As a younger magician with busy [guardians] (not living with my parents at the moment), I find it a bit of a problem to even coordinate a visit to the dreaded pit of doom - the magic shop. I'd like some advice/opinions... What do you do... Do you have your parent in the store? Do you ask them to drop you off for a bit?

...

Thank you for the info.
SH

Have 'em drop you off. If it's a good shop, you'll want to spend hours in there talking to people and begging the owner to show you stuff... Even if it's a "not as good" store, you'll still meet and talk to some very interesting people. And you'll be able to show your magic to people who might be able to help you learn more.

Have fun! The magic shop is where you'll learn everything you want to know, not the Internet.

It's actually considered to be one of the better ones, AFAIK... Magic Etcetera @ Ft Worth. Gaddy, how long do you think staying is a reasonable time?

$10 an hour.

Har har har! "Babysitting fee"! Isn't that a standard magic shop joke? It was when I worked at one!

Magic Etcetera gets some good press!

You're really only 12? Wow. Too bad you're not here in San Francisco, there's a kid here (also 12) who is a violin and piano virtuoso as well. He also is a WICKED good magician. He's doing magic that is really top notch and is better than me! You guys would probably be good friends.

I'd say 2 hours or so. Go on a Saturday. That way you can hang out, check it out, shoot the breeze with other magicians, go out for a snack or something, and finally buy something right before you leave - and probably wind up wishing you had more time!

Make sure the magic shop owner knows your situation (tell him who you are and why you're there!), and he'll probably pay more attention to you and your needs.

I mean I would not think of spending a long time in a shop without spending any money in it.

I can remember my very first visit to a magic shop many years ago. A group of magicians were there and kept blowing my mind with this and that. Wound up staying for nearly 7 hours!

Saturday was a pretty good day to catch magicians lounging around at the shop back then. Today, I think it might be a little different. Many more perform on weekends. It is probably best to call the owner ahead and get their advice as to the best day to stop by and meet him and other magicians.

Allow yourself 2 hours ALONE. No doubt you have a cell phone. If more or less time is needed, you can simply call for a pickup time.

Truer words never spoken!!!!!!


Yes, spend the time but be sure to purchase something.
Remember there is more magic in an edition of Tarbell than in just about anything else you can buy

Yes... Stay there for a really really long time!!

All day if you can.

And not just one day of the week... as many days as you can.

:nod:

Randi

I would suggest to get there meet magicians, befriend them there and get off the shop with them.
A magic shop has many advantages for a beginner but it has a major drawback: it's tempting to get from one trick you finally understand to the other one that seems so magically better just because you don't know how it works.
Becoming a magician has to do with doing a routine (not just a trick you buy) that fit your personality. Customers of a magic shop can help you in learning a routine, it is not the role of a magic shop: its role is to sell you the props for the routine, hoping that then you will learn another one etc...


Magic shops are a great way to approach magic and they're not.

Great because there is a lot of dream in magic shop and this is what "young Jeddi apprentice" crave for; great because you meet lots of people there, sometimes bad but sometimes extremely good.

I would however advise beginning magicians to go there and leave from the shop with people they meet there. The danger of hanging around magic shops too much is that once a young magician sees a new effect he tends to run after the one that puzzled him the most and disregard the ones he already knows. What makes a magician is not this never ending race, it's the few effects he is going to focus on, polish, search, read about, perform with himself under test,

With friends he can build his character and fine tune it, test his showmanship, improve his misdirection, increase the entertaining value of whatever he performs by constantly improving his scripts...

I love magic shops and I became a real friend with several serious dealers (Joe Stevens, Andy Greget, George Proust...) but I know that getting there is distracting and I tend to see my friends outside of their trade: what they can teach me out of the shop is always precious... but I still love the feeling when I hang into a magic shop

Lawrence gives great advice. Our staff is told....spend as much time with the customer as you can - regardless of size of sale. Why? I remember as a kid wishing I had a magic shop to visit and having someone to talk magic to. We designed our shop to be user friendly, decorated to look like the magic shops of old with an eye for the modern. Answer ALL of their questions without giving away secrets. Inspire the customer - even if they have little or no money - because if treated right they WILL be back or tell someone else about your shop.....on the other side of the coin...if you treat 'em badly the reverse happens. We are a dying breed - anyone in the magic shop business knows that...we have 7000 square feet to take care of and even though we don't have the foot traffic like a New York City, Chicago area would have, we still get our fair share of customers even in a village of only 1200. Field of dreams = build it right, treat your customers like gold and they WILL come

The magic shop, I believe in my heart and soul, is still the backbone of magic business and the future of inspiring magicians.

I don't know how to put this delicately, but here goes:

Lawrence's advice sounds frightfully dangerous to be given to a 12 year-old. Leave the shop with some older dude who shows him a trick or two and promises to give him advice...somewhere else...at home maybe...you know, down here, in my "magic basement"....

SH, listen to Gaddy. And don't go home with anyone promising to be your mentor unless he or she has been fully vetted by the owners of the shop and your guardians.

I'm going to have to second Stoney on this one.
A 12 year old boy should not leave a magic shop with anyone who would be willing to leave a magic shop with a 12 year old boy. It is just asking for a whole world of very bad things.
Go to the shop, hang out at the shop, STAY in the shop.
There are some sick and twisted people in the world, some of them are magicians.
Get the real world help and advice but do it safe.
Gwyd

I live on an Island that has less than a million inhabitants, Cyprus, and there is not ONE magic shop.

Chris

Cool! We have someone from Cyprus here!

Welcome to the Café, Christo.

Here in Germany there are magic shops only in major cities. For me to go to a magic shop would mean--at the very minimum--a three hour train ride.

But I'm 45, not 12.

Still, I would love a mentor.

Stoneunhinged I understand what you are saying and I agree parents have to be very careful! We never left our kids unattended at that age - but we are not talking about sending some kid home with a shop owner - Yes, we all need to be careful as trust only comes with knowledge of the person. Mentorship can be a wonderful thing and as a shop owner I can tell you I am very proud when a customer keeps coming back saying "well you got me hooked on magic" .... therein lies the reward.....

Not your advice Rick- Lawrences.
"I would however advise beginning magicians to go there and leave from the shop with people they meet there."
This, sworled around in the mind of a 12 year old becomes "Go home with a magician you meet at the shop so he can tell you secrets".
That is bad.
Gwyd

Any city large enough to have a bricks and mortar magic shop in it is already too big of a city to send a 12 year old out into by himself.

Having a magic shop owner babysit your 12 year old is fine, if you know the owner personally and are convinced he's not going to get so busy at some point in the day that he forgets he's got a 12 year old without any supervision kicking around the shelves.
I'm afraid the concept of a 12 year old being left in Ye Ole' Magic Shoppe under the tutelage of the kindly old owner is nothing more than a pipe dream.

If you're a parent, take your kid to an IBM ring or SAM meeting, and hey, here's a thought...go there with him!...do something with your kid.
Forget the 12 year old at the magic shop thing, it's a disaster waiting to happen. There's been more than one magician arrested this past year in high profile child abuse situations.

Magic is fun, but it's not at all immune from the troubles of the modern day world.

Lawrence O's advice is all of good and kind intention...but it's a terrible idea.

I think it's really sad that things have changed so much.

When I was 12-13-14, we didn't think anything of taking the bus halfway across San Francisco (yes, guys, they did have buses back then, and no they weren't horse-drawn) to go to the bookstore, the magic shop, or anyplace else. This was back in the 60's.

Back then there were some people, even in magic, who... well, let's just say they had the reputation of... doing strange things... so we definitely had to watch out for them. But we had two things back then that made all the difference: a) we had common sense, and, b) we took the responsibility for our own actions. If I had gone home with a weirdo and come home saying something happened, my parents would have a) chewed my head off for going home with the guy in the first place, and b) gone after the guy legally. But a) would have come before b), not the other way around.

I spent many fantastic hours in the two magic shops we had in the city back then, and met a lot of people, and learned massive amounts, and looked forward to the next time, and so forth. Even if we'd had the internet back then, I couldn't have picked up a fraction of what I did at the shops. But, thinking about it, I guess there was also a sense of respect back then: we were in the owner's shop, and he had a business to run, and sure he would take care of us, but we shouldn't monopolize his time, especially if we weren't going to buy anything.

Just making friends with the owners made a huge difference for me. They trusted me and knew I wasn't there just to waste their time.

Ah, for the good ol' days...

Whoa!

Now that is an interesting idea!

I like it.