Unlike yesterday’s twins, Lakshmi Tatma was born with a parasitic twin, causing her to resemble the Hindu goddess for wealth, prosperity (both material and spiritual), light, wisdom, fortune, fertility, generosity and courage. Today, HeyRubeCircus.com features a documentary on Lakshmi that follows her journey from local fame to medical attention: The following video covers the medical [...]

Today, feel-good documentary television has replaced the sideshow as an entertainment media outlet for those born with anatomical oddities. While many people decry the dehumanizing aspects of sideshows, these contemporary tv series are quite successful. This week, we celebrate one of the modern bastions of sideshow culture and the triumph differently bodied people with a [...]

Meet Nathan Comp, a writer who posts under the guise of The Feral Scribe. He’s a gypsy spirit and his travels lead him into the world of carnie work this summer. His journalistic coverage of that experience recently made front page news in Madison, Wisconsin’s Isthmus newspaper. Today, the Feral Scribe pauses to reflect on [...]

Many of my fellow sideshow lovers out there happen to be horror movie fanatics as well. And, if you’re anything like me, a good, campy slasher film is pretty hard to beat. Well, get ready for just such a horror movie set in a traveling carnival during the Dust Bowl. A menacing force descends on [...]

In the golden era, circuses traveled with two bands: one for the sideshow and one for the big top. The sideshow bands were populated with African American musicians while the spots in the more prestigious big top bands were reserved for Caucasians. This disappointing segregation, however, had an unsuspected side effect: the widespread dissemination of [...]

Circus wagons have always been numbered. This helped to maintain order on cluttered lots. Workers, however, developed nicknames for various wagons or train cars. For example, the cars that housed single women were commonly referred to as “virgin’s cars” and the dining car was called the “pie car.”

While circus performers generally don’t speak of money, the average salary for circus jobs is $35,000 according to SimplyHired.com. However, Cirque du Soleil salaries range from $30,000 for apprentices to over $100,000 for star performers, according to CNN. Clearly, income depends on the outfit and rank for circus folk. Today, vacations, medical insurance and 401(k) [...]

As most sideshow historians will agree, there really isn’t much that is completely original in the sideshow arts. Performers have been walking on glass, eating fire and laying on beds of nails since the earliest sideshow days. Instead, sideshow performers reinvent traditional acts and modify them for modern audiences. This isn’t always an easy task; [...]

Betty Boop’s regular sidekick was Koko the Clown, a character created by animation innovator Max Fleischer. Fleischer based Koko on a photograph of Fleischer’s brother Dave dressed in a clown suit. Today, HeyRubeCircus.com features Koko in an old Betty Boop cartoon. This particular episode was banned in 1934 for the politically incorrect drug consumption.

There’s nothing like a vintage cartoon to illustrate the mechanics of the sideshow hootchie show. Dancing ladies often accompanied the traveling sideshows and male audiences were lured into the separate tent with a sneak preview. Enjoy!