Signs for the Homeless is an art project started by artists Kenji Nakayama and Christopher Hope in an effort to raise awareness about poverty and homelessness around the Boston area. The basic concept behind the ongoing project is that the two artists approach homeless people on the streets who are holding signs and propose an exchange. As their tag line states: "A sign in exchange for donations and a hand painted sign." Essentially, Nakayama and Hope offer $10 and create hand painted signs for each person they come across.
Poor models. Who says they don’t have it tough? Have you ever tried walking in their shoes? Even they can’t manage it—and it’s their job! Lucky for us, people with too much time on their hands have made gifs of these moments when the aspiring and established have hilariously eaten some serious shit mid-strut. But, maybe it’s too mean to laugh at their ankle wobbles and flat-on-the-ass falls? Nah. Here are some of my faves:
Laurent Aigon is not a flight engineer, or a pilot. He’s a waiter, but he has a young son who’s obsessed with airplanes and Aigon is an airplane fan himself. So Aigon built him a fully functioning simulation of a 737 cockpit and put it in his bedroom. How the hell did Aigon even pull this off? Well, essentially by just doing it: And since 40 is a little late in life to start that process from scratch, he did the next best thing: Methodically order parts from the internet, at a cost tallying thousands of euros, until he had assembled a control panel and screen that functions precisely the way the real thing would. Particularly heartwarming is the fact that, as part of putting together this simulation properly, Aigon wound up actually logging enough hours on the simulator to be a fairly decent pilot, and his work was so well done that it’s used by professionals to learn the ins and out. He’s even spoken at aircraft repair schools about building simulators.
