Thoughtless Acts

Vertical Bike Hang, San Francisco's Embarcadero:

The first image is my favorite finding of a clever way to lock a bike, which was perhaps a rather more well thought out act than not.  Here the owner took new heights in finding a creative solution to a problem of limited parking space.  The use of occupying vertical space on this pole is not only an inspiring feat of strength but also inspires the idea that vertical space is there to be used as well; however limited to the capacity of one's reach.  A designer might take this idea a step further and put a hook or an extending arm on the pole that could enable a bike to hang safely. A hanging bike like this attracts my attention upward.  Its charm is in it not being so discreet which has a two-fold beneficiary function, one that it deters from the subtle act of stealing and two, that it respectfully leaves the sidewalk space for walkers.

Grapefruit Bowl & Pen Rest:

This photo is of a grapefruit peel turned bowl.  The skin of the fruit was carefully peeled and arranged into a bowl to capture the pieces of rind and seeds that one might not want to eat.  This is a natural mess prevention method.  Next to the bowl is a notebook that I stuck my pen into the binding while I was not using it.  I think this is a great way to rest your pen while in class, so as not to find it diving off the edge of your desk, onto the floor, to make a rather distracting noise, and to likely inconvenience a fellow student whose chair it happens to roll under.

I think to further on the use of a notebooks' binding to capture pens, one could put the pen after the class is finished inside of the binding and there would be some sort of door like mechanism on both ends of the binding to keep the pen or pens inside.  This way, one would be able to keep their pen in the same place as their notebook, avoiding the lost inside of a bag amongst a bunch of mess situation, eliminating the need for a bulky pencil case, and making packing up at the end of the class easier, with no need to disrespectfully interrupt the end of a professor's lecture with the sounds of unzipping and Velcro.

Birds Perched at the Light, Berkeley intersection at Alcatraz St.:

This final image captures the thoughtless act of birds perching on a stoplight at an intersection.  Seeing as the birds took use of this manmade perch, perhaps an interesting design idea could be to paint the perch to look like a tree branch, which would create a a beautifully inspiring image of nature even further iterated than what we already see here.  Images such as this one might be caught by a careful observer but with a little more designed encouragement, one might feel obliged to look up at the stop light and see birds and an imaginary tree,  and find their consciousness drifting towards thoughts of the forest and adventure and with all hope might urge a driver's subconscious desire to be in their car less and outside in the world, amongst the birds, more.