[Photo removed by request of Oscar Diaz. You can check photos out on Design Boom and on Diaz' website.]
The very resourceful designer Oscar Diaz, who once made gorgeous utensils out of plastic bottles, devised a huge shopping tote called “Glueline” made out of a web of ordinary strapping material secured with rubber paint. We think the bag is beautiful though a bit flawed, since little things can fall through if they’re not held in plastic bags. But rubber paint is crazy inspired!!! We googled “rubber paint” right away to see if is something we could use at home. And we can. Here’s the thrilling description from Blurt It:
“Rubber paint is a durable, creamy, brushable layer of paint… It sticks on to the surface like a sticky, thick layer of gummy paint, but then when it dries; it has a nice level finish. It has an average hiding ability, but it can hide in one coat if it is thickly applied. It has a good bonding capacity. Rubber paint is versatile and sticks to such materials as wax paper and plastics. It leaves the existing flexibility of the wax paper or plastic bag intact.”
It’s basically the stuff Nina Saltman recommended when we asked her how Pascal Anson made his red-tipped silverware: Plasti Dip, used by carpenters to add a rubber coating to their tool handles. Just imagine… read more…
In an email yesterday morning, a reader mentioned that her experiences living in developing countries led her to develop an approach similar to ‘the improvised life’s. We asked where she had lived and what that approach was and were knocked out by her answer:
“I lived in Vietnam for four years and Bolivia for three – amazing and fantastical places, where I learned many, many things, not least of which is how to view objectsneutrally, so that you can see what they can really do beyond their stated purpose..Like the woman in a market in Hanoi who was peeling carrots and other ingredients, to sell as ready-made ingredients for folks to buy and make their own lotus blossom salad, and what did she use as a peeler? A chopstick, a razor blade and a cleverly-deployed rubber band: voila, vegetable peeler, third-world style….”
The jerry-rigged vegetable peeler reminded us of Kevin Kelly’s wonderful blog Street Use, about ingeniously improvised solutions, customizations and contraptions he and his friends have spotted in their travels around the world:
“In short — stuff as it is actually used, and not how its creators planned on it being used. As William Gibson said, ‘The street finds its own uses for things.‘”read more…
Constance Old sent this account of her unexpected walkabout through Philadelphia, when she followed one thing after another, after another, after another…to discover a neighborhood full of food and cool people doing their thing. It reminded us how hunger and curiosity can cause the road to open up in the most unexpected way. And how plain old wandering is an essential element in a creative life…(not to mention all the things you can use a well-designed notecard for)….
” I went down to Philadelphia a couple of weeks ago to drop off work at Da Vinci Art Alliance at S. 6th and Catharine Streets. Although I grew up in Philadelphia, I have not spent much time there in the past twenty years. I had heard from my daughter’s twenty-something drum teacher from Brooklyn that Philadelphia is called the “sixth borough” at the moment because apparently there is a pretty happening music scene there.
Anyway, after I dropped off the work, I ambled along Catharine Street and immediately happened upon what looked like a gem of a restaurant: Little Fish. I went in and discovered that Little Fish holds about 16 people and serves the most delicious, you guessed it, fish. When I asked for a piece of paper to record the delicious food I had eaten, I was presented with the lovely note card (see photo), which is the same paper on which they write out the menu for the night.read more…
We don’t know where we would be without duct tape, the ultimate solution for many a seeming disaster. Just when we think we’ve imagined its possibilities, a friend emailed an article from the South Africa Times’ about a bush pilot in Alaska who neglected to clean his 1958 Piper Cub after a long fishing trip. The fishy aroma attracted a grizzly bear who chewed and clawed the wood-and-fabric plane apart (as well as its tires) trying to find the source of the delicious smell, then went on its way.
The resourceful pilot radioed for three cases of duct tape, rolls of cellophane and two new tires to be flown in so he could repair the plane and and fly home, which he did; witness the before-and-after pictures!
Duct tape is one of those everyday items we don’t think about much, but it has quite a story, read more…
My friend Peggy Markel, who designs unique food and culture adventures, recently went on a scouting trip in Rajasthan India. She traveled from luxurious palaces to rustic countryside, taking in its monumental contrasts.
For Peggy, food is always about context, and this little film shows a fragment of the culture she was exploring, as revealing as its food, and as essential to understanding it.
Here is the story Peggy told me of how she stumbled on these street musicians and their improvised instrument made of bowls of water. read more…
(Video link here.) This clip of the the comedian Louis C.K. riffing on Conan O’Brien’s show is a rare combination of REALLY funny and totally wise/smart/true. It is about looking around at what we have, recognizing miracles, counting blessings…
via the Technium, part Kevin Kelly’s vast and amazing site.
I started thinking about using my hand as a notepad, as I did when I was a kid, and began noticing people with notes scrawled and scribbled on their hands. The manager of the local fish market had phone numbers running up the back of his hand in blue ball point. At the Bauhaus show at the Museum of Modern Art, a teacher ushered in a group of four young women and started talking about a weaving by Anni Albers; one whipped out a razor point pen and started taking notes on her hand. It’s a convenience that I overlooked for years until I needed to remember to take my laptop’s powercord to a meeting, and couldn’t find a post-it, so I wrote a note on my hand… read more…
In my Inbox this morning, the ever-illuminating Manhattan User’s Guide alerted me to a new blog called Pop-Up Lunch. It explores ways New York’s nontraditional public spaces, like sidewalks, steps, and fire hydrants can be transformed into places to eat lunch. Writes blogger AP:
“This blog follows a series of Pop Up Lunches I have staged (some big, some small) and my development of mobile eating tools designed for the sidewalks of NYC. Ultimately, I hope that my efforts might inspire even a handful of my fellow urbanites to reconsider the potential for lunch – to be a joyful daily event – and for the sidewalks of NYC to serve as more than just pathways.”
Pop Up Lunch is totally after ‘the improvised life’s heart. You could easily apply its innovations – and certainly its thinking – to just about any city, and expand the uses for make-shift, jerry-rigged or impromptu surfaces: read more…
This morning Andrea Raisfeld alerted me to a perfect little film created by designer Susan Hochbaum. It’s called The Pastry Project and it begins:
“I came to Paris middle-aged, divorced, and newly in love. Granting myself a sabbatical and renting out my suburban home, I moved with my beau to this romantic city for a year of living shamelessly…Abandoning restraint, and with the appetite of a teenager, I’ve found my muse…”
What follows will change the way you view Paris forever…(click here to watch)Ed note 9/30/11: unfortunately, the perfect video has been swapped for a slideshow…And now a new book tells the story. read more…
What do you do when the car service car you hired to take you to the airport during rush hour stalls on the Long Island Expressway on your way to catch a transatlantic flight?
I’d been sitting in the sweltering car for 20 minutes on that bleak, scary highway, waiting for the dispatcher to call with news that another car was on the way. The driver, who had failed to get the motor going with his “jumper box”, had opened the hood and trunk to signal “stalled car” to the heavy traffic around us, and was on his cellphone pleading with his sister buy him a new battery and bring it to him. My calls to the car service now yielded nothing but piped music as I sat on hold. I called two other car services. “We can’t pick you up without an address. Sorry.” Time was flying.
“Damn. What the hell am I gonna do?” I found myself thinking about my blog, and its big message: that there is always a solution in the moment. ”I’ve got to put this into practice, somehow…Think, Sally. What are the options?!” read more…
When I’m camping in a borrowed or rented house out of town, I love the challenge of cooking in the invariably rudimentary kitchen with whatever is there. It’s fun to devise solutions to small dilemmas: making roasting pans out of tin foil, or rolling pins out of wine bottles. I’ve made cheese souffles in cast-iron skillets, and used the same skillet to smoke trout using dried twigs from a nearby apple tree. These small challenges are somehow gratifying.
The one thing I always bring with me, though, is a good knife – NOT a set of chef’s knives bound in a leather roll – but a simple, inexpensive, picnic knife from France, the Opinel. read more…
Every day for a year, as Christopher Rehage walked across China, he made a picture or video of himself, documenting his hair growth along the way. Day One shows him clean shaven, almost bald; he gradually turns into…a completely other version of himself. When he returned, he made this amazing little artwork of a video; it is way more than about watching someone’s hair grow. 3:40 minutes into the piece, it gets really moving and makes you think…
…about what time is…and how we change…and what we make along the way…share…leave for others to find…document….and if we were the same person a year ago, or yesterday?
It manages to look back and forward at the same time.
I was riding my folding bike to the farmer’s market when a Chinese man passed me on his folder, with an odd looking caboose in tow: a wheeled carry-on bag. Behind him rode a young woman on another folding bike that looked like it has been rigged too, with all sorts of cases and compartments. I followed them and when they stopped for a light, asked if I could take some pictures and find out more about their bikes. read more…
Really big bags are essential for all sorts of projects, like hauling food home from the farmers market, or a brick or two or a piece of pipe from a construction site, or [rocks] from out of town. I’ve had a variety of bags over the years, some which are still with me, though pretty down at heals (including really dirty looking – despite washing – classic white canvas satchels. Lately, I’ve been looking for a big black bag to add a little style to the huge bag category. Here’s a bargain, designed by Andy at Reference Library and sold through Kiosk. $60 and handsome. There are some nice testimonials on his site, including a guy who hauled home 4 gallons of paint.
This image from Emma’s Blog reminds me of the usefulness of radiators when traveling in the winter. A hot radiator is a good place to warm bread you’ve swiped from a room service delivery, bought at a local store or have leftover from takeout. Same with cheeses, saved or bought: you can warm some goat cheese, or a slice of cheddar or brie to melting to spread on that warm bread. Just leave it on the paper it came wrapped in or place on a plate you’ve swiped from room service. Those little chocolates the maids leave around can be melted on the radiator and paired with some warm bread to make a lovely improvised pain-au-chocolate. And of course, you can warm any take-out sandwich or bowl of soup.
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