[Ads-l] WOTY?

[George Thompson]

"International Banana Museum, Mecca, CA"?!?

Have mercy!

GAT


On Mon, Jul 25, 2016 at 11:23 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> > 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
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
George A. Thompson
The Guy Who Still Looks Stuff Up in Books.
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998..

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org