BARBARA LAMB, who offered Perry Rlickman (Perri the Hobo) her basement as a place to stay this winter, looks on at the memorial tribute that celebrated the clown’s life in front of Leo’s Place yesterday.

Pink high-top Converse sneakers sit next to a pair of patchwork plaid winter overalls and a skinny rubber chicken in the window of Leo’s Place.

A sandwich board shaped like a waiter holds a tattered black top hat and balances a plastic red nose.

The display at the JFK Street diner paid tribute yesterday to Perri the Hobo, the balloon-tying, whistle-blowing, sometimes pushy and off-color clown who worked in Brattle Square the last two summers.

The engineer-turned-entertainer came north from New Orleans, where in his more than two decades as a clown he made a video on how to tie balloon animals and planned to market a series of postcards.

Perry David Rlickman died last month at age 51, and yesterday’s day-long memorial at Leo’s coincided with his “jazz funeral,” a parade through his New Orleans haunts with a jazz band and honking horns to celebrate his life.

It was an upbeat farewell to the man who had been jailed for drug possession in Louisiana and lost his street performer’s permit in Provincetown for his offensive antics, retaining the counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to win it back.

Rlickman’s body was found on March 22 in the basement room where he lived in Allston. Boston police officials said they could not confirm the cause of death.

Three weeks after the hobo’s act disappeared from the streets of the Square, friends gathered yesterday to playfully share their memories of the man who loved kids, crowds and Creole spices.

A Very Strange Enchanted Boy

Over the past two years, Rlickman became a noisy, noticeable part of the Harvard Square routine.

Every morning when the weather was warm, a taxi cab pulled up in front of Leo’s and out stepped Perri the Hobo already decked out in his clown suit with his face made up.

He roamed Brattle Square for about an hour until 10 a.m., since more children were around in the morning. Then he took the T to Park Street and worked the lunch-time crowds on Boston Common. By mid-afternoon he was back in Brattle Square and stayed for as many as seven hours.

Rlickman had this routine down pat—except when it rained, he performed seven days a week—and he moved constantly to catch up with the crowds.

“He was fine as far as I was concerned because he came out and worked,” says Tom Newell, known in his political puppet show as the character Uncle Scam. “He did something no one else was doing... Most of your balloon guys sit there with a tank of air. Perri blew up his own balloons.”

Standing at one of the bright yellow counters at Leo’s, Newell tips his black felt hat and shoves it forward.