Hey dudes, im new to magic tricks and im just wondering what you guys think are the best magic tricks to perform on the street?
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Best Street Magic Tricks?
- Thread starter AluVayadur
- Start date
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- magic street magic
Are you planning on busking or doing it more David Blaine style such as walking up to a random group and performing?
Healed and Sealed is a great one, theory11 just released a kind of Version 2.0 of it, most definitely worth the buy. For street magic, I tend to stray away from cards to open up or do 1 time things, but if a group asks me for more, then I pull the cards out. I like more organic magic like iHole, which is a fun, ungimmicked earphones through ring penetration, pen through bill stuff, easy things with everyday objects. Coin routines are nice for beginners to magic in general because there is a lot of material on coin magic and everyone has quarters, dimes, and nickels in their house. Card tricks can get kind of stale since it's one of the first things people think of when they think of magic so I try to perform unique effects. Lit, Mint Box, Double Exposure are all fantastic effects. I have a self-made (don't want to say original because I never did the research and don't want to be crucified) card-to-cigarette effect which I do sometimes, but not often since I detest smoking. If you want more details on that, PM me.
The most important thing in street magic is audience evaluation and management. You don't want to interrupt people who seem busy and rushing places, they most likely will say no and if they say yes, they'll often be impatient and have a "Hurry up and get on with it" attitude. If more people start surrounding you, make sure you can make sure the secrets go unnoticed or you're gonna be very embarrassed when someone points out what's happening. Pick effects that aren't angle-heavy or have great amounts of misdirection, audience management on the street can be tough since the size and position of that audience can fluctuate. A fantastic advice for magic in general is to practice, practice, practice. Start out with friends or family and eventually go out. Most important, have fun! Street magic is supposed to be light-hearted, fun, a breath of fresh air.
The most important thing in street magic is audience evaluation and management. You don't want to interrupt people who seem busy and rushing places, they most likely will say no and if they say yes, they'll often be impatient and have a "Hurry up and get on with it" attitude. If more people start surrounding you, make sure you can make sure the secrets go unnoticed or you're gonna be very embarrassed when someone points out what's happening. Pick effects that aren't angle-heavy or have great amounts of misdirection, audience management on the street can be tough since the size and position of that audience can fluctuate. A fantastic advice for magic in general is to practice, practice, practice. Start out with friends or family and eventually go out. Most important, have fun! Street magic is supposed to be light-hearted, fun, a breath of fresh air.
Just wanted to emphasize this. When I was starting (I am still new!) I ran into an issue where I would be showing a trick designed for 1 or 2 people then all of a sudden I would have 5 people surrounding me and my mind would go blank on a trick I could follow up with for that many people. There are ways to mitigate this!
Kostya Kimalat suggests creating a list that takes into consideration the time you are going to spend with the group and the size of the group. This way you will have a routine that is scaled for each group size ready to go if changes occur. Also this helps make sure people nearby get a different routine than their neighbors.
Example would be for a graph with 2 axis, time on one and number of people on the other. A group of 2 people could have timed routines ranging from 30 seconds to 10 minutes and anywhere in between. If all of a sudden the group gets bigger you would already have a routine already set for 5ish people ready to go.
Print out a small version, cheat sheet, and stick it in the cellophane of your card box or pocket etc.
Kosta Kimlats Penguin Magic Live at the Table Lecture goes into better detail of how this works as well as having tons of other great information. Its not a trick heavy lecture but full of good information and is about 8 bucks.
Other people have other suggestions on how to organize your magic tricks with different strengths and weaknesses. I just found Kostya's advice to be very helpful to me!