While in Seattle we were intrigued by two eager street magicians. I’ve seen street magic on television before and was always skeptical of how ‘real’ it was. I thought that there must have been some behind-the-scenes trickery going on, though the spectators always seemed genuinely entertained. Naturally I kept a watchful eye as this young twenty-something lured in my oldest son for a card trick.
It started out with your typical ‘pick a card and don’t show me’ but then he pulled a new one. To really make it obvious that he couldn’t ‘cheat’ on this seemingly standard card trick, he had my son write his name on the card he picked with a sharpie marker. He did all those impressive, vaudevillian magic moves – the slow deal, the inverted shuffle, the switch – to reveal my son’s chosen card every time without fail.
Probably the most unbelievable was when, while expecting another clever reveal from the deck on the table, he told my son that his card was on his shoulder. And it was! I realize there had to be some slight of hand, but even my eagle eye couldn’t detect how he pulled this off. I started analyzing the logistics of this young wizard’s ‘power’ trick. I thought about the distances, proximity and fact that my son was standing right in front of me with this shoulder in plain sight the whole time. Admittedly I was entertained.
With all of us standing dumbfounded with mouths agape (several passersby included) the magician attempted to pull off his most difficult trick: getting the spectators to purchase the $20 DVD that purportedly revealed how to do the tricks he had shown us. We politely declined, thanked him for the show and slowly walked away.
Later that same day we encountered another young charlatan performing card tricks. We obliged him by again volunteering to take part as audience assistants. When the routine started to look familiar I thought to myself, ‘this time, I’ll figure it out.’ After ten minutes I was still dumbfounded (and amazed) when the pitch for the $20 DVD purchase came up. Again, we declined and sheepishly walked away. Though both magicians were legit (I saw their vendor permits), the second was a lot more persistent with his DVD offer, almost begging and belittling us when we declined. I couldn’t help but think that we had just experienced the most sophisticated form of panhandling. Ta-Da!