The Brief

When Carly Usdin started inviting friends to the Magic Castle, they always sent them a link ahead of time — the Castle’s dress code guidelines.

The club’s website lists a full breakdown of acceptable attire — “tie and suit,” “ravishing dresses” — and lists restricted choices: “all denim,” “skorts.” Back in 2015, the site presented a gendered breakdown of the dress code, asking men to “think business attire” and women “elegant attire.”

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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LAist

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Part 2: Once inside the iconic members-only Magic Castle, queer hobbyist magician Carly Usdin starts to become disillusioned with the club. LAist Senior Producer Natalie Chudnovsky dives into how this comes to a head in 2020, when the Magic Castle faces allegations of racism and sexism. 

The Castle: Part 2

Part 2: Once inside the iconic members-only Magic Castle, queer hobbyist magician Carly Usdin starts to become disillusioned with the club. LAist Senior Producer Natalie Chudnovsky dives into how this comes to a head in 2020, when the Magic Castle faces allegations of racism and sexism. 

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Carly included the link as a joke, but it was also a warning.

“We could have a laugh,” says Carly. “And also, I think probably subconsciously to prepare them for stepping back in time in this space a little bit.”

Screenshot of Magic Castle dress code from its website, from March 2023.

Carly is trans and non-binary. Back in 2015, Carly identified as a woman, and they say that throughout their gender journey, their appearance at the Castle was always the same: gender neutral, short hair and a suit. Carly says they were usually read male in the Castle.

“It is like you are back in time in the ‘50s and anyone in a suit is a guy, anyone in a dress is a gal, and the guys should hold the door open for the gals,” says Carly.

For Carly, complicating this binary worldview meant dealing with discomfort.

“When I would be in that space, I would actively try to make myself smaller,” says Carly. “And when I brought people, there was that mix of pridefully showing them around, but also knowing that most of the people that work here are gonna call me sir.”

Carly's disillusionment

Initially, Carly accepted their discomfort as a trade-off of being a Castle member. But as they spent more time at the Castle, the gender dynamics of the club began to feel less tolerable.

One year, for their wife’s birthday, Carly booked a small-group experience at the Castle called the Houdini séance. Their friends would spend two hours with a magician who would summon the ghost of Harry Houdini.

“It's a little cheesy in a Disney's Haunted Mansion sort of way,” Carly says, “but so fun.”

The Houdini Seance Room at The Magic Castle on October 24, 2008.

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Angela Weiss

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Getty Images North America

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They specifically requested a woman magician to lead the performance.

“And we get there and it's just some dude and no one told us about the switch,” says Carly. “And we had a group of like queer people, trans people, Black people. And this guy trying to talk to us was like misgendering everybody in our group. Saying ma'am to people who are trans men. [Making] assumptions of heterosexuality, like, ‘Who's your husband? Who's a handsome man in your life?’”

Carly was starting to realize that the old-timey atmosphere they’d initially been so charmed by had drawbacks.

“You're like, first of all, this person's queer. Second of all, what does that have to do with Houdini?”

Carly noticed the way sexism was baked into performances and casual conversation at the club. They’d invite friends to shows, and then watch as male magicians filled their patter with jokes at the expense of women.

“I just started worrying that I was bringing people into a space where they might not be safe and I couldn't do that anymore,” says Carly. “I felt complicit and accountable.”

First, Carly stopped bringing their friends. Then they stopped learning magic. And they completely let go of their aspirations to start a club for queer magicians.

Carly Usdin, in their Magic Castle days.

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Courtesy of Carly Usdin

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“I guess I never really felt welcome enough to try to make it better,” says Carly. “I was definitely not advocating, trying to make my voice heard in a way that like I would normally do in my career. And I don't know if that's the difference between a career and a hobby. I didn't want everything in my life to be that struggle.”

After five years as a member of the Castle, Carly stopped going altogether.

They say it wasn’t a conscious decision. They still paid dues, but they let life get in the way.

'A little lady doesn’t do any magic'

Casual misogyny has always been part of Kayla Drescher’s experience in magic.

“I've been doing magic since I was 7 and the very first day I walked into a magic club, the other kids told me magic isn't for girls,” says Kayla. “And one kid offered that if I wanted, I could stay and be his assistant.”

Kayla became a professional magician nonetheless, specializing in mentalism, bar magic and comedy-based magic. She joined the Castle around the same time as Carly, but as a performer and teacher rather than a hobbyist magician.

As a booked performer, Kayla was experiencing the same unsavory aspects of the Castle as Carly — but from a much closer vantage point.

Kayla Drescher as a teenager doing a card trick.

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Courtesy of Kayla Drescher

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One evening when she was getting ready to do her bar magic act, she says a member came up to her and asked her for a drink. When Kayla pointed him in the direction of the bartender, she remembers him responding, “How are you not the bartender?” When she told him she was the magician, he said, “A little lady doesn’t do any magic.” When Kayla started her show, he left.

Kayla wanted Castle leadership to understand they’d created an environment where sexism was tolerated. She decided to start with their booking practices. She wanted to quantify the Castle’s exclusion of woman magicians. So she and another member created a spreadsheet.

She found that between 2016 and 2019, the percentage of women performers grew from about 6% to about 9% — which tracks with national numbers on women in magic. But Kayla’s spreadsheet also looked at where performers were booked, which theaters and times, and she found that women tended to get less prestigious slots: brunches and early shows.

In 2019, Kayla presented these findings to the Castle’s Board of Directors.

When asked about whether this presentation had any effects, the Castle told us that as a result, they've made an effort to book at least one woman per week, as well as magicians from underrepresented backgrounds. They didn’t address time slots or locations.

Why Kayla doesn't go to the Castle alone

Kayla says that early in her time at the Castle she was physically assaulted by two different magicians, and a third magician harassed her and followed her out to her car.

She was a young magician in her early 20s, and felt too uncomfortable to speak up — afraid she wouldn’t be believed or that it would have consequences for her career. She also remembers that the staff who observed these incidents didn’t intervene.

“It was in that moment,” she says, “I realized, 'I’m not safe here.' To this day, I will not enter the building alone.”

When we contacted the Castle about Kayla’s experiences, they said if she wanted to talk with management now, she would be listened to and taken seriously.

Kayla said for her, it wasn't about calling out any specific members or staff — but about conveying how the environment of the Castle made her not want to speak out in the first place.

Magician Kayla Drescher practices with gift cards before her performance at the Magic Castle, on October 13, 2021

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Valerie Macon

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AFP via Getty Images

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“Magic is still this microcosm of the world, but of the world in like the ‘50s and ‘60s. It's a world of secrets,” she says. “It's a world of ‘don't tell anyone.’ It's really easy for stuff to just breed within the community and there's no outside checks and balances.”

A schism among members

In the spring of 2020 the Castle closed its doors due to the COVID pandemic. Then, that summer, the murder of George Floyd roiled Los Angeles. Carly Usdin joined many in the city to protest. Their friends clashed, at times violently, with police. Carly had journalist friends shot at with rubber bullets.

At home, Carly diligently followed the news online. One day, they saw a tweet shared into their feed — a screenshot of a Facebook post made by the Magic Castle.

Screenshot of Magic Castle Hotel post on Facebook from the summer of 2020.

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Courtesy of Carly Usdin

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Amid the protests, the Magic Castle Hotel — the property adjacent to the Magic Castle — had let the LAPD and the National Guard set up in their empty parking lot. In the photo, a Castle Hotel staff member was giving candy bars to the National Guard.

Carly honed in on the caption: “Tonight our hearts are with the business owners and employees whose livelihoods have been destroyed.”

For Carly, it felt like the Castle had chosen a side. The parking lot move was a vote in favor of the police, and against the protesters who were being attacked.

Screenshot of Carly Usdin’s tweet, calling out the Magic Castle, June 2, 2020.

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Courtesy of Carly Usdin

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So they wrote a tweet, calling out the Castle on Twitter. And then they went to the Magic Castle members-only Facebook group — and everything that they’d been holding in about the Castle, spilled onto the page. “I felt like I’d been really quiet and essentially complicit in some of this garbage for a while,” Carly says, “and I hit a breaking point.”

Carly’s post was long and wide-ranging. They wrote about how they weren’t comfortable bringing their friends to the Castle because of the sexism they encountered there. They wrote about the treatment of their friends at the protests, about what it meant for the Castle to give its parking lot to law enforcement and shared links to different resources — for example, a primer on white privilege.

The post ended like this: “I'd love to see the [Magic Castle] turn over a new leaf and become a progressive institution dedicated to raising up newer voices of magic voices that are not all male, not all white.” Carly offered their commitment to helping with such efforts.

“There's definitely a part of me that was like, ‘This is a teachable moment and maybe they'll listen,’” Carly says, now. “Although the tone I took was very dismissive.

“I had good intentions — at least 50% good intentions. And then I think 50% chaotic screaming and just having hit a wall and feeling powerless.”

Carly’s post got 105 comments. Some members commented that they’d never personally experienced anything unsavory at the Castle, or if Carly was unhappy, they should leave.

People argued about the Castle’s environment and the nature of that summer’s protests.

The Magic Castle, in Hollywood, California on October 13, 2021.

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Valerie Macon

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AFP via Getty Images

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Others responded with stories about racism and sexism, discomfort with the orientalist artwork and other problematic aspects of the Castle’s old-boy’s atmosphere.

The Magic Castle is supposed to be a non-political organization, so Carly had never explicitly heard the views of its members. And suddenly, they were all out in the open.

A turning point  

By late summer 2020, leadership at the Castle shut down conversations on the official Facebook group, so an unofficial Facebook group popped up — and for Carly, this was a window into a different world.

“It's like the moment they go to Toon Town in Who Framed Roger Rabbit,“ says Carly. “That's how it felt. There's like this Facebook group with all these progressive, interesting people that are at the Magic Castle.”

In Zoom meetings, members shared their stories and frustrations about the Castle — and also, came up with suggestions and solutions, talking about how they might put pressure on the club.

While the Castle did not apologize for the parking lot situation, after a small protest outside the Castle, they did put out a statement saying that Black lives matter. The Castle’s Board announced that they would create a Diversity and Inclusion Committee.

The Castle wasn’t alone in announcing its intentions to do better — institutions nationwide created DEI committees. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, DEI-related job openings spiked by 55% in the immediate month after George Floyd’s murder.

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“It definitely felt like a turning point,” says Carly. “Is the Castle going to move forward into the future? Are we going to be on the right side of history as so many industries, as so many groups have faced those moments of reckoning?”

In 2020, Kayla Drescher joined the nascent Diversity and Inclusion Committee — and Carly wanted in, too. They saw it as a chance to fulfill the dreams they had for the Castle when they first joined — to build a community and make it a more inclusive, more progressive institution.

“My anger and frustration with the situation had started to give way to optimism, excitement, hope. Like, I don't know where this is going, but maybe someone will listen,” says Carly.

And then that hope was punctured, by a single email from the Ethics and Grievance Committee.

When Carly joined the Magic Castle, they’d signed a Member code of conduct, agreeing not to disparage the Castle. Two members felt that Carly had done so, when posting on Twitter and Facebook.

They’d filed a grievance, asking that Carly be kicked out.

Find out what happens next, on Part III. Coming Dec. 13.

The Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory may run the second-longest study of  individually identifiable mammals in the world, but they’re not afraid of trying something new.

The lab is launching a bracket-style competition, Fat Marmot Week, for people all over the world to vote for their favorite chunky ground squirrel.

The UCLA researchers who work there have faced a loss of federal funding in recent years, so they’re now pursuing creative fundraising efforts, including a (G-rated) OnlyFans account for marmot content called OnlyMarms and a meme coin created by supporters of the project.

Where the idea came from

Dan Blumstein, a UCLA ecology and evolutionary biology professor who came up with OnlyMarms, said he’s wanted to do a Fat Marmot Week ever since the success of Fat Bear Week, in which the public votes on grizzly bears bulking up for the winter in Alaska. But it took two of his graduate researchers, Katie Adler and Emily Renkey, along with another volunteer who helps with logistics, to see it to fruition.

“ Science isn't just writing the papers, it's also the communication side of things,” said Adler, who’s also the lab’s field team leader.

Like bears, marmots prepare for the winter by fattening up, with some more than doubling in weight from about 5.5 pounds to as much as 13. But unlike bears, marmots are true hibernators. For months, their body temperature drops very low, and they breathe and have a heartbeat about once a minute. (Blumstein described a hibernating marmot as “sort of a fuzzy stone.”)

These two specimens are called Dawn and Dan's Hat.

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Courtesy Dan Blumstein/UCLA

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 Adler, who's on her third year of marmot field observations, said the individual marmots are consistent enough that she can "see what they're doing a little bit and then know exactly who it is."

“I think it’s fun to think of this from an outside perspective – why do we like marmots and how can we share that with other people?” Renkey said.

About the marmots

The marmots are all given names to help tell them apart based on markings the researchers dye on their fur.

Their names range from Dawn, who is reportedly a “a very special boy who enjoys the taste of rocks,” to a “proud mama” named 1 and a “girl boss” with no mate named Open Kite.

“Our parties are quite boring to other people because all we do is talk about the marmots,” Blumstein said. “It's a soap opera.”

Funding troubles

Faced with federal funding cuts, Blumstein realized he had to get creative, starting with the OnlyMarms account.

But he said he wasn’t expecting the “extraordinary” response – the $OnlyMarms meme coin has made more than $100,000 in transaction fees, though it’s still short of the $225,000 to $300,000 they need to fundraise to bring in more graduate student research.

Blumstein said while all funding is welcome, including the OnlyMarms subscriptions, it’s much easier for them to accept direct donations for tax purposes. The money will go to support researchers like Renkey and Adler’s contributions to the nearly 65 years of marmot research at the lab.

The tournament

Eight competitors will face off — five females and three males. There’ll also be a “true” winner announced at the end based on the lab’s measurements on which marmot gained the most weight this spring and summer.

The first round of voting will be Monday, Aug. 24, followed by the semifinals on Wednesday, Aug. 26, and the final showdown on Friday, Aug. 28. Voting runs from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. PDT.

“Everyone should vote. It's very exciting,” Renkey said. “They're huge this summer.”

The younger bald eagle that Shadow has been seen hanging out with around Big Bear’s famous nest lately has a new name.

The bird, which is believed to be a female, is banded as KD1. Friends of Big Bear Valley, the nonprofit that runs the popular YouTube livestream, has dubbed her Kaydee.

The organization generally doesn’t name visiting eagles, but Kaydee is sticking around so far and could become a new online star after Shadow’s long-time mate Jackie died last week.

So, who is this new eagle in the nest?

One expert told LAist that Kaydee is more than 4 years old and was probably wandering much further than Big Bear before it was spotted on camera.

“This is kind of the banders dream, right? You put bands on a bird so that you can possibly get … a one-off observation of where it is at some point in its life, and we're getting way, way more than that,” said Jenna Carpenter, a field biologist and environmental specialist with the Orange County Water District.

“In this instance, we're getting 24/7 views and people are so tuned into it that they're keeping really good track of where KD1 is, and it's really awesome.”

Meet Kaydee

Kaydee was first recorded on the livestream cameras in the Big Bear habitat on Aug. 6 — a few days before Jackie died — according to Friends of Big Bear Valley.

The nonprofit said the eagle started to perch by Shadow in several trees, which it has continued to do in the weeks since. The group recently referred to Kaydee as Shadow’s “shadow.”

Kaydee is from the Prado Basin area, where its parents Ricky and Lucy nest nearby. Carpenter said Ricky and Lucy have raised around a dozen eaglets since 2021, when they first started setting up shop in the area.

The eagle wears two bracelet-like bands on its legs, including a lavender-colored one, which can be used to track Kaydee in different areas.

“If someone sees [the color band] with a scope or binoculars or a zoom camera, it can be reported and put into a research database, which adds to the opportunity to progress conservation for raptors and eagles,” Carpenter said.

You can learn more about reporting a bird with a federal band or color marker here.

Will Kaydee stick with Shadow?

Kaydee is what's known as a subadult eagle, a stage in which Carpenter said raptors are still trying to figure out what they want to do and where they want to be.

“Big Bear’s a nice habitat, obviously they've been visiting this nest, you know, there's some interest there whatever it may be,” she said. “So it's possible that they stick around and find a mate, whether that be Shadow or another adult eagle.”

But it’s also possible Kaydee moves onto another habitat after the off-season. Whatever happens, Carpenter said us humans get to go along for the ride through the livestream, which she described as a privilege.

“We get this chance to witness something that we would not normally get to witness, because we know exactly who this bird is and we happen to have cameras in the area,” she said. “It might be everything and it might be nothing, and either way, I think that's really exciting that we get to have a little peek into this world.”

The Esquivel family opened their first taqueria at Playas de Tijuana 15 years ago, with a focus on individually crafted tacos, each with its own pairing of salsa.

Since then, Taqueria Tijuanero — formerly Tijuanazo — has become an increasingly popular SoCal taco chain.

Owner Aria Esquivel sat down with AirTalk Friday host Austin Cross to talk about how it all started from a humble Tijuana brick-and-mortar and how they stay true to their distinct North Mexican menu.

The art of the taco

Esquivel’s father and mastermind behind Taqueria Tijuanero, Antonio Esquivel, began working in kitchens when he was 16 years old, working his way up from dishwasher to cook at French restaurants in Beverly Hills.

“What he really loved about the taco and the art of the taco in Tijuana is how these ingredients mesh so well together,” Esquivel said.

That’s when the family opened up their own restaurant in Playas de Tijuana in 2011.

Mexico's taco diversity

Because of Mexico’s diverse landscape of crops, history and even weather patterns, taco styles can actually vary quite a bit depending on where you are in the country.

“ The tacos in Mexico City are different," Esquivel said. "The tacos in Sonora are different. The Tijuana tacos are different."

Fresh al pastor

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(Courtesy Taqueria Tijuanero

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Al pastor taco

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Courtesy Taqueria Tijuanero

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Bill Esparza, the James Beard Award-winning food writer who's spent the last two decades chronicling L.A.'s taco scene, helped curate Taqueando After Dark, a new food festival that will feature eight L.A. taco vendors, including Taqueria Tijuanero.

“When I see theirs, I see what I see in Mexico,” Esparza said of Taqueria Tijuanero’s tacos, adding, “It’s a taco that really has a lot of intentionality behind it.”

How to experience Taqueando After Dark festival

Taqueando After Dark takes over Level 8 for two nights, Aug. 27 and 28. (Courtesy of Level 8)

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Courtesy Taqueando After Dark

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Read more: LA taqueros meet Baja’s best for two-night DTLA taco festival

New location coming:

• The family is in the process of opening its third SoCal location in Echo Park.

How to visit:

• Address: 355 S Atlantic Blvd., East Los Angeles
• Hours: Closed on Mondays | Tuesday-Sunday, open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.
• Costs: Tacos are $3.95 each