The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds - 78 - The Dark Secret of American Swimming Pools

Episode Date: May 6, 2015

Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds examine the dark secret of swimming pools in America.SOURCESTOUR DATESREDBUBBLE MERCHPATREON

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. Good morning! Not the morning. You are listening to the dollop. It's an American History podcast each week. I read a

story to my friend. Gareth Reynolds who has no idea what the topic is about. Is that true? I never know what it is. I mean yeah I'd say maybe maybe three times I've been like I've heard about this guy. And then you were wrong. There's a couple times I think I was right but I think you're you look the point's valid. It's a valid point. Oh my god, do you want to look who to do? I'll do one bottle. People say this is funny. Not Gary Gareth. Stay okay. Someone or something is tickling people. Is it for fun? And this is not going to become a tickly podcast. Okay. You are queen fakie of made-up town. All hail Queen Shit of Liesville. A bunch of religious virgins go to mingle. And do what? Pray. Hi, Gary.

No, I see you've done my friend. No, no. We have some fun. No, I don't know if that was fun. We're just June 24th. Jesus, I thought you had more to say about it. 1883. Philadelphia opened the first outdoor municipal pool in the United States. Oh no. Yeah. Oh boy, is this... At the corner of 12th and Wharton streets. What?

Is this going to be a pool tale? This is a pool story. This is a dollop? It's about pools. Oh my god. Okay. City officials intended for the pool to function essentially as a large public bathtub for working class residents who lacked bathing facilities in their homes. Well, that's not a pool. That's not a pool. That's what a pool was then.

A big bathtub where everybody could go bathe? Basically... Terrifying. What? That's what a pool was then. Well, I'm glad we shifted. But quickly, local boys and young men flocked to the pool in order to roughhouse and play in the water just as they had done for generations in the rivers around Philadelphia. Throw batteries at each other.

Four days after it opened, the swimmers waited in line outside the bath, rioted, when the superintendent told them that they would not be admitted that evening. Oh boy. And raged the young men, tore the bathhouse door from its hinges, and knocked down the fence surrounding the pool. That means... Let them in. Police officers eventually restored order, quote, with a liberal application of their clubs. Well, I think we know when we're talking about cops and they're saying liberal? Yeah.

That's pretty abusive. Philadelphia went on to build nine pools. The pools were incredibly popular. Over a summer, 144,000 people would swim in each pool. But they're not swimming. They're bathing. Well, they were meant to be for bathing, but then people also started swimming. So people were swimming in dirty tubs? Gladly?

Look, it's the 1800s. What do you... I don't know. I guess I don't know enough. I don't know enough what the options were. I think these are the options. Let's go swimming! Cannonball! The pool was said to attract, quote, lower classes and street gamers.

Okay, so I'm back to where I was before. I'm out of the pool now. They're filthy people. I mean, picture how many teeth were floating in the pool. Oh, God. Just clots of hair. Yeah, they didn't have chlorine. Okay, but because the municipal pools were intended to be public baths, the facilities did not contain showers as the pool itself was an instrument of cleaning. Dirty bathers plunged into the water and rubbed their skin clean.

Just disgusting. Disgusting. The YMCA introduced their first swimming pool in Brooklyn in 1885. In the following 25 years, the pools became major sources of sustainable revenue. I really thought you were going to say staff infections. At that point, boys drowning was the second leading cause of death for boys under the age of 16 after disease. So the Y offered organized lessons and teaching the fastest swim stroke possible, the crawl stroke. In that pre TV era, being the fastest was a big part of social entertainment.

Thank God for TV. Boy, pre TV sounds fun. All right, guys, we're going to play fastest. Look at him go in the water. Which one of you is dominant? Oh, and the boys were required to swim nude. All right, so that's a weird requirement, right? Well, this was because swimsuits back then were made of wool and the fibers would clog the pool's relatively lame filtration systems.

So nude swimming was enforced to make sure the pool didn't break. I'm going to stick with the wool plan on this. But just for the dudes, women got to wear swimsuits. Well, that's fucking weird, right? That's pretty weird. All right, guys, let's see those dicks. Ladies, lace them up. Keep the tops on.

Clog your pool. We don't want to see it. Us and the young men are going to be over here. Swimming naked. Swimming naked. I'm going to be teaching them the crawl. I mean, they swim at different times, right? Yeah, no, that's not that's not helping me.

Then in 1906, Edwin Foster, a Northwestern medical school graduate who was working at the YMCA, tested the water and discovered it was contaminated. Shocking. I just want to point out that Edwin Foster, a medical school graduate, was working at the YMCA. Yeah, testing their pools. Testing their pools. So he was nailing it. My guess is that he was probably testing it during the girls' free swim over the crawl for the boys.

His dad would come down and be like, excuse me, son, but we got you a degree as a doctor. I paid for that. I like to work with pools, dad. This is my dream. Dad, let me get this wool out of the beaker. I'm trying to see what's going on in here. Okay, this was the first major threat to the business income of the Y because it was known that cholera and typhoid were transmitted through water. I mean, okay, this is fucked.

What? How are you doing this when typhoid is transmitted through water? I mean, look, it had some... Let's get naked, guys. Give the typhoid as many avenues as possible. Come on, get in there. Scrub, scrub, scrub. Come on.

And these diseases were still causing widespread fatal epidemics that closed down cities. So in 1906, the standard YMCA pool procedure was to drain the pool and refill it once a week. I mean, you really got to find out what time they're refilling it. Right. You don't want to go ahead and... That's like your one swim a week. If they're refilling on Sunday and you go in on Saturday, you are jumping into disease. Like when there's three feet in the pool, it'd be like, mind if I just do a dip real quick?

Johnny, don't go in there. There's AIDS. It's a lot of that. So this refilling pools actually continued into the 1920s. And in one case, in Spartanburg, South Carolina, the 45,000-gallon pool was emptied and refilled twice a week until the 1920s. I could really use some of that water right now, man. Oh, boy. Men and boys continued to swim naked just as they had in rivers and farm ponds before pools.

In 1909, the New York Times covered a swim meet where families attended. Forty schools competed with around a thousand spectators watching. Apparently, being nude in front of people was less important than speed. That's why it was called a swim meet, because your fucking meat was in the pool. Fucking flopping. The athletic prowess of the very small boys in the 80-pound championship was of less moment to the spectators. I don't know if that got changed by auto-correct. It was probably of less import to the spectators than the enthusiasm of the youngsters who discovered in their trial heats that their swim trucks impeded them and that they could swim faster nude.

Okay. Thereafter, the boys in a state of nature swam like tadpoles through the many heats necessary to a decision. What? So... An 80-pound boy is about a 12-year-old, 13-year-old. Yeah, okay. So, okay. Yeah.

So, are we... are we on the road to... It all sounds a little gay and pedophilic. Well, okay, but this is a different time, so I think people were... But even the way that statement was said was a little like... Yeah, it is a little... Oh, you know, they realized it impeded them. Yeah, someone's painting a picture. Oh, nothing turns me on more than them getting impeded.

Someone's painting a picture. Don't impede in the pool. Who's a tadpool? Who's a dirty little tadpool? No, but I think, like, were they right or are we wrong? Like, were they, like, not... If nudity wasn't that big of a thing, then isn't that more normal? It was, though.

They made the fucking girls wear it. All right. In 1910, the first pool recirculating pump was installed. By 1913, chlorine chemicals were being added to the water. The federal government was just beginning to require chlorination of public water. And wool bathing suits were on their way out. In the 1920s, there were other more comfortable swimming alternatives that didn't shed fibers. Mm-hmm.

Okay. Yes. But nude swimming was not going anywhere. Why? What the fuck? In 1926, the American Public Health Association published the first guidelines for swimming pool management. The guidelines recommended that males swimming take a soap shower before swimming nude. Unadored, undyed tank suits were recommended for females.

Also, male swimmers were checked out before they got in the pool. Oh, my God. What? Okay. So, here we go. This is a pyramids game. What? What if...

What? What? You've got to be, at some point, someone's got to be like, is it weird that we make the girls wear clothes and that we just shower the boys and then inspect them? And then some guy comes over and looks at my dick and asshole? All right, now how's your dick all clean? Bobby, you're looking good today. Boy, your dick tastes really clean.

You really soaked up your pecker, huh? Quote, there was the visual inspection. Part of the aquatic director's job duty was to inspect men before they jumped in the pool. Mm-hmm. I'm the aquatic director. Hello, I'm here to see your dick. Hello. The inspectors weren't just checking for venereal diseases.

No. The idea was to look for any open wounds or other indications that a swimmer might have... There's a big open wound in back here. A infectious disease. Well, you have a giant bleeding hole. Oh, boy. In the book The Sanitation of Bath Houses by William Pard Gehard, nude swimming is encouraged alongside a pre-swim physical examination.

Much can be done to keep the water in a swimming pool sanitary by an efficient supervision and management of the bathers, Gehard wrote. A physical examination of the bathers while nude to exclude the disease is much good, but it is difficult to enforce except in YMCA buildings and schools or military baths. Wait, okay. Why... Mm-hmm.

Okay, so... Right, there's chlorine in the pools now. And it's just the Y that's doing the buoy inspections? It's the Y and it's all schools, all public schools, and military places. Okay, so, but... And the Castro. Okay, I just would love to meet the aquatic director. I'm still there.

Hi, my name's Bruce. Okay, let's see now. I would like to be your aquatic director. Get out of here, you dirty girls. What's your experience? Well, I've seen dicks. Uh-huh. That's it.

I'm the aquatic director. Mm-hmm. Yes. And I'm also... Mm-hmm. My penis is a medical device. I'm sorry. So, let's see these penises.

Yeah, so this is a great job for a pedophile. Yeah. Oh, Dave, Dave, Dave. Like, this is the best job ever for... This is like, someone will be like... Remember, a few years ago, there was this tropical island that had a mansion on it, and they literally were just trying to find somebody to just kind of watch the island? Yeah.

This is that version for pedophiles. This is the island watch job for people who like boys. From the Ironwood Daily Globe in 1926. Boys shall not be permitted to use suits while swimming. Girls must wear swimming suits, preferably of cotton. All instructors in charge of classes consisting of either boys or girls shall wear swimming suits. So, at least the... What?

At least the instructors were wearing swimsuits. All very weird. Women did not actually swim in pools nearly as much as boys and men. Female athleticism was... Was it because all the men fucking was, like, hard to concentrate on their breaststroke? Female athleticism was disdained at this point. Even in the 1930s, doctors were writing books claiming that athletic women gave birth to ugly babies. Oh, that's...

Well, that's terrific. Oh, that's tasty. Well, you shouldn't run so much, Kathy. Your boy will be a freak. He'll have one eye lower than the other. Yep. I've seen it. Well, those weren't jumping jacks, were they?

You want a boy with a cone head? Then get in and just lay down and be a woman. You want a dead head on your baby's shoulder? Stop with the sit-ups. Swid with them moving around, Gladys. The school board... The public school board is responsible for schools with pools. Also had to abide by the state public health and APHA pool management guidelines.

So, nude swimming at schools. Swimming nude continued for years without anyone questioning it. A few months after the U.S. entered World War II, the L85 regulation was implemented. This mandated the minimum use of cloth for clothing since it was needed for munitions. During that time, it became patriotic for men and boys to swim nude. God bless this country. Jimmy, get your goddamn pants off! Don't you love America?

So... I want to see Dixon pools, gentlemen. You're just making the pool into like a pube soup with men of all ages. Well, you're doing your duty for the country. Yeah, don't. Don't, Dave. This is about America. No, it is not.

It's about America. Do you not care about our boys fighting over it? Again, I just think you think about... Do you care about our boys fighting over there? I do. Okay, so get it off. I also care about the pedophile who wakes up one day to hear that it's patriotic to go to the public YMCA and go swim naked with boys.

Okay, so you're rooting for Germany? Yeah, yep. Okay, Hitler, buddy. Yeah, yeah. I'm with Hitler on this one. This went as far as publishing photos of naked boys swimming in newspapers and magazines. What? What?

I can't believe how gay this has gotten. I really... I didn't even want to say that I was worried about it becoming a huge, weird, gay thing, but this is a huge, weird, gay thing. In 1941, Life Magazine published a photo of young boys in a shower as part of a spread What? On the concept of democracy. What?

The concept of democracy? How? How? How did they do it? I don't know. I mean, that is a segue of all segues. It's a huge segue. I mean...

Look how great our democracy is. These are boys naked in a shower. This is the Senate. They vote on these bills. Speaking of bill, this boy's named Billy. Here's his penis. He's naked. Taking a camera into a boys locker room at school and photographing teenage boys completely naked while showering,

then printing that photo, taking up an entire half page for the world to look at was considered perfectly appropriate. Right? A swimming pool historian. I actually took out his name because I liked the term swimming pool historian. Yeah. It is amazing to think of a guy who's like, I know everything about pools. Did you want to talk about pools today? Don't even get me into the above ground era.

At Berkeley this semester, I will be teaching a swimming pool class. To a room of crickets. Yeah. So first, there was water. The published letters to the editor immediately in the next edition of Life Magazine never revealed any review reader having any concern about the naked boys. Good. It was totally normal. Good.

It is totally normal. Totally fine thing to do. In 1940, the Sheboygan Pass, it was constant. David, why? Because I had to. Leave my people be. Published nude photos of a boy swimming along with his address. Quote, there's one striking difference between the boys and girls at the recreation department swimming classes in Central High on Saturday mornings.

The girls wear suits, the boys pretend that the pool is some old swimming hall and go in minus everything except their dignity. The two pictures above were taken out the classes last Saturday morning. The girls at eight or 30, the boys at 10 30 o'clock. Howard Rich. Victor Chink Reinholds. Chink is in parentheses because that's his nickname. What? Okay, I have a to-do list.

Who lives at 1530 Clair Street Avenue. What? Demonstrates the correct diving technique for his fellow swimmers. What? It is a picture of the boys. Dave. So it's just a naked kid on a diving board. Is he Asian?

Nope. They're just calling a non-Asian kid a chink as a nickname? That's his nickname. Were they aware that we were using that nickname for other things at the time? Okay, all right. And then, all right, so let's just put a pin in that. The fuck are they doing putting his address out there? That's...

It's like a treasure hunt for a pedophile. Maybe like this. No, you can't, you don't even have your defend voice on right now. Maybe you want to swing by his house and tell him a great is bottomless. Oh man, you had a great penis, Chink. Just one, hey, I saw Chink swimming in the pool the other day. Any way to talk about his dick or talk to him about teaching. Can I suck your boys?

Oh boy, I should go. Mr. and Mrs. Chink, I'm here to see your boy. I saw his picture in the paper and I want to touch him. I saw his picture and I know there's a long line of gentlemen, but the reason... It's like the bachelor. It's going to be like 50 fucking pedophiles. I was like, is he your boy? Can he come out and play?

I have a private swimming pool and I saw your son in the paper. That guy can't even open his eyes. He's so full of shit. I'm going to look in the ground when I talk to you. I'm just being honest. Swimming nude began to wane a bit by the late 1950s. Wait, sorry, real quick. The girls are still wearing cotton.

Oh yeah, always the whole time. Yeah, so they're not patriots. So it's just the boys. Wow, they have vaginas and breasts. Right, okay, sorry, I just wanted to get that out of the way too. But then automatic chlorination was controllable to adjust for the contamination in pools. Medicine had conquered polio and the medical profession was confident curative medicines would stop outbreaks of any disease that might be transmitted by pool water.

But nude swimming was still required by the APHA. Required. Required. Required. Required. What? So anybody who went to school... Naked.

From the right now, where we are now, is the 50s on down had to swim naked. But people began to express concern in the 60s. Oh really? The time when everybody was getting naked against war, they're like, wait a minute. Hold on now. I think we're fucked up. Societal norms shifted and some boys and their parents began speaking up. In 1961, in the small town of Manasha, Wisconsin.

Oh no, back to Wisconsin. High school boys and their parents petitioned the school board to allow boys to wear swim trucks to swim practice. All right, good. They just wanted to wear them to swim. That's all they wanted to wear. I'm glad we're trying to ride the ship in Wisconsin. Quote, the boys were affected morally, physically and psychologically by forcing them to swim

in the nude, one of the mothers noted at the meeting. But the petition was voted down. The all male board claims swim trucks would be too expensive. They also claim that swimming nude would build a man's character. I mean, the all male board? Yeah. This is just like the Catholic church in a pool. This is insane.

No, we like it when the boys are naked. Next. Quote, physical education considers that this experience is a good one for later life. For example, the armed services where the disregard for privacy is real and serious, the director of the board noted. Hey, these boys could go in the army, so they should probably be swimming around naked. Yeah. Also, I bought a new camera.

Also, men should be allowed to masturbate at some of these swim meets. Right. We're going to have a small window that you can stand up and look out and then a tiny room that you can masturbate in. And the women will be wearing summer dresses. In 1962, the American Public Health Association dropped the nude swimming recommendation because it was no longer needed to preserve public health. 1962.

Good. So every single person you know that went to high school before 1962 swam naked. Well, I'm just thinking about my parents. Right. My brother. No. Your brother's not. No.

No. Gee, good God. Sorry. I apologize. The YMC began to admit females. So everything's fucked up. Now they're going to tattle on boy time. Each location.

The aquatic instructor was like, no, no, no, no, no. No girls in their non penis bodies. Each location decided for itself on its nude swimming policies. So after the after the APHA dropped the requirement that now the Y was just like, well, each individual Y can make their decision on whether or not boys should swim nude. I mean, it really is just saying to anybody who likes nude boys. Yeah. This is your heaven.

Yeah, you can have a nude boy trap. Urban Bronger, the general secretary of the Allentown Pennsylvania YMCA reported to an executive YMCA conference that basically the reasons for nude swimming, wool fibers and tenderness no longer made sense for modern pools, which were then equipped with chlorine and powerful filtration systems. Bronger said the only rational reason to continue the tradition of nude swimming was to encourage a proper attitude toward the body. What?

He should have left that last part out. Everything made total sense. By the 1970s, swimming nude was fading from schools and public schools. From schools? Weird. The Duluth School District included in its 1973-1974 budget an amount that secured a sufficient number of swimsuits for the boys swim program and that the practice of requiring boys to swim nude be discontinued immediately.

Yeah. Well, somebody woke up. In 1972, Congress passed the federal title regulation, title nine regulations. It prohibited sexual discrimination in educational institutions and allowed females to play on male sports teams if no teams exist for females. What about their babies? This led to women being much more involved in sports and therefore swimming. It greatly helped end the practice of male nude swimming in schools.

That along with the fact the boys hated it. Here's what? And it slowly faded away and was all but forgotten. Today, TV shows and movies of those times depict boys swimming in swimsuits. So the common belief is that's how it was, but it wasn't. It was full-on nude boy time. What's fucked up is that it would have just been great. Like, well, if you were allowed to swim naked with girls at that...

Well, yeah, that would have been awesome. It would have been great. I'd have no problem with the cut. The tiny one, it also shrinks up when you go... Oh, it totally shrinks up. But I think, you know, I mean, I think if you and like 30 of your closest guy friends were in the pool, you'd just be able to say, you know, look, who knows what's going on? Science.

And when I was researching this, I found so many blogs of older men being like, yeah, I swam in the nude and then just like almost like these therapeutic posts of dudes are like, yeah, I had to go out naked out there. I mean, in Chicago in the 70s, they're all fucking swimming nude still. Like, it's crazy how long it went on. It went on until the 70s. And honestly, the thing that make the red flag to me is that the women always had to be clothed. Yeah, that is a...

That's an enormous... That's just such an inconsistency with every reason why is that the women had to be in these... If you're ever in any sort of situation and someone says, I want the women to be clothed and the boys to be naked. It's just weird. Everybody should say that. Let's not do that. It's weird. It's really weird.

It's crazy weird. All right, boys. Let's see those peanut girls. No. Come on, girls. You're fine. Keep your clothes on. Just the boys.

I just want to see dicks. Okay. I'm the director of Aquatics here. It's a... You're right. It's exactly like the Catholic Church. It's got a crazy weird pedophile feel to it. Yes.

The pedophiles feel and the non-pedophiles. But also the fact that there were a thousand spectators watching boys swim nude and they were like, yay. Yeah. And they're like 13-year-old boys. No. I mean, honestly. Like, somebody would just be like, dog, I didn't know you liked swimming.

He's like, oh, I've always loved swimming just the way the water slowly... I also like... Drips off of their nipples and their... I mean, I love the fastest. It's important to be the fastest. I also like children, naked children. Doug. Doug.

I would like to work at the YMCA because I enjoy children and I enjoy watching naked children. I will say that it is... It's nice to be back in America hearing some normal stories as opposed to... Crazy Australians. Crazy Australians. All right. Well, that's the dollop. Jesus.

God. What the fuck? Please go leave a review on iTunes. Apparently, we were wrong. That does help. So go in there. If you haven't left a review for the dollop, please go over to iTunes and leave a nice review. And that'll help us out a lot.

And don't wear cotton because there's a war. There's a war. Thank you so much for watching.