Magic has drawn audiences and students of the art for more than two centuries, and in New York a handful of brick-and-mortar magic shops are working to keep that tradition alive. For magician Dan White, a Philadelphia native, the city was the place to come for anything to do with magic, and his first stop was always Tannen's Magic Shop. Tannen's, he said, was his Disney World, the place he wanted to visit more than anywhere else as a child.
At the counter of another of the city's surviving shops, Blaze Store, the focus is on guidance as much as on selling tricks. The owner said he is not the type to push magic on anyone, and that he wants customers to be happy with what they buy and able to actually learn it. He remembered being steered, as a kid, away from things that were too expensive or too difficult for where he was, advice that he said pays off in the long run.
Blaze Store, he noted, is one of the few remaining brick-and-mortar magic shops in the city. Between the disruption of COVID and the rise of online businesses, these physical stores have become, in his words, more important than ever to continuing the art of magic. Each one that closes, he suggested, only makes the survivors matter more to the people who rely on them.
Part of the case for the shops is what can go wrong online. Magic videos, the owner said, can be a little false in their advertising, leaving buyers disappointed when a trick arrives in the mail and does not work for them. Get the wrong thing at the wrong moment, he warned, and a beginner might give up on the art completely before ever really starting.
The shops serve another purpose that a website cannot. They are community places, the owner said, where magicians go to meet one another in person. He described a ritual the regulars call jamming, where they simply talk about magic, trading methods, ideas and the small problems of the craft with people who understand it.
Like other art forms, the performance of magic is a creative expression, but its power lies in the feelings a magician can pull from an audience. The best thing about magic, the owner said, is being fooled, watching a face fill with wonder and excitement as someone tries and fails to figure out what just happened. What he listens for, he said, are the gasps.
For him, the most gratifying moment comes when a spectator simply says no. In that instant, he explained, their sense of logic drops out, leaving them in a baffling moment they cannot quite put into words. Giving people that reaction, he said, is how he knows he has done his job as a magician.