Inflatable Brick Museum
Osgood Flats, Nevada · Museum · est. 1993
A museum dedicated to objects manufactured to look heavy while remaining light: film-prop bricks, foam boulders, balsa anvils, and hollow stage safes. Founded by a theatrical props supplier in a former borax warehouse, it maintains a strict policy that visitors lift everything.
History
The Dorris & Wexler Scenic Supply Company manufactured foam masonry, breakaway furniture, and lightweight scenic rock for casino floor shows and location film work from a leased building in Sparks beginning in 1971. Founders Ray Dorris and Manny Wexler kept one example of every product run as a reference collection, a practice Wexler later described as 'inventory control that got away from us.'
When the Sparks lease was lost to redevelopment in 1992, the Osgood Flats Economic Diversification Board, then actively recruiting what its minutes call 'any employer whatsoever,' offered the company a vacant borax warehouse at one dollar per year, along with a $60,000 conversion grant from a state rural development program. The company relocated its workshop to the rear of the building and opened the reference collection to the public in July 1993 under its current name, chosen by Dorris over Wexler's preference, 'The Hall of Apparent Weight.'
The collection now numbers just over 3,000 objects, including prop bricks from four decades of productions, a foam boulder gallery, a balsa anvil series, and the museum's centerpiece, 'The Half-Ton That Isn't,' a banded pallet of 400 rubber bricks with a combined weight of 61 pounds. Signage throughout reads PLEASE TOUCH, PLEASE LIFT, PLEASE PUT BACK, and docents report that the third instruction is the one requiring enforcement.
The museum's defining setback occurred in March 1999, when a loading door left open during a wind advisory redistributed a substantial portion of the boulder gallery across the adjacent lot and, in one case, onto Highway 50, where a foam boulder was struck by a sedan without damage to either party. Recovery took two days and the insurance carrier ultimately classified the event as 'scattering, not loss.' The incident report is read aloud annually and the door now has a checklist.
“You pick the anvil up and your whole body braces for something that never comes. That's the show. There isn't any more to it, and there doesn't need to be.”
Local Legends
It is widely believed in Osgood Flats that one genuine clay brick is hidden among the inflatables as a test of visitor attention. The museum declines to confirm or deny this, citing insurance.
The sheriff's log entry for the 1999 wind event is said to read, in its entirety, 'debris, soft.' The log is real and on display during Heft Days, opened to the page.
Longtime residents maintain that Manny Wexler could distinguish foam from stone while blindfolded, by smell. Wexler never denied this, but was careful to note that it worked best with products he had manufactured personally.
The Controversy
In 2003 the county revenue office moved to classify the museum's admission as amusement rather than education, a distinction carrying a 3 percent difference in tax treatment. After a hearing at which Dorris read selected placard text into the record, the museum was classified as educational 'on the condition that the placards remain.' A compliance photograph of the placards is taken each January and filed.
Visitor Reviews
I lifted the pallet of bricks over my head and my eyes watered, and not from effort. Forty years of movies lied to me about what things weigh and I forgave all of them at once, standing there in a warehouse in Nevada. I can't account for it. Five stars.
Worth the detour. The anvil series is arranged from most to least convincing and they are right about the order. Docent knew the provenance of every brick I asked about, and I asked about eleven.
This review concerns Highway 50 itself, which between Fallon and here is as advertised, meaning empty. Gas up in Fallon. The museum was fine. My wife lifted a boulder.
The put-it-back policy is enforced kindly but definitely. My son tested this. The outlines make it easy. Gift shop brick fits in a carry-on, which is the point of it.
Gift Shop
Currently in stock
- Inflatable souvenir brick (ships deflated, straw included)ask at desk
- Foam paperweight (does not hold paper)ask at desk
- 'I LIFTED THE HALF-TON' t-shirtask at desk
- Postcard: the 1999 recovery effort, day twoask at desk
- Balsa anvil keychainask at desk
- Placard text reproduction set (educational, per county)ask at desk