King of Curiosities

The curation of randomness is about the only thing I like more than random discovery. So you can imagine how excited I was to serendipitously stumble on Busacca Gallery, a mecca for miscellanea.

Just a few blocks from the top of Lombard Street (allegedly the world’s crookedest street) high on San Francisco’s Russian Hill, Busacca is pretty much the coolest most captivating shop I’ve seen in years. To be honest, I almost walked right by it. There’s no screaming signage, it’s a nonchalant (bordering on boring) stretch of street, and the windows only hint at the brilliantly eclectic chock-a-block lunacy inside.

For some reason, my feet took me on a detour and made me walk inside to check it out. For the next hour I circled the small boutique a dozen times, discovering new objects and basically absorbing the density of totally random art and artefact—wooden cogs, a tiny Grecian urn, jumbo rings of jade, quirky silverware, seashells, skulls, primitive masks, old toy cars, water colours, oil paintings, tribal jewelry, and a whole bunch of things I couldn’t even begin to classify.

Sure, you can go to any number of antique stores and flea markets and find all kinds of random stuff. But Busacca Gallery is special, because every single object has been so carefully chosen and beautifully curated. Impossibly and improbably, a thousand individual stories braid together to make one epic, involving tale. Mark Busacca, the man behind the madness refers to himself as a taste-maker, art adviser, and consultant. All of that is true, but most of all he’s a complete pig—with an extraordinary nose for finding and a genius for editing.

Charlie has a collecting-things-from-wherever-he-goes problem. The older and odder the better. If you suffer from a similar affliction and want to know where to go to hunt for curious objects, give him a call. 

BusaccaGallery Promotional Spot from Mark Busacca on Vimeo.