In the frost-shrouded air of midnight, the rows upon rows of house trailers are serene, their wheels resting on gray stone pavers in the heart of New York City, their inhabitants fast asleep. The elongated windows of the Metropolitan Opera House peer down on the encampment; an electric chandelier casts a dim glow on the rounded roof of a circus performer’s home.
Behind the Lincoln Center complex on West 62nd Street, hidden to most New Yorkers — even those who frequent the movies and the health clubs in the neighborhood’s condominium towers — 148 circus people have moved onto a piece of land no bigger than a city block. For three chilly months, these men, women and children — acrobats, clowns, elephant trainers, electricians and concessionaires from the Big Apple Circus — will try to assume the guise of New Yorkers.
They try in varied ways; some successful, some less so. A clown’s wife signs up the children for storytelling in a bookstore a few blocks away; another clown lives apart from his family — only 25 miles away in New Jersey, but the nights are anxious with separation. An electrician and his wife spend weeks gathering supplies before they arrive — the city is so expensive, they say. They buy 150 cans of dog food on the road; the price is double in Manhattan.
For these seasoned travelers, New York living is the most intense of all — evident to a reporter spending the night in one of the trailers. Their territory here is the smallest they encounter, their parking the tightest: their metal homes are only a foot apart. In other places, they camp on grass in spring and summer; they roll out canopies and light up hibachis. In New York, in winter, they camp on stones, between marble planters, overshadowed by monuments to 1960s architecture.
The New York experience acts as a catalyst: making a move into a bigger trailer essential; making a decision to retire from circus life more pressing.
Many of the circus people own the trailers they live in; trailers with brand names like Avion and Citation and Chateau, which they batten down and haul with their pickup trucks to Reston, Va., to Manhattan, to Atlanta, to Boston, to Queens, to Long Island, to Chicago, to Cleveland, to New England. They live in trailers decorated with their children’s drawings, with shirred gingham curtains they have made. They brag about their refrigerators and stoves, which automatically convert from electricity to propane on the road. And they live with their pets: 11 dogs, 5 cats and 1 turtle.
Although the Big Apple Circus began in New York two decades ago, it has grown up and out; its promoters say it is now one of the world’s half-dozen best-known circuses. Many of its acts are foreign: for Elena Serafimovich, the Flying Jimenez and the Kuznetsovs, this is the first time in New York City: on their first full day here, each was handed customized maps of the stores and the sights.
Bernice Collins, the company manager, doesn’t need a map. She’s been coming here for 20 years and lives two trailers from her office, in a trailer hung with lace curtains and emblazoned with a spangled license plate that says GYPSI. To Ms. Collins, circus people — no matter how well traveled — are not much different from anyone else.
“Behind the glitz and the glamour,” she said, “people live everyday lives; they take care of chores and do the shopping when they need to.” To Bello Nock, the clown whose reddish-blond hair stands up as if he had stuck his finger into an electric socket, New York City is his biggest adventure. He and his wife, Jenny, live with their three children in a one-bedroom Avion.
“I’m like someone on vacation,” he said. “When I’m not performing, I take my kids to the Empire State Building. We brought our bikes and Rollerblades. We went to the zoo at Central Park; we know that place by heart already.”
“I took the subway twice because it was fun,” he added. “It’s exactly like what it looks like in the movies. It doesn’t matter if it’s the 50s, 60s or 70s, it’s the same.”
Nock, 29, a seventh-generation circus performer, dashed into the beige-and-white marble-print bathroom at the back of his trailer to wash his distinctive hair for the coming performance.
Mrs. Nock, who studied early-childhood education, tutors their son, Alex, 8. The Nocks say that in the last week, they definitely decided to move up to a two-bedroom trailer.
“Sometimes it drives me nuts, the small space,” said Mrs. Nock, 28, sitting at the Formica dining banquette, which, at night, is transformed into her son’s bed. (The table is lowered to line up with the seats; a cushion is added, and sheets are put over it all.) The couch at the back pulls out to become the couple’s bed; their two daughters sleep in the little bedroom next to the bathroom.
“I’m not from the circus, like Bello is,” she said. “I’m from the Wisconsin Dells, a resort area. I’ve known Bello since I was 3. On the other hand, I’m lucky to be with my kids. I don’t have to put them in day care.”
New York City is the family’s long-anticipated challenge. “We just signed the kids up for the YMCA here,” she said. “We signed Amariah, she’s 4, up for ballet.”
“We try to make it as normal as we can,” she added.
We used to have a house in Florida,” said Thomas M. Bennett, 52, a big, blond-bearded man, who repairs and services the circus generators. Bennett lives with his wife, Christy, 48, the Big Apple’s purchasing manager, and a golden retriever called T.C. “We’d go there in November at the end of the season. We’d uncover the Christmas tree and plug it in. Then, the end of January, we’d unplug the tree and leave.”
When they sold their house almost two years ago, they traded in their old 24-foot Avion — complete with leaks — for a new 35-foot trailer with a rubber roof, lots of overhead closets, plenty of real oak, a queen-size bed, a walk-in shower and a full “basement”: storage space under the floor. Although they declined to say how much they paid, they said a brand-new version might cost between $55,000 and $60,000. A full basement is de rigueur, they said, because of their New York City sojourn: it’s where the dog food is.
While many performers own their own house trailers, the Big Apple provides them for about a dozen performers, usually European guest artists touring for just one season. The circus also puts up 60 employees in six big vans called sleepers, to which this writer was refused access.
“They’re not picturesque,” Ms. Collins said. Those who work the “floss” (cotton candy) and “drag” (hot dog and hamburger) concessions, ushers, electricians and wardrobe staff live in the sleepers, which are segregated by sex.
At night, New Yorkers might spot the sleeper denizens — mostly young — huddled at one of the area’s bistros, maybe at a corner table in Houlihan’s, a Lincoln Center pub.
Or they might find Barry Lubin, a star clown, watching television by himself or with Paul Binder, the ringmaster and co-founder of the Big Apple Circus. “We’re the only ones who like sports television,” Lubin said. “Some nights, I just stay at home.”
Home is Chateau RV12, a big two-bedroom trailer packed with mementos of his wife and two daughters. In fact, it is a gallery of the children’s colorful sketches, many of them portraits of him in his red dress, gray, fuzzy wig and wire-rim spectacles: the costume he wears in the show, playing his alter ego, Grandma, a yenta of 80 with a very large pocketbook.
Lubin’s routine near the end of the performance, where Grandma discovers an exercise machine and starts an energetic number with dancers dressed as Men in Black, brought down the house one night last week.
At one end of his trailer is a double-bedded room; at the other, a small bathroom and a bedroom with two single beds. But Lubin lives alone; in the school year, his wife, Roberta, and their two daughters stay at their house in Garwood, N.J.
Four years ago, when their daughter Emily was 1 1/2, the couple decided they wanted more space. They took Danielle, now 12, out of the one-room red schoolhouse that travels with the circus and put her in a public school, “to allow her to become a Girl Scout,” he said.
By then, Mrs. Lubin, who was a bareback rider, had stopped working for the circus and was “basically following me around, helping me with my choreography,” he said. “She wanted a social life of her own,” he added.
They bought their house four years ago, “and it’s been very tough,” Lubin said. “My wife encouraged me in my career — `if you want to keep playing circus, go ahead’ — but it put a lot of pressure on her, with the chores and with the upbringing of the two children. I was having my cake, being a bachelor, then enjoying the home life — for about a day and a half.”
Now, Mrs. Lubin has “a real social life,” he said. “I know people there but not really well. One of my biggest kicks is watching my 6-year-old play baseball, but I see the other parents there, relaxed, in beach chairs watching, and I say, `Never again will I miss this stuff.’ “
The first thing he did one night last week on arriving home was to flip on the answering machine. There was a message from Mrs. Lubin, who needed his advice about the children.
“It hasn’t been fair to her,” he said.
Which is why, this year, he decided to leave the circus. Already, he’s turned down an offer from Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus — it meant two years on the road. “It isn’t a matter of money anymore,” he said. And sighed.
“But how do you walk away from this — happy?” he said, sweeping his hands across the narrow trailer, to encompass the lights strung along the peaks of the big top just beyond the windows of his home.
“You don’t.”
