Tag Archives: museum

Internet Makes Progress Building U.S. Tesla Museum

In fact, there is already a perfectly good museum dedicated to Nikola Tesla, it just happens to be in Belgrade. That is where some 160,000 of the polymathic-polyglot inventor’s designs and correspondence are kept. But there’s no gainsaying that Tesla lived in the U.S. for almost six decades, and was very proud of becoming a naturalized citizen.

Seattle, in return, is very proud of Tesla. We can only speculate as to why this is so. Adopted Seattleite Mike Daisey included Tesla in his Great Men monologues, and the contrast between Tesla and Edison became central to his monologue Monopoly.

Earlier this year, The Oatmeal‘s Matthew Inman, himself creator of an epic Tesla v. Edison comic, heard about the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe, the rather aspirational (at the time) name of a 15-year-old non-profit that hoped to reclaim Wardenclyffe, where Tesla tried for 17 years to build a massive wireless communications tower. Tesla bought the land, on eastern Long Island, and began building his tower with $150,000 in hand, which I’m told is about $3 million in today’s dollars.

To buy the land today was just $1.6 million, and the the non-profit had secured a matching grant from New York State for over half that amount. So Inman launched an internet fundraiser, and 33,000+ donors later, close to $1.4 million was raised. That will not, in all probability, be the last you hear about donations needed, as the site is in serious disrepair. But Tesla is getting his due at last.

 

Seattle Public Library Now Lets You Check Out a Museum (Pass) for Free

Want to check out a museum? Literally and figuratively check out a museum?

The Seattle Public Library‘s new Museum Pass program lets you use your library card to check out free museum passes. You’re allowed one pass per week to any participating museum, but you have to wait 30 days to go back to one you’ve already visited. (It’s one pass per library card, as well.)

So far, participating museums include The Burke Museum, The Center for Wooden Boats, The Children’s Museum, Experience Music Project (EMP), Henry Art Gallery, The Log House Museum, Nordic Heritage Museum, Northwest African American Museum, and Wing Luke Museum. The big name there is EMP since adult admission is $18 online.

The pass reservation system lets you browse by museum, or by date, but either way, you get a pass good for a particular day. You’ll need both your library card number and your PIN to make a reservation. If you don’t know your PIN, check with the library: (206) 386-4636.

Bremerton (Almost) Back in the High Life Again

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The historic Manette Bridge was just about to close. It will reopen as a bicycle/pedestrian bridge only. (Photo: MvB)

Bremerton as seen from the ferry (Photo: MvB)

Harborside (Photo: MvB)

Waterfront condominiums (Photo: MvB)

"Old" Bremerton still exists in many places around town. (Photo: MvB)

A broad boulevard leads drivers toward the Ferry Terminal. (Photo: MvB)

Stone sculptures obviated the need for security bollards along the Naval Base. (Photo: MvB)

The Roxy Theater, obviously (Photo: MvB)

Three blocks of Pacific Avenue were closed off for the Summer Brewfest. (Photo: MvB)

The Aurora Valentinetti Puppet Museum (Photo: MvB)

The Aurora Valentinetti Puppet Museum, curator Stanley Hess (Photo: MvB)

The Aurora Valentinetti Puppet Museum (Photo: MvB)

The puppet museum comes with a kid's theater and play area. (Photo: MvB)

The shoe exhibit at the Kitsap Historical Society & Museum (Photo: MvB)

Mayor Patty Lent standing on the museum's Main Street

One of the new downtown parks (Photo: MvB)

The new Bremerton Bar & Grill (Photo: MvB)

On the way to the ferry terminal (Photo: MvB)

Waterfront condos still available! (Photo: MvB)

At the world famous Pyrex museum (Photo: MvB)

Bremerton's fish-and-fisherman art piece is less controversial these days. (Photo: MvB)

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Bremerton has beaten Seattle to a "touch-the-water" style waterfront. (Photo: MvB)

Foot ferry or not, you can't complain about the views on your ride between Seattle and Bremerton. (Photo: MvB)

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If you visited Bremerton on July 23, 2011, you might have just been passing through, driving off the ferry and exiting through the tunnel. The tunnel’s goal was to make Bremerton more pedestrian friendly, and in fact, above your head, for three blocks along a closed-to-traffic Pacific Avenue, about 4,000 people were standing and socializing right there in the road.

They were attending the Washington Beer Commission‘s first summertime beer festival, the cunningly named Summer Brewfest. “I haven’t seen this many people in Bremerton in 20 years,” resident Brian Duclos told the Kitsap Sun. “I can’t imagine a scenario where we would not do this again. This is absolutely a home run for us,” said Eric Radovich, WBC executive director.

I was there to meet Bremerton Mayor Patty Lent, after lunch at the Anthony’s at Harborside. A former Kitsap County Commissioner, Lent began her four-year term in January of 2010, the 32nd mayor (and second female mayor–Seattle has yet to follow up on Bertha Landes).

Lent was downtown for the Brewfest, then off to the 2011 U.S. Junior Amateur golf tournament at the Gold Mountain Golf Club. In between, coordinating meeting up with her husband Doug by cell phone, she gave me a primer on Bremerton’s revival.

Since the city’s founding in 1891, its fate has been entwined with that of the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, mirroring Seattle’s relationship with Boeing in ways. Bremerton’s total population was only 37,700 in 2010, almost exactly half what it was during World War II.

Today, a little over 10,000 servicemen and women live and work in the Bremerton area, almost 13,000 civilians work at various military installations, the vast majority at the shipyard. The yard looks busy through 2016, said Lent; the Nimitz will leave this December, its space taken almost immediately by the USS Ronald Reagan in January 2012.

That’s largely the work of Norm Dicks, the powerful congressman who is Chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. Mayor Lent’s office is located in the new Norm Dicks Government Center.

Yet a city does not feed on appropriations alone, and so Lent was, when I met her just after noon, was enthused about the 1,200 tickets pre-sold for the Brewfest, and interested in showing me around Bremerton’s arts district, featuring outdoor art installations funded by a one percent for the arts program. I spotted a single homeless person, and asked how Bremerton was doing on that score–Lent had a ready answer for that.

2014 can’t come soon enough for Bremertonians who do own homes, but even so, the Harborside condominium development, which had stalled out after opening in the teeth of the recession, is 75 percent sold. That’s before the much-anticipated return of a Seattle-Bremerton foot ferry, this time featuring a hydrofoil.

An earlier incarnation in the late ’90s was tremendously popular, and Bremerton finally seemed ready to take advantage of its waterfront bedroom-community status, like Larkspur to San Francisco. It lies just 11 miles from Seattle, and a fast ferry can make the distance in just 30 minutes–burdened by lawsuits, however, it goes slower. After Rich Passage homeowners complained about erosion from the ferry’s wake, it was slowed to around 40 minutes, then finally halted in 2003.

Still, Bremerton has plenty of locals to cater to: A 9-plex movie theater is planned to go in atop a 250-car parking garage on Burwell Street. (Sadly, depending on how you look at it, the handsome Roxy Theater, designed by Bjarne Moe, is now used mainly for church services.)

This particular weekend in July, all 250 rooms in Bremerton’s Fairfield Inn and Suites by Marriott and the Hampton Inn and Suites were full because of sports events. Kids played in the five downtown parks. Diners filled the patio of the Bremerton Bar & Grill (“40 new jobs,” noted Lent). The Toro Lounge, a tapas/gastropub, was just opening. (UPDATE: The Kitsap Wine Fest on Saturday, August 20, at the Harborside Fountain Park, drew 700 people.)

But Bremerton’s downtown is not all about the new–it’s home to the Kitsap Historical Society and Museum, and shoe people will want to visit the “Made for Walkin'” exhibit before it closes this December. You can also take a stroll down a recreation of an historic Bremerton Main Street, and you have a few more chances to eat your way through Kitsap history.

You can also pop into the Aurora Valentinetti Puppet Museum; Stanley Hess, the curator, is happy to take your questions about the puppets, which hail from all over the world. Not far is the Amy Burnett Gallery and “world famous Kitsap Peninsula Pyrex Museum.” This last is a real thing which must be seen to be believed. (There’s a “That Hat” party there this September 15, from 5:30 to 9 p.m., including a wine and jazz reception.)

Back at the Brewfest, I was sampling from among the 23 microbrews there (Chuckanut’s Alt German Ale, Port Townsend Brewing’s Hop Diggidy IPA, Iron Horse’s Irish Death, Valholl Brewing’s Poulsbo Abbey Wit–the line for Slippery Pig Brewing never shortened enough for me to try it) when I ran into Bremerton City Councilman Roy Runyon, who was delightedly surveying the Brewfest crowds.

While Runyon clearly still smarted from losing the foot ferry service years ago, he had hopes that the new ferry will be running in 2012. A 30-minute ride has come to seem talismanic to Bremertonians, hundreds of whom were on the jumbo ferry with me on the way back to Seattle, on their way to a Mariners game. By their reckoning, Safeco Field is just a few minutes walk from downtown Bremerton.