Vending machine sells ideas for things to do

(Click on thumbnails for enlargement)

Sarah says: "Spotted this en route to work this morning at the bodega out front of my house in the East Village NYC. Any ideas? I was in too much of a hurry to take the bait."

It reminds me of Mister Jalopy's "Pocket Guide to Life & Death with Modest Automobiles," which can be purchased for $1 from a vending machine at Coco's Variety, or as a PDF at Boing Boing's Digital Emporium.

GammaBlog

Me too, Mailman. Had two quarters in my pocket too. Took a photo but it is too lame to clog up my Flickr stream.
romulusnr

Yet another “find great things to do” invention located only in a place where there are so many things to do it’s stupid.

No one ever comes up with a “find great things to do” invention for, say, Poughkeepsie.
satman

Reminds me of something I came across at a local art museum:

http://www.artomat.org/home.html

great idea.
MrScience

You need lots of things to do nearby, otherwise you wouldn’t have repeat business.

“Great! I got ‘Mid Hudson Civic Center’. What did you get?”
“Oh, another ‘Bardavon Opera House’.”
“That’s, what, your third one?”
Samurai Gratz

This is genius. Hmm. Where can I buy a vending machine? eBay, here I come.
Nas

Very cool to see that there are so many vending machine art projects out there. I was surprised not to see Gumball Poetry cited — I think they no longer publish, but they were quite widespread in their day and their web site is still up.

They were exactly what they sound like: a poetry journal distributed through gumball machines in various states (California, Iowa, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Montana, Oregon, and Washington).

They published a poem of mine (Stigmata) and the best part was getting my author’s copy, which involved living a sort of little kid’s dream of getting a box of gumball plastic container thingies in the mail, all at once and all for myself. Of course they had poetry inside instead of gum or toys or prizes, but I guess that part of the dream had been updated for my current tastes.

Check out their last issue at: http://www.gumballpoetry.com/poetry0602/
squib

I love mrvelocipede’s one and the poetry gumball machine – extremely cool
Thewooddwarf

Reminds me of something from mur lafferty’s waste land
SamF

I bet they all say “Go F*ck yourself!”

I mean, that’s what I’d make them all say if I’d thought of it first. :D
JFlex

I totally recognize those stores. What are the cross streets?
mrvelocipede

This seems like the perfect opportunity to post a link to some pictures of my own recent gumball machine project.

http://flickr.com/photos/mrvelocipede/tags/gumballmachine/
mailman

Went there this morning, nothing to see. Too bad.
planettom

A surprisingly high number of the ideas were, “Go on a date with a vending machine maintenance guy, 555-555-5555…”
Anonymous

does anyone know where this machine is? i’d like to check it out…
Anonymous

Yay, address! I’ll try to make it over there tomorrow, though, I’m betting someone will beat me to it. I have too many quarters as-is, and not enough ideas!
on_ono

this was all done before – ages ago – in berlin

http://home.pages.at/sculpture/
Jupiter6

i’m going to pay this machine a visit when i get off work today!
Foolster41

Wow. This is really interesting. I’m way over on the other side of the country, otherwise I’d check that out. :(
mrvelocipede

It is cool to see so many. I’d heard of Gumball Poetry, and there’s a guy who does Trashballs ( http://www.goodwinart.com/content/en/trashball.html ) but I love seeing these others! The Fortune Teller Boof has a particularly nice aesthetic, with the rust and the LEDs and the typewritten fortunes.
RogueModron

I looked it up with google maps. That is Kamaran’s Grocery, and here is the address:
79 Avenue A New York, NY 10009

Link to a google map to the store:
http://tinyurl.com/65g5b7
Peter S. Conrad

Foolster41: Have no fear! I am on the left coast, and my vending machine full of tiny comics will be on my table at Zine Fest at the County Fair Building on July 19 and 20 in San Francisco. Check out http://www.sfzinefest.com for details. I will also have my comics that are shaped like a pack of cigarettes, which I am thinking of submitting to the Art-O-Mat thing that Satman mentioned.

In the future, all art will come from vending machines.
sicklecell

next we need a vending machine of witty things to say. Sorry it was stupid. I’m just in a rut right Bret.
Pipenta

I love this.
wrybread

Awesome! And its so New York that the photographer didn’t even stop to sample one. I hope there’s an update with some of the “things to do”.

And as long as we’re plugging our own vending machine projects, here’s one of mine:

http://wrybread.com/cigs
Anonymous

i feel like this must be from the guy behind zoomdoggle.com. He does this kind of stuff all the time. Once he stood on a corner in NYC and just handed out dollar bills. Funny thing is nobody would take them…
Simon Greenwood

This chap: http://www.hayvend.com/ installs vending machines which dispense pieces of art for two pounds. The package is a yellow box with a typewritten label on it. I got one from the ICA many years ago which was titled ‘Immaculate Conception’ and contained a small ziploc bag which I hope didn’t contain someone’s, er, issue.
Stefan Jones

This is a cool idea. An artists’ group could use it to sell maps to galleries.

Have you seen Chris Ware’s amazing hand-made vending machines? One accepts keys and dispenses a small comic book.
mailman

Here’s the answer.

http://zoomdoggle.com/2008/07/meet-the-fun-o-meter/#more-626

Now I understand why the machine didn’t stay in front of the shop on the picture!
Anonymous

But how could they have come up with the idea for the vending machine before there was a vending maching to put 50 cents in and get the idea from?