Sfanthor! House of Wax

Here in North Texas the sun is shining. The weather is warming up. The world outside is getting brighter. The Texas wildflowers are already in bloom, thanks to a mild and soggy winter. In the woods, things are moving. The itchy season is upon us, and the window of opportunity for a lot of local geocaches is closing, as the casual players tend to steer clear of anything that might put them in the way of tall grass, poison ivy, or the dreaded tick.

It is a season I have grown to love. Especially because it heralds the return of my beloved firewheels, the wonderful gaillardias that blanket the countryside around these parts, that channel the power and living energy of the Texas sun into something beautiful and delicate — as delicate and precious as life. That’s a sense that perhaps only the very young, and the older, possess. I’m not that old, but I look forward.

And perhaps that is why a guy like me is never far from thoughts of fall, and pumpkins, and cool night winds. So it is no surprise that in the middle of all this awakening spring glory I find myself back in the shadows, on a quest to discover if in the heart of Texas something is still left of the spirit of the bizarre, the otherwordly, and the mysterious.

It was almost a year ago that I first blogged about Collector’s Crypt in Oak Cliff. The Crypt is gone now, lost to the real-world horror of neighborhood gentrification. (I will have more to say about that later on.) I’ve kept in touch with the owners, my friends Andrea and Kathy, and they will be making an appearance at the upcoming Texas Frightmare Weekend convention in April. They will have a booth and will be selling lots of curious items under the Collector’s Crypt banner. I would encourage all of you to attend and buy lots from them. Many of their items will surely be one of a kind. And you can even tell them Tobyblog sent you. Who knows what might happen?

They tell me their plan is to take the store online, and I genuinely hope that they are able to do that, as I’m sure I’m not finished giving them money yet.

But still, I’m sorry for the loss. It was a unique place. Maybe a little too unique. I used to wonder if it could really be possible that there was nothing else like it outside of California (that was the line I would use). But did I really believe that? Surely there had to be others. Texas is a big state, after all. And there are pockets of weirdness everywhere, especially in college towns, or sometimes in little places you wouldn’t expect. I’m not particularly well traveled, either, so what do I know? Anything could be out there. Maybe right around the corner. And so I began to look for signs of life…

I believe it was right around the time of Texas Frightmare Weekend 2015, as I was investigating some of the various merchants and attendees, that I ran across mention of Sfanthor!, thanks to the horror blog Blood Over Texas.

I would suggest you link on over and read that now. It’s a short and very well-written article, and you can probably see why my eyes perked up.

“The castle is, Sfanthor, a shop celebrating sci-fi, fantasy and horror — the name is a mashup of those three genres and is full of everything your dark heart desires. Vintage comics, toys, jewelry, collectibles and T-shirts, including horror shirts by local company, Pallbearer Press. Created by one of the coolest, weird shops in town, Museum of the Weird on 6th street (downtown Austin), Sfanthor is following in it’s predecessors footsteps by adding a cool museum to the mix.”

I did not need to read on, but of course I did! It sounded a lot like the Crypt, but with a bonafide wax museum attached?! This was a promising place, and so I told myself I’d need to get down there one day soon and check it out.

Well, somehow that turned into a year. Such is life. But an opportunity recently arose to make the trip with my bold cousin Carl (with whom I am planning some surprising new projects, friends!), and so I was finally able to make good on my promise.

This was a couple of weeks ago during Austin’s notorious SXSW festival. Like Mardi Gras in New Orleans, the festival is compromised of a ton of little venues and events that happen all throughout the city. It brings in a lot of folks from out of town, and as a result all traffic on the main arteries pretty much grinds to a halt. Nevertheless, we somehow managed to navigate our way around much of that as we made our way down to Congress Avenue.

The castle (and it does look from the outside like a small castle) is located along a trendy downtown strip among exotic food trailers and local boutiques. I recommend street viewing the place. There is a lot of foot traffic. Austin is a fashionable, hipster-ish college town, sort of like Texas’s version of Portland, with its own reputation for weirdness — “Keep Austin Weird” is a popular commercial slogan — and is known for having a lively music scene. Back in the heyday of the Outlaw movement in country music, there was a show on PBS called Austin City Limits which generally bored the hell out of me. I’d probably have a much better appreciation for it now. To my surprise it’s still taping and airing uninterrupted after 40 years. My point is that it’s a hip town, much more so than Dallas, and if a place like Sfanthor! were going to make it in Texas, Austin seems like it would be a safe bet.

But I dunno. When you consider the runaway popularity of places like Dark Hour and the ridiculously huge Texas Frightmare Weekend, the freak population may be more slanted towards North Texas than is at first apparent.

After declining a chicken burrito from nextdoor Mrs. P’s, Carl and I crossed the portcullis and entered the gift shop, which is mainly what I had come for. A friendly guy behind the counter greeted us as we walked in, which turned out to be proprietor Dave Bustis. Remarkable guy. Turns out Sfanthor! is just the newest of his contributions to Austin’s cultural scene, his best known being the Museum of the Weird. He has another little shop selling oddities called The Lizard Lounge. You should check it out in person or online, because he has some neat things over there.

I asked if I could take some pics for publicity purposes and he graciously obliged.

I stopped a bit just to let my eyes wander around the place. There were so many things to look at, my head was spinning. I recalled that feeling from somewhere before…

I instantly knew my four hours on the road had not been wasted. I came looking for a successor to Collector’s Crypt, and what I found was something different; a new experience, but satisfying in the same way. What shone out to me was the tremendous labor of love that was evident in everything from the selection to the displays to the structure of the building itself; things that made the Crypt so special. Bustis has really put his heart and soul into the place, and who knows how much time and money. Along that bustling Austin pavement he somehow lowered a drawbridge into an extraordinary world.

The gift shop portion of Sfanthor! is not as large as Collector’s Crypt, nor the inventory as extensive, but what they do carry is all highly desirable stuff. There are the models, collector’s pieces, toys, books, DVDs, masks, and games I remember from the old store — but added to that are postcards, posters, t-shirts, pins, and novelty items. It has a heavy emphasis on t-shirts, comics, and magazines — particularly Famous Monsters of Filmland — which sell for what seemed to me like frustratingly high prices.

Among my favorite items in the store were the tourist-friendly postcards and mini-movie posters celebrating the Universal Monsters pantheon. There were some really good ones.