The museum of unexpected exhibitions
THE TROLL MUSEUM
"I don't know if it's the only Trolls Museum in the world, but it's definitely the only Trolls museum on the Lower East Side," says its founder. Reverend Jen who decided that the best thing she could do with all the trolls she has been collecting since she was nine years old was to share them with people and exhibit them surrounded by drawings she had made in her apartment in the hipster area of Manhattan. And yes, do not look for a meaning to the word troll, it refers to them, to the trolls, those ugly but tender dolls, short, with spiky colored hair and protruding navels that we all had and maybe even keep. Jen went even further and she has lost count of how many she has, but she knows the story of each one. The museum that should top this list. Definitely. _(122-124 Orchard St. Apartment 19) _
CITY RELIQUARY MUSEUM
A museum that dedicates an exhibition to the donut and its fundamental role in New York City should already be in your top list of cool museums in the world. Even if it's as small as this one. The City Reliquary, as its name says, is a locket from New York and as such It has a collection of all kinds of objects that delve into the history of the city from a very human point of view. That is why we see from dozens of old postcards of the Statue of Liberty, baseball cards, bottles, cans, subway plates, pieces of buildings... a collection of unicorn figurines from a Brooklyn neighbor . Kitsch wonder! (370 Metropolitan Ave, Williamsburg, Brooklyn).
City Reliquary Museum
MUSEUM
Closed now in the harsh winter, the smallest museum in new york will return with a third collection of “The absurd and the beautiful of life” this spring. after exposing the shoe that was thrown at Bush , potato bags of the world, fossils, bulletproof backpacks of the Disney princesses, what will these non-hipster hipsters surprise us with? Or were they hipsters? _Cortlandt Alley (between Franklin Street and White Street) _.
The smallest museum in New York
MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN GANGSTER
Just a small sign on the building attached to one of the oldest venues in the East Village , the 80 St. Marks Place Theater, puts it this way: there is, on the first floor, the Museum of the American Gangster . Two rooms of a house that belonged to the family of the current owner of the theater and founder of the museum: Lorcan Otway, a Quaker, son of an actor to whom a mobster named Walter Scheib sold the entire premises in the 1960s, including the _speak eas_y that hid the theater and that still functions as a bar. **Otway now runs the theater, the bar and the museum ** that he created to retell the history of gangsters (not mafia, he explains several times) in the United States and especially in New York through old photos , newspapers and objects of the time, such as bullets the San Valentí Massacre.
With luck, he himself, with his Quaker beard, hat and coat, tells you that story, stopping at each memory and, reaching the last window, goes on to his personal one which is even more interesting . Especially when he takes you behind the scenes of the theater to the basement where he shows you the safe his father found shortly after he purchased the premises. inside there was more than two million dollars that probably belonged to another gangster, Frank Hoffman. Scorsese could get a great story out of this museum that can only be seen on a guided tour. The theater continues to have performances and the bar, a popular place during Prohibition, serves alcohol without hiding. (78 St Marks Place).
One of the pieces in the museum: pure history of "the other justice"
CONEY ISLAND HISTORY PROJECT
In 2014 this ** cultural institution celebrates the history of Coney Island, its beach and its amusement parks**. To celebrate, the founding couple of this museum Carol Hill and Jerome Albert have managed to recover the rocket that crowned the Astroland Park , the theme park opened in 1962 by Jerome's father, Dewey Albert, and closed in 2008.
They started at a roadside stand in the middle of the ride, then moved to a spot near the Cyclone, the 1920s roller coaster; and since 2011 they seem to have settled in a place that is growing little by little under the Deno ferris wheel (also from the 1920s: beware, don't underestimate the vintage attractions). There they tell the story of the different parks, attractions and shows that have passed through one of the most magical places in New York which, by the way, is changing at a speed similar to that reached by the Cyclone in its free fall. And the reality is that part of the charm of Coney Island is the decadence this museum celebrates So go check it out.
decadent and fun
The building behind the Ferris wheel