Museum Keeps Austin Weird
Attraction on Sixth Street draws tourists & locals
By Rachel Strickland | Photos courtesy of Steve Busti
Austin is proud to be weird. The city’s slogan even encourages everyone to “Keep Austin Weird,” so it’s clear that residents are pretty serious about it. Tucked away in the middle of the historic Sixth Street is a museum that’s doing its part to keep the city weird. The Museum of the Weird has a fun, campy vibe that is reminiscent of dime museums from the 1800s, and it has tons of odd and strangely enjoyable exhibits that are sure to shock just about everyone.
Steve Busti and his wife, Veronica, opened the Museum of the Weird in 2005, but it didn’t always look or operate the way it does now.
Originally, the place was called Lucky Lizard Curios & Gifts and the Bustis sold weird oddities next to more traditional souvenirs, such as jewelry and T-shirts. They also had live lizards – an iguana and a 4-foot-long monitor – in huge, glass terrariums in the Lucky Lizard shop. The problem was that customers weren’t buying the items as much as they were coming to look at the lizards. Busti said he suggested to his wife, half-jokingly, that they start to charge admission.
“That was where the idea for the museum kind of started,” he said. “We had this area in the back of the store that wasn’t being used for anything, and so I figured we could open a little roadside attraction back there.”
The Museum of the Weird is reminiscent of dime museums, which were created by American showman P.T. Barnum in the 1800s. Barnum is most notably remembered for co-founding the Barnum & Bailey Circus, but he is also famous for opening the American Museum where the entry fee was 10 cents, and visitors could spend all day enjoying the shows and exhibits available, including animals, live performances and other oddities.
The items on display come from a variety of sources, including private collections, estate sales and auction houses. In fact, Busti most recently purchased one of the famous Cottingley Fairies photographs at an auction in England. This photo is the first in a series of five taken in the early 1900s that, legend has it, depict real fairies posing with two young girls. Sometimes people bring items in for Busti to purchase.
“One time,” he said, “a guy just brought in a giant jar with a pickled, two-headed pig in it and was like, ‘Do you want to buy this?’ So, you never know where the next exhibit’s going to come from.”
The museum’s most popular exhibit is the Creature in Ice, also known as the Minnesota Iceman. Busti describes it as “a hairy, humanoid creature frozen in a block of ice,” and that’s exactly what it looks like. It was a famous attraction that made its way around the country in the 1960s and 1970s. Busti saw it when he was around 7 years old, and he credits it as one of the things that initially sparked his interest in and his dream of opening museum of weirdness. “My aunt was the one who took me to see it, and she was really special to me,” Busti said. “When she passed away, that memory came back.”
He said he had a vague memory of seeing the Creature in Ice, but he wasn’t sure what it was exactly, or if he had just imagined it. He did some research and found out it was called the Minnesota Iceman and that it had toured the country for decades. Then it went missing. Busti said that he told his wife, “It’s out there somewhere, and I’m going to track this thing down.” He searched for eight years, and in 2013, he found the Iceman. The Bustis purchased it and had it transported to the Museum of the Weird where it has resided ever since.
The museum is divided into sections. The main area is called the Cabinet of Curiosities. It has mummies, shrunken heads and all sorts of other weird items on display. Another section is dedicated to the Creature in Ice. A wax museum space is devoted to classic horror films, and another area is for freaks of nature, including oddities such as two-headed calves.
Because the museum is on Sixth Street, a wide variety of people stop by. “Sixth Street is a tourist attraction itself, so we’re right in the middle of it,” Busti said. Whether you’re an Austin local or a tourist visiting for the first time, the Museum of the Weird is a can’t-miss attraction.
IF YOU GO
Museum of the Weird
412 E. Sixth St., Austin
512-476-5493
museumoftheweird.com
Admission is $12 for adults and $8 for children age 8 and younger
Hours: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily
