I first met these fellows at the IBM/SAM Louisville Magic Convention.  Well, that is not entirely correct.  I had received a few emails from them that I unfortunately ignored because I did not know who they were and I tend to be a bit paranoid about unsolicited email.  But there they were with a dealer's booth at the convention.  The booth was a bit underwhelming at first glance.  It was pretty empty without much to see.  But, as I soon found out, that was because all their electronic gadgetry was somewhere on the sixteenth floor. They had a full working studio operating into the wee hours of the night.  (read more)

I had really wanted to get a chance to visit with them at the convention, but that never seemed to work out.  So here I am exploring what they do as usual... Online.  But, that's OK because that is how you will get to interact with them as well.

"They" are "Street of Cards" (SOC).  Perhaps you have seen their emails too.  If, like me, you have ignored them until now, it might be time to rethink that decision.  There are two main parts to their little corner of the Internet.  The first is http://www.streetofcards.com/.  This is the more traditional part of their endeavor.  First off, you will notice that they are quite proud of their physical location home, Colon Michigan, ‘The Magic Capital of the World'.  Besides SOC, Colon is also the home of Abbots and FAB Magic.

Colon is certainly a good place to be from if you dabble in the magical arts.  One of the first things you will find on the site is a bit of history on the City of Colon both in the written and video form.  The ‘page' has a nice map with many of the memorable spots in the city area marked.  The cemetery with many magicians, including the Blackstone plot, also Abbott's, the Colon High school (host site of the Abbott's Get-Together shows), The Legion Post where a lot of legendary after show magic has been  presented, and of course the ‘notorious ‘bandits alley' where the flea market is located. These are just a few of the places highlighted that make the City of Colon so magical. 

There is also a trailer for a documentary about Colon that you can watch.  The whole ‘movie' is just $10, and would be a great way to support their efforts and to get a little magic emersion with great bit of legerdemain history for yourself.

There is also a special section just on Abbott's itself.  That page has some history on the Abbott's Magic Company, the founders, Percy Abbott and Harry Blackstone Sr. including some interesting photos.

Next upe is the SOC Secrets Academy which will, if you enroll, teach you some some magic.  I sent off a registration, but sadly, have not heard back by deadline for this article, so I don't know what sorts of effects they are teaching there.

The other major section is http://www.streetofcards.tv/ (SOCTV).  At the outset, they are trying to make this a real computer based electronic TV station in that there are regular ‘broadcast' events scheduled.  These are ‘live' presentations.  The ‘regular' schedule includes video from Jeff McBride's Wonderground and Gary Darwin's Midnight Magic Club.  One thing that is different for the viewer is that there is a chat room along side the video so that you can talk with the other people viewing the show.  So, even if you are the lone magician in your house (can that be?), you can have someone to discuss the show with that understands your passion.  That is pretty nice.

Unfortunately, the ‘live' times tend to be a bit late for the eastern part of the county.  Thankfully, there are a couple of solutions.  First, if you are familiar with RSS (Really Simple Syndication, the technology behind ‘pod casting') you can subscribe to the live feeds and they will be sent to your computer automatically.

They also maintain an archive of past shows.  The archives include a lot more to it than just copies of past shows, so even if you subscribe to get the live feeds, you will want to visit here to see the other great content.  There are plenty great contributors.  The work of Jeff McBride, Tommy Wonder, Gary Ouellet, Kevin James, Ricky Jay is there for starters.  There are hundreds of videos to choose from, many more than I could name.  Some are just a few seconds in length while others clock in over half an hour.  To help you find the things you want to watch, the archive content is divided into sixteen different sections. 

One section has 18 clips from the 2008 Combined Convention, for example.  Included there are some clips from the contests, Rick Merril, Ali Bongo and more.  Another ‘channel' that I had a lot of fun watching was the ‘Magic Gone Wrong'.  There are some funny clips as well as some ‘scary' ones.  There is also a section that promotes the great documentary "Women in Boxes".  You can listen to Eugene Burger or Jeff McBride talk about the film.  There is video from the movie's debut and you can see lots of other great examples of magical women including Luna Shimada, Carol Roy, Jade and many others.  There are several movie trailers as well.  Thirty one clips in all, a great tribute to a great documentary.

Finally, there is a way to upload your own video ... if you want to share that with the rest of the magic world, making this a bit like "Magic You-Tube" ... in fact some of the videos are actually hosted on You Tube and linked to SOC.TV.  Clearly, some of the videos in the archives arrived in this manner.  And, more are being added all the time.  In the ‘recently added' list there were half a dozen that had been uploaded within the prior 24 hours of my visit.

Stop by and enjoy all that Street of Cards has to over, but be careful not to spend too much time there. There is enough content to make this a real job.

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