Oddyssea Outside: An Exploration of Art, Nature, and Tech

“We opened on June 13th,” Mike Harding tells me. “Friday the 13th.”

The date is fitting for a place as peculiar as Oddyssea Outside, the outdoor extension of curiosity-retail store Oddyssea. As an interactive garden, Oddyssea Outside has been perfectly complementary to its eponymous parent next door and, despite its foreboding opening date, has been especially well-received by Half Moon Bay locals and visitors alike.

Oddyssea Outside’s predecessor, Oddyssea, opened first in 2012. Following the trend of engaging customers—like restaurants with communal cooking, bespoke clothing boutiques, and u-pick fruit—Oddyssea features products like make-them-yourself terrariums, break-your-own geodes, and solar hummingbird kits. There is also labware, like beakers and test tubes, along with pocketwatches and other coastal curios. Visitors who have visited the Exploratorium or Maker Faire (or Burning Man) will feel a certain familiarity with this shop that has equal roots in art, nature, history, and tech.

Oddyssea and Oddyssea Outside also have an online shop through which guests can purchase some of the in-store items. Though the webshop is limited, principals Mike and Ellen strive to carry items that are not easily available elsewhere online. “If you can find something cheaper on Amazon, there is no advantage to us carrying it,” Mike says. “But many of the things that we carry in the shop are actually easier to get through us.” Fully exploiting the advantages of a brick-and-mortar, Mike and Ellen have proven that the space is dynamic, and the expansion to Oddyssea Outside has naturally resulted in further experimentation. ‘What we are doing is new.’ Mike says.

In the garden pavilion, alongside the bow of a wrecked ship Oceane, I agreed. And although it’s peculiar to stand next to the salty remains of a ship on the corner of Main Street, the Oceane will not be the first thing to catch your eye. First, you’ll spot the mighty Cannonball Run, a pedal-powered marble run soon to be certified by Guinness as the largest in the world (the ‘marble’ is a bowling ball, and the machine looks like a giant re-creation of the board game Mousetrap). When asked about the bureaucracy of Cannonball Run and the garden more broadly—securing city approval, obtaining building permits, etc.—Mike says, “Like anything else, it takes longer than expected.” As a case in point, Cannonball Run was expected to be operational in July. But because of the custom engineering specs, the Harding’s will have to wait a little longer to take their place as world record holders.

Other activities at Oddyssea Outside are equally engaging. There’s a mining trough, where visitors can search for shells and stones; metal detectors and electric bicycles for daily rental; make-your-own mason jar lanterns; and Trina’s Sweet Shoppe, to replace the energy burned riding that bicycle coastside.

I can never quite place it, but spaces like this always stoke my creativity to a higher level—sitting at a table I made notes to plant my winter garden, to build and hang a few aerriums on my back patio, to finish refinishing my pine desk. As interactive as the space is though, Mike is insistent that they’re not imposing an education on their customers.

“We want this place to be entertaining, first and foremost. But if guests come and are stimulated to do their own research about edible plants or soldering an amplifier, even better.”

Spotting my cracked iPad screen, he continues, “I don’t think you should be afraid to pop that thing off and put a new one on yourself.”

I mention my uneasiness about the pervasiveness of technology and connectivity, for which Oddyssea Outside could equally be a conduit or an impediment. Mike validated my anxieties about my own disappearing ability to just focus. About being distracted in technological today, he says: “It’s a little bit different now. Now there is expectation for continuous partial attention.”

“One of the things that’s best about Oddyssea Outside is that if you want to sit at a table with a group of friends, that’s wonderful. On the other hand, if you have a kid or a person who is shy or reserved or a little more independent, it’s perfectly okay for them to find a place to camp out, and carefully curate the little bits that are going to go into their Wearable Worlds Terrarium Necklace. They’re not gonna get hassled. This is one of the only places around that they won’t get hassled.” Across the table, his phone buzzed, right on cue.

“My phone is distracting me, but I’m not compelled to look at my phone—right now you have my full attention.”

And that’s the single most important resource we humans have, Mike reveals: attention. If you are fully engaged in whatever task or goal you are trying to accomplish or achieve, then you really cannot do anything else. More than workshops and hands-on activities, Oddyssea Outside provides an environment where one can be unusually deliberate in the time taken to complete a project. Through these engaging crafts, it becomes a place to further hone your focus and attention span. Numerous studies have shown that zoning out (and procrastination) actually enhances concentration, and to get lost in an activity at Oddyssea Outside is to train and improve your focus in this misleadingly simple way, with the ultimate goal of realizing tasks as they come—what athletes and researchers at Maharishi University of Management call ‘peak performance,’ what Kanye West called God Level. Continuous full attention, maybe.

What other projects are in the pipeline at Oddyssea Outside? Perhaps the most intriguing is Drone Flight School, where students will learn to pilot basic quadcopter drones. “There is a fair amount of skill required,” Mike points out. “You need a little bit of stick time.” With the increasing infiltration of drones into industries such as movie production and agriculture, flying a drone will no doubt be a requisite skill in the near future, and Oddyssea Outside is again ahead of the curve.

Closer in the future is Night of Lights, Half Moon Bay’s annual parade and festival, the coastside’s unofficial kickoff to the Holiday season. It’s going down this Friday on Main Street from 6:00-9:00pm. Oddyssea and Oddyssea Outside will be open late, and in addition to the standard activities visitors will be able to make coastal wreaths, snow globes, Christmas tree ornaments, and holiday candles. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more thoughtful gift for a loved one or in-law than a candle you made yourself.

Though the proprietors may not admit it, there is much more than just entertainment to be had at Oddyssea Outside. Like it or not, you will get an education after all.