Jurassic Tech

Come for the weird science. Stay for the black tea.

Visiting the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, California, feels a lot like exploring your grandparents’ attic—that is, if one of your grandparents was Indiana Jones. You might encounter the stink ant of the Cameroon, known for its audible cry and the spike that grows out of its head. Or perhaps you’ll hear the tale of the Deprong Mori, a bat rumored to possess the ability to fly through solid objects.

The trick is finding it. The building looks more like an old tenement than a traditional museum. The front door opens into a tiny gift shop, where you pay the suggested admission price of $5 then wind your way through a dark and musty maze of small rooms and exhibits. Displays on the west side of the building highlight the works of turn-of-the-century scientists and include the stink ant and Deprong Mori exhibits. The east wing contains the works of accomplished concert violinist Hagop Sandaldjian, who created tiny figurines in the eyes of needles. (The works are displayed with magnifying glasses.)

Tell the Bees: Belief, Knowledge, and Hypersymbolic Cognition feels just as strangely engrossing. The exhibit of old folk remedies makes one grateful for advances in modern medicine. Had you stammered a century ago, so they say, your parents would have made you eat a whole mouse, fur and all. On toast.

Upstairs you can take a break from the weirdness in the Tula Tea Room with a cup of Georgian Black Tea. It’s the perfect environment to sit, ponder the meaning of museums, innovation, and reality, and marvel at a bit of post-Jurassic technology: the tea bag. Hmm. Has anyone ever created tiny figurines out of these?

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Want a dose of more weird science? Head to Philly’s Mütter Museum, devoted to exploring all manner of medical oddities.

If you never progressed beyond painting with your fingers, you’ll find a kindred spirit in Massachusetts at the Museum of Bad Art.

Bay area tourists with a sweet tooth will want to pay a visit to the PEZ Museum in Burlingame, California.