I tried starting one of these in my neighbourhood at the local Men’s Shed and they turned me down flatly saying they didn’t want to deal with the insurance. Glad to see the idea getting a good run in a few places.
what’s a Men’s Shed?
As far as I understand, it’s a place where to meet around some productive activity, as opposed to meeting around booze. :P
The intended side effect should also be ensuring that even less wealthy community members can access fancy tools.
Why they call them men’s sheds is a mystery to me, since I can easily imagine a schedule where it’s a women’s shed or random folks’ shed one some days.
Men’s sheds are community-based, non-commercial organisations that are open to all men. Men’s sheds improve the health and wellbeing of their members by giving them a safe place to make friends, share meaningful activities, talk, and access health information and resources. https://www.health.gov.au/our-work/mens-sheds
Interesting. Never heard of it. Seems overly complicated to make it gender based. But I like the idea.
I like the idea of a Random Folks shed lol
from what I understand some men feel very uncomfortable around non-family women, and don’t have a third place that doesn’t involve alcohol.
It does seem to add a layer of complication, but perhaps that’s the point.
yeah i can understand that. I think every group of people can feel uncomfortable around another group of people. my general stance is to let everyone create the community that they feel comfortable with. although I think that stance can be used in the wrong way, and is used to perpetrate patriarchy and toxic culture. its complicated.
They’re traditionally for boomer age people and they can be a bit weird about gender roles. For transparency my local one is officially called the ‘Community Shed’ but Men’s Shed is still the coloquial term most people use.
In my home town (Tallinn, Estonia), one library (Pelguranna library) also lends out tools.
Tools can be selected from their library catalog, currently it seems to have 69 items. :)
I haven’t used it because I now live out of town and have a plentiful supply of instruments, but it seems really neat that they did it. :)
That’s so cool! Such an amazing resource. I wish more library’s did that.
Best title I’ve read today. I had to read through the title at least 10 times to understand that they are saying that “library is popular with women” NOT that “someone is beating library with women”. Yes, English is not my first language…
lol, it is a weird saying now that I think about it.
Hahahahaha I can only imagine the amount of theft that would happen if somebody opened one here in eastern Europe. Glad that it works in the western world though.
There should be a separate sub for theft-proof solarpunk ideas. Polandpunk.
What are “whipper snippers”?
they are for cutting grass around corners and such, where lawnmowers cant reach. Think they’re called weedwhackers in America.
Thanks so much, Google thought I was saying “whipper snappers”
To add to TiredSpider’s comment, the dry product segment name is “string trimmer”. Sometimes also called “strimmers” or “weed eaters”.
(Also, the one common chore I refuse to do. I despise the things.)
