My love for the big inappropriate liquor-hawking clown
Some images are so wrong that you just have to develop a deep love for them. The bigger such an image is, the better.
Like Chicken Boy, “the statue of liberty of Los Angeles.”
Like the ballerina clown of Venice, Los Angeles.
And the Circus Liquor clown.
The Circus Liquor clown adorns a grubby liquor store in a tatty neighborhood of North Hollywood not far from my home (which is in a much nicer section, of Burbank, I assure you). Several times over the past 20 years, the clown has successfully lured me into the liquor store, where I’ve found dead flies, snacks coated in dust, and odd old liquors last seen in early adaptations of “Treasure Island.” I may be slow, but even I have finally realized that it’s the clown I love, and he’s best admired from outside the store.
Anyone who has ever visited a circus or, even better, a carnival, knows the relationship between besotted leering clowns such as this and kiddie entertainment. The performers or ride operators are often people surprised to find themselves having come to this, and so they hit the bottle every night — even while operating the Whirl-A-Gig with screaming kids inside. (I have seen this, and I’ll bet you have too.) Bobcat Goldthwait certainly understands this dynamic, as he demonstrated in his misunderstood cinematic classic, “Shakes the Clown.” (Which I recommend unreservedly.)
If you are sadly far removed by distance and circumstance from your own wide-eyed admiration of the Circus Liquor clown, I now present you with good news. 3 Fish Studios in San Francisco has decided to pay tribute to iconic LA images with a series of collectible but low-priced lino-cuts, and they have shown the eminent good taste to include the Circus Liquor clown. Here’s more information about the whole series and where to get it, and just to show you what you should be buying while it’s available, here’s the Circus Liquor clown, made even more sinister via art.
Finally, I leave you with this. The cohort of Circus Liquor clown admirers grows daily. When I shared with my good friend the playwright Ross Tedford Kendall my admiration for the liquor clown, he smartly emailed me this strip from Bill Griffiths. As with so many other fine things in life, Zippy the Pinhead is ahead of the curve.
August 21st, 2009 at 5:29 pm
The picture of the ballerina clown picture is just wrong on so many levels. It looks like a clown mask was put over the ballerina’s head and she has white latex gloves on. You can only imagine what this demented ballerina is about to do.
August 23rd, 2009 at 12:27 pm
I just love signs and giant figures like those. Jean Sheppard commemorated them on one of his TV shows, pointing out that they are surrealistic and speculating that Salvador Dali would appreciate them. I believe Shep was in North Jersey at the time, where he found plenty of examples to videotape.