Street magic is another form of magic referred by people of the mid evil era as guerilla magic. Street magicians of the mid evil era would often perform an entire act of street magic tricks for people that were passing by, hence the term “street magicians”. The most common tricks that were performed by street magicians are sleight of hand tricks, card tricks and mental tricks. Slight of hands tricks use the art of distraction to convenience audiences that an object had disappeared. We are all familiar with the concept behind magic card tricks; magicians pull out a deck of cards shuffles them and then tells you to “pick a card any card”.
Once you have looked at the card the magician instructs you to place the card back into the deck. The magician then reshuffles the deck of cards and without any hesitations the magician picks a random card and to your amazement, the card which they have picked is revealed to be the same exact card that you have picked. When street magicians perform mental magic tricks sometimes they often ask the participant to choose a number between 1 and 100. Then the magician asks if you have picked a number and then guess the number which you have picked.
One of the greatest skills that street magicians and magicians possess is the ability to capture and hold their audience attention. Some may consider this skill along to be more mystifying than the art of illusion and distractions combined. During the mid-evil era you would have been able to find street magicians performing in such continents as Europe and in Asia, although the history often doesn’t make mention of this.
Throughout the centuries street magicians have slowly begun to gain popularity. Now here in the twenty first century the popularity of street magician has sky rocketed and as a result have spawn famous street magicians. Among the many famous street magicians two have received worldwide recognition through exposure of media coverage which as a result have lead them to have their own TV shows. The names of these two famous street magicians turned celebrities are Chris Angle and David Blaine.
Unlike Chris’s show which is named after his name with a subtitled “Mind Freak’, David’s show is self-titled. Both of these street magicians are around the same age and have been inspired by street magician of the 1960’s and 70’s. The most famous street magician during the 1960’s and 70’s was New Yorker Jeff Sheridan, he was one of the first to perform street magic tricks on the streets of New York. Jeff also published a book on Street Magic, of which David and Chris read and became intrigued.
Street magicians throughout history have been able to perform elaborate street magic tricks before an audience of spectators and every time have been able to turn them into believers. Street magicians bring the art of magic each person on an personal level, since there are no stages involved or assistances many non-believer soon convert into believers.