Street Performer

This afternoon, my daughter and I walked down to the beach to see the Kite Festival. It was very cool; lots of different colored, shaped, and sized kites. There was an area where performers were showing choreographed kite moves done in sync with dramatic music. The four person kite team impressed me the most with their kites wildly darting through the sky, dancing on the ground, and twisting and untwisting around each other.

We then went on to the pier to see it from this vantage point. It was really beautiful.
We decided to head home when at the end of the pier was a scruffy man talking very loudly and a small crowd was gathered around him. At first I thought he was a proselytizing christian but the laughter from the crowd didn't fit that mold. I decided to get closer and check him out.

He said he was a street performer, definitly not a magician. He was going to show us a few things and for the grand finale, he was going to hammer a nail into his head. This intrigued me. He asked me and this other guy if we would each hold a juggling ball for him. Then he asked us to hold them up in the air. Then he asked for volunteers to help with his performance. That's right, we were to only two with our hands in the air. He brought us up and asked us to help tie him up in this long chain. He had the spiel going the whole time which included him saying that I was really good at this so this couldn't been the first time tying someone up. Wink wink, nudge nudge.

He escaped the chains in 29 seconds which was somewhat impressive but since he had instructed us on the exact way to secure the chains, it was less than a miracle.
He took forever getting to the nail in the head trick. I almost decided to go but, you know, I "volunteered" and all.

My job for this part was to hold a pair of pliers and towel in case anything should go wrong. If he collapsed on the ground I was asked to pull out the nail and try to stop the bleeding. If I thought this was remotely possible, I would have left then. "Lucky John" was just playing it up. I also held the board up for him to nail through to prove tht the nail was real.

Anyway, he kept talking to attract a bigger crowd for the finale; "Kids don't try this anywhere" and such. When he finally got to it, he put the nail into his nostril and proceeded to hammer it straight back, not up,into his head. This was a 2 1/2 inch nail so even though I was thinking he was going to pound it into his skull, I have to admit, it looked pretty remarkable. He let people take pictures then took the pliers from me and proceeded to "pry" the nail from his head; no blood, no snot. He then took donations. I didn't contribute; one, because I hadn't brought any money and two, I had contributed by being his "assistant."

Made for an interesting afternoon though. I never would have guessed that this would have happened today or really, any other day. Seemed out of place in Seal Beach. Venice Beach? Definitely.