Fresno Famous

The last time I went to the Fresno Metropolitian Museum of Art and Science was like in Kindergarten when they had a dinosaur exhibit; the only memory I have was sticking my hand in the mouth of a T-Rex display.

I haven't been to many museums in general. I went to the L.A. County Museum of Art in 10th Grade to see a Van Gogh exhibit, but there wasn't an appreciation for the art there...I was 16 and stupid.

So my first real major Art Museum experience was this past May at the Portland Art Museum. They had no artists that I knew, but they had lots and lots of pieces to look at, and there were a few pieces that I was astonished with.

Now, about the Met. The Add-on part of the building is now gone, replaced by a very large grassy area (the grass was very mushy...like it had been rolled out the day before). All that remains the the original Fresno Bee building. The northern and eastern sides of the building retain their original looks, while the southern and western sides were given a more modern look. Those new looks were completed sometime in the last month it seemed; After 3 years, it looks like much of the exterior changes were done at the very end.

As for the inside, I wondered if thats everything they have. The first floor was the gift shop and the kids science area. The second and third floors contained their current main attraction, the "Feathered Dinosaurs." They had a large replica of one of the creatures, about 15 feet tall, maybe 20 feet long, with some brownish feathers, but it looked like a dinosaur. They also had fossils of these bird-dinosaur creatures as well. I didn't that there was a debate about what came first: a bird or a dinosaur. Which one paved the evolutionary way for the other? I'm going to google that.

The fourth floor was bare for the most part. Aside from a few paintings on the wall, that was about it. When I was on that floor, there were a few guys standing next to the stairs pouting about how they wanted to leave already. They were very loud about it too. Kind of awkward. These guys were in their 30's at least.

When I came out of the museum, they had a stage on the other side of the lawn where a jazz band was playing. There were only 10 people watching. It was about 7:20 at the time and they were supposed to be on until 9:00. It's too bad because the singer was great.

I was feeling a little let down. That can't be everything they've got, right?

However, I was still planning to go to the dance party on Saturday night entitled M3tr0pol1s (or Metropolis, if you can't understand it with the numbers and such). They were going to have 15 DJ's on 3 floors of the Met, all for the low low price of nothing.

I get there at 2am and discover that they are hundreds of people waiting in line, going from the only entrance facing the lawn, whipping around the building. In spite of all this, there were some individuals who had the audacity to try to cut the line because they knew the DJ who was throwing it. Luckily, those douche bags were not let in, but not without saying something very douche-y:

"They're not letting anyone in...they're not even letting ME in..."

Oh Fresno. Why do you people try so hard?

There was only one entrance into the building -- the one facing the new, large lawn area. When people heard that another door on the other side of the building was open, people ran like a stampede to that door. Once that door was closed, the people that got out of line thought they they could just go back to their place in line after they got out. Most of did, despite the very weak attempts by museum staff to get them to back of the line.

And so, after waiting in line for an hour, the dwindling crowd waiting outside, cold and restless, were told to leave because the cops had shut it down. I found out later that there were a couple individuals who were picking fights inside.

Lovely. Picking fights in a museum? I have the odd feeling that these individuals who were involved probably weren't the typical museum-goer either. Indeed, some of the people that had the chance to get in told me that there were a lot of people who were definitely not there to look like million year old fossils. This incident might have effectively killed any future events such as this. Typical Fresno, right?

But you can't necessarily blame the Museum for that. What I can say is that it was pretty underwhelming considering the amount of time that it was closed. Maybe there were going to add more things after this weekend. Maybe. All I can hope now is that they have some things up their sleeve.