Most people try and flee the city durning the summer time. Identical cookie cutter Jersey and Delaware shore towns are flooded with the crush of humanity who wanta to show off their fat burnt asses as they stuff their faces with funnel cakes and hot sausage. It’s what good memories and bad dreams are made of. But the best shore town is the first shore town.

The summer season is Coney Island season, it’s when dirty heaven shines the brightest, and it’s almost over. There is a lot of talk about how it’s all changing and ending. After all, Astroland went down, the condos are going up… maybe shit really will never be the same, maybe it will just be different.

Another piece of mega awesome coming to an end this year is This And That, America’s Favorite Game Show. Some might see this as another end times sign for the most unique enclave in the country, but I don’t think so. This and That has been around for ten years and it’s not like they are being run out of town. The burlesque tradition in Coney is strong and I have no doubt this will not  be the last we hear of The Great Fredini, the ultra hot Julie Atlas Muz or any of the other sick fucks involved in that orgy of creative perversion.

If you can, go see it tonight, it is probably one of the best game show concepts I’ve ever seen.

Be sure to check out there site for more sneak peeks.

-Felicia Jackson
Swellco & Swellco 22397b

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Photos courtesy of thisorthat.tv

The best in sexy, creepy, strange.

I was lucky enough to see The Squidling Bros. two times at Cha Cha’s in Coney Island. I feel blessed by what ever dark gods rule the strange and bizarre. This troupe is quite possibly one of the most twisted, bizarre group of performers alive today and I personally have a massive girl crush on their female star Betty Bloomerz

Right now they are traveling Europe but with any luck they will be back on the East Coast and in Coney Island where all good Circus people dwell. Like S&S corporate, they are based down in Philadelphia and run monthly event called Carnivalution that is supposed to be AMAZING.

Considering that they are both in Philly, and considering  I know for a fact that they all know each other. I find it really odd that they don’t work together and I’m on a mission to get to the bottom of it. When I went there for the WRATH party, I asked Louise LaTease when she was going to book them for the Video Circus. She put her hands up and said
“hey, I want them too. You better ask Black.”
I asked Black.
He shook his head and said “you better ask Brown.”
I asked Brown and he manically laughed like a super villain and said
“why don’t you ask the clowns?”

Well I’m going to when they come back home because this lack of sick & twisted solidarity simply will not do. COME HOME SQUIDLING BROS. I MISS YOU!

Be sure to check out their site and see when they will be in your area.

-Felicia Jackson
Swellco & Swellco 22397b

Photos courtesy of squidlingbros.com & Squidling Bros. FB

The impending gentrification of Coney Island loomed for years as developers salivated over the prospect of building condos in dirty heaven. The mecca for the strange and dispossessed was under-siege for what felt like years.. I remember when I went to the mermaid parade the year before Astroland went down, there were so many protest signs that it fell and it felt more like a solidarity march for freaks.

Now I hear so many people talk as if the whole board walk was nuked. But if you know anything about the history of Coney Island, you know that the whole place as been razed to the ground and rebuilt repeatedly.

The carny culture is still there. Coney Island is STILL a hub for burlesque, sideshow and art and there is ALWAYS something going on there. Most importantly Sideshow By the Seashore endures and it’s legacy continues to shine. The summer season is coming up.
The Cyclone-still there.
The Wonder Wheel-still there.
Nathans’s-still there.
Most importantly Sideshow By the Seashore endures and it’s legacy continues to shine. The summer season is coming up.  As far as I’m concerned, as long as they are, Coney island is still a magical place. Don’t forget to check them out.

-Marcus Abrey Swellco & Swellco 24534b

Check out their site

Photos courtesy of  coneyisland.com

This entry is brought to you courtesy of Swellco & Swellco’s month-long homage to Women’s History Month, “The Female Power Project.”

I’m a huge fan of the sideshow. I know the term is thrown around here as a perpetual metaphor, but I mean real sideshow, real circus. I prefer the small down & dirty DIY troupes over the over produced Circus De Soleil stuff. Generally these troupes aren’t in it for the money, it’s far more of a lifestyle than a job. The downside is that the term star power and crust punk don’t really go together very well. Many of the performers don’t really have the charisma that you see in other performance arts. But there are exceptions.

Enter Betty Bloomerz. Drop dead beautiful, physically flawless, engaging on stage, charismatic & pretty much an all in one sideshow act. Much like Debra Harry was to 70′s New York punk;  Betty adds something the sideshow scene has been needing for a very long time. She’s a movie star power cliche breaker in the face of the sleazy carnie stereotypes.

If Swellco & Swellco is the authority for all things strange, then this humble writer nominates Betty Bloomerz to be the poster girl.

-Felicia Jackson
Swellco & Swellco 22397b

I’m going out on a limb here, and I’m going to go on record and publicly disagree with the dreaded R.E. Brown’s blog entry about huge fake boobs. I think people have been disappeared for less with him, so cross your fingers for me.

I work as a pro dom, that’s common knowledge. I wear it on my sleeve pretty clearly. But my services are generally provided to people who desperately HIDE their freak side. People who live out their fantasy in secrecy.

What has attracted me to the blog aspect of the Circus, as  I’ve always understood it, is that the point of this is to celebrate those who choose to stand way, way out in the fringe of society. People who have whole heartedly rejected society and don’t hide the weirdo or freak in them.

I’m ok with the porn star entries, but it’s because I enjoy sex. Dirty filthy fucking and I like to watch people fuck. But I don’t really think there is any higher philosophical intentions by 99% of the girls involved. Some have a strong head on their shoulders, but lets face it, the motivation of most porn stars is purely economical mixed in with an overwhelming desire to be ACCEPTED. Yeah, it’s a fucked up world with fucked up people. Believe me, I know.

That doubly goes for the freak show breast implant women. These ladies aren’t stuffing thirty pounds of silicon in their chest because they want to be different, it’s because they want to be ACCEPTED. These are women are absolutely desperate for the attention and acceptance of men. They want to be what they think society wants them to be.  These are people who embody everything wrong with straight, normal society.

I think if you want to look at the true freak kings and lords of the underground, you always have to get back to the circus. Not drifting off as a metaphor, but the real circus. The sideshow is where people always proudly defy the norm. That being said, I humbly present Insectavora, now going by the name Angelica. If you live anywhere on the east coast, and know anything about sideshow, you know who she is. She is beautiful, sexy, edgy and she choose to cover herself from face to toe in amazing tattoos and makes a living eating bugs, swallowing fire and a hundred other awesome feats of amusingness. She chose to be UN-ACCEPTED. That to me is what the circus is all about, metaphor or literal, video or real.

Now hopefully Mr. Brown and Mr. Black won’t show up at my house with a giant nap sack at 3 in the morning.

It’s been a while since I’ve been up to Brooklyn. I’m not real positive where Insectavora is performing so hit her up on her facebook page to find out.

-Annette Garcia
Swellco & Swellco 54823a

Photos Courtesy of www.myspace.com/insectavora

I’ll never forget the first time I discovered who Joe Coleman was. I was in high school, hungry for all things edgy, punk rock or subversive. I acquired a beat up VHS bootleg copy of Mondo New York. It was a rather pointless Mondo entry that had my obsessive crush Lydia Lunch wandering around a pre-Giuliani cleansed New York showing off the the city’s twisted outsider denizens. She wanders into what I recall being an abandoned church full of strange Nick Zed-esk 80′s freaks. Joe Coleman came out, gave one of his mind blowing rants and then pulled out two little white mice. In a sickly sweet cartoony voice he apologized to them for what for what he was about to do but let them know that it was for the best because we live in a world of shit. Then he bit their heads off. Like the Geeks of old he bit their heads off on by one and spat them into the audience. Then he tore off his coat off and exposed a vest full of fireworks like some mad terrorist. Suddenly his whole body lit up with little explosions and he faded out as the room blacked with smoke. The end.

I sat with my jaw dropped and my heart racing. I had never seen anything like it.

But I can say that every time I’ve experienced a facet of Joe Coleman. The first painting, the first interview, the first spoken word. Always the same, my jaw dropped and my heart raced. Every time I thought “I’ve never seen anything like it.” Reading articles and seeing video’s of him perform utterly effected and sculpted my own world view. His hyper dense painting has been a major influence on my prints. His mind blowing oddities collection sparked my own love affair with the sideshow and circus. Joe Coleman has always been something for me to aspire to but never achieve.

I always snidely say that I denounce and refuse to acknowledge celebrity. But once I saw him at Coney Island. At least I believe it was him. Like a giddy little kid, I couldn’t believe my widened eyes. It was a cold shitty day he was sitting on the beach by himself with his shoes off. I just stood a few feet away and stared frozen, unable to conceive of what I was seeing. After a moment my wife called to me from the board walk. Like a little school boy I ran up the wooden planks and walked away with her, never saying what I saw. How could I say I saw the image of my own filthy Jesus. How could I admit that I had one?

-R.E. Brown
Swellco & Swellco 64312b

Be sure to check out his site

Photos courtesy of joecoleman.com