Cocaine Bear: Appalachia's Ursine Powerhouse
In this edition of No Elegy Needed, we talk about the legendary Cocaine Bear on the heels of the film release.
Note: for the next No Elegy Needed update, I’m planning to write about the “red state/blue state divide” and why its a false dichotomy. Send an email to Chuck@appodlachia.com to let me know your thoughts before next week!
The Bruin of Blow who did too much snow
Cocaine Bear gets the big screen treatment, but what is the story?
Surely your social media feeds have been absolutely flush with ads promoting the ridiculous “Cocaine Bear” movie, directly by the absurdly talented Elizabeth Banks. But did you know that Cocaine Bear is Appalachian?
Buckle the fuck up, y’all.
But first, we have to plug this week’s episode, so find the links below (it contains the hilarious reviews of cocaine bear, plus an interview with Justin Kanew, founder of the TN Holler)
The Ballad of Pablo Escobear
Cocaine Bear was a 175lb. American Black Bear hailing from the Chattahoochee National Forest in North Georgia who managed to chomp through roughly 35 pounds of cocaine
On September 11, 1985, former Lexington, Kentucky police officer-turned drug smuggler, Andrew Thornton was trafficking cocaine from Columbia and stopped in where else but Blairsville, GA to drop off a shipment. While flying off, he dropped 40 plastic containers of cocaine into the wilderness before abandoning the plane above Knoxville (Go Vols). Thornton was killed instantly when his parachute failed to open.
Those containers had roughly 75 pounds of cocaine (or as Madison Cawthorn would say, 34 keys) worth I think about $12 million in today’s dollars.
On December 23, the Georgia. officials found a dead black bear that had eaten a metric fuckton of cocaine. Medical examiners said the bear’s stomach was “literally packed to the brim with cocaine.”
Come see us at the ASA Conference!
March 16-19 at Ohio University in Athens, OH
We will have a booth at the Appalachian Studies Association conference later this month, so if you’ll be attending (or you find yourself near Athens, OH) you should come say hi! We will have merch too ;)
We’re putting more video on Youtube!
We’ve recently got back into posting video of the show on Youtube and we’d love for you to subscribe to our channel and check out our wonderful faces if you would be so kind!