Coney Island Final Days

Check out this cool video homage to Coney Island on Rocket Boom.

Burlesque Dancers and Sideshow Freaks by Brian Childs

*Dear reader, this is a first person experiment I did for class. Bear with me, I was reading a lot of Dashiell Hammett while reading this- BC

It’s the first night of the Brooklyn Burlesque Blitz in Park Slope and I’m neck deep in filthy/filthy-rich hipsters, I’m drinking one too many Circus Boy Beers by Magic Hat because it just feels right.

Onstage, the World Famous Bob (a woman) is wearing nothing but pasties and a smile. Her vagina is pierced which makes it look like it’s full of stars, or maybe I’m just primed because she’s stripping to “2001: A Space Odyssey.” I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to show your vagina in public in this city, but Bob’s stripping in tribute to some burlesque dancer who just died, and who’s going to turn her in anyway? Not the hipsters. Bob’s a lot of woman and looks like she could take out at least five or six hipster males if there was a ruckus.

My girlfriend’s tipsy and annoyed, she has a headache and I feel for the kid, but I can’t leave till I’ve interviewed Jonny Porkpie the mayor of New York City burlesque.

This is not fiction.

It may seem silly but these dancers and freaks (literally, sideshow freaks) are about to play a pivotal role in a $2 billion development deal and as far as I know I’m the only one with the story.

My interviews over the phone have all gone well, digressing into freak show gossip and gab. My interviews in person, in general, have not gone as well. I’m a square. I have a buzz cut and no visible tattoos. I’m wearing a skinny pink tie and a blue jean jacket; I look like a boy scout. I am a boy scout. The bar is packed and people are not hesitating to step on my shoes.

Where the hell is Jonny Porkpie?

Suddenly, he’s onstage dressed as Jesus, stripping to the tune of “I believe in miracles (you sexy thing).” Great. This is absurd. I look around for someone else to interview and see a now all too familiar character bobbing through the crowd. I cleared my throat and steel myself, “Excuse me, Ms. Bob, may I ask you a few questions.” She walks past me without hearing or perhaps she's ignoring and I’m too tired or too cowardly to chase after her.

-------

School. Home. Coney Island and back again; I’m living my life on the train. The hobos who frequent the D and N have become familiar faces.

That first, relatively innocuous, uncomfortable evening has led me from one person to the next into the belly of the beast.

“You should really talk to Bambi the Mermaid,” Jonny Porkpie told me.

“Have you met Bunny Love?” Bambi asks, “What about Dick Zigun?”

I interview the Lizardman, Insectevora, and Dick Zigun,“the Mayor of Coney Island.”

My stutter calms itself; my posture becomes more confident. I find myself bonding with Dirty Martini, Miss Erotic World 2004 over the phone. I’m having a drink with Captain Bob.

People with face tattoos I was scared of when I first arrived, greet me when I walk through the door. It’s six o’clock on a Sunday night and I’m soaking wet and shaking hands with a bearded lady.

Growing up I loved comic books, Spider Man and such. Now I find myself inside one. I haven’t fallen down the rabbit hole so much as boarded the southbound express train. I have escaped into an alternate reality and I’m writing the non-fiction equivalent to a fantasy novel.

I’ve been taught how to eat fire, received pointers on eating glass. The key to eating glass, by the way, is to not do it. It turns out it can kill you. Who knew? But then again, who knew eating fire was relatively safe?

By following the thread, I feel like I’ve uncovered enough stories for a life time. The sideshow leads to antique monkey-organ collectors and juggling conventions. I have more stories than I can write up, and I can’t wait till summer when school is out of my way.

I’m introduced by a friend to Red Stuart, who holds a world record for swallowing 26 swords. He has four teeth. I step forward and shake his hand, look him in the eye.

“Hi, I’m Brian Childs, I’m a reporter. Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?”

To read more Adventures in Journalism by my classmates, click here.

Baptism by Fire

Tonight I ate fire and walked on broken glass. These are not a metaphors, I'm just describing my first night of Sideshow School.
The class is composed of twelve wide-eyed, bushy-tailed students, four men, eight women, the largest class yet. The reasons for joining the class were varied, some students were performers or stuntmen who signed up for professional training. The majority of the class, however, just wanted to take up a dangerous hobby.
Students came from Pennsylvania, Long Island, and even West Virginia, and there was a near spontaneous comradery.
If you're into swallowing swords and hammering nails up your nose, you're alright with me.

Staar is reborn in Coney

Lola Staar's got her shop back. Read more here.

Save Coney Island Protest at City Hall

See Coney Island Reporter video footage here.

This Sunday, April 22, Coney Island Love Letter Blues Bash

A Photo Essay Of Sideshow School: Advanced Seminar

Please, please, please, do not try this at home. These tricks were being taught by professionals with roughly 120 years of experience between them.

Chris McDaniel teaches roping and whipping above.

Todd Robbins refines a student's fire-eating technique.

Sword-swallowing with legend, Red Stuart.

Will Hunter, a magician from Providence, RI, adds escaping chains to his repertoire.

Harley Newman, professional lunatic, teaches students how to escape a strait-jacket.
Knife-throwing with the Great Throwdini, world record holder.

Freak Show Hall of Fame & Congress of Curious People

This past Friday at Coney Island, "born freaks," sideshow performers and aficionados gathered at the Coney Island Museum to honor the most important members of their bizarre profession in a Freak Show Hall of Fame and Kick off Coney Island's First Annual Congress of Curious People, a ten-day international sideshow event.

Mat Fraser the Seal Boy, a British Performer with phocomelia, a birth deformity resulting in shortened arms, inducted Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man. Fraser explained that Merrick's life had been misrepresented by Hollywood and that Merrick himself wanted to be a performer and considered his sideshow days to be the best of his life. "As I am in a way representing the disabled of the group," Fraser said, "It gives me an enormous amount of pride to be able to say on behalf of Joseph Merrick, probably the world's most famously deformed man, that I do with great gratitude, humility and consideration accept Joseph Merrick into the Freak Show Hall of Fame."

Also inducted was Melvin Burkhardt, a magician and anatomical wonderboy, who worked for over 60 years developing and popularizing many of the sideshow's most famous acts. Burkhardt was inducted by his friend, Todd Robbins the Sideshow Professor. "Everyone who hammers a nail in his nose owes a great deal of debt to Melvin Burkhardt," Robbins said.

The evening was followed by Superfreak Weekend, two days of performances by "born freaks," performers born with visible physical-conditions who traditionally make up the top tier of sideshow society. "You are not allowed on this stage unless you are a born freak of nature," Dick Zigun assured the crowd. Performers included Mat Fraser the Seal Boy, Jennifer Miller a "Bearded Woman," Koko the Killer Clown, a dwarf comedian, and Ravi the Indian Rubber Boy. The performances were given with a tongue-in-cheek awareness of political correctness and Post Modernism.

Unfortunately due to the storm, the Sunday performance was almost non-existent, but when a few members of John Q. Public did show up, including a family that drove down from Vermont, they got the show of a lifetime. Professors from the sideshow school, Todd Robbins, Harley Newman, Chris McDaniel, and Red Stuart, a whose-who of sideshow performers, came on stage to perform an appreciative crowd of sideshow students and die-hards.

The festival will continue all this week with different performances each day, knife-throwing, fire-breathing, burlesque dancing and such, culminating on Friday in an open call event to set or break world records, judged by talent scout from Ripley's Believe It Or Not.

Interview with Ari Roussimoff, Director of Freaks Uncensored

In celebration of Coney Island's 1st annual Congress of Curious People, I thought I would delve a little bit into the history of sideshow freaks and the cult of interest that still survives. Ari Roussimoff, the director of Freaks Uncensored, is one of the world's foremost historians of the sideshow. He is also one of the few aficionados doing original research. Mr. Roussimoff was kind enough to speak to me a length on his research, how the sideshow affected our culture and the lingering effect of freaks in his paintings.

What initially interested you in the history of sideshow freaks? The funny thing is, it is very hard to pinpoint an exact moment. I was always fascinated by all things visual. I was a very visual child and I was always attracted to anything that was authentic, different, uncommon. Images of sideshows came through my life and by the 1970's, I was around 18 or 19, I had already become very involved with collecting photographs and books. I interviewed some people who were still around at the time and I got a bit of background. It was surreal, you see, better than any artist could create and that always inspired me. It's symbolic of other things, some of it conscious and some of it very subconscious.

In what way is it surreal?

God is a great surrealist. In the true creativity in which man is created, there is no book.

Whether you are a believer in god or or a believer in nature, nature and god has it's own whims and it creates the most original type of artwork in humanity which no painter could come close to envisioning. Most people assume a human being has two arms, two legs, a certain height, a certain weight, but there are other, fully functioning human beings, no less in spirit than any other man, and it shows you that god will work whatever way god will work. So there is no conformity, not in the creation of mankind.

Could you tell me about your research process for Freaks Uncensored?

This is a very difficult process because we have a legacy of misinformation. It is like professional wrestling. They have a certain name, they assume a certain personality. Of course, because it is contemporary time we know they are playing roles. However, in the olden days, in the world of side shows, people assumed different identities and it wasn't uncommon to find someone billed at another show under a different name, therefore a lot of the factual information has been lost. And I've read accounts by people who claim to be experts that were totally false. A lot of people went to the traditional show sources, the museums and books, and didn't go beyond that. Very few people go beyond that, so there are books out there by well meaning, and pretty good researchers, who do not have the right information. We went all across the globe looking for information, looking at government records, and oftentimes we would find that the people we were researching went by an entirely different name.

It seemed to me in your documentary there was an underlying message of handicap-ability. Was that intentional or was that something that a theme that emerged?

It is something that's certainly true. For example, Jeaniei Tomaini, the half-lady who appeared in our film, was an extremely capable woman. We asked her, did she consider herself handicapped? And no, she really did not. She had a full life. She was married, she managed a restaurant. The armless Carl Unthan, if you see him in action, you forget the man has no arms! Of course people overcome physical problems they are born with. How many people paint with their toes? A lot of them are better than people who paint with their arms.

Do you think there is a place for "born freak" performers in the American sideshow today?

As Jeanie Tomaini said, if people want to perform this way, who is going to stop them? Who are they harming? They are doing something they want to do. At a certain point, you cannot forget the individual. On one hand, people think they are doing things that somehow benefit these people, but in reality there is no such thing as "these people." There are people who want to perform and there are people who do not and both of them should have the right to do what they want.

What would you say is the legacy of sideshow freaks on our culture?

Today we live in an age where there is a celebration of the commonality. In Hollywood, gone is the glamour of the 1930's, gone is the glamour that was promoted with the stars. The stars today look like common people. But at the same time, a lot of people don't like that and a lot of people want to be different, because commonality becomes a stigma to their existence. These people are gravitating towards something "different," unique. You have a lot of piercing and tattooing and people trying to learn long time working acts like sword swallowing. It's a break from a society that's been trying to explore how we are all the same and an assertion of your own individuality.

I've noticed that historic sideshow freaks frequently appear in your paintings, how would you say documenting human oddities affected your other artistic works?

In my pictures, in my paintings, I paint the language of my soul, of my psyche. Everything I've lived, I've felt, I've dreamt comes together in one visual stew. The all form the world I paint. I have an individual portrait of the father of Jojo the dog faced man. I've done dancing pinheads, I've done bearded ladies.

Jojo happens to be one of my favorites. he was one of the people who stood out the most when I was very, very young. I looked at him, not even as a freak, but perhaps someone from another reality. He looks the way he should look. His demeanor was that of a man filled with dignity. He was an outstanding image. After a while, to tell you the truth, I see nothing freaky in him at all.


To see Ari's work, click here.

Coney's Last Ride? The Bulldozer!

Read this article from the Village Voice, here.

Lost Children in Coney Island

See more fascinating photos on Dr. X's Free Associations Site.

Skeletons & Kings of All Cities - "What They Said"

Check out this cool, new music video set in Coney Island, here.

ASTROLAND MAY GET 1 MORE RIDE

Read this blurb from today's New York Post here.

"THE WHIP AMUSEMENT PARK RIDE" THEN & NOW

Check out this new Youtube video here.

Or read more about it here.

Dick Zigun Explains his position

Here is Zigun's fairly comprehensive opinion on the current development controversy.

Opening Day

"Coney Island is about a person's capacity for fun, not their credit line."

Tigger at the Save Coney Island protest.

Well Coney Island lived up to it's promises, the Cyclone rattled my brains, the organ grinders thrilled my ears. Photos soon to come.

New developments- The Hot Piano Society, a new group started by Todd Robbins will be meeting the first Saturday of each month. If you are interested in playing ragtime, stride, boogie woogie and traditional jazz piano. First meeting April 7th at 1 pm, 1208 Surf Avenue.