Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Gibtown: Sideshow Central

Episode Date: May 6, 2020

There was a glorious time in American history when circus sideshow performers lived together in a small town in Florida. Learn about the fascinating history of Gibtown today! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck.

It's just the two of us again. We can let it all hang out. Gross. Jerry's not around. We're just a couple of dudes hanging out in our bath robes talking about Gibtown, the town in Florida, near Sarasota and Tampa, where the people who lived in the circus or the carnivals went to live when they weren't working.

Let's go. Quick story, since we've on a short stuff, I'll make it 20 seconds. I got out of the shower today and I almost went and put on a suit just to walk into the kitchen and make Emily laugh, but it wasn't worth the effort. So I was like, I told her the joke and said, just imagine I did that.

You're right, that's good enough. So Gibtown, yeah, we did a show, an episode on circus side shows way back and it's a really good one. And I know that we'll talk about this a little bit in this episode, but these things can very much seem like exploitation of people with disabilities. And on one hand, they certainly were.

But on the other hand, we found out through research, a lot of these people was the only way they could make money. A lot of them found love and community. And so it is very much something that is in the gray area as far as when this was going on. So I just wanted to throw that out there. I think that was really good, Chuck, because I remember our, what do we call them,

side show performers or did we, was Freaks used in the title of that episode? I don't remember, I don't think we did. But it was a really good one. And I remember I just saw Freaks, the 1930 movie the other day. And apparently a lot of people from Gibbtown who hadn't settled there quite yet,

but soon would were in that movie as well. Yeah, for sure. So we're talking about Gibsonton, Florida, which is near Tampa. And it is on the Alphia, I'm sorry, the Alaphia or the Alaphia River. Do you know which one it is? No, no, I hang out on the east side when I'm down there.

That's west side. We don't, we don't get along very well. Well, I see you flashing your west side signs. You couldn't even see me and you knew that I did that when I said west side. And it was all jumbled too. Like it's just basically all fingers were splayed on each hand and then I put it up against my chest

as if it said anything. I've been recording a lot of these Skype things now with movie crush and I always do video. And they're always surprised when they ask about us. And I'm like, we don't do video, mainly because my notes get in the way. But I was like, after this long, all I need is that guy in my ear holes.

Sure, a little bit of this, right up in your ear. It's all you need, man. Yeah. So Gibsonton, if he went to that town in the 1950s and walked around a bit, you would think, what is going on here? There are lions and tigers in that backyard. Oh my.

There is a restaurant run by an eight foot tall man and his wife, a woman with no legs. Yeah. And there's Lobster Boy and there is Monkey Girl. And these are all sort of the unfortunate names given to them on their sideshow tours. Yes, sometimes by their adopted parents who would be the promoters, the sideshowers,

circus promoters who basically had legally adopted them. And in some cases that was actually a step up for some of the kids. But yes, if you did walk around what came to be called Gib Town, it did seem a little different. I mean, just the fact that people had like monkeys and elephants and lions and tigers in their backyard, that's a bit different than most other towns.

The sideshow rides parked in people's driveways, that's a little different too. And apparently this town was that way because it was first settled by the giant and the half woman they called themselves. But their names were Al and Genie Tomainie, which is great, Genie Tomainie, it just rolls off the tongue. Yeah, that's great.

But they first showed up there in the 30s and I guess they just basically said, hey everybody, this place is kind of cool. We're not judged, we're not treated differently and the town's actually kind of neat. And eventually the town or the county, Hillsborough County, passed an ordinance that said you can have things like carnival rides in your driveway

or elephants in your backyard if you are a carnival or circus performer. Yeah, I think they got the notion that it was a pretty sleepy little town and in the 1960s they had about a hundred actual sideshow performers and about a thousand carnies that would live there when it just became a friendly place for them all to live.

And they were all kind of like a big family. So they congregated there. And I think the town was like, you know what? These are great residents, they pay their state taxes. Wait a minute, it's Florida. Right. That's why they're living here. There are no state taxes.

Although I don't know if that was the deal back then, but or has it always been the deal? I don't even know. I don't know, I know there's no state income tax but there's like the property taxes are much higher. Like they make it up in other ways for sure. Right, they get you one way or the other. That elephant tax is really steep.

But they realized, hey, we could use these residents and they're only here part time if you know what I'm saying. So that's kind of great too. And so they made, like you said, these business ordinances that made it kind of a friendly place for carnies. Yep. So I say we take a break and come back and talk a little more about Gibb Town.

Let's do it. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. On the podcast, HeyDude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back

into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips?

Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out

the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to HeyDude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough,

or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you.

Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael.

And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen,

so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. What's the famous quote, Chuck? Don't try it, Jake, this is Gibtown. I think that's it. I don't even think I got the first part right.

No, you didn't. Jake, Jake, stop, stop. This is Gibtown. Don't do it. I think it's, hey, Gibtown, I'm walking here. That's it, that's it. That's from Midnight Cowboy, right? Midnight Cowboy, yes, that is, Dustin Hoffman.

Yeah, right, nice though. Nice work. So back to Gibtown. This town, like we said, by the 1960s was booming with Carnival folk. They loved living there. It was kind of a lovely community for them. And we mentioned earlier that they sometimes found love.

We mentioned the tall man and the short lady who traveled as the world's strangest married couple. It's actually a very sweet story. Yeah, like he was over eight feet tall, Chuck, and she, not having any legs, was about two and a half feet tall. They'd admit the knees. Yeah, yeah, I guess so.

Maybe like mid-shin, actually, who knows? No, it was a knee, I saw a picture. Oh, okay, well there you go. So the Tomainis, they toured as the world's strangest married couple, and they actually, they had kids too. And their daughter remembered that they would leave for the summer and go make some money and come back to Gibtown and run the fish camp,

Giants Fish Camp, which is one of the places that they owned, which was very legendary, but apparently isn't there anymore. No, there's a memorial there now. I watched a couple of short YouTube videos about Gibtown, and there are still remnants of, and there are still some performers, about 200 carnival people still live there,

but there are little remnants of that past world every now and then. You'll see some broken-down old rusted rides in like a vacant lot, or maybe a themed restaurant that's closed down. So Gibtown's about 45 miles from Sarasota, which is where the Ringling Brothers Barnman Bailey Circus winters.

So I think it was, and we've talked about Florida in general, having sort of circus stuff in general. So I think it all just sort of made sense. Right, and I don't know why Gibtown, I think it was just that the Tomainis happened to set up shop there and found that the people were tolerant and friendly, and it just kind of spread from there.

So it had the heyday from, I'd say the 30s till maybe the 80s or so. And this article from How Stuff Works points out that there were side shows in operation, pre-Lalapalooza side shows, like the real deal, into the 80s. And although they really kind of started to decline by like the 30s and 40s, people were like,

this seems exploitive. And people say, well, it probably is, but let's not ask the performers, let's just decide for them. But finally, in 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed. And all of a sudden, working in a side show was not the only place you could get a job

if you had some sort of, what's the word I'm looking for? I don't know, physical malady? Abnormality, maybe? Yeah, I'm not sure the right way to say that these days. I'm not either, but if you were a side show performer, you could now get a job anywhere thanks to the ADA. That's right, which is great. The Lobster Boys, he was known, Grady Styles,

he was known as the Lobster Boy because, and here's the deal, and we talked about this in the side show performer podcast episode, is that you got into these things because you were born with a condition almost invariably. And they would give you a name like Lobster Boy when in fact you had a real life condition. Which one was that?

Ectrodectally. Right, where it appears like you have two fingers only that sort of look like claws. It looks a lot like Lobster Claws actually. Yeah, and Justin Bieber's wife actually has a form of this because she has a pinky that is sort of misshapen and she has just come out and said, all right, let's look at it and talk about it.

Good for her. Here it is. But he actually was a terrible person. Yeah, I saw that too. He was murdered, he was an abuse of alcoholic. He killed his first wife and was sentenced to home incarceration because there was no prison that could care for him.

Wait, was he killed this? No, I think he killed his daughter's fiance. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah, daughter's fiance, home incarcerated, quit drinking, got married again, started drinking again, and allegedly he was either knocked off by a carny for 1500 bucks paid for by his current wife

or the neighbor just came over and took care of business because they knew what a bad guy he was. Yeah, I think like he was paid from what I saw like that amount of money. I didn't see any other alternate theories, but yeah, he shot him twice in the head and he died like sitting in his chair. Yeah, he wasn't a very good guy from what I saw either.

No, not to trash his name. No, but that was like the big scandal in Gibb Town. For the most part, it was like a really peaceful, happy place where if you were a sideshow performer, like you could go feel at home and be yourself. And one of the cutest things that I saw was that another couple that found love, Priscilla, the monkey girl who had hypertrichosis,

which is she had like a full head of hair, like a hairdo as an infant and it just kept going from there. She had a beard, she was like just had tons of hair. She married Emmett, the alligator skin man who had a healthy case of ichthyosis, which is thick scaly skin all over your body. And they were married for so long that they had their 50th wedding anniversary

at a local club, the showman's club there back in 1988. Isn't that the cutest thing? It is, and I love the idea of Gibb Town that these people came together on the outskirts of society and now hipsters are moving there apparently. Yeah, that's the least surprising part of this entire episode. That's right.

One other thing, if you wanna see something very cute, go look up a baby photo of Priscilla, the monkey girl. She was adorable. Agreed. Well, that's it for short stuff, everybody. Short stuff is out. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works.

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