If you’ve driven by Earl Warren Showgrounds, you may have noticed the metal poles and rigging and wondered, as I did the first time I noticed it, what is that? The apparatus went up in September 2019, when the Santa Barbara Trapeze Company (flytrapezesantabarbara.com) literally got off the ground.
On a recent sunny Saturday afternoon, I joined Dennis, Tabitha, Joe, and 8-year-old Simone Richardson for an introductory class. I signed the perfunctory waiver and gazed up at the platform from which the action starts, 23 feet from the ground, accessed by way of a very tall aluminum ladder. Our coaches were Randy Kohn, Shane Weaver, and Efe Ilkay. Seeing that Randy was wearing a bulky knee brace and moving with some difficulty was disconcerting. “Snow skiing,” he assured me with a smile.