Jugglers

When travelling to a new city in a different country, you should try to experience local tastes and cultures. So I had to search out the local juggling club, Singapore Jugglers.

My journey begins by attempting to decipher the location of where they guys (and 1 girl) meet. Their website says "Place: Esplanade Underpass". Now typically when you meet someone under an Underpass, you are either getting mugged, murdered, or both. This seemed like a strange place for jugglers.
I set out to Esplanade street in search of an underpass. The traffic lights are really long here, so it is not unusual to wait a few minutes before the "little green guy starts blinking". When I came across an underground walkway to the other side, I took the opportunity. To my surprise , it wasn't just a tunnel, but a secret passage to swelteringly hot land of Singaporean youth. There were jugglers, an all girls hip-hop dance team and a large group of breakdancers (as seen in the back left of the photo).

I immediately notice a severe lack of juggling clubs. There were about 6 people, so I suspected something like, ya know 30 clubs or something. There were 3 "Circus Special"(style), 3 possible Renegade (I think two were Fat Bulb), 6 Airflights, a devil stick, Rubic's Cube, 6+ Rings, and a bunch of balls (bouncy, Bean Bag, and sand filled). To my surprise, club passing was not their cup of tea.

I immediately started harassing the girl juggling in the picture (because she was juggling clubs). The passing started off really shakey, so i didn't think she had many skills, but when I suggested 3-3-10, we did it all the way through (until the end where we hadn't discussed how to stop). By the end of the evening (11pm), we had done 3-count (She had never thrown left handed), Jim's 3-Count (amazing since she had never thrown left handed), and some walk-around club stealing stuff. I passed with a few other guys, but they didn't seem as interested, they were way more into 3 ball tricks (from what I saw), and when asked if I knew any tricks, they knew way more than i did.

I guess the club used to be poppin' with more advanced club jugglers, but they have since moved on. I think at least two of the people there were new or haven't attended in years. Seems like a lot of Rotation, I don't blame them it was HOT in there... like sweaty wet sauna hot... like road trip sticky seat hot. No idea how the breakdancers were still alive. Actually, after seeing this, my first thought was, If this were the 90's , we would totally be swing dancing down there in suits and the heat would be just part of the experience.

I plan to head back next week and I'll put this on my "Things to do in Singapore" list. I met a guy who said "I've never met anyone from the US"... Crazy!