Offbeat and Endearing

Forrest J. Ackerman settles into a chair in his Los Feliz living room and offers his guests seating on a lime green shag carpet that looks trampled by decades of visitors. The room is packed with 50 strangers who have accepted the sci-fi legend’s invitation to spend an hour prowling through his collection of more than 300,000 pieces of science fiction and horror memorabilia.

Ackerman’s collection contains the only remaining model of a Martian flying saucer from 1953’s “War of the Worlds,” a 69-year-old stegosaurus model from “King Kong” and the ring Bela Lugosi wore in “Dracula.” But it’s 85-year-old Ackerman who brings the collection to life.

He is the literary agent who gave Ray Bradbury his first break. His horror magazines and comic book monsters inspired filmmakers John Landis and Steven Spielberg. He seems to have endless, and little-known, stories about horror greats like Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff.

His home is now called Ackermansion and serves as a sort of museum in exile. A personal obsession open to the public. And Ackerman is not alone. Southern California has a museum subculture that exists outside the mainstream. Scattered around the city are manifestations of unique passions, bizarre visions and warped senses of humor in the form of shrines to bunnies, cakes, celebrity underwear and movie lighting.

It is a weird, fluid, unpredictable world. Most of these museums exist without established hours or serious financial backing. Only a few charge admission. Survival is uncertain. The Punk Rock Museum in Silver Lake faded from the scene in 2000. A year later, Carole and Barry Kaye’s Museum of Miniatures closed, despite a prime location on L.A.’s museum-packed Miracle Mile. Hollywood’s Museum of Death remains in limbo.

“This is how we look at it. The building that was housing it was just a shell, kind of like a person,” Museum of Death’s co-founder J.D. Healy said of the dispute with the landlord that prompted its closure last summer. “And when they die, that doesn’t mean their soul dies. The soul can continue. So that’s the attitude we’re going with. It’s not like it’s lost or going away. It’s just on the back burner

For the curious, there’s a moral here: Visit these strange museums while you can.

14,000 Bunny-Related

Items, and Counting

Candace Frazee traces the Bunny Museum’s history to Valentines Day 1993, when her husband, Steve Lubanski, gave Candace a standard-issue plush white rabbit. She bought him a ceramic bunny that Easter. And so on.

Today, there are more than 14,000 bunny-related objects--ranging from salt shakers to parts of Rose Parade floats--all crammed into their 1,500-square-foot house in Pasadena. The collection spills into their garage and front and back yards.

What’s possibly more interesting than the collection is how the couple manage their lives in a house that’s wall-to-wall bunny stuff (plus six live rabbits). The effect is eye-popping.

“Step into our warren. We only have stuffed bunnies in here,” Frazee said. The “warren” is her den, or it used to be a den, anyway. Now it is packed floor to ceiling with plush bunnies. Squeezed in between on a little patch of floor are a futon and a coffee table. A television peeks out between ears and whiskers.

The rest of the house is equally packed and meticulously categorized by type, activity and name. There are kissing bunnies, Mexican bunnies, bunny silverware and china. Bugs Bunny, the most famous rabbit, is relegated to the garage due to prolific merchandising.

“It’s mind-boggling how many rabbits someone can collect and live in the same space with them,” said Shannon Cohen of Arcadia, one of 5,600 people who have visited the museum since it opened in 1998. “I do think it’s sweet how they give each other bunnies every day.” According to the Guinness Book of World Records, it is the largest bunny collection on Earth.

Concrete Creations

at Pierce College

In a deserted little park on the Los Angeles Pierce College campus, the Old Trapper’s concrete creations--weirdly disproportionate and eternally unhappy--stand like refugees from the Twilight Zone. There’s Big Foot Brown half buried in his Boot Hill grave. Peg Leg Smith and Chief Big Bear are frozen in mortal combat, each man with a weapon buried in his foe. Their blood is bright red thanks to a fresh coat of paint. And poor Clementine, the Miner Forty-Niner’s daughter, reclines in such an improbable pose, it makes your back hurt.

The bizarre Wild West tableau is the inspiration of the late John Ehn, a Sun Valley eccentric who called himself the “Old Trapper.” He spent the last 30 years of his life sculpting the tall figures and a Boot Hill cemetery, which he arranged around his home. When Ehn died in 1981, his family got a state historic designation for the statues. The figures were transplanted to the Woodland Hills college in 1988.

According to California Historical Marker No. 939, the sculptures represent a “remarkable 20th century folk art environment.” It’s the kind of art that proliferated and perished with the roadside attractions on isolated stretches of Route 66. Their current home in a forgotten park, tucked behind the college agriculture department, is almost always deserted. Only a few wary cows and an occasional fan of roadside kitsch keep watch over the Old Trapper’s creations.

Lingerie Museum Has

Famous Undergarments

Comedian Phyllis Diller dubbed Frederick’s of Hollywood Lingerie Museum the “Museum of Unnatural History.” Tucked in the back of the Hollywood Boulevard Frederick’s of Hollywood store, the museum hosts a small collection of famous undergarments ranging from Madonna’s “Who’s That Girl” tasseled bustier to one of cross-dressing Milton Berle’s costumes.

The museum begins to tap its potential with historical footnotes such as a Keyhole Secrets catalog that details what was naughty in 1948. “Is he a bosom man?” asks one ad for the “perfect curve coaxer” bra. Then there’s the gold-plated patent for the strapless bra that’s not a bra.

Considering the titillating subject matter and the famous brand name, this shrine to unmentionables is surprisingly tame. Maybe it’s just the way they’re displayed--sealed behind cold glass and devoid of the famous forms that made them more than underwear. Without a devoted eccentric to serve as curator and docent, it’s just a collection of fading fabric.

Cakes Not Smaller,

but the Museum Is

In 1993, Frances Kuyper, also known as the Cake Lady, found herself with a spare house, an ailing husband who needed her close to home and a divine vision of a museum devoted to the art and style of cake decorating.

“I thought I should have a museum to teach people about cakes from around the world,” said Kuyper, 83. “Mostly, it was for young people. I wanted to spread the word to children and teenagers that cake decorating is a wonderful profession.”

Things have never quite worked out as expected for the Cake Lady, yet somehow they still worked out. Her story is more interesting than her collection of 150 cakes featured in the Mini Cake Museum, unless you’re looking to master the physics of frosting. She can tell you about that, too.

Kuyper opened the museum in her Pasadena guest house in 1994 after retiring from several decades on the international cake decorating circuit. She tried and failed to persuade corporate sponsors to build a museum, so she built it herself with $60,000 in savings.

Her collection showcases techniques from airbrushing to cake shaping (hint: Rice Krispy treats mold nicely) to the difficult art of rolled fondant icing, an Australian delicacy that turns to cement if the cake underneath is not moist enough. When her husband died in 1998, Kuyper moved to the Hollenbeck Home, a retirement community in Boyle Heights. The cake museum moved with her, although the movers crushed part of the collection--hence the new “mini” moniker. The 150 cakes reside behind glass in the basement.

Exploring the Depths

of the Ackermansion

Meandering through Ackerman’s house, a man has stumbled across the object of his childhood nightmares sitting on a cluttered shelf.

“I never thought I’d see ‘The Tingler.’ I even touched it,” he says of the 1959 horror prop from the movie of the same name. That’s how it is here, pieces of horror classics scattered in every corner. People are free to touch and browse--despite the occasional thief. Ackerman had hoped his collection would be in a museum by now, but official plans fizzled back in the ‘80s and private backers never emerged. So, on most Saturdays, Ackerman leads a string of visitors through the cluttered halls of his 17-room Los Feliz home.

“There’s no use being that old geezer up on the hill that has all this wonderful stuff, but won’t let anyone look at it,” said Ackerman, explaining why he’s opened his doors to the public. “The enjoyment I get out of this is worth more than losing the occasional item. Besides, it’s like trying to drain the ocean with a sieve-you can’t get it all.”

Ackerman is friendly, a little corny and totally disarming. He invites guests to try on Dracula’s ring or flip through his endless library of horror magazines. He flirts with women he recruits to act out scenes from horror classics.

“I expected this old house with this old character in it, but this is actually very cool,” said Michelle Swinney of San Clemente, who brought her husband to see Ackerman’s “War of the Worlds” spacecraft. At the end of the tour and stories, Ackerman speaks with everyone who wants to talk, even as the open house extends beyond the one-hour time limit. No one leaves without an autograph. He seems as unwilling for the strangers to leave as they are to go.

When only a few hangers-on remain, Ackerman claps his hands and smiles. “Anybody in the mood for Sizzler?”

*

* The Ackermansion, 2495 Glendower Ave., L.A. (323) MOON FAN. Hours: Most Saturdays, 11 a.m.-noon, call for details. Free; donations accepted. Web site: None

* The Bunny Museum, 1933 Jefferson Ave., Pasadena. (626) 798-7748. Hours: Most major holidays or by appointment. Free. Web site: www.thebunnymuseum.com.

* Frederick’s of Hollywood Lingerie Museum, 6608 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. (323) 466-8506. Hours: Mondays through Fridays, 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Free. Web site: None.

* The Mini Cake Museum at Hollenbeck Home, 573 S. Boyle Drive, L.A. (323) 780-3810. Hours: By appointment. Free. Web site:

www.hollenbeckhome.com/minicakemuseum.html.

* The Old Trapper’s Lodge at Los Angeles Pierce College, 6201 Winnetka Ave., Woodland Hills. Hours: sunrise to sunset. Free. Web site: None.