Pull a Brodie

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Peter calling from Eagle River, Alaska.

Welcome to the show. What can we help you with?

It’s actually sort of an Alaska-specific term we have up here.

So in the winter, a lot of the parking lots up here get packed down with snow.

And so, especially when you’re a teenage kid, you like going into the parking lots and spinning around with your car, especially if you had a rear-wheel drive car.

And so up here, we would call it spinning brodies or pulling brodies.

And my friends down in California, when I went to college down there, I mentioned that term in passing.

They thought I was absolutely nuts.

And so since then, I’ve sort of been informally pulling people.

And almost all Alaskans that I’ve spoke with either use that term or at least have heard of it.

And hardly anyone else from anywhere else in the country that I’ve asked has heard that term used.

And so most people call, like, you know, spinning donuts or something like that.

Yeah, doing donuts. That’s what I’ve heard.

That’s really interesting that your friends from California didn’t know the term. Where were you?

I went to college down in the L.A. area.

Okay. I think if you surveyed Californians, and we’ll hear from them, trust me, you will find that Brody is used to refer to donuts that are done with a car.

In California as well. As a matter of fact, it’s a little more common around the country now too, and also in the Northwest, in Washington and Oregon and places like that.

But you want to know what’s even doubly more interesting about this is the history of the term Brody.

It’s completely the other side of the continent. 1886, New York City, a fellow by the name of Steve Brody claims to everyone that he has leapt from the Brooklyn Bridge.

Unfortunately, there don’t seem to be any witnesses, one or two people who vouched for him, but nobody with a lot of credibility.

He was a sensation in the newspapers. It was much discussed. Did he or didn’t he?

Could you do it? Wouldn’t you die if you jumped from that height? Blah, blah, blah.

I mean, this was the big event of the age.

And so to do a Brody came to mean to jump or to fall and eventually came to mean to do any kind of stunt, including something simple like a donut became a Brody.

In an alternate path, Brody continued to have the fall sense, and it showed up in Hollywood to refer to a flop.

Because you would imagine Steve Brody jumping into the East River from the Brooklyn Bridge did some kind of belly flop.

So if a movie tanked in Hollywood, it was called a Brody, or it did a Brody, meaning it flopped or fell.

And so we have these weird paths that all go back to this guy and his claim in 1886 that he jumped from the Brooklyn Bridge.

And that’s how it ended up in Alaska, too.

Peter, what’s the secret of doing a great Brody in Alaska?

The real secret is to have a rear-wheel drive car with pretty bald tires or tires without any studs in them.

But when I was talking to my dad this morning, I was saying how probably kids nowadays don’t do them as much because most cars nowadays are all-wheel drive or front-wheel drive.

A front-wheel drive will work if you’re going backwards, but, you know, you need to get that end to swing out.

Whoa, a backwards Brody?

Can you do one of those, really?

That’s what it’s done.

They work as long as they have a front-wheel drive car.

And do you do the version where you throw on the emergency brake?

Yeah, you can do that, too.

That works best, especially when the lakes get frozen up here, you can drive on them, and especially if they freeze pretty solid before we get much snow.

All right.

Especially if you have a date in the front seat with you, right?

Yeah.

Are the ladies impressed by the Brodies?

Oh, yeah, most definitely.

The right sort of ladies.

Yeah, there we go.

That’s right.

You slam on the brakes and things happen.

Right, yeah.

Thanks so much, buddy.

Really appreciate it.

Well, thanks for having me.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye, Peter.

877-929-9673.