Not "myspace", but shop space!

Good day everyone, and welcome to the June 22nd. edition of the hocus-pocus.com blog! In the photo to the right that's Israel's Guy Bavli sitting behind my desk with me. He was just here in Fresno when he took a side trip from a big corporate date he was doing in Los Angeles, California. He visited with his very atractive girlfriend, the well known Israeli actress Tali. Guy and I have been good friends for many years, but it's always great to see him in person. Guy has got two brand new mentalism effects that he will be relasing to us in the next month and while I'm not a mentalist, I do predict that they will blow the magic community away. Keep on top of the "What's New" section of our website for more info.
And for those who were asking, my son Cole is now happily registered at St. Mary's College in the Bay Area. It was a cool 67 degrees when I took him up there last weekend, but when I got back to Fresno it was 102 degrees. Lucky Cole!
You know everyone, I have to tell you that a day doesn't go by that I don't thank my lucky stars that I bit the bullet and decided to move to our new larger location. It's just down the street and around the corner from where we were for many years, but while that was a large space it was a store that had been designed for walk in retail traffic. And despite closing the doors to the public in that old location and moving to internet sales, we were still always cramped and jammed in with the huge inventory of stock we keep at all times to have on hand just about anything you ever wanted.
So with this new warehouse sized space we are literally about nine or ten times bigger than we were before. We're the size of a small supermarket or a commerical drugstore of the Walgreens, Rite-Aid, CVS, or Long's Drugs type. Despite our new large size, because of the increased flow of business we still do not usually open the doors to the public as retail sales would just slow us down from taking your internet and phone orders and shipping them out to you. Still, I have had so many requests for a peek inside, I thought I would share these photos with you.











As you can see, we have aisles and aisles of stock on the shelves that doesn't look pretty, but makes it easy for the shipping department to go up and down the rows of merchandise and pick the items you ordered off and send them to you. The office/showroom is a separate space from the warehouse stock area. It's as much for my personal enjoyment as for anything else. It's a room large enough to put over a dozen cars in and I've had some of my bigger posters hung on the walls and placed some of the antique magic and one of a kind items we have in stock just to make a beautiful display. My friend Robert Baxt was here and he had a great funny line for it. He said it was the way god would have a magic shop if god had the money! He said it compared favorably to David Copperfield’s museum space in Las Vegas and he would know as he's been David's guest there many times.
The far corner of the showroom has shelving just for the accumulated estate sale items we have. That's the photo in the lower left hand corner. I haven't even bothered to put up any photos of the shipping area not only because it's not that interesting, but because the gang there, under the supervision of my sister Jan, is always moving so fast to get orders out the pictures came out blurry! LOL! Also, there's a dead storage space that's filled with magic stuff that's not very photogenic, and I'm working on my office which is a separate room that overlooks the showroom with glass windows so I can look out on the beautiful display (but has blinds I can draw when I want some quiet time). I'm putting all my personal favorite pieces and mementoes of magic in there on a showcase left over from Buma's Magic Shop in San Francisco that I frequented when I was a kid. When I get my office where I want it, I'll share more photos of it in a future blog.
Okay, so if you've looked at all the photos and read this far I suppose you deserve a treat in return. Here it is: Despite what I just wrote that we are not usually open to the public, because we are so proud of our new space and want to show it off you are invited to visit anytime. Tony or myself will give you the guided tour. If you're in the Fresno area and have some items you really want, call us to make arrangements. You'll be glad you did! And watch for announcements in future weeks about the magic classes for kids and adults that will be held here.
That's all for this week, until next time,
Paul