Are You Garbage? – "Family Vacations Edition" w/ Kevin Ryan & H. Foley

Date: August 18, 2025
Hosts: Kevin Ryan & H. Foley
Theme: A hilarious and brutally honest deep dive into the "garbage" side of family vacations—childhood, adulthood, friends, family, sketchy motels, and spectacular vacation fails.

Episode Overview

In this theme episode, the hosts—Kevin and Foley—take a break from grilling guests and instead turn the lens on their own pasts (and the wild tales of their listeners) to explore what makes a family vacation truly "garbage." From six-hour motel trips gone wrong to fights on the boardwalk, the boys revel in blue-collar vacation traditions, financial struggles, and the unique mayhem only a family getaway can bring. They poke fun at each other's families, commiserate about cheap motels and wild relatives, and read Patreon submissions so trashy they'll make you grateful for your worst vacation memories.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining a “Garbage” Vacation

• Immediate Theme: Vacations are a rare luxury for working-class families, loaded with stress, oddball traditions, and hilarious misadventures.
• Kevin on the scarcity of vacations:
  “We were never a big vacation family... You get handed down the shore to the aunt’s house, the cousin’s house.” (06:38)

2. Family Vacation Destinations & Styles

• Down the Jersey Shore, summer beach houses, the Poconos — never anywhere glamorous or out of season.
• Motels, not hotels—and always with crowded rooms and questionable amenities.
• One-off attempts at being "fancy" (Sandals Jamaica, Disney trips) often derailed by money issues or outside circumstances.
  Memorable quote from Kevin:
  “We checked into a motel, f***ing bedbugs... That’s the only night I’ve ever spent in the Hamptons.” (04:37)

3. Vacation Economics

• Families booking vacations only after payday; living on a shoestring for weeks after.
  Kevin: “I would buy it the second I got my check and then just live broke for the next two and a half weeks.” (05:01)
• The financial tightrope: incidentals at motels, overdrawn cards, friends/relatives footing bills, or offering up charity (21:00–31:00).

4. Listener Stories – The Heart of Garbage

• Patreon Questions: Listeners submit their own tales, ranging from family group trips gone wrong to cringe-worthy group vacations with friends.
  • Dad’s card declines for theme park tickets; sister’s boyfriend bails out the family (29:48).
  • Grandpa takes 22 family members on a cruise with just four rooms, sparking a decade-long family rift (35:08).
  • Road trips that are abandoned mid-route—"By the time we got to DC, my dad bought plane tickets... as far away from each other as possible" (60:00).
  • Visiting mom’s boyfriend’s parents: “Dude, it sucks... there were three kids riding a pig down the street.” (54:41)

5. Fighting, Failing, and Fights on Vacation

• Vacations always risk ending in blowout arguments, especially during forced family togetherness.
• Foley: “Fighting on vacation scars you” (15:28)
• Strategy: "I just go, yo—we’re coming in for three days, two nights. I’m in, I’m out.” (36:51)

6. Friends, Friends’ Families, & Group Trips

• Group vacations with friends rarely pan out, often dissolving into petty resentment or logistical disaster.
• Tales of showing up with no money, no girlfriend, and no plan:
  Foley: “I never had that kind of stuff... if I was in that group, you showed up, no money. No broads, no chicks.” (23:12–23:28)

7. Blue-Collar Details & “Making the Best of It”

• “Pop down the seat in the Taurus and crawl back into the trunk for snacks.” (43:56)
• Tense car rides home, sunburnt—with no AC and no food at home (39:22).
• The impact of divorce and stepfamilies on weird, forced, and sometimes traumatic vacation dynamics (52:00–53:59).

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Check-to-Check Vacation Planning:
  Kevin: “I would buy it the second I got my check and then just live broke for the next two and a half weeks.” (05:01)
• On Family Fights:
  Foley: “Fighting on vacation scars you.” (15:28)
• On Blue-Collar Beach Rentals:
  Kevin: “Anytime we ever rented a house in Wildwood... sometimes the house is split in the middle and there’s someone just on the other side of the wall, you know. So we were a lot of that and you always just compared yourself to the people upstairs or next door. And you just went—at least we’re not them. Or wow, look at them.” (14:47)
• Listener Tales:
  • Listener submission: “Is it garbage if your dad’s credit card gets jammed up at the... hotel, and your sister’s high school boyfriend has to pay to get in?” (29:48)
  • Listener submission: “For my grandparents’ anniversary, they took 22 of us on a cruise and only got four rooms. Long story short, we haven’t spoken to half the family in 10 years since that trip.” (35:08)
  • Listener submission: “By the time we got to DC, my dad bought plane tickets for each of us as far away as possible on the plane.” (60:00)
• On Shared Trauma:
  Foley: “Familiarity breeds contempt, a wise man once said. ...My dad’s buddy, Mac. He’s a teacher.” (37:18)
• On Garbage Group Trips:
  Foley recounting Lake George camping: “Me, Shriner Dufresne, my buddy Dell... we were in a two-person tent for two weeks. ...We stood outside the restaurant starving. ...The couples just went to lunch.” (22:02–22:42)
• On Relatives’ “Exotic” Trips:
  Kevin: “My dad would get, because he would buy so much like PVC from ABC Plumbing or whatever, they would give you customer of the year. We’ll send you on an Apple’s vacation to Portugal... and I would sit there like he was Magellan.” (10:29–10:54)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 04:00 – The worst Hamptons “vacation” stories
• 05:00 – Booking vacations right after payday
• 06:55 – Growing up without winter vacations
• 08:30 – Disney and the bumblebee plane
• 14:45 – Tales of shabby beach rentals and comparing yourself to the neighbors
• 15:28 – “Fighting on vacation scars you"
• 21:00–31:00 – Listener submissions: declining cards, group trips, bachelor party charity cases
• 35:08 – Cruise disaster: 22 people, 4 rooms, 10-year family grudge
• 39:22 – Coming home to an empty house after a failed trip
• 54:41 – Listeners’ tales: "Three kids riding a pig," meeting stepfamily in rural Florida
• 60:00 – Cutting a road trip short, buying plane tickets halfway through

Tone & Language

• Authentic, blue-collar Northeast banter: Roasts fly fast, stories are graphic and self-deprecating, and both hosts embrace their own “garbage” upbringings.
• Playful insults and affectionate ribbing. Both hosts joke about each other's families, struggle, and mishaps with the tone of old friends busting chops.
• Listener participation is integral; their stories of trashy vacations become jumping-off points for the hosts’ own tales and insights.
• Language is irreverent and R-rated (occasional swearing, vulgarity, and adult themes, but never mean-spirited).

Standout Themes

• Vacation as struggle, not escape: Blue-collar working families may crave escape, but budget and dysfunction always follow.
• Planning disparity: “You got to put the deposit down?... I have $400 now, something two months away.” (26:53)
• Financial shame: The recurring motif—being broke on a vacation, depending on friends or others to get by, feeling "less than."
• Comparison and insecurity: Always measuring against neighbors, family, strangers—no one’s really living up to their own expectations.

Closing Thoughts

Kevin and Foley masterfully blend their own nostalgia, listener confessions, and savage wit to demonstrate:
No matter how garbage your family vacations were, someone out there has you beat.
Whether it’s splitting a cruise cabin with six relatives, getting your theme park entry paid by your sister’s boyfriend, or getting left in a rural trailer park with kids riding pigs, these stories unite listeners in the shared experience of hilarious, real, working-class dysfunction.

Foley: “Build your own traumas, build your own memories. We love you. We’ll see you next week.” (62:28)