The canopy flaps loudly in a gust, and in the background Mt. Sopris vanishes behind haze, while a slim young man in black — that’s what magicians wear — makes one coin, and another, and then another disappear.
Logan Seriani of Fruita, age 23, works at the Palisade Peaches fruit stand at the Roaring Fork Valley Coop on Highway 133. When he has time between customers, he practices magic tricks or studies a book from his many-shelf home collection. He might offer to show you his tricks; or you might have to ask.
As he told his brother, who owns the stand, “It’s the only magical fruit stand in the Valley.” The brother, Gene Harper of Palisade, owns the business and operates a stand in Glenwood (by Ace Hardware), and they attend the weekly Basalt Sunday Market.
Seriani loves to do live performances (free) when the stand isn’t busy. Coin tricks are a specialty, and he performs with cards and rubber bands as well. He can also juggle — say, apricots.
You just have to catch Seriani when he is there, and wait for a lull. He starts with cards: has you mark one and puts it, or what sure looks like it, in the deck, and then snaps his fingers — and, as he says, “It hops to the top.” That is why this trick is called the Ambitious Card. “It’s ambitious because it keeps hopping to the top.”
A customer comes, and he pauses the demo. She chooses her peaches and apricots, and drops a dollar in the tip bag. He thanks her.
She says, “I love you guys being here.”
Local peaches at this time of year are heaven. The stand workers — there are five in total — hand out samples all day of apricots, plums and cherries as well. Next to the Coop stand is a box-laden Chevy truck named Rusty, which is pushing 300,000 miles.
“You’re going to love that hot sauce,” Seriani tells a customer as she chooses a bottle from a neat row alongside jars of jams and honey. To another person, he says, “Those peaches are from my brother’s orchard.” That brother is James Sanders, owner of the Palisade Peach Shack.
A customer says she is having 30 people for dinner. Peaches are $40 a flat, he informs her, “a better price” that way than buying large numbers in bags. (Prices drop each summer, as quantity increases.)
Between sales, Seriani buries coins in his fists and pulls them out of his ear or from behind his arm or knee. He turns four $1 bills into $20s. “Money comes, and money goes,” he says, part of the patter — and now they’re back to being $1s. He changes a $2 into two $1s and back. Three coins turn into two and back to one, and the Four Coins trick follows.
Coins “teleport,” jumping from one hand to another. Sometimes he refers to doing “a vanish.”
A smiling fellow in flip-flops steps from a car with California plates. Sure, the customer says, he’d like to see a magic trick or two, but doesn’t have much time. “My wife’s in the car,” he explains. He watches several coin tricks, blinks, laughs. Glancing toward the waiting car, he asks for one more.
“You’re very good,” he says, leaving with a fist bump.
Seriani, who ran cross-country (“I loved it”) and played baseball at Fruita Monument High School, has been doing magic since he was 12, taking it seriously the last three years. Coin magic is considered difficult, requiring patience as well as dexterity to learn, and some people avoid it.
“Coin magic is objectively hard,” says a leading expert, Rick Holcombe, on www.vanishingincmagic.com “I think we can agree, but it’s really just the learning curve. It’s a steeper learning curve in the beginning.”
A Reddit poster identified as pgadey writes on www.reddit.com: “Coin magic is super-duper hard. I’ve been at it for about two years, and everything still looks bad.
“Hopefully, in a couple more years it’ll start to look reasonable.”
Seriani performs perhaps eight times a day. “It’s the only way you can get better,” he says. He has no website yet, nor business cards, intending to create those after his wedding at the end of August. “The most magical thing in my life is my soon-to-be-wife, Emily [Morrison],” he says.
He is usually at the Coop stand Thursday through Saturday, and goes to the Basalt Sunday Market, but you won’t get a show at that location. “No time there for magic!”
Seriani is self-taught, although he talks to pros online.
“I don’t like to present myself as doing real magic,” he adds, lowering his eyes shyly. “It’s sleight of hand. The real magic is making someone’s day better.”