Young and old, hipsters and UNCOOLKIDS all gathered in the basement of Union Hall on Wednesday September 6th for the first meeting of the Secret Science Club. Eugene Kaplan read from his book Sensuous Seas: Tales of a Marine Biologist about the mating habits of nurse sharks, Octopussy and her pets, and the use of stingray spines in the Mayan practice of penile bloodletting.

This was not your average science lecture.

Union Hall may be best known for it’s bocce ball court upstairs, but what often goes unmentioned is the unusual decor of the bar. Walking in feels like you’ve stumbled upon the library in an old mansion; dark wood paneling lines the entire place and behind the bar downstairs is a stuffed pheasant and monkey skull. Although it’s usually a music venue, it is the perfect location for a Science Club; you feel that Darwin and Huxley could possibly be behind the next corner discussing evolution.

The forty chairs downstairs filled up fast and the rest of the crowd was left standing around the walls, leaning in the catch a glimpse. I would definitely recommend going early to the next one, just to make sure you get a seat. It only lasted about an hour, although many of the attendees stuck around afterward to discuss what they had just learned. It wasn’t ‘funny’ or ‘ironic’ in any way. This was a collection of people who think science is awesome and wanted to learn more about it.

The Secret Science Club will meet on the first Wednesday of every month, and is always free. In October Lee Silver, author of Remaking Eden: How Genetic Engineering and Cloning Will Transform the American Family will be discussing Stem Cell research, and future events will have ’science-themed’ bands and even experiments.