12 Offbeat Museums within the Bay enviornment to consult with q4 ...

a range of exhibits at the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents (Courtesy of Mandy Aftel)

In honor of this week's Bay Curious episode taking a look at small or atypical museums within the Bay enviornment, we requested listeners to contribute their favourite unconventional local spots and received a handful of super thoughts. With listener help we latest a short listing:

Aftel Archive of Curious ScentsBerkeleyThe collection is run by using Mandy Aftel, a perfumer who has curated more than 300 fragrances for company to odor. The archive comprises 100-12 months-historical scents alongside their modern counterparts, the raw botanical material used to create scents and body spray books from the turn of the century.

The Bay ModelSausalitoThis scale mannequin of the San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta device turned into accomplished via the military Corps of Engineers in 1957. At roughly 1.5 acres, this three-dimensional hydraulic model is capable of simulating tides and currents. It turned into built to look at public works proposals, like a plan to dam the South Bay (it proved that theory changed into unwell-informed). or not it's now not used for research, but still works! within the age of computing device modeling software, the Bay mannequin is quite the sight.

The rendering of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge as a part of the Bay model, a 320-by using-four hundred foot scale model of the Bay Delta watershed. (Olivia Allen-price/KQED)

Bigfoot Discovery MuseumFeltonSkeptics and believers alike will locate all issues regarding Bigfoot (or, if you opt for, Sasquatch/Yeti) here at this tiny museum simply outdoor of Santa Cruz, from archive photo "evidence" and artifacts to Bigfoot memorabilia and pa tradition clippings.

Letterform ArchiveSan FranciscoIf you're keen on lettering, typography, calligraphy and image design this vicinity is for you. On the cabinets you are going to discover a mode publication for NASA, stamps from the long-lasting 1968 summer time Olympics in Mexico, customary Fillmore posters and hand-drawn holy manuscripts from the 1400s. The nonprofit core permits visitors fingers-on entry to a curated assortment of over 50,000 gadgets.

The Lick Observatory peaking throughout the snow dusted good of Mount Hamilton. (Gordon Wrigley/flickr)

Lick ObservatoryMount HamiltonSweeping vistas of the Santa Clara Valley will greet you in the automobile parking space, internal which you could peruse informative displays and at evening that you could explore the sky the usage of one of the vital main telescopes used to discover extrasolar planets. The observatory opened in 1888 as a part of the university of California. It turned into funded by way of James Lick and in keeping with the web site, "Lick's present of $700,000 became the biggest philanthropic reward within the historical past of science and would amount to $1.2 billion by way of state-of-the-art specifications."

Niles Essanay Silent film MuseumFremontA stone's throw faraway from where Charlie Chaplin made videos at the flip of the century, this theater is committed to holding and showing silent films. The reveals and theater stand in what became once the town of Niles (now a historical district in Fremont), which has been called the first Hollywood. The museum has weekly showings and for October they've curated some spooky options.

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Musée MécaniqueSan FranciscoThe Musée Mécanique houses over 200 coin-operated machines on Pier 45 in Fisherman's Wharf. you can find all of the coin-operated classics from your childhood, no depend if you happen to were a toddler. It's acquired whack-a-mole, Addams household pinball, arm wrestling, coin-operated peep indicates, a lot of fortune telling instruments and plenty of musical machines together with, a wurlitzer (it's a kind of desktop which you can find in the core of werry-go-rounds) built in 1915 with 130 pipes in it, orchestra bells, a bass drum, a snare drum and an emblem. be trained more about it in this week's Bay Curious episode.

Machines at Musée Mécanique (Magg ie Galloway/KQED)

Museum of art and Digital EntertainmentOaklandFrom Atari to the psthree, from historical classics to new classics, "The MADE" residences heaps of playable video games, presents free programming classes for children, lectures, tournaments, video game construction parties and neighborhood events like "Cosplay Comedy."

The Museum of overseas PropagandaSan RafaelIn a former toddlers's shoe save, the museum displays 20th and 21st century political art from locations like North Korea, Russia, Iran, China and the USA. The exhibits are grouped into several topics, concepts and styles of propaganda.

New Almaden Quicksilver Mining MuseumSan JoseLearn the heritage of mercury mining in the area, the technology used and the lifestyle of quite a lot of mining communities. Mining at New Almaden started in 1945, when a Mexican Cavalry officer discovered the pink rock used by way of the Ohlone to color the walls of the Santa Clara Mission contained mercury. The mercury may well be used to technique silver in Mexican mines.

The native order of Rosicrucians is planning a brand new museum to center of attention on alchemy. (Bert Johnson/KQED)

Rosicrucian Egyptian MuseumSan JoseThis museum boasts of an unlimited assortment of artifacts: sculpture, jewelry, tools, ritual objects and, yes, mummies — both human and animal. There are also several wonderful replicas on screen, together with a forged of King Tutankhamun's golden sarcophagus and the Rosetta Stone. As you'll hear in our 2017 Bay Curious episode on the museum, many visitors say their spotlight is the life-size tomb that's a composite reproduction of several precise tombs in Egypt.

Santa Cruz browsing MuseumSanta CruzInside the Mark Abbott Memorial Lighthouse, which commemorates a surfer who died surfing at neighborhood Pleasure element, this small museum covers over a hundred years of browsing background in Santa Cruz. A plaque details how traveling royal Hawaiians kicked off the trend in 1885. which you could gain knowledge of more about it during this week's Bay Curious episode.