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Now, not only does the museum host myriad lectures and special events, it also offers classes in arcane arts and ancient skills from taxidermy to Victorian hair art, and is gearing up to celebrate its first birthday next month. Its events have begun to sell out rapidly—I barely made it into a recent talk on how Soviet bootleggers sold Western music on discarded X-rays—and tickets to the museum's celebratory all-day Festival of Arcane Knowledge and Devil's Masquerade fundraiser are selling fast. Though Ebenstein confides that the nonprofit institution is "scraping by" on donations and the proceeds from its gift shop and its in-house, coffee-slinging, treat-shilling Black Gold cafe, she seems delighted with the success her kooky little venture has already found."When I started the blog, the reason it was successful is that it was online; it's super niche, but online, those super niche people can find you. At the time, I was working in children's publishing, and I wrote under my initials instead of my full name because I didn't want my boss to know I was into all of this weird death stuff. In 2007, it was a very different cultural scene, and this stuff was seen as very subversive at that point, and it's not anymore—now everybody thinks it's great!" Ebenstein explains, gesturing at a cluster of young women in silver and black huddled around a display case. "It's a moment, and I'm sure that what we've done with the MA project has had a part in creating that moment, but I also feel that it's part of a zeitgeist, a much broader interest in death and 'weird stuff' that's happening now. After I started the blog, I started getting emails from people, and then suddenly there was this whole world. I was blown away—I hadn't known anyone else liked this! There had never been anyone else in my life who liked this sort of thing, ever."On Noisey: Why Iron Maiden Still Rules, and Heavy Metal Will Never Die
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