The Blue Hand, located on University Blvd in
Houston,
Texas, is probably one of the
coolest,
trippiest stores i have ever been in. It's not a
new-age store, properly, nor a
vintage clothing store, but somewhere kind of in-between with a huge amount of
randomness thrown in. They have the stock
incense and
candles, random clothes that are kind of
vintage but
exotic and
strange enough as well that a lot of them are vaguely
renaissance-y (in fact they put up a booth at the local Renaissance Festival every year). They also have jewelry, lots of
jewelry, including the stock
power beads,
ankhs, and
pentagrams.
Then things start to get weirder. They have *really funky* candleholders and bizarre oil lamps and incense burners shaped like dragons (still vaguely normal), chain mail head-dresses (weirder) and hard-to-find but really *really* cool jewelry, like sunstone rings and such. (not that sunstone's rare, just impossible to find...). They also have completely random things like african drums (which i saw actual *musicians* looking at to buy-- and not urban hipsters either, actual real professionals in that type of music who happened to be visiting from Africa), little coin purses made out of really funky sea-shells, all manner of odd little trinkets and carvings and rugs and wall decorations and just about anything you could possibly imagine. They won some award from the Houston Press that was something like "Best bet-you-never-leave-without-a-gift store". If you're ever in the area, it's worth stopping by just for its sheer trippiness value...