i’ve had a set of original dubé juggling clubs for about 25 years, i bought them from jack bosco, of the bosco boys (the juggling team before the flying karamazov brothers started happening). before my injury i either really liked them, or really hated them (depending on how much juggling i was doing), because they were extra heavy, and had lead tape wound around the handles.

recently there have been a series of workshops for the cirque and other folks (those who are now in charge say that we have to have workshops that are open to the public in order to keep our 401C3 tax exempt status, but i’ve never heard of it before, and we were 401C3 tax exempt for 4 years before those who are now in charge showed up, so i don’t know if i really believe them or not). the workshop that was given this week was on club swinging, and the big bois with poise were supposed to show up for it because there is a lot of similarity between spinning poi and swinging clubs, and at this point just about anything would help, so i went. because of the fact that tim “fyodor karamazov” (the instructor of the workshop) had requested that if we had clubs of any variety, to bring them, i dug out my dubé clubs (which i haven’t touched since my injury).

i would expect that clubs, whether they are for juggling or swinging, would be sturdy, and resist breaking. as i said, i’ve had this set of dubé clubs for 25 years, and i have juggled (and, thus, dropped) them a lot during that time, so i was quite surprised when, in the first five minutes of the workshop, i dropped, and broke two of my set of three clubs!

dubé has a warranty on all their products for the lifetime of the original owner… but i bought them from jack bosco, so i’m not the original owner… but i bought them 25 years ago, so not only do i not have the receipt any more, but i sort of wonder if anybody will notice that i’m not the original owner or not. what i am sure of is that they don’t make this variety of clubs any more.

i guess i’m going to find out…