Snail at Oakland Art Murmur
Zolie and her Cousin Stellan shooting fire from the Golden Mean Snail car.
Great story at the East Bay Monthly
Serpent Twins full swing shift
The build of the Serpent Twins is in full production now. Nice to see the shop so busy and the pile of unfinished work giving way to the finished one. This is going to be a really cool project and I’m excited about performing with our new 50 ft long 24 volt puppets!
Support our project here
Picture updates of the build
We are done framing the wing and now the start of the lower Jaw. After the framing is done all this will get filled in with sheet metal.
Discovery channel Canada came by for a day shoot to see what we are up to this year.
Lauren soldering 1000’s of LEDs for the body of the white Serpent
Tansy painting the wheels black.
I’ve been working on fins with the help of Because We Can‘s custom made plasma cutting jigs.
Railroad Revival Tour… Oakland
The Railroad Revival Tour with Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, Mumford & Sons, and Old Crow Medicine Show, started its first journey last Thursday with a concert in our corner of West Oakland. The Golden Mean and the crew got a chance to perform and see the show and what a hoot it was!
Great to meet some of the band members and play with the kids. We all throughly enjoyed a relaxing show with a great promotion company, music crew and audience. Great day!
Wish we could have seen more of this band. Their music has been the sound track to the Snail car and the Front Porch for the last 2 years! Next time this tour happens they need to hook up a few flat beds to the train for us to take our toys on!
Happy Birthday Lydia! Wish I was still 22!
Zolie Kyrsten & I on the Golden Mean enjoying a beautiful sunset over San Francisco bay from the lower bottoms of West Oakland
Weenr Car spotted in West Oakland
Zolie and I spotted the Oscar Mayer Weenr car from the freeway after work last night and circled back to take some pictures.
Great details all over the car and one of my favorites was the windshield wipers. Probably because I don’t have a windshield on the snail.
Weinermobile!
Art Car Royal Can-you for sale
Fellow builder Greg Barron from Rideable Bicycle Replicas is getting ready to build a half scale size Frigate or Brigantine, a fully functional square rigged sailing vessel for next year and needs to clear out his present creation to make room and raise some money. Greg wanted to see if he could make an art car sail since the La Contessa didn’t, nice concept but no functionality as a sailing vessel. It irritated him. The canoe concept was pretty basic and easy and it does sail under wind power alone, quite well in fact. The Can-you hit 16 mph this year up at the BR Yacht Club in a stiff breeze. New speed record and 9 people on deck too. Go sail a reach in silence and then bring it about, fire up the engine and motor back upwind. Repeat. Plus it’s nice to take on a sunset sail. Can’t wait to see his new vessel and take a ride.
Contact Greg for more information if your interesting in buying the Royal Can-you
gbarron@hiwheel.com
Greg Barron
Rideable Bicycle Replicas
Electrobite at Burning Man
Sarriugarteis (Odontochile) trilobite
Dust free just out of the truck.
People would walk up and ask if it was remote controlled. When I pointed out the leather seat and the joy stick they couldn’t believe you could drive it. Lots of smiling faces when we let them try it out.
related links to the building of this creature
Burning Man 2009
Burning Man
Kyrsten on her new Electrobite car. This was a huge hit.
What a rocket! the inside was just as nice and the fireworks we saw were over the top Zack!
Day before opening and they are still putting on the finishing touches. Zolie noticed the Monkey’s head didn’t work and impressed most people who didn’t even notice the monkey in the mans tummy.
The porch! We rolled with them most of the week and put on the 1st Steam punk rave Friday night after the rocket.
Pictures of the Steampunk Rave
Electrobite, Snail and the porch
Kids-ville with fresh cookies from the porch
Perez and Sarriugarte Family outing
Houston we have a problem!
DPW parade with a live band on top! We got 19 people in the snail at the end!
Quite the show. I really liked the scale of the Man this year. I hope it keeps getting smaller.
Camp Mates jump for Joy!
Snail Crew stops to enjoy the moon.
Oilpunk Rave with the Hobo Goblins, the Porch and us. John hooked us up with a wireless mic and the snail became the PA for the porch most the week. Thats our spot light as well.
Electrobite progress
Amy’s seat, Kyrsten’s lights, lots of sleeplittle nights and we are done! Off to BM to show it off tonight. I posted more picture to my flickr site. Looking forward to sitting in a chair and drinking beer for a week.
Patina is done and boy does it look great! We always have to pray to the patina gods before , but the problem this time was me grabbing the wrong chemical bottle. Little too brown for Kyrsten’s taste, but beautiful none the less.
Mike came by to wire up the lights last night, and Amy brought by the finnished seat… wow! I’m looking forward to seeing all the parts: eyes, seat, and lights together on the car at once.
Up till 6am and all the fabrication work is done! Now for the patina, paint and lights.
Kyrsten’s rivets look great! All the forged textures and hand hammered sheet metal look great together. As I make something this complex it’s some times hard to see ahead to make sure it’s all going to work together. Today was one of those days that I felt it did. Might feel different once I turn it over and start on the tail but today the head worked for me. Kyrsten started on the lighting by building the battery box for the cutest little 12v 7amp hr gel cell. All it’s going to do is run LED so it should last the entire week for Burning Man. Had a minor time set back today when I had to visit the ER to have some metal removed from my eye. It was quiet there and we were back by lunch. Still a bit painful, but eyes heal fast.
sheet metal wood and a hammer
Can’t wait to see Tansy’s eyes in place and Amy’s leather seat!
The Edwardian Ball In San Francisco
The Snail crew pulled off another wonderful night of fun, dress to the 9’s in our best Edwardian gear. We had so many talented and wonderful people stop by the Golden Mean for a song, a story or a nip. I so enjoyed the great costumes, dancing and the smell industry from the steam engines inside.
My pictures of the night
