Magic Shop - 11-05-08

When I was ten I discovered Joe Berg’s, a magic shop that was operated only for the initiated, where hidden treasure could be found. Berg’s, located in an upstairs office in Hollywood, had a neat showroom with glass cases, and a back room with parts of hundreds of tricks and instructions on bookshelves, covering the floor, stuffed in boxes, stacked on tables, spilling from suitcases, and steamer trunks. When Joe got to know me, he let me sift through the mess.

There were a couch, a few chairs, and a constant stream of visiting magicians… it was a lounge type of shop. The loungers often had to be swept away in order for Berg to go home to dinner.

He was the world’s worst businessman. There were times magicians wanted to buy tricks, but Berg wouldn’t sell. “I’m sorry this trick isn’t for you…” If you really wanted the trick badly enough, you had to come back when Joe’s son, Ronnie, was minding the shop. He sold anything and everything to anyone. I wanted a lit cigarette dropper… a device that hangs under your coat and secretly feeds lit cigarettes into your hand. It was a rusted used prop, covered in dust, but Joe wouldn’t sell it to me because he thought I was too young to play with lit cigarettes. Ronnie, however, sold it to me “… it’s the only one of its type in existence, made by an English craftsman especially for Cardini, a legendary star of Vaudeville. The late, great, Cardini, was good friends with Joe. On his deathbed, Cardini gave him this treasure. There’s not another one like it.” Wow.

A decade later I saw the same cigarette dropper at a Magic Castle swap meet. The guy selling it said, “there’s a great story that goes with that, I got it twenty years ago from Ronnie Berg, it’s the only one in existence, one-of-a-kind, made by an English craftsman especially for Cardini. On his deathbed he gave it to Joe Berg.” Cardini must have been awfully busy on his deathbed.

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