Abracadabra

It’s not your typical Staunton Victorian, that’s for sure. When Sara Pittella, a student at Blue Ridge Community College, brings friends home they know right away they’ve left the real world behind.

“Maybe it’s the two-headed duck they see first, or the five-headed alligator, or the antique circus posters,” says Steve Pittella, Sara’s father.

“No question about it, there’s something Addams family-ish about our house.” Pittella, a veteran side show performer, clown, magician and creator of make-believe worlds, collects the weird and unusual like others might collect porcelain or silver.

The collecting is just a sideline, a familiar accompaniment to Pittella’s fascination with practical magic, a fascination he’s had since he was a boy of seven in Brooklyn. His father, a carpenter, gave him a magic set to share with his 9-year-old brother. The boys loved the illusions and tricks, and their interest caught their father’s attention.

“Before long he was driving us into Manhattan to an old magic shop there,” Pittella said. The shop, called the Flosso-Horman Magic Shop, had once been owned by Houdini himself. Al Flosso, its then-owner, was also known as the Coney Island Fakir. He specialized in side-show skills back in the day when carnie shows drew huge crowds to the beach.

By the age of 13, Pittella was eating fire: his brother showed a gift for escaping from confinement, both skills taught by Flosso when business was slow. The boys’ father loved constructing the oddball props and secret cabinets needed, for example, for a lady without a mid-section or a half-woman, half-spider named Spidora.

Once he was old enough, Pittella would take the train into Manhattan himself to hang out at the shop.

“I’d stop at Chock Full of Nuts for a donut and coffee,” he said. “This was like my tuition. I’d put them on the counter for Al Flosso.”

In return, he was allowed to hang out with the magic men who gathered there on Saturdays.

Pittella is quick to point out that the sideshow acts are skills, not illusions like much of magic. The man who swallows the sword, eats the fire, walks on the glass, lays on the nails and escapes from the strait jacket, is actually doing those things, at least in the magic curriculum Pittella learned. Mentored by Flosso, Pittella became an old hand with the nails and the glass as well as the fire.

“It’s a combination of stubbornness and also of concentration,” Pittella said. “You just have to insist that you’re more stubborn than the pain or fear. I never swallowed swords, though.” He also learned how to drive a spike through his nasal cavity and crush a cinderblock on his head with sledge a hammer.
Meanwhile, his brother learned to escape from more and more extreme confinement.

It was not the career path Pittella’s mother had imagined for her two sons.

One memory he has: “It was a typical night when we were teenagers,” Pittella said. “I had helped my brother into a strait jacket and suspended him from the rafters of our room. Meanwhile, I was eating fire when my mother walked in. ‘I’ve raised freaks,’ she screamed, leaving the room as fast as she could. I don’t think she ever quite understood it.”

However, his father was to become an integral part of the unique business that grew out of the assorted Pittella family skills.

First, however, Pittella had to get a little experience. He left college to tour the country, working as a magic clown, a side show performer, a medieval magic man in Renaissance fairs from one coast to the other.

It was his fire-eating, though, that got him steady employment throughout the 70s.

“Clubs were springing up in New York,” he said. Each one had to be more bizarre, weirder and more extravagant than the next. Walking around eating fire at discos was a reliable way to make a living.”

It wasn’t only the fire that left a bad taste in his mouth: “I always left thinking I would never go into one of those clubs unless I had to,” he said. “It was a wild time.”

As the demand for strolling fire-eaters in high-end clubs dwindled, the demand for special events increased. The Pittella family pooled their skills to launch a new business.

“We created theme settings for parties,” he said.

They had a huge warehouse with special effects and rigged up dream worlds for clients. Pittella’s father made the props, his brother came up with the ideas, and Pittella sold the concept to clients, who ranged from ordinary families to movie stars.

“Whoopi Goldberg would have a yearly Christmas party and we’d arrange everything, from Santa’s throne to Santa himself,” he said.
Or someone else might want to create a circus, or a rodeo. Often, Pittella himself would be part of the cast of characters, creating fantastic balloons for children or eating fire.

As their children grew older, Steve and Jane Pittella found themselves wanting to leave New York.

“We have close friends – also magicians — in Gordonsville. They got in the habit of scouting out small cities and homes for sale as they toured the countryside on motorcycles. One day they called us about a Victorian home in Staunton.” The Pittellas moved to Staunton earlier this year and are enjoying the quieter pace.

Once they got unpacked and settled, Pittella looked around for something to do. “I realized I missed entertaining children,” he said. On Halloween, he launched a new business. As the “Magic Guy,” Pittella entertains with balloons and comedy. He’s available for parties and civic and business events, and will make an appearance over the holidays as a magic Santa.

“When you come right down to it, it’s what I do best,” he said.