An enormous shop dealing in engineering equipment—and everything else—tossed from Los Alamos National Labs, The Black Hole (4015 Arkansas Ave., 505/662-5053, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Mon.–Sat.) is more like a 17,000-square-foot museum of obsoleteness: Geiger counters, stacks of IBM punch cards, vacuum tubes, and –ometers of all kinds, not to mention every iteration of three-hole punch and desk stapler ever made.
Wandering the cluttered aisles is like tumbling right into a very round-the-bend brain—a feeling enhanced by the staff’s litany of conspiracy theories and the erratic click of a Geiger counter.
It is true, however, that FBI agents raided the place in 2004, taking too literally a gag planted in the front display window, a computer hard drive marked “secret.”
Owner Ed Grothus also maintains the Omega Peace Institute next door, an antinuclear shrine.
To get there, head toward the north mesa on Diamond Drive and then turn left on Arkansas Avenue.