ReMake at ACCRC in Berkeley

Dale writes -

Following the Earth Day recycling push and just weeks before Maker Faire, James Burgett and his team of ACCRC (www.accrc.org) in Berkeley hosted a ReMake event at this unique electronics recycling center in Berkeley. Alex Handy, who lived up to his name, organized a nametag table where you popped keys off a keyboard and used a hot glue gun to attach the keys to circuit boards or other backing of choice. Joe Grand who now lives in SF dropped by to check out the old gaming devices. Salaam of the Vintage Electronics Festival (www.vintage.org) also came by to save some older stuff from prying hands. Michael Shiloh who is organizing Play Day at Maker Faire was there scavenging with great delight. Ralf Muhlen of SFLAN (and networking director for Maker Faire) looked through some police communications equipment with me, both of us hoping we might find something that worked. My great joy was applying a drill to the heart of a first-generation Blackberry. James, as usual, enjoyed telling everyone about this very unusual place, a home for displaced gadgetry and orphaned industrial devices. He also has plans to adapt an exercise machine into a catapult and enter it in the King of Fling contest at Maker Faire.

Thanks to DIGG for sponsoring beverages and pizza. ReMake will continue until noon (PDT) on Sunday.

ReMake photos – Link.

5 Responses to ReMake at ACCRC in Berkeley

RonGiuntini on April 29th, 2007 at 9:26 am said:

I didn’t quite understand this event. Were you able to obtain parts, take them home, and keep them out of the landfill? Like that nice receiver in the picture. Shame to junk that one. Kind of like seeing a Python going through the scrapper. Or were you just supposed to play with them like you are in kindergarten and put them away quietly when it was naptime?

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HumanMan42 on April 29th, 2007 at 3:29 pm said:

The point of this remaker fair was to go and have a good time using the mountain of crap, James called it all crap because people threw it away, and turn it into entertaining crap. I remade the RomperStompers into…well, better RomperStompers. Look for the stilts in the Flickr page. Those are not the ones that i remade, but you will understand, kinda. You go there, use things to make things, and if you have a good idea and start it there, they will let you take the peices home to finish it. It is not a big thrift store or a big dump…haha. I wanted to take so much stuff, but couldnt. Makes me sad what people throw away. Go next year if they have it, its awesome. I was there from 8pm-6am

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RonGiuntini on April 29th, 2007 at 4:41 pm said:

That’s what I thought. Kind of aggravating to not be able to take useful stuff. Instead it goes into the grinder, I guess. I would think they would let you take whatever you wanted, just to keep it out of landfill.

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p914 on April 30th, 2007 at 12:01 am said:

Does ACCRC have a walk-in store where one can BUY their crap? In my opinion this is a much needed resource now that most surplus electronics stores have died or gone ebay-only. Also – is there a mailing list so I can find out about future events before they happen?

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tiedyepie on April 30th, 2007 at 12:34 am said:

I am pretty sure that they only make computers from the junk and then donate them to people. Go down and ask, they are nice people.

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