In 1986, Cleveland made history with a bold and colorful idea. Organizers set out to release more balloons than anyone had ever attempted before. The event, known as Balloonfest 86, promised to unite the city and showcase its spirit on a national stage. What unfolded became one of the most unforgettable spectacles in Cleveland’s history. Why Balloonfest ’86 Happened Cleveland … Read More
The Lies About Balloonfest ’86
Episode Transcription
00:00 Hey man, what's up? Have you ever heard of balloon fest eighty six balloon fest? Oh, I think I've heard of this yeah. I think okay well uh wait. Maybe I'm thinking I is this hot air balloons or is this like the no it's it's cold air balloons cold air balloons. Okay, standard air balloons. 00:24 Okay, so high school was in the 80s. So hey, what do you guys think about us filling up balloons? And they're like, 00:31 Yeah, do whatever you want. You know, they're cool. They're way too cool for this. They got the puffy hair. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're way too cool. They're like, they're smoking in class. so much in school. Things I learned last night. 00:54 Standard, normal, regular, everyday air balloons. Okay. uh Okay. I think the best way to start this story is by talking about the only thing that makes sense when talking about balloons and that is Disney World or Disneyland Disneyland Disneyland because in nineteen eighty five Disneyland said, what did it be sweet? They're celebrating their thirtieth. Yeah. They said, of these sweet if we launched more balloons than anybody's ever launched in the history of this world. And so they hired a guy. 01:23 by the name of let me get his name real quick. They hired a guy by the name of Treb Treb Henning. I'm pretty sure it's trim. I'm sorry. Did you say? Did you say trim rev? No Treb T reb? Okay, he what nationality is that name? Is that shoot? Is that shoot? Is that short for something? I don't know if it's short for anything. I've seen an interview of him and he looks like an average eighties 01:52 dad like white suburban dad treb is a cool name. Yeah, I don't know like because he's got like the male pattern baldness and like the big glasses with thin rim. What is Jeb short for Jebediah Treva Daya Treba Daya. So Treba Daya had a company called Balloon Art by Treb, okay, and he was based in La. Yeah, it's fun because if you if you read articles about this, it says they uh subcontracted 02:20 Los Angeles based company balloon art by trap and it's like we don't have to act like this is like a big company like the way you're phrased. Yeah, I lost this is base. This is a dude who fills balloons up in his garage. Is that really the vibe or is it like a company? Well, I don't know what the vibe is. I mean, I guess technically speaking he is doing a lot of big events with these balloons. Okay, so he did the Olympics. He did the balloons for the Olympics. Yes, he's probably a bigger. He's not probably doing that in his garage. I mean yeah, he's got a three car 02:51 In 1985, yeah, he was freaking rich. Nineteen, nineteen eighty five. I have a three car garage at my house. My dad fills up balloons all day, not with hot air. It's all cold. Just standard clear balloon. Nineteen eighty five. So this is like, hey, we need you to make more balloons go up than anybody's ever made. Go up and he was like, OK, 03:21 weird way to say that. So they hired him for this event. Okay, and it was just gone up. Okay, you you hit it exactly on the head. They was a thirty year anniversary. They wanted to make a big deal out of it, say hard. Well, I know because right now is their seventy. Yeah, this year was there. They're like how we've been around for like a long time, been around long enough to die. Hey, speaking of dying dude, here's the thing man. 03:50 I think I might be losing it because I as soon as I landed in the airport last night, I get off the plane and you know what's vacuuming the airport, one of the one of those robots. Yeah, I go to quick trip today. What's in quick trip one of those little I and that the quick trip one talks to you. It's got I say it went welcome to quick trip and I wanted it to die so bad. I wanted to knock it over because it looks like a little miniature zamboni just go and a trip. 04:20 down like that yeah. What are we doing yeah? My the quick trip by my house they put all the floors are got a little action figure that sits on top of it. I hate it yeah and here's what I was thinking is that because I was actually talking to a guy today about how like the vin hub by my house yeah. You know I called you I ranted about this yeah. I told you about the vin hub thing. Do I talk about this on the podcast you might have the vin hub. It's a giant vending machine with robots inside 04:49 and so you go twenty four seven. It's like a convenience store. They've got like energy drinks, anything that you would have like a seven eleven like you know, little snacks, uh ibuprofen, all the stuff and it's got little robot arms that you just basically just go. want that and it goes and the guy today made a really great point was he said well yeah, but like in five years that the robot technology is outdated, so they have to replace the robot. He goes so all the savings they're saving by not having the tendon 05:17 they're going to have to replace those parts. Even if it's not five years, they're replace those parts in ten fifteen, maybe maybe yeah, maybe true and I and I said this. I said you that's right. I mean like it takes people seventy years to break down and these robots break down every ten 05:34 Yeah, I guess that's true. So honestly, capitalist pigs. If you're listening, which I know you are, you're not listening, you're really your your I don't know. You have like a an AI recap. That's just like they joked around and about this and blah blah blah blah or whatever. It was really annoying. You should leave a comment about how annoying it was. That's the AI. The A is like if you're listening, it's more cost effective for you to hire people because 05:58 to one. Two things are going to happen. One, this little quick trip robot is going to run out of juice. The battery is going to replace the no. The battery costs more than the whole appliance itself. The battery will corral and two I'm going to beat the crap out of it and you're going to have to replace. You're to have to do something about that. I'm to fight that robot fist fight that robot. Okay, all right, me and velocity gnome are here to fight that robot and fight the robot bears. 06:27 You know, is this a valid crash out? I'm having or no, it is a bad crash out. I I don't think it's. I don't know. I think it's a valid crash out. Yeah, whatever, but I there's nothing we could do about it. We're just going to become. we're all just going to die. All right, only in seventy years though, which is how old Disney was or is now at this time. They were thirty at this time. Disney was young and spry and only thirty years old and still had a whole life ahead of it. 06:55 disneyland yeah sorry disney yeah yeah yeah, and so they were like we got to celebrate have the bird had a big in a big party yeah so treb put together a million balloons and I can't picture what a million balloons looks like he went to disney and he released a million balloons at disney land my gosh he filled those up in his garage yeah there's one hot air balloon in the background. Oh yeah look at that. I think it was that so this is cool yeah it's not really thinking about anything 07:25 in the neighborhood or did they get this approved by the city? I mean this was eighty five, so probably not. I mean yeah, I do five. Who cares? um I miss the days man, could you can't do something like this now? No, you could not because of this. Probably what happened? So they did this. How many fish did that kill? I don't know. um I imagine that it all goes into the ocean. Well, I mean, I don't know 07:53 I don't know. As far as I'm aware, this goes off relatively without a hitch, but there was someone in the crowd that day and he worked for United Way. was in the marketing department uh and he saw this and he said, this is really cool. And he said, I just recently got placed in a new United Way office in Cleveland, Ohio. And he said, man, Cleveland's there. They're in a bad way. uh Cleveland over the last 10 years has been just rotted with scandal. 08:23 So the list is pretty long. We're going to kind of go through everything real quick, so you can just get an idea of where Cleveland's at as a city. Okay, obviously they're a steel town and they are part of the whole motor city, like falling apart, or a tree big. Yeah, so like they blew up in population and now in this era when everything got shipped overseas in the late seventies, they no longer have in the late seventies. No, in the 08:51 early like 70s. Yeah, the whole 70s across the 70s. Yeah, these all these auto and manufacturers got shipped overseas. Yeah. And so then a lot of their manufacturer manufacturing plants shut down, steel plants shut down and a lot of people lost their jobs. Right. This was also the era of white flight. so downtown Cleveland was falling apart because of white flight. On top of that, there was a shocking amount of bomb violence throughout 09:20 the seventies really enough to where they earned the name bomb city USA because there was just so many people just like doing like like bombs yeah just makeshift bombs and so like car bombs were constantly going off and like people were setting up little like um what's the word on the pipe bombs everywhere it was just a really common thing terrorism I mean terrorism but also people who were like it was like going postal but before going postal it was like I'm gonna bomb 09:49 my office because I'm disgruntled or like I lost my job at the steel mill. So I'm going to bomb the steel mill. uh People are doing that in this era. Okay. So like it was like it was such a big deal. Like everyone was bombing everybody and then the main river that went through Cleveland was super polluted. I actually have a picture of how bad it was. This is how polluted the river was from all the steel mills. They were just yeah. And so throughout red yeah and it got so bad. Why they're the Cleveland Browns? 10:19 It looks like their color. 10:24 like what do you guys want to be our football team? Let's name it after the river of Brown. 10:31 Look at it. That's the same orange. Oh my gosh for the audio listener. It's Cleveland in the nineteen eighties. This is seventy's the seventies and the river is the color of the Brown's helmet. It actually is orange. I mean if you can't make sense that I can't get anyone else. Now I'm pretty sure the Browns started in Baltimore. They're the Baltimore Browns and I'm pretty sure they're named after the founders dog. Okay, but and I don't know if that's true, but I'm pretty sure he's made it up, but 10:59 This does look like the Cleveland Browns colors yeah, but it was so polluted that more than five times throughout the 70s. The river caught on fire. ah Oh, like big time caught on fire. Wow, and so if you're listening, it looks like a fire on the river. Put that out. Yeah, that's a good question. More water. You push it. You push it. Push the fire into the water. 11:25 get that fire underwater. Is it like is it like the you know you know too much about this right? Not ask follow up questions. I know. Is it like the chemicals laying on top of the water? Yes, I do know that there's like oils over the top of it. That's this is burning on the top of the okay the river. Okay, super common. Also this guy seeing okay, let's keep going through the corruption. Go ahead. I'm just going through like this guy is like dang man. Our city's suffering because people have lost their jobs. People are leaving the downtown for suburban areas. 11:53 the rivers brown and on fire. You know what the Cleveland needs well there may be a million and one balloons. Their mayor Ralph Perk. Okay. He he was a little he was I was the word eccentric didn't have a great reputation on the national stage and one day in the 70s this he was mired in a scandal. 12:21 that made national news. was on the front page of newspapers across the country because he was at a uh public, like a very big uh event for the American Society of Metals at the Cleveland Convention Center. they had him cut the ribbon going into the convention, right? But they thought it'd be cool if the ribbon was made of titanium. And they're like, you cut the titanium ribbon. But obviously you can't cut that with scissors. 12:50 so he cut it with uh with a welding torch. People were terrified cut, he cuts it with a laser. No, he cuts it with a welding torch, oh and so he put on the goggles, cuts it with a welding torch and a spark bounced up in his hair and caught his head on fire, and so this picture was on the newspaper, the front page of the paper across the country. 13:19 And look at him. 13:25 Oh my gosh and he lost some hair, but that was really it, and this is what sucks about doing comedy. Do is that we would do that in a tv. I would pitch that for a sketch or a tv show and someone would go there like it's like when people were like parks and rec is too you know over the top and it's like are you are you looking around at real life dude? That's crazy. So this guy he also got an invite to the White House 13:54 and I kid you not because of this or I don't know if it was because of this. I don't know if it was before after this was Nixon in right now. I think so Nixon was sixty nine seventy four so yeah it was during I was thinking of the Republican move in the fifth or all for the polarization and then in the board was seventy four to seventy seven Carter seventy seven to eighty one. That's right anyways, so he got an invite to the White House uh and uh his response dead serious was like I can't make it 14:23 because Tuesday night is bowling night a turn it down because he had a ball. He's like no, no, I'd rather be bowling. Here's a thing dude. People used to do that bowling's important. Bowling's important to me man. I don't know what you expect. President Nixon was it Nixon? Is that what we said? Yeah, that was that was during his term. Okay, so this guy so he well here's okay tangent on the bowling thing now 14:52 I just ordered Robert Putnam's bowling alone book Robert Putnam. Why do I know what he's a social he's a sociologist or is he just a he wrote bowling alone, which is his huge book from the nineties and but it's about how the number of people who bold didn't go down, but the number of people who bold in groups did 15:13 so he became more of an individual uh activity, and so it's a it's a community book, but he's talking about like so like the reason that that he was not what not willing to skip his Tuesday night bowling group is that that's like that's like yeah. That's like if you were like hey, don't go to church on Sunday and for some people, that's like that's my community. That's the only place I can at this bowling yeah interesting anyway, and now we hold nothing sacred. It's true. I don't know if there's anything I would skip to be able to just be home alone on the weekend. uh I love 15:43 sometimes I'll make plans with someone that I know is going to cancel. Yeah, I hear like this will be great because you're not going to and then I always end up right in the window where they're like trying to turn their life around, you know, and they're like I'm trying to cancel less. Oh no, I was really banking on you not doing this. Speaking of people followed through, did you listen to my karaoke this weekend? 16:09 I was I wasn't sure if you were going to think it was mean or funny. Here's what I think. You know when someone wants to make it really obvious that they're too cool for something. Oh my God and and it makes them well you're like all right. You are too cool. My God, here's the here's genuine. I felt like I Alex has no idea what we're talking about, so we have a group chat where it's called Serenade Sunday where every Sunday we take a voice at memo 16:39 of us singing a song and you got to try earnestly to sing this week. I did um something like that, but Tim McGraw yeah and you just you play. You can either play not trying earnestly though. I know how you like that. I was. I was trying to a country accent earnestly. I was trying to do that. It was Labor Day week and I was seventeen. You know that see that's I don't sound good when I sing like Tim McGraw um 17:05 Tim sends a voice memo where he goes, pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and I listened to it and I went, Oh, all right. 17:16 I thought it was funny. The pledge was the last time you did the pledge. I do it every morning. 17:25 do it right now. Can you do the whole thing? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Would you be able to do that? If you didn't hear me do that on a voice recording yesterday? Yeah, because I do it every morning. I wake up, I look myself dead in the eyes in the mirror because there's the red, white and blue is in my eyes. It's in my heart. I have to look like allegiance to the flag. 17:52 and to the savior for whose kingdom is tan. You're talking about indoctrination dude. I was in third grade doing the allegiance to the Christian flag and then also do you do the pledge of the Bible? We did the pledge to the Bible yeah and I remember a me a lamp into my feet, a light into my path. I remember being so confused as a kid because I went to Christian schools and so we flew the Christian flag outside at our flagpole, but the American flag flew higher. 18:20 And I remember nobody could give me a straight answer why we put the American flag above the Christian flag. I'm like, why isn't God more important to you than this country? And no one could give me a straight answer. The straight answer is that it's illegal not to. 18:34 I mean I know that's true, but if we're going to fly like no one who's in beyond it yeah. You do that. The cop show up sorry got to take you to jail flag flag code violation. Excuse me, it seems like your uh your flags are wrong. Here's my here's my hot takes on the half mass stuff. Okay, we are getting a little out of hand with them. 19:01 yeah, there's there's. I fee? Am I is this bad? Listen, if I see a flag half a bath, I have to ask if I have to Google, wonder why that's half mass, then it shouldn't be. I'm not trying to be insensitive. Yeah, I you agree with me on this. Yeah, it shouldn't be 19:17 it used to be like a president died or like nine eleven happened yeah, and now it's like dude. It's half mass more than its regular mast. I don't know what regular mass is called yeah and I got to google to figure out oh wires is down right now. No, I don't think that that's yeah. That's done my crazy Alex is giving us that at least like yeah. He's like yeah, I mean, but you know I do feel like it's a little yeah. You know if we have this thing that we say all the time 19:47 and like uh computer engineering. If everything is urgent, nothing is urgent. That's what that's what I'm saying feels like. Well, okay, okay, okay. I know we're gonna have big tangent right now. Okay, and I will get to the story later. This is the show welcome, but that kind of goes to the 20:09 the a part a big part of our culture is if some if I say something is important to me, then some people interpret that as the other things aren't important at all like where it's like it's either important or it's not and I'm it's like hey there's different varies like my wife is more important to me than my friends. Oh, so don't care about your friends, no 20:35 you don't talk about yeah yeah, and I think that that is pervaded a lot of anyway. Okay, we rant over put the flags up 20:48 Let's say together. Yeah, I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all for most for some. 21:10 Hey, thanks for watching our show. you like it, a great way to help out is by being a Patreon supporter. Doing that helps make this show possible, but it also gets a lot of perks for you. You can get every episode a week early ad free. You get access to a Discord where you can meet a lot of other people who love the show and actually hang out with Jaren and I every month on a hangout. And we're also in that Discord chat all the time, hanging, talking with people, talking about episodes and just random stuff in life. It's super fun. 21:33 We do, there's a way to get birthday messages, a free gift, merch discounts in there. So there's a lot of really great reasons to be a Patreon supporter. You get a lot of benefits out of it. And it also makes the show keep happening. So if that sounds great to you, you can go to support.tillin.com or tillin.com slash support, uh or just tillin.com and search around until you find the links uh and become a Patreon supporter. really appreciate you doing that. But if not, right back to the episode, right? 22:06 and if you were listening to that on the podcast and you didn't pull over yeah shame. You're not a patriot get out of here. Why don't you keep driving? So this guy by the name of George Frazier, I don't know if I said his name earlier. He's in Disneyland. He's watches this and he says man Cleveland struggling. You know what we need? We need one of these Cleveland needs something like this just to revitalize the city arm. our our rivers on fire 22:35 Our mayor is on fire! 22:39 We, we got to get some lose then we need this. Okay. And so he goes back to his office in Cleveland after the event, he works for United way. He's the marketing director and he calls up that guy. Uh, what did I say his name was? It was some weird term. Treb. He calls Treb. Yeah. And he says, Hey, is this Treb at balloon are by Treb? And he says, Treb it is. And so he talks to me, tells them all about it. And he says, I want to break that record. And he's like, Oh, I just broke the record. 23:09 and he said, well, I need you to break it again and he's like, I like the way you're thinking there, that's pretty good. Nothing better than breaking a record twice. Am I right? ah First place, trebed second place, that's how I like it. 23:30 in the balloon world. They've got flags hanging half mass that say trev on me. 23:41 he's the balloon guy. Can we be a? Can we make a flag? It's a balloon snake and it says don't treb on me treb on me yeah sure. Okay, so we'll hire an artist 24:07 hey, we're not going to iron artist yeah, we're not gonna. It's not going to be a all right. uh I don't like that. I can see how long we've been recording now and now I'm getting anxious about it and I'm like oh, we got to hurry up the flag code for too good podcast flag, go, and you know what sucks is that we're going to get so many YouTube comments. So like these guys know nothing about flag. 24:36 and here's the thing. Here's the thing. If you're watching on YouTube, you should be a listen to me. Listen, we make way more money. I mean guys so much okay for real low positive. We did make a joke about people watching on YouTube and I honestly didn't know we had that many audio list who were who would feel bad. We were joking like you can still listen on yeah, but you should you should listen on audio, because if you're watching right now, 25:00 You're stealing from us, essentially from us. Yeah, that's that's a joke. It doesn't matter. Thanks for if you're reading a transcript of this in Braille. Thanks for being here. I don't know how you're consuming this body, so George calls Turb and he tells him hey, I love what you did for Dixie. Yeah, I think Cleveland needs this and Turb literally needs this turn straight up is like good luck. That was hard and he's like well, I don't need luck. I need you and Turb was like oh, I'm in 25:29 Yeah, nothing gets the balloon guy in more than inflating his ego and so him and turb start to put together this plan. Sure and oh wait, it was trep to him and trep not turp turp. If a trap start put this play together objectively funnier and so uh george is like okay. Well, this is going to take some funding. He works for united way a non-profit organization and so he wants to make this like a big 25:59 like publicity stunt. uh And so like something to like kind of bring the excitement back to Cleveland. This is 86 now. And so some things have happened like Cleveland is not what it was in the 70s. United Way, along with the local government, has been cleaning up the city. Like the bombs aren't going off anymore. The river's not burning. Some of the factories have opened back up or they've replaced those jobs that were lost. And so like the city's doing better. They revitalized the downtown and it's not the problem that it was. 26:28 before that I've only been to Cleveland a couple times. Yeah. What you think it was for? I love Columbus. Columbus is a cool vibe yeah. I don't think I spent enough time in Cleveland Cincinnati was okay. Cincinnati was very the way that Kansas City used to be Kansas City, probably you know early twenty tens yeah that first half of the ten was very like this part of town school don't go here. Yep, this part of town school not like don't go here, but it's like there's nothing there or it is like 26:58 don't park your car there and leave it yeah attended yeah like not dangerous by any means, but it was just like segregated like here's a here's an area that business is happening and then it's just dead zones around. Here's an area. That's what Cincinnati kind of felt like yeah yeah is Cleveland. No, that's what I mean. That's what Cincinnati just felt like I Cleveland also felt a little bit like that. I guess, but yeah anyway, yeah, I'm a big fan of Ohio. I do like I've never been 27:26 But I do think it looks like a great city. From me scrolling around on Google Maps. You want to do a weekend getaway to Cleveland? I honestly genuinely would love that. 27:40 is the worst step up I've ever seen. Yeah, it was you because you kept your way over here. I got caught on you with God on this. All right, anyways, we can wear those shirts that have like you know, like the drawing of the bikini body on it. Just walk around Cleveland, Cleveland with our 28:05 with our cleavage. Is that where they got the name? I don't think so funny right? I don't know. Did you tell the story? I'm just joking, so he goes and he tells us together a group of the like top like brass of Cleveland, like government people, business owners and he's like guys. I've got an idea to release some balloons yeah yeah and he's like he's like I need some funding for this. How much does that cost? 28:35 I mean, I don't know you figured what ten cents a balloon five cents a balloon. How much were balloons in in the eighties? I know with inflation. Oh no, I set it up and he fell for it. What an idiot. I don't know. I don't know how much it cost. I would guess that they probably I mean today if this happened today, I would say this is a multi million dollar event. Yeah, course from like the infrastructure of it. Maybe the cost of blue itself, but also the labor of putting the heal in the 29:03 Yeah and then just like putting the event rib in my garages, putting together security for it. You need security for our balloons. Yeah, okay, so darts Adam. You never know like you you got to be. You got to be prepared. Okay, so he goes to these people and he kind of puts together his pitch and everybody was like seemed a little ah and someone says this sounds all well and great, but like what does this do for cleveland? A lot of people weren't seeing the bigger picture and he musters up this kind of pitch out of 29:33 nowhere where he's like, he's like, I think that if we can bring Clevelanders together, people from all walks of life, people from all spiritual backgrounds, people to work together from the East side to the West side, from black and white and Hispanic, we can make the impossible possible. And we can show to the world and we can show to Cleveland that Cleveland is great. And the, the, the board essentially that he put together was like, you know what? 30:03 that is the best little pitch we've ever heard and I'm just the eighties because they're like let's do it. I kid you not. That is like a direct quote. Everything I just said from him in an interview. He said that yeah they said that that was the best little pitch we've ever heard and so they signed off on a little pit. I know it's the word little in there. You know the best little bit I heard you know what 30:25 This guy's adorable. Let this weird guy do his balloons. Yeah, this seems like an opportunity to launder some money through it. So just let him do the balloon thing. Jack it up. A couple million dollars. We'll get some money cleaned through this. So they put together some funding for it. They still needed to put together their, what's the word, ah volunteer army. And so what they do you need to do this? ah Well, they figured, ah and I did see it another interview, Trev said, 30:55 If I was doing this by myself, I could put this together a lot quicker. But if we were using volunteers, most volunteers probably gonna do two to three balloons a minute, inflate two to three balloons a minute. He said, I could do way more, but I can't do a million, more than a million balloons by myself. And so I need volunteers to help. And so two to three balloons a minute, we need a few thousand people to help put this together. And so they set their sights on 2 million balloons. Disney did 1 million. They said, we wanna do 2 million. We wanna blow that record out of the water. 31:24 by one upping it one million upping it yeah and so they went around to local schools and they started doing assemblies and they were like how cool would it be if there was like a lot of balloons in Cleveland and the kids really and the kids these are high schoolers in the eighties yeah these are high these are grade school to high school okay so high school assemblies in the eighties so hey what do you guys think about filling up balloons and they're like 31:54 yeah, do whatever you want. You know they're they're cool. They're way too cool for this. They got the puffy hair. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're way too cool for their like they're smoking in class so much in school. They actually their schools was separate. A lot of people don't know this, but school had smoking and non smoking section. Yeah, when you get there in kindergarten, you want to be in the smoking class or not, we're in class. Yeah, put me in his wrong last and it's like why I get to choose no thanks. I quit a choice. I quit. I quit years ago. 32:24 So he goes to the school and he shows them all the balloons he's done. Yeah. So he shows them the Olympics. He shows them Disney. He shows all these big events that he did the Super Bowl. Like he's done all these big events to balloons and he's like, you can do one of these if you volunteer to help us for Balloon Fest 86. All I need you to do is show up at 3 a.m. and help me inflate 2 million balloons and 3 a.m. Yeah. And so he puts together this army of volunteers, mostly kids. 32:53 but a lot of like, mean, most, most of these kids, their parents came out, full family came out to inflate balloons, but it became this thing where it was like, there was a lot of buzz around it. It was like, we're coming together as a city to break a world record. Guinness book of world records is going to be there. They got a bunch of corporations to jump on. So Coca-Cola sponsored book of world records related to Guinness, beer. Yes, actually. And it's kind of interesting. I've thought about doing an episode, but there wasn't enough. So I can tell you right now, Guinness in the late 18 hundreds was like everybody's constantly in bars. 33:22 like just telling these crazy stories, but we have no way to verify if they're true or not. And so Guinness, the beer family said, what if we put together a group to verify these stories? And so they did. And so the world record book was if people tell a crazy story, call us and we're going to go verify it and put it in the book. And so then they started having the book at their bar and like the original Guinness like distillery or not distillery, a brewery. And then it caught fire and now it's all over the place. 33:52 And that's where it came from. Wow. Because of bar stories. We'll cut that out. 34:00 of it. I'm choking. That is super interesting. Yeah. So get his book of world records is going to be there. Coca-Cola sponsoring the event. Taco bell jumped on Taco Bell's like we'll make the longest burrito ever made to 34:11 like we'll also break. What is the company's trying to freaking jump on stuff to will also break? They've always been doing that. How do we do? We're gonna be here. We're also making a super long also breaking a record to the burritos super long. We can break records also and you're like why? Okay, what does that? We just want to bring Cleveland together. We also want to bring clear also around the eighty nine cent cheesy gordita crunch. What? 34:38 What are you talking about right now? Still a base, still a taco. What does that have nothing to do with baseball? Baseball season's over. Sorry, we're sorry. We're just trying to steal a steal a balloon, steal a talk. was trying to be relevant. What is trying to relevant? You can't forget about us. Don't forget about us. Dude, companies have always been so thirsty for attention. That's crazy. So this became this huge thing. They're like the kid who's like my mom will buy us alcohol. If you guys come over 35:02 and they're like what's like. don't want any worth seven yeah it's eighty seven. Well actually would your mom buy a cigarette smoking is smoking is cool. 35:16 so they start planning for this event. Yeah and okay, try picking a school assemblies with balloons. So have I told you about the guy who came to our school? No, we had the guy from the world's strongest man competitions. You know, man, cut where they flip cars over. This guy was still pretty jacked, but his that he was he held the records for whatever was strongest lungs and he would come do the anti smoking speech at our school and he could bowl up those long balloons. 35:43 yeah with his like just his mouth yeah, which is impressive. Yeah, is it impressive enough to do a forty five minutes school assembly over them where you're like? No, it doesn't happen that fast. It's very okay. I could do that then let's be honest. I can do that and then like he's not super talented at making balloon animal stuff. Yeah, he does the thing and he goes. If you don't smoke 36:10 you can do this too. Oh, so he's just an average guy. Yeah, I don't think you let's we'll get balloons for the next. I was do that for sure. got a hundred percent. I'm trying to do it I have good lungs. Yeah, I've got good lungs to Tim. Yeah, wait to see these lungs boy. Don't look at me like that. Who thinks? Who do you think has the better lungs? Leave it in the comments now. So Treb Treb is says he says hey, uh 36:39 when we did a million balloons at Disney, what we did is we had a thousand of these bags and you can see it and it was a thousand bags of a thousand yeah and so we had a thousand people that ripped open these bags and then we had the million balloons in the air and he said with two million balloons. I don't think this is feasible because that's two thousand people holding up 37:01 bags of a thousand balloons. And he said, I just don't think we can get that many people into the square in Cleveland where they were going to do it. It was too tight. And so to also be releasing and ripping up balloons, they just didn't think it was realistic. So they got a group of engineers together to build an enclosure. Oh my God. was they had this big, huge square in downtown Cleveland and they built this frame and then attached nets to the frame. 37:27 and they said okay, everyone's going to sit under there. They're going to put the balloons together and flight them and just release them into the net and so day of the event rolls around, which is what day nineteen 37:42 September twenty seven, nineteen eighty six, September twenty seven. Yeah, I should say right before September twenty six, nineteen eighty six. They're all in Cleveland, ready for this big event. The city's. What are you in town for? I want to put a bunch of balloons up balloons, loons, excuse me, loons, loons. I call them that for short balloon takes too much to say. 38:06 You would know if you were in the industry, you get it. I want a week long punk. You're too weak. You've been smoking. Haven't you? Yeah, I could tell so so number twenty six traps in his in his hotel. Okay, and a microbe. think it about a microburst comes through town. Big storm causes a ton of damage throughout the city. Sixty mile an hour winds just kind of out of the blue. Oh, they knew there was going to be a storm. They didn't know it's going to be the severe of a storm. 38:36 And it actually damages some of the netting. so they're very concerned about whether or not this event can really happen. They're looking at the forecast. It looks like there's a chance it'll rain the next day. But the organizers are like, well, we really want this to go on. George comes to Treb and he says, hey, look, one of our nets is damaged. But he said, but I think our crew can handle this. And so he says, why don't you just go to bed? And he said, we're going to take care of the nets. We'll see you in the morning. 39:05 George and the construction crew, they go out there, they're out, they pull an all nighter repairing the nets. Okay. They get everything put together. There's one edge of one of the nets. That's a little wonky finicky, but they said we can, we, think we can still release everything. That's just going to stay attached because originally the plan was the nets were all going to be removed. Sure. And then it was going to release when the time came to release them. They're like, we can just leave this one section of the balloons, but there is a little bit of a little bit of nerves because there's the chance of a storm the next day. 39:36 Hey, thanks for listening to things I learned last night. It would do us a huge favor if you could just share this episode with somebody or just share the show. Tell someone you like it. That helps us grow the show. Another way to help us grow the show is to support our merch, which is actually super comfy. We changed to a new merch supplier a couple of years ago called fourth wall. You can buy our stuff at shop.tillin.com. None of this is a pressure by the way, but it just really does help us grow the show and it helps, you know, get the word out and people ask me about my hoodie in the airport all the time. So they're really comfy. Would love for you to support the show. 40:06 And either way, thanks for being here. We're glad that we get to do this podcast. 40:14 next day they wake up 3 a.m. and thousands of kids and their families are in downtown Cleveland already, three o'clock in the morning, ready to put together these balloons. And they tell the story of this event because all these people were putting together these balloons and they're putting together and tying thousands of balloons. And I got to the point where you looked around this weird enclosure that they built and everybody had like their fingers all taped up because they were like, 40:42 cutting their fingers from tying so many balloons. And so everybody had these weird like duct tape ties around their fingers to like protect their fingers from how many balloons they were tying all day. um So there's this army of reverse fingerless gloves uh all around this enclosure. And by early afternoon, uh the public square in Cleveland looked like this. um Oh my gosh. 41:08 because they're and you can kind of see in this. So you're tying the balloon, just kind of letting it go to get up to the net. Yeah. And it was just the net was catching it. You can kind of see everyone's just sitting at a table and on the table there's all these helium tanks and the families are just sitting there tying balloons all day, just kind of chit chat and gossiping, tying balloons and releasing them and filling up this giant net in the middle of the public square of downtown Cleveland. OK. um And as the day goes on, it looks cool. It looks pretty neat. Like it looks this looks like. 41:37 uh The Skittles jar or not the Skittles jar this the the sprinkles jar. Yeah cold stone uh and so as the day goes on uh They start to kind of hear okay. Hey look that storm is starting to head in We need to start to be prepared to launch early because there's a chance we got to get this out of here right or things go south Because we can't launch all these balloons in like a middle of a storm uh And so they're kind of I don't want to say rushing but they're kind of there's this idea that they're like kind of racing against the clock a little bit 42:07 They're putting these things together. And as they're getting close to the end, the finish line, uh they end up uh realizing the net just keeps getting caught on all the bolts for the frame that they had put together. And so they're sitting there and they're like, I don't know if this is actually going to actually release because it's catching these bolts. so Treb says, you know what? I think I know what we can do. And so he goes into the hotel and he just starts rounding up plastic trash cans from the hotel. 42:36 And then he starts cutting up the trash cans and just building little enclosures for all the bolts. And so that way it would just slide around the plastic and wouldn't have anything to catch on. so there's like a lot of a lot of quick things, small little things, little details. And then finally, they are they get news from the National Weather Service that, hey, we do think that the storm is going to come in about an hour early. And they said that's perfect because we're looking out here and we did it. We've got all the balloons we were looking to get. 43:05 at this point they had they had lowered their sites to one point five million. I don't think they had enough volunteers to get to two but they still clear the record yeah by five hundred thousand and so they said everybody's just kind of hanging out. We're in party mode. We're just waiting for the release and so they said why don't we just release early at this point. There are two hundred thousand people in downtown Cleveland. They said that the attendance to this event was the only thing in the entire twentieth century that rivaled it was the end of World War Two. uh 43:34 And so there was, this was a big deal for Cleveland. It was packed. Everybody's excited for this. And so then they said, okay, it's time to go. And they pulled the releases and the net starts to open up and swell out. And so the way this worked is I believe all these balloons were like acting as like almost tie down the big ones. They released them and then they started to lift the net up and 1.5 million balloons lifted up. 44:03 and spread across the skyline. This is not as good of this from the news helicopter. Yeah. And just enveloped downtown Cleveland uh and covered the entire city. That's pretty cool. And it's really cool if you watch the video because people, this was one of the wildest things anybody had ever seen in their life. The George, the guy who did it, I watched an interview. He said, he described it like a uh atom bomb of joy, which it does kind of look. 44:32 That's cool. It's not, it's probably insensitive to call it that. 44:40 ah But things didn't stay joyful for long ah because that storm did end up coming through. And that storm front, what happened is it caused a lot. What they expected is, and what normally happens in these balloon releases is the balloons go up and then they kind of go in the atmosphere and they disappear. You never have to think about them again. That is what happens to them. What they expected is that most of them are going to pop or deflate and come flood. 45:08 falling back down. It's the eighties. No one cares about pollution yet and so everyone's just like who cares there'll be trash somewhere. People pick it up but not here yeah. We won't have to worry about it. Imagine you're in a town near Cleveland. You have no idea what's going on and all of a sudden you just see a cloud of point five million balloons descending on your day. You don't know their balloons when you see them. Yeah, they're just it's just like a real ad a bomb. You're like we're being attacked. 45:37 it's the cold war era right. Yeah, the eighties yeah, we're all dead, we're done, we're done for okay, so these come crashing back down to earth and yes, they're just balloons, but there's so many of them that it's affecting visibility and there are car accidents all over the city of real who just couldn't see enough and so they were hit and running in other cars and there was crashes happen because the change in pressure in the 46:04 What? What you said because the storm is rolling. Oh yeah, I thought you were talking about the crashes that like no the pressure change. You're like I can't drive anymore. No, the change in atmospheric pressure is yeah forcing the balloons for the balloons back down. Yeah, as they all came down, it continued to go up yeah and they ended up going into Lake Erie and just filling Lake Erie with all these balloons and this ended up being a really big deal because the night before an hour before that microburst came through 46:33 a couple of fishermen went out on Lake Erie to go fishing and the microburst came in that they weren't expecting and then they went missing. And so that day there was a Coast Guard search trying to find these guys and they said in a report they said what most of our searches are is we're going around. We're looking for heads on the water and they and they said how are you going to out what's these as a person and not a balloon. Oh no. So they 47:03 were and to make matters even worse, the airspace around it was so crowded that they had to call in a fly zone because you couldn't fly through all these balloons because they were just kind of getting pushed down. so this ended up becoming this disaster that led to millions of dollars worth of damages and ended up causing lots and lots of injuries. There's a report of a local stable, I guess is the word for it, place where you keep horses. That's a stable. 47:29 Ranch, that's the word. came in and all the balloons spooked the horses because they've never seen balloons and they've also never seen that many balloons at once and they ended up getting injured. uh so the Wikipedia page actually literally says non-fatal injuries, multiple horses ah were injured in the event. then ah those fishermen, ended up later recovering the bodies and the public was blaming the. 47:57 balloons. If the balloons weren't there, maybe they could have found them earlier. And so this became this whole scandal and the family of the fishermen, the families of the fishermen came forward. They sued United Way for millions of dollars. The ranchers whose horses were injured sued United Way. The people who were involved in car accidents sued. There's other damage to property all throughout the city that came forward and sued. So United Way expected this to be this big event where a ton of 48:24 uh publicity would come and turn around the bad perception of Cleveland in this era. And it actually soured it even worse and cost them way more. Yeah, because of all the settlements. And so in the year since this has become like this urban legend almost no, it's not a legend because it's true story. Just this big thing that you hear people talk about, how big a failure. Yeah. Balloon Fest 86 was because it was such a big failure. It's kind of like Firefest before Firefest. Sure. 48:54 But here's what's interesting. None of what I just said is true. All of this story of everything that happened, of the million dollars in damage, the injuries, the people dying, all of this stuff isn't true. And it's something that you hear everybody talk about when they talk about Balloonfest86. If you've heard about this before and you're like listening to this episode, like, yeah, I remember hearing about how big of a failure it is. It's not true. What happened is... 49:22 about a decade after Balloonfest 86. Balloonfest happened, went off without a hitch. There was a lot of balloons that fell, that storm did come in, a lot of balloons fell. There was a 10 car pile up on the freeway, but that 10 car pile up was because someone was distracted watching the balloons launch, not because they fell and they got in their way. It was them just seeing it and then crashing. And there was no like major injuries in it. There was damage. There was no major injuries. 49:50 There was a couple of other car accidents that day, all the rest of the car accidents could only be attributed to just like regular causes. Like it wasn't had nothing to do with the balloons. Right. There was all those balloons that fell in the water and there was that search for those those two fishermen. But after the fact and autopsy revealed that they had died long before Balloonfest even happened. And so, yes, it did impact the search, but it wouldn't have mattered if that was there or not. They wouldn't have been able to save those fishermen. What happened was 50:20 somebody and ah we don't know if there was another interview but somebody had interviewed someone who was involved with the planning of balloon fest not george not treb but somebody else on the team at united way for the local paper in um cleveland cleveland and when they recorded for that the paper was called the plane dealer and they did this interview and after the interview ah the person said that 50:49 when they did this interview, they presented everything that happened and they felt like it was an accurate, like from the conversation. Right. And then this article came out and it called it this major disaster and, and told all these stories of all this damage and all these lawsuits and all this stuff. And she's like, that's not what happened in this interview at all. And they said, George ended up calling the paper and was like, Hey, that's a lie. Like half the stuff in this paper is just not true. Right. And so he ended up speaking to the editor and the editor pulled the story. 51:18 And the editor was like, oh, I'm sorry. is done. Yeah. They said there was some stuff that was kind of liberties were taken in the telling of the story that made it sound more extreme than was because what did happen is the family of those fishermen did sue United Way, but they settled outside of court and the United Way, the report was they got sued for millions of dollars and they settled for millions of dollars outside of court. But what really happened is United Way had insurance for this event. They went out and got an insurance policy and they paid just to cover the legal fees of the family. And so it was like a $5,000 settlement outside of court. 51:48 And then again, with the horses, there was a lawsuit for that, but the courts threw it out. And so United Way ended up paying them a few thousand dollars just for to cover their legal fees from that. So they kind of came forward and they were like, that was a big misunderstanding. We're sorry about it. We're going to go ahead and cover your legal fees. they did not get sued. There was not millions of dollars of damages. None of that stuff happened. There was that one car accident uh and then some other around, none of that related. And it all comes back to this one paper. 52:17 and this paper got circulated enough to where there are copies of it that exist out in the world. And then when the internet became such a big thing, somebody found this and then they amplified the story even more on the internet. And now it's so bad to the point where every podcast, every TikTok, every YouTube video, the Wikipedia page talks about this being such a bad event. But if you go and you watch from people who were actually there, people who lived in Cleveland, from the people who organized it, 52:46 from Treb and from the government there, and the Coast Guard, they'll all say none of that is true. They didn't shut down the airspace because there was too many airplanes. They called ahead of the time for the event and they said, hey, we're going to launch this. And so they set up a no-fly zone before the event that was already established. And so there was all this stuff that was made to seem... Misconstrued. Yeah. uh And it just kind of shows how hard it is to know how true a story is. 53:15 because this really is. This really was fire fest before fire fest right and this was the thing, especially on the internet in the early days. The internet was where if you wanted to call something colossal fair, you would it balloon fest because this was a colossal fair, but it wasn't like it was a they did get a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records. They broke the record. Everybody who was there said they had a great time. Nobody acted like it was a bad event. Nobody got injured and there was just a coincidence that those fishermen died the night before and it was yeah, it wasn't. It was a big success. Yeah, 53:44 but it was seen as a failure yeah because somebody misreported on it, but the mayor's hair did catch on fire. Mayor's hair definitely did catch on fire. That's hilarious. 53:56 and so it's crazy because that it's crazy because the goal was to make Cleveland look better and it did for a little bit until Cleveland's own paper sabotaged it wow, which is nuts. So that's balloon fest eighty six a huge success according to us. 54:17 They were. It wasn't bad. It was a good event. Wow. Yeah, I like when you end stories with, by the way, none of that was true. 54:29 that's crazy. I mean how could this be a bad? You know yeah, it does look like it looks like a nuclear bomb of fun. 54:41 they kept those things in a net like Alcatraz. It's all a good time. It's all a good time. I got bombed at balloon fest. That's crazy man. Yeah, that's that's well, I guess the record set. Yeah. And what's crazy. I forgot to mention all these corporations got involved in this to kind of sponsor and put their mark on it. You had Coca-Cola. You had Taco Bell. I mentioned them right. A of people don't know that 55:10 hell sponsored this and they actually had the devil there pulling off hell sponsored by hell. Hey, that's the episode. Please share this with somebody helps our girl grow our show. If you want to listen to other episodes, we did an episode about the balloon boy hoax, which is where a family had their kid in a balloon that was floating over Colorado and it turned out to not be true the whole time. So and then if you want next week's episode right now, it's available to our patreon supporters. Just another way to help grow the show. 55:39 We really do appreciate you being here. We love this podcast. I hope that you enjoy it as well. We'll see you next week.