San Francisco’s off-kilter gardening store Paxton Gate is opening up a Portland location on N Mississippi. According to a post on their Facebook page, “Two friends of the SF store approached us with the idea of licensing Paxton Gate under separate ownership and we took them up on it. They’ll be carrying a very similar product line, with many of the same artisans and purveyors and certainly with the same focus: Treasures and Oddities inspired by the Garden and Natural Sciences.” In other words, they don’t just sell pots and soil: They’re known for their natural sciences bent, and they offer entomology supplies and large and small taxidermy, like these taxidermied baby chicks (and taxidermied mice dressed up as Jesuit priests or Hamlet, and even a mothereffing cobra).

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Now, you’re either the type of person who’s thinking, “A raccoon penis bone for only $3??! My stocking stuffers are going to RULE this year,” or your clutching your copy of the Veganomicon and thinking along the same lines as this I, Anonymous writer:

Just a heads up to the weird, unique, local, humane people of Portland: Mississippi Avenue Lofts has decided to rent its last retail space to Paxton Gate. For those of you unfamiliar with this shop out of San Fransisco… Taxidermy, giraffes, horses, bug & butterfly pinning, white laboratory mice stuffed and dressed up like angels and the pope-type things. Where’s PETA when you need them!?! Now, North Mississippi Ave, I don’t feel that you need this outsider chain coming in here selling DEAD ANIMALS that came from and how who knows where! Lets paint it in red… NO DEAD ANIMALS for your amusement, fuck you for trying to make money off them!!!!!! Keep Portland, Humane, Local and Weird! —Anonymous

So, where do you fall? Keep in mind before you answer that they can provide you with a taxidermied piranha for only $25! And that their San Francisco location also hosts classes and special events for adults and kids to get them interested in the natural sciences… doors are set to open December 1st.

Marjorie Skinner is the Portland Mercury's Managing Editor, author of the weekly Sold Out column chronicling the area's independent fashion and retail industry, and a frequent contributor to the film and...

22 replies on “Paxton Gate”

  3. Yay more blogtown vegan baiting.

    Something about taxidermied little fish/animals appeals to me aesthetically, but I can’t really think of any reason this is ethically different from large game trophies, which I’m guessing most of Paxton’s clientele would feel was tacky at best, and properly associated with redneck stereotypes of cruelty and ignorance at worst.

  5. @ Sarah, I think there’s a difference there, and it’s KINDA similar to the Zoo conundrum. If we agree there are times and places where animal suffering is outweighed by what we feel are effective ways to get kids interested in animal issues, science, etc., it’s still a far leap from “everyone should have taxidermied animals in their homes as decorations, and if you think otherwise you’re anti-science.”

    Let’s imagine stuffed dead chicks becomes THE home decor thing thanks to Paxton – when Paxton drastically ramps up killing and stuffing baby chickens to meet demand, can’t we say that’s morally different than what OMSI has done, or what the Zoo does?

  7. @CC: The Oregon Zoo probably does more to protect animals and educate the populace than any other single organization in the PNW. The amount of stewardship displayed by the staff there is amazing.

    (disclosure: I’m a zoo member and FUCKING LOVE THE ZOO!)

    Also; if I can get tacky taxidermy for cheap, then everyone is getting tacky taxidermy for the holiday-present-giving-time-event this year.

  9. List of other places selling DEAD ANIMALS on Mississippi:
    Every place that serves food, including the convenience store.

    You’ll need a lot of paint.

  12. I’m going to put this in the “I want a new, ethically problematic bauble, but I don’t want to do any work to get it” pile.

    I mean, the whole point of creepy taxidermy is that you have some connection to the animal, either you killed it or owned it or at least found it by the side of the road. Or all three.

    I get my stuffed baby chickens with the old ways: mud, a sharp stick, guts up to my elbows. As men once did.

  14. Oh this makes me so happy! I used to live about 6 blocks from the SF store. Now if we can import a Borderlands bookstore too I will never ever leave Portland again.

  16. @ Graham, I’m with you on the Zoo, I just think the comparison is valid, and I respect the points made by the anti-Zoo folk.

    @ TSW, I see an ethical difference between eating animals for food and having them killed to decorate your apartment, but I’m in already in the minority.

    Can we agree that the debate over fur as fashion is basically the same debate as Paxton presents?

  17. taxidermy stuff is totally gross, but it feeds a very portland scenester need for perversity that can’t be entirely satisfied by eating the weirdest animals or food combinations. so i see this kind of crap getting more and more popular, and then tapering off when people notice their taxidermy items are slowly decaying parts of dead animals. i don’t think anybody purchasing decorative animal parts is even remotely considering ethical or sustainable choices, so that’s completely out of the argument. and yeah, you’re a bad vegan if you wear fur.

  18. @CC,
    Perhaps. But using Anonymous’s standard, all fall under the category of “dead animal for amusement.”

    Fur as fashion is deplorable but even more so triggers my class bias. Coming from Wisconsin, a state big on outdoor sport, I can accept taxidermy as a pride-laden adjunct to hunting culture. But something about stuffed baby chicks rubs me the wrong way. Then again, those chicks will eventually be stored along their berthren in flithy tight quarters then slaughtered so….maybe it’s a mercy killing?

    The bigger issue is I can’t stop thinking “Paxton Gate” refers to a scandal involving Bill Paxton, and how I would hate to have to re-think my enjoyment of Big Love, Aliens and Weird Science.

  19. When I was a kid I had a taxidermied seagull as a toy. I have been vegan for the last 11 years. With those qualifications in mind, I would just like to say, stores like this are ridiculous wastes of space. This kind of product fetishizes nature and reinforces a conservative idea of the dominion over animals as man’s god-given right. Fetishizing nature is not helpful to environmental causes and can have an opposite, detrimental effect on our culture’s relationship with nature.

    It also speaks to the current trend of throwback Victorian exoticization (ahem, steam punk, vintage girls wearing furs, et al) that leads down an inevitable road to racism and division.

    Fuck that.

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