The Sad Collapse of the Traveling Show
After years of bringing entertainment to Spokane, a promoter’s carnival empire crumbles into a heap of legal seizures and rheumatism.
Spokane, Wash., Oct. 10.—George Jabour, the noted promoter of hoochee-koochee and other Oriental attractions, lies on his back in a local hotel, the life of Napoleon Bonaparte and one of his former performers providing meal tickets and the balance reflecting the fates which told Jabour to go to Spokane. It is the wind-up of his checkered career in the west. The show is no more. Railway companies have attached and reattached the paraphernalia and seized all his assets. After a meeting of the directors of the Interstate Fair had been held with the hope of straightening out the tangle and saving some kind of a show, the financial debt was so involved that the project has had to be abandoned. For years, country people have flocked to Spokane during fair time, attracted by the excellent entertainment given in the big pavilion downtown. The collapse of the Jabour show leaves the town without a big attraction, and as a result people can be seen at all hours of the day walking around and swearing over the lack of entertainment. Meanwhile, Jabour lies on his back nursing his rheumatism and planning for next year, when he says he will run a one-ring circus on the road.
“The collapse of the Jabour show leaves the town without a big attraction, and as a result people can be seen at all hours of the day walking around and swearing over the lack of entertainment.”
The struggle of local entertainment venues to stay afloat amidst shifting economic tides is a story as relevant to Walla Walla's modern downtown as it was to the fairground promoters of 1903. Even then, the community reaction to the loss of a public spectacle was visceral, showing that the civic need for 'attractions' was a vital component of city life.
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