Over this last weekend I was lucky enough to find myself in St. Louis, Missouri. Some of my favorite places in the universe are there, the city museum being one that pops into mind most frequently. I realized I had never toured a hackerspace in St. Louis though!
A quick phone call to Arch Reactor remedied this. Even though it was Easter Sunday, they came down and gave me a tour. The space was quite nice with a lounge area, electronics workstations, fabrication tools and a complete wood shop. On top of the hackerspace’s pleasant atmosphere, the building also includes a fun little art-bike group called the Banana Bike Brigade, and even has a roof-top bar made from reclaimed materials. For those of you who are into cars, in the bike shop there were several nice corvairs and a porsche 911 that appeared to be mid 80s.
If you ever get a chance to stop by, you should definitely try to visit Arch Reactor.
Hello from St. Louis!
Holy crap that place looks nice! Looks like they got a new building since the original open house deal I went to – where they apparently shared a building with some beyond shady characters.
Anyhow, looks really interesting – will definitely have to check things out. Thanks for the kind words about StL, easy to forget all the good things the city has to offer when all you hear about is violent crime…
Oh, we’ve been out of the Lemp for a few years now. That place was sketchy as heck, but when you are just getting out of the gate you gotta take what you can get. We’ve gotten a leg up in the world. :)
Glad to hear! HI hpe to come by and meet you guys sometime – I see some stuff coming up this weekend but unfortunately I already have other plans :(
Caleb mentioned Corvairs in the description, and “air cooled cars” in the video, but no footage of one. Got any pics? I love my Corvair :)
Living nearby, I thought I’d like to check them out, but when I went to check out member info, as in how to become one. the website is screwed up, and membership for a month is USD 15 ( I assume $), but for a year, it’s $0? Perhaps they should spend a bit of time on their website and getting things straightened out for potential members. I too was wondering about the Corvairs and the 911, and disappointed when they weren’t shown.
RB,
I would encourage you to visit Arch Reactor during the Open House this Saturday, April 6, 2:30pm – 9:00pm to post your questions directly to members. I can tell you that almost all of the meetings are open to the public at no cost. As an alternative, the discussion forum link on the Arch Reactor website works very well and you can easily post any questions you have there.
I don’t make it down to St. Louis too often, but the last 2 times I was there I stopped by an electronic’s store called “Gateway Electronics” http://www.gatewayelectronics.com/ We don’t have any electronic stores around me (Not including Radioshack), but that place is amazing! They have pretty much anything you could want, from surplus electronics, vacuum tubes, ic’s, heatsinks, pcb supplies…pretty much everything. I could spend all day there.
28 seconds into the video above, Caleb walks right past a set of bookshelves for the Arch Reactor Library. The bookshelves have recently been “Featured” by an editor on Instructables.com and the Instructable has subsequently been labeled “Popular” on their website. The bookshelf was assembled from re-purposed items that Arch Reactor had on hand, mainly an old server rack and some scrap lumber. You can read more about it at: http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-a-bookshelf-from-an-old-server-rack-and-scra/
I just contacted Cyberooth Tech and they fixed it.
Come & help us to grow!
Learn more about the exciting things the educational non-profit, Arch Reactor Hackerspace (Makerspace) is doing in St. Louis, Missouri. http://igg.me/at/archreactorstl/x/11766633