Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Moving the bears #1


More bear pictures of the 1980 Blue Show from Eric Beheim. These show the Transportation Dept. moving the shifting cages from their permanent area to the performing arena where the Prop Crew will take over.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

When the Blue show closed it's season in "81," Ursula and the Bears waited for their departure back to Europe in the parking lot of the Meadowland's Arena, while the Red show was there. They had never performed there though.The Arena was new and had just opened that year and the Red was the first to play it.
If I'm not mistaken, I believe there was an incident that occurred in Cincinnati Ohio, while the Blue was there in "81", where someone from the general public lost a finger trying to pet one of Ursula's Bear's.
Maybe it was just one of the many Wild and Wonderful stories I've heard, during my circus career, but chances are it's true, too many times they have been.
Wally Naghtin and Rene Turcios provided the Red show with the Greatest 2 ring's of mixed brown Bear's, which I'm pretty sure, will sadly never again be witnessed on the Ringling show, or any for that matter.
Ina and Venko Lilov had a nice Bear presentation as well, and Venko was forever trying to prevent people from petting the Bear's.

John Darragh-
Red & Blue Unit's
81 thru 87
Big Apple Circus
Lincoln Center "91"

Anonymous said...

Question from Eric:

Is that Junior Ruffin reaching up and locking the cages together?

Anonymous said...

That is not Junior. Junior was running transportation that season, but was probably overseeing the operation from one of the clarks used to move the cages.