Down the Rabbit Hole at the Gregangelo Museum
It may look like an ordinary neighborhood in San Francisco, and it is, for the most part.
Except for one house. Guarded by Bigfoot and a dodo bird, it’s stairway made of tailpipes and mufflers. You wouldn’t see that at first look. Not the remnants of a rust-bucket but an artistic creation.
Two miniature sphinxes lead you to what lies behind a clattering bamboo curtain.
OK, Lewis Carroll fans. It is rabbit hole…of sorts.
Once inside, you may be asked to sing. You don’t have to be Beyonce or Bad Bunny to belt out “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and gain access to a labyrinth of rooms that will allow you to channel your inner Alice.
This is Greganglo Herrera’s house, which, over thirty-plus years, he has made into a museum. It is in the Balboa Terrace neighborhood, just a scones-throw from posh St. Francis Wood. The Gregangelo Museum was declared a San Francisco Landmark, a declaration which silenced a few NIMBY neighbors and City Hall. I met one of the neighbors. She was fine with it.
Greganglo, a trained whirling dervish has, with his business partner Marcelo Defreitas, produced interactive entertainment — circus like events — for more than thirty years. But this is not a circus or a hodge podge grandma’s closet of old and new age memorabilia. Greganelo’s goal is to guide you through your own life journey: past, present, future…death, and whatever else turns up (check out the ape on the lampshade) while interacting with tableaus ranging from a dayglow depiction of ancient Egypt and a vision of the 1960s by Grandpa on acid, to a re-creation of an alien escape-pod surrounded by lava lamps with a black hole in the ceiling into which you can shout your frustrations. All of this is created by Gregangelo, along with visiting artists from around the world. It is not all fantasy. Science too. An astrophysicist visited last week.
In a paneled library, some of the artists left their shoes. “Which sole (sic) would you like to walk in?” was one of the questions asked of us. Gregangelo said he painted the ceiling of this room with his own ripped up shirt.
I have known a few of my touring group casually for years. But Gregangelo prompted us to tell our stories. We learned, we felt a closer bond. Tough for a Swede often criticized of having the demeanor of a herring.
We went outside. The house is surrounded by a garden of otherearthly delights.
We ended up in a glassed-in greenhouse, where we looked beyond life, a shrine honoring the Mexican celebration Dia de los Muertes, Day of the Dead, when the souls of the dearly departed return for a visit. We were asked to reflect on loved ones we have lost. Like the celebration in Mexico, this is not sad, it is festive.
Just like Bigfoot, who guards the museum. His bouquet of flowers cautions us to not make judgements about people by they way they look.
Go There: The Gregangelo Museum
There are themed tours of inside the house and the outside gardens and lots of events. There is a maximum of eight guests for public tours. No selfies allowed, Yay! They get in the way of the experience and you wouldn’t want to trip over an alien.
