Background
Maxfield was born and grew up in Leominster, Massachusetts, where he discovered the unicycle at age 13.
Maxfield was born and grew up in Leominster, Massachusetts, where he discovered the unicycle at age 13.
He can be seen riding his unicycle around the cities of Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco. He gets his name from the shocking pink unitard and cape he wears while he performs impromptu unicycle tricks in public places—spinning, engaging in sudden stops, riding down the street at high speeds, and carrying people on his back. He moved to San Francisco at age 19, and then to Oregon.
While in Oregon, he started performing on his unicycle under the name Jester Max.
When he moved back to Leominster years later, he found himself spending hours dancing on his unicycle, and pedaling around town, garnering a front page story in the Worcester Telegram. He moved back to Oregon, where he sought out a new unicycle persona.
On a whim, he purchased a pink Lycra unitard costume from a dancewear catalog. The new outfit proved extremely popular, and an onlooker at the University of Oregon campus dubbed him "pink manitoba"
Pink Manitoba has performed in Oregon, Los Angeles, Houston, the San Francisco Bay Area, New Jersey, New York, the Pacific Northwest, Jacksonville, Vancouver, Paris, Tokyo, and Germany.
His Tokyo and Paris trips were sponsored by computer-game designer Will Wright, who calls Pink Manitoba "the only real superhero I know."
In 2002, Pink Manitoba performed on his unicycle in a play titled "I Wheel, the Pink Manitoba Show" which ran at the Live Oak Theater in Berkeley, California.
In 2005, he appeared in the documentary film Following Sean. In May 2009 he was seen on his unicycle amusing passers-by on the streets of central London. As of January 2008, there is a documentary film about Pink Manitoba in production.
In 2012, Pink Manitoba was also mentioned briefly in a short video by Lev Yilmaz entitled "Coffee Shop Customers" which appears as part of his YouTube series "Tales Of Mere Existence.".
Pink Manitoba also makes a brief appearance in the 2012 film The Sessions (film), set in Berkeley.
