Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Water Towers

Episode Date: November 15, 2021

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedians/podcasters Kath Barbadoro, Patrick Monahan, and Eli Yudin ('What A Time To Be Alive' podcast) for a look at why water towers are secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Water Towers. Known for being tall. Famous for being city stuff. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why Water Towers are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. Three returning guests join me this week. Kath Barbadoro and Patrick Monaghan and Eli Yudin are the co-hosts of one of my favorite comedy podcasts. It's called What a Time to Be Alive. It's about news stories that will make you say the title of the podcast.

They're also all hilarious on Twitter. Kath and Eli are stand-up comedians. Kath co-hosts a whole nother great podcast called Lie, Cheat, and Steal. Patty co-hosts a whole nother great podcast. It's called Not You, Guillermo, and it is about the TV show What We Do in the Shadows. I'm so thrilled they all found time within all that stuff to come back on this show. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that me and Kath and Eli each recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. Acknowledge Patty recorded this on the traditional land of the Lenape people, and acknowledge

that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And today's episode is about water towers. That is a patron-chosen topic, many thanks to Greg I for that wonderful suggestion that took the poll by storm at SifPod.fun. Water towers are an amazing topic for this show. They are probably the most humongous building that we all just go right past without paying attention to. So let's pay attention to them. Please sit back or adjust a single letter

on your water tower to get back on the federal government's good side. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Kath Barbadoro, Patrick Monaghan, and Eli Yudin. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Kath, Eli, Patty, thank you all for for coming back and and as a group and and of course i always start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or opinion of it any of you can start but how do you feel about water towers i feel uh you know good i think that my knowledge of water towers is mostly related to like teens hanging out on them in

movies and then one of them falling off and that being like a big plot point i feel like maybe that's one specific movie but that that that's immediately what i imagine is like a dark water tower with teens hanging out on it that shouldn't be hanging out on it because of the inherent danger is there a famous movie for that i don't know yeah are you thinking of a specific one eli uh i'm gonna have to hit the google and be like teen falling off water tower um there's definitely one it's probably one of those like formative like youth you you know young adult books where somebody falls off a water tower is that how that's not i was about to be like is that how casper dies i do not think that's true

i don't think that's true all right well we're this is truly an informative podcast i'm already doing research where i water towers are very near and dear to my heart because so i grew up in new hampshire it's very wooded it's very like there's lots of little forests and stuff and down the street you could walk into the woods and there were some trails back there and they led to a water tower. We weren't climbing it, but I wouldn't say we were up to like fully legal activities

by the water tower. But that's kind of where there was like a clearing. So you'd walk through the woods and now it's all like publicly maintained. Like they actually, the city actually maintains trails up there now like but when i was a kid it was all just teens so really we kind of paved the way for a public good by uh by misbehaving i i feel like it it balanced out i hope they just

followed the the paths that you guys made with your feet, the desire paths. Like, oh, yeah, this seems like a good route. Cool. They kind of did. I mean, there was also some other stuff up there. Like, growing up in New England is really interesting because, like, another thing that you would see a lot in the woods that you would see on the way to this water tower is in, like, the 60s, they would set up like rope toes for skiing. And it's basically like a lawnmower engine with like, like, it's just sort of jury rigged into like a rope toe. So it would pull you up the hill and then you'd go down.

And this was like in the 60s and they'd all been abandoned. But the trees that they were attached to had grown. So you would see the old machinery way up in the trees because they had grown like for 40 years. What? Yeah. It was super cool. So there was like a lot of like weird kind of somewhat shady, uh,

trails and stuff back there. But that was, yeah, that you would, you would see those kind of, there were two or three in my town that you could point out that used to be little hinky ski areas that that sounds like such science fiction nature planet stuff like our technology will rise as the tree

does great like really good yeah some amazing you know relics of a past age uh for anyone that maybe is screaming this i doubt there's many if anybody i'm looking to patty to maybe is screaming this, I doubt there's many. If anybody, I'm looking to Patty to maybe know of this. This is, I think, the movie, but I have no memory of it outside of that scene. It's a movie called The War, where Kevin Costner and Elijah Wood are in it. Apparently, one of them almost drowns in a water tower. But it also reminded me, my other water tower knowledge is from Elisa Lam and Dark Water, the Japanese horror movie. Oh, yeah. Where the mysterious getting trapped in a water tower knowledge is from elisa lamb and dark water the japanese horror movie oh yeah the mysterious getting trapped in a water tower was she i guess that kind of counts she was like in a tank at the top of a building which i guess is a form of water tower it towers over people

it's filled with water the bases yeah but i would say that counts for what we're going to talk about because it's a top of a building water tank that is the local water tower in the building. And, yeah, we'll link about Elisa Lam for people. She tragically drowned in a water tank on a building. And some people thought it was ghosts, but it's probably not. Probably not. I would say I'm somewhere in between. I was waiting for Eli to find the answer before I jumped in on.

All of his water tower stuff is like people dying and being haunted and all of cas is like hanging out and having a good time uh yeah joy mine is just kind of neutral i think um i think i think i mean i think they're neat uh real three bears situation here yeah exactly i don't uh i don't have a lot of experience with them um they didn't really have any that i can remember you know that were like notable anyway in around where i grew up or anything and obviously in new york they're all just kind of on the tops of buildings or not really you know there's no like uh i don't know like the big peach from house

of cards or whatever right there's no like equivalent of that anywhere around i've been to that peach i forgot about that peach i've been. I drove out of my way specifically to post a stupid joke on Twitter of a selfie of me with the peach. Oh, there you go. All for content. Anything for content. I do like the ones in New York though. They're very sort of cartoony. It seems like we should have a more sophisticated way to store water, but they look but they look like Looney Tunes to me. I love them. There's also a cool one that they changed. I think they turned it into an art installation.

You see it on your way out of New York. I see it all the time when I'm driving from New York to D.C. or someone else is driving and I'm in the car. Have you seen that water tower that's now, it's completely stained glass? It doesn't have water in it anymore, but it's like a water tower, but it's all stained glass. It's in Williamsburg, right? That's pretty cool. Yeah, it's on your way. I know you see it on the BQE when you're leaving New York.

Yeah. I was going to say that there is like a, and this might be the same place for all I know, but one of like the ritzy like new places or something like in Williamsburg had a, it was like a faux speakeasy or something in the water tower, or maybe I'm conflating two different things of course but there was like there was okay there was there was the why the hotel no first the first there was like an actual like speakeasy where like and it was one of those things that got written about in like you know on eater or something and then got ruined or whatever

and then and then they did like uh they did like a faux one in like the place next to like the William Vale or something. And I, you know, it was something like hard to get into club or something. So that's, yeah, that's my, yeah. So that's the extent that I can think of, of that kind of stuff around here. I know that there's in Williamsburg that the clock is now a luxury apartment. So this all like tracks to me that you can like, you can live in that clock. I think Amari Stoudemire was like live in that clock. I think Amar,

I think, I think Amar Stoudemire was like looking at that clock at one, when he, when he was a Nick, if I remember right, he was considering living in the clock, like a, like a Disney,

like rat again from the great mouse detective or something. Considering the clock as a place to live. Yeah, exactly. It's, it's hard because there's constantly people hanging from the minute hands that are involved in some sort of thriller caper. Um, I also want to say, cause this is something that's very connected to me and my, and like we wouldn't, didn't have a

water tower, but Kath was there that, that lovely teenage moment where you were all hanging out by the water tower and then, uh, headlights or a spotlight turned on and everyone had to scatter and run with like a half full pbr into the woods no because you couldn't get there by car so it was like it was pretty pretty secluded i mean definitely like people came up because it it was close enough to civilization that like people were walking around up there and would like you know just kind of vaguely scold but like yeah no uh i had other encounters kind of sneaking around doing teen stuff broke into some some swimming holes and and the like but uh the water tower is a pretty safe zone jail i think i'm i guess i'll find out perhaps during this podcast. I'm wondering if because I can't really remember any water towers in D.C.

Does the reservoir basically fill that need? I mostly know about the New York situation with that. But reservoirs can, especially if they're at elevation. Yeah, because then the water comes rushing down in a way that that kind of does the job. Yeah. All right. Well, I'm already learning. You just jam one of those things anywhere in the ground in D.C.

because it's so moist and swampy down there. You just kind of pump it a few times and you basically have like a well. So no problem. We just drink swamp water down there. Yeah. Just drink out of Rock Creek. Real good stuff. Yeah. I mean, even D.C.'s water is also not good.

Do not drink out of the Potomac. Note that I was very clear about that. Do not do that. The Anacostia. Now that's the tasty water. That's the real flavorful stuff. D.C. heads will appreciate us sh**ting on our rivers. I mean, pooping on our rivers. Well, I, cause my, my region growing up was the Western suburbs of Chicago. because my my region growing up was the western suburbs of chicago and as a kid like i didn't know where any towns stopped or started because i never had to navigate anything and so like all our water towers it was built up enough that it was just a boring lot under it with a fence around it there was no woods or anything but like every water tower instructed me on whether we were in

downers grove or naperville or Wheaton or whatever, you know. That is something that like I because so I grew up in New England, but I went to school. I went to college in Iowa and like the Midwest is Watertower country because it's I guess because it's so flat and like dry. And so, yeah, every town has a huge one that's like the tallest building in the town. And yeah, with a big mural on the's like the tallest building in the town. And yeah, with a big mural on the side with the town's name and sometimes a very ambiguous, quasi-threatening motto. You're just like, I don't know if I want to stop here. I don't know what these people are about.

Yeah, maybe that's why it becomes such a teenager hanging places because it's basically an obelisk in the middle of a Midwestern town that the teens are drawn to. And it's got everything a teen could want because it's kind of secluded. There's not usually great lighting. And also it's dangerous because there's a big ladder that you're super not supposed to climb. And so it's got everything. Here's the thing you don't know about water towers. Every water tower is actually on a ley line. So that actually all tracks. Yeah.

The water is just an excuse to connect. They are like a weird sort of like non-zone. Like they do, there is something sort of paranormal seeming about them. They're on the, yeah. They're all on the beam for all the dark tower heads out there. Yeah. Every water tower is on the beam. Yeah.

Very much, very much can imagine, you know, like suddenly a hole being found in like the top or side of a water tower and then some sort of creature, you know, having landed there. Good spot. Very mysterious spot. A lot of Spielberg vibes for sure.

Yes. With water towers. Absolutely. I paused because I just had a real clear metal picture of the gunslinger from the dark tower approaching a water tower like it's a big deal but it's just i was gonna is is mad max not just the idea of the water tower taken to its natural conclusion just where the water tower is truly the most valuable thing in the world yeah there's another question does a morton

joe live in a water tower sort of kind of a water cave yes a whole water grotto how'd you like fury road i love the water tower design really good i mean that would be sick in like peoria they once a year they just a bunch of water pours out of skull's mouth and everyone's running with little bowls to fill it up they have one shaped like a peach why not have one that shaped like a morton joe's house i mean i mean that's kind of how i feel about any of the ones that are i understand there are shapes that lend themselves better to it so there's probably a general form factor you have to follow but if your water tower is not a fun shape these were all put up during like a time when like even like red state governments like gave a little bit of a about public works sorry bleep me um and and there was a little bit of a sense of like i don't know fun

or like you know caring a little bit so they should all be fun shapes and if they're not at least fun colors you know shame on the people who't. Most of them were put up in the era when every restaurant was shaped like a bowler hat or something. Yeah. Or like that hotel that shaped like an elephant in New Jersey. There was just stuff like that. That's just what everything was. It was a fun shape. Yeah.

If you were trying to do this now, it would just be like, it's not a question of whether it's going to be a fun shape it's like no no one's entitled to water or what i know the private sector will handle this or and if we will make it it'll look like an iphone or something it'll just be like a smooth black it will be an obelisk it will be an obelisk yeah these these millennials okay the millennials are too busy on their phones to build a hotel that looks like a boot anymore and that's why america is failing novelty hotels because it's not just governments too like it's if people have heard the ketchup episode of this way back when we talk about a collinsville illinois water tower that's just a huge ketchup bottle because the brooks catsup company wanted a water tower and wanted to have fun and so that's

just there now they just did it see that's great what's not to like about that who can get angry at that something for everybody water and a fun shape yeah prove us prove us wrong on twitter get really mad about the catsup Water Tower. Oh, boy. Mustard Twitter is going to be going nuts. Here comes Mustard Twitter. It's mostly in French. You can't follow it anyway. Forget it.

Yeah, I think from here we can get into the segments of the show. Because the first chunk of the show is always a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. And this week that's in a segment called Statistics All I Ever Wanted. Statistics Gotta Tabulate. And that name was submitted by Kathy Schmidt. Hi, Kathy. Thank you. We have a new name for this segment every week. Please make him as silly and wacky as possible.

Submit to SifPod on Twitter or to SifPod at gmail.com a couple numbers here and the first one is 1.2 million and that's a number of people that's approximately how many people see the union water sphere water tower in one day in new jersey 1.2 million wow i'm assuming just you know by accident not like as a destination i'm guessing it's not a pilgrimage i mean it's about a flight path too i would assume that's like that's such a cheat though if you can see it from a plane that's like that's part of racking up the numbers you know yeah that's like the colgate clock it's like yeah if you're in downtown manhattan i guess you could say you see the Colgate clock. That is true. Yeah, they did all these cheats, basically. But it's a water tower in Union Township, New Jersey, and it's 212 feet tall, which is more than 64 meters.

It's considered the tallest water sphere in the country. And Mark Moran of Weird New Jersey ran up an estimate where daily there's about 750,000 drivers on the Garden State Parkway passing it, another 200,000 on US Route 22, a bunch of local people, and then 50,000 people flying in and out of Newark Airport. So this huge water sphere gets seen by over a million people, probably pre-COVID, but still. Is that like a sort of like water tower enthusiast thing where it's that WaterSphere is the correct terminology and that WaterTower is considered like misleading to say or something like that? Yeah, there's some guy who's like a super fan of this thing. And a town in Oklahoma built a taller WaterTower, but he argued that it wasn't a sphere. It was a spheroid. And so he lost the title still to New Jersey.

Oh, wow. He's lucky they gave it to him. He's going to drive up with like a van full of fertilizer, you know. Yeah. The worst plan of all time. He was going to set the water sphere on fire it did not work almost immediately solved itself is that do they do they still add space on the on the union water sphere because that feels like a golden opportunity there at least something that's you can not a lot of text yeah golden

opportunity golden palace what's the one where they put it on every boxer's like forehead golden palace is that the one yeah poker it would be honestly i think today it would be draft kings you'd have a lot of like draft kings was golden palace a poker site it was some sort of online gambling thing that i think once they advertised enough the government looked at it and was like this is illegal you can't do this but But I don't remember. I think you're right. I think it is like a progenitor of DraftKings. I do think that is what it would be now. It would be like, or maybe like Figs, that like scrubs company that had Subway ads everywhere

for like the past two years. How many people need scrubs in this world? That was before. They just advertise openly. Before COVID. It was before COVID too. openly before covid that it was before covid too i did look up the the union water sphere and it does like it it is different than like my vision of a water tower because it's it is one circle on a stick it looks like a lollipop

it does not look like a like it doesn't look like the looney tunes ones on the tops of the buildings in new york with like the little steeple and it's like round it's like yeah it's just fully speaking of which how did we miss the animaniacs whom in a water tower that may be that's actually now that i think about it was probably the most frequent water tower i've ever seen is the one from the credit scene of of the Animaniacs and that uh water the Warner Brothers water tower is that real because that's very iconic that's true yeah it's actually that tower is going to be the whole bonus show it's a real tower oh my god yes talking all about it yeah yeah and because I like one time when I was living in LA was on the Warner Brothers lot and I was mainly excited about the tower above me.

I was like, that's where they live. You know, it was just all the geek stuff that probably people do. Which makes a lot more sense, too, with Patty's ley line theory, because I don't know for any of the non showbiz people who are listening, going on any production lot is for a parking lot. It's insane how easy it is to get lost. You'd think it would be easy. You can spend hours driving around a production lot, trying to find somebody. And maybe you almost hit Jason Schwartzman with your car,

but that's maybe a personal story. Not something that everybody did. Yeah. If I was ever on the Warner's lot, I would go to like the coffee like the you know how they have a coffee places and be like does freak the canteen does freakazoid ever come in here you know just trying to yeah has ever seen freakazoid is he still around freakazoid reboot when bring freakazoid back

they brought back the animaniacs freakazoid is probably like a like a super republican now or something you know who knows you know he can't work like they thought about bringing him back but he won't get vaccinated there we go that's probably it that's the true freak azoid that idea is extra fun in my head because the coffee shop i remember from that lot was a replica of the friends central perk so if you go to the friends coffee shop and just talk about freakazoid, that's great. That's a really good use of it. They probably love that compared to what they normally get.

That is true. It's like finally another Warner's property, anything else. Yeah, please. If one other person tells me they were on a break i am gonna just they're just dying for someone to come in and talk about michigan j frog that's all they want oh yeah they just yeah it's just it's just thousands of guys who think they're chandler

yes all the time it's unbelievable yeah every name on a cup yeah yeah talk about a cursed idea all all chandler friends just five chandlers unwatchable i think that's just hang out with comics though unfortunately yeah well and uh there's only a couple more numbers here. One of them is 1974. And 1974 is the year when the town of Florence, Kentucky, built a new water tower that accidentally broke advertising laws in the U.S. Because what they did, Florence, Kentucky is in northern Kentucky. It's outside Cincinnati, Ohio. But they built their water tower right by the mall. So they wrote Florence Mall on the water tower. And then Atlas Obscura says that the U.S. Bureau of Highways reached out

because the water tower was technically advertising the mall. And so it was technically too large by like federal law for a highway advertisement. And so what happened is the town decided to fix it by changing Florence Mall to say Florence y'all. They just did one letter different and that was it. Nice. And now it's like the whole thing for the town. It put it on the map. People come see it because it's so Southern. Fantastic. I mean, that's a that's a that's a whoever came up with that. Like, not that it's not not that it's like super obscure, but but just perfect solution. No notes.

Could not be better. Really smart, yeah. Yeah. This actually brings up another water tower association that I forgot about as far as writing on water towers goes, which is Ferris Bueller's Day Off. When they write Save Ferris on a Water Tower. Which, yeah, I don't know if the advertising commission would be upset with them for doing that. But another notable water tower in our history. There would be yet another thing that's angry at Ferris Bueller.

It's the scourge of the town. Yeah. Another group of people going after him are the ad commission people. It would, like, the movie he gets through all the principles and everything and then federal agents like tackle them that would be a great ending to the film but yeah and they so that's like weird business law they got around it and now the the town festival is called the florence y'all festival and it's like delightful part of the south thing. Great. But there's only one more number here. It's 25 gallons per day. And 25 gallons per day is the clean water output from a prototype of a new kind of water tower called Worca Water.

And I'm saying you guys a picture of it because it's like new technology. And the Worca Water Tower was unveiled in 2013 by an industrial designer named Arturo Vittori. And it's designed to like supply clean water in rural and underdeveloped areas of the world. And all it is is a structure made of bamboo and then mesh netting over it and rope tying it together. And Smithsonian says that the net collects dew and then the dew like runs down the structure of it into a water storage container. And I couldn't find much evidence of like how much this is actually in the world. But it's an idea that is in like the Cooper Hewitt Museum of Design and is a new idea for how to do this. It's also very cool looking.

Yeah. It looks very midsummery to me it is yeah i was thinking it does kind of look like a wicker man um yeah wicker man said you don't want to have a wicker man situation i mean it looks a little wicker man but it also looks a little bit like um uh like african savannah architecture like which which is probably an area where it would be used so uh i think that's kind of cool that's right yeah i like it yeah i'd be i'd be i'd be happy if one of these went up near me on uh on my roof it would be a luxury apartment within weeks uh amari stoudemire would be looking at it these things are gentrifying the savannah

i'll also say what was it arturo vittori yeah arturo that is top-notch industrial designer name like absolutely yeah you meet a guy that's like art vandele it's like oh yes yes yes you definitely designed something that guy is designing no right angles on anything he makes. Yeah. Just it's super innovative. He's either like a really innovative industrial designer or a vampire. It's one of the two. Maybe both. Could be both.

Maybe both. Why not both? Could be both. I wish I had more information about whether these are actually out in the world these days or whether it was just a prototype, because it's a very, very like stylish African science fiction looking thing. It's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Were they what was cost like as part of the design?

Is it like do you know, is it like super expensive to put one up relative to what other options would be or like the the article claims it's super cheap materials and so i think it's like and it's designed as like a world good and like a nice thing um so yeah i guess my lack of with my deep lack of knowledge of it the only thing would be that it seems for it to work well you'd have to be in an area that sees decent rainfall already so we just need that might be the thing you just need to do so but doesn't you so you just need mist it needs you need fog well do is like it's condensation based on temperature changes and humidity and stuff so you wouldn't necessarily need rainfall but you would need some it would be tough in an arid climate do you think yeah if it were super arid i think it would be difficult yeah so that seems still good but you know it would just for you to be like oh we'd

love one of those and they're like actually your area is too dry for this so we can't get you water it's like yeah we know that's why we were asking. Sorry, folks. Yeah. For some reason, it's the Jack Nicholson Joker is the one telling you. Do not buy a water tower from him. Oh, yeah. Joker, I feel like, did some water tower stuff. I'd put money on the fact that he was messing with water towers. I feel like that is a very, again, the like the classic wb water tower is a very like tim burton batman item like yeah of architecture

yeah it's full of it doesn't seem like batman villains would hang out there yeah it's full of joker venom and not water yeah yeah exactly i mean the scarecrow i feel like every villain in gotham their ultimate goal was to get it batman should have just spent a hundred percent of his time defending gotham's water tower because everybody was just you just poison it and then that's trying to put stuff in there yeah you just yeah valuable lesson about infrastructure yeah because i i always did enjoy that kind of thing of the dc reservoir which is is that it is kind of almost a throwback to this very old idea of a heavily guarded water source. Which even though we take water for granted now, there's still a big pool of water that you will get shot if you try to get in there. That they have armed guards.

But it's still this really valuable resource there where they have barbed wire so that you can't mess with everybody's water. I think you should be able to go in there if you promise not to pee in it. I think you should be allowed to go in. Oh, yeah. Well, we all promise not to pee in the pool. And look how that turned out. Everybody's going. I didn't pee in the pool.

Come on. You should have to promise not to do a few other things, I think. It's like, oh, I didn't pee. I just poured a bunch of this stuff in there. This experimental stuff. Yeah, you're definitely not allowed to bring any vials in there. No vials. Hard vial ban in the reservoir.

I just poured this Ice 9 in there. So long, everybody. No Ice 9. Ice 9 is banned as well. But you should be able to swim around. Two things you're not allowed to do. No peeing, no Ice 9. Going to jail for life because I put 4,000 tons of crystal light in the D.C. reservoir.

What are the bad flavors? Oh, yeah, the diet cranberry. Put diet cranberry in there. God, what a disgusting... That's just pure idiocracy. People on dialysis just get like, this is not helping. DC emergency. The country time lemonade truck crashed into the reservoir.

The entire water supply is pink lemonade. It's making jungle juice in there. Making jungle juice in the reservoir. Rat boy has gotten to the reservoir and made jungle juice in there. Making jungle juice in the reservoir. Rat boy has gotten to the reservoir and made jungle juice. Crash a truck full of the old El Paso taco mix. Oh no! Ooh, spicy water.

Everything has too much Latin flavor. Jail. Well, before we give people too many ideas, let's get into the big takeaways for the show. There's a couple of them, and here comes the first one. Takeaway number one. Water towers are tower-shaped for several important reasons. And I think this is relatively basic, but I just like never checked before researching this.

Like, why is it a whole tower? Why can't it just be on the ground or whatever? And it turns out there's like a bunch of reasons to do that. I don't know if you guys ever thought about that or it ever crossed your mind. I would just assume gravity, right? Now I want to know what the reasons are, though. I mean, I'm thinking like I'm imagining, yeah, gravity, like the Roman aqueducts and stuff like they're transporting water has kind of generally been something that requires a lot of space. It seems like throughout our history.

But, yeah, I mean, I guess you'd want to put it up there so nobody can get in it. Like, as we said, it they're playing keep away it's at least it's at least harder to mess with it i think that's that's right yeah it's slightly harder to mess with it yeah that's the big one yeah those are those are like two of the big reasons is it's harder to contaminate that's we just know like like things that could spill or leak even accidentally it's just up there. So it's OK. Right. And then the big, big reason is gravity.

Yeah. Because it turns out like there aren't that many parts to the system. It's a big tank of water on a tower. And then for for any water storage, you need something to put stuff in, something to take stuff out. So they have electric pumps to put water up into the tower and push it up there. That's what I was wondering. To release it, it's basically just gravity. And towns will also structure the height of it and the size of it so that as much gravity can do the work as possible of shooting the water into the town when needed.

Yeah. Just really confirming that Mad Max is... mean that's how a morton joe does it as well so it's very a morton joe based yeah they also have those uh they have a couple of women living in the water tower uh that he calls his ladies and yeah i just yeah i figured it's like an ivy bag kind of situation to use a useless metaphor for it but you know that's pretty good yeah yeah and it also it turns out the the gravity element is particularly helpful because in most cities especially in the modern day there's a really uneven demand for water across the day because you'll have like everybody showering in the morning or everybody

cooking and washing dishes at dinner time but then overnight really light use during the workday really light use and so in order to like do the heart the hard task is getting water out in the big times and so if you can just let gravity do that that's great and then the pump just gradually refills it when it's quiet again. Yeah. I feel like living in New York or any big city where you probably live in a big apartment building, you immediately already know about that just from hot water. You can almost kind of tell when everyone in the building or just internet, like everyone's internet goes down.

You're like, oh, everyone's browsing right now. Just a small demonstration of it. Yeah, like a 30-person building and 28 of them are watching Netflix after work. So sorry, you don't get to look at anything. Bandwidth is down. Yeah. And the wiring is probably from the same time that the water towers were built. So it's not equipped for that.

When I was a kid, let's say, I always thought like water towers were built so it's not yeah for that when i was a kid let's say i always thought like water towers were like just in case they just like had the water there in case they needed it kind of thing as opposed to like an actual functional thing that was like part of a you know like yeah it was just like well you know this way if we can't get water and it's like without thinking about like well where do they get it normally then it's like, without thinking about, like, well, where do they get it normally then? It's like, uh... It's just recirculated. I think I thought that, too. I didn't realize it was in continuous use. I think I thought it was for, like, fires or something.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. They just crack it open, and it just dumps all over the whole town if there's a big a** fire. Yeah. It's very helpful. And that is another key use of them, is, like, there's a fire, we suddenly need a bunch of water. That's totally a use.

But it turns out it's also just for like, everyone wants to rinse a pot. And so we need to get some water out to everybody. Yeah. People love to rinse a pot. That's true. Go crazy for it. Yeah. Not to be too relatable, but rinsing pots, folks.

I think I do. Rinse a pot. Yeah, not to be too relatable, but rinsing pots, folks. You guys ever rinse a pot? And then the other emergency use of it is that a water tower system helps us still have fresh water still coming through the pipes when the power's out. Because they need electricity to clean and treat water. They need electricity to pump water up into the tower. But since you can just let gravity let it fall to everybody, that's why if there's a short power outage, you still have water in the faucet and it's not weird or anything.

Yeah, I never thought about that either. Yeah, we're looking at countertop dishwashers just to see what's out there because we don't have one. Probably should have gotten one earlier in the past year and a half when we weren't doing anything. I felt like I was washing dishes at least an hour a day. It's constant. It was like a full-time job. But they sell these things and they hook up to the fauc to the faucet and, and there's like a hose in and a hose out, you know, for the, you know, and then the hose out goes back into the sink

or whatever, one way or the other. And it's like, yeah, you just turn the faucet on and you turn the thing on. And it's like, yeah, but how does it stop? Like, I, like, I still can't really, it's like, it works. It's fine. It's like, yeah, like the water keeps coming out of the, like, where does it go? Like, what are you talking? You know, but I'm just not going to worry about it. That my take on it you know it's fine it's fine they say it works

no one says this blew up and flooded my kitchen or whatever so there's something i don't understand and i'm not gonna worry about it so you know we're all modern intelligent people but we only have so much insight into valves i know about them i know there's different kinds but you know not my problem i'm not the valve guy not my purview yeah you it works and if it doesn't work i will write a review about it on amazon and that's as far as i know and then you have to kind of discount like anybody because i've also been looking at countertop dishwashers because we live the same curse uh clearly and every once in a while you do find a reviewer someone's like it did explode and it's all over my kitchen and you're like well that guy's just an idiot he just

doesn't know how to use it can't trust this guy you do kind of have to suss out whether it's like is this a real problem or is this a problem you had because you didn't read directions yeah definitely you forgot to use the the o-ring or something yeah and then i run into that with every restaurant review kind of too i'm like are they good at eating this kind of food though or like hold on that my big one my big one like that um is nail sal. When I go get my nails done is, is this a bad nail salon or is this reviewer racist? Which is like, at least it's usually pretty easy to tell, but sometimes it's buried like a few, you know,

like part of the way through the paragraph and then you're like, Oh, you're just racist. Okay. Like we'll do a good job. Like, yeah. Always unreliable narrators.

If you love, like, fiction with unreliable narrators, just sort Yelp reviews by one star. And one of my friends one time did a search of Yelp for the phrase extremely rude to my fiance and just read all the articles that it's very good. Very good. Yeah. The one like that that I recommend is you go to like nightclubs.

Like if you know like the cool places in your, in like your town or city and just go, first of all, like the kind of people that are giving reviews on Yelp for that are almost certainly people that are not getting in. Right. So like it's a, it's a cornucopia of, you know, my girls and I were out for my birthday and we looked hot and the bouncer was so rude and it's just, it's just wonderful stuff.

Yeah. No one's posted a review from inside the club. Writing a Yelp review of studio 54 or whatever. Cause you, cause Andy Warhol pushed past you. Yelp of Studio 54 would be so good to read. Yeah. Best of luck to all of them. Yeah, hang in there, folks.

All right. Off of that, we're going to a short break followed by the big takeaways. See you in a sec. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places. Yes, I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR.

Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience. One you have no choice but to embrace because yes, listening is mandatory.

The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. And remember, no running in the halls. Well, there's a couple more takeaways here. And the next one is about New York City. Takeaway number two.

New York City has a different water tower system from the rest of the U.S. And I moved here recently. You guys have lived here longer. that's what makes the bagel so good is that water tower that water tower water it seasons it you know we all have black mold in our apartment it's fine just a guy stirring a water tower full of bagels like yeah this is going well this is good we also have the most marinara towers in the united states number one that's a whole separate infrastructure that we have they're all filled all the water towers have burrata floating in them

just different Greatest city in the world. It's just that weird cloudy mozzarella bar. That's what's in all those towers. And there's a couple sources here, mainly Untapped New York and AMNY. But New York City, if people haven't been, it's full of small wooden water towers on the tops of the bigger buildings. And Untapped New York puts the estimate at at least 10,000 of them across the city. small wooden water towers on the tops of the bigger buildings and untapped new york puts the estimate at at least 10 000 of them across the city which is a lot and some of them have like little structures around them to hide them and others are out there they're actually because i haven't thought about it before there is there is a pretty bad open mic that's on the roof of a building and it is i have sat under a water tower at that open mic a ton of times there's never

registered it so wow by far the most useful thing happening on that rooftop is the water tower the funniest water in new york city it gets right in there yeah which is also a good it's infused with comedy yeah that's also a good uh site let's look into the the glamour of new york City comedies. Did you want to do an open mic under a water tower next to a train track? That's very good. Don't worry, the trains only come by every five minutes. It's fine.

The trains come by every five minutes. Every set is two minutes. You just got to roll the dice. You just got to roll the dice. Yeah. Either your set has no trains or it is 50% trains. Those are the options. Yeah. Either your set has no trains or it is 50% trains. Those are the options. Like the,

it's one of those comedy club printed lists of all the exact times and the trains just on there, you know, drop in, drop in, drop in. Oh man. I got the train spot.

I got the train spot again. Yeah. So you have to prove yourself. I want to see if you're good enough. Yeah. If they want to see if you're good enough for the rooftop, you can do the train spot oh i got the train spot again yeah so you have to prove yourself see if you're good enough yeah if they want to see if you're good enough for the rooftop you could do the train spot see how you do i don't know why this club passes all these trains but yeah and there's there's a couple quick reasons for why those are there one is just the density of the city like in a smaller town, you have one big tower instead of, and you can just leave a lot taken up by it.

So New York, they put them on roofs. The second big reason is that New York's main water source is reservoirs that are a little bit upstate. So they're at a much higher elevation than the city down here, basically at sea level. down here basically at sea level and so the water is coming down from there with enough force that it can get up to about six floors worth of pipe in a building and so like our our where i live is four stories we don't have a water tower on top because just the reservoir water gets up well enough but the bigger buildings beyond that need their own little tower for their own stuff it's just it's just another thing not to think about too much that there's just this flood of water coming at all

times from up high and it's coming back up and it just jams up into your sink when you turn the valve and uh and you rinse your pot it's uh the entire city city is pressurized at all times i recently went um camping up by the new york city where one of them the ashokan reservoir is one of the big ones and uh i went camping up near there and uh yeah like they're pretty they're pretty specific about not letting you get that close to it but uh I feel like you can get surprisingly close. Like I feel like you shouldn't be able to get as close as you can. I welcome any efforts to keep people away. I think that's,

I think that's just great personally. Plenty of other places you can go. Don't. Yeah. That was also a plot point in the film die hard with a vengeance. There's a lot that goes on sort of towards the end in those, in those water tunnels. And there was a long like tunnel improvement or increase i don't remember which project um on the east side kind of where i used to live over in like the 30s um that had to do with like

you know improvement of that system and it went on forever and ever and ever i don't even know if it's done yet but just like tunneling up there making the tunnel wider or whatever you know but again not my i mean my problem in a real sense if it goes bad but otherwise you know it's like it's like my attitude with those guys you know when there's guys digging holes in the in the street it's like uh you know what good for you guys i don't want to know what's going on down there it's not it's not for me to know if i think about it too much i will get very upset and i have absolutely nothing to offer in terms of solutions so god bless you don't tell me what you're doing that's right right so that's interesting to know it goes up to six so

so buildings without with that are higher than six floors need to have some sort of water, if not a water tower, at least a connection to something with a water tower. Yeah, that's the situation. It's weird that it's... Because I think six floors is also the cutoff for how tall you can legally have a walk-up in New York. If it's over six floors, you have to have an elevator.

So maybe the water takes the elevator. How about... Is that a possibility explain to me my my building i just moved into is six floors this is the biggest building i've lived in by far so uh pretty cool wow yeah i'm my overlords above me the more they're the top floor is a morton joe's apartment yeah he has the penthouse he listens to a lot of weird music and he's got that he's got that one giant sun and that guy really walks around all night it's very loud oh my god he's stomping around up there he's always drinking that milk

whole floor smells like milk. They stomp it around. The last thing about those New York Water Towers is they tend to be made of wood, which is, you know, old fashion. And it turns out there's just a couple companies that make all

of them and have been doing it for decades. There's one called the rosen watch tank company that was founded in 1866 and is on long island city because the technology is kind of the same they say like it's it's pretty much the same system it's been i'm imagining the people who own these water tower families it's just all steampunk dynasties they're all steampunks it's the steampunk mafia that's what it is they all have like monocles and top hats yeah and uh i'm also just imagining them as huge donkey kong style barrels that they build basically just big and they hammer the things on them and they put them up there yeah yeah i mean i feel like it has the water tower families

definitely are involved in some sort of organized activity they have to be right they get cleared i would imagine that yeah uh yeah but and like it's a business nobody's paying attention to you know you can just do it yeah and they they also say that the water towers are just made of cedar planks with steel hoops around them. There's no glue, there's no nails, there's no screws. They're big barrels. It's just big barrels. And they're cut precisely enough where it holds together. And they also have to be plain wood,

so there's not paint or other chemicals leaching into the water. So the old ones and the new ones look the same. They're just wooden barrels. That's real Cooper hours right there. That's true Cooper action. The master Coopers are approved to build the big barrels for the whole city. Well, there's one more quick takeaway for the main episode, so let's do that. Takeaway number three.

There is a fascinating and ongoing history to the water tower at Alcatraz. Because Alcatraz, the island prison off of San Francisco in the Bay Area there, it's like surprisingly historically significant. And the main reason is from the 1960s. But it's probably most famous as a federal prison. It was that from 1934 to 1963. It had like Al Capone and people trying to escape. Before that, it was a fort and then it was a military prison. And the saddest use of it was probably the detention of Native people in the late 1800s and early 1900s who like resisted U.S. colonialism and colonization. And so that's part of why in the 1960s, native activists started taking over Alcatraz to do protests. And the largest protest was in November 1969, a group called Indians of All Tribes led by Richard Oakes. They took over Alcatraz for one day

and then decided they could take it over for the long haul. And so later that month, they organized about 100 people to take over Alcatraz and demand the deed to it so they could turn it into a university and a cultural center. The government refused, and so there was a standoff for 19 months. And one thing they did while they were there is they graffitied the water tower. And they wrote, Peace and Freedom, Welcome to the Home of the Free Indian Land. They also wrote, Free Indian Land, Indians Welcome. So the water tower there became a historic part of the prison and the fort, but also part of this amazing effort to try to better things for Native people in the U.S. Does it still say that?

Yeah, and then it became like a really interesting it changed to say florence y'all and then the government came in alcatraz y'all yeah because people don't know it's Alcatraz. Yeah, you got to tell them. But yeah, it became like after the occupation, it became a national historic landmark. And then like great people with the modern park service realized that kind of all of Alcatraz has a bunch of saltwater damage because it's just constantly being hit by the sea. And so the water tower, the whole water tower was degrading, and they realized they wanted to preserve the water tower, but also preserve the graffiti that wasn't there in the first place. And so in the early 2010s, they like collaborated to repaint it. That Park Service description, quote, the Park Service fully documented every detail of the original work

before it was painted over. Once the contractors finished repainting the water tower with marine grade paint, Richard Oakes's daughter and grandson and others that were present on the island during the Native American occupation were invited up to the top of the water tower to recreate the original lettering, end quote. I cannot believe they let them do that. that's like the most magnanimous thing i've our government has ever done that's crazy yeah well that's it's so interesting to me because it's like they let them preserve the graffiti but they didn't seed alcatraz to them like they didn't do any of the stuff that they wanted to do. I mean, it's not a prison anymore, but it's also not a native cultural center or school.

So they're just like, yeah, but this is really nice. This is a nice message that we do not materially support in any way. But we will let you repaint it. Yeah, they put one of those, like the little girl statue on Wall Street. They put one of those there as like the little girl statue on wall street they put one of those there as a way of showing yeah yeah i think the government let them do this because they were embarrassed by the by the events uh when general hummel and the marines took over alcatraz and they had to send in you know that wasn't gonna have to blow up they sent that bombs blowing up

half of the it was embarrassing anyway yeah yeah it's a real embarrassment you know yeah i gotta say i i applaud that everything i'm doing but if someone was like we're gonna here's what we're gonna do the government's gonna be really mad we're gonna go into jail i'd be like i need you to tell me how we're gonna get back out before we do this plan this seems way too easy that's where they want us to go especially that yeah like an undercover they're like all right we've hey i'm the new guy here in charge of this uh this group the government really hates here's the new plan we're all gonna break into jail and then we're gonna lock the door we're gonna swallow the key right and that'll show them like let's make sure it's a jail on an island that's really

hard to get off that's very important yeah yeah yeah the one guy did did the bird man ever use the water tower for anything how many times did he escape do you know no i don't know how many times yeah we'll link about him i don't know much about him but he's the most famous during the the federal prison time not a military prison time the guy who tried to escape the most it's it's so true that they should have just made it the better thing that the activists wanted because there were also like previous occupations in 1964 and it was a really clear message but i i guess they've decided the the thing to do is to like preserve the multiple layers of history of the whole thing which is is something. Yeah, no, I mean, it actually is.

Like, I've never been, but I was wondering if it still had the graffiti on it, because I went to San Francisco, like, probably 10 years ago now for a comedy festival. And we went on, like, one of those cruises, like, through the bay. And I remember going by Alcatraz, and it was really interesting, but I don't remember seeing that graffiti. I might just not remember. And they remember going by Alcatraz and it was really interesting, but I don't remember seeing that graffiti, but I might just remember. And they, they redid it in 2012.

So you probably went right before. That's when I was there. Yeah. So probably had not been done yet. Yeah. I see. Gotta go back. Yeah.

Before like Peter Teal knocks it down or something, you know, once again, Amari Stoudemire has moved into a new landmark folks that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Kath Barbadoro, Patrick Monahan, and Eli Uden for bringing that Three Bears energy from the top, right? When one loved it, one was not into it, one was neutral. That's such a beautiful way for three guests to go.

I'm way into it. Anyway, I said that's the main episode for this week because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. E if you support this show on patreon.com. Patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the Warner Brothers water tower and the Warner Brothers themselves. What's their, you know, what's their whole deal? I found out. Visit

sifpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of almost six dozen other bonus shows, and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring water towers with us, which is very fun phrasing. It's like we dove in. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, water towers are tower shaped for several important reasons. Takeaway number two, New York City has a totally different water tower system from the rest of the U.S. And takeaway number three, there is a fascinating and ongoing history to the water tower at Alcatraz. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests. They're great. Kath and Patty and Eli are the hosts of What a Time to Be Alive.

I'm linking that show, which is free to hear. And then it's Patreon, patreon.com slash whatatimepod, where you can hear bonus episodes and more. Also linking Kath's podcast, Lie, Cheat, and Steal, Patty's podcast, Not You, Guillermo, and all of their Twitter accounts, at Kath Barbadoro, at Patty Moe, and then at Eli Yudin. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. My favorite is definitely a piece by Troy Johnson, professor of American Indian Studies at Cal State University, Long Beach. It's all about the Alcatraz occupations in 1964 and 1969. Also linking an article from Mental Floss about basic water tower function,

a bunch of National Park Service stuff that gives you more depth on Alcatraz, and several sources, including Untapped New York in particular, about the weird and amazing situation of New York water towers. Find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun.

And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by The Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show. And thank you to all our listeners. go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show.

And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then. Thank you.