Oddity Central

Oddity Central

Looking for Thrills in the Desert: The Crazy Dune Bashers of Qatar

Posted: 09 Jul 2013 04:24 AM PDT

To relax after a hard week’s work, Qatar’s car enthusiasts jump in their powerful 4×4 vehicles and drive out into the desert to engage in “dune bashing”, an adrenaline pumping pastime that has passengers hanging to the edge of their seats.

What do you do to relax on weekends? Hang out with your friends, go camping, or stay home and watch TV all day, that kind of stuff, right? In Qatar, the crazy rich have found a different, more dangerous way to unwind after a stressful week. They take their specially prepared Toyota and Nissan 4×4 vehicles to remote desert locations, deflate their tires for extra grip and surf the endless dunes, racing each other and performing unbelievable stunts. There is no police, no speed limits and no rules. The drivers are as skilled and experienced as they come, but accidents are still very common at dune bashing events, and some of them result in fatalities. But that doesn’t seem to scare the other drivers from engaging in this insane and exhilarating activity.

dune-bashing-qatar

Bubble Football – The New Sport Craze Taking Europe by Storm

Posted: 09 Jul 2013 03:32 AM PDT

If you thought the game of football couldn’t get any better, think again. Introducing Bubble Football, a new almost-sport that combines the popular game of football/soccer with zorbing.

Bubble Football is the brainchild of Henrik Elvestad and Johan Golden, two wacky Norwegians who thought football would be even more entertaining if players were encased in clear plastic zorbing balls. The first ever match was broadcast on Norwegian TV show “Golden Goal” at the end of 2011 as a gag, but after being posted on YouTube, the craze spread throughout Europe like wildfire. In the last few years, bubble football matches have been held everywhere from Italy to Latvia, and there are now even online store selling and renting equipment to anyone willing to try it.

Bubble-Football

The Do Hit Chair – A Smashable Piece of Furniture Worth $8,500

Posted: 09 Jul 2013 02:17 AM PDT

Furniture doesn’t come much more customizable than the Do Hit Chair from Droog Design. For the modest price of €6,553 ($8,500) you get a stainless steel cube and a sledgehammer to shape it into the chair of your dreams.

Created by Dutch designer Marijn van der Poll caused quite a lot of controversy when it was first revealed back in 2000. You’d expect a designer chair priced at several thousand dollars to be really special, and this one is, just not in the way that you would expect. Instead of shaping his masterpiece into something unique, van der Poll simply welded a stainless steel cube and left the design part to the buyer by throwing in a sledgehammer. So you basically pay €6,500 (€7,930 if you’re in the EU) for a steel cube and get to smash it for minutes or hours until you get the desired shape. If this sounds interesting, the Do Hit Chair is still available on the Droog website, but you could just run down to your local hardware store, get some steel sheets and a sledgehammer and just build your own for much less. And if you’re feeling uninspired, there’s even a YouTube video of Marijn van der Poll himself smashing away at a steel cube trying to make a chair. Or, if you’re too lazy to pound it with the sledgehammer yourself, you can have the designer pre-smash it for you, but the price for the chair goes up to $12,738. The default version sounds cheap now, doesn’t it?

Do-Hit-Chair

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