JugglingSubculture.com

I performed my first street show of the season today at Seaport Village in San Diego.

I got off to a late start this year for a few reasons:

1. May was supposed to be my retooling month but I ended up putting in a million extra hours at my “real job“.
2. I have been dealing with some colds over the past couple of weeks so I haven’t been at my physical peak.
3. Acclimating to my new clubs threw me off more than I thought it would.

Despite these factors I decided to go out today no matter what. Sure it’s a Thursday afternoon and no one will probably be there. Sure I haven’t practiced much lately and my show might turn into a drop-fest. Sure I could be spending my time getting my car to pass smog. But no. Today was the day.

And it  turned out surprisingly well! I did one show (did the old “quit while I was ahead” routine) and had a healthy crowd of about 75 people stick around for 45 minutes. They crowd was fairly responsive to the show, I had less flubs than I thought I would my first time out for the season, and a little kid named Esteban ended up stealing the show.

I’m very pleased with the first show of the season and look forward to tweaking it for the summer days ahead.

(By the way, the picture above isn’t my crowd. It’s just a shot of Seaport Village to show you where I was.)

Remember this? Here’s another chance to vote on a juggling themed shirt for threadless.com.

It’s called “My Juggler Martian” from the designer called Irita.

Click here to vote on this juggling design.

Just got new American Clubs from Dube. I’ve never had one-piece clubs before, and I’ve always been entrigued by the Classic Americans. (They come highly recommended by Jim from The Jim Show.) I’m excited to see how they work with the juggling that I do in my show.

There is nothing better than fresh juggling props! I’m almost afraid to juggle them because they’re so clean and white, but I know soon enough they’ll be beat up, dirty, scarred, and stained. I guess the faster I destroy these, the faster I’ll get to buy new one’s again!

Click on the banner below if you’d like to share in the wonderful feeling of buying new Classic American Clubs from Dube.

The Simpsons animators snuck a bit of juggling into another recent episode.

That’s two juggling cameos in the same month!
(Click here to see the first one if you missed it.)

The juggling subculture has benefited a lot from reality TV. Mostly from variety shows like America’s Got Talent. Here’s a rare and funny glimpse of juggling on American Idol where one hopeful singer uses his devil stick skills to try to get Randy, Paula, Simon and Jewel to notice his singing. Needless to say, it doesn’t work very well.

Here’s a weird one. Apparently Dean Cain was on Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader. As a surprise, his favorite elementary school teacher comes out and makes him juggle three apples. I don’t know if he ended up being “smarter than the fifth graders,” but it’s nice to know that Superman can juggle.

There was a nice juggling cameo in the first couple minutes of the latest episode of The Simpsons.

Props to the writers for using the word “cascade.” (Even though he’s clearly doing a shower. Oh, and we’ll forgive them for calling the “clubs” “pins”.)

Happy Easter from JugglingSubculture.com!

David Rosdeitcher is one of those people you hear about whenever you say you’re a street performer. It usually goes like this:

“You street perform? I once saw a guy who could tell everyone in the audience what their zip code was. It was amazing! Can you do that?!”

It’s always a little humbling.

Here’s an article about Zipcode Man and how he got his start as a street performing juggler before finding his niche as a memorization phenomenon.

Makes you wonder what skill you have that could turn your act into something truly different and amazing.