Dave Barry
speaker
175 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard Feb 2025
Dave Barry’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
You can move to the villages and get a really cool golf cart and drive around drunk.
Everybody here is 19 years old. That's right. They don't even know what newspapers are, Dave. Yeah, I used to have this thing that would happen to me when I was, like, there's fame and then there's newspaper fame, which is kind of like, you know, somewhere below the local TV weather guy, you know? Not everybody's reading the news. But I used to, I'll never forget, like I said, Nordstrom, I think.
I'm in Nordstrom trying to buy socks, I think. And the salesman just turns out to be a huge fan of my column. He's like, oh, God, you're Dave Barry. Like, oh, man. And this random woman is standing nearby. And he's like, do you know who this is? And she goes, no. And he goes, Dave Barry. And she goes, clearly knows. No, OK. And he goes, well, Dave, tell her. I'm really hilarious.
Like, I can't think of anything funny right now. I'm trying to buy some socks. But anyway, that's kind of what it's like. No, no. But that is not the connection between you and the reader. I had a lot of I have wonderful relationship with my readers. I always did. I relied on my readers for a lot of source material.
They would send me, you know, if something would happen like, OK, Miami being Miami. I don't know if you remember this. But I got a call from a reader once saying, I'm on the PeopleMover. For those of you who don't live in Miami, PeopleMover is this train that moves around downtown Miami. It moves people. And he goes, I'm on the PeopleMover, and there's a shark on the PeopleMover. I go, what?
He goes, yeah, and it's not dead, Dave.
So I'm on that story. I mean, I'm on that story right away. You're doing real journalism. That is what I'm born to do, man. That's my kind of journalism. And it turns out there was a shark on the... I don't know if you remember this.
What happened, just to understand. It didn't get on by itself, okay? Let's not give the shark that much credit. But these two homeless guys catch a shark in Biscayne Bay, like a nurse shark, like six feet long. And they decide this is a chance to make some money. They're going to sell it to a restaurant. Now, why they think a restaurant is going to want A shark, I don't know. A live shark.
A live shark. So they don't have a car. They're two homeless guys. But they get on the PeopleMover, which I think was free at the time. And it's not designed for marine life. That's why we call it the PeopleMover. That's correct. But it was rush hour. And there were people on there with this thing. And they go over to the river where there's a bunch of restaurants on the river.
And nobody wants to buy their shark. Predictably. Yeah. Like, who knew? So then they leave it on the streets of Miami. And then the Herald, it was the front page of the Herald the next day. Because people would come to work the next day, and there's a shark in downtown Miami. That's right. At that point, it was dead. They don't go that long. That's right. I mean, they're hardy animals, Dan.
Right, but not that long. Overnight, no. Yes. But there was a quote from a shopkeeper. This is so Miami. It's like... Yeah, when I first saw it, I thought, oh, damn, it's a dead body. And it's always really relieved it was just a shark.
They do. And they all think they know me. And they think that I'm just wild and wacky all the time, which I'm not. But... But yeah, to this day, if somebody will recognize me in Publix, I'm maybe in the supermarket aisle, and they'll try and decide which size granola to get. And they'll say, the people who recognize me will go, you going to write a column about this, Dave?
Well, no, I'm buying granola. But yeah, people do feel they know you. I'm sure it was the same with you when you wrote a comic. Of course, in your case, they thought they knew you and they hated you.
How would anybody get that impression? Yes.
I will not argue with that. I really do think that for this period from like mid-70s through mid-2000s, I had the best job in American journalism. I had the most freedom, I was well compensated, I was in 500 newspapers, and I could do anything I wanted.
If I read that there was gonna be a sommelier of the year competition at the Waldorf Astoria, I could just tell Gene Weingarten, Gene, I gotta go to New York and rent a tuxedo, and go to the Sommelier of the Year competition. And he would never even question.
It's still a lot of money. To take a picture of a garbage barge from the air.
That's right.
Can you imagine what you would have to do today to get the Miami Herald to give you $8,000 to do anything? No, it's not possible. We didn't even ask. We didn't even ask, would it be okay for us to rent a helicopter to take a picture of garbage? We just said, we'll charge this. Do you guys take American Express?
No, I remember when I asked you, because I remember I was hanging around, we were hanging around the Marlins spring training, and we're talking, and I remember asking you, you know, do you want to go to dinner? And you're like, oh, okay, now you're going to ask me inside information. And you're like, you were fine with that.
Showing 81–100 of 175 · page 5 of 9
← Previous
Next →