You're Not Welcome Here, Nik! Upitty Koch Theatre and City Ballet Order Big Apple Circus Posters Off Construction Walls ... A Fearless Wallenda Blasts Back On Eve of Show's Opening ... ...

This is one for the ages.  Remember when the circus came to New York in the spring and the press covered it as tantamount to a holiday?

Remember when crowds stormed the ticket windows at Madison Square Garden to grab the best seats for the greatest Greatest Show on Earth?

Today, it seems that even New York’s own circus can’t get a pass on plastering plywood walls encircling a construction site with posters directing customers to its hard-to-detect box office, and then to its tent, somewhere back there.  Good luck on this shipwrecked midway.

Heartbreaking to listen to the show's new producer Nik Wallenda spill out his heart — a great spokesman for the growing disdain in general that many circus artists are being made to suffer in a land that has gradually been talked out of its love affair with spangled wonders under billowing white tops.

Yesterday, a day before opening, there in a bizarre affront to a tradition once embraced by the millions, was the lonely figure of Wallenda removing his own ballyhoo sheets ---as if the show had already come to town and was leaving. 

The famed wire-walking grandson of Karl Wallenda  told Page Six, apparently a wing of the feisty New York Post, that construction in front of the building was  “completely blocking our box office.”  So he raised the posters in order to direct customers through the makeshift maze. 

Can Wallenda turn this ordeal into a public backlash --  swelling the coffers and filling the seats? So far, media coverage of the shows third reincarnation since fumbling out of bankruptcy has been anything but boffo. In fact, hardly aware at all. Told silence from The New York Times. 

This is potentially one hell of a human interest story, and how it may play out  in the Big Apple could have some effect on America’s nearly brain-dead indifference to true circus.

Said righteously articulate Nik, “We’ve trained our whole lives, and to be treated and beat up for who we are is heartbreaking.  It’s like our art form isn’t worthy — which is obviously offensive. It’s green mesh construction barricades. What are we hurting by having signage, so people know we’re here?”

Show uncorks tonight.

Stay tuned.

Thank you, Don, for the link

I Wrote Some Books ... Do Any of Them Still Sell?

I get sentimental over typing machines that serve me well. On the cusp of a new millennia, I typed out a love letter to my loyal royal portable. I still use it for short notes.

Here you see me getting tear-eyed over my dying (or then I assumed) 2008 Dell Vostro, which I still much prefer typing drafts on.  A few months ago, it was acting very erratic and weak, seeming to wobble and lose focus, so much so that I knew its days were suddenly over, ready to force myself to get a replacement.  But then, Vostro (maybe down with Covid), made a total recovery, back to its old reliable self, and I value it more, turning it on in the mornings when I write,  and then off for a day long break.

My best selling books were born in circus rings. Big Top Boss: John Ringling North and the Circus, moved almost 4,000 copies out of the warehouse. Still in print, it virtually never sells a copy. My latest royalty statement from University of Illinois Press showed Total Taxable Royalties: -6.96.  Does Uncle Sam owe me? 

Behind the Big Top, my very first book, put out by A.S. Barnes in New Jersey,  sold out its first printing of 2.500, and was slated for a return trip to the press when its new west coast publisher, Oak Tree, a house that catered to kids, went under.

Now here comes Broadway Musicals: A Hundred Year History, my third best selling title, of which I am amply proud. (An entire chapter on Stephen Sondheim was reprinted in Gale's annual Drama Criticism.)  After the initial rush of good strong sales, it might sell 10 to 20 copies most years, then something unexpected happened: What I regard as possibly my best written work has rebounded at the registers.  

Now nearly 20 years in print, the book is now selling closer  to a hundred copies a year, and it ain't being given away.  McFarland, who knows how to move books,  lists the paper version for $49.99, the kindle for $19.95.  I have come to believe that when somebody really wants a book, they will pay what they have to to get it.  But, if the interest is low, you can't give it away.  May I be pardoned from mentioning any of my own indie titles that fit this woeful  category? 

I had, yes, past tense, given the self-published world a good try, and  have little inclination to go back.  My first book, Riding Amtrak: The Rise and Fall of American on Rails (under a pseudonym), did remarkably well given totally no media reviews and a ragged bag  of split consumer comments, selling so far around 250 copies.  Not bad for me in Indie.  A few indie titles later, with zero sales humbling me, came another bright exception ...

I have always felt I got super lucky with this marvelous cover design, by Brian Pearce, which in my biased opinion, deserves some kind of an award.  By far the best cover of any of my six books on the spangled subject.  Believing it would be impossible to find a publisher willing to go with a narrative that candidly covered my dealings with various publishers and editors, I did not even try, but decided to self-publish. 

And  I was proved right by the half raving, half damning review in Publishers Weekly, which went ballistic over my gall to be honest.  What bothered me the most was how blatantly PW misrepresented and/or invented what I said with respect to my travails at publishing houses.  However, they did grant that, for much of the way, "circus fans will be thrilled." A red hot quote.

Of course, had a traditional house brought out Big Top Typewriter, it would easily have sold three to four times as many copies, if not more.  But it did sell decently well off the press, and I am cheered to see that rarely a month goes by without a few copies still moving off Amazon shelves   In the indie world for me that is big.

There is one big flaw in Typewriter: The irrelevance of the three-chapter middle section that covers my two books on musical theater -- the one you see above, and Flower Drum Songs: The Story of Two Musicals.  When recently I reread Typewriter, I was so happy about the whole thing that when I got to the Broadway chapters, I jumped them completely to keep the circus parade going.  Were I to do it over again, there would be but one brief chapter about my interval on the stage away from the sawdust.

Almost always, there are things I find that I wish I had done differently. But there is one book of mine that I feel comes as close to a thoroughly unified work as I have ever been able to bring off:  Inside the Changing Circus. 

Sunday Over Light ... Why I love my old Canon -- when it's in the mood ... The Mystsery of Photography Can Surprise

 Walking the streets of Piedmont, gazing at houses and trees sharing space.  Favoring lone objects. Looking up.  Looking down. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 Okay, I'm not being shy about this lucky snap.  I think it deserves some kind of an award. I love you, Canon!

Risky Resurrection for The Greatest Show on Earth: Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus Owners Promise 2023 Return ... Radical Revamping Raises Deflating Questions ...

There were tears in my eyes when I read this  And there were tears in the eyes, too, of a "choked up" Juliette Feld Grossman, seen above, breaking the news to an applauding audience in Seattle that they are "casting for a new version of the Greatest Show on Earth." 

She was seated next to her father, Kenneth Feld, who shared a vision of renewal for the most famous name in the circus world.  They talked of a "reassessment of the operation with an eye toward doing things Feld Entertainment has been doing for decades, only better."

"We looked at our company like a 50-year-old startup," said Kenneth.

Juliette, who looks at the moment to be the heir apparent of the family throne, stressed  the perpetual value of live entertainment before families, of how for decades, many voices had been telling them that virtual reality and artificial intelligence would "replace what we do." 

But there was something conspicuously missing, however, from her following quote:  "There is nothing like going to an arena, theater or stadium and being part of that momentary community, to be swept up in the excitement and the action and the experience of it all."

The word "tent."  In fact, not the theater or the stadium or the arena are central to the still-operating circuses in the UK,  not even to the once, and maybe still, powerhouse on the lot, Cirque du Soleil, which once tried to sell its shows under hard tops and struck out.  They could fill up maybe 3,000 chairs. A whole arena?  Not even close.

But most conspicuously and ominously missing from the headline came through in two words I wanted to push back -- two words that instantly deflated the bright victorious balloon of this announcement:

"The circus is coming ... back.  Feld Entertainment plans an animal free relaunch of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey in 2023." 

And how empty and impotent the occasion felt.

And by the morning after, the tears in my eyes have dried, as I am left wondering if they are not once again charting a major reboot with a built-in fatal flaw.  When four years ago, Kenneth Feld, in a concession to the animal rights movement, removed his elephants from the show, at the same time by not removing the big cage acts, he nullified the action, leaving the door open for PETA to stand firm at the front gates with placards and pamphlets in hand.

And now, "animal-free" feels like a rash sell out to modern culture -- a kind of pandering to the crowds that may or may not still fill up the tents of Cirque du Soleil and of, it would appear, the majority of circuses across the pond.

So, at the moment, to quote an old song, I guess I'll hang my tears out to dry.  One thing feels certain: This should be one heck of a story to follow.  The Felds have millions to spend. They have vast resources at hand to draw from.  Kenneth Feld is one of the smartest showmen who ever lived. But he, too, is human and prone to making wrong decisions, as all the mighty are. The next steps he takes may be the most critical in his career.  Pray he gets this one right.  Innovation will always be a big factor. So too, tradition. 

Thanks to Don Covington tor linking  the news release my way.

Amtrak Sinks to Lowest Point Ever in Customer Service – Denys Coach Class Passengers Access to the Diner ... A Showbiz David On-the-Scene Exclusive ..

    DATELINE AMTRAK, en route on the California Zephyr behind mask — having both shots count for nothing. Yesterday through Colorado, my mask-free windows glowed with the blossoming yellows of fall, train now three and a half hours late on its way to Chicago.  My next train, the cozy Cardinal for family in Culpepper VA (who earlier appeared here in April), leaves 4 hours after this one arrives, when it’s on time, and I fear an overnightmare of boredom in this great big city that feels so alien to me, waiting to get out and back on the  tracks.  My Grade A car attendant, Greg, believes we will make it.  As you can see, we did.

    DAMTRAK’S INFURIATING delays are caused partly by its kowtowing to freight trains barreling through as we wait on side tracks like old-school peasants accepting whatever will be. Now and then, a spectacular vista reminds me of  why I put up with our national railway.  Still, I am not ready to embrace a bullet train that blurs the landscape to nothingness.  Slow does have it advantages, does it not?  Service so far is exemplary.  Much easier these days to dine in your own compartment and not be made to feel like a snob or a difficult loner.

    HAVING SAMPLED on a few previous trips  the “bedroom” suites, I am happily for now, tucked back into the eminently doable economy compartments, where everything can be within arms reach, and where you will avoid the difficult-to maneuver shower and toilet combo.  The solo community restrooms are much easier to navigate and more comfortable.

   FOOD IS A MIXED plastic plate — the salmon divine, the baby potatoes for breakfast hard and clumpy.  Flat Iron was a tad tough The “garden salad,” an insulting joke, more aptly titled Dead Leaves of Wrath, some strands bearing odiously unhealthy colors.  Three or four small grape tomatoes, dry chicken breast pieces can be added. But other items satisfied, if overly rich.

    THE MORE MY sleeper rumbles and jerks about, the better, it seems, I sleep.  Sometimes.  Which makes me wonder if I was lullabied to sleep in a tilt-a-whirl crib.

   SO JOE BIDEN gave Amtrak a whole lot of play money. Then why does the diner, in a shocking and callous move, refuse to serve the coach set?  I ask them.  Covid is why.  Covid is so easy an excuse for any why.  The audacity of denying all coach passengers food in or from the diner, and ordering them to the hell pits of the sodium and sugar dispensary (aka: the lounge car café), is an outrage.

   THE COACH CLASS are doomed to a sentence of deprivation.  I have close up and with horror examined the glossy packages of these dastardly “café” offerings.  The lady at counter asked if she could help me.  I said I was looking for something on the low-sodium side. She said, “I don’t read the labels."  Okay, now my turn to toss around that nauseating word, Equity.  Joe, knock knock: Are you or one of your under-lords reading this?  Where is the equity in dining options on your pampered railroad?  How would you feel, Joe, setting out on a 3-day train trip and learning that your dining choices have been reduced to 7-ll junk food?  I would scream abuser of public health! You’d spend trillions on catastrophic nonsense, and leave stranded the people in coaches?

   WITH LUCK, there will be time between trains to type this out on my maddening Dell that features a wild jumping cursor, which not infrequently runs away from where I am and sneaks into something already typed ... At Union Station in savvy Windy City, there is a great subway style place that puts out the most fabulous sandwich, the  ingredients on a sheet of paper which contains info for this trip, the ONLY thing I forgot to take! ...  Maybe I can get them to pry it out of me with key words. I could use a break from Uncle Sam’s hit and miss menus. I'll wait for my subway-like moment upon my return through, and for now wallow in the thrill of having not been too late on Amtrak, again!  We don't ask much of it these days.

The Yawn of Posting These Days ... The Vile of Anonymous, Alive At Least ... The Gore of Booming Brit Tops, Thrilling the Crowds, At Least ... Le Freak! -- Let's Dance! ...

                    The defining element of true circus? Risk

    LAZY OVER HERE. How can I make much out of not much?  I cover skimpy midways.  I wonder as I wander, how much longer a dry drill? ...  Even five years ago, I had stuff to knock around, laugh at and run with,  blow up or toss out ... Hardly anything left but scraps and peanut shells, even screwed-up documents in e-mail, such as, from Carson & Barnes to me, a print out I can' read that I am suppose to approve for my 'earnings" during 2021, under the name of Wang.  Did I tell you how dead it's getting out there? ... Tenting in the Twilight Zone ... Hugo, what were you thinking?

   BEAR WITH ME, or giggle in front of my back.  I'm scrambling around here, like poking in sticks under the old cedar of Lebanon in my boyhood front yard, looking for something to play around with ... Trying to kill time cobbling together a posty.  It's a drag when what you have to work with is the sad spectacle of the trouping wounded managing to keep their shrinking canvas in the air, smiling to the public and it smiling back, wanting to believe still in circus day. Can you hear the beat of Chic in the background ?... 

   A FEELING OF being stranded in a morgue ...  There was a rare streak of life from our beloved visitor, Anonymous, reveling in the darkness, declaring Big Apple Circus, yet to open, "garbage."  Well, it felt real, at least ... and I ponder about Big Apple Circus Comeback Season 3, to be produced by Nik Wallenda. Why do I already feel uneasy over its prospects? Stay with me here.

   NEW YORK PRESS  & MEDIA not turning even fake somersaults over the news, possibly worn down by resurrection fatigue ... What the Hook This Time? Comeback Producer 1 (the doctor) offered us stodgy, Comeback Producer Number 2-3, sleazy. And what from Nik?  Here's my queasy: Can the 7-high wire walk be really that much a pull, since it was performed in the first comeback, and anyway, as executed under so small a tent on a wire closer to low than to high, the feat may be unable to achieve maximum awe  ..  A trapeze act would be a better draw.   Production Values: Show's creative staff shows a composer and a sound engineer, but no musical director or band leader, which hints of money problems at the outset ... To Manage and Perform: Nik himself will still be walking the wire (his life). thus, his focus on managing (new to him?) may be severely compromised. Lean Line-Up  ... The solo-intense cast leaves me feeling a bit, what --recital-ish? ... Circuses for the most part thrive on the family or the partner(s) factor. Or animal friends.    

    MAKE 'EM SCREAM across the Big Pond!  Can you feel alive? Can you feel a crowd? Gore is the new freak show, and it's knocking 'em dead. Crowds so great at Circus of Horrors, producer's sending out a second tent, relays Douglas McPherson from dare-to-terrify Over There.  This may be good news, kids.  Hear me out: I do believe that the public, whether it knows it or not, is hankering for something far closer to what circuses where (as in sideshow kink and true daredevils) than to another recycled acro-ballet bore.  In other words, CIRCUS.  I saw a You Tube of another edgy UK offering that dares to call itself  "the daredevil circus," Circus eXtreme, giving acts of great skill and dangerous risk-raking.  The gall of it all!  Big crowd in the tent.  Yes, a mass of live bodies, some wearing masks.  While I'm not advocating  a Stephen King bloodbath, I do exult in the kind of authentic circus that can raise the pulse and hit a visceral nerve in the human spirit.  And when I see such a venture drawing a crowd, I can still see a future out there. We are still at least hanging on. God bless our dedicated troupers who endure against all odds ...

   FEW HOURS LATER.  Back at this whatever post, I'm now listening to Chic's 1978 disco hit, I want Your Love, and it feels good. No, no, I'm not going off my rocker, only grabbing a few vibrant bars of some of the best pop music ever composed, for inspiration. Monte Carlo is coming back in January, and that's good, right?  Who was big when Chic was big?  Cliff Vargas was in the early stages of his career, on the mad rise to something really big ... The Felds had Ringling riding high. So many solid American shows out there posting arrows, following arrows onto and off of grass and mud and weed and cracked cement. Crowds lining up to embrace the tattered magic.  The animal hysterics had not yet formed.   Some of the best tunes were composed pushing disco onto dance floors and kept it there for years ... I'd like to hear more of it under a tent ... It was always about the music for me.  And for you?  And where is this going? It's Saturday night, tomorrow is Sunday, and I may post this then ...Or maybe, NOW.  Yes, it's 9:06 pm PST. They want our love. So, let's give it back ...

Big Apple Circus Roars Back, Gunning for Gotham Return Under Nik Wallenda Control ... Solo-Heavy Lineup Awaits Phillip McKinley Direction ... America's Got Talent Alumni Promise Populist Media Eye ...

Once more rising from the ashes of bankruptcy -- a form of endurance it has become adept at outlasting --- the long-beleaguered Big Apple Circus makes yet another comeback. This third time around to uncork at Lincoln Center on November 11.  Pray they make it to Queens next April or May – and I’m going.

Alan Silva's umbrella intrigues me. The silks could use a good prop.

This time out, gone is any mention of Compass Partners, the Sarasota-based angels who bought the circus out of bankruptcy in 2017, and may now be dining on food stamps behind sad faced clown masks.  Gone too is Remarkable Entertainment hired by Compass, which not so remarkably blew its chance at Comeback Season 2.  You may remember a retired spinal surgeon who took on Comeback Season 1.  The media chirped.  Will they replay the chirp for Comeback Season 3?  Their patience may be running low. So far, little evidence of hometown media running with the news

Johnny Rocket.  He makes me laugh already. A runaway Nock?

Enter new lead man Nik Wallenda, whose name alone should guarantee ample New York press coverage.  The nephew of legendary Karl Wallenda is partnering with a conglomerate of entities too fuzzily reported on to make complete sense of.  One is called  “S2BN Entertainment,” another Grand Slam Productions. Remarkable is nowhere in sight.  I’m not wasting any more time trying to untangle this web of murky control, only wondering who really is in charge. For the moment, I’m going with Nik

And just in the nik of time, when Big Apple Circus looked eerily close to a fire sale  Shall we count on three being a charm?  Heck, I’ll even go for four, or more.

Singing swinger Eli Huber, yes she sings, too! And oh, how daring you don't look with your iron mechanic.  Nik: You booked her?  

And what to look forward to? Most impressive to my eyes are at least the first two of these three promising elements, all of which speak well to Nik’s showmanship:

1.  Show to be directed by Phillip William McKinley, a former Ringling knockout stager with a gift, when it is turned on, for brilliantly shaping and pacing circus action.  His Ringling unit at Coney was the best damn circus show I have seen in many seasons.

2.  America’s Got Talent contributes as a valuable tie-in, thanks to the populist exposure it has given to a few of the show's acts.  This gives Nik’s PR department ample human-interest material to push on the media.

3.  The Loner Edition? On paper, a slew of solo artists from around the world — perhaps too many solos —  promise a vibrant spread of intense novelty. Houdini Illusion to tiny dachshunds.   Some have worked on Cirque du Soleil shows, but none tout Monte Carlo medals. Should we be surprised by the lack of Asian faces? I am disappointed but not surprised, given the simmering US-China tensions.  The bios on them are wordy, and two do not even spell out what the artist actually does!  Excuse me?

Classy: Katya Nikiforova

From Cirque land, James, Gonzales: Let's see, at least we see some kind of a prop, and since he toured with Cirque's Kurious (the last good CDS I saw), perhaps he learned to go super abstract.

Golly, have we a duo?  Count them two solos in one! Ethiopia's Yab Brothers.  So, what exactly do they do, bio writers? Yet to be determined?  Risley, maybe.

Okay, so three’s a charm, a good theme for now.  Nik’s forebears tried taking out a circus of their own, and the tents fell in weeks. Has happened to other performers, too.   But ... but, the Ringling Brothers were performers before they turned themselves into circus kings. Paul Binder and Michael Christensen performed before they produced.

Yes, they are not miniatures but real!  And they rocked America's Got Talent.  I saw the You Tube. Pure gold, kids

"We can't wait to reveal the new show that will certainly mix traditional circus and modern updates," said Wallenda to AMNY.

On balance, I see Nik making some very smart moves at the outset. Not sure he can be both star performer and effective CEO. But this I think:  We can rest assured that “character arc” does not count much if at all in his mind.  Pray he keeps the dramaturgs out of his tent.

Simon Cowell -- Closet Circus Fan? -- Pumps Circus Acts to Lure in the Crowds, Dumps 'Em at Finals for His Favorite Singers. America's Got Gall!

Okay, Simon, why are you so afraid of the circus in your own show? Is that why you haven't the guts to give its best moment the honor they deserve?

I am starting to look deeper into the win history of America's Got Talent.  And I am finding what should not be a surprise.  Most of the winners are the singers.  A few are magicians and ventriloquists

Top dog?  Only once did a real circus act bark off with top honors -- an act introduced to Americans in 1989 by Cliff Vargas --- surprise! -- Olate dogs.  You did know about Simon and the dogs?

Runner up? Only once, to an acrobat

Just Another Rigged Reality Show?

To be clear, I only watch parts of these drawn-out episodes.  I have seen so-so circus acts, now and then the occasional star turn.  There were three men this season doing, from a bit I caught, a fantastic balancing act. They brought the judges to their feet, as the judges sometimes do for circus acts.   You might get from Simon rare verbal acclaim -- "The best act of your type we have ever seen here!"  Maybe even "the best I has ever seen  anywhere!"  And how exciting to hear, Simon.  And where from there?  Onto no where.  Pumped and dumped.

Here's my best guess: Simon does not want to risk giving circus the prime attention he gives to the singers, lest he produce the image closer to a vaudeville show than a singing contest, right?

Other night I tuned in and saw three acts standing on the stage -- only one would be named to go to the finals. One of them were a terrific group of ladies on unicycles who turned in a dazzling display.   Would they get through?  Of course, not.  Another singer was plucked to stay the course. Singers ... singers ... singers ... BOOOOORING.

Rigged? Who really knows but Simon and his cronies.  I've read the audience may be mostly what are known in Hollywood as "audience extras," meaning paid shills to fill up the seats. Better yet, to take their reaction cues from scripted signals.  There are plenty of complaints out there alluding to rigged judging, and I have to believe them, simply because I believe Simon will not dare turn his precious little let-me-hear-you-sing showcase into something closer to a Barnum concoction.  Thus, they use 'em for come in, shun 'em at finals.   

I have noted here how lucky we are to at least have America's Got Talent, if only for the continued national exposure it gives to circus arts. Which means that it will continue to infuriate me.

Power. Agility. Perfection. The Face of the Chinese Acrobat, No Longer Welcome?

Whether scampering up and down poles, throwing up audacious human pyramids on rolling bicycles, or diving through stacked  hoops, they win us over.  Breathlessly.  Emphatically.   They are the essence of circus. The dazzling manifestation of its ancient roots giving rise to yet more ground-breaking wonder in the here and the now. But these days, the here and now may be leaving the lot.

It is, of course, a political question, given the rising tensions between the U.S. and China.  Anti-Asian currents rattling pockets of Asian communities into fear and retreat are said to be on the rise.  The tragic irony  here in the Bay Area is that the older Asians being attacked are among the most civil and law-abiding and productive citizens anywhere, their young hoodlum attackers, the very opposite.  The crippled agenda-driven media here in the state of insanity is too timid to clarify. 

But those currents are felt elsewhere, too, and the question becomes: How detrimental will these anti-Asian hostilities be to Asian circus acts?  Hardly an issue, really, considering  the demise of the two shows that could afford to routinely import from China and other Asian capitals: Ringling and Big Apple.

     Nixon’s Gift to the Big Top

When Richard Nixon went to China in 1972, he established a cultural exchange program, which opened the tent to the Shenyang Acrobatic Troupe the following December.  Chicago welcomed them with raving receptions. Dates in Indianapolis, New York and Washing, DC followed.  The ring had been set. 

China’s most profound impact on the American circus scene was produced 14 years later by  Kenneth Feld in 1986, when he ingeniously integrated the various acts of the Shanghai Acrobatic Troupe into the program.  East and West merged in a spectacular three ring smorgasbord0. The public took note.  So did Paul Binder, who checked in two years later with his own The Big Apple Circus Meets The Monkey King. Any good circus producer, and Binder was one of the best,  soon learns that to get your best acts, you must go abroad.

 The British Validation

Over across the pond in the 1990s, Circus owners  Carol and Phillip Gandey were awestruck by a group of Chinese acrobats they saw at one of  Monte Carlo Festivals.  They could envision a rebounding road to robust ticket sales, and thus they smartly established The Great Chinese Circus.  The Brits responded with billfolds wide open.  In the land where circus was invented, how could they not spot the brilliance?  It has been written that for many years in the UK, Gandey’s Chinese unit drew the greatest patronage.

   Sky Bound, Too

Traditionally preoccupied with ground acrobats, in the last 20 years Asian acrobats everywhere have expended their repertoire, onto wires and swings.. One of the best multiple rigging  flying acts I have ever seen were the Shanghai Swingers, with UniverSoul some years back.   You may have seen footage of the North Koreans at Monte Carlo, of the young star flyer who executed five somersaults over a long arc.  YES, maybe not adhering to the traditional flying return set-up specs, but a hell of a trick on its own, and a longer lasting one to enjoy.

 Now A Harder Sell?

Over here, we may be seeing less of the Middle Kingdom, I currently fear.  On America’s Got Talent the other night, which I now and then scroll through, I was stopped by the sight of a group of  acrobats already in progress.  Of course, I was hoping to see Asian faces, for I knew the odds would favor something special.   Close up, the faces were not Asian.  The young men performed an ambitious routine of mediocre content, though a couple of the judges swooned, one of them conceding she loved a certain member's body. Somebody cracked that Simon had given them the buzzer. Simon knew best.

Does this mark the new normal?  I hope not.  Given the absence of Ringling and Big Apple, and worse yet, the ominous rumblings over Taiwan's precarious future (truly frightening), we may not have much of a chance in the years ahead to be thrilled by those fiercely driven wizards of wow-full invention.

But I do believe that American circus goers, who have long understood and appreciated the truly international nature of great circus, will respond as vividly as ever when offered the genius that comes our way from other lands, no matter the politics. 

Above: The mesmerizing Ty Tojo on Big Apple Circus, 2013

Sunday Morning Pics, From Piedmont Hills to Piedmont Avenue ...

Okay, Blogger, so you want these two pictures at the top?  You have a way of shifting things around behind my back.   I did not consciously put  them there! But why not.  I want to go to St.Leo's someday, for more than a brief sit down. I must admit, I love the rich atmosphere of being inside a Catholic chapel -- or is it cathedral? . I remember attending one on Christmas Eve in Glasgow, Scotland, many years ago. 

The border between Piedmont and Oakland, where I live,  crosses through my apartment building, it has been said. Which might mean that I sleep in Oakland and, up the hall, do my laundry in Piedmont.

Sometimes, above and below, with my Canon SD 780 1S, which I took to China in 2010. Sometimes, it seems in the right mood and I love the results. Other times I raise my iPhone SE to the view, forever suspicious that it is pixelating to dazzle me with something closer to a techno seduction than to a  more intimate connection with nature and art.

 

And yet, I can't tell you for sure, picture to picture, which camera took which one. I think my iPhone came in handy for this image, as it did for those along Piedmont Avenue.

We are, above and below, on Cambridge, my favorite street in Piedmont. It is hilly and cozy, winding and filled with a variety of homes, not all that spectacular except for this one, my favorite house in all of Piedmont (of those I have seen).

 

 

 

 

This corner house bears the most lavish new landscaping, it must have been sold. It is for me impossible to photograph, so here I have simply gone for a wide view through the iron gate.

 

If I may say, this is a keeper, which I came upon up above a stream below that winds its way under and along  a series of blocks. It's that little brown shape that makes it for me, whatever it is -- it looks alive.

The impromptu chairs. I love reading here, and often I have the spot all to myself as people and dogs amble by -- my current paper mate, a Hamish Macbeth mystery. You can hear the trickling stream down below.  Nobody knows how the chairs got there, at first there were only three greens. Sometimes they take a break and are gone and I fear they will never return. Happened a week ago, and I assumed they were gone for good. And then they came back!   So now,  to the Piedmont Avenue part of this post.  
 

The Piedmont Grocery went mask-free for two or three daring weeks.  Of course, it  couldn't have lasted.   The un-vaccinated are the problem -- sorry if you are and feel offended.  The two shot protection is so amazingly good (99.9% against hospitalization and death),  that  what really boggles my mind is how many health workers resist it, too. Which only goes to show that those who administer science-based treatment to others do not always accept the same treatment for themselves.. We are innately irrational creatures.  

I wondered who that was in the window. Oh, it was me!

I could cry,  Ninna's was my favorite Thai restaurant on Piedmont Avenue.

And Gaylords, still shuttered.

This was a total shock. Greetings. I thought it was invincible, I have bought so many things there over the years, mostly gifts.  The walls were lined with greeting cards, some blank, from the world over. They always had just the right thing.. So many small business owners got screwed by one of the most shamefully self-serving governors ever to rule the State of Insanity. A smug self-entitled despot who faces a recall.  And may have plenty of time, if he gets the royal boot, to wonder what all went wrong at the French Laundry.   

Goodbye, another our-town Piedmont Avenue luxury.  My last purchase a few days ago was a  colorful little child's book with blank pages, which I will give to my friend Boyi's son, Ethan, come Christmas.  You can see him up there, top right. playing a game of rescuing me (that's how it felt when I hid and made funny sounds and he came after me), during their visit a couple of weeks ago. He is such a cute kid, and now he can say name perfectly -- when he wants to. Oh, the joy a child can bring with just one word.

8.8.21