The fan is dead! Long live the fan!
Last week saw the execution of my old Honeywell ceiling fan. The crime? Conspiring with a known bad in-wall control unit. Sending secret radio messages. Total dereliction of duty.
I chortled in my joy as I surfed, now in the dark, for a replacement fan. I scanned the entire collection at Vintage Fans. I ran through the entire online collection of Hunter fans. That site actually generates new fan combinations randomly as you ask for each page. I found sizeable collections of fan porn in the pages of Pinterest and Houzz. In all, I put together a list of about 25 fans and passed it on to my wife.
I expected her to quickly ratify my top choice -- the Hunter Hotel Original with Adaptair. I thought I would pair it with a set of custom fan blades in maple from C&R Woodcrafters. It was going to be great. I'd be able to believe I was cool in summer. The fan would work well and look good. No stinking digital controls.
My wife got back to me in a flash. She said "I was imagining something more awesome." That knocked me out of balance, like a fan that has thrown a blade. I had no backup plan so I googled "awesome ceiling fan" and used image search. I discounted novelty fans and props left over from Terry Gilliam movies. I found the answer on the first page. The 'Haiku' by Big Ass Fans.
I also found Virginia H. S********, Air Force Civilian. She has no part in this story except that the Google image search results for fans turned up a cute snap of her cat, Tabbie, staring at the ceiling fan while tugging on her badge for work. Her badge is readable in the photo. Tabbie looks like a cat caught in the act. I wonder who he really works for.
Back to fans. I hated the old fan from the first day I bought the house. I was having a fight with it only minutes after closing when I was interrupted by a knock. The knock was from my new tenant. He had just returned home from a backpacking trip to Paraguay. I had never met the man. This stranger announced that he had lost his keys in Paraguay and asked me for mine. I didn't know if his story was authentic but I was sure that his stink was. I gave him my key to the basement apartment.
He returned my key in the little paper bag from the hardware store that had held the copies he had made. It said 'Qty 3'. He came up about an hour later to tell me that his Ukranian girlfreind would be arriving imminently and moving in. I said I already knew. When he asked how, I told him that I knew he had made three copies of the key. He said "Huh. Have to practice better information management in this town." Virginia should take this advice to heart.
Really back to fans this time. Haiku by Big Ass Fans. I remember a years-ago BAF ad. Got a Big Ass Room? Get a Big Ass Fan. The have brought the line down to medium ass rooms by licensing a novel, modern fan design from a Kiwi and marketing it under their brand.
The Haiku fan is the more awsome that my wife was looking for.
The old Honeywell unit was a five bladed fan that spanned about 54 inches. The Haiku spans 60 with three blades. The blades look purposefully aerodynamic. Mine are molded bamboo. I wondered immediately why I couldn't think of an Eames piece in bamboo. Maybe Nixon visited China too late for them. The humble downrod is clad in sleek fairings. The mount was utter simplicity. Everything about the fan is beautiful.
Blogger's iPad app still doesn't allow me to insert hyperlinks in posts. It turns out that hyperlinks, not W3C browser-based DRM protected video, are the defining feature of the web. If you revived Vannevar Bush to show him the Blogger app, he would be completely blown away... by the lack of hypertext. I have to circle back to the web interface after writing these posts to touch them up with actual hyperlinks. I'll try preparing the next installment in a different environment. Maybe wordpress. Maybe a typewriter. Maybe a typewriter emulator app for Chrome running on a Google Pixel. Stay tuned.
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