OMSI After Dark

OMSI After Dark is a 21-and-over event held by the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry once a month. On their website they boast, "Enjoy child-free, brain-building science fun featuring live demos, new exhibitions and old favorites! Guests can indulge in tasty snacks, sweets and beer and wine from regional food and beverage artisans." After reading that, and being a science nerd, I thought it would be a great idea for a date night. January's theme was Sugar.

A giant devil cupcake…mobile?

So we got our $13 a person tickets and invited our friends Stephanie and Gabe along. When we got there the entire parking lot was completely packed. At 6:30 PM there were barely any spots left. WOW, we thought. This was way more popular that we expected. It must be super cool. Unfortunately, the result was merely satisfactory.

Pulling our own taffy. Literally the best part of the night. 

What we got were small samples, an overpriced cash bar, and a lot of this:

Standing in line!!!

The only good part of the night was when we found a hidden free sample room and tasted enough bit-size bundt cake samples to satisfy our entry fee.

A caramel apple of the future! Cool science, but worth 30 minutes in line?

The main hall with free samples was so crowded you almost couldn't move. But no matter how I tried to wrap my mind around how people would pay to come get free samples, I couldn't figure out the logic. Well played advertisers. It seemed like the "hip" Portland crowd attended just so they could talk about the cool "nerdy" thing that they did. I can't blame OMSI for using this as a revenue stream for what they do (which is great by the way!), but next time I think I will stay home. Maybe I'll put a marshmallow in the microwave and do my own sugar science.

xoxo

K