Wow, this weekend did not go at all as I expected. It was an exercise in thinking on your feet, and I definitely learned a lot. I think I would call it a success, though it definitely wasn't what I was expecting to do in the first place.
Saturday was a complete loss. Severe thunderstorms all day, with very brief periods of not so heavy rains. I knew my original plan of busking on a corner was not going to work out. I had no cover, so I'd be standing in the rain. A lot of the vendors didn't show, and though there were nutcases out in the rain, there weren't lots of people walking around. I grabbed a name badge and made a quick "I Work For Tips" tag for my shirt, planning to do some walk around when the rain let up. The rain never let up. I waited inside one of the businesses for an hour and a half and it just straight up poured the entire time.
I figured even if the driving rain let up and I could go out in the light sprinkles, was I going to be able to get people to actually stop and watch me? If they did stop, was the rain going to ruin the cards and stuff I had with me? If I did manage to get someone to stop and my stuff wasn't ruined, were these people going to then dig out their wallets and give me a couple bucks? The answer I came up with to all of those questions was no. So I went home, threw my clothes in the dryer, and started watching season 2 of The Americans in my underwear.
Sunday was calling for rain, but not as much as Saturday. I figured with the potential of rain, I still wasn't going to have luck pulling a decent crowd for busking. I managed to borrow a 10x10 EZ Up tent from a friend and was able to set that up in a spot where on of the vendors cancelled. I put on a back and a side and set myself up in the corner. My plan was to do smaller shows with whatever crowd I could fit under the tent.
I wrote a little bit of copy for the DJ to announce what I was doing when he made other announcements about the festival. He convinced me to omit a line about the shows being free but donations being accepted at the end, and instead put out a tip jar. I wasn't too keen on the idea of the tip jar, I wanted to just build a crowd and hat them at the end. Turned out to be a good idea because I never ended up getting enough people to do a whole show.
People trickled by and the rain came off and on. I was glad to have the tent for sure. I ended up doing the same handful of tricks over and over, which actually worked out pretty well. Like I said previously, I wasn't doing anything knuckle-busting or earth shaking, but everyone really had fun. I started with a 52-on-1 card gag that lead into an Invisible Deck. Everyone liked that, but sometimes I could tell people just wanted to move along so I didn't push the routine further. If people were receptive, I followed it up with another gag card, the 3 1/2 of spades. I built this up as my "No Fail, Never Wrong, All Day Long prediction." I said it was my "money trick" and I would "bet a lot" on it, while indicating my tip jar. Not sure if it helped or not, but I liked the allusion to money to get people thinking about it. I usually ended there, especially if there were only one or two people. The couple times I had a decent crowd, I finished off with a Stebbens deck that I presented as a human lie detector. That really went well the few times I did it.
Once or twice during the day I had some kids come up that were too young for my other material. I had a regular deck of cards with me and so I did some basic pick a card tricks, a few color changes, just messing around stuff. They liked it. I had some kids come back for like the third time with a $5 bill and asked if I knew any tricks with money. I dug around in my case looking for a Sharpie and slipped on an extra tip. I had the kid sign the bill and then made it disappear. I pulled it back out of my wallet and gave it back to them, and they were both going "Whoa! Oh my God! That was crazy!" and just stuffed it into my tip jar and walked away.
I made a couple mistakes during the course of the day too. Fortunately I never screwed up my force for the 3 1/2 of spades which would have been supremely embarrassing. I did screw up the revelation on the invisible deck a couple times, which I can attribute to just not being able to math in the moment. Fortunately the misses were pretty close, like a 5 of diamonds instead of a 7 of diamonds. I mean, it sucks from the magician's perspective because you know it was supposed to be an exact match, but you also gotta figure from their perspective it's still pretty damn close! It also enabled me to follow up right away with the other prediction that seems to go wrong but ends successfully. It was fun to see the facial expressions change from "Wow, two in a row. This guy is not good." to "Holy shit! That was good! Maybe that first one wasn't a mistake after all!"
I screwed up my Stebbins routine once, too. Again, I attribute it to not being able to math in the moment. I think I miscalled a King of spades as the Queen of spades, so at least I was really close on that one too. Since my patter involved reading body language to determine lies, I think it was still impressive to get that close. Plus, I was able to follow that up with the rest of the routine that hit dead on again and got great results.
I got pretty good tips throughout the day, several fives, lots of ones, only change twice and it came from kids. Honestly, I kind of appreciate change from a kid more than five bucks from an adult. It's easy for an adult to give away money (for the most part). A kid giving me change is basically saying, "You have blown my mind so badly and I appreciate that so much I'm going to give you literally all the money I have." I don't want to say exactly how much I made, but I was thrilled with the outcome. Keep in mind though, I'm the type of guy who wins thirty bucks at a casino and feels like a baller.
I passed out a lot of cards and I have a few leads on some stuff for the future. We'll see if anything pans out, and if it does I'm sure I'll be writing about it. I've got another episode of AGT to write about in the next day or so here. Lots of goings on. Gonna be busy.
- Andster
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