Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Papasan Chairs

Episode Date: September 11, 2019

Oh, the papasan. What a chair! But where did it come from? And what does the name mean? The answers lie within. 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 there, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck, there's Jerry. Man, I wish I hadn't said, oh, it's eating up time, Chuck.

This is short stuff. Oh God, I already said that too. This is already off the rails. Let's just start over. Like five years from now, are you gonna be doing this? Yes. Short stuff. Yes.

Okay. It's the short stuff thing. All right, I just wanna know what I'm in for. Yep, buckle up, Chuck. So, I heard you talking to Jerry as I sauntered in. Yeah. Saying that you've never had a papa's on or a futon. No, neither one.

Same here. Good for us, Chuck. That's really like sticking it to the man, you know? Yeah, we're anti-papafut. We're saying to heck with you, society and popular culture, we're going to go our own way and use a normal mattress and box spring combination. Yeah, or a regular chair.

Yeah. That doesn't think it's a cereal bowl for sex. Is that what they're for? I don't know, but we should shout out the great, great website, Atlas Obscura. Sure. We both love that website and have for years. And this is a, you know,

when you're doing papa's on research, look to one person and that's John Kelly of Atlas Obscura because he really dug into it. Dude, he is the only person who did too. I know. And any other article on the web, including this how stuff works one, it's like, here's what John Kelly found.

Like this guy did all of the legwork and the research and he really did dig in. But the beautiful part of the whole thing is that he failed to fully solve the mystery. It's still a mystery, which we probably will be forever. Yeah, so there are a lot of mysteries about the papa's on. You can start by going to papa's on.com,

which will redirect to peer one imports, which is pretty great. That is a little fishy and cool. But there are a lot of like, like you can't get anything clear as to like the origin of the name or even where the chair originally came from or when people started selling it.

Yeah, it's weird. But there are, so John Kelly did turn up some tantalizing clues. He wasn't able to triangulate on a particular year and even necessarily a particular country. But there's a lot of strong evidence that they emerged in the 60s probably in the Philippines. That's where I'm putting my money.

That's where the papa's on chair came from. 60s Philippines. Yeah, and that would make sense because by 1966 was when we finally got the name peer one as a store, which had been, I guess it was previously cost plus. Yeah, which I guess split off and the cost plus went on become world market, which everybody knows.

Well, cost plus world market is still on the sign, which I think is interesting. Yeah, but weirdly, peer one was cost plus originally. And I think it was after they divided. And then if you really want to get the mind boggling, it was the guys who started Radio Shack, who originally funded the guy who founded peer one. Yes, and the people who were Radio Shack

were originally the Tandy Corporation, which I remember that name, I think. Oh, I had a Tandy robot arm that moved left and right. You still do, it's attached to your body. That's right. The appendage on Stellark. But, Stellark, God, I love just hearing that name. But 1966, peer one, what they're doing is,

they found a good market in importing Asian goods, very cheaply, and then marking them up for profit. But here's the deal, even marked up in the United States, they were, it was still like cheaper than other stuff that you would get here from America or Europe. So people bought the stuff. Yeah, so peer one is basically like the place. Everybody says, no, this is where America became

enamored with Papazone chairs. So people go to peer one and say, where did Papazone chairs come from? And peer one says, we don't know. But we can tell you exactly when we started selling them. It was the mid-70s, and you say, okay, great. So Papazone chairs hit the US in the mid-70s. But then if you talk to somebody else at peer one,

they might tell you that, no, actually, peer one sold them until the 60s. They just didn't blow up until the 70s. So that remains a tantalizing mystery as well. Yes, and what we do think we know is that the reason they blew up in the United States was because of the Vietnam War. And apparently here's what happened as the story goes.

American GIs would go to Vietnam. They would go and serve in the countries that surround Vietnam. And they would, this is where it gets a little dodgy. Perhaps visit red light districts in these areas. Perhaps. As, you know, single soldiers with some spare change, I guess.

Sure. And they would, this is where they would find the Papazone chair is at these brothels. And Papazone, this is where they think the name comes from because it doesn't really make sense that the chair would be called the Papazone chair if it comes from the Philippines because that's a nonsensical word in the Philippines.

It's actually Japanese meaning like father or esteemed older man. Right. Or if you're an American GI in the Vietnam War, Papazone meant pimp and Mama's on meant madame. There you have it. So it's possible according to John Kelly's research, this is a theory.

It's a pretty, pretty good one that American GIs started calling these chairs, Papazone chairs, rather than just calling them straight up pimp chairs because that's who they'd seen lounging around in them in brothels. That's right. I think this part is fairly interesting.

In 1977, there was, and I guess in the surrounding years, but this is when this issue came out, but there was I guess a magazine called Mac Flyer, M-A-C, capital M-A-C, Flyer. And it was issued by the Military Airlift Command Safety Office. And there was a character, Major C.R. Terror, who was a pilot, fictional pilot, obviously. And it was all about his crew and their antics

and stuff like that. And there was one issue in 77 that said this. And this is the guy who doesn't know where to get his wife for Christmas. That's the setup. So he gets her everything. And he says this. She's got that wombat skin coat.

I brought her back from Athens. The Honda Goldwing from Tokyo, candlesticks from Bangkok, a giant brass table from Iran, two camel saddles from Turkey, a pair of elephants from Saigon, and a Papazone chair from Clark, which was Clark Air Base in the Philippines.

In the Philippines, right? So at least by the 70s in the military, an in-joke that you would assume any military guy would know, is that you would associate Papazone chairs with the Philippines. So that's pretty strong evidence for John Kelly's idea. Right.

And the joke replied back in the comic was, sounds like her apartment is decorated in contemporary military. Should we take a break? Yeah. After that burner of a joke? Yes. All right, we'll be right back with more on the Papazone. The Papazone.

Look at all the stuff. There's so much stuff. Look at all the stuff you should know. 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. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop 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 Hey Dude 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. Ah, okay, 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, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, 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, ya 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. Okay, Chuck, so here's where it's possible, that Pier 1 already had Papa's on chairs, just no one was really paying attention to them. Um, it was probably soldiers, American soldiers returning from Vietnam, who had seen these chairs in brothels in the, in Southeast Asia, and were like, holy cow.

And they were like, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. In Southeast Asia, and were like, holy cow. There's a pimp chair right there, and they're selling them. I totally gotta get one of those. Or, people went over to military people's houses, saw them in their houses,

and then also saw them at Pier 1, and thought, these are really cool. One way or another, they just hit just the right nerve, and definitely by the mid-70s, they were all the rage in the United States, as far as home decor is concerned. Yeah, and it's occurring to me, we haven't even described one,

because I just assumed Papa's on's were so ubiquitous. If you grew up in the 60s, 70s, or 80s, even hanging out in the 90s probably, that you know what one is, but you might hear it called a Rattan chair, or perhaps bamboo, or like a moon chair. And there were different models over the years. Some were smaller, and had four legs,

and like a smaller cushion. The one, when I think of a Papa's on, I think of the almost comically large round saucer, that is not attached to the round base. Right. It just, you can angle it and move it around, you can make it completely flat like a bowl of cereal, or you can tilt it up if you wanna look like,

was it Isaac Hayes? Yeah, sure. Although those chairs are different, and those are awesome too. Yeah, it's like a Rattan woven king chair. Throne. Throne like prom pictures in 1983. Yeah, but that's what the Papa's on is,

and the big fish bowl one that I associate with that word had a very, very large cushion. A lot of times it was like flowers on it, or palm trees, or something like that. I just reminded myself of a P.F. Tompkins bit, where he talks about how he used to work in a hat store, and they had all sorts of hats, and people would come in, they'd be like,

let me try on one of them king hats, and he would say, what's the matter with you? Like you and I both know that that's called a crown, not a king hat. Why did you just call it a king hat? He does it way better than me, but it kills. And I just called it a king chair. King chair.

And then you corrected me quite rightly, it's a throne is what I meant. Oh, Paula Tompkins, the best. The best. So that's what I associate with the Papa's on, although like I said, there have been other models, and over the years they've evolved into like, instead of bamboo, it would be like woven string,

and stuff like that as the support base. Yeah, or metal. They're like, a lot of people have said like, no, no, no, you don't have to associate them with hippies, because they were definitely associated with hippies, and artsy chic, and definitely kind of like that whole like, I don't know what you'd call it, but. The same people that had beads in their doorway

probably had a Papa's on. Exactly. Exactly, and you could buy that at Pier 1 too, right? But now people are saying, well, wait a minute, if you get rid of the base or you replace the base with something like with kind of thin tapered stick legs, like it makes it suddenly mid-century modern, you know? So people have rethought it, and it's kind of made comebacks here or there,

but if you ask me that Papa's on chair that you described, where you could move the bowl and be the cereal yourself, that's the all-time great one, but you just have to have the right room for it, because it totally ruins everything else in the room if you have a theme going that's not Papa's on themed. Yes, and be prepared to drink plenty of Mai Thais. Nothing wrong with that.

And John Kelly also found a bunch of people in here that he dug up through social media and stuff that had stories, it was kind of cool. This one lady from Malaysia said in her native Malacca, it was a very big thing in the 70s to shoot studio portraits of your kids and the smaller versions of these. Yeah, which is when they think

they started introducing cushions, which means people were sitting around in these things without cushions, just the retan part. Sounds pretty awful. Yeah, that's no good. But that's, yeah, so they think that by the 70s for sure, these things were commonplace in the Philippines and that they got picked up by then.

And I assume so you can still buy these, brand new, right? I mean, I know you can get them used online virtually any day of the year. Yeah, that's another, you can find trampolines and Papa's on chairs in the classifieds all the time. But yeah, I think Pure One, like if you type in papazonshare.com, it takes you to the Pure One Papa's on page

and they have them, I looked. And they're cheaper than you'd think. They're like 55 bucks, I think, for the highest end one. No, I'm seeing some, look here, this one's 180. Right, okay, I mean like the traditional good kind that you and I were talking about, like the wicker retan version. Yeah, the cool, kind of like the hanging basket ones as well.

Yeah. Those are very cool, just make sure you hang it on a sturdy buttress, everybody. For sure. Well, since Chuck said sturdy buttress and we don't do listener mail, then that means that we are at the end of this short stuff. So short stuff, adios.

The Stuff You Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.