advancement of settled fields
ya gotta dig it when some cool bastard unleashes and markets a seemingly obvious idea that blows away a standard. this post is about shower curtain rods and rings.
staying in a nice motel this weekend, i think it’s the first time i’ve seen this bitchin’ gizmo called “the arc” — a curved thin rail that replaces the standard oafish shower curtain rod. it arcs away from the shower and gives an impressive sense of roominess within while seeming to take nothing from the other side. the rail shape’s remarkably resistant to downward stress, and a good platform for what i assume is another recent innovation — integral rings.
as a fan of Planes, Trains & Automobiles, only rarely do i look at a shower curtain rod without thinking of shower curtain ring salesman del griffith (john candy). poor del would be struggling if he ran into these spankin’ “hookless” curtains with the built-in rings. saw them a while ago, but they still impress. the curtain in this motel also has a cool window section near eye-level, with a sort of bubble texture that you can see through okay but which, i’m guessing, hides nicely the usual visual degradation associated with the shower environment.
put all three of these neato things together, and a boring shower’s transformed into luxury. i wonder though what i’ll do with the time i used to spend resnapping those damned rings.
of all technical innovations, this type of radical improvement on convention may be my favorite. cool shower dudes and dudettes, i raise my beer bottle to you. thank you for getting rich making richer the lives of millions.
January 26th, 2008 at 18:20
I think I see how this works. Pretty awesome. I am wondering, though, does the design of the ARC also interact with the thermodynamics of a hot shower in such a way that it puts some kind of force on the shower curtain that keeps it from billowing inward toward you and losing that hard-won elbow room?
Bathrooms/showers are things that I want to spend some time designing well for the house that I eventually build/have built (can’t do shit with tools, to be honest, I’m not much of a man). This gives me some ideas.
Now if only someone could invent a shower curtain that TRULY didn’t mold, no matter how abusive you were to it.
January 26th, 2008 at 18:55
yeah, i think it whips that. won’t attempt a thorough analysis, since that subject’s baffled better science brains than mine, but i just checked, and the result bears out my theories. pre-angling the curtain makes it effectively weigh more for any further angling force. perhaps most important though is the comparative seal it provides at the bottom, blocking air movement from underneath. if i press the middle part above to remove the arc, it immediately begins the “shower curtain effect” thing.