Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2021/01/08/brooklyn-man-creates-snatchelator-to-grab-plastic-bags-from-city-trees.html
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This is brilliant! I’ve always thought about the logistical problems of getting those wind-blow bags out of trees - sure you could use a long extendable grabber/pincer, but at that length it would get heavy. This is perfect; lightweight, simple, elegant.
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I thought that name was familiar. This is brilliant
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I thought this sounded familiar - it was addressed Wayne Wang & Paul Auster’s 1995 film “Blue in the Face” - https://youtu.be/MGulpkquxp8
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He had driven over with the Snatchelator lodged between the seats of his Tesla Model X
Since the year 2000, he has made a career out of giving poetry readings, lectures and workshops
Poetry pays better than I thought.
Or maybe not
He has also had some success doing commercial voice-overs, and he financed the down payment on his first New York apartment by doing a series of ads for Burger King.
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Not all heroes wear capes.
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Snatchelator, where was my life before you entered it snatchelator?
Rubbish hanging in the sky unreachable and I did nothing to settle the score.
Now you and I are inseparable snatchelator we go everywhere together
Partners for life, comrades in arms we fight this litter war no matter what the weather.
I don’t know life without you now snatchelator. Where once there was a void now there now burns a fire.
Oh, snatchelator let my heart not cease before your lifetime warranty dost expire.
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Wow, what a powerful 3 minutes, good for him! I’ll be sharing this around, and coming back to it as it also applies to us parents of school age children/students. I sometimes think about how I spend my weekends/holidays versus childless coworkers come back with awesome stories from far and wide.
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Not to twist things too much, but I think that’s called plumbers tape (not the teflon tape variety). Yeah, it’s metal, unlike regular ‘tape’ but it’s good stuff for all sorts of uses. It’s like duct tape’s little known brother who also has amazing superpowers.
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It is called “Metal Strapping” or “Hanger Iron.”
Mucho useful.
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Yeah, I got some potted plants that sit on my terrace’s columns strapped to lamp poles with that stuff.
Came here for this. Thx!
So, I live in a big city and have this rooftop terrace garden with plants and everything - hammocks to lay in while you internet.
And someone gave me some of those burlap sacks that coffee beans are exported in, and so I made some pillows.
And one day in late December, a fierce wind blew one of the pillows right over the edge, and down, down, until it got stuck in the neighboring roof’s barbed wire.
It was the one I’d been using at the time …
So, my first prototype was a plastic basket from the bathroom cupboard wired to the painting extension pole, but while I could just barely reach the pillow, I couldn’t wrangle it from the barbed wire.
Then we tried a rope lasso mounted on the rod, but it could only get around one corner of the pillow at a time. Failure.
Then, I went inside and when I came back out a couple hours later, I found that my partner had invented a snatchelator-like device. Letś call it a snugglelator. And had been out there practicing on similar pillows. It comes down to a wire frame mounted on the pole, that allows the lasso to retain its width even when being lowered a full story off the edge of a roof.
With the aid of the snugglelator, we were finally able to grab the pillow and, by pulling the lasso tight, hold it in a death grip while we spent about 45 minutes alternating between shaking it wildly and poking at it with another stick to get it un-ensnared from the barbed wire.
Finally, success!
And that, my friends, is how I spent Christmas day.
Wonderful thing, the Snatchelator. Great to learn about it’s existence.
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