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October 1998 Seattle Magazine www.seattlemag. com Weathering Heights When he isn't wearing his thinking cap, His clothes are a loose-fitting hodgepodge of purples, blues and greens. His closely cropped hair is still thick, but speckled with gray, and a beard pops out of his chin like an upside-down rhino horn. Larry Dobson is 57, but looks not a day over 40, and in this midmorning getup he resembles more the part of his passion than his profession. At home in Clinton, on Whidbey Island, Dobson is an inventor who specializes in sustainable energy and combustion. He has been building and testing prototypes for a quarter century--out-of-this-world concepts like the one he's working on for Pyro Industries in Burlington, Washington: how to heat poultry houses by burning the litter from their chickenhearted inhabitants. But when his thinking cap is removed, Dobson's passion soars--11 feet above the ground. He loads up his red hatchback with props, masks and accessories and performs at festivals and celebrations throughout the Northwest as an exotic stilt walker. Transforming himself into a wizard or an alien, a bat monster or a sun god, Dobson is head and shoulders above the crowd. "Ever since I was a kid, I've had this obsession with strapping on stilts," says Dobson, who says his first high-rise experience, around age six, was initiated by his father, who built his first stilts. "I don't remember much, but I look ecstatic in a picture I found where I'm proudly posing on traditional wooden stilts. I used to wear them to play basketball with the neighbors. "Now it's just a good balance to my 'head work,' because by the end of the day I'm dizzy. Stilt-walking puts me in another realm of life. It's a bizarre, artistic way to relate to people. My firebird costume has a 15-foot wingspan and my bug suit gives me an antenna that's 19 feet high. From a distance I am quite a spectacle." A stilt walker for hire, Dobson takes his Tall Characters Unlimited show around the region, performing in handmade costumes on custom-built stilts. With his background in children's theater (Dobson was part of a 1970s local trio, the Pied Piper Players), he struts and dances at smaller gatherings, such as family reunions and company picnics, and at some of Seattle's largest, including Nordstrom's Grand Opening Celebration and Fremont's Summer Solstice Parade and October Trolloween festival. Born in Seattle, Dobson grew up in Lake Forest Park "when it was a watershed," he says, "and I could walk all day without hitting civilization." Soon after moving to Whidbey Island, his private passion turned public. At a Fourth of July parade in 1971, Dobson showed up as Uncle Sam on wooden stilts, wearing shoes and pants made by a local cobbler and seamstress. Today, Dobson's stilts are made of lightweight aluminum, designed with an apparatus that allows him to swivel at the hips, turning his body without having to pick up his feet. Giant clown shoes do the walking, while Dobson's feet rest in straps 5 feet above the ground. His costume covers the stilts, making him appear to be 11 feet tall. Part of a national network of stilt walkers, he even has his own Web site (www.stiltman.com), and teaches the craft on stilts that he supplies. "Everyone should try it once," says Dobson. "It's surprisingly easy if you begin on shorter stilts. The trick is you must be an 11-foot-tall person, comfortable in your larger body, with your feet on the ground below. It's like learning to walk again, feeling where your feet go when you move them and how gravity aligns you as a taller person. But many people are afraid of falling. That's the question I'm asked all the time: 'What happens when you fall?"' Dobson claims he's not afraid to take a tumble. Twenty-five years in the business have brought him an air of confidence. But, he says, that doesn't mean it's never happened. "During [Seattle's] Torchlight Parade in 1991, I dropped behind and tried to catch up, but I tripped in the middle of the intersection," he says. "I landed pretty hard, and before I knew it, they had stopped the parade and a Medic One guy was over me. I said I was all right, but they put me in the ambulance with my stilts sticking out the back." -SCOTT HOLTER October 1998 Seattle Magazine www.seattlemag. com |
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WHO ROBBED THE BANK? WHO IS DEANO? Innocent clown is detained in bank robbery December 24, 1997, by Jim Larsen The clown did not rob the bank. But it took Snohomish County police a while to figure that out, during which time South Whidbey's most famous clown was face down with his red nose scraping the pavement and his hands cuffed behind his back. Deano the Clown, who has entertained South Whidbey kids for about 20 years, felt some sympathy for the cop who was frisking him and checking his pockets outside of the US Bank branch at Smokey Point near Arlington. Deano had just come from a clown engagement and was in full costume. "I've got 35 pockets," said Deano, a Langley resident who goes by his real name of Dean Petrich when not in clown costume. As Deano lay on the ground with 20 or 30 other police offers (sic) looking on, the cop pulled out the contents of Deano's pockets: Balloons, balloons and more balloons, juggling things, magic tricks, puppets and lots more. "He got pretty tired emptying my pockets," Deano laughed from his home on Tuesday morning. But the erroneous arrest wasn't entirely a laughing matter for the clown. Yesterday morning KIRO TV began broadcasting film of Deano's detention by police, which included his being grabbed, forced to the ground, handcuffed, and held in a patrol car. The newscaster didn't use his name, but Deano said "everyone in Seattle knows who Deano the Clown is." Deano got into the predicament simply by walking into the wrong bank at the wrong time. He had done a clown gig in Arlington and had a number of checks to deposit that he accumulated during the busy holiday season when he works seven days a week. His home US Bank is in Freeland, but he stopped at Smokey Point to save time. While Deano was carefully filling out his deposit slips, someone else was robbing the bank. "I didn't realize it," Deano said. But when he finished with his paperwork and approached a teller, he noticed "she was very nervous." He also found it strange that "they were closing the bank," even though it was only 1:20 in the afternoon. "Being a clown I started joking," he said, but nobody laughed, so he decided to leave and take his deposit elsewhere. He heard the door lock as he left the bank. Stepping outside, he finally realized something was seriously amiss. Someone yelled, "Hey you, over there!" and he saw a cop pointing a gun at him. "Walk forward five steps!" the officer ordered. As Deano complied, he says "20 to 30 policemen all behind cars --but I wasn't scared, because I hadn't done anything wrong." After the time-consuming search during which Deano and the frisking officer "got to know each other quite well," the police seemed to realize they had the wrong clown, Deano said. So they handed him a form to fill out before letting him go. That's when Deano made his only mistake. He said he was cold and asked for a warmer place to fill out the form. They put him in a patrol car, which locked automatically. He was stuck in there for 90 minutes as "one very obnoxious man with a camera" filmed him. That apparently is the film that ended up on television. The report of the clown frisk even made National Public Radio. Before Deano was allowed to leave, he was taken inside the bank to wash is face so police could compare it to his driver's license picture. "Sure enough, it was me," he said. The entire episode took 3 1/2 hours out of his day. Police are still looking for the bank robber, who gave a note to the teller asking for money. He is described in his early 40s, about 5 foot 8, wearing a green shirt, dark cap and dark-rimmed glasses. Deano recognized him as one of the few customers in the bank. "I saw him coming out -- he walked right past me." He said. By the time police arrived, Deano was the only customer still in the bank. Snohomish county Sheriffs Office spokesperson Jan Jorgensen said officers couldn't be blamed for suspecting the man in the clown suit was the bank robber. "It's so bizarre that a clown walks in at the same time as a real robber," she said. "It's unfortunate it happened, but it's a normal reaction." Proving that nobody can talk about the story without bringing up a clown joke, Jorgensen added, "At least he had a smile on his face the whole time."
IS THAT REALLY DEANO IN THE PHOTO? NO! IT'S INNOCENT HIGH JACK!
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Here’s Deano riding his unicycle |
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