This article is retyped it is not an actual reproduction of the original. New Yorker Magazine would not allow us to use the beautiful art that was included in this issue.

Steve & Carol

There are riskier places to try to pursue a professional juggling career than Father Demo Square---which is actually a triangle, an island bordered by Carmine and Bleeker Streets and Sixth Avenue, in the Village. For instance, there is the living room of Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Mills, of Morristown, New Jersey. Nobody juggles there and escapes unscathed, for not long ago Mrs. Mills put a no-juggling edict into effect. This has created some inconvenience for her son, Steve, who, along with his wife, Carol, makes his living tossing around and usually catching gasoline-soaked torches. Nine months of the year, Steve and Carol Mills work on the road. They entertain between halves of Harlem Globetrotter basketball games, or they juggle in Missouri or New Zealand or Texas--wherever their agent books them. This summer, they have been boarding with Steve's parents and coming in from Morristown to spend Friday and Saturday nights working in Father Demo Square. For their own reasons (it has something to do with the texture of the daylight in New Jersey), they prefer to practice their juggling indoors. Of late, in deference to Steve's Mother and her no-torches-in-the-living-room manifesto, they have done their juggling on the job.

Working in Father Demo Square means coping with certain adversities. Steve and Carol do five or six shows a night, between nine and midnight. Each performance lasts about twenty minutes. A steady patter by Steve accompanies the juggling, and he has usually shouted himself hoarse by the end of the evening. He has to contend with the traffic noise from Sixth Avenue, Children that like to play kick-the -bottle on Bleeker Street, drunk hecklers, sober hecklers, and the usual explosions. When we went to watch the act one recent Friday, a festival sponsored by Our Lady of Pompeii, a church opposite the square, was in progress. A noisy generator that powered a carnival ride was parked nearby, but Steve was determined to shout over that, too.

A lot of jugglers come to Father Demo Square to watch Steve and Carol. The other Night we met John Reutershan, Stephen Cybard, Ned Gelfars and Will Shaw. Reutershan and Cybard are earnest amateurs. Gelfars and Shaw used to have a semi-pro act, which they did next to the Arch in Washington Square. "We called ourselves the Lester and Mel Juggling Trio," Shaw said. As he spoke, he tried unsuccessfully, to to keep two lacrosse balls and a unicycle airborne. Cybard told us that he is a composer who has been a serious juggler for two years. "I come to get my juggling lessons," He said. "Steve is one of the top people in the country when it comes to torches and plastic clubs. He's unbeatable with clubs. He's unique in being able to juggle five clubs and pass them behind his back. Just a handful of people in the world can do it, really. At any jugglers convention, you hear about Steve Mills and his clubs."

Steve and Carol met three years ago at a juggler's convention in Delaware. A year later, they got married and formed their act. "We thought about it for quite awhile, and decided to call ourselves Steve & Carol," Steve said.

Carol is slight and pretty and has light-brown hair and almost looks her age, which is nineteen. She does her most impressive juggling while she rides a six-foot unicycle. "I've been unicycling since I was seven," She said. "Latter , my parents also took up unicycling, and we became the Haines Family Circus. My maiden name is Haines."

Steve, who is twenty two, is slender and has long arms, dark brown hair, hazel eyes, and a grin that goes well with his five club back-crosses. It's wide and full of teeth, like a grimace, except that the corners curl up and say in effect, I've-never-done-this- one -before-folks-well-actually-I-have-done-it-a-couple-of-times.

Shortly before nine, with the daylight almost gone, a street lamp in the middle of the square comes on. "Awright!" Steve said. "Time to go to work." He put on a white T-shirt with red trim and red lettering that said "Steve & Carol- Famous International Attractions," and stood near the street lamp, facing Carmine and Bleeker Streets, with three plastic clubs in hand. for a minute or so he worked the clubs in front of him, behind his back, under each leg, and high in the air. Finally he balanced one on his chin. When Carol handed him three torches, he repeated most of those moves--all but the chin trick. The neighborhood after dinner crowd had already gathered on the benches in the square, and now the flames began to cause bottlenecking delays in the pedestrian traffic. Brief applause greeted the conclusion of the torch routine, but Steve cut it short. "Wait! Wait! Wait!" he insisted. "Save your energy! I'm just warming up." This was meant to be the opening laugh line in his routine. It worked. Next, he said "Now I'm going to throw up three torches, pirouette , and catch them. Your job is to yell when I finish. The more yelling, the more people, and the more people, the more money---I mean fun!" After a moments hesitation, he launched three torches about fifteen feet in the air, pirouetted, and caught them. The crowd yelled at the finish, and Steve waved and called to the passersby, "Hurry up over! I'm great!"

During the next fifteen minutes, the crowd got steadily bigger. It saw among other things, Carol- and- her- unicycle jumping rope; Steve juggling three clubs behind his back, over his head, under his legs, and rolling over his forehead; Steve juggling five clubs behind his back; Steve and Carol each astride a unicycle, rapidly passing six torches between them from a distance of twelve feet; Steve and Carol standing arm in arm juggling three clubs back and forth with their free hands. Midway through the performance, Steve announced, "At this point we would like to introduce ourselves." He and Carol silently shook hands. The Steve and Carol aficionados, most of whom had seen the act many times, managed to laugh at some of the jokes. More often, they simply sighed. "Doesn't he have the smoothest back-crosses you've ever seen?" Cybard asked aloud during one effect. No one bothered to answer.

Each Steve and Carol performance has several false finales. Steve nurtures the audience's sense of anticipation by saying things like "And now, at last, the amazing trick! Why do I call it that? Because it is! and "You might have heard about this trick! You might have read about it! Probably neither." At one point , working with torches, he said, "Remember this is for your entertainment, not mine. I've seen it before." The actual finale took place when Steve was on his unicycle. He wore a floppy hillbilly hat to protect his hair, and he said "I will now ride a complete circle without burning you." He kept his promise. While pedaling around the street lamp, he juggled under his legs. This drew big applause and Steve set up for his concluding speech. "Before you go, I have two things to say to you," he announced, still pedaling. "First, you've been a great audience. Second, this is your part of the show, Where you make us happy. No! Wait! Not yet! Before you reach into your pockets--Please!--remember that last movie you went to see? It was lousy! You paid five bucks! You were honked off! Well, tonight, ladies and gentlemen, Carol and I have given you a bargain."

Steve got down from the unicycle and took a walk around Father Demo Square, literally passing the hat. Carol passed a wool stocking hat she had been wearing. When Steve saw some non-paying spectators slinking off down Carmine Street, he called after them. "Please don't leave feeling guilty!" The solicitations lasted about five minutes. Several members of the audience walked across the square to drop bills into one of the hats.

Afterward Steve and Carol got together to examine the bootie.

"It was pretty good for a first show," Steve explained. "It usually gets even better as the night goes on. We need it, we just put a bid in on a house." He showed us a brochure, which featured a photograph of a model design called Tahoe II. "The one we want to buy is in Milford, Pennsylvania,"he said. "Since we're on the road most of the year, we'll rent it out for nine months and just live in it during the summer."

"It has a cathedral ceiling in the living room." Carol added.

"Twenty feet high,"Steve said, nodding, grinning,

August 11, 1980, New Yorker Magazine, "Talk of the Town"