826 DC: The Museum of Unnatural History

I collect 826 stores like kids collect Pokemon — gotta catch em all! The difference is that I’m supporting a savvy literacy nonprofit and not padding the pockets of a toy company.
826 is a national organization with tutoring centers in many different cities. This is an awesome thing to support, since I believe the children are the future and all that. But 826 centers are also usually attached to little thematic storefronts that are wacky and fun and a great way to draw people in to spend money, learn about the organization, and maybe even start volunteering. Each city has a different theme and they usually take it to the extreme — DC has the Museum of Unnatural History, and there’s so much detail to explore. Rejected planets! Weird animals! A CAVE!!! Everything has a story attached (which makes sense, given their goal of boosting literacy) you should stop and read.
Of course, they also sell a variety of merchandise around the store theme. If you’ve ever needed to contain a koala or wanted a less formal-​dehyde, they’ve got you covered. My favorite thing, though, are the stories written by the kids they tutor. You can buy short and long compilations of these, and they’re great. Imagine being a published author at 12! I’ve visited several 826 stores and loved them all.

Really more of a quirky gift shop than a museum, but it’s filled with items that will make you laugh, and maybe a few that you will want in your home.
Here are a few examples of their business model:
Take a small jar with twigs in it, slap on a label that says «Existentially distressed wood,» charge $ 5.
Take a $ 3 pair of socks from JC Penneys, slap a sticker on ‘em that says «dry socks: *not waterproof,» charge $ 7.
You get the idea. And I’m not criticizing them because a lot of these are hilarious. Plenty of nice t-​shirts, too if you’re not a trinket person. The one I couldn’t stop playing with is a massive jar of «wooly mammoth chunks» with «extra mammothy flavor.» I discretely picked one up, and it’s actually quite heavy. What’s in there?
The best part: they are a nonprofit that offers tutoring to children and gives them free buried treasures from a sand-​filled trunk if they write an imaginative story about the object they find. Encouraging creativity and education in our children? Can’t beat that.

This sure is one quirky little (as in one room) museum. Right in the heart of Columbia Heights! I don’t know much about the educational programs they offer, except for what I read here.
They sell inexpensive gag gifts, much like you’d find at Spencer’s Gifts. (Does that store still exist?) Unicorn tears. Used paperback two-​packs with a quirky hand written note linking the two. And many more. You can even say hi to Alverez, the store’s iguana. I thought he was a fake, until he turned his head. I bought a postcard of him with the Capitol Building in the background. It’s good to know he gets out once in a while.

I loooove the gift shop!
I can’t speak about their educational program, but they have the quirkiest gift shop I’ve ever seen, full of totally random stuff you never knew you needed.
Whoever put it together is a stone cold weirdo, and I say that in the best way!
They’ve got little goodies all over– the first that comes to mind is a bottle of bubble mix labeled «unicorn farts.»
I mean, come on. You know this is where you’re coming to get your kids and silly friends all their holiday and birthday presents from now on.

I have no doubt that the events organized by the Museum of Unnatural History are wonderful, and I love their mission and work, but as a member of an arts group that rented the space for performances and had a terrible experience with them, I want to warn potential renters and suggest you look elsewhere.

This place brought me true joy. I used to tutor here, and I loved it. I also helped to keep up the shop and whatnot. Fantastic.

Stumbled upon this place completely accidentally while strolling around Columbia Heights. It’s got a quirky little gift shop in front and a tutoring center in the back. I seriously had a great time just looking at all the displays and silly items for sale like unicorn tears which raise money for the mentoring program. Wish I were enrolled in a place like this as a kid!

This place is the literal and figurative opposite of a mullet for two reasons:
1. It is super hip, cool, funny.
2. It’s party in the front and business in the back.
An after school mentoring program for local kids is run in the back of the house. The front of the house is a store, where they sell a range of fun items — like unicorn tears — to raise money.
The whole theme is exploration /​natural history, they sell everything a possible explorer could want — like FORMALdehyde to preserve your specimens. They also sell the under appreciated Business Casual DeHyde.
Place is hilarious — Soccerballgirl and I were there for a good hour yesterday, I was laughing at all the books and exhibits, and she was having a lot of fun digging in a treasure case of sand.
Really a top spot.

This just in — 826DC is now renting out it’s excellent space after-​hours and on weekends for events. $ 165 per hour with plenty of discounts available. Seems like a cool place to have party, unique wedding, holiday parties, board meeting, etc… e-​mail
if you are interested.

Waldorf schools require that its teachers harbor a legitimate belief in wood gnomes. Think of this place as a sidelong vamp on that notion.
Dave Eggers cofounded 826 National and apparently writes copy for some of the exhibits. The vast majority, however, are created in-​house, and are unique to this location. (Check out my pics for examples of the quirkiness. I scored an awesome T-​shirt made by Neko Case, and was all «my word, that’s cool» when they swiped my cc via a
iPad reader.)
The volunteers and interns that staff the place are fantastic, both in that they delight in the museum and in the work they do with kids.
Unilocal categorizes this place as several things, but because of 826 stores they’ll have to invent two more: Roadside America and Freaking Awesome. I’ll definitely be returning for gifts, and maybe even to explore volunteering.

This place was a BLAST. There were some awesome things to buy inside. Oh, yeah, and I guess tutoring kids is pretty cool too.
I literally bought unicorn tears. That’s after I considered buying THE missing link.
Nuff said.

My favorite item in this store is the mega sand: a jar of very pretty pebbles. From the review the giant left, it feels just like regular sand if you’re really big. I’m thinking, soon, though — I’ll get some unicorn tears from the unicorn kept out back that they read sad stories to all day. Or a t-​shirt.
Anyway, I’ll leave out the background because the others have mentioned this place is really a non-​profit writing and tutoring center (part of the 826 family across the country), but check out the store and make a purchase. It goes to a good cause.
Oh, and if you’re not into unicorn tears or even the koala containment unit (which looks a little small), they’ve got a good selection of Dave Egger’s books and others’ from McSweeny’s, some posters that are pretty fun and a variety of t-​shirts.
Take your kids.

I almost couldn’t believe it when I heard: DC was getting an 826, and right in my neighborhood! I like their mission but I must confess I go for the storefronts (and I can feel good that buying stuff goes to a good cause). This one is most excellent, right up there with the pirate store in San Francisco! I highly encourage you to go and check it out, especially if you like laughing. Someday soon I will buy a t-​shirt.

Background: 826 is a national non-​profit dedicated to improving creative writing skills. Dave Eggers founded it, and he’s a creative writer if there ever was one (some would call him a ‘defining voice of our generation,’ if those some were in the 20 – 30’s heavily self-​aware post-​ironic set). Each 826 center is fronted by a themed store, generally selling things that are not real but are quite clever to raise money for the org. In NYC, they’ve got the superhero supply store, in LA, it’s the Time Travel Mart. In DC, amongst the gentrifying monoliths of Target, Best Buy, and Bed, Bath, and Beyond, lies the Museum of Unnatural History.
Foreground: The mission is to make kids fall in love with creating. One to one tutoring, homework help, and intelligent grown-​ups showing that they value the work created by young minds accomplish this. The workshop is well-​furnished; as far from a classroom as one can get without losing the basic elements of education (tables, chairs, lights, etc). The frontispiece is the aforementioned museum and the only way I can describe it is this: imagine combining the creative capacity of a late-20’s-year-old with the topical immersion of a five year old (remember when the living room floor really was lava?). Give this hybrid infinitely witty/​infinitely imaginative mind a theme — riffing on natural history museums — and let loose. There’s formal-​dehyde, there’s semi-​formal-​dehyde, there’s business-​casual-​dehyde. Unicorn tears. Bizarre cross-​pollinated animals (an owliphant, e.g.). Unnaturalist journals. Surrealist dioramas. Skunk-​butt evolutionary supplements. A cave (currently under excavation). Open your mind, walk in, and you will find yourself returned to the (literally) marvelous perspective of childhood.
Or, if you’ve got kids, get them signed up ASAP. I’m not telling you how to be a parent, but it seems like a good idea.
Moral: Creation is beautiful, especially for its own sake, but it’s better when it’s for the kids.