What better way to promote the new Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey show LEGENDS than to have three Asian elephants take over the streets of Boston on a Thursday morning, much to the public’s excitement?
Crowds of young children and families gathered in the North End for the circus’s annual North End Elephant Brunch on Hanover Street.
The elephants were met with screams of excitement as they traveled from the Nashua Street expressway ramp to the audience clustered at the end of Hanover Street, around the Fire House. The crowd watched in awe as the three elephants gobbled up a table of vegetables in no time at all and then smashed whole watermelons with their feet.
Prior to the elephant showcase grand finale, the crowd also got to enjoy the comic antics of circus clowns and the impressive stunts of the Chinese National Acrobatic Troupe.
Kelmiah Simpson who came in from Dorchester to see the show on her day off says that she saw the Ringling Bros. circus show when she was a young girl. She hopes to make it to at least one of this year’s performances at the TD Garden this week.
“I’ve been a big fan of the circus when I was younger,” Simpson said. “However, when I first came here and saw the elephants, I was thinking in the back of my mind on whether they and other circus animals are being taken care of.”
“I think it’s one of those things you never quite stop thinking about. You just hope that they’re being treated well …not just for entertainment purposes,” she said. “Today was fun though; it was nice seeing all the kids out enjoying the animals you don’t get to see every day, just roaming the streets of Boston!”
The LEGENDS show will be at the Garden for the rest of the week through Sunday. Tickets can be purchased through Ticketmaster, by phone at 800-745-3000, or at the arena’s Box office.
