Devious,

You must have just downloaded a meme pack because you are replying to everything with them.

I got another event for the weekend. My weekends are filled with festivals. Its great.

Great story!!

You know what they say...big hands means big...

....cantaloupes?

This is going to be kinda short but I think it is important. I worked a festival last weekend, the Battle of the Burgers. It was kinda small, but turnout was supposed to be good. $25 all the burgers you can eat, $5 beer, live band, plus All Burgers/All Beer tickets for $60. Turnout looked to be good. Festival started at Noon. I changed locations about 45 minutes into the festival. I did one single show and a monsoon started. I put my table in the car, waited for it to stop and set back up, rain started again. People thinned but large crowds stayed, some people kept coming, buying tickets and eating burgers and voting on them. They were huddling under the restaurant tents though. I was pretty discouraged because of the weather.

I met Magic Debbie, she is the President of the Atlanta Chapter of SAM, she came just to see me work, she saw I was to be there and had never seen me at the Club meetings (I am not currently a member of any currently). She had a party Gig and couldn't stay long enough to see me work, Debbie, I will be at the Festival on Ponce this weekend, it's free, come see me!

Anyway, when I got started working, I ended up doing about 2 hours total. I said screw the table and I took my TT, Sponge Balls, ID, and Rope Trick. I worked out of my pockets, strolling style. I walked up to a group, said, "Hey, how are you guys? Watch this!" and started my show. No rope, completely surrounded, in the crowd. I built an edge of about 30 people, did my show, no Cups and Balls, finale was the ropes, hatted em good! I repeated this for the next two hours. I had some really good fun and so did the spectators.

The reason I think it is important is because if you plan to make money regularly from street work, you need to be able to think on your feet. Dumping the table and doing walk around busking was not something I had thought of but for this venue was perfect. People were not actively moving around like they do at a lot of festivals. They were congregating near where the burgers were being cooked. Few were venturing to the stage or the tents with the live college football on TV. Recognizing this and improvising allowed me to salvage the day and still make some money despite the rain. All told, in two hours, I made almost $90. It was not what I was hoping for but considering the circumstances I was pleased.

Finally, the reason I tend to mention money is that it is hard to give you an account of my success without some way to gauge it. If I say, I had a good day, a lot of people had fun, that is subjective, but when I say I made $90 in two hours, that is $45/hr and is totally objective. I am saying this to say that if you are working somewhere and something isn't working, remember, you are a street worker, you don't have to follow any rules, you can improvise. Just remember, to improvise you first need a set show that pays that you can do in your sleep, that makes improvisation easy! If you want to survive doing this type of work, you need to learn this skill.

I will tell you about a failed lemon load next time!

Gr8gorilla, I loved how you adapted to the situation. Working out of your pockets and doing it strolling style shows your performing versatility.

Thanks for sharing the money info. I have no idea what a bad, good or GREAT hat actually means because it's subjective as you pointed out.

Gr8gorilla, only now I've started to read your busking journey, and I already find it tremendously helpful.

Thanks a lot for sharing, and keep it rolling.

Cheers,

Rui

Fantastic read and truly an inspiration to fellow workers of the art, whether busking or not. Thank you very much for your stories and please keep them coming.

Gr8gorilla,
This is a great thread, educational for others.
What was your background before you went performing on the street?
Did you have a lot of effects ready to go as a show, or did you build up effects from scratch to be able to do the street show.
How much performing close-up or parlour had you already done?

If these topics have already been covered, just cut and paste, or refer to the date you posted this already.
Thanks.

MagiCol,

The questions you have asked have not been answered concisely and in one place. I will answer each now.

Question: What was your background before you went performing on the street?
Answer: I started learning magic young, around 10 or 12. I had a Tarbell Course and all of the requisite texts, Erdnase, Card Control (Buckley), Hugard's books on cards, etc. When I was young I liked cards a lot. When I was 19 or 20 I got a job at Magic Masters in Atlanta. I worked at both stores, they had two locations. Turns out, working at Magic Masters as a salesman had a lot of parallels with busking. I worked at Magic Masters for around a year and they closed one of the Atlanta locations. I went to work elsewhere. I continued practicing magic but only performed a bit of strolling/restaurant stuff. It wasn't consistent enough and I was to young to work hard at it and get known. I didn't want to work hard back then. Then I took a break from magic for several years. I worked, went to school off and on, and just dabbled in magic. Shortly before I went to the street for the first time I pulled out all of my old magic stuff and bought a few things. One thing led to another and I decided I wanted to perform again. First I looked into restaurant magic. That scene is pretty well sowed up here in Atlanta, all the Magi are looking for work with the economy. I had performed for live audiences in almost 10 years, nor had I performed for money. I didn't have a show but I had plenty of magical knowledge and decent skills.


Question: Did you have a lot of effects ready to go as a show, or did you build up effects from scratch to be able to do the street show?
Answer: The first day I went out to the street I took a silk vanish, linking rings, and a couple of card effects. My goal was a solid 10-15 minutes. I had experience performing many effects but only had a few I could do reliably at the time. You can read about that here. I didn't make any money, got harassed by the police, etc. I was totally unprepared. It was a scouting mission of sorts though. The next time I was ready though. I took a professors nightmare, rings, silk vanish, sponge balls, Invisible Deck. The nightmare was a fiber optics routine that was kinda long. I have since cut it down to 3 phases. To better answer the question, I followed the advice of, "take your best stuff, 3-4 tricks that you do well, and start there." I changed what I was doing based on audience reactions and how I liked the show. My current show is as follows: Silk Vanish, I.D., Professors Nightmare, Pressure(Phone in Balloon), Cups and Balls. I don't consider the Silk Vanish part of the show. It is a build trick. I also have sponge balls and a routine that I can do for 3 minutes or 5 minutes if I need to stall. You should never start your show with less than 5 or more people, preferably more. Honestly you don't need a lot of effects. I mean watch Gazzo sometime. He only does one real trick, Cups and Balls, and audiences of 300 watch the whole show.

Question: How much performing close-up or parlour had you already done?
Answer: I think I kinda answered that above. I had plenty from Magic Masters but I was rusty. The thing is, if you pay attention and adapt to what the audiences on the street are telling you, you will be successful. If you are a successful street magician, you will be a good magician anywhere really and the reverse isn't true. There was a learning curve and it was steep.

I hope that my experience continues to inspire others. Remember, if you don't have a place to perform go out to the sidewalk and set up. You can get as much performing experience in a month as most performers get in years. I think that is why Magic Masters helped me so much. We did shows every 20 minutes. We built crowds just like a busker, on the sidewalk in front of the store doing silk vanishes or light flights. Once we had a crowd we did a show and our hat lines were pitch lines for the trick we just did. It was eerily similar. It was a great primer. I really think every magician can a learn a lot about his show by taking it out on the street. It may be humbling.

Thanks for that. I like knowing more about the background of street workers.
I'll share my background to busking but don't want to distract unduly from this thread being about your experiences which we readers are learning from.

In contrast, I recall I was such a newbie to performing magic tricks before I went onto the streets that I could perform maybe only half a dozen tricks until I got together some tricks for street work. So, armed with a few newly learned tricks and street knowledge pretty well limited to book [Jimmy Talksalot] and reading on magic forums on the internet I hesitantly started performing in public. My first pitch was at an open air market doing balloon twisting and at least one card trick. I approached the organiser of the market and said I would like to be there to do some magic. To my consternation I was told I could have the mic soon on the staging area. Gulp. I declined. That was way out of my depth at the time. A stall holder I knew offered me a place alongside her site. I was so naive the first day's take of a total of two $1 coins was pushed upon me by two women I gave balloon models to. I took the money and turned and put it in my bag, not even realizing that I should have shown it in front of me {That's how much I understood about a hat, let alone doing hatting!!] O.k. so I'd read Jimmy's book, but I was so naive. It was the friendly stall holder who told me to put the money on the ground. Well, first day out in public, as I say, I earned $2 from balloon twisiting.
I started on the street proper about 4 months later. I was about 65 or so then. Now I'm hitting on 70. I'm a part-timer and so my learning has been a lot slower because my exposure to number of shows is less than a full-timer.
I love street performing - meeting the people, appreciating what it takes to be a street magician, improving effects, becoming street-wise...
One of the best pieces of advice about starting on street performing, I reckon, is what Jimmy wrote "It's better to go out and do something than stay home and plan something." I'm glad I acted on his advice.

This is some very good information, and wonderful documentation on starting to street perform. I am going to try this here soon too, and it's noce to see another magician grow in doing this so fast!

"I met Magic Debbie, she is the President of the Atlanta Chapter of SAM" Shaun... Did she say she was the president of SAM Ring 30?

She said something like that. I don't remember exactly. I know she said she knows you Merritt and that she was president of the Atlanta Chapter of SAM.

Sounds like you are doing good. You should check out the IBM Ring 9 of our SAM 30... would love to have you!!

Billiards update: both hands can perform the ball roll at decent speed. Have to practice reverse. Focusing on classic palm and ball productions with continued practice of the finger roll.

I find it fascinating to read your updates Shaun.
Please keep posting. This thread is going to help
folks in the future. This is your online legacy.

Question:
Have you considered a theme or the motivation for the ball act?

Yeah, keep this up. This is handy and a good motivation and confidence builder for people just starting out!

Spot on!!!!!

Devious/Stperformer:

Honestly,

As far as I have gotten is the idea that I do a Billiard ball routine, followed by cups and balls, and a ball and cone finale. I have plans for appearing billiard balls to be a theme/recurring joke in the routine. I was thinking something based on Cardini, the idea is a guy that is plagued by these magical balls. The balls are more of a nuisance that I must deal with than a wanted magical ability.

I have no plans to copy the Cardini routine but I plan to link the 3 phases together. I will get matching Fakini 1" balls and maybe do Diminishing ball prior to the Cups and Balls. I haven't decided yet. I am still not sure if I should finale with Cups and Balls or ball and cone. I also have some plans for a loop ball in all of this. Right now that is where I am. I have not yet pictured a plot or story for this idea. I am working on the technical aspects alone right now. I am working at a ridiculous pace though and plan to be working on the story or character motivation by Mid January. I plan to take the first version to the street around April or May.

The thing is, technically, billiard balls are the hardest sleight of hand magic(given the circumstances - Street conditions, possibly surrounded - ) that can be practiced. I suppose that doves on the street may be slightly more difficult, but only slightly! In fact, that gives me some ideas! Does anyone do Doves on the street?

In the words of a great South Park episode: "OH, ****TY!"

Well, this weekend I will go out and work on the street for the first time in a while. I am excited to see how my improved skills carry over to my work on the street. I am also hoping that I don't get in any trouble with my hat lines. It could happen though. I am ready for a day on the street. It should be fun!