Behind a souvenir shop on Sixth Street is a deliberate revival of a form of entertainment that died out a century ago. Steve and Veronica Busti opened Lucky Lizard Curios and Gifts here in 2005, and Steve began filling an unused room at the back with the oddities he collected, on the model of the dime museums P. T. Barnum ran in the middle 1800s: a paid room of curiosities, shown without apology and without much explanation. What is in it includes shrunken heads, two headed animals, mummified remains, wax figures of the Universal movie monsters, a Fiji mermaid of the sort stitched together from a monkey and a fish for the nineteenth century sideshow trade, and a frozen manlike figure that toured carnival midways in the 1960s as a supposed missing link. A small stage upstairs runs live sideshow acts, the sword swallowing and escape artistry that would have shared the bill with the exhibits originally. The point is not that any of it is real. A dime museum never claimed to sort the genuine from the fake, and this one does not either. It is one of the few places left in the country working in that tradition rather than exhibiting it at arm's length, and it sits on the loudest three blocks of bars in Texas, which is roughly where it belongs.
Getting there
30.2671, -97.7387
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
Whistlestop tells you this story automatically when you drive past. No searching, no tapping, nothing to ask.
