Though the store was usually busy, the occasional lapses made a bored clerk appreciate counter-leaners like Big Tom Mizell, who came in daily to proselytize against the government, Rod the Biker with his hairy tales of Valdosta and Glinda the Crotch-Grabber, who…well, you know. Over the course of a given day, we had drug dealers who stayed out of jail by helping the government smuggle arms to the Contras, we had exhibitionists who boldly tried on dresses without the aid of a changing room, we had teenyboppers on the lam from home in Opa-Locka, looking for love in all the wrong headshops.
And then, there were the employees, our co-collaborators who pulled up each morning in the clown car and came in to see how much havoc they could wreak. Dick North was the first, a co-resident of the fabled Charlatan house on Sixth Street. Dick favored the Eastern religions and was disposed toward Buddha, exceptional marijuana and the body-painting of runaway girls in the blacklight room. Fifteen-year-old girlies with rucksacks would poke their little heads in the door and ask, “Is this where Dick North teaches?”
Ricky Childs, a gay, black young man, was a Circus employee of 18 years. He dutifully went to church with his mother on Sundays but raised merry Ned in the local bars the other six nights of the week with co-hellraisers Debbi Brandt and Michael (Jagger) Hatcherson. Ricky was also a member of the famous Circus Posse, which tracked a bad-check writer to her apartment, climbed in through the transom and recovered the ill-gotten goods, not to mention a lid of grass she had resting in the refrigerator. Cheaters tax, we’d call it. I told Ricky we brought him into the clan to cover all our minority hiring requirements. Mr. Childs was also responsible for our sponsorship of a candidate in the transvestite Miss Gainesville contest at one of the bigger bars in town. Don’t think that wasn’t a barrel of laughs…those girls have no regard for the sizes clearly written on dress labels. When “Patricia” won the local contest, Ricky came rushing up to tell me she was now eligible to compete for Miss Florida laurels. I told him he was on his own, I’d done my time. And then, of course, there was the star on top of the tree, Daniel Levine, the Pride of North Miami Beach. Every store should have one.
Danny Boy
My Circus partner in crime was Pamme Brewer, known coast to coast as The Nude Coed. Pamme was an Art major, thus ran across a broad cross-section of lunatics on a daily basis, not the least of which was one Daniel Levine. “You should hire Danny,” she advised one day, “he’s funny, he has a great personality and everybody likes him. And he was a clothing salesman on the Miracle Mile in Coral Gables.” Any side effects? “Well, they locked him up in San Francisco for awhile because he was confusing himself with Jesus.” Oh. “But he’s better now.” How much better?
Pamme brought Danny around and he turned out to be a very engaging fellow. Moving directly to the elephant in the room, I asked him, “Danny, are you still crazy?” Nope, he said, “that’s all done with.” I hired him on the spot and his first day on the job he reorganized the clothing department, sold fifty (count ‘em—50) pair of bluejeans, made coffee, and got a cutie to try on the forbidden Red Dress, a fairly transparent creation she came back to try on five more times. Everyone in the store was deeply chagrined when somebody else bought the thing and it disappeared forever down the blacklit corridors of Circus lore. C’est la vie, as they say in Montreal.
I have had very few male roommates in this life. The first was Gordon in East Bennett Hall at Oklahoma State during my freshman year. Gordon was immediately homesick, constantly pining for his high school girlfriend back home again in Indiana. The gleaming candlelight still burning bright through the sycamores finally drew him back.
The next guy, Buck, also at OSU, was more of a housemate since we shared several rooms but had our own sleeping quarters. Buck was a rodeo rider and a drunk, who was always broke but told great stories. One night, a large member of the Cowboy wrestling team tracked me down at home to pay me back for an ornery article I’d written in the campus newspaper. Highly offended by this breach of etiquette, Buck picked him up and threw him through a window. Best pane of glass I ever paid for.
There were a couple of months spent in Austin at Gilbert Shelton’s condemned apartment where I slept on his hair couch while Gilbert and his half-brother Steve occupied the bedrooms. That was more like living in a war zone, with drunken wall-painting parties, phantasmagorical peyote extravaganzas and violent water-balloon fights with merciless antagonists. Finally, also in Austin, there were a couple of months in Wally Stopher’s atrium located in the infamous Austin “Ghetto,” which featured numberless mattresses on the floor, the tangy odor of feline urine and madwomen grappling on the stairway. Taking note of all this, I decided to cast my lot with females in the future, and I did. Except for one formidable stint with the irrepressible Danny Levine.
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| Dick North, left, John Buckley and Danny Levine, right, work on Subterranean Circus booth at the Atlanta Pop Festival. |
Glory Days
After I spent five days in Alachua General recovering from a massive plaster-dust-induced asthmatic attack in 1968, my doctor thought a change to a relatively dustless environment was in order. I found a decent two-bedroom place at Summit House Apartments off Archer Road and Danny moved in with me. He was a fine roommate, except for a nasty habit of leaving odiferous wine bottles in the sink, and we got along famously. We might be roommates at Summit House today if Danny hadn’t fallen madly in love with a local highschool Lolita named Charlotte Yarbrough, who visited him at the crack of dawn most mornings before roaring off to classes on the back of his noisy Kawasaki. Apartment dwellers like nothing better than being roused at sunrise by the revving up of motorcycles, thus we lost our lease, alas. No hard feelings, though. Shit happens when you’re having fun.
Opening the Subterranean Circus door each morning at ten was like going to a new musical comedy every day. You never knew who was going to show up and in what condition, but whatever happened you knew Danny Levine could relate to the issues of the customer. He was a combination of Class Psychologist, mentor of the young and innocent, loyal friend to the confused and depraved. He was also a certified minister of the Universal, having sent in his 29 cents and two boxtops from Quaker Puffed Rice. Now and then, he’d trek out to some woodsy glen and marry a starstruck couple of hippies while their friends released terrified doves into the sky. He was a man for all seasons, a cheerful bon vivant, a lover of art history, a daring motorcycle racer, a sucker for any crazy new plan. Once, in Manhattan, he took me to the Metropolitan Museum and I learned more about Art in a few hours than I’d assimilated in the rest of my life. Danny was like Norm in Cheers; everybody perked up and smiled when he strode into the room. All good things come to an end, of course, and so did Danny’s multi-year sentence at the Circus. He was direly needed elsewhere, especially at Art’s Kawasaki Shop, so one day he picked up his rolling papers, love beads, Indian mandalas and got on his motorcycle for a final drive west. “I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places,” he promised, then sped off into the night. But not before leaving us this gleaming silver bullet, a token of his reign.
The Latter Years
Like rambling Hank Snow, Danny Levine has been everywhere, man, traversing the world in search of merriment and mirth. Exploring through Europe and Asia, he’s expressed an appreciation for the kindness of strangers, with a particular fondness for the Irish and the Thais. His favorite place on Earth is Italy, which seems a natural for a professor of Art History, but it’s the food that won him over. “Best in the world, not even close,” he swears. He’s finally settled down in lovely Savannah, the genteel city of parks and greenery where he taught for 17 years at the Savannah College of Art & Design.
Not too many years ago, Mr. Levine was dutifully swimming laps, as some of us do in the interests of self-preservation, when he came upon an irritating problem---a temporary loss of ability to use one of his legs. After traipsing down several blind alleys as often seems to happen in neurological cases, he finally got the correct diagnosis---Parkinson’s Disease---an ugly game-changer. “I use to feel sorry for myself,” he says, “but one day I got some kind of unexplainable revelation. Now I’m just happy to be here.” Welcome to the club, Dan.
Danny made the drive to The Last Tango, but it’s a scary four hours each way on the road for a fellow who is never sure when the next body part will temporarily opt out. Still, he perseveres. A recent brain stimulation procedure at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville gave him a boost and last Winter he gave us a call. “An old friend of mine wants me to go to Italy for a couple of weeks in December. I think I’m going to go,” he said. And he did. Despite a few minor issues, the trip was such a great inspiration that this November he picks up his backpack and heads for the tulip fields of Amsterdam. We’ve no doubt that he’ll make it. He’s a Circus boy! He’s a magic-maker! And he’s strong to the finish ‘cause he eats his spinach, he’s Danny the Sunshine Man!
That’s all, folks….
