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