We recommend turning off the sound and playing both videos at the same time. We came upon them when we were reading blogs the other morning, and were blown away by this kismet-ish reminder of simultaneity.
wheels
skateistan: skateboarding as antidote (to war, poverty, sadness…)
This stunning video is well worth the riveting 9 minutes it takes to watch it, even (or especially) in the midst of a busy day. Part of Sundance’s short film program, it is a moving, beautifully filmed documentary about Skateistan, Afghanistan’s first co-educational skateboarding school, created by Oliver Percovich to help kids dealing with a life of war, poverty and destruction, “to build kids’ confidence…and give them a voice.”
Says Fazilla, a 12-year-old girl living in Kabul:
I work in the street and sell chewing gum. Life is hard for me personally because my family is poor, sometimes we can’t afford enough eat. At Skateistan, I dont feel that my surroundings are ruined, I feel as though I’m in a nice place.
Skateboarding totally changes the view. Such a simple brilliant idea.
This piece in the New York Times tells the story.
via BoingBoing
danny macaskill’s joy ride
Here’s a video treat for this lazy day after Thanksgiving…
Related post: danny macaskill’s bike lesson (setbacks + difficulties + perseverance = mastery)
via Kottke
danny macaskill’s bike lesson (setbacks + difficulties + perseverance = mastery)
Sofia Rower alerted us to this astonishing video by Danny MacAskill, which goes way beyond his technical brilliance. We love the first minute best: a glimpse of the setbacks and difficulties that come with achieving this kind of mastery…A big reminder of what it often takes to be able to LEAP! with ease and push the envelope.
Thanks Sofia!
how to haul stuff on a bike shanghai-style
Alain Delorme
While in Shanghai a year or so ago, photographer Alain Delorme became fascinated by the extraordinary loads carried by migrants on their bicycles and other rigged vehicles: ”piles of stacked ‘made in china’ products which form unusual sculptures…loads of tires, water containers, office chairs, flowers…”
The images are amazing, though we find the title Manufactured Totems and accompanying text a bit overwrought…
For us, these are images of crazy everyday ingenuity…(plus balance, innate and strange gifts for architecture and engineering, gumption and bungee cords)… read more…
twitter in dire straits
Leigh Fazzina was lost in a 300-acre Connecticut wood, racing downhill on her mountain bike looking for the main road, when her front wheel hit a tree root. She flew over the handlebars and slammed into the ground, to find herself bloodied and unable to walk…and panicking. She tried screaming and calling for help on her cellphone but couldn’t connect. Then she tried Twitter, the social networking site, hoping that one of her 1000 followers might see her tweet:
“I’ve had a serious injury and NEED Help! Can someone please call Winding Trails in Farmington, CT tell them I’m stuck bike crash in woods.”
At least half a dozen people, many of them strangers, responded; the Farmington Fire Department got calls from California, Chicago and New York. A few minutes after sending her tweet, an EMS team found her.
Twitter, so often maligned for being a frivolous time-waster, proved to be an unexpectedly useful emergency tool; tweets, and text messages, will often go through in areas with spotty cell phone coverage, like state parks. Fazzina seems to have broken new ground in her improvised solution; there are no records of Twitter being used to call an ambulance before.
It reminds us though of other potent ways Twitter has been used by people in dire straits to connect, like the heart-rending tweets that came out of Iran during its recent revolution, when text messaging and phone service was cut off by the government…
PS: The amateur mini-triathlon cyclist thankfully had no serious injuries, just bad scrapes and bruises. She is grateful she didn’t have to spend the night in the woods.
via USA Today via BoingBoing
Related post: An Amazing Amount of Improvising Going on in Iran
cars as paint brushes and other guerrilla activities
We are big fans of guerrilla activities of all sorts, from the making of art and theater to gardening and marketing. So we loved stumbling on this picture of a striking guerrilla action that took place in Berlin recently: While cars were stopped for green lights, a group of cyclists dumped 13 gallons of colored paint in large puddles onto the street in Berlin’s busy Rosenthaler Platz. As the cars drove through the puddles, their tires inadvertently became brushes to spread the paint, creating a constellation of colored lines. (The artworks’ masterminds posted signs nearby explaining that the paint wasn’t harmful and would wash off with water.) Like the best guerrilla actions, this one shakes up habitual thinking and seeing (and hence maybe living) in positive ways. read more…
cool material: rubber paint (+ oscar diaz’ strap bag)
[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…
(easter) eggs as blank canvas
Anders Adermark via Flickr*
We read that the decorating of Easter eggs came about in the 13th century, when the church prohibited eating of eggs during Holy Week. They couldn’t stop chickens from laying however.
How to identify those “Holy Week” eggs after the fact? Paint em’!
Soon the eggs, which were already an ancient symbol of new life emerging, became a symbol of the Easter.
It’s not too late to decorate an egg or two. You can do it the usual way by submerging hard-boiled eggs in a bowl of vinegary colored dye. But we’re wondering why not view an egg shell as a blank canvas, and draw or paint right on it? (Be sure to hard boil the eggs first).
Here are some pictures and resources, including read more…
broke-down-taxi-on-the-expressway improv
Jay Richmond/Google Earth
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…
chalkboard volkswagon
John Cachego (NogsOnline) via flickr
Chalkboard paint is one of the best inventions to come down the line in some time, due in large part to it’s improvisation-inspiring nature. There seems to be no end in sight to the uses people are devising for it. A current favorite: this ’70′s Volkswagon painted with chalkboard paint that I stumbled on on Flickr. read more…
improvised bike trailer and storage bins
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…
