Where are the clowns?

Isn't it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground
you in mid-air.
Send in the clowns....

Thank you, Barbara Streisand, for buring that one into my brain over these 30-some-odd years of my life. In the past couple years, I've heard it playing in my head more than it ever has before. But it's appearance has nothing whatsoever to do with my occasional personal melancholy or relationship issues. Rather, it has *everything* to do with living down the street from a Clown House and walking past their abode with regularity, as often as two or three times a day.

For the 18 months that I've lived in my sweet little "urban" loft, I have become something of an ethnographer where these clowns are concerned.

And yes, when I say "clowns," I mean that I have been living down the street from a house FULL of Clowns. They put up a stage in the front yard, where they have regularly given performances of one sort or another to passers-by. Their most elaborate shows have taken the stage during the monthly artwalk and festivals that happen on my street. But as I've learned from my dog-walkings, there was almost always something going on with these clowns.

They were very partial to building tall bikes and riding around the neighborhood on them. Several rode bikes that were rather fantastical looking -- most of them made of multiple bike frames welded together, one atop another, to achieve the effect of a bike on stilts. These bikes have become curiously popular with average riders in the neighborhood, which frightens me a little because they don't have the acrobatic balance of the clowns.

The clowns would usually decorated their weird bikes and perform artful mounts and dismounts of them at intersections and street lights. It has not been uncommon to hear music -- say, the strains of Edith Piaf -- as one of the bikes would pass beneath my window, a boom box or old record player strapped to the back. Every once in a while, the bikes carry mulitple passengers, such as one woman I recall, clad in a melange of period pieces, who reclined rather peacefully on the back of a board jutting out from behind a particularly large bike. She was there, suspended about four feet above the road, looking carefree despite how vulnerable she was to cars or a tall-bike mishap.

Aside from the bikes, the clowns put on stage shows, musical performances, acrobatics and comedy. Some of these performances are considerably better than others. But they're clowns. What should I expect?

And in true clown fashion, face make up is not uncommon, particularly for events (but sometimes, clearly, just for the hell of it). Mainly, though, they have the looks of grungy off-casts from a Rainbow gathering. Very ripe, non-bathing hippies. Or Gypsies. That's been my impression while walking past the house these many, many months.

Their decision to sell "organic, vegan gluten-free dog treats" in front of their house -- first, from an old-fashioned carnival popcorn machine and, later, from a bubblegum dispensers placed on the sidewalk -- only reinforced my notions. Hippies. Gypsies, tramps and theives..., as the song goes (and often has gone in my head while walking past their house).

But for the past week or so, the refrain in my head has been: But where are the clowns? Quick, send in the clowns.

It seems they have bid the neighborhood farewell.

I watched it happen over the course of two or three weeks -- a strange, gradual cleanup of the property that began when they dismantled the stage and filled in the mud pit they sometimes used in their performances. (I recall one "Child Mud Wrestling Show" that involved some of the children who lived in the Clown House. Probably wasn't too popular with DHS, because I never saw that performance again....)

The weekend before this last one, I watched from the street as the final floppy, decrepit mattresses were brought out from behind the house while a curiously large amount of paper burned in a fire pit in the yard. It really was the End of the Show.

And every time I've walked past the house, I've felt mixed feelings. It was a dump, to be sure, because it seems clowns aren't the best house-keepers. But it was, without question, a most amusing and *interesting* dump, and the goings-on I witnessed there have given me all sorts of things to ponder.

They have prompted great consideration on my part about social conformity and what people do to intentionally put themselves outside of "polite society." I have also found myself wondering how much of it is choice/intention versus how much is simply a way of life from which they have not diverted for generations. I've thought long and hard about what it must be like as a child raised in such an unconventional lifestyle, especially one that was as publically displayed as this particular Clown House managed to be.

Gypsies really do exist. So do clowns. But who were these people? How did they get here? Where did they go? ... And what, oh what, will replace them?

In the meantime, the song is there in my head, a process, perhaps, of grieving the loss of the Clown House. Sometimes, it's just the melody playing in my head. Sometimes I whistle or hum a little to myself. Sometimes, it's impossible not to sing the words:

...And where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns.
Well, maybe next year.