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.

Students within the Los Angeles Unified School District showed improvements on state reading, math and science standardized tests for a third consecutive year, district authorities announced Tuesday.

Superintendent Andrés Chait revealed the preliminary results at the annual opening-of-schools address at East L.A.’s Garfield High School— his first as the district’s leader since the board appointed him to the job in June.

“ These are not just numbers on a page,” Chait said to an audience that included about 1,000 principals, administrators and district supporters. “They are the result of your passion, your persistence, your belief in what students can achieve. These are collective accomplishments.

"They reflect the dedication, skill, and commitment of our entire community,” he said.

Jai Gant-Leau, principal of Eagle Tree Continuation High School, said the “back-to-basics” focus of Chait’s speech was a welcome departure from the tone of recent opening addresses.

“We will continue to rise for the outcomes and expectations for the success of our students. That's the message I got,” Gant-Leau said. “Very different than the others where it was a lot of… bells and whistles.”

Why it matters

Student achievement, as measured by test scores, plummeted during the pandemic. Los Angeles Unified’s growth in 2025 outpaced the state, as test scores exceeded pre-pandemic levels.

This year the percentage of students in all grades who met or exceeded the standard are 39.7% for math, 48.3% for English and 32.1% for science. It’s unclear how this compares to students statewide because those results have yet to be released.

Challenges ahead

Chait also acknowledged the challenges posed by declining enrollment, community fears of immigration enforcement actions and proposed budget cuts.

 “The decisions will be hard, but we cannot lose sight of what defines us,” Chait said. “We are the system that lifts students to opportunity, turns potential into achievement, creates spaces of belonging, healing, growth.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

We hope you’ve gotten used to the hot weather, because it’s going to be here for a while.

The National Weather Service has issued yet another heat advisory for much of Southern California, less than a week after other high-temperature warnings were lifted.

This week’s advisory will be in place from 10 a.m. Wednesday through Monday. Forecasters expect temperatures to climb steadily over the course of Wednesday and Thursday.

The San Fernando Valley, San Gabriel Valley and other inland areas in L.A., as well as Riverside and San Bernardino counties, will likely see highs ranging from the mid-90s to about 105 degrees. Areas closer to the coast, including downtown Los Angeles and much of Orange County, will hit the 90s. Beaches will hover mostly in the upper 70s.

Humidity will also add to the discomfort. Even though it’s decreasing slightly, it makes cooling down harder, especially at night.

People who work outdoors or do not have air conditioning are especially at risk from the heat and humidity, along with people over 65, young children and other sensitive populations.

Fire risk

Forecasters are warning that conditions are ripe for fires, driven by a combination of wind and dry vegetation.

Southern California hasn’t seen much rain recently, despite the humidity, leaving plants with little moisture and turning them into the perfect fuel.

“Even though the air feels kind of moist, we're in the time of season where it doesn't matter. The fuels are dry and they're ready to go,” said NWS meteorologist Ryan Kittell.

Kittel said people should take extra care with anything that could create a spark, and residents in fire-prone areas should remain aware of their surroundings in case a fire starts.

The fire risk is likely to be concentrated in a few specific areas that will experience higher winds than others, including parts of the 5 Freeway corridor in northern L.A. County, especially around the Grapevine, and in southern Santa Barbara County.

For most of the region, though, winds should stay fairly mild.

Dangerous beach conditions

Southern Californians also have to contend with some ocean-specific risks this week.

Forecasters expect dangerously large waves and strong rip currents to hit the coastline at a time when the heat may drive more people to the beach. The conditions are expected to persist through the weekend.

If you decide to head to the beach, it’s a good idea to ask a lifeguard for advice on the conditions before entering the water. It’s also recommended to swim only near occupied lifeguard stands, stay off of rock jetties and avoid turning your back to the waves.

South-facing stretches of coastline will bear the brunt of the swell, which is being driven by two tropical storms churning hundreds of miles away in the Pacific Ocean.

“Those two systems generated the winds and the waves locally that are pushing towards us, and so that's creating elevated surf and some stronger currents than normal,” Kittel said.

The swell is not expected to cause significant coastal flooding as high tides remain relatively low.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Free transportation to the Santa Fe Dam Recreation Area swim beach will be available this week as East LA families continue to seek relief from another heat wave and the aftermath of the Lineage warehouse fire.

Los Angeles County is offering complimentary transportation Wednesday through Saturday at select Eastside parks so residents can enjoy a day at the lake at no cost.

More than a month after the Lineage Logistics warehouse fire, many residents continue to report persistent odors from rotting food and cleanup efforts. Because of the ongoing air quality concerns and community complaints, Los Angeles County Parks and Recreation has canceled its local aquatic programming.

To ensure families still have access to summer recreational activities, Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda L. Solis directed resources toward providing the “beach bus” program to Santa Fe Dam Recreation Area Swim Beach in Irwindale.

Read below for more information on the free shuttle services, schedules and more. 

Pickup locations

Belvedere Aquatic Center

5035 1st St. East Los Angeles, CA 90022

Obregon Park Pool

4021 1st St. Los Angeles, CA 90063

Salazar Park Pool 

3864 Whittier Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90023

City Terrace Park Pool

1126 N. Hazard Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90063

Shuttle dates and times 

• Wednesday, July 22
• Thursday, July 23
• Friday, July 24
• Saturday, July 25

Morning trip: 

• Check in at 8:30 a.m. 
• The bus departs East LA at 9 a.m. 
• The bus leaves Santa Fe Dam to go back to East LA at 12 p.m.

Afternoon trip: 

• Check in at 12:30 p.m. 
• The bus departs East LA at 1 p.m. 
• The bus leaves Santa Fe Dam to go back to East LA at 4 p.m. 

What to know

No registration or proof of address is required, but children under 12 must be accompanied by an adult. Bring your own food and drinks. Space is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis.