Street Use

October 27, 2006 4:04 AM

Street Use: Somewhere on a continuum shared with Umdenken and Chindogu we find Kevin Kelly's Street Use.
posted by econous (13 comments total)

This picture of a device for the heating of water for hot beverages, leaves me in fear.
posted by econous at 4:12 AM on October 27, 2006

I actually own, and have occasionally used, spring-loaded chopsticks, though not the kind modelled here.

BTW, look at the site icon. Good thing his middle name wasn't Keith.
posted by ubiquity at 4:25 AM on October 27, 2006

That rocked! Especially all the Russian stuff towards the bottom of the page.
posted by BrotherCaine at 5:04 AM on October 27, 2006

Yeah, the Russian gear was fantastic - the shuttlecock is incredibly beautiful.
posted by jack_mo at 6:55 AM on October 27, 2006

That was fun.
posted by caddis at 7:07 AM on October 27, 2006

He missed this bottle opener made of a strip of steel and some gold foil and this bucket-sized still.
posted by nasreddin at 7:11 AM on October 27, 2006

Neat. See also Prisoner's Inventions.
posted by hydrophonic at 7:28 AM on October 27, 2006

Not only is the Russian stuff great, but if you click on the audio icon on each page you get a page with a transcript of someone (often the creator) talking about the object and how it came to be made (e.g., here's the page for the hangers), and if you click on the icon on that page you hear the voice itself (RealAudio, I'm afraid). What fun! Thanks for the post.
posted by languagehat at 8:01 AM on October 27, 2006

I adore this stuff, and have followed street use since I saw a link to X-Ray Sound Recordings - people in soviet states pirating western records using old x-ray film. It saddens me that there is so little of this kind of ingenuity in modern life in the west. Do check out the archives (linked on the left side).
posted by MetaMonkey at 10:15 AM on October 27, 2006

cool.
posted by juv3nal at 10:21 AM on October 27, 2006

The original source is in Chinese, so I don't know too much about this homebuilt submarine, other than it was built by a Chinese farmer. On inspection, I doubt it will even submerge; it is probably simply a boat with submarine decoration. I hope I am wrong.

Heh.
posted by delmoi at 10:33 AM on October 27, 2006

I love this stuff. It's cyberpunk (The street finds its own use for technology), but mostly without the cyber. Or the punk.
posted by hattifattener at 12:00 PM on October 27, 2006

The-uh Spacingi-ngr Guild-ildh favors-orss thissh project-grub.

posted by Smedleyman at 1:52 PM on October 27, 2006