Tucked off the busy streets of Chinatown stands a nondescript building that gives only one small, easily missed clue to the literal magic that takes place inside: Beneath the doorbell is an insignia in the shape of an upside-down spade — but, also, the lower-case initials “db.”
Stepping inside, you descend a flight of stairs and pass a motorcycle gifted by King Abdullah of Jordan. Thousands of boxes of playing cards line the walls. Welcome to the secret magic lab where David Blaine, the world’s most famously daring magician, and his gang of shifty-handed pals come up with tricks, illusions and endurance-testing stunts. This is where Blaine figured out how to hold his breath for a Guinness World Record-setting 17 minutes and 4 seconds, how to control lightning and how to regurgitate live frogs.
The lair “is a childhood dream,” Blaine, 44, told The Post. Growing up in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, and Little Falls, NJ, “I always wanted a space in New York City where I could work on magic and not be distracted by anything else.”
The 4,400-square-foot lab spans three floors and includes administrative offices for Blaine’s DB Productions, a small gym loaded with free weights and spin bikes, and even two bedrooms for visiting collaborators (and where Blaine crashes after late-night sessions).
It’s a place where Blaine can bring in his favorite magicians to help him devise tricks like the mind-reading bit he did with Jennifer Lawrence on his 2016 TV special, “David Blaine: Beyond Magic.” Communicating with her via FaceTime, he asked the actress to shuffle a deck and name a card and number. She chose the jack of clubs and 23. Then, from several states away, he asked her to count out 23 cards. The 23rd card was her jack of clubs.
“You’re a witch!” Lawrence shrieked.
Last week Blaine was down in the lab, working with his current troupe of hired collaborators: the Israeli mentalist Asi Wind; Mario Marchese, a magician who fabricates mechanized props and specializes in performing for children (including Robert De Niro’s grandkids); and Paul Kieve, who creates magical effects for Broadway shows such as “Groundhog Day.”
Printed on the door that opens into the space are three words: “Meaningful, interesting, believable.” Tricks created here must fit this doctrine.
“I do that by finding what seems impossible and pushing myself to the point where I can do it,” Blaine said, offering as an example his newly acquired ability to bust out of NYPD regulation handcuffs.
The team has been intensely planning for his 40-city tour that begins May 30 in San Diego. Last week, they helped Blaine perfect the slamming of an ice pick through his hand while his eyes were covered with light-repelling silver dollars and black duct tape.
Wind characterized the move as “Russian roulette.”
“Doctors [told] me that I cannot do this show because they don’t like the idea of me holding my breath and drinking kerosene night after night,” said Blaine of other tricks. “Due to the cumulative impact, they think I am putting myself in a lot of danger.”
Dangerous or not, it’s rare for Blaine to abandon a trick. When he does it’s usually out of fear that a fan could try to copy him and get injured. For instance, he put a lot of time into a stunt that would’ve involved jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, but ultimately ditched it for that reason.
That said, he’s not daunted by the idea of putting his own health at risk. There was the time in 2008 when Blaine suffered heart arrhythmia while holding his breath underwater for 17-plus minutes. Prior to that, he blacked out while trying to snag the underwater record. And this past January, before 20,000 people in Las Vegas, he nearly got shot through the back of his head when attempting to catch a bullet inside a steel cup in his mouth.
That most recent scare was very real, to the point that Wind refused to work with Blaine on this tour if he insisted on doing the stunt again. Blaine acquiesced. “Part of my job,” said Wind, “is to make sure David is alive at the end of the show.”
Blaine’s internist, Dr. Ronald Ruden, told The Post of the upcoming tour, which is packed with death-defying stunts: “I think it’s nuts. He showed me his set list, and I told him that he should cut the show in half and do it over the course of two tours. That would make it safer. But he won’t do that. The crazy thing is that he is saving his underwater breath-hold for the end [of the show]. If he can do it for five minutes, after the exertion of the show, that will be amazing and borderline ridiculous.”
Blaine is unapologetic.
“Night after night, this show will be spontaneous,” he promised. “It’s about figuring out how much the human body can endure. Anything can happen — for instance, I may destroy my hand with the ice-pick trick, and then the whole tour will be over. That makes it less of a magic show and something of a magic spectacle.”
Blaine fell into magic when his mother gave him a deck of cards at age 5. By 18, he was doing magic for strangers on the street and in trendy restaurants like Bowery Bar and Café Tabac, where patrons such as Uma Thurman, Michael Jordan and George Clooney were floored by his illusions. Blaine’s reputation spread, and well-heeled Manhattanites began hiring him to perform at parties. In 1996, NBC signed him to a million-dollar deal for his first TV special, “David Blaine: Street Magic.”‘Doctors [told] me that I cannot do this show because they don’t like the idea of me holding my breath and drinking kerosene night after night’
- David Blaine
While Blaine, who is single and has a 6-year-old daughter with his ex-fiancée, fashion model Alizee Guinochet, is still a fixture on television, he makes his real money doing private performances for corporations and wealthy individuals. Fifteen years ago, he bought his Chinatown den, the walls of which are covered with vintage posters featuring his favorite magicians, including one that pictures Harry Houdini and that Blaine purchased for an undisclosed, record-setting price. Hidden out of sight are treasures such as Houdini’s handwritten and unpublished show notes.
In a corner stands an oversize bulletin board covered with index cards that contain the titles of Blaine’s moves for the upcoming tour. One reads “Dajo” — a reference to the early-20th-century performer Mirin Dajo. One day, Blaine revealed, he hopes to stab himself through his torso with a rapier in the way that Dajo supposedly did.
Right now, though, “I am attracted to things that look like magic but are not magic,” he said. “I tracked down a security guard in Africa who taught himself to keep one-and-a-half gallons of water in his stomach — and spout it out when he needed it. But he did not do it for the sake of magic. He taught himself this because there is hardly any clean water in his village and he wanted to be able to reuse the water at will.”
With the man’s help, Blaine learned to swallow a gallon of water, hold it in his stomach and top it with a layer of kerosene. He can now spit out a shower of the flammable liquid to start a fire and follow up with the water to extinguish the blaze.
“I am trying to see how far I can push the line between what is real and what is magic,” Blaine said. “[On the tour,] I’ll be drinking a gallon of water every night, putting things down my throat and pulling them out with a hanger — actually using my body as a magic prop.”
He smiled slyly and added, “I’ve always been fascinated by guys who put skin into the game.”