It's Disco Baby

      This is a story about how London won major cool points tonight. The National Science Museum (which just so happens to be pretty close to my school) stays open late every last Wednesday of the month. They creatively refer to this as Late Night at the Museum. It’s basically the museum’s way of hosting a unique event to raise its popularity and money. The entry is free, but there are lots of table scattered throughout the levels where people can buy drinks, from a can of soda to a bottle of wine, and the Londoners certainly love to look at nerdy science things with a glass of wine. From 6:30 till around 10:00 the museum has different shows and interactive exhibit type things going on. We got there at an awkward time when a lot of the options were already over or half-way through, so the situation was looking rather dire. Until we realized that the Silent Disco was open all night.

       What is a silent disco? I was hoping you’d ask, because the same thought ran through my mind as we made our way to the second floor. There was a short description in the Museum brochure, but I still wasn’t sure what to expect. We walked into the room with the disco and I burst out laughing. It was just perfect. What I saw before me was essentially a room full of people dancing with no music, but the vast majority of them were all singing in unison. It was so weird to watch, but I just couldn’t look away. Finally we made it to the front of the line and some workers handed me a huge pair of 80’s style, Bose-no-sound-gets-in head phones. They pointed out the on/off button and the button to change stations.

      Basically, you had a choice between three DJs and a red, blue, or green light would glow on your headphones depending on which channel you were listening to. My two friends and I decided to start out with the green light, and we found a spot in the crowd to dance to The Twist. The whole experience was just so fun. It was strange to sort of be in your own little world, but still surrounded by a ton of people who may or may not be dancing to the same music. I think people felt more free to dance in goofy ways because we were all safe in our personal little music bubble and half the time, the people around us were dancing to a completely different song. It was great to try and figure out what people were listening to by their dance moves. At one point, little clusters of people started jumping up and down and I was thinking “what is going on” until I realized they were listening to Jump Around and I promptly joined in. It was funny to see people walk into the room without headphones and laugh the same way I did. We must have looked crazy, but it was just so much fun.

      The moral of the story is: If you’re lookin’ for a good time, look no further than the National Science Museum. It’s the perfect combination of nerdy and brilliant.


And on a side note: I bought myself some man cologne. It was sort of on accident, but it was only £2 and I smell like a delicious pine tree.