Card to Fly (Direct Side Steal)

Although not a family trick or appropriate for all occasions, this is a great quick trick and a perfect example of the direct side steal. I learned the direct side steal as a youth after "overseeing" it performed by David Roth, one of the only two card sleights I've seen him perform. At the time Roth boasted that he didn't even have a deck of cards in the house. In any case the direct card steal is just a thumb riffle and stop, at which point the magus cuts the cards to show the bottom of the right hand (upper) half; upon replacement of this half the left fingertips, jutting out from the mechanic's grip, guide the card into the right palm. The effect of card to the fly, while it seems impossible that it wasn't independently derived, was brought to my attention in summer camp by a young man I taught some sleight of hand, a Mitch Topol. Topol, who played the lead in Camp Kinderland's production of the Music Man (as Constable Locke I had one line), had a flair for the dramatic and came up with this in-retrospect-obvious, if outrageous, card trick. The direct side steal is a perfect sleight for it. After having the spectator say stop and showing him his card, you side steal card most of the way out on the off beat. What I do is move the left hand to the left and up, eyes following it, after making eye contact and saying, "Okay, you'll remember your card, right": when I get an affirmative, I move the deck up and to the left as stated: this allows the left of the selected card (now palmed in right hand) to clear the body of the pack silently as the left hand with cards now loudly thumb riffles the pack's upper left corner. (This is the would-be-magic gesture.) The left hand then immediately either tables the deck, or hands it to a spectator, after which it moves directly to the performer's fly to separate the fabric flap of the fly as the right hand locates the top of the zipper to open it. The right hand then immediately unzips the zipper, plunges into the fly, and, by bringing the card to the tips of the fingers in the process of removing the right hand, creates the illusion that the card has flown to the performer's zipper. What's nice about this steal and production is that the right hand with palmed card is never idle; during the short time the card is palmed there, its position and actions are completely natural, and the grabbing of the zipper top between thumb and forefinger lends subtle credence to the illusion that the hand (which just transfered the pack to the left hand) was empty. In the future I will show my use of the direct steal for an original card-to-glass routine.