Master pickpocket Apollo Robbins on the art of misdirection

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Wonderful performance, but I was hoping to learn more secrets.

love watching this guy work

good finish too!

And here he is on the Today Show. I love watching his work.

I half expect at one of his upcoming shows heā€™ll say ā€˜Iā€™m on a horse!ā€™, and he will be, and nobody will have noticed until he said it.
The beauty of these videos is that you can go back and rewatch them to see when, if not how it happened.

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I think his actual plan is even more awesome:

At the moment, Robbins has no idea how this more exploratory, biographical show might look, but he has known for many years how he would like it to endā€”with a spectacular act of theft that he calls his holy grail. ā€œAt the beginning of the show, everybody gets a nicely engraved black envelope and a little red paper heart,ā€ he told me. ā€œI say, ā€˜All of you have been given one of these. Put your heart in your envelope, seal it, and hide it in your purse or in your pocket. Guard your heart.ā€™ ā€

Robbins went on, ā€œAt the end of the show, I point to a guy in the audience and have him stand up. I show my hand empty, then I close it, and when I open it again thereā€™s a heart in it. The guy looks in his envelopeā€”his heart is missing. Then I reach into my pockets and pull out all the heartsā€”handfuls of themā€”and let them flutter to the ground. The rest of the audience check their envelopes, and all their hearts are gone. I stand there smiling, and as soon as I see that look of astonishment on their faces I bow and walk off. Itā€™s the only time I donā€™t give back what Iā€™ve stolen.ā€

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Sheesh! Give that man a glass of water.

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