Since she's shutting her doors for good at the end of the month, I finally got up to the American Dime Museum in good ol' Baltimore. It's a recreation of the 18th century exhibitions of oddities and curiousities peddled by the likes of P.T. Barnum, until vaudeville and the movies made the sideshow collections obsolete. Five bucks very well spent. I took some pictures, which ain't great because my camera was damn near dead, causing me to work very fast, and there wasn't much room to maneuver. Oh, and I'm also not a top-notch photographer.

The upstairs was a replica of the original Dime Museum setup, where audiences would pay ten cents to scope out all sorts of interesting things. Right as you walked in, you were greeted by a Jersey Devil perched atop a display case.



Not to far off was the Jersey Devil's cousin, the Flying Squirrel. Funny, I don't remember Rocky having wings.



In the side room there all sorts of bizarre creatures, including a fossil of a fairy, a Fijian mermaid…



…and the oh-so-sexy half-human, half-gator. They also had a little bucket of "Gator Skin", which to my untrained eye looked a whole hell of a lot like sheets of seaweed.



In the main room there were two different mummies, very questionable medical devices and some interesting arts and crafts. The picture on the left is embroidered out of human hair. They also had buttons and jewelry made from hair. It was wild. In the interest of multi-marketing your sideshow attractions, the sculpture on the left was made by a "miniature man" (dwarf) out of matchsticks.



The back room had a model of a 700 lb. man. Died when he was only 39, who woulda thunk it? Oh, and they also had Abraham Lincoln's final bowel movement, fetched from the Surratt House and framed.



Downstairs was modeled after the early century circus sideshows, with some common faces from the movie Freaks. For you "Carnivale" fans, they had a 12.5 foot, 600 lb. bat, the largest in the world. There were also some rickety ass ferris wheel chairs and a tattoo machine that was pedal driven like a sewing machine. That thing was pretty intimidating. There was also this big ball of ties.



As I said before, it sucks that this place is closing on the 31st. Even though I went primarily for the freakshow factor, it was pretty interesting to get some historical perspective on how much entertainment has changed. I'll take a mummy and a fur-lined trout over sitcoms anyday.

Thanks for posting the pics, that's pretty damn cool. Have you ever read any of Ricky Jay's books on oddities, like Learned Pigs & Fireproof Women?

I wish they still had freak shows

No, but if you throw the recs my way, I'll probably grab some up.

whoa, that looks bizarre/entertaining man. thanks for the pics.

why's she closing her doors??

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At five bucks a head, it doesn't make enough money to stay afloat. It's not really near the touristy parts of the city either. It's sorta in the middle of nowhere--just southeast of the Meyerhoff, south of Penn Station and north of Walters Art Gallery for those of you keeping score at home.

There were probably 20 people there when we were there, and it was packed. Sometimes you would have to wait a few minutes to let someone into or out of a corner with a display of Le Petomane or a two headed goose.

Definitely some Ricky Jay then. He's pretty much an expert on exactly what would be found in the American Dime Museum. I have Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women, which is a historical look back at freaks, magicians and other weird stuff from the 17th through 20th century. I notice he has a new one called Extraordinary Exhibitions: The Wonderful Remains of an Enormous Head, The Whimsiphusicon & Death to the Savage Unitarians so I can't attest to its value. He also had a quarterly publication called Jay's Journal of Anomalies, which was culled together for a single volume called Jay's Journal of Anomalies.

Charles Fort is also interesting, but tends toward being more scholarly. His work mainly deals with unexplained phenomena in general. He only wrote four books which can be found all in The Complete Works of Charles Fort.

Kind of sucks that museum is closing. That's a shame.

Rads, tell me that's fake. Please.

It's the owner's private collection on display. We asked if we could buy some shit off him, but he gave us a few Chinese fingercuffs and a bobbing bird instead.

ha ha. SWEET!

that alone would've made my day.

Wait let me guess...

Shemale right?

Edit: ugly one at that. Why do a makeover and keep she-it ugly?

Who says your photography skills suck? I thought the picture of the tie ball was quite nice.

Gracias. I wasn't saying they suck, just that I'm not getting any calls from National Geographic yet.

That tie ball picture needs to be patched up and used for album art. Fo' sho'.

Wouldn't it be funny if someone from National Geographic happened to call you up right as you posted that? I love situations like that.
I love National Geographic pictures. Unfortunately I haven't run across any issues with sloths featured in them, yet. Oh well, there is always hope that the day will come.

Abe Lincoln's final turd = QUAL

And you didn't so much as pm me.

You would dig the Mutter museum if you ever get up to Philly, for sure.

Sorry darlin'. This was a me and best friend fence mending and getting back into our old mindset trip, for the most part. Busy schedules and womenfolk ain't no good reason for homeboys to get pissy with one another. We're trying to hit 34th Street in Hampden this week, too, but he's on call and my work schedule is all over the place, so it will probably be an "Oh shit, we're both home, let's go!" sort of trip.

I know how that is, got one of those with the sisterhood in Jan.

If you happen to make it thurs I'll be at the Ottobar. Short girl, glasses.

You should read this: