The life and death of hobbies...

aahh..!!! ahhahahaha... I got a good dead hobby story..tonight,, I was the grocery store headed home,,, bumped into a person from my town who is semi important/well respected etc,, got chatting about the fire dept, etc,, and some how we got on hobbies,, etc,, she and her husband and some friends are in a Ukulele club!!!! ?? I was like WTF ? there are enough people who play and like the Ukulele to form a club ?? and get together?? they also travel to Newfoundland and New Brunswick and play in bars and such.( I bet Vance is there secret idol). their doing a fund raiser for a cancer patient this weekend.. !!! ok ?? cool. and all..but what ?? lol.. they even got T shirts made up...!

now.. there.I thought that was a dead hobbie!!!!

and now.. for something completely differant...

oh wait.. we just had that.... Long Live Monty Python..!!

where is Barney Fife when u need him,,,

VanceCrozier

 No really, how many people can cook for themselves now?

 And how many of them that can cook for themselves will actually go into the woods and kill their own dinner? And, how many of those that kill their own dinner, can do their own butchering?

Hans von Hammer

p38jl:

nice to meet you Owl..!

 

psst..fellas.. play nice.. Ladies are present...

 

Wait.. Manny did't ask for a picture of her ? 

Hate it when he breaks character...

Somethin's wrong...

quick..,.! in the bunker comrades~!!

p38jl

nice to meet you Owl..!

 

psst..fellas.. play nice.. Ladies are present...

Wait.. Manny did't ask for a picture of her ? 

Hate it when he breaks character...

Somethin's wrong...

Me too.  I started because my Mom and Dad got me this Revolutionary War cannon model at the Bunker Hill Monument in Boston when I was 4.  That and a tube of "No-Tox" lemon smelling glue.  That was my first.  I always loved playing with my gi-normous lego collection, and my Grandfather was a carpenter.  So I had a lot of creative inspirations.  There is one kit I will never forget.  When I was 9, my Grandfather died about 2 weeks before Christmas.  Before that he had gotten me a Christmas present that was already sitting under our tree.  We shared a house with my Grandparents, and when my mom came in and told us to stay in our room, I knew something was wrong.  After they had taken him, my Mom came in and told us.  We didn't stop crying for hours, especially.  My Grandfather was actually closer to me than my Dad was so when Christmas rolled around, I was really unsure of opening the present.  My Grandmother brought it over and told me it would make Bumpa (My Grandfather's Kid Nickname." happy if I opened it and liked it.  I opened the kit and I have to this day never figured out how he knew the exact kit I had wanted but not talked about for months.  It was the 1/48 scale B17F.  I guess he saw me watching the movie "Air Force" which is what made me want it so bad.  He was a smart old cuss.  I still miss him horribly.  He was the most supportive and helpful person I knew when I had just started out.  He even let me build in his workshop in the basement.  He had a small drill press and some older tools he let me have to work on kits.  It took me over a month to complete that kit.

I had to tone it back in HS though.  I was taking AP classes and I skipped my Sophmore year and I needed a LOT of time to keep up on my schoolwork and activities.  So until I was disabled, I never had time to do many.  Now I am back into it and trying to relearn long lost skills. Oh well...  At least my hobby isn't computers..  Oh wait.  That's my other hobby... lol

CallSignOWL

 

Manstein's revenge:

 

Cool...so what is your favorite subject matter and how did you get in the hobby?

 

 

 

Ive always liked building things, be it Lego castles with my brothers, K'nex, or snap together Zoid kits. My favorite subject matter is aircraft. Ive loved planes since before I can remember! I really got into the hobby in High School when the Air Force JROTC offered a model airplane club. Ive been hooked ever since!

OWL

nice to meet you Owl..!

psst..fellas.. play nice.. Ladies are present...

Manstein's revenge

Cool...so what is your favorite subject matter and how did you get in the hobby?

Ive always liked building things, be it Lego castles with my brothers, K'nex, or snap together Zoid kits. My favorite subject matter is aircraft. Ive loved planes since before I can remember! I really got into the hobby in High School when the Air Force JROTC offered a model airplane club. Ive been hooked ever since!

OWL

If i may toss my into this conversation. I dont think the hobby is dying. I think its as alive as it ever has been. Im a 17 year old football player and I have been modelling for around 10 years now. Ive gotten both my younger brothers hooked and i feel no greater joy in showing off my model tanks and such to my family and friends and hearing "oh wow." I think that this hooby isnt dying its just flying under the radar for alittle while

My cat just ran under the bed when I read that.  No kidding LMAO...

Manstein's revenge

 

DoogsATX:

 

 

VanceCrozier:

 

 

No, but the need to know who has contracted what from Paris Hilton on any given day... that's new. And what the is a Beiber anyway?

 

 

Eh, celebrity gossip's nothing new.

 

Very true---I mean there were those rumors about me at the "U-Boat Rehabilitation Centers" that persisted well into 1944...then there was that lingering rumor about me eating cats during the Stalingrad seige---wait, that was true...

Paintball use to be really big here in Utah. I played in tournaments had a pretty good team with shop and field sponsors as well as gear for cost deal with a top brand. i moved to California back in 2007 for work. when I came back this year everything had all but dried up. all of the shops and fields have closed up and nobdy really plays anymore here in UT. kinda sad.

PaintsWithBrush

 ...most people couldn't even do the most basic service if they had to.

And...I pumped my own gas this past weekend...

CallSignOWL

I guess I'm an anomaly in this generation! I build models, don't watch much TV, I don't play many video games, I like to read, I love to cook....and I'm a girl. In High School, I WAS the modeling club--the president, secretary and grunt all rolled into one.

I am the only person I know who does modeling, which is why I turned to this site so I don't bore my family and friends to death with talk about airplanes and plastic.....

 

OWL

 

the doog

I think the hobby will face a drastic draw-down in the coming twenty years. By that time, lots of hardcore modelers will be gone, and the upcoming generation just will not have the patience for it.

I agree 100% with you on that one and will offer up another that is close to home for the two of us as well:

The backyard tinkerer.

From what I have gathered from your postings about your racer side, you handle your own maintenance and that is the rarest of all skills these days.

If all the motorcycle mechanics were to suddenly disappear, the hobby would die off as fast as it would take for the scheduled services would arrive because most people couldn't even do the most basic service if they had to.

I guess I'm an anomaly in this generation! I build models, don't watch much TV, I don't play many video games, I like to read, I love to cook....and I'm a girl. In High School, I WAS the modeling club--the president, secretary and grunt all rolled into one.

I am the only person I know who does modeling, which is why I turned to this site so I don't bore my family and friends to death with talk about airplanes and plastic.....

OWL

Now that's a hobby that isn't ...dying...?

DoogsATX

 

The key is in the filtering. If you want to follow celebrity gossip, that's there for you. If you want to follow politics, or science, or movies, that's there for you, too. 

I don't know. I know celebrity news is pretty rampant, but I don't read People, I don't watch E!. I get most of my news from a combination of drive-time NPR, blogs, and a selection of news sites. Unless it's something big like Michael Jackson dying, I pretty much don't hear about it. And I'm 100% cool with that.

Wait, Michael Jackson is dying??????

bbrowniii

 

 

Nope.  But technology has given us the ability to 'know' what the wealthy, powerful, celebrities are doing EVERY SECOND of the freakin' day. 

It's also given us the ability to know that a plane crashed in the Hudson BEFORE any news network picked it up. Share pictures instantly, around the world. Share our thoughts with the world, be they the latest celebrity gossip, or a tutorial on aircraft weathering.

The key is in the filtering. If you want to follow celebrity gossip, that's there for you. If you want to follow politics, or science, or movies, that's there for you, too. 

I don't know. I know celebrity news is pretty rampant, but I don't read People, I don't watch E!. I get most of my news from a combination of drive-time NPR, blogs, and a selection of news sites. Unless it's something big like Michael Jackson dying, I pretty much don't hear about it. And I'm 100% cool with that.

Manstein's revenge

bbrowniii:

It is simply that, as our society has changed, what is important to them has also changed. 

 

You mean wealth, power and celebrity is something new?

Nope.  But technology has given us the ability to 'know' what the wealthy, powerful, celebrities are doing EVERY SECOND of the freakin' day. 

hummm... cats.. saute'd in recoil oil....stewed in a T-34 muffler.. now thats cooking!!

Hamsters, don't forget about the hamsters Manny. No, I suppose the celebrity gossip thing isn't totally new. I guess the on-demand immediacy angle is what's really new. Now someone can text/facebook/tweet these things instantly. Caesar et al, their "news" took longer to get around.

DoogsATX

VanceCrozier:

 

 

No, but the need to know who has contracted what from Paris Hilton on any given day... that's new. And what the is a Beiber anyway?

 

Eh, celebrity gossip's nothing new.

Very true---I mean there were those rumors about me at the "U-Boat Rehabilitation Centers" that persisted well into 1944...then there was that lingering rumor about me eating cats during the Stalingrad seige---wait, that was true...

I think one of the barriers to new entrants to the hobby is the initial cost. Once one gets introduced and begins to look more into it a bit there is an overwhelmingly large assortment of tools and materials that one could feel like they must accumulate in order to build models. I myself was intimidated by the thought of getting an airbrush and compressor years ago.
But the majority of we older modelers started as kids where mom or dad would buy us a $2 kit and a .50 tube of orange testors and let us have at it. Paint and brushes didn't come until years later. Then finally, as we became more serious about producing better looking models (and trying to reproduce what we saw in the new model rags) we moved into more exotic tools and supplies. The hobby came in easy to digest phazes that allowed our tool assortment to grow with our budgets and interest.
The hobby has changed a lot since then and so have people. I had HO trains and AFX cars back then. Today my boy has video games and computers.  It don't seem that people, no matter what the age, look at model building as an inexpensive kids past time today but an expensive adults hobby. And that's simply not true. While the sky is the limit on what we spend it's certainly not the rule.
Now lets change tracks.
For a number of years now it's been known that some kids have  abused the very materials we use to build our kits. Glue and paint have become a dirty name in some circles and I can imagine an overly cautious or worrysome parent may well forbid their kids to have access to chemicals they might abuse for a cheap high. In places like that it's safe to say any interest in the hobby may get stamped out if for no other reason than just for the parent to play it safe.
There is a large and growing list of reasons kids and adults may avoid model building as a hobby and there could well be pages of text spent discussing them. In my own eyes there is a certain romantic quality in reproducing my fantasies in miniature plastic models. I spent hours and hours as a kid shooting down the bad guys in my very own imaginary Corsair and having a toy I made myself really helped seal the eventual hobby into my head. Had I had access to video games? I may well have never picked up that very first snap tite kit of a funny car back when I was six. Todays kids still have that lively and wonderous imagination that I did as a kid, they just imagine different things than I did when I didn't have video games and ipods to distract me.
Heck, I never even saw the first Star Wars movie until I was in my twenties.

VanceCrozier

 

 

No, but the need to know who has contracted what from Paris Hilton on any given day... that's new. And what the is a Beiber anyway?

Eh, celebrity gossip's nothing new. Go back far enough and there were those persistent rumors of Caesar giving it up for the king of Bithynia. Or Burt and Loni. It's just, like so much else, become a self-sustaining industry. That and Caesar and Burt Reynolds actually did stuff to justify celebrity status. I'm convinced Paris Hilton is a product of E!...

As for Justin Beiber...latest in a long line of teen hearthrobs who inevitably flame out and go nowhere, except for the 1 in 20 that reinvents themselves. 

The more things change...

VanceCrozier

mmmmm - pie, now there's a hobby. No really, how many people can cook for themselves now?

I think it varies geographically, but home cooking is exploding with the whole foodie culture thing. My wife hits the famers' market every weekend, she's part of a local farm co-op that gives us a box of fresh vegetables every other week (for like a third what they cost in stores). We've considered going in on a meat co-op, but 50 lbs of assorted cow parts is a lot to store. We both cook frequently (I'm in charge of the grill and dishes), everything from basic tacos and burgers to last night's green chile pulled pork over cilantro lime rice. In the last few years I've learned what the heck quinoa is, and that it's pronounced keen-wa, not quin-noah. 

My boss is a total foodie, runs a foodie blog, and goes to all the various restaurant tastings, hits every new food trailer that opens...

I think, like modeling, it's a passion thing. The "passion curve" is flattening, with less people in that casual middle. Hence the explosion of foodie cooking alongside the general decline of the type of home cooking I grew up with.

Manstein's revenge

 

bbrowniii:

 

 

It is simply that, as our society has changed, what is important to them has also changed. 

 

 

 

You mean wealth, power and celebrity is something new?

No, but the need to know who has contracted what from Paris Hilton on any given day... that's new. And what the is a Beiber anyway?

I grew up with a classical Italian Grandmother. :)  She was great.  Learning to cook was not optional in my family.  She started teaching us when we were old enough to hold a spoon.  Man... Now I am having cravings for Lasagne

VanceCrozier

Yup, my daughter (grade 8) came home with a sheet full of circles, cut into quarters, with a number in each quarter... with instructions to solve the equations... HUH?  Sure, when you give me an equation to solve, what's with the screwed up pie charts?

mmmmm - pie, now there's a hobby. No really, how many people can cook for themselves now?

bbrowniii

It is simply that, as our society has changed, what is important to them has also changed. 

You mean wealth, power and celebrity is something new?

Yup, my daughter (grade 8) came home with a sheet full of circles, cut into quarters, with a number in each quarter... with instructions to solve the equations... HUH?  Sure, when you give me an equation to solve, what's with the screwed up pie charts?

mmmmm - pie, now there's a hobby. No really, how many people can cook for themselves now?

Manstein's revenge

 

 

When should we say enough?  When everyone owns a house with a picket fence, a car and there is a model kit in every pot...that's when...

 

That's the spirit!

lol. hunting next to the fire station.. sheesh..

also.. has anyone tried to help their kids with their math lately ??? wow.. i have to read the chapter to figure out what their doing.. I can get my own answer, just not the way the teacher wants them to do it...

the times they are a changing...