The Legend of the American Science Center

Snazzy hat, eh? I kind of wish I had bought it now.

This fab chapeau is only one item available at American Science and Surplus! I guess they have a website, but I’ve only ever gone to the store. This last week I had a shopping list of 1mm glass balls, water syringes, empty jars, and a few other things. Last Halloween, Knut bought me a gorgeous little bat skeleton there. At the moment, it’s in a little mini mall and geared towards the trendy geek. Ahh… but when I was a lass it was different…

It used to be called The American Science Center and before that it was something like Genco? Anyway, it occupied a strange building in an industrial area with only a small sign to lead you into the Ali Baba cave of nerdy wonders within.

It was a big square room with a row of glass cases marking the staff area at the front and aisles of goodies. These were roughly divided into silly stuff and evil robot building supplies by a display of telescopes. The serious stuff was mostly things like alligator clips, mercury switches, motors, cables, etc. The silly side had pretty much everything else: old glove molds, laminated animals for dissection, tiny rubber pigs, the top half of Jabba the Hutt dolls, jars, rabbit pelts, plastic organizers, magnets, and spools of mylar. Each item was in its own bin with an amusing card stating the name, price, and usually a bad pun. In the glass cases were optical illusion kits, real anatomical specimens, vintage gas masks, and sea monkeys. This was an excellent place to buy both wall-y-walkers and replacement rotary phone cords (turquoise only). Various doodads hung from the ceiling or were pinned to the walls.

I was pretty much the only child in there at the time and now it’s more geared towards science projects, but they seem to be doing well. It’s pretty darned neat.