Clowning around at the Milwaukee Lakefront.
The Great Circus Parade returns to Milwaukee, after an absence of several years. The parade will start at the lakefront, and proceed down Wisconsin Avenue, this Sunday, July 12th. For Milwaukeeans, visitors, and circus fans, it is a welcome return. The last circus parade here was in 2005.
This interruption was not the first. The circus parade started here in 1963, as a sort of a reenactment of one of the great pageants of the idealized nostalgic America of old. In 1973, the parade, and its expenses were shared between Milwaukee, Baraboo, and Chicago, with the parade moving from city to city. Finally, in 1980, it began its 25 year run in Milwaukee, where it became a fixture of the Milwaukee summer festival season. In 2005, due to sponsorship issues, the parade took its last trip up Wisconsin Avenue.
The parade will begin at 1:30 Sunday afternoon, and is expected to last for two hours. It will feature all of the pomp, pageantry, and showmanship of the genuine article, and then some. The old time circus parades were never so grand. The traditional circus parade was not done for the fun of it, or as an end in itself. It was an advertisement for the circus coming to town. The same holds true today.
From Wednesday, through Saturday, the Milwaukee Lakefront will host a circus such as was never seen back in the old days. There will be animal, acts, vendors, food, and everything else you might expect to find under the big top. The culmination of it all will be the parade on Sunday. This unique event draws people from all over the world. There is nothing else quite like it, and now it is back.
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