Short Stuff: Gibtown: Sideshow Central

There was a glorious time in American history when circus sideshow performers lived together in a small town in Florida. Learn about the fascinating history of Gibtown today!

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, you welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck.
It's just the two of us again. We uh can
let it all hang out. Jerry's not around. Um, we're
just a couple of dudes hanging out in our bathrobes
talking about GiB Town, the town in Florida near Sarasota

(00:25):
and Tampa where the people who lived in the circus
where the Carnivals went to live when they weren't working.
Let's go quick story. Since we've on a short stuff,
I'll make it twenty seconds. I got out of the
shower today and I almost went and put on a
suit just to walk into the kitchen and make Emily laugh.

(00:47):
But it wasn't worth the effort. So I was like,
I told her the joke and said to just imagine
I did that, right, that's good enough. Uh, so give Town. Yeah,
we did a show, an episode on Circus Side Shows,
uh way back, and it's a really good one. And
I know that we'll talk about this a little bit
in this episode. But um, these things can very much

(01:09):
seem like exploitation of people with disabilities, and on one hand,
they certainly were. But on the other hand, we found
out through research. A lot of these people it was
the only way they could make money. A lot of
them found love and community, and so it is very
much something that is is in the Gray area, uh
as far as you know when this was going on.

(01:31):
So I just wanted to throw that out there. I
think that was really good, Chuck, because I remember our
um what do we call him? Sideshow performers or did we?
Was freaks used in the title of that episode. I
don't remember. I don't think we did, but it was
a really good one. And I remember I just saw
Freaks the movie the other day and apparently, um a
lot of people from GiB Town who hadn't settled there

(01:53):
quite yet but soon would. We're in that movie as well,
Yeah for sure. So, um, we're talking about Gibsonton, Florida,
which is near Tampa, and it is on the Alphia
I'm sorry, the Alafia or the Alafia River? Do you
know which one it is? No? I no, I hang

(02:14):
out on the east side when I'm down there, that's
west side. We don't. We don't get along very well. Well,
I see flashing your west side sign. Yeah, you couldn't
even see me, and you you knew that I did
that when I said west Side, and it was all
jumbled to like it's just basically all fingers were splayed
on each hand, and then I put it up against
my chest as if I've been recording a lot of

(02:38):
these skype things now with movie Crush, and I always
do video and they're always surprised when they ask about us,
and I'm like, we don't do video, mainly because my
notes get in the way. But I was like, after
this long, all I need is that guy in my
ear holes. Sure a little bit of this right up
in your ear Yeah, So give Gibson toon. If you

(03:00):
went to that town in the nineteen fifties and walked
around a bit, you would think, what is going on here?
There are lions and tigers in that backyard. There is
a restaurant run by an eight foot tall man and
his wife, a woman with no legs, And there's Lobster Boy,
and there is uh monkey girl. And these are all

(03:22):
sort of the unfortunate names given to them on their
side show tours, yes, sometimes by their adopted parents, who
would be the promoters a side shower circus promoters who
basically literally had legally adopted them and in some cases
that was actually a step up for you know, some
of the kids. But um, yes, if you did walk

(03:44):
around what came to be called GiB Town, um it
did seem a little different. I mean just the fact
that people had like monkeys and elephants and lions and
tigers in their backyard. That's a pretty that's a that's
a different than most other towns. The side show rides
parked and people's driveways, it's a little different too. And

(04:04):
apparently this town was that way because it was first
settled by um, the the Giant and the half woman
they called themselves, but their names were Alan Genie Tomaini,
which is great Genie Tomaini. It just rolls off the tongue.
Yeah that's great. But they first showed up there in
the thirties, and I guess they just basically said, hey, everybody,

(04:26):
this this place is kind of cool. We're not judged,
we're not treated differently in the town's actually kind of neat.
And eventually the town or the county, Hillsboro County, passed
an ordinance that said you can have things like carnival
rides in your driveway or elephants in your backyard. Um,
be if you are a carnival or circus performer. Yeah,
I think they got the notion that it was a

(04:47):
pretty sleepy little town, and in the nineteen sixties they
had about a hundred actual sideshow performers and about a
thousand carnies that would live there. When you know, it
just became a friendly place for them all to live
and they were all kind of like a big family.
So they congregated there, and I think the town was like,
you know what, these are great residents. They pay their

(05:09):
uh state taxes. Wait a minute, it's Florida, all right,
that's why they're living here. There are no state taxes,
although I don't know if that was the deal back then,
but or has it always been the deal. I don't
even know. I don't know. I know there's no state
income tax, but there's like the property taxes are much higher.
Like they make it up in other ways. For sure,
right they get they get you one away of the
other that elephant taxes really steep. But they realized, hey,

(05:34):
we could use these residents. And they're only here part time,
if you know what I'm saying, So that's kind of
great too. And so they made like you said, these
business ordinances that made it kind of a friendly place
for Carney's. So I say we take a break and
come back and talk a little more about give Town.
Let's do it. What's the famous quote, Chuck, don't don't

(06:18):
try it, Jake, this is GiB Town. That's it. I
don't even think I got the first part, right, No
you didn't, Jake, Jake, stop stop, this is gid Town.
Don't do it. I think it's uh a GiB town.
I'm walking here, that's it. That's from Midnight Cowboy, right,

(06:38):
Midnight Cowboy. Yes, that is Dustin Hoffman. Right, nice work.
So back to GiB Town. This town by, like we said,
by the nineteen sixties was booming with carnival folk. Uh.
They loved living there. It was a kind of a
lovely community for them. And we mentioned earlier that they
sometimes found love. Uh. We we mentioned the tall man

(07:02):
and the short lady who traveled as the world's strangest
married couple. It's actually a very sweet story. Yeah. Like,
he was over eight feet tall, Chuck, and she, not
having any legs, was about two and a half feet tall,
and it am at the knees. Yeah, yeah, I guess so, um,
maybe like mid Shin. Actually who knows it was a knee.

(07:23):
I saw a picture. Okay, where there you go? So um,
the Tomaini's they toured as the world's strangest married couple
and they actually they had kids too, and their their
daughter remembered that they would, you know, leave for the
summer and go make some money and come back to
to Give Town and and run the Fish Camp Giants
Fish Camp, which is one of the places that that

(07:45):
they owned, which was very legendary but apparently isn't there anymore. No,
there's a memorial there. Now. I watched a couple of
short YouTube videos about Give Town, and you know, there
are still remnants of uh and there are still some performers.
About two hundred carnival people still live there, but they're
little remnants of that past world. Every now and then
you'll see some broken down, old rusted rides in like

(08:07):
a vacant lot, or maybe a themed restaurant that's closed down.
So Get Towns about forty five miles from Sara Sota,
which is where the Wringling Brothers Barnman Bailey Circus winters.
So I think it was, and we've talked about Florida
in general, having sort of circus stuff in general. So
I think it all just sort of made sense, right, Um,

(08:30):
and I I don't know why GiB Town. I think
it was just that the Tomainis happened to set up
shop there and found that the people were tallerant and friendly,
and it just kind of spread from there. So it
had the Heyday from I'd say the thirties till maybe
the eighties or so. And um. This article from how
Stuff Works points out that there were side shows in

(08:52):
operation pre Lallapalooza, side shows like the Real Deal um
into the eighties and um, though they really kind of
started to decline by like the thirties and forties. People
were like, this seems exploitive, and people say, well, it
probably is, um, but let's not ask the performers. Let's
just decide for them. But finally, in Americans with Disabilities

(09:16):
Act was past, and all of a sudden, you know,
working in a sideshow is not the only place you
could get a job if you had some sort of um,
what's the word I'm looking for. I don't know, physical malady, abnormality. Maybe, Yeah,
I'm not sure the right way to say that. These days,
I'm not either, But if you were a sideshow performer,

(09:36):
you could now get a job anywhere thanks to the
A D A. That's right, which is great. Um. The
lobster boys, he was known greaty styles. He was known
as the lobster Boy because and here's the deal, and
we talked about this in the Side Show Performer podcast episode,
is that you got into these things because you were
born with a condition almost invariably, and they would view

(10:00):
a name like lobster boy, when in fact you had
a real life condition, which which one was that ectrodactically
right where it appears like you have two fingers only
that sort of looked like claws. It looks a lot
like lobster clause. Actually, yeah, and Justin Bieber's wife actually
has a form of this because she has a pinky
that is um sort of misshapen, and she has just

(10:22):
come out and said, all right, let's look and talk
look at it and talk about it, because here it is.
But he actually was a terrible person, so that he
was murdered. He was an abusive alcoholic. He killed his
first wife and was sentenced to home incarceration because there
was no prison that could care for him. Wait he
killed us? No, I think he killed Yeah that's right.

(10:47):
Yeah yeah, daughter's fiance home incarcerated, quit drinking, got married again,
started drinking again, and allegedly he was either knocked off
by Carney for bucks paid for by current wife or uh,
the neighbor just came over and took care of business
because they knew what a bad guy he was. Yeah,
I think like he he was paid from what I

(11:09):
saw like that that amount of money. I didn't see
any other alternate theories. But he shot him twice in
the head and he died like sitting in his chair. Um. Yeah,
he wasn't a very good guy from what I saw either. No,
so not to you know, not to trash his name,
but you know, but that was like the big scandal
in give Town. For the most part, it was like

(11:30):
a really peaceful, happy place where if you were a
side show performer, like you could go feel at home
and be yourself. And one of the cutest things that
I saw was that another couple that found love. Um
Priscilla the monkey girl who had hypertrichosis, which was um.
She had like a full head of hair, like a
hair do as an infant, and it just kept going

(11:53):
from there. She had a beard. Um, she was like,
just had tons of hair. Um. She married Emit the
alligator skin Man, who had a healthy case of ichthyosis,
which is thick, scaly skin all over your body. And
they were married for so long that they had their
fiftieth wedding anniversary at a local club, the Showman's Club.

(12:14):
They're fact that the cutest thing it is. And I
love the idea of GiB Town that these people came together,
um on the outskirts of society, and now hipsters are
moving there apparently. Yeah, that's the least surprising part of
this entire episode. That's right. One other thing, if you
want to see something very cute, go look up a

(12:34):
baby photo of Priscilla the monkey Girl. She was adorable. Agreed. Um,
Well that's it for short Stuff, everybody. Short Stuff is out.
Stuff you should know is production of iHeart Radios. How
Stuff works. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit
the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen

(12:54):
to your favorite shows.