I'd originally posted about the SF-based museum on November 30, 2008. I'd been out in San Francisco and had learned my lesson that the Palace of Fine Arts was not a museum. I've known that for what seems like forever, but in 2008, I made the discovery in error. I also revisited the Exploratorium museum (which has since moved), and had a bad visit to the restroom, which was dirty and disgusting.
The original post was an angry rant. I've since removed that, but I did want to take the time to document why I returned to this museum and why it meant so much to me.
My first visit was in January 1992.
In 1992, I was enjoying my senior year of high school. I was a confident person, maybe too confident, which in hindsight we might have labeled as cocky. My friend who was two grades behind me invited me to come out to California. We were to stay with his uncle and his grandmother between visits downtown to attend the NeXTWorld conference. It was the first time I'd taken a trip without my parents. I'd had independent experience at summer camps, and this was somewhat similar, in that I was left to think on my own. A bit of a preview of what college would be like.
My friend, whom I'll call LC, was like me a Mac user and the two of us quickly bonded over this common interest. I'd since turned him on to Nigel Kennedy's Vivaldi Four Seasons and I remember dropping my Walkman (cassette, not CD) on the floor of the airplane and losing a portion of it (either the actual Walkman or the headphones). His uncle picked us up at SFO and literally scared the shit out of us by flooring the car he'd picked us up in, just as LC told me he'd been a racecar driver. Fully understood, LC. Here was an adult who wasn't like our parents and it put a smile on my face.
I don't remember every detail of the trip, but I do remember shopping for computer software and picking up a cool mousepad that advertised Berkeley Systems (the folks that made the AfterDark screen saver). It was heat sensitive and changed color with your touch. I remember his uncle taking us to a sushi restaurant and refusing to eat. And I remember the smell of his grandmother's home, with her cooking up a batch of Polish cabbage rolls.
And the Exploratorium.
Imagine you're two teenagers and an uncle without kids suddenly has to look after you—I might do the same thing and drop them off at a science museum. I don't remember him coming in at all, it was just the two of us, left to explore.
The coolest thing I remember in that space was a seat you could sit in (backed by a concave dome) that faced an identical seat on the opposite side of the large space. Despite being so far away, the two of us could have a conversation with one another. I was so inspired by that. The whole place, really. The two of us were curious, good-natured teenagers who, given our own volition, were willing to spend the afternoon actually trying to learn and discover.
The truth was I hadn't been to such a place before. And with everything new, being so far away from our homes back in Ohio, the feeling is what sticks with me. It's a feeling that remained with me, so strong, that when coming back to SF in 2008, I wanted to see it again, since it was adjacent to the Palace of Fine Arts. The revisit wasn't the same. As I mentioned, the place hadn't much changed and the bathroom was an abomination.
The image that comes to mind is from the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off where he visits the Chicago art musuem with his friends. That feeling the movie conveyed, at least, was of friends goofing off in an adult space doing their own thing. It felt like that, I guess.
I lived with this feeling for a long time, obviously. I came back home to Ohio a changed person. But I hadn't really understood why. All I could point to was that something had happened and I knew it had happened at the Exploratorium. That musuem meant something to me that was profound and lasting. And yes, the exhibits were cool. But just if we'd put ourselves in Ferris' shoes in the movie, it wasn't about the art, or the large Seurat painting they focus on.
Let me step back. My friendship had started my chance; I'd gone to LC's house on a Saturday armed with floppy disks. He'd recently moved to town and was running a bulletin board service on a MacPlus out of his basement. We'd chatted online (not the Internet, but via his MacPlus, which I'd dialed-into). It was my first real experience chatting online with someone and I'd take this skill, if you want to call it that, with me to college when I'd discover IIRC on the Internet. He'd eventually invited me over to trade software.
Yes, that was a thing. Makes Napster sound so natural when that came out, right?
So there we were, sitting in his basement. Mind you, I was not the outgoing type of person. Showing up at a stranger's house was a little intimidating. Even if he was younger than me. What I saw was a teen boy who was very, very different from me. My standard uniform was chino pants, lace-up shoes, and button-down shirts. As a teenger, my look was a bit more formal than most. And here was a guy in tight shorts, a t-shirt, and socks. He had, compared to me, a very fasionable haircut, with his hair coming down, covering half his face. He literally could only see out of one eye and kept pulling his hair back when we were talking and looking at his color Mac's screen.
And soon enough I was going to his house all the time. We were unseperatable. But I didn't know. I really didn't know.
But take me out of my comfort zone, in a place far away from home and my family?
When I'd eventually tell my mom about the Exploratorium, and how I'd loved that place? I couldn't have written it out then, but it's obvious now. I fell in love in that museum. Part of it was the novelty of being away from home, part of it was San Francisco itself. But the majority of it was LC. The dynamic between us was odd, because he looked up to me. In some ways I filled a role of an older brother, someone with experiences he hadn't yet had? He started to dress like me and our identities started to mesh. And that felt like something to me. It felt good. I felt accepted.
I think LC eventually figured out that my feelings for him went beyond friends. And no, there was no magical kiss or anything like that? But there's a part of me, if I could, I'd go back to that day at that museum and would gladly re-live it all again. One of the best feelings of my life.