Museum Of The Weird
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Like it or not, tourist attractions are part of this city, too. But do they deserve the bad rap they get from grizzled locals? Decider takes an ongoing, objective look at the cold, hard facts of establishments that largely exist to draw in transients in Tourist Trap. In this edition: Museum Of The Weird, the most bizarre, non-alcoholic $3 buy on Sixth Street.
Roadside America says: “This cabinet of curiosities has grown to about three times its original size when it was opened in the back of Lucky Lizard Curios & Gifts in 2007. Proprietors Steve and Veronica Busti created the museum in the back of their gift shop to keep the tradition of old time dime museums alive.”
Roadside America says: “This cabinet of curiosities has grown to about three times its original size when it was opened in the back of Lucky Lizard Curios & Gifts in 2007. Proprietors Steve and Veronica Busti created the museum in the back of their gift shop to keep the tradition of old time dime museums alive.”
Decider says: Vampires, two-headed sheep, hulking ape-men covered in thick, matted hair—sounds like another night on Sixth Street. Thanks to the Museum Of The Weird, however, you can now enjoy these bizarre sights without the aid of a half-dozen Jell-O shooters at Dizzy Rooster. The Lucky Lizard may sound like yet another shot bar, but it’s actually one of the more unusual souvenir shops on the strip: It's well-stocked with the standard array of "Keep Austin Weird" T-shirts, but it's also got you covered with a variety of tiki-themed knickknacks, gargoyle figurines, and assorted handmade gifts and novelty items. 
Three dollars gains you admission to the aforementioned cabinet of curiosities in back of the shop (just past the larger-than-life pirate skeleton), an assortment of artifacts straight out of Ripley’s Believe It or Not. There are no living freaks on display here—you can head further down the street to Casino El Camino if that’s what you're looking for—but taxidermic oddities loom from the walls, which are lined with dimly lit display cases housing shrunken heads, mummies, and a 100-percent authentic Fiji mermaid. Cryptozoologists will delight to find that Texas Bigfoot has his own display cabinet, complete with plaster casts just like the ones made famous in those crappy ’70s documentaries about the creature. Further into the darkened recesses of this chamber of horrors, you’ll find even more items sure to upset any visiting PETA representatives, including a two-headed chicken and a one-eyed pig. (Hey, isn’t that a Cramps song?) Shunted off to the side are several life-sized wax figures of the famous monsters of filmland, along with a “pardon our appearance” sign indicating further expansion is still to come. This is the sort of quality entertainment you can usually find only by driving hundreds of miles out of your way to some seedy truck stop in Arizona.Tourist Trap? Of course it is—that’s the whole idea. The spirit of P.T. Barnum is alive and well here, and if you don’t feel at least a little ripped off, you’re missing the point. What else are you going to do with those three bucks anyway—buy another shot? If you’ve wandered into the Museum Of The Weird, there’s a good chance you’ve been overserved anyway.
