Drain-spotting: The people who keep their minds in the gutter | Hacker News Reader

Drain-spotting: The people who keep their minds in the gutter

bbc.co.uk

33 pointszeristor7 comments

I grew up not-too-far from Neenah Foundry, whose hole-covers I've seen everywhere I've gone (Wisconsin obviously, UK, Japan (e.g. a news article mentions Okinawa[1]), CA/FL/NY/MD/WA states, I've seen at least one reference that theirs are/were under the Eiffel tower, etc). It's quite a lot of reach for a foundry in a town of ~25k. It has been an idle source of entertainment over the years, I keep a an eye open for manufacturer names on municipal cast iron stuff :)

If you ever go to Japan, definitely keep your eyes down. There are a TON of fancy covers, lots of them enameled, in both big cities and tiny towns.

[1]: https://www.postcrescent.com/story/entertainment/2018/09/06/...

Suddenly - have a picture of "Victor Musgrave having spotted a drain cover". That's some meme potential right there. That alone made the article worth it, thanks!

Joking aside I think the urban infrastructure of today could use more of these small touches of aesthetics around. Why does everything modern have to be so boring, somehow I don't see a few ornamental street lamp posts or manhole covers wrecking any governmental budgets.

> ... the urban infrastructure of today could use more of these small touches of aesthetics around. Why does everything modern have to be so boring ...

I can't help my overall perception that nearly every single fixed item in the public space (including buildings, lamp posts, benches, door fittings, fences, pavements, ...) has these unbearably boring asthetics today, compared to the design of a few decades ago. Back then, many of these things had textures, ornaments, and other elements that gave the eyes something to look at and hands something to touch.

Almost everything that's put in the public space today is boringly sleek, agressively glossy ... anonymous brushed stainless steel ... a lot is made up of simple primitive forms, planar, spherical, cylindrical ... that's it.

Yeah, they probably do cost less, these minimalistic designs ... but do they really in the long term? Don't they get replaced more often (because noone cares about them anyway) with something new yet equally bland ... more often than those old designs that were richer in details?

Martin Zero's youtube channel is one of my favorites if you enjoy seeing the insides of drains and old tunnels all around Manchester and elsewhere: https://www.youtube.com/c/MartinZero/videos

Two well known drain-spotters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanton_Warriors

The Japanese are the kings of that sort of thing.

Example link: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/japanese-manhole-cover... (I believe HN had linked to this in the past, which is how I initially found it).

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