DUNEDIN, Fla. — Joan Vickers heard about a little museum while visiting Dunedin from upstate New York and knew she had to check it out.
“Never met them. Wish I had,” she said.
The New Yorker found herself walking down memory lane at Penny Lane, the museum off Main Street and Broadway dedicated to The Beatles.
“I was always an Elvis fan. Still am. But, they were just different,” Vickers said. “They changed the whole rock and roll spectrum and they opened up the world to a whole new spectrum.”
She wasn’t the only one who spent part of her morning looking over authenticated memorabilia owned by local doctor Robert Entel. Since 2017, a portion of his vast collection has been housed in an upstairs museum space. In it, you’ll find everything from signed guitars, clothing worn by the rockers, and ever silver albums from the legendary band.
“We just have so many things that people focus in on,” Harlan Brown, the museum curator who has dutifully guided guests around the shop nearly since its opening, said.
“Robert tells me it’s between a quarter and a third of what he has and he’s actively seeking a bigger space because of that. He really wants to get it all displayed.”
The museum isn’t open eight days per week. Rather, you can only see the collection from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays. Visitors sometimes spend up to an hour walking around Penny Lane and snapping photos of their favorite pieces of Beatles history.
“It’s amazing,” Vickers said, whose favorite Beatles song is Strawberry Fields Forever.
At Penny Lane in Dunedin, "All You Need is Love" – and an appreciation for one of the greatest bands ever.
“This Beatles music will more than likely be listened to hundreds of years from now,” Brown said.
The Penny Lane Beatles Museum is located at 722 Broadway Street in Dunedin, Florida. The museum is free to enter and is located on Main Street and Broadway.
Penny Lane has no timetable for moving into a bigger space but hopes to find a place soon.