Don’t be alarmed if you see lots of steam, leather and top hats in downtown Idaho Falls Friday. The Museum of Idaho has organized a steampunk street festival in conjunction with its exhibit called “Discovering Steampunk.”
Director of public relations for the museum, Jeff Carr, says the idea for the festival came after observing the people who came to see the exhibit.
“We noticed through that just how many great steampunk fans there are and how many people have come and been enjoying it and dressing up in steampunk wear and partying and having fun and learning with us,” he said.
The festival will feature several live bands, The Wild Potatoes, Walters Wallpaper and The Opskamatrists. There will also be food, drinks and games. Carr says most of the games are STEM related with contests built into many of the science games.
Carr says this isn’t something the museum normally does, although they do host a Museum after dark event every month that is more of a date night for people to learn more about the exhibit and do fun activities after normal hours. Tickets for the event are $20 for the general public and $10 for museum members.
The event is for those 18 years and older, but if you are looking for a family friendly event the Makers Fair is on Saturday, September 15.
The Makers Fair is a free event for the community to see engineers, crafters, artists and inventors show off the things they have created.
“We have more than 30 different exhibits, we’ve got virtual reality worlds, robots, crafts and just other stuff people make, but things that are beyond the stuff you would see at a farmers market,” Carr said.
The people who will show their projects could have created something just for the Makers Fair or they have been closet inventors for years just looking for an opportunity to show them.
“A lot of these people are folks that just do this because they love it,” Carr said.
Going into October and the spooky season of Halloween, the Museum will be starting its Haunted History Tour of downtown Idaho Falls.
Because they tour different buildings every year this year there are four more buildings with new stories to tour.
“We talk about the history of the buildings and the history of the area including some of the sort of creepy sordid stories of the past that a lot of people kind of look at eastern Idaho and think “how seedy can it be?” but there are some really crazy stories from the past,” he said.
Carr says they conduct extensive research to make sure all the stories are accurate and 100 percent true.