237: FISM Italy - Day Six

We finally made it through all the competitions and the final night gala show. Max Maven competed the evening contest show. These are the first place winners who competed tonight for the Gran Prix:
Kim Young-Min from Korea - general magic
Shin Lim from Canada - cards
Horret Wu from Taiwan - cards
Thommy Ten & Amélie van Tass from Germany - mentalism
Pierric from Switzerland  - parlor
Hector Mancha from Spain - manipulation

Gran Prix winner close-up - Pierric
Gran Prix winner stage - Hector Mancha

Special winners
Creativity and artistic achievement  - Derren Brown
History, research and scholarship - Magic Christian
Theory and Philosophy - Roberto Giobi

And the 2018 FISM will be held in South Korea.

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Time stamps for this podcast:

00:02:12 - Guy Hollingworth, one of the lecturers and performers.

00:10:49 - Rob Zabrecky, another one of the lecturers who also presented his one man show.

00:19:10 - William Watt, from Paris, France, was one of the "pre-selected volunteers" used by many of the competitors

00:26:48 - Christian & Katalina, contestants from the U.S. who competed in the Mentalism category

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One of the unique booths at FISM 2015 was selling these puzzles which you can use to engage your audience during walk around magic, particularly in restaurants. Click on the image above to visit their website and view a video.

213: Chicago Magic Bars & Lounges

Chicago has a rich history of magic bars within the city limits as well as in the outlying areas. The "hay day" of magic bars in Chicago ended around 1998 with the closing of the last magic bar. But Joey Cranford and John Sturk are pumping new life into an old concept with the new nightclub/theater called "Chicago Magic Lounge". This will be a recreation of the early 20th century, prohibition era lounge one night each week on the upper part of Chicago.

Bill Weimer is a local magician who was an integral part of the Chicago magic bar scene from the 1970's through the 1990's. He worked seven of the nine or so Chicago-land magic bars. He has a lot of stories about these clubs in their glory days and in fact, wrote a book about his experiences called "Now You See Them, Now You Don't".

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00:03:18 - Joey Cranford and John Sturk talk about the newest venture that will open on March 5, 2015, The Chicago Magic Lounge. They talk about their vision of the Lounge and what they hope will happen. They will also encourage local magicians to come and hang our and create a "magic lab" where performers can try out new stuff.

00:40:56 - Bill Weimer talks about the history of Chicago-land bars from his perspective of one who has been there and done that having worked at seven of the nine or so magic bars within the city's boundaries over a 20 year period. Bill wrote the book on bar magic entitled "Now You See Them, Now You Don't". In this podcast, Bill shares some of the stories from his book and his perspective as a working performer.

Download this podcast in an MP3 file by Clicking Here and then right click to save the file. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed by Clicking Here. You can download or listen to the podcast through Stitcher by Clicking Here or through FeedPress by Clicking Here or through Tunein.com by Clicking Here. Remember, you can download it through the iTunes store, too. See the preview page by Clicking Here.

Open Thursday Nights at 8:00

Order your copy of Bill's book at his website http://www.magicbarbook.com/