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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2639 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 8, 2025

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Due to various circumstances, I sometimes (about 6-8 times a year usually) find myself traveling to various cities in the US and having a free weekend afternoon with no plans. I usually just went for a walk in a park, or to a museum, but lately my walking capacity has been diminishing (after an hour or so I sometimes start getting various unpleasant feels) and with the museums the ongoing wokification is starting to get on my nerves. So, I am looking for new ideas - what could be a fun way to spend an afternoon in a new city? I am an introvert, and the free afternoon usually comes after several days of interacting with a lot of people (that's usually the reason why I got there in the first place), which means my social battery is near depleted and anything involving meeting any new people and talking to them is just too much. And unfortunately I am completely indifferent to most sports. Obviously there's always spending the whole time reading or watching some movies, but I can do it at home too, so I want somehow to leverage being outside in the city. Any fresh ideas?

jazz bar

Have you tried ‘quirky’ museums? The Bigfoot museum is unlikely to say anything true, but it will say much interesting.

In the OKC area, I recommend both the American Pigeon Museum and the Museum of Osteology.

I keep seeing the latter show up in Wikipedia photos.

Beer garden

This happens to me sometimes too. I've taken to reading a bit about the local history of an area before the trips and use my free time to visit historically interesting, but tourist uninteresting, locations. Some great experiences in the past include visiting very old churches/shrines, the oldest restaurants/bars in the area, harbors/docks and other industrial areas, train and bus stations. There are often very small specialist museums that have been pretty good too. I visited a devastated Rust Belt town that in 2020 was at something like 15% of its all time high population from 1950. The town had converted an old train station into a local history museum full of photos and artifacts related to what people used to do there when it was an economically viable, vibrant location, a whole post mortem shrine of remembrance to a place that doesn't really exist anymore. There are a lot of little spots like this around the US, but they take a bit of digging to find them. I often just use Google maps to virtually explore, then visit spots that look interesting.

I like to check out aquariums and aviaries, personally. Fish aren't known for a history of racism and colonization.

Love aquariums, but not all cities have decent ones, and ones that do I've been to them already a couple of times. May be worth another visit though.

You'd be amazed. Not by racist fish, but by the pathological need of ~museum curators everywhere to conform to the trend. Pride finds a way.

I love finding random small bookstores or something like that. Atlas Obscura also has cool stuff https://www.atlasobscura.com/

Thanks, Atlas Obscura sounds interesting, though sometimes outdated - noticed some place there are actually closed or inactive. But certainly helpful as a starting point.

There's always geocaching.

https://www.geocaching.com/play

Can help you look at your environment in a new way, and also creates a nifty record of all the places you've been.

Depending on where you are this might not be an option but I usually go to some restaurant or café in the city center with outdoor seating and do some people watching while drinking a beer, eating or having a coffee. If there is a waterfront you can also go there.

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