Seen On The Subway: Alan Malakov The Magician

When it isn’t a game day, the Mets-Willets Point subway station on the 7 Subway Line sees few passengers, and the owners of the Queens baseball team have dreams of a casino, or at least an entertainment complex on the massive parking lot next to Citi Field. Among the advertisements on the platform wall is for The Amazing Alan Malakov: Magician, Mentalist, Hypnotist. While a casino at Willets Point is only an illusion for now, this Bukharian magician has experience in casinos, among other venues.

“I saw Darren Brown on YouTube who has a ‘trick or treat,’” Malakov, 25, said of his inspiration. “He’s a London mentalist. He manipulates, influences, and plays people like puppets. That’s what got me into magic. I first watched him at age 14.” He also spoke of the mentalist David Blaine as an example for his tricks.

If the name sounds familiar, he’s a grandson of Ezro Malakov, the chazan at Congregation Beth Gavriel and People’s Artist of Uzbekistan, and they both live in Forest Hills. “I have some of his traits and it benefits me well. It spreads my last name,” he said. He also shares his grandfather’s self-confidence, soft-spoken in an interview while commanding the stage and earning admiration from audiences.

One early example of his self-propelled quest for fame is his ability to guess. “I called news stations all across America and started guessing stuff about the people who picked up the phone, what they had for breakfast, time they went to sleep, what their environment looks like, and more cool stuff like that. Most people got freaked out, understandably, and hung up the phone.”

But one program, Wyoming News Now, was impressed and paid for his flight to its studio. “It was a good time, and I was later offered to go to New Mexico for $2,900, but it didn’t make sense. I could make more in New York.”

Following up on that television appearance, Malakov purchased ads on the radio, trucks, high-rise billboards, and subway station walls, and a social media presence in which he guesses the score of a boxing match, or the length of an upcoming video by an influencer, coming up very close when he is not correct.

Among his recent high-profile acts was at the New York Fashion Week last September, along with bar mitzvahs and birthday parties closer to home.

“This is what I do full time. I do parties. My goal is to have my own show, perhaps on Broadway,” he said. Magicians are famous for not revealing their secrets, but Malakov does not mind sharing a few of his tricks. “I have a special deck with me. I put on contacts and with UV light and I can see the card. That’s a small piece of the puzzle.”

What he couldn’t explain was his ability to guess the chair on which I am sitting, and the routine of my day at the time of our interview. “It comes naturally. I like playing with people’s minds. There’s visual and mental. That’s my focus. Visual is making a coin appear behind one’s ear. Mental is predicting an action by making people think of it on their own. Mind control is convincing people that you can control their minds, and they will act like you do.”

In the Subway system of 2024, most ads are dominated by food delivery, dating, and job search apps, colleges, and personal injury lawyers. Then there are the seemingly ubiquitous Alan Malakov billboards, implanting the name into commuters’ memories. Perhaps not now, but at some point, he will be called to do his tricks as the only magician at this time to have advertisements throughout the great city.