Third Round Draftpick Team Steampunk

Somehow I got it backwards. Aren't you suppose to start out living the gypsy life and then becoming conservative by the time you're crowding 50? Me in a suit, coiffed hair, heels at 25... that was an interesting role. Now I'm wearing 1900's french peasant clothes, enthusiastically describing an antique dealer's life on the road, adventures in foreign lands, the glitz the glamour, to a group of renaissance/goth/comicons on the steampunk tour.

I've just been told by the insiders that I'm now one of them. Seems like just yesterday I was with the green party, draft-picked from the shabbily chic having been picked up from the strictly architectural farm team. The making new things out of old things keeps me in rotation. I'm gonna have to sit out sword fighting and dungeons and dragons games and hope they overlook the ripped jeans and workbooks under the tophat and tails. I like costumes but I don't think I can play in a cinched corset. My longevity depends on adapting my market strategy but still be brand heritage co2. It's still about finding cool stuff, in this case gadgets and old machines, figure out what to do with them and get it built.

I am intrigued by the intricate fabrications and the engineering of this stuff. You gotta check it out (www.steampuffin.com). The tricked out wheel chair, computer desk on a victorian printer's stand, old typewriter parts and an armature holding a skull with glasses…provide a much needed new way of looking at antiques and design. And boy do we ever need to find a fresh market. Our hosts, The Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation, is promoting preservation of America's manufacturing heritage which fits right in with my message. The Steampunk City event in their hometown of Waltham, Mass. drew 10,000 aforementioned costumed steampunks..and curious locals. The movement is building momentum and a following all in less than two years, pretty impressive.

The 1950's folk art tractor and the floor lamp put together with an adjustable 1920's automotive headlight and a fine wooden surveyors tripod I brought got a lot of attention. So here I am wearing what amounts to old cotton undergarments and telling stories about how this all came to be. It's in the gypsy job description, that and wearing lots of hats, changing costumes and personas, keeping the act fresh and selling the new show from town to town. It's an interesting life and somehow there's always money to keep the show on the road. Best of all, you don't have to wear pantyhose. But for Godsake, don't tell the parents who put yours truly through university thinking I'd be an engineer, you know the regular corporate kind.