2025, near Christmas). I've been watching him on and off for the better part of the past 15 years, and hearing of his passing caused me genuine grief.

A Brief Explanation of The Woo

Adam the Woo was one of the original vloggers on YouTube: He started in 2009 and, for the better part of his time on the platform, recorded and posted a video every day for years upon years. He mainly focused on things that interested him: Roadside attractions, odd Americana, movie filming locations, them parks, and famous travel corridors (such as Route 66).

He used to be in a punk band prior to going full-time on YouTube, and many of the eulogies and celebrations of his life I've watched online have noted that Adam live a punk rock life. He did what he wanted, when he wanted, money be damned. In fact, he was very generous with both is time and money, even when he didn't have much of either.

He had a theory of the circle of goodness, this idea that you send good out into the world and, albeit in a possibly convoluted manner, the goodness comes right back to you. From my impressions, this was a man who wanted to travel, learn, and develop his passions and appreciation to a much deeper level than he would have been able to had he lived a more conventional lifestyle.

The Woo and Me

I originally got into Adam the Woo back in the early days of his channel, around 2011/2012. He did a lot more urban exploration back then, and he is perhaps most famous (or more like "Oh! That's who did that!" kind of famous) for his exploration of the abandoned Nickelodeon studies in Universal Studios, Florida.

As a Nickelodeon kid growing up, and a big them park nerd, this was an amazing find for me. I loved seeing these odd abandoned spaces. People literally just up and left, threw up some plywood to close it off, and left all this there, untouched. It felt like opening a treasure chest or a time capsule, and instead of disappointing loot, it was an actual part of the culture frozen in place for you to see and experience. It was kind of mind-blowing.

Since then, I kept Adam on my radar, checking in every now and again for his various adventures. Mostly, I wanted to check in when he went to Disney World, because I have complicated feelings and memories of the place. Many good, such as when I was a kid visiting Epcot in the early 90s and Animal Kingdom after it recently opened, but also some more melancholy ones, such as when I worked there as a College Program student when my brother was diagnosed with cancer. There were some parts of the parks that I cherished, and those tended to be the smaller, less phenomenal parts, such as the walkway that connects the two Port Orleans resorts. I loved walking along the paths as a child, knowing that not many people knew of this hidden path. It felt like I was unlocking real-life secrets, much like I would stumble into hidden paths in my beloved video games.

I watched his trips and reflected, took in the new sites and sounds, and tried to see things through Adam's eyes. I learned and loved the various gags he had along the way, such as his calling of "Heeerrreee coooommmeees the monoraiiiiiil!" whenever a monorail zipped into frame, his crazy prospector voice saying "BEST REMOVE 'EM!" whenever he went to Big Thunder Mountain (a bit from the safety speech where they say if you have a hat, you'd best remove them), and his iconic impression of Mickey Mouse at the opening of SPACE. MOUN-TAIN. Hearing him explain that to his confused friends always cracked me up, because he had iterated on it so much that it became more of his thing than a recognizable impersonation of the original. Shit like that tickles me: I love it so much because you remix and reshape things that made you laugh and make them your own micro-jokes and references to build up your own small groups. Delightful.

The Woo's Crew and The Woo's Way of Life

The lives he touched were vast and numerous: I've spent much of the past two days watching and listening the tributes. Aside from JustinScarred, Adam's longest famous friend on the platform, two tributes really stuck out to me: His friend Jacob the Carpetbagger and Brickey.

Jacob, and many, many others, noted how Adam had a restless energy to him. He would watch the clock in Celebration, FL, where he lived, and seem confused that the minute-marker, a girl on a bicycle, wouldn't move as fast as he thought it should have. He would have conversations with friends, and they would spitball ideas for things they wanted to do, places they wanted to visit. Adam, without fail, would always say something along the lines of "Stop talking about it and do it! Let's do it!" That really; echoed with Jacob and many others, and is a common thread of great qualities his friends are talking about now that he's passed.

I have a problem of talking and not doing. I've threatened to do many a creative endeavor (just ask my wife, my sometimes willing soundboard) but everything just kind of fizzles out. I sometimes have legitimate excuses, but often my anxiety, laziness, or feelings of being overwhelmed by where to start derail any good intentions before the train even leaves the station. I want to be more creative, more focused, more into the present in an intentional way so that I'm more than a passive consumer of content. I hate that word, by the way, content. It feels so sterile and corporate...

The past few months I've been trying to make tangible moves into that direction, that goal of having the kind of life I can take with me everywhere, that leaves me feeling fulfilled and content (not content. You get what I'm saying). I've been reading a lot more, a lot more, and recently, it's been centered on the acts of reading and writing themselves. It ignites a spark inside me: I get excited, inspired, blown away by life and what seems to be so ordinary and taken for granted hiding a complex web of interactions and processes that we are still trying to disentangle in our pursuit of understanding. It genuinely gives me goosebumps.

I've also been writing more, or trying to. A lot of writing has been for work and research, which I do adore, but I'm trying to get my journaling in order. I've watched many videos on journaling, knowledge curation, commonplace diaries; the works. I think I'm falling into a system that I'm going to try, tinker with, and ultimately remix to make my own. The process is incredibly exciting and motivating for me. Now is the time to do it and I've taken those first steps towards motion.

I think Adam's death and Jacobs reflections really got me thinking more about just doing things. Getting up and doing them. I have a lot mor privilege and freedom than most in the world and I don't want to squander that with complacency. Hearing these stories, more about his philosophy that was in plain sight through his actions but not explicitly said in each video, really hit home for me. I love just appreciating the small, hidden, everyday things, and seeing how Adam made his entire life revolve around that is truly inspiring.

Brickey talked a bit about how Adam made films, and the legacy of his filmmaking on YouTube. He talked about how to make people feel like they were there and involved, mixing up shots, and how to be more genuine. He would often talk about how what you left behind after death would be one things people could go back to and remember the good times, even if you're no longer around to enjoy them with them.

In a prescient video, now that he has passed, Adam talked about how cool it is to share what he did: A life in microcosm. People will always be able to go back and see what Adam was doing, what he was feeling, what he was up to when he was alive. People have watched him during their meals (like me during my lunch breaks at work!), in the evenings with their families, or alone while they're trying to fall asleep. Adam never married or had children, but he built up such a loving network of friends and fans that these videos being left behind have profound meaning for all of them. In Adam's case, it wasn't a bid for some form of fleeting immortality, but rather, just a catalogue of everyday happenings for anyone curious about his life or what was happening around during his life.

One project I tossed around in my head was to create an oral history of my family. Interview my parents, uncles, grandparents, and get them polished up and stored and shared as a podcast and raw audio. Projects help me learn new skills, so this could really help me with my audio engineering and editing hobby. But I didn't do it. I got too scared, too nervous, about how it might be perceived by my older family members, how they might fight back and say they want their private life private, not recorded for anyone else to learn from. In the end, I got very close: I brought a microphone with me to Ohio to interview my Grandmother, but got so anxious about it that I just let it be. I thought about how to get my Grandpa Garnica on a Google or Zoom call and to get someone to record his audio on the computer or phone he was using. But then I didn't. And now, they're both gone: The stories they may have been able to tell me about growing up young during the World Wars in small-town Ohio and possibly even smaller-town Michoacan, Mexico weren't saved. No one with any interest can go in and give them a listen, to hear their authentic voices, telling their lives as they remembered them now that they had achieved a much older age.

I think of Adam and his daily vlogs a lot because of these missed opportunities. Some people get really annoyed by vloggers, especially Adam, saying that it's narcissistic, boring, or that nobody cares and they should stop being so dang irksome. But I think of the people close to Adam and how much they cherish their time, and how his videos are now a record of their friend, and how much that must mean to them.

In combination with his "Stop talking about it and just do it!" philosophy, you can see that he lived what he preached. He just had that in him, that drive, desire, or whatever you want to call it, and that propelled him forward with a force that I've rarely seen in such an authentic, unapologetic manner. The sudden and unexpected end to his life caused me immense sadness, and after reflecting and watching his friends, I think I know why. It's more than he shared the same name and, even though it's a bit odd to hear your name in reference to another, I must admit that I developed some kind of connection with Adam and his content. Parasocial? Perhaps; I think that's a fair assessment, but it's more than that for me.

It's that, much like Anthony Bourdain, another man I looked up to, Adam lived his life as he saw fit. He got up and went where his curiosity took him. He deepened his knowledge and appreciation to uncover new layers of discover that made his objects of interest even more meaningful. He was generous to others and tried his best to make them happy. He had his ethos, he had a clear vision, and he dedicated himself to that everyday. And he looked like he was very content and often times incredibly happy doing what he was doing.

Watching him do that, little did I know, it was planting seeds in my own mind, helping me shape my own philosophies, my own ethos, and my own vision. Sadly, it wasn't until he passed that I was able to make that clear connection between my restlessness and desire to be more reliable with following my interests and his videos.

I am genuinely sad that Adam the Woo is no longer with us. It hurt to see, I cried with his friends while watching their videos. He lead a good life, and I think now I have more clarity in what I need to do to live my own version of that good life.

Good Thing: Ballet

For Christmas, Halee and I eschewed our usual afternoon tea and instead went to see the National Ballet production of the Nutcracker. I had seen a smaller-scale production in Phoenix years before, and every production works a little differently, but this one really went all-out. New score, interpretations, additions, the works! It was truly a spectacle for the senses. I can’t say there was a minute that went by where I wasn’t captivated by something happening on stage. No photography and filming, of course, so I don’t have much in the way of visual evidence to share, but hot damn. My favorite bits included the large jelly dessert dancers, waddling in their huge costumes during the celebration in the second act. And the war with the Rat King? Holy moly, it was dark, moody, and I saw several rats fire a cannon. What’s not to love?

Miscellaneous Media

I blew through the Library Trilogy this Fall, and my current deep-dive into reading about reading made this series feel quite familiar. It is fantasy with some time-travel and dimension hopping spread about. It’s a very quick and easy read, nothing academic or too arcane for you to grasp. I think the first book in the series, the longest by far, is the best of the trilogy. The second book suffers from “second book syndrome,” unfortunately, but introduces some fun and interesting ideas for the world. The third book has some insanely quotable and thought-provoking passages, but I felt some of the interesting bits from the second book just kind of fizzled out for the third. I do highly recommend reading it - it’s one of the more enjoyable trilogies I’ve read in recent memory and worth your time.

I’ve also been galivanting about in Astro Bot for PS5. I said it before with my time playing Astro’s Playroom, but this game really captures that feeling of whimsy and awe that earlier Mario games really hit me with, particularly Mario 64 and Galaxy. I love the odes to Playstation games and gaming in general, I love the feel of platforming (although I do have sections where the depth perception messed with me) and how the music and sounds bring everything together. I’m at the last challenge world, which is, if I’m being honest, a real pain in the ass. If you screw up once, you’re sent back to the beginning, and I couldn’t tell you how many times I got near the end and messed up because I positioned the camera in a weird spot or I messed up the depth perception. It’s the last thing of the main game I have left to do, and I am super curious who this mystery bot is laying at the end of the challenge…

In the words of Adam the Woo, today, “Stop talking about it and just do it!” Have an adventure, even a tiny one, and let me know about it. Thank you, truly, everyone, for reading my writing. It means the world to me.