When my wife and I heard the news that American Science & Surplus launched a GoFundMe to help raise operating costs to move into a new warehouse, citing slumping sales since the COVID-19 pandemic punctuated by a huge drop-off in the last year, we began to look around our house and try to identify what bits of our home décor came from the very quirky, very geeky retail shop at 6901 W. Oklahoma Ave. The light-up moon atop our entertainment center? Yep. The kitchen measurement chart magnet on our fridge? Obviously. (Forty-eight teaspoons to a cup!) The Archie McPhee tiny hand, and the tiny hand for tiny hands, mounted in one of our kitchen plants? Oh yes. And my wife reminded me that we have a book about East Germany we bought there, because…book about East Germany. But in reality, there are enough weird novelty items in our house that it’s become difficult to tell what came from AS&S and what hasn’t.

That seamless integration of straight up weird shit from the Weird Shit Store is a microcosm of American Science & Surplus’ presence in Milwaukee proper: technically, it hasn’t been in Milwaukee since the city’s start, but it has, hasn’t it? (There are two locations in Illinois, as well.) I couldn’t tell you when I first became aware of AS&S, but it was some time before I moved to Milwaukee in the summer of 2002. I moved to this city for a number of reasons—my band was relocating, along with lots of other Green Bay music scene mainstays after the closure of the Concert Cafe. I was dating someone here, and the Fox Valley had started to feel smaller than what I wanted in a stomping ground. But knowing that there was a place in town that sold medical posters, novelty toys, graduated cylinders, and enough spare circuits and wires to build your own protocol droid was certainly one of many selling points that convinced me that Milwaukee could be my home. Hell, had I lived here in my teen years, I would have begged and pleaded with my parents to let me get a job there, assuming that I was cool enough to get hired. You can save your uber-hip local musicians and sports heroes; as far as I’m concerned, whatever nerdy purple-haired teenage comedian labeled the back scratchers with a Ted Nugent pun is the coolest kid in town.

I confess that when I read how soaring shipping costs were causing financial hardship for the store, I realized I forgot that there’s even an American Science & Surplus website, let alone one that takes orders. I never visit it, because, well, the store’s right there. Stepping through what feels like the entryway to an old grocery store or five and dime (albeit one with a flyer taped to the wall for a seminar on the dangers of AI), immersing oneself in the brick and mortar is an instant adventure. Record shops typically have two types of customers: those looking for a specific LP and others who show up with no particular goals in mind, just hoping to discover something they didn’t realize they needed until it’s right in front of them. AS&S is built for discovery, tailored to the shopper who wanders in having absolutely no idea what they’ll find until they find it. It sounds cliché at this point in the ongoing Death of Retail, but the hypnotic aimlessness of getting lost in a resale or surplus shop is fading, and that’s a drag, because anyone who has been there will tell you that getting lost in AS&S totally rules.

In 2006 my band was asked to play the South Shore Frolics parade (RIP, South Shore Frolics) on the Rushmor Records float, and were instructed to dress like space aliens. Where Rushmor made a mistake was in not telling us what kind of space aliens to dress like—hey, we could put any kind of nonsensically horrific outfit together and say we’re “aliens!” So to AS&S we went, where we picked up some white lab coats to complement the clear face masks and blue/green face paint we bought from Bartz’s Party Store. We looked horrifying. I’m pretty sure we scared, even scarred, some kids. We thank American Science & Surplus for the opportunity.

Not long after, I bought my first telescope since high school from them—one that I years later broke out during COVID lockdown to reignite my love of astronomy. Speaking of which, the eclipse watching party in the parking lot April of last year was an absolute hoot, with a line out the door to buy eclipse glasses while WMSE blasted cosmic tunes from their tent.

Every year, my wife and I do a run to the store to make a Christmas sweep, picking up random novelty toys for the niblings (you haven’t lived until you give your nephew a whoopie cushion from AS&S that promptly lasts for about five inflations before he accidentally pops it) and then hopping over to Lost World of Wonders to check out the trade paperbacks and Funko Pops. (Hop in to Albella Bargain Store for some vintage toys, and you’ve hit the nerd trifecta.) I am fairly sure that most every noise artist in the city has probably assembled a homemade tone generator from spare parts from this place, and I’m certain that family after family has stories of similar random treasure hunts. Ask my wife about her plastic trout. It’s small, it’s plastic, it’s a trout. It’s on her desk at work. No, it doesn’t do anything—it’s a trout.

Look, it’s always a little uncomfortable to see a capitalist business of any kind asking for money. Many of us might see a retail outfit post a fundraiser and react: “If they need extra help, they must not be that successful of a business, right?” But let’s be real—shit’s been really weird since COVID, hasn’t it? Retail of all kinds is floundering, and we all know the culprits: inflation, online retail giants and their accursed free shipping and loss leaders. And some people just still don’t feel comfortable in crowded stores. But small businesses aren’t a homogenous mash of soulless department stores or interchangeable Dollar Trees. Losing American Science & Surplus would actually alter Milwaukee’s identity, make it considerably less weird. More beige. Who needs more beige?

Yesterday, I stopped by the shop to snap some photos for this piece, and poke around to see what might call to me. Sure enough, I ended up leaving with a USB clip-on fan to mount on my mic stand for summertime drumming, some tree-shaped LED table light fixtures to add to the indirect lighting in the practice space, and a capybara finger puppet which now lives with the owl and rat finger puppets I got at Green Bay UFO Museum Gift Shop and Records (the Concert Cafe may be dead, but Weird Green Bay lives on).

As I wandered the aisles, I noticed a guy maybe eight years my junior exploring with two kids that looked to be around 7 or 8. I kept hearing them exclaim “that’s so cool!” every time some new curiosity caught their eyes. As of this writing, the GoFundMe is just shy of $82,000 out of a goal of $125,000. I trust those kids and I are going to continue to be wowed by cool, wacky shit from the Cool Wacky Shit Store for years to come.

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