Teddy

was photographed by Clayton Hauck
at See You Soon during a Keep it 100 session on February 3, 2025.

Interviewed on location and edited by Clayton Hauck.

“Now that I look back on it twenty-something years later, it almost became me more than me seeking it out, you know?”

How's it going today?

Good. Considering I just did a photo shoot, which I don't ever really want to do. But it was fun and you made it great, easy, and chill.

I appreciate that. Tell me a little bit about yourself. Where are you from? Hobbies/interests?

From Chicago. I’m a filmmaker and video producer. That's what I do for a living, but as a hobby, I also play shuffleboard (floor shuffleboard, not table shuffleboard! It's a big difference) kind of obsessively. I play at Royal Palms Chicago and we're going to Florida in two weeks for two different national tournaments; going to Germany for an international tournament. Outside of playing with cameras and shuffleboard, I don't do a whole lot other than play with my dog and then play video games, because I'm still kind of 12 [years old].

That's interesting. Would you consider yourself a professional shuffleboarder?

There’s certain criteria you have to hit to be an actual “pro” and I am not even close to that. So while I’m not a pro in terms of official shuffleboard status — as far as the average person goes — I’d say I’m sort of a professional amateur.

How did you originally get into shuffleboard?

My wife's cousin used to live in Brooklyn and we went to visit him. It was our first trip to New York. And he was like, “What do you guys wanna do?” We're like, “We don't know, we've never been to New York.” And so he was like you wanna go check out a shuffleboard club? We said, “Sure.” So we went, got to see it, we didn't get to play, but it was just really cool.

Fast forward a couple years later, they [Royal Palms] posted that they were coming to Chicago. We geeked out, so I went out for breakfast with the owners and tried to just meet them and be friendly, admittedly, as a way to maybe get in and possibly help them out with photo or video work… you know… just make a relationship. Now, fast forward eight years and we spend most of our disposable income on traveling for shuffleboard tournaments all across the world.

Did you ever play when you were a kid, or was your first time as an adult?

No, the first time I played was in 2018 when the Chicago club opened. None of my family had ever played it or anything like that. I knew of it as a sport, but it was just as most people think, which is sorta true: retirement homes, cruise ships, aka just old people. But us “kids” in our 30s and 40s are coming in hot, and kind of revitalizing the sport, because it really is a lot of fun. You’d be surprised at how deep the strategy behind each shot can get.

Teddy’s Music Playlist:

“Serotonin”

🥴

I know you went to Columbia College to study film video, as I did myself. I'm curious, how did you get into video? What was the origin story of that?

My sister likes to take credit because she used to make me use our VHS camcorder, with the big shoulder pack with the flashing red light, to tape her and her friends doing Spice Girls music videos. Heavy air quotes there on “music videos.” Maybe that's kind of true, but really my dad always had a camera out since we were kids, and I probably have hundreds of hours [of footage] of us growing up. He was not a professional photographer, he just had cameras and took photos all the time, so I was always kind of around cameras.

Then in high school, we had this project we had to do, and it was supposed to be to write a newspaper from a particular decade. That sounded boring to us 16 year old dudes and we were just kind of like, “Could we do a news report instead of a newspaper?” And our teacher said, “Fine.” It was like a ten minute video. It's objectively awful and cringey. But I hold it dear to my heart, because what really got me going was screening it for the class, knowing how dumb it was, but everybody's laughing their asses off — my teacher included. I got kind of a high from making my classmates and friends laugh. So really, it started as I wanna make funny videos and make my friends laugh, and then high school goes by; we started a media production department; we started doing live morning announcements… Now that I look back on it twenty-something years later, it almost became me more than me seeking it out, you know? That teacher low-key changed my life with his openness to us experimenting with video for class. I’ve included him in the special thanks for both the documentaries I’ve shot/produced. Had he said “no” to us asking to make a video instead, I imagine my life would be very different.

I have basically the same exact origin story.

I was like, I can go to school for film. I'll try that. So that's about it.

Favorite place you've ever been or a dream destination?

One of my favorite places I've ever been is Montenegro. I went there to film a wedding years ago. I describe it as almost like the Hawaii of Europe, which doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, but it’s a really beautiful place.

I also love the Pacific Northwest, St Petersburg (the Mecca of shuffleboard), Oslo, Norway... I love to travel.

Dream destination, though, is Japan. Never been to Japan. I took a year of Japanese in college. I don't remember any of it, but I've always loved the culture and language, and actually we had a whole trip booked — flights books, hotels booked, Airbnbs booked — we even had some dinner reservations booked. We were set to depart on March 2nd, 2020. So that got canned and I’m still a little salty about it. (Laughs)

Japan is incredible. It's one of my favorites.

I'm dying to go. I have friends who are going next weekend and I'm trying to be supportive but I'm like, so jealous.

A question I like to ask people, especially if they're in the arts: what are your thoughts on Ai? Are we all doomed, or is it just gonna be a new tool?

I don't think we're doomed. For me at least, in my experience, the worst part of it is people's expectations. Meaning: clients. They're saying, well, can we do this? Can we do that? And the answer is maybe? I'm not afraid of Ai taking my job outright, necessarily. It has caused some headaches, sure, but more than anything I'm trying to just use it where I can to my advantage. You know, even stuff like text to speech, where you’ve got like a minute of clean audio and [they ask,] “Oh, hey, Teddy, he said ‘2024’ and he meant ‘2023’ can we fix that somehow?” And I can fix it now super easily with Ai — where some years ago, it’d be a different story.

I’m cautiously kind of one foot in, one foot out. I try not to use it just to use it, but if it can help me do my work better or more efficiently, then I'm gonna use it, you know?

Anything else you wanna add, or plug?

A plug? I don't know. I mean, I’ve been trying to make documentary films for a while. We (One City Films) have a couple documentaries out that I produced and was the director of photography. One feature, one short. The short is called F*** Your Hair (trailer) and earned my partners and I three Emmy nominations and one win. And the feature is called A Tiny Ripple of Hope (trailer) where we followed Jahmal Cole of My Block My Hood My City for over five years, documenting his life and the challenges he faced creating and running a nonprofit in Chicago and all that comes with it. I’m very proud of both of those projects.

My name is Teddy Waffles. I do film and video production so if you ever need a A-Z video guy — I’m your guy! I play shuffleboard. I play video games. I love dogs. And check out the Royal Palms Shuffleboard Club in Bucktown if you haven’t been before. The staff is great; the sport is super fun… But it's addicting, so be careful what you get into, because like I said, I did not expect it to become my life almost eight years later.

Awesome. I love it.

Yeah man, thanks again, this was a lot of fun.