Category: Article

When we were all younger and firmer, my husband was a competitive runner and our daughters were Dad groupies. Upon returning from the crusades, battle scarred and sweaty, the girls would surround him, hopping around with Barbies in their fists and shrieking, “Did you win Dad, did you win?” The situation was such that sometimes he could truthfully say yes and a cheer went up, yeah, and all was happiness. But sometimes when he was being silly and honest, he said, “No, I was tenth.” Not only was he tenth, he was colder than yesterday’s starlet. The daughters were of the Linda Evangelista don’t-get-out-of-bed-for-less-than-ten-thousand-dollars school of thought. Why race if you weren’t going to win?

Of course that’s immature thinking. Judging from the streams of competitors transitioning from swim to bike to run in the Lifetime Fitness Triathlon later this month, not to mention the ten thousand runners who’ll be making their way down Summit Avenue in the Twin Cities Marathon in October, there must be lots of reasons to race that don’t include a prize worth $500,000. The Road Running Information Center reports that while numbers of participants in marathons have steadily climbed in each of the past ten years, median finishing times are significantly slower—from 3:54 to 4:23 for men and from 4:15 to 4:51 for women. This suggests the athletes swelling the ranks are definitely not racing to win.

Missy Fee, thirty-eight, race director for the Heart of the Lakes Triathlon in Annandale, first became involved in the event as a competitor in the early 1990s. There were perhaps one hundred other racers that year, including her husband who signed up on race day. This year, the short course reached its five-hundred-entrant limit in just two days, four months prior to race day. Between short and long courses and relay teams, the Heart of the Lakes Triathlon drew one thousand entrants who each paid sixty dollars to participate. “It’s hard to say what’s motivating people to enter triathlons,” she said. “I can only speak for myself. I was a competitive athlete in high school and college, and I had run several marathons. This is a local event, and when I saw what the distances were, I thought, I can do that.”

Suzannah Mork, a doctoral candidate in the school of kinesiology at the University of Minnesota, has interviewed twenty ironman-distance triathletes and discovered several characteristics unique to participants of this extreme event that comprises a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike, and a 26.2-mile run. “In most events, racers compete against each other. Ironmans are so challenging that there is a strong sense of cooperation and camaraderie among racers, and every finisher really is a winner.” The triathletes she interviewed listed many reasons for racing, among them, curiosity, motivation to exercise, an enormous sense of accomplishment, and even social opportunities. “There’s a lot of time to talk on a fifty-mile bike ride. Triathletes appreciate the chance to meet and socialize with other like-minded people. They commented, ‘We used to meet for coffee. Now we meet for a run.’ ”

Overwhelmingly, the reason proffered for racing is to challenge oneself, to discover something about oneself by finding limits and then pushing beyond, to see what’s on the other side. So says Jan Kahring, age fifty-three of Maple Grove, who, when interviewed, was in the thick of training for Grandma’s Marathon, her first. “I like to push myself but I need a race to motivate me to get out and do the training.” She recalled a cold, rainy weekend when she did an eighteen-mile run—something that would not have occurred had she not been training.

Any intuition that training more often and more intensively increases one’s susceptibility to injury was debunked by Liz Schorn, a physical therapist in Minneapolis. “I think people who race are more attuned to proper training techniques, hydration, diet, and stretching and therefore are less likely to get injured,” she said. “Racers are also more likely to have invested in better-quality gear which helps prevent injury. The noncompetitive athlete may take a more casual view of these factors and, even though they are logging fewer miles, may be just as likely to sustain injury.” She notes that while participation in races has increased over the past ten years, the number and types of injuries she sees has remained steady.

Of course, race participants don’t sign waivers of responsibility for nothing. Two entrants died during the 2006 Los Angeles Marathon, and a third was hospitalized. Race officials ran out of water during last year’s Life Time Fitness Triathlon, held in ninety-degree heat. At least three competitors ended up in Hennepin County Medical Center’s intensive care unit. This year both the Mad City Marathon in Madison, Wisconsin, and the Med City Marathon in Rochester took place over the unseasonably hot Memorial Day weekend; both events were called off after five and three hours, respectively. In Madison, some five hundred runners who were still on the course were encouraged to accept a ride to the finish area or to walk the remaining miles at their own risk.

“I don’t really get it,” says Diane Wiese-Bjornstal, an associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Minnesota, speaking of the flood of people entering races these days. “Racing does motivate people to be active, and as a kinesiologist, this is important to me. But my cynical side has observed that races serve as a notch on the belt, an observable accomplishment that seems increasingly important in our society,” she said. Beyond health, Wiese-Bjornstal suspects that at least part of the motivation for neo-racers is our society’s obsession with the tangible evidence of success; acquiring a souvenir race T-shirt serves as a marker of success, much like driving a Hummer or buying a mini-mansion. Anyone can jog or go for a swim or a bike ride, Wiese-Bjornstal points out, but “racing has become increasingly attractive in part because it raises the status of the participant. The intrinsic value of physical activity has shifted to extrinsic—‘Look, I completed a triathlon’ rather than ‘I am a disciplined person’ or ‘I love being outside on my bike.’ ”

Many of the registrants filling triathlons and marathons are young professionals trying to make their mark on the world. Wiese-Bjornstal observed that this generation was one of the first to have had a highly scheduled childhood, with organized sports starting as early as three years old. If a child enjoys whacking around a can with a stick, the inclination for many parents is to channel that activity into a peewee hockey program, where he quickly learns there is more glory in competing than there is in merely whacking around a can with a stick. It’s not surprising that children who grew up connecting physical activity with competition and external rewards would, as adults, choose to race, Wiese-Bjornstal explained.

“That may be true,” said Charlie Peterson, a runner and triathlete from St. Paul. “I saw a lot of people wearing their T-shirts and finisher’s medals around after the Boston Marathon. The T-shirt is really important to some people.” Although a young professional himself, Peterson says his motivations for racing involve travel and socializing. “It’s a fun thing to do with friends and a great way to see another city.”

The opportunities to socialize and belong to a community played an important role in Janet Robertz’s decision to race. The forty-four-year-old Bloomington resident had been running every day for seven years before she ever entered a race. Even though she was the first woman finisher in that event, she was sorry she’d entered. “It was a horrible experience—stressful, competitive, crowded, and I felt just terrible. This was the exact opposite of everything running had been for me. After that first race, I wanted no part of it.”

But being both intrinsically motivated and talented as a runner, Robertz eventually transitioned from being vehemently noncompetitive to becoming one of the country’s top masters (age forty and older) runners. “I still love running by myself on trails through the woods, but racing has opened a whole world to me. I’ve gotten to travel and I’ve met the most wonderful people. It’s been fantastic. Back before I was racing, I knew nothing of the running community. I thought I was kind of weird. A few years ago, I was at the Avon marathon and my sister said, ‘Oh my gosh, all these people look just like you.’ It’s true. They’re my people.”

I blame it on Beckham. While the average American doesn’t even know who Beckham is, and has no idea how to bend it like him, he was the first celebrity to sport the faux-hawk, back in 2002. Having moved on, Beckham’s hair is now shorn in the fashion of the photogenic inmates on Prison Break. Yet soccer-naïve Americans still stumble upon his old hairdo almost daily. Not since the ornamental kale craze of ’98 has something so absurd been so prevalent.

The faux-hawk seems the tonsorial equivalent of heaping beer cans in the backyard—it’s lazy, unattractive, and does nothing to help the environment. But surprisingly, the style has a distinguished provenance. An article in the recent Style Issue of the New Yorker attributed the faux-hawk’s invention to Hedi Slimane, famed designer for the House of Dior. Perhaps that accounts for the appeal of the look, particularly among gay men. But, according to the article, Slimane himself abandoned the cockscomb coiffure after he “encountered one on a desk clerk at a hotel in Prague.”

Dr. Frankenstein might have joined the village mob, but his monster survives. Gregory Slade, a young barber at the Hair Cuttery near Chicago’s gay village Boystown, said in an interview, “Mainly guys get their hair cut that way because they like how it can be worn in about three styles. You can wear it down, spike it, or wear it as a faux-hawk. I probably cut about three to five faux-hawks a week.”

Closer to home, the trend shows no signs of fading. At Minneapolis’ Lyn-Lake Barbershop, where clients pay fifteen dollars for a no-nonsense buzz, Brian Preston says he gets asked to do them all the time. His pronouncement is surprising, coming as it does from the Twin Towns’ last bastion of butch. “It’s everywhere,” observed Preston. To prove his point, he went flipping through a copy of Details. Happening upon a Dolce & Gabbana ad, he said: “See, both these guys have little faux-hawks. Of course, most men will just focus on the naked torsos and never even notice the hair.”

Both Slade and Preston note that the style is flexible and rather noncommittal. According to Slade, most clients who request the faux are “guys who are afraid to sport a more punk look.” In other words, this is a hairdo that can stand erect for the occasional night on the town, but go limp in time for tomorrow’s job interview.

“It’s a cop-out,” said Preston. “A poor substitute for the real thing.”

Speaking of the real thing: Remember when punks with real Mohawks and safety-pinned leather jackets hung out in front of the Uptown McDonald’s? Say what you will about them, but those folks had the courage of their convictions. A flaming-red Mohawk erupting from a shaved scalp makes a sure-fire statement—the kind that makes parents nervous and gives adolescents certain bad ideas. A faux-hawk, on the other hand, says nothing except, “Take away my pomade!” Or perhaps: “In the morning, I can help you start an IRA.” Can we—and by we, I mean all of us, but especially gay guys—please put the faux-hawk behind us? We have to get ready for the return of the mustache

The bathroom has long been a solitary place in which to hide out from family holiday gatherings and awkward dates. But only recently has it been elevated to the lofty status of “I-room” by high-end interior designers—a sanctuary where quotidian tasks become rituals and ablutions, where relieving oneself has metaphysical ramifications. No such shrine is complete without throne and font, and the latter has recently become an inspired installation for chic bathrooms the city over. Freestanding vessels are particularly popular these days. Gathering pools of water, these sinks invite bathroom-goers to linger over the water, like Narcissus. Those that are perched atop the vanity or countertop like some sculpture even facilitate the plunging of one’s visage directly into the H20. Designer cloisonné and carved onyx versions can run between one and five grand. But a few industrious ceramicists and glass artists are catching on, producing vessels that are equally beautiful but surprisingly less expensive—ranging between just two hundred and one thousand dollars.

It’s been a few years since Montblanc, the German jeweler, brought out the Meisterstück, the world’s grandest fountain pen. In fact, it was an old design going back to the early twentieth century, but through some kind of marketing alchemy, the pen suddenly became ubiquitous in American malls and upscale catalogs in about 1988. I received one, as a gift, upon graduating from college; it had been one of those presents I told my girlfriend to tell my parents about, and crossed my fingers. The silly thing was as big as a Cuban cigar, and probably the most spendy stock fountain pen one could ever hope to find. I put the price tag at about three hundred dollars. (There are limited-edition, precious-metal versions of the Meisterstück and its competitors, but I like to think that the standard jewelry-store versions top what is reasonable for a normal person.)

It is, of course, the kind of pen you want to reserve for signing declarations of war and bilateral trade agreements. This is true of fountain pens in general, I suppose. They are a delight to write with, once you’ve mastered them, but they can be a pain to master. Fountain-pen ink has not yet been developed to the point where it will dry as fast as the ink from your typical ballpoint, felt-tip, or rolling-ball pen. This is both a weakness and a strength, because fine pen ink is silky, almost oily as it goes onto the page. It is a widespread fallacy that fountain pens are “scratchy.” They are only so when they have a cheap nib, or when the ink is inferior. Like vintages in wine, you can’t really go by brand. The finest bottle I ever had was an inexpensive, opaque black Platignum that flowed like my grandmother’s chocolate syrup poured over a sundae. I’ve never found another bottle like it, though a well of Pelikan turquoise came close. Also, you can tell a lot about a fountain pen’s owner by the ink color she chooses—blue-black and brown are especially eccentric and beautiful.

The Montblanc’s main selling point is its nib, which contains both yellow and white gold, along with some dramatic filigree. Although I felt terribly self-conscious about using it to take notes in grad school, I quickly got over that, due to the pure sensual pleasure of using it. When I missed a lecture, I mostly regretted the missed opportunity to take notes that day. I believe I developed a kind of iron grip with my right hand that has—like my brain—atrophied considerably since then.

A good fountain pen with real gold in the nib will quickly form to the hand of its owner. It will feel as if it intuitively knows the slope of your words. When people ask to borrow my pen, I know it will not work for them. When I first got my Montblanc, I thought it might become an heirloom, something I’d pass along to my children or grandchildren. Surely the price justified that sort of exaltation. But it will never quite write in anyone else’s hand, and that seems a shame.

A pen like that you constantly worry about. I had several close calls when I left a book bag in a bathroom, or dropped the uncapped pen and watched in slo-mo horror as it pin-wheeled down to the floor, only to bounce off the safe end. Eventually, I retired the Montblanc to my home office; sadly, I don’t use it much anymore. I bought a cheaper and more modest Pelikan, and the truth is, it fits my hand better than that massive Meisterstück. Besides, the first and last peace treaty I’ll ever sign was my wedding license, fifteen years ago. Other than that, I’m not really in the business of signing Important State Papers. But it’s nice to know that I’d be well equipped when the next opportunity comes along.

The word “cute” was uttered no fewer than five times when I test-drove the Mini. This is a car that appeals to my natural fascination with rounded objects. All those buttons and knobs on its dashboard? Cute. The big, round whatchamacallit, which is a tachometer, as my driving mates reminded me, but which is also, more important, reminiscent of a Swatch watch—super cute! On the exterior, the Mini has these adorable little dimples for exhaust pipes, and I couldn’t help but note the cuteness of these as well.

But “cute” had to go a long way before I could actually get excited about this car, or any car, for that matter. I suffer a form of “auto-aversion,” common among city-dwelling females and partly attributable to the increasingly complex nature of automobiles: the infinite possibilities for malfunctions, breakdowns, and repairs, not to mention crashes. But it’s also partly due to the men in my life—from dad to brother and boyfriends and now, finally, the boss—who have always been poking their noses into my purchasing decisions.

That said, being as it is so adorably compact and curvaceous, with ovular details in every little nook, I found the Mini rather un-intimidating as vehicles go. I had similar sentiments about the Volkswagen Beetle back when it was re-issued in 1998. Both of these cars look more like fashion accessories than insurance liabilities. As I slid behind the wheel of the Mini Cooper—an electric blue convertible S Series, to be more precise—I caught myself wondering: How do I look? And why on earth hadn’t I remembered to bring my Jackie O. sunglasses? Cruising by Highland Hills in Bloomington on a spring afternoon, I downshifted to second and slowed to a crawl, just to give all the good-looking joggers cause for checking me out. —Christy DeSmith

This scheduled test drive was slightly worrisome. There was some question whether the Road Rake and I, both horsepower heads, would be able to overcome the femme factor and just drive. We did, and the Mini did not let us down; although Christy did let out some worrisome noises when we tested its cornering ability.

As Sarah Britney, the salesperson at the dealership, said, this is a “BMW go-cart.” And if there are two things the Road Rake and I like, they’re BMWs and go-carts. Especially go-carts that will do eighty in third-gear, like this one.

This car definitely displays its BMW lineage when you take it somewhere near the limit. Acceleration, cornering, and braking are all in the wow zone. (Christy might say the EEEEE zone, coined when we took our first high-speed turn.) The handling is maybe the best I’ve ever experienced in a front-wheel-drive car. If you take a closer look at the car, the reason for this is obvious. The wheels are actually placed at the corners of the chassis, instead of being inset from the front and back, like most cars. So there is almost no lean in the turns, because there just isn’t much to lean out there beyond the wheel base. Unfortunately, this also means there’s damn near no trunk, but there isn’t much of one on a Porsche, either. If you want trunk, buy a Buick.

When Christy took the wheel, though, the Road Rake and I were holding our breath for nearly the entire ride. We both loved the car for what it was, but dreaded what Christy might say when it was her turn to drive. (If you want to know what that was like, here you go: I drove eighty-three miles per hour in third gear; Christy drove thirty-eight miles per hour in fourth gear.) We were finally able to exhale when it came. “This car is CUTE.”

Damn, and we—and the Mini—almost got away with it. —Tom Bartel

Gene and Jennifer Oberpriller rolled into work the other morning at about 9:00 a.m. They pulled up in front of One on One Bicycle Studio, the downtown Minneapolis coffee shop/bike shop/art gallery they own, and hitched their tattered, old road bikes to a signpost. Gene pushed his sunglasses into his dark, curly hair as he unloaded Hannah, the couple’s fourteen-month-old, from her Burley trailer.

It’s hard to resist labeling the Oberprillers as part of the recently coined “grup” demographic—grown-ups who retain their youthful cool, eschewing minivans and the suburbs even as they bear children of their own. For instance, the Oberprillers commute seven miles by bike, almost year round, from their home near Minnehaha Falls, arriving in time to greet the early crowd of fellow bike commuters who file into One on One for their morning brew.

The pair met as pro mountain bikers, both sponsored by Bianchi; Jennifer raced on weekends and holidays while attending the University of Minnesota, while Gene was able to make a modest income off the sport. He especially relished the itinerant lifestyle he lived on the U.S. race circuit. “It was sort of like being in a band,” he said.

As with being in a band, bike racing isn’t meant to be a lifelong career. After retiring, Gene did stints as a bike messenger and at the Alternative Bike and Board shop in Uptown. Both he and Jennifer also worked at Quality Bicycle Products, a distribution company in Bloomington. Gene was fired (twice), but Jennifer eventually became the marketing director. Jennifer lived alone during this time while Gene maintained his footloose lifestyle, hanging and rooming with local rockers and hardcore cyclists. In fact, he first discovered the building that now houses One on One—back then, in 1990, it was the notorious Yoshiko’s Sauna—when he took over a room upstairs from the drummer for Soul Asylum.

These days, Hannah is the most obvious sign of the couple settling down. Jennifer also does the accounting for One on One and oversees the café, while Gene curates the bike-themed art exhibitions and serves as the enterprise’s all-around style director. He selects the various offbeat brands, such as Bianchi and Surly, in which the bike shop specializes, and also deals in vintage bikes, hunting them down from as far away as Switzerland.

Then there’s the clothing and accessories. Gene believes that cyclists operate at the forefront of fashion trends, and so he’s always on the lookout for cutting-edge gear—everything from seventies-inspired “heritage” Adidas jerseys to One on One onesies and riding socks that assert “Your Bike Sucks.”

For himself, now that he’s something of a nine-to-fiver, Gene strictly eschews technical garb for the purposes of commuting. Instead, he goes for rock ’n’ roll T-shirts and rolled-up jeans. Carhartt pants are another favorite, especially when made into Bermuda-length cut-offs. He’s also a fan of Swobo, a San Francisco-based line of fashionable-yet-bike-friendly street wear, which includes designer tees and finely detailed jerseys—all without a lick of Lycra. Speaking of polyester, as the mercury pushes seventy, neither Oberpriller will be wearing the sort of high-tech, moisture-wicking fabrics that keep riders cool and dry. Both regard this style as being too fussy. In this matter, it helps that they’ve both put their racing days behind them, so that they can avoid reeking up the workplace. “We just don’t ride fast!” said Gene. “We ride fast enough to get there, but slow enough to not sweat.”

There is probably no more beleaguered building in all of Minnesota than the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. If there’s one thing both sides of the stadium debate can agree on, it’s how hideous the place is for baseball. Nevertheless, in its twenty-four years, Minneapolis’ “Rec Room” has become surrounded by a nebula of strange little shops, odd industrial enterprises, and food vendors on game days. It is precisely these places that make the Metrodome area so promising to the meanderer.

A casual walk through the area—the Dome peeking through gaps between buildings, like a mad scientist’s cloud floating through the city—reveals a pleasant mix of old industry, inner-city churches, the greenery of Elliot Park, government buildings and, to the north, the now-artsy Washington Avenue strip. You get places like the Justice Center, where a couple was recently wed by an ex-soap-star-turned-Ventura-appointed judge, and the eye-popping rainbow mural on the Valspar Building, by Peter Busa. There’s even three white clapboard homes with unkempt lawns. This section of the city is a reminder of the days when the game of bat and ball was considered blue-collar, attracting beer drinkers instead of cocktail sippers.

It is also a pleasure for the greasy-spoon connoisseur. Hubert’s, the famed meeting spot for football and baseball fans, has a fine menu, offering what is perhaps the city’s best BLT. And for eighty-one days during spring and summer (and into fall, if the Twins are lucky) you can lay claim to a wax-paper tray of cheese curds or a corndog dripping with ketchup on the plaza outside the stadium, aka Kirby Puckett Place. Vendors hawk their wares, straining their voices over the pre-recorded train whistle that signals the light-rail train, and you can admire the man whisking cauldrons of hot kettle corn like a modern-day Vulcan. There are children everywhere, goofballs with their scorecards, vendors hawking those scorecards, and crazy scalpers buzzing around like bees in a dumpster.

Crackpots abound on game days. The Metrodome attracts all manner of street musicians, for example. Just the other day, a guy was scraping a bow across his violin, turning “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” into a spine-tingling affair. There are fireworks. Police officers loaf about with assault rifles in plain view. These are to keep terrorists at bay, for “guys with weapons of mass destruction and stuff,” as one officer put it.

You can also stop into the musty Dome Souvenirs Plus, owned by Ray Crump, a man who’s also running a museum out back. The Original Baseball Hall of Fame Museum of Minnesota is made of equal parts Twins memorabilia and celebrity photos. Of these, there’s a plethora of country-western singers, from Tom T. Hall to Porter Wagoner, and even a disturbing picture of Ray and his wife with a topless Hank Williams Jr., who lounges not-so-seductively on a cheap motel bed.

Vikings owner Zygi Wilf has pledged that, should the football team get its new supercomplex in the burbs, he will redevelop the area. But for what purpose? The Dome seems to be the area’s sole raison d’être—aside from, maybe, the few who still punch time clocks over at Valspar Paints. Nevertheless, it’s inevitable that the Metrodome will go the way of Met Stadium or the old Armory, just three blocks west. When it does, the vendors, street musicians, and Ray Crump and his wall of heroes, will probably dry up and blow away, like empty peanut shells.

The rooms in the labyrinth beneath the Christ the King retreat center in Buffalo, Minnesota, are sparsely decorated with religious iconography, and the place has a settled, monastic atmosphere of tranquility. Located on a quiet edge of town, on a bluff overlooking Buffalo Lake, Christ the King advertises itself as a “sacred place for meditation and quiet time.” The facility’s posted schedule is booked with retreats for Catholic singles, engaged couples, parish secretaries, and members of Overeaters and Emotions Anonymous. 

One afternoon last summer, the small rooms on the lower level of the retreat center looked as if they had been hastily abandoned by schoolchildren who had been having the time of their lives. There were piles of inflated balloons twisted into myriad and occasionally recognizable shapes. Akimbo puppets and stuffed animals were heaped here and there, along with strands of knotted rope, wigs, and scraps of colorful fabric. On an easel in one room there was a large notepad on which was written such strange (and moderately disturbing, considering the context) phrases as “They Smell Fear” and “Don’t Become A Machine.”

The place was eerily silent, and filled with crepuscular light that was swirling with dust motes. Down the hall, the corridor opened into a large room with a vantage of the lake and a sky that was in the process of being overrun by storm clouds. A group of people were gathered around a long, wooden table, hunched quietly over handheld mirrors and intently applying makeup. Most of them were wearing giant shoes that were embellished with bright stars and polka dots.

Outside, the tree-covered lawn was swarming with clowns. Some of the clowns were dancing, arm in arm. Some were juggling. Others were crowding themselves into a tiny car, which is apparently a group behavior that is hardwired in the brains of clowns. One clown staggered around in the grass brandishing a shotgun.

The temperature was almost one hundred degrees, but despite their Technicolor wigs, grease-painted faces, and bright and voluminous clothing, none of the clowns appeared to be sweating. A visitor, who happened upon this scene entirely by chance, watched as two clowns, a man and a woman, took a candy-apple red clown buggy (with a red star license plate and fluttering American flags) for a slow lap around a statue of the Virgin Mary at the far end of the lawn. The statue had its head tilted back and its arms raised imploringly to heaven.

The clowns, eighty of them, from all over the globe, had traveled to this “sacred place for meditation and quiet time” to spend a week at the Mooseburger Camp for Clown Arts Education.

The camp, now in its tenth year, is a big deal in the world of serious clowning. Since the 1997 closing of the legendary Ringling Brothers Clown College in Florida (and, in its later years, the Wisconsin Dells), the Mooseburger Camp has been a national and international draw for clowns, whether they be professionals or the sorts of community amateurs that make up a disproportionate percentage of today’s clown population.

The director of the Mooseburger camp is a petite woman named Tricia Bothun, aka Pricilla Mooseburger. Bothun had something of an archetypal entrée into the world of clowning: Raised in Maple Lake, she ran away from home in 1982 to join the circus. She eventually ended up at the original Ringling Clown College in Venice, Florida, and then spent three years on the road with one of the Barnum and Bailey traveling units. When Bothun left the circus, she returned to Maple Lake and began creating clown costumes—Pricilla Mooseburger Originals—out of a little shop on the main drag. Today, she employs a team of eight seamstresses who help her produce hundreds of customized designs for clients all over the world, as well as stock costumes for the more casual hobbyist. She also travels around the country performing and teaching at workshops and camps, and is active in the Maple Lake Community Theater. It’s obvious, though, that Bothun’s annual camp—and the logistics and networking required to pull it off—occupies a good deal of her time.

Clowns, you might think, have become something of a dodgy proposition in the age of irony, and there’s no doubt that the profession’s public image has taken a few hits over the last couple of decades. Think serial killer John Wayne Gacy; think Shakes the Clown or Poltergeist; think the Insane Clown Posse; or Stephen King’s It. Think every blundering clown you’ve ever encountered in a small-town parade. The Mooseburger campers seemed either too keenly aware of this fact, or blithely oblivious. Either way, a big part of the camp’s mission is to provide clowns with the skills to do battle with lingering negative stereotypes created by hapless greasepaint amateurs and fear-mongering clown haters.

Joe Barney, one of the instructors at the Mooseburger Camp, has been a clown for forty-one years, and has carved out a specialty niche with New York’s Big Apple Clown Care Unit. “Ten years ago there was so much clown bashing going on,” he said. “Clowns were considered passé, and there’s no denying that the numbers were on the decline. Clowning was a dying art. That’s all really changing now, and this is the cream of the crop for clown training in the United States. I think clowns are more in-demand than ever, for a variety of reasons. Kids have been fed a steady diet of canned entertainment for years, and live entertainment is such a novelty for them. A clown that can actually work up a decent routine—maybe incorporate some magic tricks, some comedy gags, and material that both adults and children can enjoy—can get steady work.” Barney pointed out that he, for instance, works probably three hundred events a year, mostly in the New York area.

Although Bothun and her camp staff use classic circus routines as primary teaching tools, they also offer classes in all sorts of specialized skills that wouldn’t have much place in the average circus clown’s performance. “There’s a big difference between what a circus clown does on a daily basis and what’s expected of what we call hometown clowns,” Bothun said. “In the circus, the clown’s job is to get in and get out before the elephants show up. When you’re working in the community, you have to be able to work up close and personal, and often you have to interact directly with a small audience. You really do need a work ethic.”

Every year, Bothun assembles a crew of instructors with a diverse range of professional experience and skills. “We recognize that we’re part of a weird little subculture all our own,” she said. “People come to this from all sorts of backgrounds and with different needs and expectations, so we try to teach everything.” Bothun will generally have people on staff to teach basics like movement, makeup, and magic, and the camp’s schedule includes classes with titles like “Juggling and Ukulele Lab,” “Gospel and Greasepaint,” “Clowning and Puppetry,” “Bubble Magic,” “The Clown Hat as Your Friend,” “Parades and Props,” “Hospital Clowning,” and “Paper Plate Hats.”

There’s also a dealer room on site, where the campers can purchase hats, costumes, props, books, and makeup. They can also be fitted for the incredibly beautiful, plus-twenty sized shoes that are handcrafted by Wayne and Marty Scott, the Manolo Blahniks of clown footwear.

The clowns at Mooseburger Camp spend much of their time in character, and it can be difficult to see them as anything but the characters they play. They have names like Fitzwilly, Popcorn, Skippy Do Little, Toolz, Pastyr Clarence T. Funy Bone, and Little Pat. Some of them are Shriners or community clowns; others are professionals or semi-professionals looking to hone their skills or add something to their repertoire. Still others are strictly amateurs or curious beginners. Among last year’s crop of campers there was a New York cop, a gastroenterologist, a financial analyst, a retired shop teacher, a postman, and the dean of a university in Idaho.

There was also Angela Knight, aka Annie the Clown, a lawyer from Barbados. “There is a real shortage of clowns in Barbados,” Knight said, in explaining her decision to travel to Minnesota to attend the camp. “The island is 166 square miles and has a population of 265,000, but there probably aren’t more than a dozen clowns and maybe one or two magicians. I’m a government attorney, and I’m thirty-five and childless. I got interested in clowning as a way to sort of balance out my job. I’d gone to the Clowns of America convention in the past and heard about this place. I wanted to be funnier and more magical to watch, and this has been a wonderful experience. You get so much individual attention, and the instructors here are part of so much great history and tradition, and they’re passing on time-honored skills. I’m also grateful to be able to buy the sort of props and supplies that are so expensive and hard to come by in Barbados.”

On the last night of camp, the Mooseburger clowns stage a public performance in a nearby community. Last year, as the campers mingled outside the retreat center in full costume, preparing to board buses to the Annandale High School football field, Jose Rivera, a mime and clown from New Jersey who was teaching movement at the Mooseburger Camp, was talking about how rewarding it was to go into nursing homes. “It’s amazing,” he said. “It only takes an instant and so many of these old people remember how to dance and fall right into step with you. They remember that rhythm. It’s pretty wonderful to realize that you’ve just made someone remember part of who they once were.”

After the All Star Clown Show in Annandale, as the campers gathered back at their base in Buffalo for a pizza and dance party, a burly Shriner from Florida by the name of George Dondero was literally bouncing up and down. “I’ll tell you what,” Dondero said. “This place is where you separate the men from the boys. It’s like boot camp, only pure fun. You’ll find out pretty quick if you’re a clown or not, and I just found out that I’m a clown.”