The front page of the South Bergenite newspaper says it best.

Paul Blum is the King of Costumes by Louis Chunovic

June 22, 2005, Rutherford, New Jersey, cover story – King of Costumes holds Free for All – If you haven't gotten your free gorilla suit, fuhgeddaboutit, it's too late.

New York's King of Costumes, Paul Blum, a Rutherford resident, has just finished giving away for free – first come, first served – what he said was over $100,000 and maybe as much as $200,000 worth of costumes and novelty items that were simply taking up storage space in a basement on Park Avenue in the borough.

Theatre groups, professional clowns and kids at heart loved the week-long giveaway, prompted by the loss of a lease. And one café owner even came from as far away as Detroit to cart off the freebies, Blum said. “I had tons of costumes, just mountains of them.”

About eight years ago, Blum “bought out a warehouse that had been in existence since 1925, and [we] took out 12 27-foot truckloads.”

The Rutherford giveaway goodies, including space suits, zebra suits, fur suits, magicians' ties-and-tails and two-person cow costumes, were what was left sold from that original warehouse haul.

Blum just shrugged off the cost of the giveaway costumes and the loss of the Rutherford warehouse space, which he'd rented for about three-and-a-half years, paying $500 per month.

It won't affect Abracadabra, his thriving Manhattan business, he said, or the available merchandise in the costume “superstore” (where there are 500 kinds of fake noses alone, according to Blum), or even his plan to build a costume/ magic theme/ amusement park, Abracadabra Land, about an hour-and-a-half away upstate. “The store is packed,” Blum said. “It's the most famous store like this in the world.”

Upstate, on the acreage of the proposed theme park, the “carousel is going up, finally, after about five years.”

The store itself sells not only to tourist and Halloween and other party goers, but to “all the TV shows,” Blum said, and the store is regularly visited by costumes from MTV, Saturday Night Live, David Letterman, Conan O'Brien and Carson Daly, among others.

While Abracadabra itself is on West 21 st Street in Manhattan, both the basement storage and the Costume King's own residence are in Rutherford.

Blum, set out to build his enterprise when he was a young man still burning with entrepreneurial zeal, practically broke, with just $171 in his pocket.

He spent the money on whoopie cushions and glad-hand shock buzzers that he sold on the street in Sheepshead Bay. Blum, who knew a good shtick when he saw it on TV, took a page from the hot new young, comedian of the era, Steve Martin: He affixed an arrow to his head – in one side and out the other.

“I wore the arrow for about two weeks when I started,” he recalled. “Then I wore the knife through the head for about two-and-a-half years.”

The whoopie cushions started to sell. Blum took the money he made and, in classic entrepreneurial fashion, reinvested it in yet more merchandise to sell.

Before you can say “abracadabra,” he'd made enough to open up his own store. Almost four years ago, and long snce having become a successful businessman, he came to Rutherford, buying a house on a quiet street where, it can be safely said, his is the only home with a cartoon chipmunk statue on the front porch and a sculpted macaw eyeing a realistic-looking, life-size alligator around back.

“I love the town,” Blum enthused, “I love the atmosphere – the old homes, the quaintness of the town, the trains going through and the church on the corner… and it's only ten minutes into Manhattan.”

When he first came to the borough to look at the house, Blum recalled, “I said, ‘Wow, I finally found the perfect place.'”

But if there's an upsurge in zebra and gorilla sightings in the borough, amused kids of all ages will know whom to thank.”

* SPECIAL NOTE
** Paul's neighbor saw his Lexus pull up in the driveway Wednesday morning when the June 22, 2005 newspaper article came out. Paul was just returning from a successful afternoon at his amusement park, Abracadabra Land in Montecello, New York, upstate near Swan Lake.

The Venetian carousel he imported from Italy finally went up Tuesday, June 21, 2005 after waiting 5 years. Enclosed is the picture of the carousel lit-up at night.