The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds - 38 - Balloonfest

Episode Date: December 3, 2014

Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds examine Cleveland's Balloonfest.Tour Dates Dollop MerchSourcesPatreon

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? You could be sitting on an Airbnb and not even know it. That in-law sweet guest house where your parents stay only part-time Airbnb it and make some money the rest of the year whether you could use a little extra money to cover some bills or for something a little more fun your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host. Welcome to the dollop. I each week Dave Anthony tell a story from American

history to my friend. Gareth Reynolds who knows nothing about it. Do you want to look who to do? I'll do one bottle. People say this is funny. Not Gary Gareth. Dave okay. Someone or something is tickling people. Is it for fun? And this is not going to come to tickle you Quadgames. Okay. You are queen fakie of made-up town. All hell queen shit of Liesville. A bunch of religious virgins go to mingle and do my thing. Hi Gary. No. I see you done my friend. No. No. Smaller. It's alright. Yeah but you just think it was alright. That was not good. The day was September 27th 1986. Okay. Yeah. The city was Cleveland. Oh no. No. We're back. Home of the river on fire in Tencent Bear Night. Oh boy. The event was balloon fest. Oh dear. Oh dear. Oh Cleveland. Oh boy. The city of

Cleveland tried to set a world record. Not for the number of hugs in an hour or the highest human pyramid. No. They decided to set the world record for the largest number of balloons released. Two million was what Cleveland was going for. I can't wait to see how this gets fucked up. Why would it get fucked up? Because we're talking about it. This could just be a happy story of balloons. Don't think that it is. Scores of people gathered in Cleveland's public square to see balloon fest and the releasing of thousands of balloons. The five hundred thousand five hundred thousand dollar stunt began as a fundraiser for the United Way of Cleveland but ended up being a colossal headache that

disrupted everyday life and worse. Much worse. The fundraiser had a chance to put Cleveland back on the map. Bustling a record for simultaneous release of balloons set the previous year by Anaheim, California, sorry busting, on the 30th anniversary of Disneyland. Okay. So Disneyland had done this already. Cool. Nothing happened though. Yeah. They just went off. Those balloons. You didn't hear any stories about Anaheim. Exactly. So what's the point? Chaos. Yeah. Cleveland had cleaned up the tremendously and no longer wanted and no longer wanted to be known as the dirty city where rivers caught on fire. Right? So they're trying

to redo their image. They're like so they're probably not happy with the dollar. We're past rivers on fire and filth and no and there's no more ten set beer nights. Let's turn this shit around. Let's let a lot of balloons into space. Turn this shit around. Okay. The guy from United Way who dreamed up balloon fest had been in marketing at Procter & Gamble and was trying to rebrand Cleveland as cool. What better way than with balloons? Yeah. It's a very cool thing to do. It is super cool. The stuff was coordinated by Balloon Art, a Los Angeles based company headed by Treb Haining, which spent six months

preparing for it. A rectangular structure the size of a city block measuring 250 feet by 150 feet and rising three stories high covered with one piece of net of woven mesh material was set up to hold the balloons. That's a lot of fucking balloons. Yeah. It was designed to withstand up to 90 mile per hour winds. So they weren't gonna cancel this. No matter what. Well that was the building code so I think they had to do it that way. Jesus Christ. Haining later had this to say Cleveland Hopkins was far enough away so nobody expected any impact. They signed off on all our plans as well as Cleveland Police and Fire. We

never would have started if the plans had been nixed at any point. I knew it would impact auto traffic so we designed a street closure and detour plan that worked. Planning ahead. Mm-hmm. Right? Sure. Yeah. Oh yeah. I'm sure this plan went off without a hitch. Planning ahead. Yeah. Yeah. Smart. Inside the structure, 2,500 students and volunteers spent many hours filling balloons with helium. United Way original. By the way, helium is not, it's a resource that you shouldn't just. Yeah. Helium is actually a limited resource. Yes. Helium and almost, yeah, and almost running out. And so and also it's just terrible. There's just no point to

releasing balloons into our atmosphere. Oh well. I mean, what about fun? Yep. See, like I said, no reason. No reason. None. I want to look up something really quick. So they plan to release 2 million balloons. 2 million balloons. But eventually stopped at 1.4 million. Oh, I mean, okay. Nobody's gonna give a fuck either way. Why do you say that? Because it's just a shit load of balloons regardless. And nobody's gonna give a shit anyway, because they're just balloons. It's like a fun two minutes. Like that's what it is. You're so underestimating this. So, children sold sponsorships to benefit the United Way at the price of

$1 for every two balloons. So wait, people were like buying? I think, I think yes. Like you were like sponsoring a balloon. Well, you like a kid would like say I'm gonna blow up 100 balloons. Oh, right. Right. It's like, yeah, yeah. Right. Okay. It's a great way to know totally totally a normal thing to be doing. Yep. Project manager Tom Hollowatch had this to say, I was the project manager for the event. I worked on it for six months and lived in Cleveland for a month preparing for it. We had to design a structure that filled the city square could stand up to the winds. The one piece net was fabricated by the exact

company I found in Southern California who built cargo nets for the Space Shuttle. So shit's real. Shit sounds real. Day of they were a little worried about impending weather. Oh boy. Rain to be specific. If it rains, you don't do it. There are news reports of reporters talking to people running the balloon fest about the possible weather problems. I actually watched a couple. Oh God. The people putting it on knew the rain was coming the day before and they didn't think it would be a problem. How could you not think that rain could affect balloons? Well, still, they did decide to release the balloons early. Oh, early

before the rain. But it did start raining right before they let them go. I mean, you can't. What? You can't. I'm sorry. You cancel baseball games or you have to change your face on weather. How could balloons be affected by rain? What are you fucking talking about? You ever seen a wet balloon that they're going to be affected? The balloon release was scheduled. I can't believe they're going to go through with it at 1 50 p.m. on a rainy, windy Saturday. It was nowhere near the ideal weather conditions to release helium balloons as the northern winds blew the balloons in that direction and the rain pushed them down so much so that they

shut down a runway at Burke Lake Front Airport, blanketed Lake Erie and coated the northern shores with deflated balloons. So wait, they released the balloons, right? Yeah. And then they get rained on and windblown everywhere all over the city and there's 1,400,000 of them. So they let, so they, there's, the way they released the balloons is they were like huge balloons holding the big, what's called a tarp, the neck in place. So they cut the big balloons and then the whole tarp thing goes up. Uh-huh. And then all the balloons go up, right? And so the balloons look like this big multicolored dome, right? Uh-huh. And, and

then they came up and they, and they, they completely obscure like this tower, this tower in Cleveland, so you can't see this giant building anymore. And they, and they float up and they become expects in the clouds and then they start coming back down. Oh, no. Because clouds have rain and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the idea that you could fuck up a balloon release is pretty crazy. Well, for a while it looked amazing. Oh, I'm sure for a while they're like, that was great. And then they're like, oh, fuck me. No, no, no, no, no. Photographers captured the event on film and the images are unbelievable. You see everyone, I'll put

them up, but the, it looks really rad at first. Of course, the balloons collided with the cool air and the rain and they dropped and they dropped with force. Oh shit. The balloons were not going to sail off into the distance. Instead, they clogged the land and waterways of northeast Ohio. Oh boy. In the days following the event, balloons were reported washing ashore on the Canadian side of Lake Erie. Burke Lakefront Airport was shut down for half hour after balloons landed there. Can you imagine finding out your fucking flight is delayed for balloons? What? I'm sorry? There's a lot of balloons on the runway.

There's what? On the what? What is it? Do you see balloons? On the runway? Traffic accidents were reported as drivers swerved to avoid slow-motion balloons, blizzards of multicolored orbs, or took their eyes off the road to gawk at the spectacle. People are like looking at balloons. I mean, it's just, oh my god, look at that. Basically, I picture Godzilla, but just balloons. Balloons landing on a pasture in Mendena County, Ohio, spooked Louise Nakakowsky's Arabian horses, which suffered permanent injuries as a result. She sued United Way of Cleveland for $100,000 in damages. Okay. And so for

undisclosed terms. Okay. So it hurt the balloons hurt the horses and Arabian horses. And this great idea to release balloons into the environment is for sure going to cost them a hundred grand. Yeah. Some people probably were really happy with how this went. By November, the balloon fallout had become international news. P. Allen Woodcliff of Mo Peth, Ontario, complained. A short time ago, I was walking along the east beach of one of the special nature areas in Ontario. Oh, god. Rondue Provincial Park. I was greatly dismayed, however, when I saw balloons along the shore, not just one or two, but many in an average 200-yard

stretch along the beach, I counted 140 balloons. Jesus. In the same average distance along South Beach, there are at least 300. This translated into anywhere between 10,000 to 15,000 balloons scattered along the eight and a half miles of shoreline of Rondue Park. Which is supposed to be preserved. And now it's just full of dumb fucking balloons. Now it's just full of rubber. These balloons being made of plastic are not readily biodegradable and thus will create an eyesore for some time to come or else be an unnecessary and time consuming expense for someone to clean up. They may also be hazards to wildlife

such as foul goals and turns. Yeah. The next year, a 3.5 million dollar lawsuit was filed by Gail Broderick. 3.5. That's a big balloon suit. Her husband was one of two fishermen who had gone out on September 26th in the boat on the lake. Uh-huh. The next day, the day of balloon fest, they were reported missing by their families. Those running balloon fest not only ignored the weather conditions but also did not check with the Coast Guard to see if they had any emergencies on Lake Erie. Oh my god. Rescuers spotted the 16-foot boat anchored west of Edgewater Park breakwall. A Coast Guard search and rescue helicopter crew

had difficulties reaching the area because of the asteroid field of balloons. Oh my god. On September 29th, two days after balloon fest, the Coast Guard suspended the search because Coast Guard officials said balloons in the water made it impossible to see whether anyone was in the lake. Oh my god. So they were trying to find a couple of dudes' heads and they couldn't tell the difference between balloons and heads. Oh my god. Because there's so many balloons in the lake that they were never going to find the guys. I mean balloons. Fucking balloons. What like a four-year-old enjoys holding? The fishermen's bodies

washed ashore two weeks later. Gil Broderick settled for an undisclosed sum with both United Way and balloon art. Balloon art, it must be fucking pissed. While the site of 1.5 million balloons released was a site to behold, the outcome was far from pleasant. A massive area was covered in balloons, leaning the death of two the two men. Floyd Rishan, oh, Raymond Scheiner, wrote into the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper. On September 28th, the newspaper reported that the United Way and Cleveland released 1.5 million balloons in the air, some of which landed in Lake Erie and on an airport runway shutting down

the airport for half hour or so. It seems to me the money spent for this stunt, $500,000 could have been used to much better advantage seeing how most of the funds were probably from donations to people who believed the money was going to a good cause, such as helping out the more unfortunate, not on balloons. Okay, that's a really good fucking point. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, also the idea like that they were like, they're like, this is going to help Cleveland become like turn into a place that people will, you know, like if this won't hurt us, we'll release balloons and it'll help our cloud as far as what we are. And then it ends up just

being such a fucking shit show. It's a total shit show. And then did you ever watch WKRP in Cincinnati? A little bit. Yeah. Do you remember an episode about a turkey drop? No. You don't? No, I didn't. I mean, I've watched on reruns a little bit. So there was an episode that they basically, I believe, took from this. Oh really? I might be wrong. But the quote is, as God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly. So they arranged to have live turkeys drop from helicopter as an advertising stunt. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a serious miscalculation. The poor birds plunged earth, never even having a

chance. So they pushed turkeys that helicopter they just fell. In 1994, there was a profile on the paper on George Frazier. By the early 1890s, he left Proctor and Gamble for a three year stint as director of marketing and communications for United Way services of Cleveland. The period was marked by an incident Frazier calls his greatest success and his biggest failure, balloon fest 86. How can you call it his greatest success? I don't know. What does he think? Killed two people. Like admit that you fucked it all up. It was not a great success. You fucking fucked it. You let balloons go in a fucking rainstorm. I

mean, you imagine doing all that shit and then still being like, fuck it, let them go. Like you just want it over. You just gotta get out there. You can't postpone it. You can't postpone it. Get him up there. How can you postpone it? I mean, what are you gonna do? We would not do a balloon launch ever again. Oh really? It says Jenna Snyder, spokeswoman for United Way. We've learned a lot in the last 25 years. I'd love to hear some other lessons. So we pissed in the wind and got wet. We can't figure out how. Cleveland is completely insane. Yes. And do I get to see some balloons? Yeah, I'm gonna show you some balloons now.

See, there's the dome of balloons. Like that's fucking amazing, right? That's so many balloons. Before they went. That is so many fucking balloons. And then there they go. Oh my god. That's rad looking. That's great. I'll put that up on the Facebook page. Yeah, that looks like a fun explosion. It looks fucking awesome. It's just crazy balloons. Okay, yeah, looking good. Yeah, so I don't know what your problem is with this. Well, I think it's when, okay, you know, so looks lovely. Look, I'd love to see some, um, you know, some, some bad ones, some pictures of people who got into collisions based on fucking balloons. How

about that one? Oh my god. So what we're looking at is a picture of balloons. Oh my god. Lake. I think it's Lake, Lake Erie, right? And it's a guy in a boat. And there are some people who have picked some balloons out of the water on the boat, but the entire fucking lake is covered in fucking balloons. And the Coast Guard thing now just makes so much fucking sense. If you're looking for a body or a head, I mean, that looks like a packed beach. So those fishermen could have been swimming around. Oh yeah. And they're like, what the fuck is happening? Oh no. I didn't say send balloons. Is this what they do now? Oh god. Like, is

there over you just waving while you're in a world of balloons? Well, good job, Cleveland. That, uh, was great. Cleveland, you won again. Unbelievable. Un-fucking-believable. There you go. Good. Well, congratulations to United Way, Cleveland. Yeah, Balloonfest is awesome. I feel like if we could only get Rainbow Man to make Balloonfest, that would be just perfect. Yeah, get them together. Yeah, that'd be nice. Alright. Alright. That's a small thank you. I love you. And I'm sorry.