Jim Rose, the creator of the most intriguing and enthralling sideshow events of the past 25 years, brings the old-school hoochie-coochie show into the twenty-first century.

Jim Rose, who’s been dubbed (or dubbed himself) the Godfather of Modern Freak Show, is best known for turning Lollapalooza into an event, not a concert, in the early nineties with his can’t-miss Jim Rose Circus Sideshow. Since then, he’s created a series of spectaculars; written his autobiography, Freak Like Me: Real, Raw, and Dangerous, and the books Angles and Snake Oil: Life’s Calculations, Misdirections, and Manipulations; contributed to the online community Fraud, Scam, Rip Off, and Con Artists Beware; helped artists fight corporate entertainment companies and promoters; and become a consultant for Fortune 500 companies. (Seriously. He was even on the cover of Fast Company magazine.) He’s got two upcoming projects that he’s very excited about, but as of press time he was unable to reveal specifics.

In the meantime, he created a supersexy girlie show for Penthouse starring (from left) ringmaster Sarah Jessie, strong woman Kelly Shibari, and Giraffe Woman Sydney V. Smith.

What was it about the circus sideshow that first appealed to you?

I was mesmerized by the Arizona State Fairgrounds as a kid. I grew up next to the fairgrounds, and I would vend soft drinks and ended up working at the different freak shows when I was really young. It wasn’t an artistic vision at the time. It was how I made my money. And then I got really interested in being a motorcycle daredevil and that sucked up some years, until I had an accident. Then I needed to do something that required less mobility.

What happened?

I jumped 19 cows. And I cleared ’em, but I must have landed on some spit cud and went a little wobbly and had a wreck. That’s why, as I speak to you right now, I’ve got the posture of a jumbo shrimp.

I’m laughing, but that’s not funny.

You know, man, if I didn’t embellish liberally, I wouldn’t be doing justice to my ancestry.

When did you realize you actually liked what you were doing and had the artistic insight to make it better?

I really enjoyed it pretty much from the get-go. And then the motorcycle-daredevil bug bit hard. Once I really started feeling audiences, it was hard to turn back. But when did I think I could create a new tentacle for the punk-rock ethos? That probably was about 1988.

And you just cold-recruited performers for a sideshow? That must have been nuts.

Well, let’s see… Take women’s sumo wrestling, for example. I was really into sumo wrestling, but it was really hard to find women sumo wrestlers. I’d walk up to someone in public and go, “Hey, would you like to be a woman sumo wrestler?” And they would slap me into next week. So I decided I would run an ad in the newspaper. It said, “Must be more than 260 pounds and able to travel the world.” They would call up, and as soon as I would say it’s for women sumo wrestling, they would hang up. And so I just thought they needed positive reinforcement. The world runs on that. They would call, and I would say, “Let’s see now. How tall are you?” And they’d tell me. “Well, how much do you weigh?” And they would tell me. And if it sounded like they would make a good woman sumo wrestler, I would switch the subject and just keep talking with them. I would then say, “I’m having a meeting tonight, and I’ll call you tomorrow.” I would call them back the next day and say, “Hey, listen, I had that meeting last night and there were openings for wrestlers. We have midget wrestlers, Mexican transvestite wrestlers; we got regular wrestlers, along with some other stuff. I really enjoyed talking with you last night, but all the positions are filled except for one… but you don’t really qualify for it. Listen, it’s women’s sumo wrestling. Could you gain a few pounds?”

Brilliant!

As soon as I said “gain a few pounds,” they’d start fucking laughing. That sounded like an easy thing to ask.

What was your success rate?

Wow. You probably won’t believe me, but I only needed four and — boom — four, right in a row.

Did you always layer storytelling into your shows?

Actually, I used to be just a storyteller; I didn’t even do circus. The storytelling started first, as far as my adult artistic life goes. That stuff when I was a kid, I kind of dropped out of all of that right around 1976. And then I even went to university — political-science major. And then I got on heroin and shit and needed to learn how to hustle. I got off the drugs, and I met my wife, who comes from a circus family. It rekindled my interest in all of that stuff. That’s when I had the epiphany: This has disappeared from the landscape for so many years, and I can make a comeback with this type of entertainment. So that’s what I did. In 1988, I started doing shows with her family circus , and then I came to the States and did it.

You’ve also dedicated a large portion of your time to teaching others how to hustle and how to avoid scams.

The thing is, to be successful in the arts, you don’t really need a college education as badly as you need a street education. And street educations are expensive, financially and emotionally. I thought I could circumvent some of that pain for artists. That’s why I wrote the book Snake Oil — so they wouldn’t have to pay their dues out on the streets. They can start to look at everything as being an angle. Once you’re able to do that, you can become successful as an artist. The big machines are only there for Mariah Carey and people like that. There’s only about 200 artists who get real “machine” support. How are you going to promote yourself?

How did you promote yourself?

I used to say Michael Jackson was trying to buy my circus and move it to a Polish theme park, and that would end up on front pages all over the world. You could go let a monkey loose at a park, and if it’s a trained monkey, it just stays on that branch. But then you call the fire department and the media. Do you think the media can help themselves on a monkey-gets-away story? Forget about it.

I’ve never seen the media restrain itself on a monkey-gets-away story.

Tell me about it! You know, just like Ozzy Osbourne never bit the head off a bat and Van Halen never parachuted into Shea Stadium. This stuff has been going on since Moby Dick was a minnow, and I understand it and have used it and have self-mythologized well enough to become an artistic director on a Penthouse magazine photo shoot.

That’s as fine a segue as —

The Penthouse brand is very, very important. My dad used to say, “Son, you know you’ve had a productive day when you run out of semen.” And who’s done more for being “productive” than Penthouse? For many, many years it’s helped people run out of semen, and I just wanted to be part of that family. We’re doing God’s work in the Penthouse family.

Yet you were a bit apprehensive about sharing such personal insight.

There was some fuzziness on my part at times, but then the artistic help involved, the suggestions they gave, helped me get to those “yeah, that’s it!” moments.

You kept coming back to the idea of strength.

I really like strong women. Mentally. Physically. Sydney is really beautiful, so it’s not hard to be attracted to … actually, any of these young ladies. But to be able to put your neck on the line, so to speak, and to be out there like that… Sydney saw that stuff in a National Geographic years ago when she was a kid. She started making her neck grow when she was really young. She stuck with it and caught some flak for it. She’s wearing this weird stuff and people are seeing her and it just doesn’t look right. But as her neck starts to grow, man, she’s just exquisite. She’s just so unique.

So Sydney represents strength of conviction?

That’s exactly what I’m saying. And Kelly Shibari — Kelly has a more traditional strength, and she’s really intelligent. I just think of a mother seeing a child getting hit by a car and being able to lift that car off that child by summoning that kind of adrenaline and energy. I’ve always gotten the sense that she can do that, that she has the mental strength to be able to channel her energy in herculean ways.

And Sarah?

I saw Sarah as a leader. A take-charge type of person. I don’t think there’s anything hotter on this planet than Sarah in a business suit. But for the photo shoot, I liked the idea of her being the ringmaster, with that strength of leadership.

Are all three models physically attractive to you, or do they represent different components of what you find attractive?

When it comes to sex, until you’ve tasted their mind, you don’t realize how much you’re starving.

When a woman walks into a room, what’s the first thing you notice about her?

I try to get a look at the ass.

So she’s got to walk in backward?

Yeah! She’s got to moonwalk, and she’s going to get my attention immediately.

Is it a coincidence that all three models have tattoos?

That was very much by design. I really like tattoos. I don’t like excessive tattoos or tattoos for tattoos’ sake, but I like tattoos that show me that there’s an appreciation for the arts. And all three of those young ladies have that.

How does the finished product stack up against the vision you had?

I just absolutely love the work that was done. It really did capture exactly what was going on in my head. They came out so much better than I thought. I mean, wow! They are unrivaled. One of the things you can count on with Penthouse is a high-quality photo shoot. The magazine was almost founded on that, and it’s kept that tradition for 50 years.