Being a clown is tough work. The four core members of Alley Oops, a North Bend-based clown club ought to know.

“At the end of the day your nose is sliding off your face and your butt is on the ground, and some little kid looks at you and says, ‘Hey clown,’” said “Howie Diddit” aka Mike Gentry, a 59-year-old with his derriere padded with a pillow.

And the fun must go on.

“Clowning for us is for the heart,” he said.

On Friday night, the club had its first gig of the season at Blossom Gulch Elementary School. Children with balloon hats and animals filled the large gymnasium. Those who didn’t have them stood in lines as the clowns feverishly twisted and pulled balloons into shapes.

Their night started at club founder Sandra Waite’s North Bend home a couple of hours before showtime. Waite, aka “Pinkie,” was finishing up her day, running a daycare with her last two charges yet to be picked up. Gentry and 14-year-old Ricky “Wats Dat” Condon, a student at Sunset Middle School, arrived made up and in costume. Then came Candice Gordon, 26, already dressed as her clown character, Shuggs, sans makeup. Gordon’s boyfriend, Jeremy Worch, stood behind her as she applied the grease paint.

“I never pictured I’d have a girlfriend who’s a clown,” Worch said. “I like it.”

Gentry, a graduate of three clown schools — Mooseburgers Camp in Minnesota, the University of Wisconsin Clown Camp and the California Clown School at Circus Circus in Reno, Nev. — joined Alley Oops about a month after it started last April. He moved to the Bay Area in 1989, after his Silicon Valley semiconductor company went kaput.

“I went from designing integrated circuits to clown school,” Gentry said.

From there, he’s become a teacher, too, training the others in most everything he learned.

“At clown camp, they have contests to see who can put on their makeup the fastest,” Gentry said.

It’s no simple process. He guided them, cautioning them not to extend their painted mouths too wide.

“You have to keep the mouth inside the eyes,” Waite said.

“A bad makeup job really scares the kids,” Gentry added.

Another tip was not to furrow their brows.

Waite got down to business. She sat at the table and stretched a hot pink rubber cap on her head to hold her hair underneath her equally pink wig.

The 57-year-old said she created Alley Oops when she and her late husband, David Waite, were Shriner clowns with the Hillah Shrine Coos County chapter. About three months later David died of a heart condition. The group went on, Waite said, but she still uses her husband’s clown name “Pickles” now when she’s performing a trick.

Last year the club kept busy juggling parades, events and appearances at retirement homes and children’s parties. Members meet Tuesday nights at the Indian tribal hall in Coos Bay, practicing skills such as throwing hats on one another’s heads and juggling. The meetings keep them smiling throughout the dreary winter months, and this Tuesday, with a background of silly circus-type music, they ended up in a giggle fest of balloon and pop-gun popping.

So far they’ve barely made enough to pay for their performers’ insurance, but Waite says they’ll stay in it for the fun.

“As long as we have enough to cover our balloonage,” she said.

And judging by the children waiting in line at Blossom Gulch on Friday night, they’re not in danger of losing fans.