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Jack's Joke Shop


If you're ever in Boston, you must visit Jack's Joke Shop. Visit it before you visit any of the lame tourist stuff: Freedom Trail, Fanueil Hall, Ben Franklin's grave, all that crap.

Just steps away from Boston's infamous Combat Zone, Jack's Joke Shop is the largest storehouse of back-of-the-comic-book pranks you'll find. They've got your whoopie cushions. They've got your joy buzzers. They've got your squirting cigarette lighters. And so much more.

Once I went in and asked if they had fake snots. "Fake snots?" yelled the elderly gentleman behind the counter, wearing an arrow-through-the-head gag. "Whaddyaneed? We've got the yellow snots, the green snots, the plastic snots, the rubber snots, the old-time fake snots, the modern snots." He leaned up to me conspiratorially. "We just got in some gorilla snots, my friend."

Jack's Joke Shop bills itself as "America's Oldest Continually-Running Joke Shop." They only recently added the "continually-running" bit, which makes me think that some competing joke shop started earlier, but had to shut down during the Great Depression. A bad time for the joke shops.

I went in to Jack's Joke Shop looking for a brain for PumpkinCam. I asked a clerk, "You got a brain?"

"Uh," said the guy, feeling his head. "Not sure."

"You're good," I said, pointing at him.

"You need a large brain or a small brain?" he asked.

"Man, you guys never disappoint," I proclaimed. "I could come in here with the most obscure request. I could ask for...yak hair. And you guys would say..."

"What color yak hair you need?" asked the elderly gentleman from across the store. This time he was wearing a butcher-knife-through-the-head gag. "Hey Harry!" he called to the back room, "We got any more yak hair left?"