Here’s Seven Stars for the USA: That Many Circuses Are Springing Back in Spring with Safe, Doable Fare .... Southern Dates Dominate the Arrows ...

     THEY CAN'T STOP TROUPING, though New England may not know it, not with our seven one ringers favoring dates leaning westward and southward, with Texas, not a surprise, the most valued midway. Culpepper & Merriweather – or waryweather — uncorking in good old reliable Hugo, OK on March 18, then heading down into Longhorn country.  In my unscientific memory, this is the most receptive spot in all of  America for circuses from near and far.

     ALSO HEADED TO TEXAS is Circus Funtastic, coming to us, let’s have fun assuming, from a wing of the Byrd family.  They’re calling this mini sampler  “a superhero adventure.”  Wishing them plenty of super crowds to match the adventure, being sold for a charitable $5 to $15. This just might give the dormant Byrds a more viable hook into how to fly their bigger tents once again.  Add to the Texas guess list, soon to arrive, Circus Venardos, the small time charmer with a breezy mix of circus, magic and various poetic touches.

     OVER MY WAY in the State of Insanity, there is Circus Vargas, the name growing stronger and sturdier by the year, bless its hopeless addiction to the life.  From website photos of the show, I  see a classy spread of refined ground action tinted in hues of Cirque du subtle.  Animal-free all the way.  Okay, yes, I do understand.  “We don’t  have any animals, and haven’t had for about 20 to 25 years,” culture signals one of the company’s own to a media reporter, nibbling around the subject we dare not speak.

     SHOWING OFF YOUR  wokeness is damn near necessary to avoid being run off your own lot by some amateur thug running out of a drug store with legally stolen loot, and pausing to slam the beastly sins that you circus people should still be ashamed of!  No wonder, the Vargas voice, later in the interview, inserted, “We have two rescue dogs” (signal, signal). Okay, who can blame her, considering the open air asylum in which Vargas  gratefully and graciously operates. Seats are going for $28 to $70.  Heck, next time they come my way, I’m gonna go full tilt on my wallet and try the ring-curb view.

     ROYAL HANNEFORD rolling royally down Alabamy way ... While, up in red hot Georgia, the new Big One, (UniverSoul), flexing up its  funky strut and “black owned” creed for a month of soulful jazzing up the sawdust in Duluth, Ga, then settling into a mighty two month stay in Atlanta.   Tickets a friendly $25 to $40 ... But without a live band, I can’t quite call them “the Big One.” Retract that signal.     

     HECK, THERE'S EVEN something for me!  I only need ride an empty BART car to transfer to an empty bus over a bridge to San Rafael, from there to train up on the new  “smart train” (dumb, really)  to Petaluma, once the “egg basket of the year.” Drum roll!   The Zoppe Family Circus will be jumping from Colorado to California, with a first stop in the still old-fashioned egg basket,  August 25 to September 5.  They do get around, and I admire their pluck, first seeded in 1842.  Remember Cucciolo?  

     TWO BIG QUESTION MARKS:   Over at the Big Apple Circus website, this message: “We’ll See You Again Next Season”. Missing are the words “October” and “Lincoln center.” Prominently displayed at top is the word “Wallenda.”   And  I am voiding out here, stuck between Nik’s shredding dream of Gotham glory and a memory of Kenneth Feld talking up the return he keeps talking up.  Maybe by then, there will be mandatory mask implants so that a brave  new faceless world can return to the new abnormal.   It could be worse, or could it?  Keep the exotics in the barn, and tell the clowns to stick one pink nose on their face covering.  Better yet, skip the Golden State like Elon Musk is doing and tent up in Texas.