99% Invisible - 188- Fountain Drinks

Episode Date: November 10, 2015

On April 21st, 1859, an incredible thing happened in London and thousands of people came out to celebrate it. Women wore their finest clothing. Men were in suits and top hats, and children clamored to get a glimpse…of the very … Continue reading →

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. In 2012, a design group in New York City called Pilot Projects rolled out a strip of red carpet in Union Square, a public park in the middle of Manhattan. They hired a floutist and a waiter in a tuxedo who wore white gloves and had a small towel draped over his forearm. And one by one, they served people drinks. Drinks of water from the public drinking fountain. That's our own Katie Mingle. This design group, Pilot Projects, held this event to promote their plan to install

a hundred new drinking fountains in New York City, but not just run-of-the-mill drinking fountains. We're talking about drinking fountains that would be designed by artists and designers and architects. That's Scott Francisco from Pilot Projects. We really want the drinking fountains to be something that people love to use and share with each other.

And that there's a sense of pride in the fountains, too. Pilot Projects was hoping to put some prestige back on the drinking fountain. Make it cool again. I know what you're thinking. Drinking fountains have never been cool. No one has ever been like, yo, see you at the drinking fountain later. But you're wrong. There was a time when everyone was like, yo, see you at the drinking fountain later.

On the 21st of April 1859, the streets of London were thronged with crowds of people who came to witness the opening of the first free, fresh drinking fountain. That's Philip Davies. He wrote a book about historic drinking fountains in London. And he's talking about the day that the public drinking fountain was the coolest thing in town. The scene was recorded in the London Illustrated News, so we actually have a pretty good idea of what it was like. Women turned out in their best finery. The men had their top hats on.

Children were clambering over the ratings. Everyone was so pumped. There were clambering over the ratings. Everyone was so pumped. There were like water is the best. People I think couldn't believe that they were blessed with something that was so important to them. And if you look at the picture in the London illustrated news, you can see above the fountain engraved in the Stonewall the words, the first drinking fountain. It probably wasn't the first drinking fountain in the history of the world, but it was the first one in London. This fountain was used by thousands of people a day, and to understand its mass appeal,

you have to understand some things about London before this fountain was installed. Well, a city life in the 19th century, in London in particular, was an absolute nightmare for the poorer classes. And a big part of that nightmare was the drinking water. Most people did not have access to water in their homes. Instead, many got water from the nasty, cesspool known as the River Thames. The Thames was basically a great sewer. It was full of feces and chemicals. It was not uncommon to see dead animals floating down the river. The Thames was so nasty that London has the distinction of having a period in their history called.

The great stink when the smell from the Thames was so bad that they had to evacuate the House of Commons in Westminster of other river. So some people in London got their water directly from the stinky Thames and other people got it from wells that were also dirty and contaminated with disease. Colora was rampant. Outbreak to the disease in 1847 and 1854 killed 58,000 people in London. And the accepted theory at the time was diseases including cholera were spread through bad smelling air. But some people were skeptical of this, including a scientist named John Snow. John Snow thought the disease might be spread through water.

And everyone was all like, you know nothing, John Snow. And he was like, actually, I know that the water is killing you. And I'm going to prove it. He went door to door and said, are you sick or members of your family sick? And he actually marked down on a map everyone who was sick. That's Peter Glick, an expert on water-related issues at the Pacific Institute.

He identified in the center of this outbreak a particular water well. He went, he removed the pump handle so that nobody could pump water from that water well, and the cholera epidemic in this neighborhood ended. No one had ever really mapped disease patterns like this before, which is why John Snow is known as the father of modern epidemiology. John Snow made the discovery that cholera was linked to water in 1854. Shortly after that, a group was formed called the Metropolitan Free Drinking Fountain Association. They later changed their name to the Metropolitan Free Drinking

Fountain and Cattle Troph Association, because it was just catchier, you know? And providing clean water for animals also became a central tenet of their mission. They built drinking fountains all over London, including the first one in 1859. Very soon afterwards within five or six years over 80 fountains, similar fountains were erected across London. By 1879 the Metropolitan Free Drinking Fountain and Cattle Troph Association had built almost 800 drinking fountains in London. The association was made up of wealthy,

mostly Christian philanthropists, and they had a couple different agendas in building these fountains. One was clean, safe drinking water for poor people, and the other was temperance. The temperance movement, a social movement that opposed the consumption of alcohol, was an early supporter of this new beverage called water. See, there was a terrible epidemic of alcoholism in London at the time, but not just in London, in a lot of other places too, including the United States, where the temperance movement was also taking hold. And really, the reason that temperance is invented is because alcohol is what people drink.

That's historian and architect, Marta Gutman. Water is dirty, water is not understood to be a suitable beverage, milk is unheard of, except for babies and coffee into your expensive. So that's it. Men, women, and even children were drinking alcohol all day long. Alcoholism was destroying families. In order to push the temperance movement, in order to fight against alcohol, part of the argument was there had to be an alternative, and one of the alternatives that at this time, once we figured out how to provide safe water, was water. Temperance fountains were built in public parks at churches, and often right outside the

local bar, hoping to snag those few people that weren't going in because they wanted to get drunk, but just because they were thirsty. The architectural style of these fountains varied greatly depending on who commissioned them, but they weren't like the drinking fountains you grew up with. They were generally made of stone or granite. That first fountain in London was fairly simple, but they became quite rapidly much more elaborate and were seen, I suppose, as symbols of philanthropy. Some were ornate Victorian Gothic structures, my name, that's really. Quite a common architectural detail here was just a lion's-headed spout from the water came out of the mouth of the lion's head. The ones built by Christian organizations often included a biblical inscription, like

the fear of the Lord is a fountain of life. You can still find Temperance Fountains all over Europe and in the US. There's one in New York City's Tompkins Square Park. In Oregon, a lumber tycoon slash Tito learned Simon Benson built Fountains all over Portland. They came to be known as Benson Bubblers, and Portlanders loved them, referred to drinking from them as having a Benson Heimall.

There's a fountain in Petaluma, California with the inscription, total abstinence is the way to handle the alcohol problem. Ultimately, drinking fountains didn't handle our problems with alcohol, but they quickly became part of the public landscape. What comes out of it is an idea that there should be drinking fountains in cities. That fountains should not be ornamental, that there should be water available in public for people to drink. As building codes were developed, people started to require a certain number of water fountains in, for example, stadiums, sports stadiums, or in music halls. I think that became an important part of our municipal design.

But it took a while to refine certain aspects of the design. For years, drinking fountains were sort of like a public faucet. You'd set your cup under a spigot and turn on the water. In this cup, it was a common cup that hung from a chain and was meant to be used by all. And then the little sign that says, please, please replace the cup. It was actually a pretty big battle to get rid of the common cup. Public health officials knew it was spreading disease, but people weren't in the habit of carrying their own cup around.

In 1912, the very first federal regulation on our drinking water was passed to abolish the common cup at drinking fountains. Meanwhile, a drinking fountain was designed that did not require a cup. It was similar to the drinking fountains we use now, the difference being that the water came out in a vertical jet that shot straight up. Which is exactly like the day, but for your mouth. And all of your backwash would just drip straight down onto the spout.

Or people would just put their lips onto the spout. This vertical jet style drinking fountain was called, ironically, a sanitary drinking fountain. And in 1920, the American Waterworks Association issued a sternly-worded report that begins. The war against the common drinking cup has been won. This victory, however, must not be allowed to blind us to the dangers lurking in the sanitary drinking fountain.

The report goes on to detail a study of one of these so-called sanitary drinking fountains. Of the 47 people who used the fountain in almost every instance, the lips were placed completely around the metal ball from which the water spurred, and one small boy acted as though he were trying to swallow the whole machinery. It goes on. Of the 47 people, three looked as though they were unmistakably victims of tuberculosis and three had eruptions on their faces. They advised putting cages around the spouts so that we couldn't wrap our mouths around

them. And finally, they advise switching to a slanted or arked jet of water. This, along with the guard around the spout, proved to be the design that stuck. Finally, a drinking fountain we could all get behind, sort of. of. For a lot of Americans, the public drinking fountain conjures an image that has nothing to do with the slanted jet, or the common cup, or with temperance. It's an image of segregation. The segregated drinking fountain during the Jim Crow era in the South

means one of the images that haunts us, right? Sharing water made racist America uncomfortable, whether it was drinking fountains or swimming bowls, there's this huge anxiety about the contact of black and white bodies. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended segregated public facilities, including drinking fountains, although a handful hung on in the South for a few more years. Even with that darkest period of the drinking fountains history over, it's never really been as beloved as it was when they opened that first one in London in 1859.

Recently public drinking felons have met their most formidable opponent. So in the United States, we consume 9 or 10 billion gallons a year of expensive bottled water, and it's growing 5 to 10 percent a year. That's Peter Glick again of the Pacific Institute. He also wrote a book called Bottled and Sold. The story behind our obsession with bottled water. The consequence of that is billions and billions of plastic bottles that have to be thrown away or recycled. Another consequence, drinking fountains, are starting to disappear from the public landscape.

Despite the fact that many people believe public war is sort of a standard part of any urban design, we have seen movement away from water fountains. The University of Central Florida in 2007 opened a brand new football stadium. They had built the stadium with no public water fountains. And on opening day 45,000 people showed up to watch the UCF nights play the Texas Longhorns. It was an incredibly hot day. Almost 100 degrees, so everyone was thirsty. Bottle water was for sale, of course, but it cost $3.

And then the bottle water sold out. 18 people were taken to hospitals, and 60 more were treated by local campus personnel for heat-related illnesses. At first, the university was unapologetic, and then some angry students organized into a group called Nights for Free Water. They demanded drinking fountains being installed in the stadium.

We're not out for blood, we just want water, they said. The local press came up with a name for this candle. You'll never guess. Yes, it was Watergate. And finally, the university was forced to concede. They installed 50 drinking fountains in their stadium. The Knights for Free Water probably didn't know anything about their four mothers and

fathers and the Metropolitan Free Drinking Fountain and Cattle Troph Association. But it's because of them and their tea-todalling brethren in the United States that we've come to expect access to clean, free water in public places. If watergate proved anything, you know, besides Nixon was a liar at Cheat, it's that drinking fountain still matter. And when they're gone, we notice. Because even though we as a society

have mostly rejected the idea of temperance and embraced the idea that we love booze forever, sometimes water is still the best. Special thanks to Marta Gutman, a talk she gave on her book City for Children, Women Architecture, and the charitable landscapes of Oakland inspired this story. Bonus Fact. The Metropolitan Free Drinking Fountain and Cattle Troph Association still exists, but they change their name again.

Now they're just the Drinking Fountain Association. They still maintain London's historic fountains and build new ones in developing countries. The design group we mentioned at the beginning of the piece, Pilot Projects is trying to build 100 new drinking fountains in New York. They're still trying to make it happen, but they need the city to partner with them. If you really enter this, write a note to the mayor's office and ask for better drinking fountains and mention the 100 Fountains project as part of the solution. 99% Invisible was produced this week by Katie Mingle with Sam Greenspan, Avery Trouffman, Kurt Colstead, and me Roman Mars.

We are a project of 91.7 KALW San Francisco and produced out of the offices of ArcSign, an architecture and interiors firm, in beautiful, downtown Oakland, California. While Katie was working on this piece, we collectively couldn't get the two-nured song Water Fountain out of our heads, and it just so happens that Rishi at Song Exploder did an episode about that song, which was one of our absolute favorite episodes. So we thought we'd add it here as a little bonus. Enjoy. I want my music to be a product of the world that I am growing up in and growing older in.

So if this song is gonna exist as a tuneyard song, it has to have some dirty nasty to it. No, I didn't know what a function. My name is Merrill Garbis and I make music under the name Tuneyards. Nate Brenner is a co-writer on most of the songs now that Tuneyards creates. It was January of 2013 and I was like, okay, it's the new year and I'm going to start to make a new album.

And so I kind of forced myself into this routine where I'd go into my little studio, which was a shipping container that had been made into a little rehearsal studio. So I was there in this super hot metal box sitting at a computer and trying to make all these demos. So I had been taking a lot of walks around Oakland, and I was walking around Lake Merit, which is just down the street from where we live. And I would just walk around that lake a whole lot

and passing water fountains, some of them working, some of them not working. And at that time, I was hearing stuff about conservative not wanting to pay taxes. And I just kind of let my brain wander, like, what if no one ever paid taxes and what if no one ever decided that it was worth it to put money into our greater good?

Seeing that through my imagination that, you know, no roads, no sidewalks, no water funds. I don't know. There was something about the rhythm of my walking and the rhythm of that phrase that, no, I don't know what I found in that just like came out of that. The lyric and the melody and the sing-song-e-ness of it and the topic of it, I think I'll came bundled up into one. When two years began, I was really interested in rhythm being a huge part of that. I just am super obsessed with the interplay between rhythms and this creation of a greater rhythmic whole when you have these multiple rhythmic voices going on at the same time. I'm super obsessed with the interplay between rhythms and this creation of a greater rhythmic hole

when you have these multiple rhythmic voices going on at the same time. So the three, two, and the other, two, three. And that was me, you know, in the hot box, just layering claps or one over another and just saying, okay, that's a start to something. And then I kind of would just hear what was missing. Like, where can I fill in even more gaps between those two clapping parts? And what I came up was, was this, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that But it. So it's really those three rhythms laid over each other. I love when things are human and not machine-like, obviously, as anyone listening to this

music would know. It is not perfect by any means, but there's a tipping point at which I go, nope, I was a little bit too off the beat there for yous in a song that I really wanted to be a dance song. The story of this song is basically that I almost threw it away because I thought it was dumb. It just sounded like really simple. I mean think about me spending hours trying to work out laying my collapse over one another and then coming up with the

words like no wood in the woodstock. What the hell does that mean? And I was like this is so annoying and I'm annoying and everything sucks and Nate had a hot box across from mine and he would walk over every afternoon. It would be like a sanity check and And I'd be like, this sucks. And he'd be like, no, no, it's cool. And he came in and he played the first bass line that comes in. And I thought rhythmically his bass line was awesome, but I thought, no, it sounds too right. Like if you play in that kind of major key, then it's going to sound too right and it needs to sound a little bit more wrong. We kind of fought about it a little bit in our peaceful way and then he came up with if he's playing in minor. And all of a sudden a color of the song completely changes and that was really important to me

that the things that the song was talking about to me were really heavy. And so it didn't make sense to just keep the whole song in major. It was like, this is disturbing. That's kind of where he was like, well, how about this? And I was like, how about that?

And then we're like, OK, both. I saved up all my pennies, and I gave them to this special guy. When he had enough of them he bought himself a cherry pie he gave me a dollar a blood soaked dollar I cannot get the spot but it's okay, it still works in the store

it's still this pretty simple major melody but then you just make the baseline minor and all of a sudden it's like the stomach-turning part of the song. We're all of a song you know that something's gonna go down. You know now there are a lot of people involved in Tuneer. It's the record label and our manager and they're like, this is it, man, this is the single, this is the catchy one. Can you please just make it less dissonant? And I was like, no! I really can't.

I mean, Tuneer had started when I was listening to a ton of dance hall reggae. And there's something about the tradition of reggae that for so many reasons, there is this dissonance and this kind of dub sensibility where there are things that feel wrong or don't link up exactly, but there's so much implied in that disagreement between elements.

There's some reggae albums where you feel like the singer came in and sang and couldn't hear the track. And then the track that they end up putting underneath the singer is like a totally different song with a different key. So I love that sense of wrong parts put together, but then when it comes back together as a whole, it has this whole different conversation of wrongness. You know, no water in the water fountain is, it's like a horrible concept, even more so now in California, but in 2013 too, we were talking about the drought and it was terrifying to me to allow my imagination to go that far and think of life without water coming out

of your taps. You know, even just talking about these things now, it's like this really uncomfortable tension in my stomach and I think that's the feeling that I love to evoke in songs where I'm not writing pretty songs for people to fall in love to necessarily. I'm writing songs that sound more like the truth of the world to me, and that has to mean that that's literally built into the song, that's literally built into the harmonies, or the friction or that grating sense of the song. And that's kind of why, I don't know, I was listening to that drum machine stem, and

at first it's got the cute little cowbell sound. And then throughout the song, as you get to the end of the song it's like this crazy distorted mess of a drum machine. I found this awesome water bottle in the thrift store and it's just like these things that kind of fit into the world of the song like spare parts kind of sounds sounds, like a water bottle, just evokes water somehow. Even if you're not saying, oh, it's a water bottle. There's just something about it that's like, yep, that fits in. So this is where the brilliant John Hill comes in,

because he introduced the laser sound. Now, we were so nervous working with other producers, and I'm very possessive of the term producer because I feel like you know I am my own producer But we took the song in at the request of some of our label people and played it for John Hill who's worked on a lot of cool stuff Rihanna and MIA and so he had those lasers for us and And I played those lasers on a sample pad with a stick. So we all agreed that that was again another dance hall element

that amps up the song when it's like, and now the lasers come in. You know what it is? Oh my gosh. That's just me and my voice and my tongue making some crazy roll in there. But then sampled and played on a keyboard. So that we did with John Hill as well. We sampled my voice and then I was able to play it on a MIDI triggering keyboard and I could play chords with my own voice doing that crazy gurgly noise.

I am so captivated by music. The ability to speak without words, the sound itself is telling the story and it's kind of like a big puzzle that even I am trying to figure out. It's so fun! Recording is amazing! And now here's Water Fountain by Tune Arts in its entirety. I said all night, yeah, what you doing there? Nothing much to do when you're going nowhere Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, no way How I wanna hide That's it, we're gonna get the water from you Sure Nothing feels like dying Like the drying of my skin and long Why we just sit here

All they watch us with are till we're gone I can't seem to feel it I can't seem to feel it I can't seem to feel only, only, only, the cold still You will ride the whip, you'll ride the crack The reason fighting back You're in too feelin' You're in too feelin' You're in too feelin' You're in too feelin' You're in too feelin' You're in too feelin' You're in too feelin' You're in too feelin' You're in too feelin'

You're in too feelin' You're in too feelin' You're in too feelin' You're in too feelin' You're in too feelin' You're in too feelin' You're in too feelin' You're in too feelin'

You're in too feelin' You're in too feelin' You're in too feelin' You're in too feelin' You're in too feelin' You're in too feelin' You're in too feelin' You're in too feelin' You're in too feelin' You're in too feelin' You're in too feelin' You're in too feelin' No one in the water, captain.

No phone in the phone booth. And you said, oh my yeah, what's your name? Jump back, jump back, and shout it out. Woo-hoo, woo-hoo! We're gonna give the water from your house, your house. I saved up all my pennies, and I gave them to the special guy. When he had enough of them He bought himself a cherry pie He gave me a dollar A blood soaked dollar

I cannot get the spot I'll put it's okay It's the works in the store Gracie man come and dig my well Life without your water is a burning hell Suck me up with your homegrown rice Anything make me shitness Suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck me, suck Stop and run me, run me, run me, run me, run me, run me, run me And a two pound chicken jazz, better with friends

A two pound chicken dance better with two, and I know it, finally Who's the listener of the one that's like dead? Sing, give me your head, a birdie going round and round and round I want in your bed, how do you know get ahead? Whoop, dead, your fingers do not hurt Your fingers do not hurt, give me a chest, give me a breath, I got nothing in correct We're just, we're just, we're just listenin' to what I thought Sound like a bubble, hey, I leave it going, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come and see me, come Facebook, all of us are on Twitter, Instagram, and Spotify, but to find out more about this story including cool pictures pictures and links, and listen to all the episodes of 99% invisible.

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