PAUL BINDER

The Ivy League Vagabond Who Started the Big Apple Circus
Ralph Gardner Jr. Tries His Had at Juggling With Paul Binder
Ralph Gardner Jr. meets with Paul Binder, the founder and ringmaster of the Big Apple Circus and the author of a new memoir, "Never Quote the Weather to a Sea Lion," about his life in the circus.

 

Paul Binder is the founder of the Big Apple Circus. Above, a file photo from when he served as ringmaster.
Big Apple Circus
From:  stream.wsj.com
 By Ralph Gardner Jr.
July 25, 2013
New York---If you could acquire any skill that would be guaranteed to impress children and adults alike, that would make you a hit at parties, that would wow the ladies—and the men for that matter—what would it be?
Making lots of money would be a good place to start. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I mean a physical skill, a talent that suggests coordination and makes people more intrigued about you; that in some small, subliminal way suggests there’s sparkle to your personality—a deep, subterranean reservoir of drive and passion that can just be glimpsed behind your smooth, debonair, unemotive exterior.
I’m talking about juggling, of course. Who wouldn’t want to know how to juggle? I’m not suggesting doing it for a living. But simply when the action lags at a business meeting or a cocktail party, and you spy off in the corner, say, several rubber balls, a bowling pin or two, and maybe one of those rubber chickens you can buy at novelty shops—what any of these objects would be doing in a Midtown office or someone’s home, for that matter, I have no idea—being able to pick them up and prove yourself capable of keeping all of them aloft at the same time, and then catching them before they drop to the floor.
It was something like that desire to learn a bold new trick that found me on a recent afternoon at Dube Juggling, a store on lower Broadway that has answers to all your juggling needs. These include juggling balls, of course, as well as juggling clubs, knives, bean bags, cigar boxes, hats, scarves, rings, fire torches, unicycles and rola bola boards. Indeed, the only thing you have to supply yourself might be the stilted banter that professional jugglers seem to feel essential to their craft.
I happened to be there in the august company of Paul Binder, the founder and onetime ringmaster of the Big Apple Circus and the author of a new memoir, “Never Quote the Weather to a Sea Lion,” about his life in the circus.
Mr. Binder claimed he’d have me juggling in no time. “I think I can give him a basic pattern in half an hour to 45 minutes,” he boasted.
I told him I already knew how to juggle two balls. He was unimpressed. “Three is juggling,” he sniffed. “Two isn’t. One more object than hands becomes juggling.”
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