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How do you haul wood from Home Depot's equivalent to make your own furniture? Do you have any privacy outdoors or landscaping?

adjkant 6y ago
I live in Brooklyn and have made multiple trips to Home Depot, via subway actually even! If I needed to take bigger loads, zipcar + 10 minute drive. No landscaping but I can chill on my backyard with a garden behind my brownstone. If I really wanted to make furniture out there I could probably manage. For smaller pieces of wood, I can pick from 4-5 hardware stores in a 10 minute walk radius.
benrbray 6y ago
One scalable solution is community workshops / maker spaces / community gardens.
- throwaway316943 6y ago
  While they have their place, I don’t think they’re scalable unless you’re talking about proliferating a lot of small ones. Beyond a certain number of people you get a real tragedy of the commons situation and you have to start enforcing rules and resolving disputes.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
For the most part you don't. Anyone with a space intensive form of recreation (arguably this included raising a family) has to slog out a commute from the suburbs. Yes there are some single men in their 20s with table saws in their living rooms but they're the exception and not the rule.
- ghaff 6y ago
  I think this is one reason you get people talking at cross-purposes about living car free. Leaving aside where their job actually is... (Which, in the case of many cities may well not be in the city in the case of tech-related jobs.) People tend to bias their activities to what they can do relatively easily. If you don't own a car and don't have a lot of space, you're probably not going to take up some space-intensive hobby or head off on a lot of weekends to hike or canoe. Maybe you'll lean a bit on friends with cars--though that tends to get harder as people get older and busy with their own activities. And maybe you'll rent a car now and then. But mostly you'll fall into activities that don't have a lot of overhead associated with them.
  - lorenzhs 6y ago
    I don't have a car, but the city I live in has an excellent car sharing system. I just checked, if I wanted to go hiking tomorrow, the nearest suitable car that's available all day is 200m from my place. Booking it for 8 hours and driving 100km would cost me 33€ ($41), all costs included. The key is in a lockbox that opens with a card, so it's available 24/7/365 without another human in the loop. Booking is easy and convenient. If the weather were any good tomorrow, I might have done that and gone winter hiking. Not having a car doesn't have to be as limiting as you may think :)
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Car-sharing (and Uber) definitely make it easier to live car-less in a city, at least at the margins. I know a couple in SF who don't own a car but they make pretty regular use of car-share. (Although last I heard they had their ZipCar account suspended for a minor accident and the alternatives or not as good.) I still stand by the broader point though. To the degree that you don't really have the space for hobby/recreational gear and that it's harder to transport the things you need for activities, the less likely you are to do them.
gen220 6y ago
We have a hardware store within a five minute walk. Most small things we can get there. Lowe’s is about 15 minutes away, and is the only place to get serious wood. For small things we’ll walk there and back. For medium things we’ll walk there and UberXL back ($15), for large things we’ll zipcar or rent a UHaul ($25). We don’t have private outdoor space, but we live in a very quiet neighborhood. For woodworking we get very far with a dremel and a jigsaw. :)
vharuck 6y ago
When I worked at Lowe's, we had pickup trucks to rent and offered delivery (with or without installation) for larger items.

adjkant 6y ago

I live in Brooklyn and have made multiple trips to Home Depot, via subway actually even! If I needed to take bigger loads, zipcar + 10 minute drive. No landscaping but I can chill on my backyard with a garden behind my brownstone. If I really wanted to make furniture out there I could probably manage. For smaller pieces of wood, I can pick from 4-5 hardware stores in a 10 minute walk radius.

benrbray 6y ago

One scalable solution is community workshops / maker spaces / community gardens.

throwaway316943 6y ago
While they have their place, I don’t think they’re scalable unless you’re talking about proliferating a lot of small ones. Beyond a certain number of people you get a real tragedy of the commons situation and you have to start enforcing rules and resolving disputes.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

For the most part you don't. Anyone with a space intensive form of recreation (arguably this included raising a family) has to slog out a commute from the suburbs. Yes there are some single men in their 20s with table saws in their living rooms but they're the exception and not the rule.

ghaff 6y ago
I think this is one reason you get people talking at cross-purposes about living car free. Leaving aside where their job actually is... (Which, in the case of many cities may well not be in the city in the case of tech-related jobs.) People tend to bias their activities to what they can do relatively easily. If you don't own a car and don't have a lot of space, you're probably not going to take up some space-intensive hobby or head off on a lot of weekends to hike or canoe. Maybe you'll lean a bit on friends with cars--though that tends to get harder as people get older and busy with their own activities. And maybe you'll rent a car now and then. But mostly you'll fall into activities that don't have a lot of overhead associated with them.
- lorenzhs 6y ago
  I don't have a car, but the city I live in has an excellent car sharing system. I just checked, if I wanted to go hiking tomorrow, the nearest suitable car that's available all day is 200m from my place. Booking it for 8 hours and driving 100km would cost me 33€ ($41), all costs included. The key is in a lockbox that opens with a card, so it's available 24/7/365 without another human in the loop. Booking is easy and convenient. If the weather were any good tomorrow, I might have done that and gone winter hiking. Not having a car doesn't have to be as limiting as you may think :)
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Car-sharing (and Uber) definitely make it easier to live car-less in a city, at least at the margins. I know a couple in SF who don't own a car but they make pretty regular use of car-share. (Although last I heard they had their ZipCar account suspended for a minor accident and the alternatives or not as good.) I still stand by the broader point though. To the degree that you don't really have the space for hobby/recreational gear and that it's harder to transport the things you need for activities, the less likely you are to do them.

gen220 6y ago

We have a hardware store within a five minute walk. Most small things we can get there. Lowe’s is about 15 minutes away, and is the only place to get serious wood. For small things we’ll walk there and back. For medium things we’ll walk there and UberXL back ($15), for large things we’ll zipcar or rent a UHaul ($25). We don’t have private outdoor space, but we live in a very quiet neighborhood. For woodworking we get very far with a dremel and a jigsaw. :)

vharuck 6y ago

When I worked at Lowe's, we had pickup trucks to rent and offered delivery (with or without installation) for larger items.