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

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: It's just the two of us again. We uh can
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: let it all hang out. Jerry's not around. Um, we're
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: just a couple of dudes hanging out in our bathrobes
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: talking about GiB Town, the town in Florida near Sarasota
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: and Tampa where the people who lived in the circus
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: where the Carnivals went to live when they weren't working.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Let's go quick story. Since we've on a short stuff,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: I'll make it twenty seconds. I got out of the
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: shower today and I almost went and put on a
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: suit just to walk into the kitchen and make Emily laugh.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't worth the effort. So I was like,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: I told her the joke and said to just imagine
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: I did that, right, that's good enough. Uh, so give Town. Yeah,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: we did a show, an episode on Circus Side Shows,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: uh way back, and it's a really good one. And
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: I know that we'll talk about this a little bit
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: in this episode. But um, these things can very much
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: seem like exploitation of people with disabilities, and on one hand,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: they certainly were. But on the other hand, we found
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: out through research. A lot of these people it was
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: the only way they could make money. A lot of
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: them found love and community, and so it is very
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: much something that is is in the Gray area, uh
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: as far as you know when this was going on.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: So I just wanted to throw that out there. I
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: think that was really good, Chuck, because I remember our
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: um what do we call him? Sideshow performers or did we?
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Was freaks used in the title of that episode. I
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: don't remember. I don't think we did, but it was
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: a really good one. And I remember I just saw
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Freaks the movie the other day and apparently, um a
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: lot of people from GiB Town who hadn't settled there
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: quite yet but soon would. We're in that movie as well,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. So, um, we're talking about Gibsonton, Florida,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: which is near Tampa, and it is on the Alphia
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, the Alafia or the Alafia River? Do you
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: know which one it is? No? I no, I hang
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: out on the east side when I'm down there, that's
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: west side. We don't. We don't get along very well. Well,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: I see flashing your west side sign. Yeah, you couldn't
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: even see me, and you you knew that I did
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: that when I said west Side, and it was all
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: jumbled to like it's just basically all fingers were splayed
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: on each hand, and then I put it up against
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: my chest as if I've been recording a lot of
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: these skype things now with movie Crush, and I always
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: do video and they're always surprised when they ask about us,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, we don't do video, mainly because my
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: notes get in the way. But I was like, after
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: this long, all I need is that guy in my
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: ear holes. Sure a little bit of this right up
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: in your ear Yeah, So give Gibson toon. If you
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: went to that town in the nineteen fifties and walked
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: around a bit, you would think, what is going on here?
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: There are lions and tigers in that backyard. There is
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: a restaurant run by an eight foot tall man and
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: his wife, a woman with no legs, And there's Lobster Boy,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: and there is uh monkey girl. And these are all
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: sort of the unfortunate names given to them on their
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: side show tours, yes, sometimes by their adopted parents, who
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: would be the promoters a side shower circus promoters who
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: basically literally had legally adopted them and in some cases
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: that was actually a step up for you know, some
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: of the kids. But um, yes, if you did walk
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: around what came to be called GiB Town, um it
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: did seem a little different. I mean just the fact
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: that people had like monkeys and elephants and lions and
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: tigers in their backyard. That's a pretty that's a that's
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: a different than most other towns. The side show rides
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: parked and people's driveways, it's a little different too. And
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: apparently this town was that way because it was first
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: settled by um, the the Giant and the half woman
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: they called themselves, but their names were Alan Genie Tomaini,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: which is great Genie Tomaini. It just rolls off the tongue.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah that's great. But they first showed up there in
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: the thirties, and I guess they just basically said, hey, everybody,
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: this this place is kind of cool. We're not judged,
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: we're not treated differently in the town's actually kind of neat.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: And eventually the town or the county, Hillsboro County, passed
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: an ordinance that said you can have things like carnival
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: rides in your driveway or elephants in your backyard. Um,
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: be if you are a carnival or circus performer. Yeah,
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: I think they got the notion that it was a
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: pretty sleepy little town, and in the nineteen sixties they
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: had about a hundred actual sideshow performers and about a
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: thousand carnies that would live there. When you know, it
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: just became a friendly place for them all to live
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: and they were all kind of like a big family.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: So they congregated there, and I think the town was like,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: you know what, these are great residents. They pay their
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: uh state taxes. Wait a minute, it's Florida, all right,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: that's why they're living here. There are no state taxes,
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: although I don't know if that was the deal back then,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: but or has it always been the deal. I don't
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: even know. I don't know. I know there's no state
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: income tax, but there's like the property taxes are much higher.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: Like they make it up in other ways. For sure,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: right they get they get you one away of the
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: other that elephant taxes really steep. But they realized, hey,
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: we could use these residents. And they're only here part time,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: if you know what I'm saying, So that's kind of
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: great too. And so they made like you said, these
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: business ordinances that made it kind of a friendly place
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: for Carney's. So I say we take a break and
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: come back and talk a little more about give Town.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: Let's do it. What's the famous quote, Chuck, don't don't
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: try it, Jake, this is GiB Town. That's it. I
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: don't even think I got the first part, right, No
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: you didn't, Jake, Jake, stop stop, this is gid Town.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Don't do it. I think it's uh a GiB town.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: I'm walking here, that's it. That's from Midnight Cowboy, right,
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Midnight Cowboy. Yes, that is Dustin Hoffman. Right, nice work.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: So back to GiB Town. This town by, like we said,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: by the nineteen sixties was booming with carnival folk. Uh.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: They loved living there. It was a kind of a
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: lovely community for them. And we mentioned earlier that they
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: sometimes found love. Uh. We we mentioned the tall man
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: and the short lady who traveled as the world's strangest
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: married couple. It's actually a very sweet story. Yeah. Like,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: he was over eight feet tall, Chuck, and she, not
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: having any legs, was about two and a half feet tall,
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: and it am at the knees. Yeah, yeah, I guess so, um,
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: maybe like mid Shin. Actually who knows it was a knee.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: I saw a picture. Okay, where there you go? So um,
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: the Tomaini's they toured as the world's strangest married couple
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: and they actually they had kids too, and their their
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: daughter remembered that they would, you know, leave for the
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: summer and go make some money and come back to
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: to Give Town and and run the Fish Camp Giants
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Fish Camp, which is one of the places that that
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: they owned, which was very legendary but apparently isn't there anymore. No,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: there's a memorial there. Now. I watched a couple of
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: short YouTube videos about Give Town, and you know, there
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: are still remnants of uh and there are still some performers.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: About two hundred carnival people still live there, but they're
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: little remnants of that past world. Every now and then
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: you'll see some broken down, old rusted rides in like
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: a vacant lot, or maybe a themed restaurant that's closed down.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: So Get Towns about forty five miles from Sara Sota,
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: which is where the Wringling Brothers Barnman Bailey Circus winters.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: So I think it was, and we've talked about Florida
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: in general, having sort of circus stuff in general. So
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: I think it all just sort of made sense, right, Um,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: and I I don't know why GiB Town. I think
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: it was just that the Tomainis happened to set up
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: shop there and found that the people were tallerant and friendly,
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: and it just kind of spread from there. So it
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: had the Heyday from I'd say the thirties till maybe
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: the eighties or so. And um. This article from how
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Stuff Works points out that there were side shows in
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: operation pre Lallapalooza, side shows like the Real Deal um
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: into the eighties and um, though they really kind of
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: started to decline by like the thirties and forties. People
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: were like, this seems exploitive, and people say, well, it
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: probably is, um, but let's not ask the performers. Let's
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: just decide for them. But finally, in Americans with Disabilities
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Act was past, and all of a sudden, you know,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: working in a sideshow is not the only place you
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: could get a job if you had some sort of um,
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: what's the word I'm looking for. I don't know, physical malady, abnormality. Maybe, Yeah,
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure the right way to say that. These days,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: I'm not either, But if you were a sideshow performer,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: you could now get a job anywhere thanks to the
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: A D A. That's right, which is great. Um. The
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: lobster boys, he was known greaty styles. He was known
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: as the lobster Boy because and here's the deal, and
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: we talked about this in the Side Show Performer podcast episode,
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: is that you got into these things because you were
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: born with a condition almost invariably, and they would view
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: a name like lobster boy, when in fact you had
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: a real life condition, which which one was that ectrodactically
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: right where it appears like you have two fingers only
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: that sort of looked like claws. It looks a lot
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: like lobster clause. Actually, yeah, and Justin Bieber's wife actually
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: has a form of this because she has a pinky
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: that is um sort of misshapen, and she has just
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: come out and said, all right, let's look and talk
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: look at it and talk about it, because here it is.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: But he actually was a terrible person, so that he
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: was murdered. He was an abusive alcoholic. He killed his
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: first wife and was sentenced to home incarceration because there
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: was no prison that could care for him. Wait he
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: killed us? No, I think he killed Yeah that's right.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, daughter's fiance home incarcerated, quit drinking, got married again,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: started drinking again, and allegedly he was either knocked off
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: by Carney for bucks paid for by current wife or uh,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: the neighbor just came over and took care of business
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: because they knew what a bad guy he was. Yeah,
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: I think like he he was paid from what I
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: saw like that that amount of money. I didn't see
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: any other alternate theories. But he shot him twice in
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: the head and he died like sitting in his chair. Um. Yeah,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: he wasn't a very good guy from what I saw either. No,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: so not to you know, not to trash his name,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: but you know, but that was like the big scandal
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: in give Town. For the most part, it was like
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: a really peaceful, happy place where if you were a
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: side show performer, like you could go feel at home
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: and be yourself. And one of the cutest things that
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: I saw was that another couple that found love. Um
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: Priscilla the monkey girl who had hypertrichosis, which was um.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: She had like a full head of hair, like a
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: hair do as an infant, and it just kept going
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: from there. She had a beard. Um, she was like,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: just had tons of hair. Um. She married Emit the
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: alligator skin Man, who had a healthy case of ichthyosis,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: which is thick, scaly skin all over your body. And
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: they were married for so long that they had their
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: fiftieth wedding anniversary at a local club, the Showman's Club.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: They're fact that the cutest thing it is. And I
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: love the idea of GiB Town that these people came together,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: um on the outskirts of society, and now hipsters are
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: moving there apparently. Yeah, that's the least surprising part of
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: this entire episode. That's right. One other thing, if you
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: want to see something very cute, go look up a
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: baby photo of Priscilla the monkey Girl. She was adorable. Agreed. Um,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Well that's it for short Stuff, everybody. Short Stuff is out.
• 12:46
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• 12:48
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