[title]
New York has no shortage of “interactive experiences” promising to transform your social life, whether it’s candle-making, pottery throwing or painting mediocre watercolors while drinking Chardonnay.
But a tiny live magic workshop in Midtown might actually be one of the few classes where you leave with a skill people will continue forcing you to perform at dinner parties for the next six months.
Open With Magic, a 90-minute adult magic workshop held in Manhattan, is quietly becoming one of the city’s more unusual after-work activities. For $75, small groups learn up to six practical sleight-of-hand tricks designed specifically for adult life—not giant top-hat rabbit situations, but tricks involving dollar bills, coins, cards, pens and business cards you could realistically pull out at a bar.
And unlike most magic shows, this one is less about watching somebody else be mysterious and more about discovering you are apparently capable of lying to people professionally with a deck of cards.
“This isn't a passive demo,” founder and magician Jeremy Pasternak told Time Out. “It's a hands-on workshop where you'll walk away with the secrets to real tricks, real technique and the mindset of how to fool people.”
Pasternak, who goes by Jeremy the Magician, has been performing professionally for roughly 15 years, including stints with Norwegian Cruise Line, the Off-Broadway institution Monday Night Magic and countless close-up performances around Times Square. He’s also been teaching workshops for about eight years.
The adult-focused approach is what makes the whole thing surprisingly compelling. Instead of flashy prop magic aimed at kids, the workshop leans into subtle psychological misdirection and tricks that feel weirdly plausible in everyday situations. “Kids love loud, colorful, prop magic,” Pasternak said. “Magic for adults needs to be more natural, organic, and fit within their everyday life.”
The class also dives into the psychology behind why people fall for magic in the first place, including the small performance details that separate a convincing trick from someone fumbling through YouTube tutorials. That, honestly, may be the biggest selling point here: unlike another paint-and-sip canvas you immediately hide in your closet, this is one of the rare workshops where the takeaway might actually stick around.
New workshop sessions open every few weeks and the full schedule is available on Open With Magic.