A recent Friday at 11:58 a.m.: "It's like a universal language. Everybody understands what a bubble is," said Rebecca Nile. She gently blows a giant bubble she calls "Moby the whale bubble" over a sea of 2- and 3-year-olds at the Montessori School of the Bay Area San Francisco. Today, she controls the world. Kids and parents alike can hardly contain their excitement as she performs bubble acrobatics unimaginable to anybody who's used to tiny little blips from store-bought soap bubbles. Nile's bubbles flip and flirt with each other. They twirl. They grow. Her secret is knowledge. She moved here 16 years ago from Toronto with a degree in chemical engineering technology and shortly afterward combined those skills with a passion for clowning and entertaining. Nile became the Bubble Lady. Now she mostly works indoors, preferring large, calm rooms, and says you have to control your conditions. "Not too hot, not too cold," she said, constantly adding and subtracting ingredients on the fly until her clear spheres bloom, reflecting a rainbow of color. "You become one with the bubble. You feel it," she said.
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