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Short Stuff: Papasan Chairs · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck, there's Jerry Man. I wish I hadn't said
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: it's eating up time, Chuck. This is short stuff. Oh god,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Area said that too. This is already off the rails.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Let's just start over like five years from now. Are
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: you going to be doing this? Yes, it's the short
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: stuff thing, all right. I just want to know what
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: I'm in for. Yep, buckle up, Chuck. So I heard
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: you talking to Jerry as I sauntered in, Yeah, saying
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: that you've never had a papasan or a futon. No,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: neither one. Same here. Good for us, Chuck. That's really
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: like sticking it to the man, you know. Yeah, No,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: we're anti pappa foot. We're saying tech with you, society
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: and popular culture. We're going to go our own way
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: and use a normal mattress and box spring combination or
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: a regular chair. Yeah that doesn't think it's a cereal
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: bowl for sex. Is that what they're for? I don't know,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: but we should shout out the great, great website at
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Las Obsecura. Uh. We both love that website and have
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: for years. And this is a you know, when you're
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: doing papas on research, look to one person and that's
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: John Kelly. That was obscura because he really dug into it. Dude,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: he is the only person who did too. And if
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: you find any other article on the web, including this
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: how stuff works one, it's like, here's what John Kelly found. Like,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: this guy did all of the legwork in the research,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: and he really did dig in. But the beautiful part
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: of the whole thing is that he failed to fully
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: solve the mystery. It's still a mystery, which it probably
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: will be forever. Yeah, so there are a lot of
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: mysteries about the papasan. Uh. You can start by going
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: to papasan dot com, which will redirect to peer one imports,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: which is pretty great. That is a little fishy and cool,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: but there are a lot of like like you can't
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: get anything clear as to like the origin of the
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: name or even of the chair originally came from or
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: when people started selling it. Yeah, it's weird, but there
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: are so John Kelly did turn up some tantalizing clues.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: He wasn't able to triangulate on a particular year and
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: even necessarily a particular country. But there's some there's a
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: lot of strong evidence that they emerged in the sixties,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: probably in the Philippines. That's where I'm putting my money.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: That's where the popasan chair came from. Sixties Philippines. Yeah,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: and that would make sense because by nineteen sixty six
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: was when we finally got the name pier One as
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: a store which had been I guess what it was
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: previously cost Plus, Yeah, which I guess split off and
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: the cost Plus when I become World Market, which everybody
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: knows well. Cost plus World Market is still on the sign,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: which I think is interesting. Yeah. But weirdly, Peer one
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: was cost Plus originally, and I think it was after
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: they divided. And then, if you really want to get
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: the mind boggling, it was the guys who started Radio
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Show who originally funded the guy who founded pier One. Yes,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: and the people who were Radio Check were originally the
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: Tandy Corporation, which I remember that name. I think. Oh,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: I had a Tandy robot arm that moved left and right.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: You still do. It's attached to your body, that's right.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: It's a new appendage on Stellar. But Stellarc God, I
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: love just hearing that name. But nineteen sixty six Peer one.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: What they're doing is they found a good market in
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: importing Asian goods very cheaply and then marking them up
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: for a profit. But here's the deal. Even marked up
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: in the United States, they were it was still like
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: cheaper than other stuff that you would get here from
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: America or Europe, so people bought the stuff. So Pier
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: One is basically like the the place everybody says, no,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: this is where America became enamored with papasan chairs. So
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: people go to Pier One and say where do papasan
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: chairs come from? And pier One says, we don't know,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: but we can tell you exactly when we started selling them.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: It was the mid seventies. And you say, okay, great,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: So papasan chairs hit the U s and the mid seventies.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: But then if you talk to somebody else to Pure One,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: they might tell you that no, actually pure One sold
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: them until the sixties. They just didn't blow up until
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: the seventies. So that remains a tantalizing mystery as well. Yes,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: and what we do think we know is that the
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: reason they blew up in the United States was because
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: of the Vietnam War and Apparently Here's what happened. As
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: the story goes, American g I s would go to Vietnam.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: They would go and serve in you know, the countries
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: that surround Vietnam, and they would this is where it
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: gets a little dodgy, perhaps visit red light districts in
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: these areas, perhaps as you know, single soldiers with some
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: spare change. I guess sure, and they would, uh, this
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: is where they would find the papasan chair. Is that
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: these brothels and papason this is where they think the
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: name comes from. Because it doesn't really make sense that
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: the chair would be called the papasan chair if it
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: comes from the Philippines, because that that's a nonsensical word
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: in the Philippines. It's actually Japanese meaning like father or
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: esteemed older man. Or if you're an American g I
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: in the Vietnam War, papasan meant pimp and mamison meant madam.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: There you have it, So it's possible. According to John
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Kelly's research, this is a theory. It's a pretty pretty
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: good one that American g I s started calling these
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: chairs papasan chairs rather than just calling them straight up
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: pimp chairs because that's who they'd seen lounging around in
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: them in brothels. That's right. Uh, I think this part
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: is fairly interesting. Uh. In nineteen seventy seven there was
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: and I guess in the surrounding years, but this is
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: when this issue came out. But there was, I guess
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: a magazine called MAC Flyer m a C Capital m
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: AC Flyer, and it was issued by the Military Airlift
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Command Safety Office US, and there was a character, Major
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: cr Terror, who was a pilot, fictional pilot obviously, and
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: it was all about his crew and their antics and
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: stuff like that. And there was one issue in seventy
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: seven that said this, uh, and this is this is
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: the guy's like, doesn't know where to get his wife
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: for Christmas. That's the setup. So he gets her everything
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: and he says this, she's got that wombat skin coat.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: I brought her back from Athens, the Honda Goldwing from Tokyo,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: candlesticks from Bangkok, a giant brass table from Iran, two
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: camel saddles from Turkey, a pair of elephants from Saigon,
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: and a Papasan chair from Clark, which was Clark Air
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Base in the Philippines in the Philippines, right, So at
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: least by the seventies in the military, and in joke
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: that you would assume any military guy would know, is
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: that that you would associate papasan chairs with the Philippines.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: So that's pretty strong evidence for John Kelly's idea, right,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: And the joke replied back in the comic was sounds
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: like her artman is decorated in contemporary military Should we
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: take a break after that burner of a joke? Yes,
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: all right, we'll be right back with more on the
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: papasan Okay, Chuck. So here's where it's possible that Pier
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: One already had popasan chairs, just no one was really
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: paying attention to him. Um. It was probably soldiers, American
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: soldiers returning from Vietnam who had seen these chairs in
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: brothels in the in Southeast Asia and we're like, holy cow,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: there's a pimp chair right there and they're selling them.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: I totally got to get one of those. Or people
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: went over to military people's houses saw them in their
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: houses and then also saw them at pure one and
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: thought these are really cool. One way or another, they
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: just hit just the right nerve and definitely. By the
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: mid seventies they were all the rage in the United
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: States as far as home decor is concerned. Yeah, and
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: it's occurring to me. We haven't even described one because
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: I just assumed papaisans were so ubiquitous. If you grew
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: up in the sixties, seventies or eighties, even hanging out
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: in the nineties, probably that you know what one is.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: But you might hear it called a retan chair or
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: perhaps a bamboo or like a moon chair. And there
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: were different models over the year, somewhere smaller and had
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: four legs and like a smaller cushion the one. When
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: I think of a papasan, I think of the almost
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: comically large round saucer that is not attached to the
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: round base. It just you can angle it and move
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: it around. You can make it completely flat like a
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: bowl of cereal, or you can tilt it up if
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: you want to look like uh was Isaac Hayes. Yes,
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: although those chairs are different, and those are awesome too. Yeah,
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: it's like a retan woven king chair throne from like
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: prom pictures in Yeah, but that's what the papasan is.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: And the big fish bowl one that I associate with
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: that word had a very very large cushion. A lot
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: of times it was uh I had like flowers on
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: it or palm trees or something like that. I just
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: reminded myself of a p. F. Tompkins bit where he
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: talks about how he used to work in a hat
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: store and they had all sorts of hats and people
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: would come in. They'd be like, let me try on
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: one of them king hats, and he would say, what's
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: the matter with you? Like, you and I both know
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: that that's called a crown a king hat. Why did
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: you just call it king hat? He does it way
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: better than me, but it kills, and I just called
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: it a king chair chair and then you corrected me rightly.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: It's a throne, is what I meant. Oh, Paula Tompkins
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: the best, the best. So that's what I associate with
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: the Papason, Although, like I said, there have been other models,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: and over the years they've evolved into like instead of bamboo,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: it would be like woven string and stuff like that
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: as the support base. Yeah, or metal. They're like a
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: lot of people have said like no, no, no, you
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: don't have to associate it with hippies, because they were
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: definitely associated with hippies and um artsy chic and and
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: definitely kind of like that whole like, um, I don't
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: know what you call it, but the same people that
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: had beads in their doorway probably exactly. And you could
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: buy that at Pier one two. Right. But now people
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: are saying, well, wait a minute, if you get rid
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: of the base, when you replace the base with something
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: like with kind of thin tapered stick legs, like, it
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: makes it suddenly mid century modern. You know. So people
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: have rethought it and it's kind of made comebacks here there.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: But if you ask me that popas on chair that
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: you you described, where you could move the bowl and
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: be the cereal yourself, um, that is that's the all
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: time great one. But you just have to have the
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: right room for it because it totally ruins everything else
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: in the room. If you have a theme going that's
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: not popasan themed, Yes, and be prepared to drink plenty
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: of my ties. Nothing wrong with that. And John Kelly
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: also found a bunch of people in here that he
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: dug up through social media and stuff that had stories.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: It was kind of cool. This one lady from Malaysia
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: said in her native Malacca, it was a very big
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: thing in the seventies to shoot, uh, studio portraits of
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: your kids and the smaller versions of these, Yeah, which
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: is when they think they started introducing cushions, which means
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: people were sitting around to these things without cushions. Just
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: the ratan part. It sounds pretty awful, Yeah, but that's
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: the Yeah. So they think that by the seventies for
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: sure these things were commonplace in the Philippines and that
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: they got picked up by then. And I assume so
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: you can still buy these brand new, right, I mean,
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: I know you can get them used online virtually any
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: day of the year. Yeah, that's another You can find
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: trampolines and papasan chairs and the classifiedes all the time. Um.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I think pure one like if you type
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: in papasan chair dot com, it takes you to peer
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: one papas on page and they have them. I looked,
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: and they're cheaper than you think. They're like fifty five
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: bucks I think for the highest end one. Uh no,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: I'm seeing some look here, this one's one eight right, okay,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: I mean like the just the traditional good kind that
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: you and I were talking about, like the wicker retan version. Yeah,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: the cool kind of like the hanging basket ones as well,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: those are very cool. Just make sure you hang it
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: on a sturdy buttress, everybody for sure. Well, since Chuck
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: said sturdy buttress and we don't do listener mail, then
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: that means that we are at the end of this
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: short stuff. So short stuff Audio stuff you should know
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