One of the three women who manned the counter sold him his first trick deck of cards and then told him, “There’s the door.” Kahlow started going to Eagle Magic in the 1950s as a 10-year-old boy. “I would just have to decide at that time.” “Some of it is, some of it isn’t,” he said. What’s for sale in the crowded cabinet depends on Kahlow’s mood. A cabinet of curiosities is packed with items like autographed cards from the Magic Castle, a private Hollywood, Calif., club where magicians perform. Kahlow keeps copies of “The Eagle Magician,” a magazine put out by original owner Collins Pentz in the early 20th century. There’s a desk from the 1880s where, according to Kahlow, Harry Houdini once sat. There are vintage gag gifts in cases and antique lithographs of tent show magicians. The shop, in existence since 1899 - the oldest magic shop in the country, according to Kahlow - is part store, part museum of pranks, trickery and illusion. It maintains the same setup inside as its old downtown store - showcases crammed with pranks and jokes on one side, magic on the other, and plenty of room for the seller to demonstrate. Eagle Magic moved from its downtown Minneapolis location seven years ago and is now marked only by a tiny sign. “Things go bang, they smell bad, they shock, they snap,” said Larry Kahlow, the shop’s owner.įinding the shop, tucked away in a commercial building on County Road 11, is a trick in itself.
For those in search of April Fools trickery, Eagle Magic in Burnsville has almost as many pranks and jokes as magic tricks: “snap snots” that can sail across the room, vintage cans stuffed with spring-loaded snakes, even itching powder and cigarette loads that explode.
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