Even though we have yet to meet, I was recently tapped with helping my new bride find a birthday gift for my brother-in-law, who will be coming to town later this month.
A well-known and liked “scare actor” at Universal Studios and their Halloween Horror Nights in Orlando, he and I share a mutual love of the horror and the occult, so she figured I'd be a good guide.
Yes, please!
In search of spooky and kooky treasures that pay homage to both Oklahoma City and my brother-in-law's pop-culture fanaticism, I directed us to Oklahoma City’s own warehouse of the mad and macabre, Craig’s Emporium, 1209 NW 23rd St.
Celebrating 30 years in OKC—Craig’s feted its anniversary last month—the sprawling shop has transformed the depilated 23rd and Classen street corner, where the much-missed Rainbow Records once was, into a magically inclusive, LGBTQ+-friendly skull-ful of witchy wonder and kitschy celebration.
Some of our old school readers may have bebopped around Craig’s in the 90s, when it was just a small but still deeply weird gift shop anchored on the main strip of the Paseo Arts District.
Sadly though, I had never been!
Once, a few years ago, a woman I was dating insidiously and ominously insisted on going to Craig’s, but she said she had to go alone. I first surmised that she was shoplifting, but it could have been that she wanted to choose her geode sex accoutrements in private. We broke up and I had a stroke before I got the chance to find out.
But, in somewhat good health now despite my recent bout of phantom pneumonia—I’m all better, thank you!—my wife and I decided that this birthday-gift mission was the time to check it out. So, around noon on a Saturday, we trekked out to Craig’s before a planned stop at the panaderia.
Little did we know the treasures we would find!
As we quietly entered, the overwhelming scent of mystical moods and magical blends shooed me in. Fair warning, you will smell like Craig’s for the rest of the afternoon, and everyone will know you’ve been sneaking around doing weird stuff.
The 30th Anniversary hullaballoo had the store buzzing with first-time customers, expected regulars and well-meaning lookie-loos, as a tower of multicolored sunglasses blinded me with exact science. Where to even begin?
Sensing both my delight and overwhelm, my wife took me by the arm and showed me to the massive Halloween display in the middle of the store. Featuring a life-sized alien from Mars Attacks!, his ray-gun displayed all the tricks and treats for the season, with masks, monsters, and novelty candy. Zap!
As she looked for strange presents, I ventured out for stranger realities.
From glorious massive geodes to massive ivory dildos, my pants got a little tight in this section.
Thankfully, the grim statues of Saint Death—or, La Santa Muerte, as my relatives call her—kept everything wholly reverential and somewhat holy. (While I get those and other spiritual iconography from the many Mexican stores I frequent on the southside, it’s good to know these are available downtown in a pinch!)
Taking whiffs of holy scents, burning incense, and downright demonic candles with the sweetest smells to bitter sniffs, Craig’s had the old gods, the new gods, and the pewter figurines of all the minor gods in between.
For a second there, I had to step out and get some fresh air, as it was too much sensory overload!
Swigging some water, when I returned, my wife had already filled her basket with all types of supernatural happenings, including a vampire kitten, a Rocky Horror magnet, and some Frankenstein socks that looked mighty cozy and downright monstrous.
As she was looking over some more of the incense, past the walls featuring soaps and candles hand-crafted by Craig’s mom and beyond a smattering of music-boxes, the one thing that really stood out was their section of festive LGBTQ paraphernalia, memorabilia, etc. — a thoroughly weird showcase of what makes Oklahoma better than OK.
Speaking of sun-burned ideologies and mostly-burned pathologies, the hand-held Donald Trump stress-ball was definitely on my stressful Christmas wish-list for many of my MAGA-log family members.
Giving Craig’s Emporium one last look, as we purchased my brother-in-law’s gifts, I saw a bookcase of forbidden texts of esoteric spirituality and hidden religious tomes. I am going to come back to delve into those, especially the Santerían ones, thankfully in convenient paperback form.
As I licked the oversized lollipop I treated myself to at checkout, I thought, yeah…I will definitely be going back to Craig’s. And, if he ever visits our fair city, I will take my brother-in-law too.
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Follow Louis Fowler on Instagram at @louisfowler78.
