Step Right Up

Bobby Reynolds brings his sideshow shtick to Fresno because he loves it here.

Bobby Reynolds, self-proclaimed greatest showman on Earth, has moved to Fresno.

This is evidenced by a life-size elephant statue on a Fresno lawn and a garage that neighbors strain to catch glimpses into.

The garage's walls are painted circus red, the ceiling black. There are bookshelves stuffed with leather-bound tomes by P.T. Barnum, as well as books about lions, tigers, flea circuses and Egyptology. Reynolds says that, sadly, the two-headed baby -- pickled in the jar -- is real. The shrunken heads stuffed in a giant glass jar are not.

"A panorama of strange, bizarre, macabre things," says Reynolds, 74.

"They are beautiful. I am beautiful."