The United States Congress recognized

July 24, 2022 11:23 PM

Colon, Michigan as the magic capital of the World.

Wiki page.
"Mystery push to make Colon’s name vanish has ‘Magic Capital’ residents baffled"

posted by clavdivs (12 comments total)

I used to teach Human Physiology 101 to trainee pharmacy technicians. One of the habitual gripes was The Long Words. As a riposte I invited the majority anglophone students to reflect on how much more difficult it was for their minority Polish-first-language colleagues. That evening I put together a list of terms to show how baffling that might be.

Translation started off easy: homeostasis = homeostaza ; cytoplasm = cytoplazma ; aorta = aorta
but rapidly went south: kidney = nerka ; liver = wątroba ; pancreas = trzustka
For the next class I put up a slide summarizing my findings
- thalamus = wzgórze
- hypothalamus = podwzgórze
- adrenal = nadnercze "stuck on the kidney"
- pancreas = trzustka
- colon = dwukropek
One of my Polish students, very politely, suggested I might have the wrong word for colon "because, you know, dwukropek is the thing with two dots (gesture with two prodding fingers)". Much hilarity! With hindsight, I should have known that: dwu . . . kropek. Curse you Google-translate, for collapsing my street-cred again.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:39 AM on July 25, 2022 [9 favorites]

Colon is the magic capital, when it's working right.
posted by fairmettle at 12:53 AM on July 25, 2022 [2 favorites]

It's early, but your comment baffled me so I went to Google translate, and it still took me a minute to think of "colon" as a punctuation mark!

dwu kropek-----two dots
dwukropek-----colon
jelito grube----large intestine
posted by Miss Cellania at 2:37 AM on July 25, 2022

i've driven through it a few times - it must be magic, because every time i blink it disappears

it's kind of a dull seedy town except for a couple of shops which were closed when i went through

10 miles away in athens, they have an alligator sanctuary
posted by pyramid termite at 3:21 AM on July 25, 2022

The Magic Capital, huh? Quite a title... Where'd they pull that one from?
posted by entropone at 4:16 AM on July 25, 2022 [5 favorites]

I'm kind of glad we live in a world where the magic capital of the world is a sleepy town in a forgotten corner of Michigan with a quirky, somewhat embarrassing name which lends itself to endless numbers of childish jokes.

No secret castles shrouded by fog on imposing mountain peaks. Just a sign on a highway and a run-down looking shop. It's the perfect blend of "nothing to see here" and "everything to see here".
posted by RonButNotStupid at 4:59 AM on July 25, 2022 [5 favorites]

The Fourth of July parade is something to behold. Plenty of tractors and fire trucks, but no visible magicians.

Oh. Never mind.
posted by MorgansAmoebas at 6:02 AM on July 25, 2022 [2 favorites]

No shit?
posted by TedW at 6:29 AM on July 25, 2022

Colon, Michigan, a sleepy, one-streetlight town somewhere between Detroit and Chicago that proudly bills itself as "The Magic Capital of the World." (The name comes from a pair of nearby lakes shaped like the punctuation mark.)

That parenthetical confused me for a second, but I am assuming these are the lakes, in case anyone else is curious. Lots of lakes there to choose from though.
posted by TedW at 6:52 AM on July 25, 2022

I was really enjoying this article up until the author asked a young magician if his magic helped him "get girls." That felt weirdly regressive and made me check the byline, which is when I realized this article was written in 2014. Anyway, blecch.
posted by lieber hair at 11:18 AM on July 25, 2022 [1 favorite]

oooh Colon and its magic shops show up in this really interesting history zine about a magician named Dorny.
posted by PikeMatchbox at 12:38 PM on July 25, 2022 [1 favorite]

When I was 10 I wanted to be a magician more than anything. My mom surprised me with a trip to Colon, where we saw a magic show that I enjoyed more than anything Las Vegas, Los Angeles or NYC could offer. It was, well, magical.
posted by peanut_mcgillicuty at 5:23 PM on July 25, 2022 [2 favorites]