LUNATIC FRINGE
Introducing Libertarian Tim Cridland, performer
and author of Weird Las Vegas
BY JARRET KEENE

Visit your local Barnes & Noble Booksellers, and you’ll see his book prominently featured at its very own table — Weird Las Vegas and Nevada: Your Alternative Travel Guide to Sin City and the Silver State. Published by Sterling (a subsidiary of Barnes & Noble), Weird Las Vegas is the culmination of the more than a quarter century that Tim Cridland has spent researching and studying the world’s top paranormal phenomena. Cridland has been obsessed with the uncanny and offbeat since he was little kid growing up in Eastern Washington. But he credits his interest in Libertarian philosophy and politics with his status as a small businessman and professional writer.

“Libertarianism offered a perspective that allows me the freedom and personal responsibility I need to run my own business,” he says. “Other political perspectives only made me think I had to rely on the state as a solution to my problems.”

What is Cridland’s business? We’re so glad you asked. 

Cridland is perhaps best known by his sideshow stage name, Zamora the Torture King. Chances are you’ve seen him on TV, whether on “Ripley’s” or “Guinness World Records,” walking barefoot on broken glass or having concrete blocks smashed against his chest with a sledgehammer. Or, if you’re an alt-music fan, you may remember him from Jim Rose Circus at Lollapalooza (an annual American music festival that lasted from 1991 to 1997), getting imaginatively pierced or swallowing swords. 

And if you haven’t encountered Zamora’s reality-defying performances before, you’re in for a real treat: He performed nightly at the Aruba Hotel Showroom Sept. 9-20 in a late-night variety show called “Vegas After Midnight.” The show is designed to promote Weird Las Vegas, which Cridland will sign copies of at each performance.

The book is a wonderful overview of all the sights, sounds and spectral happenings that make Nevada such a compelling area to visit and, yes, inhabit. Gorgeously illustrated and designed, and co-authored by Joe Oesterle (of National Lampoon fame), Weird Las Vegas is a reminder that people and places are strange even when you’re not a stranger. Even Cridland admits that assembling the book challenged him as a writer — and that working in Southern Nevada is an ongoing challenge.

“For the last 15 years, I’ve worked outside the status quo of what people consider an acceptable job,” he notes. “I happened to find a marketplace where I’ve pursued my hobby and my own self-interest. I’ve been able to turn my passion into money and attain freedom from the rat race.”

Sure, being a sideshow performer is in many ways an archaic kind of self-employment. But what Cridland proves is that you don’t always have to follow the path laid out for you by your public high school guidance counselor. Instead, you can look for market gaps, or market niches, to fill with whatever passion or talents you may possess. 

“If you want something bad enough, you should go for it,” advises Cridland. “Just don’t drag me along with it.” 

Which leads Cridland to ask a question about Mr. Nationalized Healthcare, a.k.a. documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, whose latest movie, SiCKO makes the case for government-sponsored medical care.

“If Moore wants nationalized healthcare so badly, why doesn’t he just move to Canada, become a citizen and get it?” he says. “Plenty of other people have done just that. It’s like he needs the entire country to agree with him instead of taking the easier path toward Canadian citizenship.”

Don’t get Cridland started on politics. From his cynical vantage, Libertarians will always be deemed “a third party” rather than a viable party. 

“The very term ‘third party’ used by the media suggests that anything other than a Republican or a Democrat is just automatically lumped together into this category,” he says. “As a result, no party has a chance of being taken seriously. From what I understand, these days even Ron Paul would rather be called a Republican than a third-party candidate.”

Cridland remembers Paul from the 1988 Libertarian National Convention, when the now-Texas Congressman bested Indian activist Russell Means to win the Libertarian presidential nomination.

“I supported Means,” reveals Cridland. “At the same time, there was concern, at least among what I respectfully call the lunatic fringe of the Libertarian Party, that Paul more closely resembled a mainstream candidate. Here was a successful doctor wearing a suit, a professional politician, running against this other guy in a leather jacket. We were worried that the Libertarian Party was beginning to resemble Republicans and Democrats.”

Cridland briefly worked for Loompanics, a small publisher that blended Libertarian and Left-wing philosophy while championing free markets and multi-national corporations. Now, however, having worked in Vegas as a sideshow performer, Cridland is quick to place the onus of the blame for an over-regulated entertainment industry on the gaming corporations.

“Corporations sponsor the presidential candidates, and so the corporations win,” he says. “Here on the Las Vegas Strip, there’s just too much red tape, and it’s constructed by the corporations that write the rules. They make it difficult for an independent performer to gain a foothold in the marketplace. The diversity of entertainment in this town is terrible. You can choose from eight Cirque shows, and that’s it, really.”

On the bright side, Cridland sees the Wal-Mart-ization of the Strip as providing an opportunity for market gaps. It’s so difficult to get a show on the Strip that people are looking elsewhere — Empire Ballroom and Krave, just to name a couple of examples — for entertainment. Cridland’s own show at the Aruba is an example of what he hopes will be a niche market.

“You’re eventually going to see a backlash against all the regulations that gaming companies have been quietly putting into place over the years,” he predicts. “My show at the Aruba aims to attract tourists looking for something edgier. Late-night shows used to be standard here. Vegas After Midnight will be marketed as old-style Vegas meets New Vegas.”

The Aruba Hotel Showroom is located at 1215 Las Vegas Blvd. South. Admission to Vegas After Midnight is $25. For more info, go to mindandmatter.net or call (818) 693-0492.

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