according to<\/a> the American Association for State and Local History.<\/p>\nThe owner of the museum, Steve Busti, was originally fascinated by these museums and saw the interest of the public from the sales in his gift shop.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe used to sell a lot of our stuff in our gift shop, but over time, I realized that a lot of people were interested in looking at it rather than buying it,\u201d Busti said. \u201cI was brought going to places to like Ripley\u2019s Believe It or Not and circus sideshows, so in the back of my mind, I always thought it would be cool to have something like that in Austin.\u201d<\/p>\n
Busti originally dedicated a small section of his establishment to showing off the objects, but after accumulating objects over the course of 20 years, he was able to expand into several exhibits. His passion for these oddities stems from a childhood fascination with the unexplained.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven before I opened the museum, I was always on the search for oddities and things that are off the wall,\u201d Busti said. \u201cI knew that if I was interested in it, someone else would have to be as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
The exhibits in the museum, which include wax figures, taxidermy, cryptozoology and cultural objects from around the world, all mean a lot to Busti. However, Busti\u2019s favorite exhibit is one that has a personal connection with him.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of my favorite exhibits is \u2018The Creature in Ice,\u2019 and one of the reasons it is my favorite is because I got to see this when I was a kid back in the 1970s,\u201d Busti said. \u201cHe was traveling around the country all the way up until the early \u201880s, and then it mysteriously vanished. I had a memory of seeing this as a child, and it shocked me because it looks like a prehistoric Neanderthal man frozen in a block of ice. It kind of scared me for life!\u201d<\/p>\n
The creature eventually disappeared from the public eye, but Busti never stopped looking for it. After seven or eight years, he eventually got a lead on its whereabouts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 2013, I made arrangements with the original owner\u2019s family to purchase it, and we were on a TV show called \u2018Shipping Wars\u2019 where they drove me down with the ice man from Minnesota,\u201d Busti said. \u201cAfter we premiered him at the museum with a grand opening of his exhibit, and it was a lot of fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Busti took pride in being a unique attraction in the city, along with keeping the legacy of the dime museum and P.T. Barnum alive.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was very inspired by P.T. Barnum and what he did,\u201d Busti said. \u201cI feel like we\u2019re carrying on a tradition that is no longer being done anywhere. Being that unique kind of gives us this sense that we\u2019re carrying on the torch of the dime museums and sideshows.\u201d<\/p>\n
Imagination is an important part of the exhibits, and according to Busti, he wants people who visit to try to discern what is \u201ctruth, fact or fiction\u201d in the museum.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t tell people what\u2019s real or what\u2019s not, but we want the person who is visiting to kind of use their own imagination,\u201d Busti said. \u201cI think that\u2019s important. That\u2019s what makes this a special place, and it makes the experience that much better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Visitors can find the Austin Museum of the Weird on Sixth Street next to The Jackalope bar. They are open seven days a week, and tours cost $12.99 for adults and $8.99 for children. Their website can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN, Texas \u2014\u00a0For over 20 years, the Austin Museum of the Weird has been enthralling locals and travelers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155114,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[3564,4283,132,134,133,5604,14210,223,36427,27],"class_list":{"0":"post-155113","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-austin","8":"tag-app-community","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-austin","11":"tag-austin-headlines","12":"tag-austin-news","13":"tag-austin-what-you-need-to-know","14":"tag-human-interest","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-rhett-brady","17":"tag-texas"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}