| By Kara Patterson
Post-Crescent staff writer
APPLETON — Gerhard Van Baalen of Clintonville put another trick up his sleeve Saturday at downtown Appleton’s inaugural Houdini Days Magic Festival.
Gerhard, 14, already has mastered several sleights of hand involving a deck of cards, said his father Chris. But the first move he made upon their arrival at the Houdini Plaza spectacle was to buy a magic coin bank.
“He loves tricks,” said Chris Van Baalen as Gerhard inserted a nickel into the small black cube and rattled the bank for effect. “He’s gotta teach me yet. I don’t do any of these.”
Appleton Downtown Inc., the event’s main sponsor, planned for a crowd of between 3,000 to 4,000 to appear for the festivities, which kicked off with Appleton Mayor Tim Hanna’s proclamation that the Labor Day opener is meant for magicians and audiences of all ages to embrace magic as performance art.
Event organizer Chris Cochrane, half of the Valley’s Comedy Magic of Mike & Chris, said the event coincides with a Houdini Club of Wisconsin convention in downtown Appleton. Those magicians and magic enthusiasts added their energy to the 20-plus performers working Houdini Plaza, the spot marking legendary magician Harry Houdini’s boyhood apartment at the corner of Appleton Street and College Avenue.
“They’re all very diverse,” said Cochrane, “from comedy magic to very serious card and coin manipulation, and from stage magic to close-up ‘miracles.’”
The Balloon Guy, a.k.a. Dylan Maass of Appleton, was one of the local strolling magicians whose job was to make animals appear with several twists of his wrist.
Would he give up any of his secrets?
“Patience, patience, patience,” Maass said as he tied off a blue “flying dinosaur” for a young bystander. “I’m assuming I’m going to go through about 500 balloon animals at least.”
Jei McKinney of Appleton held her daughter Marion, 2, as her other children, Mei Lin, 6, and Kai, 4, waited in line for a yellow butterfly and a tractor, respectively.
“The kids really like balloons and that’s the first thing they spotted,” McKinney said, as Kai changed his order to match Marion’s, a yellow Chihuahua.
“I had no idea Houdini lived here when we moved here” from Louisiana, said Michelle Olivier of Kimberly.
Her son Drake, 6, thought Houdini Days was “cool,” but he was on the lookout for some sign of his favorite magician, the fictional boy wizard Harry Potter.
“I heard they were going to show (the movie) Harry Potter II here,” Drake said. “I like when (Harry and his schoolmates) do duels.”
Kara Patterson can be reached at 920-993-1000, ext 215, or by e-mail at kpatterson@postcrescent.com | |
