A Day in L.A. : The Bearded Lady Mystic Museum

Moving back to L.A., my home town, has been a wonderful adventure for me. I was aware of the changes in some of the San Fernando Valley areas I used to frequent when I visited my folks, but since I need to navigate around here on a regular basis, I almost feel like I'm visiting a new city.

Magnolia Boulevard in Burbank has always been home to some pretty funky places. Antique and second-hand stores abound, and always have, but now some new kinds of shops are infiltrating the older lathe-and-plaster buildings and making a stroll down the boulevard even more fun.

Case in point: The Bearded Lady Mystic Museum.

The Bearded Lady  Mystic Museum and Bearded Lady Vintage & Curiosities are two shops with a pass-through between them. 

On one side, you have The Mystic Museum. The front of the store's space is filled with a wonderfully-presented and tasteful array of dark delights: Books on fortune-telling, as well as several types of Tarot Cards rub elbows with elegant  fortune-telling teacups from Miss Havisham's Curiosities. A strange taxidermied and altered rodent sits atop a faded pink tasseled foot rest, gazing into a cracked and broken gilt mirror. Books on Houdini are nestled among ceramic hands, which show how to read palms.

My kind of weird store, for certain!

As I wandered the shop floor, I discovered Beistle-inspired pins, made by Creepy Co, as well as some really nifty Halloween III mask pins, made by Silver Shamrock (sold at one time by Fright Rags, though I don't see them as available on their site right now.) 

Vintage style silhouette cards bump up to tiny bat skeletons...

Lovely linen hand-towels sport bats, a perfect addition to the guest bath!

Houdini glowers from a shelf...

In the back of the shop is a doorway which leads to a real museum dedicated to vintage mysticism, spirit boards and all-around occult goodness. I didn't have time to go in and take the tour, but it's definitely on my list the next time I'm in the neighborhood.

The other side of the shop, Bearded Lady Vintage & Oddities, will fascinate you with its various taxidermied and resin-encased creatures, as well as unusual antique furnishings and dare I say, "home decor?" (Some of the furnishings would be delightful for the Goth household.)

The Bearded Lady will tell your fortune for a nominal price.

If you're looking for a very old dental chair, there's one in the back corner, and I think I saw a scapulimancy head lurking in the glass cabinet between a couple of stuffed bats.

 Mixed in there are a number of vintage medical, dental, and optometric tools of the trade.(And if any of my readers happen to need some old lobotomy tools, I think you're in luck...)

I have to say, the creepy old mannequin (a Goth Howdy Doody?) in the window does lend the store a certain something, and are those brain surgery tools I see in that box? 

Of course, I had to pick up a Tasseography cup of my very own,since all of my teacups are currently buried in storage. This one, as I mentioned before, is by Miss Havisham's Curiosities.

It really is beautifully made, and a girl can't go wrong with gold spiderwebs...

The Bearded Lady is at 3005 W Magnolia Blvd. in Burbank, CA 91505.

More on Tasseography here.

Or browse from here for a book of your own.