May 80s Nights never die! Return to the decade of decadence at the Science Museum Thursday August 1st and dance your Jordache off. The event gives you unfettered access to all of the museum’s exhibits, including its very popular BODY WORLDS: The Anatomy of Happiness installation. Have some adult beverages, pop your collars, and rock out to timeless jams you swear aren’t old enough to be playing over the speakers at Whole Foods.
In addition to the bumpin’ dancefloor and the food trucks, the museum will keep your dance moves bold with their craft cocktails and cold beers. There’ll be trivia, inflatable foosball and jousting, retro arcade games, and even a troll doll bracelet-making station to share with the new friends you’ll meet during their Best of the 80’s presentation at the Dome. They’ll be breaking down the science in your favorite sci-fi franchises – separating the science from the fiction.
We got Jennifer Guild, the Communications Director at the Science Museum, on the phone for a hot minute to get her impressions of the upcoming event. Her excitement was palpable and shed some light on the why’s of whats going on over there:
“Science on Tap is a specific event we created just for adults. When there are kids here, most of the adults let them interact with all of the exhibits primarily, stepping back to let them explore. This usually ends up with our adult patrons never really being able to “play” the way we all know they want to. So, we take some time aside just for the adults to cut loose.
We realize, too, that sometimes adults feel they can’t really connect to science the way kids naturally do. We want the adult children-at-heart in the city to take advantage of the fun interactivity of the museum. We also know they love costumes, cosplay, theme parties etc. So we’re just going to give them everything with this series of parties. We switch up the themes each time to keep it fresh and exciting. The elaborate costumes people come up with are amazing. People go all out. The steampunk event we did recently was incredible.”
We also include all the exhibits at the museum with the Science on Tap ticket so that our guests can experience the entire building without dodging toddlers.
For the 80’s theme this time we have a heavy metal themed interactive exhibit for, well, heavy metals. We combined the psuh/pull of science and fiction within science fiction, centering around 80’s sci fi films we all know. The adults only screening, led by our in-house space nerd duo Justin Bartel and Prabir Mehta, will be broken down and commented on for the innate ridiculousness of the era and the wild hopes of futurism.
There’s a live astronomy show, inflatable jousting and foosball activities to play up Olivia Newton John’s “Let’s Get Physical” and retro arcade games, a 80s DJ on the dancefloor, 80s trivia games – which pulls from the ‘80s’ of any of the last six centuries.
It’s going to be a blast. Come check it out August 1st between 6 and 10PM at the Science Museum of Virginia.
All photos courtesy of the Science Museum of Virginia
