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.