David Blaine's Top Street Magic Stunts
Far from being just your conventional street magician, David Blaine's Repertoire Combines Good Old Traditional Street Magic With Some Truly Awesome Feats Of Human Endurance, Which Stretched His Body To The Max.
This Page Highlights Some Of His Most Stand Out Stunts.
Many of the contemporary street magicians such as Criss Angel and David, come up with many highly imaginative stunts to really elevate themselves and make their acts stand out from the crowd. The bar is set very high but David Blaine seems to be a master of his craft with a highly diverse mix of magic and mayhem from regurgitating live frogs, standing on a pole for 35 hours to being encased in ice for over 60 hours.
This guy, I believe has been the inspiration for a new generation of budding magicians who have been enthralled by his entertaining style and got the itch to take up practising magic, themselves. Obviously starting small and conventional with traditional magic tricks, as the endurance feats require lots and lots of professional training and supervision.
Standing In An Ice Block For Almost 3 days
David managed this gargantuan feat after after nearly a year of climatization, ice baths etc until he felt prepared for this ordeal. He managed 63 hours encased in ice, after which he was released by his team cutting away the ice with chainsaws.
This highly publicized stunt brought him a lot of media attention and a rumored one million dollar pay packet, which he could perhaps put towards his central heating bill back home.
A few magicians at the time, highlighted that the temperature inside the ice block was actually quite bearable but the stunt produced the desired audience shock effect.
Levitating In The Street
David wowed passers by by appearing to levitate in the street in one of his televised street magic specials. This is widely believed to be a variation of the Balducci levitation method, which is a convincing effect but is angle specific and his audience would have been positioned at the right angle to show the illusion at its maximum effect. The effectiveness of this can be heard from their screams of amazement as David appeared to be lifting off the ground.
25000 Feet Altitude Balloon Ride
In 2020 David again, excelled himself by achieving an amazing balloon ride, almost 25000 feet above the Arizona desert, during a stunt that was named. Ascension. This ended in spectacular fashion, with David parachuting back down to Terra firma.
Not Eating For 44 Days
This one again is more a feat of endurance than a magic trick. David chose to be suspended in a canopy in mid air in London and fast for 44 days.
The public were free to pass by and look up at him during the challenge.
There were many reported instances of the public trying to tempt him with Big Macs and other treats to try and break his resolve.
Regurgitating Live Frogs
This sound positively revolting and you can find a few videos online of David performing on the Jimmy Fallon and Joe Rogan shows, if you really want so see this being performed. I think the real explanation is that David really did swallow and regurgitate the frogs.
Professional regurgitators I think, develop a technique where they can hold the objects in an area where they are not fully exposed to the stomach which would be too acidic for most creatures.
Probably best advice would be to leave these poor wee creatures to hop about in their ponds where they naturally belong.
Shock your friends by pretending to grab a goldfish from its tank and bite it in half. In reality its just a carrot roughly carved out into a fish shape. This version is much more frog friendly.
1) Goldfish carved from a carrot. 2) Wow, this tastes really fresh!!!
Bending A Solid Metal Bar
Here's another seemingly impossible feat of strength where David takes on a challenge to see if he can bend the metal bars on a prison door. This would have required an incredible amount of strength and was performed with an audience and prisoners present.
Again, who knows if this stunt was totally genuine or if there was any previous tampering with the steel bars. We should just take it on face value as pretty good entertainment
Standing On A 90 Foot Pole For 35 Hours
Even the thought of this fills me with fear and the need to make sure my hands and feet are firmly on the ground. Once again, David accomplished this high up on a pole in manhattan, even making a phone call and interview at some point during the feat. It seems that he just did it, although this would be sheer impossibility for the likes of myself and many others with even mild vertigo. I believe we were born to be ground dwellers.
Summary
So there we have it. Just a snapshot of a few of the weirder and boundary pushing stunts that this extraordinary chap is willing to take on in the name of entertainment. There are many more zany achievements accredited to him such as breathing fire, poking an ice pick through his arm and even being buried alive. A quick search online should give you plenty of further content.
Although entertaining stuff, I am a great believer of letting the pro's get on with it as we can't fully appreciate the countless hours of practice and preparation that goes into these challenges.
