new 1990's
updated 27 may 2024
Grothus' Black Hole, aka Los Alamos Sales Co. nominally sells what he calls "nuclear waste" -- surplus from the infamous Los Alamos National Laboratory, home of the Manhattan Project in the 40's, and of even less-reputable horrors in the decades that followed. Embedded in the rigidly tranquilized town of Los Alamos like an infected thorn, Ed the Red pisses of the townies merely by existing and surviving.
Not only, he thrives -- and generates a stream of visitors who tread lightly whilst they visit his treasures, lest they set off his hair-trigger bullshit-detector.
Ed is now a friend of mine, and I've also built a lot of things from his piles of incredible stuff. I visit a half-dozen times a year; he's open six days a week, it's quite reasonable to drop in.
(may 2024)
At the main site was the old supermarket proper, but also the church on the hill to your left as you drove in the driveway; Ed had renamed this the OMEGA PEACE INSTITUTE ("First church of high technology, Black Hole Synod, with Bomb Unworship Service"). If you were nice he'd give you the key to the church, which had stuff once set-aside for his long-desired museum (that sadly never came to pass).
Here are old photos, 1990's, some chemical prints scanned, some on ancient digital cameras:
PS: Here's the WIRED WPS home
(May 2024) These are photos taken in 04 April 2009, at Ed's life celebration after his death earlier that year:
(1990's info, obsolete.)
You can contact Ed at (505)-662-9713, or just drop in during business hours at 4015 Arkansas, Los Alamos NM 87544 (Arkansas is a mile or two N. (?) past the high school). Tell him I said Hi.