The Saint Louis Science Center does a monthly, nerdy event every month called First Friday. As the name suggests, it’s the first Friday of each month, and each is themed differently. They offer a variety of activities, vendors for fandom merch, and occasionally special guests.

And best of all: it’s free to the public, as is parking. There are select ticketed events they warn, but I didn’t encounter any on this trip to know which to point out.

If you’re interested, I do have a video up on YouTube: First Fridays: Star Trek.

Star Trek night was filled with a busy itinerary, and one of out main plans was the special presentation of “Science Fiction or Science Fact?” Hosted by an UMSL professor.

It was a pretty great experience, where the audience was given a QR code to load an interactive voting system for the presentation on our phones. We we view examples of Trek tech, then vote whether we thought it was something science has since proven or is working on. Then once the polling was done, we had a discussion about the real science.

Anime STL provided nerdy pancake demonstrations, which was pretty cool to watch.

Plus, themed food and drinks, which I always appreciate, though I didn’t partake in these or the pancakes… this time.

There was also an end of the night costume contest which was fun to watch.

I also met Wyatt Weed, from Star Trek and Predator 2, but I went up to say hello based on his The Dark Knight Returns fan film. I was rewarded when he pulled this from his bag:

Yessss.

I’m hoping to attend another one or two of these before the year is out.

Do you have anything like this locally?

-Angel