Warning: If you didn’t enjoy the “Bodies” exhibit and get queasy at Freemans, you probably won’t dig this slideshow either. Photos: Vivienne Gucwa.
It’s been a real challenge finding shrunken heads, human skulls and mounted piranhas in the neighborhood since Obscura Antiques and Oddities closed in January. But search no more: the store selling all things weird opened in its new location at 207 Avenue A, near East 13th Street, on Saturday.
The new digs are nearly double the size of the previous store, meaning that owners Mike Zohn and Evan Michelson have more room to show off their wacky nicknacks, and fans of their reality show “Oddities” have more room to walk around. Read more…
Stephen Rex Brown Mike Zohn and Evan Michelson show off some just-purchased oddities in front of their new location at 207 Avenue A.After a rushed departure from their former space on East 10th Street, the owners of Obscura Antiques and Oddities are aiming to reopen at a new, more spacious location at 207 Avenue A by the end of February.
Fresh from a visit to a Hell’s Kitchen building that yielded a Tibetan Kapala skull-cup, headhunter’s axe, a small replica of an electric chair, and old handcuffs, Mike Zohn and Evan Michelson touted their new store, which is nearly double the size of the previous location.
“There is room to breathe,” said Ms. Michelson. “It’s like a dream come true.” Read more…
To simply call Obscura Antiques and Oddities another East Village antique store might not do justice to the offbeat and slightly macabre aesthetic that co-owners Evan Michelson and Mike Zohn have spent years cultivating in their small curiosity shop.
Carrying everything from Victorian dolls to monkey skulls, the store has become a magnet for both serious collectors and curious passerby lured in by the stuffed animal heads leering from the shop’s front window on East 10th Street.
“There’s really nothing that comes in that’s too weird but there are things that are inexplicable,” Ms. Michelson said.
The store, which has been a part of the neighborhood for almost two decades, moved to its current location between First Avenue and Avenue A in 2001.
“The energy down here is amazing,” Ms. Michelson said. “It’s the heart and soul of this business to me. It wouldn’t be right if we moved it anywhere else.”
When they’re not collecting, Ms. Michelson and Mr. Zohn are busy taping the second season of “Oddities,” a TV show that premiered on the Discovery Channel last year (it will run on the Science Channel for its second season) featuring some of the duo’s stranger finds.
NYU Journalism’s Kathryn Kattalia reports.
