Vicki Arkoff knows Los Angeles better than any other Holiday Goddess editor. So how weird, exactly, is Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Odditorium? And did she survive seeing a trout with fur?
“Discover the unusual and the bizarre,” passers-by are dared, at the entrance of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Odditorium tourist attraction on Hollywood Boulevard, where “truth is stranger than fiction.” Of course, when it comes to this 90-year-old franchised sideshow collection, it’s difficult to tell the difference…and that’s half the fun.
It doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to gawk at exhibits like an Elvis portrait made from butterfly wings, or the all-candy one of Michael Jackson. The 14-foot-long python skin is believable enough, as are gothic collections of torture devices, voodoo paraphernalia, and crime artifacts. The genuine vampire-slaying kit is a personal favorite of mine, not because Ripley’s pretends it was actually used, but because they admit they were made for gullible tourists traveling to Romania and Transylvania.
A morbid thread of “graveyard humor” runs throughout the Hollywood oddities; after all, the first job held by California-born Robert L. Ripley (born in Santa Rosa on Christmas Day in 1890, believe it or not) was polishing head stones. If you believe that one, you’ll believe all the headstone epitaphs he gathered over the years, such as “I told you I was dead!” his all-time favorite.
It’ s fun watching Ripley’s old documentary footage from his original TV show, featuring his international discoveries of people with odd “talents” and claims-to-fleeting-fame; it’s also nice that it’s located just after the grisly hall of death and provides the museum’s only opportunity to sit down and quell your nausea.
There’s plenty of filler in the 2-story Hollywood Ripley’s, including plaques, replicas, optical illusions, and recently produced items such as a statue made from auto parts, and a Marilyn Monroe figure covered in shredded $1 bills. The wax figure parade is a snooze, especially since several of the “honorees” – such as the world’s tallest man, RIP – are duplicated just a few doors down the street at the Guinness World Record Museum – another Ripley chain, oddly enough.
But the shrunken head, mummy hand, and two-headed animals (stuffed and mounted) deliver freak-out shivers as promised by the Ripley motto “Proudly freaking out families for 90 years.” And moldy-oldie classics like the “Fee Gee Mermaid” and “Fur-Bearing Trout” aren’t just presented here for your amusement – they’re carrying on the old carny side-show and roadside tourist trap traditions that would otherwise be a thing of the past.
So thank God for the continuing existence of the Hollywood Ripley’s Believe It Or Not museum, just one of 24 franchised locations in tourist meccas across North America, plus nine overseas outposts. Ripley himself is long gone, but his twisted vision of entertainment for the masses lives on…and not just inside his eye-catching buildings (just look for the T-Rex bursting through the roof at Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue), but on the sidewalks directly outside where the notorious Hollyweird freak show of delusional nutjobs – dressed as Darth Vader, Elvis and Elmo — can really be seen.
Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Odditorium: 6780 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, CA. (323) 466-6335. www.ripleyattractions.com
Photos by Vicki Arkoff
