I don’t like clowns. I never liked clowns, my whole life.
Every inch of Michael Russo’s front yard is crammed with clowns.
Over a dozen robo-Bozos stand ready to scare his neighbors, screeching, glowering, lighting up and occasionally jerking forward with a cackle.
Michael's wife Kim pointed to a smaller clown in a red hoodie, perched in a tree. “That’s the one I don’t want, the child, because I go to work every morning at 5:30, and I look at that thing and it scares the crap out of me.”
But the clowns are a must. It’s the Russo family’s second Halloween in the Historic Old Northeast neighborhood, where decking out your front yard and buying enough candy to feed a small, costumed army is a decades-long way of life.
This is what the Russos learned last year, before they even moved in.
“Some guy was walking by and goes, ‘Y’all planning on looking at this house? ... Get ready for Halloween,’” she said.
The couple purchased $600 worth of gently used clowns from a guy on Facebook Marketplace. Michael Russo’s adult children are flying in with their significant others from Colorado and Connecticut, prepared to pass out 6,500 lollipops. They ran out last year after 3,500.
Read more at the Tampa Bay Times