It's hard out there for a clown.
Loco Coco, aka Siddhartha Calacuayo, 28, spends his days in the Village practicing traditional Mexican clowning and trying to make a living as a street performer.
"I need to make money," the Los Angeles-native told DNAinfo New York, saying he was having trouble surviving in LA after a crop of scary clown stories this year and decided to head to the Big Apple.
“I saw an article that said no one gives a s--t if there’s a clown on the train. No one cares," Loco said. "I don’t want to be bothered."
While drunken Santas stumbled through Greenwich Village Saturday as part of the annual SantaCon pub crawl, Loco skateboarded through Washington Square park juggling multicolored disks.
He made duck sounds and inflated a giant, pink balloon heart, handing it to a girl, whose parents gave her $1 to give Loco.
On a good day he makes between $70 to $100, though on slow days he said he might only make about $10.
“I find a red light where it’s pretty busy, juggle, and people are very, you know, they’re giving —especially this time of the season," he said.
The streets of Manhattan might be his stage now, but Loco's career as a clown started six years ago on the streets of San Luis Potosi, Mexico, after a bad breakup.
“I was going through a bad time and I didn't know what do do with my life and I saw the clowns from Mexico. I said, 'You know what I could do something like that.' It was just like a caterpillar went in my brain and flourished into a butterfly," according to Loco.
"And I said, 'You know what? Why not be a clown?' I tried it out and I loved it ever since."
DNAinfo/Ben Fractenberg
He said he first thought about calling himself Yuppie the Clown, but was doing a lot of children's birthdays and decided he wanted a more "musical, funny-sounding name."
"Loco" was a nickname a friend in LA gave him, "and Coco the Clown was the first cartoon clown and pretty famous," Loco said. "And then Conan O’Brien was given the name Coco from Tom Hanks and I said, 'You know what, I wanted to be somehow connected to all that: Loco Coco. And that’s how I came up with the name.'”
On Saturday, Loco eventually left Washington Square Park for Union Square in hopes of a fresh crop of customers. En route, he ran into a line of Santas waiting to get into a bar. He high-fived the revelers and let one Santa squeeze his nose, finally getting a Santa to part with a little beer money.
Liz Marotti, 33, said she met Loco about two years ago when he was visiting New York and would perform on 14th Street next a table where she sold paintings.
"We laughed all day because Loco Coco was there," said Marotti, a Staten Island native.
"He would follow behind people," she added. "Sometimes he would walk like a duck, sometimes he would imitate them."
Marotti connected with him again when she went out to LA on recent trip and watched him perform on Hollywood Boulevard.
"Reactions are so different in LA. In New York they laughed. In LA they looked at him like he was crazy," she said. "He wasn’t as free to do all the craziness like he is in new York."
Loco seemed to play well off a little New York attitude.
"Wait, wait, isn’t it SantaCon, not Scary Clown Con?" a woman walking her dog on University Place joked.
"Am I that scary?" Loco asked before trying to give her a balloon bouquet.
She politely declined, but told Loco to "enjoy your day."
He got back on his skateboard and continued toward Union Square, unfazed.
"You just got to throw yourself at the people, pretty much," he said. "You've got to be not afraid for anything because anything can happen."
