Street Use

Priti Baiks

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 11:25:17 -0800

Street bikes from Panama. They are called priti baiks. The term priti means both "pretty" and also ingenious, or striking.

The photographs are taken by Jose Castrellon, who spent time hanging around this subculture of hot rodders. Except these guys are too poor to own a car so they soup up their bikes. Note the air horns, normally found on trucks.

His web site says, "Priti Baiks is a series of portraits of men who display tons of creative ingenuity and dedicated a good amount of their meager resources to decorate and equip their humble bicycles."

Velowalas: Bikes for Business

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 13:08:10 -0800

In much of the developing world, bike technology is significant mobile technology. Bikes are transportation, and offices and shops and stores. The folks at Velowala -- velo for "moving" as in velocity and wala for "man" as in the Hindi -- collect examples of people using bicycle technology on the streets of India. This wala sells churan, tangy snacks and digestive pills. Many more examples here.

Home-made Camera for Ogling

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:30:45 -0800

Nice piece in the New York Times about a Czech photographer who worked in the 60s and 70s using homemade cameras, one of them shown here. They are a wonderful example of street use. The Times said, "he fashioned them from shoeboxes, toilet-paper rolls and plexiglass, polishing the lenses with toothpaste and cigarette ash." The guy was a bit of a pervert. He took low-res images of pretty girls on the street, in cafes, and on buses. "His photographs may look naïve, but they’re the product of a carefully orchestrated series of missteps that begins with crude, homemade cameras. As he says in the film, “If you want to be famous, you must do something more badly than anybody in the entire world.”" Still, his cameras are cool.

Jailhouse Tech

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 09:50:17 -0800

There's an emerging category of street technology which might be called Jailhouse Tech. The material constraint of a prison inspire fantastic innovation and re-use of made parts. A lot of the devices made in this manner are crude weapons, but others include eating implements, tattoo instruments, music, and other tools. Here are some examples from a prison in Mexico City by Gabriella Gomez-Mont.

Electric cooking stove made with wire and brick.

From the fantastic interview with the artist who works in this prison and who facilitated the photographer who shot these images:

Now that it is over and done with I can tell you this. For the eight prisoners that helped us it would have easily meant another extra seven years in jail, and for us instant lock-up until they set bail. Especially because of having in our possession—or even presence–those knives made from the metallic edges of the windows! In there, they menace and kill people with those, we would all gotten into so much trouble if we had been caught with them. I don’t even know if those particular knives that we photographed that day had already been used for some sort of bloody business or not, I preferred not to ask; but it would have been even worse.

Weapons.

Scooter Contraption

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 10:03:44 -0800

I can't tell what this is for. Might be a portable night market stall (for food?). There's a generator on the tail and a light bulb hanging in the middle. Seems to be in Korea. That's all I know. (Thanks Dave Gray)

Escape Devices

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:47:53 -0800

Photographer Marc Steinmetz features some really cool examples of home-made devices fashioned by prisoners in order to escape. A few of them succeeded.

This shotgun was "made from iron bedposts; charge made of pieces of lead from curtain tape and match-heads, to be ignited by AA batteries and a broken light bulb. On May 21, 1984 two inmates of a prison in Celle, Germany, took a jailer as a hostage, showed off their fire power by letting go at a pane of bullet-proof glass [bottom of picture], and escaped by car."

DOUBLE-BARRELED PISTOL
This gun was found along with other homemade firearms in the cell of two Celle prison inmates on November 15, 1984. The weapons had been made in the prison’s metal workshop. They were loaded with pieces of steel and match-heads.

Street Food Contraptions

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:43:21 -0800

Dornbracht, a German manufacturer of bath and kitchen fixtures is presenting a exhibit called "Global Street Food" which has removed street food carts from the streets and spotlighted them in a gallery on Dornbracht's campus.

I wish I had thought to photograph the many wonderful carts I had seen in my travels, but it never occurred to me then.

Here is grill from Kampala, Uganda.

And a cheese and sausage cart from Buenos Aires.

If you have photographs of interesting street food carts send (or point) them to me, and I'll post.

Clothes Dryer Chicken Coop

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 09:51:58 -0800

Here's one way to keep your chickens dry. Pete Betchik of Madison on the Lake, Ohio built a chicken shelter using found materials. "The frame is made from wooden pallets, the roof also is pallet wood. The sides are old steel shelves. The inside is lined with old pizza boxes, the nest box was once used to ship fresh fish to market, and the front door was an industrial clothes dryer front."

Outdoor Barbers in India

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 08:59:17 -0800

Streetside barbers are quite common in India, at least in the smaller towns. A hair cut can certainly wait for good weather. The tools are very portable. Note the cool adjustable head rest on the chairs. This set of pictures comes from Dark Roasted Blend.

Generator Motor Car

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:52:25 -0800

Some kind of home-made vehicle from China. I appreciate the wooden wheels and bamboo combined with what looks like a cheap honda generator motor. (Via here.)

Improvised Polish Hot Water Setup

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 19:09:07 -0800

This picture of a jury-rigged hot water delivery system from Poland is pretty cool. I bet it works. (Ignore the label, it is meaningless, added by the website Fail Blog, where I found the picture. Thanks, Ross Beane. )

Wooden Pedal Bicycle

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 20:26:58 -0800

Unlike the wooden bikes I posted about previously in Street Use, this wooden bike is unusual because it employs a pedal. It is made by the Cameroon wood sculptor Jules Bassong who normally makes effagies out of wood. He is riding his wooden bike on a tour of Cameroon. As reported by Walter Nana in Africa News:

“There is the break mechanism, if not I wouldn’t have been able to go down the steep slopes found along the Dschang road in the West Province of Cameroon,” Bassong noted.

Monster Segway

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 20:28:17 -0800

When I saw a photo of this I thought it must have been photoshopped. But here's a video:

Improvisation in Thailand

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 20:26:19 -0800

Thomas Kalak is a photographer from Munich, Germany who specializes in the offbeat. His subject is the curious art of found technology. He's accumulated a magnificent gallery of old American cars in Cuba called "Havana Oldtimers". In Thailand he focuses on the often-seen but rarely-noticed jumble of wires that weave their way overhead every street. Adhoc in design, these almost organic nests have their own charm if you let them seduce you. Kalak has collected an entire portfolio of Bangkok Wires.

These and more are included in a new book about Thailand called "Thailand -- Same Same, But Different. No cliches here. No lovely maids, palm beaches or grand temples. Instead Kalak captures odd moments of street use. Plastic chairs in alleys; traffic cone patterns. Even the locals are blind to their off-center beauty. Kalak has a keen eye for the way folks improvise. I think of this work as improv zen.

The ubiquitous plastic bag becomes an instant cheap bottle if you add a straw. And you can hang it anywhere.

Owner-built key ring boards.

I think these are home-made brake lights. Suspended by a wire, a bulb inside a bottle covered with read plastic will light up at night.

Filled with water this can keeps the table cloth from blowing away.

A mop made from old socks!!

Reflectors made from CDs.

Guns on Segways

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:37:49 -0800

Anti-terrorist demonstration in Jinan, China. (BigPicture)

When the lovable Segway was unveiled, who would have guessed that its chief street use would be a platform for cops and soldiers. Here's Paul Saffo on the phenomenon:

It is always fascinating to see once-cuddly technologies turn dark. Consider the Segway, that sweetly geeky gizmo that was supposed to drive autos out of our cities and save the planet. Well, Segways have arrived, but instead of transporting happy auto-eschewing citizens on their daily errands, the Segway has become the personal chariot of cops adopting the gyro-stabilized two-wheeler for patrol and crowd control work. Seqway-riding security dudes are turning up at airports and convention centers, and now are finding their way into the security mix at lock-down events like the G8 Summit and the upcoming Beijing Olympics. No cuddly here, just pure menace, like the rent-a-samurai in full battle rattle riding a nobby-tired industrial Segway at the this month's G8 summit (pic below). Watching the transformation is like discovering that one's favorite teddy bear has fangs and a taste for human flesh. Before long, I'll bet we'll see squads of Segway cops in full riot gear running down fleeing demonstrators at some future anti-globalization demonstration.

Some of the pics Saffo has collected and captioned:

The G8's rent-a-samurai and his timid sidekick.

I wonder how the Segway handles recoil? (Flickr)

The Ventura county sheriff's gyro-bomb squad. (Segway)

A Segway with training wheels for the vertically challenged.

Last one to the Dunkin' Donuts is a rotten egg!

And a few others:

(PoliceOne)

In Mexico City (Jason)

You need a good belt. (Wilisms)

Nice off-road tires at Yale University (Yale)