Oddity Central |
- Sleep as a Hobo at Sweden’s Homeless Experience Hotel
- Artist Turns Adorable Teddy Bears into Creepy Zombies
- Ultimate Freedom – The Unlikely Story of a Man Who Chooses to Be Homeless
| Sleep as a Hobo at Sweden’s Homeless Experience Hotel Posted: 18 Feb 2013 02:28 AM PST It costs money to be homeless in Sweden. Well, only for a night though, at the Faktum Hotels. Located in Gothenburg, the hotel has no rooms but instead offers the complete homeless experience. Once you make a booking online, the hotel will lead you to a pre-determined place where the real homeless might spend their nights, one of 10 extraordinary locations they've handpicked for their guests. A 'room' at the Faktum Hotels costs $10 a night and customers are free to choose their location from 10 options, including a spot under a bridge, in a derelict factory, a park bench, in forests, or even under seats at a football stadium. High quality images of all these places are available on the hotel website that actually make the experience look tempting. The descriptions accompanying the images are quite enticing and entertaining to read as well. Where else would you find an underpass described as: "Feel the city's pulse from dawn to dusk at Gullbergsvass. This delightful dwelling is just a stroll from the romantic Dreamer's Quay: a source of inspiration to musicians and artists alike. And all under the noble eye of the Skansen Lion from his centuries old fortress."
Photo: Faktum Hotels But guests can take a look at the location and then choose whether to spend the night there or not. Either way, they do have to pay up and the revenues earned by Faktum Hotels are used to support the charity works of Faktum Magazine, a publication sold by people without a home. The actual purpose of the hotel project is to raise awareness about the plight of the 3400-odd homeless people of Gothenburg, who are often forced to face harsh Scandinavian winters out in the open.
Photo: Faktum Hotels Overall, I'd say the folks at Faktum have done a great job making use of technology and photography to create a cause for the homeless that's so simple to participate in. I watched their promo video and knew instantly that I'd book a space for the night too if I was in Sweden right now. What's even better is that they've made it possible to gift a booking too, like for a friend on Facebook. Whether you do live in Sweden or not, their website is certainly worth a visit.
Sleep as a Hobo at Sweden’s Homeless Experience Hotel was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
| Artist Turns Adorable Teddy Bears into Creepy Zombies Posted: 18 Feb 2013 01:42 AM PST Nothing seems to escape the zombie epidemic sweeping the planet; not even fluffy teddy-bears. English artist Phillip Blackman uses zombie-flick special effects makeup to turn the lovable toys into creepy undead that will keep you awake at night. 45-year-old Phillip Blackman, from Suffolk, England, says the idea for his zombified teddy-bears was born from a silly joke between him and his partner. “She had a terrible cold at the time and we’d been talking about a gift for a friend’s baby. With a very stuffy nose ‘teddy-bear’ kept coming out as ‘deady-bear’, and we joked about zombie teddies that creep from under your bed at night to feast on your brains while you sleep,” the artist remembers. He eventually became quite intrigued by the idea of making undead toys, so he bought a bunch of teddy-bears from eBay. But it was during that time that his girlfriend became pregnant, and in the chaos of moving to a new house and starting a family, Phillip forgot all about his creepy projects. Years later, while sorting his son’s soft toys, he came across the teddy-bears he had bought, and decided to put the his old idea into practice. And that’s how the wonderfully-creepy Undead Teds came to be. But who would actually spend money to own a disturbing zombie teddy-bear, right? You’d be surprised! “The demand is astonishing – as soon as I make them, they’re gone,” Blackman told the Mail Online. “I put up three new bears on my website this week and they were all sold within 90 seconds.” Apparently most of his clients are men and women in their 20s looking for unique gifts. This past Valentine’s Day has been a very busy time for Phillip, but the zombie creator says his favorite undead teddy-bears are those created specially for the romantic holiday, with their torn-out hearts as a present for the receiver of this grisly gift. To transform the kids’ toys into Undead Teds, Blackman uses film-standard special effects makeup. He sculpts the bones, teeth and other organs by hand, from polymer clay or latex, then opens the bear’s carcass, takes out some of the stuffing and fixes the gory details in place with glue. Finally, he paints on the blood and adds a layer of varnish for a wet effect. ’Each UndeadTed takes in excess of eight hours to make, not including the time it takes for glue, paint and varnish to dry, and I price them individually depending on size, complexity, materials used and time taken”, the artist says.
Photos © Phillip Blackman/UndeadTeds.com Artist Turns Adorable Teddy Bears into Creepy Zombies was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
| Ultimate Freedom – The Unlikely Story of a Man Who Chooses to Be Homeless Posted: 18 Feb 2013 12:02 AM PST It's not the first time we're hearing about someone who is homeless by choice. A while ago, we wrote about a man who lives with only 15 possessions and a college student who chooses not to live in a house. Minimalism is a concept that several people around the world are embracing, and Richard from England is one of them. What makes Richard's story unique is how happy his homelessness has made him, in a world that sees it as a pitiable condition. I found out about Richard from a video on Vimeo. Although it's only about 4 minutes long, the video tells quite a powerful story, depicting Richard's life in his own words. The young piano tuner says he used to live in an apartment with all the modern comforts, and yet that didn’t really make him happy. He had student loans and other debts that he hadn't been able to clear for several years. And then one day, he realized how pointless it all was. "I remember specifically one afternoon I looked around my flat, looked at my LCD TV and I thought, 'When was the last time I had time to watch that?' And then I looked at my Playstation I had never even played. I still had this mountain of student debt, of bank loan debt which I was still scratching the surface of. And in the end, I just thought that the only thing I really value in the flat is the hot shower. Everything else, I can do without."
Photo: Richard/Piano-Tuning.co.uk So Richard decided to do just that – make do without everything else. He realized that his love of travel was more important that the kind of lifestyle he was living. He wanted freedom to do the things he really loved, and today he’s living his dream. Instead of using the money he earned to pay for stuff he didn’t need or use, he decided to use it on the activities he enjoys. He sold most of his possessions, left his flat, and decided to go homeless. All his possessions fit in a single bag, and he commutes using his bicycle. A couple of boxes of his important possessions have been left at his parents' house but he says those aren't important to him either. Today, Richard says it feels great not to be chained to one place or to his belongings.
http://www.piano-tuning.co.uk Richard tunes pianos for a living. When people call on him for his services, they expect a homeless bum to show up at their doorstep. And they're quite surprised to see him. "Some people, they answer the door, they look me up and down and they ask me, 'Why aren't you blind? Why don't you have a dog? Why haven't you lit a pipe? Why don't you smoke?'" he says. "I had this one person who looked me up and down and said, 'But you're normal!' Some people have this idea of a piano tuner being some kind of a weirdo." The reactions Richard gets to his homeless status are also quite varied. He hasn't had too many negative reactions, but people are curious and interested to know how he gets along. He gets a lot of questions about how he washes and showers, and if he feels safe.
While the lifestyle of his choice has made Richard extremely happy, he isn't going all out and promoting it either. "I don't want to be an environmental nut and say everybody should sleep outside like me." In just a year-and-a-half he was able to clear all the loans he never thought he'd see the bottom of, and become completely debt-free. This, he says, has made him feel like a free man. If you'd have to sum up Richard's philosophy in just a few words, it would be this: "You don't need material things to be happy." Wise men have been saying this for thousands of years, and yet our society becomes more materialistic with each passing day… Ultimate Freedom – The Unlikely Story of a Man Who Chooses to Be Homeless was originally posted at OddityCentral.com  |
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