Sideshow or Rock Show? On H St., You Decide
By Fritz Hahn
Washington Post Weekend Section
Friday, July 28, 2006

There are two new venues on H Street NE offering a serious choice on Saturday nights: Would you rather watch an up-and-coming local rock band or someone lie on a bed of nails?

The Palace of Wonders draws its inspiration from Coney Island sideshows to create a two-level funhouse of curiosities, such as the two-faced bull, shrunken heads and the taxidermied remains of a unicorn. On weekends, '50s-style burlesque dancers, sword swallowers and human blockheads take to a stage in the rear of the building.

Next door at the Red and the Black, the guys behind the U Street corridor rock club DC9 have turned a hairdresser's salon into a cool little spot with live music, Abita beers and jambalaya, plus the occasional weekend DJ.

Showbar Presents The Palace of Wonders
The Palace of Wonders is the only bar in Washington that can claim to have a taxidermied unicorn on display. It's the only nightspot I've ever visited where the bartender puts down her cocktail shaker, takes the stage and swallows a huge sword. On the comfortable back patio, the resident orange tabby tries to make friends and taste your beer. That's about par for the course.

The cornerstone is a selection of sideshow relics, freaks of nature and other oddities belonging to carnival expert James Taylor. For years, Taylor and his friend Dick Horne ran Baltimore's American Dime Museum, dedicated to showing off their collection, which included nine-foot-tall Peruvian mummies, a five-legged dog named Fivey and that unicorn, which once traveled with the Ringling Brothers circus.

Taylor and Horne dissolved their partnership a few years back, and when nightlife mogul Joe Englert was dreaming up themes for his H Street properties, he approached Taylor about opening a sideshow-themed bar that would offer a stage for live performers as well as provide a museum-like setting for Taylor's best (and grossest) items.

Checking out the assorted skulls and the wax statue of the Elephant Man while having a beer and a foot-long hot dog was the draw when the Palace of Wonders opened six weeks ago. Patrons crowded around the cluttered glass cases holding such marvels as the eight-legged goat "Spider Billy," the fearsome Samoan Sea Worm or a mummified "Devil Man." The problem is that the second floor gets congested, and after dark, the soft lighting doesn't show the artifacts to their best advantage. It's hard to read the explanatory plaques that accompany some of the strangest objects, like the one-gallon jar holding the head of the gigantic python that crushed famed showman Sailor Katzy. And besides, once you've browsed the collection, the novelty wears off.

Instead, I find myself returning for the Saturday night shows, which offer everything from lip-synching drag kings to a guy who drives nails into his nose. Among the performers I've caught in the last few weeks: the captivating Kitty Victorian, whose classic burlesque routine begins with an elbow-length satin turquoise glove snaking from between two black curtains and ends with a tornado of tassel-twirling; women who walk on (and do handstands in) piles of broken glass or lie on beds of six-inch nails before inviting audience members to walk across their bodies and smash cinderblocks lying atop their stomachs. Bartender Charon Henning, who bills herself as "the most dangerous beauty alive," has wowed crowds with her sword-swallowing ability several times. (It's a serious business, too. Hanging on the wall upstairs is a Celtic broadsword that almost killed Henning a few years ago when she "swallowed wrong" during a live broadcast on a Baltimore radio station and had to be rushed to the emergency room.) In coming weeks, co-owner Getinet Bantayehu says, the schedule is going to expand even more, with a dog fashion show (which may include an owner-pet look-alike contest), game show nights, bingo, female-only arm-wrestling contests and family days when children can complete scavenger hunts through the museum area. "The goal," he says,"is to have odd things and odd acts." I'd say they're two for two.