If you've never driven into or out of a major city late at night while listening to

bad out of hell, then like, you got to do it. Welcome to your rung about. I'm Sarah Marshall and today we are talking about Cleveland's Balloon Fest of 1986 with Harmony Colangelo.

Harmony was last with us for an episode about Tiny Tim and today we are tiptoeing through the tulips again to talk about

what it means when a city tries to jumpstart its renaissance by releasing more balloons

than the human brain can conceive of and perhaps even more importantly

what happens to all those balloons. This is a conversation about balloons, balloon-related folly, but also about what it's like to love and defend

a city, and also to love a city, not in spite of its flaws, but in a way where its flaws and its problems make you love it more because

you want to try and help it be a better place and that is a conversation that's close to my heart as a

Portlander. So in this patchwork country made of

struggling cities, here is a conversation between two girls

from two cities, but boy, are there a lot of other ones and I bet

you will hear one or two things that feel very familiar to you if you have your

own struggling city that you love.

This was a really lovely episode to record with Harmony,

who you can also listen to on this ends at Prom,

the podcast that she co-hosts with her wife, B. J.

Colangelo. It is required listening, especially in the summertime. It's focused on

teenage girl-centric cinema. Need I say more, and I just loved getting to think

out loud with her about what it feels like to belong to a city and for a city to

belong to you and the ways that not your cities but people try to reinvent themselves

and what it means when we stop trying to run away from what we might be afraid we are. If you like these episodes, if you're looking for more, we do have

bonus content on Patreon and Apple Plus subscriptions for you. We just finished our Brittany Spears saga with Eve Lindley which I believe is about six hours long in total so if you have a road trip coming up.

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