After a few delays caused by ‘you-know-what,’ Magic Live had finally arrived. We’d booked our flights, chosen our schedules, checked into our rooms at the Orleans (fridge optional), and before we knew it, we were back to old times. I’ve met some of my closest friends at magic conventions, and Magic Live has always been on my wish list. All I knew in advance was to expect the unexpected.
The convention format is the same each day, depending on which color lanyard (green or yellow); you start the day with a General Session in the Showroom followed by two Focus Sessions in the afternoon. Each night there are two special events.
Sunday
Kicking off with a pizza and cookie party on Sunday night, delegates roamed the dealers’ room while filling out raffle cards to be in with the chance of winning some envy-inducing prize packages. The dealers’ room, or ‘Magic Shop’ as its affectionally signposted at Live, was just large enough to fill time between the sessions but manageable in that you could see what you wanted within a couple of hours.
Compared to somewhere like Blackpool, there’s a smaller quantity of stands, but the overall quality is higher. Fewer stockists and more creators help to ensure the relationship between seller and buyer is more direct. Big names such as Tannens and Vanishing Inc. occupied the prime real estate and their ‘shop-within-a-shop’ setups, meaning you could hang out and jam and browse their latest releases.
In a backroom at the Tannens booth, you could check out L.I.F.T., a re-release of their Live Impromptu Floating Table - which is pretty much as it sounds. And yes, it does look that good! Over at Vanishing Inc., their Taschen-style two-book set compilation of Joshua Jay’s Talk About Tricks column (over eight hundred items) drew serious attention. Josh covered twenty-two of those in his Focus Session on Monday.
