BILL KURTIS, BYLINE: From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME, the NPR News quiz. I'm Bill Kurtis. We're playing this week with Adam Felber, Bobcat Goldthwait and Faith Salie. And here again is your host at the Durham Performing Arts Center in Durham, N.C., Peter Sagal.
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PETER SAGAL, HOST:
Thank you, Bill. Right now, it's time for the WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME Bluff the Listener game. Call 1-888-WAIT-WAIT to play our game on the air. Hi, you're on WAIT WAIT ...DON'T TELL ME.
CARLY RUBIN: Hi, this is Carly calling from Portland, Ore.
SAGAL: Oh, Portland, Ore., one of my favorite places there is.
RUBIN: Yeah, it's pretty awesome.
SAGAL: What do you do there?
RUBIN: I'm a yoga instructor.
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SAGAL: You know what's interesting? As soon as you joined us I wrote down three things - yoga instructor, potter and spiritual medium. So I got one of them. That's great...
RUBIN: (Laughter). Well, my mom is a potter, so...
SAGAL: Hey.
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BOBCAT GOLDTHWAIT: Does Portland have any yoga students or is it just you instructors get together?
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SAGAL: You just go into each other's classes to keep each other employed.
RUBIN: Pretty much. You got it figured out.
SAGAL: Carly, it's nice to have you with us. You're going to play the game in which you must try to tell truth from fiction. Bill, what is Carly's topic?
KURTIS: Stay back you yuppies.
SAGAL: You all know about the bourgeoisie gentrifying the neighborhood. You know, the bad neighborhood, the yuppies move in, then it's even worse. This week we read about a creative way some people are fighting the hipster invasion. Guess the real story and you will win Carl Kasell's voice on your voicemail. Ready to play?
RUBIN: I can't wait.
SAGAL: First let's hear from Faith Salie.
FAITH SALIE: Appalachian Point Early Learning School in Belick Knob, W.Va., home of the busy honeybees, has been attracting a swarm of yuppie parents. It all began with one new teacher, Lisa Dozier, fresh off her Masters from Oberlin in child development, who, with her eager multi-lingual and empathetic ways, turned this mountain school into a destination for upwardly mobile parents seeking whole-child learning.
Yuppie families started migrating to the district, not caring that their commutes to D.C. and Alexandria would take two hours each way. Classes became overcrowded. Immediately there were 47 students named Mason and Olivia.
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SALIE: Blessed with an unusual amount of autonomy from the state to decide curriculum, the native Belick parents buzzed into action to sting this influx. Starting next fall, the Yuppie Child Left Behind program calls for nuts only snacks, no Lululemon pants at drop off, full milk-milk, not almond or hemp, infused with high fructose corn syrup, praising achievement, not effort and hitting with Chinese BPA-filled toys instead of using our words.
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SAGAL: The Appalachian Point School in Belick, W.Va. trying to keep the bougies from invading. Your next story of someone taking a stand against gentrification comes from Adam Felber.
ADAM FELBER: Need a new luxury apartment near Prospect Park in Brooklyn? How about one built into a former Children's Hospital that includes great views, a gaming lounge and a fitness center? OK. And what if we threw in the wandering howling ghosts of the hospital's dead doomed to wander your hallways and torment for all eternity? Now how much would you pay? Does this sound like a hoax? Yep.
Apparently nearby residents of the former Caledonia Hospital worried that yuppies would raise everyone's cost-of-living. Instead of asking themselves what would Jesus do, asked themselves what would Scooby Doo?
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FELBER: And so they began floating rumors to prospective buyers that at least three of the one, two, three On The Park's doorman have quit in the past six months, citing, quote, "eerie sounds, visions and even smells." However, according to the building's management, there have been no personnel problems and the haunting is just the work of curmudgeonly neighbors trying to scare off the specter of gentrification. And they would've gotten away with it too if not for those meddling market forces.
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SAGAL: Neighbors of an apartment building in Brooklyn trying to keep the hipsters away by spreading rumors of haunting. Your last story of people trying to save the neighborhood comes from Bobcat Goldthwait.
GOLDTHWAIT: Eleanor Coin of Royal Oak, Mich., had all her legal ducks in a row with city officials to turn her turn-of-the-century Victorian home into a bed and breakfast that would cater to upscale business professionals. That was until her neighbor, Walter Spencer, got wind of her plans. Spencer, a retired biker who was recovering from a motorcycle accident tried to put the kibosh on Coin's dream. Spencer said that's how it starts with these urban professionals. You let one in, the next thing you know, you're up to your neck in chi lattes.
Spencer took matters into his hands by reaching out to local Juggalo chapter.
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GOLDTHWAIT: Juggalos are fans of the group Insane Clown Posse. Juggalos dress like the band, wear scary clown makeup and are infamous for their rowdy behavior. In an effort to make Coin's home a non-desirable retreat for exhausted yuppies, Spencer leased his backyard to the Juggalos to throw gatherings. But the plan backfired on Spencer, who had to call the police to have the Juggalos removed from his property. Spencer says he had had enough. Look, I can tolerate fighting, nudity, vomiting, clowns as much as the next guy, but that music is just horrible.
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SAGAL: All right. One of these was the plot to keep the better element from coming and ruining how good things are. Was it from Faith Salie, how the residents of Belick, W.Va., tried to change their school's policies to keep those rich people from Washington to come in and sending their kids to their school? From Adam Felber, how neighbors of an apartment house in Brooklyn spread rumors of its haunting to keep the rich guys from moving in. Or from Bobcat Goldthwait, how a man tried to prevent the opening of a bed and breakfast next door by having a gathering of the Juggalos in his own adjacent backyard. Which of these is the real story of an attempt to ruin somebody's attempt to de-ruin a neighborhood?
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RUBIN: Oh my God, this is a hard one. I think I have to go with Adam's story.
SAGAL: OK.
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SAGAL: All right. Well, to bring you the real story, we spoke to a reporter who covered this attempt.
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JESSICA ROY: Neighbors were actually making up the rumors about ghosts. And as someone who lives in Brooklyn, I'm for anything that will keep our rent from going up.
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SAGAL: That was Jessica Roy. She is a Brooklynite and a senior writer for newyorkmagazine.com, talking, of course, about the attempt to prove to neighbors or convince neighbors that the former hospital was haunted. You got it right, Carly. Congratulations.
RUBIN: Yay.
SAGAL: You earned a point for Adam and you've won our prize...
FELBER: Thank you.
SAGAL: ...Carl Kasell will record the greeting on your voicemail. Well done, Carly.
RUBIN: Thank you.
SAGAL: You thank you so much.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD")
GRETCHEN WILSON: (Singing) There goes the neighborhood, trashing it up just like you knew we would. You throw a hillbilly log into the Hollywood... Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.