If it's just small, local, non-commercial you're looking for, there's any number of hackerspaces you can get memberships to. There's still lots of domains where you can do discovery, like 3D printing and making electronic music live.

What made the H:HotCR environment so weird and crazy and compelling was a) the fact that they were the very first to be working with this equipment, b) they worked in a university setting, and c) the weird dynamic between school administrators and the geeks.