Niche Museums

Starting in the 1820s, farmers from the area around Roscoff in Brittany started crossing the channel to sell onions in Wales and England. Known as Onion Johnnies, they became the stereotypical image of the French to the English, riding bicycles hung with onions and wearing berets and striped shirts. Their activity peaked in 1929 when over 9000 tonnes of onions were imported by nearly 1400 Johnnies.

Their golden age was ended by Import restrictions following World War II, but the trading relationship between Brittany and the UK was a key factor in the founding of Brittany Ferries operating out of Roscoff in the 1970s.

Today they are commemorated by the Onion Johnny museum in Roscoff, which hosts an annual Onion Festival (Fête de l'Oignon) every summer.

Neon Works is a neon sign fabrication and restoration business based in a 17,000-square-foot studio in North Oakland.

Founder Jim Rizzo also collects historic neon signs, and displays them in the workshop. Any time he hears about a Neon sign being taken down anywhere in the Bay Area Jim will swoop in and see what can be salvaged.

His collection has signs from throughout the previous century, including the 1500 pound 42 foot long Kilpatrick's Bakery sign rescued from 16th and Folsom street in San Francisco in the late 1990s.

Neon Works carried out the $70,000 restoration of the Castro Theatre’s 85 foot tall sign for the production of “Milk” in 2008.

The workshop is not open to the public, but occasionally hosts tours.

Can an entire island be classified as a niche museum? In Lundy's case I'd say yes. Accessible only by a twelve mile, two hour boat ride from north Devon, Lundy is a spectacular island in the Bristol Channel with a fascinating history.

The island has three light houses, a charming little village, a church, numerous ruins and a castle that was built in the 13th century by Henry III after he retook the island from the apparently traitorous William de Marisco.

Thanks to the Landmark Trust you can stay in many of the buildings (including the castle). Lundy is Britain's first Marine Conservation Zone, playing host to wildlife that includes puffins and Atlantic grey seals. It also offers excellent letterboxing.

jAdis is a shop, prop rental place and curiosity cabinet “dedicated to imagination and wonder”. Parke Meeke and Susan Lieberman opened Jadis on Main Street in the mid-1970s and began collecting and constructing objects along a theme that can best be described as a mad scientist laboratory. Items from jAdis have featured in movies such as The Artist, The Prestige, Batman and Robin, and Van Helsing along with many different TV shows.

Alexander Ivanov opened the Fabergé Museum in Baden-Baden in 2009 to host his collection of over 1,500 items made by Russian jewelry firm House of Fabergé. The firm was founded in 1842 and is most famous for making jewel-encrusted Fabergé eggs for the Russian Tsars.

The museum holds at least one of those Imperial Easter Eggs - the Karelian Birch egg, which was ordered by the Tsar for Easter 1917 but was delivered after he had been deposed during the Russian revolution.

The museum also holds one of two known versions of the Constellation Egg, which it claims is the finished original. This claim is disputed.

Voted "Best Comic Store" in Best of the Bay for 17 years running (2002 - 2018), Isotope Comic Book Lounge plays host to a unique museum of toilet seats. The collection was founded by accident in 2002 when Brian Wood (DMZ and X-Men) vandalized their bathroom and owner James Sime kept the toilet seat. Over 100 comic artists have now contributed illustrated seats, and a subset of the collection can be seen lining the walls of the lounge.

A building of unknown origins. The conservatory was bought as a kit by James Lick for his estate in San Jose, then purchased as a gift for the city of San Francisco after his death in 1876. it was assembled as the first formal structure in Golden Gate Park in 1879. The origin of the kit itself is unknown, though it is thought to have come from somewhere in Europe.

Today it hosts over 1,700 plant species, including some rare tropical plants that are over 100 years old and the world’s largest public collection of high-altitude orchids. Their Corpse Flowers attract a substantial crowd when they bloom for 2-3 days every 7-10 years.

Relocated from NASA Glenn Research Center to a new home inside the Great Lakes Science Center in 2010, this is one of just eleven NASA visitor centers in the USA. See inside the Apollo Command Module used in the 1973 Skylab 3 mission and celebrate Ohio's status as the fourth-largest producer of astronauts in the United States (25 astronauts so far).

Widely considered one of the most beautiful cemeteries in the world, the Recoleta cemetery hosts 4691 above ground vaults, 94 of which have been declared national historic monuments. The cemetery is laid out like a small city with a complex network of streets dividing tombs representing nearly two hundred years of architectural styles. The residents tell the story of the nation, including presidents, writers, generals, Nobel laureates and Argentinian first lady Eva Perón.

San Francisco has few cemeteries: most of them were relocated to the nearby city of Colma in the 1920s. This Columbarium (a repository for human ashes), built in 1898, is now the only non-denominational place in the city that still accepts new burials.

Interments include FORTRAN creator John Backus, politician Harvey Milk and Harry August Jansen, aka Dante the Magician - the last representative of the Golden Age of Magic.

Many of the urns are accompanied by small dioramas representing details from the life of the person interred there.

First planted between 1880 and 1883 for Jane and Leland Stanford, then restored from 1997 onwards. The 30,000 square foot garden now features over 500 cacti and succulents, 10-15% of which are historical plants still in their original locations.

The House of Broel is a 1850 Victorian mansion in New Orleans which now serves as a wedding venue and museum exhibiting Bonnie Broel's impressive collection of dollhouses. Tours by appointment only.

Describing itself as "Perhaps one of San Francisco's least known eclectic treasures", Audium is a unique sound art event presented weekly since 1967 in pitch darkness in a custom theater with 176 speakers. Founder and composer Stan Shaff still presents his compositions in person every week and will enthusiastically answer your questions after the show.

Housed in a historic cable car barn and powerhouse, this free museum tells the story of San Francisco's unique under-road cable pulled street cars. In addition to vintage cars and other exhibits illustrating the history of the system visitors can descend below the street to see the cables running, or watch the engines that power the cars from a viewing platform.

Travel back in time to a street-scape replica of Tokyo in 1958, the year instant noodles were invented, and sample Ramen from nine different restaurants representing regional varieties of the dish. Easily accessible via bullet train from central Tokyo.