At last week's Maker Faire I ran into a few of my favorite food artisans. In place of single-estate chocolate or the minute's freshest fruit, though, their ingredients were felt and yarn, circuit boards and LEDs.
What happens when you fold together San Francisco's cult of craft with its love of all things sweet or savory? And what if you spice it up with a dash of Silicon Valley's geeky, cheeky inventiveness and a generous dose of Burning Man bravado? You get a robot who mixes cocktails and you get the Dorkbake Challenge, where inventors present their original designs for working ovens heated with a 100-watt lightbulb.
It was a fun, unexpected reminder of how much our taste buds spark our creative cortex. Here are just a few highlights...
Zipping around the San Mateo Fairgrounds were big, bright cupcakes. A double-take confirmed that they were, indeed, giant sweet confections rolling on wheels with one, sometimes two, human occupants. They were capable of turning on a dime and generating smiles wherever they appeared. Surely the best use of old, motorized wheelchairs and fuzzy fabric ever.