Visiting Los Angeles? Insiders share tips Whatever “in” you can swing, slipping past the front foyer’s fake bookcase portal into the Magic Castle’s inner sanctum has become its own vintage Hollywood rite of passage over the past half-century. Staying at the Magic Castle Hotel next door – no relation to its famous neighbor, but hotel guests are provided courtesy access to the separately run club. Having an AMA member (if you know one) provide you with a guest pass.Ģ. Officially, this private venue is open only to registered AMA members – of which there are now more than 5,000 spread across 48 states and 47 countries, but probably not you.Īs for the rest of us magically-challenged, non-AMA-card-carrying types, getting into the Magic Castle requires one of three sleight-of-entrance methods:ġ. What better place, you’d think, for anyone to indulge an appetite for the conjuring arts – let alone Oysters Rockefeller, Beef Wellington and whiskey cocktails named Sassy Black Magic? Johnny Depp apparently digs the Magic Castle, as does Quentin Tarantino. So was Johnny Carson, a big magic fan, who frequented the Magic Castle – and, as the story goes, was once stopped at the door for not arriving in the club’s famously enforced formal evening dress code. Penn & Teller, David Copperfield and Siegfried & Roy – whose smiling photos hang on the walls – may not have played here, but they’re all proud AMA members. This iconic, castle-ish landmark (built by a local banker in 1909) at the foot of the Hollywood Hills has for the last 53 years been the hallowed headquarters of the AMA, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion and advancement of the art of magic.Ī who’s who of eminent magicians and illusionists have performed at this curious-looking fortress over the years, which pulls in big names – Mac King, Michael Carbonaro, The Amazing Johnathan – that still might escape you. Perhaps this mystical experience still awaits you – at the Academy of Magical Arts and its private clubhouse the Magic Castle. When’s the last time you enjoyed a night of astounding magic and illusion with a festive supper-club crowd gathered in an old Gothic mansion on the edge of Hollywood?
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