"It sounds ridiculous now, because now there is so much equipment around that the challenge is to sell it against your competitors, but in those days, it was unheard of that somebody would actually have equipment right there to buy," Dube said. His supplies did not last long. "I got to the vestibule, and put my shopping bags down to talk to this guy, and some people who had been hounding me from my car already wanted to buy them. I started selling right there and everything was sold before I even got into the room."

 

Dube notes that juggling supplies had not always been so difficult to come by: "I have a little antique catalog that has a pretty extensive range of equipment: juggling knives, devil sticks, all kinds of clubs, torches. There were even things that aren't made today, all kinds of balancing devices, swords, trays and spinning plates."

 

Juggling occupied most of Dube's life at the time. Having lost interest in leathercraft, he focused on his new calling. He recalled, "All I wanted to do was juggle. I spent several hours a day making equipment and juggling... I probably didn't work as many hours as I should have."

 

For his first six years in the business, Dube worked out of his apartment across from Washington Square Park, a place famous for its buskers. His business accelerated very rapidly, because there was an enormous pent-up demand for props. He enjoyed being involved in juggling, arid knew the satisfaction that comes from working with one's hands. "In our society, if you have any intelligence at all, you are funneled into academic areas," said the former New York University math major who left college after three years. "Working with your hands in America is not really respected... in school, I didn't really know that crafting was anything I would be potentially interested in."

 

Still working out of his home, he watched his business grow, and with that came more of the trappings of commercial life. He grew tired of loading equipment into a car and driving to midtown for a UPS drop-off, so he got a pickup account. Soon he was receiving truckloads of dowels, storing goods in the building's basement, and having UPS pick up shipments every day. He began to do some retail business with characters like the Flying Karamazov Brothers, who walked in off the street to pick up equipment.

 

At least one of his neighbors decided that Dube was doing a little too much business for a residential building. A complaint was filed and Dube had to leave his apartment. It was 1981, and Dube was searching for both commercial and residential space in downtown Manhattan. The company moved to Park Place, which became its home for 10 years, and Dube's overhead increased more than tenfold.                                      .

 

He had sought out a much larger space with 14-foot ceilings, partly because of a plan to teach juggling. Fred Garbo was living in New York City and working at Barnum on Broadway, and the two started giving lessons. Eventually, Dube found that organizing and running the lessons was taking an inordinate amount of energy, so he developed an alternate strategy - still taking advantage of its impressive ceilings, the company offered five­dollar open juggling sessions.

 

As juggling grew in popularity, more people began to supply equipment. Jugglebug appeared on the scene about two years after Dube went into business, and after some initial; concerns, the companies found that they were comfortably focused on different segments of the market. Jugglebug followed Dave Finnigan's mission of spreading juggling to the masses, while Dube tried to produce performance-quality props for professionals and serious amateurs.

 

Things got a little more intense around 1980, when Todd Smith Products appeared on the scene in Cleveland. Smith also sought to serve the high-end juggling market, and Brian Dube, Inc. saw some of its first serious competition. Prop-making was still a laid-back business: Dube, Finnigan and Smith were all juggling enthusiasts, and juggling's popularity was growing. Dube said he feels that equipment availability "was definitely a big issue," in more people becoming involved in juggling, as the International Jugglers Association's membership grew from around 100 in 1975 to 3,000 by the 1990s. "Prop­makers coming onto the scene helped. It's hard to say how much of a role equipment played. You can't go back and take it away and see if the demand would have increased anyway."

 

As the big three prop­makers' business grew and Brian Dube, Inc. developed its more-professional image with full color catalogs, a slight backlash against corporate juggling culture developed. It was most successful in the 1983 founding of Santa Cruz, Calif.-based Renegade Juggling Equipment, which positioned itself against the prop powerhouses.

 

Dube said he feels that there is not as much of a difference between his, Todd Smith's, and the Renegades' equipment as many jugglers perceive there to be. "A lot of it had to do with buying from the Renegades. Image is an issue for every business. Even those who are not into that have an image - not being into that."

 

While based at Park Place, Dube' developed his juggling knife, which he considers to be the jewel in his prop-making crown. "I didn't know much about steel, I didn't know much about a lot of things. It took several years to really get it down."

 

The first challenge was to develop his own riveting scheme: juggling knives, which weigh almost one pound and are dropped and dropped and dropped, experience too much stress for any pre-existing riveting scheme to last long.

 

Once that was overcome, the next challenge was to find a wood-turner who could drill handles precisely enough to fit the blades perfectly. While he was searching for a shop, his father was making handles that met his needs perfectly, which increased his frustration. Dube "would call wood-turners and ask, 'Why is it that a 75-year-old man can do this and you can't?'" After finally finding suitable manufacturers for all the parts, and getting the knives riveted together, he was done in time for Christmas. Or so he thought.