Difficulty: 4 - Applied-Intermediate Trick
Siteswap: 3
Prerequisite Skills: Boston Mess, Claw
Watch Video - WMV - 0.6 MB
Cherry Picker is a Half Boston Mess using Claw catches with the top hand. It is a very cool looking pattern (much more so than the regular Boston Mess, in my opinion). When done right, the balls seem to just hover in mid air, as your arms franticly move all over the place.
Instructions:
For some reason, many people find this trick very difficult. I can't say that I had much problem learning it, but I already had Mills Mess, Boston Mess, and Claws mastered. This would be a very difficult trick to learn, if you didn't already know Boston Mess.
Start by juggling a Half Boston Mess. I prefer to juggle this with my left hand on top, but use whichever hand feels more comfortable.
As you're juggling the Half Boston, start raising your top hand. Make its catches and throws from a higher elevation. And, make your bottom hand catch and throw from a lower than normal elevation. Now you can clearly see the gap between the top and bottom hand.
Now, just start adding claw catches with the top hand. Start with just randomly picking one catch every once in a while to be made with a claw grab. Then also throw that ball back with a claw throw. Then you can start to add more and more claw catches, until you're doing it with every top hand catch.
The trick to getting this pattern to work well, is to make sure that you get some height on your claw throw. It may just look like I'm dropping the ball from the top hand, but actually I make sure to throw it up a little bit with the claw throw. The claw throws may take some practice to get them right, but you definitely need that little extra time (for the ball to go up a few inches, peek at its apex, and start falling back down again) for your bottom hand to make it's round to all three stops as it traverses back and forth.
Variations:
You can also perform the Full Boston Mess style Cherry Picker, where you switch which hand is on top. This trick is a bit harder to perform, because it requires faster hand speed. I don't think it looks as good as the "Half" version, so why bother performing a harder trick that people will enjoy less? :P (less bang for your buck)
