Category:
Regionalism

The Venice Surfestival

This celebration ran for a number of years. And of course, there had to be a queen each year.











Posted By: Paul - Fri Mar 22, 2024 - Comments (0)
Category: Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Oceans and Maritime Pursuits, Parades and Festivals, Regionalism, Twentieth Century

Easter Lifting and Heaving

Easter is early this year: March 31st. So you'd better bone up quick on the old practice of lifting strangers up in chairs.

According to Hone, the practice was common in Lancashire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and other parts of England. Groups of people would gather together in the street and physically lift those they came across into the air, expecting a financial reward in return. Hone describes the practice as differing slightly in different parts of the country:

In some parts the person is laid horizontally, in others placed in a sitting position on the bearers’ hands. Usually, when the lifting or heaving is within doors, a chair is produced, but in all cases the ceremony is incomplete without three distinct elevations. (SCM 03706, p. 426)

In Warwickshire, Easter Monday and Easter Tuesday were known as ‘heaving-day‘, because on the Monday it was the tradition for men to ‘heave and kiss the women’ and on the Tuesday for the women to do the same to the men. Hone viewed the practice as, ‘an absurd performance of the resurrection’ derived from the Catholic church.











Posted By: Paul - Tue Feb 06, 2024 - Comments (3)
Category: Furniture, Holidays, Easter, Regionalism, Foreign Customs, United Kingdom

Konjola

Read the full story here.

It was a vegetable concoction with a high alcohol content that could be sold without prescription and gave comfort to many who could not or would not find a bootlegger to ease the strictures of Prohibition.

Konjola sold like bathtub gin in the Roaring Twenties. Gilbert and Roberta started Mosby Medicine by mixing up tubs of Konjola in their basement and bottling it themselves. By 1927, Mosby owned a factory on Reading Road in Avondale and was planning an even bigger complex up the road. Mosby bought a spectacular neon sign, 84 feet long and 32 feet high, to advertise Konjola on the central pier of the Atlantic City boardwalk.

And then it all fell apart.




Posted By: Paul - Mon Jan 29, 2024 - Comments (2)
Category: Regionalism, Patent Medicines, Nostrums and Snake Oil, 1920s, Alcohol

USC’s Helen of Troy Contest

The University of Southern California used to elect a woman as "Helen of Troy."





Finalist for Helen of Troy (University of Southern California), 10 November 1960. Mary Elinor Memory; Lynne Helene Hunsucker; Marcia Anne Northrop; Barbara Louise Stephens; Linda Eleanor Scott.; Caption slip reads: "Photographer: Miller. Date: 1960-11-10. Assignment: Finalist for Helen of Troy. L to r: Mary Elinor Memory; Lynne Helene Hunsucker; Marcia Anne Northrop; Barbara Louise Stephens; Linda Eleanor Scott".





Posted By: Paul - Mon Nov 20, 2023 - Comments (1)
Category: Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Regionalism, Historical Figure, Twentieth Century

Show Low, AZ



For our category of weird town names, such as Linoleumville.

The city's home page.

Their Wikipedia entry, from which we learn:

According to a legend, the city's unusual name[5] resulted from a marathon poker game between Corydon E. Cooley and Marion Clark. The two men were equal partners in a 100,000-acre (400 km2) ranch; however, the partners determined that there was not enough room for both of them in their settlement, and agreed to settle the issue over a game of "Seven Up" (with the winner taking the ranch and the loser leaving).[6] After the game seemed to have no winner in sight, Clark said, "If you can show low, you win." In response, Cooley turned up the deuce of clubs (the lowest possible card) and replied, "Show low it is."[7] As a tribute to the legend, Show Low's main street is named "Deuce of Clubs" in remembrance


Posted By: Paul - Tue Nov 07, 2023 - Comments (1)
Category: Regionalism, Weird Names, Gambling, Casinos, Lotteries and Other Games of Chance, Nineteenth Century

The Acme Barbecue College

Once upon a time, in Alhambra, CA, you could go to school just for BBQ. One presumes that this is where Wile E. Coyote learned how to cook a Road Runner--if one such could ever be caught!





















Posted By: Paul - Wed Nov 01, 2023 - Comments (8)
Category: Education, Food, Regionalism, 1950s

Robert Quillen’s Monument to Eve

Robert Quillen was once a well-known humorist, but is nigh-forgotten today. However, still standing is one of his pranks. A whimsical statue dedicated to "the first woman."

Official South Carolina page on Quillen here.

Posted By: Paul - Fri Oct 20, 2023 - Comments (1)
Category: Humor, Newspapers, Regionalism, Religion, Statues and Monuments, Historical Figure

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Who We Are
Alex Boese
Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes.

Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.

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