September 2010

hacking ikea: throw away the book!

Kenyon Yeh


London-based designer Kenyon Yeh has developed a wonderful premise for hacking Ikea furniture (one of our favorite past-times): He buys standard Ikea flat-pack furniture and throws away the instruction book; then he assembles it the way he wants, adding new elements like an old English chair leg he cast in resin…It seems to us like their are HUGE possibilities for improvising here. Said Yeh (using some mighty weird language):

“The process is liberating and brings a limitless attitude of possibility creating unique furniture instead of doing such a thing that made by forces”

We know what he means. It IS a liberating idea.

And now that we’ve heard that Ikea is planning read more…

09.06.10 | comments (1) | in cheap + great, elements, furniture, inside, materials, people, plans, reimagine, resources, why not? |

a gift for the last day of summer

We were looking for a little gift to leave on the blog this last day of summer and thought The Wilderness Downtown would be just right…It is one of the very best things we’ve seen on the internet: crazy beautiful, imaginative, really surprising and moving…

…click here, have patience while it loads, and watch to the end…

Wishing you a wonderful Labor Day!

09.06.10 | comments (3) | in art, gifts, identity, inspiration blogs + sites, media, paths + processes |

more improvising at the beach – in black tie

Improv Everywhere is devoted to “causing scenes of chaos and joy in public places”. Over the years, they have invited anyone-who-wants-to to participate in their missions which have included Cell-Phone Symphonies to No Pants Subway Rides. In the latest, they instructed their agents to appear at Coney Island dressed in tuxedos and ball gowns bought at thrift stores or other cheap venues.

“We covered a mile-long stretch of beach with a diverse group of people of all ages (from babies to sixty-somethings) laying out, playing games, and swimming in the ocean, all in formal wear.”

We find this video curiously liberating to watch. (It totally changes the look and vibe of black tie in the best, most unexpected way possible..).

What strange delight!

via BoingBoing

Related post: Improvising at the Beach

09.03.10 | comments | in apparel, celebrations, inspiration blogs + sites, outside, projects + play, sightings |

improvising at the beach

Mike PD/via Flickr CC

Until our recent vacation, we hadn’t been to the beach for so long that we’d forgotten what wonders lay there: raw materials free for the playing with…

…Our friend James brought a ball with him, then hunted for the perfect piece of driftwood, for a pick-up game of stickball

(and we realized that we never really thought about that form of rough-and-tumble baseball born of improvisation: Don’t have a bat? Use a stick!)… read more…

09.02.10 | comments (3) | in family + friends, materials, nature, outside, projects + play, resources, sightings |

reality sandwich*: street mural, bronx-style via manny howard

Manny Howard

Manny Howard emailed this photo in response to our post on San Francisco street murals…The Subject Line read:

“the last mural to catch my eye was on the feed store in the bronx where i buy my chicken food”

Manny still keeps a few chickens from the days when he turned his Brooklyn backyard into a farm as an experiment. His book, My Empire of Dirt: How One Man Turned His Big-City Backyard into a Farm, is a truly entertaining story of a guy plunging head-long into something he had no idea about, and figuring alot out the hard way, from hurricanes in Brooklyn to what marriage is REALLY about.

We love that a feed store and a graffiti mural co-exist side by side, a swell Reality Sandwich*

*”Reality Sandwich” is from a work by the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, ‘a prime example of his use of startling verbal juxtapositions to suggest new ideas and connections.’” -Wikipedia…You can buy Ginsburg’s Reality Sandwiches here.

Related post: We’re Back! (Let’s Paint a Wall…)

Manny Howard’s Empire of Dirt


09.02.10 | comments | in inspiration |

new york city beekeeper/surfer

Todd Selby/The Selby

The Selby has run a really nice story-with-few-words about Andrew Field, chef of Rockaway Taco, in Rockaway Beach, Queens – right by the beach – who loves surfing and keeps bees on his roof (we are always heartened when we discover a New York City beekeeper; it reminds us that nature is here, even in the midst of the city…”build a hive and they will come!…)

We’ve been pondering what makes Todd Selby’s work so compelling. He’s not a great photographer in the usual sense; individual photos are not terribly well-composed or exposed or beautiful. But, man, does that guy have an eye for a story, which he always manages to tell in a compelling way, with lots of photos. He makes sure to choose interesting people in their very personal spaces, honing in on the details and surroundings, so you get a sense of where this person is living and what their life is like, some of what they see when they go about their day. Like this little detail that speaks volumes: read more…

09.02.10 | comments (2) | in cool spaces, identity, inside, inspiration blogs + sites, paths + processes, people, sightings |

the unexpected delights of a real dictionary

Sally Schneider

…While we’re on the subject of bound dictionaries, largely considered an anachronism these days, we loved finding a dictionary on a stand at Zeitgeist Coffee in Seattle. We found ourselves flipping through randomly to discover a few odd words and ideas we never would have found otherwise: teeny surprises in our day, and a reminder read more…

09.01.10 | comments | in learn, resources, resources books + zines, sightings |

 
 
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