The Balloons That Ate Cleveland (A Cautionary Tales Short)
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Pushkin. So I have some big news for vegans and vegetarians everywhere. It's Hellman's plant-based mayo spread and dressing. Made for people with a plant-based diet or anyone really who wants to enjoy the great taste of Hellman's real without the eggs. Hellman's plant-based is perfect for sandwiches, salads, veggie burgers, or any of your family favorites.

To celebrate, Hellman's is sharing some easy, delicious plant-based recipes at hellmans.com. Hellman's Plant-Based Mayo Spread and Dressing. Same great taste, plant-based.

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Hello, Tim Harford here.

I've been sitting on some great ideas for gripping cautionary tales. They're stories full of exactly the sort of instructive downfalls and disasters that I love. But I've never quite found the right place to tell them during our normal episodes. So I've created five cautionary tales shorts. You're about to hear one of these bite-sized stories right now. But there are four more cautionary tale shorts available exclusively to Pushkin Plus subscribers.

To hear them, subscribe to Pushkin Plus in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm. You'll receive other bonus content and ad-free listening on all Pushkin shows, including Cautionary Tales, Revisionist History, The Happiness Lab, Against the Rules, and many others. Enjoy! Disneyland, the happiest place on Earth, December 5th, 1985.

As a celebration of Walt Disney's birthday and the 30th anniversary of Disneyland's opening, Disney released a world-breaking flock of helium balloons. More than one million soar into the blue California sky, gladdening hearts everywhere. Hold my beer, Disneyland, says Cleveland. A million balloons isn't cool. You know what's cool? Two million balloons.

Nine months later, excitement is building in Public Square in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. Above the square, billowing in a stiff breeze, is a net filled with a mind-boggling mass of helium-filled, multicolored latex balloons. The balloon mass oozes and bulges, eager for sweet release into the gray, overcast Midwestern skies.

I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to Cautionary Tales. When Disneyland had released those balloons, Cleveland had been watching from the shores of chilly Lake Erie. Cleveland had endured a lot. A steel industry in decline, a population that had nearly halved, a river so polluted that it regularly caught fire.

People would sneer that the once proud city of Cleveland was the mistake on the lake. But by the mid-1980s, Cleveland was fighting back, securing tourist attractions such as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And, well, what about a Disneyland-style balloon release? Cleveland's branch of the non-profit United Way is behind the quest to break the Guinness World Record for a mass release of balloons.

The idea is that local kids will collect sponsorship for each balloon. But everyone knows that the record-breaking balloon release is about much more than raising money for good causes. It's about civic pride. Beneath the hovering, gelatinous form of the balloon mass, more than 2,000 young volunteers are inflating, knotting and then releasing each newly buoyant balloon to join the angry swarm lowering overhead.

Many of them wear tape on their fingers in an effort to prevent blisters. But those blisters usually come anyway after the six or seven hundredth balloon of the day. There is no art without suffering. The local TV station is buzzing with excitement. The distinctive Cleveland TV hosts, Chuck Shadowski and John Rinaldi of the Big Chuck and Little John show are there on the scenes interviewing the organisers, the children and the excited crowd.

Mary Ellen is one of them. She's an elderly lady in a two-tone, stripy blue dress. She'd brought two bunches of green and pink helium balloons to donate to the effort, but attached one of those bunches to her watch strap. The strap came loose, and the balloons stole her watch away into the sky.

TV host Big Chuck, from behind the finest tinted aviator shades that 1986 can offer, sympathises with Mary Ellen. If anybody finds Mary Ellen's watch tied to a bunch of balloons like this, announces Big Chuck live on air, if you return it to the station, we'll have all kinds of rewards for you. All kinds of rewards. And there we see the whole Cleveland Balloon Fest in miniature.

A well-meaning gesture, a bit of bad luck, a rather predictable mishap, and extremely vague promises of good things to come. Cleveland, it's your time, says Treb Heining to the TV cameras. It's time to say yes.

Treb is indisputably the best balloon guy on the planet. He's sitting under the growing balloon cloud on Cleveland's public square, looking sharp in a flat white cap, blue blazer and red tie. Treb has the fastest balloon hands in the world. Armed with a helium hose, he can inflate and tie a thousand balloons an hour. He's from California. He worked on the Disneyland balloon release.

Now he's in charge of Cleveland's attempt to break the record. As he speaks to the camera crews, balloon after balloon rises in the background to join its roiling siblings above. Trebb has definitely read the memo about Cleveland's civic pride. It's time to say it's a happening city. We're on the move. It's no longer the butt of jokes.

In his months working on the project, Treb Heining seems to have picked up a certain energy from his colleagues. An inflated inferiority complex. And Treb and his two million balloons, well, they're going to help. Those balloons will bring, as Big Chuck might say, all kinds of rewards.

I've been in this city for six months and I absolutely love it, Treb continues. My wife and I have even talked of moving here and our friends in LA think we're nuts. Er, Treb, maybe stop now. But it is a wonderful place. If I had money to invest, this is where I'd be invested. Treb's team have built a formidable temporary structure with a one-piece net.

Every newspaper report notes that this net was made by the guys who also made cargo nets for the space shuttle. It's designed to withstand a 60 mile per hour wind, but September weather in Cleveland isn't as predictable as the weather at Disneyland. The night before the big release, a sudden storm blew in out on the lake. The waves swelled alarmingly.

Small boats hurried to get to shore. It was frightening. One boat didn't return. And the Coast Guard headed out to try to find two missing fishermen. Even in the safety of the city, the storm was gusting at 90 miles an hour as it hit Public Square, where the balloons were being stored. It was like a mini-tornado, recalled one of the team. Things like chairs were physically picked up and spun in circles.

Yet, when the morning comes, the net is mostly intact. There are a few rips, a few balloons might have bled out, but nothing that will jeopardise the big day. But the balloon release team are worried that a second storm is forecast to hit. With the weather closing in, the organisers decide to stop filling the net. There aren't two million balloons in there yet, but there are plenty. Definitely more than Disneyland.

The balloon release begins with a mass countdown. Are you watching, Mickey Mouse? Then, with cheers and whistles and screams of triumph, the net is withdrawn and the balloons, every colour of the rainbow, rise into the air. But at a distance...

The colours merge to form a rusty cloud that roils around the city's iconic terminal tower. It's not a beautiful sight. It looks like blood released into water. It's unsettling. It was overwhelming. Balloons start, like, boiling in the air, recalled a local reporter. You thought, wow, we're going to drown in these balloons.

But TV presenter Little John Rinaldi isn't going to let the bilious storm cloud of balloons detract from the excitement. Ladies and gentlemen, there is no mistake on the... He bellows. ...the Guinness Book of World Records and released over 1,000 balloons. Think of that, Chuck. The Guinness Book of World Records. Cleveland. Poe. Robin Wall. Hall of Fame. All of this in Cleveland, Ohio.

All this in Cleveland, indeed. Cleveland has had its big build-up. The balloons are free. And now what? A few years ago, three psychologists, Jeff Gallack, Julian Givy and Eleanor Williams, examined the question of why so many Christmas or birthday gifts are a bit disappointing.

The researchers argued that while there were many ways in which a gift might fall flat, there was a single, simple error behind them all. When people bought gifts, they thought about the moment at which the gift would be unwrapped. The surprise, the delight, perhaps a grateful hug. All too often, they didn't think beyond that. This explains why people give silly joke gifts.

It explains why they give stuff rather than experiences. It's hard to gift wrap an experience. And I think it also explains why the Cleveland Balloon Fest happened. The idea of releasing so many balloons, of breaking the record, the sheer spectacle of the moment, it seemed so exciting.

It's only after the balloons have been released and the net droops flaccidly to the ground that you start to ask questions like where are those balloons going to go? Are people actually going to start moving back to Cleveland because of a balloon record? And don't we love Disneyland because we love the characters and the scenery and the rides rather than because it released a million balloons?

The wind and rain hit not long after the balloon release, and the balloons started dropping out of the sky as rapidly as they'd risen. There were reports of a few minor traffic accidents, and the local airport had to shut down a runway for a while. In a nearby farm, thoroughbred horses injured themselves after being spooked by the balloons. But the most obvious problem was the mess. Cleveland was now covered in shreds of latex.

As for those cruel jibes about the mistake on the lake, they were becoming uncomfortably accurate because gazing out over Lake Erie from Cleveland, the water was covered in balloons. The morning of the big release, the Coast Guard found the boat of the two missing fishermen. But the men themselves? The search became impossible.

Rescue teams were out on boats, scanning the water, looking for a bright orange life jacket or a head bobbing in the waves amid a couple of hundred thousand balloons. Eventually, the search was abandoned. The bodies of the missing fishermen washed ashore a few days later.

They were probably dead before the balloons were released. But the widow of one of the men sued United Way for over $3 million. The case was settled out of court. So too was a case brought by the woman who owned those terrified prize horses. By then, of course, the surviving balloons had long since blown to Canada.

Latex takes a while to biodegrade, while helium is a scarce and non-renewable resource. The whole thing seems like environmental negligence at best.

But Treb Heining, the balloon mastermind, was infuriated by the idea that we should worry about a little latex. I've been in the balloon industry for years, trying to spread joy and happiness, he complained to the Chicago Tribune. Are you going to eliminate everything on the face of the earth that creates happiness? If you eat enough apple pie, you can die. And what about fireworks? Are you going to ban them because they put a few chemicals in the air? It's very unfair to make this a litter issue.

The balloon fest was not a resounding success. Amidst all the headaches, United Way lost money. A representative said, we would not do a balloon launch ever again. And what about that record?

A delightful short documentary, Balloonfest, by filmmaker Nathan Truesdell, ends by noting that the event was not recognised by the Guinness Book of Records. Local newspapers tell the same story, that it was never an official record. But then, someone found the small print in an old edition of the Guinness Book of Records.

Page 290 says, The largest ever mass balloon release was one of 1,429,643, sponsored by United Way at Public Square in Cleveland, Ohio on September 27th, 1986. So there you go. It was wrong to say the record wasn't recognised as a Guinness World Record.

More accurate is to say that while Cleveland did break the record, the whole thing was so obscure that people thought it hadn't. And people still take their vacations in Disneyland rather than Cleveland. In 2011, 25 years after the original release, balloon master Treb Heining told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that the record still stood. Of course it did.

As the plane dealer noted, after the trouble the balloon launch caused, no one around here would ever try a stunt like that again. It's good to dream big. But whether we're picking out a holiday present or planning to release two million balloons, we should imagine not just the moment of climax, but what happens afterwards and whether it's really likely to play out as we hope.

As for Mary Ellen's missing watch, stolen away by a rogue bunch of balloons, your guess is as good as mine. Nathan Truesdell's documentary is Balloon Fest. It's available to watch for free online. For a full list of our sources, please see the show notes at timharford.com.

Cautionary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford, with Andrew Wright. It's produced by Ryan Dilley, with support from Courtney Guarino and Emily Vaughan. The sound design and original music is the work of Pascal Wise. Julia Barton edited the scripts. It features the voice talents of Ben Crow, Melanie Gutteridge, Stella Harford and Rufus Wright.

The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Mia LaBelle, Jacob Weisberg, Heather Fane, John Schnarz, Carly Migliori, Eric Sandler, Royston Besserve, Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morano, Daniela Lacan and Maya Koenig. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate and review. MUSIC

I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and I'd like to take a moment to talk about an amazing new podcast I'm hosting called Medal of Honor. It's a moving podcast series celebrating the untold stories of those who protect our country. And it's brought to you by LifeLock, the leader in identity theft protection. Your personal info is in a lot of places that can accidentally expose you to identity theft.

and not everyone who handles your personal info is as careful as you. LifeLock makes it easy to take control of your identity and will work to fix identity theft if it happens. Join the millions of Americans who trust LifeLock. Visit LifeLock.com slash metal today to save up to 40% off your first year.

So I have some big news for vegans and vegetarians everywhere. It's Hellman's plant-based mayo spread and dressing. Made for people with a plant-based diet or anyone really who wants to enjoy the great taste of Hellman's real without the eggs. Hellman's plant-based is perfect for sandwiches, salads, veggie burgers, or any of your family favorites.

To celebrate, Hellman's is sharing some easy, delicious plant-based recipes at hellmans.com. Hellman's Plant-Based Mayo Spread and Dressing. Same great taste, plant-based.

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