The Circus Came to Town—and Bought the Place

January 5, 2023 2:49 PM

Spiegelworld, a Las Vegas-based company known for adult-themed acrobatic performances, purchased Nipton, Calif. The company has never owned or run a town before. (archive.today link)
posted by Etrigan (39 comments total)

I hope they've got a plan for defending Nipton from Caesar's Legion.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 2:57 PM on January 5, 2023 [42 favorites]

Just skimming the article gives me some Wild Wild Country vibes. The Bahgwan's people amazing police uniforms, so looking forward to what adult-themed acrobats will bring to that game.
posted by zardoz at 2:59 PM on January 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

I did not have this on my 2023 bingo card.
posted by Splunge at 3:01 PM on January 5, 2023 [5 favorites]

I hope they've got a plan for defending Nipton from Caesar's Legion.

Yeah! SMELL THAT FRESH AIR!
posted by nathan_teske at 3:03 PM on January 5, 2023 [9 favorites]

Um, circus town sounds AWESOME and I wanna hear how it goes.
posted by jenfullmoon at 3:04 PM on January 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

circus town sounds AWESOME and I wanna hear how it goes.

Then head on over to Hugo, Oklahoma.
posted by Dr. Twist at 3:08 PM on January 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

Nipton was their second choice but they got outbid on Jugsville.
posted by saladin at 3:11 PM on January 5, 2023 [7 favorites]

I'll take Grift for 400, Alex
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 3:21 PM on January 5, 2023

Reminds me of this bit from Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities:

The city of Sophronia is made up of two half-cities. In one there is the great roller coaster with its steep humps, the carousel with its chain spokes, the Ferris wheel of spinning cages, the death-ride with crouching motorcyclists, the big top with the clump of trapezes hanging in the middle. The other half-city is of stone and marble and cement, with the bank, the factories, the palaces, the slaughterhouse, the school, and all the rest. One of the half-cities is permanent, the other is temporary, and when the period of its sojourn is over, they uproot it, dismantle it, and take it off, transplanting it to the vacant lots of another half-city.

And so every year the day comes when the workmen remove the marble pediments, lower the stone walls, the cement pylons, take down the Ministry, the monument, the docks, the petroleum refinery, the hospital, load them on trailers, to follow from stand to stand their annual itinerary. Here remains the half-Sophronia of the shooting-galleries and the carousels, the shout suspended from the cart of the headlong roller coaster, and it begins to count the months, the days it must wait before the caravan returns and a complete life can begin again.
posted by Rinku at 3:27 PM on January 5, 2023 [17 favorites]

perhaps a restaurant built high in the town’s grove of Eucalyptus trees.

During drought, it is common for eucalyptuses drop limbs as big as some trees.
posted by aniola at 3:29 PM on January 5, 2023

There were groups who seemed to be operating religious cults, cryptocurrency investors, a crew that wanted to run a party train from Las Vegas, and “some people from Brazil, one of whom was a dentist,” says Ms. Lang.

"Is it safe?"
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:39 PM on January 5, 2023 [5 favorites]

Also, "Spiegelworld" sounds like it should have been a sequel to this Daniel Pinkwater novel.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:41 PM on January 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm kind of on board for this. After years of watching libertarians and cryptobros try and fail to run their own communities, I'm 100% behind letting the professional clowns give it a try.
posted by phooky at 3:43 PM on January 5, 2023 [43 favorites]

I could see this working under the right circumstances. Traveling circuses are essentially villages all on their own and circus performers are usually very community oriented. Perhaps a permanent circus village could work out, especially if they opened a circus arts school or something. You never know, this could turn into a circus arts version of the Stratford Festival.

I can also see this turning into a whole libertarians and bears situation. I give the circus performers better odds than the freedom crowd of pulling this off.

Either way, I look forward to the articles on this experiment five years from now.
posted by forbiddencabinet at 3:47 PM on January 5, 2023 [5 favorites]

I was really hoping the first comment would be a Fallout: New Vegas reference. Thank you, TMBG.
posted by mollweide at 3:51 PM on January 5, 2023 [7 favorites]

{send in the Elvis battalion}
posted by clavdivs at 3:53 PM on January 5, 2023

[the circus founder] has a grand vision for Nipton, though he concedes he hasn’t worked out all the details.

Yep, they're doomed.

Pie in the sky ideas (that will end up on a clown's face).
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:53 PM on January 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

Um, circus town sounds AWESOME and I wanna hear how it goes.

Mass crucifixions and a weird lottery.

(for the confused about this and Caesar and all that, Nipton appears in Fallout: New Vegas; there are web pages out there comparing New Vegas places to their real-world counterparts)
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 3:54 PM on January 5, 2023 [11 favorites]

Gibsonton, Florida, setting for the acclaimed 1995 X-Files episode "Humbug"
posted by Iris Gambol at 4:27 PM on January 5, 2023 [5 favorites]

There were groups who seemed to be operating religious cults, cryptocurrency investors, a crew that wanted to run a party train from Las Vegas, and “some people from Brazil, one of whom was a dentist,” says Ms. Lang.

I might fork over five bucks for the sockpuppet “some people from Brazil, one of whom was a dentist.”
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:53 PM on January 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

Now it just needs a theme song, like Luckenbach, Texas.
posted by credulous at 4:55 PM on January 5, 2023

Spiegelworld runs great shows in Vegas, and a dinner-with-strolling entertainers restaurant as well.

Getting into the Esalen-except-funny business sounds cool.
posted by MattD at 5:13 PM on January 5, 2023

Ah, I mixed up the first letters in your name, The Great Big Mulp! Apologies, once a They Might Be Giants fan, always a TMBG fan, I guess.
posted by mollweide at 5:18 PM on January 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

New Gibsonton. City. West New Gibsonton City, if you're nasty.
posted by rhizome at 7:14 PM on January 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

My favorite place to camp is in the Mojave National Preserve, so I've been to Nipton a few times. It's a really beautiful place, but since it lacks a gas station or restaurant (at least the last time I was there, pre-pandemic) we never did much there except but buy fireworks, which were available in August and September at least, if not year-round.

$2.5 mil seems like a pretty good deal, though you'd need at least that much more to either build your retirement castle or a profitable business there. It is right on the border of CA/NV and the right distance between Los Angeles and Las Vegas that a destination hotel and restaurant could do really well.
posted by Anoplura at 7:22 PM on January 5, 2023 [1 favorite]

I feel that circus people, unlike libertarians, would know how to act around large, dangerous animals. And walking around a circus town sounds intriguing. I'm thinking they've got a shot at making it work.
posted by emjaybee at 7:41 PM on January 5, 2023

(mollweide: It took an embarrassingly long time for me to realize this username shares the same initials as my favorite band. Like at least 10 years. And it was only after that realization that I started getting it wrong myself half the time.)
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 7:47 PM on January 5, 2023 [4 favorites]

Everything right is wrong again, indeed!
posted by mollweide at 8:10 PM on January 5, 2023 [3 favorites]

Nipton has a kind cool old 5 room hotel and a little "trading post" and general store. It isn't "too remote", only a few miles off i-15, and 20 miles or so from Primm, NV...and not much farther to Searchlight, NV. Went there several times with a group of BMW motorcycle riders, old friends who were scattered across the west. They liked to ride in and meet up early in the spring. Nipton can be quite beautiful: the New York Mountains provide a beautiful backdrop. There are fairly decent roads that you can navigate into the Mojave Preserve and explore various old mining sites, or just admire the beautiful, mostly untrampled desert.
So, this isn't a "pig in a poke" kind of deal, really. It really could be (er...is) a very nice spot to be.
Back when we used to camp there, there were yurts to rent out behind the hotel (Google maps shows they were still there two years ago.)
The other main attraction is the Union Pacific Railroad. Several times a day, and into the night, long freight trains rumble through town, and a couple of Amtrak trains, too. For us tourists, always a big event! One youngster, who was in his Thomas the Train phase, still gets kidded about the first trip we took him out there. Middle of the night, a train coming through, and he is so excited screaming in his family's yurt: "Train! Train! Its a train!"
posted by pthomas745 at 9:38 PM on January 5, 2023 [5 favorites]

The song Searchlight, by Giant Sand, refers to Nipton in the chorus. The song is about driving at night around Searchlight Nevada, which is near Nipton. The music video for the song has a couple of clips shot in Nipton. It was released in 1989.
posted by Metacircular at 11:01 PM on January 5, 2023 [2 favorites]

I would be fine with this if there aren't any clowns around *shudder*
posted by mightshould at 3:37 AM on January 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

Don’t worry, there won’t be any… where you can see them.
posted by Etrigan at 6:46 AM on January 6, 2023 [5 favorites]

Clicked through hoping to see multiple Fallout: New Vegas jokes. Was not disappointed. A++ FPP, would read again.
posted by seasparrow at 8:13 AM on January 6, 2023

I don’t think that location could sustain a gas station, even if it was adult-themed.
posted by ryanrs at 8:33 AM on January 6, 2023

I for one welcome Our New Town Manager.
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 8:47 AM on January 6, 2023

Um, circus town sounds AWESOME and I wanna hear how it goes.
posted by jenfullmoto

Waves from DC on January 6.
posted by aspersioncast at 10:14 AM on January 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

Primm has gas, food and everything. I wish I had gone.through there, it is quite the.climb out of Vegas going west, and I would love a flattish desert, deserted drive, instead.
posted by Oyéah at 5:34 PM on January 6, 2023

This week's hottest Mojave town is Primm. It's got everything -- food, gas, a fat kid eating biscuits...
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 5:51 PM on January 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

Sadly, the DC circus people aren't nearly as fun as those who are eating fire and running around on tightropes. I also assume circus people have enough brains not to die doing what they do, which cannot be said for many members of Congress.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:30 PM on January 6, 2023