Dan and Dave

One of my local magic club's claims to fame is.

They were the Ring for Dan and Dave Buck as kids.

The local IBM ring in San Jose California had two young men show up to a meeting about 16 years ago. There they ran into the evil, yet extremely talented Ricky Smith. And that has made all the difference.

Ricky was a real inspiration to the twins. He's an inspiration to many magicians. Dan and Dave actually did something with that inspiration. They've literally become the biggest thing in close-up magic.

Financially successful, self-effacing and talented, they are pretty well-behaved too.

Last night they came home and lectured to their old ring.

I had to go. I had the pleasure of meeting them and even hanging with them a bit at the Golden Gate Gathering. They lectured for us our first year. But this isn't about that.

Dan and Dave are really good lecturers. They can both do all the stuff they demonstrate so you sometimes get them both showing hand positions to different sides of the room. Their ability to effectively describe hand positions and walk even tyros through difficult stuff is wonderful.

They dealt more than amiably with questions from a relative tyro and a nine-year-old. There was no sense of superiority or dismissal from our lecturers. They just described the moves with more detail and what seemed to be infinite patience.

They will the audience to participate. They taught some quickly mastered flourishes in the first half of the lecture. Cards were gleefully flying all over the room as we worked on a great little launch of a single card. I can now cause a deck to spin 360 degrees in the palm of my hand. Sometimes the cards even stay in my hand!

After the lecture we went out for bad food and long talks. I was lucky enough to sit with Dave and one of my old pals, John Bodine. Sure I'm name dropping, for me, it was a great night though. Just hanging out . . . doin' card tricks and telling lies. (Dave did the card tricks . . .)

KG