The Conjurers Club

In the heart of youth-obsessed Hollywood, a century-old mansion for magicians refuses to bow to modernity.

Illustrations by Joseph Lambert

Irma the ghost is playing the piano. Apparently, it’s a habit with her. She takes requests on a nightly basis, although by the sound of it, her repertoire stops somewhere in the late 1970s.

It’s my first time inside the Magic Castle, LA’s well-known but exclusive club for magicians. I gave the owl sculpture perched in the foyer the secret password—“open sesame” of course—a hidden door slid open, and now I’m nursing a cocktail while people in their late sixties sing along to songs I’m guessing were groovy party standards back when I was still in diapers.

I’ve come for a friend’s birthday. I would celebrate her anywhere, but scoring this invitation carries a certain cachet for those in the know: Only members or their guests can walk through the Castle’s front door.

Like most big cities, Los Angeles is made up of vastly different sub-cultures all sharing the same geography. What unites them is a commitment to informality, whether real or laboriously studied. S…