{"id":897,"date":"2016-10-14T04:46:05","date_gmt":"2016-10-14T04:46:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dancentury.com\/travel\/?p=897"},"modified":"2025-02-01T19:31:13","modified_gmt":"2025-02-01T19:31:13","slug":"calico-the-evil-middletown-clown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dancentury.com\/travel\/calico-the-evil-middletown-clown\/","title":{"rendered":"Calico, the “Evil” Middletown Clown"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Jersey has many massive & memorable business mascots, including Margate City’s Lucy the Elephant<\/strong> and Asbury Park’s Tillie<\/strong>. My personal favorite promotional character is Calico the Clown<\/strong>: an enormous, primary-colored clown, located at 853 Route 35 North, Middletown, NJ. Calico now stands before a Spirits Unlimited liquor store, but he once was the mascot of Food Circus Super Markets, Inc., a company that operates a bunch of Foodtown supermarkets (more info<\/a>). I can see the connection between “Food Circus<\/em>” and a clown, and … liquor makes folks “act like a clown” as well.<\/p>\n

Calico has garnered the unfortunate name “the Evil Clown of Middletown”. The look on his face conjures up terms like wily, scheming, bemused, or vexed<\/em>. His eyebrows are reminiscent of the Rock’s “people’s eyebrow” – but with both eyes. I don’t see “evil” when I look at Calico. I see a complex individual, often misunderstood and under-appreciated, stoic, with a healthy disdain and sense of humor about the world around him. I guess I see myself in Calico.<\/p>\n

\"Middletown<\/p>\n

The clown has been profiled by Weird NJ<\/a> and Roadside America<\/a> over the years. There is a Facebook page dedicated to preventing his destruction (Save Calico, The “Evil Clown” of Middletown, NJ<\/a>). There are even songs about him<\/a>.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.dancentury.com\/milkshake\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/Middletown-Liquor-Clown.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/p>\n

Also, note that the original drawing of Calico features all 7 chakras:
\n\"Clown<\/p>\n

It appears that his third eye was omitted or removed from his roadside manifestation. I also wonder why they chose to paint his finger red.<\/p>\n

The Circus Foodtown in Middletown on route 36 features Calico in their flyers.
\n\"recipie<\/p>\n

An update (2\/1\/2025): Developers bought the land on which Calico lives, and he may or may not perish. Good luck<\/a>! Some have suggested that film maker Kevin Smith (Clerks) should buy him and move him to the Quick Stop<\/a> or Smodcastle<\/a> locations. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Jersey has many massive & memorable business mascots, including Margate City’s Lucy the Elephant and Asbury Park’s Tillie. My personal favorite promotional character is Calico the Clown: an enormous, primary-colored clown, located at 853 Route 35 North, Middletown, NJ. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":901,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[62,101,64],"class_list":["post-897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-roadside-attractions","tag-62","tag-giants","tag-new-jersey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dancentury.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dancentury.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dancentury.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dancentury.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dancentury.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dancentury.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dancentury.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dancentury.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dancentury.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dancentury.com\/travel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}