Electric Ladyland

In my last blog story, my American citizenship was a liability. Yesterday, though, I had a great opportunity to flash my American passport—at Electric Ladyland, the first (and presumably only?) museum of fluorescent and phosphorescent art. Turns out that if you put an American passport under short and long wave UV lights, you can see some pretty cool designs that are hidden in special ink. The museum itself is pretty incredible; part is a cave/sculpture-type thing, all covered in fluorescent paint, in which you can climb around while looking at the various crystals and minerals embedded in it. The rest has other art pieces and an amazing collection of minerals that look like ordinary rocks in normal light, but turn all kinds of crazy colors under blacklights (another moment when I felt pleased to be American: it turns out that Franklin, NJ has the largest deposit of fluorescent rocks in the world. When the museum owner quipped that these are the first and last psychedelic things to come out of Jersey, I got the joke and the Belgian boys on the tour with me didn't. Ha). To be honest, I have no deep passion for fluorescence, and after the first "ooh!" moment when you see the rocks change as the light does, my interest wanes. But the museum is still an absolute must-see, because it is exactly what you would expect from a museum of fluorescent art in Amsterdam, complete with a crazily knowledgeable aging hippie owner and faint soundtrack of Hendrix and the Beatles. Pretty sweet that you can enjoy the psychedelic 1960s for just €5 and a stop at 2e Leliedwarsstraat #5.