I was wondering how people on this forum got into magic. Maybe you are like me, and for some time magic was just a hobby of yours before becoming something bigger. Maybe you made the decision to become a magician right from the beginning. Maybe you have a different story that I'd love to hear. So how did you get into magic?

D

I was “drafted” into magic.

I had to spend several summers with an uncle because both my parents had to work and they could not afford “child care” for four kids. Each of us kids “got” to spend the summer months with a different relative.

I was lucky; I was sent to spend my summers with my father’s brother. Which meant that I got to travel with him. He was a Carney. That is, he made his living traveling with various carnivals in the southwest and south of the USA. In general he ran a “flat show” (gambling joint).

Two weeks into my first summer, the ten-in-one operator lost a couple of acts. He needed to fill the spots. He and my uncle decided that I should become “the worlds youngest Professional magician!” I was 12 almost 13 and very small and slight for my age. I also looked younger than my age. Just based on size alone they told the crowds that I was only 8 years old! Hey, I could have passed for seven!

The ten-in-one operator gave me an Egg-Bag, a Die-Box, and a spool of rope. He taught me a routine for each and spent a couple of days drilling me on presentation and performance of my spot/act. Three days later I was on stage and earning money as a magician. I got critiqued after each set by all the performers. I got competent fast!

The act consisted of a fairly good Egg-Bag routine with a lemon production finish, a standard die box routine, and a cut and restored rope.

There were two other effects I was trained to do. The first was a Broom Suspension that was my bit to perform "out front", to help gather a crowd. I would use one of the female performers or a girl from the “Kooch” show (owned and operated by the same guy).

I also performed the “Blade-Box” as a blow-off to make a little extra money inside. Again, some poor girl was drafted to be my assistant. My boyish prank was to reach into the box and pull off her costume after I had sectioned her with the blades. This of course was when it was only when needed as a blow-off to make extra money.

The broom suspension and the blade box belonged to the ten-in-one operator and apparently had been abandoned by a previous magician who tended to drink a bit and just wandered off one night and never came back.

The egg-bag was a heavy, red, wool flannel affair. It may have been home made and I still have it. It has a few spots on it that the cleaner couldn’t get out but is as functional as the day I got it. It was not new when I got it.

The die box was a rather primitive affair. It did not have a sound gimmick (noise maker) or any fake door panel to show the die present in a compartment. It was small, The die being 2.5 inches cube, and the box itself only 6.5 inches by 3.25 inches (front to back) by 3.5 inches deep (top to bottom). The shell was made from steel! It was painted red and I still have it and still use it from time to time.

In the early 70’s discovered that the Rubik’s cube was the same size as the die. So I bought two Cubes, painted the shell glossy black, peeled the square colored squares from one Cube and stuck them on the shell. Viola! Rubik’s Cube box! I added new brass hinges to the box at that time. The old hinges were painted and looked horrible!

I still have the original die.

I added to my repertory over the summer and over the next few years. But that was my first experience with magic. I was hooked from the beginning.

I backed into magic
I had a good 30 minute juggling act 25 years ago, and I wanted a 45 minute show, so I asked a magician friend of mine to teach me some magic tricks that I can do in my show. That was 25 years ago, now that I have slowed down a bit my show consist's of 15 minutes of juggling, and 30 minutes of magic. Some day I guess I will only have the ability to do magic, but my wife will tell me when I no longer have it (juggling, or anything else).

I was 10 or 11 when an old Jesuit Priest visited the Catholic School I was at. He was a magician and performed for the school. Afterwards, I helped him pack his stuff. He gave me Okito coin box and showed me the secret and told me to never reveal that secret and practice it until I could perform it better than anyone.

I still have that old brass coin box.

Check out:

http://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/viewt......um=41&44

Natural born from a long line.

An uncle taught me some very basic stuff when I was about 15, the most advanced of which was back palming a card. Later, I was a math major at UNLV in Vegas. Friends of mine who knew I did magic kept saying, "Hey, there's this professor... Allan Ackerman... he does magic. You should totally talk to him."

And I thought, "Pshaw, whatever. I'm a REAL magician, not some math professor with a Svengali deck. Maybe if HE'S lucky I'll go show him something." Eventually, the day came where I was hanging around the department with time to kill, and he was in the office. So I knocked on his door fully ready to blow his mind by back palming a card.

Fortunately, he went first.

I don't remember what all he did, but he definitely started with an awesome variation on Triumph. It was all kind of a blur after that. But, suffice it to say, I never did get around to blowing his mind. He did recommend some books though, and I was on my way to being a little more serious.

I also became friendly with Looy Simonoff, but in his capacity as a math professor. He would regularly show up to this Carl's Jr. (... a fast food restaurant, for those abroad) where a bunch of mathematicians and math-wannabes like me hung our after hours. I actually didn't even know he was a magician until I showed him a trick. Instead of being confounded, he taught me how to act 1000% more natural while presenting magic. Looy was probably my first serious mentor. I had no idea what a big deal he was until I started seeing his name pop up in books.

As an adult I was walking through Costco and saw a Bob Longe book of card tricks. Took it home and learned most of tricks, but performed for no one. Once I got to his version of OOTW, I performed that (repeatedly) unil I finally got totally stupid and started spending money...


John

What I like about Ackerman and Persi Diaconis was that they weren't just math geek professors who became magicians--they were magicians who became tenured mathematics professors so they could improve their magic!

I have kids. I always loved magic but when I had kids, they bought me a magic kit, well my wife did. It had simple easy stuff. The following day I received it, I went to the magic shop, Best Magic and dropped a few $$$ on the real stuff. My wife was upset at me for spending all that money "What are you going to do become a pro!" If I had known back then I would have said "YES!"

A David Copperfield gig at the Spokane Opera House gave me the bug as a kid. I can't really remember how I got back into it.
I think it has to do with my love of the Victorian era. I think I was reading about Victorian era Physical Culture and stumbled across some Houdini stuff, and then I just kept getting deeper and deeper into the history of magic. The more I got into the history of magic the more I loved it and modern magic too. T. Nelson Downs and Mercedes Talma were my favorites in the historical realm.

Later I went to Vegas and had the best magic experiences ever. I went to Amazing Johnathan and he threw a bowling ball at me that turned into a balloon. I went to Lance Burton and he sat at the front of the stage and started asking me questions. I went to Penn & Teller and they brought me up on stage and Penn vanished my glasses, then smashed a block of concrete on Teller's head and Teller was wearing them. Best vacation ever.

Then I went to a magic convention and almost quit. I couldn't stand the snobbery and elitism. But, luckily, Reed McClintock was there and he was such an inspiration that I just had to keep practicing until maybe one day I'll figure out how he got so good.

Try this link to six pages of answers to the question from 2003. Some from members that haven't posted in years!

http://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/viewt......&start=0

And yet another two pages from 2003:
http://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/viewt......forum=41

When I was eight years old I joined the Cub Scouts. The father of one of the other boys in my Cub pack was Glenn Falkenstein. He would do a show for us every year, and my parents would go to the Magic Castle with him and his wife.

That same year they had a magician at our school carnival, and I was one of the volunteers he chose from the audience to help out on stage.

Those two put the bug in my ear.

NICE, more unique than the ol' coin from behind the ear!

I was always fascinated by magic. I owned the television when Mark Wilson's "The Magical Land of Alakazam" was on and remember someone doing a cup and ball trick on "Captain Kangaroo" more than anything else on this show. But this was stuff someone on television was doing, it never dawned on me that we could do this stuff ourselves until I met my Uncle Bob.

(It's amazing how often it's an uncle, isn't it.)

I remember watching him do an egg bag, passe passe bottle/glass and a trick where he dropped the beads from a necklace into a glass, swallowed the string and the beads and then pulled the necklace out re-threaded.

Then he bought me an Adams magic kit and I was gone from there!

At age 13, my best friend saw the movie "Houdini" (Paramount, 1953) and wanted to look into magic.
I tagged along.
After a year, he dropped that interest to look into medicine.
I was, by then, hooked on escapology and continued with it.
:handcuffs:

I was always into magic as a kid but had no drive to learn. Then when I was 11 or 12 I saw Ricky Jays 52 Assistants. Ever since I saw that show I wanted to practice card work.

Unfortunatly at the time the NET wasnt avaiable to me and didn't know where to start. My parents bought me Larry Anderson's Jaw Droppers with the trick deck. That sucked and I lost interest until a 1 yr and a half 2 years ago. I wish I had not stopped when I was younger

I know it sounds cliche, but Criss Angel inspired me to do magic.

You see, a few summers ago, my best fried kept nagging me to watch CA's show (it was a season premiere). I wasn't too fmiliar with agic at that point and certainly didn't know who CA was. But, I st down and watched it and absolutely loved it. I was inspired. I wanted to do magic, I just didn't know how to start.

That summer I went on vacation to Pigeon Forge. They had nice deck of Smokey Mountain cards, so I bought it. They're actually decent cards, I still have most of them, used mainly as throw-away cards. So, I was constantly fiddling with the cards, eventually got some Bicycles, my grandpa gave me a book by Bill Tarr, I read a lot from the library, I started performing and realized that I thouroughly enjoy it.

Welcome Damace.

Was it "Now you see it, Now you don't?"
That was my first 'real' magic book. That book led me to Bobo's MCM, and it was all over from there.