When I’m not writing about weird places and weird things, I sometimes act as a theater critic for a Pittsburgh-based paper (which you could say makes me weird for an entirely different artistic reason). Last week, I reviewed a musical called Side Show, which is based on the true story of conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton. This was exciting since it tapped into my love of the offbeat (the Hilton sisters co-starred in the 1932 horror classic, Freaks).
Afterwards, I got to thinking about vaudeville, carnivals and circuses. Sure, a few still tour the United States, but this certainly isn’t the heyday of cross country shows. I try not to rhapsodize the memory of these past times too much; after all, the stories of animal abuse in circuses and side shows are legendarily disturbing.
Fortunately, there are plenty of places you can get your fill of carnivals and circuses–or at least the history of such past times. The Ringling in Sarasota, Florida lives up to its name with circus exhibitions celebrating the mostly lost diversion of elephants on parade. Likewise, Wisconsin’s Circus World revels in the history of the circus, including daily tours of Historic Ringlingville which features wagons and buildings where the animals and performers used to rest between seasons. If you’re ever in Kentucky, consider stopping by the Charles Jackson Circus Museum, noteworthy for its collection of Ringling Brothers memorabilia and for its location–Hopkinsville, Kentucky was the site of a truly bizarre cryptid encounter from the 1950s, one that went on to influence the movie, Gremlins.
Coney Island is the premier place for keeping kitschy American past times alive. Even after Hurricane Sandy destroyed the museum, the purveyors got it back up and running with the help of public support, including a Kickstarter campaign last year to Save the Mermaid Parade. And if mermaids taking over entire city blocks and a gift shop of oddities aren’t enough to get you excited, then the Sideshow School certainly should. If I lived within a three-hour radius of Coney Island, I’d already be an expert in breathing fire.
Speaking of gift shops, at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, the entire first floor is a gift shop called Sideshow, which spotlights–you guessed it–cool, kitschy items that harken back to the days of carnivals. The American Vaudeville Museum, though not an actual brick and mortar building, celebrates the lost art of vaudeville through its colorful website and dozens of profiles on vaudevillian stars. And if you’re ever on the, ahem, Strip in Las Vegas, you can visit the Burlesque Hall of Fame, an ode to vaudeville’s scantily clad counterpart.
And let’s close with one of my personal favorites. The Massillon Museum in Massillon, Ohio is home to perhaps the coolest, kitschiest museum exhibit: a giant miniature circus. Starting in 1946, Dr. Robert M. Immel, a local dentist, handcrafted the Immel Circus, which is on display year-round in a circus-themed room. With over 2,500 individual pieces spanning 100 square feet, this tiny circus captures a bygone time when whole towns would drop everything to go see the show.
So these days, none of us might get to be vaudeville stars. But that doesn’t mean we can’t marvel at the nostalgic artifacts and dream of a time when the lion tamers, the strong men, and the tiny car full of clowns came to town.
Happy haunting!