Easily one of my most ambitious projects, as well as the most functional, that I’ve undertaken is a bench that I built for a Gimme! Coffee cafe in NYC.  Because the cafe was (is) so small, there was no room inside for seating, and the outdoor seating was limited to a box-bench built around a tree and a 2×6 wooden bench that employees would drag in and out everyday.  City ordinances restricted any kind of larger benches, and the storefront architecture was prohibitive to seating wider than 2′ from being installed behind where the security gate came down.

When the 2×6 bench started to wear out, I was tasked with building a new one.  It had to be light enough that baristas wouldn’t just leave it outside at night, but sturdy enough to keep from being broken or toppled by patrons. Also if it could be prettier than the old bench “That’d be great.” I waded through a maelstrom of initial ideas, but they all would have been too heavy/bulky for one person to move, or would have been carried off by the first Manhattanite that wanted a new coffee table with just that urban flare.  I kept thinking, and my mind kept circling back to the tiny stoop that was too narrow for a bench.  There wasn’t a lot of room behind the security gate, but there was some…. I’ve read all kinds of articles and books on “idea generation,” and they all say to grab the biggest, craziest idea you have for a problem and to go with it.  So over the next six months I grabbed every one of those crazy ideas and burned them together with materials that I found in other cafes, pulled from old vehicles, and stole (liberated?) from peoples trash piles.  The end result was a 2-3 person bench that folds up and swings flush to the building.  It’s bolted to the granite storefront, pivots on a jeep axle, has an oak hardwood flooring seat with a quarter inch thick clear coat.  It even has a little kickstand that swings out via pulley when the seat is lowered. It can be viewed and “test sat” with a cappuccino at the Gimme! Coffee on Mott st in NYC, NY. Reservations are not taken however, so plan accordingly.