Vice: How did you fall into this line of work?

Cappy da Clown: I was going to college up in Rochester and left for New York to become an actor. Before I left school I stole a clown costume from my theater department. I figured I might as well do some fun stuff with it. A friend of mine wanted me to be a clown for her daughter’s fifth birthday. I had no idea what I was doing—I just kind of ran around acting silly. Then I worked for a greeting-cards store in midtown, handing out flyers and pulling in people off the street. Anyway, I had a friend who did kids’ parties for extra money. One of the shows was a “half and half” routine where he’d come out dressed as some sort of costumed character for 30 minutes, then do a clown for the remainder of the hour. He hated wearing the costumes so he’d throw me a few bucks to put on a fur suit and lead the hokey-pokey. All of that led me to work at Zack’s Funhouse as a booking agent. I started out doing Yosemite Sam when they needed one for a party and kind of just fell into clowning from there. But that’s only half the story because a lot of my shtick came from my professional-wrestling days.

Were you some sort of wrestling clown who would squirt people with seltzer after giving them a Frankensteiner?

No. I was the Captain, which has been a recurring theme with most of my characters in one form or another. I collected comic books for years and Captain America was always my favorite. I even have a tattoo of Captain America on my arm. Mostly I was a manager, but when they needed someone they’d throw a mask on me and put me in the ring. I always had either a Captain America shirt or button on and people just started calling me Cap. I became a photographer and started selling pictures and giving them to the promoters and wrestlers. So I bought a stamp for the back that said “Photos by Cap.” I also had a stint in the Caribbean and got pretty big down there. Once I even went for the heavyweight title in the Dominican Republic. This was all part-time, on vacations from my job as a court clerk.

Are you clowning for a living now?

Being a clerk still pays the rent. There are exactly 2,041 days left until my retirement, after which I will continue to clown. But I’m very active and have created a variety of characters: Cap’n Dandy, Louis Lo’ser, the Kanarsie Kid, and a hobo clown of sorts named Mugglesworth “Muggsy” Aloisius McGuirk. I’ve been clowning for close to 30 years so it’s not like I’m going to stop anytime soon.

How do you decide which costume to put on?

A few years ago we had contracts with the baseball stadiums that host a couple of New York’s minor league teams—the Staten Island Yankees and the Brooklyn Cyclones. As a clown you can’t really be a fan of both because they play each other a lot, so I started going to the Yankees games as Cap’n Dandy. He wears a suit and has a little fancier mouth and is a little bit more conservative, almost like a “Don’t talk to me” type of guy. In Brooklyn I was Cappy. People would see me at the two ballparks in the different costumes with the different faces and they would ask, “Aren’t you the guy from the other stadium?” and I would answer, “No, that’s my evil brother from Staten Island,” or “That’s my idiot brother in Brooklyn.” So, I had this rivalry going between the two. I knew it worked when I was in Staten Island one day painting this little girl’s face and she looked at our promotional cards and asked, “Oh, is that him?” Her friend said, “No, that’s his brother from Brooklyn. They look almost alike.” Muggsy doesn’t do that much party work. Any time Muggsy goes out it’s usually promoting The King Henry Show.

Do you follow a clowning framework?

Probably more so than some of my peers. In the clown world’s scheme of things the whiteface throws the pie at the auguste, the auguste ducks, and the pie hits the hobo. My first clown was a whiteface, but it just got to be so much putting all that makeup on all the time. Like so many others I’ve switched to an auguste character. Actually what I do as Cappy is more of a light auguste, but the rules and regulations from the different clown organizations are pretty strict and technically I can’t be a light auguste because I wear a jacket and put glitter on my face. Light augustes are supposed to wear a vest and not use glitter.

Seriously? There are rules to clowning?

Oh yeah. The main clown associations hold competitions and publish the rules every year in their magazines. I belong to both of the major ones—Clowns of America and the World Clown Association. But I don’t like the competitions because to me it is not about competing. A clown is out there to make people laugh—to have fun and help other people have fun. Maybe you can improve yourself and learn by being judged by your peers, but I do not need to be judged by them. If the kids don’t laugh then I’ll be judged.

What does your family think about your clowndom?

They’ve been resigned to the fact that I moved to New York to be an actor since I left, so performing is just what they expect of me. They have seen me do crazy things all my life and I’m still doing them. Once you get bitten you are hooked. There is a line that I always tell people from the musical Applause: “When I was eight, I was in a school play. I’ll never forget it, I had one line to say. My big moment came, I said, ‘What ho the prince.’ My sister applauded, I’ve been hooked ever since!” Once you get the spotlight in your eye it never goes away.


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