A no-clowns-allowed sign put up as a joke led to a confrontation between angry clowns and a rattled bookstore owner on Richmond Street Thursday afternoon.

Just to make the circus-like scene complete, two police officers on bicycles showed up to defuse the situation.

But nothing seemed likely to ease the temper of the clowns Lulu Pullitzor Palooza and Buttons Blammo or the frustration of City Lights Bookstore co-owner Teresa Tarasewicz.

The small sign, a drawing of a clown face with a bar through it, has been in the store for years, Tarasewizc said.



The signin the window of City Lights Bookstore on Richmond Street in London (Derek Ruttan/The London Free Press)

With all the fuss over creepy clowns lately, she put it up as a joke, she said.

“We're a light-hearted place,” she said. “We are all collectively losing our sense of humour.”

She and Lulu, Lori Ackerman in non-clown life, had a conversation about the matter.

But when Buttons stormed up and started to draw, in fat but erasable marker, on the store's window, things got heated.

Tarasewicz rushed out and wiped out the marker.

“You're racist!” Buttons, Brian Currie in non-clown life, told her. “You said it's a joke. Well this is a joke.”

“You are yelling at me in the street and you have a child with you,” an upset Tarasewicz told him. “This is terrible."

“It is horrible you are not taking down a sign that is offensive,” Currie retorted.

The confrontation lasted several minutes until two London police officers on bicycle patrol arrived and calmed things down, to a point.

Currie, aka Buttons, said he would bring more clowns to protest.

Tarasewicz said she wasn't going to pull down the sign under a threat.