‘I started to notice the things I didn’t like about this place.’
to handle the matter. “She was assaulted in a place [where] she should have been meant to feel safe,” he said.
The next day, Furlow emailed Kemp to apologize for Chavez’s “deplorable behavior,” adding that he was “horrified and embarrassed,” the correspondence shows. A few days later, Furlow wrote Kemp to say that Chavez had been suspended from the academy for “conduct unbecoming” and that the matter would be addressed in an ethics hearing.
After the hearing, Chavez said, he was stripped of his academy membership and banned from the Castle.
Another woman — who requested anonymity because she did not want to hurt her standing as a member — described a similar 2013 experience while attending an instructional session that magicians receive as part of their membership.
The woman, then 23 and a new member, was asked to demonstrate a trick onstage. Afterward, a male magician approached her to compliment her on her skill.
“He was like, ‘You’re really tall, but I don’t mind the view,’ and then motorboated my chest,” she recalled. “I shoved him, said, ‘You’re disgusting,’ and left. I was 23. I was still so young that I didn’t understand I could go and say something.”
As soon as she got in her car, she called her boyfriend to tell him about the incident and vowed that she would never go to the Castle by herself again.
“She was very upset and distraught,” the woman’s boyfriend — whom she is still dating — told The Times. “It was a very upsetting night.”
There also is something of an open secret about the Castle’s interior architecture: A few seats at the venue’s main, ground-floor bar afford people seated there an intimate view of women as they ascend the central staircase. The stairs have a slatted railing, and with the steep angle, it is easy to “fully see straight up a dress,” Hannibal said.
“I have stepped in and stopped somebody from doing it on numerous occasions,” Hannibal said. “I have heard people joking about it: ‘ These are the prime seats.’ I’ve stepped in and stopped the joking.”
When he has confronted men doing this, some simply turn away, but at least one got belligerent, Hannibal said, adding that at least half a dozen men are known to do this.
Hannibal said that when he recently raised the issue on the academy’s Facebook page, some people denied it was a problem, although others said that when they bring female guests to the club, they make sure to direct them away from the section of stairs where they could be unwittingly ogled.
Kayla Drescher, a magician member, said she was warned of the staircase.
“I was told during my very first week performing at the Castle that when I was wearing a short dress I should walk up the stairs a certain way because if you aren’t right up against the wall — and wearing any dress that’s knee-length or shorter — you can see right up,” said Drescher, who added that she’s since given similar advice to fellow female performers.
She said that she later told a male board member about the issue and that he responded, “Well, then maybe we need to instruct women not to wear low-cut tops and short skirts.”
Besides magician membership ranks that are overwhelmingly male, the academy is led by two bodies also composed mostly of men. According to an organization-wide email sent in November, five of the seven members of the board of directors are men, including its president, Sinnott. Six of the seven members of the board of trustees, which oversees “the magic aspects of the club,” are men, according to the group’s website.
Drescher said the board of directors has at times seemed indifferent to the idea of increasing the academy’s female membership and upping the number of female performers. In an April 2019 presentation to the board, she highlighted the Castle’s poor track record with women, sharing findings from a report she wrote on the matter.
Drescher’s report, a copy of which was provided to The Times, said that during each year from 2016 to 2018, female magicians were booked for less than 7% of the 700plus performance slots, hitting a low of 4.4% in 2017. In the first four months of 2019, female magicians were given 22 of the 258 slots, or 8.5%. She also examined bookings for individual theaters at the Castle and found that in some years women had never been selected for certain rooms and times. For example, her report said that not one female magician had worked the late session in the Close-up Gallery, a prime venue, from 2016 through April 2019.
Drescher was allotted 20 minutes to present these findings while the board took its dinner recess, during which she also outlined how dressing rooms at the Castle did not allow for privacy.
“When we finished and asked for questions, one person started yelling at us and saying that everything we’d said was false,” she said. “He asked how we could accuse the Castle of doing these kinds of things — of saying it wasn’t a safe place for women.”
Drescher said a board member told her that he would follow up with her to pursue next steps; she said she never heard from him.
Allegations of racism
This year’s nationwide dialogue about systemic racism has sparked a period of introspection for many organizations and institutions, the academy among them. And several allegations of racism, disclosed to The Times after the summer protests over racial injustice, have highlighted this area of concern for some members.
Many of the complaints center on the use of racist language.
Hannibal, for example, said that while dining at the Castle last year he overheard a white member use a slur to describe the cooking of the Castle’s then-executive chef, Jason Fullilove, who is Black.
“A very respected, very old white stage illusionist … and his wife were dining in a different part of this room. His wife said, ‘The food hasn’t been as good since we got that Black man in the kitchen.’ And [the man] said something in the lines of, ‘Well you know, those N-words like to cook for themselves, for their own taste, and white people don’t like it quite as much,’ ” recalled Hannibal, who sanitized the magician’s use of the epithet.
Told of the man’s comments, Fullilove, who departed the Castle early this year, called them “hurtful.”
Brian Turner, a former Magic Castle cook who is Black, said that a handful of non-Black colleagues habitually used a racial epithet in the kitchen. “It was a whole lot of N-bombs being dropped all day, every day,” Turner said. “It was very uncomfortable.”
Turner, who was laid off when the facility closed in March, said those who used the slur refrained from deploying it when Fullilove was around. But they used it among themselves as “everyday vernacular” and directed it at Turner and other Black staffers, he said.
A person who worked in the kitchen at the time told The Times she also heard staffers use the slur.
Turner said he asked his colleagues to stop, but they would not. He said that he informed two sous chefs about the situation and that nothing was done, adding, “They didn’t care.”
Professional photographer Najee Williams, a magician member of the academy since 1990, described an encounter with Furlow that also had racial overtones. Williams had long served as the venue’s official photographer, but a 2014 negotiation between him and Furlow over renewing his contract turned bitter.
“I am your boss — you are to do what I say,” Williams said Furlow told him.
Williams said that when he explained that he had a strategic partnership with the academy — and that Furlow was not his boss — Furlow responded: “We have the land here and we’re allowing you to work it. Yeah, you pay us and everything, but we’re allowing you to work our land.”
Williams, who is Black, said the comment immediately brought to mind sharecropping. “It was one of those coded words, one of those dog whistles,” Williams said.
“I think that he knew what he was saying. And if he didn’t, you’d have to be pretty darn ignorant not to know,” Williams said. “You’re talking to a Black man.”
Williams said he didn’t confront Furlow over his remarks because he didn’t want the manager to be able to accuse him of “playing the race card.”
After the dust-up, Williams said, his photography contract was not renewed.
Furlow did not respond to ques
tions about the incident.
Some conversation about racerelated issues at the Magic Castle has occurred on Twitter and Facebook — especially after the summer protests.
During the L.A. demonstrations sparked by the death of George Floyd, Castle management allowed law enforcement authorities to use its parking lot as a staging ground for their response. This upset some in the academy who support the Black Lives Matter movement and objected that members weren’t consulted, according to magician member Brandon Martinez. Some members, he said, took to the club’s Facebook group to express dismay.
In response to the controversy, the board of directors issued a statement June 5 that expressed support for Black Lives Matter. It said the decision to allow authorities to use the parking lot was meant to “help ensure the safety of our building and the irreplaceable items inside” and should not have been interpreted as “a statement of support for bad actions, which was never intended.” The board also said it would match members’ donations to “organizations and programs that benefit social justice causes” — up to $50,000 in total.
As the online rhetoric intensified, members’ statements in support of Black Lives Matter were deleted from the group’s Facebook page, according to interviews and a review of messages on the website. On June 12, the board announced via the group’s page that moving forward it was to be used only for posts pertaining to “magic, art or entertainment.”
The board also retreated on its promise to match up to $50,000 in donations, saying in a mid-June Facebook post that it could not do so on the advice of its legal counsel. Instead, the board said it would spend up to that amount on the creation of a diversity and inclusion committee.
The online rancor led to a digital schism. Martinez and other members have formed a new, invite-only Facebook group for some academy members where they feel more comfortable discussing the club’s ills. “This is bigger than just the Magic Castle and Joe Furlow,” Martinez said. “There’s a lot of people that have experienced a lot of pain, and there’s been a lot of sorrow. And I want that to be treated with nothing but respect.”
In the June 5 Facebook post, the board of directors acknowledged concerns about its handling of issues related to race: “We admit our own past shortcomings in this area. We will work steadfastly for a more diverse and inclusive club in our membership, our performers, our staff, and our outreach.”
Leaving the Castle
The Castle hasn’t escaped the economic cataclysm caused by the pandemic.
Early this year, business at the Castle was strong. The academy reported total income of $1.68 million in February, up 2% from the same month in 2019, according to minutes from a board of directors meeting. But the venue closed in March, laying off about 95% of its staff, board minutes said — or 189 people, according to an email the academy’s leadership sent members.
Since the pandemic began, the academy has been mired in red ink, with monthly losses topping $300,000 on several occasions, according to board minutes.
The academy has sought and received partial deferrals on the rent it pays for the Castle. It has rolled out online magic shows and a to-go dining service, both of which generated modest profits in September, according to the minutes. No reopening date for the facility has been set.
Sinnott said in his statement that the academy looks forward to welcoming people back to the Castle “once COVID restrictions are lifted.”
“Despite the challenges imposed on all individuals and organizations by COVID, we are on track — with the continuing support of our members — to weather this pandemic and to keep the magic alive,” he said.
As for the internal investigation into alleged misconduct, the board’s October statement to members said that its ongoing implementation of changes recommended in the report would “continue over the coming months” but offered no details.
Sinnott expressed confidence that the “changes will create an even better experience for members, staff and guests.”
Informed of the nature of allegations in this story, Erika Larsen, daughter of the late academy founder Bill Larsen Jr., provided a statement to The Times that said she and her daughter Liberty are “deeply saddened and disturbed by these devastating reports” and pledged to “do everything in our power to help our community heal.”
“This is not the club that our family envisioned,” the Larsens said. “The Academy of Magical Arts, and its clubhouse the Magic Castle, were built on a foundation of love for the art of magic and love of community. The Larsens do not condone discrimination on the basis of race or gender, sexual harassment or any form of abuse and intimidation.”
Through Erika Larsen, Magic Castle co-founder Milt Larsen declined to comment.
What the founders envisioned is exactly the kind of community Kwon was looking for, but what he experienced was a different version of the Magic Castle. Five years after moving to the U.S. for college, Kwon returned to his native Seoul in June. He said he was in part fleeing a country whose ineffective response to the COVID-19 pandemic had led to widespread devastation. But the corroded culture at the Castle also factored into Kwon’s decision.
“I started to notice the things I didn’t like about this place,” said Kwon, whose Korean name is Kwon Joon-hyuk.
Over the years, Kwon, a member of the academy since 2018, grew closer to Castle employees and learned of their plight, including disputes over pay. In 2016, former Magic Castle bartender William Peters alleged in a class-action lawsuit that the academy violated labor laws by not paying hospitality workers overtime wages, among other claims. The case was settled in 2018, with the academy agreeing to pay $300,000 while denying any liability.
“If it wasn’t for the friendly staff that really treated me as one of their own, I don’t think I would have been so persistent,” Kwon said. “It was home. And I just did not appreciate that they weren’t being treated [with] justice.”
Since returning to South Korea, Kwon said he’s questioned his devotion to the Castle and considered leaving magic behind for good — a striking development for someone who, as a boy, taught himself English to read books on the subject.
He’s turned down about 25 shows, accepting only a handful of one-off gigs in Seoul. And on Dec. 21, he will depart for a two-year stint in the South Korean army to fulfill his compulsory military service. While there, Kwon said, he won’t share that he’s a magician.
Magic isn’t the same for Kwon anymore. That may also be true for the Castle and its academy, which is hemorrhaging cash, contending with a lawsuit over the alleged abuse of an ex-employee, dealing with claims of racism and sexual misconduct, and facing an increasingly skeptical membership.
Kwon said there’s a perfect word in Korean to describe how he feels about the Magic Castle — one for which there is no English analogue.