Geek Venues (3/4)

The third guest post from Brannen in a series about geeky hangouts around DC. This time, he covers a few museums that usually get missed in the online lists.

For Science!

Welcome back, geeks and friends. Today’s posting is brought to you by something I’ve been experimenting with involving high grade coffee beans, pure water, some lab equipment and very, very slow expression of the goodness in the beans. I’m almost to the point where I can see time, but not quite yet. Let’s see where I am by the end of this posting.

As promised on Saturday, tonight I want to talk about a couple of spots to get out to with friends, family, loved ones or those you hope to entice into becoming your companion for a time. But not just any kind of spot. Thus far I’ve looked at places for gaming, spots for making but tonight I want to talk about a couple of places that fall more under Science! than anything else.

For those who want a more mellow time (and perhaps be reminded of just how small and meaningless and... okay, I’m back), I can’t really suggest a better spot than the Albert Einstein Planetarium. Oh, sure, there are IMAX theaters all around you in the complex where you can watch Big Bird talk about the sky and stuff about planes, but that’s just local details. In the planetarium you get a kind of purity, a sense of where you are with all the stars shining around you. Not everything is sedate out there. I’ve been hearing good things about the Cosmic Collisions presentation at the planetarium as well, so you can go for the peaceful and philosophical or you can still get massive (galactic scale) bang ups. The choice is yours.

This is a hard spot to beat for sheer versatility. Desperately need a break before you go Sweeny Todd on visiting family? Head out for an afternoon showing and then a walk over to say hi to Albert himself. Need some alone time? Metro over and enjoy. Looking for something with more geek cred than a movie to take the object of your affection to? Take a walk around the Mall and wind up in the dark, looking up.

I wish you could see the ground at his feet. It's a map of more
than 2700 local stars. (via Bernt Rostad)

Pulling a serious one eighty from the planetarium (and heading over state lines) brings us to The National Firearms Museum, a prime example of the application of science. Now, I’ll say up front, this won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. That being said, I know a lot of geeks who enjoy heading to the range now and again. I know a lot, lot more geeks who love guns (along with swords and lightsabers and knives and...) as part of their fandoms and fan iconography.

The museum itself is home to fifteen galleries and more than 2700 firearms. Most of the galleries are arranged by historical period (not a bad way to hook in a proto-geek child if you have one available) with a few specialty galleries like the toy gun section or the Hollywood Guns gallery. They also have collection images online, but that’s just the same as getting to see them in person. Check out the site for hours and directions, but if you’re the type who enjoys weapons or perhaps has a love of reserve engineering then go and enjoy an afternoon.

Coming up next from Brannen on DC Geeks is the final installment of this little series, two places the book geek has to go in DC.