Lovers of slime can indulge at NYC pop-up

NEW YORK — 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.

An immersive, 8,000-square-foot museum dedicated to all things slime opens Friday for a nearly sixmonth celebration complete with a sticky barefoot lake walk and DIY bar. There’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.

The brainchild of Karen Robinovitz, Sara Schiller and Toni Ko, the so-called Sloomoo Institute is the latest in Instagram-friendly popups (hello “Friends” 25th anniversary and Museum of Ice Cream) to hit New York and then travel to other locales. Why Sloomoo? There’s a thing in the slime community where you replace the vowels in your name with “oo,” so slime = sloomoo.

The idea, the co-founders said during a pre-opening tour, is simple: To spread slime’s powers of rejuvenation and relaxation. Skeptical? There’s a nook with an EEG machine to actually show your brain on slime.

There’s also a glow-in-thedark cove and an ASMR tunnel for slime’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.

“The social media aspect of slime has really shown community,” Robinovitz said. “There’s a lot of sensibility in the world that social media can isolate people. What we’ve seen in the slime world is that people are coming together.”

There are slime conventions, online shops and meetand-greets with top influencers that draw thousands of fans at a time.

Nichole Jackylne, 23, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, is a top slimer enlisted by Sloomoo. She’s been on YouTube since 2013, taking on fashion and other content before she settled on slime nearly three years ago.

“I found out how to make slime on Pinterest and just went from there,” Jackylne said as she sat in the museum’s front window with a huge tub of pink slime on her lap, rows of Elmer’s glue gallon jugs on shelves behind her. “I never thought, even for a million years, that I would be making a living off slime.”

Jackylne brings in between $5,000 and $10,000 a month from merchandise and slime-making supplies she sells online. That doesn’t take into account her YouTube ad income and partnerships. She has nearly a million followers on YouTube.