Walk into the American Dime Museum, and a telling odor will hit you hard. It is the smell of the museum: mummified cadavers, stuffed animal anomalies and other strange aging objects slowly decaying in the four cramped rooms of the two connected row homes at 18th Street and Maryland Avenue.
Perhaps it was the mysterious title and entertaining front display of the museum, or, even more likely, it was the promise of the world's largest bat that brought you inside. The Dime Museum, according to its Web site (http://www.dimemuseum.com), offers visitors "a sample of both the 'old time' dime museums and store shows as well as a more contemporary sideshow."
To be fair, the museum makes good on its promises, though keen observation reveals an amateur approach. The front and back rooms, which are recreations of the classic dime museum gallery, feature a dazzling array: astounding works of humankind, such as quack medical equipment and human hair art pieces, marvels of nature, like the devilfish and the two-headed calf, and of course, the grey area in between: the taxidermic creations of the Jersey Devil and Fiji Mermaid, and the 92 inch "Amazonian" woman's body.
With no particular progression in the old time rooms, it is easy to become swept up in the chaotic yet fun mystique of the collection. In one corner, there's a wax model of Abraham Lincoln, while in the opposite, a presidential turd supposedly taken from the Ford theater bathroom the night of his assassination.
The basement gallery reveals the various techniques that proved so profitable to the sideshow tycoons of the past. Along with the dime museum's homemade exhibits, such as the largest ball of neckties and the "amazing gum woman," they let you in on classic tricks of the sideshow trade.
The curators have some obvious expertise: from "The Front" to the "Ten-in-One" to the "Blow Off," they explain and illustrate many facets of the double-talking arts of the curiosity showcase industry. The museum itself even takes part in the swindling -- the abundance of phony objects aside, let's just say that the "World's Largest Bat" struck out, and that the visitor needs to read the fine print on the "Largest Ball of Rubber Bands" (it says: in Maryland Avenue).
But back to that smell -- while the dime museum surely offers an insightful look at the sideshows of yesterday, there is an uncomfortable ambience, the feeling that one is not in the hands of a professional curator. The final, contemporary, wing illustrates this well.
Probably the most randomly arranged room of them all, it is designed to exhibit sideshow objects that spark the most interest in today's oddity-seeking crowd. While the snakehead fish, having recently made a big splash in Maryland news headlines, and the magical floating coin are certainly spectacular, the several 12-packs of soda piled in front of one exhibit and the poorly hidden cat litter boxes behind curtains spoil one's feeling of amazement. Indeed, you don't need a sense of wonder to consider what that smell is -- it is ammonia from litter boxes that fills these stuffy rooms.
When you stumble across major signs of irresponsibility and disorganization like these, it becomes hard to gloss over other smaller problems as simple products of the informal and humorous mood prevalent in this museum.
The numerous other blunders are no longer easy to ignore; the WJZ Jazz Radio mug sitting upon a mantel along with stuffed birds, the disproportionate amount of space dedicated to chimp finger paintings, the loud and unofficial-looking employees gossiping about personal finance problems, and the broken electronic audio player all suddenly make a lot more sense in this light.
Perhaps this is the way all dime museums and sideshows have always been and always will be. They have little regard for accuracy or honesty, and for that we can hardly blame them.
Yet however much they stimulate public interest, we should always be sure that they do not have the public interest in mind. Not only unorthodox and deceptive, but amateurish and careless as well, the American Dime Museum offers much spectacle and delight for a mere $5 -- if you can stand the smell.
