Oddity Central |
- Germany’s Trendiest People Converge on Berlin for the Hipster Olympics
- Jim Power – The Mosaic Man of New York City
- Deodorgrams – An Anonymous Way of Telling People They Stink
| Germany’s Trendiest People Converge on Berlin for the Hipster Olympics Posted: 27 Jul 2012 06:41 AM PDT
With the real Olympic Games about to start in London, Berlin’s self-proclaimed hipsters though they’d organize their own competition to find the most athletic hipster in Germany – the 2012 Hipster Olympics. The tongue-in-cheek event took place last Saturday, and drew a crowd of over 6,000 hipsters to a club in east Berlin, for a series of nine ironic sporting events. Ironically, there were a lot of applicants who wanted to join the game, but a panel of hipster judges had the difficult task of choosing only 60. ”We had to select the coolest ones,” said 24 year-old Alexander Bernikas, head of the Original Hipster Olympics Committee. The skinny-jeans-wearing, jute-bag-carrying contestants were split into twelve teams of five, and pitted against each other in ironic events like a horn-rimmed-glasses-throwing contest, a vinyl-spinning marathon or a skinny jeans tug of war. While the challenges of the Hipster Olympics may seem fun and easy, but in order to take home the title of 2012 Hipster of the Year, competitors needed to care enough to win, but be ironic enough to look like they didn’t care. But let’s face it, for real hipsters that comes naturally. Other challenges included confetti tossing, an Apple product "The Price is Right" game, a bubble tea dive, and a Club-Mate crate race, but nothing symbolized the irony of the 2012 Hipster Olympics like the jute bag race, which had competitors climb inside a hip cotton shoulder-bag and hop along a short track. Pretty fun to watch, but infinitely harder that the traditional sack race. This year’s winners were the members of team Jam FM, a group of broadcasters from a local radio station. Apparently, they managed to be more ironic than the other hipsters. Their prize a gilded bottle of Club-Mate called Golden Club Mate. If you don’t know what Club-Mate is then you’re not hip enough, but I’ll tell you anyway. It’s a caffeinated carbonated mate beverage very popular with hipsters and computer hackers, especially in Europe. The drink’s slogan is “You Get Used to It”, so don’t ask if it tastes good.
Photos via Facebook Hipster Olympics official site Germany’s Trendiest People Converge on Berlin for the Hipster Olympics was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
| Jim Power – The Mosaic Man of New York City Posted: 27 Jul 2012 01:19 AM PDT
For the past 26 years, Jim Power, known by most as The Mosaic Man, has been decorating the light posts of New York’s East Village with intricate tile and mirror mosaics. And the homeless 64-year-old is still at it. “When I got into this, I was immortal all a sudden,” Power says about how he felt when he first started creating his art, in the late 1980s. The former Vietnam veteran set out to make East Village a known arts destination by creating a trail of 80 mosaic-decorated light posts, each with its own theme and design inspired by local history and culture. At the height of his career as a street artist, The Mosaic Man was up to 70 light posts, but in the later part of the 80s and into the 90s, mayor Rudy Giulianni started a clean-up-the-city anti-graffiti campaign and took down 50 of his beautifully-adorned artworks. It was pretty hard to bear, but Jim never gave up on his dream of completing the trail, and managed to rebuild every one of them. Photo by Gregory Tran Tormented by a fading eyesight and a problematic hip, The Mosaic Man struggles with the most mundane tasks, but he keeps making his street art, for the people of the Village. After all, he says they’re the ones who stopped authorities form taking down all of his poles during Giulianni’s campaign. But although Jim Power is a local icon for long-time East Village inhabitants, he has little recognition for his work. City Lore, an organization that supports New York’s cultural heritage, honored Power in its 2004 People’s Hall of Fame, and a short documentary on his activity was recently posted online, but other than that… He has never made any real money from his art, has been homeless for decades, and struggled finding funds to restore his works. Photo by James Robinson Back in 2007, he was so frustrated he couldn’t get money to rebuild his decaying light posts that he took down his own works. He was bitter the city of New York had spent millions of works of foreign artists like Olafur Eliasson, while ignoring his homegrown works, but admits part of the reason he’s had problems getting funding is his inability to complete a formal application. ”I would say it definitely stopped me…I don’t read and write on a writer’s level at all. In fact, I spell words the way I pronounce them, and I don’t pronounce them right.” Photo by Vivienne Gucwa The now infamous Mosaic Trail of East Village spans from the Lower East Side running from Broadway down Eighth Street to Avenue A, to Fourth Street and then back to Eighth Street. His works are a tribute to local icons and events that took place in the areas where the light posts are located. The Mosaic Man has also made it his mission to show the history of September 11 by creating message to honor those who have fallen during the tragic event.
The typical mosaic light post decorated by Jim Power is covered with a myriad of ceramic fragments and glass pieces. Every one of his works comprises of over 1,000 small tiles while the eight-foot pole at Eighth Street and Broadway has more than 2,800. Jim’s vision has changed the face of New York City and he knows it:”If I tell you I invented the East Village, a lot of people would disagree, but they can’t prove it,” Power says. “Nobody put their stamp on this neighborhood like I have, and nobody will.”
If you find yourself strolling through the streets on the lower east side, you’ll undoubtedly stumble across one of The Mosaic Man’s works and realize why he is a living legend of New York’s art scene. Sources: Runnin’ Scared, Weekend Notes via Neatorama Jim Power – The Mosaic Man of New York City was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
| Deodorgrams – An Anonymous Way of Telling People They Stink Posted: 26 Jul 2012 11:53 PM PDT
It’s never easy telling someone they smell, but a new service called Deodorgrams plans to make it a little easier by anonimously sending friends and acquaintances a scented deodorant. I remember back in high-school we would get stinkers deodorants for their birthday, which was kind of cruel, and didn’t really work on clueless colleagues. Man, how I wish a service like Deodorgrams was available back then, it would have probably saved me from days of smelly torture. The first deodorant messaging system of its kind, Deodorgrams was created by an Arizona-based natural body products company and will probably become a big hit, because let’s face it, sending an anonymous deodorant beats looking your friends in the eye and telling them they smell bad. The unique service will let your friends know exactly how you feel, without telling them who you are. So how does the Deodorgrams option work? It’s quite simple, really. All you have to do is visit the company’s online shop, buy one of their For Pits Sake! deodorants (lavender, citrus, lime & clove or unscented), have a message included with the gift (the most popular one is ”You’ve always been such a cute little stinker, now you can just be cute and little! Please enjoy this hard working natural deodorant sent to you from a caring friend”) and fill out the recipient’s address. The deodorant is sent by mail, and the person getting the “gift” will have the company’s return address as the only identifiable source. via CBC.ca Deodorgrams – An Anonymous Way of Telling People They Stink was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
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