And You Wonder, What Are They Thinking? ...

From the best -- or worst -- of Showbiz David
Originally published 12/07/07

Rumblings down at the runs, waiting on a circus train from nowhere... Once upon a season they were all in the barn by now -- red wagons in need of fresh red paint, ring curbs for new stars, jacks and stringers for repair ... Now the elephants wait for cues that may never come ... To be or not to be? To perform or not to perform?

Down at the runs, you wonder what Barbara Byrd is thinking. Strange how it should all come down to this -- from a man to a woman, from William Coup adding rings in 1872 to Barbara Byrd being the last to keep three of them in motion under the same canvas. Is she too thinking a single circle, or does she hear the ghost of her dad Dory telling her to stay the American course? ... Down in Florida, what is on Johnny Pugh’s mind? Time to retire? Or time to go for broke in a daring blaze, to reinvest and bring back the band?

A thousand miles down a spur track to a humble dream, a new circus is being formed in somebody’s ambitious mind, and maybe that circus has a crusty old midway to offer the jaded patron in search of the past ... Strange gaudy banner lines in flagrant violation of PC standards ...

... What might Paul Binder be thinking when he notes how long it’s been since he presented either a pachyderm or a flyer? Big Apple opens in the fall when circuses once closed, and closes come summer ... Once upon a season, the white tops slept during winter, awoke in time for early spring and were out in the sunshine chasing after the money that harvests put into farmer’s pockets....

Down by the old ice house where the train once arrived, you can almost hear the sound of a faint whistle up the rails and remember when they clanged into town under the cover of a damp morning mist. When the world was barely born and then suddenly appeared before your eyes under pennants galloping in the wind. And you wonder what Renee Storey is plotting when she considers how PETA gives her employer, Cole Bros. Circus, more publicity and might not be such a bad thing after all? What Kenneth Feld is thinking when he continues pitching the Big Cage act to customers who who evidently still want their circus on the wild side ...

And out in San Francisco, where patrons prefer Perrier over lemonade, ballet over big top, even the nuovo rich are growing restless for a taste of reality. They are taking in a very different version of Cirque du Soleil at the moment, a version called Kooza, and some of them are realizing what they have been missing for more than a season.

“This production feels like a heart-pumping cocaine binge for thrill addicts,” proclaims Nathaniel Eaton in the ultra-liberal S.F. Weekly, coming honest on how “ho hum” he found the three Cirque shows that came before.

Animals? Weren’t they supposed to all be gone by now, asks the Savvy Insider, elsewhere at work on routing and promotions, taking time out to answer his own question. No, says he, animals acts did not go away as planned. In Europe, they “have instead been reinvented” ... And you think how wonderfully ironic, that those uppity Brit Lords, sure of their agenda, paid for a study to prove that elephants are really mistreated at the circus —- a study they proved the very opposite! And down at the runs waiting for a train to pull in, you wonder what the public is thinking now...

Over road maps and sponsor contracts, watching videos of acrobats and jugglers and plotting another season, you wonder what John Ringling North II is thinking ...Bigger and better —- or the same?

Even more fun to ponder is what S.F. Cow Palace big shots, without a circus for two years, may be thinking? ... And you can almost hear a distant train whistle somewhere out there on real rails or in the back of your mind, racing forward with a world of spangled wonders to capture a waffling public restlessly ready to be thrilled by something either very new or very old ... And optimistically, you enjoy remember being told over and over again that history repeats itself ...

Down at the runs, Byrd and Pugh, Feld and Binder and Ringling North and Judkins, and yes, Laliberte the Great reinventing himself, are watching and waiting, too. Maybe wondering what we’re thinking ...