Imperfect Paradise: The Castle Part 2

Antonia Cereijido  00:01

[music in] Hey, this is Imperfect Paradise from LAist Studios. I'm your host, Antonia Cereijido. This is The Castle, Part 2. Last episode we met Carly Usdin and learned about how they got obsessed with a members only club in Hollywood called the Magic Castle and spent a whole year learning magic to access the space.

Carly Usdin  00:20

It felt like you were back in time in a place where like, almost everyone there is an older white, cis, heterosexual man. It's their world that you're stepping into.

Antonia Cereijido  00:29

And Carly was excited to be part of changing the Castle by bringing their friends and maybe even starting a club for queer magicians. Coming up on the show, in the wake of George Floyd's murder and protests in 2020, Carly reaches a breaking point, and the Magic Castle faces a reckoning.

Kayla Drescher  00:50

I still to this day, will not enter the building alone.

Paul Draper  00:53

We are not a truck with an engine. We are one wheel on a Radio Flyer wagon squeaking a little bit in the distance, hoping someone will listen.

Herve  01:06

Change has never happened quickly enough. But we have to be mindful about everybody's opinion.

Carly Usdin  01:11

I had good intentions, at least 50% good intentions. And then I think 50% kind of like, chaotic screaming, and like just having hit a wall and like feeling powerless.

Antonia Cereijido  01:24

Here's LAist Senior Producer, Natalie Chudnovsky. [music out]

Natalie Chudnovsky  01:32

I asked Carly to show me a magic trick.

Carly Usdin  01:34

These are two rubber bands. I'm gonna hand them to you. [duck under]

Natalie Chudnovsky  01:37

One of the only tricks they still remember.

Carly Usdin  01:40

What I'm going to do is connect them here. Now as you can see, they are linked... [blowing] until I blow on them. [Natalie: Whoa.] You can't, this is an audio medium, but what I did was I separated the rubber bands into separate rubber bands.

Natalie Chudnovsky  01:57

I'm impressed. And you're not allowed to show it to me again?

Carly Usdin  02:01

I will show it to you next time. [laughter]

Natalie Chudnovsky  02:07

[music in] Back around 2015, Carly actually used to teach this rubber band trick...

Carly Usdin  02:12

There was this thing my friends created years ago called A Camp, which was basically a queer camp for adults. And at that time, I was a member and I had just learned everything and it was like really fresh, and I was like, I'm going to teach a magic class. And so I taught like a bunch of other queer adults to do magic, and I was like, this is the future liberals want.

Natalie Chudnovsky  02:32

This was back when Carly had just become an official member of the Magic Castle. And they were excited about everything that came along with that- pins and branded tchotchkes, a new member orientation, and a members-only Facebook group. There were dues- $745 a year at that point.

Carly Usdin  02:51

And to me that felt like a fine price to pay to not only support the club and help it stay open, but also to have access to the space and all the fun that could arise there.

Natalie Chudnovsky  03:02

There was paperwork, the members code of conduct, which laid out how members should behave. For example, that they shouldn't sully the name of the Castle. And you also got this sticker to put on your windshield. So when you drove up to the Castle, the attendant immediately knew that you were a member.

Carly Usdin  03:04

Kind of like in the spot where like the oil change sticker is, and so when you pull up, the valet greets you with, Welcome home.

Natalie Chudnovsky  03:19

Welcome home. [music out] It was 2015 and Carly was in their honeymoon phase with the Castle. And now that they were a member, they'd get to do something they'd been looking forward to for a year- introduce the Castle to their friends. And that's where it all started to go wrong.

Carly Usdin  03:46

[music in] I was so proud of being a member because of all it took to become a member. And I really, really thought it was such a special place. So I was so excited to bring friends. And usually we'd have a good time. We'd see some magic, we'd have some cocktails. And then like the amount of instances where we would leave and we'd all have like a really weird story to discuss as we were waiting for the car at valet- that number started to rise. We're like, What a fun night! Yeah, that was fun. That one thing was, that was messed up though. Yeah, that was, that wasn't great.

Natalie Chudnovsky  04:31

This episode is about Carly's years as a member of the Magic Castle and the boiling point, around equity and police, that roiled 2020. This is part two of Imperfect Paradise: The Castle. I'm Natalie Chudnovsky. [music out]

Natalie Chudnovsky  05:07

You're listening to Imperfect Paradise: The Castle. I'm Natalie Chudnovsky.

Natalie Chudnovsky  05:14

So I used the internet, the way back machine, to look up the dress code.

Carly Usdin  05:17

Oh, yes. From when?

Natalie Chudnovsky  05:18

From 2015. [Carly: Oh my God.] There's two columns- [Carly: Yes.] One for men, one for women. In the men column: Think business attire. Men must be in coat and tie. For women: Think elegant attire. [Carly: Hmm!] Women must be in a dress, cocktail dress, elegant skirt and blouse combination, pantsuit with a matching jacket. There's some exceptions for ethnic and religious attire.

Carly Usdin  05:41

Like, it's like, women have to be elegant and men are business, like it's just very like, magician and magician's assistant.

Natalie Chudnovsky  05:48

When Carly brought friends, they'd sort of translate the Castle's aesthetic.

Carly Usdin  05:52

I would give them a more personal touch of the dress code like, Oh, just wear an outfit like you wore to this thing, or wear a suit or whatever, depending on their own gender expression and just who I know them to be. But I would always send them the link to the website so we could all have a laugh. [laughs] And also, probably subconsciously to prepare them for like, you're stepping back in time in this space a little bit.

Natalie Chudnovsky  05:59

[music in] Despite misgivings, Carly was sort of laughing off the dress code with their friends. But still, I was curious how it all made Carly feel.

Carly Usdin  06:28

When I was in that space, uh, [ ] Carly, a woman, she/her pronouns but dressed in like suits with short hair. And now I'm Carly, they/them pronouns, a non-binary trans person who would be wearing a suit and look the same. But my gender is read by people differently in every environment I go into.

Natalie Chudnovsky  06:48

How did you feel like people read you at the Castle? Obviously, acknowledging that everyone is different.

Carly Usdin  06:53

I was usually read male in the Castle. It was like a very binary world in that space. It is like you're back in time in like the 50s, and anyone in a suit is a guy. Anyone in a dress is a gal. And like the guys should hold the door open for the gals, like it is deeply that.

Natalie Chudnovsky  07:14

And you were someone who was complicating that binary. [Carly: Oh, yeah.] So what did that mean for you, when you were there?

Carly Usdin  07:19

I would try to just like be as unnoticeable as possible. When I would be in that space, I would actively try to make myself smaller, because I just didn't want to deal with it. And then when I brought people I would, you know, there was like that mix of like pridefully showing them around, but then also like knowing in the back of my mind that most of the people that work here are going to call me "Sir." [music out]

Natalie Chudnovsky  07:47

Carly still really enjoyed being other people's ticket into the Castle, but there kept being incidents like this one time.

Carly Usdin  07:56

My wife's birthday one year- they have a thing called the Houdini Seance. It's like an hour or two long performance where they summon the ghost of Houdini. It's like a little cheesy in like a Disney's Haunted Mansion sort of way, but like, so fun. We had requested this one performer to do the seance, a female magician, and we get there and it's just some dude. And like no one told us about the switch. 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, like assumptions of heterosexuality, like, Who's your husband? Who's a handsome man in your l-? You know, that kind of garbage. And you're like, first of all, this person's queer. Second of all, what does that have to do with Houdini?

Natalie Chudnovsky  08:47

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

Carly Usdin  08:56

When you walk in, and you feel like you're being transported somewhere else, [music in] there's a cool part of that, that you're immersed in a magical environment. And then there's a terrible part of that, that you're kind of like, shoved back many years into this like very hetero, white, patriarchal environment. The older white cis heterosexual male members, they acted like it was their playground, just walking around in the space, and hear them saying something gross about how a woman looked, uh, something you know, very sexual. I saw several white male performers with very sexist patter, that their routines involved making jokes about women. One time a man made a joke about his own assistant, and that assistant was his daughter. And that made me feel quite ill.

Natalie Chudnovsky  09:53

And when it came to female performers...

Carly Usdin  09:56

When you look at the schedule for the week, and you see who the performers are, usually there's not a single woman listed, and usually it's all white men. [music out]

Natalie Chudnovsky  10:04

This is something Kayla Drescher was really attuned to.

Kayla Drescher  10:08

And I know this because I have Excel spreadsheets examining how women are booked throughout the building.

Natalie Chudnovsky  10:16

Kayla says casual misogyny has always been a part of her life in magic.

Kayla Drescher  10:22

Been doing magic since I was seven, and the very first day that I walked into some magic club, the other kids told me that magic isn't for girls, and one kid offered that if I wanted, I could stay and be his assistant. And that was my very first day in the magic [laughing] community.

Natalie Chudnovsky  10:39

Kayla joined the Castle around the same time as Carly. But unlike Carly, Kayla wasn't a hobbyist. She's a professional. So for years she was a booked performer and teacher at the Castle, and she noticed the lack of female performers right away. She and a friend started this spreadsheet as an unpaid, unofficial project to examine how the Castle booked performers of different genders.

Natalie Chudnovsky  11:04

Oh, I got it. Okay, perfect.

Natalie Chudnovsky  11:05

Kayla emailed it to me while we were on the phone.

Natalie Chudnovsky  11:08

So I'm opening the overall stats. By Davids, Jeffs, and Johns do you mean literally people named Davids, Jeffs and Johns?

Kayla Drescher  11:18

Yes... You got it! [laughter]

Natalie Chudnovsky  11:20

[music in] So besides the fact that in 2017, more magicians named "John" performed at the Castle than women in total, here's what I found most interesting in Kayla's spreadsheet. Between 2016 and 2019, the percentage of women performers grew from about 6 to about 9%. If you remember from last episode, this actually tracks with the low ratio of women in magic. And Kayla's data also accounts for where performers are slotted, which theaters and which times, and she found that women tended to get the less prestigious slots- brunches and early shows. In 2019, Kayla presented these findings to the people who run the Castle, the Board of Directors. When I asked the Castle about it in 2023, they told me that as a result of the presentation, 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. [music out] Around 2018, Kayla and Carly actually met through a mutual friend. But Kayla never shared her spreadsheet with Carly. And Carly didn't share their experiences either. So Carly was feeling alone. And increasingly disillusioned.

Carly Usdin  12:44

I kind of just sat with all of it. And it felt like for someone like me, the price of admission to this space is $800 a year and like putting up with some bullshit. I think I was just like, this is, this is how this space is. And if I want to be a part of it, then I kind of need to suck it up.

Natalie Chudnovsky  13:04

Well, what I'm hearing is like, that was how you were there when you were alone. But maybe when you were taking your friends there, you were kind of seeing it through their eyes.

Carly Usdin  13:13

That's absolutely correct. All the little things I would notice were just for me. Once I started bringing my friends into the space, then I felt complicit and accountable. 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. So it became a thing to me where like, well, if I'm gonna go to the Castle, I'll go alone. And then it just became a thing of like, why am I going at all? Whenever they would say, "Welcome home," and you, when you drive up to the valet, it's like, this isn't my home, you know? It didn't feel like a place for me.

Natalie Chudnovsky  13:49

How did that affect you in your magic practice? Like, were you still learning new tricks?

Carly Usdin  13:54

Mm mm. I stopped learning. I would see people I hadn't seen in a while and they'd be like, do a magic trick. And I'd be like, I can't.

Natalie Chudnovsky  14:01

You had expressed that you wanted to bring in your friends. And then the other thing you wanted to do was potentially carve out a queer space. Did you make any moves towards that?

Carly Usdin  14:12

No. I didn't know how. And I had just sort of convinced myself that it would not have been met with like, open arms like that, that may- maybe would not have had a positive reception. And I take full responsibility for my inaction there. I do look back at that and wish that I had maybe tried, like, had made any effort. I guess I never really felt welcome enough to try to make it better. And I think that's probably what it comes down to. And I regret that. I was definitely not like going in advocating, trying to make my voice heard in a way that like I would normally do in my career, let's say, and I don't know if that's the difference between a career and a hobby. Like maybe I just didn't want to work as hard in that space. I wanted it to just be easier. I didn't want everything in my life to be that struggle.

Natalie Chudnovsky  15:12

Carly had been a member for five years, and by the end, they'd kind of stopped going to the Castle. They said it wasn't a conscious decision. They were still paying dues, but they let life get in the way.

Natalie Chudnovsky  15:26

And then what happens in 2020?

Carly Usdin  15:28

[music in] Well, COVID. Everything shuts down including the Castle. [cars honking and people shouting] In summer of 2020, there were a lot of protests here in LA after the murder of George Floyd. And I was not expecting that to seep into my life at the Castle, but it, they intersected in a very weird way.

Natalie Chudnovsky  15:53

Carly would go out and protest, and when they got home, they'd log on to Twitter to follow the news online. One day they're scrolling and...

Carly Usdin  16:02

I saw a tweet get shared into my feed that was a screenshot of a Facebook post posted by the Magic Castle.

Natalie Chudnovsky  16:13

Amidst the protests, The Magic Castle Hotel, the property adjacent to the Magic Castle, had let the LAPD and National Guard set up in their empty parking lot. In the photo, a Castle hotel staff member is giving candy bars to the National Guard. Carly honed in on the caption.

Carly Usdin  16:31

Tonight our hearts are with the business owners and employees whose livelihoods had been destroyed.

Natalie Chudnovsky  16:37

For Carly, this felt like the final straw.

Carly Usdin  16:41

Really? I mean, that's just an incredibly racist thing to say, to be that blindly pro police, pro the force that was attacking protesters unprovoked. I had already kind of fallen out of love with my membership at the Magic Castle and then seeing this just felt like a punch in the gut.

Carly Usdin  17:09

So then I did something.

Natalie Chudnovsky  17:11

That's after the break on Imperfect Paradise. [music out]

Natalie Chudnovsky  17:27

You're listening to Imperfect Paradise. I'm Natalie Chudnovsky. [music in] Carly is seeing the screenshot rack up shares on Twitter. And suddenly all these pent up feelings about the Castle hit all at once.

Carly Usdin  17:43

I think it was a combination of a lot of things where I felt like I had been really quiet and essentially complicit in some of this garbage for a while. And I hit a breaking point.

Natalie Chudnovsky  17:54

So they post on Twitter.

Carly Usdin  17:57

And I wrote, Hey, @Magic Castle, @Magic Castle Hotel. What on earth are you doing? Signed a longtime member who is very angry.

Natalie Chudnovsky  18:07

And then Carly goes to the Magic Castle members-only Facebook page and starts writing.

Carly Usdin  18:12

I have a, a screenshot so I could read it if you would like me to read it. [music out] "Going to post this knowing that I will definitely get banned from this group for doing so, but many of you need an education right now, and I've got the time today."

Carly Usdin  18:12

Oh my God. Who's this child?

Natalie Chudnovsky  18:31

[music in] It's a long post where Carly says they weren't comfortable bringing their friends to the Castle.

Carly Usdin  18:36

[fade up- reading from post] ...because of the racism and sexism I've encountered.

Natalie Chudnovsky  18:36

Addresses the National Guard Facebook post.

Carly Usdin  18:36

[reading from post] No one is calling for the looting of the Magic Castle.

Carly Usdin  18:36

People were saying that by speaking out against this National Guard post that meant that we wanted the Castle to be looted.

Carly Usdin  18:40

[reading from post] Of course, we want the club and all the wonders contained therein to remain safe.

Carly Usdin  18:54

Like there's truly like our historical artifacts in this club. Like obviously, I care about that.

Carly Usdin  18:58

[reading from post] But that is a completely different issue than giving our parking lot to the LAPD.

Natalie Chudnovsky  19:00

Carly brings up what they saw going on at the protests.

Carly Usdin  19:03

[reading from post] I've had friends put in jail all week for simply exercising their First Amendment rights. I've had journalist friend shot at point blank range by rubber bullets. Ask yourself who these forces are protecting. If they are protecting buildings, then why are they shooting people?

Natalie Chudnovsky  19:09

Links to different resources...

Carly Usdin  19:12

[reading from post] And here is a reading list to start with if you want to step outside your comfort zone. Here's a primer on white privilege...

Natalie Chudnovsky  19:23

And a final closing statement to the AMA, the Academy of Magical Arts and its clubhouse, the Magic Castle...

Carly Usdin  19:31

[reading from post] I'd love to see the AMA turn over a new leaf and become a progressive institution dedicated to raising up newer voices in magic, voices that are not all male, not all white. And as long as I'm a member, I will be committed to helping these efforts.

Carly Usdin  19:31

[music out] So I posted that on Facebook. There's definitely a part of me that was like, this is a teachable moment. And maybe they'll listen, although when I read back, the tone I took- it was like very dismissive. I think I thought I was like doing the work. I had good intentions, at least 50% good intentions. And then I think 50% kind of like chaotic screaming. And like just having hit a wall and feeling powerless.

Natalie Chudnovsky  20:18

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 got into fights about the Castle's environment, and the nature of the protests. The Magic Castle is supposed to be a non-political organization. So Carly had never explicitly seen the politics of its members. And suddenly, it was all out in the open on this Facebook group. And I was curious how the Castle's leadership was reacting. This is the take of one longtime Castle member and magician, Paul Draper.

Paul Draper  21:00

The Castle was being run and managed by individuals who were of their time and their culture, which is one with a lot of misogyny, punching down, and a love of Orientalism, so I think they were not prepared for it.

Natalie Chudnovsky  21:21

Yeah. Are there examples of that that come to mind?

Paul Draper  21:24

One of the major examples is the artwork.

Natalie Chudnovsky  21:28

[music in] This was becoming a topic of discussion on the Facebook group, that the Castle had all these relics of Orientalism, which was a fad in 19th century Europe.

Angela Sanchez  21:41

A lot of this was then appropriated by white magicians to invent personas that they would use to sell their own magic acts.

Natalie Chudnovsky  21:51

That's Castle member and magic historian Angela Sanchez.

Angela Sanchez  21:56

One particularly famous magician went by the stage name of Chung Ling Soo.

Natalie Chudnovsky  22:01

His real name was Will Robinson, and he was a white guy from New York, copying the act of a real Chinese magician, Ching Ling Foo. Now, we'd call it yellow face. And kind of like the debate around Confederate statues, there was debate around what the Castle should do about these paintings, which in this moment for some members, no longer felt tenable. Here's former Magic Castle member, Brandon Martinez.

Brandon Martinez  22:31

I would make jokes about the Chung Ling Soo stuff like, Oh yeah, by the way, that's a white dude, and it's, it's racist. Like, you know, it's the Castle. What are you gonna do? After the self-realization that most people in the United States went through, you kind of go to a point where you're like, Oh, that's not good enough.

Natalie Chudnovsky  22:50

Carly was finally seeing people call out all the things that they'd found problematic and more- the dress code, sexist patter, how performers sometimes called up female audience members to embarrass them. This one infamous spot at a bar below the central staircase where if you looked up, you could see up someone's skirt. And then there was the way female performers were treated at the Castle. Kayla Drescher, the magician with a spreadsheet, had a lot of thoughts on this topic, about the interactions she seemed to have over and over again. [music out] She recalled this one evening, when a guy came up to her at one of the Castle's bars.

Kayla Drescher  23:33

He came up and was like, Sweetheart, trying to get me a drink. I was like, Great, uh, give the bartender a second. And he was like, How are you not the bartender? Because I'm the magician. And he was like, A little lady doesn't do any magic. And then when I started my show, he just left.

Natalie Chudnovsky  23:34

Can I, can I ask you something? I can imagine a defender of the Castle saying, It's not our fault that some of the clientele is problematic, but that's not a reflection on the Castle itself. We don't condone that. What would your response to that be?

Kayla Drescher  24:09

Well, my response to that number one is that man was a magician member. So that man passed an audition. He was allowed to come in. He can exist in the Castle. He pays a membership. And of course the Castle isn't responsible for everything that somebody says. What the Castle I believe is responsible for, is creating an environment where that isn't tolerated.

Natalie Chudnovsky  24:36

Kayla wanted a change in the Castle's culture. And she had specific ideas, for example, a clearer path for guests and performers to report incidents like assault. And that stemmed from Kayla's personal experience at the Castle.

Kayla Drescher  24:51

I had three different incidences of assault or harassment where like, I definitely was physically assaulted by two different magicians and then a different magician would not leave me alone, like, follow me out to my car, etc.

Natalie Chudnovsky  25:06

Kayla says she didn't report it at the time, afraid that it would hurt her career and that she wouldn't be believed. She said the staff didn't intervene.

Kayla Drescher  25:17

They're just there. They're just watching. They're not doing anything. So it was in that moment, I realized I'm not safe here. I'm 24 at this point. So I'm young. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know how to speak out. I don't know how to stand up for myself, and I just shut down while it was all happening. I know a lot of women who stuff like that has happened to, and they immediately just quit magic. They never come back. And that, that sucked. I didn't want that to happen. And so I really intentionally made sure that I didn't quit magic. I just had to be very, very conscious of how I accessed the clubhouse. So I still to this day, will not enter the building alone.

Natalie Chudnovsky  25:56

[music in] When I brought this up to the Castle, they said if Kayla wants to talk with management about this now, she would be listened to and taken seriously. When I talked with Kayla, she said for her, it wasn't about calling out any specific members or staff, but about conveying the environment of the Castle that made her not want to speak out in the first place.

Kayla Drescher  26:20

Magic is still this microcosm of the world, but of the world in like the 50s and 60s. It's a world of secrets. 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. All of the issues that I was experiencing with misogyny, were now all packed into a clubhouse. [music out]

Natalie Chudnovsky  26:52

I talked to about a dozen former and current Magic Castle members about the summer of 2020 when the Facebook group was exploding. There were whispers of an LA Times investigation, and the online conversation was starting to get ugly.

Paul Draper  27:09

The immediate response of the leadership at the Castle was, Well, shut down the chat board, and this causing a split off of a division of members, creating a separate account to the owl bar where people would speak freely.

Carly Usdin  27:26

It was weird because like this kind of like progressive community kind of started to get a little louder. I'm like, Whoa, like-minded people in this group. Where have they been? It's like the moment they go to Toontown in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? a little bit, where you're just like, Oh my God, what is this world? That's how it felt. There's like this private Facebook group where like, of all these like progressive, interesting people that are at the Magic Castle.

Natalie Chudnovsky  27:51

[music in] People like Paul and Kayla.

Kayla Drescher  27:56

We started having Zooms with anybody who wanted to come and we were just having like, just open and honest conversations about how the Castle treats members. Lots and lots of sharing stories.

Carly Usdin  28:09

Like, wow, there's a whole lot of us on this Zoom. There's at least 20, 30 people in here. What can we do? Do we have options? Can we complain about things? Can we make suggestions? Are we going to be heard?

Natalie Chudnovsky  28:22

In that moment, it felt like the answer might be yes. The Castle didn't put out an apology for the parking lot situation, but after more back and forth on the Facebook group and a small protest outside the Castle, they did put out a statement saying that Black Lives Matter. They were going to meet and consider the Orientalist artwork situation. And on June 17th, 2020, Carly saw an announcement from the Castle's Board of Directors. [music out]

Carly Usdin  28:52

[reading post] The formation of an ad hoc diversity and inclusion committee that will develop ways to expand the diversity of our club and to bring the art of magic to underserved communities in the greater Los Angeles area. We know many of you would be interested in participating in this new diversity and inclusion committee. We will be establishing how to go about joining in and informing you very soon.

Carly Usdin  29:13

It definitely felt like a turning point. And I'm like, 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 like reckoning?

Leslie Short  29:26

When George Floyd's murder happened, companies really felt the pinch to say, We're gonna do pledges. We're going to do better. We have to do something.

Natalie Chudnovsky  29:31

This is Leslie Short. She's been in the DEI space for over 25 years and has her own firm that helps companies work on their cultures. Leslie remembers that in the summer of 2020, she was booked from morning until 10 o'clock at night. And it was like that for all the folks she knew in the industry. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, DEI related job openings spiked by 55% in the immediate month after George Floyd's murder.

Natalie Chudnovsky  30:11

Can I ask you how many private clubs you worked with?

Leslie Short  30:15

Two.

Natalie Chudnovsky  30:16

Okay. And they both decided to have DEI committees after 2020?

Leslie Short  30:22

Oh, absolutely. But so did most [laughing] companies.

Natalie Chudnovsky  30:26

The Castle was no different in announcing their intentions to do better. Kayla Drescher was asked to join the nascent Diversity and Inclusion Committee, and Carly wanted in, too. Encouraged by Kayla, they sent an email asking to join.

Carly Usdin  30:41

I would love to be a part of that. I would love to fulfill this thing that was in the back of my mind when I first became a member of like, there is a really great community here. Magic is really special. This is a special place. I think we can make it more inclusive, bring it to the 21st century. 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.

Natalie Chudnovsky  31:12

I think for a lot of people, it felt like that summer of 2020 was a turning point when problematic institutions would have to shift. When things would finally get better. That's how it felt for Carly. And then that balloon of hope, punctured.

Natalie Chudnovsky  31:30

[music in] How did you receive the letter?

Carly Usdin  31:35

I think it was just an email.

Natalie Chudnovsky  31:36

What does the subject line say?

Carly Usdin  31:38

Academy of Magical Arts, Inc. Ethics and grievance committee.

Natalie Chudnovsky  31:45

When Carly joined the Magic Castle, they'd signed a member code of conduct agreeing not to disparage the Castle. And two members felt that Carly had done so when posting on Twitter and Facebook. They'd filed a grievance. Carly was at risk of being kicked out of the Magic Castle.

Antonia Cereijido  32:07

That was LAist Studios Senior Producer, Natalie Chudnovsky. Next time on Imperfect Paradise…

Carly Usdin  32:14

As the minutes are ticking away, as this is about to start, I get incredibly nervous.

Kayla Drescher  32:20

It just felt a lot like we were banging our head up against the wall for nothing.

Paul Draper  32:25

And it took 10 months of us meeting before we were able to make any sort of public statement.

Natalie Chudnovsky  32:33

I know that the committee was making recommendations in 2021. Why do you think it was difficult for them to get...

Herve  32:40

Because I think the first, the first 2021, what the, the vision was not clear. I was not really like impressed by the way we were doing things.

Antonia Cereijido  32:49

Plus, an explosive investigation from the LA Times rocks the members- only club. That's coming up on the next episode of Imperfect Paradise: The Castle. Listen to new episodes of the podcast every Wednesday, or tune in on Sunday nights at 7 PM on LAist 89.3 or LAist.com. [music out]

Antonia Cereijido  33:08

[theme music in] Imperfect Paradise: The Castle is recorded, written, produced and sound designed by LAist Senior Producer, Natalie Chudnovsky. I'm the show's host, Antonia Cereijido. Catherine Mailhouse is the Executive Producer of the show and our Director of Content Development. Shana Naomi Krochmal is our Vice President of Podcasts. Additional production by Marina Peña. Jens Campbell is our Production Coordinator. Editing by Audrey Quinn. Fact checking by Caitlin Antonios. Our theme was composed by E. Scott Kelly, who is also our engineer. Imperfect Paradise is a production of LAist Studios. This podcast is powered by listeners like you. Support the show by donating now at LAist.com/join. This podcast is supported by Gordon and Dona Crawford, who believe quality journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live. [music out]