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The Strange Tradition that Forced Everyone in New York to Move House on the Same Day · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. You
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Speaker 1: hopefully know what that music means. Folks. That's right, welcome
0:30
Speaker 1: back to Ridiculous History. Thank you so much for tuning in.
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Speaker 1: My name is Ben, My name is Nu Ben. You
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Speaker 1: know what stresses me out more than anything in the
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Speaker 1: whole wide world is moving? Yeah, you know it is, baby,
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Speaker 1: You know it is you. That's right, because you're like
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Speaker 1: most people, you're someone who doesn't enjoy moving. I love moving,
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Speaker 1: which I've been told is somewhat anomalous. A minute that
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Speaker 1: I thought you just liked helping other people move. I
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Speaker 1: like moving my stuff. I like helping other people move
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Speaker 1: when they are organized. And on top up of it,
1:00
Speaker 1: now to trade spots. What's that? It's just trade spots.
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Speaker 1: What do you mean trades? Apartment? Oh? I really like
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Speaker 1: my apartment now. Yeah, sometimes I move stuff just from
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Speaker 1: one room to another in my apartment, you know, and
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Speaker 1: I'll say, hey, what if this was the bedroom instead
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Speaker 1: of the living room. Interesting, it's organized chaos. Uh. And
1:17
Speaker 1: speaking of chaos and organization, let's give a big shout
1:21
Speaker 1: out to our third half of Ridiculous History. Uh. The
1:24
Speaker 1: man behind the curtain, the man who organizes all this
1:27
Speaker 1: chaos into something that sounds approximately like a podcast super
1:31
Speaker 1: producer Casey Pegrum. You know, you got me thinking. I
1:35
Speaker 1: really like the idea of ridiculous history being considered an organization.
1:38
Speaker 1: And Casey is the head. Of course, Casey's the head.
1:41
Speaker 1: We need his international connects because all of mine are illicit,
1:45
Speaker 1: or a lot of his are not necessarily entirely above board.
1:49
Speaker 1: His life is LaBouche. As we know, it's quite a
1:51
Speaker 1: shadowy existence. Zaboosh is a different entity. We've established that, right,
1:56
Speaker 1: Maybe we uh, maybe we when we move International League
2:00
Speaker 1: can acquire uh some new monikers, or maybe I'll pick
2:04
Speaker 1: up some of my old personas we don't want that
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Speaker 1: honestly or whoever. Yes, so I think we're going somewhere though, uh,
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Speaker 1: somewhere interesting because as soon as we mentioned moving, a
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Speaker 1: lot of our fellow listeners probably felt their stomach drop
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Speaker 1: and they got a little palpitation in their heartbeat, because
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Speaker 1: study show that most people hate moving. Yeah, it's it's
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Speaker 1: like on par with like losing a loved one in
2:33
Speaker 1: terms of the amount of stress that it imparts. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: and there's this nightmare if we're thinking of logistics there's
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Speaker 1: also a lot of heart wrenching emotional stuff because we
2:43
Speaker 1: invest so much meaning in these objects, and then we
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Speaker 1: have to all this sudden take these objects and evaluate. Uh.
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Speaker 1: You know, sometimes we have to move to a smaller place.
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Speaker 1: We have to move somewhere far away such that we
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Speaker 1: can't take everything. And we have to think between these
3:00
Speaker 1: two things that I love and you know, one in
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Speaker 1: my left hand one of my right hand, Which one
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Speaker 1: do I love more? Which one do I love less?
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Speaker 1: It's arrowing which one sparks more joy? That's very Condo
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Speaker 1: would say, yeah, yeah, And there's some there's some sand,
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Speaker 1: there's some validity to that. It's also before we get
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Speaker 1: started today, I gotta tell you, I don't know if
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Speaker 1: I ever talked to you about this off air housewarmings.
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Speaker 1: What's your take on housewarmings. It's interesting. It's sort of
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Speaker 1: like you got rid of all your stuff. You didn't
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Speaker 1: want to hear some more stuff. You probably are going
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Speaker 1: to go round. So we have talked about this, then, No,
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Speaker 1: maybe we're just on the same page, okay, man, unless
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Speaker 1: unless we're on opposite ends. No, No, I love housewarmings
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Speaker 1: because of the absurdity. It's I love that we have
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Speaker 1: this thing, at least in Western culture, maybe even just
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Speaker 1: in US culture, where we say, okay, it's been a
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Speaker 1: few weeks since you had to look at literally every
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Speaker 1: possession in your life and throw some of it away. Uh,
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Speaker 1: And since you just figured out how much stuff you have,
4:01
Speaker 1: I wanted to give you more stuff. As a matter
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Speaker 1: of fact, for bonus points. Here's a plant. I want
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Speaker 1: to give you, not just a gift, but a responsibility
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Speaker 1: homework assignment. You know, there should be housewarming registries like
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Speaker 1: there are for for for marriages. That's a great idea
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Speaker 1: because then you can get just the stuff that you
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Speaker 1: actually need or maybe that you are lacking or you
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Speaker 1: threw too much stuff away. And now you realize, I
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Speaker 1: don't have nearly enough pot holders, you know, right, right right?
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Speaker 1: I thought I had. I thought I was the emperor
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Speaker 1: of potholders. Now am potholder lists gotta have at least two. Yeah, yeah,
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Speaker 1: that's how pots work. So all this to say, moving
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Speaker 1: obviously is a lot of emotional, physical, mental things wrapped
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Speaker 1: up in it. And that was absolutely the case. Uh
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Speaker 1: in New York City for around two hundred years, where
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Speaker 1: the busiest day in the city that never sleeps wasn't
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Speaker 1: around the holidays. In fact, it was May the first,
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Speaker 1: when at nine am on the top every single person
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Speaker 1: in New York City's East for their apartments expired at
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Speaker 1: the same time, and a burst of genius, who or
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Speaker 1: whatever city planner came up with this concept. Yes, and
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Speaker 1: we have the history to that this should seem strange
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Speaker 1: to you. We know that here in the US, on average,
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Speaker 1: more than forty million people move each year, and eight
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Speaker 1: percent of those moves occur kind of the same clindrical
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Speaker 1: area between April and September. But nobody has this one
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Speaker 1: day anymore. No city has this one day where everything
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Speaker 1: goes bananas on May one at nine am. As you said,
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Speaker 1: for several centuries, these horses and carriages would choke the roads.
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Speaker 1: You couldn't move anywhere. There were beds, bureaus, people's furniture
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Speaker 1: all around, alleys, their belongings, piles of clothes and stuff
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Speaker 1: spilled into the streets, rich, poor, one neighborhood another neighborhood.
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Speaker 1: It didn't matter. We actually have a firsthand account of
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Speaker 1: this from eighteen thirty four when Davy Crockett, Yes, the
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Speaker 1: Davy Crockett said it seemed to me that the city
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Speaker 1: was flying before some awful calamity, which, to be fair,
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Speaker 1: it was. It was freaking moving day and that's about
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Speaker 1: as calamitous as it gets. Um. All this from a
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Speaker 1: fantastic mental Fluss article by Lucas Riley, New York City's
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Speaker 1: most moving tradition. Uh yeah, it's good. Um. Fantastic illustration
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Speaker 1: on this article, which you can find at mental fluss
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Speaker 1: dot com, of of this chaos in question, there's like
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Speaker 1: a parrot flying away with his own birdcage, mattresses being
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Speaker 1: thrown out of windows and then belonging to being bounced
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Speaker 1: off of mattresses, the whole horse and buggy situation in question.
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Speaker 1: Um you know, tables, uh, coming out of windows with
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Speaker 1: a woman and an address hanging from the end of
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Speaker 1: piano loaded with everything from grandfather Clock's the other household
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Speaker 1: at as being lowered down on rope. Obviously it's more
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Speaker 1: of a cartoonish character nation of this, but it's a
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Speaker 1: really really kind of cool image to get a mental
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Speaker 1: picture of the kind of craziness that would Can you
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Speaker 1: imagine so many people living in a such a packed,
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Speaker 1: densely packed city like that, It would have absolutely been bedlam.
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Speaker 1: The closest I can come to a real world experience
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Speaker 1: of that would be an evacuation situation, which is totally
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Speaker 1: different or and this might be familiar to a lot
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Speaker 1: of us listening today, moving in college dorm rooms or residencies,
7:31
Speaker 1: because depending on where you went to college, you may
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Speaker 1: have been in a situation where you were required to
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Speaker 1: move all your junk out, you know, once per quarter
7:39
Speaker 1: or semester. Um, Casey, did you ever stay at dorms
7:43
Speaker 1: when you were at Georgia State? Right? Yeah, I was
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Speaker 1: here for a couple of years. Yeah, like not a
7:47
Speaker 1: Georgia State for a couple of years, but in the
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Speaker 1: dorms for a couple of years. Okay, did you did
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Speaker 1: you ever have to move stuff around or out like
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Speaker 1: during the school year or is it just once a year?
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Speaker 1: Just once a year? But um, yeah, I mean I
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Speaker 1: never look forward to moving day, certainly, and it was
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Speaker 1: definitely one day, right, yeah, it was all one day.
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Speaker 1: So it was kind of you know, you had you
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Speaker 1: knew you had to get all done, and it was
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Speaker 1: a little stressful all that. Casey on the case. Now,
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Speaker 1: imagine an entire city doing that. First things first, this
8:16
Speaker 1: seems like a terrible idea, why on earth would you
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Speaker 1: subject millions of people to this hellish experience. Well, as
8:24
Speaker 1: it turns out, there is a tail that leads us
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Speaker 1: to this problem. According to city metric dot com, which
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Speaker 1: has a great explanation of this, the Encyclopedia of New
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Speaker 1: York City claims that that date, the first of May,
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Speaker 1: was chosen to link with the celebration of May Day
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Speaker 1: over in England. And then others are more specific, you know,
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Speaker 1: other sources, and they say that this is uh some
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Speaker 1: kind of descendant from affair that English servants would attend
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Speaker 1: to find new boss's new employers. And then another guess
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Speaker 1: is that the date was chosen as uh memorial, a
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Speaker 1: commemoration of sorts, rather to commemorate Dutch colonizers who set
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Speaker 1: out for Manhattan on May one. So they didn't really
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Speaker 1: have the the exact cause for this nailed down, but
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Speaker 1: they did have an interesting legend in the city. Yes,
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Speaker 1: it's a little bit of a snoozer of a legend,
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Speaker 1: but we'll give it to you anyway. Um. The legend
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Speaker 1: says that on May Day was when Henry Hudson and
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Speaker 1: his Dutch crew set out for Manhattan on the have
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Speaker 1: man Um that wasn't infect true, But the New Yorkers
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Speaker 1: actually celebrated that voyage by going on trips every year
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Speaker 1: of their own and trying to settle other places themselves. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: so this feels like, you know, people call it a legend,
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Speaker 1: but it feels more like one of those uh factoids
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Speaker 1: that someone will spout and someone else'll say, well, that
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Speaker 1: sounds true, you know what I mean? Uh fun fact
9:59
Speaker 1: By the way, about the word factoid, it's often misused.
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Speaker 1: A factoid technically means an assumption or speculation that's reported
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Speaker 1: and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact
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Speaker 1: without actually being one. You know what them, I'm still
10:18
Speaker 1: like it. I'm still going to use it. Well, it's
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Speaker 1: also a living language, so if enough people use it.
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Speaker 1: I mean that's why Peru's means two different things. Yes,
10:26
Speaker 1: its own opposite. So to me, a factoid is a
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Speaker 1: little bit e fact. It's a little nugget of fact.
10:32
Speaker 1: Why do you call it like a factito? I like
10:34
Speaker 1: that too. About a factotum, A factotum is I think
10:38
Speaker 1: a little bit different. What is a factotum? Absolutely is?
10:42
Speaker 1: It's a book by Charles Bakowski. That's true. A factotum
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Speaker 1: is a person with many diverse activities and responsibilities. So
10:51
Speaker 1: we three are fact totem are fact totems, so we
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Speaker 1: have a better guess for the cause of this, uh,
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Speaker 1: the cause of this catastrophic annual moving day. We think
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Speaker 1: it started in New York's colonial period in the eighteenth century.
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Speaker 1: A guy named John Pintard was a founder of the
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Speaker 1: New York Historical Society, was writing to his daughter and
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Speaker 1: he said that the city's practice of all moving on
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Speaker 1: one day is of an ancient custom, and when the
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Speaker 1: city was small and inhabitants few, so it just kind
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Speaker 1: of became this tradition they were locked into. But it
11:33
Speaker 1: entered into the legal world. In eighteen twenty there was
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Speaker 1: a law that was passed that said, quote, every lease
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Speaker 1: shall be deemed and held valid until the first day
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Speaker 1: of May. And this was on the books for eight years.
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Speaker 1: But even after it was repealed, people kept up with
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Speaker 1: his practice. Landlord still had all the leases go up
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Speaker 1: on May. You know, right, But isn't there also the
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Speaker 1: idea that it was very first known as rent Day,
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Speaker 1: would be when people would be notified of the new
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Speaker 1: rents for the subsequent year, which would then go into
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Speaker 1: effect on May first, so give them a couple of
12:10
Speaker 1: months to kind of decide whether they wanted to stay
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Speaker 1: or go, if they could afford it or not. Very
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Speaker 1: important distinction too, because we're not saying that everybody in
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Speaker 1: the city had to move. We're saying that anybody who
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Speaker 1: was going to move in the city was going to
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Speaker 1: do it on May one. So it's so it's not
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Speaker 1: the whole city, it's just everyone in the city who's moving.
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Speaker 1: And this meant that, like, as this practice kept going
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Speaker 1: and the city kept growing, the math became precarious and intimidating.
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Speaker 1: By the early nineteen hundreds, a million people would take
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Speaker 1: to the streets on May one. That's right, one million.
12:48
Speaker 1: We pulled up you know, New York Times. I just
12:51
Speaker 1: want to take a second. I'm not blowing smoke here.
12:55
Speaker 1: The New York Times is so cool, it's so worth
12:59
Speaker 1: the subscription. And in my opinion, that's not an ad
13:02
Speaker 1: for them. I'm just saying it's neat to be able
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Speaker 1: to look up all these old reports from the early
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Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds. So the interesting thing about this nineteen nineteen
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Speaker 1: piece is that while people were organizing, while there were
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Speaker 1: businesses that would just dedicate themselves to helping people move,
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Speaker 1: and while people tried their best to plan ahead, it
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Speaker 1: was just a matter of too much stuff and too
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Speaker 1: many people. It's a fact that, you know, two items
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Speaker 1: cannot occupy the same space at the same time. There
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Speaker 1: just wasn't enough room for everyone to move. And we
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Speaker 1: saw that despite all of the efforts, the good faith
13:42
Speaker 1: efforts of tenants, landlords, moving companies and so on, a
13:47
Speaker 1: lot of stuff would still be damaged, some stuff would disappear.
13:50
Speaker 1: Can you imagine how much stuff got stolen or destroyed? No,
13:53
Speaker 1: I mean again, like you're a lot of the these
13:55
Speaker 1: services are probably very ad hoc, you know, um, I
13:58
Speaker 1: think originally a lot it was a much more of
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Speaker 1: a ramshackle kind of a fair with like very you know,
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Speaker 1: sort of stitched together like moving carts and horses and wagons.
14:07
Speaker 1: You know, everyone couldn't afford to hire a team to
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Speaker 1: help them move. I mean they had to just kind
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Speaker 1: of do it as they were able to do it
14:14
Speaker 1: with whatever means they could. And I think you know,
14:16
Speaker 1: over time, by that nineteen nineteen article that things were
14:19
Speaker 1: a little bit more organized. But no, it's true, Ben,
14:22
Speaker 1: I mean think about you know, the rideshare economy or
14:25
Speaker 1: give economy of today. This would have been like that,
14:27
Speaker 1: but much less regulatable obviously, and who knows if you
14:32
Speaker 1: were hiring someone who is trustworthy. You know, you would
14:34
Speaker 1: have been doing it out of desperation, and likely your
14:37
Speaker 1: stuff might not have made it to where it was going,
14:39
Speaker 1: or it might have ended up smashed to bits. Right, Yeah,
14:42
Speaker 1: there's that. There's a quote from that piece where they say,
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Speaker 1: we still don't know how much of the furniture would
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Speaker 1: reach its destination. Is furniture, that's how much as fire would.
14:54
Speaker 1: Let's pause for a minute, because one thing that people
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Speaker 1: hate about moving is the inconvenience, but also the time
15:02
Speaker 1: they have to spend on it, you know what I mean.
15:04
Speaker 1: And you're like lugging stuff around. You have to prepare
15:07
Speaker 1: in advance. There are a hundred things you have to
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15:13
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15:21
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15:23
Speaker 1: I mean, you gotta go to the store, you gotta
15:25
Speaker 1: make a list. You know, chances are you gonna forget
15:28
Speaker 1: like a key element when you get home. You've done
15:31
Speaker 1: all this like leg work, and then you get home
15:33
Speaker 1: and start whipping up your recipe and realize that you
15:35
Speaker 1: didn't get enough ginger or whatever. Where's the rue de baga?
15:38
Speaker 1: Where is the ruta baga band? That is the question.
15:40
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18:21
Speaker 1: Let's jump around in time a little bit. We're gonna
18:24
Speaker 1: play with chronology because we want to give you, uh,
18:28
Speaker 1: we want to give you some visceral images of just
18:32
Speaker 1: how profoundly messed up in cartoonish this was. Yeah, there's
18:38
Speaker 1: a writer by the name of Francis Trollop fabulous name
18:43
Speaker 1: who described this scene of the moving experience in eighteen
18:48
Speaker 1: thirty two as quote, a population flying from the plague
18:52
Speaker 1: very much matches up with our boy Davy Crockett, king
18:55
Speaker 1: of the wild Frontier himself, and he would have seen
18:58
Speaker 1: some stuff out there in the on tier and in battle,
19:01
Speaker 1: and he was taken aback by this um pandemonium as well.
19:06
Speaker 1: We've got some other accounts, as a lawyer by the
19:07
Speaker 1: name of George Templeton Strong who kept a very detailed
19:12
Speaker 1: diary UM, a daily daily entries, and and for for
19:15
Speaker 1: this uh particular entry, he wrote, every other house seems
19:19
Speaker 1: to be disgorging itself into as visceral disgorging itself into
19:25
Speaker 1: the street. All the sidewalks are lumbered with bureaus and bedsteads.
19:31
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. It wasn't this. This day wasn't just
19:34
Speaker 1: relegated to folks moving out of houses. Landlords um also
19:38
Speaker 1: took this as a as a chance to tear down
19:42
Speaker 1: entire structures, So there were building supplies just like raining
19:47
Speaker 1: down from the sky. Um. There's a New York City
19:50
Speaker 1: mayor by the name of Philip Hone who in eighteen
19:52
Speaker 1: thirty nine described it as brick, bats, rafters, and slates
19:57
Speaker 1: showering down in every direction. I mean, this is just
20:01
Speaker 1: like a real scene. Now, we do have a positive
20:05
Speaker 1: side to this. In the beginning of this May day
20:10
Speaker 1: moving tradition, a lot of the movers were farmers who
20:15
Speaker 1: came from Long Island, and they would rent out their wagons.
20:19
Speaker 1: And then later cartman not related to South Park, like
20:23
Speaker 1: people who had carts in the city would rent out
20:28
Speaker 1: their carts and they would make a ton of scratch
20:31
Speaker 1: with this. And and it's weird because we found this
20:35
Speaker 1: quote from a guy named Isaac Leon who had a
20:39
Speaker 1: stand at the corner of Broadway in Houston Streets. This
20:42
Speaker 1: from brick Underground dot com. He was writing about the
20:47
Speaker 1: action in the weeks leading up to the main moving day,
20:51
Speaker 1: and when he's writing about it, he says, check this out.
20:54
Speaker 1: During the last two weeks in April of each year,
20:57
Speaker 1: the cartman begin to put on a few extra airs
21:00
Speaker 1: and look and act with more importance than at any
21:03
Speaker 1: other time during the year, because you need me, I'm
21:08
Speaker 1: moving your stuff. Yeah. So, oh, you were so big,
21:11
Speaker 1: you were so big and fancy and August, weren't you, buddy?
21:14
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, so they they started off by kind
21:18
Speaker 1: of coming in just for the occasion, using from out
21:21
Speaker 1: of town, and then they stuck around or like it
21:24
Speaker 1: became more of like a now we're in the moving
21:27
Speaker 1: business kind of well. As the city grew in population
21:31
Speaker 1: and as the infrastructure increased, there were more opportunities for
21:35
Speaker 1: people with carts or haulers or transporters to work year round,
21:39
Speaker 1: but they all came in such extreme demand. People would
21:43
Speaker 1: pay week's worth of wages to have someone helped them
21:47
Speaker 1: move their schiffer rope. I just I'm finding excuses to
21:51
Speaker 1: say schiff a rope is just such a fun word.
21:53
Speaker 1: I actually said schiffer robe last night. I was at
21:55
Speaker 1: a mutual friend of ours house and he was saying
21:57
Speaker 1: how he was out of firewood, and I said, we'll
21:59
Speaker 1: go find yourself a shiff robe to bust up, you know,
22:02
Speaker 1: make make use the firewood. Use that for fun. Thankfully,
22:04
Speaker 1: I played Atticus Finch in high school. No, yeah, it
22:08
Speaker 1: was weird. I bet you were good. That's very kind
22:10
Speaker 1: of Gregory Peck. Did you do it Peck style or
22:13
Speaker 1: did you do it Ben style? You know, I'm glad
22:17
Speaker 1: there's not footage of it. I'm sad that there's not
22:21
Speaker 1: footage of it. I wish there had been the Internet
22:23
Speaker 1: back in those days, but I'll have to use my imagination.
22:25
Speaker 1: You have a bit of an Atticus Finch type demeanor
22:28
Speaker 1: about you anyway. Oh well, thank you. I know I
22:32
Speaker 1: know that you have a thirst for justice and uh,
22:35
Speaker 1: protecting the little people. Thanks man. I like to think
22:39
Speaker 1: everybody does you know what I mean? And I think
22:41
Speaker 1: I I think the same of you. I I could
22:45
Speaker 1: see you now. I step on little people, step on it,
22:47
Speaker 1: and I just just to get to the top. Mainly.
22:50
Speaker 1: You know, you can't get to the top without stepping
22:52
Speaker 1: on a few heads. But you're not going to be
22:54
Speaker 1: happy once you get there. You don't know that. I'm
22:57
Speaker 1: pretty sure I don't know that. I haven't gotten there yet.
23:00
Speaker 1: Someone else will step on you. It's just people stepping
23:02
Speaker 1: on each other forever. And then once I get to
23:04
Speaker 1: the top, then there's a new top. Then there's a
23:06
Speaker 1: top above that. You guys, I'm actually completely being facetious. Yeah, yeah,
23:11
Speaker 1: I think we all know. I'm a nice I'm a
23:12
Speaker 1: nice you're not. I'm not a stepper on her multi
23:16
Speaker 1: level marketing type dude, you know. But that being said,
23:19
Speaker 1: the four of us. You, Casey, myself and you, dear
23:23
Speaker 1: listener could make a ton of cash if we just
23:28
Speaker 1: were standing around in the street on May one with
23:33
Speaker 1: a cart. And this became such a big deal, such
23:38
Speaker 1: a huge expense and a headache for the good citizens
23:40
Speaker 1: of New York, that people started thinking there was a
23:45
Speaker 1: conspiracy afoot. According to Bowery Boys History dot Com, by
23:50
Speaker 1: the eighteen sixties, this custom was so cemented into the
23:56
Speaker 1: culture of New York that people started saying the carmen,
24:01
Speaker 1: which were like the haulers, the van operators, were working
24:06
Speaker 1: with the city in a corrupt way to keep the
24:09
Speaker 1: practice going because they could increase prices and they could
24:13
Speaker 1: gouge people in the weeks before and after May one.
24:17
Speaker 1: What's what's neat about this? Uh? And I think this
24:20
Speaker 1: is something Gabe brought up, and he said, you know,
24:23
Speaker 1: we could consider this a nineteenth century version of surge
24:28
Speaker 1: pricing with Uber, if you guys ever had to get
24:32
Speaker 1: stuck with a surge price on Uber. It's all about
24:36
Speaker 1: the supply versus demand. And that's the thing about New
24:39
Speaker 1: York in general, though. I mean, it's like the demand
24:40
Speaker 1: is so high for everything that the prices are just
24:43
Speaker 1: absolutely exorbitant on most things. And I'm picturing this. You know,
24:47
Speaker 1: I love New York City, and when I was younger,
24:49
Speaker 1: I very much wanted to live there, but getting to
24:51
Speaker 1: go there for work a decent amount, I now realized
24:53
Speaker 1: what a survival game it is living there. Like it's
24:56
Speaker 1: just you know, even just to like go to Ikea
24:59
Speaker 1: and then you had a car it back on the subway.
25:01
Speaker 1: You know. Likely if you live on a walk up,
25:03
Speaker 1: you got a cart it up from stairs. I mean,
25:05
Speaker 1: it's just really not not to mention if it's you know,
25:07
Speaker 1: winter and the weather's gross. Um. It really is kind
25:10
Speaker 1: of like, uh, you know, an endurance match of a life,
25:13
Speaker 1: you know, when you live there, and you really do
25:15
Speaker 1: kind of adopt a much more of a um, hustle
25:18
Speaker 1: kind of mentality just to like go through your day
25:21
Speaker 1: to day life. Um. And it does create some very
25:24
Speaker 1: resilient and resourceful human people that are New Yorkers, you know,
25:28
Speaker 1: and I love it very much. But this is kind
25:31
Speaker 1: of the extreme case study for that, right Yeah. Yeah,
25:35
Speaker 1: And I agree with you totally. It is true that
25:38
Speaker 1: we both travel to New York fairly often. And I
25:41
Speaker 1: don't know about you, man, but my New York personality
25:44
Speaker 1: is different from my Atlanta personality. When New York personality
25:49
Speaker 1: walks a little faster, is more of a get stuff
25:52
Speaker 1: done kind of dude, because you have to be and
25:57
Speaker 1: in this survival game and this endurance run. And I
26:01
Speaker 1: love the way you described that on moving day on
26:03
Speaker 1: May one to New York, a transporter, a cartman, or
26:07
Speaker 1: a carman could charge any price they wanted. A lot
26:11
Speaker 1: of people try to control price, GAUGI, but the movers
26:17
Speaker 1: didn't pay much attention to those laws and there was
26:20
Speaker 1: no no real way to enforce them, right, So the
26:25
Speaker 1: New York Times tried to publish, you know, the legal
26:28
Speaker 1: price schedule. This is really interesting. I mean it's literally
26:32
Speaker 1: just like a recommendation, right, I mean, you know, it's okay, sure,
26:34
Speaker 1: it's legal, but it's clearly not actually being enforced by
26:38
Speaker 1: any you know, arm of the law. I mean they're
26:41
Speaker 1: publishing in the papers saying, literally two individuals, hey be smart,
26:47
Speaker 1: get a contract with your mover that enforces these these prices.
26:52
Speaker 1: But that was a little bit of a stress people
26:53
Speaker 1: to expect as well, because of the duress under which
26:57
Speaker 1: all of these you know things had to take place,
26:59
Speaker 1: and you had to this hustle and get it done right. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
27:02
Speaker 1: exactly because the New York Times says, okay, talk to
27:05
Speaker 1: your mover, get a contract in advance. It's always a
27:09
Speaker 1: smart thing to try to do. They say, pay two
27:11
Speaker 1: dollars for a load on a one horse truck within
27:13
Speaker 1: two miles, fifty cents for every mile after that, fifty
27:17
Speaker 1: cents to load and unload on the first floor, and
27:20
Speaker 1: twenty five cents for each additional floor, each additional flight
27:25
Speaker 1: of stairs. The problem was that an unscrupulous mover could
27:32
Speaker 1: say okay, yeah, that's fine, and then someone else could
27:36
Speaker 1: come in, a desperate customer and say, hey, I need
27:38
Speaker 1: to move. It's May one, it's moving day. I'll give
27:41
Speaker 1: you three dollars or I'll give you five dollars and
27:44
Speaker 1: then boom, your movers gone. What are you're going to
27:47
Speaker 1: spend more money to take that person to court? No,
27:50
Speaker 1: because you need to move all of your crap today.
27:54
Speaker 1: There's no way, there's no legal recourse. But the kids
27:56
Speaker 1: really liked it because they you know, it's such chaos
27:59
Speaker 1: that the kid it's got to be out of school. Um.
28:02
Speaker 1: And you know, if I was a parent in the situation,
28:05
Speaker 1: I wouldn't just let my kid run wild. I would
28:08
Speaker 1: expect a little bit of assistance wrapping, you know, some
28:10
Speaker 1: lightweight knickknacks and such. But at the very least they
28:13
Speaker 1: were out of school for uh several weeks um, and
28:17
Speaker 1: they were likely expected to help. But I bet you
28:20
Speaker 1: there was also some kind of kids running wild in
28:23
Speaker 1: the streets. You know, those the feral kids of New York.
28:26
Speaker 1: Oh yes, of course, like like in newsies, just like that.
28:31
Speaker 1: There's actually a poem um from this Time is from
28:34
Speaker 1: a really cool article on brick underground dot com that
28:37
Speaker 1: they cite um that references moving Day. It's called a
28:40
Speaker 1: May Day madrigal, and it's from the perspective of a child.
28:43
Speaker 1: Of the child says, I want to see the carpets
28:45
Speaker 1: torn in patches from the floor. I want to see
28:48
Speaker 1: the statuettes thrown through the plate glass door. I mean,
28:53
Speaker 1: you have to imagine, right, it makes sense. There's this
28:56
Speaker 1: uh you know, you could call it bedlam, but it's
28:59
Speaker 1: such a stimulate, eating, exciting time, you know what I mean.
29:02
Speaker 1: You see things up ended, you're going to a new place.
29:05
Speaker 1: You maybe see your neighbors and your parents acting in
29:09
Speaker 1: a way that you with which you were unfamiliar up
29:11
Speaker 1: to that point. So there's this sort of uh, there's
29:20
Speaker 1: this holiday aspect of it for the kids. But as
29:24
Speaker 1: you know, if you're listening to this in New York
29:26
Speaker 1: or if you have ever lived in New York, this
29:29
Speaker 1: tradition is no longer celebrated. Sure, some people still move
29:34
Speaker 1: on May feet, but it's not a citywide ocean day. Instead. Uh,
29:39
Speaker 1: people move when their individual leases expire, and it took
29:43
Speaker 1: us a long time to get there because there's so
29:46
Speaker 1: much money steak. There is a pretty good argument that
29:50
Speaker 1: the politicians, maybe even some of the same politicians who
29:54
Speaker 1: were publicly against moving day on May first, maybe they
29:59
Speaker 1: were I don't want to stay in bed with but
30:02
Speaker 1: maybe they were having some other conversations with movers and
30:06
Speaker 1: getting a little kickback. It's quite possible, possibly also with Shakers.
30:11
Speaker 1: Possibly also with Shakers, Uh, the religious offshoot who ran
30:16
Speaker 1: the Lower East Side. Is that true? Ben, No, that's
30:21
Speaker 1: not true, but uh, But it is true that it
30:25
Speaker 1: would take a lot for this practice to end, because
30:28
Speaker 1: we know how people are when it comes to tradition.
30:31
Speaker 1: Our species will will continue the strangest, most unhelpful traditions
30:38
Speaker 1: until we are literally forced to stop. And what did
30:43
Speaker 1: it take for May one moving day to come to
30:46
Speaker 1: an end in New York. Yes, it would take something
30:49
Speaker 1: very significant in the form of World War One, where
30:51
Speaker 1: a lot of the builders um, who would be you know,
30:55
Speaker 1: working to create more supply for the housing demand in
31:00
Speaker 1: the city, were sent off to the front lines. So
31:03
Speaker 1: in nineteen nineteen you had twenty two thousand of the
31:06
Speaker 1: cities one million apartments um sitting vacant, that is in
31:10
Speaker 1: comparison to fifty three thousand three years before that. So
31:15
Speaker 1: because the demand was so high and the supply so low,
31:20
Speaker 1: folks were gonna pay whatever it took to just stay
31:23
Speaker 1: where they were because they didn't know if they'd find
31:25
Speaker 1: something better or if it would just be like they
31:27
Speaker 1: might not even find anything at all. Yeah, there there
31:30
Speaker 1: may be no room at the end. So these folks
31:34
Speaker 1: were really at the mercy of their landlords. No matter
31:38
Speaker 1: how high their rent got, they would stay because they
31:41
Speaker 1: felt like they had no alternative, you know. And that's
31:45
Speaker 1: a different kind of housing crisissault together, right, because that
31:48
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, the power is completely in
31:50
Speaker 1: the hand of the landlords. And it wasn't until New
31:53
Speaker 1: you know, legislation was passed, eventually limiting how much you
31:56
Speaker 1: could increase the rent legally each year. That that was
32:00
Speaker 1: sort of you know, taken care of. Then you have
32:02
Speaker 1: things like rent control, etcetera. But at this point it
32:04
Speaker 1: was literally the landlord's choice when whim to gouge these
32:10
Speaker 1: relatively helpless tenants. Yeah, there's a book called The Great
32:15
Speaker 1: Rent Wars by an author named Robert M. Fogelson. And
32:19
Speaker 1: in The Great Rent Wars we hear the tale of
32:22
Speaker 1: a woman from the Bronx in nineteen nineteen speaking with
32:25
Speaker 1: a court clerk. She has five kids with her, and
32:28
Speaker 1: she is saying that her rent was raised six times
32:31
Speaker 1: in two years, and she had been to more than
32:35
Speaker 1: two hundred places in a week, and everywhere she looked,
32:38
Speaker 1: she found someone and beaten her to it. So people
32:42
Speaker 1: at crises where landlords would also lie to them. The
32:45
Speaker 1: New York Tribune reported also in nineteen nineteen, that thousands
32:50
Speaker 1: of people moved, you know, May one, and then they
32:54
Speaker 1: found the apartments that they had already you know, put
32:57
Speaker 1: a deposit on and we're ready to rent. Those apartments
33:01
Speaker 1: had not been vacated, and people who were supposed to
33:04
Speaker 1: be kicked out of their apartments. Just refuse to move.
33:08
Speaker 1: They said, you know, I'm I'm not gonna go. There's
33:11
Speaker 1: nowhere for me to go. You can't put me out
33:15
Speaker 1: in the cold. And so moving day meets its end
33:20
Speaker 1: partially because of the subway. Now, the subway in New York,
33:24
Speaker 1: if you've never been, is amazing. I know people who
33:27
Speaker 1: live in New York love to hate it. I'm not
33:30
Speaker 1: saying it's perfect, but if you live in a city
33:33
Speaker 1: that does not have a subway, you quickly learned to
33:35
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Right, Like I I traveled by subway up
33:38
Speaker 1: pretty often when I'm up in town. Yeah, I mean,
33:41
Speaker 1: we here in Atlanta have a subway system that takes
33:44
Speaker 1: you comparatively far far and far far, far fewer places
33:48
Speaker 1: than the subway system in New York does. And while
33:50
Speaker 1: subway system in New York les leaves something to be desired,
33:52
Speaker 1: and then like on the weekend, there's always construction and
33:54
Speaker 1: the lines are diverted, and there's sometimes a little bit
33:57
Speaker 1: of a chaotic kind of element to it. It's pretty
34:00
Speaker 1: darn efficient um and can get you just about anywhere
34:03
Speaker 1: you want to go eventually. And I've always found it
34:06
Speaker 1: gets you there quicker than catching a cab post of
34:08
Speaker 1: the time. For sure, Oh for sure, definitely, because you know,
34:11
Speaker 1: people don't take tractor trailer contents or cargo on the subway.
34:17
Speaker 1: It's just the people mover, or it should be. So
34:21
Speaker 1: this subway changes everything for the city because now people
34:26
Speaker 1: don't have to rent cars or carriages. Now they can
34:31
Speaker 1: uh Now they can move a lot of stuff on
34:34
Speaker 1: their own, and they still have to get you know,
34:37
Speaker 1: help with big furniture bedsteads and shift a robes and
34:40
Speaker 1: so on, but they can also move further out. They're
34:45
Speaker 1: no longer restricted maybe to the paltry choices of neighborhoods
34:49
Speaker 1: they had before. So east Side landlords said that they
34:53
Speaker 1: had more vacant apartments than they had ever had, and
34:57
Speaker 1: rents were cheaper and cheaper and more more people were
35:00
Speaker 1: paying consistently. Fast forward to the nineteen twenties, New Yorkers
35:06
Speaker 1: kind of rebel against moving day as one point one
35:10
Speaker 1: demand in a larger fight for tenants rights. And this
35:14
Speaker 1: is like, this is the same year that New York
35:17
Speaker 1: passes the emergency rent laws that you know you alluded
35:22
Speaker 1: to earlier, know, where we have we see something like
35:24
Speaker 1: rent control that says thou shalt not increase rent over
35:28
Speaker 1: a certain amount per year. It's very true. Um So,
35:32
Speaker 1: there you have at the the ultimate end of this
35:35
Speaker 1: chaotic uh day of the year in New York City.
35:39
Speaker 1: Um but it's interesting, Actually, this was not the only
35:41
Speaker 1: city that this kind of thing took place in. You
35:44
Speaker 1: had Quebec in Canada that passed a moving day in
35:48
Speaker 1: the mid eighteenth century as well, where landowners had been
35:51
Speaker 1: hiring folks to work on their land and then sending
35:54
Speaker 1: them off into the world, you know, to find new employment.
35:58
Speaker 1: Um as the winter was a approaching ouch. Yes, So,
36:02
Speaker 1: as we said, this was a practice that existed other cities.
36:06
Speaker 1: Hopefully it does not exist in a city today, or
36:09
Speaker 1: at least not one in which you live. Fellow listener,
36:13
Speaker 1: New York's May first moving day officially ends in and
36:24
Speaker 1: it's kind of fuzzy, but bab here's what happens. Essentially,
36:27
Speaker 1: The New York Times runs a headline that says housing
36:30
Speaker 1: shortage erases moving Day, and with that, the millions of
36:35
Speaker 1: residents of the Big Apple began to move year round.
36:39
Speaker 1: There were some things leading up to that, you know,
36:42
Speaker 1: as some people wanted to have three different designated moving days,
36:46
Speaker 1: throughout the year to reduce congestion. But at the end
36:49
Speaker 1: they just said, hey, let's get rid of this tradition.
36:52
Speaker 1: Let's let's be a little smarter about it. And that
36:56
Speaker 1: is why if you moved to New York, or if
36:59
Speaker 1: you live in New York and move somewhere, you don't
37:01
Speaker 1: have to wait until May one. So be thankful. And uh,
37:05
Speaker 1: let us know if you live in the Big Apple,
37:07
Speaker 1: always down to hang out and say hi, I am
37:11
Speaker 1: at least yeah, oh me too, Yeah for sure. Actually, uh,
37:14
Speaker 1: I don't remember if to have told you this, but
37:15
Speaker 1: I had the good fortune of meeting up with one
37:19
Speaker 1: of our listeners who is a fantastic painter. Yeah, exactly
37:22
Speaker 1: when I was in New York this last time. And impressive,
37:26
Speaker 1: really really impressive work. If anyone out there wants to
37:28
Speaker 1: check out her work, it is June y j U
37:31
Speaker 1: n y I underscore Liu l I you underscore art
37:35
Speaker 1: on Instagram. Really really cool photo realistic oil paintings, oil paintings,
37:40
Speaker 1: very large scale stuff. Uh and a lovely human person
37:44
Speaker 1: and fan of the show. And we had we had
37:45
Speaker 1: a nice meeting. Um, so yeah, we're always done with that.
37:47
Speaker 1: Hopefully we'll be doing some live shows in the not
37:49
Speaker 1: too distant future, and we'll keep you posted on that
37:52
Speaker 1: here on the show and on our Facebook group Ridiculous Historians,
37:56
Speaker 1: where you can join the conversation there at your leisure.
38:00
Speaker 1: Also find this on Instagram UH and Twitter at Ridiculous History,
38:04
Speaker 1: or you know, you can check us out individually as
38:06
Speaker 1: human people where I am on Instagram exclusively at how
38:10
Speaker 1: Now Noel Brown, and I am on Twitter at Ben
38:14
Speaker 1: Bolling hs w UH. Tune into my Instagram at Ben Bulan,
38:20
Speaker 1: where you will find me no spoilers, doing some travel
38:25
Speaker 1: abroad in Wow wait Boa sooner than I thought, so
38:30
Speaker 1: tune in uh in the meantime, of course, as always,
38:33
Speaker 1: thanks to our super producer Casey Pegrum, Thanks to Gabe Lousier,
38:37
Speaker 1: Thanks to Alex Williams who composed that banging track at
38:41
Speaker 1: the beginning and end of every show. Thanks to Christophracio
38:44
Speaker 1: is here in spirit Jonathan's trickling the dvos Quister, And
38:47
Speaker 1: thanks to you Ben for being a friend and a
38:51
Speaker 1: confidant and traveling down that road and back again. Golden Girl,
38:54
Speaker 1: stop with me, all right? Thank you, Noel. I gotta
38:56
Speaker 1: move for more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the
39:05
Speaker 1: I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen
39:08
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.