One recent Friday night, a hidden door at the rear of Art of Play, a curiosity shop in Brooklyn Heights, swung open and theatrical smoke wafted into the store. Two dozen people had been waiting for this moment, passing the time by handling the store’s menagerie of optical illusions, wooden puzzles and magic-adjacent objects. Now, they filed through a short passageway and into a tiny room with three rows of benches and standing room for a few people in the back.
Soon, a German magician named Denis Behr, 44, dressed all in black and about as tall as an N.B.A. forward, took a seat at a desk in front of the audience. For the next 80 minutes, he put on a thoroughly flummoxing demonstration of sleight of hand, using just a deck of cards and a bit of goofy, anarchic wit.
At one point, he seemed to cause two cards, both signed by a spectator seated to his left, to fly invisibly across the table into a pack of cards held by another to his right. After this effect sunk in there was applause, then a lot of murmurs of the what-just-happened variety.
“Something to think about,” Behr said, unhelpfully.
It was late November, and Behr was one of the first performers at 69 Atlantic — the name of the theater as well as the address — a new venue for close-up conjuring. New York City is in the midst of a magic boom, with long-running residencies (Steve Cohen’s “Chamber Magic Show” at the Lotte New York Palace, Dan White’s “The Magician” at 281 Park Avenue South, Noah Levine’s “Magic After Hours” show at Tannen’s Magic near Herald Square) and multi-performer evenings (“Monday Night Magic” in Greenwich Village, “Speakeasy Magick” in the Flatiron district and “Standup Magic” in Williamsburg).
If 69 Atlantic has a niche, it’s importing A-listers from around the world who otherwise would never be seen here. They are too big for cameos in a revue but lack the profile for long solo runs. Plus, these maestros need what has long been missing from the city and what 69 Atlantic finally provides: an 18-seat setting so intimate it verges on claustrophobic.
“What’s special is to be in the presence of a performer who is demonstrating impossible things a few feet away from you,” said Adam Rubin, who co-owns and runs the theater with his wife, Temis Galindo. “People who have mastered this art form are vanishingly rare.”
Rubin, 41, is a former advertising executive, a sometime magician and a full-time evangelist for delight and awe. He left the advertising world in 2015 after success as a writer of children’s books; one of them, “Dragons Love Tacos,” spent more than 400 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. He moved to Spain and began combing the continent for artisans making things “at the intersection of beauty and wonder,” as he put it.
A few years ago, he called Dan and Dave Buck, twin brothers and magicians who had turned their love of card flourishing, a.k.a. cardistry, into Art of Play, which, at the time, was an online business selling high-end playing cards. Rubin wanted advice on starting a new company. The brothers had another idea. Come work with us.
For their first full-scale retail spot, they settled into a 130-year-old building across the street from where the Brooklyn Queens Expressway empties onto Atlantic Avenue. The interior was a dilapidated mess, and far larger than Art of Play needed for its whimsical wares. This includes a battery-powered cast iron-hand, the fingers of which thrum on a table, a chirping automaton wooden bird, decks of cards and a glowing lightbulb that spins and levitates above a block of wood. (Credit magnets and electricity).
There is also a large selection of limited edition playing cards, with backs featuring Smokey Bear, a “mini-flea” circus and the Alfred Hitchcock classic “Vertigo,” to name a few. And if you’re looking for elaborate contraptions that perform nonessential tasks, by all means, look here. The store offers a Party Popper Machine, a $950 device made of red metal and an assortment of gears that yank out party poppers with the press of a button.
Rubin and the Bucks realized that even after this extensive inventory was meticulously laid out on shelves and in glass cases, the store had extra space. And they knew exactly what to do with it.
“Dave and I traveled the world all through our 20s and 30s as professional magicians and cardists,” Dan Buck said. “We got to make friends with a lot of magicians and see different styles, and now it’s like, here’s our chance to share those guys with the community.”
The theater opened in October with Eric Mead, a magician based in Aspen, Colo., who rarely performs in public and is known for impeccable sleights with coins and cards. Coming attractions include Dave Williamson, the fiendishly deceptive great-uncle of American magic in Yellow Springs, Ohio, who learned his craft from 20th-century masters like Dai Vernon and Ed Marlo. Ondrej Psenicka is coming, too; a Prague magician, he stumped Penn & Teller three times in a row on their show, “Fool Us,” prompting Penn to threaten to punch him in the face. (He was mostly kidding.)
Shows are booked through May. Generally, there are two a night for two weekends in a row, on Friday and Saturday. Tickets start at $75 for standing room. Wine is included in the price of the ticket, as is astonishment.
“I went with my husband to watch Eric Mead, and he did things like move a coin from under one hand to another, which doesn’t exactly sound crazy,” said Emma Straub, an author and the owner of the Brooklyn bookstore Books Are Magic, in an interview. “But when you’re that close, it feels magical, if not miraculous.”
