Unlike most city galleries, with their towering pillars and marble girders, Los Angeles’ Museum of Jurassic Technology first appears to be what is almost literally a hole in the wall. And despite being wedged in what at first seems like unremarkable slabs of concrete on the corner of Venice and Bagley in Culver City, it’s not unusual to see it packed with visitors who have only heard through the grapevine of its extensive list of oddities and wonders. Behind those rather bland walls are endless rooms of exhibits–many of which lie somewhere between irreverent and incredible, and prove that the Museum is, in the true sense of the word, one of Los Angeles’ hidden gems.

The museum’s milieu rests somewhere in between cozy and creepy, albeit in an antique-ish, endearing way. Dark corridors are flanked by labyrinthine mansion rooms that look like something out of The Haunting or Resident Evil, with a cacophony of eerie and tranquil sounds–which range from a flowing mountain stream to what sounds like barking, Baskervillian hounds–carrying on in the background. And what of the exhibits themselves? A wide-ranging historical survey of different telescopes, with microminiatures of everything from Disney characters (check out Snow White right above, standing on that needle) to mosaics comprised of tiny bits of butterfly wings. Be sure to check out The Stink Ant of Cameroon. And a detailed biography, presented in a glass box within polished wooden walls, of Geoffrey Sonnabend, an engineering savant who was charged with much of the task of re-building Chicago years after it was burned down in the fire of 1871, and whom constructed an actual physical model of memory/thought process (though unseen here, it’s among the museum’s most fascinating displays). Work your way down deeper and check out the exhibit on theater mechanics–presented in glass dioramas within a narrow, oak hallway.

You don’t have to be a fan of theater to admire the reconstruction of a theater cellar, where angels would be lowered, and devils raised to scare audiences in the time of Shakespeare and Marlowe. Check out the glass dioramas of wind and wave mechanics, entitled “Etiquette in Renaissance and Baroque Theater Mechanics.” Then, a velvet carpet draped across the stairway leading up to more: The Logic Alphabet of Shea Zellweger, complete with a history of puzzles developed, which you can try for yourselves. Then there’s Yuri Gregorian and his chromolithographs of solar protuberances and Soviet Spacemen (as well as those famous Russkie Space Monkeys,) as well as Talkosky’s scientific rocket theories. Plunge into an exhibit on the history of treatments for manic depression, and a potential list of cures that may still be found in the Amazon Forest.

All this does little to justify the wonders and weirdness behind the museum’s walls. It’s one of those rare city spots that’s good for indulging both the cerebral and visceral, and its cozy-yet-claustrophobic atmosphere helps rid one of any pre-conceived notions of what a museum should really look like. (See how closely the exhibit above looks like the cryogenic sleep chamber in ALIENS?) Rid yourself of all expectations and bathe in the bizarre.

The Museum of Jurassic Technology is located at 9341 Venice Blvd., Culver City CA 90032.