Keeper of Wonders (San Pedro Today Cover Story)
- aaronwmckenzie
- Nov 6, 2025
- 1 min read
Updated: Jan 7
30 October 2025
When Thomas Monauni was four years old, the circus came to Munich. What caught the young boy's eye, however, were not the exotic animals, the freak show performers, the fortune tellers, or the burlesque dancers. Instead, he was fascinated by the whale. Stuffed and mounted atop a flatbed trailer, the creature rolled through the crowds of onlookers, a visitor from some alien world. "When you're a kid, things are larger than life and they really impact you," says Monauni. "That was my first exposure to a world you don't see everyday."
We are sitting in the middle of Wunderkammer, Monauni's "chamber of wonders" located in the Crafted warehouses in San Pedro. It is equal parts antique store and art gallery, where everything is for sale but where, Monauni hopes, visitors will experience more than the thrill of mere commerce. Retro-futuristic, polished aluminum cars by Los Angeles builder Baron Margo occupy a corner across from a life-sized Frankenstein figure and within sight of 500-year-old Christian relics. Down the way sits work by special effects artist Norman Cabrera and a display of Bone Clones skulls, including an 8½-foot-tall megalodon shark jaw.
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