The colorful life of a carnie

Leigh-Anne Brown Arizona Daily Wildcat Thompson operates the Tubs of Fun game at Spring Fling. Through great practice and patience, he has perfected the art of accurately throwing the ball into the tub without it popping back out.

Ride operator Al Burs stepped out of the operator's box and beckoned passers by to take a ride on the Spring Fling ride "Spinout."

He yelled in a slow monotone slurred by age and a Massachusetts accent.

Then a smartass kid asked a personal question.

"How did you lose your teeth?"

Without a pause or a blink, he mumbled something intelligible.

The kid asked him to repeat his answer - after all, this was the interesting stuff. A few eves-droppers stopped to hear his answer, hoping it would give some insight to the carnies' "secret world," no doubt full of all kinds of nasty stuff. Whispers ran wild.

Did he lose them in a drunken brawl? Or maybe some kind of sick bet? Or a rough night of sex with the bearded lady?

Burs repeated himself. "An auto accident."

Three words that made the listeners recognize just how human the carnie was after all.

Burs is just one of the several carnies who have made Tucson their home for most of the month of April.

Tucson is quite the carnival town these days, what with Spring Fling haven sprung last week and the Pima County Fair about to start today. If you plan to attend the Fair, which runs until the 18th, it will help to know thy carnie.

Leigh-Anne's experience

Wipe away any tears that Burs' story might have induced.

As Leigh-Anne - a Catalyst photographer - can attest, carnies can most definitely still be creepy.

In order to get the most out of the free media passes, Leigh-Anne took an extra visit to the Spring Fling on Friday. She approached the Spinout ride to take some pictures of its operator, who that day was a funny-looking man who identified himself as Patrick Herring.

Leigh-Anne Brown Arizona Daily Wildcat Ride operator Al Burs shouts to entice onlookers to experience the Spinout ride he operates at Spring Fling. The Spinout ride stayed true to its name by flipping its riders upside-down and whirling them around in a circle.

"Spelled just like the fish or the bone," said Herring, a real charmer. Leigh-Anne rolled her eyes and walked away.

Then Leigh-Anne walked around the carnival, partaking in rides. She noticed that the man was following her around.

She tried to get away from Herring without letting him know that she was on to him. When she got in line for a caramel apple, Herring approached her.

"Don't you have any questions for me? Don't you need to interview me?" he said.

Leigh-Anne told him that interviewing was the reporter's job. Creeped out, she left the carnival soon after.

The next day, Leigh-Anne led the reporter to the same ride, which that day was run by Burs. "There's no one named Patrick Herring that works here," Burs said.

That's carnie folk for you.

A carnie by any other name

Carnies don't mind being called carnies, in certain instances, anyway.

"That depends on what the definition is," Thompson said.

Webster's 3rd New International Dictionary provides the sterile "one who works with carnivals," and goes on to say that other acceptable spellings of the word are "carny" and "carney."

Given that definition, the carnies are glad to call themselves carnies.

And then there's the other definition - the unwritten image. Austin Powers put it best.

"Only two things scare me, and one is nuclear war," the International Man of Mystery said, before Basil Exposition asked him what the other thing was.

"Carnies," Powers responded, his face scrunching up. "Circus folk. They're nomads, you know. Small hands."

When asked if Thompson calls himself a carnie, he shook his head, then shot back.

"I'm an outdoor entertainer," he said.

Leigh-Anne Brown Arizona Daily Wildcat Thrill-seekers spin high over the UA Mall on the Yo-Yo ride at Spring Fling last Friday afternoon during a rare moment of good weather.

We are fa-mi-leee

According to Burs, competing carnies are really friends at heart.

Even though they compete for visitors' cash, they realize that they live the same tough life, and they share each others' troubles, Burs said.

Tony Fiori, Marketing Director for RCS, which owns most of the games and rides that show up at the Fling or Fair, echoed the sentiments.

Fiori, who has a wife and five children, said that his family travels with him when his kids' school schedule allows.

There also seems to be a chummy relationship between employees and management. When asked to describe Fiori, Thompson laughed.

"Look for the big ugly Italian guy," he said.

You can win, really

Leigh-Anne tossed the ball in a smooth arc, and it drifted into the waiting receptacle. It hit the top of the basket, bounced down, then took a nasty spin and rimmed out. Frustrated, she tried it again. And again. And again. Same result.

After five such throws, Leigh-Anne gave up. It turned out "Tubs of Fun" was really "Tubs of Frustration."

This scene has been repeated countless times in any well-run carnival, and it's occurred so much that so-called "scam games" have sparked police investigation and appeared on "60 Minutes."

What better way to get the scoop on these games, than to ask a pseudo-carnie?

UA Ecology and Evolutional Biology freshman Stephanie Callimanis was working "Tubs of Fun" as a fund-raiser for Yuma Hall.

"About one-in-five win this game," Callimanis said.

Fiori said that all of RCS's games are clean and winnable.

"We don't have games you can't win. It's all about merchandise. We want to give (merchandise) to our players. Those (companies that run scam games) are mostly the ones back east," Fiori said.

UA Police Comdr. Brian Seastone gave a second to that emotion.

"We're strictly here for safety reasons," said Seastone, who was on duty at Spring Fling on Saturday. "I've never seen any (scams). I've been doing these for 18 years."

So, there you have it. It is possible to win these things. Just don't count on Leigh-Anne to win you that cute Tigger doll.

Cleanup process

Fiori said that he's aware of the unsavory image that carnies have, but he said that RCS is committed to cleaning up the image of the scumbag carnie.

Fiori said that the biggest change in carnie policy has come in the past year.

*All RCS employees are pre-drug tested and subject to random drug tests throughout the nine-month carnival season, even during events.

*No earrings or tattoos are allowed.

*Management has a "20 days dry" policy with alcohol.

*Games must provide at least one prize per $5 spent.

"We want to promote safety and make our employees feel good about what they do," Fiori said. "We want them to be educated and make them feel good about their lives."

The approach seems to be working. When Burs operates the Spinout, he seems to be at peace. He brags that he has the ride down cold. After nine months of monotony, the ride is still fun for him.

On Saturday, Burs took the time to answer a question from a curious kid.

"Do you ever ride this one?" the kid asked.

"I ride it whenever I can," Burs said to kid with a smile, still mumbling in a thick accent. "I ride this one whenever I have a chance."