Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: The Conch Republic

Episode Date: November 13, 2019

Back in 1982, Key West seceded from the United States. Don’t believe us? It’s true! Just listen to the episode, will you? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. There's Josh. Let's go. Key West, Florida. Dateline. Southernmost point of the United States.

Smuggler's Island. That's what it's called sometimes. Yeah, because Key West, obviously, just the location itself is gonna lend itself to smuggling stuff in from other places by boat. And I mean, it has, it was a pirate haven for a very long time, but apparently the local population really took to that and just kept it up, but over time what they were smuggling just kind of changed. And at this point in question, this point in history that we're gonna kind of dive into

right now, it had become marijuana and cocaine. Those were what was being smuggled through Key West. The glorious 80s, keys of cocaine and Key West. Shortest shorts you've ever seen. Oh, I imagine so. So these drugs were coming in through South America, through Cuba, and then obviously from there, it's a quick 90 miles to get to Key West. There's a report from the UPI in 1983 that, quote, crews on fishing boats brazenly unloaded

bales of marijuana. High school youths made big money driving the contraband, 150 miles northward to Miami. Big dealers held lavish champagne parties at Peer House, the Posh Waterfront Hotel. So these kids were driving the stuff up and just sitting in the back of their pickup trucks. Well, yeah, around the island in particular, I think when they left to drive it to Miami, they were a little cooler, but it was- They throw a tarp over it at least. Wide open in Key West at the time.

Like the local law enforcement, the local city government, everybody seemed to either be directly involved in smuggling or turning a blind eye to it, probably because they were getting kickbacks or whatever. So they're a fire station that was shut down? Yeah, because so many firefighters were busted for marijuana smuggling that they had to shut the thing down. And one of the fire chiefs was actually put in prison for it. So by 1982, at the latest, if not earlier, the Reagan administration said, this totally

contradicts what Nancy's saying. We're going to do something about this, and they set up the South Florida Task Force against crime, which doesn't really create any kind of good acronyms, I found a little disappointing. SFTF, you got to have some more vowels in there. Come on, Ronnie. So by 1982, he, well, not he, yeah, Ronnie alone- I'm sure he named the organization too. They intercepted $2 billion in drugs coming through South Florida in just 1982 alone.

Imagine how much they missed. Oh, sure. You know? Yeah. So they were really cracking down. They also like basically took over the city government, investigated the police. Like they really went into Key West and the Keys in general and said, we're cleaning this place up.

And that was $2 billion in street value. Right, exactly. That always cracked me up. They used to always say that. Yeah, I think they kind of inflate that to make themselves look very sure. It's like the manufactured suggested retail price. And that's RP. So one of the things they did on this task force was set up a border patrol checkpoint

and between the, you know, the Florida Keys are off the mainland of Florida. So they would set it up between the Keys and the mainland. At Florida City. Yeah, just right there at Florida City on Highway 1, just south of that. And basically, effectively what they did was shut off Key West from the rest of the United States. Yeah, they raised... That was the only way in and out.

They raised the border up above the Keys and basically made the Keys like another country. That's ostensibly, that's exactly what happened. And the Keys did not like this very much. Should we take a break? Oh, okay, sure. Hey, everybody, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn?

So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren and Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca slash host. 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 going to 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. Okay, Chuck, so the Border Patrol is now basically doing drug searches, because they were saying

ostensibly, we have this roadblock to keep migrants from coming through illegally. Yeah, that was sort of how they dressed it up, right? Right, but they were looking for migrants, according to, I think, Floridahistory.org. They were looking for migrants in the glove compartment, or under the seat of the car, or something like that. So really, it was part of this drug crackdown. And I mean, that was bad enough that they were masquerading one thing for another. But the effect that it was having was really negative on the keys in general, and Key West

in particular. Yeah, I mean, they rely a lot on tourism. You couldn't get in or out. There was a 17-mile traffic jam. Can you imagine? I thought I said 17 minutes at first. I was like, oh, that's not that bad. I'd just be like, I'd just drive right into the ocean.

Yeah, 17 miles. Are you kidding me? Yeah. So, you know, hotels are empty, restaurants are not doing any business, bars are not doing any business. Right. Which was a big deal there. It sounds silly to talk about restaurants and bars not operating, but, well, that's

a big part of your income. Sure. It's a big deal. So, they said we've had enough. They got together, and they filed an injunction against the U.S. Border Patrol. This was the people of the keys, the governments of the keys. Yeah. The community, the people at large.

Mm-hmm. So, we're doing this. They took him to federal court in Miami. The court said, no, you can keep that roadblock. Mm-hmm. So, the mayor of Key West, Dennis Wardlow, which I looked him up, and I fully expected him to look different than he looked. Oh, really?

Yeah. I expected him to look kind of like a Jimmy Buffett type. I did too, and he didn't. What does he look like? He looked sort of square. Did he look like the evil banker from It's a Wonderful Life? No. He looked like the opposite of Jimmy Buffett.

No, but I fully pictured like a guy in like a Hawaiian shirt and no shoes and long hair. But he looked square, huh? He looked a little square. That's fine. But it was 1982. He did that one short shorts. Okay. It was suit and tie.

So, the press is there. He leaves the courthouse after the defeat, and they said, you know, what's going on? What are you going to do? And he says a very eye-attention-grabbing, ear-grabbing thing, tomorrow at noon the Florida Keys will secede from the union. So, he had a sense of humor. He did, but he also had a lot of follow-through on a sense of humor. Oh, yeah.

It wasn't just a joke. No, because the next day, people showed up to see what would happen. And at noon, he came out and he said, okay, first things first. The Key West is no longer a part of the United States. It's its own independent nation called the Concrepublic. Yes. It's the sovereign nation of the Fifth World. Yeah.

And there's this really great Atlas Obscura article about the Concrepublic. And they described the Fifth World as, so, you know, the First World, Second World, Third World is the one everybody started. Yeah. And we should say this is an outdated Cold War thing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, the United States and its allies were First World, the Soviet Union and its allies

were Second World, unaligned countries or developing countries, Third World. Fourth World were people who were stateless. I'd never heard that before. I hadn't either. Apparently, Dennis Wardlow had, because he said that the Concrepublic was the first Fifth World nation. He's pretty smart. Which existed as a state of mind.

He said, we exist as a state of mind and aspire only to bring more warmth, humor, and respect. To a planet we find in soar need of all three. That by the way, you guys don't know this, was an exceptional Dennis Wardlow impression. He sounds exactly like me. Wow. That's crazy. So, he officially changes his position in his title from Mayor of Key West to Prime Minister of the Concrepublic.

And I felt like I'd heard this somewhere before, but I might just be thinking of other crackpot weirdos like Sea Land and the Pineapple Cult. There's a history of people that do things like this. Really? Yeah. We've talked about a lot of them. Okay. Remember Sea Land?

Yeah. Not impressed? No, I had forgotten about them. Did they declare themselves sovereign? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Out there in the ocean, it was like a floating barge or something.

Can you start your own country, I think, was the episode? Yeah, that was it. That was a good one. So, Prime Minister of the Concrepublic and he had a moxa session, a declaration of war on the United States right off the bat. That's a big one. He declared war and ended with loaves of Cuban bread being broken over the head of a man dressed as a U.S. naval officer.

That was the war of aggression that the Concrepublic inflicted on the United States. Yeah. So, they're having fun at this point because the press is there and this is the whole point is they're trying to get press. They are. They're trying to draw attention to the roadblock. They're also trying to draw attention to their tourism and then after a minute of this war, Wardlow officially surrenders the Concrepublic to the United States.

He went to a Navy base and surrendered. And then requests a billion dollars in aid, foreign aid from the U.S. to rebuild after the war. Pretty great. It is great. Of course, the U.S. didn't give him a dime. No. Did you ever see that movie, The Mouse That Roared?

I did. It was basically the same thing. So, I guarantee Wardlow saw that. Probably. So, the U.S. didn't give any of this foreign aid. There was an ascent given, but that roadblock ended almost immediately. Yeah, very quickly afterward. So, it had the effect that he was looking for.

That's right. And they still celebrate it today. They will issue a passport to you for the Concrepublic. I saw and I couldn't verify this. I saw this same thing in multiple places. So, you know, it's like, yeah, that they'll stamp your passport, which I'm like, I'm sure they do, but do you want them to do that, because I could see U.S. customs being like, what is this?

Your passport's void now. You can't just go stamping a passport with whatever you want. That's what I would think, but of course, I'm no fun at all. There's a Pokemon stamp on the next page. Right. I probably shouldn't have told you that. Oh, I imagine that customs has seen a Concrepublic stamp. How about this?

If you don't have any customs agents for the U.S. listening, if you get your passport stamped with a Concrepublic or some other made up stamp, Pokemon, whatever, like does it invalidate your passport? You know, customs officers are famous for their sense of humor. Sure. They're just tickled by just about anything. So they also fly a flag with a motto, we seceded where others failed. And then every April, they celebrate still, they're a little nutty down there in Key West.

Well, they are island people. Yeah, they celebrate the independence of the Concrepublic still in April. Yeah, for like nine days. And I looked at, there was a guy named Peter Anderson who was the prime minister. No, I'm sorry, he was the secretary general of the Concrepublic, and he was like a guiding light keeping things going, and he died. But they still, they still do it. I thought maybe they would have discontinued it, but no, they still keep it up.

Have you ever been down there? Yeah. I've never been to Key West. I did not realize they don't have beaches, and that's what we went there for. And we were kind of surprised. Is it just like Little Rocky Island? It is a rock. And buddy, if you like to fish or scuba dive or drink, you're going to love it down there.

If you go for beaches, you're going to be unpleasantly surprised. I like to drink. Yeah. Well, you should take up scuba diving or snorkeling. Not much of a fisherman. It is like fisherman's paradise there. It's one of the most otherworldly looking places I've ever been. It's like a rock coming out of like the ocean.

Yeah. An ocean so blue, it doesn't even look real. Amazing. It's a neat place. And like there's a really crazy awesome like gay community there. I'm sure you've seen on CNN, on New Year's Eve. That's right. And it's just a cool place.

It's a neat place. But I like the keys in general. Oh, one other thing. If you go down there, there is a museum. I think it's just called the Key West Museum. But it has... Just Hemingway or...? No, there's Hemingway's house.

This is different. Okay. This is some weird clunky museum that it's almost like somebody who's never been to a museum said, I'm going to put a museum together and this is what they came up with. There's rooms where you're like, is this a storage room or is this like part of the museum? It's in an old stone fort, but there's this one exhibit. There's a bunch of them. There's Robert, the famous doll, who's like haunted and cursed.

They have him there. It's really neat to see. But there's one exhibit that is just amazing. There was a famous Key West resident who engaged in necrophilia for decades with the love of his life. Yeah, boy. Could not let her go. Yeah, boy.

And there's like a whole thing on him there that's really neat and they like redid this mannequin that he basically turned his wife into trying to preserve her. Wow. What is it worth going to? Well, if we're plugging very quickly, weird museums, I should plug the museum of umbrella covers. What? And that is on Peaks Island, Maine, right off of Portland, Maine.

Okay. Take the ferry out to Peaks Island. Sure. Go to the museum of umbrella covers, not umbrellas. Umbrella covers. Umbrella covers. I didn't even know there was this. Put your umbrella in a little sleeve.

Yeah. That's it. Okay. This lady's got a bunch of them. So there you have it from Chuck. That's right. If you want, no, we don't do that on this, do we? No.

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