So... Alright - Second Time's a Charm?

Episode Date: September 26, 2023

Geoff records the same podcast about Acapulco twice, because he is an idiot. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So this fucking episode, it's just starting for you. It's brand new for you. You're 10 seconds into it and you're already hearing me yell about it. But for me, it has been a whole goddamn thing. I was really excited about recording this one. I was really looking forward to it when I initially had the idea of making this podcast. This is one of the first ideas that popped up because it's something that's always kind of been in the back of my head. And I always kind of wanted an excuse to dive in and read a little bit more about it. But boy, do you not know what I'm talking about? However, before we even get to it, I recorded this entire podcast two days ago. Didn't feel great about it. I typically am able to record these in about a

in less than an hour. And this one took about twice as long. And I was just like stumbling over shit. And I didn't feel like I had my my notes right. And so I went back and I listened to it today to kind of try to edit it. I thought, you know what, I can make this work. You can fix anything in the edit. And then I discovered the mistake I had made, and a mistake I made throughout the entire recording, and it's unfixable. I mean, maybe a better editor than I could fix it, but I'd rather just re-record the whole goddamn thing than try to fix it. And I'll explain the error in a second. Let me tell you what we're doing, though. This episode, we're talking about

vacation destinations of our youth. When I was a kid, I would always, well, I don't know about you, but I was a kid in the 80s. We took a lot of like National Lampoon's-esque road trips in cars. Flying to exotic locations wasn't really on the menu for a dumb little redneck kid from Alabama. So I would take a road trip for the summer, and I would like it, and I would love it. But on movies and in television, I would always see sitcom stars or famous people vacationing or honeymooning or about to go to or just coming back from. It was always like a plot device. Two places, Acapulco and Club Med. Like when I was a kid in 1984, when you heard about people getting on a plane to go to a vacation, they were probably going to Club Med. I didn't know what that was, but it sounded cool.

Or Acapulco, which I'll be honest, was a really, really fun word to say when I was a kid. And actually kind of still is. Acapulco. It even sounds fancy. It sounds fun. It sounds like it sounds like getting splashed with waves and dolphins and maybe maybe cliff divers. It sounds like it sounds like getting splashed with waves and dolphins and maybe maybe cliff divers. It sounds honestly, it sounds like one of those T-shirts you get airbrushed at the beach where it has a bunch of impossible things wedged together into one like awesome beachy type scene, which is funny because I like saying the word Acapulco so much, it makes no goddamn sense that I spent almost two hours in my recording yesterday saying Cancun. Every time I met Acapulco, I said Cancun. I must have transposed those 60 times and at no point did I catch on and realize it. You can imagine my bitter, bitter disappointment and anger at myself and embarrassment. Just abject failure of a recording when I sat down to edit it today and I went, oh, that's weird. I meant to say Acapulco there and

I said Cancun. I wonder if I can fix that. Well, let me keep it. No, I said it again and again. Let me fast forward 10 minutes. No, I'm still saying, let me fast keep it. No, I said it again and again. Let me fast forward 10 minutes. No, I'm still saying, let me fast forward 30. No, I'm still saying it. Utter dog shit, utterly useless. So we're kind of starting over again. And I pray to God I don't say Cancun when I mean Acapulco. I also mentioned Club Med. That's a thing that we'll get into some other time. I've done a little bit of reading on Club Med. Didn't understand what it was when I was a kid. Kind of don't understand what it is now as an adult. So I want to read up a little bit more about it.

Definitely seems like a thing that had its heyday in the 80s and then kind of flamed out maybe in the late 90s. Similarly, in some ways, I guess, to Acapulco. So recently, my fiance and I were planning a little weekend away beach vacation. And we tend to go to Cancun a lot there's that word and I do mean to say Cancun this time we go to Cancun a lot to like all-inclusive resorts or sometimes if we want to be a little more adventurous we'll go to this amazing little island called Isla Mujeres which has uh some of the best food I've ever had in my entire life. And it's just lovely.

But we've been to we've been to both of those spots a handful of times over the last few years. And so when my fiance and I were sitting down to plan our next little weekend getaway and she was looking at Cancun, I said, hey, you know what? I love Cancun. I love Isla Mujeres. But I don't want it to become rote. You know, I like I don't want it to become rote. You know, I like I don't

want it to be just the de facto place we go all the time when we want to weekend away. What if we went a little further into Mexico and we went to Acapulco when I was a kid? I remember that being the hot spot. And she kind of chuckled and said, I don't think I don't think we should. I thought, oh, man, is Acapulco too expensive? Can we not afford it? And she was like, no, it's definitely not that. It's more that it has kind of become a dangerous place for vacationers and tourists,

which I was very surprised to hear. So I thought, huh, I'll have to look into that later. Imagine my surprise when I looked into it later and the place where Elvis filmed the movie and Elizabeth Taylor had her honeymoon and John Wayne. I remember owning a hotel there. That was a big deal. Imagine my surprise to find out that that place, one of the most dangerous cities in the world. one of the most dangerous cities in the world. How is it possible that the vacation spot that was considered like the Riviera

of our area of Earth, that was a playground for the elite and the rich and the famous from America and from Mexico and from other places in Central America and even from Europe, like there's a lot of ties between France and Acapulco. It's a pretty popular destination for French people too. And apparently it's represented in the culture from what I've read.

So imagine my surprise to find out it was such a dangerous place. How do you go from being that place, that world-class vacation destination, to a place that's supposedly too dangerous to visit? I had to look into it. I had to read a little bit about it and shocking what i read the first thing i read was on wikipedia and i think this is a little outdated because i've done some other research that comes up with with different figures that i think are more accurate i think this is probably written i don't know four or five years ago but from the the Wikipedia, it says it is both the sixth deadliest city in Mexico and the seventh deadliest city in the world. And the U.S. government has warned its citizens not to travel there.

And then it said in 2016, there were nine hundred and eighteen murders and the homicide rate was one of the highest in the world as of 2016 103 of every 100 000 people that is an insane homicide rate in september 2018 the city's entire police force was disarmed by the military because they suspected that they'd been infiltrated by drug gangs that That's fucking crazy, which you would think probably affected tourism. Here's how much it affected tourism. According to the Dirección General de Aeronáutica Civil, or Dirección General de Aeronáutica Civil, I'm not quite sure how to say that, the number of international flyers coming to Acapulco decreased from 355,000 in 2006, which is a pretty healthy chunk, to 52,000 in 2015.

That's like an 85% drop in international tourism in like nine years. That is insane. But that was also 2016. So maybe that's not the case now. I started looking around, trying to find out the why. And I guess that a lot of it is because of, clearly, I mean, it's a lot of the reasons for a lot of the crime throughout the world. A lot of it's gang violence. A lot of it's drug and gang violence. And I'd always read that when you go to Mexico as a tourist, you're relatively safe because they recognize that tourism is a driving industry in the country. And a lot of the violence is gangs fighting gangs and whatnot or gangs and police.

And that as long as you kind of like, you know, hang out in the safe spots and you don't go looking for trouble, you probably won't find it. But that's just supposition on my part. So I wanted to look into it a little bit. I Googled, is Acapulco safe to visit in 2023? And the first website I went to, which is travelersworldwide.com, answered the question, no, it's not the safest destination to visit right now.

It has a very high crime rate and criminals often target foreigners. So that kind of flies in the face of that adage that i hear all the time uh it also says many foreign governments advise their citizens to avoid acapulco at all costs i remember thinking that the u.s had issued that advisory i wonder that was in 2016 it's 2023 that's whatever the math on that is seven or eight years could it possibly still be like surely it's not still listed so i went to the uh travel.state.gov the u.s department of uh state's bureau of consular affairs where they issue travel advisories throughout the world as of the most

recent one i could find was october 5th of 2022 and they have it broken up into four categories of concern. The least, I'll go from least to most concerning. Exercise normal precautions when traveling to, and like Yucatan State is on there as an example. And then exercise increased caution when traveling to, and Quintana Roo is on there. And that's where Cancun is. And I meant to say Cancun.

That's a place I've been to and I feel very safe at, so I thought, okay, exercise increased caution. Then there's Reconsider Travel To, and it's got a bunch of stuff on there, like, interestingly, Baja California is considered a place you might want to reconsider travel to because of crime and threats of kidnapping. Then there's the Big daddy, do not travel to. And there are one, two, three, four, five, six places on it in 2020 as of October of 2022. Number two on there is Guero State, which is where Acapulco is. So here's what it says. Guero State, do not travel due to crime. Crime and violence are widespread. Armed groups operate independently of the government in many areas of Guerra. Members of these groups frequently maintain roadblocks and may use violence toward travelers.

U.S. citizens and LPRs have been victims of kidnapping in previous years. I don't know what an LPR is, so let's look that up. What is an LPR is, so let's look that up. What is an LPR? Lawful permanent citizens, also known as green card holders, are non-citizens who are lawfully authorized to live permanently within the country in question. Okay, well, there you go. So citizens in LPRs should not travel there because they've been victims of kidnapping in previous years. Travel for U.S. government employees is limited to the following area with noted restrictions. And they list a couple of places that U.S. employees, U.S. government employees are allowed to visit.

But for the most part, it even says here U.S. government employees may not travel to other areas of the state of Guero, including tourist destinations, Acapulco and Ixtapa. So U.S. government employees are in still in 2023 prohibited from traveling to Acapulco. That's crazy. I looked it up. I looked it up on hotels dot com. There's really nice looking hotels. They're maybe not the fanciest in the world, but they seem great. And there's really nice looking hotels they're maybe not the fanciest in the world but they seem great and there's like three different destinations the more i'm reading about it unfortunately the more i want to go to acapulco because of all this stuff like i'm i'm it sounds fucking awesome it's got this crazy nightlife that's i'm not a big nightclub guy but it sounds cool anyway it's famed for its nightlife and its nightcl not a big nightclub guy, but it sounds cool. Anyway, it's famed for

its nightlife and its nightclubs. And apparently like Bono from from U2 has done shows there. Sylvester Stallone was a mainstay there for a while at the on the, you know, the club scene. There's even a list of famous DJs that have performances at this bar or club called the Palladium. This is a who's who of people I've never heard of that are probably a big fucking deal. DVBBS or maybe Dubs, Tom Swoon, Nervo, someone named Junkie Kid. They all do DJ sets there apparently pretty commonly.

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They have supposedly, like, food and they have these three wild tourist areas that like the the first one's called traditional acapulco and it's like the where the old port is and it's where i mentioned uh i mentioned that john wayne owned a hotel there it was called hotel los flamingos that's there it's where the famous cliff divers of la quibrada are which i had not heard of but now i definitely am interested in these dudes they jump they started this like in the 1930s and they've been going consistently still i'm assuming it's not the same guys i'm assuming it's not like a 102 year old dude who was in the 30s still doing it now. But there are people that are still doing it. They jump from as high as like 130 feet into these tiny little pools that I guess you got to see it to believe. What I was reading about, it sounds insane.

Today, these divers, I think, have to be like they're essentially professionals because they're diving from 130 feet into like an inlet that is like 7 meters wide and only like 13 feet deep, which does not seem deep enough to dive 130 feet into. I guess they know what they're doing. What's insane is that every year on December 12th, they celebrate the Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe. the Virgin of Guadalupe. And in honor of her, they dive into what they call the Ocean of Fire, where they just light it with gasoline and they dive through the fucking gasoline. Holy shit, that sounds cool. I would love to see that. Also, there's these amazing beaches. Now, I'm getting sidetracked. I was talking about the three different tourist areas. So there's traditional Acapulco. Then, like in the 50s, they started to build a new one called acapulco dorado that kind of had its heyday from the 50s to the 70s and i think that that's uh kind of like the middle class area that for families and stuff then uh in the 80s or

so they started developing acapulco diamante which is supposedly like full of luxury condominiums and private villas and spas and very golf courses. And you see a lot of limos and and shit driving around. Apparently, that place is pretty nice. However, if you are a U.S. government employee, you cannot go there because it's apparently very, very dangerous. And I guess this all started to I guess the crime really started to get out of control like around 2010 or so, because I was reading that it was actually, it didn't start out as one, but it was becoming a pretty major spring break destination for dickhead American college students, who I think, I think I

read that like around 2010, 100,000 American teenagers and young adults traveled to resort areas throughout Mexico, mostly in Cancun. But I guess Cancun kind of fell out of, well, the reason they're doing it right is because if you're a 19-year-old college kid and you want to go down to Spring Break and you go to Fort Walton Beach or you go down to Gulf Shores or Miami or wherever you want to go, you're probably not 21. And the drinking age in America is 21, but the drinking age in Mexico is 18. So a lot of kids will just apparently would just fly over to like Cancun. That was really popular in the late 90s and early 2000s because they could drink and get fucked up and they're in another country.

And, you know, they can they can probably act like little assholes all day long and then go back to America and feel fine. But Cancun was had enough of it. day long and then go back to America and feel fine. But Cancun was had enough of it. So they really started to crack down on deviant, bullshit, dumb American college age kid behavior. And so they just moved further in, even though it was further in and it probably ate up a little bit more of their time to get there. They started to go to Acapulco, which was already famous for its nightlife. And then it, you know, it had some very fancy hotels. Like I told you, it was kind of an internationally recognized and beloved place. And so in 2008, it says here 22,500 students came to Acapulco for spring break.

However, 2009, it was way down. And some of that was because of the drug-related violence and the gang violence. But a lot of it, I think, was probably because of the drug-related violence and the gang violence, but a lot of it I think was probably because of the 2008 recession. And so I think people just probably weren't spending that kind of money or their parents weren't spending that kind of money to send their kids to be assholes in other countries.

But then also in February 2009, the State Department issued a travel alert like directly to college students planning trips to acapulco saying that there's been violent activity and it's been happening uh like a lot and uh apparently they like they like they really pointedly like put this information in college campuses and it kind of spread like wildfire and then like a lot of schools were warning their students not to travel to Mexico over spring break, saying it was too dangerous. Bill O'Reilly, who never missed an opportunity to

stoke fear in Americans, he devoted an entire segment on the O'Reilly factor to tell kids to stay away from Acapulco. And I guess, I mean, ultimately, I guess it was necessary because in June 2009, there were apparently a ton of incidents between drug cartels and the government. And there were coordinated attacks on police headquarters. I read there were battles in the streets with like automatic weapons and grenades and shit. And throughout all of that, I would like to point out it was reported that there were no incidents of violence against uh spring break travelers at any point man i started just like i just started googling crime in okapoko and reading stories on websites and there's just photos of like people laying out on

the beach with dudes in in full military gear or even almost full like riot police gear walking around with long guns and Kevlar helmets. And just there. Unfortunately, there's a lot of pictures of dead bodies. It's just it's crazy because this is the place that Elizabeth. I know this is I know this is a long time ago, but Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, John F. Kennedy went to Acapulco and vacation there. It was like it was the glitziest, coolest place to go. And it's insane to think that that place in such a short period of time can be listed as the what was it? The seventh most dangerous city in the world, which I can't imagine is still true. So I look it up on and let me me see, this is on statista.com.

And I looked up ranking of the most dangerous cities in the world in 2023 by murder rate per 100,000 inhabitants. And this survey time period was February of 2023. So as of February in 2023, these are the most dangerous cities in the world. The most dangerous is, I hope I'm saying this right, Salaya, Mexico. The murder rate is 109.39 per 100,000 inhabitants. That's a, fuck, isn't that what

it was in Acapulco in 2016? Where did that go? Hold on, let's look at that. By the way, I don't know if this matters, but I figured I'd show this out there. Acapulco is the largest city in the state of Guerrero, and I think the population is somewhere around 700,000. It's a big fucking city people more dangerous per 100,000 than they were. Let's see where they are now. So that's number one, 109.39 per 100,000. Then so Acapulco, oh, with a murder rate of a paltry 54.13 out of 100,000 inhabitants. So it is about half as dangerous as it was today in 2016, and no longer the seventh deadliest city in the world. It is now the 18th deadliest city in the world world coming in just safer than Kingston, Jamaica, which comes in just a little bit safer than Baltimore, United States.

So Baltimore, that's how they written it. Baltimore, Maryland in the United States. So Baltimore, Maryland has a murder rate of 56.45. Acapulco is 54.13. Baltimore, Maryland has a murder rate of 56.45. Acapulco is 54.13. Maybe the United States government should issue a fucking do not travel advisory to the city of Baltimore for American citizens and government employees because it's apparently more dangerous than Acapulco.

Man, throughout the course of this, too, I saw I found so many movies with the name Acapulco in them and TV shows like fun in acapulco which was the elvis movie that i think was pretty good i'm gonna go try to watch that there was a 1952 film called acapulco there was in 1973 what looks like a german film with a dude holding two machine guns which i guess denotes violence but it says the man from Acapulco. There was a movie in 1976 called Acapulco Gold that looks really cool. Then, oh, there's a what I guess is a direct to TV or DVD movie from 2019 called Welcome to Acapulco that had William Baldwin and Michael Madsen in it. Interesting.

Interesting. Huh? Oh, Paul Sorvino, too. Love that, dude. Is Paul Sorvino dead? Yeah, Paul Sorvino's dead. Michael Madsen's dead, too, right? Still alive. Michael Madsen is not dead. I think I'm thinking of the other Michael Madsen who died recently. Tom Sizemore. Yeah, the other Michael Madsen, Tom Sizemore. Pretty sure Tom Sizemore is no longer with us. Let's see. He died in, oh, geez, he died in March. Yeah, I thought I remembered that. Well, I'll dedicate this episode to Tom Sizemore, who has nothing to do with it, and Paul Sorvino, who has next to nothing to do with it. There's also a television show, and this, this I think we should dive into. And by we, I mean me, and then you, the audience, if you're brave enough.

To the TV show Acapulco Heat. And the heat is H.E.A.T., which means it stands for something. What does it stand for? Let's see. I don't think it's going to tell me, but it does say it's about six former secret agents who act as a covert agency based out of Mexico. They are undercover as bathing suit designers and models,

and they thwart attempts to kidnap, murder, and bomb all over Mexico. And it stars, I can't believe this was only around for one season. It was around from 1993 to 1994. Somehow, that was the year I graduated high school and joined the Army. Somehow, I was probably so consumed with that, I missed this groundbreaking television series, which starred Fabio and a bunch of other people I've never heard of who all kind of

look like Fabio or they would hang out with Fabio. It's got heavy hitters as Brendan Kelly and Catherine Oxenberg and Alison Armitage and Graham Hayward, John Vernon. I don't know. Just naming people none of us have ever heard of. Let me know if you've ever seen an episode of Acapulco Heat and what you thought of it. I'm certainly going to try to find it, find it streaming somewhere or a DVD, because now that I've seen the the the cover of the TV show, which is a lady in a bikini holding a pistol and then a dude dressed up like James Bond holding two pistols. I don't know how I could I don't know how I could not watch it, honestly. Anyway, I'm pretty bummed to find out that a coastal city that

is, from what I can tell, safer than Baltimore, a place that I've been to many times for work, is not somehow not safe enough for me to go to. And the more I read about Acapulco, the more bummed I am that this wonderful

place has had all of this drama and pain uh visited upon it because it seems truly magical and uh it's in such a such a shame to see well to see these headlines so i've i've done a lot of googling and i found a bunch of different headlines. I figured this, maybe this would be the way to end it. Here's one from, from the daily news to November 7th, 2010 Acapulco nightmare. Mexican officials confirm 18 bodies found in mass grave were missing tourists.

Here's one from December 23, 2022 beachgoers in Acapulco were subject to a horrible scene in November when several dead bodies showing signs of torture washed up on the beach in what many believe was a scene linked to cartel violence. Blood on the strip. Acapulco's holiday makers horror as two men are shot dead in front of tourists at popular Mexican resort. The brutal double murder happened on Coletta Beach in Acapulco, which is, by the way, I was doing reading Coletta Beach is supposedly one of the most famous and most beautiful beaches. That was, by the way, in October of 2018. Here's one. At least eight killed in Mexican resort of Acapulco, including five in

bar shooting December 6, 2022. That sounds like that just sounds like fucking drunk bar violence that happens everywhere. Two men shot and killed near beach in Mexican resort of Acapulco. That's not the same one that I just read from 2022. This was one from eight months later in 2023. At least three dead in shooting on a beach in Acapulco. That's another one from 2022. Good Lord. And it just keeps going on and on.

Have you ever been to Acapulco? Have you vacationed there? How was it? Did you feel safe? Did it feel any more dangerous than any other vacation destination you've been to? Do all of these headlines and travel advisories, if you haven't been to Acapulco, are they enough to warn you away away or would you be determined to still go and explore? And if you're from Acapulco, what's it like to live there? I would love to know. It sounds like a really interesting, fascinating, vibrant place that's full of culture.

They have so many festivals. They have a lot of food festivals. I think I might have mentioned earlier that they have like a real connection to France. Apparently, they have a big like French festival every year with cuisine and fashion shows and stuff. So drop me an email and let me know about your experiences with Acapulco, whether you visited, whether you want to visit, whether you'd never visit or whether you live there. My email address is Jeff at ericsboss.com. That is a real email address and I will really get the email eventually. That is a real email address, and I will really get the email eventually.

Anyway, I want to know more about it because it seems like the kind of place that's as fun to visit as it is to say. Acapulco. All right.