Todd Lappin, a combination pop-culture / military tech geek-historian, recently visited The Black Hole, an equipment surplus store that sells all sorts of cast of machines from Los Alamos. His Flickr set has his excellent comments.
It’s been on my must-visit list for years, but owing to my recent obsession with building Dr. Strangelove-
style control panels, my need became more pressing. So at last, I made the pilgrimage to visit Ed Grothus at The Black Hole, a remarkable place in Los Alamos, New Mexico.Ed is a former Los Alamos National Laboratory employee, and The Black Hole is his masterpiece — an improbable but effective combination military surplus outlet, pacifist shrine, and “museum of nuclear waste.”
Ed was on hand when I stopped by, so I had the opportunity to talk with him, watch his presentation on the perils of atomic warfare, learn about his plans to erect a pair of “Rosetta Stones for the Nuclear Age” in Los Alamos, and, of course, wander the aisles.
Reader comment:
Paul Alvarado-Dykstra says:
Per your Boing Boing post about Todd Lappin’s awesome Flickr tour of The Black Hole in Los Alamos, I must also highly recommend the 2002 documentary “Atomic Ed & The Black Hole” (directed by Ellen Spiro and produced by Karen Bernstein), which is as fascinating as it is amusing. It aired on HBO and PBS, and is now available on DVD. A QuickTime clip can be viewed here.