Matt Bevan

There's about 3,000 people living on this island.

And so this few years, this period where they built not only two of the biggest bridges in, you know, America...

and an entire Madman Island became this core inspiration for this Czech guy called Jan Šramík.

He grew up in Czechia in the 90s to working-class parents.

His dad was a mechanic.

So as an adult, he eventually moves to California.

And when he sees actual modern-day California with, you know, their problems, they've got a housing crisis, they've got a homelessness problem, various other realities, he has a sort of Paris Syndrome reaction.

Interesting.

So, yeah, he kind of has this idea of what California was and what it meant to America in this time of great innovation and, you know, we used to build things in this country sort of perspective.

It's just funny that he's, you know, from a former Eastern Bloc country and he's like, I understand what America used to be like.

This is a rare example of that we used to build things in that country.

Yes, that's right.

And his idea is basically that, you know, modern development roadblocks, what have you, have sort of choked California.

And his solution is this.

Okay, so he wants to do something with Solano County.

What is Solano County and where is Solano County?

Basically, he's looked at the San Francisco Bay Area, which is quite a wide area, and he's picked the poorest, most rural county in that area.

So Solano County is a very sort of rural area.

It's mostly grazing for cattle.

There's some cities throughout, but especially for that part of California, it's not a particularly wealthy area.