[Ads-l] WOTY?

[Laurence Horn]

> On Jul 25, 2016, at 11:17 AM, Dave Wilton <dave at WILTON.NET> wrote:
> 
> "Greatest Niche Utility" would seem to be a useful (and fun) category.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of George Thompson
> Sent: Monday, July 25, 2016 10:47 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: [ADS-L] WOTY?
> 
> Is there a category "Likely to be found highly useful by a *very* select few"?
> 
>> From a story on off-the-beaten-path collecting, on the front page of 
>> the
> Arts section of today's NYTimes:
> “It started out innocently enough with a plastic banana in a Ziploc bag on the door of my apartment when I was in college,’’ wrote Scott McCarney of Rochester. “Before I knew it I was publishing a newsletter and collecting bananabilia.”
> 
> But I suppose someone is going to respond that a Google search shows that the word was used by Prime Minister Gladstone in 1873.
> 
> GAT
> 
Research should probably begin (but maybe not during the summer) at the International Banana Museum in Mecca (no, not *that* Mecca):

International Banana Museum, Mecca, CA

“The Banana Museum puts a smile on peoples’ faces every time,” says founder Ken Bannister. Since the early ’70s, he’s gone bananas for the tropical fruit, amassing more than 18,000 items of bananabilia, from a banana-shaped putter to a seven-foot-tall banana popular for photo ops. He sold the world’s largest collection of a single fruit to a new owner in 2010—the equally enthusiastic Fred Garbutt—who serves banana smoothies and dresses in banana-themed clothing at the newly installed nonalcoholic bar within the museum.

http://travelmiamor.blogspot.com/2013/12/bizarre-museums.html

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