The Pride of Bay Ridge, Mark Yost, writes in to let us know there's no freak shows like Brooklyn freak shows:
For an authentic freak show you have to go -- where else??? -- to Brooklyn. The Coney Island freak show to be exact.
This is the same side show where Houdini performed in the 1890s. I took my son George there two years ago and he loved it. A guy pounded nails into his head. A woman got into a box and then they shoved swords into it. George paid and extra dollar to walk up on stage and see how she contorted herself around the blades. Another guy swallowed fire and another laid down on a bed of nails and had a cinder block broken on his chest with a sledge hammer. The contortionist woman then cut up fruit with swords, then placed them blade-side up on a rack and climbed them barefoot, like a ladder. It was all big fun.
And there was no Lobster Boy.
Just further evidence of the Eden that God created on the western edge of Long Island.
I'm not sure if that was a freak show Mark was describing or just a typical afternoon on Bay Ridge Parkway. To paraphrase Yevgeny Yevtushenko (gesundheit!), he who is conceived in a freak show, years for the freak show.
BTW, the Minnesota State Fair will not be wholly without it's freaky charms. Making a return engagement in the Midway, the World of Wonders Palace of Illusions (pictures available here), including, pay attention Mr. Yost, a woman climbing a ladder made of swords barefoot. For twelve days, Minnesota will be just like Brooklyn.
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