Serge Coronas Jr. and his family have been a part of the big top for five generations.
“It’s a family thing. It’s in our blood,” explained Coronas. “Our family was wire walkers. There are a lot of families that do it — they tend to have their thing; others might be daredevils.”
He proudly recalled the brazen high wire acts of his grandfather, Charles Coronas.
He turns 101 years old in November and still occasionally comes to watch his family perform.
Though Serge Coronas Jr. might have started out in a family of wire walkers, he’s also a daredevil, performing in the circus’s motorcycle cage act, where he and another rider defy gravity by racing around inside a metal-framed globe, about 15 feet in diameter.
In actuality, though, Coronas said being apart of a circus means being a jack-of-all-trades. One of his first acts was juggling.
The Hollywood Circus tent is 150 by 150 feet, holding 1,200 people in the center of the fair’s in field. The circus has seven revolving acts with camels, horses, dogs, clowns, daredevils, magicians and trapeze artists.