99% Invisible - 105- One Man is An Island

Episode Date: March 11, 2014

A few years ago, reporter Sean Cole was working on a radio story and needed to interview the rapper Busta Rhymes. Sean was living in Boston at the time, so he did a Google search for “Busta Rhymes” and “Boston” to see … Continue reading →

This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. So there was this moment in my life when I needed to interview the rapper Buster Rhymes for the radio. And this is Friend of the Show, Sean Cole. And so I tried calling his people, which got me pretty much nowhere. So I've been tried googling Buster Rhymes and Boston, which is where I was living at the time because I figured he maybe be coming on tour and I could ambush him backstage or something. And one of the first results I got was a map, like on Google Maps, of a little pond in Trusbury, Massachusetts, which is this little town outside of Boston. And in the pond was this teeny speck of land labeled Buster Rhymes Island. What?

Needless to say, I was a little confused. I mean, you have to understand, like, Shrewsbury is like the least likely, I mean, first of all, for there to be a Buster-Ryme's Island anywhere is pretty unlikely, but Shrewsbury is like this bedroom community for Worcester. It's not even, it's like the most exciting thing to do there on a Saturday night is go to chillies after like, shopping at lumber liquidators. And I was like, is this for real? And then underneath the link for the map

was another link to this short little kind of blurb in the Boston globe with the headline, Buster Rhymes Island is for real. And they interviewed... What did they interview Buster Rhymes? No, they interviewed Buster Rhymes. They interviewed this guy named Kevin O'rian who lives in a house overlooking the pond it's

the mill pond is the name of it and who this is still true lists his phone number as the number to call if you want to contact the island so he's the guy who named the island he's the one in the island and this is a quote from the the Globe piece, this guy, Kevin, says, it's a very small little island with rope swinging blueberries

and stuff Busta would enjoy. This is adorable. So just to give you a sense of the differences between Busta Rhymes and Buster Rhymes Island. You mean other than the fact that one of them is like an internationally known really fast rapper with 10 albums to his credit, the other one being... Being an island, exactly.

Being a tiny island. Right, yes. No man is an island after all. It's literally not Buster Rhymes. after uh... missusly no bust around yet but also just sonically um... bustar rinds sounds like this everything in the touch and bustar rinds island sounds like this

so what about this island would you say bespeaks bustarolims? I'd say just pretty much the kind of feel of it. This is Kevin O'Brien. I drove out to Shrewsbury to spend some time with him on the island. It was cold, February. We walked across the ice to get there. Little more about Kevin, he's in his early 30s, works in tech support, and DJ's wedding

on the weekends. You know, if you come out here in the summertime, it's in his early 30s, works in tech support, and DJ's wedding on the weekends. You know, if you come out here in the summertime, it's a really nice, relaxing place to be. It's dead silent. It's just really, really low key, and who wouldn't like it? Those aren't aspects of Vester Rhymes, dead silent and low key. He meditates. Kevin started canoeing out to the island about 10 years ago now, when he and his wife first moved here. The pond is practically in their front yard.

And when you say it's a teeny tiny spike of land, you mean... It's like 40 feet by 40 feet. And there is a rope swing hanging from one of the trees and blueberry bushes, which Kevin planted. He doesn't just visit the island a bunch, he takes care of the island. He cleans up after the teenagers, who leave beer cans lying around, drinks beer himself on the island with his wife and their friends. And when you love a place, the way Kevin loves this place,

you don't want to refer to it generically, that just doesn't feel respectful. So, one day, I was sitting around with my friend Brandon, and we just started talking about how we were always coming over the island and he asked what his name was and it's, oh, It doesn't really have a name. So we started saying, well, how about Buster Rhymes Island? You love Buster Rhymes?

Everybody loves Buster Rhymes and I'm like, all right, you know what? That sounds great because telling somebody the dirty Directions to my house saying, oh, you know, just look up Buster Rhymes Island on Google Maps and follow your way there and I think that sounds a lot better than saying Milpon, so we went we went with Buster Rhymes and we have a lot of respect for him So how did you get it on Google Maps? than saying Milpons, so we won't bust our eyes and we have a lot of respect for him. So how did you get it on Google Maps? We just applied a geotag to it. It's that easy. It's that easy.

And really, the whole thing would seem like a big joke if it weren't for all the effort Kevin went through to try to make the name stick. Around the time I contacted him, he submitted a formal proposal to the US Board on Geographic Names, which decides what the federal government is going to call a piece of land. He showed me the proposal. Feature class, Island, meaning or significance, Busta Rhymes is a gravel-voiced rapper we all have an incredible amount of respect for. Supporting materials? No, they turned him down. But not for the reasons you might think. The only way you can name the island or a body of land after celebrity is in a

commemorative fashion. So that person has to be deceased for five years. So unfortunately it really can't be official until a bus to pass is. That could be a long time. I'm willing to wait. So someone has to be dead for five years before the board will consider naming a place after that person what by five years and at the same thing so i called up blue yost who's the executive secretary at the u.s. board on geographic names regarding domestic names names in the united states

for names is another committee anyway when some passes away soon after persons's death, it's an emotional time. And there are close relatives and friends who feel they want to do something to honor this person. And the five year waiting period, this is what's

it's said. Do our people disappointed when you tell them about the five year? Yeah. There are people disappointed when you tell them about the five year? Yeah, there are some are disappointed, but after we explain the reasoning, while they're disappointed, they agree, or at least they say they agree with the policy. That it has to be still won a name in Ireland after that person, half a decade later, type of sentimentality. Right.

Lou Yost says the board actually discourages naming places after people at all. It'd rather the name be feature-base. That is, having something to do with the way in Island or Mountain or River looks or sounds or how big it is, rather than who homesteaded there. But with the exploration of the West and Alaska, it was bound to happen. Oh, so these guys have been around a long time. Oh, the board's been around since 1890. Wow. And then he told me that six days after JFK was shot,

so 1963, Lyndon Johnson announced that Cape Canaveral would be renamed Cape Kennedy to commemorate the president, who's Jackie Kennedy's idea. Well, people in Florida did not like that at all. Why not? Oh, I mean, it had been called Cape Canaveral for like 400 years. And I didn't know this,

Canaveral is a Spanish word. Canaveral. It roughly means a plantation of canes or reeds. Canaveral. Anyhow, 10 years later, the Florida legislature voted to change the name back from Cape Kennedy to Cape Canaveral, and the board went along with it. And it was this event that led to the one-year waiting period.

But I thought it was a five-year waiting period. It was one year then, and it changed to five years in 1995. Gotcha. And there has never, never! Been an exception to the rule since then. No naming places after people who have been dead less than five years, and certainly no naming a place after someone who's still alive. If the board starts naming features for living people and then they go on and do something

heinous, that's what I look good. Buster Rhymes is being accused of using gays slurs at a fast food restaurant in Miami. This was at Cheeseburger Baby in Miami Beach and he was apparently there for some promotional purposes and it's a 24 hour restaurant. He went there late at night with his posse and there was a very very long line. And I'm looking, oh there it is. But as I was learning about all of this, I remembered this one place that had been named after someone, not while he was living, but not that long after he'd died either. And here we are, in Central Square in Cambridge.

Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I was born. There's a black sign in the sidewalk that says, Mark Sandman Square, the corner of Brookline Street and Mass Ave. Mark Sandman's another musician. He was the lead singer of the band Morphine. He died in 1999, just collapsed on stage during a concert in Italy. And then just one year later, this sign went up on this corner. Right outside the Middle East. The Middle East nightclub where Sandman used to perform or just hang out.

The sign was Joseph Sader's idea. He was one of the owners of the Middle East. Do you remember the dedication ceremony? I think the public work called us and they said the sign is ready. So I wanted to put the sign up, put the flowers and bunch of friends and we had little party in his flowers and bunch of friends and you know, and we had little party, you know, and his memory and thinking over the good time. So, how was Joseph able to dedicate the corner to Mark Sandman only one year after he died when the regulations says that he has to wait at least five years?

From the way you're explaining it, it would have been relegated to the city of Cambridge. This is Lou Yost again at the US Board on geographic names. A square or a city park or building would be what we consider an administrative feature. The board has relegated that authority to name those features to the local administrative agencies. So if we were in the city, we would be up to the city, what they wanted to name the park. Nonetheless, I explained the five-year rule to Joseph at the Middle East and how, especially in that first year, of course, everybody wants to name something

after their loved one who died. Everybody want to stop on the wagon. They want to name everything after him. They want to name everything after him. No, I understand. It wasn't like this was my, you know, I mean, definitely you'll miss him. He moved on.

We get cheated by not having him around, but it wasn't emotional. It's, you know, I mean, it's. It wasn he moved on. We get cheated by not having him around, but it wasn't emotional, it's, you know, I mean, it's... It wasn't an emotional thing, you see? No, not at all. It was like it's true, you know, friend around, you know. They did a lot in this community every time you call on him

for fundraising or a show, you know, he dared to play for free or barely any money, so. Definitely, he did the due diligence socially, you know? What would he think of the sign, do you think of the squirre? Affatas, he would. No, Mark, he would laugh, you know, but it doesn't matter. I also got in touch with the mayor's office in Cambridge to ask what the criteria are for naming a corner of the city after someone. They sent me the application you fill out when you want one of those signs hammered into the sidewalk.

Mark Sandman would have fit under the category, distinguished careers by present or former residents who have achieved state or national fame. And then I asked them if the person in question had to be deceased and they didn't respond, but on the application it says, deceased it's in with a question mark, and then a box to check. So that makes it sound like you can memorialize people

who are still alive. Or it's just like a test, because they just remove all the ones that are still alive. Or they automatically kick those out. Exactly. Or something. But then I started noticing those black commemorative signs everywhere, all around Cambridge.

There's John T. Johnny Collins Square, Commander Francis X Buddy Foster Square, Robert E. Goodman Road. It's been very loose. This is Charlie Sullivan with the Cambridge Historical Commission. Anyone who is interested in having a square named after a family member, like there's one of those signs right on the corner. Helen and John Black Square.

Could just ask a city counselor and they would put in a council order and the city would do it. So we have intersections in some parts of town that have one of those signs on each of the four corners. Really? Yeah. The preponderance of... Dedications. The preponderance, yeah. Proliferation of dedications.

You seem... you seem not so pleased with that. Well, it gets to be a little bit of a clutter after a while and they begin to lose their meaning. So, I think the... See, Council is a little more resistant than they used to be. They're running out of places to put these signs. So just to be clear, these places they're not recognized by the US board of geographic names. Right. So they're not on federal maps or used by the federal government in any way. But that said, local usage is something the board takes into account when it's evaluating a proposal.

And not just the local authority recognizing the name, but... The locals, like those folks up there in that house over Yonder. Exactly. This is Kevin O'Brien again. That Buster Rhymes Island. We would basically have to go to them and say, hey, do you know the name of that island? And if they were to say, oh, that's Buster Rhymes Island or whatever else we're going to name it, then that would be considered local usage. So if if local folks know what to call it and everybody calls it that, then you have a lot more, a lot more weight going to the government and saying, I'd like to name this island this. But as far as Kevin knows, nobody except for him and his wife and their friends

call this island anything. We spent about an hour on the island together. As I say it was very cold and just as we were about to leave these two kids who'd been skating out in the middle of the pond came wandering over. Two boys, maybe 10 years old. Good morning. Good morning. What you doing? Doing a radio story about this island. Do you know anything about this island? No. I just moved here. Oh, did you? Well, if you look up this island on Google Maps, you know what it's called?

No. It's called Buster Rhymes Island. Buster Rhymes? Do you know who that is? Nope. He's a rapper. Why would this be named after him? He named it after him. I named it after him. Because he's a rapper. Why would this be named after him? He named it after him.

He named it after him. Because he's a big fan. Because I'm a big fan, yeah. What would you name this island if you could name it something? Um, I don't know. Wait, wait, the shoe is very island, I guess. The shoe is very island? Yeah.

Do you have a favorite musician or anything like that? Uh, no. No. I don't either. Do you have a favorite musician or anything like that? Uh, no. I don't need it. Feel free to come with the Buster-I'm Island anytime though. Good to meet you guys. This is what we teach you. Local usage, right?

You get that's right. We just witnessed Buster-I'm Island being used. That's right. That's right. I did. We just conned them into it. Exactly. Exactly. Just condom into it. I should say I did try contacting Buster Rhymes again told his managers all about the island that I wanted to interview on.

And again, they never responded. Also, a few days after I first emailed them, I went back on Google Maps and the geotag was gone. I contacted Kevin right away, it was the first he'd heard of it, and he said, well I know what I have to do. Add it again and see how long it takes to be taken down again. Sure enough, a couple weeks later, Busta Rhymes Island was back on the map, like Mount Rainier appearing and disappearing with the weather. And not long after that, friend of mine randomly met Busta in a bar in New York. She was dating a guy who knew him.

And when she asked him about the island, Busta said, this is a quote, yeah, I heard about that. Yeah, I heard about that. 99% Invisible was produced this week by Sean Cole, with Sam Greenspan, Katie Mangle, Avery, Troubleman, and me Roman Mars. We are a project of 91.7 local public radio KALW in San Francisco, and produce of the offices of ArcSside, a brilliant architecture firm that we love rubbing elbows with every single day in beautiful downtown Oakland, California.

You can find the show and like the show on Facebook, I tweet at Roman Mars, Sam tweets at Sam listens, every tweets at truffleman, Katie Mingle sometimes tweets at Katie Mingle. We also have this really great Tumblr that Avery takes care of, which is the law because she's the youngest. But if you would, do as a kindness, until everyone you know to subscribe to the show at 99pion.org. Radio Topee from PRX.