Once intended to stand at the top of the grandest cathedral in Pécs, the decaying statues of the 12 apostles now take shelter from the rain under an archway.  

Completed in 1855 after nine years of work, the statues were carved from Budafa yellow sandstone by Mihály Bartalits. Each stood at a towering four meters tall and was meant for the cathedral's façade. But the sandstone was of poor quality. Rain would seep into the stone and become trapped inside. In winter, it froze and expanded, cracking the statues bit by bit. Over time, the apostles decayed. 

Bartalits later fashioned items made of tin to be associated with each of the apostles, but these deteriorated even faster than the statues themselves. They were replaced and maintained, but hardly any remain today.

Less than 30 years after their completion, the statues were relocated from the cathedral façade to the courtyard of what is now the Saint Maurus Education Center, then a seminary. 

Over the course of the 20th century, the apostles continued to deteriorate. In 2017, they were eventually moved back near the cathedral, but this time under arcade arches constructed in the 1930s. 

The statues now stand beneath the impressive arches, shielded from the elements. At night, atmospheric lights illuminate the worn apostles, creating a moody, almost haunting scene. During the day, the space in front of the apostles serves as a parking lot for the cathedral. The imposing arches and decaying statues they shelter remain impressive and unique.

In Herve, a town between Liège (Belgium) and Aachen (Germany), a brick building with 7 arches covers the town’s main water source. It is located below the town centre. The building was built in 1894. It replaced the old woollen washhouse dating from 1783, which had only two wells.

Despite the relocation of the textile industry to the Vesdre Valley in the 19th century, the growth of the population and the need for water led to conflicts between users.

In order to solve the problem, the water supply was divided into seven wells, six of which flow into large basins made of limestone. They are known as the Six Fontaines or Six Batches.

From left to right, each had its own function:

• Lu batch à djvas (the horse basin) for watering the animals;
• Lu batch à pourcès (the pig bath) for washing the pigs after burning their bristles;
• Lu grand batch (the big tub) for the washerwomen;
• The central well for filling water buckets;
• Lu p'tit batch (the small tub) for washing sausage casings;
• Lu reû batch (the stiff tub - difficult to translate) for domestic use;
• Lu batch Lecomte (the Lecomte tub), named after an old family in the town who drank only this water, said to be the best.

The water comes from the same source and the six wells do not have different characteristics, contrary to what many people think.

Finally, according to a legend, on Christmas Eve, wine is said to gush out of the Lecomte fountain. However, anyone who tried to drink it would be “struck dead.”

In Tempe, Arizona, the sky looms large. The horizons are broad, and the sun shines more than 300 days a year. It’s hard to imagine a more fitting location for an installation by the Arizona-based artist James Turrell, known for his Skyspaces, a series of works that inspire visitors to ponder the connections between light, space, color, and the natural world. 

Installed on the campus of Arizona State University in 2012 and titled “Air Apparent,” this remarkable work allows viewers to reset their connection with the sky. Visitors approach the space along a path that leads through a desert garden, before entering a roofless square open structure. Benches along the inside perimeter allow for about 50 people to sit. Above hangs a square sheet of steel, 45 feet on every side, with a cutout in the center, also square, measuring 15 feet per side. 

“There is this sense of peace and everything stopping when you walk into the space,” said Deborah Sussman, who has been visiting the space regularly since it opened.

“People immediately speak a little bit more quietly,” added Sussman, the senior director of communications and marketing at ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.

Inside, visitors tend to be transfixed by the square patch of sky above, reframed by the artist in a way that tends to inspire awe. The sky, so vast and familiar that it rarely commands our attention, is renewed as something dynamic. The square plane changes color, of course, as the day proceeds, with occasional interruptions—clouds, airplanes, or birds.

But the most electrifying experience comes at sunrise and sunset, when Turrell’s deep understanding of light and color are fully revealed. A system of 480 colored LED lights, carefully concealed in the structure, illuminates the steel plate from below, in a programmed display that changes as the sun rises or sets. These lights in turn change the viewer’s perception of the sky and the surrounding environment, as the color combinations go from contrasting to complementary. 

“At the end of it, you feel altered,” said Sussman. “In the way that a poem can make you see the world differently, that’s what this does.”

It’s one of her favorite place to take visitors to Tempe.

Designed by Turrell in collaboration with the Tempe-based architect Will Bruder, “Air Apparent” also evokes the construction of buildings by the Hohokam, an indigenous people who occupied the region from around the year 300 to 1500.

The Hohokam are known for building complex irrigation systems, so essential to desert life; as well as pithouses, low structures built atop excavated earth—a rich connection to ponder during the immersive experience of Turrell’s creation.

The Scots mining company, which owned many of the mines around Leadhills, near Biggar, in southeast Scotland,  erected this bell in 1770 to commemorate James Stirling, who managed the mines and brought about great technical and organizational improvements to the benefit  of both the company and the miners.

Amongst these changes were the cut in the compulsory working day for miners from 12 hours to 6 hours. With the additional leisure time he encouraged the miners to grow vegetables in their gardens so as to bring about an improvement in diet and thus health.

The bell was never rung to mark the start of a curfew in the widely understood sense or in the older sense, as a reminder for people to cover the fires in their houses (as a fire prevention device). Over the years, however, it has found many uses as well as announcing mine shift changes. It has rung to call children to school, to mark funerals and to call people together to form search parties for people lost on the hills.

Today it is only rung to mark the new year.

Visitors to Eisenhower Park in Abilene, Kansas, will encounter this looming monument to the city of Abilene and its rich cultural heritage. Unveiled in December 2022, the World's Largest Belt Buckle measures 19 feet, 10 ½ inches wide and 13 feet, 11 ¼ inches tall—and that's not counting the frame! Visitors can climb a metal staircase to a small platform where they can stand atop the World's Largest Belt Buckle for photos. 

On the buckle are several significant symbols. A longhorn adorns the center to celebrate Abilene's history as a significant Kansas cowtown. Above the longhorn are likenesses of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Old West folk hero “Wild Bill” Hickok, both notable residents of Abilene.

Below the longhorn are three images: the historic Seelye Mansion, a local architectural marvel; a steam engine from the Abilene & Smoky Valley Railroad, a heritage railway which preserves the legacy of the railroad industry in Kansas; and a greyhound, representing that Abilene is the Greyhound Capital of the World. Lastly, the wheat on either side of the longhorn underscores the presence of agriculture in Abilene's past and present.

When exploring the nooks and crannies of the bustling town of Richmond Hill, many folks overlook this small wooded park near the town's outskirts that houses a historic observatory.

This massive white dome used to be the second-largest telescope in the world when it was built in 1935, and remains the largest in Canada. 

From 1935 to 2007, the observatory was at the forefront of astronomical discoveries, notably Thomas Bolton's 1972 work confirming the existence of a black hole in the Cygnus X-1 system.

Since then, its been designated a National Historic Site by the federal government and hosts yearly astronomy programs and events, offering visitors public astronomy nights, educational programs, and hands-on activities, including a viewing through the observatory's 74-inch telescope. 

The complex is made up of two incredible buildings, the observatory and the administration building. Both structures are worth exploring, but the admin building is the real eye-catcher with its beautiful stonework and triple-domed roof.

Overall, this location is a pleasure to visit, not only for its incredible history, but also for its beautiful architecture.

In 1929, an unusual chapel emerged in a small Belgian town. The Sainte-Lutgarde de Fauquez Chapel—nicknamed the Glass Chapel—was built with a striking new material: marbrite, a type of glass that would soon become a hallmark of the Art Deco movement.

Built by Arthur Brancart, owner of the Fauquez glassworks, it served both as a chapel for his workers and as a showroom for the factory's prized invention.

Marbrite, as its name suggests, was a technique for tinting glass with specific colors and nuances so that it imitated marble. Exclusively produced in Fauquez, it briefly took the world by storm. Production stopped in 1964, and the glass today is most commonly found in cemeteries. 

The chapel was abandoned along with its once-celebrated material, and remained in ruins until the 1990s, when a couple decided to buy it. 

After years of restoration, the Glass Chapel is now open to visitors as a cultural venue, hosting concerts and plays.

Guests can also stay overnight in this unusual place, and explore the neighboring museum which preserved more than 300 pieces produced by the Fauquez factory. The owner is always eager to share the history of the chapel and its glass. 

Older inhabitants of Buenos Aires, or porteños, still recall when Costanera Sur was the site of a literal dumpster. Debris from across the city—everything from demolitions to subway excavations—was poured into the water, next to what once had been a glorious bathing site.  The reclaimed land was meant to become the site of grand government facilities in the 1970s, but the project was abandoned without explanation.

Over the years, plants, birds, and other animals gradually took over the reclaimed lands, kicking off a virtuous cycle of regeneration. In 1986, the city government recognized the area's status as a sanctuary for wildlife and declared it an Ecological "Reserve" (to distinguish it from naturally-formed "Parks").

Still,  the reserve mostly remained ignored by porteños, who tended to turn their backs on the polluted river. The area was further cut from the city by the then-derelict Puerto Madero, where crime thrived in the decaying docks between slowly corroding ships.  

In the early 90s, another mega project, this time successful, was launched to restore Puerto Madero and repurpose it as a chic office-residential-restaurant area. Once the zone began to attract people back, the reserve was rediscovered by porteños, who enjoyed walking through the vestiges of the 1930s bathing facilities into a patch of wild nature, where the city's towers peek above the tall grass plants.  

Today, the site is a magnet for porteños seeking to escape the city without traveling far. Stretched over 350 hectares, it is the city's biggest and most biodiverse green space. Visitors can try to spot more than 300 species of native and exotic birds, as well as over 500 species of native vegetation.

Several trails leading into the reserve provide for long walks into a surprisingly well-preserved area, its artificial nature only betrayed by the unusual nature of some of the rocks.

Hidden deep within a limestone cliff, some of the most spectacular prehistoric cave paintings are still open to the public.

The paintings of Font-de-Gaume were first formally discovered in 1901 by a local schoolteacher, Denis Peyrony, although locals had long known of their existence without recognizing their significance. Since then, the site has been extensively studied by generations of archaeologists who, with new technology, continue to find previously undocumented paintings hidden in the shadowy crevices of its walls. 

Research suggests that the area was inhabited by hunter-gatherers starting around 25,000 B.C., with sporadic settlements lasting thousands of years.

The paintings themselves were created during the Magdalenian period, the last phase of the Ice Age. It was an era of enormous artistic expression, technological innovation and cultural development.

The motives for creating this art remain a mystery. Whether it reflects a drive for self-expression or a much deeper religious symbolism tied to rituals is still a matter of debate. What is clear from the themes of these paintings, however, is the importance that animals and the natural world played in the imagination and the worldview of these ancient peoples. 

The walls feature a veritable bestiary of species that roamed the land in prehistoric times. These include woolly mammoths, wild horses, red deer, ibex, cave bears, wild boars, reindeer, aurochs, cave lions, a wolf, and a woolly rhinoceros. There are even some faint paintings of human-like figures that seem to move cryptically amongst the herds of animals. 

Of the paintings still visible to visitors, the numerous European bison are undoubtedly the most visually striking. Painted in polychrome, the artists used the natural contours of the cave walls to emphasize the bulk and muscularity of their bodies.

The result is a striking testament to the innate human impulse for artistic creativity and expression.  

Museum Het Schip (The Ship) is a shining example of social housing in the Netherlands. 

Commissioned in 1917 by the socialist housing cooperative Eigen Haard and designed by Dutch architect Michel de Klerk, Het Schip was completed in 1921. Today, it serves both as a museum and a residential building.

The structure is a showcase of the Amsterdam School, an architectural movement that broke away from traditional styles by focusing on individuality, craftsmanship, traditional materials, and intricate construction. This style was instrumental in shaping social housing designs of the time.

The museum features an interactive exhibition on the movement, including a collection of furniture, sculptures and other works of art. But the highlight is the guided tour, included in the ticket price. Lasting about an hour, it takes visitors around the building to admire its orange-brick facade, a reconstructed 19th-century slum apartment, the former post office, and an original apartment in 1920s style.

The unconventional, mesmerizing orange-brick building is an remarkable example of Dutch social housing and architectural aesthetic. 

One hundred-and-fifty-plus years ago, Pony Express riders galloped across eight states delivering the mail. The states included California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri. While the Pony Express was short-lived, lasting just 18 months from April of 1860 to October of 1861, it's still the most famous mail delivery system ever used.

The Pony Express was fueled by the Gold Rush in the West, which created a pressing need for faster mail service between East and West. Riders covered more than 1,800 miles in just 10 days, carrying their mailbags.  

And the mail wasn't carried in just any old bag! Riders used a specially made leather mochila (Spanish for "knapsack"). The mochila had four pockets, or cantinas, with openings cut into the leather so they'd fit over the saddle horn and cantle of the rider's saddle. The monument does a great job of showing the mochila draped over the saddle beneath the rider. 

Riders used some 400 horses, which galloped between relay stations  10 to 15 miles apart. At each of these stations, the riders changed horses until they reached their own "home" station, 90 to 120 miles away. Then a new horse and rider took over.  

The bronze Pony Express Monument is situated in the parking lot of the Cabela's store in the small Nebraska city of Sidney. It was sculpted by American artist Peter M. Fillerup in 2011 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Pony Express in 2010. 

Along with the monument, there are flagpoles with flags for each state crossed by the Pony Express. As you walk around, you'll also see stone carvings for Pony Express stations such as Sportsman's Hall in California, Deer Creek Station in Wyoming, and Pumpkinseed Station in Nebraska. 

When looking for liquid refreshment, sometimes it can be hard to settle on on one of the many pubs in Brighton & Hove. There are plenty to choose from—it is often said that there is a pub and a church for every day of the year in this city!—and only so many that boast a unique, yet cozy, atmosphere.

Very few have remained in their traditional form over the years, as the trend for craft IPAs, ironic neon and chicken-wire partitions wreaks havoc on the ambience of the traditional British boozer. One pub in particular has not only managed to keep its authentic pub feel but has been carrying hidden local histories on its walls, dating back to its Victorian-era early days. 

You see immediately upon entering the pub that the walls are littered with tobacco tins and boxes from as far back as the 1850s, when the establishment first became a drinking house. Get up close and you’ll find that they are stuffed with paper notes from the pub's many customers over the years.

You’ll find everything from confessions to poems, recipes to jokes, declarations of love to incoherent ramblings. If you like one in particular, tradition dictates that you replace it with a note of your own.

They say, “in vino veritas,” and these little containers filled with the heartfelt rambling of yesteryear’s (and yesterday’s) drinkers are a great example of the true history of a place. So grab a pint of ale and entertain yourself with the many hidden treasures of this great pub’s past.

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Joey Weiss: Upstairs is where we have our classical instruments room.

Dylan Thuras: Oh, I see. I see. Okay. What’s downstairs then? That’s like your synths?

Joey: Downstairs is our 1950s room.

Dylan: I see. Cool.

This is Joey Weiss. All right. So Joey is, he’s my friend. He’s also my neighbor. He lives like five minutes up the road. He’s a really talented musician. He’s a really talented producer of music. And because of that, Joey has a studio next to his house. This incredible little space with a collection of a ton of instruments in it.

All right, so, into the attic of the studio. Cool. We got harps and all kinds of … Can you play any of these? That sounds nice. That sets a mood. That sets a mood.

And the reason I wanted to go visit Joey at the studio is to see one of these instruments in particular. This instrument seemingly made out of a series of glass salad bowls.

Describe what we’re seeing here. What am I looking at?

Joey: You’re looking at a two-and-a-half octave glass armonica. Glass armonica is a series of glass bowls basically turned on their side.

Dylan: They’re like, nested.

Joey: And they’re nested, right. And they’re connected through a rod. In a grotesque way, it kind of looks like a …

Dylan: Like a kebab!

Joey: A kebab on its side.

Dylan: It looks like a glass kebab!

Joey: Because as you would shave it from the middle, it gets ...

Dylan: Oh my God, it looks exactly like a doner kebab.

Joey: Do you want to give it a go?

Dylan: Sure. Sure.

Here’s where I should probably warn you that the thing about this instrument is that since it was invented, it has been followed by a lot of rumors, including that if you hear the sound of the instrument, you might lose your mind. So, if you want to turn off the podcast now and not take the chance, this is the moment to do it.

I’m Dylan Thuras, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. And today, that includes my neighbor’s music studio, because we’re going to go deep on the history of the glass armonica. It’s a musical instrument that was invented by a founding father, became a hit sensation in Europe, and then became associated with a kind of magical, mystical, medical quackery. And did I mention that one of the people most associated with it also mysteriously disappeared?

This is an edited transcript of the Atlas Obscura Podcast: a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

Dylan: And what are you doing here? You’re dipping your fingers in water?

Joey: Distilled water, water with as little minerals as possible, because what you need to do is ... Benjamin Franklin apparently was enamored with the sound of people playing wineglasses. He set about making a version of it that didn’t require a giant table and a ton of wineglasses, and you could put it in a suitcase and travel with it.

Dylan: Yes. We have Benjamin Franklin to thank for the glass armonica. That, I don’t know, that dude, what the hell? He’s done so many different things. Anyway, like Joey was saying, Ben Franklin spent some time—before the American Revolution—just kind of bumming around London. He was a colonial ambassador there, or equivalent. And at some point in the early 1760s, one of his friends in the Royal Society, a guy named Edmund Delaval, showed him a fun party trick. Edmund lined up a bunch of wineglasses, filled them with different amounts of water, and then he’d wet his finger and run them along the edge of the rim. You have probably seen somebody do this at a party, and if you do it right, they play. They make this kind of ringing, chiming sound, like a single-note musical instrument. But Ben Franklin was, like, really into this. He was like, “Oh, wait a second.”

Franklin was a famous tinkerer. He loved to invent all kinds of things. And so, in good Franklin style, he thinks, how can I invent a better version of this fun wineglass party trick? So, Franklin goes to a glassmaker in London, and he says, “Hey, I need you to create a series of nesting glass bowls in varying sizes, from small to medium-large, and all of them need to have a hole in the middle at the bottom.” And then, once they were made, the bowls could be nested together, and you’d put a rod going through them in this hole in the center. The rod would be made of cork or something like that, so it’d keep them stable and cushioned. And then you’d take this whole contraption, this series of nested bowls on a rod, and you’d put it into something that looked like a side table with a foot pedal, which could turn the rod, and thus, turn the bowls. And once Franklin had done all of this, the glass armonica was born.

For the rest of his life, Ben Franklin pretty much brought an armonica everywhere he went. I mean, you can picture Franklin showing up with his little bifocals—which he also invented—on his nose, and carrying his glass armonica over one hand, and then, you know, he’s like talking about his electricity research. Anyway, but little did Franklin know that this fun party invention of his was about to kick off a craze in Europe, a craze which would end in something of a moral panic and a public health scare. The sweet tones were about to turn sour.

Joey: You know, Mozart composed for the glass armonica.

Dylan: Really?

Joey: Yeah, which is fascinating, because for some reason in my brain, Mozart and Franklin do not cross over, but they do.

Dylan: The armonica took off in Europe right away, and like Joey said, Mozart was a big fan. He composed some pieces for it, and supposedly, Marie Antoinette even received armonica lessons. And it was the guy who introduced the armonica to Mozart that we need to spend some time talking about, because he is about to become central to this story.

Now, he’s not as famous as Franklin or Mozart, but you may have heard his name before. He was a German doctor named Franz Mesmer. Mesmer was an interesting guy. Playing the armonica was kind of a side hobby for him, but his main job was health remedies. I am putting “health remedies” in pretty heavy air quotes here.

Mesmer was really, really interested in magnets. He was a new age guru of that period. He believed the human body was filled with mysterious liquids, or these magnetic fluids. And these magnetic fluids could become blocked. And if they were blocked, they would cause health problems. So to cure this, Mesmer would hold magnets up over his patients and help move these fluids along. This theory became known as animal magnetism. And over time, Mesmer’s treatments got weirder and weirder and more and more theatrical. And a big part of these treatments became the sound of the armonica itself.

Joey: It’s haunting. There’s a sound that happens with the vibrating glass that’s unique. And after about five to 10 minutes of playing, it starts to charge the room in a way where the sound starts to feel as if it’s coming from no source at all.

Dylan: Imagine for a second that we are in some grand salon in Paris in the 1780s. Yes, please. There is a ton of people milling around. They’re all dressed up. The lights are low, the candles are burning, and mirrors are everywhere. There is a giant bathtub in the middle of this room, and the bathtub is filled with bits of iron and glass. And sticking out of this bathtub are these iron rods. Someone in the corner is sitting, playing the glass armonica.

I mean, just a side note, whatever you think of the effectiveness of these treatments, I mean, hell yeah. A+ theatrical presentation. Anyway, Franz Mesmer is in the middle of all this. He’s encouraging people with their stomach aches or headaches to come forward, come, come up, rub your body on these iron rods sticking out of this bathtub.

So for hours, people come up, and they’re rubbing their stomachs, their arms, their other areas on these rods. The armonica player is going hard. And this sensation would cause them to have these strong reactions. They would hiccup or sob or cry or even faint, all with the sound of that devilish glass armonica in the background.

This became enough of a craze that by the late 1780s, the other doctors in Paris were like, “What the—what are you doing?” It got intense enough that the King of France was asked to intervene. And he decided to put together basically a scientific commission to evaluate Mesmer’s claims. For this commission, the King brought together a chemist, a doctor, and he’s here, he’s there, he’s everywhere: our old friend, Benjamin Franklin. At this point, he is living in Paris and working there as an ambassador.

So yes, Ben Franklin goes, and he sits into these sessions, and he’s like, “What is my armonica being used for? What is all of this going on?” So the commission declares Mesmer a fraud. Or put another way, these patients had sort of cured themselves using the power of the placebo effect, the imagination, the power of your own belief about yourself.

Mesmer eventually left Paris in a little bit of a cloud of shame. And while Mesmer may not have won his battle with Ben Franklin, he lives on in another way. Even if you have never heard anything about the glass armonica or bathtubs full of iron shavings before, you might still describe the feeling that you get when you’re listening to a glass armonica as mesmerizing. As in Franz Mesmer.

Maybe because of its association with mesmer and mesmerism, the tides began to turn against the armonica. Instead of curing you, rumors began to swirl that the armonica, even just listening to it, could actually make you ill. One popular musical journal warned in 1798 that the armonica could plunge a player into a nagging depression, and hence into a dark and melancholy mood, and that it was an apt method for slow annihilation. An apt method for slow annihilation is a great, like, album title. It went on to say that you should not play the armonica late at night, if you were ill, or had any kind of nervous disorder.

By the 1820s, the armonica had also just fallen out of fashion. It still popped up occasionally in classical music. This is a piece you might recognize. It’s by the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns. It’s from his Animal Suite, and this part is called, “Aquarium.” Really does feel like watching a jellyfish float by. What this meant is that the armonicas being out of fashion, slightly disreputable, and also highly, highly breakable, they just slowly started to disappear. They became collectibles, sitting in museums, and basically no one played them or thought much about them.

Until the 1980s. Because in the 1980s, a guy named Gerhard Finkenbeiner started making new glass armonicas. Gerhard was based in the Boston area, and he was a high-end glassblower. He made scientific glassware and tools for all the labs in the Boston area. This was super fancy stuff. This was glass for IBM, Raytheon, the glass used in making semiconductors.

One day, he was making quartz tools for semiconductors, and he saw that the cut-off ends of these tubes could make perfect glass armonica bowls. And so Gerhard started to manufacture brand new glass armonicas. And over time, people started collecting and playing these again. They became a kind of niche sort of thing to have if you were into music. And this is how Joey got his hands on one. It was passed through a series of collectors, including a guy in LA who had been using it to do movie soundtracks. However, Gerhard’s story takes a surprising turn.

So what happened to Gerhard?

Joey: So no one really knows what happened to Gerhard. Apparently he was an amateur pilot, and one day, he told his co-workers during lunch that he felt like he needed to go, didn’t mention anything about flying, apparently changed his mind after being home, and he got into his plane, and instead of going north towards his other home in New Hampshire, in his other glassblowing studio, he went south, and then was never heard from again.

Dylan: Gerhard Finkenbeiner disappeared on May 6, 1999. Neither him nor his plane have ever been found. What this means for glass armonicas is that today, they’re pretty hard to come by. Maybe if you’re handy with woodworking and glassblowing, or happen to have a collection of quartz salad bowls, you could potentially make one yourself. Ben Franklin refused to patent any of his inventions, including the glass armonica, and so made no money off of it. So if you wanted to try and make your own, you absolutely should, and Gerhard’s studio does still help fix existing glass armonicas, and I think they may produce even a couple. I think it is long past time for yet another comeback of the glass armonica.

In case you do not have a neighbor who happens to have a glass armonica in their attic, you can go see one in person at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Their armonica is an original that was owned by Franklin himself, and was given to the museum by one of his descendants. They are such cool instruments. They won’t let you play that one, though, unfortunately.

Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

This episode was produced by Amanda McGowan, and this episode was sound designed by Manolo Morales. Our podcast is a co-production of Atlas Obscura and Stitcher Studios. The people who make our show include Doug Baldinger, Chris Naka, Kameel Stanley, Johanna Mayer, Manolo Morales, Baudelaire, Gabby Gladney, Amanda McGowan, Alexa Lim, Casey Holdford, and Luz Fleming. Our theme music is by Sam Tyndall.

Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

Dylan Thuras: I’m here and no one’s here yet. This is a mailbag episode, and so we’re going to chat and ask each other questions. But it’s just me right now. So I’m going to eat some clementine and get some ASMR of me eating a clementine. People don’t like the sound of other people eating, but too bad. I wonder who figured out ASMR first. Like how old is it? I mean, obviously—

Johanna Mayer: What are you talking about? Just got on the Zoom and it’s Dylan talking to himself eating chips.

Dylan: No, not chips. Orange slices.

Johanna: Oh, much better.

Dylan: I was just doing a little … I was here alone. I was doing a little ASMR of what it sounds like to eat a clementine. You know.

Johanna: Ew.

Dylan: Why not? It sounds ... Honestly, peeling a clementine sounds really good. Hi.

Johanna: What’s up, Amanda?

Amanda McGowan: Hey. What did I miss?

Dylan: The goal for this mailbag is for everyone to enter in the most disorienting moment humanly possible.

Johanna: Yeah.

Dylan: I achieved it twice. I’m feeling good.

Johanna: Okay, Dylan, do you want to do the show intro?

Dylan: Yeah, we better do it. Yeah. I’m Dylan Thuras.

I’m Johanna Mayer.

I’m Amanda McGowan.

Dylan: And this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Today, we try to answer questions about solo travel.

This is an edited transcript of the Atlas Obscura Podcast: a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

Johanna: Okay, first question. This one is from a listener named Kara. She says, “I just graduated college, and I’m about to go on a month-long backpacking trip before starting real life in the fall. Honestly, the thing that I’m worried about the most is: I am shy. Am I really not going to talk to anyone for a month? Also, I’m going to be moving around a bunch, and that makes it tough to make friends. Do you have any tips for meeting people while on the move?” What do you think?

Dylan: Yeah, I mean, this is a tip—I think it still holds. It held—I mean, I did a big trip right before college. I was just out of high school. I was still 17. Me and my friend, he was 18. We did like a month and a half.

Johanna: Well, in that case.

Dylan: He was 18.

Johanna: Glad there was an adult there.

Dylan: We had one adult on the trip. And we did a month and a half all across Europe, and at least at that time—it was a long time ago—but hostels do actually provide a lot of opportunity to meet other travelers, especially if you’re young.

Amanda: I also, I went on a trip—I was probably in my early 20s with a friend of mine—and yeah, I remember we were in Rome or something, and we just ended up talking to this group of people. And we all ended up going on this excursion to a neighborhood together and getting lunch together. And it was really fun.

Johanna: Did you ever talk to those people again?

Amanda: No, no, no.

Johanna: Yeah. That’s okay.

Dylan: But that’s how it works.

Amanda: I think we were friends on Facebook maybe for a while.

Dylan: I like that kind of thing. You’re good friends with someone for like 48 hours or like half a week, and then you’re all like, “Bye. I’m literally never going to see you again.” That’s kind of—there’s something really beautiful about it.

Amanda: Yeah.

Johanna: I mean, that dovetails into my answer to this. I have a slightly different thought, which is that I think it’s okay if you don’t talk to anyone for a month. I think it’s totally fine to not make a friend while you’re on this. There are a lot of benefits of being by yourself and being with your own thoughts for an extended period of time, which may never happen again. I would say just don’t worry about it. And the other thing that I want to comment on in this question is Kara said this backpacking trip is supposed to be before she starts, quote, “real life in the fall.” This is real life, Kara.

Dylan: Totally.

Johanna: This is it.

Dylan: This is the realest life.

Johanna: It doesn’t get better.

Amanda: No, real life is creating shareholder value.

Johanna: Okay. Next question. This is from a listener named Dean. He says, “Two years ago I traveled for 10 months, eight months of it I was mostly by myself. Now I have image flashbacks from the trip, not just highlights, but also very mundane moments. They don’t bother me, but at first they surprised me because I don’t remember ever hearing anyone else talk about this as a phenomenon. I call them PTFBs for post-travel flashbacks. I wonder if you or your listeners have similar after-travel experiences.” I 100 percent get this and very, very mundane moments as well.

Dylan: Yeah.

Amanda: Ooh, say more. I wish he had included an example. I want to hear.

Johanna: Well, my example is like I was alone briefly on a larger trip to Indonesia. I spent six days by myself. I separated from the group. The thing that I primarily remember from that trip, I had split off in order to go see a couple temples that I really wanted to see, but I have almost no memory of that. I remember the very long bus ride from the hostel to the downtown area super clearly and how it was heavily air conditioned and the way that the doors opened and the sounds that they made. I also remember some very long walks down very hot dirt roads by myself. And those are the primary memories of that trip. So Dean, it’s not a phenomenon unique to you. I totally get it. Don’t know why exactly that is.

Dylan: I think travel in general, I feel like I have much clearer memories of. I mean, novelty sort of unfolds time in this funny way. A two-week trip can somehow feel like it takes up the same memory buffer as like six months of normal life, right? Because it’s all new and your brain is kind of doing this extra work to like, “What is that? Why is it like that? Where do you put your trash?” And that gives your brain so much to chew on, and that’s part of why it feels delightful and exciting and also sometimes taxing and exhausting. It’s all of that at once. And I feel like being solo on top of that, you’re not doing this other work of being like, “What does that person want? What are they doing? Where’d they go?”

Johanna: Oh, you’ve freed up brain space.

Dylan: Your brain space is fully occupied by your sensory experience, which is why I think your note from before about like, take the whole month, and just like actually—maybe you’ll be a little bit melancholy and lonely at points, but those memories will be like a mountain in your mind. I think that’s like a really—never heard someone describe this post-travel flashback thing, but it’s a thing. You can just get these crystal clear memories of those experiences.

Johanna: Do you guys have any specific examples?

Dylan: There’s a number of—we took a trip to Scotland with the kids, and I have all of these memories where it’s just like walking on a trail. Like it’s a sun-dappled—it’s just a nice sun-dappled trail, and I see my son is ahead of me, and I’m carrying my daughter on my shoulders, and it’s just like this perfect little sensory moment. That’s the kind of stuff that I feel like comes back to mind.

Amanda: I mean, we’ve talked a lot in these Mailbag segments about how the iconic traveling experiences can sometimes be kind of overrated, like going to the thing just to check it off. And it’s just interesting that what the brain—what your mind actually latches onto and remembers is sometimes these just more quiet, more sensory-laden moments. Yeah.

Johanna: Okay. Final question. This is from someone who did not leave their name. I think there might be a reason for it. Okay. This person says, “When I was younger, I loved traveling by myself. It was a huge part of helping me make my own identity, learn things about myself, and build confidence. These experiences gave me some of my most formative memories. Now I’m married, and I’m thinking of starting a family, and of course I want to share travel experiences with my family, but part of me is also a little sad at the thought of losing that part of my life. Is it selfish to continue to take solo trips? Do you have any suggestions for how to fit solo travel into your life?” Dylan’s nodding with a knowing look in his eyes.

Dylan: You guys go first this time. I feel like I’ve been jumping in on everything.

Amanda: My thought immediately is just, I don’t think it’s selfish. And one thing that I like to do is, if you’re going on a trip with the fam, maybe tack on a couple of days at the end and just be like, “Okay, bye family, I’m going to do a little two nights or something by myself,” and then you still get that experience, but you also get the experience of being there as a group.

Johanna: So you don’t think it’s selfish? I think maybe it’s a little selfish. I don’t necessarily think it is selfish. I totally hear what this person is saying about this formative memory as it being a very important experience to you, but I don’t know, if I’m being honest, I do think if my partner just took off on a trip by himself, I think maybe it would be a little hurt or jealous, maybe.

Amanda: And I think you’re so right that there has to be the dialogue there. It can’t always be one person doing the solo trip and the other person corralling the children.

Johanna: That definitely, yeah.

Amanda: That has to be acknowledged, yeah.

Johanna: I will say that definitely do it before you have kids. This person says they’re thinking of starting a family. I think it’s probably a whole other thing once you are ditching your partner with the children.

Dylan: I have strong thoughts on this.

Johanna: Okay. Okay, Dylan, you’re up.

Dylan: Okay. Well, I think you’re both right. Johanna, I do think it can’t work if someone’s constantly just like, peace, I gotta go explore myself. But I also think, actually, I actually think, especially after you have kids, and so much of your life is actually sort of logistical and more kind of like you’re a partnership running the business of your family. That is sort of what happens. And I’m about to take a huge trip with my whole family. And one of the things we’ve been explicitly talking about is making sure that along the way each of us gets like half a day to—I’ll take the kids, and Michelle will go and wander around and go to a flea market for half a day. And then some other time, I’ll do that. Or then we’ll split up and we’ll each take one kid. But like, it is actually oppressive to be in the same group of people for really long periods of time, because it’s stressful, and you don’t get a chance to kind of think. And so I think even on a trip with a partner or with family, actually making time to split up and do separate things and then come back together. It’s hard, because you have to be really explicit about it. I do think it’s good. I think it actually improves everyone’s like mental health and well-being. And then on a bigger perspective, I just think it has to be reciprocal. So maybe your partner is like, well, what I want to do is take a long weekend and go hang out with my friends who I grew up with. And we’re going to do a boy’s weekend or a girl’s weekend. And you’re like, what I want to do is like, actually, I’m going to take four days and go explore this place, or even a week. I mean, there’s probably a limit on total time, but like, which is probably about a week, but like …

Johanna: I think it’s a week, max.

Dylan: It’s a week. It’s a week, max.

Amanda: I think three days would do the job.

Dylan: Long weekend is probably the right scale, week is probably maximum. But I do think if there’s that reciprocality where it’s like, okay, this is just a thing that twice a year, you know, we each just go do a thing. And that’s just in our contract as a relationship, actually, that’s very healthy. I think that’s really good for everybody.

Johanna: You know, you speak the truth. And it’s a good point also that like, I don’t know why there’s this difference in my mind. If my partner came to me and was like, “I want to spend a weekend with my boys. We’re going to go fishing or whatever,” I’d be like, yes, absolutely. Like, go. You need to nurture those friendships. Like, go do that. But if he was just like, “Hey, I’m going to this other city by myself for a long weekend or whatever,” I think I’d be like, “Well, what the hell? I want to do that too.” Maybe it’s not fair. Maybe I need to expand my mind a little bit.

Dylan: I do think it takes a high-trust relationship. I think it takes a high-trust relationship because it does feel a little bit harsh to be like, oh, you’d rather be literally by yourself? Like, excuse me? That’s rude. Like, that’s really rude. But I think if you have that kind of communication, it’s just like this is something that brings me a lot of joy and peace and quiet. And frankly, when you have kids in a family, that is actually really important to get because I think it can become suffocating for people, you know, especially moms in particular because like so much of the expectation is like around sort of constant kid availability, you know what I mean? It’s just like, that’s like, it’s good. It’s going to be good for everybody’s well-being. It’s good for people to have, you know, like to have the kids by themselves, a different experience to have your kids on your own. And it’s like it can be fun. It can be challenging. It makes you appreciate having a partner there in a very serious way. You know, you’re like, oh, thank God you’re back. You know, yeah.

Johanna: So it sounds like the moral of the story is do it now before you have kids and not for too long.

Amanda: Yes. It’s certainly easier that way. Yeah.

Dylan: Do it. Keep doing it. Do it. Just high-trust, high-communication relationship. Johanna’s boyfriend, do not do this. No.

Johanna: It’s my husband, Dylan.

Dylan: No, yeah, your husband, your husband! You guys got married! No. Double no. Super, absolutely not. It makes me want to go solo traveling, to be honest. Like it feels, this all feels very romantic. There’s something romantic about solo traveling.

Johanna: Bye Michelle. Bye the kids.

Dylan: No, this isn’t …

Johanna: No, I’m on board. I’m on board. I’m on board.

Dylan: I travel so much for work and stuff that actually in my own relationship at this point, if I was like, I just want to take a week and do, it’s like, Michelle does do that actually. Michelle will go off by herself for a few days.

Amanda: That’s cool.

Johanna: Where does she go?

Dylan: To a cabin. Like, up to a cabin and she like reads, you know what I mean?

Amanda: She gets it.

Dylan: Dude, she plays the oboe, she’s practicing, she reads, she’s just like …

Johanna: You know what? It’s good. I’ve had a change of heart. Somehow, hearing that Michelle does and I’m like, that’s awesome, good for Michelle.

Dylan: Yeah. I can’t do it. No way. Not me. Uh-uh. Thank you for hanging out with us while we talk about solo travel.

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This episode was produced by Johanna Mayer. Our podcast is a co-production of Atlas Obscura and Stitcher Studios. The people who make our show include Doug Baldinger, Kameel Stanley, Johanna Mayer, Manolo Morales, Amanda McGowan, Alexa Lim, Casey Holford, and Luz Fleming.

Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

Dylan Thuras: For this conversation, we asked you to choose places that you felt like shaped or influenced your life in some fundamental way.

Paul Scheer: Absolutely.

Dylan: I have to say the three places, when I saw your list of three places.

Paul: Yes.

Dylan: I was filled with a mild sense of anxiety.

Paul: You know, well, I think one of, you know—and I love this point of view—but I think one of the reasons why I picked these three places was because there is trauma in each one of these places, right? And, you know, and I had just finished writing my book, which is called Joyful Recollections of Trauma. And I realized that the things that influenced me, it’s kind of like the way that, you know, a lump of diamond can be squeezed into coal, right? Like, I feel like some of these places did that. I may not have loved it in the moment, but I came out of it better. Sometimes a travel experience is important to kind of change you or challenge you.

I’m Dylan Thuras, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Today, I’m talking with actor and comedian Paul Scheer about his life in three places. You probably know Paul Scheer. Maybe you know him from TV, things like The League or Black Monday, or you might know him from his very funny, big podcasts, like How Did This Get Made? and Unspooled.

Paul has a really distinctive sense of humor, and it’s very clear in the stories that he chose to tell. Because when I asked him to think of three places that impacted him, he did not choose memories that made him look heroic or good or were like, you know, sweet stories. No, he chose three very funny, fairly personally embarrassing stories. Because as he put it to me: trauma is the fire in which we are forged. Like the story he told about a mishap on a trip to Disney World, or his solo adventures as a kid at a family ranch resort in upstate New York, or the time he worked up the nerve to speak to a big-time celebrity at Comic-Con (and will be the last time he ever does that). Each of these moments changed how he approached his life as a parent and as an actor. But today, these stories, it’s just, they still make him cringe internally. The memories he made in these three places will stay with him forever, whether he wants it or not.

This is an edited transcript of the Atlas Obscura Podcast: a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

Paul: So the first place is Orlando. It is Walt Disney World. Up until I was 18 years old, I visited this place, I would say, once a year, and multiple times twice a year. So yes, I spent many a time at Walt Disney World. And I guess this thing that would happen a lot, my parents were divorced, and a ticket to Orlando, I remember being in the—reading the papers, it’d be $74 to Orlando.

It was almost—it was a very cheap flight. So my dad and I could go and do like a three or four day trip there. And it was at a point when, again, Walt Disney World has become prohibitively expensive for a family. But man, oh man, they made it worthwhile. Like we stayed on property, we would get free tickets, right, to go to the park. It was a whole different ballgame. And so we went there a lot. But one of the first times I went there, we stayed at this hotel. And I can’t remember the name of this hotel. Now I had the problem of this” I was, I am lactose intolerant. And I did not find that out until a trip to Walt Disney World.

Honestly, if you’re lactose intolerant, you’re going to find it out there because everything has milk and cheese in it. And man, oh man, I found out in a way that was intense. Like it was Alien, the movie, the original movie level explosions, right? I was like, my body was wrecked. I destroyed this hotel. I destroyed it to a point where my dad and I snuck out in the middle of the night. We were like, we got to get out of this hotel because it was—there’s only so many things I could soil in so many different ways. And my dad was like, we need to go home.

Now that’s an intense Disney trip, right? I learned I’m lactose intolerant. You know, I can’t eat my Mickey Mouse bars anymore.

Dylan: So, okay. So your first place is Disney World. Your second place is like in a similar vein. And I have to say, I am like 30 minutes away from this place. We could continue this conversation, I could drive there and we would still be talking as I arrived.

Paul: Wow, now that’s fascinating.

Dylan: I didn’t know it existed. I did not know it was there. And so suddenly I was like, what the hell? Okay, so what is this place? Tell me about the second place.

Paul: Okay, so this second place. So now I did say that we went on a lot of family trips to Orlando. And I guess what I should maybe say there’s a caveat is my dad and I did a lot of trips there. My mom and I didn’t do as many trips there. I can count on like really like one hand, the amount of trips I went with my mom to places.

One was a place called the Rocking Horse Ranch. So many people were familiar with this place in the East Coast because I think it was a destination. It was a family style resort that was very much based in ranch related activities. Kind of like a City Slickers meets Club Med for families. So they did have a lot of kid related activities, but it was just like, it was ultimately just horseback riding, which I could do at home. I said, you know—and then it was like horseshoeing. It was, you know, playing a game of horseshoes. You know, it was like a lot of horse related things.

I’m there with my stepsister on this one, but my stepsister is older. She’s in high school. So she basically is like running into the woods, smoking cigarettes, listening to The Who bootlegs. You know, I don’t see her all day. And I’m forced to be with these kids that I don’t know that seemingly have friends or siblings. No one’s making, you know, comments to me. So I just see—sadly see myself eating my boxed lunch alone, doing something that I hate. So I begged my parents. I’m like, please don’t make me go back to this day camp. I hate it. I just let me like—be, I’ll do whatever. And they’re like, “Well, if you don’t go to day camp, there’s nothing for you to do.” And I’m like, “Fine.” Like literally, I will stay in the hotel room.

And I just, you know, as an only child, even though I had the stepsister who was kind of a, she was kind of an occasional feature in my life because her parents, well, her mom, she had, her mom had custody. So she wasn’t always with us—occasionally. So I was used to being an only child and I played a lot by myself.

I’d always act out these like action movies in my head. And I would play like a grizzled cop, you know, men in their thirties and cops divorced, having kids, and I’m out there play acting these scenes. I would just play by myself. It looked to me like, if you saw me in the distance, it looked like a kid that was having a full-blown manic episode. I’m yelling at myself. I’m on my knees begging for mercy. I’m arresting my—putting handcuffs on myself. Now my character did smoke. I didn’t smoke. But you know, what I did was I pocketed a bunch of matches from the hotel room. And I had these matches and I would just, I liked the idea of lighting, right? And I’d light and I’d throw it, you know, and I’d just light, throw. It just felt cool.

And so I was doing that around a lot of dry brush, which, you know, if you’re not stomping out the match well enough, that’s going to cause some problems. And I find that out when in the middle of my playing, a fire starts.

Dylan: Oh my God.

Paul: Like a fire is—and not only does it start, but it grows quickly. And I’m like, oh my God, I don’t know what to do. And as a kid, you’re like, well, I’m not going to call for help because that would show that, A, I’m irresponsible. And I got this, I can figure this out. You know, so I start stamping on it, but the fire has grown too hot. I run inside to my room and I grab like, you know, they have those little bathroom cups. Like, you know, they’re not, they’re not very big, but they’re, you know, they’re just, just big enough to like give you a little gargle after you brush your teeth.

And I run in and I grab one of those and I run out with it and I throw it on the fire. It does nothing. And meanwhile, my step-sister had come back and she can see that I’m panicked. And I, you know, keep on running in and out of the bathroom. I keep on trying to do this. But now on the third try, the third attempt of this fire growing, it has reached—

Dylan: You’re just going back and forth to get little tiny cups of water.

Paul: Little tiny cups of water. I’m passing fire alarms left and right. And my step-sister kind of stops and she’s like, “What are you doing?” I’m like, “Nothing. I’m not doing anything. I’m fine. I’m fine.” And as she says that, from behind her—she’s standing in front of a window of this place—I can see the fire engulfing the window. And man, oh man. And then I pointed at her. I’m like, “it’s a fire, but I didn’t start it. I didn’t start it.” You know, she’s like, “What?” And like, she sees this fire. She’s like, “Holy shit, get your parents.” And I’m like, “No, I can’t. They said I shouldn’t bother them until 5:00.” She’s like, “Get your parents.” Knock on the door.

And I’m like, “There’s a fire. We didn’t start it. I didn’t start it.” And my mom kind of runs out and sees this blaze. Long story short, the firemen come, they put out this fire, minimal damage to the cabin—I think a coat of paint would probably fix it. Burn marks, not like burnt. And they kind of start to question me. And I know if I say that I started this fire, I could go to jail. And I held to my lie. I kept on doubling down. “I just found, I just found it.” And I was like, “You know what? Let me, let me help you, investigate how it could have started,” right? You know, so I go out and I’m looking around and I find my match.

I find that match that I threw out there, you know? And I go, “Oh, here it is. Here it is. The match. It probably—probably someone was smoking. They didn’t mean to.” And they said, and they clearly—you know, I think I’m being smooth—they know this kid’s lying. He set this fire. You know, they’re really kind of, they’re on me. And my stepsister is watching this whole thing. And at one point the guy says, “Empty your pockets.” So I pull out my pockets and there in my pocket is the matches, the matches I had stolen from the hotel.

So now I’ve not only found the incriminating thing, but I also have the other part of it, right? So I’ve now connected the pieces for them. I’ve done the detective work. I’ve busted myself. And, um, my stepsister kind of steps out of this little semicircle of people watching me be questioned by the fire people. And, she’s like, “Oh, he couldn’t have started that. He was with me. We were together and we were watching TV.” And I was like, oh my God, she saved me. My stepsister saved me from going to jail, saved me from this dark version of my life that would have been otherwise. So the Rocking Horse Ranch represents to me this place that I absolutely hated.

Dylan: Paul Scheer, he’s talking to us about places that he’s not ever been able to forget because they are embarrassing, anxiety-inducing stories that have left a deep mark upon him. The first two were from his childhood, but this next one happened a lot later.

Paul: San Diego is the location that—and specifically the San Diego Convention Center. That is my place, the San Diego Convention Center. Because for this one weekend a year, Comic-Con comes through and it is, and it changes the entire city of San Diego. If you’ve ever been there during this time, the streets are filled with people in cosplay, every hotel room is booked. It’s like being in Blade Runner. You’re just in this weird world of costumes and characters, and you’re just pushing your way through, eating the worst stuff.

When I first started with going to Comic-Con, I had done some TV shows already. I had been on Human Giant. And so there was a little bit of notoriety that I was able to cash in on. I could go to parties and stuff like that, and it was kind of fun. And as I got more and more to be a staple of Comic-Con—going back every year, getting my hotel, I got to do different shows—and as the shows opened up doors, I got to host a panel for Lost, the last season of Lost. I hosted that panel. Or not, I hosted the panel, sorry, I did a bit in that panel, which is a whole other story that’s very long, convoluted and involves a velvet painting of a polar bear.

But I had an all access pass. And one of the things—because they’re not paying me to do any of this stuff—was, “Hey, we’ll give you an all access pass. We’ll get you in everywhere. And we’ll give you two.” So I had this card that would allow me backstage anywhere. It was the ultimate backstage pass. And this is awesome. I have a wife who couldn’t be further from anything—not even Twilight is appealing to her. Nerdy sci-fi shit is not gonna, in any way—but I’m like, you know what? If I can bring her to this, and kind of show her the backstage version of it, that’s cool. And so they were doing the Marvel panel. And it was the Marvel panel very early on in the Marvel universe. So much so that Robert Downey Jr. had just flown back from shooting Iron Man 2. And they were gonna premiere some footage of Iron Man 2. So this is like really at the height of when shit is popping for Marvel, right?

Dylan: It’s jumping, yeah.

Paul: And so, you know, I bring June backstage. We go into the Hall H room. And that’s where all the actors and directors and everybody is. They’re lounging before they go out onto the stage. Now, quick—just kind of a pushback, and I’ll make it quick—but I just finished shooting a movie and on this movie, I would travel every day by boat to our location. It sounds more exotic than it was. The movie is called Piranha 3D. So we would travel by boat and you would be sitting on this boat going to set and you just get into these conversations with people beyond your regular cast.

One of the guys on this boat was a really good friend of Robert Downey Jr. Or so he said. So much so they called him RDJ. “Oh, RDJ, RDJ.” He talked about RDJ all the time. And my ears are always open for bullshit. I’m always like, man, I don’t know if I—do you know RDJ? Like, you know, like it sounded a little bit like, oh, I could understand that you’re like tertiarily involved in some world, you’re a producer—right? But he mentions a lot of people that I know that I’m like, oh, well, you may not be full of shit. Like, you know, a lot of non-known people.

So I’ve come to believe him. And I wrapped that movie a couple of days before Comic-Con and he says to me, “Hey, if you ever bump into RDJ, tell him I said, hi.” I was like, “Yes, of course,” knowing that I’ll never do that. I’m like, oh, that’s a weird conversation. You know?

Anyway, they get the call. Hall H gets the call, right? “All right, Ironman 2 cast, or Marvel panel, everybody head down please.” And we’re all heading towards the elevator. Now we get to the elevator and I am standing right—my toe of my foot is at his heel. Like that’s how close we are. It’s not like he’s not across from me. He’s closer than—I just would have to lean forward and I would be touching him.

And, you know, I had some margaritas at lunch because I also got June a margarita to loosen her up a little bit to make her feel like she’s going to enjoy this. And June had been in a movie with, with Robert Downy Jr. It’s a movie called Zodiac. So I’m like, well, I mean, you know, like I did say I’d—

Dylan: You got to weigh in.

Paul: I’d say hi to RDJ. And my wife was in a movie with him. This is, this is casual. This is casual. We’re going on the elevator. And I go, “Hey, Robert,” right? Real casual, real too casual. And he turns and I say—and I won’t reveal this person’s name—and I say, “Oh, you know, I just did this movie with so-and-so. He says, ‘say hi.’”

And when I say that to him, his face looks at me so quizzically like, “What?” I’m like, “Oh, I’m friends with …,” and I say the guy’s name again. And it’s not going forward. It looks like when you’re trying to talk to a dog and the dog is like, “Huh?” Like what are— cocking its head a little bit. And now I start giving way too many—I mean, “Well, he looks like this. He’s got this kind of a thing, and his hairs like that, and his eyes, and he has this tattoo.”

Nothing. And at this point now I feel like, now I’m fluttering. Like I am—

Dylan: You’re panicking.

Paul: I am panicking. My wife, who has been in a movie with him, has let go of my hand and kind of done that Homer Simpson thing where she goes back into the bushes. Like she just disappears into the crowd. I don’t know where she is. So now I’m alone. I feel his bodyguards, they turn, they look at me. And his bodyguards are thick, thick men, men whose necks feel bigger than my thighs. And now I’m starting to get that flop sweat. I don’t know what to do.

And I’m like, “Ah …” And he goes, “Hey man, I don’t know who you’re talking about.” And I’m like, “Oh, Oh, right. Uh, well I must have, um, gotten you confused with somebody else.” Who did I get confused with, Robert Downey Senior, right? I’m like, “I-I-uh,” and he goes, “Oh.”

Like, I’m confusing Robert Downey Jr. for someone else. And then, thank God the elevator comes and I make this choice. I’m like, I can’t go here. And I literally, I just wait. Crowd passes by me. I’m just like, I’m staying. I’m not getting on now. This is the worst moment of all time. You know, he doesn’t know who this is. I feel like I’ve embarrassed myself now. It had caused a little bit of a scene. Everyone gets on the elevator. June turns to me and she’s like, “What the f*** were you doing?” And I go, “I don’t know. My friend said he was a friend with him. He said, ‘say hi!’ He said ‘say hi!’ He said ‘hi!’”

Dylan: And what’s bizarre about this Paul is you’re there with your wife who was in a movie that he was also in. And you’re there talking about someone who’s like a tertiary—

Paul: Yeah. Well, because I’d have to throw June into the thing. I’d have to say like, “My wife was in a movie with you.” And then June would be like, “I don’t want to be a part of this.” My wife has no desire to be in this conversation. So he goes away and I live with this thing. I’m like, I just feel like he’s like, “This guy is weird.”

Dylan: Well, do you feel like it is revealing about yourself that the three places you’ve chosen are all like, not re—they’re all like, uh, simulations of reality.

Paul: Yeah, right?

Dylan: And then they’re simulations of reality where bad things happen to you. I don’t know what that says, but …

Paul: You know, it’s like, it’s so interesting, right? Because I think that, you know, I could tell you about walking around in Paris. I could tell you about going to Japan. And all these places are beautiful and I loved it. And they were like, at some even kind of—really like kind of spiritually fulfilling places. But each one of these, and this is a theory that I’ve said now a bunch, which is trauma is the fire in which we are forged. And there is something about these moments that make me still feel uncomfortable to this day.

Like these moments where I’m like, “Oh my God.” Like I will think about any of those moments: wrecking that hotel embarrassing myself in front of Robert Downey Jr., starting this fire. And I still feel guilt. I, you know, I still feel like this thing. And I think you’re right. It’s like this—I’m supposed to be in the safe place, but I’ve pushed the boundaries too far. And the facade of fake falls down and the real world of awkward, dangerous, and accountable pops up. And then it’s like getting sucker punched. My defenses were down and that was, and that—so yeah, I think you’re right. You really well said, like I have, I have punctured the fake reality of it. Like, you know, you’re only supposed to look, not touch. I touched, the thing broke off in my hand, and now I’m like, “Oh no.” And someone’s like, “You owe us money.” Like, this is it.

And those are these moments. Cause I think it also is—it’s made me approach so many things differently, which is, I never talk to celebrities anymore. I don’t, I will not talk to them. If I’m the biggest fan, I will never meet them. I will never go out of my way. I will try to be casual, but I’m not gonna— I did a movie with Nic Cage. I sat next to him, never said a word. He introduced—he said things to me. I would pop in, but I’m not, I won’t do it. Don’t meet my heroes, or the heroes shouldn’t meet me, whatever the way it should go.

And then finally, you know, I do think that there is this thing where—I do feel like getting sick there and being with my dad and escaping away with my dad, there is something really fun about this. I think, you know, destroying a place like this, but being in it with your dad, being in cahoots with your dad, there was something fun about us escaping this hotel in the middle of the night and getting the hell out of there.

But, yeah, I think a lot of the times I spent as a kid, it was alone. And so I think as a parent now, I try to make sure that I make my kids not feel alone, without feeling like I’m over on them, but I’m like, we’ll get through anything. If you puke in a hotel room and shit in a hotel room, we are going to get out together as a family and never feel bad about it.

Dylan: Thank you, Paul, for taking the time to do this.

Paul: Thank you so much.

Dylan: Check out Paul Scheer’s very funny book, Joyful Reflections of Trauma. If you want to hear more stories like this or follow his excellent podcasts, How Did This Get Made? and Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.

Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

This podcast is a co-production of Atlas Obscura and Stitcher Studios, and this episode was produced by Tameka Weatherspoon. The production team includes Dylan Thuras, Johanna Mayer, Chris Naka, Doug Baldwin, Kameel Stanley, Manolo Morales, Baudelaire, Gabby Gladney, and Talon Stradley. Our technical director is Casey Holford, and this episode was sound designed by Tomeka Weatherspoon and mixed by Luz Fleming. Our theme and end credit music is by Sam Tyndall.

But times and tastes change constantly, especially in a global food destination like New York. To see just how much, take a glimpse into the New York Public Library’s massive collection of historical online menus, many originally gathered by Miss Frank E. Buttolph in the early 20th century. One menu for a fine dinner served at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in 1882 features terrapin soup and canvas-back duck, a wild North American bird popular on upper-class menus until it became scarce from overhunting. (The menu itself was printed on pink silk.)

Other foods on these vintage menus will be more familiar to modern New Yorkers. In April of 1904, the Mann Fang Lowe Chinese restaurant, at 3 Pell Street, offered chow mein, chicken with mushrooms, and roast pork.

The Mann Fang Lowe is long gone, as are most restaurants with menus in the New York Public Library’s archives. But some are still going strong, keeping the things that made them special while adapting to the times. Gallaghers Steakhouse still proudly serves up steaks and speakeasy history today, while Serendipity 3 continues to offer outrageous desserts in a quirky setting. These institutions even made some history of their own together by participating in the very first New York City Restaurant Week back in 1992, when well-known restaurants across the city offered three-course lunches for the price of $19.92. The first Restaurant Week was such a hit that it inspired imitations across the country, and in New York, it became such a phenomenon that it’s now held twice a year.

In a sense, Restaurant Week and the historical menu collection are two sides of the same coin: the ongoing effort to highlight the fascinating blend of culinary experiences on offer across every borough of New York City. And if you’re looking to take a historical view on your next culinary adventure, these dishes are the perfect place to start.

“The Other Soup” at Gallaghers Steakhouse — Manhattan

While today it serves steak and oysters entirely aboveboard, Gallaghers, located just steps away from rip-roaring Broadway and Times Square, originally got its start as a speakeasy in 1927. In fact, the restaurant still pays tribute to those years with a certain unorderable menu item. Just try asking for “The Other Soup,” listed at market price. There is, in fact, no “other soup” on offer at Gallaghers, other than French onion or clam chowder; the name was code for alcohol during Prohibition. Can this menu item be used to sneak in a cocktail on your business lunch expense account? You’ll have to let us know.

“She-Crab Soup” at Gage & Tollner — Brooklyn

In 1879, Gage & Tollner first opened in Brooklyn, offering oysters and a menu of Victorian-era delights to its famous guests. Its current location, where the restaurant set up shop in 1892, is a Gilded-Age fantasia of mirrors and columns. The restaurant became a Brooklyn icon, and, in 1975, the interior was designated as a landmark by the New York Landmarks Commission. But tastes and the surrounding neighborhood changed, and the restaurant closed in 2004. Though the interiors were preserved, the space was occupied by various discount shops and fast-food chains for decades.

Yet Gage & Tollner celebrated a glorious rebirth in 2021, with its new owners fixing up the place and bringing many classic dishes back on the menu. One standout is the she-crab soup introduced by Southern chef Edna Lewis, who ran the kitchen from 1988 to 1992. The soup comes with a boat of sherry to pour atop the hot, crab-laced broth.

“Haymaker’s Punch” at Neir’s Tavern — Queens

In nearly continuous operation since 1829, Neir’s Tavern is one of the oldest bars in the country. The bar, however, hasn’t been frozen in time. Though it has a long and fascinating history, it’s still a neighborhood pub with chicken tenders and familiar beers on the menu. But also on the menu is a drink that was popular back when the bar first opened in 1829.

Haymaker’s punch is a sweet-and-sour, vinegar-based beverage that was served as a kind of energy drink for farmers working for hours out in the sun. Neir’s Tavern offers a modern version made with molasses and apple cider vinegar. It comes with or without a shot of rum.

“Frrrozen Hot Chocolate” at Serendipity 3 — Manhattan

This over-the-top dessert palace opened in 1954 as a quirky blend of antique store and café. Though its menu offers much in the way of actual food, from foot-long hot dogs to nachos, the Frrrozen Hot Chocolate has been the main attraction for generations of New Yorkers and tourists. The oxymoronic nature of a hot drink served cold and the novelty of drinking a blend of 14 different types of cocoa from a huge bowl-like glass made it famous, so much so that Serendipity 3 proudly boasts that Jackie Kennedy once asked for the recipe and was turned down. The restaurant mixes it up these days by offering all kinds of variations on the original drink, with ingredients ranging from peanut butter to Fruity Pebbles.

“Charlotte Russe” at Holtermann’s Bakery — Staten Island

This old-school bakery serves the last vestige of what was once a beloved treat across all of New York City. The Charlotte Russe consists of sponge cake, cream, and jam, served up in an ingenious single-serve container that functions like a Push Pop, making it easy to scarf down every scrap. These handheld cakes were once especially beloved in Brooklyn, but Holtermann’s in Staten Island might be the only holdout still making them today.

“Bagna Cauda” at Barbetta — Manhattan

This venerable Italian restaurant is one of the oldest in New York, dating back to 1906. Barbetta claims to have introduced staples such as risotto, polenta, and sun-dried tomatoes into the American pantry, as well as regional dishes such as bagna cauda, a hot dip of garlic, anchovies, olive oil, and wine. In fact, the current Barbetta menu also offers a glimpse into the past. Each dish is listed alongside a year, denoting when the restaurant first began serving it. Guests can dine through the decades, sampling roast peppers bagna cauda-style (1962), linguine al pesto (1914), and panna cotta (1984).

“The Sausage Chandelier” at Calabria Pork Store — The Bronx

Arthur Avenue is lined with food shops and restaurants that have been open for generations, serving the community and earning the area the title of New York’s “real” Little Italy. There’s lots to see and eat, but for an awe-inspiring sight, head over to the Calabria Pork Store, home of the “Sausage Chandelier.” The ceiling bristles with bundles of cured meat hanging overhead. The store got its start in 1973 as a salumeria focusing on the traditional meats of Calabria. The store is still dishing out its famous soppressata and sausages today, and you can also take home a sandwich instead of buying meat to make your own.

The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Louise Story: The first thing I want to ask is how you became interested in “Charlie's Place.” Had you known about it or did you just learn of it recently?

Rhym Guissé: Myrtle Beach brought me on to this project because they know I've done a lot of social justice work before, so I was really aligned. I didn't know what to expect, but I absolutely fell in love with the community and the story. And I really also loved the initiative of wanting to revive the history and revive the community, because this was such an incredible story that was almost lost to time, quite frankly.

Story: That's interesting. You mentioned you've done a lot of social justice work and content around social justice. Can you tell us about some of the things you're most proud of in that space?

Guissé: Oh, my gosh. Most proud of – that's so challenging to say, because it's like choosing your favorite child. All of my storytelling work really centers around the concept of identity, and it has roots of social justice in it. My short film Cartes is about undocumented African immigrants. I'm really proud of it because when I wrote the story and made the film, I didn't think it would be so timely and so relevant. Just in the last couple of months, it's completely catapulted. There have been a lot of anti-immigrant feelings globally leading up to this moment, particularly in Europe and the United States, which I think is why we landed here today with these policies that are anti-immigration. I hope [the film] opens a discourse for us all to just start talking about this.

Story: Indeed, so in our new podcast with you, “Charlie’s Place,” you mentioned that you and your parents are immigrants. Tell me more about your immigration story and experience, and how that affected how you looked at “Charlie's Place.”

Guissé: Oh, absolutely. So, my parents and I immigrated to the States. We moved to Louisiana – the South. So my first American experience was in the Black South of Louisiana, Baton Rouge. My first experience in America as it pertains to cultural specificity is Louisiana, is the South, you know, and every southern state really has its own culture. So, South Carolina and Louisiana, I wouldn't say are the same, but there are so many similarities. Particularly the older Black generation, right? How they comfort themselves, and how they move and navigate through life in the South. I saw similarities when I went to Myrtle Beach.

Story: And how did your immigrant experience in Louisiana affect your understanding of Myrtle Beach?

Guissé: I think that really helped me understand how to code-switch – how to assimilate. It allowed me to listen better when I was doing my interviews in Myrtle Beach and find commonalities with the locals, who are all really just gems, you know, who have endured so much. And these are stories that I had also heard in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which I think connects so much throughout the South with these incredible stories of Black entrepreneurs who were doing fantastically. And then, unfortunately, there were a lot of folks who were for Jim Crow and against this kind of progression.

Story: In listening to your interviews, I could hear how much you connected with the people, and how much it seemed like it gave you satisfaction to include their voices and the way they were thinking about things. Could you talk about one or two of the people who you met along the way who you enjoyed getting to know and including in the podcast?

Guissé: Absolutely. There were so many incredible people. I think the two that resonated with me the most just happened to be the ones that I spoke to the most – the first, is definitely Miss Pat.

Story: In case people are reading this and they haven't listened yet, can you tell us who Miss Pat is?

Guissé: Miss Pat is someone who was born on The Hill, grew up on The Hill, and during her developmental childhood years, Charlie's Place was there. She lived down the street from the nightclub, actually. And she really had the most vivid memories of that time, and was able to give us much more insight on what The Hill was like then. She really was able to describe everything in such a way that I hadn't heard anybody else describe – a lot of affection, but also a lot of crazy stories because she was a kid. She went to the Colored School, and she helped preserve it. The Colored School was the only school at the time in the 1930s and ‘40s that Black kids in the neighborhood could go to.

Story: Who is your other most memorable person?

Guissé: Dino was really fun. Dino was this young Greek kid. His dad actually owned the Kozy Korner, which was a coffee shop. And this was during segregation, of course. So, Charlie was the first Black man to be able to sit down in there and have a meal. And that was shocking for everybody.

Story: Why could Charlie sit down there when other Black people could not?

Guissé: I have theories. I think part of it is that Charlie was light-skinned, so he was a little bit white-passing. I think that was one reason. The other reason also is he was so powerful and influential that it's kind of like, who's going to stand up to him, you know what I mean? Or why bother?

Story: Right. It sounds like Charlie was a real exception to social norms of the time.

Guissé: That's right. He was the exception to the rule. Absolutely. And he was also in business with powerful people in town.

Story: I agree it was gripping hearing what Dino has to say about Charlie in the podcast. So, one more question. Why should people listen to this podcast?

Guissé: There are so many great reasons to listen to this, but I think the biggest reason is to learn about how a small town in South Carolina can be so similar to other towns. There are a lot of similarities with people going about their lives but wanting more for themselves. It's about reinventing yourself. Charlie did that to get a better life. And that really is also the immigrant story. The Black story of wanting a better life in this country is no different than the white story of wanting a better life, no different than the immigrant story of wanting a better life. So this dream, this American dream, was a throughline. And whether people bought into it or not, I don't know – but I think people should listen to it so that they can see the similarities and be inspired.

These people endured crazy obstacles, but they overcame them. They overcame so many hurdles, including segregation. Miss Pat's stories are really heart-wrenching, but she’s still a positive person to this day. She learned to look at the good side of life, and I think that's a lesson we can all learn from.

Charlie broke down racial barriers through the power of music and dance, hosting some of the greatest musicians of our time: Little Richard, Count Basie, Ray Charles, Duke Ellington, and many more.

But who was Charlie? How did he rise to power? And what price did he pay for achieving the impossible? This is a story of joy and passion that erupted into violence and changed a community forever.

Episode 1: Whispering Pines

“Myrtle Beach was a good place, if you stay in your place, I’ll put it like that.”

At the height of segregation, when everywhere else was divided. Black and white people danced together to the biggest R&B acts of the time at Charlie’s Place. How was this possible? And who was the proprietor of this mythic space?

Episode 2: Sin City

“All the dancers wanted that Black music. Why? Because it had a danceable backbeat.”

Dance at Charlie’s Place wasn’t just dance; it captured the spirit of an era defined by both segregation and creativity. When white audiences arrived for the music, these moments sparked shifts that transformed Myrtle Beach and resonated far beyond its borders.

Episode 3: Power Cedes to Power

“He helped people. He loaned people. He wasn’t to be trifled with.”

Charlie Fitzgerald built multiple businesses across Myrtle Beach–the hotel, the club, the cab company, the high-stakes poker game–and loaned money to white folks in town to bend the rules in his favor. How long would this last before Charlie became a target?

Episode 4: Mr. Nobody From Nowhere

“And in the minds of many, Charlie Fitzgerald’s dance hall becomes the worst fears of the champions of white supremacy.”

There’s much mystery surrounding Charlie Fitzgerald and who he was before Myrtle Beach. Before he was Charlie Fitzgerald he was Lucious Rucker. So who is Lucious Rucker?

Episode 5: All Costs

“You know, that incident was what many of us consider the ugliest black molar in our local history. It was just pure evil and ugly.”

August 26th, 1950 was the night that changed Myrtle Beach. It changed Charlie and the impact reverberated throughout the south.

Charlie's Place is a podcast series co-produced by Atlas Obscura and Rococo Punch in partnership with Pushkin Industries and Visit Myrtle Beach.

Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

Dylan Thuras: If you ever find yourself in Portland, Oregon, in the southeast part of the city, it’s a really nice spot to go and poke around. There are a bunch of cool antique shops, furniture makers, restaurants and bars in big old converted industrial buildings. It’s just a nice neighborhood to kind of go exploring in.

And while you are there walking around, it’s worth keeping your eyes peeled for a low-slung building set a little way back from the street. It’s got a bright red door with a sign in both English and Japanese.

Lauren Yoshiko: You can technically go in. They don’t advertise that really broadly. So you almost feel like, am I allowed to be in here? Because you open up the front door, and this steamy, steamy cloud of warm, damp soy vibes kind of immerses you. And there’s no one at the front desk because everyone’s working. And then you’re like, hello? And they say, yeah, what do you want? And you just do an exchange.

Dylan: This is Ota Tofu. If you live in Portland, you’ve probably seen this brand of tofu at the grocery store. But you can actually get it right at the source, right at Ota’s factory, because this is where they make all of their tofu on-site.

Lauren: They grab it out of the vat, freshly made, put it in a bag, like a goldfish, frankly, with some water in it. Or in a little to-go takeout container. There are a handful of people who are all, it looks like they’re fishermen. They’re in tall boots because water is involved with most of the steps. So everyone’s got like Wellington boots on or whatever you call those and hairnets and the whole shebang. It feels like a little bit of a time jump, a little bit of a time machine, because you can tell like this is an old process.

Dylan: This is an old process, brought over from Japan over a hundred years ago. And today, Ota still does things the old-fashioned way.

I’m Dylan Thuras, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Today’s episode was produced in partnership with Travel Portland. We’re going to Ota, the oldest, longest-running tofu shop in America. And the story of this shop is also the story of a multi-generational family business that is intertwined with the history of Japanese American culture in Oregon. We tell you the surprising story of Ota after this.

This is an edited transcript of the Atlas Obscura Podcast: a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

Dylan: I’ve always had, to be honest, a kind of love-hate relationship with tofu. My wife really likes it and often cooks it, and when it’s good, it’s great. But then, when it’s bad, it’s not, it’s just like it has no flavor to it. But apparently, Ota Tofu is, it’s kind of its own thing. It’s on a very different plane of tofu existence.

Lauren: I think most generic tofu that you can find are, they can have a little bit of a cardboardy taste, where it’s like, you want to dress it up with something else. It’s going to need some other flavors. Ota by itself has a really clean, simple, hard-to-describe flavor.

Dylan: This is Lauren Yoshiko. She’s a food and cannabis writer in Portland. Her family is from the area, and she has been eating Ota since she was a little kid.

Lauren: I grew up outside of Portland, actually. So when we got Ota, it was like a special treat. My mom would be like, Ota is the best.

The traditional Japanese way of eating it is cold, plain, with a little soy sauce and a little chives or grated ginger. When you eat that with any kind of tofu, it’s not always great, but when you eat it with Ota, you can taste the difference. It melts in your mouth. All the flavors really, really stand out, and the texture is soft and smooth and creamy, and it doesn’t need a bunch of other flavors. I think that’s probably the best way to describe it.

Dylan: One of the reasons that Ota has this kind of different flavor is all in the way that it is produced. The shop was founded by two brothers back in 1911, and they brought these techniques with them over from Japan.

It starts basically with soybeans. These soybeans are organic, grown in the Midwest, and then they are soaked for hours and hours, ground up, and then cooked. And this gives you basically soy milk. But then this next kind of transformation starts. The soy milk is then turned into these big, soft tofu curds.

Lauren: So Ota’s tofu is made only with nigari, soy milk, and water, and nigari is a Japanese coagulant extracted from seawater. That’s what’s used to create curds out of the soy milk, and they are really delicate to do it in that gentle way. They simply wouldn’t withstand mass production machines. So the hand-pressing, hand-folding is required for this sort of pure recipe.

Dylan: These curds, like cheese, are stirred and pressed and folded multiple times. And for this tofu, this is all done by hand.

Lauren: And that is why it is so rare. Even in Japan, most people are using mass production machines, not doing it in this style. And that’s what makes Ota incredibly special, that not only is it the only one still doing it this way in America, but it’s one of the only ones doing it globally. It feels very old world in a wonderful way.

Dylan: This is, in fact, a very old-world technique. And it all starts with those two brothers at the beginning of the 1900s.

Lauren: So in the early 1900s, Oregon had an influx of Japanese immigrants because of the anti-Chinese laws that were in place. They started enacting exclusion laws to limit Chinese immigration, but guess what? We still need cheap labor as a country. So the Japanese started moving here in flux to help with timber, to help with canneries.

At the time, Heiji and Saizo Ota were a couple of brothers from Okayama, Japan, who set up the first tofu shop in Nihonmachi in 1911. It was originally called Asahi Tofu.

Dylan: Asahi Tofu was part of Nihonmachi, or Japantown. That was a neighborhood in Portland that had a lot of businesses owned by Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans.

And over time, one of the Ota brothers returned to Japan, and the business was kept going by Saizo and his wife, Shina. They renamed the business Ota Tofu, using this anglicized spelling of their last name.

Lauren: Their customer base grew. They were delivering to restaurants around town, and people from the Japantown neighborhood and others came and bought there.

Dylan: Lauren’s own family has a surprisingly long history with Ota. Her great-grandfather owned a corner market in Portland that sold Ota Tofu.

Lauren: And my mom has memories of needing to go down and grab bulk tofu to sell at the store. And so does my grandma. And they talk about going down, and bringing a bin and filling it up and having all this water and bringing it back to sell there.

Dylan: But then everything turned upside down very abruptly in 1941, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the U.S.’s entering of World War II.

Lauren: The bombing of Pearl Harbor was followed by Executive Order 9066, which forced anyone of Japanese descent, whether you were born in the U.S. or not, to go to incarceration camps.

You had three weeks to sell off all of your possessions because you basically didn’t know if you were coming back. You were told, sell everything, you can bring what you can carry, you’re due at this government address at this time. That was the rule.

Dylan: Saizo and Shina sold off whatever they could, but they left Ota’s tofu equipment in the care of their building’s landlord.

Lauren: Saizo and Shina and the rest of the Nihonmachi neighborhood, many of whom went to Minidoka camp in southern Idaho. It’s actually where my great-grandparents went as well. And unfortunately, Saizo did not survive the camps. When Shina returned, the original building owner had been kind and saved their equipment for them, which is a rare story.

Dylan: Most people lost everything. When she returned to Portland, Shina decided to try and pick up where the family had left off, and she began rebuilding this tofu business.

Lauren: It was called the Soybean Cake Company for a while, I think largely because there was so much anti-Japanese sentiment that having any name relating to anything Japanese was scary and negative. And then in the 1950s, they started to feel more confident. They renamed the shop Ota Tofu to its original spelling, O-T-A.

And then, you know, the ’60s and ’70s, things are happening culturally. People are more interested in tofu. Its appeal is expanding beyond Asian communities.

Dylan: And it’s around this point that the associations I have with tofu enter the scene. The hippies arrive. There is this new growing interest in vegetarian cooking and alternatives to meat. By the early 1980s, Ota was ready to expand to a new location.

Lauren: Shina’s grandson, Koichi, started running things with his wife, Eileen. And those two moved the shop to where it stands today on the east side of Portland.

Dylan: Koichi and Eileen ran the shop until 2019. But by that time, they were getting older and starting to slow down.

Lauren: They were like, look, we are tired. This is hard work. We have only so much we can do. And they did not have clear successors in mind. So at that point, they were starting to talk about finding a buyer, shutting it down. And a friend of Eileen’s, Sharon Hirata, said, I think I want to talk to my son about this.

Dylan: His name was Jason Ogata. He is actually a former professional minor league baseball player. And she tried to get him interested in the family business.

Lauren: He wasn’t exactly in the food world. He had a good job in Virginia, was a new dad, he has twins. But his mom was like, look, this is a special place. It can’t die. It has to keep going. And they’re not going to sell to just anybody.

Dylan: He thought, OK, let’s go, Mom. Let’s do it.

Lauren: When Jason was training to take over the business, he went to work with Koichi at 2 a.m. for a year together to learn exactly how it was made. Because Koichi also was like, I’m not leaving until I know you can do it exactly how I did it. And he has since passed, Koichi. So the timing couldn’t have been better for the traditions to be passed on by hand.

Dylan: Jason still gets up at 2 a.m. to start making tofu. And Ota churns out about 4,000 pounds of tofu a day. A lot of that tofu goes to restaurants around Portland, like Tokyo Sando, this popular food truck and now a brick-and-mortar spot, or Murata, this high-end sushi place in town. Of course, you can go and get this tofu right at the Ota store and factory, where it's just about five bucks a block.

Lauren: It's the best tofu you can get in the U.S. for $5. It’s so accessible and yet so high-end that the poorest of the college student vegetarians and the highest-brow restauranteurs are both like, of course I know what Ota tofu is. That’s where I go.

It was just a really accessible part of the Japanese American community. And as things have shifted and Portland’s neighborhoods have changed, it’s really something that this place still stands the test of time. It’s still there.

These doors that my mom walked through, my grandma walked through, that I get to walk through and get it for barely more than whatever they paid for it. I feel so grateful to have access to that history just very easily down the street.

Dylan: Go check out Ota’s tofu factory for yourself. They’re open every day except Sundays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Rhym Guissé: A quick warning, some of the language and imagery used to describe this period of time may be upsetting. Please take care while listening.

Betty Singleton: I remember my mother was getting ready to go to the movies with my cousin and they came back. She said, “They’re riding.” And when they say they’re riding, that mean the KKK was riding. You know, once you knew they were riding, you had to stay home for protection.

Patricia Burgess: My granddaddy was sitting in the shop yard and the police told us to go in the house and make sure all the lights was out. And every light on that corner 21st was out. You couldn’t see nothing. My aunt was scared. She had her young, young baby in there crying and shaking her baby, keeping her baby from crying and nobody said a thing.

Rhym: This is Charlie’s Place. I’m Rhym Guissé. Episode 5: All Costs.

This is an edited transcript of the Atlas Obscura Podcast: a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

Rhym: While much of Charlie’s life is shrouded in mystery, this moment is different. We actually have documentation, including very detailed FBI records of what happened that night. It was a Saturday night, August 26th, 1950. Around 8:00, the cars rolled into town like a funeral procession, slow and bumper to bumper. There were men inside the cars in white robes.

Dino Thompson: Twenty-six carloads are driving through slowly. People are walking beside cars. Some of them have rifles on their shoulders. Some are carrying pistols. And they slowly slimed through downtown. And people are terrified.

Bobby Donaldson: These white robed Klansmen fitted every category. There were professionals, there were doctors, there were pharmacists and there were policemen, there were law enforcement officers riding with the Klan.

Dino: So now they come right in front of The Kozy Corner. I remember my mom was crying.

Herbert Riley: The Grand Dragon of the KKK in North and South Carolina was a man named Thomas Hamilton. He led the group into town that night. So, this Thomas Hamilton, Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, he wanted to be a super big shot. He started pushing this thing because Blacks and whites were partying together and the young Black kids were learning how to dance and taking it back to their community, calling it The Shag. But anyhow, the rumor was spread that Charlie was running a prostitution ring over there. White girls and Black men. They always used the sex thing as a catcall to bring out the lowest elements in their own people.

Rhym: To bring out the Klansmen looking for an excuse for violence. By August, the Grand Dragon Thomas Hamilton had launched a full Klan recruitment campaign in Myrtle Beach. A local judge had helped him organize the Klan motorcade.

Dino: The Grand Dragon’s car was a Lincoln Continental and on the front of his bumper he had a four foot high cross and it was punched out with light bulbs, red light bulbs, and electrified to his battery. And he had a little red light inside like a siren he would turn on occasionally. So it’s a frightening looking thing.

Rhym: It was typical to see cars lining Carver Street outside Charlie’s place on a Saturday night, the busiest night. But not like this.

Herbert: Charlie had a good crowd of people in his club and there wasn’t no white folk in there, strangely enough.

Dino: And people that were there said Charlie came out and stood on the porch. And he said he just stood there, and some of his people were standing there. A lot of people were afraid and ran. As the KKK rolled by, they sent Charlie a message. Somebody had a bullhorn and said, “We’ll be back to see y’all …” the n-word.

Leroy Brunson: And they announced that they would be back at 12:00.

Dino: They intimidated everybody and they left.

Rhym: They promised they would be back. Then the lines of cars snaked away and drove 12 miles up the coast to Atlantic Beach, the Black beach, the one place Black people could put their feet in the water.

Dino: It’s busy. It’s August. It’s summer. Probably 4,000 people are there. They scattered them from fear. People just saw them and just ran.

Rhym: What happened next has different accounts.

Herbert: People always believed that they came back because Charlie dared them to. That’s not the truth. I’ve seen the files. What did happen was this: He called the chief of police.

Rhym: Charlie called the chief of police because he knew him. He knew him well. Several sources mentioned that Charlie and Carlisle Newton had had a special arrangement, Charlie allegedly paying off Carlisle so he could sell illegal liquor. Charlie called Carlisle because he thought, as a chief of police, he could help. But when he called the station, Chief Newton wasn’t there. So Charlie left a message with the radio man …

Herbert: And told him the Klan has been over here, and they say they’re coming back, and the people are not going to sit back and be slaughtered like dogs. They will fight if they come back, and there’ll be some bloodshed. In other words, you’re saying do something about this before it happens.

Rhym: Before the people at Charlie’s place would have to defend themselves. The radio man said he’d tell the chief.

Herbert: In those days they used two-way radios like the military did.

Rhym: And this is where things got tricky, because there were police officers in white hoods in that Klan parade. In fact, some think the head car with the siren blaring and the Grand Dragon Hamilton inside was a police car. And some think that car picked up the message meant for the chief.

Herbert: And when it was radioed to him that Charlie said what Charlie said, Hamilton decided that was the excuse he needed to go back.

Rhym: The Klan cars turned around and headed for Charlie’s place.

Dino: As soon as they came back, people ran.

Herbert: And some people say it was 30 cars. But they’re saying four and five in each car. In other words, you’re talking around 100 people. They formed a skirmish line.

Dino: They actually lined up kind of like soldiers in front of Charlie’s place.

Herbert: This is right after World War II. So you can figure out a large number of them were probably military veterans.

Dino: Now these are good old boys, probably all grew up hunting.

Herbert: They knew how to use weapons.

Dino: They liked to carry bats. A few of them had whips. That’s one of their symbols.

Herbert: They started to move forward. And when they did, they got this guy, his nickname was 230 because he always carried a 32 pistol. They grabbed him and they started beating him, asking where Charlie was. He wouldn’t tell at first. I think that he eventually did.

Rhym: According to one report, a man yelled, “Get your guns ready and everybody get in line.” The Klansmen lined up like soldiers. They started walking toward the club. Anyone who tried to leave was driven back into the restaurant.

Herbert: This is when Charlie played hero. Now, he knew he could have been killed, but he also knew if there’d been a straight out gunfight with 100 men with shotguns and pistols, it would have been a slaughter. So Charlie walked out. He had his weapons on him. He had two weapons on him.

Rhym: One of the Klansmen asked, “Who runs this place?” And Charlie revealed himself. “I run the place,” he said. “My name is Charlie.” “He’s the one we want,” the Klansmen said. And then they knocked him out cold.

Herbert: Three of them approached him. One got him from the back and hit him upside the head with a gun or a bat or something and knocked him down. Then they hit him again and rendered him unconscious temporarily.

Rhym: The Klansmen picked Charlie up, and they threw him in the trunk of one of their cars. But they weren’t ready to leave yet. The Klansmen started shooting.

Leroy: Our place was right here. You walk across the street, just like that. I mean, just like a straight bullet, our house was pointing straight into Charlie’s door. And when the guns start shooting and stuff like that, my mom dragged us out of the bed and said, “Y’all, come on, let’s go.” We didn’t know what was happening. She said, “Come on, let’s go. We got to go get out of here. We got to go hide. So y’all go under the house, hide up under the house.” And we did. And we was, my brother and I, he was two years older than me, we were just laughing and looking at people running and shooting. We didn’t, you know, we were young then, you know, when it came through. And she came back again and got us and took us back behind the house. And we went through the bushes, you know, stood out there for a while. People were running all through the woods and different places when they were shooting.

Clyde “Frankie” Foster: Man, they was running all in the woods. I had all my uncles and aunts and stuff, we’d come to Charlie. They were in the woods, running from them, right behind Whispering Pine.

Rhym: When the Klan members got into the club, they started to destroy the place.

Dino: They roughed Cynthia Harroll, the lady we called Shag. They roughed her up. People said that she sort of confronted a few of them, so they roughed her up and probably hurt her.

Clyde: When Shag grabbed the cash register, they had to beat her in order to get where they want. But when Shag didn’t let them do it, they tried to take the cash register and all this, tried to take everything from him. They tried to destroy the place.

Dino: A waiter from the Pink House restaurant was wounded in the leg. Some other people received shrapnel from glass flying and things like that. Newspaper reports said they shot from 300 to 500 shots into his place. One person was killed, and it was a Klansman who was shot, left in the parking lot, bleeding. Under his Klan sheets, he was still wearing his Conway policeman uniform. He was shot dead. No one knows who shot him.

Rhym: Many people think he was shot by one of his own, since he was shot in the back. Now, Charlie was in the back of a trunk, and a police officer had been shot on his property. The men in robes got back in their cars and drove Charlie away. On Sunday morning, the people on The Hill woke up to a terrible realization: The Klansman had taken Charlie.

Patricia: They said they had gotten Mr. Charlie and they took him someplace. We didn’t know where they took him at that time, but it was so sad. It was one sad day in Myrtle Beach, because nobody could do nothing about it. They didn’t do nothing about it.

Clyde: They thought he was dead.

Rhym: When Ms. Pat went to work that day, she saw her boss’s white KKK robe lying out on the bed. And then, the little girl she babysat came in.

Patricia: And the little girl told me, she said, “You see that thing on that bed?” I said, “Yeah.”

Rhym: What was she talking about?

Patricia: She was talking about the suit her daddy wore to kill Charlie. They had the suits and everything, the Klan suits, laying on the bed, so if anybody go in there, they’d know her daddy was a Klansman. And the little girl told me, “If you hit me, he will kill you too.” And all I could do was cry.

Clyde: I had an aunt, the oldest sister that my mother had. Ever since then, she would never let any white person or anybody, showing me anything, enter the house. My mother had let him in one time to get the receipt and she ran him out. She said, “Don’t let them come in this house. Don’t let them do it.”

Rhym: Because she experienced that night, Charlie’s …

Clyde: Yeah, she said, “Don’t let them come in any place you got.” The insurance man had to write the receipt in the car in the rain and then bring it.

Rhym: Because that night must have traumatized her.

Clyde: Yeah.

Dino: You know, that incident was what many of us consider the ugliest black molar in our local history. You know, just pure evil and ugly.

Leroy: And I learned from that, you know, don’t take anything for granted. You just don’t, you don’t know when it’s gonna happen, how it’s gonna happen, who’s gonna do it to you.

Clyde: Everybody was traumatized. But a lot of Blacks, they were strong men. They destroyed everything. But they didn’t take a lot of heart from a lot of people.

Rhym: People thought Charlie was dead, but they didn’t know the whole story. About a month and a half after the Klan attack on Charlie’s place, Charlie turned up in Washington, D.C. He was very much alive. He was there to give his testimony to the FBI, to tell the story of what happened that night. This is the only record I have of Charlie talking at length about this time, beside a brief quote in the newspaper. The statement he gave is just Charlie in his own words. No speculation. Just what he says he saw and experienced after the Klansmen threw him in that trunk.

Charlie said, “They drove me around for about an hour-and-a-half, and about three or four times during this hour-and-a-half, they stopped. And I heard them say, ‘This is too public. Too many civilians passing.’ Lots of the driving was done on bumpy, dirt roads. When they finally stopped, I did not know where I was.”

Charlie tells the FBI agents that the leader told the men to take off their hoods and put them away. He says, “When I was taken out of the trunk, I was between two cars, and the only light was the taillights of these cars. I saw that I was encircled by men. I lay on the ground face down. Someone stood on each hand, and someone stood on my feet, and somebody else stood on my neck. At this time, my wrists and ankles were cut as a result of their standing on them. The men then took turns in beating me with what felt like a bullwhip. I counted over 80 licks before they began to ask me anything. I heard them say, ‘Come on now, it’s my turn,’ and say, ‘You haven’t hit him hard enough. Hit him.’”

Charlie says they asked him about his connections to the county sheriff, his connections to the chief of police, Carlisle Newton. They asked about the police officer who was shot at his place earlier that night. He heard somebody say, “He couldn’t have done it, as I had him covered.”

The men searched him. He had a men’s diamond ring, eyeglasses, and $235. They took his belongings. Then Charlie said, “They asked me to swear that I would go to church every Sunday, and I would take an oath to leave South Carolina, and not even go back to my place, not go back to my wife, and leave now.”

“Don’t go to Georgia, because we got Ku Klux men there,” one man said.

“He better not stop in North Carolina,” said another.

That’s when Charlie says they decided to mark him. Somebody said, “We ought to swing him to a rope.” Charlie heard a guy say, “I’ve got a penknife, just the thing. Let’s notch his ear.” It was something Klansmen were known to do.

Charlie says he looked up at the man, and that he had a small badge pinned inside his shirt pocket, and a revolver in his holster.

He says, “When the man saw me look up, he kicked me on the side of the head, which still swells, and still requires medical attention. When the man notched my left ear, it apparently bled, and I had an opportunity to jump up, and I jumped toward a nearby ditch. The ditch was about four-and-a-half feet deep. I carried two men with me into the ditch. In the scuffle, I got away and rushed into the nearby bushes. I fell behind a log in the bushes. As I was escaping, they shot 15 or 20 times in my general direction. I then heard them say, ‘Let’s go.’”

The Klansmen left Charlie for dead. But later that night, one of the drivers from his cab company spotted him on the side of the road and picked him up. From there, Charlie got in touch with Police Chief Newton, who told him that he never got the message to send help. Newton called the doctor. The doctor came and gave Charlie a shot to put him to sleep. Then the county sheriff came by to see him, a man named C. Ernest Sasser. Many people call Sheriff Sasser, this white officer, a friend and an ally to Charlie during this time. Charlie once said about Sasser, “I’ve never known a straighter white man in my life.”

Sasser told Charlie it wasn’t looking good. The Klan was after both him and Charlie for the death of a police officer. The robed officer who had been shot at Charlie’s Place earlier that night had died. Sasser said the best thing for him to do was lock Charlie up until he could get it straightened out for his own safety. For over a week, Charlie was moved around to different jail cells throughout the county.

Meanwhile, Sasser went on the radio to try to clear Charlie’s name. In the broadcast, he said Charlie had no part in the shooting. Sasser instead blamed the Klansmen who, “Left him on the ground to die.” Sasser continues. He dispels the prostitution rumors.

“That’s not why the Klan attacked Charlie’s place,” he says. Instead, he suggests another reason. He says, “To my knowledge, some white men and women do go to this place on special occasions to hear the orchestra and watch the colored people dance. I have, on many occasions, told them it was not a good policy.”

Sasser then tells listeners that the Klan has threatened to blow up the Myrtle Beach radio station if they reveal any information about Klan members. The very station where Sasser broadcasts this message, but then quickly adds, “I happen to know a few men that are members. Some are from good families. They were led into this unfortunate thing with no intention of committing a crime.”

This is so revealing. County Sheriff is a political position. Sasser can’t completely denounce the Klan if he wants the votes. They’re that powerful. But he also can’t stand for what they did to his friend. He has to say something. And he’d pay for that. Sasser lost his seat as a County Sheriff in the next election—by a lot. He lost to a known Klan sympathizer. There was one area, though, where Sasser dominated. He carried the precinct known as the Race Path, which included The Hill neighborhood. The Black residents there voted 343 to 6 for Sasser.

All this time, parents in Myrtle Beach had tried to shield their kids from the details of what happened to Charlie. Ms. Pat said years passed before the adults began to talk about it. So the kids were left with a lot of assumptions.

Dino: We had heard different stories. Some people said he was dead. Some people said he was beaten to death. As a child, I heard his ears were cut off. And I remember one day, I don’t know, eight months later, nine months later, he walks into The Kozy Corner.

Rhym: Dino had grown up watching Charlie eat club sandwiches at his dad’s restaurant, The Kozy Corner. Dino thought Charlie was gone for good. And now here he was, walking through the door as if nothing happened.

Dino: And I remember everybody, everybody knew him. The Black cook came out to see him. And the waitresses all knew him. And I remember I was staring at him because I thought his ears had been cut off. And I think he knew what I was doing. And he swooped me up and he said, “You looking at my ears, boy?” “No, sir. No, sir.” And he said, “I got ears.” And he did. You couldn’t tell, you know, that his ears were cut at all. I’m sure it affected him and changed his thinking and perspective of life. But he seemed normal. When I would sit, watch Dad sitting, shooting the breeze, and he still came in The Kozy Corner. He still went to the Broadway theater, sat in the white section. He still did what he wanted to do.

Rhym: Eventually, five Klan members were arrested for the 1950 attack on Charlie’s place, including the Grand Dragon, Thomas Hamilton. If anything, these arrests only emboldened the Klan. They continued to rally around the Carolinas. And they ditched the hoods. They stopped hiding their faces. No shame. No fear of being recognized. And almost immediately after Charlie leaves jail, he’s picked up again for having a gun and an obscene film. Not that it really matters, but Charlie said the film wasn’t his. It was collateral for a $3 loan he had made to a friend who was short of cash. But the gun was for protection. Charlie spoke to the newspaper that covered his arrest.

He said, “I know it was against the law to have that gun, but it was right in my conscience because my life has been threatened and I’m still in danger.” He added, “I’m a free man, and I’m not a free man. I don’t know who is or who isn’t a member of the Klan.” It’s this last line, “I don’t know who is or who isn’t a member of the Klan,” that sticks out. I think that’s a strategic lie on Charlie’s part. I think he was trying to send a public message to his attackers that he wasn’t their threat. All five Klansmen are cleared of all charges. Charlie left Myrtle Beach for a while. He spent time with friends in Philly and New York. He went to D.C. and gave that testimony to the FBI, but nothing came of it.

And eventually, Charlie came home. Even though Dino couldn’t see the difference, Charlie had changed. Some said he got a little meaner. Some say he faded into the background. The club may have been called Charlie’s Place, but it was as much Sarah’s place as it was his. Sarah had always had a hand in its success. In all of their business, they were true partners.

Herbert: After the Klan raid, until that place closed, she had to manage that place. He was there often, but he wasn’t the same. Everybody says Charlie wasn’t the same. But she had to be tough in a man’s world. So, she didn’t take no foolishness.

Rhym: When Charlie took a back seat, Sarah kept it going, and she booked some of the most famous music acts the club ever saw.

Herbert: And she ran it with an iron fist under velvet gloves, so to speak. Ruth Brown and those, they loved her. Bill Pinckney, the last of the original Drifters, he loved her. When Otis Redding and cats like that were coming, that was Ms. Sarah doing. She had Charlie’s old contacts. There was some guy down in Texas. They called him the Peacock. I think he was a gangster, Black gangster. But he controlled all the top Black artists. And he was a friend of hers, so I’m thinking she got it through him. But she had all the artists there. She told me the only person that she didn’t get there to play, and he’d come there, but the only person she didn’t get there to play was James Brown. Everybody says James Brown was there, and they’d see his bus outside. The bus, he’d park the bus there, and I think some of his players would stay there. James would most likely go up to Atlantic Beach because you could be oceanfront up there. But she said James would come, said he was just as nice as could be. He’d sit down, we’d talk and talk. But he just wanted too much money, and I couldn’t afford him. Sarah came and handled all of that.

Rhym: I think the fact that Sarah rebuilt the club and ran it as long as she did helped solidify Carver Street in the minds of its residents. 1950s Carver Street is the symbol of the glory days for many in Myrtle Beach. The people on The Hill remember it as this thriving time when Black people ran their own businesses—for Black people. The fact that Charlie’s Place survived and lived on, even after the KKK attack in August 1950, the fact that the big artists kept coming, it meant that the Klan’s terrorism wasn’t the end of the story. Instead, the attack was a moment of defiance, of resistance, a testament to the strength of the community. Professor Bobby Donaldson says Charlie Fitzgerald’s actions sent a message.

Bobby: So here is someone whose business is riddled with bullets. Here is someone who is thrown in the back of a car and kidnapped, who is stripped and beaten. Here is someone whose ear is slashed with the knife of a Klansman. And I guess an ordinary person would say “To hell with it. I’m going to the promised land. I’m going elsewhere.” But Charlie was not ordinary. And I think the defiance is probably what motivated him to stay right there, that he had already built a business and he was going to rebuild and stay. And he did. And so Charlie Fitzgerald returns to the very space where he defied the Klan and stayed there until his death.

Rhym: It encouraged the community to defend their home at all costs. Clyde Foster gave me an example of this. He’s lived in Myrtle Beach his whole life, where everyone knows him as Frankie.

Clyde: Almost everybody owned businesses on that boulevard, they know about me. You know, because I’m that type of person. I’m a public man.

Rhym: Frankie hadn’t been born when the KKK attacked Charlie’s place in 1950, but he heard the story. His family members and friends had been there, and he saw how it had traumatized them. Frankie’s aunt never let a white person enter her house again after that night. So Frankie grew up expecting that there would be a time when he too would have to fight, when he’d also have to defend his community. And in the 1970s, he thought the time had come. It was a night when The Temptations came to town to play on Carver Street. A rumor got out that the Klan was planning an attack. Frankie was a teenager, and he and his friends wanted to be prepared.

Clyde: We were young. On Carver Street here, almost all the young people, we were in trees and stuff, waiting on them. We had Molotov cocktails. We were young. We weren’t going to let that happen again. We said we would never let them come through here. The older people, they couldn’t do it. They already went through that experience. We was in trees and in the woods on Carver Street, waiting on them to come. We were going to destroy them. We were going to blow them up.

Rhym: But Frankie says the word got out that these kids were ready. He thinks the store where they bought bullets let the Klan know that the community was armed.

Clyde: And the way we figured out, they warned them, said, “Don’t go back in that neighborhood. Them people are ready for you.” And they didn’t come. They did not come back.

Rhym: Charlie died on July 4, 1955, five years after that night in August. He had lung cancer.

Leroy: Because we used to go over there, and he used to be in the bed. He had a tank. He used to walk around with the breathing tank, you know, and stuff like that.

Rhym: According to his death certificate, he died eight months from diagnosis. He returned to Toccoa, Georgia, to be buried, where he was born. He returned home as Lucious Rucker.

Leroy: And Sarah cremated him.

Patricia: She was devastated. And she cried a lot. But she tried to keep the place open. And a lot of Charlie’s friends made sure she had the support for the whole family, the whole yard, but nobody could get her out of that languish she was in. Because she was upset.

Rhym: Finally, in 1965, Sarah decided it was time to close Charlie’s Place. Then she took what seemed like a hard pivot. She left the nightclub life and became a Jehovah’s Witness.

Dino: Ms. Sarah found religion, and she not only gave up that life, but she didn’t want anything to do with it. She never wanted to talk about it. I remember I tried to chat with her, and everybody told me, she will not talk about it. She walked away from that part of her life and never again spoke of it or involved herself in it.

Leroy: And she closed the business down, and a few years later, she tore it down. And people were really upset with her for tearing the building down.

Rhym: But no one who had been there, including Ms. Sarah, would forget. Herbert says Sarah told him that she knew exactly who was in the KKK in town and who raided their club that night. But she would never tell for fear of being taken.

Herbert: She told me something that stuck with me. She said, “You know what? I’m not going to die until I know every last one of them is dead.” And she wasn’t playing, because I got a picture of her with me. She was 94 and still eye candy. And she died about three years later than that. She was working the day she died. She didn’t have to work. She had money, but she liked to work.

Rhym: In the ocean, time is long. The Atlantic Ocean has existed for over a hundred million years. The thundering waves and friction beat rock and glass into pebbles, and eventually into sand. A human life in the scheme of things is a blip, like a grain of that sand. But all those grains add up to something. Still, the physical geography of Myrtle Beach is fragile. The beach erodes. In 1954, Hurricane Hazel hit Myrtle Beach and wiped out 80 percent of its oceanfront properties, virtually erasing the shoreline. Charlie and Sarah Fitzgerald were once fixtures of Myrtle Beach. But decades after they died, people started to forget.

Herbert: Ms. Sarah, I miss her to this day. I thank Ms. Sarah a lot. I told her, I said, “One day I’m going to do something with that property.” I made her a promise, and I was determined to keep it. I pushed and pushed and pushed, and the biggest problem was getting people around here, the younger people, the ones that’s 40, 50 years old, getting them on board, because they didn’t know anything about it. That Klan raid scared Black people, so this is what terrorism does. This is how terrorism wins. It’s not about killing somebody. It’s about putting fear in somebody, and it frightened the people in this community so badly that they didn’t tell their children, because they felt like their children, some of them, may have wanted to retaliate, because they knew who did what. Don’t think they didn’t know who did what. They knew who did what. So when I started talking about Charlie’s Place, nobody knew what I was talking about. None of the young ones, the 40 and 50 years old.

Rhym: In 2016, all that was left of Charlie’s Place was the house Sarah and Charlie lived in. The city decided to knock it down.

Herbert: They were having a demolition party at Charlie’s Place. They billed it as a demolition party. That’s valuable land up there.

Rhym: City Councilman Mike Chestnut says he had a sledgehammer in his hand when he got a call from a neighbor who said, “Don’t you know the history of this place?”

Michael Chestnut: And my phone started ringing off the hook, you know, hey, y’all don’t need to tear that place down. Y’all don’t really know what you got there. We need to save it. And, you know, talk about the history, you know, the early Black community here in Myrtle Beach. And I kid you not, we stopped the demolition that day.

Rhym: He halted the demolition and fought to preserve the building instead as a landmark, which they did. Today, there’s a small business incubator in the old inn. And the Fitzgerald’s house still stands as a museum. A love letter to that time. And every year, jazz and R&B artists from all over come here for the Myrtle Beach Jazz Fest, in the exact same spot where the Whispering Pines once stood.

On my last trip to Myrtle Beach, I went to Jazz Fest. I looked up towards the sky full of stars, at those pine trees swaying above me. I thought about Billie Holiday and Count Basie, Sarah and Charlie. And I noticed the crowd, people from all walks of life, hundreds of people just soaking in the music together. It can be hard to pinpoint how Sarah and Charlie left their mark, beyond the lessons and memories they left with the people that knew them personally. But on nights like this, it’s clear. This is what Charlie and Sarah fought for. A place where everyone could experience the music, no matter who you are or what you look like, in Myrtle Beach. These grounds remain a special place. An echo of what they built is here, for anyone who wants to come and experience it. I thought to myself, “If Charlie and Sarah could see it, they’d really be pleased.”

There’s a memory of Charlie that Roddy Brown shared with me. It’s how I pictured him at the end. It surpasses the cut earlobes and the breathing tanks. Roddy remembers seeing Charlie. It’s an image of him on the beach, the sun kissing his skin. To me, it’s an image of defiance.

Roddy Brown: When I came here in 1951 in December, when we moved in, Charlie was back on the beach. Charlie was going strong. Charlie was doing fine.

Rhym: Roddy had never known Charlie before the Klan attack. He only knew this version after. And to him, it looked good. It’s interesting what’s lost to history and what remains. I had to go digging to find the fragments that were still there. The stories people held onto all these years. The story of Myrtle Beach. And in Roddy’s case, the memory he was left with was a lone Black man on a crowded white beach in summer, flagrantly defying the rules. An image of what might be possible, what they all deserved. As for Ms. Pat, she’s still here too. I feel so lucky to have spent time with her and hear her stories about Myrtle Beach and her life.

Patricia: It was nice growing up in Myrtle Beach. And I never wanted to leave home. Everybody left home and went to New York and went to Florida. I love Myrtle Beach. I love Myrtle Beach all my life. You know, I go visit, but I love my home. And everybody says why don’t you—I don’t want to leave.

Rhym: You can find her in the same spot in Myrtle Beach, like a beacon, just inside her front door in her La-Z-Boy, ready to call out to visitors, waiting for whoever wants to come in and hear a story about a time gone by.

Patricia: Thank you for listening.

Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, and Amazon.

Charlie’s Place is a production of Atlas Obscura and Rococo Punch, in partnership with Pushkin Industries and presented by Visit Myrtle Beach. It’s written and produced by Emily Forman. Our story editor is Erika Lantz. Our team at Atlas Obscura is Doug Baldinger, Chris Naka, Johanna Mayer, Linda Llobell, and Emily Yates.

Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

Johanna Mayer: Hey, Amanda.

Amanda McGowan: Hey, Johanna. What’s up?

Johanna: I want to start by showing you this photo. First, maybe just describe the photo to me.

Amanda: Yeah. Okay. So we are standing behind like maybe a waist high glass barrier. And beyond that, there’s like a very large white room. The walls are empty. It’s white, high ceilings. And it looks like there’s a thick kind of layer of ... At first I thought it was a carpet. It almost looks like a shag, like a thick shag carpet. But now that I’m looking at the glass, it kind of looks like, almost like concrete or asphalt or something?

Johanna: So what you are looking at is a room full of 280,000 pounds of dirt. It is in a loft in the Soho neighborhood of New York City, and it is likely worth millions of dollars.

Amanda: No way. Oh, cool. Okay. Well, I’m Amanda McGowan.

And I’m Johanna Mayer. And this is Atlas Obscura. Today, we are talking about how 280,000 pounds of dirt wound up in the middle of a very fancy neighborhood in New York City and the man who took care of it.

This is an edited transcript of the Atlas Obscura Podcast: a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

Johanna: So, Amanda, this giant room full of dirt is actually an art installation.

Amanda: Oh, cool.

Johanna: It is called, appropriately, The Earth Room. And it is in this loft in the Soho neighborhood of New York City. And I had heard about this exhibit for years. I was always really drawn to it. I wanted to go see it. And a couple years ago, I was really close to being able to make an episode about this place. I was in touch with the caretaker of The Earth Room.

Amanda: The Earth Room has a caretaker.

Johanna: Yes. This is the person who has maintained this strange piece of art for decades, actually.

Amanda: The same guy for decades.

Johanna: Same guy., 35 years.

Amanda: Oh, cool.

Johanna: But then you know how it goes. It just kind of ran into snags. Eventually, he stopped returning my emails. So I just set it aside. But then a few weeks ago, I woke up in the middle of the night to get just like a glass of water and just sort of on autopilot pulled out my phone and opened up The New York Times app and saw an article that brought this whole thing to the forefront of my mind again. And it was that the caretaker of The Earth Room, this person who had been tending to it for 35 years, had died.

Amanda: Oh, no.

Johanna: A few months prior. It was reported a little later. So I always wanted to talk to him for an episode of this show. Never got to. But I have visited The Earth Room myself. And if you’ve never been to Soho in Manhattan, it is fancy schmancy. There are a lot of tourists there. There are a lot of influencers there. You know, it’s really classic, old, beautiful buildings with firescapes and cobblestone streets. But also now there are storefronts of Prada right across from it, you know. So I visited The Earth Room a couple of years ago. And when we got to the building, there’s a door that’s basically unmarked and a buzzer that just says “New York Earth Room.” And I was very nervous to open it. I was like, am I going to be denied going in here or something? But you do, you buzz, go up a flight of stairs, and then you enter the room. And really, the first thing that you notice when you get in there is the smell. Obviously, it’s very earthy. The air is sort of thick, tropical. It was an early fall day when I visited. So the windows when I got in there were all sort of steamed up. There was kind of a greenhouse effect. It was very vibey, very cool. And there’s also a real hush, like a real sense of silence when you walk in there. Two hundred and eighty thousand pounds of dirt does a lot to dampen the sounds of the street in the city.

Amanda: Really? Yeah, I guess that makes sense. I wouldn’t have thought about that.

Johanna: But yeah. And so of course, then you see the dirt, which is right directly on the floor, like you saw in the photo with the glass barriers that you can see inside. It’s 3,600 square feet of floor space that it covers.

Amanda: Oh, wow. That’s huge.

Johanna: It’s big. It’s like almost an entire apartment.

Amanda: That’s probably three times the size of my apartment.

Johanna: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s bigger than mine for sure. It’s 22 inches deep, so like almost two feet of this material. And it weighs, like I’ve been saying, 280,000 pounds.

Amanda: Oh, my God. Is it on the first floor? Or do you have to ... No, you said you go upstairs, right?

Johanna: It’s on the third floor, I believe, which made me ... I had never thought about building structural integrity in this way before. I mean, I guess that there’s probably like 280,000 pounds worth of things in my apartment, but I don’t know.

Amanda: That sounds amazing. I have many questions about like, where did this come from? How did this get here? Like who made this?

Johanna: Yes, yeah. So it was made by this really famous artist named Walter De Maria. He was born in 1935, died in 2013. And he was really big in the land art movement, if you’re familiar with that. He made these pieces that were just like gigantic, monumental scale. One of his most famous ones is called The Lightning Field. And that’s this enormous piece of land art at this semi-secret location in New Mexico. Whoa. But so all this to say Walter De Maria was like a lot.

Amanda: He thinks big.

Johanna: He thinks big.

Amanda: Yeah.

Johanna: And so then there’s the Earth Room, which he made in 1977 in this loft in Soho. There were actually two more before it, both in Germany, but neither of them exist to this day. This is the last one.

Amanda: Wow.

Johanna: It’s also interesting because the artist famously refused to explain the meaning behind the work, which I’m like, that rules to have lived in a time where an artist can just be like, I want to put 280,000 pounds of dirt in a loft and no one asked me to explain.

Amanda: Yeah, rock on, man.

Johanna: Rules.

Amanda: Okay. So you mentioned this is like 200,000 pounds.

Johanna: Two hundred eighty thousand pounds, Amanda.

Amanda: Two hundred eighty thousand pounds of dirt. How do you take care of something like this?

Johanna: So this is like perhaps the most hands-on work of art I can think of in terms of caring for it, and also maybe one of the few pieces of art that you can walk on.

Amanda: And he walks? Wait, can visitors walk on it?

Johanna: No, no, no, no, no, no.

Amanda: Oh, okay.

Johanna: No, only the caretaker. But he has to walk on it to take care of it. Yes, yes, because it requires a ton of monitoring the soil health, watering it, raking regularly is a huge part of it. And also sort of sorting through the soil and trying to make sure that there are no intruders like little mushrooms or grasses that are spread in there. Apparently, there was like a bunch of dragonflies hatched out of nests buried in the dirt, and then they had to deal with that in the gallery. And once a visitor apparently threw a can of black beans in there. Not good.

Amanda: Not recommended.

Johanna: Very off limits, disrespectful. But so there’s a lot of constant raking to sort of get through that and maintain the soil health. And for 35 years, this was all done by one man, whose name was Bill Dilworth. He was an artist himself who’s like an abstract painter. He knew Walter De Maria personally. And I think this is so funny, when he took this job, he was not given any real instructions on how to take care of it. He was given a photograph of what the dirt looks like when it was installed, and basically just told like, “Maintain it, please.”

Amanda: Yeah, “Take care of the dragonfly infestation whenever that arises.”

Johanna: Good luck digging out those black beans. And another really sweet thing is that his wife was also the caretaker of another Walter De Maria piece called The Broken Kilometer, which is just a few blocks away. And I read that they had this little routine where every day at 3:00, they would close their installations and meet up and go for a walk in Soho and then return at 3:30 after their break. It’s really sweet.

Amanda: What a cool life.

Johanna: Totally. He seems like one of those people who can just be interested in so many things and like a really contemplative person. One example is that I read that he would sort of mix up his raking patterns occasionally. I think the default was right to left, but then sometimes he would go left to right. And then the next week he’d go top to bottom and just see how it felt.

Amanda: Yeah. I’m picturing those zen gardens where they have the beautiful designs raked in the soil. Maybe the way he raked was reflective of what was going on in his mind that day.

Johanna: Maybe so. But on that day that I visited the earth room a couple of years ago—I know now after seeing pictures of him that he was there, I recognized him. And he was surrounded by visitors that day. Maybe they were old friends. And he was just sort of chatting and kind of holding court, it seemed. And I didn’t speak to him. And I wish I had.

Amanda: I’m just thinking about what you said about how he and his wife would like go for a walk around the neighborhood every day. And I feel like they’re, I mean, similarly, there were probably people that just sort of popped into this earth room like once a week or something, you know, like the regular. It’s just to check on the rake patterns. Okay, so Bill, unfortunately, no longer with us. Does that mean that the Earth Room is going to go away? What’s going to happen?

Johanna: Definitely not. Definitely not. So Bill was already planning to retire and he did. He retired in June of 2024. And according to The New York Times article about his death, before he left, he actually spent a month training his successor, who was someone who worked at the same art foundation that cared for Walter De Maria’s estate. Her name is Dana Avendano. She’s 28 years old. She’s an artist. And before Bill left, he apparently gave her a gift, which was a new rake. I think Bill was a tall guy. And Dana, according to this article, is four foot nine. So she can’t very well use his rake.

Amanda: Nice. That was thoughtful.

Johanna: It’s very sweet. I tried to get in touch with her. She wasn’t available for an interview.

Amanda: Yeah, she’s got a lot of dirt to take care of. She’s got her hands full right now.

Johanna: She’s currently raking, I’m sure.

Amanda: Can people still go visit? Is it open to the public?

Johanna: Yeah, totally. It’s at 141 Wooster Street in Soho in New York City. It’s open Wednesdays through Sundays, twelve to three and then again, three thirty to six.

Amanda: Rock on, Bill and Walter and Dana. I think I should say dirt on.

Johanna: Dirt on. Rake on.

Amanda: Rake on.

Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

Our podcast is a co-production of Atlas Obscura and Stitcher Studios. The people who make our show include Dylan Thuras, Doug Baldinger, Kameel Stanley, Manolo Morales, Amanda McGowan, Alexa Lim, Casey Holford, and Luz Fleming. Our theme music is by Sam Tyndall.

Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

Amanda McGowan: Picture a college campus in Southern California in the 1960s. Here is what comes to mind for me. I’m picturing kids with long hair, wearing flower crowns, playing music, protesting, and talking about peace and love. Well, I’m currently looking at a real photo of a college campus in Southern California in 1964, and it really does look like that. This is Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles.

Nellie Scott: People think that they’re protesting because they’re holding these signs and walking and singing and all of the things that we would think of in the late ’60s as like California culture or counterculture.

Amanda: But there is one major difference. A lot of people in this photo are wearing habits, so the head-to-toe black and white uniforms that nuns wear, because a lot of people in this photo are nuns. Yeah, this hotbed of California counterculture was a school run by nuns. The head of this parade was also a nun. Her name was Sister Mary Corita, also known as Corita Kent. She was a teacher and an artist. Her work has this really unique style. It’s super colorful, super pop art with images from brands and advertisements and kind of enigmatic slogans, a little bit of the sacred and a little bit of the profane. And in the 1960s, Corita’s art made her very famous.

Nellie: She was on the cover of Newsweek. She was truly the poster child for the nun going modern.

Amanda: But it also got her into a lot of trouble. In fact, the Catholic Church basically ended up shutting this entire scene down and forcing Corita to choose between her life as a nun and her life as an artist. I’m Amanda McGowan and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Just recently, in the last few months, a brand new art center has opened up in downtown LA dedicated to the work of Corita Kent. And it seems to me that what she was doing back in the 1960s speaks pretty perfectly to our own times. We will meet LA’s hippie nun.

This is an edited transcript of the Atlas Obscura Podcast: a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

Amanda: When I got on a call recently with Nellie Scott, who is the new head of the Corita Art Center, I had sort of a chicken or an egg question for her, which was, what came first for Corita Kent? Becoming an artist or becoming a nun? Because to me, I don’t know, this seemed like kind of a surprising combo.

Nellie: I know, what a juicy story. It’s so cinematic. People definitely are attracted or find this sense of a rebel nun very novel and intriguing, but she’s so much more than that.

Amanda: As it turned out, for Corita, the art came first. She loved making art from a young age, and the center even has some of her work from high school. But then, when she was 18, she enrolled in a religious order that was located pretty close to where she grew up in LA. It was called the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart.

Nellie: She kept that decision very close to the chest to everyone. She surprised her family and friends when she announced that she would be joining the order.

Amanda: But Nellie pointed out to me that Corita was graduating during the Great Depression, and there were just not many options for women at the time, especially if you wanted to continue with your education. So it was a time when lots of women who didn’t want to become housewives became nuns.

Nellie: This was a pathway for her passions.

Amanda: Corita got her bachelor’s at Immaculate Heart College, which was run by her order, and then she went on to get her master’s at USC. And it was around this time that she discovered the medium that she would do most of her most famous work in: screen printing.

Nellie: So she sends away for a do-it-yourself screen printing kit because, of course, it’s Corita. And there’s great stories of her going into the bathroom at USC and, like, printing on paper towels.

Amanda: At first, Corita made art with pretty explicitly religious themes and images. So imagine pictures of, like, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. She’s putting her own spin on it, her own style, but, you know, the kind of stuff that you would expect to see on a Christmas card. And she actually did make Christmas cards and stuff like that. So, sounds somewhat tame, right? But even this apparently raised some eyebrows among the leadership of the Catholic Church in California.

Nellie: By the late ’50s, she starts receiving letters from the local archdiocese here in LA actually asking, you know, they had some choice words about their opinion on her artwork.

Amanda: The cardinal apparently called Corita’s work, “disturbing and scandalous.” And I’m just putting myself in her shoes for a minute. I mean, if I was a nun in the ’60s and the cardinal said that my work was basically blasphemous, I might have considered laying low for a while. And maybe Corita considered that too. But she actually did not stop making art. She just decided that she was going to change her approach. In the late ’50s and early ’60s, there was this new movement in art that was kind of shaking up the scene. It was called pop art. And the idea was artists would use images that the public would know in their work. So things from ads and pop culture and celebrities and things like that. Andy Warhol is probably the example of the pop artist. I mean, picture his Campbell’s soup cans or his images of Marilyn Monroe. So that’s all kind of swirling around in the background.

Nellie: And then a grocery store opens up across the street and next to her studio.

Amanda: Put these elements together and you get one of Corita’s first pop art works. It’s inspired by Wonder Bread, specifically the Wonder Bread bright, colorful packaging with all the dots on it. And in 1962, Corita makes this print called Wonder Bread that is just 12 beautiful, colorful dots.

Nellie: You can enjoy this as a beautiful object. But if you are of faith and you are looking at that Wonder Bread piece, you may see the 12 apostles there. And so the lines begin to blur between, how can the ordinary be extraordinary?

Amanda: Corita also started using text a lot in her work, like she would bring in ad slogans or headlines from the newspaper. And she also started pointing more specifically to social issues, things like poverty, inequality, civil rights, and later on in the ’60s, phrases like “stop the bombing” and text about the Vietnam War. And beyond just her own art, at Immaculate Heart College, Corita was now head of the art department. So the college had this annual thing called Mary’s Day, which was this day to honor the Virgin Mary. And apparently it had been this sort of old school, serious affair. And Corita decided that she wanted to update this.

Nellie: The idea being that they would center these social justice issues, poverty and world hunger. And the idea being that as an order, that if Mary was alive today, she would very much care about the things that brought her son to this earth. And that if Mary was alive today, she would wear orange and she’d go grocery shopping and she would smile and laugh and she would very much be a human.

Amanda: The new Mary’s Day took the form of a sort of joyful protest/celebration. So the nuns and students went across the street to the grocery store to get cardboard, to make big signs to put around campus and to march around with. They had slogans that said things like “peace,” “give us this day our daily bread,” “God likes me.” They played guitar. They danced around in circles. It was all kind of bacchanalian.

Nellie: What they’re trying to do there is build this bridge and say that a revolution—you must include joy.

Amanda: So this was really cutting edge stuff. And the college started to attract a lot of attention. Famous artists and thinkers of the day started stopping by to give workshops. People like Ray and Charles Eames, the furniture designers, Buckminster Fuller, the architect, John Cage, the composer, and Corita herself also became a celebrity. In 1967, she was on the cover of Newsweek magazine, sort of the poster girl of the modern nun. But as you may remember, there were some powerful figures in the Catholic Church in LA who did not like it even when Corita was making Christmas cards of the baby Jesus. So as you can imagine, they were not liking this whole situation. And just as a bit of a brief aside, there was a lot of other activity going on at Immaculate Heart at the time. In fact, the nuns basically had a labor dispute going on because they were sick of teaching for free. They wanted more control over their time. They wanted more freedom in how to express themselves. They didn’t want to wear the habits anymore. And the archdiocese did not like any of that either. That plus Corita’s art was like the final straw. So they gave the sisters an ultimatum: fall in line or leave. Corita had to decide if she wanted to stay a nun or keep making the art that she wanted to make.

Nellie: She goes on sabbatical in 1967 and 1968. And ultimately, you know, she does step away. She does seek dispensation from her vows, does leave the religious life.

Amanda: Corita did decide to leave the order and she moved to Boston where she made a living as an artist for the rest of her life. And actually, if you spend any time in Boston, you have almost definitely seen at least one example of her work. So if you’re coming into the center of town from the south through the Dorchester neighborhood, there’s this huge water tank or tower looking structure on the side of the highway. It’s covered with these big colorful slash marks. And that is actually a piece by Corita Kent. It’s called Rainbow Swash. And Corita was not the only nun from her order to leave. Around 300 other sisters made the same choice and they actually banded together and formed their own community outside of the church called the Immaculate Heart Community. And it’s still going strong to this day 50 years later. Sadly, Corita died of cancer in the 1980s. And when she died, she left her unsold works and copyrights to the Immaculate Heart Community. And this community kept her work in the public eye however they could, even though it wasn’t always super glamorous.

Nellie: We were located and kind of sequestered in a hallway co-located on a high school campus.

Amanda: The last year, the Corita Art Center spun off from this community as its own non-profit. And now it has this new physical space in downtown LA. And they’re experimenting with all these ways to get Corita’s art out in the world. They distribute free art kits. They make it free to visit the museum, things like that. And I’ll just speak for myself for a second and say that learning about Corita and her work has felt very soothing and also at the same time very fortifying. But her focus on joy and being present and caring for her community, it’s a message that I just personally really like right now. I mean, I don’t have to tell you, we live in scary times. And actually the day that Nellie and I spoke over Zoom, the National Guard was actually being sent to downtown LA right next to their art center because of all the protests going on.

Nellie: We have, of course, a lot happening right now as we speak. Truly, there are helicopters above us. We are located downtown LA. We are not well as a whole, as a large community. We are not well. We have an epidemic of isolation. How do we bring people together? How do we gather? How do we kind of take that Mary’s Day spirit and go, there is joy here when we are together and when we lift each other up?

Amanda: I can dig that. Or maybe I should say, amen. The Corita Art Center is open to the public on Saturdays. It is totally free to visit. You just have to make a time reservation online before you go. And if you’re into this topic, I really recommend this documentary from a couple years ago. It’s called Rebel Hearts. It’s all about the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart and Corita and sort of their butting heads with the church. It’s really, really interesting. I am also going to include a link to Corita’s Rules for Creativity. This is this awesome list that she had posted in her classroom at Immaculate Heart College. It’s cool. Check it out.

Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

Our podcast is a co-production of Atlas Obscura and Stitcher Studios. The people who make our show include Dylan Thuras, Doug Baldinger, Camille Stanley, Johanna Mayer, Manolo Morales, Alexa Lim, Casey Holford, and Luz Fleming. Our theme and end credit music is by Sam Tyndall.

Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

Elah Feder: A few weeks ago, I contacted someone named Judith Finell, not really expecting to hear back from her, because Judith is a forensic musicologist, and she’s in very high demand. On a typical day, she’s advising companies like Disney and Netflix to help them avoid copyright infringement, or she’s sharing her expertise in high-profile legal cases. Remember when Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams were sued for copying parts of “Blurred Lines”? That was Judith. She was the expert witness that helped clinch the case against them and for Marvin Gaye’s estate. So I really didn’t think that Judith would have any time for my case, but I sent her an email, and she wrote back right away.

Judith Finell: I’m glad you found me, it really gave me a lot to think about, just preparing for this, so thank you.

Elah: Wait, what did it give you to think about? I mean, I feel like you’re dealing with music plagiarism day in, day out.

Judith: I am. I am. From humans.

Elah: That’s right. The case I laid before Judith was both strictly pro bono, and it was against birds. On the east coast of Australia, high up in dense forests of eucalyptus and southern beech trees, there’s a group of birds that appear to have swapped out their usual songs for something more melodic. It’s the only place in the country where these birds are known to sing like this. And it might get them in some trouble, because allegedly, they got these songs from us. I’m Elah Feder, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Today, lyrebirds in Australia stand accused of copying human music. Specifically, two songs they learned in the 1920s. It’s a story that’s been repeated a few times on the internet as just a fun fact. But is it a fact? A small team set out to investigate.

Hollis Taylor: And along the years of our study, at any one point, I think it’s fair to say that all four of us believed it. And then all four of us maybe had serious doubts about it.

Elah: And I bring Judith Finnell, a case that’s finally worthy of her talents.

Judith: It’s really interesting. Yeah, I mean, it’s sort of surreal that this is even coming up.

This is an edited transcript of the Atlas Obscura Podcast: a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

Hollis: So, shall we say the story?

Elah: Yeah, that’d be great. Hollis Taylor is a violinist, composer, and zoomusicologist living in Australia. And about 15 years ago, she and three friends decided to get to the bottom of this lyrebird story. The lyrebirds in question are these superb lyrebirds, living in forests in and around the New England Tablelands, which is near the coast of New South Wales.

Hollis: Okay, so as the story goes, a lyrebird chick was raised in captivity in the 1920s. He mimicked the household’s flute player, and he learned, allegedly, two tunes and an ascending scale. And then released back into the wild, his flute-like songs were picked up by the other local lyrebirds.

Elah: Generations later, lyrebirds in the area are still singing these old songs, kind of like a living time capsule in the forest. The idea that lyrebirds do this is totally plausible. It’s almost unremarkable if you’ve heard anything about what they’re capable of. Lyrebirds are songbirds, big brown ones that look kind of like pheasants. When male lyrebirds fan out their tails, you see these two long brown feathers on either side and a mess of stringy white feathers in the middle, so that if you squint, the whole thing kind of looks like a lyre, the ancient instrument. When a male lyrebird is trying to seduce a female, he clears out a little area on the ground, makes a kind of performance stage for himself, where he puts on this astoundingly complicated song and dance.

Now, I’ve watched a bunch of videos of this, and it is the most bizarre, goofy display you can imagine. There’s wiggling, there’s chirping, and in at least one video I watched, what I can only describe as the sound of space lasers. And I would love to play it for you here, but in the course of reporting this episode, I’ve become acutely aware of copyright issues. So instead, please enjoy this equally incredible lyrebird, recorded by someone named Marc Anderson, and shared under a Creative Commons license on xeno-canto.org. The songs of the lyrebird are worth talking about in their own right, but peppered throughout each bird’s routine is the thing that makes these birds famous: mimicked sounds.

Hollis: They will imitate other bird calls and songs, they’ll imitate bird wings, and they will even imitate anthropogenic noise.

Elah: And these birds are so good at mimicry. David Attenborough, he once featured a captive lyrebird who could perfectly recreate the sound of a camera shutter and a chainsaw, and you would not know the difference. So could these lyrebirds copy human music? No question about it. But did they? To find out, Hollis and her team went all the way to the source, to the person who first told the story of the lyrebirds to the world. Her name was Martha Manns. Martha first moved to this part of New South Wales in 1936, to run a farm with her family.

Martha Manns: Well, I went to live up there, and late in the night or early hours of the morning, I heard this weird and wonderful sound.

Elah: That’s Martha recorded in 1972, shared here courtesy of Hollis Taylor. And that sound Martha heard that night, it seemed to her like someone was playing the flute just outside her bedroom window.

Martha: I couldn’t imagine anything like a flute being played there at that hour of the day or night.

Elah: Some people might run for cover if they lived on an isolated plot of land and heard someone playing music outside their window in the middle of the night. But by all accounts, Martha was an independent and unflappable kind of person. So she just ran outside to check it out, and she didn’t see a flute player. The sound was coming from high up in a tree.

Martha: And then, investigating later, I found the sound came from a lyrebird.

Elah: Martha also learned that the man who used to live nearby kept a lyrebird as a pet, a man who played the flute, and well, you know the rest. According to Martha, the bird sang scales and two songs. “The Keel Row,” an old Scottish or possibly English folk song, and something called “The Mosquito Dance.” And Martha said that the bird that she heard had really mastered both of these. It never sang a whole song in one stretch. It would sing a section, make some other sounds, then do another section. But each section was impressively accurate. Okay, so that’s the original version of the story. That’s the one that spawned all the stories to come. Now listening to this, Hollis and her team were split. One friend who was a lyrebird expert, he actually met Martha Manns and heard the story directly from her and was totally convinced. Hollis believed it too. But the other two in the research group remained unconvinced.

Hollis: Because lyrebirds tend to be very faithful to their songs and not see a lot of change over years.

Elah: Lyrebirds do mimic sounds they hear around them, but they still always have their own unique signature sound too. And yet here the claim was that these birds had dropped their main song and replaced it with a man’s flute music. And that just didn’t sit right with them. Now you’d think this would be the easiest thing to settle. You just go to the forest and check out what these birds are singing. But take a listen to this one clip Hollis shared with me, recorded in 1970. Does it have a flute-like quality? Sure. But what about the melody? Hollis says she doesn’t hear any “Mosquito Dance” in there. If the original bird sang it, later birds seem to have dropped it. The other song, “Keel Row,” the old folk tune, that Hollis hears. So here’s what that sounds like. And here’s the bird again. Let me pause it. So that beginning part, that sounds reminiscent to “Keel Row”?

Hollis: Yes.

Elah: I was still struggling to hear this. After our call, I tried slowing down the bird clip. I tried playing it over top of “Keel Row.” And after a bunch of listens, I could kind of hear something. Unlike me, Hollis has the ear of a professional musician. But even she acknowledged this isn’t an open and shut case. She went back and forth on it herself over the years.

Hollis: What’s absolutely certain is that all of the lyrebirds in this one area sing something that no other lyrebird anywhere else in the country sings.

Elah: But is it human music? I started having real doubts. If these birds started off singing “Keel Row,” then over the years, it had changed and become almost unrecognizable. So, are we imagining things? Did the birds steal our music? And if so, dollars and cents, what kind of settlement are we looking at? If there was anyone who could settle these particular questions to the satisfaction of a jury, I knew it was Judith Finell. Because she’d helped Marvin Gaye’s family, thanks in large part to her testimony in the “Blurred Lines” case, they got $7.3 million, plus royalties. Judith, I felt, was ready for a real challenge.

Judith: Who’s accusing? I just want to understand, what’s the premise? Is it that the representative of the birds …

Elah: Judith squeezed me in on a busy Thursday morning. I had just 30 minutes of her time. So I quickly explained our predicament and then dove right in, playing her the clips in question. Here is … I think the part that’s relevant starts around here.

Judith: Hm.

Elah: Atlas would not provide me with the funds to hire Judith for a full investigation, but on just a basic listen, it was the differences that stood out to her.

Judith: It doesn’t imitate the rhythms such as the triplets in the sheet music or the dotted rhythms, which I know I’m getting pretty detailed. I mean, it’s definitely very melodious. So I would say, did I hear anything? I definitely heard melodic content partially into it, rather than just chirping.

Elah: Let’s just imagine for one moment that after a long and careful analysis, Judith finds that yes, there is a real resemblance here. She points out that that still would not prove the birds copied this music.

Judith: And if I were on the bird’s side—and say they did go to court—on the bird’s side, so to speak, might be say, well, but the bird has been using that melody for 300 years and here’s an ornithologist to talk about that.

Elah: Another defense, the birds couldn’t have copied it because they never even heard the man who played the flute.

Judith: And they came up with it completely coincidental.

Elah: The plaintiffs would have to prove this was a lie.

Judith: In other words, they have to prove, well, actually I mailed a recording of my song to these birds and, you know, pretty soon they came out with this big hit and it came top on Billboard charts, you know? I mean, that’s really how the conversation goes. And that question of access, in this case, it was going to be very hard to prove a full century later. We’d have to go all the way back to the beginning, to the 1920s, and show that there really was a man who played the flute and a pet lyrebird that heard him. So, tall order. That combined with the fact that these songs didn’t sound like “Keel Row” in a very obvious way, I started to think that none of this happened. Not that anyone had lied. It’s easy to imagine how something like this could have been spun. You know, some birds in the area sounded vaguely flutey. Someone was like, hey, doesn’t Mr. Jones play the flute? And the story took off from there. And if that’s what happened here, it says something a little uncomfortable about us. Like, how vain must we be to take credit for bird music?

Hollis: One of our friends who’s a recordist, he had said, isn’t it like a human to have to make up a story because they can’t just accept that the lyrebirds are doing this amazing thing on their own?

Elah: I was just about ready to chalk this up to humans and our unchecked narcissism when I arrived at one more key piece of evidence that Hollis and her team had gathered. I nearly missed it. It was in one of their papers, this one 8,000 plus words retracing the history of the legend. But near the very end, they shared a transcript of a conversation recorded by Martha Manns in the early 1970s. So remember, Martha herself only ever heard the story of the lyrebirds secondhand from locals in the area. But in this interview, she spoke with a man who claimed to have firsthand knowledge. His name was Gordon, and years before he’d known the family in question. They’d lived on a plot of land neighboring Martha’s, but before she actually moved there.

So Martha asked him about them. She asked, did they have a lyrebird? Yes, Gordon said. They kept it in a big wire cage. Okay. Did the man of the house play an instrument? Yes, Gordon said. A flute. And now for the clincher. Martha asked him if the bird had learned the flute music. Well, Gordon said, one time he was having tea with the family when he heard flute music, but the man who played the flute, he was just sitting there not playing the flute. So where was this music coming from? The family told him it was their pet lyrebird. This is about as close to proof as we’re going to get all these years later. But it still wasn’t quite enough to settle the matter for Hollis’s team. They were still divided. Two for, two against. I wanted just one more person to weigh in. Judith Finell, forensic musicologist to the stars. So in her usual work, she rates the similarity of two pieces of music on a scale of one to ten.

Judith: So one is music that’s completely dissimilar, and ten would be identical, like you lifted something from a recording.

Elah: Clearly the bird song is not identical to “Keel Row.” But is there anything there? Does it lie somewhere in the middle there?

Judith: Well, it lies in the middle enough to say, if I were talking to, you know, the attorneys representing the birds or the other parts, I think this warrants further study.

Elah: Okay. Warrants further study. The story of the lyrebirds isn’t as tidy or certain as the fun facts online, but after talking to Judith and learning all about Hollis’s investigation, I was left feeling like, yeah, some version of this could totally have happened. And if so, good for the birds.

Judith: There’s a whole history of composers using music from birds, either inspired by or actually using recordings in their work. There’s a lot of classical composers who’ve done it for centuries. From Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, inspired by singing birds and buzzing flies, to Baha Man’s “Who Let the Dogs Out,” which included the mournful barks of an uncredited canine, we have borrowed from animals plenty of times. So yeah, I hope the birds did take our music. I hope they keep creeping around forests at night, taunting sleeping people with it. But as for the truth of what actually happened in the 1920s, one might say the lines are blurry. To learn more about Hollis Taylor and her team’s investigation, visit FluteLyrebird.com. You can find the papers they’ve published and some really haunting lyrebird songs.

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Our podcast is a co-production of Atlas Obscura and Stitcher Studios. The people who make our show include Dylan Thuras, Doug Bauldinger, Chris Naka, Kameel Stanley, Johanna Mayer, Manolo Morales, Baudelaire, Amanda McGowan, Alexa Lim, Casey Holford, and Luz Fleming. Our theme music is by Sam Tindall.

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Hi, Dylan here. You have reached the Atlas Obscura podcast line, the last functioning voicemail message machine in the world. Unfortunately, I’m not home right now, but leave me a message about a trip you took to experience some special event in person, whether it was a concert or a convention or a sporting event, whatever it was that you were dying to see and willing to travel for. I want to hear about it. After the beep.

This is an edited transcript of the Atlas Obscura Podcast: a celebration of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

Dever Probst: Hey, Atlas. My name is Dever Probst and I live in New Mexico and my story is about cicadas. Last year was the first time that broods 13 and 19 emerged together since 1803. So I figured it would be a once in a lifetime opportunity to go see trillions of insects crawling around and decided that the best place for me to go see these insects would be in a forest. So I drove about two hours south to the Shawnee National Forest and I spent all day wandering through the forest. And it was amazing. There were bugs everywhere. There were birds. There was a rattlesnake that I almost stepped on. I got lost a few times, but overall made it out alive.

The one thing that I didn’t see, though, were cicadas. After nearly six hours in the forest, didn’t see a single one. Didn’t even hear them. So I got back to my hotel and I only had really that one day to go look for this. But the next morning I had a little bit of time before I needed to go to the airport, so I decided to go to a park about 10 minutes from my hotel just to relax, kind of sit on the bench, read a little bit. And I drove in there and as soon as I turned the engine off, I could hear them. You could hear the buzz of cicadas.

I opened the door and they were everywhere. The parking lot was covered in them. The lawn of the park was full of these bugs coming out of the ground or crawling around. You could see them buzzing in the trees, flying overhead, and the park was just full of life. There were birds everywhere eating the cicadas. There were chipmunks all over the place, little kids running around picking them up. And I got to spend a good couple of hours just relaxing amidst this buzz of trillions of insects. It’s truly a once in a lifetime experience to see these two broods come out at once.

Megan: Hey, Atlas Obscura, this is Megan. Last year, my friend and I got to go to the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics. My friend and I have known each other since second grade. We have always been Olympics obsessed, and it was absolutely an incredible trip.

I think one of the things that was most surprising was how mundane it was, or almost less exciting than watching at home at some point. I ended up going to 18 events, which for anyone who knows is a massive number of events. I think most people go to something like three to five. But even at 18, we would go and today was the day you saw swimming, or the next day is the day you saw beach volleyball. At home, you throw on the TV and there’s four sports at any one time and you’re always switching back and forth.

So being at the Olympics was actually the least amount of Olympics that my friend and I had ever watched in a given year because we were just seeing the one event live. And so we ended up catching a lot of stuff on TV while in Paris. And then on the other hand, it’s just the most vibrant live experience you could ever imagine.

The most memorable experience for me was watching the men’s gymnastics team finals. And about 10 rows in front of us was a gentleman who very clearly was a family member of one of the teammates. And so it was the very last round. There was only one gymnast left on the floor, and it was a Japanese team on the high bar. And this man, every single time that the gymnast let go from the bar, he would let go of the rail in front of him and then grasp back down, moving in sync with every single one of the gymnasts moves. So he was obviously connected. He knew every single move.

When that gymnast finished and after it was scored, that is what put Japan into the gold medal position and they unexpectedly won gold. And this man was in front of us and just fell to the ground and put his hands to his face and was crying. For me to witness that experience is something I would never, ever have from home. The games are something unlike anything else I’ve ever experienced. I’m so, so glad I got the chance to go.

Kennedy: Hi, my name is Kennedy. Recently, I’ve been really into Thai TV shows, and it’s really interesting because the Thai actors do meet and greets. So I was working in Brussels last summer and they were having a meet and greet in Rome. So I was like, perfect. This was during the same time I could go. So I bought my ticket for the event. Then I was looking for plane tickets.

Because of the Olympics, oh my gosh, plane tickets in Europe were so expensive that summer. Even people who usually use Ryanair were surprised. So my round trip ticket from Brussels to Rome cost me $200. But when I got to the airport, the flight was delayed four hours. So I didn’t end up getting to Rome till midnight. And even though my Airbnb was only two minutes away, my Uber was 50 euro because of how late it was. Luckily, the next morning when I went to the convention center, because it was at the airport, it did not cost me as much, but I didn’t realize how far away the other airport would be. So I chose to land at one airport and leave out the other one to make it cheaper. But I was told on the internet that there was like a train or a bus that would take me from one airport to the next. That was wrong. There was none. So I had to book an Uber and it cost me so much money. And when I got to the airport, the flight was delayed another three hours. So it ended up being a lot of me just sitting around, but the event was really great. I love my Thai actors and I always have fun watching their TV shows.

Drew: Hey, Atlas Obscura. My name is Drew. I love music—like, love music. I’ll listen to all kinds of varieties. And a good way to know if you and I are getting along well is that we will likely share music recommendations.

About six or seven years ago, a dear friend of mine tried to share with me a band he was falling in love with called Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties. At the time, it must not have hit me in the right place or I wasn’t ready for it. I listened maybe once and moved on. Each album is a season in each song and episode. It’s a fictional story. It’s made up of an amalgamation of all the people the band’s ever met, but it’s really a guy who’s had a bad year.

His dad dies. His wife has a miscarriage and then his wife leaves him. It’s a rough start, I know, but stick with me. Fast forward a few years in my life and my youngest son, who was 19 at the time, introduces me again to Aaron West. And this time it sticks. In the interim between these two events, I had done a lot of processing trauma in my life from a messy divorce with the mother of my children, and also struggles with my oldest son, as he had some stumbles in his beginning of his adulthood journey.

The songs of pain and loss, as well as the work of rebuilding a life, really resonated with me deeply. I spent the next two years devouring every aspect of the band. I gifted my youngest son a live stream of the most recent album release concert for his birthday and we watched it together and it was incredible. It was at that moment I knew I’d need to find a way to get him and I to a live show somehow.

This last summer it was announced that they would be having a pair of concerts to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the first record. But it was in Philadelphia and that’s a long ways from Nebraska where we’re from. And there were some questions though whether or not there would be more music or more touring, so I knew that now was the time. I bought the tickets the minute they went on sale and in celebration of my son completing half of his bachelor’s degree, we made the trip a reality. We weren’t about to waste 18 hours in town.

We walked to Washington Square Park and we saw the Liberty Bell in Independence Hall. We had a cheesesteak at Campos. We saw the historic Walnut Street Theater which happens to be the longest running English-language theater in America. But that was all followed by a simply incredible celebration of new music that has helped my son and I connect in a meaningful way. And we were able to process a lot of personal things together with it. And I gotta tell you, I will do this again if I can. It was an incredible experience.

Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast apps.

This episode was produced by Manolo Morales. Our podcast is a co-production of Atlas Obscura and Stitcher Studios. The people who make our show include Doug Baldinger, Chris Naka, Kameel Stanley, Johanna Mayer, Manolo Morales, Baudelaire, Amanda McGowan, Alexa Lim, Casey Holdford, and Luz Fleming. Our theme music is by Sam Tindall.

Though Cincinnati is best known for breweries, another effervescent beverage has a long history in the Queen City: the nectar soda.

Home to the oldest pharmacy college in the U.S. west of the Alleghenies, the Eclectic Medical Institute (1845-1952), and Lloyd Brothers Pharmacists, Cincinnati was long on the forefront of the pharmaceutical industry. The city had a number of apothecaries with soda fountains, as well as confectioners serving countless carbonated concoctions—some claiming to cure a variety of ailments, and others simply providing customers with something sweet and refreshing to drink.

Enter the nectar soda. The flavor is a combination of vanilla and bitter almond, and the drink is pastel pink in color—a nod to the hue of almond flowers, according to Dann Woellert, a Cincinnati food historian, etymologist, and the author of Cincinnati Candy: A Sweet History. Nicknamed the “drink of the gods,” the bitter almond flavor of nectar soda balances out what would otherwise be overly sweet vanilla, creating an addictive taste that grows on you with each sip. 

Nectar sodas have been served in Cincinnati since at least the late 1870s, though, like many iconic foods and beverages, its precise origins are murky. The only other U.S. city to embrace nectar sodas was New Orleans, but unlike Cincinnati, the tradition fizzled out in the Big Easy in the mid-20th century. Plus, Woellert says that the Queen City popularized them first. “They were served in Cincinnati nearly a decade before New Orleans,” he says.

While the Cincinnati nectar soda has multiple origin stories, each crediting a different pharmacist or confectioner, Woellert has concluded that John Mullane created the flavor after traveling to Quebec City to learn the art of confectionery from a prominent Canadian candymaker. He began serving nectar sodas in his confectionery shop in downtown Cincinnati in the late 1870s.

So, why did the nectar soda end up in Cincinnati and New Orleans, of all places? Wollert suspects that the bitter almond and vanilla flavor was used by the French Acadians who settled in both Quebec City and New Orleans.

Though nectar sodas aren’t as common as they were in the early 20th century, when they could be found at countless confectioneries and pharmacy soda fountains across Cincinnati, they’re still served at establishments throughout the city and the surrounding area. Nectar sodas have been on the menu at ice cream and chocolate shop Aglamesis Brothers since it opened in Cincinnati in 1908, if not shortly thereafter. That’s according to company president and CEO Randy Young, who is also a third-generation family member. 

It’s unclear when nectar sodas were added to the menu at Graeter’s, a Cincinnati ice cream and chocolate shop that opened in 1870 and now has locations throughout the city and the Midwest, but Chip Graeter, chief of retail operations and a fourth-generation family member, says that they were especially popular throughout the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.

In a January 28, 1947 article in the Cincinnati Enquirer, Tom Moore, the head of the soda department at Dow Drug Store—which operated 32 soda fountains throughout the metropolitan area at that time—said that “nectar is one of the most popular flavors in all of their stores, and has been for many years.” Five years prior, Dow ran an ad in the same newspaper which read: “Be glad you live in Cincinnati, the only place in the country where you can enjoy a Dow double-dip nectar soda.”

Originally, nectar syrup was made by combining half-and-half or milk with water, bitter almond extract, vanilla extract and red food coloring. While Aglamesis eventually switched to a dairy-free shelf-stable syrup, Graeter's recipe has never changed—it still contains milk and needs to be refrigerated. 

Both Aglamesis and Graeter’s make nectar soda by mixing nectar syrup with a dollop of whipped cream, adding a scoop or two of vanilla ice cream, then topping it off with some soda water and more whipped cream.

Though Young says that nectar sodas are most popular with older adults, they’re also a hit with members of younger generations who try them. “People who grew up with them still love them today,” Graeter says. “We still make them in all of our stores, but they're not nearly as popular today as they once were, simply because milkshakes and smoothies have taken over.”  

According to Young, there is a commercially available descendant of the nectar soda. “Commercial soda companies like Barqs and others came out with their version of cream soda—a bright pink soda—which got its flavoring from nectar soda,” he explains.

Indigenous Brazilians have fermented alcoholic beverages from the cassava root for thousands of years. These beer-like beverages go by names like cauim, caxiri, and tarubá. Fermentation is an important step in cassava processing—the raw root has chemicals that can turn into cyanide in the human body. Native peoples found that a bit of human saliva and some naturally occurring yeast could eliminate these toxins and improve the nutritious value of the tuber. When the technology of distillation arrived to the Munim River region (now in Maranhão), locals who already drank lightly alcoholic cassava beverages began to distill them. Tiquira was born. 

The name tiquira is likely derived from the Tupi word tykyre meaning "to drip." But it is a curiosity that the spirit has flourished in only one Brazilian state, Maranhão. Margot Stinglwagner, founder of Guaaja Tiquira, the first modern brand to produce the spirit starting in 2016, says “It’s a spirit that is also unknown in Brazil. A few people have heard about tiquira—but usually only people who have gone to Maranhão once.” Accordingly, the state moved to declare the spirit as a piece of Cultural and Intangible Heritage in September 2023. 

Part of the reason that tiquira has remained so isolated is that cachaça, Brazil’s rum, is far easier to produce. Because the rum comes from sugarcane, the sugar for fermentation is already there. “With cassava, you don’t have sugar,” Stinglwagner explains. “You must first transform the carbohydrates into sugar and then you can ferment and distill it.” To achieve this end, Guaaja Tiquira uses food enzymes instead of the traditional human saliva. Guaaja also differs from other distillers because they use full cassava roots where most tiquira moonshiners rely on processed farinha de mandioca, or cassava flour. 

“The majority of people produce it illegally,” laughs Stinglwagner. “The state does nothing about it.” Outside of the urban center, tiquira is invariably a homemade product. Generally, tiquira makers don’t separate the "heads" (the first drops of liquor from a distillation, which contain harsher alcohols including toxic methanol and other pungent and volatile flavor compounds) from the "tails" (the final liquid produced from distillation, which has a low alcohol content and can have unwelcome bitter flavors), meaning the spirit is stronger and may contain more toxins and impurities. Some even macerate marijuana into the combined spirit to produce the doubly-illicit tiquiconha.

Maranhenses believe that you cannot get wet or bathe after drinking tiquira, lest you become faint or dizzy. Zelinda Machado de Castro e Lima, one of the great chroniclers of folk culture in Maranhão, has recorded other traditions surrounding the drink. Firstly, it is typical to pierce a cashew with a toothpick and soak it in a glass of tiquira for several hours. It is then sucked as a sort of boozy lollipop. She also writes about the belief that those drinking coffee should avoid tiquira, while locals say that fishermen on the coast used the liquor to sanitize wounds incurred on the job. 

Finally, there is the curious question of the color of tiquira. In the tourist markets of São Luís, the spirit is always blushing a translucent violet. “They say that the color of tiquira is from tangerine leaves, but we tried to do it and the color from the leaves is not stable,” says Stinglwagner. “It is also not a strong color. The norms and laws for tiquira prohibit the addition of the leaves.” The violet color may be artificial (perhaps from food dyes), but some tiquiras do have a citrusy flavor. 

Tiquira today is still largely relegated to the world of moonshining, but with the government’s recognition of the spirit and new legitimate ventures like that of Guaaja Tiquira, Brazil could be seeing more of the cassava liquor outside of its home in Maranhão. 

“All the people say to me, ‘What is this new spirit?,’” says Stinglwagner. “I say, ‘It’s not a new spirit, it’s the oldest spirit from Brazil.’”

Know Before You Go

Tiquira is widely available in the downtown markets of São Luís, Maranhão. Both the local Mercado Central and touristic Mercado das Tulhas have many vendors selling tiquira. The commercial brand, Guaaja Tiquira, is also available in São Luís at Empório Fribal, in addition to Copacabana Palace and Fairmont Hotel in Rio de Janeiro, and Mocotó Bar e Restaurante in São Paulo. 

The origins of Germany’s Maultaschen are deliciously devious. Legend has it that, in the late Middle Ages, a lay brother named Jakob invented the stuffed pasta dumplings at the Maulbronn Monastery, a UNESCO World Heritage site founded in 1147 by Cistercian monks in southwest Germany.

One direct translation of Maultaschen is “mouth pockets,” though “Maul” could just as easily refer to Maulbronn. Maultaschen are usually square dumplings (though sometimes they're rolled) and can be fried in a pan or served in broth. Commonly described as Germany’s version of Italian ravioli, they allegedly emerged as a way to use up an unexpected bounty of meat that Brother Jakob stumbled upon in the forest outside the monastery walls.

The twist? Although they abhorred waste, these monks weren’t allowed to eat the meat of four-legged animals, especially during the Catholic fasting period of Lent in the spring. So Brother Jakob minced the meat with herbs and onions and wrapped everything inside pasta dough, hiding the forbidden flesh from the eyes of his fellow monks—and even from the eyes of God.

In Swabia, the region encompassing much of Baden-Württemberg and part of Bavaria where Maultaschen originated, one of the colloquial names for the food references this deception directly: Herrgottsbescheißerle means “little God-cheaters.”

Everyone in Swabia has their version of the legend with more or less embellishment. Ludwig Nestler holds a master’s degree in heritage conservation and works for the State Palaces and Gardens of Baden-Württemberg, a government organization that oversees monuments like Maulbronn Monastery. His version of the tale includes a sack of stolen meat dropped in the woods by a fleeing thief, which inspires Brother Jakob’s trickery in the kitchen. But he acknowledges that there’s no undisputed “historically correct version” of how Maultaschen came to be. Similarly, everyone in Swabia has their own Maultaschen recipe, with unique ingredients for the minced filling, called Brät.

“Traditionally the Brät is made from pork mixed with herbs, onions, and occasionally bread crumbs for texture and stability,” says Nestler. Swabia, however, “was a rather poor region with limited amounts of meat due to rather unfertile land, so being adaptive and innovative has always been a part of the people’s nature.” As Maultaschen became popular, fish and seasonal vegetables like spinach, carrots, beets, and mushrooms became common inclusions.

Today, the European Union ties Maultaschen to Swabia with a Protected Geographical Indication, which lists required ingredients the authentic product should feature, but even the necessary inclusions are pretty loose, such as “pork and/or beef and/or veal” for meat Brät and “typical regional vegetables” for meat-free Brät. It speaks to the way the dumplings developed as subsistence food, used to stretch leftovers and reduce food waste.

Today, Germans throughout the country enjoy Maultaschen in dozens of flavors in all seasons thanks to grocery stores that stock packaged varieties made by companies like Ditzingen-based Bürger, whose mascot, Erwin, is a Maultasche (the singular form of the plural Maultaschen).

But the dumplings remain most popular in southern Germany. Maulbronn Monastery offers a special tour that pairs Maultaschen with wine from the monastery’s vineyards. And many locals, including Nestler’s family, still make them from scratch on special occasions—even during Lent, when meat might otherwise be off the menu. There’s no telling if it’s a fraud good enough to fool God, but it’s worth a shot.