Things Will Get Weird at Poorhouse's Clown Night This Sunday in Fort Lauderdale

We’re now both six months past and six months away from Halloween. But if you happen to be in downtown Fort Lauderdale this weekend and see a bunch clowns roaming around, it’s not hallucination. They’re really there. At least, we think they will be.

The Best Day Ever Clown Club has been posting and reposting an open invitation on its Facebook page for this month’s Clown Night on Sunday, April 12, at the Poorhouse in Fort Lauderdale. The jokesters want make sure they’ve got a full house when the Sun Sentinel is expected to come capture some portion of whatever happens for part of a video series on cool stuff in South Florida.

Clown Night, which is sure to freak out some coulrophobic people, is mostly a tribute to Shakes the Clown, according to a Facebook post Best Day Ever Clown Club put up last week. That underrated 1992 Bobcat Goldthwait shit show is about a depressed, drunken, failure of a clown who gets roped into a hellacious scene of similarly fucked-up career clowns. 
Even before the movie, many have wondered what makes a grown adult cake on cartoon makeup in order to take abuse for the amusement of other people’s children? Money is a decent answer. But surely there's something deeper — something tragic about the psychology of clowns and, really, comedians in general.

The only clowns anybody talks about are the evil ones. Pennywise, the sharp-toothed freak from Stephen King’s It, and the weirdo aliens of Killer Clowns From Outer Space are probably the two biggest touchstones in the last generation's transformation from Clowns at the circus are hysterical to Get the fuck away from me, you nightmare-inducing crazy person!
Now, in the internet age, clowns have been reduced to sarcastic memes. YouTube videos of people getting pranked by murderous clowns have gone viral. And in some parts of the world, you can even hire an evil clown to stalk your child as a birthday present.

So what’s up with the clowns that’ve been showing up to the Poorhouse once a month for the past five months? We're not really sure. Details about Clown Night are scarce, and the clowns — or at least some of them — were tight-lipped when New Times requested an interview. Though, none of these clowns appears to be at the dangerous levels of Shakes the Clown. At least, we hope they’re not.
The fact is, we’re not sure why the first couple members of Best Day Ever Clown Club started doing the clown thing, why they’ve turned it into a regular gathering, or if they’re trying to accomplish anything beyond causing a ruckus and having a good damned time.

While we may be just as confused as you are about these clowns, we're also really fucking curious about what the Poorhouse is going to look like on Sunday night. We’ll be there, big fluffy red nose and all. Will the rest of you clowns be showing up too?

Clown Night is happening this Sunday night at Poorhouse, 110 SW Third Ave., Fort Lauderdale. Entry is free, 21+.