On September 9th, 2016, 18-year-old Luke Byrne rammed a pint glass into the face of street magician, Mark Beltran, blinding him in one eye. Byrne and a gang of underage thugs assaulted Beltran after he prevented one of the teen’s underage associates from stealing his amplifier earlier in the day. Byrne received a nine-year sentence for the attack, as well as a further five years for robbing nine women at knife point over a two-year period. The last four-and-a-half years of the sentence were suspended. Byrne is now appealing the nine year sentence, arguing that it is too “severe.”

Talking to The Irish Sun from his home in the Philippines, Beltran pledged to oppose the appeal.

“If I have to go back to Ireland and remind the judges of the trauma I have endured, I will,” he said. “I had a feeling this would happen.”

“I will now hope and pray that he doesn’t get anything reduced from his sentence because this would just send out the wrong message,” he continued. “He left me with life-changing injuries so he deserved the sentence he received for the level of violence he used.”

“Nine years for what he did to me is OK at best, but five years and some suspended sentence isn’t enough for what he did to those women. I will fight this appeal to ensure that I and all the other ­victims he terrorised receive the justice they deserve.”

Despite his injury, Magic Mark Beltran is still blowing minds on streets all over the world. As you can see in the video below:

Having hibernated throughout the winter months, magician and street performer Steven Bridges is finally back on the streets of London doing what he does best: Interviewing other performers.

I kid. Bridges is great and we’re big fans of him here at GeniiOnline, but he doesn’t actually perform a great deal of magic in this latest video. We see a couple of tricks and the tail end of a disrupted set, but the bulk of the runtime is dedicated to quick hellos with his fellow street performers, a request for challenges from his viewers, a random dancing lady, some solid advice about performing in front of crowds and a trip to Tesco’s salad bar. 

The vid is actually a really interesting glimpse into the day-to-day grind of street performing, but I can’t let Bridges’ poor life choices when it comes to salad requisition stand unchallenged. Morrisons’ salad bar is clearly superior both in terms of cost and salad quality. Not only that, he didn’t even overfill his salad container until it was bursting at the seams and then secure it with elastic bands. Terrible.

You can subscribe to Bridges on Youtube and support him via Patreon.