web1_New-Oped-photo-1-2-1-1-.jpg

Their view: It might be a bit early, but …

web1_Liz-Weston-1-.jpg

Liz Weston: Will you get what Social Security promises?

<p>NEW YORK &#8212; Slime, the bedazzled, stretchy sensation that has spawned its own social media influencers and fans of all ages, is taking up residence in New York City.</p><p>An immersive, 8,000-square-foot museum dedicated to all things slime opened Friday for a nearly six-month celebration complete with a sticky barefoot lake walk and DIY bar. There&#8217;s also the opportunity to don goggles and a poncho and get doused in the stuff that has a big following but a questionable impact when it comes to disposal and the environment.</p><p>The brainchild of Karen Robinovitz, Sara Schiller and Toni Ko, the so-called Sloomoo Institute is the latest in Instagram-friendly pop-ups (hello &#8220;Friends&#8221; 25th anniversary and Museum of Ice Cream) to hit New York and then travel to other locales. Why Sloomoo? There&#8217;s a thing in the slime community where you replace the vowels in your name with &#8220;oo,&#8221; so slime = sloomoo.</p><p>The idea, the co-founders said during a pre-opening tour, is simple: To spread slime&#8217;s powers of rejuvenation and relaxation. Skeptical? There&#8217;s a nook with an EEG machine to actually show your brain on slime.</p><p>There&#8217;s also a glow-in-the-dark cove and an ASMR tunnel for slime&#8217;s visual and auditory qualities, further ballyhooing the restful and spine-tingly autonomous sensory meridian response that has exploded in no-talking videos on YouTube.</p><p>&#8220;The social media aspect of slime has really shown community,&#8221; Robinovitz said. &#8220;There&#8217;s a lot of sensibility in the world that social media can isolate people. What we&#8217;ve seen in the slime world is that people are coming together.&#8221;</p><p>There are slime conventions, online shops and meet-and-greets with top influencers that draw thousands of fans at a time.</p><p>Nichole Jackylne, 23, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, is a top slimer enlisted by Sloomoo. She&#8217;s been on YouTube since 2013, taking on fashion and other content before she settled on slime nearly three years ago.</p><p>&#8220;I found out how to make slime on Pinterest and just went from there,&#8221; Jackylne said as she sat in the museum&#8217;s front window with a huge tub of pink slime on her lap, rows of Elmer&#8217;s glue gallon jugs on shelves behind her. &#8220;I never thought, even for a million years, that I would be making a living off slime.&#8221;</p><p>Jackylne brings in between $5,000 and $10,000 a month from merchandise and slime-making supplies she sells online. That doesn&#8217;t take into account her YouTube ad income and partnerships. She has nearly a million followers on YouTube.</p><p>&#8220;I consider myself more of a slime lifestyle personality,&#8221; Jackylne said. &#8220;I don&#8217;t just post slime. I try to keep it about my personality, so I&#8217;ll film blogs of myself shopping for slime supplies or just out in the public making slime content.&#8221;</p><p>Not exclusively solid or liquid, slime is often made &#8212; to the bane of germophobes and neatnik parents &#8212; by mixing the mineral-based cleaning product Borax, glue and water, along with liquid scents, coloring and &#8220;toppings&#8221; that are all the rage, including tiny toys and plastic-based glitter. Some variations are made with clay.</p><p>The varieties and scents are endless. Noting glitter and other potential eco-foes were deliberately left out of Sloomoo&#8217;s slime, Robinovitz showed off varieties that pull like weightless clouds (fake snow is mixed in), crackle because of plastic beads inside or shine with a high gloss and a tough pull.</p><p>At the DIY bar, where 8 ounces of slime is included in the $38 base ticket price, scents include banana cream pie, Froot Loops and prickly pear. The get-slimed experience is $30 extra.</p><p>Hand wipes are liberally distributed throughout Sloomoo with the plea that people use them before and after touching the huge bowls of slime placed along a walking route. The slime will be changed throughout each day.</p><p>Michelle Diaz, 36, the mother of two girls &#8212; 16 and 11 &#8212; regularly makes slime at home. Does she mind the mess?</p><p>&#8220;I do but it&#8217;s inevitable sometimes,&#8221; she laughed as she and her oldest daughter, Iyanna, peaked into Sloomoo&#8217;s window as Jackylne stretched and twirled her creation. &#8220;We make it different ways, with stuff out of your cupboard, from flour to Vaseline. But I don&#8217;t do Play-Doh, because Play-Doh gets stuck. The slime doesn&#8217;t really get stuck on anything.&#8221;</p><p>Technically speaking, slime is a cross-linked polymer scientifically known as a &#8220;non-Newtonian fluid.&#8221; Its history stretches back to the 1830s, when polymer science originated and Nathaniel Hayward and Friedrich Ludersdorf concluded that adding sulfur to raw, natural rubber prevented it from getting sticky.</p><p>As toys, and in TV and film, slime has been a part of the cultural landscape for decades. Silly Putty went to the moon on Apollo 8 in 1968. The 1962 movie &#8220;Son of Flubber&#8221; starred goopy slime that could fly and spawned a toy product called Flubber, but it made people sick and was yanked from the market, according to a timeline on two walls at Sloomoo.</p><p>Mattel launched a jiggly slime as a toy in 1976. It came in a plastic garbage can.</p><p>Nickelodeon has been all in on slime for years, since it rebroadcast a Canadian show, &#8220;You Can&#8217;t Do that On Television,&#8221; starting in the 1980s. The show slimed participants who answered questions with &#8220;I don&#8217;t know.&#8221; The network launched its own slimy show, &#8220;Double Dare,&#8221; in 1986 and has been sliming celebrity winners of its Kids&#8217; Choice Awards since 1987.</p><p>In 2014, slime videos from Thailand spread around the globe and the DIY slime phenomenon took off, particularly among young girls.</p><p>&#8220;When Nichole Jackylne does events there are girls lined up to meet her,&#8221; Robinovitz said, &#8220;because they love her slime and they love what she stands for, which is truly representing joy.&#8221;</p><style>
.neFileBlock {
	margin-bottom: 20px;
}
.neFileBlock p {
	margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
}
.neFileBlock .neFile {
	border-bottom: 1px dotted #aaa;
	padding-bottom: 5px;
	padding-top: 10px;
}
.neFileBlock .neCaption {
	font-size: 85%;
}
</style>
<div class='neFileBlock'>
<div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/web1_123840632-b84097410d2d4d73aa6de04081261090.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Sara Schiller stretches cloud slime during a preview of the Sloomoo Institute in New York. An immersive, 8,000-square-foot museum dedicated to all things slime opened Friday for a nearly six-month celebration before hitting the road to other locales. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/web1_123840632-b84097410d2d4d73aa6de04081261090.jpg</photo0><caption0>Sara Schiller stretches cloud slime during a preview of the Sloomoo Institute in New York. An immersive, 8,000-square-foot museum dedicated to all things slime opened Friday for a nearly six-month celebration before hitting the road to other locales. </caption0><photoCredit0>AP photo </photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/web1_123840632-d56610d803b44686b3441128497131d7.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">This photo shows pigments available in the build a slime bar displayed during a preview of the Sloomoo Institute in New York. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/web1_123840632-d56610d803b44686b3441128497131d7.jpg</photo1><caption1>This photo shows pigments available in the build a slime bar displayed during a preview of the Sloomoo Institute in New York. </caption1><photoCredit1>AP photo </photoCredit1></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/web1_123840632-acd53103943044f4a9488b85b461c847.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">A member of the Sloomoo Institute staff demonstrates one of the slime stations during a preview of the Sloomoo Institute in New York. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo2>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/web1_123840632-acd53103943044f4a9488b85b461c847.jpg</photo2><caption2>A member of the Sloomoo Institute staff demonstrates one of the slime stations during a preview of the Sloomoo Institute in New York. </caption2><photoCredit2>AP photo </photoCredit2></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><subheadMeta>NYC pop-up dedicated to all things slime</subheadMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Leanne Italie</p><p>Associated Press</p></bylineMeta></div>

Gear up and get drenched