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Sean Kleefeld on Magic Shops
posted June 8, 2008
 

I don't know how meandering your First Thought of the Day was this morning, but they DO still have magic shops, but they are considerably more rare than they once were.

Interestingly, the magic industry on the whole shares many of the same issues that the comic industry does. My father is a professional magician and we've talked on this point several times. With the advent of the internet, magicians were better able to shop online and purchase whatever equipment they required after shopping around -- a luxury not terribly cost-effective a decade or two back. Distribution channels are not always the best, further hampered by magic shops often being run by (mostly) white (mostly) men who were not able to make a living as a the next Doug Henning and are content to sit in their small boys' club of a shop talking about how much better things would be if they had more power in the industry. This has led to two big producers of magic props, plus a large subset of independent producers who vie for market attention.

Magic shops were further hampered by the niche market of "street magic" popularized by David Blaine and Criss Angel. It's a select market whose props are minimal, and whose performances are more stylish than substantive.

Many dire predictions of the death of magic have been uttered in recent years, but it's also been pointed out by those with a little more perspective that such predictions have been common for the past hundred years but have yet to be borne out.

But, yes, magic shops are still around. In pretty much the same capacity as comic shops.