JugglingSubculture.com

Here’s a nice post on the My Cool Job Blog about Steve Thompson, a professional juggler and internet juggling retailer from Stirling, Scotland.

Thompson loves his self employed life as a juggler, which is encouraging for anyone thinking about becoming a professional.

Sometimes we feel so alone. Where are all the other juggling blogs?  There are blogs about every subject under the sun, but the representation of the juggling subculture in the blogoshpere is paltry and depressing. Jugglers are smart, willing to work hard, creative, collaborative, entrepreneurial, enthusiastic–all ingredients for solid, interesting blogs–but for some reason, very few of us are willing to channel these characteristics into blogs.

That needs to change. We need more juggling blogs!

Like we said in one of our first posts:

Juggling and the internet seem like they meant for each other. Juggling is a collaborative endeavor. And now–with sites like YouTube, MySpace, Flicker, etc–it’s easier than ever to share. Any 12-year-old kid with a Macbook and a decent three ball cascade can make a video of himself/herself doing the “most awesome juggling routing ever”, ad a groovey soundtrack, and post it up for the world to see.

So why aren’t more of us doing it? Are there just not as many jugglers out there as we think? Is there not enough for the juggling subculture to talk about? Are jugglers not thoughtful and passionate enough about their skills?

A thousand times NO!

There have been a few rays of light that quickly fade away. It seems to be an epedemic among juggling blogs: They will post a few great posts, seemingly walk away for months, and eventually abandon the endeavor. Even some of the big names in juggling have started blogs that get a post once every three months at best.

So here is yet another plea to the juggling subculture: Start more juggling blogs and stick with them!

If you need some good examples here are a few people who are doing exactly what we need:

• Michael Karas–The Karasel of Progress
• Ed Provencher–I Can’t Stop Juggling
• Perry Romanowski–Just Your Average Joggler
• Jason Garfield–The Jason Garfield Show (technically a video podcast but still what we’re looking for)
• Luke and Pola–Juggling Podcasts (also a podcast)

(Disclaimer: We humbly admit that we don’t know everything, and that there may be some great juggling blogs out there that we haven’t found. If you’ve found some or if you’ve started one please tell us!)

There are three reasons I like this video:

1. This kid is seriously good at bounce juggling a ton of balls
2. I like the cage he built himself so that he doesn’t have to chase stray balls
3. It demonstrates how hard it is to find a place to practice where people won’t bother you

Enjoy!

I was excited to go to the gym last night. After a day at work, all I wanted to do was throw up 5 clubs a few times and let the stress of the day fall to the floor. But my excitement was quickly crushed after I walked into the gym. Fifty young children covered the gym floor running back and forth with basketballs. A charming community center scene but crushing to a hopeful juggler.

Sure, I could have staked my claim in the corner and went along with my practice in spite, but I could already hear the comments from the parents and kids in the room–Where are the chainsaws? How long have you been practicing? How many is that? Can I try? Can you do 7? Do you do parties?–and I just didn’t feel like dealing with it.

Defeated, I left the gym.

But on my way to my car I made a discovery. A gated soccer field adjacent to the gym was emitting a soft glow. No one was on the field and yet a few of the lights illuminated small pockets of grass around the corners. Surprised that I had never noticed this field at night, I searched around until I found a way in and walked across the dark field to my very own piece of grass. Feeling slightly victorious, taking a deep breath of the cool fall air, I took out my clubs, threw them up and had a great, refreshing practice.

Enjoy this online game for the juggling subculture! Help this octo-pirate catch and throw bombs before they explode.

Knives, guns, kegs, and bombs . . . a lot of street performers would kill for a finale like that!

Another way to put juggling props to good use:

Catchy little ditty isn’t it!

The WJF has done so much to advance the understanding of and interest in the sport side of the juggling subculture. Here is the promo video for the fifth WJF event coming up in December. This video gives a great description of the different competitions and how they are scored.

Looks like the WJF will be putting on another awesome event!

(If you’re interested in registering click here.)

I smell a shark!

I think I want these:

I can’t tell if they’d really work well or not. JugglingStore.com has a video about them but I still can’t tell how they look when you juggle them. If they’re as cool as they have the potential to be, they would be great to bust out at parties.

Anyone have a set, or ever used them?

Threadless.com describes itself as “an on-going t-shirt design competition.” Designs are submitted and then put up for others to score. The designs with the highest scores get printed and sold.

Someone in the juggling subculture recently submitted a design with a bunch of juggling props falling to the ground. Since we recently posted about some hip juggling t-shirts, we though we’d bring this to everyone’s attention.

Log in and rate this juggling shirt so that it can make it into production.