You could say a lot about The Beautiful Game table soccer that just made its debut in Milan yesterday, but you could really keep the comment down to one. This is the most insanely beautiful table game. Enough Said.

11 – the beautiful game

The other day, I was working away and my boss rides in on one of these bikes, the OPA Black by Jorg & Olif… or, at least I think it was one of these bikes. I was immediately in love and decided to write about it. For you cyclophiles out there you know this is a Dutch City Bike. For those maybe not that familiar with the cycling this bike is the standard bike that everyone owns in the Netherlands. I don’t think people use anything else because if you did, from what I’ve been told, it would be stolen. The company that makes these bikes, Jorg & Olif, have decided to construct everything down to the last detail of the original Dutch City Bike.

The bike, to be fair to the gear heads, does not go very fast, it’s heavy, and it’s not made for any sort of performance. This means that I do not find it ideal for riding in a hilly city. I think the places where this bike would make a great difference in your life would be if you needed to run to the store close by and you live in a flat area. If that’s the case, then you should buy this bike. It’s built to serve this function. The mud flaps and chain guards will keep your clothes clean, the ride is very upright and comfortable, and the light never needs to be changed (because you make the power). Oh, and By the way, the red is my favorite.

I think I put a placeholder for this post in my queue about 8 months ago, and I just today got around to putting this up online. What immediately struck me is how I can use this blog as my own personal style gauge. 8 months ago, I was really into looking at low rider bicycles because I really wanted to buy one. Today, I just think they look sort of silly. This particular low rider by Ben Wilson Design, for instance, is maybe just a bit over the top in the way it has tweaked out this bicycle. The craftsmanship is superb. Every piece of the frame and the seat is custom made and meticulously fabricated. However, what you end up in the end with is something that looks like a drawing I did in 5th grade when thought to myself, “What would the perfect bicycle look like?”. I really wish I felt like I did back then, though. Goodbye trend that I will never revisit. You were like the mullet I had when I was twelve years old. Back then, I was not afraid to test the limits of my style and be unashamed. Now potential embarrassment has taken its foothold.

Design House Stockholm is a company that finds and creates great Scandinavian design, and they’ve been doing so since 1992. They probably have dozens of designed products that I could easily show on this site, but I’d like to start with a bike basket called Carrie. This piece gets to me because, as a daily cyclist, I’ve always wanted to adorn my bicycle with accoutrements that were not just built for function or for light weight, but were built for fun, or for shock, or for nostalgia. The Carrie bike basket touches on all my desires. The basket transports me to a small Spanish fishing village where white and black lace is made in the town square by widows in scarves and sturdy shoes. (By the way, I’ve pictures a green basket here, but the black and white baskets also available are more evocative of this feeling). I would love to see Design House Stockholm, or another company with similar design prowess, take on the cycling world and create whimsical design products for people’s bikes. Let’s move away from the gear-head fare, and just have fun. It may inspire a new generation of cyclists who had considered cycling athletically elitist.

I was recently scouring You Tube when I came upon this contraption. I would almost consider this more gadget crack than I would design crack. Still, the design that lead to this invention was immense, I’m sure. So, I commend you oh inventor of the Projump stilts. What’s the big deal though? You’d have to see it to believe it. Check out some of the videos here. The design creates a true extension to your legs’ abilities. You can run, jump, and move nimbly in these stilts. It’s prety amazing because at first glance it would look like this contraption would immediately snap your bones in half. Not so, it seems.

I have no idea why I love this shoe. I just do. It has a bit of that franken-shoe look which has infected so many top brand design shops. This one takes on the two forms: The back of the shoe is late 90s Italian gigalo / amateur football player. The back of the shoe is peace activist turned novelist turned washed up history professor who wishes he could bang all his students but holds it inside with constant meditation. Together, thay meet on this Gola shoe in a combination that deftly looks like they were made for each other. I’m very impressed with Gola’s virtuosity and plan to buy these shoes this week.

I’m not sure why I’m attracted to the MP3 by Piaggio. I just am. I think it has something to do with the fact that it’s a scooter with three wheels, but three wheels instead of two means that it can stand upright without assistance. I have two quick points about this machine, and then I’m done. First point is I don’t know if I’m excited or baffled by the two wheels on the front of the scooter. As far as I can tell, the two wheels are simply for balance at low speeds to stop. At high speeds, three wheels slow you down because the added wheel adds friction. When this vehicle turns, the wheels have to twist in and out to properly maintain contact with the road. Surely, all this technology was expensive to develop and for what? To add an extra wheel seems pointless when two wheels are already so perfect.

And then there is the name. The MP3. I just don’t think it’s very inspiring. It seems to me that Piaggio is hoping to get sales from the MP3 by unsuspecting music listeners clicking on the wrong search result. At least MP3 sounds better than its Italian name which is Fuoco. In Italian, Fuoco means fire, but here in the U.S. it sounds too close to the name Buttafuoco, as in “Joey Buttafuoco“. I think this fact alone would keep me away from a product named fuoco.
called fuoco in italy

I decided to put a lot of picture of this bike on the site because bicycles are an interesting beast. Often times, I look at bikes from far away and think they’re ugly, and when I get close up they become beautiful. The Aeroblade for Koga Miyata is definitely one of the bikes that benefits from detail shots. Take a look at this bike. Each bike is hand built for the owner, and signed and numbered which is attached to a special plate. The rims are aluminum glass fiber carbon coated composite which makes these components unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The bike also has crazy gadgets as the Rohloff concield gear shifting. With all this cool stuff, the price isn’t cheap. It comes to $16,000 for one of these bikes which means it’s a real commitment.

Clement Eloy is a French product designer with an idea to help out dogs when they get the urge. Mr. Eloy has produced a number of provocative product designs in the past couple years, but this one is the most visceral. The Hotdoll. There’s not much to say about the concept that isn’t already obvious. The one thing that cracked me up was just how similar the Hotdoll looked compared to the Cingular logo.

I’ve read comments from other bloggers that this similarity in design styling is probably completely unrelated to Cingular, and it’s a bit of a fluke. Then, I remembered that Cingular’s mantra, it’s tag line, is “Cingular, raising the bar”. That is certainly what this product does. That is, it raises the “bar” of our canine friends.

Regardless of future lawsuits for copyright violation from Cingular, I think Mr. Eloy has tapped an otherwise un-thought of market which is pet porn. And as silly as this idea is, it’s still helping dogs out by letting them enjoy their lives more when another dog isn’t available. I just wouldn’t want to be the one having to clean te sex toy.

Object: Napali Kayak

Designer: Clear Blue Hawaii

URL: http://www.clearbluehawaii.com

Category: Sports and Recreation

Price: $See Website

Lust Factor: Warm

Description: The Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum is about to begin it’s 2006 Design Triennial: Design Life Now starting December 8th and running through July 29th. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be profiling several of the objects from the 87 designers that have been chosen for the event.

Why no one has built a line of affordable glass bottom boats before is beyond me. Clear polycarbonate has been around for a while, and so has the carbon fiber reinforcement that Clear Blue Hawaii uses to construct the frame. My guess is that it takes years to develop and build a patentable prototype and I need to just be a little more patient. That, and Clear Blue Hawaii are really smart and creative and just thought of this first. But now, they’ve opened up the mental block that begs the question: “What other items would benefit from being transparent?”. Obviously, a boat is really cool because you get to see the fishies.