COOL STUFF Gems and jaws: a nature store with bite By Jennifer Wettlaufer, photos by kc kratt It’s impossible to drive by a six-foot set of jaws without stopping. The hungry flash of white in a store window on South Park Avenue pulls my miniature Honda over like a tiny fish to a shark’s lunch. When I walk into Past & Present, the charms of the science and nature store consume me: gems and science toys, meteorites that shine like metal or feel heavy in my hand, and twirling stands of shark and dinosaur teeth. A man shops for “something different” for two girls aged eleven and thirteen, and other customers look at jewelry. The store is like SoHo’s popular Evolution with its crowded neighborhood feel and enchanted customers. But on South Park, behind the busy storefront, something else happens. A true museum grows from the ground up. LaPlaca’s collecting life started early, on expeditions with his father. He still has a piece of coral—found when he was three, at 18 Mile Creek—that is about 370 million years old. Not only meteors, bones, and fossils travel over space and time to land in the store; over the past few years, people have visited from forty-seven states and sixteen countries. A room in the back is the shiniest gem in Past & Present, where lighted cases and shelves hold stories. Scratched glacial pavement, gorgeous white snail fossils, and part of an early rhinoceros sit near a concept painting by Kristen V. H. Wyckoff of a Devonian swampy forest. In a corner, assembled bones of a duck-billed dinosaur leg tower eight feet high, starting with the ungues, a.k.a. toe-tips that look like oversized arrowheads. Store owner Glen LaPlaca collected the bones. “We have about half the dinosaur, and we’re going out, collecting the entire skeleton,” he says. To LaPlaca, “going out” means digging on a ranch in South Dakota. A longtime scientist, LaPlaca hails from the Aquarium of Niagara, where he most recently served as its general curator. His current lab is behind a door that won’t shut because there is a humerus bone in the way, wrapped in plaster and duct tape and tied to a book cart purchased from Media Play when it went out of business. “I just haven’t taken it out of its jacket yet,” says LaPlaca, who since 9/11 ships or drives bones himself instead of taking them on the plane. Geoscience educator Heather Truitt, who has worked at Past & Present for ten years, tells me the gauze wrapping is the same stuff doctors use for broken human bones. LaPlaca’s collecting life started early, on expeditions with his father. He still has a piece of coral—found when he was three, at 18 Mile Creek—that is about 370 million years old. Not only meteors, bones, and fossils travel over space and time to land in the store; over the past few years, people have visited from forty-seven states and sixteen countries. One of LaPlaca’s goals is to add a classroom to give current activities the space they deserve. Birthday parties, classes, book signings, and school visits are offered. Past & Present, A Unique Science and Nature Store, 3767 South Park Ave., Blasdell, is a mile from exit 56 of the I-90, just a corner north of Ilio DiPaolo’s Restaurant. There is a small parking lot and street parking. Call 825-2361 or visit www.pastpres.com for more information. Jennifer Wettlaufer recently won a science writing award from the National Federation of Press Women. She suffers from the fear of being eaten. Back to the Table of Contents Back to Top