99% Invisible - 336- Mini-Stories: Volume 6

Episode Date: January 9, 2019

99% Invisible is starting the year off with the sixth installment of our staff mini-stories. Kicking off 2019 are a set of tales about a perpetual lie about New York City, karaoke, a 50-foot-tall burning puppet, the result of a Canada-U.S. border dispute, and time thieves. Mini-Stories: Volume 6

This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. This is part two, the 2018-2019 mini-stories episodes, where I interview the staff about their favorite little design stories and stories about the built world that don't quite fill out an entire episode for whatever reason, but they are quintessential 99PI stories nonetheless. We have stolen artifacts, mythical alleys, detached US territories, machines that bring joy to people's lives in a 50-foot screaming monster that we will burn to the ground. If you are ever in need of a conversation starter, the many stories are our gift to you. Stay with us. At first, producer Joe Rosenberg. Okay, so Roman, imagine you're watching a TV show,

like set in New York, and let's say it's one of those buddy cop comedies where they pair the rookie with the grizzled veteran. And it opens, let's say, on a foot chase, you know, they're closing in on their suspects, streets of Manhattan are whizzing by. Let me ask you, like, nine times out of ten. If the suspect ducks around a corner to get away

from them, he usually ducks into a what? And Ali, is that what you're looking for? Yes, okay, yeah, I'm kind of leading you on. You are correct. You're not okay. Now imagine another episode, same television show, The Rookie Cop is woken in the middle of the night because there's a fresh body.

There's been a murder, they need him at the crime scene. Now picture the crime scene, the police day, the chalk outline, where is this crime scene? That is definitely in an alley. Correct, yes, again. And now imagine a humor view for what just to complete the rule of three. In another episode, the grizzly cop breaks up a drug deal. It's going to be in an alley. And that's just for like, you know, a television crime procedural. I mean, imagine like, say all the roles an alley might play in a movie,

you know, set in a New York restaurant. Sure. like if you're, you know, a restaurant worker or a dishwasher, you're taking out the trash and in the back alley, you're like having a secret rendezvous in the back alley, totally. Like that's an alley is where things happen. Right, exactly. It's all alley everything. But the point is that regardless of what's happening

in the film or the television show, all of these alley scenes help sell audiences on the same idea of New York. That New York is a city of 10,000 alleys, each with its own secret history. There's just one tiny problem with this, which is that there are no alleys in New York. That can't be true. It's hard to wrap your mind around because we've all been raised on thisys in New York. That can't be true. It's hard to wrap your mind around because we've all been raised on this myth that New York has alleys.

And there are some in the outer burrows, but like if you've spent time in Manhattan and you really search your memory, you will not remember passing by an alleys. At least not like a classic alley that like leads between two streets as the fires could, like usually maybe at best like if there's like a glorified like loading

dog right right I can't specifically remember one you're right but it seems amazing to me right but like proper Allie's they're just they're just not there huh so why do I think there is and then why aren't there Which is the right question right right well so so first why aren't there and and this is because like Which is the right question. Right, right. So first why aren't there? And this is because like when the city planners laid out the grid for Manhattan, north of Houston, street in 1811, something called the commissioners plan, they purposefully did not include allies. They figured that they didn't need allies because they thought the high frequency of the east west streets, which are much closer together to each other than the north south streets, kind of obviated the need for shortcuts or anything else that might break up their wonderfully perfect grid.

But also, and this was probably the real motivation, it was a way to maximize real estate. Because this way, without any alleys cutting through the blocks, the landowners could squeeze in more housing and the land was worth more. And after that, almost no alleys were built because, of course, why own an alley when you can own a larger building? And so the result is that today Manhattan has, at best, a dozen things you might call alleys, but they're all south of Canal Street in the oldest part of the city that was built before the grid.

Wow, that's amazing. I mean, now that you mention it, the thing I noticed the most when I'm walking on the streets of New York is the piles and piles of trash, which when I lived in Chicago, that's put in the alley, that is not on the street. Chicago is like the antithesis. Chicago has something like 2,000 miles of alley. Totally. And it's just, it's so key to the idea of that city, but in that case, it's actually true. But you know, it's weird. A lot of people don't put this to into together including

new yorkers that the new york alice up evasive that even a lot of native new yorkers have fallen prey to it one of my favorite things to do is just like i always ask people out of fellow new york is interesting like when was last time you remember saying uh... i really get it somewhere in the quickest way to get there would be to take the alley shortcut it's not it's not a thing. It's only when you point it out to them

that they kind of step back and go yeah that's right. So this is Nick Carr and he's a film location scout who worked in New York for many years on films like War of the Worlds, Wolf of Wall Street, or recently The New Ghostbusters, The Smurf's's movie that didn't know that had a man had a section you got to know this of course the smurfs go to new york and you know what that's what happens when when your television shows turned into a it makes sense or at least in the sequel and uh... he says but anyways nick nicks as it this belief that new york has allies is like the bane of his

because hilltell director you know new york new york is not a city of allies new york does not have allies but you were to tell a director that that there are no allies in new york if they'll look at you like you have to head and think that you don't know how to do your job so invariably he reluctantly winds up

showing them the dozen or so allys south of canals three and i would think of the filmable allies in New York that look like how you want them to look. I'd say it's like five or six. And of those five or six, most of them are either privately owned and so they're very expensive to shoot in or they have other permanent issues, logistical constraints, parking constraints, leaving only this one alley just south of Canal Street and east of Broadway in which almost everyone films. And that is Cortland alley which is just it is the alley. And Cortland you have to understand this it's the alley you've been seeing your entire life. You just don't realize it. So, like, let me show you some photos. It's got the fire escapes.

It's got loading docs. It's got bricks and graffiti. And it's an alley. Really is. It is like the perfect alley. It's very archetypal. This is the photo. This is the one where I looked at it.

I have totally seen that. Yeah. I've seen 300 lawn orroofs with that alley. Yeah, I have totally seen that. Yeah, I've seen 300 lawn orph so it's with that, Ali. Yeah, exactly. And yeah, it's so archetypical to such a degree that if you walked by it, you wouldn't actually notice it because it would feel so intensely normal. It's almost like you'd been there, you know, like even if you'd never set foot in it, take it for granted because you have already been there.

So I'm pretty sure that whenever the first time i said i walk down that alley it might as well have been like the hundredth time i walk down that alley but here's where things get especially weird because the reason courtman looks like the platonic ideal of a new york alley is precisely because it's been used in so many movies and so there's this chicken and anything that happens where once a filmmaker who wants to film a quote unquote classic new york alice c's courtland

they're like this is perfect and it lurs them into contributing to this fantasy of new york because when a director has a location in mind he is created the perfect location and that and no location you ever find will ever match up to what it is right but courtland is what you picture the director pictures it and it's not eighty percent of the way there's not ninety it's a hundred percent of what he had in mind and that's because the people directors see a version of new york and other movies and t-v-shows and then go

and want to recreate it when they do their own film in town so the sad truth is that uh... it's sort of a stereotype that gets perpetuated from movie to movie. And so now, Kortlyn is forever caught in this loop. To the point where it can seem like it's all it's used for is filming by basically everyone all the time. When I used to drive by, I mean, I swear to God, it was on a weekly basis.

The Law and Order series would put a body in the alley every other week, but the thing is they all did it. They all do it and still do it. Every, every major crime show, cop show, superhero show, anything that is filmed in New York has filmed in Portland. Like I would say that with 100% confidence. So like even the one alley in Manhattan doesn't really function as an alley, it's basically a film set. Yeah, exactly. And just to give you an idea of Hollywood's,

like to the greedy, which it's like treated as a film set, and Hollywood's zeal in pursuit of the platonic New York alley, like a story often calls for an alley to be filled with trash. That's a part of the classic concept since that's part of the archetype. But of course, real trash and grime would be hazardous to the casting crew so the first thing they do is actually clean the alley with like pressure hoses to the point where it's you

know pristine and then you buy movie trash and movie trash is large plastic bags like trash bags that are filled with approved logo sort of trash so it's like generic milk bottles and cereal boxes but i believe each bag of movie trash is about forty to sixty dollars a bag uh... so there's an industry just in making allies look like uh... look like allies but what especially kind of interest me about all this is that i think with some cities

we don't really know much about them so they get to be their own thing. There might be like cliches about San Francisco or Chicago, but no one outside of San Francisco like truly thinks they know the city. But New York, perhaps more than any other city, in some sense, it belongs to everyone. Everyone feels that they know it.

Right, because they've seen it in a million movies, it is like America's city to so many people. And it is the city to so many people in another cell. Right, and there's like a level granularity when you talk about uptown, downtown, so Manhattan Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge, Brooklyn, like, like, there are more like household names in terms of like the geography. Totally. No, that makes sense. It's also kind of like, you know, people think they know it, but they don't. And the result is that at some point the idea of New York

has overtaken the reality of New York. It kind of takes cultural precedent, right? Even in the minds of a lot of New Yorkers who never realize New York has no allies. And it's just sad because it's almost like an actor that's typecast, right? Like it's like an actor that's being asked to play the same old role because hey you did

that one role really really well back in nineteen seventy seven so keep doing it for another you know fifty years uh... and i think just think movies are just so much more interesting when you pray portray uh... the locations featured on for what they are and let them be a real character instead of just a backdrop so at at any point in its film history, was it ever named or presented as Corland Alley? Almost never.

Like, but Nick says like, men in black three has a scene where Will Smith is tracking down an alien and they actually do at least attempt to They did their best. I think that's the most you can ask of Minim Black III. Well, thanks so much, Joe. Thank you, Roman. This is so cool. This is been a lot of fun. Okay, Sean.

Composer, Sean Real. What's the story of today? Well, first, I want to ask you a question, Roman, so you've never done karaoke. I've never done karaoke. How is that possible? I've played the singing parts of Guitar Hero. That's almost karaoke. Almost.

But not as performative within a bar with strangers. I've never done that. Yeah. It doesn't count. That's fair. So I want to tell you about the person who invented the karaoke machine. Oh. His name is Daisuke Inoue.

And as you can imagine, he loves music. Of course. I read this interview with him and I found out that he started working as a drummer when he was still a teenager in high school. And after he graduated, he was perpetually in a traveling band that did cap-a-ray music for nine years. And I think that's a really big achievement, but in his interview, he likes to kind of talk smack on himself. And so he says, when I realized that no matter how much

I practiced, I could never be as good as someone with God-given talent. And that was enough to change my life as a band man. And after nine years on the road, many tales and no regrets I went home. I don't know. It seemed like it was more than just his musicianship that took him out of road life. It seems like he wasn't really compensated fairly all the time. And people, he was working with, they were really, they partied a lot and they're drinking all their money away. So he was 28 and living with his parents in Kobe, Japan after all that. Wow. And so 1968, karaoke is kind of already like a social activity, but it's done with

live instruments. So they're like bars where you have a musician playing a single guitar or a keyboard or something and people singing along to the hits. And this was one of Daisuke's regular gigs when he was living there with his parents. And he says, playing the drums? Oh no, he learned how to play keyboard.

Oh, okay. Yeah, he says that he taught himself 300 songs, which once again, it is just like a humble brag Because then he says because then he goes on to say that he was like but every time I tried to learn more than 300 songs Like I just would forget them or I would start mixing them up Wow, so yeah, dice case is pretty down on himself Okay, I find it really charming is pretty down on himself. Yeah, we're guy.

Okay, I find it really charming. So he's working at these karaoke bars, and he's got like a bunch of regular karaoke singers, and there was this one business man who would always sing with him, who kind of changed everything. This businessman was about to travel for work, and he wanted to be able to sing for his colleagues

on the trip, and Dicek ever calls the businessman saying to him, your keyboard playing is the only music I can sing to. You know how my voice is and you know what it needs to sound good. And Daisuke couldn't take time off work so he taped himself playing some of this guy's favorite songs. And it worked. The guy was happy. Daisuke got paid. And I'm sure you can see where this is going. Totally. After his success with this businessman, Dysuke in 1971 commissioned a friend to build a machine out of three existing machines and amplifier, a coin box, and an eight-track car stereo.

And he called it the Juke Eight. So a hundred yen, you put in a hundred yen, and the machine would turn on for five minutes. So you could put on a tape of instrumental music and sing through a microphone. And Roman, I want you to see one of these machines. They're really beautiful. If you just go into Slack.

Oh, wow. It really is beautiful. Yeah. It's a cabinet, it's red and white. It has great little analog knobs and a place for the, you know, the A-Track cassette, what I would call a cart machine in the radio business that you press in there, and then a little red cabinet on the right that stores a little library of A-Track tapes. It's lovely. Is that him smiling right next to him? Yeah. What a delightful looking man.

And every picture he's smiling like that. I love it. So the music on these first A-track tapes, were they the ones that did he compose those? Or how did he get the music for those? So they were popular songs and Dixie recorded them with his band or actually I guess he recorded his band playing the songs. He says that early on in the process, they fired him from playing.

Sorry, Hitch. Again, poor dice kick. Poor guy. So he just focused on recording and mixing the music, which is a really important part. Oh, totally. Totally. Yeah, if it doesn't get recorded, no karaoke machine. Yeah. Yeah, recording and mixing, thank you, Sharif. Thank you, Roman. Sharif does the really best job with it, for sure. Yeah, and it's funny to me because even though Daisuke was fired from his own band, he was a real hustler.

He got bars all over Kobe to lease these machines from him. He got contracts with major record labels to use all these popular songs. But he didn't patent the machine. Oh no, yeah. He says, when I first made the juke-aids, a brother-un-loss suggested I take out a patent,

but at the time, I didn't think anything would come of it. I was just hoping the drinking places in the Kobe area would use my machine. Most people don't believe me when I say this, but I don't think karaoke would have taken off like it did if there had been a patent on the first machine. I think that's actually a pretty fair assessment. Yeah.

Honestly, you know, it's a really nice and joyful thing even though I've never participated in it. It's a nice and joyful thing. A lot of people think so, yeah. And this machine is really, really lovely and And it's actually nice to think of it. Is it just existing in the world to make the world better and not necessarily to make him that money? No, yeah.

It does make some people money. This other person did take out a patent on a laser-discarriotie machine. Oh God. But he's not part of this story. No, God no. Let's write him out of history. Yeah.

But then, then, a dice-gate goes on. Besides, I didn't build the thing from scratch. The amp, the microphone, let's write him out of history. Yeah. But then a day skate goes on. Besides, I didn't build the thing from scratch. The amp, the microphone, the A-track player, even the 100-yen box machine, all had patents on them. Yeah, but that's not how patents work. Could have totally gotten a patent for it. You think so? Totally.

Yeah, I don't know anything about patent law. Especially Japanese patent law. Well, I don't know about Japanese patent law. I actually have no expert of US patent law. Well, I don't know about Japanese patent law and I actually have no expert of US patent law but if you come up with a new use for even a known thing and prescribe that use inside of the patent it doesn't have to be three machines it could be one machine to do a certain thing as long as you change a little something and change it's purpose so he totally had the right to a patent for sure. So this is just more of him talking smack on himself But yeah, what I really love about this story on a whole

is that he seems pretty okay with how all of this turned out. You know, he talks a lot about just like how glad he is that this brought so much joy into the world. And he says, I may not have the original patent. Some say I would have made $80 million last year and that was a bad year. But I have good friends and a family I love, and I can't help but smile every day.

Do you have a thing to some uppers? Yeah, I guess the last thing was I just wanted to say that DiceKey says that to honor Karaoke, he and his wife and daughter and three granddaughters get out a song book once a week and see who can sing the most songs before going horse. Which sounds crazy.

That's so crazy. That's way harder than I want a party. And yeah, and there's more to his story, but I think it's better told from him, so we'll put a link to that on our website. Nice. Alright, thanks. Yeah. And we should totally go carry out getting some time.

Totally. I think we could make that up. Thanks. Thanks, Fromm. About a year ago, our senior editor, Delaney Hall, moved from beautiful downtown Oakland, California back to New Mexico, where she grew up. She now works for Nine Nymphia remotely, and her mini story is about this phenomenon in the new city where she lives, which is Santa Fe.

The phenomenon is called Zozobra. Zozobra is a big deal here in Santa Fe. Basically, every year, a group of people in the city build this enormous marionette that's named Sosobra. And in Spanish, Sosobra means anxiety. So he's like all of the city's collective sorrows embodied in this huge puppet. Wow, that's amazing. So what does he, what does he look like? Well, he's 50 feet tall. He is dressed in a long white gown. He has these very dark angry eyes. They're usually rimmed with green or black. And what happens is that every fall this group constructs a news ozobra and about 50,000

people gather in one of Santa Fe's biggest parks and they burn him. Wow, they burn him a 50 foot puppet. Yeah, it's a very intense kind of pagan feeling event. I mean, basically the crowd chance, burn him, burn him, burn him, and he's set on fire, and he is slowly engulfed in flames. And I assume they burn him so they can burn their collective anxiety that he represents. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So because he represents Glim, it's this way that the city purges its sadness every year. And people get to participate in these interesting ways.

And one of the reasons, so so-but-a, is so flammable, is that he is stuffed with bushels of shredded paper. And where that paper comes from is in the weeks leading up to the burning, anyone with an excess of gloom is encouraged to sort of write down their gloomy thoughts on a piece of paper and to leave it in this thing called the gloom box, which at least in the past has been located in the offices of one of the local newspapers. So people contribute police reports and mortgage documents and divorce papers.

I mean, just anything they might want to burn. It reminds me of other sort of bonfire rituals, like burning man or something in which a lot of people go to around here. Yeah, I mean, so so it has been around a lot longer than burning man. It's been around since the 1920s, but there are definitely some similarities, like both were developed by artists. Both events began relatively small, like in someone's backyard

around a beach, and then grew into something much bigger. And both actually draw on other traditions that go back even farther. But one thing that's pretty neat about Sosobra is that because he's a puppet, he's capable of kind of rudimentary movement. So his arm swing around, his jaw is hinged, so his mouth opens and closes, and he also makes sound. So I'm going to play a little bit of sound of the event so you can hear it. Oh! Oh! Oh!

Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!

And I assume he's flailing at the same time. Yeah, he's flailing. His mouth is opening and closing. It's a really, it's actually a really troubling event to go to as a kid. It is sort of seared into my memory, but this is actually like the thing I most warm and tell you about because I recently learned just

in the past year or so that the voice of So Sobda is performed live. And there is one guy who's, that the voice of Susoba is performed live. And there is one guy who's been doing the voice for about 20 years. And I learned this thanks to this gem of local reporting from KOT, Action 7 News. Me, I see him as an old grumpy old man. And that's the character that I get into. This is this is Oprah, you know. They want to get rid of him, they want to destroy him, they want to burn him. And my, the way I play the character is I'm fighting to stay alive. On Friday, Michael Ellis will take on the persona of our collective sorrow for the 19th

time. And despite the title of Old Man Gloom, Zezorba's voice battles several emotions. There are times when, uh, when he'll sound like he's crying. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr Adam it. I'm not gonna let you do this to me again. Oh Ellis has the audience of 50,000 should always know what's his over. It's feeling not only do I want the crowd to hear him I want them to feel him and even after 19 years for Alice the big night is always exciting I'll sit down and have a sandwich in the early afternoon After that I've got butterflies and I won't have anything until after it's all over. On Friday night, those butterflies

join all of New Mexico's gloom up in smoke. Yeah, I just I love this new clip so much. I think it's one of my favorites ever and it's it's the combination of the reporter's seriousness or maybe mock seriousness and then just like the sublime ridiculousness of what you're seeing, which of course people can't see it, but to describe it, it's Michael Ellis, the voice of Susoba, performing the sounds of Susoba,

but to this big empty baseball field, which, you know, probably later in the night will be filled with 50,000, 60,000 screaming people, but but at the moment is just entirely empty. Um, yeah. you get like a little taste of what Michael Ellis is about, but what is he really like? Yeah, so this was the only thing I could find on the internet about him. And from seeing this clip, I definitely wanted to learn more. And so I looked him up and went to talk with him. And what I learned is that he was born and raised in Santa Fe. And so Michael told me that, you know, as a kid, so sober was like this figure, this monster who almost seemed real, like actually alive. And that sense of realness was this thing that the community continues to really play into and cultivate. Growing up, I remember there would be little stories in the newspaper talking about how Zizobra has been spotted in the royals in the east side of town.

And you would hear stories of sheep being missing from the area. Little things like that would play into trying to make this thing seem real. And so from there, how did Michael actually become the voice of Zazobra? So as a high schooler, he started volunteering for the event. He would help with building the puppet, stuff like that, and he just kept being involved a little more each year. And eventually, he was asked if he wanted to help with the voice. So it was just sort of a matter of hanging around for long enough, I guess. And so did Michael do it any differently?

Did he add something special to the voice when he took over? Michael didn't have any formal voice acting experience. He's done various jobs throughout his life, including working at Lowe's Hardware and running a DJ business. But he told me that the main thing he wanted to bring to Susoba was that sense of realness, that kind of aliveness that I was talking about earlier. And to do that, he said he had to find ways

to really empathize with Susoba, this grumpy old man, and to see the whole event unfolding from his perspective. Knowing that everybody wants his demise, they want to see it happen. So I do my best to try to fight with just, you know, with my voice. There are times when it'll almost sound like he's crying. When he begins to realize that there isn't anything he's going to be able to do to stop it. Of course, in our conversation I was like pushing to try to understand is there some deep gloomy memory or experience that Michael taps into in order to perform. I asked him about his personal history.

I asked him about some health problems he's had recently. But he said, you know, not really. It just comes when it's needed. You just got the readily accessible grumpy old man right there. I guess. Maybe there's a little bit of that deep inside. So that's the voice of Susobeda. And I really like thinking about the fact that when I went to see Susobeda burn back in the 80s, it was Michael performing the voice. And if I take Fiona and my daughter next year

that it will probably be Michael again. Up next is our technical producer Sharif Yusuf All right, so Roman if I told you that I had another map story How excited would you be? Very excited. Okay, cool. I love a good map story. Oh, I know so maybe Maybe if you could just go to Google maps real quick So maybe if you could just go to Google Maps real quick. The main thing we're going to be looking at today is the border between the US and Canada and pardon my cibolins, I have some dental work. Okay, yeah.

You're excused. Thank you. And the thing they need to pay attention to is the 49th parallel in the Pacific Northwest of America. Okay. So important thing to be here. Okay. yeah. And you can like, probably,

maybe now can notice a little something that looks off. Are you talking about point Roberts, that sticks out right here. Yeah, point Roberts on that little peninsula, so Watson Peninsula. Maybe you can just sort of describe what you're seeing. So point Roberts is off of peninsula, off of the area of Vancouver. It looks like it's completely cut off from very, very gritted streets. Yeah. A couple.

It is a couple. Yeah, it's kind of like an exclave, but not quite. Yeah, it's a semi-exclusive space, but it is difficult to get into. So it's an exclusive, exclusive thing. So yeah, Point Roberts is actually in Washington State, part of Watcombe County. So, I first heard about Point Roberts from a podcast called Stop Podcasting Yourself, hosted by Dave, Shumka, and Graham Clark to Van Kuverites. And they are saying that some Van Kuverites go there because it's only 20 miles away or so

in order to pick up packages because shipping across the borders is actually quite expensive and also to get cheaper gas. It's also rumored to be the site of a federal witness protection program, like where they relocate. And I just happened to be in Seattle a little bit ago, and I also wanted to excuse to go to Vancouver and have you pay for it. So I just hired it to go, should I just play some border crossing? My first border crossing? All right. This is the piece arch border from Washington State, and the Kim. Exactly.

Good, how are you? Good, thanks. So what's the purpose of your trip today? I'm going to Point and Roberts to report a story. It was just like a weird little part of America that you have to go through like two border crossings to get to. Yeah, it's just relatable. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

It's okay. It's so nervous. Yeah, can you hear my voice crack a little. Yeah, I think there's an instinct that arises in every Arab when they are crossing a border. Also a funny story. The last time I crossed a Canadian border, I was three or four years old going into the American side of Niagara Falls. And the border guard looked in was like, is everyone in this car American?

And my dad's like, I'm Egyptian, she's American, and he's American in the back. And I go, no, I'm French, I'm being kidnapped. Oh my God. So there's some trauma around the Canadian board. Oh my God. Young Sharif. I was a little...

You were a scamper. Yeah. Scamp is a much nicer than I was going to use. Okay. Are you making any stops in between? Uh, not in between, but I'm spending the night in Vancouver tonight. Vancouver. Have a good time.

Thanks, man. Unscathed. Unscathed. Unscathed. Yeah, he was a very nice border crossing guard. He did ask if I had been arrested, which apparently is a thing like if you've been arrested you can't. You have to get like special permission to get into Canada if you have a criminal record in the States.

So anyway, it's another 20 or 30 minute drive to border number two. Welcome to Little America. I could just cross the border into Point Roberts. Scenic Loop Gateway. That sounds like something I would do. I like Scenic's loops. And basically immediately to my right

after I cross the border, there's a place that receives packages. Open 24, seven. Automated retrieval. Vacuum-boot coffee, parcel services. It seems like there are a lot of places for parcel service. That was the theme throughout the entire time

in Point Roberts. Basically, any shop, no matter what it was selling or what it did, they offered to accept packages for you. Yeah. Oh It's good to be back To the familiar land of America God The gases and gallons. Oh, maybe it's not oh Interesting

They see measure the gas and leaders here even in America. That's nuts. Wow leaders. Yeah, leaders. So, so what else did you find these little differences besides the leaders' revelation? Yeah, there wasn't much. It wasn't the most happening spot. Free wood. It's about like five square miles, a population of 1,013 and 14, according to the latest U.S. census in 2010.

But in the summertime, it can grow to about three or four times that, because a lot of Canadian vacationers come in. I went to the post office To closed Guess it's Saturday 150. Is there a school system? I saw that there is one primary school Mm-hmm. I believe it goes up to grade three or four Uh, and then everyone who is older than that has to go across four international borders every school day to go to school and blame Washington. Oh my god. Yeah, and I grew up in a fairly rural place with long school bus ride

So I very much empathize and feel for you Any point Robert school kids who are listening. Driving down the Smeindrag, the biggest little store in Point Roberts. Hey. Eventually, I ran into their restaurant district. Oh shit. It's called the Reef Tavern. I have to eat there, right? Reef Tavern is calling to you. That's what we call you. I don't know. People know that. Yeah, it was fate. And at the reef cavern, I had a wonderful server named Tony, and he was just the absolute sweetest person and told me about how people from Canada go to that restaurant to get medium rare burgers

because apparently the health codes in Canada are a little more strict about how, how, what's the bad at meat terms. Basically in Canada you have to cook it longer. So the real blood connoisseurs go to point Roberts. I'm a journalist from Oakland, California. Oh yeah. It's so cool that you ran into the other Oakland guy. Yeah, why? what are the odds?

And that's not even the weirdest part. Hold on, let me, let me play you a little, little something. Get ready to have your mind bone run prepared. It's a point of reference then. Yeah, thank you. Beautiful downtown foot rabbits right here. Beautiful downtown foot rabbits. Yeah, you guys have the same catchphrases. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there.

People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there.

People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there.

People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. People down there. Yeah. Did you over figure out why the gas was in leaders? I didn't do much slew thing, but my guess is mainly to market to Canadians. Right. So they know how much gas they're putting in the gas. Yeah, exactly. And actually at the reef tavern, I saw two very lovely Canadians named Jason and Lisa. They had come in that very day to pick up a guitar loop pedal from a seller on eBay who didn't want to ship it across the border. Oh, perfect. Yeah. So it's super common. Come enough that you just run across a person who is doing these type of thing they're expecting. Totally.

Totally. Looking into the town, Lisa saw that the average visitor spends less than 20 minutes. Only 5% of the visitors spend. Stay longer than that hour. Yeah, anyway, we've never been here before. It's super weird, but I like it. Cool, thank you guys so much. Yeah, I'll give you guys my phone number and he's going to serve. Making friends.

Yeah, making friends. And coincidentally, I showed them where I was staying in Vancouver. and it was basically right next to them and they invited me to drink wine and decorate their Christmas tree and it was just a really lovely evening. That's so cool. Yeah. Did you ever get confirmation about the witness production thing? Well, I guess I can neither confirm nor deny it. I actually reached out to Gerald Schor, the founder of the Witness Protection Program, and he responded back and he says, I have no information on Point Roberts, Washington, which I guess you can take to be like anything you want.

which I guess you can take to be like anything you want. Um, that's awesome. Nice adventure in the name of the show. Yeah, thanks for, thanks for the expense. No problem. Thanks, Rief. Yeah, thanks. This special thanks to Nate Berg, Lauren Sporer, and Pete Earley for helping Shreef out with that story. We have one more mini story coming up next with the King of the Coda, Kurt Colestead, after

this. So, every year, at the end of the year and the beginning of the next year, we do these mini stories. And the funny thing is, is that the mini stories were so popular that we began doing them curtain-eye, I'm in this studio with Kurt. Kurt-eye started doing kind of a mini stories almost every episode, like as Dakota, because there's always some story that Kurt has that relates to the story we just told. But this one we never found

up place for exactly. Yeah, this one just never quite fit yet. And I really wanted to tell you. Oh, there we go. And we have the perfect opportunity. Yeah. So basically last year, the Ford Motor Company made big news into Troy when they said they were going to buy and renovate Michigan Central Station.

And this is like a big train station, sort of like Grand Central terminal type train station. Yeah, it's huge, old, beautiful. It's like Grand Central much, much taller. And it's in downtown Detroit? Yeah, it's really visible when you're coming in on the highway. It's just like one of the most visible tallest structures on the side of the city. And so Ford, who based still in Detroit, bought this, and they're going to run a bit of it. And suddenly there is all this news around the fact that they're going to, you know, come out and do

this big press conference and explain to the city what their plan was for this old building that had been deserted for so long. And then lead up to that big press conference, someone anonymously approached the Ford Museum with this surprising artifact. It was this big round antique clock that used to hang really prominently on one of the walls of the station. Let's face it, train passengers needed to know the time, so the clock is huge. It's been gone for a very long time now, and Bill Ford says he couldn't believe it when a secret approach was made to get that clock back. Somebody must have really loved it and loved the train station because they took very good care of it.

So somebody stole this gigantic clock from a train station and then they returned it when they heard that the train station is going to be renovated. Yeah, it's pretty remarkable. And we don't really know much about the person who returned the clock. I mean, maybe they just took it to try to help preserve it. Maybe they weren't even the original thief. It's possible they bought it or found it. Let me bet. Yeah, right? Or inherited it. All we really know for sure is that they carefully wrapped it up and then told the folks at the Ford Museum where to find it. What do you mean where to find it? All we really know for sure is that they carefully wrapped it up and then told the folks at the Ford Museum where to find it. What do you mean where to find it? Like they left it somewhere and they like a lot of a sleeve. They left it like alongside of the side of a building. There are pictures of

this. You can see it like the he just kind of wrapped it up and like kind of strapped it in and then high-tailed it and then high-tailed it and just texted that one again. Yeah. That's amazing. Just come and grab the clock but bring a couple guys on a track. Wow, it's amazing that he felt so inspired to give it back. I mean, I think this is sort of a civic icon. It's this stunning, massive, bozart structure, and it was designed by the same architects as Grand Central Terminal in New York.

And the idea originally was that it would be the Grand Central of the Midwest. It would handle all this passenger and freight traffic and be kind of, you know, this landmark in the city. So they put up these, you know, it's filled with all these beautiful details, these marble walls, vaulted ceilings, copper skylights, and it's huge. It's 18 stories tall. So there are restaurants and shops down below and then office spaces above. And so, but obviously it fell on hard time. So what went wrong with the Michigan Central Station?

Well, a lot of things arguably, but the rise of the car definitely helped drive it out of business. Yeah. More people were driving out to the suburbs and the city itself and the station fell into disuse. And at first the offices cleared out and then the shops and restaurants started to close down. And then finally in the 80s, the ticket booth shut down,

and basically the whole place was just locked up. Well, and they just abandoned it. It was left empty at that point. Yeah, and there was talk over the years of tearing it down, but it had this status as a landmark, and that helped protect it from demolition. Wow. They came up with plans to try to reuse this,

like ideas to turn it into a police station, or a convention center, or even a casino. And none of those panned out, so the building just kind of kept being sold and changing hands. And the owners before Ford finally did do some work on it, like they drained the basement and they had to send new windows and they put up a security fence. Right. So obviously that must have happened after the clock was stolen. Yeah. Yeah. They definitely were aware that things were disappearing from the building and I think they wanted to put a stop to that.

I mean, a lot of people were visiting this building to take pictures or just explore it, but along the way, hundreds of artifacts were taken to. So the clock is really just one piece of the puzzle. There were lots of little things taken from this building. I would imagine over the years. Yeah, a really large piece that took multiple people to move, but definitely one of many things. And returning it actually started this kind of bigger movement.

Because once Ford had the clock in hand, they were able to put out a call and say, hey, look, somebody returned this clock. If anybody else has stuff, maybe you could bring it back to. And you won't get in trouble. No questions asked, leave it on the side of a building. Right, right. And it worked.

Dozens of people have now come forward to offer up old station artifacts, including fountains and plaster medallions and light fixtures and all kinds of stuff. Wow. Wow. Yeah. And Ford actually has a wish list too. They want back things like the ticket window grills, elevator trance and panels, other clocks that have disappeared over the years, and basically, you know, anything that is sort of considered critical to the historic character of the building. Right. And what are they planning to restore it as it was, where they plan to do with all these artifacts? Well, some things will probably go back into the building, and others will

end up in local museums. And one of the sort of side benefits is that some of these things can be used to model copies too, right? So if you have one plaster medallion, you can make a bunch of other ones, but in the renovated building. Yeah. Well, that makes sense. So is the idea that this thing is going to be like a passenger train terminal again, or is it something different?

No, it's going to be something different. Basically, Fort Hyrd Snowhead, this sort of famous international design firm, to help them build out a new campus. They're calling it the Quirk Town campus and it's gonna be the center for Ford to develop autonomous vehicles and other urban road related technologies in a nice central area where they can do like actual on the road testing.

And the station itself is gonna be the heart of this and it's gonna be repopulated actually with a lot of the same things I had before, like restaurants and shops, and above there are going to be offices, but also condos now. And the idea is that Ford can move some of its people and its partner organizations up into these spaces. Have you seen pictures of the artifacts and the renovation at all? Yeah, there's some great images of the clock,

and it's sitting outside wrapped up. And there are a lot of historic photos that kind of show what was there, what's missing, and Ford's plan for what this building is going to look like when they're all done with this campus. That's awesome. Can you put them on the website for us? Oh, yeah, of course. That soundsffleman, Katie Minkle, Kurt Colstead, Delaney Hall, Sheree Fusef, Emmett Fitzgerald, Sean Riel, Taren Masa, Joe Rosenberg, Vivian Lee, Sophia Klatsker, and me Roman Mars. We are a project of 91.7K ALW in San Francisco and produced on Radio Row in

beautiful downtown Oakland, California. We are a founding member of Radio Topia from PRX, a collective of the best most innovative shows in all of podcasting. We are supported by our sticker-loving coin carrying listeners, just like you. You can find 99% invisible and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet at me at Roman Mars and the show at 99PI org, on Instagram, Tumblr, and Reddit too. But the real 99PI HQ is at 99PI.org. RDO-TOPIOR. you