world traveler

clown tom bolton

Here are the first jugglers I ever saw, the guys who inspired me to start juggling. They were both basically beginners but to make such a comedy juggling show seemed the ultimate in cool to me. The dark haired juggler, Waldo later became a well know performer. The blond, Eric Haver, was still performing on the streets a couple of years ago in relative obscurity. Coincidently, I didn't run across their paths again until over 20 years later. Eric showed up on the streets of Stuttgart and just a month later Waldo was performing with his partner Woodhead at the variety theater.

This photo shows is Dr. Harmonica another well know performer in the international street scene. He later relocated to Holland and used to play much of every summer in Oslo, Norway where I often ran into him. Many of the top performers in Europe in the early 1980's were Americans who like me went to Europe to explore the situation and decided to stay.

In the time after University I spent in New Orleans, the first couple of months were in a small windowless room in a rattrap boarding house. The guy in the next room was a psychopath that made his living selling bird feed for the pigeons on Jackson Square. If he found an injured bird he would put it in his room and leave his radio on all night to keep it company. Told to keep the noise down, he freaked out and would threaten to kill you. Many years later, I heard he had gone to prison for assault and then saw with my own eyes that he had been set up with a hotdog stand. The city couldn't get rid of him but felt it the best way to keep him from drawing pigeons to Jackson Square where they covered everything with droppings.

I shared a large apartment with 2 English guys during my last month living in New Orleans in 1983. They sold time-shares by day and went out drinking every night. In England they were used to putting it away until last call at like 9 or 10 pm. In New Orleans the bars could stay open 24 hours, so without a "last call" they drank until they dropped. The only problem with our flat was the multitudes of huge cockroaches. They so infested the whole city that one could tell if a local or an out of towner had eaten in a restaurant. The locals put the roaches to the side of the plate and ate the rest of the food while others would stop eating as soon as they discovered the first roach.

These jugglers Bounce and Bertie were known as Loco-motion. Finally I got to see a real professional level comedy juggling show!

At the time they were also working with another performer called Flip. They built up the crowd by acting like they were annoyed by this clown and his big shoes on their mats, which turned into a slapstick brawl. Nothing draws a crowd like a good fight other than maybe a car wreck.

The white guy on the drum is Will Soto. He later got into juggling and rope walking and established himself as a real institution in Key West.

This photo is from Dec. '95. My future wife Traudel, her son Florian and I made a trip to the States visiting Washington DC, New York City, Ohio and Florida. We did the clichés including visiting an alligator farm and boat tour of the everglades. Actually, we saw much more animals including lots of big alligators close up in the wild by parking our car on a road, which runs through the everglades. In Key West we saw among others, Will Soto from the above photo.

Here are Traudel and Florian by the Manhattan Public Library. I flew through NY from Europe again around the late 1980's and small world, on my flight ran into another street performer I knew "Shoehorn" who played a saxophone while tap dancing. Traudel and I were in NY City again in 2001 for my brother Michael's wedding in Philadelphia. After the wedding, Michael and Maggie were also headed to see friends in NY for a few days. Traudel and I stayed with performers friends who turned out to live literally around the corner, less than 100 meters from my brother's friends. My friends Clarke and Sylvia had also worked with a theater group, which my brother Michael had occasionally worked with in New Orleans where he did his doctorate in Biology and the occasional street juggling show. And Clarke's brother ended up living in Dayton, Ohio where my parents still live. It's a small, small world sometimes!

A street food cart in Manhattan. Just a typical scene but such carts are much more typical of the third world than the USA. It was also interesting for Traudel as a German to see people selling soft pretzels and sausages like back home.

I really liked Quebec, which gave me the feel of being in Europe. I got to see a couple of jugglers performing there but I don't remember their names and haven't any photos. From Quebec I hitched to Montreal. I got a ride from an off duty policeman and his family. Near Montreal they let me out on a very busy multiple laned highway. There was no way anybody was going to stop for me there. Then a car on the other side of the highway pulled over and proceeded to burn up. A fire truck and police came. When the police saw me, they came and hassled me for hitching on the highway and were annoyed that I didn't speak any French. About 6 month later I got a fine from them in the mail, which I never paid. What a rebel!

In Toronto I tried some of my very first street juggling shows. Or rather, I had no show but put out my hat and tried to get a little money for my limited juggling. I don't remember if I got any donations at all but there was a young couple selling things that invited me to their place for a meal and a place to sleep for the night. Otherwise, I mostly sleep outside in my sleeping bag on that trip. I don't remember much about the couple except that the woman was very pregnant. It was one of my early experiences that even if I didn't make lots of money, the good karma produced by doing something entertaining could attract good will and charity.

We also went to the Indian village of Acoma in New Mexico. It is on the top of a mesa and is suppose to be the longest inhabited place in North America. As a kid, I had been there with my family. The guidebook said one could visit it except during their special holidays. Well, it was a holiday when we arrived but my father didn't want to hear of it. We wandered around to the glare of very uninviting Indians. The people were throwing food like boxes of breakfast cereal off the roofs of their adobe houses. The crowds jostled and tried to catch the goodies. Then suddenly things would start to fly off another roof a ways down the street and everyone would madly rush there. Thus I suddenly got separated from my parents. But my father has a distinctive way of clearing his throat, which I managed to hear over the crowd and relocate him. This return visit was much quieter than the first one and the chance to see all these cultural relics inspired me to take an excellent history course on American Indian cultures during my next semester back at university.

San Francisco is one of my favorite American cities. Here at Pier 39 (in 1981) is one of the best know places for street performing, where amongst others, I saw well know comedy jugglers like Frank Olivier and the butterfly man and close by I saw the human jukebox who I remembered seeing nearly 10 years earlier. I could do some juggling, so like a fool I got up on one of the stages at Pier 39 when it was free and tried to do a little show. I was quickly told that these spaces were regulated and there was a tight schedule of established performers. I was a beginner of the worst kind but didn't like their attitude that jugglers need not apply anyway because they had enough of them already.

I spent 4 days in SF again in 1989 staying with Dave "Rave" Gomez who I had met in Germany. A couple of Dutch brothers, Mark and Paul Van Wees, who I knew from Amsterdam, were also in town, sometimes appearing at Pier 39 and the Cannery. From them I discovered that most of the performers in town had a day job to be able to survive. And the best times for the best pitches were given to the performers who had been there for years already. Obviously the European street performing scene has much more opportunities and freedom than the American one.

Having mentioned Dave Gomez I can relate a funny story. Dave used to work with a Danish juggler Henrik Bothe as duo "Twist and Shout". They toured around Europe in the late 80's in their VW bus. Once they drove up to the Austrian border wearing clown noses. The Austrian border police, not known for their sense of humor, checked their passports and saw that they had painted the photos within with red noses as well. Just the kind of silly stunt that I would have pulled, so I am jealous I didn't think of it first.

Golden Gate Park was another cool place. There was a weekly get together for jugglers back in '81 and this photo shows me attempting some of my first club passing. A German student named Jochen who I had met at Venice beach took this photo. I would later visit him many times in Mainz, Germany. In SF we also had a memorial time visiting the headquarters of the religious cult of Sun Yung Moon. They were always inviting young people there for a free meal. They turned out to be rabid anti-Communist whackos. After giving us a long presentation suggesting one should be open-minded to THEIR beliefs, they threw me and Jochen out after we started a discussion about American foreign policy and what was going on then in El Salvador. They told us that it was better to kill everyone there and let God sort them out than the mere possibility of them becoming god hating commies. At least 3 Moonies spouted the exact same brainwashed induced ideology. These creeps were even more out of their minds than the scam-artists scientology perverts. Yet one of the members in SF was a law student who had been recruited by his Moonie professor and members of the Moonies made it into the US Congress and their Washington DC based newspaper was regularly read by Ronald Reagan while president.

After California, I went to Boulder, Colorado, which was another place full of religious cults like "Eckenkar" and "the army of God". Lately I have seen promotion of the latest money making scam called "the secret". Which shows that when packaged as religion or pseudo-religion, many people are vulnerable to scams and sick ideology. My travels have only re-enforced my attitude of religious and cultural tolerance yet such nonsense really makes me puke.

From Colorado I went down to Albuquerque to see a friend and from there basically back to Ohio. The whole trip back from California was done by hitchhiking, which was of course difficult but interesting. One needs determination to wait hours for a ride and the worse the weather is, the less likely someone would stop. More than once I ended up sleeping under an overpass. The kind of people who did stop were generally laid back and friendly. I never had any really bad experiences but a couple of times some rather strange guys picked me up but I managed to get them to let me out at the next possibility. Once a middle aged Belgium guy picked me up and told me that he had befriended an old couple who had the title to a large piece of land but no money to buy food none-the-less exploit the land's resources. He said he gave them food and other essentials and eventually they sold him the mining rights for next to nothing. He said he was now on his way to the mine, which was in production and worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Truth or BS, who knows?

Another ride was with an Austrian guy who had done a lot of traveling. He showed me a "Texas passport" which was a novelty. It looked very official but was for the "Republic of Texas" and full of bombastic quips along the lines of "Texans are the biggest and baddest mother fu**ers so you better let this passport holder through or we'll come and kick your stupid ass". I found it rather amusing but then he insisted I take a closer look in the back pages. There I saw numerous stamps from him having entered countries with this fake passport! He said it was sometimes scrutinized since border officials had never seen a Texas passport before but nobody ever made trouble about it. My later experiences echoed this amazing incompetence of many border officials. If you fit their profile of a well off tourist going for a short vacation then all is ok. If you tell them you are an accountant, no problem, a clown - and you're likely to get strip-searched. A number of times entering France, I had to answer the most basic of questions like where I was born despite it being written in American passports in French as well as English. My biggest stress was usually returning to the USA with no fixed address or job, stamps from Asia and Latin America. I learned to put one of my flyers with my passport. Then suddenly I seemed "cool" and got treated like a celebrity rather than a possible drug carrier making up an unbelievable life story.

In April 2010 I finally got to the Great North-West. I arrived in Seattle, picked up a rental car from the airport, which I had lined up in Germany and went to stay with my youngest brother and his wife and daughter. They had lived earlier in New Orleans, San Francisco and Atlanta but mentioned that if possible they will stay in Seattle. Seems that it is the kind of place one learns to love once you get used to the rain. Like I had imagined it, it was laid back without being pretentious. Even though I had the car, I learned that there was an acceptable public bus system and with parking downtown costing 6 USD for half an hour, it was the cheapest option. One of the big attractions in the downtown area is Pike Place Market.

It is much more a place for souvenirs and handicrafts than fish, fruits and veggies but those are available too. The fishmongers running around in their orange outfits liked to yell and throw big fish to each other. It definitely caught your eye although I had to wonder if it really inspired people to buy more fish. Most people there were tourists - without much use for a huge fish. And while many of the handicrafts were nice, I didn't see much which inspired me as a memory of Seattle and for every half decent t-shirt I might have considered, there were a pile of ill-shaped, plain white ones with some poorly laid out slogan in a basic black script. Seemed to be an unfulfilled market for some quality artistic souvenirs Seattle.

There were a couple of guys offering their services as guides, probably sweet characters but they looked like they best knew the soup kitchens and most comfortable bridges to sleep under. I had envisioned more skate-boarding, slacker types begging for spare change but I guess the city had been cracking down on the panhandling lately and every park had signs posted saying it was illegal to sleep there. I had envisioned more street performers adding a bit of life to the city. Maybe they were waiting for more summer like weather but all I saw was one balloon twister and a couple of musicians which seemed to trade off a small place squeezed into the market, which was definitely not big enough for a clown or juggling show.

The number of coffee houses in Seattle is incredible. The first Starbucks opened by Pike Place Market and now there seems to be one every 50 meters or so. So a view of tall buildings and a Starbucks typifies Seattle. One can even get a good view over the city from the Columbia building. There is an observation deck up top but one has to pay 8 dollars at the information desk and then they send someone up with you. I went for the free option, which was to take the express elevator to the 49th floor where you can look out the windows of, you guessed it! the Starbucks. And if you didn't get enough caffeine, don't worry; there is another Starbucks on the ground floor.

There are still some nice preserved old buildings downtown, which offset the skyscrapers. Columbia square looked very quaint but the weather was still cool so there were not a lot of people hanging out. There are a number of totem poles displayed there and around the town and I passed signs for a couple of reservations on my drive up to Vancouver. This was a surprise for me since I had rarely seen much of an Indian presence in the USA outside of Arizona and New Mexico.

That's my cute (but smart) niece Tessa back of the house. She, my brother and I, took his big kayak out on the sound, which is just 15 minutes by foot down the hill. It was a bit chilly but sunny and we warmed up once we got paddling. This seems to be the main attraction of the area, access to both mountains and sea both of which are spectacularly viewable from this neighborhood called Sunset Hill. The area itself, Ballard seemed pretty nice, still well connected to the city but with its own center with plenty of restaurants and bars to keep one entertained. The scenery, weather and even style of wooden houses reminded me a lot of Scandinavia and in fact this neighborhood used to have a large percentage of Scandinavian immigrants, many attracted by the big fishing fleets based here.

I drove from Seattle down to Portland for a couple of days to visit an old friend. I took my rental car but had second thoughts about having booked it since it might have been more relaxing to take the train. I take trains all the time in Europe but just once had the opportunity in upstate New York to ride on a train in America. Later on this trip I was in Ft Worth, Texas and wanted to take the intercity train to Dallas but it was Sunday and there was no service, no city buses running either. My friend Steve showed me the Portland art museum and took me to the main Powell's bookstore, which is said to be the biggest in the USA. Would have loved to have more time just poking around the shelves but we took advantage of another offering which was their daily author reading. I was told that Portland has the highest level of residents with advanced degrees in the country, which makes it a ripe market for such things. But the lively place to hang out was in the neighborhood of Burnside, which had a lot of little restaurants, coffee houses, second-hand shops and what ever that would contribute to the local slogan of "keep Portland weird".

There seemed to be a number of old cinemas around and the city is supposed to be the capital of burlesque in America. Many performers I know have ended up in Oregon and such venues provide at least the occasional gig for them. We also went to a video store, which was unlike any I had ever seen. It not only has the country's biggest selection of video/DVDs but also is a museum to cinema memorabilia as well including important objects from some of the most famous films of all time.

From Seattle I also did a day trip to Vancouver, Canada. The winter Olympics had just finished a few weeks before so either I just missed a great time or a lot of stress depending on your point of view. I remember the good old days where crossing the Canadian border was done by flashing a driver's licence. Now they wanted to see my passport and know exactly where I live, what I do, where I was staying and for how long, what my purpose was... Returning later that day I had fewer questions to answer at US customs because they simply already had it in their computer. But one had to pass through 3 sets of multiple cameras. They don't just take your photo but take video footage of everyone coming across, most likely in 3-d. As it was a Sunday it was rather quiet downtown except for the tourists running around. I even found a free parking place. Granville Street was basically just an extension of the highway I had taken all the way from Seattle. It is the main drag downtown to shop or get a bite to eat and luckily I could get a burrito and pay in US dollars, as I couldn't be bothered to change money just for the afternoon. The exchange rate is like 1.03 something, which also surprised me as for years the Canadian dollar was worth significantly less.

Central Vancouver has a lot of big, modern buildings but unlike in most American cities, many of them seemed to be residential rather than just office space. Not that Canada lacks enough space but the approach to urban planning there reflects a more European approach to condensed city spaces, which makes more sense for things like saving energy and the efficiency of public transportation. Thankfully, they have also kept and renovated some of the older neighborhoods like Gastown. It was once a real working class place but much of it is now quaint shops and restaurants. This old trolley car was one of the eye catchers for the tourists.

Another oddity was this old steam powered clock. Gastown was the location of the old gasworks, which would have been pretty important before the street lamps were converted to electricity. So if you can light a lamp, why not use gas to drive a steam powered clock?

The area was not all quaint and fixed up though. I had notice a multiple of crosses on my map but rather than big churches they turned out to be missions which catered to hardcore junkies and street people. With huge crowds of down-and-out looking characters, I stashed my camera in my bag and continued on my way past many places that looked abandoned. Was almost surprised to see this cannabis store as the average pot head would probably not want to be associated with most of the clientele I saw around there or maybe they are too stoned to notice. A bigger surprise was the Scientology center. Like they hide themselves in the neighborhood to say, "Hey, we're a church too". Would love to see the reaction of having some street people ask for a hot meal and a helping hand from those pricks who are all about swindling peoples money. Or maybe they actually have some crack dealers donating their profits to Ron L. Hubbard.

Returning to Granville Street, I followed it across a long, high bridge, which has a spectacular view of the downtown and harbour at Granville Island. The island is half industrial and the other half fancy establishments catering to tourists.

If I had had more time I would have taken one of the tours on these cool little tugboats, which seemed to show up every 10 minutes or so and take off when they filled up.

There were a number of large covered markets on the island, which were really just small malls of souvenir shops in addition to the many eateries. It was a bit brisk but people still hung out to enjoy the day.

There were two spots, which were reserved for the buskers. Seemed well organized and each got an hour pitch but the crowds were not so big. Would have been a lot of work to pull a proper crowd for a clown show there and all I saw were musicians. I had seen a juggler with a tall unicycle in the pedestrian part of Granville Street, which had more room and fewer distractions. He mentioned that it had only been a year since the police allowed performers to use this area in addition to the pitches on the island. Ralph Shaw the ukulele player seemed to be in his element here with his family friendly entertainment. I would have loved to explore more of the city especially to see how many immigrants make up such a dynamic metropolis but I had to return the almost five hour drive to Seattle.

From Seattle I went on to Texas, staying with my brother in Ft Worth and attending the wedding of a niece in San Antonio. The Alamo and river walk area are nice in S. Antonio but I had seen them before and spent my energy visiting relatives rather than seeing such sites. On the way back to Ft Worth, we stopped a day in Austin, which also has the motto "keep Austin weird". I don't know Portland or Austin well enough to declare a winner as America's weirdest city. Weird for Texas probably doesn't compare to weird for the Northwest but the amount of live music offered for free on the main strip in Austin was impressive. And the millions of bats that fly out from under a bridge at dusk was pretty unique to see in a major city although they took a route a bit hard to see rather than flying right along the river. Guess I might have to visit both more extensively to declare a winner.

If one goes even further back, the seeds of my future might be seen to have been planted at an earlier age. Here I am at 5 dressed up for Halloween. Superman destined to save the world!