Seattle Center: MoPOP

Still beautiful after all these years

I have never taken the elevator to the top of the Space Needle. This day wouldn't be any different.

The two-hour wait and the $32.50 price of admission didn't match the imagined benefit of the spectacular view, especially for those who only had a few hours to spend on a Sunday afternoon.

We walked around the rest of Seattle Center, which is built on the grounds of the 1962 Seattle World's Fair.

The Space Needle and the Monorail are the most recognizable historical landmarks, while the other buildings have been renovated and repurposed.

Marvel's Black Panther and the Thing

One attraction that we did visit--for about the same cost as the Space Needle--was the Museum of Pop Culture, aka MoPOP.

Popular culture covers such a vast territory--music or film each would deserve large museums of their own--that it was interesting to see what MoPOP would choose to showcase.

I liked their choices: Marvel comics and movies, science fiction, fantasy, and horror.

Guitar sculpture near MoPOP's entrance.

Re music, we had to tear ourselves away from the iMAX screen that was playing Michael Jackson's Thriller, which we had seen many times on our 19-inch Zenith during the 1980's.

Otherwise, the music displays somewhat understandably focused on Seattle bands Pearl Jam and Nirvana.

Within 2½ hours we were able to cover all of MoPOP, though we could have spent double the time studying the exhibits in depth.

For Seattle neophytes like us, it was definitely worth a visit.