The sound of balls thudding against rough stone tiles echoes across Smith Plaza.
Two people are juggling in front of skateboarders. The skateboarders talk about how they can’t juggle, and Bob Liberatore, one of the jugglers, offers to teach them.
“Come on. I can teach anybody to juggle!” he said.
The skaters declined and rode off, but Liberatore kept juggling.
“I’ll just harass them later,” he said.
The two jugglers are part of the UNM juggling club, a group that meets every Friday at 7 p.m. in front of Zimmerman Library. The sun may set, but the lack of light doesn’t deter them — they just move inside the SUB when it’s too dark.
Liberatore, the club’s president, said he encourages everyone to check it out regardless of whether they have juggling experience.
The club has existed since the early 90s in various incarnations, but Liberatore said he recently re-chartered the club because the paperwork lapsed.
“Nobody was doing the paperwork, so I decided to do it and make myself president,” he said. “I sort of staged a coup. Jugglers tend to be flaky people.”
Liberatore said he was first drawn to the club because it had a more serious attitude toward the art of juggling.
“I’ve always been a technique nut whereas most fire spinners are like, ‘Whee fire!’ and don’t really care,” he said. “So it was cool to meet people who were also interested in what I did.”
He said the University won’t permit him to juggle fire on campus, so that takes place on his own time.
The club doesn’t just practice standard forms of ball-and-club juggling. It also encourages nontraditional types such as the art of
poi, where a ball with a piece of string is attach to the performer’s hand and swung in large arcs.
Contact juggling is another rare form: A long staff, with the capacity to be lit on fire on each end, is rolled across the juggler’s shoulders, torso and arms.
The club attracts people for several reasons. Some look for a place to juggle, and others stumble upon it accidentally.
That’s what member Scott Mellos did.
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“I was headed to go play pool in the SUB, and I came across the club, and I never made it to the pool hall,” he said. “I’ve wanted to check it out, but every time I’m in the SUB I’m like, ‘I want to juggle.’”
The club is diverse in makeup. It includes high school students and graduate students, but Scott said they all have common reasons for being there.
“The reason I go is because I get stressed out from school or work Monday-Friday, and I go just to relax, be in a big group of people, and have a good time,” he said. “It’s more to unwind, and instead of watching TV, get a little active.”
The sense of calm is apparent on the jugglers’ faces as the balls rhythmically fall into their outstretched hands. The concentration they exert isn’t forced — it is a product of the club’s laid-back atmosphere. Liberatore’s words of encouragement float across Smith Plaza as the colored balls fall to the ground and are retrieved.
Liberatore said that friendships are enriched by the teaching and learning the club promotes.
“I learn a lot from people who are better than me. I learn a lot from people who are beginners,” he said. “It’s really interesting the things you accidentally figure out through just teaching somebody. I love it. This is my breath of fresh air during the week.”
Club members don’t seem to mind that the meetings are held Friday nights. Most of them continue juggling until the cleaning crew kicks them out of the SUB at midnight.
“We still get a decent turnout, and in that respect, it’s kind of cool because then only the people who really want to do it show up,” Liberatore said. “The people who really appreciate what the club offers come regularly. I think that’s the way it should work.”
