99% Invisible - 383- Mini-Stories: Volume 7

Episode Date: December 19, 2019

It’s the end of the year and time for our annual mini-stories episodes. Mini-stories are fun, quick hit stories that came up in our research for another episode...or maybe it was some cool thing someone told us about that we found really interesting. They didn’t quite warrant a full episode and two months of hard reporting, but they’re great 99pi stories nonetheless. And my favorite part is we do them as unscripted interviews where I’m in the studio with the people who work on this show, who I like a lot. Sometimes I know a little about what they’re going to talk about, but sometimes I know nothing. It’s very fun. This week we have stories of mistaken identity, unreachable iconic tour destinations, haunted architecture, and of course, raccoons. Mini-Stories: Volume 7 Make your mark. Go to radiotopia.fm to donate today.

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. It's the end of the year and it's time for our annual mini-stories episodes. Maybe if I knew five years ago that these episodes would become an audience favorite and we do them every single year, I might have come up with a better name than mini-stories, but here we are. You got to dance with the girl that brought ya. Mini-stories are fun, quick hit stories that maybe came up in our research from their

episode, or it was just some cool thing someone told us about and we found really interesting, but they didn't quite warrant a full episode in two months of hard reporting. But they are great 99 PI stories nonetheless. And my favorite part is we do them as unscripted interviews where I'm in the studio interviewing the people who work on this show who I like and off a lot. Sometimes I know a little bit about what they're going to talk about and sometimes I know nothing. It is very fun, especially for me. This week we have stories about mistaken identity, unreachable iconic tour destinations, haunted

architecture, and of course, raccoons. Stay with us. So I'm in the studio with Emmett Fitzgerald, and I'm told you have a story about a park. Yes, a park in Ottawa, Canada, called Jack Purcell Park. And you know, it's a pretty ordinary looking park in many ways. It's a little pocket park with some grass, some trees, community center. But there's one kind of distinctive feature, I would say, to the park, which is the light fixtures.

Okay. So take a look at this picture. So they're, they look like they're about 8 feet tall. There's a post and a oval on top of it kind of looks like like lollipops, like a tennis racket or something like that. Yeah. Okay. So hold that thought.

Okay. Okay. So back in 2014, a reporter for the Ottawa citizen, a Matthew Pearson stumbled upon these strange looking lights. I was new as a city hall correspondent at the time and I asked the city counselor and she just said, you should do some digging and you should go visit the city archives and look up Jack Purcell. That's what Matthew did.

He went to the city archives to try to figure out who was this guy that the park was named after because maybe that would give us some clue as to like why these lights look this way. And pretty quickly he learned that Jack Purcell was just kind of a regular local guy who was known around the neighborhood for fixing hockey sticks back in the 50s and 60s. Cool. The Jack Purcell for whom the park is named is a man who lived in Ottawa. He was a postal worker and he was nicknamed the Stick Doctor because he was really good at and liked repairing broken hockey sticks in his basement for kids who played probably street hockey in the neighborhood.

When I went to the city archives to read about him, I found out that in one hockey season alone, he m meant 175 sticks. It's funny, maybe this is just the American Emmy, but naming a park and a community center after a local man known for generously repairing children's hockey sticks feels like so amazingly Canadian. Ha ha ha, that's kind of you. Ha ha ha, well it's so sweet.

Well what a great person to honor, but I can't quite figure out how to connect the lollipops to, you know, like repairing hockey sticks. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't make sense, but try googling Jack Purcell. Okay. Okay. So, as Jack Purcell, Edward, John Edward Jack Purcell was a Canadian world champion, Batman player.

Purcell was the Canadian national badman champion in 1929, 1930. The third world champion in 1933 even has a shoe named matrim from Converse. So those are badminton rackets. They're badminton rackets. And this, this is a different Jack Purcell. A different Jack Purcell who also happens to be a Canadian athlete. Oh my goodness. But he is not the Jack Priscell that the park was named after. And so I love it. You have these

lighting fixtures that are very lovingly designed in honor of the wrong Jack Priscell. Of the wrong Jack Priscell. That's awesome. And Matthew reported that in total, they cost about $50,000. The city counselor who, you know, tipped Matthew Pearson off to this whole thing. She said to me, I think he just Googled Jack Purcell and the only thing that comes up is the badminton player. The Ottawa Hockey's chick helper outer of kids

doesn't come up on Google. I mean, that's a real lesson in research. We come across that type of thing all the time too, basically. Wikipedia is this great resource, but sometimes they don't have entries for the kind postal carrier who repairs Hockey sticks. Right, right.

And so the designer of these lights, they admitted that that was what they were following. Yeah, so Matthew talked with the designers and they admitted that that was what they were following. Yeah. So Matthew talked with the designers and they admitted that initially they had at least they had designed the lights in honor of Badminton, Jack Purcell. And in fact, the original design called for the racket shaped light fixtures to be strong like real rackets.

But that part of the plan was next. You know, presumably when they figured out their mistake. Although they, you know, it gets a little sticky here, but the designers told Matthew that at that point, they had completely redesigned the light fixtures to look like stylized trees. Although I think to Matthew and kind of anyone looking at them, they still look pretty suspiciously like

unstrung badman records. And kind of anyone looking at them, they still look pretty suspiciously like un- Un-un-unstrung badman rackets. You know, I don't think, I basically what I'm saying, and it is I don't think people bought the suggestion that they were stylized trees. So, but I can see how they would get confused and maybe make these lights, and they are stylized enough, they're pretty, you know, so it makes sense to choose them. But like, how did someone from the city government not notice and how do you get through? Yeah, I mean, I had this question too,

and Matthew isn't exactly sure about that. But I think, you know, the truth, the more I think about it, the more I think it's totally possible that the people who commissioned the park redesign and looked at those plans also didn't know. Which Jaguar sound the park was the same as that? Because he's a world class Canadian athlete. Right, totally.

If you were gonna design a park after a recreation center, named after a person named Jack Bracell and there happens to be a very famous Canadian athlete named Jack Bracell, it hardly seems unreasonable that that would be what the park was named after. And in fact, back in 2014, Matthew reported that one of Badminton Jack Purcell's great granddaughters

or several family members of Badminton Jack heard about the park and they took a visit. And people on staff there told them that the park was they took a visit and people on staff there told them that the park was named after a local man who repaired hockey sticks and was also a world champion pad. Right, right. So no one knows the story.

Everyone is confused in this story. Yeah, exactly. That's amazing. And you know, the more I talk to Matthew, like I think I when I first heard this story, I was like, oh, those idiot designers. But the more I thought about it, I mean, it's just like, I have was like, oh, those idiot designers. But the more I thought about it,

I mean, it's just like, I have total sympathy. They made a mistake. At the same time, at least, they were actually trying to figure out who Jack Purcell was and based the design off of this character. And it just seems pretty reasonable to me that a community center in Park in Canada would be named after a famous Canadian athlete,

this famous Canadian Badminton champion. If the park had been named for the badminton player, you couldn't come up with a better lamppost, light fixture feature than these things. They do. They really look like badminton racquets. Yeah, they look like badminton racquets. They are not, they don't look like stylized trees. I think you're right to have sympathy for the designers because the client should tell you what the significance of the person is that they're honoring. And that was, I think that was their responsibility.

Yeah. Yeah. To me, it's just a story about the way legend builds and people, you know, like, you know, it's like, I love the idea that if Matthew hadn't broken this story for the Ottawa citizen that like 200 years in the future There's just a truth that is there's this amazing Canadian who is both a hockey stick-mender and a badman champion And he has bet any of this rec centers named after him or throughout the city like I you know

But things like that I'm sure happened. I do not doubt it. That's amazing. What a great modern day example of that type of thing of like I do not doubt it. That's amazing. What a great modern day example of that type of thing of like historic monument like setting people's Mines us to how someone or some thing should be remembered the stick doctor became the greatest badman player in the world Just because of a monument, right That's awesome. He's got a shoe named after him Well, thanks so much, Emmett. Thank you. That's producer Emmett Fitzgerald.

Thanks to a listener named Nancy Norton, who wrote in with the story of Jack Purcell Park. Up next, Chris Baroube. So I'm now talking with Chris Berube, who is in Canada, actually, doesn't work in Oakland. Yes, I am. That's right. And actually, Roman, it is cold here.

I don't know if you knew this back Canada at this time of year. I suspect it as much. So Roman, I actually have a story for you that is about the Hollywood sign, which I think is just me taking like a vacation of the mind by doing a story about Los Angeles right now. Do you know the whole story of the Hollywood sign, which I think is just me taking like a vacation of the mind by doing a story about Los Angeles right now. Do you know the whole story of the Hollywood sign?

Like do you know how it started? Not exactly. I do remember that it used to be Hollywood land. That's the only thing I can really recall. That's right. It started in the 1920s. It was actually a real estate ad when they built the Hollywood sign. It was supposed to get people to move into the Hollywood land neighborhood.

And then over time, they left it up. It sort of became this icon. Actually, it really fell into disrepair in the 70s. So I sent you a photo if you want to take a look at it. Okay. Oh, wow. You mean really falling into disrepair? There's basically no H.O. Two of the O's are almost completely down. It's a disaster. I had no idea it got in that bad. Yeah, it looks like a tornado actually came through and demolished it basically. And it was just kind of rotting on the side of Mount Leigh for a long time. And then a bunch of celebrities came together and led by Hugh Hefner. There was a huge fundraising drive.

Actually, Hefner saved the Hollywood side twice. It was Playboy Enterprise's founder, found her you have to do guaranteed success back in nineteen seventy eight have to read the effort to rebuild the tattered hollywood sign this time you provide to the final nine hundred thousand dollars to preserve the land to the west of it well say what you will if you have no there's a complicated feelings about that guy but he

he is responsible for the hollywood side as we know it the hollywood side will welcome Dreamers and artists and Austrian bodybuilders from around the world to continue coming over here for generations to come. So the Hollywood sign becomes this icon, tourists come from everywhere to see it, and you can kind of see the Hollywood sign in a lot of parts of LA, if you're just driving around your book and you'll be like, oh, there's the sign.

But lots of people come to LA and they really just want to get close to it. Like they want to get up close, they want to have like a selfie with it. But the problem with the Hollywood sign is a tourist destination is that it's actually like really hard to get to. So the Hollywood sign is on top of a mountain

and the mountain is in Griffith Park. So to get there, you actually have to park somewhere and then you have to do a whole elaborate hike up to the sign to get a really good close-up view of it. I see. I see. So you can't drive that close to it. So what are tourists doing? Where do they park to go there? Well for years, they actually didn't really do anything. Tourists would show up in LA. They'd ask people, where's the Hollywood sign? And then someone would be like, well, you have to park here and then you have to do

this whole hike. And then often people would just give up. People wouldn't come up here. They wouldn't know how to get around our neighborhood. So this is Sarah Jane Schwartz. She's an actress. She's lived in the Beachwood Canyon neighborhood for over 40 years.

So her home is like right under the Hollywood sign. You maybe have somebody ask you once a month, how do you get to the sign? And you talk to them for 20 minutes, you'd ask where they were and they tell you about their life and you were friendly and very hospital to Taurus because they were a rarity. But Sarah Jane says around 2005,

two big things happened that changed everything. So the first was GPS came around. So suddenly everybody had a map in their pocket. So the first was GPS came around. So suddenly everybody had a map in their pocket. So if you wanted to figure out a way to get up to the Hollywood sign, you could just consult the map on your phone and you always had a way to figure out where you were. And then the second thing was the rise of articles and YouTube videos. Hey guys, I'm Amber and welcome to the top of the Hollywood sign. How cool is this? This is one of my favorite hikes in all of LA. So today I'm gonna show you just how to get here.

Let's go. Amber seems excited. Yes, you're going up to the Hollywood sign. Man, you're having a great day. That's a perfect day. All right guys, so it's super early because we decided to do a sunrise hike. But getting started, this is where you park.

Grid in a LA, so make sure you read the street signs, but you can just park anywhere along this residential neighborhood and you should be good. All right, ready? Let's get started. So it's 6am and they're instructing people to park in a residential neighborhood. Yeah, and guess what, that's Sarah Jane's neighborhood. The trailhead that is being recommended is like, right where Sarah Jane lives.

So just all of a sudden, like everything changed overnight in her neighborhood. You have groups of people. I mean, you even sometimes have groups of 25, 30 people walking in a street with no sidewalk and narrow street. So she said like a lot of these tourists were cool, but definitely not all of them. So people would urinate on lawns. She said at some point, someone actually hit her car, and she started filming bad behavior by tourists and her neighborhood.

I have a film about her neighborhood. It's only a half hour long. It has been a struggle to keep it at a half hour. But I have hours and hours and hours of footage. People breaking the law and gridlock streets. And whenever I put anything new in, I try to take something out. Have you seen this video? I was not actually allowed to see the video so she doesn't post it online because she's worried about people finding out where she lives. But I've been told it's really dramatic.

They actually have all this footage set to Stravinsky's ballet, the right of spring. So like the most dramatic music you can imagine. So it's not just peeing in yards and stuff. Like there's all that bad behavior, but Sarah Jane says her biggest worry has always been fires. You know, she's in Southern California, she's near a lot of dry brush.

And while California was having these horrible fires, I look across the street and I see somebody smoking, you know, in front of my house. Huh, so what is she done about this? So Sarah Jane, like her full time occupation now, is being an advocate for less tourist access to the Hollywood side. She wants the city to stop promoting it

as a tourist destination. Many of her neighbors were also part of this campaign and some of them started going a little too far. What, like what do you mean? You remember we did this episode about informal interventions, so like informal urbanism, like people kind of taking things into their own hands. So some of Sarah James neighbors were doing things like painting curbs red to indicate there's no parking,

putting up signs that said things like there is no access to the Hollywood sign here. And I saw one that just said no tourist zones, tourist must leave, which is pretty aggressive. And it's not a legal sign clearly. No, absolutely not. And here's the biggest one. So Roman, I need you to pull out your phone right now

and pull up the mapping software on your phone. All right. So type in the Hollywood sign and then ask for directions from anywhere else in LA. So like LA City Hall. Okay, Hollywood sign, directions, you go up the 101, you get off on Vermont Avenue, and then it brings you basically to the Griffith Observatory.

That's right, so you probably know the Griffith Observatory, it's like a famous LA landmark, it's in La La Land and lots of other pop culture, but it's not the Hollywood sign. Like it is a 75 minute walk from the Hollywood sign. So people in the neighborhood and the city counselor actually petitioned Google and lots of other mapping softwares and got the location of the Hollywood sign changed on the maps. Alyssa Walker, who's a writer at Curb, she wrote a whole piece in 2014

where she found that it's true of like all the big mapping softwares that they do not send you to the Hollywood sign. So clearly this campaign was pretty effective. So even though it says Hollywood sign, I see the marker for Hollywood sign, but it's letting you off at a place where you can see the Hollywood sign

from the Griffith Observatory, not where you could actually walk to this Hollywood sign. Exactly. Exactly. And the argument is it's sending tourists to somewhere that has a view of the Hollywood sign, and that's what people want, right? But actually, I sent you another photo.

If you take a look, this is a photo of the view of the Hollywood sign from the Griffith Observatory. It's teeny tiny. Yeah, it's really small. You can barely see it. I don't know if this is a bad photo or this is typical, but the one I sent you is like really small. So we should do the other favorite trick with this, which is type in the directions

from the Hollywood sign to the Griffiths Observatory and see what the map does. Oh, okay. Here we go. And it just loops around. Yeah, it just tells you to drive in a circle for five minutes. Wow, that's amazing. That is remarkable. I feel conflicted about this because I do understand, you know, it can be difficult to

be there. If there's lots of people there, that the infrastructure wasn't there to support a bunch of tourists and a residential neighborhood. But I'm a big believer in public resources and that we should allow people to walk through places that are public land and all kinds of other things like that. So. Well, exactly.

And I mean, when you think about it on a bigger level, it's a story about people trying to protect a tourist destination from tourists, right? Like trying to send people to the wrong place. I mean, there's like a lot of criticism of Sarah Jane and the people in this neighborhood that they're being nimbis. People are really quick to say, oh, this is just nimbism.

When it's not, there are huge, huge safety issues here. Like I am somewhat sympathetic because I do recognize when there's a special event in my neighborhood and cars like overrun the neighborhood and make it more difficult to be in. But this seems like this is part of being in a city. There are places that people want to go. And if you are in a place that's desirable, you know, people show up. So I'm really torn about this.

But I think I'm kind of pro roaming. I think we're a show that is our stance has been pro roaming in general. So what happens now? So Sarah Jane, her side actually won a victory. The trailhead near her house has been closed down, it closed down in 2017. So she says that's actually limited the number of people who come by. She only sees about like 30 or 50 tourists every day now. But there are people trying to come up with some kind of a bigger solution

because this has been going on for at this point close to 10 years. So some of the solutions being thrown out are maybe moving the Hollywood sign to Universal Studios. One really creative solution that's being proposed is to put up a gondola that actually takes people all the way up to the side. I'm pro gondola. That is the perfect solution. No contest.

Right, I mean, it's a good solution. I think the one issue with it is people say it might cost $100 million to build this gondola. So Warner Brothers said they might be interested, the movie studio. I don't know, it's in like the pretty early planning stages right now. Oh my God.

Seriously, if you can fix a problem with a vernacular, you fix the problem the best way possible. I love that idea. Oh, oh my God. Oh, I love it. I love it. I do not care if there's a big tower in the way or whatever it is to make that happen.

That needs to happen. Well, I'm so glad we came to a happy ending. Even if it's hypothetical. If not in real life, then at least in our minds, you know, with the perfect solution to this whole thing. I look forward to taking the gauntlet to the Hollywood side in some day. The Roman Mars Memorial gauntlet. What a joy that would be.

Thanks for the story. Thank you, Roman. That's producer Chris Barube. So I'm in the studio with you and I, and you're gonna tell us what kind of story. So this is actually a Christmas present for one of the staff members here at Nine-Nine PI, and I'm sure you're gonna guess who it's for when I get there. Okay.

So there's this famous Buddhist temple in Kyoto called Biodoean, and it's been standing for basically a thousand years, it's a World Heritage site, and it's so iconic that it's even on the back of the Ten-Yen coin, but it's under attack. By whom? Records. No. The attic of Biodoeen is actually infested with raccoons. Well then I know who this story is for. This is for our own critical stat because he loves raccoons. True story when I first joined on staff. I said that my spirit animal was raccoons and he flipped out and sent me like tons of pictures of raccoons. I was like this is

This is actually a lifestyle for you. It's not just like a thing. He takes it very seriously So we did a story a little bit ago about the green bins and Toronto and how they are made raccoon proof So now we have a temple that they're trying to destroy. Yes, they're just like the Raptors in Jurassic Park, where they're learning how to open doors, and they're escalating. But I mentioned Biotoene off the top, but about 80% of the temples in Japan have suffered some form of raccoon damage, which is huge. Wow. Aside from giving them their garbage, what kind of damage can a raccoon do to a temple? So they're scratching up these ancient wood pillars that have been standing since the 11th

century. They punch holes in the ceilings and they tear apart wires and tiles and they just, since they're wild animals, they will crap everywhere too. But the thing is, the raccoon menace is actually a relatively new phenomenon in Japan because up until the 1970s There weren't any wild raccoons in Japan. Wow. That's that's not that long ago. They're already doing significant amount of damage So here's the thing you can actually pinpoint the raccoon explosion to a single cause and that was a cartoon. Oh Well, okay, I gotta know what this is about. Okay, so in 1963, an American writer named Sterling North released a memoir about his childhood called Rascal, a memoir of a better era.

And this took place in rural Wisconsin, and he came from kind of like a frontiersman type family, and he spent a lot, like a lot of time in the wilderness. But the book was mostly about him and his best friend, which was a spunky baby raccoon named a rascal. And they would do all sorts of things together like build canoes and like enter pietying contests. And it was, you know, adorable. And Disney actually adapted North's memoir into a 1969 live-action movie called Rascal.

And I want to show you a quick clip of the hijinks that Rascal would get into. Okay, great. Good. Thank you, Larry. Thank you, Larry. Rascal got into a lot of trouble. He did, yeah. Wow. For listeners, that was the sound of a raccoon being dropped from the ceiling onto a woman's head, the live raccoon.

That seems like a very simple and ridiculous premise for a movie. Was this movie somehow big in Japan or something? No, not really actually, because in 1977, Nippon Animation in Japan adapted North's novel, his memoir. Oh, okay. So they actually adapted it into this adorable anime series called Adai Guma Rascal. And it's so cute that I want to die.

And we'll play you the titles and you're... You're going to have to cut me off because I will let it play forever. Yeah, buddy. Oh you're drinking soda pub? Yeah. You're running through a field. It's a pharacum. He's a big guy, he's a big old boy.

Okay, since people can't actually see this, maybe I should cut you off at this point. I could listen to that song all day. Oh, that was delightful. I kind of want to add that song to like my workout playlist. So in 1977, when this anime debuts in Japan, it's a sensation. And I actually have a friend that grew up in Japan around this time, and I asked her, you know, just to kind of explain to me

how popular this was. Like, I was like, I can translate it to like American terms, and she said, Rascal was slightly less popular than Mickey Mouse, but much more popular than SpongeBob. That's very popular. It's crazy. It's really, yeah, it's really popularBob. That's very popular. It's really pop. And it's so cute.

So kids loved this show. And Rascal's so cute that it makes raccoons look like really fun companions. So Japanese families started importing baby raccoons from North America to Japan to keep his pets in their homes. And they were bringing in as many as 1,500 raccoons a year. Wow. And I couldn't find the exact number of how many were imported, but this took place over like multiple years before the Japanese government had to step in and like ban importation.

So at least a few thousand were introduced in the country. And so I take it that some of these pet raccoons got out and then made baby raccoons and then wild raccoons took over. Yes. Okay. But also here's the thing. So, if you read the end of sterling North's autobiography, he comes to the conclusion that raccoons are not good pets because they're wild animals and they become aggressive

and as they get older they will destroy your house. For sure. So, at the end of his memoir, North decides to release Raskle back into the wilderness because it's the right thing to do. And that's totally fine for him because he's in Wisconsin. Oh, I see. But a lot of the people in Japan also ended up releasing their pet raccoons in the wilderness,

which is bad because they're an invasive species with basically no predators. So now they're destroying crops and they're ruining ancient temples. And kind of the worst part about this is that they're endangering their Japanese raccoon doppelganger, the Tanuki, because they have, you know, this food competition. So. Oh, so it's like displacing a native species that takes the place of a raccoon in Japan. Yes. So sad. I've never heard of a Tanuki. That's amazing. Oh, those are all those are cute. Those will be my new spirit animal. I mean, I feel like I've heard other stuff like this

in pop culture. So like when you know, collies were really big in the 70s when I was a kid because of Lassie and then and and then after Harry Potter, like people really wanted owls, you know, which is not something that's easy to care for either. But it usually doesn't result in something being an invasive species. It's just a bad idea. Exactly. Yeah, it just sends up with like more animals in shelters. But like the thing is, I was a child of the Pokemon generation.

And if Pikachu's were a real thing and an invasive species, I would definitely be shipping Pikachu's into the country. And they would destroy the grid and I would not care. You would not care. I would not care. Too cute. Too cute. So one weird part of this whole situation is that the places being hit the hardest by,

you know, these raccoons and this raccoon damage are these Buddhist temples and shrines. And they're really, really hard to restore because, you know, they're ancient buildings and you can't really replicate this kind of architecture. But the most effective way to control, you know, invasive species populations is eradication. Right.

And if you know anything about Buddhism, one of the core philosophies of Buddhism is that you could never harm a living creature. So it's just like a weird pickle that, you know, Buddhist monks have to be in, where it's like, do you protect the temple or these raccoons be in? Wow. That is a tough choice, because you don't want to kill raccoons, obviously. So what did they end up doing?

So there was this special on PBS from 2012 called Raccoons Gone Wild. That featured the Japanese temple problem and it's great. You should probably check it out. It's fun. But I'm going to display you a clip of the conclusion that they come to. These masked aliens have no natural predators here. So the Japanese, including the monks, have adopted a zero tolerance policy. Every year in Japan, over 10,000 raccoons are trapped, then killed.

Whoa, so even the pacifist Buddhist monks, they're going after the raccoons, they're going to kill the raccoons. Yeah, And now that I think about it, a story about murdering his favorite animal, probably was a bad Christmas present for Kurt. Wow. Sorry about that Kurt. Oh, poor little guys. That whole situation is horrible.

Yeah, it's not their faults. No, not at all, but you know, you can't have invasive species. You can't introduce them even if they're cute. That's just an important lesson. Well, thanks for that story. I had no idea about that story. Thank you so much. Thank you. We have one more mini story about the things we build to appease the spirit world after this.

about the things we build to appease the spirit world after this. So I'm in the studio with Kurt Colstead, and we've talked about a number of different regional vernacular designs of the years, including the Hillshoist of Australia, the clothesline that is in every suburban backyard in Australia, and is like the pride of Australia. I enjoy. And the German Tilton Turn Windows, which is the pride of Kurt Kohlstead and heated Japanese Kotatsu tables. But you've been accumulating a collection

of even kind of weirder, more esoteric, vernacular designs that are equally interesting, but just a little bit stranger. Yes, yeah, just a little bit different. And we often talk about, you know, regional designs and architecture and how it's shaped by weather or available materials or building codes or things like that. But this subset of designs is culturally specific and it's less associated with, I'm not even sure how to say it exactly, but let's say tangible

reason. Right. Right. So we're talking about things like designs that are for warding off ghosts or appeasing spirits or you know, otherwise dealing with figures of myths and legends and one of my favorites is something that's called a witch window, which is a type of fenestration. It's mostly found in the northeastern United States. I think I've seen them in Vermont and I just want to be clear. We talk about which windows we're talking about, which is like green skin,

white, you know, like fine on broomstick, which is, and these windows are supposedly designed for them, or toward them off. Right, right. So these are witches flying around on broomsticks. And the idea is that which is, can't pass through these tilted windows to get into buildings. And there's nothing else about this window that says witch.

They're just angled in such a way that they align with the slopes of roofs rather than the straight edges of walls and floors. Right. It's kind of hard to imagine that witches cause these windows. So other explanations as to why they might exist and then maybe the term which window was applied to them after the fact? Yeah, there are definitely other theories about these and there are other names for them too So one of those names is coffin windows and so that might suggest that it was a design choice that would let caskets pass into and Out of upper stories of buildings

You know, there's also very simple explanations like maybe it's just about getting in more natural light It's just a simple hack to fit in full-size windows between different levels of angled rooftops where they wouldn't otherwise fit. Right. So in both of those explanations, what you're trying to get is as big a window as possible and because there's another roof, it's a small story, like a attic or something, you're putting a full-size window at a tilt so that it lines up with the slope of the roof and therefore can be the biggest window possible. So you can get a coffin out of it or you can get more light into it or anything like that. Or you can keep witches out or you can keep witches out.

And so these types of architectural flourishes that are meant to ward off spirits, this is not unique to the witches of New England. They're all over the south too. Oh yeah, yeah. In the American South, you can find, for example, blue paint on the ceilings of porches, and that's something that's called paint. And this is said by some to ward off ghosts or spirits. And the idea here is that spirits will maybe confuse the blue for water, and since they don't want to pass over water, they'll stay out. Or another theory that

kind of runs in parallel is that they'll confuse it for sky. And because they can fly in the sky, they'll fly up towards it instead of flying into your house. I lived in this out for a long time, and I was always told that the blue paint on a roof was to attract mosquitoes away from you sitting on the porch, and they would go up to the blue in the ceiling. Well, yeah, so there's a couple of theories that involve mosquitoes too. And one is that essentially, yeah, they confuse the blue for sky, like the ghost's wood, and they fly up instead of towards you. And another one is that essentially because blue paint used to be made with LI,

which is of this caustic material, that it actually worked as an insect repellent altogether. So it would just keep mosquitoes away from you. And then there's like aesthetic reasons to Victorian traditions of painting houses in natural colors. I mean, there's all kinds of reasons that this could have started as a tradition. Right. So it's fair to say that some of these stories might be sort of retroactive explanations rather than the cause of it.

Like it isn't early spirits or witches. It might be these other things, but you apply this good story of folklore to them, and it's a way applying folklore to what is a much more practical decision, really. Yeah, that's absolutely fair to say. And in some cases, it's really not clear, but there are cases where beliefs really do shape design.

A good example of this is found in Thailand, another Southeast Asian countries, where there are actually purpose-built structures called spirit houses. The idea here is that instead of trying to keep spirits out of your house, you invite them to stay in a different house altogether, something custom-built for their needs. Wow. So just houses devoted to spirits so they don't occupy your own? them to stay in a different house altogether, you know, something custom built for their needs. So just houses devoted to spirit so they don't occupy your own. Yeah, yeah, and they look good too. I mean, I live there. Of course. Why not? In also in Southeast Asia, we've talked about this before, the dragon gates in skyscrapers. Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, and those are really big and really obvious and Pretty new too. I think it basically they look like a giant

wound up in punched a hole all the way through a skyscraper And the theory behind them is that these holes these gaps in the skyscrapers allow dragons to fly back and forth between the water below and the mountains above Wow, and when you think about that in, like skyscrapers are pretty new phenomenon. So this is really taking the superstitions into account is a modern tradition. Yeah, very modern. And as a consequence, a lot of big name modern architects have had to contend with these belief systems

when they're working in Hong Kong. And sort of famously, the Bank of China Tower by IMP got a lot of grief for ignoring Feng Shui experts and geomansers. And so when fostering partners came along and started designing the HSBC Bank Building nearby, they took Feng Shui advice really seriously. And so on their structure, among other things,

there are these maintenance cranes on top. And if you look at them, they look kind of like cannons pointed at the I&P building. And they serve a practical purpose, but symbolically they're meant to deflect the other buildings negative energies. So they're just permanently there poised to attack the other building? Yeah. And they take away evil spirits. Yeah.

And they really look like it too. I mean, you look at them and you think, you don't think crane, you think, that's like a cannon up there. Well, it's a pretty ostentatious display or disapproval of somebody else's disregard for the spirit world. Oh yeah, very much so.

And so some of them are about that, right? They're about being ostentatious and obvious, but there are a lot of these things around us that we don't necessarily even think about when we see them. So for example, there's a tradition called Topping Out, which has its roots in Scandinavia. And historically the idea was that you'd put a tree or a wreath on top of a new house or some other building, and that would appease the tree spirits. So it was like a thank you to the forest for providing the wood that was used to make the architecture.

Oh, I've seen these unskyscrapers, but without all the accompanying lords, they'll put a ceremonial tree at the top of a building. And I didn't know there was a real explanation for that. Yeah, and often there's not. Often you just kind of see it and you're like, oh, that's a neat thing that you do at the end, like cutting a ribbon. Right. And that's partly what's fascinating to me about these things is that there's this back and forth between the function of the folklore, and sometimes you see one more obviously than the other.

And it can be hard at times to separate the two. So gargoyles are a classic example, right? They have these supernatural associations, but they're also part of a very pragmatic drainage system for buildings. And welcome mats too. We see those everywhere, and we think those are very practical for wiping off your dirty boots. But this idea of having something with symbols on it or words on it that wards off or welcomes people at thresholds

goes back thousands of years. So it can be a real challenge in some cases to tell what came first. The practical or the spiritual reasoning behind a particular design strategy. Yeah. And so you've collected a bunch of these on the web, right? So people can read more about them. Oh yeah, I've written about some of these and put some images on there to you. So you can check them all out. Cool. You can check that out at nnipei.org. Thanks Kurt. Yeah, any time. anytime. We will hear more mini stories from the rest of the 99% visible crew as the first episode of 2020. We're gonna take a little bit of time off. We hope you do too. Happy New Year. Be Do too, Happy New Year. As of the end of 2019, 99% invisible is Avery Truffman, Katie Mingle, Kurt Colstad, Delaney Hall, Sharif Yusif, Emmett Fitzgerald, Sean Riel, Joe Rosenberg, Vivian Le, Sophia Klatsker,

Chris Baroube, and me Roman Mars. We are a project of 9.1.7 KALW in San Francisco, we produced on Radio Row in beautiful downtown, Bokeland, California. 99% invisible is a proud member of Radio Topia from PRX, a fiercely independent collective of the most innovative shows and all of podcasting. Support them all at radiotopia.fm. This is the part of the show where I tell you to go to the different social channels

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