A is for Academy of Sciences

Image credit: Cal Academy of Sciences Research Archives

Welcome to the A-Z Challenge Entry for A on the Museum of Joy! This month, I'll be writing about 26 inspirations for the Museum of Joy, one for every letter of the alphabet. To be fair, this entry is actually about the California Academy of Sciences, but I've got something else lined up for letter C, and living in San Francisco there's no need to refer to what state you're in. When I was a kid, it was just The Museum with Dinosaurs.

My family moved to San Francisco just before I turned 2 and just after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. We were pretty poor, apparently, although I had no idea because I was a toddler and we lived at the edge of Golden Gate Park, which is still one of the coolest places in the world that a kid can possibly have at her doorstep. (Although the Inner Sunset, our neighborhood, is a whole bunch ritzier now, there still remains a shop that was for me a magical cave at the age of 2, which we called The Badge Shop because it sold dozens of tiny enameled pins and other treasures. It's really called "Oriental Import Co" or something, and it looks exactly the same. You can still buy a really great pin for five bucks, too.) Back then, a member ship at the Academy of Sciences was affordable. As this article says, a family membership was $25 in 1996, and this is even earlier. Now it's $500. Poor kids like me don't get to go any more, but then there's a lot less to see these days....