Let's Go on a Field Trip!

Yay! It's Friday, it's summer, so let's pile in the station wagon and go to everyone's favorite store:


Archie McPhee is a Seattle institution. It's in the Ballard neighborhood and it is a sight to behold. Where else are you going to go for all of your unnecessary plastic objects? Eh? Archie McPhee is it.

The first time I discovered Archie's glory, was on the Great Northwest Road Trip with Amanda. It was sort of a surreal trip with the magic fairy forest (Jedediah Smith National Forest) and more Paul Bunyons than you can shake a stick at (I don't know how many that is, technically, but it's a lot.)

We were visiting our friends Gary and Megan in Seattle, and since Amanda and I had never been there before, Gary took the day off work to show us the sites. We went to Elliott Bay Book Company (a most excellent bookstore), Ruby Montana's Pinto Pony, and the glorious 211 Billiard Club, whose motto was "No bullshit. No noise. Just pool." But the highlight of the day was our trip to Archie McPhee's original store--back when it was in the Fremont neighborhood.

I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. We must have spent an hour in there, playing with rubber eyeballs, plastic hearts, urine specimen bottles, action figures of various types, and ooohing and ahhhing over the nickel glow-in-the-dark chamber. I think I spent all of $10.

They claim to have more than 10,000 items for sale, and I believe it. Where else are you going to buy a smoking monkey?

A giant ear?


Or a corn dog air freshener?

So, have fun playing at Archie McPhee today, kids, and remember--if you break it, you buy it!

(And yes, they ship. You could have all these wonderful things, and more, on your front porch tomorrow morning!)