“I could promise it is indeed possible to slip on a banana peel…”

December 9, 2024 1:47 PM

The History of Slipping on Banana Peels is a half hour documentary video essay by Jon Bois about the non-metaphorical act of slipping on a banana peel, as recorded throughout history by American newspapers.
posted by Kattullus (25 comments total)

I spent my entire childhood assuming that slipping on banana peels was a thing that only happened in cartoons, similar to running off a cliff and not falling until one looks down.

In my early twenties I was walking down the street and absentmindedly stepped on a banana peel and I can confirm that they are every bit as slippery as Mario Kart would have you believe.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 2:29 PM on December 9, 2024 [13 favorites]

how to slip on a banana skin in a silent movie. (yt/1:01)
posted by clavdivs at 2:29 PM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

Smokin' Banana Peels is a 3m40s documentary video essay by Rodney Anonymous and Joe Jack Talcum about the non-metaphorical act of smoking banana peels, as recorded by the Dead Milkmen.
posted by eschatfische at 2:31 PM on December 9, 2024 [4 favorites]

Yep. I too have slipped on a banana peel. Managed not to fall but it was a close thing.
posted by supermedusa at 2:44 PM on December 9, 2024 [4 favorites]

Once, years ago, me and a friend walked along a marathon route after the runners were all gone, but before the cleanup started. There was a stand where they apparently were handing out gatorade or something in little paper cups, and the road was plastered with a mat of flattened, sticky cups. About a mile further along someone had apparently been handing out bananas, and there it was, a giant yellow slick of banana peels. Surprisingly non-slippery!
posted by phooky at 3:32 PM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

someone give bois a macarthur already
posted by minervous at 3:39 PM on December 9, 2024 [13 favorites]

Thank you eschatfische

In all my years of diggin that tune, I'd never seen the video. It is everything I'd hoped it would be
posted by ginger.beef at 3:54 PM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

I once slipped on a half tomato and I went down JUST like it was a banana peel. Bruised the hell out of my hip and even hit my head on the floor. Someone who saw it literally said "wow you wiped out just like a cartoon character stepping on a banana peel" but because it was a tomato I'll never get the satisfaction of having executed one of the classic pratfalls. Life is so unfair
posted by potrzebie at 4:26 PM on December 9, 2024 [11 favorites]

I just finished reading Banana by Dan Koeppel, which among many other interesting facts about the history of banana cultivation and trade, mentioned that the previous most common banana type eaten around the world, the Gros Michel, had a slippery, oily skin. It is likely the reason that people slipping on banana peels in movies and cartoons is such a cliche.

Here's a link with some of the same info (in part 2, paragraph 4). The Gros Michel fell out of favor (but is not extinct) due to rampant disease affecting the crop and making widespread cultivation difficult if not impossible. The replacement which most of us are most familiar with now outside of banana growing areas, the Cavendish, does not have such a slippery skin, so the cliché in cartoons has lost its reference, at least in my mind. The cavendish has other disease issues affecting future cultivation, so the decades-long effort to find a disease-resistant, easily shippable, and tasty banana, continues.

I'd recommend the book, but while reading it, I wished it was a little more compellingly written. There's some great anecdotes throughout, though.
posted by msbrauer at 4:29 PM on December 9, 2024 [4 favorites]

We watched this on Sunday, and even though we’re huge Bois fans, we weren’t expecting much.
Surprise! Without spoiling it… just wait for the story of Banana Anna, and one particularly hapless guy in San Francisco. Marvel at how glorious old newspapers were, and how much Bois can do with just news clippings, Google Earth and a bar graph.
posted by martin q blank at 5:07 PM on December 9, 2024 [3 favorites]

honestly if there's one Pretty Good video that makes a case for hopping on the Secret Base patreon to get early access to more stuff like this (December's Pretty Good was also outstanding, being a deep dive into "what if, every time the company he bought his mattress and bedframe from emailed him telling him to buy a mattress… he did?") it's this one

might have to give this a rewatch soon since it was on Patreon months ago
posted by DoctorFedora at 5:49 PM on December 9, 2024

I once slipped on a half tomato

When I was a waiter in my early 40s, I slipped on nothing but a spot of greasy water as I was carrying three - not one, not two, but three - full racks of clean glasses from the dish pit to the front.* Someone told me later they heard the crash from the dining room. I was on my ass faster than my brain could even register I was slipping. Fortunately I got away with nothing worse than a bruised tailbone, that was sore for a week or so. The glasses weren't so lucky...even though I kept a grip on the racks, only a dozen or so of them survived intact.

* The price I paid for being a good do-bee on a hectic weekend night. I was even wearing the right "non-slip" shoes!
posted by Greg_Ace at 6:56 PM on December 9, 2024 [3 favorites]

Oh, the Cavendish slips just fine. I skidded on one that had turned black on the sidewalk, and I remember being incredibly irritated about what a Day it had been, with a gag like that on top of it.

The “oaf” gag made me LOL.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:58 PM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

"the Cavendish slips" would be a great username!
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:10 PM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

The podcast that the SB folks put out for Patreon subscribers is Pretty Good too. I mean, it's pretty good too.
posted by supercres at 7:13 PM on December 9, 2024

I was fortunate enough to witness, in October 2019, an incident on 57th St. in Manhattan as an extremely fashionable lady in towering heels walked from Carnegie Hall towards the F train station at sixth Avenue, and, passing in front of the Morton Williams grocery store where the day’s garbage had been set out on the curb, and a stray banana peel lay in the path of those towering heels, and this lady was sent careening along the sidewalk. She was fine, but it was astonishing.
posted by Jon_Evil at 7:18 PM on December 9, 2024 [5 favorites]

the old former bagboy instincts remain strong for me and I will nudge any piece of produce I see on the ground out of the way, because that's a sure accident. (grapes and cherry tomatoes are the worst)
posted by drewbage1847 at 7:53 PM on December 9, 2024 [2 favorites]

It's not produce, I think, but millet or quinoa are very slippery. They're like little ball bearings.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 8:10 PM on December 9, 2024

Mythbusters did this.
posted by olykate at 8:13 PM on December 9, 2024 [1 favorite]

How often have people smashed through panes of glass two people are carrying across the road, though?
posted by Jon Mitchell at 10:49 PM on December 9, 2024 [7 favorites]

my cabbages!
posted by taquito sunrise at 12:27 AM on December 10, 2024 [6 favorites]

Mod note: [We've fallen! But we were able to get up to add this to the "It Could Happen To You" collection on the sidebar and Best Of blog!]
posted by taz (staff) at 1:23 AM on December 10, 2024 [2 favorites]

I was one walking and passed what looked like a used condom on the sidewalk; immediately thereafter someone going the other way stepped and slipped on it.

What is a condom, if anything, but a "banana peel"?

(yes, eww, gross)
posted by vernondalhart at 9:23 AM on December 10, 2024 [5 favorites]

I'm proud to say that I'm also in the Metafilter banana-peel-slipping club (see you all at the AGM!). In my case, it all happened very slowly but unstoppably. Not like a cartoon at all, but once my foot landed on it I simply could not stop sliding until I was all the way down on the sidewalk, staring at the sky. At each moment I was sure I was about to regain some traction because it wasn't that slippy, but no, I never did, because it was slippy enough.

The worst bit was then arriving at a bar to meet my friends, and not a single one was willing to believe me. They all thought I'd just tripped over the curb.
posted by YoungStencil at 11:46 AM on December 10, 2024 [2 favorites]

I knew someone who slipped on a piece of banana in her own home and broke her knee.

Myself, I was shopping at a mall and found myself sliding down, slamming my knee to the floor. The culprit was a slice of a pickle, dropped from someone's sandwich. Bruised my knee pretty good!!
posted by annieb at 5:38 PM on December 10, 2024