Emily Carter felt like she had the perfect job. She was working at a climate tech startup where she believed in the mission, respected her co-workers and even liked her boss. But something was missing, she told Gazetteer SF.
“Career has been a marker of success in the world — that’s how I was told it should be — but I’ve always felt a little like I didn’t quite fit in or didn’t quite get it,” she said.
Now, Carter has become part of a larger wave of once-traditional workers ditching their SF business casual attire in favor of something a little more fulfilling: professional magic.
“All the cool kids are earnestly pursuing deep personal fulfillment amid a harsh and unstable world,” Carter told Gazetteer, quoting a response she received to her email letting people know about her next move. “That really sums it up.”
With the transition, though, she’s leaving one traditionally male-dominated industry for another. She now aims to be part of the change in the small community of San Francisco magicians.
“I hope we can have this conversation in like a year and it looks totally different,” she said. “I’m just excited to sort of say goodbye to some of those tropes of just like a sexy, silent assistant that kind of undergoes some bodily harm on stage. We’re done with that.”
About five years ago, Carter took a trip to Los Angeles and visited the infamous Magic Castle, which she described as going into “a magic K-hole” where there are no windows, everyone’s dressed in black tie and there’s that “old, dark wood energy” from another era.
“In some ways that’s very cool,” but in other ways, there “were very few women, few young people, queer people — like anyone different from the norm of how this art form has been preserved,” she said. “So it was both really traditional and analog in a lot of cool ways and in a lot of not cool ways, so I wondered if I could sort of bring a different energy or at least try to inspire something a little different.”
Once she got back home to San Francisco, she started taking lessons at a magic shop in the Sunset called Misdirections Magic Shop. The shop’s owner, Joe Pon, has become a mentor for a lot of folks in San Francisco’s magic scene, Carter said. She credits him and other male mentors “who want to see a different environment and are really stoked about my interest and helped fuel that fire.”
She also gave a nod to Andrew Evans, owner of SF magic venue The Magic Patio, who has been very generous with his performance space, she said. Evans, a former product designer at design firm IDEO, opened The Magic Patio in the Outer Mission back in 2019, after spending about five years hosting magic shows in his own backyard, he told Gazetteer.
“In a fun, tongue and cheek way, it’s like a wink to the Magic Castle,” he told Gazetteer. “LA may have a castle but we have a patio.”
Evans said he’s going for something that feels “very approachable, but also top tier.” He wants to have the best magic — but not make people feel unwelcome, the way we’ve heard the Magic Castle can.
On most nights, Evans is the only performer at The Magic Patio, but sometimes Carter performs close-up magic ahead of the main show for early arrivals. Evans envisions hosting more open magic mic nights next year to make space for other local performers, he said.
In the meantime, Carter — professionally known as Ms. Direction — is making ends meet with more intimate magical gatherings and is headed to London next week to perform in an immersive theater show. Her website lists private events, corporate gatherings, weddings and live shows as golden opportunities to hire her for her close-up magic and mentalism, which Carter describes as “like mind reading and prediction.”
Both Evans and Carter pointed to what they see as a unique spin on magic in the city, with the “DIY, grassroots nature of San Francisco meeting this high caliber of talent,” Carter said. “And I think that tech influence…makes it kind of modern and young-feeling.”
As Carter embarks on her new professional journey, she’s looking for opportunities to create astonishment and delight, especially as we continue to exist in a world that so often prioritizes speed, efficiency and automation, she said.
“I think we live in a world with not a lot of mystery anymore,” Carter said. “Most of the continents have been explored, AI can write an essay for you in seconds and science can explain the daily things in our life. And I think magic really preserves mystery and sort of resists any easy explanation.”
