Why would anyone want to climb a tall pole, such as a flag pole, and stay there for any length of time? Fame and fortune, of course! It wasn't so easy to go viral 100 years ago, so to grab attention, one had to do something that was worthwhile to watch in order to draw a crowd. Once one guy succeeded at that, many others looked, thought "I can do that!", and tried it out.
We can’t talk about pole-sitting without talking about Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly, the original “influencer” for the roaring twenties craze. The aerial stuntman dubiously claimed to have been a survivor of the Titanic and called himself “the luckiest fool in the world.” He was first dared by a friend in 1924 to sit on a flagpole and succeeded in staying up there for 13 hours and 13 minutes. In an era without television, the odd stunt attracted considerable attention, prompting Kelly to travel around America charging admission for the spectacle, as well as earning endorsements for publicity stunts. He helped inaugurate new hotels and shops; attracted crowds for movie premieres and amusement parks, and once sat on a pole for 22 days at Madison Square Gardens during a dance marathon (another endurance fad) until the last dancers dropped.
It didn’t take long before pole-sitting fever had spread across the country, prompting amateur copycats and professional pole-sitters alike to seek out similar fame and fortune….
As the poles got higher and the record time got lengthier, fewer people wanted to compete, and the fad died out. But it wasn't the first time such a fad took hold. Read about pole-sitting in the 1920s and its origin in ancient times at Messy Nessy Chic.