The Brass Monkey is not the type of place I usually write about in this blog but I was lured into it after seeing a cool octopus bowl in the window. Indeed this place was FULL of cute little octopus things, beach chic, owls, and chickens. It was an odd, colorful, and sweet assortment.
Also they had hats, lots of hats! I wish I looked good in hats… but alas I don’t think I do. So off I went to check out their humerous hand fans, their delightful assortment of couch pillows, and the lobster trap decorated with dozens of guady Christmas ornaments.
Again this was a lovely place for tourists to wander if you have the money for a middle class vacation like people used to have in the 90s.
You know with the economy crashing as badly as it has been I have a feeling more of y’all will be joining me in finding the best FREE entertainment New England has to offer! On this particular day it was the Beneski Natural History Museum attached to the university in Amherst Massachusetts.
This is one of the things I love about New England is their colleges and universities are usually quite proud to share their discoveries and collections with people, even people who do not attend said institutions, which is great because even though I was once academically inclined I now do not have a cent to give towards such lofty endeavors but that doesn’t mean my love for the sciences has waned.
The Natural History Museum is attached to an active science building. There are classes going on in the back but there’s pretty rocks in the hallway just outside said classrooms to enjoy if you’re quiet. I was hoping to eavesdrop on a paleontology lecture as I was surrounded by the aforementioned pretty rocks but instead my eyes glassed over at the sound of someone trying to make unsolvable math problems exciting in two different classrooms. Math. It’s never liked me and I never liked it. But the rocks were cool… there was even a display on rocks and minerals found here in New England and I had NO IDEA were here but now I’ll be looking! And the variety… my god, I’d never heard of most of these little earth treasures.
However I didnt swing by today to tell you about hallways, the main part of the museum was probaly more notable! It had more fossils than anything. Most of the big displays were brought back during one exhibition the college hosted in the 1920’s when all you needed was a $100 car, a pick ax, and a vague destination out west somewhere. The colorful details if this story were everywhere to be read and enjoyed.
But there were also drawers, so many drawers! Each just asking to be opened with all sorts of fun stuff… everything from trilobites to turtle fossils. My favorite displays included an Irish elk, two beautiful archapteryx complete with fossilized feathers, and a sea scorpion which is the state fossil of New York. Also the basement which had dinosaur tracks and dinosaur skin imprints lining all the walls.
And since I seem to be writing this entry backwards I will say the exhibits in the entry were very well displayed and even included a cute little dinosaur I’d never heard of and the school’s mascot: the mighty mastodon. A very excitable student greeted us and told us to ask any questions we had. I didn’t ask anything but I did learn the US used to have tiny camels running around and there’s a rock called wulfinite that’s is a gorgeous orange…
I guess that’s where I’ll leave you until tomorrow when I’ll tell you where we walked from here.
After enjoying a few hours in the Antiques Marketplace we wandered back out onto the streets and got lost looking for a hot dog stand but before that we realized there’s another antique store right here! Clearly, we had to check it out. Especially with such a razzle dazzle name. But we were kind of a bit burnt out and hungry but when in Rome, or rather Putney CT….
We were greeted with another large store with rows upon rows of glass cases. Most of their contents were pretty normal – mostly bricabracs and whatnot fir the rich grandmother in all of us but then we came across a box of Jarts! Gawd, did they look terrifying. A convenient way to murder your little brother or sister while making it look like an accident. “We were just playing! I swear!”
Weird and very charismatic chairs were scattered about – furry chairs, chairs with weird art deco designs, chairs that could sit alone in the middle of the room and make anyone visiting blurt out, “BUT WHY?”
And then came the all too familiar trickle of racist bullshit including several different copies of Little Black Sambo proudly on display. This quickly devolved into a case and a half of Nazi bullshit. We sighed. I didn’t bother taking a photo. Honestly this sight just made me tired. More helmets, more random loot, more shiny swastikas. Some things should just stay in the past, dead and forgotten. If only.
We then took a trip into the basement which had some more bargain finds. Things started to get more delightfully bizarre from there starting with more creepy dolls including a decapitated ventriloquist dummy, his head sitting on his lap??? Probably by no small coincidence this is the same area of the shop I kept seeing a cat sized void of color darting about at our feet like it was keeping tabs on us. I never give attention to weird shadows and phantoms, though I see them fairly regularly. In a place like this they could be attached to any one of these artifacts, its a hazard of the trade. I made no note of its existence as I ambled onward.
Back upstairs again and I was greeted with a whole cabinet of fruit shaped kitchen ware, an absolutely darling dresser painted to look like the front of a Volkswagen bus, the head of a manniken all punked out with a Christmas light Mohawk, and of course who could forget the absolutely terrifying leather gorilla in attack position with glinting white teeth or the worst doctored nude I have ever seen? A black and white photo of a topless woman with tattoos randomly cut and pasted over the image, I hope in the days before photo shop was a thing because WOW that wasn’t fooling anyone.
This was a nice way to top off the adventure we already had next door. Sort of like a happy bonus!
It seems like every time I feel like we’ve seen it all something else pops up that’s amazing and weird and 100% worth the long drive. That’s what happened when we drove up to yet another antique store (waiting for the warm weather to open up some outside options.)
We’d been to so many antique stores but this one was settled in the center of an old mill city and was HUUUUGE and clearly not what this space was originally used for. It meandered for what seemed miles with weird nooks, corners, rooms, entire whole floors, and the antiques were absolutely bonkers. SO MUCH WEIRD.
We stopped by this salt and pepper shaker shaped like a monk and a nun and my companion asked, “Why does it look like a pod person whose soul has been sucked out?” I couldn’t hold back the nervous half-triggered laugh of some one whose watched and been scarred by The Dark Crystal.
The day had been full of our fun little games: How Racist is this? You Know What a ____ Looks Like Right? And of course, What the Fuck is That?! My companion has roped in a gaggle of D&Ders to enjoy these games with us, taking photos and sharing them to long distance giggles and bewilderment. Initially what started all this was the fact this place was full to the brim with nightmare fuel.
I have become accustomed to haunted dolls but even I was alarmed to find a set of toddler twins still in their perspective boxes, complete with a menacing grin, more than a little side eye and their own bundle of red balloons looking like twin baby Its. Stephen King would be proud.
The creepy dolls were endless. There were ancient dolls with cracked faces, doll heads in tea cups, and even a cabbage patch doll head – sold separately from its body! I never knew they were sometimes sold by the head.
But there was also a ton of terrifying masks and paper mache creations that’d put the fear of Piñata in you. It was also a day for chasmatic chairs – including a solid mahogany shitter. The label said “throne.” This was near a three foot tall anthropomorphic poodle holding a serving tray, a pancaked pheasant on a wall mount, a candle holder that was actually half a gold horse leaping out of the wall, and painting I could only describe as, “A conversation piece.” To which my companion retorted, “Yeah, if you want every conversation to start with ‘What the fuck is that?!'”
We were in this one mall for hours. I kinda wish I was a picker and knew what I was looking at… or had a house and some money to invest in some more conversation pieces. Someday I’ll have a home of my own, at the end of a dirt road, and half the town’s children will think I’m a witch. Their parents will tell them to stay away from my house after walking into it one day and realizing a huggable baby baphomet sitting above the coat rack was the most normal thing they saw there. I look forward to this. To being “eccentric.”
I’ve been to the Hancock Creamery before but for some reason it never got posted?? Which is weird because that day we walked in and all I ended up buying was this awesome book of creepy photos and poems that one of the workers there wrote. It was called Sea Witch; Photographs, Poems and Forget Me Nots from a Mainer Growing Up. I should have had her sign it… as it absolutely delightful! The photography was whimsically dark, the poetry vulnerable, and it’s by a local author! What’s not to love?(Though for legal reasons I have to tell you if you buy it from the link above I will receive a small commission. I’m trying something new with this Amazon Associate experiment.)
This time around there wasn’t a stack of books at the door but instead we were greeted by an old man offering us fudge. Apparently, every Friday is fudge day. It was delightful fudge! And the antique store didn’t disappoint, just rows and rows and isles of some of the strangest damn things – everything from lobster shakers to a two-foot-tall chocolate Easter bunny mold to a decapitated ceramic clown head. Everyone needs one of those. And it was for the most part all different stuff than the last time. This has definitely been added to our list of continued haunts!
For the sake of making Catching Marbles more accessible this is the first blog entry which I am trying to post a reading of the entry to listen to. So, if you are so inclined enjoy, otherwise feel free to read it yourself and look at all the pretty pictures! Much love! ~Theo
Provincetown has been on my bucket list for a number of years, but I didn’t really know what to expect. All I knew was that it was a long drive and whomever I brought with me had to be really cool with a whole lot of shit. No prudes, no relatives, just merciless sarcasm and innuendo, like an episode of Hazbin Hotel! (which if you haven’t seen it yet it’s on Amazon Prime. Go watch it. Right now.)
ANYWAY, why would I want to visit New England’s queerest corner? Why wouldn’t I?! I figured it must be a neurodivergent heaven! I mean 1 out of every 6 normal people define themselves as gay but if you only poll autistic people…. literally over 70% of us identify as various flavors of the rainbow. Basically, it’s a giant blinking bug zapper to people like me.
Be this as it may I did not know anyone in my circle wanted to go and was more than happy to take some hostages on this venture. So, with BF and BFF in tow we made our way to Commercial Street, which I am going to say now IS NOT MADE FOR CARS. Do not drive down it! You will be MOBBED with pedestrians and only able to go at max 2 miles an hour until you find a parking lot. The parking lot I found was $15 and came with an attitude. Was I just learning how to drive? No sir, your instructions just suck and it’s making me nervous you’re standing directly in front of my car while I park. I suspect the $20 parking just down the road came with less guff. And a hanging sculpture of a Great White at the entrance….
Now that that was settled we all got out of the car and started our ambling. This was going to be another adventure in ADHD. We were immediately distracted by gargoyles. Fucking GARGOYLES. So, we walked away from Commercial Street to figure out why on earth there was a tower full of gargoyles overlooking the town. As it turns out this was the Pilgrim Monument. For a cool $20 you could take an elevator to the top. Or you could pay nothing and just read the pretty plaques probably stating that the pilgrims first landed in P-town not Plymouth. They merely wandered off and settled in Plymouth.
From here we decided to go back to Commercial Street which was FULL of summer tourists and pride flags of all persuasions. Some of them even flew out of the eaves of Seamen’s Bank which made us all giggle like twelve-year-olds. To be honest everything here seemed to be written with a wink and a nod. Never have I seen an oyster bar so thirsty. “Real men eat it raw.” (I’m really starting to wonder how I am going to contain the rest of this entry within the PG range for the angry and decidedly prudish AdSense gods.) Especially since the first thing we saw was this alleyway covered in…. I’m going to say erotic art. And baby doll heads in cages. My kinda weird.
It wasn’t all adult oriented. We started off within the normal area of family friendly activities stopping by a candy shop and checking off another bucket list item – trying saltwater taffy. It was soft! And sweet… and… I don’t have much of a sweet tooth but I’m glad I tried it anyway. The orange flavored ones were the best. From here we wandered into a little hippie shop with T-shirts and hippie clothing, funny bumper stickers and the usual touristy shit, and a forbidden staircase to the above 18 crowd. Wait, what? You can’t just dangle a forbidden staircase; curiosity will kill the cat (but satisfaction will bring him back.) So, what was up there? A weird convenience store of dildos and hookahs and bongs and pipes and more adult toys… just an overwhelming blizzard of rainbow colors… and textures… and why does this dildo look like it’s made for a platypus? (If you know, you know…and if you don’t you probably shouldn’t google what’s up with platypus bits.)
ANYWAY. We came across a lot that afternoon. Much of it was perfectly tame like a T-shirt shop for funny T-shirts that “can be printed in 9 seconds! Just pick a design!” As well as galleries, so many galleries with such a range of topics. There was even one that was just hyper detailed photos of your eyes. Or someone else’s eyes, but I’m pretty sure the point was to make it your own. And there was an AIDS monument we accidentally found as well as another monument with a ship on it that I would have read if I weren’t also trying to run and catch up with my crew. Lollygagger.
The whole street seemed to be places to eat, dispensaries, adult stores, galleries, tourist traps, billboards for drag shows (dammit, I want to see Hedwig live now!) and a smattering of bookstores. One such bookstore I’m pretty sure was a fairy trap. My companions, also twelve at heart, said damn straight it is a fairy trap. It was down a long alley that was completely covered in vines. How is that not some sort of fae attempt at luring unsuspecting humans?! We’re all idiots because we walked right into it. And it was sweet! A little quiet used bookstore with some really interesting titles… granted a large selection for the LGBT+ community. I enjoyed it.
Then we ended up walking by yet another sex shop but this one had signs in the windows none of us could ignore. One was the shop’s name, “Toys of Eros: More toys than the devil has sinners!” One point for the Greek mythology reference, another for the blasphemy, can we make it any better? Oh yes, they can also have a sign on the door that says they won’t sell to bigots except with MUCH more colorful language. I want to post a photo I took of it on FaceBook but I’d have to censor 30% of the words. SIGH. And beside all that there were promises of a sex museum! Fine… we’ll follow the free candy sign into the big black van just this once. The sex museum was more of an entryway full of terrifying cake mixer looking vibrators. Did you know that the electric vibrator predates electrical outlets? They had to be plugged into light bulb fixtures! So, I guess you can diddle or have light but you can’t have both. They also had a merkin. Looked like a dead rat. And some other things. Of course, by this time we’re in the shop. Clever ploy sex nerds, clever ploy.
First, we saw the case of glass twat ticklers. Slightly terrifying but I’m sure they were phantasma-orgasmic. I was then distracted by a rack of leather puppy masks, which are just… so… perfect…. for wearing when you go back in time just to scare the hell out of people. Hey, no one said it had to be a sexual thing. Sometimes, intrusive thoughts need love too. You could totally be a cryptid. I believe in you. ANYWAY, back to the task at hand – there was a wall of whips and switches and floggers with which to fondle all under a flying mannikin descending from the ceiling on a sex swing. Speaking of uses against manufacturer’s instructions I knew someone once who hoisted her rottweiler into a tree with one of those so she could spray her bath-hating pup down with a garden hose. Try getting that image out of your head.
I think the store clerk was bored because at this point she approached us and started showing us a whole rack of pocket pussies. You may wonder why a gay man and a woman would entertain such a thing but I wasn’t going to walk away without poking at it and HOLY SHIT this feels more real than my own flesh and blood bits! Whaaaaat is going on here?! This is where morbid curiosity gets you. Pondering what decisions in life brought you to this exact moment. They also had some that were less hyper realistic and more demure – and by that I mean hidden in what looked like a coffee thermos. I’m just saying, if I opened up my thermos one day and the death of Adam stared back at me from with it… Well, it’d just make the whole rest of the day weird, you know. Awkward weird. Naked Lunch weird.
It’s OK though because past the trans-friendly corner there was a delightful selection of vibrating muff marauders. Again, the clerk made sure to turn on every one and hand them to me and my companions. So many speeds, and vibration patterns, textures, and sizes. Cute little ones and ones that looked like they were made by Black and Decker complete with attachments. Purple ones, pink ones, black ones, shiny ones. Ones that thrust as well as vibrated! Hell, there was even one that sucked. Quite literally. It was a suction device for lady beans. That one was called the Womanizer. Of course, hearing that I tried to goad the clerk into telling me what was the most offensively named product in the store but she shied away from my cheerful trolling. Shame. I would have enjoyed that list.
As we left the clerk let it slip she was from NH and I had to ask where exactly. This resulted in her asking where I was and when I told her she had the same not great opinion of my town. Said the only good thing about it was the Walmart and the people were miserable. Guys, I’ve been saying this for years, and everyone always says all small towns suck but low! I’ve never felt so validated in my life to meet a complete stranger who sees the unique shittiness of my hometown. BIG SIGH!
It’d been a long but fun day. We’d found food and places to poke at and were really just heading back to the car when we saw a young woman across the street sitting at a typewriter with a sign reading something like, “I’ll write a poem for you.” This intrigued all of us to varying degrees and we went to see what that was all about. In short order we found ourselves talking to her and telling her about our day to which she took a notecard out, placed it in her typewriter, and in the matter of a minute managed to concisely summarize our day with some pretty words. It warmed my Beatnik heart and provided a beautiful souvenir. We decided to give her $20 for her efforts. And you can follow her on Instagram! @sticky6wordbandit
It was getting late and we were heading back to the car but that’s always perfect for yet more distractions. This time we’d be playing with a bunch of dead bugs. There was a whole shop for them! Just… butterflies in frames… and weird creepy crawly keychains… Made my inner bug loving twelve-year-old very happy. And finally we wandered into a well-lit and empty gallery because we’d seen one of the paintings from the street that looked decidedly like an all-male orgy melted like candles into each other in some sort of acid induced hallucination. The other art ranged from beautiful and serene to more erotic scenes. Then there was a little sign pointing to a dark streetside staircase reading, “there’s more in the basement!” Another fairy trap. I wasn’t about to but after reading the sign aloud my companion said we should go down and a disembodied voice from the underworld yelled, “YEAH! YOU SHOULD!” You guys, no, this is definitely a fairy trap. We’re gonna be disappeared. But alas the basement was just a TINY room barely big enough for the three of us and the disembodied voice was the artist who swooped by and up the stairs with all the deftness of… well, I guess a fairy.
I really liked some of the really close up paintings of blueberries and fruit. Sadly, I didn’t have 2 or 3K on me. But none the less I wished him good luck as I popped out of his gallery and into the night. We all agreed that as fun as today was we’d still like to come back and see more. And so that’s how our day ended… with sweet beautiful whimsy and more than a little innuendo. Totally worth it.
There’s few things more alluring than the chance to see dinosaurs. Add to that the fact this museum was free and we were all on board. To the dinosaurs!!
Of course being a natural history museum there was a lot more than dinosaurs but they were the first thing we saw – specifically a life size triceratops guarding the outside of the building and several pterodactyl fossils just in the lobby. Already I was endeared. From here we wandered into a large room with mostly prehistoric ice age fossils – all the most beloved creatures from the time – a mammoth, a sabre tooth tiger, even a moa which I lovingly call a “12 foot murder bird.” It was a nice display.
This wasn’t the end of the fossils. There was also marine fossils, including a precambrian section with an anomolocarus, a whole dinosaur room, and even a huge sea turtle in a large sitting area near the bathrooms. Also near the bathrooms was a super cool little water bottle refilling station claiming to have saved the world from thousands of plastic bottles. I liked that!
The museum also had a selection of very well done taxidermy of unusual species – my favorite was an aye aye, as well as displays about how taxidermy is done, as well as a living lab with leaf cutter ants and butterflies. For the more technical minds there were displays of the evolution of various technologies, for history buffs there was a very touching display of archeological finds including a Mesopotamian legal document showing a woman selling her own children into slavery to spare them from starvation after losing her husband, and finally there were several rooms dedicated to rocks and minerals that were far more fascinating than I had anticipated. Things I’d never seen – including one that looked like rolls of fabric and another spikey creation that made me itchy looking at it.
All and all we spent a couple hours in this museum and for being free I was quite impressed! I would definitely recommend it to any curious minds looking for something to do in the area.
The Bangor Antique Marketplace was what you’d expect with such a title – a large antique mall with lots of vendors and variety. I was particularly thrilled with their vast collection of wall art depicting seemingly haunted Victorian children and one photo portrait of what was clearly a Civil War orphan carrying his pa’s hat. You know, the sort of thing you hang up if you want a poltergeist..
Most of it was pretty standard fair but we did find a few cool things. One was a hand-pump vacuum?? The specifics of which confused me to no end but I guess vacuums predated electricity in every home?? It looked like a butter churn with a sucking attachment! We also found the weirdest “spice rack” I have ever seen in the shape of a 1950’s poodle mama and six pups. A few racist artifacts were spread about in the usual manner including a mammie doll that also doubled as a broom because why not? Funny enough since I have started going around to all these antiques stores pointing out these less than welcoming items I have noticed a lot less of them being blatantly visible. Are these two things connected? I couldn’t tell you, but I sometimes like to think I do have some effect on the world with my joyful chaos even though it was never my intent to make these things go away. I’m not sure I have an intent.
On the other hand there’s no shortage of terrifying clowns and haunted dolls and I would have it no other way. And this place had at least one vendor with some really instruments – mostly banjos, but weird ones.
I ended up buying a brand-new book that was at the door and clearly written by one of the cashiers. It had big glossy photos of creepy dolls taking an ocean hiatus juxtaposed next to some home-grown poetry. OUCH. Hit me where it hurts, I couldn’t leave it behind. I HAVE to support this sort of whimsical strangeness. An independent author and photographer after my own heart. I should have had her sign it! She was super pleased (and halfway shocked) I walked out with it. Maybe I was the only one… but you guys, you have to support independent authors and artists. You just have to. (And if you want to support this particular author the book was called Sea Witch; Photographs, Poems and Forget-me-Nots From a Mainer Growing Up by Kristie Billings.)
Of course, you could also do that by going through their shop and finding something nice for yourself. There was plenty to choose from! Well worth the visit!
There were two art museums within the pavilion but we’d gotten to the museums rather late and basically had to run through what we could. As such we had to only chose one of the two art museums. We chose the one with a Georgia O’Keefe and a Monet, neither of which my travel companion had seen before.
This was such a sweet little art museum. Not too big. Not too stuck on itself. Just the right atmosphere. There were some neat abstract sculptures and paintings I felt like I could have made…. if only I could find some rich people to ̀¶c̀¶ò¶ǹ¶, er, sell to.. *whistles innocently*
Most of the other pieces were impressive in their own ways. There were lots of European portraits which seemed to be confused as to how children should be composed… with boards for necks? Sure, why not. And one with a wealthy gent leaned back in in a pose I can only describe as “Tinder the 1700’s Version.” There were some poignant African American and black pieces. But with 15 minutes left on the clock until closing we had found neither Georgia O’Keefe (who I struggled to categorize) or Monet. Luckily the impressionists were a few rooms over and there was the usual line-up of Degas and Monet. Degas was predictable. Ballerinas. Monet though…. who knew he painted pink hay bales?! Were they supposed to be pink or did they just age weird?? I have no answers.
We had to ask the desk clerk for O’Keefe. We’d passed by hers it was so unimpressive and entirely not flowered. It was a simple, very flat, depiction of a gray mountain landscape. Underwhelming for sure. I was kind of annoyed by this… both O’Keefe and Monet were… atypical. But my companion was happy, so I was happy for him. Besides, I’d seen so much nightmare fuel to keep me bust it was still worth it. We made a note to maybe come back some day and see the other art museum as well as the Springfield Historical Society’s Museum.
This was a great art museum if you’re just starting out going to art museums. It wasn’t too big or overwhelming but still managed to be interesting. At no point was I stopped in my tracks and crying, which is always a plus with me in art museums! It was a nice entry point for starting to learn about the different art movements.
Good news! I managed to post one entry of Catching Marbles for every day of October!!! Granted to reach this goal I did cheat a bit, did a few underwhelming entries and some backlogged stuff, but when you have a crazy migraine for days straight, I don’t think anyone’s going to complain. I pushed HARD to complete this goal and since my body hates me for it, I probably won’t be doing it again, but I have decided the boost in traffic was worth at least trying to post more when I could. (My new goal is to hit 500 destinations before the end of the year!)
Because of the aforementioned migraine I was unable to go out and do something spooky for Halloween. I was barely able to pass out candy to the 12 kids who showed up. So tonight, will be another backlogged entry about a cool new shop at the Olde Mystic Village – The Rustic Relic Country Store. It’s a small and pretty typical country store but very cute, very country chic, very warm. I think it provided a nice compliment to the rest of the village and fit right in. I think this would be a great place to do some Christmas shopping for the people in your life who love this rural aesthetic.
