Glass Eyes and Bark Birds

schmooschmoo Registered Users Posts: 8,468 Major grins
edited April 13, 2011 in Journeys
Dgrin has quite a few SF Bay Area locals, but how many of them knew about the strangeness that is the Zymoglyphic Museum?

This weird little collection sits in a beat-up wooden shed in some dude's driveway. It is a hardcore suburban neighborhood at the end of a picturesque cul-de-sac. On April 9th, Obscura Day, I thought it'd be an interesting way to spend part of the morning.

Of course I had no illusions that this would take more than half an hour... and that was if we chatted up the owner and got really into it.

San Mateo is not far, so what's there to lose? We hopped on the road with friend and fellow Dgrinner Andrew (dna) to find out:

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A kindly gentleman creates alternate histories and interesting sculptures out of.... stuff:

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That owl sculpture was actually rather terrifying. The three of us stomping around the shed was causing enough vibrations to make the skull-face bobble around on its neck. I was terrified that it was just going to fall apart simply by us walking around.

While I can totally appreciate having a hobby, I did notice that a lot of the specimens were just as dusty and cobwebby inside the cases than outside of them. It added to the.... um, je ne sais quois quality of the exhibit.

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He even has some fairly interesting altered engravings print thingies hanging around back, on the fence.

And don't forget the "gift shop"!

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The guys were just humoring me. I doubt too many pics were actually taken:

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Then it was time to cleanse the weirdness with lunch:

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... and then a walk on the beach in the sea air. There was quite a lot of it, enough to blow us clean over.

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Here's to finding more oddities in your neck of the woods! You really, really never know what's out there. :wink

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