I love being the center of attention at a bar, even if only for a brief moment and as a result of a stupid bar trick. Blowing smoke out of the filter end of a lit cigarette by placing the lit end in my mouth and exhaling generally doesn’t fail to impress.
I've also become quite apt at uncapping beers with my thumb ring (doesn't really work at a bar, but very handy when drinking with buddies). I can often quite easily fool the less brilliant girl that I am some kind of beer opening god, by cleverly hiding my ring behind an object (in itself unfit for the task) e.g, a dollar bill, or a banana. It can create a convincing and entertaining illusion.
Im interested in learning more interesting bark tricks so please share!
Take four of those tiny straws the bartender puts into some mixed drinks.
Make a small slit in one straw, near one end.
Push one of the other straws through that.
Spread a napkin out on the bar (this is to increase friction so the straws don’t fall over).
Carefully make a tripod with the two straws you’ve got put together and the third straw leaning against it. Make sure you have the two-straw unit closest to the friend attempting the trick and the third straw leaning against it from his far side.
Now tell your mark…er, friend that the object is to use the fourth straw, held parallel to the floor, to lift the tripod as a unit.
Let the friend know they can’t use another hand or any other object.
Try this a few times (be honest) and if you can’t figure it out, fess up right here and I might be moved to post the solution.
As for more interesting bark tricks: I can’t help you as I don’t speak dog.
I can do the cherry stem trick quite well. My friends are usually impressed (and my boyfriend LOVES it 'cause it’s a sign of things to come that night ;)).
Other than that, I just have a tendency to get naked when I’m drunk. Unfortunately, I usually do this in gay bars with my roommate and his boyfriend, so no one’s ever looking at me.
(1) While smoking a cigarette, hold TIGHTLY onto a glass holding liquid and ice. After a minute or so of making your thumb and middle finger numb, you can easily hold a lighted cigarette between those two digits without damage or pain. (2) Absolutely dynamite trick that I don’t reveal to many humans, but y’all here are my friends, right? - Catch a fly. You know, an ordinary housefly. This can be tricky… aim behind the fly as it is sitting on something - that usually gets it. Now, with this fly in your hand, make some casual remarks that the fly doesn’t deserve to live or some such inane crap. Get a bunch of folks to join in the conversation and then make a big show of killing the fly by placing it in a glass of water and holding it under the surface with a bar straw. Make sure you don’t injure the fly in any other way. After a bit, the fly will cease struggling and you can remove it and put it on the bar surface. Now announce that you feel bad about killing the fly and that you’re gonna bring it back to life. You may even generate some bets at this point. Using a napkin, soak up all the water on and around the fly, being careful not to damage the fly. Now, grab a salt shaker and pour a mound of salt a couple of inches deep on the fly. After a minute or so, that dang fly will crawl out of the mound of salt and fly away!
Aquire a fork, a spoon, a toothpick and a glass. Mesh the tines of the fork through the business end of the spoon, so they form one curved unit, with their handles pointing away from each other. Insert about 1/2" of the toothpick through the remaining gap in the fork’s tines. Carefully balance the fork-spoon assembly on the toothpick. Balance the fork-spoon-toothpick assembly on the rim of the glass. With care this whole mass can be balanced so the fork-spoon unit is hanging in mid-air, balanced only on the toothpick. You can see some photos here. For even more excitement, light both ends of the toothpick.
Another challenge. Gather a small saucer, a shot glass, a slice of cucumber, and some matches. Pour some water into the saucer. Challenge people to get the water into the glass without touching the saucer.
Tear up some little bits of paper napkin and hide them in your hand. Ask your mark “How can you tell if someone has been making love to a chicken?” Mark says “I don’t know.” You cough into the hand holding the napkin bits, causing them to fly about and say “I don’t know either, but if you find out, will you let me know…”
Neither of these is technically a ‘trick’, but in a group of friends sat round a table in a bar, they’re good for puzzling people for a while.
Take a beer mat and explain that it is to be passed around from person to person according to certain rules. <This trick has the most impact with a ‘plant’ – someone who hides the fact that they know what’s going on and acts surprised when they consistently get it right>. The beer mat is passed to the next person with the declaration: “I’ll give it to you – CROSSED.” <or UNCROSSED – it depends only upon whether your legs are crossed or not>. Accompany the pass with a complicated gesture that holds the beer mat in a horizontal plane and twists it through ninety degrees, or whatever. Every time you, or the ‘plant’ pass it on, be sure to use a different way to pass it on, and be sure to appear to study each pass minutely before saying whether it’s correct or not. Some people will get it pretty quick, but if no-one lets on when they do, then the last person to get it will usually provide a bit of amusement as they struggle to make sense of the increasingly complicated passes.
Similarly, using a match or toothpick, invite people to count using your unique method. Place the match on your open palm (say, near your thumb) and call out “One.” Move the match to somewhere else, like crossing the fingers halfway along their length and call out “That’s two.” Repeat for “This makes three.” “This one makes four.” and “The this one makes five.”
Written down like this, it’s obvious that the number of words you say dictate the number called, but the misdirection means that some people will be calling out: “That’s one.” and “Two.” whilst concentrating on replicating the match positions as exactly as they can. The more you correct them, (“Over here is four!”), the more they will be confused.
I must try that fly one sometime - it sounds excellent!
Penn & Teller have been the source for most of my tricks - whether card or coin-related. Nice simple stuff that anyone can master - I’d recommend their ‘How to play with your food’ book.
It’s pretty easy to remove twist-top lids from beer bottles using your forearm.
Simply jam the bottle against the skin on the inside of your non-preferred arm (an inch or so below your elbow joint is good). Twist the bottle, ignore the brief pinch and voila!
It helps if your skin is reasonably tight. Clenching your fist can help.
Removing lids using this method on extra-cold bottles that just came out of the freezer is more difficult.
Lizardo’s trick can be made even better using another toothpick and a salt shaker. Stick one toothpick into one of the holes in the top of a salt shaker (it should jam in there so it won’t move), and then take the forks and toothpick combo and you can balance it all on the very tips of the two toothpicks. It looks really cool this way. I’ve even stacked two sets on one toothpick using a fork-fork combo opposite the fork-spoon combo. (fork-fork can have a shallower spread and fit inside the fork-spoon combo).
If you can get a bit messy, this one is great! take a creamer packet (little plastic bucket type with that foil peel-back top for coffee) and hold it upside down hidden in your semi-closed fist. Make a show of something iching your eye to get everyones attention. Say “Something has been driving me crazy for a week in my eye! I’m sick of it!” Grab a fork and quickly raise your fist up and cover your eye. CAREFULLY but quick, stick the fork into your fist and puncture the cream. Pull out the fork and say “Aaahhhh! better!” as you squeeze the cream and it gushes out. Gets 'em everytime.
Go to a magic shop and ask them for quick and easy bar tricks, they’ll have a bunch for cheap.
When I was a kid, I had a little old uncle who used to win bar bets all the time by ripping phone books in half.
He’d antagonize the biggest, strongest-looking guy in a bar, and bet that HE could rip a phonebook in half, while the strong guy couldn’t. And sure enough, the muscular guy would strain, huff and puff, but never tear the book at all. Then, my little old uncle would take the same book and tear it in two.
I was too little to go to these bars, but I saw him perform this trick at family gatherings. The trick is in the way you hold the phone book. If you hold it just right, you’re really tearing individual pages (which is easy), and not thousands of pages at once (almost impossible for anyone but the Incredible Hulk).
He tried to teach me and my brothers to do it, but we never mastered the trick.
:::So, I walked into my favorite watering hole last Saturday night. It was nearly empty. So I told Joe, the bartender, that I felt like a bet. He said sure. So I bet him that I could stand on one end of the bar and piss into a shot glass at the other end of the bar and I wouldn’t spill a drop. He said I was drunk. I said how’s about $100 says I can do it. Since it was almost closing time and there was no one around, he agreed.
I stood up on the bar, he positioned the shot glass at the other end. I unzipped and pulled out my “shot glass filler.” But, of course, you know that I only managed to piss all over the bar, the barstools, and everything withing 6 feet or so.
Joe couldn’t stop laughing. He demanded his $100. I paid up and told him this was the best $100 I ever lost. He asked why I was so happy.
I told him to look outside the front window, at the guy who was crying buckets of tears. He did, and asked who that was. I said it was my buddy with whom I had just bet $500 that I could walk into your bar, stand on the end of the bar and piss all over everything. And that you would just laugh your ass off at what I did.
If you would like to pass yourself of as some mathematics savant that has created a cryptic new numbering system, you’ll need a wingman.
First tell everyone around you that you discovered this (choose one) Alien-ancient-newly created-mysterious number system. Everyone gathers around you including the wingman (or two) innocently checking out like the rest. You tell everyone that it is based on graphic logic patterns instead of the regular arabic numerals.
Place 1 toothpick down, point at it and say that is ONE. Simple enug, its universal you say. Place 2 toothpicks down side by side and you point at it and say its also universal and that is TWO. Place a third toothpick on top of the other two, point at it and you ask the audience to guess what it is. Only your wingman would be able to guess what number it is. He says it out loud and you say “Correct, very good.” and you make another random pattern and point and let them guess then let either another wingman guess it or you sole wingman say the answer in a guess and you tell him its right. By then the crowd may get suspicious, because your wingman is the only one getting it. So you write down the next number on a napkin, give it to a babe next to you, make a pattern and point. Take guesses but your wingman(men) will always get it right. For proof, show the napkin to everyone when your wingman guesses it.
The way the wingman knows what number your random pattern of toothpicks mean is that everytime you make a pattern you point at it. Use one or 2 hands to point with but the number of fingers you point with is the correct number. Graphic logic pattern is actually your fingers not the toothpicks. Everyone will concentrate on the toothpick pattern and not your hands.
Just the other night, I was rather impressed when a girl I was just introduced to at the bar kicked my glasses off my face, without actually kicking me in the face, or damaging the glasses. Certainly took me by surprise.
My favorite drinking trick, not really suitable for a bar, though, was to do a cartwheel while holding a drink in my hand without spilling it.
When in the presence of an objectionable individual, bet him or her a drink that they cannot balance two pints of beer on the backs of their hands. Make up some patter about the bone structure or something, whatever seems appropriate.
When the bet has been accepted, order two pints of beer and have the victim place their hands on the bar.
