Johnny Payphone - ProfilesArchive

About Me

I like to chop and ride bikes and dig through the trash. I like to develop bike programs in Africa and in the Chicago ghetto. I make things out of metal. I marry people. I work for festivals.
I'm kind of an old fashioned guy.
Check out Chicagofreakbike .
Check out my article on how to make a pennyfakething in Steampunk Magazine #2 .
Take a look at my portfolio .
I'm also in Rat Patrol Hot Layouts

My Interests

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Zombie hunting, apocalypse preparation, teaching ghetto kids to fix bikes, vintage metalworking methods, automata (especially pedal-powered), homemade boats, exploring abandoned buildings and tunnels, finding dead clowns and poking them with sticks, mass transit, moving bridges, Victoriana, live steam, old iron, archaeoastronomy, guerilla taxidermy, girlesque, kinetic sculpture, parasitology, corvids, scarification, trash (especially scrap), dumpster dining, living steampunk, playing dressup, fighting crime in a cape, the Rat Patrol Africa Corps, chopper bikes, welding, exotic vehicles, mass transit, gender fluidity, mobile pirate radio, making booze, varmit hunting and eating, and the found lifestyle.

Heroes:

Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Claude DeBussy, Kinetic Steamworks, Messy Stench, Ada Lovelace, Dr. Evermor, Edna St. Vincent Millay, John Edel, Big, Mark Messing, Pickles, my Aunt Barbara, Laurie Anderson.

My Blog

Australia 3: Corinbank

Right after I wrote my last letter I went out for aswim in the swimmin' hole. There was a big three-footeel in there. So I yelled for my friends to get ahook and some meat. We found ...
Posted by Johnny Payphone on Thu, 15 May 2008 04:34:00 PST

New Zealand

What a beautiful place. Endless tropical beaches bythe coast, endless Wisconsin inland. It’s kind ofshocking that the place is still so rural. They sayit’s because it’s so far fro...
Posted by Johnny Payphone on Sun, 16 Mar 2008 05:42:00 PST

Australia 2

My weekly schedule goes like this: During the week, Iwake up and ride over to the Rat's Nest (someone'sgarage). I chop bikes, usually working on threeprojects at once, until dark. Usually someone c...
Posted by Johnny Payphone on Sun, 09 Mar 2008 05:06:00 PST

Australia 1

One of the founders of RPOZ has a dad named Mick, andit was Mick's dream 20 years ago to create a skiresort and bobsled track in the mountains outside ofCanberra. So Dan aka Nancy Porker grew up in t...
Posted by Johnny Payphone on Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:03:00 PST

Global Supercontainer Shipping

The invention of the shipping container has changed the world. Previously ships were unloaded by stevedores bit-by-bit: Casks of wine, crates of goods, etc etc. Now a universal conta...
Posted by Johnny Payphone on Fri, 18 Jan 2008 11:16:00 PST

5 generations of Steampunk

They call me Johnny Payphone because I'm the last person on earth without a cell phone, I gotta go down on the corner to make a call. I love old telephone technology and anything coin-operated. I lik...
Posted by Johnny Payphone on Thu, 29 Nov 2007 06:31:00 PST

Professional Welding

Here's a sample of some of my professional welds:Before:After:...
Posted by Johnny Payphone on Fri, 09 Nov 2007 07:41:00 PST

Traveling

Things are pretty uprooted in my life. After almost three years, Pot'n'Rox is dead. Good times and bad times, but memory only retains the good. I lived there longer than anywhere els...
Posted by Johnny Payphone on Fri, 27 Jul 2007 02:47:00 PST

The Diary of my great-grandfather, Fletcher A. Hatch

My mom and I have been transcribing my great-grandfather's diary, 101 years later to the day. He traveled from New York to work in the Phillipines building the railroad. The Diary of Fletcher A....
Posted by Johnny Payphone on Tue, 03 Jul 2007 01:17:00 PST

Pedal-Powered Crane

Here is a pedal-powered crane I made for Redmoon Theater. Most of the parts came from Northern Tool's ATV supplies: The wheels & stub axles, with the front axle being their go-kart axl...
Posted by Johnny Payphone on Wed, 06 Jun 2007 08:49:00 PST