HOW

YOUR WORLD
WORKS

BEST
TECH
OF
E V E RY T HING
IS RE T RO
NOW

TH E
YEAR
Stay Warm with The Best Way to SCIENCE FICTION
the Newest SHARPEN That Will Keep You
MOUNTAIN GEAR KITCHEN KNIVES Up at Night
PAGE 53 PAGE 88 PAGE 3
NEW STYLES
AND GREAT FITS
 THE ISSUE
STARTS HERE. A STUNNING NEW WORK OF FICTION
BY ACCLAIMED NOVELIST SMITH HENDERSON,
T H I S I S A S T O R Y O F A LT E R N AT E R E A L I T I E S ,
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, MARTIAN COLONIES,
FA M I LY, T E C H N O L O G Y, C L I M AT O L O G Y,
F E A R , LOV E , A N D T H E FAT E O F H U M A N B E I N G S O N E A R T H .

WE PRESENT

A LINE OF BLOOD runs from under her right nostril and then Rhea topples
over at the market, clutching a bunch of tulips. She never rises. My wife is
gone. Just like that. ¶ I travel for work so I shouldn’t be home for this, but I am.
As soon as I jump off the running board at the depot, I feel every eye askance.
Olympia is a small village, everyone knows everyone, word travels fast. ¶ I am
taken to see her at the doctor’s house. He can’t answer my questions, doesn’t
have the equipment to see. It’s not like the old days when there were hospitals
and expertise. Now we must look out for one another. We grow gardens. We
share a watermill. We run on solar. The village has roadlights but we don’t
run them much because there are no wolves or outlaws, and lights only draw
swarms of insects. ¶ I leave the doctor in a dense daze. The villagers adored
Rhea, and they come condoling as I pass by the longhouses, the commons in
the square on my way to the school. ¶ The name Olympia is immodest. The
village sits on the Arctic shore of what used to be Alaska, near what was once
Prudhoe Bay, but the geography is changed from the last paper maps when
this was the center of the world. When it was unbearable everywhere else. Now
the Arctic is a warm body, full of jellyfish and black chokeweed. Our days are
long and hot and then warm and short. But it rains and the soil is rich. The
village holds some six hundred souls. Less one now. In the prefecture there
are dozens of villages like this. We trade, but keep our distance. We survive
on dispersion now. All bad news is local. A sinkhole, a flu, a fire, a bad crop.
A woman falling over in a market. CONTI N U ED ON PAGE 6 8

@PopularMechanics DECEMBER _ 2017 3

TA B L E O F 18

TINY SATELLITES
They’re the size of
grapefruits—and
they’re making data
collection quicker and
more comprehensive.
9

3D PRINTING 40
A technology in
progress finds a per- LIFE AT THE MALL
fect fit in schools. The death of malls has
been greatly exagger-
ated, but they are not
what they once were.
We went to find out
what’s going on.
46
By Tom Chiarella
MERCURY RACING
SB4 7.0: Do you need
a 750-hp engine?

53

THE LIFE 3 Popular

Colorado snowcat Mechanics
drivers. Fiction: “Olympia”
6 PM Everywhere

14 The Hyperloop:
60 FAQs

BEST TECH OF 20 Maker City:

THE YEAR Indianapolis
Concrete speakers,
22 How to Cut Your
Beats that are finally
Own Hair
worth your money,
nine different smart- 24 Things
phones, and more. Come Apart:
Including Cuphead: Coffeemaker
Your new favorite
game. 26 Ask Roy

28 Homemade
Sauces to Give as
74 Gifts
HARLEY GRICE 30 The Very Very
AND THE GREAT Basics of Car
VERMONT Care
TARGET SHOOT
With deliberation, 36 Huckberry Gift
precision, and a cow’s Guide
horn full of black pow-
50 Road Tested
der, these men and
women trek through 82 Project: Make
the woods of Ver- a Dish from
mont, testing their Concrete
marksmanship the
old-fashioned way. 84 Shop Notes
By James Lynch
88 Sharpening

92 Popular
86 Mechanics for
Kids: Ball Toss
TOOL TEST
Welders. 104 Great Unknowns

4 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M
 WHAT WE’RE UP
U N DER T H E T REE! TO BEYOND THESE
PAGES

THE
P ODC AST!

On the Most Useful

Podcast Ever, tech-
nology editor Alex
George goes head
to head with Dan
Ackerman, senior
editor at consumer
technology site
CNET. What’s the
best tech item of
the year? What
shouldn’t you
bother buying?
How’s your Christmas shopping going? Not great? Yeah, we Hear their useful
opinions—which
thought so. That’s why this year we partnered with online men’s shop we hope will come
Huckberry to bring you a curated selection of Popular Mechanics– in the form of a
heated debate,
approved clothes, bags, and outdoor gear just in time for the possibly fisticuffs—
holidays. Check out our favorite items on page 36, then head over on the Most
Useful Podcast
to huckberry.com/popmech to purchase. Returns are free—but we Ever, available on
have a feeling that won’t be necessary. Apple Podcasts.

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6 DECEMBER _ 2017 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M

 B Y R YA N D ’ A G O S T I N O

AFTER AN
EXTENDED
PERIOD OF
HYPE, A
TECHNOLOGY
FINDS ITS SO W HERE ARE we now?
One day soon, we’ve been told over the last decade or so,
PURPOSE. we’llallhave3Dprintersinourlivingrooms!Youcanmake
whatever you want!! But we don’t, and you can’t.
“With every technology, you have the hype cycle, and
right now we’re sort of at the bottom, because the hype is
over,” says Joris Laarman, a Dutch designer who has engi-
neered new types of digital-fabrication materials and whose
work is the subject of an exhibition at the Smithsonian’s
Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York through January.
“People are kind of like, ‘Okay, so? What can we do with
it? Was it real or was it just hype?’”
Well, for some it hasn’t been just hype. Laarman uses 3D
printing to create functional, usable furniture called micro
structures. SpaceX has a dedicated 3D printing zone at its
plant in Hawthorne, California. GE’s Brilliant Factory aims
to use 3D printing to transform large-scale manufacturing.
But where is 3D printing for the rest of us?

@PopularMechanics DECEMBER _ 2017 9

 3D printers build objects by layer-
ing a thin filament. Most machines
use a thermoplastic, like what
Legos are made from, but some can
print wood and metal.

PART OF THE ANSWER liesinthebook.

The book is 194 pages long. On each
page, color photographs and diagrams
illustrate clear instructions presented
in large type beneath easy-to-read
headlines:
DESIGN. RESIZE AND DUPLICATE.
BUILD THE TALLEST BUILDING.
PRINT, TEST, AND ITERATE!
The book is written for teachers and
students, and each of the nine projects
in the book begins with a Lesson Sum-
mary. Such as: “Students will be asked
to create a vehicle . . . to carry 100 mL
of water from the starting line, around
a track and to the finish line. Students
should aim to spill as little water as pos-
sible while speeding around the track.”
The book is called the MakerBot Edu-
cators Guidebook. And it reflects the
new direction the consumer 3D-printing
industry is taking. In September, the day
before its release, employees were smiling
about it at the Brooklyn headquarters of
MakerBot, the company that pioneered
desktop 3D printing less than a decade
ago—the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic,
which came in kit form, was introduced
in 2010. It seems simple today, when com-
pared to their most current model, the
Replicator+, on which, with a little help,
a ten-year-old could open the box and be
printing in less than 30 minutes.
That book, that machine, and that kid
are the future of 3D printing.
EMILY JACKSON SANBORN becamethe
Orono Middle School and High School
librarianlastyear.TheMaineschoolshad
a 3D printer already—somewhere. She
dug the kit out and enough curious stu-
dentswantedtohelpherfigureitoutthat
she started offering mini-classes during
students’ advisory time. It was such a hit
that Jackson Sanborn and her principal
applied for, and won, a foundation grant
to buy a FlashForge—a “super-crazy-easy
out-of-the-box printer to use.” The school
also hired a new IT director over the sum-
mer, who brought a MakerBot Replicator
II and a bit of experience. “My goal is for
the kids to work toward a project with a
real-life application,” says Jackson San-
born. “A problem that we can create a fix
for.” This year, one high school student
will print a gimbal camera mount to film
projects for his acting class.
Today’s kids will grow up knowing that
3D printing works in a lot of ways—and
that it is their technology.
At the World Maker Faire in New York,
in September, the 3D Printing Village
showcased dozens of machines meant
for the educational market. Booth after
booth, many of them surrounded by kids.
There was a booth by a company that sells
3D printers that work off a smartphone. A
high school girl sat behind a booth at the
end of a row fiddling with a printer she
had hacked so that two extruders could
work simultaneously.
Dremel, the hand-tool manufac-
turer, started selling its Idea Builder
3D printers in 2014. At that time, the
3D-printer-in-every-pot hype was still
high. Now, Dremel president John Kava-
nagh says the company has recalibrated
its mission. “There’s still a consumer
market, it’s just that it’s a smaller mar-
ket. It’s these ultra-creatives or the
ultra-technical. So the needs we were
actually trying to fulfill in the consumer
market weren’t really there—and yet
the needs were there in education,” he
says. Dremel has since set out to provide
schools with a premium product and
easy customer service. “You don’t want
to put a product in the school that is not
easy to use, because the teachers aren’t
experts in 3D printers. And the product
really should be reliable and safe. The
teachers don’t have time to try to call
remote customer service.”
For companies like MakerBot and
Dremel, the problem on the educa-
tional front is that several companies
are marketing basic, low-price printers
to schools. They have lower capability
(smaller, slower, fussier), but the price is
alluring for school budgets. So instead
of buying one Dremel Idea Builder for
$2,000, a school might buy four printers
by XYZ Printing for $449 each. “We’re
often shocked at how quickly it seems to
be—I hate to say it—a race to the bottom
on price. To get these higher volumes and
unit sales, the overall value of those in the

10 DECEMBER _ 2017 3 D - P R I N T E D L E T T E R S CO U R T E S Y O F M A K E R D E P OT, TOTO WA , N E W J E R S E Y.

 business isn’t that high,” says Kavanagh.
A And yet in some communities, basic
works. Ron Smith teaches welding and
engineering at Nestucca Junior/Senior
High School in Cloverdale, Oregon. His
3D printer? An Afinia H480, a now-
discontinued desktop model he’s had
since 2014. At the end of the year, each
student gets to design his or her own keep-
sake, something small that they want
B just for themselves. “These are some of
C
the tools I can use to get kids interested,
to go on to college and learn more about
stuff like this,” he says. “Around here, if
you don’t own a dairy, if you don’t work in
tourism—we’re on the coast—then you
work for pretty much minimum wage.
There’s no industry. We have a cheese fac-
tory in Tillamook, which is 25 miles away.
So I’ve done a really, really good job of try-
D
ing to stay up with technology and get my
kids interested in stuff like that. To show
them it’s a big world out there, go out there
and make your mark, that type of thing.”
E F
W H I C H B R I N G S U S back to the book.
The book is about the future. “The revo-
lution didn’t happen overnight the way
commentators and the media predicted,
so now a good amount of skepticism and
G
cynicism has set in,” says Josh Snider,
public relations manager at MakerBot.
“There’s still a widespread understand-
ing that the technology will mature and
have its place in a number of industries,
but the general public still only sees 3D
printing as a curiosity and a ‘revolution
pending’ status.”
H
But you know who’s not skepti-
cal? Kids. The kids who learn the nine
projects in the MakerBot Educators
Guidebook will grow up thinking—grow
up knowing—that printing works in a lot
of ways and for a lot of things. And that it
A Few Educational Printers of Note is their technology.
A. MakerBot Replicator+; B. Prusa i3 MK3; In October, MakerBot announced the
C. FlashForge Dreamer; D. Dremel 3D20 Idea Builder;
E. Ultimaker 3; F. Type A Machines Series 1 Pro;
creation of MakerBot Labs, an initiative
G. 3Doodler Create; H. XYZ Printing da Vinci Color. that includes new software, hardware,
12 DECEMBER _ 2017
and community building designed to let
creators create with fewer technological
barriers. The centerpiece is the Exper-
imental Extruder. An extruder is the
device on a printer that absorbs whatever
material is being used to print—usually
plastic filament—then heats it so that it
can be extruded onto the printer’s work
surface (called the build plate), and casts
it in solid form again. More advanced
printers have experimented with other
materials besides plastic—wood, metal,
stone—but those materials tend to clog
and wear out normal extruders. The new
one from MakerBot promises to handle
a variety of exotic and composite materi-
als—cork, wood, copper, brass—printable
within a temperature range of 100 and
255 degrees Celsius. “We know printing
in non-typical materials—anything that
isn’t PLA or ABS plastics—is much harder
to do and requires some trial and error,
something our competitors are happy to
leave out when they list their ‘material
compatibility,’” says Snider. “We’re going
toleverageourcommunitytocollaborate
and hone different material profiles.”
Thethingabout3Dprintingis,you’re
going to mess up. Maybe mess up is
the wrong phrase. Your efforts will not
always succeed. Things won’t work. An
object will collapse, or not fit together,
orbreakwhenyoutrytoremovethesup-
ports that hold it together as it comes
intobeing.Thiswillbefrustrating,espe-
cially if you’re a seventh-grade teacher
with a room full of kids staring at you.
But that’s what happens. 3D printing is
not really printing at all. It’s manufac-
turing. It’s making. And that’s a messy
business. Today’s most-used printers
make it easy without making it simple.
They help get you to a place where you
can fail, and that’s what makes us create.
Messy is where we are now. The rev-
olution is messy everywhere. It is messy
at SpaceX and it is messy at GE. And it
is messy at schools where kids are learn-
ing to use a new generation printer to
make keepsakes and gimbal mounts and
small water-carrying robots so that—
in another ten years—they can work at
SpaceX, and GE, and companies that
don’t even exist yet, using materials that
no one has imagined, to make break-
throughs nobody has dreamed of.
—Additional reporting by
Eleanor Hildebrandt
P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M
“Bye, bye, frequent heartburn.”
BECKY LONDON, ACTUAL PRILOSEC OTC USER

#
1 DOCTOR RECOMMENDED
FOR 10 STRAIGHT YEARS AND
IT’S STILL RECOMMENDED TODAY

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for full effect. AlphaImpactRx ProVoiceTM Survey, Jan 2006 - Mar 2016. © Procter & Gamble, Inc., 2017
 THE HYPERLOOP: FAQ
It’s been four years since Elon Musk shared his vision for transcending ships,
trains, cars, and planes. Will the hyperloop ever be more than a vision?
BY KEVI N DU PZYK
IN AUGUST 2013,
disappointed by the high-
speed-rail system being built
through the center of Cali-
fornia, Elon Musk released
a white paper called Hyper-
loop Alpha, describing a
system of pod-cars shoot-
ing through vacuum tubes at
nearly 800 mph. The paper
ended with a plea for “the
community” to work on an
“open source transportation
concept”—he was too busy,
he said, to work on it himself.
Here are the key questions
that have arisen since.
Has anyone taken up
Musk’s challenge to
develop hyperloop
technologies?
Yes—initially, two main
companies, one called
Hyperloop Technolo-
gies and another called
Hyperloop Transportation
Technologies (HTT). The
former, now called Hyper-
loop One (H1), boasts a
flashy venture-capitalist
cofounder and more than
$150 million in funding.
The latter has taken “open
source” to heart and is more
like a very well-organized
14 DECEMBER _ 2017
consortium of engineers
from around the world.
Was Hyperloop One
cofounded by a guy
legally named Brogan
BamBrogan?
Yes. Although BamBrogan
left and earlier this year
formed his own company,
Arrivo, one of a handful of
other small startups working
on the hyperloop. And a vari-
ety of academic teams are
working on pod-car proto-
types, spurred by a series
of competitions hosted by
Musk at SpaceX HQ.
So Musk isn’t totally
leaving this up to “the
community”?
No. SpaceX built a three-
quarter-mile-long track, and
has hosted two competi-
tions (a third is scheduled
for summer 2018), reward-
ing things like design, safety,
and speed. At the second
competition, the winning
team hit 201 mph.
Are there other test tracks?
A Dutch company born
from Musk’s first competi-
tion built a 30-meter-long
test track in Europe. While
the SpaceX track is only six
feet in diameter, its track
is full-size—it can handle
tests with cars big enough
to carry passengers. And H1
has the full-size DevLoop, a
500-meter test track out-
side Las Vegas. It hit 192
mph in a test in July.
It sounds like the technol-
ogy is coming along.
It is. A team from NASA
examined the feasibility of
the hyperloop, purely from
a technological standpoint,
and found it doable. Every-
one agrees the technology
itself isn’t the challenge.
Then what’s the challenge?
There are two: cost and land
acquisition. Musk’s original
paper said hyperloop would
be cheaper than existing
high-speed-transit options,
but at this point, with the
technology still in develop-
ment, there’s no consensus
on the validity of his esti-
mates. There is consensus
on the second challenge: It’s
incredibly difficult to acquire
land on this scale in the
U.S. For this reason, many
companies are exploring
projects in other countries.
One of the more promising
startups, TransPod, is based
in Canada; H1 has a deal with
the government of Dubai;
P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M
and HTT with South Korea.
It’s entirely possible we’ll see
a working hyperloop abroad
before we get one in the U.S.
At least we’ve got Musk.
It’s too bad he’s staying
so hands-off.
About that. In July, Musk
tweeted he’d gotten “verbal
govt approval” to build a
hyperloop underneath the
Atlantic seaboard with the
help of his tunneling outfit,
The Boring Company.
Why did he get back in?
The most interesting of
many possible reasons:
Creating a near-vacuum
inside a tube is challeng-
ing and costly in Earth’s
atmosphere, but on Mars
atmosphere is negligible.
The hyperloop could be
the public transit system of
Musk’s Red Planet colony.
In other words, we might
see a working hyperloop
on Mars before the U.S.?
Possible, but unlikely:
SpaceX is currently planning
its first, unmanned mission
to Mars in 2020—probably
a long shot—and that’s also
about when most hyperloop
startups are targeting for
their first operable line.
Hyperloop One’s
DevLoop, in Nevada,
is the most advanced
test track to date.

THE AIR FORCE
INVENTED
NEVER LOSE ANOTHER SCREW
I have a gift for losing small mechanical parts. I’ve
dropped screws so successfully, it’s as if they departed
for another dimension—a place in which exists an in-
finitely large cloud of small metal parts, circling slowly
through eternity. That’s why I now use a magnetic
parts tray for everything short of making a sandwich.
With my Craftsman tray ($10), I hold woodworking
screws, small parts for hand planes, finishing nails,
lamp nipples, bolts, and studs. The tray is a blessing
for appliance repair because it can hold parts in a ver-
tical or upside-down position. —Roy Berendsohn
16 DECEMBER _ 2017
FIVE THINGS When the U.S. Air Force was born out of the
Army Air Corps just after World War II, the
country was experiencing tremendous ad-
vances in science, medicine, and military
technology. In honor of its 70th anniversa-
ry, SECRETARY OF THE AIR FORCE HEATHER WILSON shares
five noteworthy technologies, developed to enable and protect
servicemen and -women, that now improve the lives of civilians.
1.The satellite constellation behind the Global Positioning System,
which the Air Force manages, enables everything from synchro-
nized bank transactions to smartphones.
2.Commercial airliners cruising at 36,000 feet would be inconceivable
without pressurized airplane cabins, which debuted with the XC-35
in 1937 at Wright Field in Ohio.
3.Drones—we call them remotely piloted aircraft—have fundamen-
tally changed warfare, providing “eyes in the sky” over hostile
territory, 24/7. Now they aid civilian efforts in mapping, agricul-
ture, and disaster recovery.
4.Research into advanced composites that made aircraft stronger
and lighter began during World War I at McCook Field in
Ohio. Today materials like carbon-fiber-reinforced polymers and
ceramic composites have found their way into commercial
airliners and earthbound equipment like car chassis, bicycles, and
tennis rackets.
5.The Air Force introduced the first fly-by-wire fighter, the F-16, in
1978. The same technology that gave that jet its unprecedented
maneuverability has improved the reliability, performance, and
safety of commercial airliners and “drive by wire” automobiles.
THE PERFECT GIFT,
IN A TUBE
Christmas trees are ringed by flat
sweater boxes and punctuated
by gift-card-size boxes, making
a wrapped tube stand out like a
spinning UFO in this landscape
of rectangles. And more than an
eye-catching silhouette, the Un-
derground Meats Gift Tube ($75)
is a multi-tube—tubes within a
tube—packed with summer sausage
and salamis. To giftees, it’s a tube
of mystery. Starting knuckles-deep,
they reach into this model of a four-
dimension sausage until they’re
up to their armpit with a spread
of tubed meats complemented by
chutney, pickles (practically tubes),
a wedge of cheese, candied pecans,
and chocolate squares. Wisconsin’s
Underground Meats—slogan: Buy
Curious—buys heritage breed pigs
and cows and does its own butcher-
ing, grinding, curing, and packing
(in tubes).
P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M
 May your holiday wishes come true.

makersmark.com
WE MAKE OUR BOURBON CAREFULLY. PLEASE ENJOY IT THAT WAY.
Maker’s Mark® Bourbon Whisky, 45% Alc./Vol. ©2017 Maker’s Mark Distillery, Inc. Loretto, KY

AFTER A SUMMER of wildfires, hurricanes,
and nuclear threats, it isn’t hard to see the
value in being able to surveil the Earth with
daily—or even more frequent—updates.
But traditional satellites, which cost hun-
dreds of millions of dollars, have orbits
that mean they may not see the same tar-
get for a week or more. So an Earth-imaging
company called Planet, in San Francisco,
is doing something different. In the past
year, it has sent nearly 150 satellites into
space, including a record 88 at once from
India on Valentine’s Day. That should be
unthinkable, but Planet is using CubeSats,
an emerging type of small satellite made
possible by the miniaturization of electron-
ics and sensors, like those in smartphones,
that are creating new possibilities to use
Small spacecraft, shaped by
the forces that shrunk your
cellphone, are changing the
way we observe space and
understand our home.
BY BOBAK FERDOWSI
TINY
SATELLITES
EXPLORE
18
space technology for social and eco-
nomic purposes.
CubeSats are based on a one-unit
(1U) standard cube the size of a grape-
fruit—10 centimeters in all dimensions,
and weighing up to 1.33 kilograms.
(Planet’s Dove satellites are called 3U
CubeSats because they have one longer
side of 30 cm.) They can fly as extra pay-
load on an existing mission, taking up
the space left over on a rocket after, say,
SpaceX’s resupply for the International
Space Station has been loaded up. And
organizations with less funding than
SpaceX can use them: Universities are
able to develop, build, and launch 1U
CubeSats for less than $100,000.
Much li ke sma r t phones have
collectively changed the way we com-
municate and interact, CubeSats have
demonstrated that constellations of
small satellites provide services not
easily achieved with traditional space-
craft. As Mike Safyan, senior director
of launch and ground station networks
at Planet, says, “Once those large net-
works of small sensors are deployed, the
scope of coverage and timeliness of data
collected can be greater than any single,
large satellite mission.” CubeSats are
also relatively disposable, so it’s possi-
ble to learn from flight experience and
Planet’s Dove satellites
are ejected from the ISS’s
spring-loaded CubeSat
deployer, which shoots
satellites into orbit.
quickly make design changes. Planet’s
88-CubeSat flock was its 13th genera-
tion, and allowed it to achieve its goal of
daily imaging of most of Earth. Cube-
Sats also serve as proving grounds for
new technologies: In 2018 the Plane-
tary Society, a nonprofit founded by Carl
Sagan and led by Bill Nye, will launch
the LightSail 2 mission to validate novel
propulsion, using a solar sail to alter a
CubeSat’s orbit. Upcoming NASA Cube-
Sat missions will qualify a variety of
electronics for use in commercial mis-
sions—and deep space.
Soon CubeSats will venture beyond
Earth’s orbit. Lunar Flashlight, launch-
ing in 2019, will circle the moon and peer
into its shadowed craters. Traveling mil-
lions of kilometers alongside NASA’s
InSight mission to Mars in 2018 will be
a pair of experimental CubeSats called
MarCO. They’ll separate from the lander
prior to touchdown to augment the land-
er’s data. Going forward, it’s likely we’ll
see CubeSats fly alongside other inter-
planetary missions, hitching rides to
try inventive new technologies, often on
missions of opportunity. Though small
and modest, in their way CubeSats are
the perfect expression of the ingenuity
and adaptability that drive our ventures
further and further from home.
BOBAK FERDOWSI
is an engineer who
helped land the
Curiosity rover.
Opinions are
his own and not
endorsed by his
employer, NASA’s
Jet Propulsion
Laboratory.
 DO YOU
STEER CLEAR
OF BAD CAR
ADVICE?
Sources: Simmons Research, Multi-Media Engagement Study, Spring 2016; GfK MRI, Spring 2016.

Let’s put the brakes on believing

random reviews and self-proclaimed
car experts. Whether in print, online,
on mobile or video, magazine

MAGAZINE
brands fuel our obsession for
expertly conducted test drives

MEDIA
and authoritative safety news.

With content that’s trusted and an

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out of magazine media.

#BelieveMagMedia | BelieveMagMedia.com
 IN DI A NA POLIS
firefighter has a very
BY FRANCI N E MAROU KIAN
specific responsi-
bility to get the job
As the site of the first railroad union station in the world—where lines con- done, and we use
nect, enabling train transfers within the same building—Indianapolis similar tactics in run-
was the Midwestern migration gateway. By 1860, one in five newcomers ning our operation,
came from a German-speaking region, bringing cultural craftsman- splitting respon-
sibilities based
ship with them, including cabinetmaking and veneer. Over time, regional on our strengths.
THE MAKERS
workers used hardwood from the state’s 22 tree varieties to produce iconic Our build process
B RYAN YO RK
furniture styles including Old Hickory and Amish, as well as the Hoosier is old-school—no
AN D
Cabinet, a kitchen cupboard and work counter popular through the 1940s. J USTI N B E RG CAD, software, or
Today, these makers continue to create furniture the homegrown way. official sketches.
THEIR COMPANY Many projects are
B ROTH E RS frankensteined from
FU RN ITU RE several inspirations.
DESIGN Every wood we use,
from poplar to wal-
Making something out nut, is from trees
of nothing is a gratify- grown and cut in
ing change of pace Indiana. Being able
from our job as profes- to keep our product
sional firefighters, and local from start to
that’s what drew us finish creates the full
to woodworking. On circle that our clients
the fire ground, every appreciate.
THE MAKER
B RIAN PRE SN E LL
HIS COMPANY
I N DY U RBAN olis—you could say because my grand-
HARDWOO D urban milling is an Indy mother never wasted
thing. With the emer- anything—a true
My mission is to keep ald ash borer beetle maker, before that was
damaged city trees infestation we’ve lost a label. When I bond
from becoming mulch an uncontrollable with customers over
by preserving the number of trees in tree loss, I promise
hardwood, which I do this region, but I try to it’s the beginning of a
by on-site milling with envision a second life yard-to-table move-
a Wood-Mizer LT30, for the wood. Maybe ment: Give me your
a portable sawmill it’s my background tree and I’ll bring you
invented in Indianap- in museum work, or back a table.

HE RECOMMENDS THEY RECOMMEND

SEE THIS BUILDING DRINK HERE

EAT THIS
Everything on the brunch menu
at Milktooth. Their bacon is like
a little steak, the lamb burger is
get-out-of-here good.
TOUR THIS
Area makers on First Fridays at
Circle City Industrial Complex, in
the Schwitzer building, a historic
auto plant.
The Scottish Rite Slippery Noodle Inn,
Cathedral. The Indiana’s oldest con-
craftsmanship in the tinually operated bar
architecture and inte- in the same building—
rior woodworking is an “if the walls could
unseen today. talk” kind of place.
Plus, live blues.

20 DECEMBER _ 2017 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M

 THE ULTIMATE
DIY PODCAST
Every other Friday, be entertained and enlightened
by the editors of your favorite magazine.
Hosts Jacqueline Detwiler and
Kevin Dupzyk explore ideas,
products, hacks, tricks, projects, and
techniques that are guaranteed to
make your life easier. (Jacqueline is a
neuroscientist! Kevin is a great guy!)
The Most Useful Podcast Ever is an
entirely original, 25-minute, biweekly
audio program that’s perfect to
listen to while doing yardwork,
driving, washing dishes, running,
jogging, walking . . .

H E RE ’S H OW TO G ET IT:

SUBSCRIBE

Go to the iTunes store Subscribe to Get automatic Enjoy

or popularmechanics. The Most downloads every time
com/podcast Useful Podcast Ever a new episode airs

Learn everything from lawn-care secrets to the best way to hang a TV

to the proper way to sear a steak. Also: On one episode, for reasons we now forget,
Jacqueline and Kevin had an on-air push-up contest. (She won.)
 3

the easier way: Slide

1 4 2
a comb up through
your hair, then run
clippers over the
comb. Move toward
the back of your head
in sections about the
width of a bookmark,
slightly overlapping
FIG. A FIG. B to be sure you’re cut-
ting to the same
length. Working
backward in the mir-
ror was hard, but
after a few tries I fig-
ured it out. If you
keep some length
between the comb
and your scalp, you
can avoid accidental
divots, like the two I
gave myself.
The back of my
head, surprisingly,
was the easiest part.
FIG. C FIG. D I went completely by
feel. Where my hair
SIDES AND felt too long, I placed
B A C K I moistened the comb using my
T O P Martinez sug-
gested a different
method for the top
of my head: With my
thumb and forefin-
ger I twisted locks
of hair into spi-
rals [Fig. D]. Cut at
a slight angle, just
above where you’re
holding your hair.
This gives your cut
texture, rather than
having the uniform
length of Astro Turf.
Halfway through,
I swapped my
$50 scissors for
Martinez’s $600
Japanese-made
shears. They were
so much smoother.
They were also so
sharp that while try-

CUT YOUR
my hair with a spray fingers as my guide, ing to trim the top, I
bottle, then dragged and ran the clippers cut my knuckles and
the corner of the across it [Fig. C]. had to tape them up.
comb from my right Finally, I’d tug down At this point, about a

OWN HAIR
eyebrow to my crown on each ear and cover half hour in, I got the
to create a lengthwise it with my palm while hang of it. I started
part. After clipping using the clippers or enjoying the visible
the hair above the scissors. Since hair before and after, a
part out of the way, creeping over my similar satisfaction
Self-sufficiency, meet vanity. you attack your hair ears is the first point you get from build-
BY ALEX AN DER GEORGE in quadrants [Fig. A]. at which I look scrag- ing something. The
Sides first, then back, gly, I plan to use that taper from the top
I’D TRIED TO cut my own hair a few times then top. For a longer particular technique to the sides will take
before, both to save cash and to learn a useful cut, you use your fin- from now on to buy more practice, but
skill. The results were always bad enough that gers to hold the hair time between profes- the fact that the final
I L LU S T R AT I O N S BY S T E V E S A N F O R D

the barber I would finally visit usually asked, off your head, and sional cuts. result didn’t look
unprompted, “Did you do this yourself?” This time, instead cut anything that post-lobotomy made
of relying on YouTube, I got help from Mike Martinez, a styl- sticks out with scis- me proud.
ist and instructor at Cutler Salon in New York. sors [Fig. B]. I chose

COMB SCISSORS CLIPPERS SPRAY HAIR BAND-

Get rubber, Martinez Philips BOTTLE CLIPS AIDS
not plastic. It suggests an OneBlade The ones
lasts longer ambidex- or Reming- that look
and has less trous model, ton Haircut like a long
pointy, pain- so you can and Beard bird beak.
ful teeth. switch hands. Trimmer.

22 DECEMBER _ 2017 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M

OFFICIAL GOLD COINS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A PH OTOG R APH BY TO D D M CLE LL AN

D I S A S S E M B LY R E P O R T

COFFEEM A K ER
MODEL: TECHNIVORM
MOCCAMASTER KBG
TIME TO NUMBER
741 AO OF PARTS:
DISASSEMBLE:

PRODUCED:
AMERONGEN,
43 MINUTES,
23 SECONDS 137
NETHERLANDS

NOTES: One of the undersung pleasures of our growing

appreciation for formerly quotidian beverages like coffee
and beer is uncovering people who were doing them right
before the rest of us cared. Before anyone had any idea
what a third-wave coffee shop was (first wave = Folgers,
second wave = Starbucks, third wave = hipsters), Gerard-
Clement Smit founded Technivorm and started making
a coffeemaker that got water hot enough and dispersed
it effectively enough to yield quality coffee at home. Five
decades and many imitators later, Smit’s Moccamaster
is still many coffee snobs’ brewer of choice.

THE WATER THE COFFEE THE CARAFE

Coffee begins as water in the res-
ervoir (15). Ideally, it starts as cold
water—not because of thermody-
namics, but because of taste: Hot
water has likely had some downtime
in the tank of a water heater, which
means it’s a little old and a little flat.
When the coffeemaker is turned on,
the water-heating element (11), a
copper coil, begins to heat up. Water
goes down the rubber drain tube
(9) and into the heating element.
When it reaches the boiling point
of 212 degrees Fahrenheit, boiling
action carries it up the glass water-
transfer tube (14). At the same
time, that causes the water level in
the reservoir to fall, and as it falls,
a float (13) falls with it. When the
float reaches the bottom of the res-
ervoir, it deactivates a switch (12),
turning off the heating element.
By the time water reaches the top of
the transfer tube, it has cooled to the
optimal brewing temperature range
of 196 to 205 degrees. It flows into
the nine-hole outlet arm (3), which
aligns with the opening in the brew
basket lid (4) so that water drips into
the coffee grounds waiting in the
brew basket (5). Because it’s boil-
ing action that forces the water into
the outlet arm, the water pulses out
of the holes—it’s not the continuous
stream a pump would create. That
allows the coffee time to “bloom” just
like it does when you order a pour-
over from the barista at your local
coffeehouse. The brew basket’s cone
shape creates a large surface area at
the top for water to infiltrate while
keeping water among the grounds
for longer before it drips out the nar-
row bottom.
Coffee exiting the brew basket lands
in the glass carafe (6) waiting below.
The carafe lid (2) funnels it through
the destratification tube (1), which
ensures that new coffee enters the
carafe at the bottom. Different com-
pounds are extracted from the coffee
grounds after different amounts of
time in water, so the first coffee that
drips out is usually stronger than
the last; the destratification tube
ensures an even mix. The carafe sits
on the hot plate (7), which contains
the hot-plate element (8), a sepa-
rate heating element that holds the
coffee between 175 and 185 degrees.
The temperature is chosen with the
hot-plate hi/lo switch (10). The hot-
ter option is for people who like to put
cold cream in their coffee, and the
cooler option is for brave souls who
take theirs black. —Kevin Dupzyk

24 DECEMBER _ 2017 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M

15 1 2

3
14

4
13

5
12

6
11

7
10

8
9

@PopularMechanics DECEMBER _ 2017 25

 POPULAR MECHANICS’
SENIOR HOME EDITOR
S O LV E S YO U R M O S T
PRESSING PROBLEMS.
B Y R OY B E R E N D S O H N
askroy@popularmechanics.com

@askroypm

Every winter,
snow and
My LED Christmas lights flicker,
ice storms tend
especially the ones outside.
to knock out
What can I do to stop this?
TODD E., MORGANTOWN, WEST VIRGINIA
our power—and
my pellet stove.
Older inexpensive LED Christmas lights flicker. There isn’t
anything I’m aware of that you can do about that, other than
What’s better
replace them. Newer and higher-quality LED lights have a flicker- backup, a battery
free circuitry and rectifier that converts alternating current to direct or a generator?
current. This causes the flicker to shift to a speed that’s too fast to be HENRY B., HAZLETON,
seen. Although they don’t have the warm glow of old-school incandes- PENNSYLVANIA
cents, these new LED lights are nearly unbreakable, use as much as My advice would
90 percent less electricity, and are rated for 50,000 hours of opera- be to use both. The
tion. They even come in the retro candle shape. auger, convection fan, and
exhaust blower on your
stove all require power.
Fortunately, their power
We get Mystery noises can be a violent downdraft got caught draw is not so great that
maddeningly difficult to between the backyard fence, they can’t be run on a
strong track down. They’re almost as the rear wall of the house, and a properly engineered bat-
winter winds bad in a house as they are in bunch of stuff that I had stored tery backup. Notice I said
a car. Begin on the side of the outside that wasn’t in its usual
that produce house that the wind strikes. location. Check if you’ve created
properly engineered. Don’t
cobble this together your-
a mysterious Look at the sliding doors (if a wind pocket. self. Plug your stove into a
thumping noise there are any) and objects Finally, repeat the procedure product such as the Sure-
stored outside that might rock on the downwind side of the fire Stove Sentry (about
I can’t track against the house such as a gas house. The suction produced $480), and the moment the
down. Every- grill, loose siding or aluminum on this side can be quite pow- power goes out, the Sentry
trim, a light fixture, an old alumi- erful. If nothing obvious turns
thing seems num awning, or a loose shutter. up, you’ll need to hire a roofer
switches over to a 12-volt
marine battery that can
secure. I’m Also consider that what you’re to look for a loose vent cap on last up to 8 hours. A bat-
stumped. hearing may not be something the roof or a piece of flashing tery bank can provide as
loose but a corner that catches that’s moving and transmitting much as 24 hours of opera-
ED C., MANITOWOC,
the wind. I had a basement the noise down through a rafter tion. Both should buy you
WISCONSIN
window blow in recently when and into the attic. plenty of time to get the
generator up and running.
When it comes to that
generator, have an elec-
trician install a proper
transfer switch that con-
nects the generator to the
circuit on which the pellet
stove is operating. What-
ever you do, don’t use a
I L LU S T R AT I O N BY J E F F LO W RY

down-and-dirty double-
ended power cord from
the generator plugged into
an electrical outlet by the
pellet stove, for example.
Known as backfeeding, this
can electrocute somebody
or cause an electrical fire.
Burning down your house
is always an inefficient way
to stay warm.

26 DECEMBER _ 2017
 STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP,
MANAGEMENT, AND CIRCULATION

1. Publication Title: Popular Mechanics

2. Publication Number: 0530-3900
3. Filing Date: October 1, 2017
4. Issue Frequency: Monthly; except combined Dec/Jan and
Jul/Aug Diamond Hone® Knife Sharpener Model 15XV
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Business Office of Publisher: 300 West 57th Street, New
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Editor, and Managing Editor: Publisher: Cameron Connors, “Highly Recommended”
300 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019; Editor: Ryan “Purrs with perfection”
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Managing Editor: Helene Rubinstein, 300 West 57th Street,
by Cook’s Illustrated
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of Hearst Communications, Inc. are: Hearst Holdings, Inc.:
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13. Publication Title: Popular Mechanics
14. Issue Date for Circulation Data Below: September 2017
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3. Paid Distribution Outside the Mails Including Sales • Incredibly sharp Trizor XV® edge
Through Dealers and Carriers, Street Vendors, • Easily convert 20° edges into high performance
Counter Sales, and Other Paid Distribution Outside
USPS: 31,976 Trizor XV 15° edge
4. Paid Distribution by Other Classes of Mail Through • Sharpens straight and serrated edges, Asian and traditional
the USPS: N/A
c. Total Paid Distribution: 816,358 Euro/American style knives
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 T HE
PRESENTATION

The DIY Gift for

I use Klean Kanteen
canisters, which
are as much a part
of the gift as the

People Who Eat

sauces. They’re
durable and ver-
satile, with a nice
clean appearance,
and their BPA-free
THREE TASTY SAUCES, THREE REUSABLE CANISTERS. DONE. stainless-steel con-
struction means no
odor or food stain
R E C I P E S B Y R AY M O N D C H E N , chef and owner, The Inn at West View Farm, Dorset, Vermont is left behind. I label
with blue painter’s
tape. We buy rolls
You could get a lot of holiday shopping done using the gift guide that starts on page 36. For everyone else in contractor packs,
on your list, make this: a trio of easy condiments packed with flavor, developed for Popular Mechanics by and the tape peels
off, with no gummy
Raymond Chen, a star chef in Vermont by way of New York. (Eat and stay at his inn whenever you’re any- residue. —R.C.
where close.) The recipes below make enough to give a set of three to four of your friends and/or loved ones.

Sriracha Vermont Spicy Peanut Gochujang

Maple Mustard Sauce Barbecue Sauce
We developed this recipe to Classic Chinese dish with I love the depth of fla-
use with a kimchi pulled- cold noodles or chicken vor and unique texture of
pork egg roll as a riff on salad, and the richness of gochujang. It makes for a
Chinese takeout egg rolls the sauce is a great comple- resilient barbecue sauce
with spicy mustard. In the ment to otherwise ho-hum that stands up to stronger
kitchen, we smear buns meat dishes. flavors that can result from
with the mustard and make grilling or smoking.
sandwiches with any left- MAKE S 4 ¼ TO 4 ½ CU PS
□ 1 ½ cups creamy peanut MAKE S 4 ¼ CU PS
over pulled pork.
butter □ 1 ¼ cup gochujang (hot-
□ 1 cup unseasoned rice pepper paste available
MAKE S 3 ½ CU PS
vinegar at southeast-Asian
□ 2 cups Dijon mustard
□ ½ cup light brown sugar markets or at yummy-
□ ½ cup sriracha
□ ¾ cup soy sauce bazaar.com)
□ ¼ cup toasted sesame
(We use Pearl River □ ½ cup plus 2 Tbsp
oil
Bridge—light, thinner ketchup
□ ¾ cup Vermont maple
and slightly sweeter. □ 1 ½ cups light brown
syrup
Not to be confused sugar
□ 1 tsp fresh minced
with low-sodium.) □ ½ cup soy sauce
ginger
□ ¼ to ½ cup water, □ ¼ cup plus 1 Tbsp
□ 1 tsp salt
depending on desired unseasoned rice-wine
consistency vinegar
□ 2 Tbsp toasted sesame □ ¼ cup plus 1 Tbsp
HOD
MET AC H oil toasted sesame oil
R E □ 2 Tbsp chili garlic sauce
FO IP E s □ 1 Tbsp minced garlic
R E C edient □ 1 Tbsp minced ginger
i ngr owl.
is k i n b l
Wh ther unt i
toge gerate .
i y
Refr deliver

ed Pu ll ed Pork
ha ni cs Sm ok
Popu la r Mec
ond Chen
Recipe by Raym k
se ground blac
1 cu p ko sh er salt, 1 cup coar rlic.
ga
•Rub: Combine cup granulated
paprika, and ¼ to about ¼ inch
T HE CARD pepper, ½ cup tt , ab ou t 8 lb, fat trimmed
les s po rk bu
•1 bone
Attach an index card oke in a smoker
depth tops. the rub. 2. Sm
with your loving To/
ra lly co ve r the butt with ho ur s. (Recommende
d:
From; on the back, 1. Libe
5 degrees for 3 
½
t oven to
co al gr ill at 22 .) 3. Pr eh ea
handwrite this recipe, or char apple wood
le, hickory, and a roasting pan
a blend of map
which works beauti-
p bu tt in foil and place in
t shreds
225 degrees. 4.
fully with all three W ra
oven until mea
sauces.
w ith 2 cu ps water. Finish in fin al co ok ing time as
along
t an ot he r 2  ½ hours. Adjust
easily, abou one hour.
low to rest for
necessary. 5. Al
28 DECEMBER _ 2017 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M
 FOR COMBUSTION-ENGINE VEHICLES, OLD AND NEW.

C A N YO U F I X IT YO U R S E LF ?
SYMPTOM

The interior Your garage White High-pitched Wheel squeak The steer- The battery
has smells like exhaust squeal from that goes away ing wheel is you just
developed maple syrup. smoke. under the when you vibrating. replaced is
a rattle. hood. brake. dead. Again.

A pothole or There’s a leak Coolant is The serpen- The wear bars One of your A bad charging
LIKELY CAUSE

general wear somewhere in entering the tine belt, which on your worn- wheels is out system means
has shaken your coolant combustion drives every out brake pads of balance. The it’s time for a
parts loose. system. chambers. important are making question is why. new alternator.
engine part, is themselves
slipping. heard.

Yes. Remove Maybe. See No. This is Yes. You can Yes. New brake Maybe. If it’s Maybe.
the culprit if it’s coming caused by a put a new belt pads are an easy winter, you Beware busted
panel and from a place blown head on yourself, fix, but you’ll might have knuckles and
apply Dyna- you can fix gasket, which usually by need a few snow or ice the effort
CAN YOU FIX IT?

mat adhesive yourself (i.e., a is as bad as loosening one tools. Most cru- inside a wheel, required for
sound-dead- nice, accessible engine prob- component, cial: jack stands. which is easy safe disposal.
ening material. hose). Other- lems get. Call either a ten- Don’t trust your to knock out. This is a cheap
It’ll add mass, wise, as long AAA. And sioner or the roadside jack to If a weight fell (and faster) fix
changing as the leak isn’t possibly start alternator. support the car off a rim, go to for a mechanic.
the resonant too ferocious, shopping for a when it’s up for a tire shop and
frequency, stop- drive to the new car. longer than a get the wheel
ping the rattle. mechanic. tire change. rebalanced.

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30 DECEMBER _ 2017 Abridged. P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M

 A G U I D E TO
I D I OT LI G H T S
CARE
CAR
HS
MYT

BLOW OUT
THE CARBON
Hypothesis: Redlining your engine
CHECK ENGINE COOLING SYSTEM TRACTION occasionally helps eject carbon buildup.
Ever been in a cab Does your car have a CONTROL Fact: The idea is based on an engine
with a permanently lit temperature gauge? If this light is flashing design that hasn’t been used in a cen-
check-engine light? It Consult that to find intermittently, you’re tury. After explaining this, Thomas
still ran, right? Indeed, out just how hot is overcoming the Douglas from the Guild of Automotive
the check-engine hot—a little bit too available traction Restorers says to just let your car get
light isn’t typically hot, you can still and you might want up to operating temperature (usually
going to indicate an drive it to wherever to back off the between 195 and 220 degrees Fahr-
ailment that’ll strand you need to go. gas. Conversely, enheit, which you can hit after just a
you. However, it But if the needle’s sometimes you want few minutes of driving) before turning
might pertain to a pegged to the letter wheelspin (like if it off. Otherwise, soot that never gets
bad signal from an H (or if you just you’re stuck in snow burned off can build up.
oxygen sensor or don’t know), shut or sand, or entering
some component it down. If you’re the burnout box
of the emissions desperate to get to at your local drag DO A COOLANT FLUSH
system. That means where you’re going, strip). In that case, Hypothesis: You’re changing your
you will fail your next turn your heater on manually disable the oil . . . may as well change your coolant,
inspection. Visit a full blast. You might system and bring on too. Just because.
garage, or check the be sweaty, but that’s the squiggles. Fact: “If your car’s less than ten years
code yourself with an a little less heat in old, it was probably filled from the fac-
OBD scan tool. the cooling system. tory with coolant that’s formulated to
last 100,000 miles,” says Colin Dilley,
vice president of technology for
Prestone. That said, coolant is impor-
tant, because if your car starts running
hot, then the oil has lower viscosity
and doesn’t lubricate the engine as
well. So a creeping engine tempera-
ture gauge is your signal to get a flush.

USE THE TOUCHLESS

CAR WASH
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If this light goes on, PRESSURE Get thee to a safe washes won’t hurt your exterior.
pull over immedi- Pay attention. Most spot to call roadside Fact: Never mind the unsupervised
ately and shut off tire-pressure- assistance because self-serve bubble brush that might’ve
your engine. You monitoring time is running just been used to clean mud off of
don’t want to mess systems aren’t out. If it’s lit before Grave Digger. Even the fancy auto-
around with this actually measuring you start your car, matic washes have their problems. “A
one. Oil starvation pressure—they’re find some jumper lot of car washes use recycled water,”
foretells imminent measuring speed cables. Your voltage says Stephen Mosca, owner of South
engine seizure, at each tire. So if has probably dipped County Hand Car Wash in Rhode
which is disastrous one doesn’t match too low to crank Island. “Sometimes their towns require
at speed. Get a the other three, the starter. it, and they have filters. The problem is
tow truck. the light comes on. salt: Once there’s salt in the water, you
Solution: Add air and can’t filter it out. So you could be wash-
look for nails. ing your car in salt water.”

@PopularMechanics DECEMBER _ 2017 31

 GI FT GU I DE
1 2

This year we’ve partnered with Huckberry,

an online retailer we love, to find the best
technical gear and clothing for anyone on
your list. To buy any of the gifts you see here,
go to huckberry.com/popmech.

Gifts for the

6
SEL F-SU FFICIEN T M A N
1. Taylor Stitch 4. XTRATUF deck 7. Navy SEAL
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A 20-liter pack with The wool keeps you
to the Navy SEAL
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Foundation.
inner compartments. keeps you protected.
8. Huckberry x
3. Goal Zero recharge- 6. LifeStraw, $25 Lum-Tec GMT
able lantern, $80 Weighs only 2 ounces watch, $498
Charge it up with the and filters more than Durable, easy to read
sun or the hand crank. 250 gallons of water. in any weather, and
You can also use it to limited to only 50.
top off your phone
battery.

36 DECEMBER _ 2017 H U C K B E R R Y. C O M / P O P M E C H
 9. Arcade Guide
belt, $30
Holds up your pants.
Looks good. Washable.
10. Compact EDC
kit, $60
Cut, measure, and
clip, all with your
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11. Leatherman
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A knife and a bottle-
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3
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@PopularMechanics DECEMBER _ 2017 37

 GI F T
GU I DE
2017
Huckberry’s catalog is almost as much a great magazine as it
is a place to buy clothes. It has a special feature called The
Rundown in which they ask notable people to share their
stories—and the stories behind some of their favorite gear.
This year, Huckberry was kind enough to consider me notable. Ryan D’Agostino
Here are a few of my answers, along with some more great gifts. Editor in Chief

Most Surreal Moment as Editor
in Chief
I met Tim Cook at the Oscars. Popular
Mechanics had sponsored the Scien-
tific and Technical Oscars, so I was
fortunate enough to attend the main
event, too. Anyway, he told me he loves
Popular Mechanics. Then Lady Gaga
walked by.
Gift I’m Giving
The MMX Vancouver Marshmallow
Crossbow will be going to a few very
lucky people on my list. It shoots marsh-
mallows up to 60 feet. And not those
little tiny marshmallows. The big camp-
fire ones. I don’t know why anyone
wouldn’t want one of these.
Holiday Travel Tip
Old paperbacks. I’m not good at read-
ing books electronically, so I carry
pocket-size editions of classic books—
stuff I should have read by this point
in my life. They actually fit in your
pocket, so they’re easy to pull out on
the train or plane or (in my earlier
days) bus station, and you don’t use up
your battery.
Project on My Bucket List
We have a little cabin (you might call it a
shed) that I want to turn into a painting
studio for my wife, who’s an art thera-
pist and a gifted painter. Solar panels,
woodstove, a little deck out front so she
can work outside.
Favorite Holiday Tradition
I make this hors d’oeuvre called
rumaki. I think it’s from the ’50s. You
wrap a piece of bacon around a water
chestnut and a piece of chicken liver
that’s been marinated in soy sauce and
ginger and some other stuff, and broil
it until the bacon is just crispy. It’s the
greatest party food of all time. But you
can’t tell people what’s in it. They just
have to eat it.
Gift I Want
The Raden A22 Carry-On suitcase looks
like a fine piece of luggage and I’ve been
eyeing one. I do a lot of quick business
trips and I never check a bag. I think I
could fit everything I need in there.

Shop
these gifts
and more at
H U C K B E R RY. C O M /
PO P M E C H

Marshmallow
Crossbow
$79

38 DECEMBER _ 2017 H U C K B E R R Y. C O M / P O P M E C H
 Best Part of My Job
Learning from people who have mas-
tered a skill, who have lived interesting
lives, and who have things to say.

Favorite Huckberry Purchase

Easy: The Flint and Tinder 10-Year
Hoodie. I didn’t know cotton could be
that soft. You just don’t want to take it
off. I would say I wear it more days than
not in any given year. On the other days,
my wife wears it.

Raden A22
Carry-On
$295

I’m Most Productive When . . .

The sun is shining, I’m out in the barn,
my sons are within earshot, and the
shop radio is playing the kind of clas-
sic rock that you can only listen to while Flint and Tinder
10-Year Hoodie
puttering around the yard. Journey,
$98
Badfinger, Joe Walsh. Heart. Old Van
Halen. You know the station.

Book That Changed My Behavior

One Man’s Meat, the collection of E.B.
White’s essays about Maine farm life
in Harper’s Magazine. It made me bet-
ter at my job because it taught me that
every sentence can, and should, be
perfect.

Splurge Booze Purchase

I love Jefferson’s Ocean. Jefferson’s
is a great bourbon producer in Ken-
tucky, and they age these barrels at sea.
It’s smooth and has a deep, rich flavor,
which they attribute to the movement
of the ship and the salt air. Who knows?
It’s fantastic.

Craziest Project Submission I’ve Seen

at Popular Mechanics
One of our editors is currently trying to
build a trebuchet, using an authentic
all-wood design from the Middle Ages.
I think he might do it. If he does, we’ll
publish it.

Album I’m Listening To

America, Location 12, by Dispatch. Full
disclosure: I was their first manager, 20
years ago. They’ve come a long way since
then, and on this new one, every song is
a story you want to hear again.

@PopularMechanics DECEMBER _ 2017 39

 LIFE
AT THE

MALL
40
DECEMBER 2017

Malls were the great social and economic

experiment of the second half of the
twentieth century. Their death has been
greatly exaggerated, but they’re not what
they once were. We went to find out
what’s going on in there.
BY TOM CH IARELL A

O U T S I D E T H E M A L L , three boys sat on the

sidewalk in front of P.F. Chang’s, in the
shadow of a giant horse statue, looking at
YOU ARE their phones. One of them had his feet up on
HERE
his skateboard like it was an ottoman. Nearby,
a telephone contractor held a clipboard up,
blocking the sun, scanning the roofline. A woman drinking a
Cool Lime Refresher from a massive plastic Starbucks cup stood
in a slender blade of shade created by an eight-foot-high sundial,
also looking at her phone. Two parking valets wore identical sun-
glasses. They stared at the horizon. From the mall doors, two
women, fingers dangling Lord & Taylor bags, emerged into the
sunlight, looking like an artist’s rendering of the verb to shop.
I asked the boys what they were doing at the mall. “We’re
allowed to be here,” one of them said, glancing up at me as if
arguing with the sky. The other two did not give me a sniff. “His
mom is picking us up,” the first one said. He wore a T-shirt that
read TEE SHIRT in iron-on letters. “We’re allowed to sit here if
we’re just getting picked up, right?” I told him I didn’t know. He
muttered at me. All three of them did. The woman by the sun-
dial sipped her drink and smiled. “Don’t look at me,” she said.
“I just work here.”
The sundial told me it was right about noon. I went in to the
mall.
Why? Why does anyone go to the mall these days? It’s a valid

P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M
 Peter van Agtmael photographed the MyZeil mall, Frankfurt, Germany,
in 2013. See more in “Malls of the World,” starting on the next page.

question. Have they not outlived their

use? I went to see what life is left in them.
People opine about malls being dead.
Maybe they are. But here’s this one, still
at 93 percent occupancy and employing
thirty-eight hundred people. Nine mil-
lion visitors a year. So, technically alive.
Anyway I hadn’t been in a while, and I
wondered what goes on in there. I won-
dered if they had changed.
The mall in question is Eastview Mall,
in Victor, New York, a suburb of Roches-
ter, my hometown. It’s big, as these things
go (1.6 million square feet), and old, in
depreciation terms—forty-six years
since its making (and it’s been expanded
several times). It’s populated with the
usual suspects of retail life: Macy’s,
Sears, JCPenney, Victoria’s Secret, L.L.
Bean, Abercrombie & Fitch, Lids, Aero-
postale, Banana Republic, the Apple
Store, Forever 21, The Walking Com-
pany, Nail Studio, Nail Studio 2. It has
a large detached theater complex and a
food court that’s jaunty when it’s full and
semi-tragic when devoid of customers.
Banners of new food offerings—garlic
knots, lobster mac n’ cheese—hang like
wanted posters in Carson City. There’s
a carousel, improbably manned by a liv-
ing ticket taker, doling tickets to ride for
one dollar. And there are restaurants
of unusual size: Chang’s, Champps,
Biaggi’s, Bonefish Grill.
So, not the mall. Not the best mall.
Not the first. Or the biggest. Just a mall.

GREW UP in a mall.
I’ve a lways li ked

I
saying that, because
for me it is more than
an expression of my
aimless youth. Many
people—generations,
really—might lay claim to growing up in,
even to gaining selfhood under, the in-
different lighting of an American mall.
That’s fair. What I should really say is: I
grew up with a mall.
My father built a mall. He worked
on its design, supervised its construc-
tion, and then stayed on to manage it for
forty years. Midtown Plaza, America’s
first enclosed urban mall, right there in
downtown Rochester, designed by Vic-
tor Gruen, the man some have since
nicknamed the Mall Maker. Gruen, an
Austrian transplant, fathered dozens

@PopularMechanics DECEMBER _ 2017 41

 MALLS OF
THE WORLD
For as long as
there have been
malls, there
have been great
photographers
chronicling Santa Monica Place, Santa Monica, California, 2004.
life inside. Photograph by Eli Reed.
of American malls in the 1950s and ’60s. They were expan-
sive—he loaded their interiors with art and ornament. Clocks,
fountains, gardens. He incorporated music in their creation,
and included mahogany and redwood in the construction
of interior walls. He cared. He fronted the stores inside his
malls with window displays he’d perfected while designing
storefronts in Depression-era Europe. These were his prov-
ing ground. His windows, my dad once told me, made people
want to buy.
Gruen’s exterior designs were unremarkable, workmanlike,
even ugly. For Victor Gruen the work of malls went on inside
them. In his design, malls were a piece of the puzzle that con-
stitutes human community. In his hands, malls were meant to
double as gathering spots, meeting points, celebration
locations, performance spaces, even demonstration
areas. He believed the social function of malls might
one day surpass their economic importance.
My dad worked five and a half days a week for four
decades in Midtown Plaza, a salient acolyte of Gruen,
with whom he worked only a few years. He wanted
that place tied into the lives of everyone in the city. We
stayed loyal to that city. He and my mother refused to
drift to the suburbs because of that link. My broth-
ers and I thought of ourselves as city kids. We sneered
at the very idea of ranch houses and cul-de-sacs. We
spent our weekends in Midtown, worked our holidays
in Midtown, watched jazz shows in the Midtown Tower
restaurant, concerts on the floor of the mall, bought our
clothes only in Midtown’s anchor department stores—
McCurdy’s and Forman’s, avoiding the third local department
store in town, Sibley’s, which sat across Main Street from Mid-
town. Sibley’s. Bah.
My brothers and I painted the cement pillars in Midtown’s
garage, changed fluorescent bulbs in its utility tunnels, car-
ried buckets of hot pitch like hod carriers across the roof of
Midtown. At night, my family talked about the stores, the ten-
ants, the trends in retail, and later the slow decay of the ailing
city around the mall. In 2002, the property was sold to a Cali-
fornia developer who bilked my dad out of a year’s pay and let
the whole enterprise go to seed. In 2007, the year my oldest
son graduated high school, Midtown’s closing was announced.
42 DECEMBER _ 2017
Mall of the Emirates, Dubai, United Arab
Emirates, 2006. Photograph by A. Abbas.
A year later, my father died. I was fifty the year they tore the
mall, his mall, down.
TARTING AT DAWN, I came to Eastview every day
S
for four days, all day. If you’ve seen the sunrise at
a suburban mall, then you know there is nothing
to it. There is no middle ground, no gentle intro-
duction of daylight at a mall. The sun barely rises,
and the switch of the day is suddenly flicked. Bam.
Get inside. And buy.
The employees arrive in small bursts, aprons thrown over
their shoulders, lugging boxes, smoking one final grit, enter-
ing through unmarked doors, a key in a scratchy cylinder or a
code tapped out on a keypad. Entering the mall,
accompanied by no one at all, they look a little
grim. Defeated. Except the Apple Store staff, who
in every age and gender identification look like
happy, hungover sophomores galumphing off to
MALL FACTS their favorite studio art class.
2007 was Sitting in the mall parking lot in the early
the first year morning, you can expect some scrutiny. Espe-
since the
cially at 6:22 a.m. When you get cruised by
1950s that
not one new security, show them your coffee; everybody
mall was built understands a raised Styrofoam cup in the quis-
in the U.S. ling light of morning. I have coffee! That gesture
speaks. I’m like everyone else, it says. I’m just
waiting to get into the mall.
H EN YOU P U L L open the glass doors of a mall,
W
they draw a suck of air from the interior. It always
smells of perfume or shoes. Mall air.
Eastview might not be your mall, but it may
as well be. There are 170 retail spaces, and those
thirty-eight hundred people are employed there
in one way or another. It has 1.4 million feet of leasable interior
space, which classifies it as a super-regional mall. The East-
view components—the enclosed common space, the shared
walkways, benches, fountains, terrazzo, the storefronts, the
food court—are surely similar to, if not the same as, your mall.
If you haven’t been to a mall in twenty years, many things
haven’t changed all that much. Curly fries. Big pretzels. You
P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M
Park Place Mall, Tucson, ION Orchard, Singapore, 2014.
Arizona, 2011. Photograph Photograph by Ian Berry.
by Susan Meiselas.
still get offered samples of teriyaki chicken. Still not bad. At
Eastview, there’s still a Spencer’s Gifts, been there since the
opening in 1971. In the walkways, young people hold clip-
boards, looking to sign you up. For something. Anything. They
offer gift cards, discounts. Key chains. You still nav-
igate a mall by looking up to see which department
store is ahead of you. At the end of one walkway
or another, on the apron of any of the department
stores in question, you still run into local fashion
shows, radio broadcasts, fundraisers for the local
travel teams. sales were up 4.5%
Other parts have changed fundamentally. Cell-
phones drive entire businesses. Candles, too. And
tea. Tea is big at the mall. There’s the valet parking.
But the biggest change? The mall is not crowded.
Eastview has its quirks. The walkways are uni-
formly roofed with glass, providing a weirdly
straight-down sunlit illumination. You can always
see the sky. A little bit of it anyway. In 2013 man-
agement installed a fireplace, laid in area rugs, set
up a giant hearth outside Von Maur. And throughout the mall,
amongst the smartphone-accessory kiosks and the jewelry-
repair places, homey stations are set up like small sitting
rooms—leather chairs, table lamps, comfy couches. This is
the American mall inviting you to treat it like a place to stay,
not just to shop. To dwell there.
People come to read in the cozy chairs. Families sit to argue.
Old men in golf shirts doze off. On that first morning, I found
three women doing sudoku. A club, they said, that met there
on Fridays and Saturdays. Natalie started it, they said. She
wasn’t there today. Gallstones. They urged me to sit. Nice chair.
Apparently, a lot of people in the area get gallstones. They feel
there is ample evidence of that, and begin ticking off the gall-
stone victims they know. Even I knew one of them, the mother
of a woman I knew in college. “See?” one of them marveled. “A
mall is a small world.”
Sales reps hold impromptu meetings in the chairs, which
amplifies the sense that commerce is alive and well in Vic-
tor, New York. “This way we don’t have to meet in a bar, where
someone always orders carbs, or drink wine,” a mattress
wholesaler told me. Later, in the chairs, I eavesdropped on the
@PopularMechanics
Mall of America, Bloomington,
Minnesota, 2003. Photograph
by Martin Parr.
performance review of a barista, an older guy. “You are mostly
upbeat,” he was told. “And upbeat is good, right? Really good.
Essential. But it’s too clear to the customers that frozen drinks
aren’t your strength. Are they? I think you show that in your
face. Use that upbeat energy when you use the
blender. Use your face to smile.” The old barista
agreed to try. His supervisor was pleased. “And
don’t lean against the counter, okay?”
MALL FACTS The principle of most malls was once to keep
Overall U.S. retail people moving and looking, to expose them archi-
tecturally to constant opportunities to buy. This
from the previous is not the case anymore. Not at Eastview, anyway.
year in April 2017. The urgency of movement is missing. The rea-
More than 90% of soning now seems to be: If people sit, they won’t
purchases are
leave. I saw more than eighty people sitting on
still made in
physical stores. the couches by themselves, mostly checking their
phones. At least two of these admitted to me they
were ordering from Amazon after having priced
an item in the mall. A woman named Anne, from
nearby Canandaigua, talked to me about shopping
online from the mall, after pricing at the mall. She had to, her
husband had COPD, a heart ailment. She retires in twenty-
three weeks. Even small savings meant a lot to her. “Money is
money,” she said.
“It is what it is,” her friend echoed. She would not give me
her name, but she lived in Ogden. Not that nearby.
“What does that mean?” Anne said.
The second woman stammered. “It’s like what you said.
Money matters. It’s not a crime. It’s not illegal to shop online
here, is it?”
“I’m not even using the Wi-Fi,” Anne said, a little
desperately.
Ask a stranger about the mall when at the mall, there is an
inevitable discomfort regarding the purpose of the place and its
rules. Is it a public space, or not? Who decides the rules? Who
enforces them? What is shopping anymore, when you can buy
what you want anywhere you are? Like the boys with the skate-
board, she assumed I was some sort of mall cop. I reassured her.
“I know that I’m supposed to buy things here,” Anne said.
“I’ve been coming in here since I was a kid. It’s a mall. I know
that’s what they want. Buying.”
DECEMBER _ 2017 43
 West End City Center, Budapest, Hungary, 2002.
Photograph by Stuart Franklin.
“It is what it is,” the other woman said.
Anne pinched an eye at her. “I hate that expression, Barb.”
Then she looked at me. “Oh, don’t use her name, right? She
doesn’t want you to use her name.”
“I’m just saying there’s more to the world than the mall,”
Barb said. “You can’t ignore the rest of the world when you’re
at the mall. It doesn’t just disappear because you’re in here. So
it’s fair to check prices online.” Anne agreed with that much.
“What are you going to call me?” Barb said, as I stood to
leave the comfy chairs.
What would you like? I asked.
“How about Barbara?” Anne said.
Barb sniffed and nodded. “Okay,” she said. “But just plain
Barb, I think.”
HERE ARE PEOPLE who only walk the mall.
They arrive early, wait in pairs for the doors
T to open. Some of them begin walking before
the doors open, back and forth
in front of the doors like sentries.
They dress for it in their way. They
are not particularly old, or out of
shape. But they are uniformly quiet. They wear
shoes that don’t cluck against the floor tiles, don’t
echo or drag. They roll their feet, heel-toe, heel-toe.
Their earbuds stay tucked in their earports. They
wear patches of neon, or Buffalo Bills T-shirts.
Track suits, shorts, leggings, T-shirts from upstate
wineries, from ancient community fundraisers.
But the truth is, the world dresses like mall walk-
ers now, not the other way around. So it is difficult
to tell who’s who.
Why walk the mall? I ask. Why not walk in a
park? Or along the Erie Canal? Uniformly, the walkers cite
the weather in Rochester, splendid in the summer, punishing
in fall, winter, and spring. Others are pragmatic. “No dogs, no
dog poop.” Anxious. “The mall is protected,” the leader of one
small walking group tells me. “There are cameras and secu-
rity.” Or existential. “Everything about it is familiar. There’s
nothing to look at after awhile, so I move faster.” Or compet-
itive. “Walkers actually come from other malls to walk here.
They just walk fast because we do.” Every walker I talked to
4444 DECEMBER _ 2017
The Galleria, Houston, Texas, 2016.
Photograph by Jérôme Sessini.
admitted they don’t shop when they walk. Several said they
actually worked hard not to.
And Victor Gruen wept.
“In a lot of ways, the walkers are the best regulars, mostly
because they show up. But they aren’t shoppers,” says a woman
behind the fragrance counter at Macy’s. Do people really shop
anymore? In the old-fashioned way, of letting your eyes fall on
what you might want? “People shop with a purpose now,” she
says. “It’s not so much shopping as entertainment.” She has
worked at Eastview for twenty-two years. Her station is just
inside the entrance. As we talk she takes a long look at the thinly
peopled visual line to another anchor store in the distance, Sears.
“I used to think the days I could see through to the Sears sign
were really slow. Now the crowds are so thin that I’m surprised
when I don’t see it,” she says. She puts the blame on online
shopping. “The UPS guy told me he’ll drop nine packages off
at a house in the morning, and by afternoon he’s getting called
back to return eight of them. That’s how people are shopping
now. It’s not social, it doesn’t involve interaction
with people,” she says.
Walta Leake, a nineteen-year-old sales asso-
ciate at the Sprint store, is standing outside the
MALL FACTS store in his khakis, looking for some interaction.
30% of He wants to sell me a new cellphone plan. He just
Americans over needs five minutes to do it. He’s a part-time stu-
18 have worked dent, a mall enthusiast. “When I was a kid, I found
at a shopping all my new stuff at the mall,” he says. He raps his
center at
finger against the air in front of him three times.
some point
in their lives. “It was new, new, new.” It’s hard to imagine that
in the few years since Leake was a kid things could
have changed that much. “Oh yeah. Very, very
different,” he says. “The kids do come to the mall
now, but they move around. You’ll find them near
clothes. Just looking. They may not be buying here, but they are
here, you know? But they keep this place alive.”
At the cellphone repair place, the owner, Manpreet Singh,
thirty-one, says, “This business is online, but that does not work
well for what I do here. Here I have to convince people. I’m not
selling a brand. I make two to three thousand transactions a
month. That’s all. That’s all me, standing here, explaining,
taking phones apart, defining what damage can and cannot be
undone. I have to be here. Someone [continued on page 100]
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 This 750-horse-
power V-8 sells for
$29,000 and will
drop into any car
that can handle
the power.

BRING
BACK
THE
MUSCLE
BACK IN 1990, a Corvette cost $31,979 and the ZR-1 option added another
$27,016. What that bought you, mostly, was the most fearsome engine ever
bolted into an American car. Instead of the pushrod, two-valve heads used
in the standard Corvette engine (and every other Corvette engine before
and since), the ZR-1 had a 5.7-liter V-8 with quad overhead cams and four
WHY CHEVY NEEDS THIS valves per cylinder. This allowed it to rev high and breathe deeply, spinning
P H OTO G R A P H BY R I C K Y R H O D E S

NATURALLY ASPIRATED,
WISCONSIN-BUILT V-8.
BY E Z R A DY E R
out 375 horsepower back when a Ferrari 348 TS made only 300. A friend
who was reviewing cars at the time managed to wreck a ZR-1 so violently
that the car broke in half. “When the GM people showed up,” he said, “they
only cared about the half with the engine.”
That engine, dubbed LT5, wasn’t built by GM. It was built by Mercury
Marine. And when the ZR-1 went out of production in 1995, Mercury went
back to making boat engines and GM went back to using pushrods. Ah, but
what if? What if GM kept developing the LT5, eschewing the current Cor-
vette Z06’s supercharger for high-revving, naturally aspirated power? Well,

46 DECEMBER _ 2017 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M

3 Things We Like 1. A smooth power climb, to prevent spinning the tires when exiting a corner.
About Naturally 2. No lag, because there’s no external device delivering boost.
Aspirated Engines 3. Better sound. No supercharger howling at the intake, no turbo muffling the exhaust.

we have an answer. It’s called the Mercury Racing to upshift but the SB4 is just getting started on a
SB4 7.0, and you can buy it for $29,000. manic surge toward its 8,000-rpm redline. You’ve A camshaft is a
The key design element is the heads: four-cam, got to will yourself to hang in there for the last cylinder with little
32-valve, just like the original ZR-1. By combin- couple thousand rpm, as your ears tell you to shift protrusions that,
as the cam rotates,
ing airflow with big-bore displacement, the SB4 but your eyes on the tach tell you you’re not there press on levers that
achieves impressive numbers: 750 horsepower yet. I’ve never driven an original Corvette ZR-1, open valves to let air
at 7,500 rpm. That’s 100 more but I’d imagine it’s more like in or out of the com-
horsepower than the current this, frenetic and linear, than bustion chamber. In
Z06, without a supercharger. the current Z06’s sledgeham- a pushrod engine, a
With the SB4’s four-valve-per- mer delivery of supercharged single cam pushes
rods to activate the
cylinder heads, the engine torque. This is the alternate
flows a lot of air and thus can be
It’s not belching reality where GM and Mercury
valves—hence, you
know, pushrods.
tailored for a sort of split per- flames or Marine kept collaborating on
sonality—livable at idle and still spin-dizzy V-8s that dare you
explosive at high rpm.
threatening to keep the throttle down.
To find out just how explosive, to stall or Alas,theydidn’t,andproba-
I strapped into Mercury Rac- bly won’t. Chevrolet’s ZR-1, for
displaying the
ing’s test mule, a ratty Ultima all its greatness, cost twice as
GTR, on a runway at Fond du Lac sort of untoward much as a regular Corvette—
airport in Wisconsin, down the the new Z06 is $24,000 on top
behavior you
road from Mercury’s headquar- of the $55,450 for a stock Cor-
ters. Mercury chose the Ultima, might expect vette.Andwithfewexceptions,
a midengine kit car from Eng- to accompany allthemodernbig-horsepower
land, as a testbed because it’s engines are going to forced
lightweight and uses a steel tube 750 horsepower. induction, turbos and super- PUSHRODS
frame designed to accommo- chargers that make more vs.
date engines making as much power with smaller, compar- OVERHEAD
as 2,000 horsepower. atively fuel-efficient engines. CAMS
The SB4 fires up with a lumpy idle, the staccato These days, natural aspiration is an indulgence, and
lope of a race engine awaiting its orders. But it’s not the SB4 represents a chance to experience it in its
belching flames or threatening to stall or displaying highest form—American flavor, bolted into what-
the sort of untoward behavior you might expect to ever hot rod or track car you care to put it in. A new
accompany 750 horsepower. Indeed, the 2017 460- Corvette would be appropriate, but I’d like to drop
hp Corvette Grand Sport that I drove the same day an SB4 in a 1969 Chevy C10 short-bed. Or better
sounded more ragged at idle. yet, an old Donzi 22. I don’t know if it’s occurred to
The engine’s specialness, though, is evident Mercury, but one of these could make for a pretty
in motion. At 6,000 rpm, the Corvette is ready fast boat.

I test-drove the engine

in an Ultima GTR, a
In overhead-cam
midengine, rear- engines, the cams
wheel-drive British are above the
kit car. cylinders, often act-
ing directly on the
valves. This setup
makes it much
P H OTO G R A P H BY R I C K Y R H O D E S

easier to have more

than two valves
per cylinder, which
means more air-
flow and thus more
power and tuning
flexibility.

48 DECEMBER _ 2017 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M

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 Base price:
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Zero-to-60:
W I T H E Z R A DY E R 5.4 seconds
Named for: Stelvio
Pass, the highest
mountain road in
Italy. It’s 13 miles of
driving nirvana.

I want Alfa Romeo to suc-

ceed in the U.S., because

2018 Alfa a successful Alfa Romeo means

that every now and then I’ll be
Romeo Stelvio delighted by the sight of a mid-
How Italy does engine 4C ripping past. That’s
only going to happen if lots of
the crossover. people buy Stelvios. Fortunately,
I think lots of people are going to
buy Stelvios.
The price is definitely right. The Stelvio starts in the low $40,000
range with a standard 280-hp turbocharged four-cylinder that sends
power through an eight-speed transmission and rear-biased all-wheel
drive. There’s a fat, square-bottomed steering wheel and aluminum pad-
dle shifters mounted on the steering column, a setup more than a little
reminiscent of Ferrari’s. If you need further confirmation of the Stel-
vio’s intentions, it has a lightweight carbon-fiber driveshaft to help the
engine feel even more responsive.
Now, to give a $40,000 car a carbon driveshaft, you have to pinch money
somewhere else, and that somewhere is probably the interior. Which isn’t
bad, but the materials are a little plain compared to the inside of an Audi
Q5 or a Benz GLC. If that bothers you, the Ti Lusso package dresses things
up with leather and wood finery for $2,500—very reasonable in the world Only problem with Stelvio Pass: It’s no secret. Go at
of European option packages. If Alfa can stay off the reliability naughty dawn on a weekday to get the hairpins to yourself.
lists, the Stelvio looks like bargain Italian fun.

VOLKSWAGEN VOLVO V90 CROSS MAZDA3

FIVE-WORD TIGUAN COUNTRY Get the
REVIEWS A tall Golf. Remember boxy hatchback,
That’s good. wagons? Us neither. and manual.

50 DECEMBER _ 2017 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M


2018
Chevrolet
Traverse
Three-row, nine-
speed, useful.
The Chevy Traverse is
a triumph of rational­
ity. Compared to its SUV
sibling, the Tahoe, the
eight­passenger Traverse
is roomier inside, 1,000
pounds lighter, gets bet­
ter gas mileage, and is less
expensive. It’s probably a
little bit quicker, too—we
clocked a front­wheel­drive
Traverse’s zero­to­60 run
at 7.0 seconds, but it feels
even stronger than that,
thanks to the nine­speed
transmission’s tight lower
gear ratios. The Tahoe’s
main advantage: It can tow
up to 8,600 pounds versus
the Traverse’s 5,000. So if
you have a boat that weighs
5,001 pounds, I guess you
need a Tahoe.
Of course, car buying
isn’t a strictly rational exer­
cise or we’d all be driving
@PopularMechanics
four­cylinder Camrys. But
the Traverse–Tahoe dichot­
omy is a stark lesson in the
advantages of crossovers
versus body­on­frame
SUVs. The new Traverse
drives like a big sedan,
because that’s essentially
what it is. And while its for­
mer identical twin, the GMC
Acadia, shrunk in its rede­
sign, the Traverse got even
bigger. Yet on a long drive,
I saw fuel economy creep
over 29 mpg. The Chevy’s
305­hp V­6, kin to the
Camaro engine, can really
stretch a gallon when you’re
loafing in ninth gear. Again:
so pragmatic.
But if you’re worried
that a Traverse would
starve your id, remember
that there’s an even more
sensible solution to your
eight­passenger needs. And
you haven’t fully committed
to family­hauling logic until
you’ve got sliding doors.
Base price: $30,875
Luxury options:
Adaptive cruise control,
8-inch infotainment
display, automatic
emergency braking,
automatic high beams.
2018 Mini Cooper
Countryman S All4
The only manual-transmission
luxury-compact tall wagon.
Base price: $27,450
Available as:
Plug-in hybrid with
12 miles of all-
electric range.
The Countryman has
the odd distinction of
being the biggest Mini ever.
But that’s not like being
the tastiest rice cake or
most optimistic Cleveland
Browns fan. This is actually
a spacious car, with a wheel­
base that’s slightly longer
than a Honda CR­V’s. You
can put your friends in the
THE BIGGEST TACHOMETER
The LED ring around the
Countryman’s dash display
can serve as a tachometer,
sweeping from white to red
as revs rise. At about nine
inches across, it makes the
tach in a Ferrari look tiny.
DECEMBER _ 2017
backseat and when you get
where you’re going, they’ll
still be your friends.
Weighing more than
3,600 pounds, the All4 is
a husky lad. Thus, even in
Cooper S form—turbo­
charged 2.0­liter, 189
horsepower—it lacks the
feisty exuberance of a two­
door Cooper S hardtop.
But you can get it with a
six­speed manual transmis­
sion, and that alone marks
the Countryman as a more
engaging drive than you’ll
typically find in the crop of
small crossovers. And as an
offshoot of BMW, Minis are
quite nice inside. The Coun­
tryman feels like a luxury
item, from the grain of the
leather to the decisive snick
of the dashboard toggle
switches. A panoramic glass
roof is standard. Optional
is the “picnic cushion,” a
pad that folds out over the
bumper for tailgating. I have
the vague feeling that I’d be
embarrassed to use that,
but it fits with the Mini’s
cheeky personality. After all,
this is a vehicle that offers
hood stripes. It dares to
have a point of view. More
cars should be like that.
51
KNOB CREEK® KENTUCKY STRAIGHT BOURBON WHISKEY, 50% ALC./VOL. ©2017 KNOB CREEK DISTILLERY, CLERMONT, KY.
 THE

L O S T

MOUNTAIN
NO LINES, NO TRAFFIC,
NO DISTRACTIONS FROM THE POWDER.

Photographs by
M AT T K I E D A I S C H

@PopularMechanics DECEMBER _ 2017 53


T he sunrise drive up U.S. 50 to Mon-
arch Mountain is a gray haze of flying
snow, paced for us by a blaze-orange
snowplow. It’s a slow chug up toward
the Continental Divide, but we’ve come
for one of the last pure ski areas—no
spas or luxury hotels, no snowmaking
or lift lines. A former Works Progress
Administration project, Monarch’s
chairlifts are mostly two-seaters, and
the lodge’s biggest concession to com-
fort is the two bars running Colorado
taps. The mountain’s goal, instead of
growth, is making its cotton-stuffing
soft powder accessible to those pas-
sionate enough to reach its quiet notch
in south central Colorado.
Anyone wearing Monarch’s reason-
ably priced ($89) lift ticket can hike
into the 130-acre Mirkwood back-
country, but we’ve come for a snowcat
tour. Riding in the back of the alpine
hybrid of a tank and a church bus, ski-
patroller-turned-snowcat-director
54 DECEMBER _ 2017 FOR A SHOPPABLE LIST OF ALL THE STUFF OUR SUBJECTS ARE WEARING, SEE PAGE 58.
Aaron Peyrouse will lead us through
an additional 1,000 acres of untouched
bowls, glades, and chutes.
After a safety briefing where we
receive beacons and avalanche airbags,
we take a lift to Monarch’s north-
ern peak (elevation 11,680 feet) and
join our snowcat. The driver, Corrie
Steinau, is going into her ninth season
of tours and unfazed by the impossible
visibility as snow continues to fall and
more powder whips over the ridgeline.
“It’s like driving in a ping-pong ball,”
she says, explaining that her only guide
is the bamboo poles she’s stuck every
few yards on either side of her trails.
“They’re my best friends out here.”
Peyrouse starts us on an open bowl
where each of our group of ten enjoys
fresh tracks. It’s as steep as skiing gets
before you’d call it a cliff—Monarch
has those too—and carving through
the dry, thigh-deep powder is an alter-
nating rhythm of weightless floating
Snowcat driver
Corrie Steinau
builds her own
roads to navigate
Monarch Mountain’s
backcountry.
Previous page:
Snowcat director
Aaron Peyrouse skis
the Hydrant run off
Waterdog Ridge.
and fleeting control accompanied by a
giddy rush of endorphins.
Soon we kick out of our skis, clam-
ber into the back of the snowcat,
and let Steinau ferry us to the top of
another untouched trail. Riding with
us, Peyrouse explains it’s the quality of
snow and uncommonly steep terrain
that drew him to Monarch.
We skim half-buried trees, burst
through drifts, and slowly work our
legs into a Gore-Tex-wrapped pudding.
By midafternoon we’ve put in six hours
of skiing that (in our minds) would
make great GoPro highlights, and
retreat to the Sidewinder Saloon.
Over a beer, Peyrouse shares the
other reasons he hasn’t looked back
since moving from Denver in 2008. “It’s
a small-town vibe where everybody still
looks out for everybody,” he says. After
a long sip he adds, “You don’t get here by
accident, this is a place people seek out.”
—Matt Allyn
Jeremy Valett
(left) leads the
snowcat shop.
His team repairs
cracked and
broken metal
tracks and
maintains the
drivetrains.
 “The cliff
zone is our most
extreme terrain. Every
run includes mandatory
air time, as much as a
60-foot drop. Standing
at the top, you can’t
see anything below,
you go in blind.”
—Aaron Peyrouse

DECEMBER _ 2017
5 4

5 5
PA G E
PA G E

Fjällräven Fjällräven TREW Women’s RAEN Arlo TREW Cosmic

Women’s Keb Women’s Keb Wander Jacket Sunglasses $170 Jacket $379
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$175 Reinforced $400 Three- weather shell lenses minimalist shell
shoulders for a layer, waterproof
backpack protection

RAEN Kettner Copper Kettle Mountain Khakis Hanwag Grunten Hanwag Alaska
Sunglasses Bavarian Helles Original Mountain Boots $370 GTX Boots $370
$185 Dress up any $10 Refreshing, yet Pants $85 Triple-stitched Leather lining and Gore-Tex lining and
après interesting organic cotton Vibram sole memory insole

THE VISUAL
Filson Alaskan
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REGISTER Helly Hansen
Ridge Shell Jacket
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Wind-resistant flannel in the backcountry
5 6
PA G E

Helly Hansen Fjällräven Helags TREW TREWth Bib Duckworth Pow- Pret Cynic X
Elevate Shell Pants Cap $35 Waxed $399 Ready for der Hoody $140 Helmet $140
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dry in deep powder water and wind stinks brain-injury risk

Zeal Slate Goggles BCA Float 42 Pack Hestra Fall Line Grass Sticks Fjällräven Bergtagen
$120 Huge vents, $750 Patrol-size Gloves $150 Soft Original Custom Trousers $350 Tough,
all-mountain pack with avalanche cowhide with foam Ski Poles $99 pliable, and water
versatility airbag insulation Bamboo shafts and resistant
cork grips

58 DECEMBER _ 2017 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M

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 P

DECEMBER 2017

WHAT I’M INTO

The Switch
By DANNY
BROWN
Rapper
THE Nintendo Switch $300
When you
GROWN- Attribute some of the Switch’s travel so much,
appeal to its namesake trick— hotel rooms
UP you can carry it around and start to feel like
play anywhere, or detach the jail cells. I used
GAME controllers and play it on a to have to lug
big TV. That flexibility makes around two lap-
BOY it appealing to frequent fly- tops to game. It
ers. Among those spotted was a headache.
with Switches: musicians Ben Folds and Ariana Now, I just hook
Grande, wrestler John Cena, and rapper Danny the Switch up
Brown (see right). For us, it comes down to the to the hotel TV
familiar names in the game library, which, thank- and play Street
fully, developers didn’t carelessly exploit. The Fighter like I did
latest Zelda, Mario Kart, and Sonic are all fantas- back in sixth
tic experiences that just happen to have nostalgia grade. It makes
appeal. It all combines into a device so fun that me feel a little
it could push anyone claiming to have outgrown bit at home. And
video games to reverse his or her stance. on the plane, I

WENT
play 12-minute
quarters on NBA
2K, so that’s a
48-minute game.
Three games,
and I’m in L.A.
 The Future Will
Be Hand-Drawn
The newest thing in gaming is actually really old.
If you haven’t played Cuphead yet,
here’s what will happen the first time
you do: While battling a malevolent
potato the size of a minivan, you will
become so distracted by the extraordi-
nary detail of the watercolor pastoralia
behind it—the subtle rotation of a tire
swing in the wind, the word Acme sten-
ciled on a bag of fertilizer—that your
avatar, a personified latte mug with a
ridiculous barbershop-striped straw
sticking out of it, will get hit in the face
by one of the realistically textured dirt
balls the potato spews continuously,
and the words YOU DIED! will flash
across the screen like a title card in a
Charlie Chaplin film.
This will happen to you because it
happens to Chris Charla, director of
Microsoft’s Independent Developer
program, all the time, and he’s been
playing Cuphead for years. “Even now,
I’ll find myself so entranced by some
beautiful animation that all of a sud-
den the ‘Oops, you died’ screen will pop
up,” he says.
Cuphead is so distractingly
beautiful because it is the first video
game to employ the same cel anima-
tion techniques that studios from
the 1930s used to make those trippy,
strangely macabre cartoons in which
devils and cats and mice caper to
great jazz tracks. Canadian brothers
Chad and Jared Moldenhauer drew
every frame of the game by hand,
62 DECEMBER _ 2017
painting the backgrounds in water-
color and then arranging everything
into a fever dream of gameplay over
the course of four years. The result
is a ludicrous romp through carnival
rides and old tattoos that—among
the hyperrealistic first-person
shooter games that are the normal
output of the gaming industry these
days—feels a bit like Jack White re-
issuing classic blues tunes on vinyl.
So how did they do it? When
you play a game like Cuphead, the
computer refreshes successive
images of “sprites” (characters)
over a background (which is also
refreshing) to create the illusion
of motion. The sprites also refresh
in response to commands from
the controller. “As you hit, say, the
right direction on the keypad,
the computer knows, okay, every
tenth of a second, change the
background frame and also
erase the main character and redraw
him three pixels to the right,” says
Charla. The Moldenhauers had to
create movement sequences for
every character, then draw frame
after frame of the characters making
every motion. “On average it might
take 15 minutes to draw a frame,
and then that frame has to be inked,
and that takes five or six minutes,”
says Chad. “I think there are close to
60,000 total frames.”
P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M
 That’s 60,000 drawings of
Cuphead jumping, crouching, and
running. Of an hourglass dancing
and a war-hardened pig with an eye
patch talking and a mermaid with a
dead octopus for hair squeezing beta
fish out of . . . a giant sea bass? Of an
angry cupcake mansion spewing
airborne waffles and rolling pep-
permints and jellybean soldiers, and
then, crawling zombie-like toward
Cuphead on candy pink hands.
Honestly, if you saw all the Molden-
hauers’ Cuphead drawings tacked
up in a friend’s kitchen, you might
offer said friend the number of a
psychological professional. “There’s
a reason no one has attempted this
before: It’s nuts,” says Jarred Goro,
director of North American licens-
ing for King Features, the company
that owns classic cartoons includ-
ing Betty Boop and Popeye. King
found Cuphead so exciting that it
partnered with the brothers to cre-
ate merchandise. (King Features is
owned by Hearst, which also owns
Popular Mechanics.)
“If we’d known it was this much
work, I think it would have scared
us away,” says Chad. But it didn’t,
@PopularMechanics
and teaser videos of the animation
the brothers posted online in 2013
generated so much excitement that
a scout from Microsoft’s develop-
ers program, the one run by Charla,
contacted them to offer help with the
programming that would turn Cup-
head into a game playable on Xbox
and Windows 10.
The game has been in the news
almost constantly ever since—
beginning with “When will they
finally release it?” speculation and
eventually moving on, when gaming
journalists kept failing disastrously
at Cuphead demonstrations, to a nou-
veau gamergate about whether video-
game journalists are good enough
at playing to do their jobs. Oh yeah,
that’s one other thing you should
know about Cuphead: It’s hard. When
Kate Upton and Conan O’Brien took
an advance shot at it in July, O’Brien
died almost immediately. “Every-
one who’s played the game has the
response we wanted: It’s the kind of
game you want to keep playing over
and over and over. Even if you lose,”
says Chad. Which is good, because
that’s what’s going to happen. The
first time. —Jacqueline Detwiler
SHORTCUTS
FOR GAMEMAKERS
“In the olden days, like 15 years ago,
if you wanted to make a game,
you needed to have a pretty deep
technical background,” says Chris
Charla, director of Microsoft’s I.D.
at Xbox program. “But in the last ten
years, there’s been more and more
middleware—third-party tools and
technology that enable creators to
make video games.” Here are three you
can use to create your dream game.
GAMEMAKER A drag-and-drop,
learn-to-code-as-you-go-style
creative engine, this will help you
create 2D games like Cuphead.
UNITY This 2D/3D engine, based
primarily in C# or JavaScript, comes
with tons of tutorials, as well as a
particle system for making flames,
clouds, and sparks.
UNREAL ENGINE This C++-based
2D/3D program is centered around
forums and has a visual scripting
option for code-free planning.
DECEMBER _ 2017 63
Your New Desktop
Typing on a keyboard and using a mouse to drag files into folders A
goes back to the mid-’80s. In the decades since, plenty of tech com-
panies have attempted more efficient methods of human–computer
interaction. But this year was an affirmation of either the brilliance or
stubbornness of WIMP (windows, icons, menus, pointer). We’d complain
about the lack of progress if these things weren’t so pleasant to use.

WHAT I’M INTO

Samsung DeX $150
Smartphones are more pow-
erful than most of us need
them to be and, this year
especially, can cost more than
a laptop. So it makes sense
that Samsung would create
this dock that turns a Sam-
sung S8 or Note8, keyboard,
mouse, and TV or monitor
into a full-fledged computer
in which apps like Outlook,
Google Docs, and YouTube fill
the screen. Video editors and
other power users need not
apply, but even for them, the
DeX points to a near future
when we can use our overkill
phones beyond the confines
of taps and swipes.
Logitech Craft
wireless keyboard $200
Twist that knob on the upper
left to go between Chrome
browser tabs, push it down
to play/pause Spotify—
whatever you want it to do
within the range of compat-
ible apps. Or, do like we do
and just use it to turn down
your music when a coworker
or significant other needs
your ears. Besides having the
most satisfying keys this side
of a mechanical keyboard,
the Craft will make you
remember why the volume
knob always beats a touch-
screen slider.
LG Gram
($998 and up)
By LINUS
Volta V $1,999 and up
SEBASTIAN
The prettiest all-in-one com- The internet’s resident
puter since the original iMac, tech explainer and the
the Volta is specced out with name behind Linus
Tech Tips
liquid cooling and processor
and graphics cards options I love the new iPad
specifically meant for hard- Pro, but all I use
core PC gamers. Meaning, it for is watching
this walnut and bamboo box videos. If I’m doing
will handle any task you throw something seri-
at it. The design pairs well ous, it’s the laptop,
with the newest Call of Duty my LG Gram. When
game, WWII. I’m traveling, it
weighs so little that
it makes no differ-
ence if I have it in my
bag. And maybe this
is a PC guy’s way
of thinking, but it’s
C better than a tablet
in every possible
way. It’s faster, the
screen is bigger, it’s
got a keyboard, and
the battery is not
far off. That thing
will do nine to 12
hours. As someone
who’s not a brand
loyalist, who looks
at every product
individually, I only
care about what it’s
like to use. That’s
why I use the LG.

64 DECEMBER _ 2017 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M

 D

Master & Dynamic

MA770 speaker $1,800

To answer your first ques-

tion: 35 pounds. Second:
E No, the concrete body isn’t
just a novelty. The material
dampens like wood, and the
resulting sound is of the qual-
ity you’d expect for this price.
It streams via Bluetooth or
Wi-Fi, but also has auxiliary
and optical outlets for record
players and theater systems.

Beats Studio3 $350

Looks like what Dr. Dre would’ve

worn while producing Straight
Outta Compton (the 1988
record, not the movie), except
with Bluetooth and noise can-
cellation that adapts as you go
from the coffee shop to the
sidewalk. We’ve dismissed
previous Beats products as
marketing compensating for a
bad sound-quality-per-dollar
ratio. The Studio3s changed
our minds. The only gripe: If the
battery’s dead, the wired con-
nection doesn’t work at all.

Mighty music player

This year, Apple stopped mak-

$86

Antique
(Looking)
ing the iPod Shuffle and Nano.
For those who miss using
a dedicated music device,

there’s the Mighty, which holds
more than 1,000 songs from
Spotify. Good news for jog-
gers, because these big phones
are annoying to carry in an
armband.
Sound
Audio is one of the few places where technology hasn’t
outsmarted basic ergonomics or the laws of physics. Yes,
Bluetooth earbuds are convenient. But for serious listen- F
ing, tiny pieces of plastic can’t replace audio hardware
with real buttons and enough size to produce big sound.

WHAT I’M INTO

ME-Geithain speakers A normal high-end speaker system will have a low driver power-
ing all the low sub—kick drum, bass guitar. The mid driver is for the
(Price upon request,
starting around $2,000)
vocal-type stuff, and the tweeter gets the high hats, sibilance, all
By WAYNE SERMON
that. Geithain took another approach: It took all three drivers and lit-
Lead guitar, Imagine Dragons erally stacked them on top of each other. Somehow, the waves don’t
cancel each other out. I don’t know how they did the math on that,
but the result is incredible. It’s such a focused and concentric sound. And the bass is cardioid, mean-
ing, it’s being pushed right to you, so you’re not getting all these unwanted frequencies that are being
combed and masked. For musicians, for people who have to do this kind of stuff for a living, it’s pretty
exciting. And these guys, Geithain, are the only ones I know of that do it.

@PopularMechanics DECEMBER _ 2017 65

High-Tech
Pencils
Got an unreasonable romantic attachment to pen on
paper? If so, 2017 was a good year. Because until now,
everyone who’s tried to marry the simplicity and immedi-
acy of handwriting with the organization of Cloud storage
didn’t make anything good enough to replace either a notes
app or paper. These three products finally got it right.
Samsung Galaxy
Note8 $929
Only when you use the
pen tucked into the bot-
tom right of the Note8
do you realize how
clunky and imprecise
your fingers are. Use
it for precision photo
edits, or send animated
drawings instead of
texts—they will still show
up as GIFs if the recipi-
ent is on an iPhone. The
most useful: Pop out the
stylus and the phone will
automatically open to a
note-taking app.
reMarkable tablet
$599 with stylus
In theory, it’s a simple
combination of two
existing technologies.
Take the E Ink display
you’d find on an Amazon
Kindle, and add a stylus.
Boom. Futuristic note
taking you can read in
sunlight. But getting
E Ink to respond quickly
enough to follow a pen
is difficult. If you’ve ever
turned a page on a Kin-
dle, you see the screen
flash as it rearranges
the little black and white
capsules into new text.
Any latency would make
writing feel unnatural.
But reMarkable figured
it out and they won’t
tell us how—at least not
until the patents are
finalized. However they
did it, the reMarkable
is the closest gadget to
digital paper yet.
66 DECEMBER _ 2017
iPad Pro
10.5 inch $649
We, too, chortled at the
$100 Apple Pencil when
it came out two years
ago. But then the Notes
app and others like
GoodNotes got better.
Now, you can handwrite
your ideas, then, when
you want to search for a
specific word, the iPad
will find it among your
scribbles. And that’s
just one of the ways
that Apple has usefully
regressed the iPad with
new software. Two oth-
ers: the mid-2000s-style
A app dock, and the ability
to drag and drop files
between apps. Finally, a
tablet that you can actu-
ally use like a laptop.
B always work on
C movies.
P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M
WHAT I’M INTO
Plex
($5 a month)
By GARY
DELL’ABATE
Executive producer,
The Howard
Stern Show
I have tons and
tons of movies I’ve
ripped from DVDs
that I keep on my
Drobo, a big exter-
nal hard drive. The
Plex app finds those
files, and then I can
watch all my mov-
ies on my iPad Pro.
It’s like a personal
Netflix. The videos
whatever device I
use, and I can even
download them
for when I’m on
the plane. It means
that when I travel, I
have a much, much
bigger selection of
movies than if I just
sat down and pulled
them off the hard
drive before I left.
Because, listen, if
I asked what you
want to eat the day
after tomorrow,
you’d get there and
say, “Ehhh . . . that’s
not exactly what I
want.” It’s the same
thing when you pick
The
Popular
Mechanics
Smartphone
Guide, 2017
Edition
We asked Marques Brownlee, YouTube’s big-
gest tech enthusiast, to help us sort through
everything that came out this year.

Nokia 3310 Essential Phone Red OnePlus 5

This one’s for
anyone who just
wants the real
essentials—phone
calls, texts, and a battery
that lasts forever. It uses
such old technology that it
was a challenge to get an
old-style SIM card that
would work with it. When
we finally turned it on, it
only did five or six things.
But the fact that it all works
perfectly is pretty cool. ($90)
Someone who buys
this has to want to
try something
different. It’s
designed by the person who
created the original Android
operating system, and it’s
got some weird quirks—no
bezels, it’s made of ceramic,
and it has these add-ons like
a 360 camera that is actually
really fun. As long as you
don’t mind the price, it’s
solid. ($699)
Hydrogen One
It’s hard to say
right now because
it’s still not out,
but from what I’ve seen
demonstrated, this is a
device for a cinematogra-
pher. It’s for someone who
already has a daily phone
and wants another device
with imaging capability.
For sure, this phone is
concentrated on the
camera. ($1,195)
I used this for a
long time
off-camera
because it was
one of my favorite phones
of the year. Just a great,
fast, do-it-all performer. If
you’re okay with the big
front bezels and a front
fingerprint sensor—which
you actually still have on
phones like the iPhone 8—
you’re getting a really
good deal. ($479)

HTC U11 Samsung S8 Google Pixel 2 LG V30

All the stuff you
expect from a
flagship phone, like
a nice display, build
quality, and this good-look-
ing reflective back. But the
squeeze thing—where you
press the sides to turn on
Google Assistant or the
camera or whatever—that’s
also for a person willing to
try something new. ($650)
This is the
complete
enthusiast’s
phone, the one I
recommend to people
looking to buy an Android
phone right now. The only
complaint is that you need a
special app to remap the
side button that opens the
Samsung voice assistant,
Bixby. ($700 and up)
This doesn’t solve
the old Pixel’s
outdated design,
but it has great
features. There’s a squeeze
control like the HTC, an
OLED display, and one of
the best cameras out there.
So along with Google Lens
augmented reality, you’ll get
really good photos.
($649 and up)
Excellent display,
great camera,
wireless charging,
waterproof, and a
fingerprint reader where it’s
actually reachable. It also
has a special audio
converter behind the
headphone jack, making it
one of the only phones still
catering to audio enthusi-
asts. ($810)

iPhone X WHAT I’M INTO

The most beauti-
ful iPhone ever.
It looks like you Apple Watch Series 3
would need big By JOHNATHAN WENDEL
hands to use it, but it’s really Retired professional gamer better known as Fatal1ty
only a 5.8-inch screen, simi- Being able to take phone calls and texts right from your wrist—
lar to the smaller iPhones. that’s the future. And with Apple Pay, you don’t have to carry
Either way, if you’re an around a wallet in your back pocket and sit awkwardly all day. I’m
Apple enthusiast, this is the so tired of carrying around things, especially with how big phones
way to go. Expect that Apple are lately. When I want to go out to socialize, to have an easy state
will be pushing accessories of mind, I don’t want to worry about losing my phone. I want to walk
and making sure things work out with just my watch.
well on it. ($999)

@PopularMechanics DECMEBER _ 2017 67

 FICTIO N

WH E R E WI LL YO U G O WH E N

E V E RY TH I N G FALL S TO PI ECE S?

By SMITH HENDERSON

PAG E 69
 TH I S STO RY I S
CO NTI N U E D FRO M PAG E 3
ABOUT THE
AUTHOR
Born and raised in
Montana, Smith
Henderson currently
lives and writes in
Los Angeles. His
short fiction was
awarded the PEN
Emerging Writers
Award in 2011, and
his debut novel
Fourth of July Creek
was a 2014 New
York Times Notable
Book.
70 DECEMBER _ 2017
T H E J A N I TO R O P E N S an empty room
off the gymnasium where I will tell the
kids. A little room where the teachers
make paper. Bottles of dye glow in the
sunshine by the window.
Jay is just happy to see me, but Ruby’s
eye is sharp. Sometimes she looks at
me like Rhea does—did—and I feel her
searching my heart. My thirteen-year-
old daughter knows there’s more to all of
this. Secrets.
“What is it?” she asks. “Jay get down
from him.”
“Don’t tell your brother what to do.
Both of you sit.”
“Where’s Mom?”
“Sit please.”
“Where’s Mom?”
“Ruby, she’s gone.”
I can’t even see Jay—Ruby’s stare
stings, I’m not going to hold myself
together—but I know Jay is motionless,
inert. Like this might pass over us if we
remain still.
“Gone where,” she demands.
“She died, Roob.”
The words fall out like that, just like
she fell. Like that.
TH E ENTIRE VILLAGE turns out to
dirge. They place Rhea on a bier and
send her down the river to slip out to sea.
Ruby stands in the water, her fists at her
side. Jay wails.
When we get home, our bed is deco-
rated in flowers. As is the tradition.
I N T H E S C H E M E O F T H I N G S —and
I am someone who thinks only of the
scheme of things—Ruby and Jay have it
awfully good. When their mother was a
baby, you expected to live only as long as
the biosphere, all dreams were pegged
to the ecocide. The entire biota was a
husk. All the megafauna...gone. All the
amphibians. All the flying, swimming,
and creeping things reduced, more
clever. Tiny silver dace in the streams.
Little black ravens. Everything dimin-
ished or extinct, save the roaches, flies,
and rats.
Rhea spent a childhood huddled like
the rest of humanity on the Arctic shore,
watching for rockets screaming over the
water. Until every gov-corp was punched
out and soldiers sat on their haunches in
the sand, palms up like tired apes.
Methane poured from the holes in
the soil, pilgrims dead where they fell.
Forest fires under black thunderheads
that paid out no rain. The middle lati-
tudes were quaking hells. Hurricanes
the size of continents. Humanity’s
menopause, the Climacteric.
But we’d thrown up the Transoms.
The Transoms saved us.
R U B Y W O N ’T E AT, won’t do her
chores. We have pinto beans, raspber-
ries, potatoes, and lentils, and she loves
all those things but she won’t eat.
“I need you to eat.”
“I’m too sad to eat.”
She is direct, in command of her feel-
ings. I would tell her there were times
when all her mother had to eat was
beetlemeal, times she ate nits. But of
course I can’t.
“I need you to eat. A father is nour-
ished by the sight of his child eating. It
heals me.”
She rolls her eyes and leaves the table.
P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M

“Smell that?” I ask Jay.
There are apple blossoms on the
breeze, a storm maybe too.
“It’s gonna rain,” he says.
“I have to get back soon.” I surprise
myself blurting it out. But I can’t stand
to tell the both of them at once.
He won’t look at me directly. When he
was little, he’d just cry as I was leaving
and follow me out the front door hug-
ging my leg. But now he’s eleven and his
hair is cut short and there is a small man
in him.
“I hate this,” he says, setting his dish
in the sink and joining his sister in their
bedroom.
“Pack your stuff,” I call out.
S H E K N E W W H O I W A S when we mar-
ried. That I would be gone so much was
the quaint least of it. I never hid any-
thing from her. But the truth is, toward
the end, we’d grown raw from our wor-
ries, our fights. Moments stand out.
And what if something happens to me
Marc? What then?
Nothing’s gonna happen.
You won’t be here for them.
Nothing will happen.
This isn’t even real to you.
You know that’s not true. This is
everything to me.
She used to call me angel. But as time
went on, she’d look across the table at me
like I was some kind of monster.
W E S TO P O U T S I D E the Irvings’ front
gate. Down the horizon we can make out
three Transoms, their miles-wide bases
winnowing up to thin spires that dis-
appear into the aurora borealis. When
the shrouds were deployed and refract-
@PopularMechanics
ing exactly 65.9878 percent of the sun’s
energy into space, it cost us the North-
ern Lights. But now Grandma Anna sips
tea and Grandpa Lee something stron-
ger on the front porch under undulating
waves of color and shape.
I make Ruby wait. I have to say some
things. She drops two heavy canvas
bags. She insisted on taking her moth-
er’s things.
“I don’t want to live here.”
“Jay. You two can’t live alone. I’ll be
back, but I have to go now.”
“The Transoms,” Ruby mutters.
“They’re important,” I say.
“Tell us why.”
“Really?”
“Tell us.”
“Fine. A long time ago, this part of
the world was entirely covered in ice.
And the ice was bright and shined the
sun’s light and heat back into space. And
it kept the world just right for us and all
the animals.”
“Tell the real—”
“Let me finish. When the ice melted,
the whole planet heated up. It got too hot
to live anywhere but up here at the top.
So we built the Transoms, to send some
of the sunshine back.”
Ruby points at the sky.
“But they’re not doing anything!”
She’s right. They haven’t been
deployed for decades now.
“I maintain them.”
“Maybe some other guy could do
that.”
“Obviously someone could do that,
Jay!”
“Ruby! Look, it’s...you don’t know
everything.”
“Because you won’t tell us every-
thing,” she says, hefting her mother’s
things and heading to the house.
FICTIO N
W H E R E D O YO U B E G I N ?Do you tell
her that when you bend back your wrist,
four tendons rise thick as cello strings,
and if you play a bit, you engage the Exit
Protocol and disappear from Olympia?
Is that where you start?
Do you tell them that Rhea would
watch you leave this way? Until she
stopped. Do you say the music didn’t quit
for hours? That it just rained in her ears
as she fixed dinner? That she hummed
along with it as she put everyone to
bed? That when she laid herself down it
crawled into her head again and wormed
around and she did not sleep?
I CO M E TO I N B E D. My real bed. In
the real world.
I have an officer’s bunk in the Hive.
Outfitted with a nodal interface, a pri-
vate bath. I’m on the top floor, not far
from the officers’ mess, but mostly I
use my hot plate. Which explains why it
smells like neetles in red sauce in here.
Our diet consists of neetles and the like,
because bugs and fungus grow best
underground. I have a window, eleva-
tion one meter. The view is lacking. Most
days a gray churn of some thousand-
mile front of grit. On clear days, I have
the privilege of the blasted rock surface,
the hiss of wind. Sometimes there’s a
lavender glow of the sun. Once in awhile
rain. But mostly just a churning murk.
Here, in the real world, the Transoms
are fully deployed.
Sometimes the Transomists return
with a half-mad refugee. They only
work as far south as Fairbanks, so the
last guy they brought in—goggled and
swaddled in ragged sleeves of cloth—
claimed to hail from Denver. I’ve been
DECEMBER _ 2017 71
 FICTIO N
underground in the safe confines of
the Hive my entire life, so I sat hours
listening to him. He saw ostriches run-
ning against curtains of lightning. He
watched storms devouring horizons in
grim minutes.
I’d tell Rhea how harrowing it is here.
What a burden that put on her.
I don’t just have to worry about the
kids and Olympia and what could hap-
pen, she said once. I have to pray for
your whole world too.
T EC H N IC A L LY, I’M A T R A N S O M I S T
too, but I don’t work in the field. I run
scenarios on the Quarantined OS. I cook
Earths, spend years proving what won’t
work. Drone fleets. Satellites. Even the
Transoms looked like a dead end at first.
Here’s a shocker: adjusting a planet’s
thermostat is tricky. Effects cascade
decades after causes, feedback loops
last generations, variables exist on a gla-
cial time frame. Cool too fast and plunge
into an ice age. Cool too slow and we go
extinct.
Then Olympia. That sliver of hope,
the best-case scenario, the proper
deployment of the Transoms. I seeded
one of the test redundancies with a sen-
tience kernel. Strictly speaking it’s
against regs, but then I’m not supposed
to have these node plates behind my ears
either. A lot of what I can do is basically
illegal. Not that anyone but me has the
time to mess around with this stuff.
Anyway, I’m old enough to be Rhea’s
great-grandfather: Olympia is the
future. What could be. Rhea knew this.
Rhea knew everything, she knew what
she wasn’t. She knew she was software.
She knew her world was an outcome, a
version of many versions. She also knew
that we’d fallen in love. I don’t know that
we’d do it over. It hurts too much.
72 DECEMBER _ 2017
T H E T R A I N L U R C H E S, stops. Every-
one groans at the delay and the lights
going out. It’s Little Sister. A software
gremlin, playing games. The Tran-
somists in their surface gear flick on
their dome-lights. Dr. Ivanov sidles up
next to me in our brief captivity. Wonder-
ing how to start in on me. Finds it.
“This train, eh?”
“It’ll reboot in a minute.”
“How are you doing Marc?”
I look like hell.
“I’m fine.”
“You come see me.”
But instead I’m seeing Rhea. I see Jay
and Ruby. I let the tears fall. The Tran-
somists are talking about me within the
shared privacy of their helmet comms.
“What is it Marc?”
What it is is I’m an orphan. Never
belonged to anyone, the subterra-form-
ers, the engineers or post-military and
all their kin who populate the Hive.
What it is is I don’t belong here.
“If someone dropped dead,” I say,
“and the only sign of anything wrong
was a nosebleed, what would you say
caused it?”
“No one’s been to the infirmary,
Marc. I’m not understanding. Who
died?”
Just then, the light flickers on, the
train lurches.
“Nobody,” I say. I know I seem insane.
Probably I am.
S H E N . O U R L E A D E R.Long iron hair,
yet the spry gait of some extinct ani-
mal. A winking wise smile. They wanted
her to lead the colonists on Mars, but
she stayed. She’s an orphan too, but the
Transomists adore her, her high wide
laughter at lunch. She is a blue sky. She
spends hours in the launch bays where
the teams board the mechanicals out to
build the Transoms. She breathes the
unfiltered air, its gales and vapors. Shen
is our last chance, hers is the last will,
our last shot.
She lifts herself from the chair over-
looking the Helm as thirty-five of the
smartest people alive—to ever live—
labor to salvage a livable atmosphere,
and comes to my station. She regards
the twelve fully cooked manifestations
arrayed before her, floating, globes
slowly spinning on the deck. I’ve made
thirteen working scenarios out of...tens
of thousands? Only thirteen manifes-
tations reabsorbing the carbon fast
enough, the Transoms dialed in just so.
“Where’s the other one?” She means
Olympia.
I dig the simcell out of my pocket
and toss it to her. A cylinder the size
of her pinkie from tip to first knuckle.
She holds it up in the light. Millions of
DNA strands of data, data that com-
prise my kids, their dead mother, their
grandmother and grandfather, friends,
village, prefecture, their continent,
night sky, every grass blade and last con-
sciousness, every stray daydream. The
grand scheme of all things.
Shen runs her thumb up and down
the simcell’s shiny glass surface. Within
me, a taut cord of fear twangs at all of
Olympia in Shen’s hand.
“This is the good one?”
“They’re all good. But yes, that’s
Olympia. Temps dropping quick and
steady to within three degrees of the
Holocene.”
She has a funny look on her face.
“How quick?”
“About seventy-five years.”
It’s worry, this look. Never seen it on
her before.
“What’s wrong?”
“Get everything important in here
onto paper,” she says, tossing me the
simcell.
“Like paper paper?”
“We’re going analog.”
T H E M E LT I N G P E R M A F R O S T
unlocked the old germs, anthrax and
plague. Little Sister was like that too,
hidden. She’s Russian in origin. An old
war virus. She preceded the adoption
of the GOS, and still wormed her way
into every operating system running on
the global language. She was designed
to disrupt infrastructure, needle the
P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M
grids, coded comms, simple telemetry
programs, you name it. She used to just
infect a system, leave a few pockmarks,
and disappear. But for the last hundred
years her hit-and-runs are perfect havoc.
We’ve tried patches and cul de sacs.
We’ve put A.I. on her tail, only to have it
return gibbering, broken, and incoher-
ent. Every countermeasure she thwarts.
For cancer we have nanotherapeu-
tics. Gene therapy gives us a century of
life. An orphan like me can build a world
full of sentient beings who don’t know
they aren’t real. But Little Sister...we
cannot wipe out.
O U R D E B T TO T H E M A R T I A N colony
is not a new world. It’s the Transom. In
the violent electric churn of the atmo-
sphere, satellites were useless for
signaling our brethren. But the Tether
Station—that old Chinese super-tower
winnowing upward into a single gra-
phene line affixed to an outpost in the
heavens—could catch the data dumps
from Mars. But more than that, Tether
Station gave Shen the idea that we could
shield the Earth if we just built enough
of them. A network of towers holding the
graphene weave overhead like a great
sail or tarp. Simple. Almost elegant.
Shen brings up an image of the colony
on the big board. White domes, square
depots, and the launchpad deep in the
Valles Marineris of Mars.
“The Musk Habitats are dark,” she
says. “No activity whatsoever. No dam-
age. No movement for fifteen days. Just
this.”
A line like a finger trail through
sand. Miles and miles through the mas-
sive valley. The line terminating at the
vehicle itself, we can just make it out, a
rover mechanical, whoever in it, simply
running away. Nothing we can do. We
haven’t fired a rocket in twenty years.
For several minutes we absorb this.
That we’re all that’s left.
“Little Sister,” I say.
Everyone is looking at me when the
lights come up.
“Marc’s right,” Shen says. “They had
significant attacks the last few weeks.
We sent the latest security packet, but
near as we can tell Little Sister had
already chaperoned the neural net. The
imagery is consistent with massive air-
@PopularMechanics
lock breaches. You can see here the
windows are coated from within with
ice.”
This is why I’m not supposed to use
the nodal interface. Why there’s no sen-
tience kernels or A.I. or Olympias. You
don’t know what Little Sister will do.
Shen sits on the edge of the stage. She
holds her head. For a long time. When
she gathers herself, when she wipes her
eyes, there is a severity to her face, a new
calm. We are rapt.
“Little Sister is a life-form at this
point. A hostile. Fortunately, we’ve put
resources into more definitive solu-
tions. The AGORA team has completed
the new OS. We were hoping to have
fresh hardware ready, but now we don’t
have a choice. We have to shut down the
GOS immediately.” A murmur crests,
Shen carries on. “We’ve already got
teams working on new boards for core
systems—the scrubbers, power, water—
but in twelve hours, the GOS will power
down on every system. Mechanicals
will be grounded. Comms will be down.
Transit. For a time. We’ll have core sys-
tems up ASAP. In the meantime, the bee
farms and food production, every GOS
function in the entire Hive system in the
world...goes down.”
Including my manifestations.
Olympia.
“Look,” she says. “It’s just gonna
be...different. We’ll use candles. We
will have power, but that will be for the
air first and then each basic system. Our
main goal remains the completion of
the Transoms. The good news is they’re
designed to survive us—no GOS, just
servos, power, and those wonderful gra-
phene foils that even now are sheltering
us. Our work on them is nearly done.
Let’s finish. Let’s make it.”
A subdued hum sweeps the room.
Lieutenants fanning out to direct each
team on how to collect their data, what
to cull, what to keep. I can feel Shen
watching me, I have the simcell in my
sweaty palm, in my pocket, I’m out the
door, there’s nowhere to run, but I bolt.
I VA N O V A N D H E R A S S I S TA N T S
work in longhand, writing down every
diagnosis in the sick bay. The chronic
conditions, supplemental information,
dosages. Ivanov shakes out her wrist.
The brute inefficiencies of our fingers.
“Slow down, Katya,” I say. “You’ll get
a cramp.”
There is a Russian nesting doll on
her desk. Small plants. Candles of bees-
wax from her friend who maintains the
hives. Ivanov has a lot of friends. The
security chief, the officer’s chef. The cou-
ple who maintain the zoo of thirteen
dogs and two old chimps. She is telling
me about the dogs and little puppies as
I pull apart the nesting doll, remove the
inner doll, and so on until I have a row of
them before me. I think of Ruby and Jay.
I can’t put the dolls back together fast
enough.
“Okay Marc,” she says. “What is
going on?”
I laugh a snotty laugh. Wipe my face.
“I’m cracking up.”
“Talk.”
I tell her everything. From the start.
How Shen tasked me to figure out all
the different Transom contingencies,
what was possible, ideal, likely. How
much cooling we could achieve, how
fast. A system that needed to perform
for decades. In an environment clogged
with space debris and tormented by
storms. Every contingency. What if the
Transoms failed. What if they locked
shut. What if they worked. I gamed it all
out, decades, millennia. I cooked worlds.
I tell her how I paid a visit.
“I banged out an avatar protocol,
self-installed a pair of interface nodes
behind my ears. And...I just walked
into a village there. Fresh air. Apples.
Sand. I sat on their shores. In the sun-
shine. I climbed trees.”
“Marc, you know that is—”
“I installed a sentience kernel,” I say.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“I made people. A world of people.
Who didn’t know they were software.”
“Marc—”
“I fell in love with someone. Her
name is Rhea. We had children. I
have...children.”
She shakes her head. Stands.
“This is...” she says.
“She died. Rhea died. That nose-
CO N T I N U E D O N PAG E 9 4
DECEMBER _ 2017 73
Standing
behind one of
the orange-
tipped stakes
that mark each
station’s firing
line, Joe Church
fires a gun he
made himself.

target course on his 300-acre patch of woods and
through it using 19th-century-style muzzleloaders.
SO
M E
By EB
JA MES OD
LY NCH
Y WI
NS. NOB
I F T Y P E O P L E S TA N D in the gravel
driveway staring at the foot-thick log,
fifteen inches across, propped on its
side in the yard. It’s maybe thirty feet
away, and its ringed face is covered
with soft, rotten scars left by lead balls
fired by primitive guns. The man who
built this particular target—the man
whose gravel we’re standing on, the
man who invited us all here today—somehow attached
an axe blade (no handle), cutting edge toward us, to the
center of the face of the log. He’s driven two nails into the
face, one on either side of the blade, and he’s hung orange
clay pigeons on the nails, rusty after all these years, so that
if a person were to fire a rifle and the bullet were to strike
the blade dead on, the blade’s edge would bisect the bul-
let, sending each half flying into one of the dangling clay
pigeons, shattering them.
We stand there, still as mounted trophies, only the
shuffling of feet beneath craning necks, amplified by the
gravel, cutting into the quiet. Men and women in a vari-
ety of leather, Under Armour, and canvas, dirt and grass
from the Vermont morning across the tops of our boots.
The overcast gray threatens rain.
At the front of the crowd, two men. Shoulder to shoulder,
one’s rough flannel next to the other’s flowing and tasseled
tunic. Powder horns, bullets, and primers hang around their
necks, necessities when shooting muzzleloading black-
powder rifles, technology outdated by a century and a half.
Page
75
ONCE A YEAR, a retired
dairy farmer rigs up an elaborate
invites friends and family to shoot their way
S.
OS
Photographs by
L M AT T
ODY K IEDA ISCH
These men, Gary Perkins and Eric Bye, both local guys,
work through the measured preparation of their guns, fin-
ishing with the definitive rap of the ramrod. They look at
each other, then to the axe blade. Perkins packs away his
normal cheer someplace deep within him and shrinks his
world to that sharp metal edge. He steps past Bye, raises the
rifle to his cheek, stoic, eyes clear as they look down the iron
sights of the gun, lining up the small bead between the arms
of the V inches from his nose. The crowd’s silence peaks,
momentarily exciting the gravel. The entirety of this compe-
tition—the year’s bragging rights—depends on the bullet he
packed spinning down the rifling of the barrel, flying true,
and splitting in half on the edge of the blade.
This is Paul Bunyan stuff. Billy the Kid, man. It seems
fine in those tall tales, but now? This can’t be 2017, right? A
bunch of teachers and electricians and laborers out here in
the yard on a Saturday afternoon? With pizza later? And yet,
something about those tales comes through, the exceptional
skill, the dogged hard work, the pride. Insurmountable chal-
lenges and those bold enough to face them, confident enough
to conquer them. They’re stories of our national identity, sto-
ries we aspire to. So when you happen to own a rifle and your
friend sets up an impossible course every year and invites
you to come try your hand...well, you come. Perkins shoots.
Muffled thunder of burning gunpowder, the boom of a rock-
eting bullet, the cloud of smoke obscuring the gun, its tip as
steady as if it rested upon a fence post.
The crowd stares into the smoke, waiting for it to blow
away, looking for the orange clays.
 Some targets are iso-
lated; others make you
shoot in full view of
everybody. Opposite:
Grice loads his rifle
beside his daughter
Heather Carnevale.

N E Y E A R B E F OR E . On the outskirts of Mid- Harley picks a day and invites all his friends, some he went to Mid-
dlebury, Vermont, I knocked on the door of dlebury Union High School with in the early ’50s, some he met the
Harley Grice’s white farmhouse, hands buried week before, to his house for a black-powder rifle shoot: eighteen
in my pockets, half hoping he wouldn’t answer. stations, eighteen handmade targets, spread over the 300 acres of
When a friend of mine, the college librarian, his farm. Every man, and a handful of women, shooting for them-
told me she was shooting black-powder rifles, selves, recording hits and misses—X’s and O’s—on crumpled paper
I asked her to teach me. She said something about not being able with an inevitably dull pencil. Some years he makes age brackets, or
to get out of work, and she gave me Harley’s address. men’s and women’s. But the 2017 shoot would be different: Only the
He was expecting me. I stood there in his kitchen, cabinets top six shooters of the day would be recognized. After eight months
painted with apple trees growing hearts, intimidated by the white- without practice, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be one of them.
bearded, enormous-boot-wearing octogenarian who skipped small Harley had spent weeks welding and experimenting with new
talk. But a few minutes in, his smile rearranged the wrinkles targets, covering them all with neon orange spray paint that lingered
beneath his thick glasses, and a chuckle puffed out of his chest. in patches across his lawn. He prepared guns for those who couldn’t
Then he put a gun in my hands. bring them, passing hours in his basement beside his overflowing
Harley’s the type of man you could imagine breaking the West, gun rack, naked lightbulb shining down on his thick fingers run-
or gracing the back of a quarter, his life the pride of an entire state. ning cleaning patches through already pristine barrels, counting out
He worked the dairy farm he grew up on for more than five decades. bullets, filling a fleet of powder horns. He cleaned the bedrooms on
When he feels restless, he drives his the second floor of his house for those, like me, who would be com-
camper out to the Rockies. On any ing from afar: Boston, Canada, the edges of the Vermont border.
given morning he’ll wake up, read
his Bible, and split enough wood for
the week before I’ve pulled the blan-
ket over my eyes. He keeps a room
decorated in honor of his late wife, HE BRINGS THE RIFLE OFF HIS
Marilyn, keeps his daughters close,
and befriends most all he meets, even SHOULDER, THEN SLOWLY UP AGAIN.
clueless kids from the local college.
Every year for the past five years, THE CROWD IS QUIET. HE SHOOTS. PING.
76 DECEMBER _ 2017 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M
 roofing mishap. Eric Piccioni gets out
of his camper and introduces him-
self to the others with an earnest grin
and plumb-line nose, his wife beside
him. They met Harley a few months
before at a shoot close to the Cana-
SHOOTING
dian border, and came all the way AROUND A
from Lacrombe, Quebec, just for the COR NER
invitational.
Joe Church, white beard beneath 1. Weld a steel
his top hat with two halves of a play- bracket to a two-foot
ing card he shot tucked into its band, piece of 3-inch steel
pipe. Fix it horizontally
drove in fifty miles this morning.
to a tree or post.
Gary Perkins, eyes disappearing into
smile lines behind small glasses, 2. Spray-paint the end
emerges from his FJ Cruiser. It’s only of the pipe that faces
a moment before someone asks him the shooter. Attach
about the goats he’s raising. In three a piece of steel, at
least ¼ inch thick, to
years they’ll be trained to carry deer
the other end at a
out of the woods on hunting trips. But 45-degree angle.
when they were infants he had to wake
up every three hours to feed them, says 3. Hang a painted tar-
it was worse than raising a kid. get perpendicular to
About half the crowd dresses as the angled steel.
if they bought their pants with their
4. Shoot through
muzzleloaders. Bowler hats, blanket the pipe, so the bul-
coats, various articles of handmade let deflects off the
clothing and repurposed material. angled steel and hits
“You don’t go out and buy, you make the target.
do until you can make better,” one of
A stack of sheets, towels, and a fresh bar of soap greet every guest. them tells me, recounting the recy-
I had graduated college by this point, and would be traveling back cled purse he once carried bullets in.
to Vermont for the shoot. On the last mile of my three-hundred-mile These are the descendants of Ethan Allen and the Green Moun-
trip, I practiced the slow finger pull of a trigger above my steering tain Boys, living an older, non-disposable way of life.
wheel. Imagining shots near his swamp, or over the corner of his John Curler, one of Harley’s sons-in-law, fires a small cannon to
pond, hoping to avoid flinching or some other embarrassment. The grab the crowd’s attention. Harley steps up front, says hello to his
windows of the house Harley built with Marilyn from plans in a mag- friends, and offers a prayer: “Lord thank you so much for this day. For
azine cast shadows of light across the graded dirt of Halpin Road. the sunshine that is about to appear. We ask you, Father, for safety in
At the dining room table with his daughter, son-in-law, and two- the day and good fellowship. We ask it all in Jesus’s name, Amen.”
year-old grandson, Harley turned toward the opening door. Behind The collective exhales an “Amen,” gives final well wishes, and
him, dozens of eyes looked out from the living room, the largest splits into groups of six to eight that head for stations throughout
from an elk with a six-foot-wide rack. With a grin, he got up from the woods. The goal is to hit the target at all eighteen. Throughout
the kitchen table and moved toward the door with the eighty-one- the morning, they’ll pat another group on the back for its successes,
year-old shuffle-jog-step he does when he moves quickly. Massive maybe, and they’ll give helpful tips when they can.
hands and broad shoulders wrapped me in a tight bear hug. But here’s the thing: They’ve got scorecards in their pockets,
“James is here!” and they remember who won last year, and the year before.

IFLES CROW THE DAWN, a few early guests get-
ting ready for the day. By mid-morning, they gather
across the street at Harley’s daughter Penny Curl-
er’s house and rest their guns on the beds of trucks,
handmade wooden racks, and boot toes to shake
hands, slap-hug, meet new folks, and catch up.
Ernie Malzac, a friend of Harley’s from elementary school,
drove from a few doors down in his CR-V. It’s the same truck he
and Harley used to pull a deer out of the woods last winter. A friend
from the street over arrives with a muzzleloading pistol wedged
between his chest and the immobile sleeve of a sling from a recent
S THAT A propane tank?”
“It is. I sure hope it’s empty.”
The targets are cobbled together from bits
and pieces scavenged from the farm. An old
spring, an ancient plow, thin strips of steel,
bowling pins, golf balls, metal daisies, swing-
ing chains, a bent pipe that bounces bullets around a corner, and,
in this case, a swinging propane tank.
Overtly aware of our mortality, and hoping the invitational
doesn’t turn into a memorial, we begin to load our guns.
Rather than simply inserting a bullet into the breach, muzzle-

@PopularMechanics DECEMBER _ 2017 77


Steve Alford adds
powder to the
pan of his rifle,
an older match-
lock style, which
uses a burning
rope to light the
gunpowder.
loading is a multistep process. Its success, and your safety, depends
on an exact order that Harley hammers into the head of new shoot-
ers with the mantra: “Powder, Patch, Ball.” It isn’t easy. You wear the
tools around your neck. First down the barrel, fifty grains, about a
spoonful, of black powder poured from a hollowed-out cow’s horn.
Then a greased cotton patch with a bullet, slightly smaller than a
marble, pushing into it. A wooden-ball starter, a palm-size sphere
with a dowel sticking out, pushes them a few inches down the barrel, a
ramrod finishes the job. Each shooter’s motions are choreographed—
two taps here, an extra push there. Consistency is accuracy.
These steps, the necessity for precision, are what draw many
of them. They grew up shooting and hunting with modern rifles,
but muzzleloaders are different. It’s like driving stick, or listen-
ing to vinyl. When you have to work with the tool, be involved with
every step of its success, you feel a deeper connection. Each shot,
absent modern aids or scopes, must be perfect. There is no second
chance at a fleeing buck. They all have stories, and trophies, of the
single bullet that took down the deer, elk, or bear.
I step up to my eighth station of the day, boot touching an orange
stake, the official shooting line. I raise the gun to my shoulder. The
long octagonal barrel dances about, my left arm struggling to calm
it. My sheet has more X’s than I expected by this point, and I can
feel the jury of real Vermonters, real men, behind me, looking out
to the target for even a glancing hit. Mind on my scorecard, I pull
the trigger slowly, the hammer snaps, the explosion obscuring
sight and sound, a swift shove into my shoulder.
Miss.
“Low and to the left,” the men behind me say as I draw the gun
off my shoulder. A guy named Tom McElhaney walks over, asking
about the carved deer antler I used to measure out powder. I hand
it to him. “I’m borrowing it from Harley,” I say. He takes it in his
hands, turns it over, and nods faintly.
“I think I made it for him...ten years ago? Yep, right there,
that’s where I repaired it when a piece of the carving fell off.” He
78 DECEMBER _ 2017
hands it to me and wanders back to another conversation. Peo-
ple talk about gear, new guns, leather bags, handmade tools. I ask
Joe Church, playing card still perched in his hat, about his gun.
“I make all my guns. This one is the first I ever made. I make
maybe two or three a year.”
Ralph, next to him: “I made my gun, too, close to forty years ago.”
Brian, a feather sticking out of his floppy leather hat: “Me too,
I’ve built nine.”
I felt shabby in my synthetic jacket, my clothes conspicuously
clean and untorn, tags attached, phone bulging from my chinos.
More than any desire to hit a target, I want to live up to these men
and women covered in things that hadn’t existed until they real-
ized they needed them. To build, to make, to not rely on the store’s
medium rack. At least to have the confidence to try.
Another member of the group shoots at the propane tank. Dead
center, it bangs from tree to tree, an enormous dent in its front.
“I guess it’s empty.”
The next group put a hole in its side, and the tank spun about
like a deflating balloon, propane hissing from its side.
O M E Y E A R S, the winner misses only one target.
Perfection seems attainable. At that level, the chal-
lenge isn’t hitting targets, but rather not missing
them. After each shot, it’s either the ring of flattening
lead or a muffled curse. As groups pass the same call
goes out, “How you guys doing, anyone perfect?” No
one checks their cards, they already know. “No. No. Nope.”
Anyone could take the lead.
As the number of stations dwindles, some participants stop
and reach into leather satchels for cleaning patches and solvents
to clear the residue of burnt powder from their barrel. They do this
half to avoid any malfunction in these crucial last stations, and
half to calm the mind. The day’s chatter quiets. Everyone wants
to finish strong. The last thing you want in your head as you look
down the barrel at a target is the image of dirt jumping up beside
the last one you missed.
Three left, two left. Passing groups silently nod, not wanting to
jinx their friends, not wanting to jinx themselves.
One station left.
F IT W EREN’T for the racks of guns and strong smell of
gunpowder, it could be a church picnic. Slices of pizza, from
the one parlor in town, float through the air on paper plates
clutched in storytelling hands. People talk. Many lean over
Perkins’s shoulder, bedamning their missing readers,
squinting down the length of his arm at photos of goats.
John moseys to the front of the crowd again, cannonless, and,
yelling a few times, gets their attention. Next to him sits a stack of
trophies, wooden discs Harley cut from a decades-old fence post,
hand-painted with the optimistic script of a 1950s advertisement.
The participants get their first looks, and a few remark how hand-
some they are. Each of us silently decides what will have to come
off the mantel, replaced by this new prize.
Looking at the stacks of crumpled paper in his hands, sloppy
X’s and O’s, John begins to read off the winners. A mix of camara-
derie and competition, the men and women cheer for their friends,
but wait for their own names. The successful make their way to the
front trying to hide sheepish grins, beards more effective than
P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M
 MUZZLELOADER
force of will. The stack shrinks, brows fur-
ACTIONS his shoulder, makes an adjustment, slowly
row, the crowd laments missed targets and The most common actions for brings it up again.
remarks on the trophy bearer’s great shots. muzzleloaders are flintlocks and Ping.
percussion locks. Flintlocks use flint
John pauses, two discs remaining, and looks Orange rushes off one side of the stump.
and a steel frizzen to spark gun-
at the papers again. With only two misses powder. Percussion locks hammer Its opposite sits unbroken. The bullet
each, Gary Perkins and Eric Bye tied for first. small exploding caps. deflected off one side of the axe.
There will have to be a shoot-off. The axe. The crowd surrounds the two men. They
are already recounting the incredible shots,
HEIR FRIENDS PUSH a story they won’t tire in retelling. Bye walks
the men to the front. They over to Perkins, smiling, congratulating
wipe pizza grease off their him. John walks over to both and hands them
fingers, soaked up by nap- their trophies. Arms around each other, they
kins, flannel shirts, and smile genuine smiles into a camera.
the legs of Carhartts, and The crowd buzzes as it spreads back across
pick up their guns. They stand next to each the yard. There is more shooting, and more
other, the careful measurement of powder eating, and more camaraderie, but soon the
interrupted as they laugh at shouted jokes crowd will disperse, back to their trucks to
and encouragements. clean guns and head home. Before they do,
Perkins steps up, Bye leans on his rifle. they’ll make their way over to Harley, the
Perkins raises the barrel, looking down the patriarch, and thank him. He’ll hug them,
sights beneath the brim of an olive-green step back, and shake their hand, looking
baseball cap. Steady. into their eyes with an iridescent shine in his
He pulls the trigger. own. Not letting go of the grip, he’ll carefully
The ringing clang of metal hitting metal, choose each word, passing them through a
shearing metal. The clays on either side shat- constant smile, and make plans to see them
ter, and the silence of the crowd. Small pieces of orange skitter down again, next week, in a few months, next year. To shoot, to say hello.
the face of the stump. Perkins lowers his gun, and calmly steps to The prayer for fellowship is answered. Even if the sun never did
the side. Bye smiles at him, and steps to the line. A miss means he break through the clouds.
loses, a hit means they’ll both have to shoot again. Only a few pizza munchers remain in the yard. Perkins puts
He raises his gun, quiets himself. down his award, picks up his gun. There’s a third bullet already
Perkins reloads, ready for Bye to make the shot. loaded—preparation in case Bye had forced another round. Stand-
Clang. The skitter of two broken clays. ing alone now, absent the forward-leaning crowd, Perkins raises
The afternoon has turned into an exhibition. The cheering the muzzle of his gun, and aims it squarely, slowly, at the axe
crowd forgets their missed shots, hang fires, faulty flints, itchy blade. He steadies himself, his body motionless for a quiet second.
socks, and focuses on this bit of extraordinary in the afternoon. He pulls the trigger.
Perkins steps up to the line again. Clang.
Clang.
Two broken clays, wide eyes, open mouths. Perkins can’t help
but smile. He steps to the side. His goats grow forty feet tall.
Bye cheers with the rest of the crowd, then steps back up to the
line and raises his gun. Steady, eyes focused—he pulls the rifle off
P H OTO G R A P H / I L LU S T R AT I O N BY T E E K AY N A M E

Marshall Curler,
Grice’s grandson,
uses a spotting scope
to check the paint
on a hit target (left),
then runs back after
repainting it.

@PopularMechanics DECEMBER _ 2017 79

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Mark Melonas
is the founder of Luke
Works in Baltimore. He
makes custom
furniture and sinks,
often out of
concrete.
MAKE A CONCRETE DISH
All you need is an afternoon and a little
concrete to make a dish for your change and
keys—in any shape you want.
BY MARK M ELONAS
MATERIALS
• craft-store felt
• thread
• wax paper
• West System epoxy
• 200-grit sandpaper
• acrylic tile sealer
• paste wax
• 1 x 1–foot piece of melamine
or ¼-inch plastic
• cardboard scraps
• Smooth-On Mold Star 16
Fast silicone
• Rockite cement mix
• pigment or paint
T O OLS
• scissors • sewing needle •
small paintbrush • hot-glue gun
• mixing containers • gloves
82 DECEMBER _ 2017
DIRECTIONS
1
Cut out two identical rect-
angles (or stars, hearts, or
any other shape you want) of felt
to the desired size with scissors.
Measure the perimeter of one of
the rectangles, then cut a 1-inch
strip of felt to that length. This will
form the edge of your dish.
Sew the top and bottom
2
pieces to the felt edge, and
the ends of the felt edge together
[Fig. A]. The heavier the thread
you use (or the more times you
go over your stitching), the more
visible the stitches will be in your
final product.
Cover your work surface with
3
wax paper. Mix about 1 cup
epoxy. Put on gloves and brush
the epoxy onto the felt shape until
the felt is fully saturated [Fig. B].
As the epoxy hardens, pull on the
corners of your pattern to remove
wrinkles and determine its final
shape. Let the epoxy dry.
Use a light sandpaper to
4
knock off any pilly fibers, then
add a thin layer of paste wax to
smooth the surface.
5
Put your hardened pattern
on a disposable piece of
melamine or ¼-inch plastic. Use
the hot-glue gun to glue the dish to
the plastic so it’s facing right-side
up. Cut strips of cardboard so they
are ½ inch taller than your pattern,
then use them to form a barrier
around the pattern. Hot glue them
to the melamine and to each other
to create a liquid-tight barrier.
Mix up the Mold Star and
6
pour it slowly over the pat-
tern until it’s to the top edges of
the cardboard [Fig. C]. Let it cure,
then remove the cardboard.
Fig. A Fig. B Pull the mold off of the pat-
7
tern and flip it over so the
open side is facing up. Mix the
Rockite and pour it into the mold
[Fig. D]. Shake and tap the mold to
remove air bubbles.
If you want to add a little
8
color, rub pigment or paint
onto the surface and buff it off
with a rag before sealing. When
dry, remove the dish from the
mold and seal with acrylic tile
Fig. C Fig. D
sealer or paste wax.
P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M
 E A S Y W AY S
TO DO
HARD THINGS

Bolt

Hacksaw
Locking
pliers

Clever Fence for

Cutting Bolts
When using a hacksaw to cut a bolt,
keep the cut aligned by threading a
nut onto the bolt to the length of the
desired cut and use it as a fence.
If you find the hacksaw twists the nut
out of position, a second nut will lock
it in place. And if you don’t have
a clamp to hold the bolt, try fixing it
in a set of locking pliers.

THE BAKER’S WASH

READER NOTE

Old Records Become Mixing and kneading by hand is

crucial to producing airy bread
Flowerpots or flaky biscuits. But cleanup is
tricky: Soap and water are not
Maybe you don’t dig the vinyl revival, or maybe your dad’s taste wasn’t so good, and you effective, and dough down
the sink causes clogs. So try
inherited worthless LPs. Try this suggestion from reader Herb Graham of Chiefland, Flor-
what bakers do. Sprinkle extra
ida: Take a small ceramic flowerpot and put it upside down on the center rack of your oven. flour on your hands and rub
Put a record on top of it and turn the oven on to 300 degrees. As the vinyl heats up, it’ll them together over a trash can.
soften and droop over the clay. At that point, take it out. When the record has cooled but The extra flour dries the dough
is still malleable, shape it by hand into a shiny, undulating receptacle. It’ll shortly harden and friction rubs it free.
and be ready for planting (or anything else you need a psychedelic bowl for).

A Knot to Know: The Packer’s Knot

Whether you’re rolling up a roast or tying up a gift, this is the knot with which to do it. It’s one of a class of knots, called
butcher’s knots, that uses an adjustable knot to tighten against a parcel, then a second knot to hold fast.

Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5

I L LU S T R AT I O N S BY M O R N I N G B R E AT H

Pass the end of the Pass the end of the rope
rope around the item under the main length,
to be tied. then bring it behind itself.
This gives you a loop
with the main length running
through it.
Bring the end in front of
the main rope, then come
forward through the loop.
These two steps should
form a figure eight—in fact,
what you’ve done so far is
called a figure-eight knot.
Pull the figure eight tight. Add the securing knot,
Then, holding it in one called a half-hitch. Make
hand, use the other to a loop in the main length
pull on the main length of rope, going toward
of rope, tightening the the figure eight. Pass the
wrap around your parcel. end of the rope through
the loop, then pull the main
length to cinch it tight.

84 DECEMBER_ 2017 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M

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 I can divide my life into
two distinct segments: the
time before I owned a welder,
and every day since. When
I bought my first truck, a
20-year-old Tacoma with a
rusty frame, my welder made
it roadworthy. When I started
my blacksmith business out
of my grandparents’ garage,
I used my welder to build a
forge out of scrap metal. And
when a neighbor needs a rail-
ing fixed, it’s my welder he
wants me to use to fix it—usu-
ally for free.
My great-grandfather was
the first welder in my fam-
ily. He started out running a
welding shop, and later, dur-
ing World War II, a school
named Wicks Welding in
Queens, New York. In his day
welding required a compli-
cated setup of machines and
gas tanks that looked like
they belonged on the set of a
bad sci-fi movie. While the
usefulness of welders hasn’t
changed a lot since then, the
technology has. Now weld-
ers are accessible to anyone,
regardless of skill, and you
don’t have to break your back
or the bank to use one.
We tested eight of the best
new entry-level welders. They
can be plugged into a nor-
mal electrical outlet and run
without any gas tanks using
a process called flux-cored

Entry-Level
arc welding (see opposite).
And when you’re ready to buy
L E F T: T H O M A S P R I O R ; R I G H T: H E N R Y H U N G

some tanks, they can also be

Welders
run as MIG welders. These
four were our favorites.

WHAT WE PUT
TH E M TH RO U G H
Wire-feed welders let you conquer the world of metal, We ran the welders at every
whether you’re reattaching the feet to a fireplace grate or power and wire-feed
fixing the broken axle on a trailer. setting, then used them
on multiple passes to join
everything from 18-gauge
BY N ICHOL AS WICKS
to ¼-inch mild steel.

86 DECEMBER _ 2017 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M


B
A / Lincoln
Electric 140
LIKES: Using this machine
felt like welding with a
paintbrush. It’s smooth,
powerful, easy to use, and
reasonably priced. You
might be tempted to get
Lincoln’s 125HD and save
$100, but don’t. The 140
lets you work thicker
materials, and can also be
used for MIG welding.
DISLIKES: Not as heavy-
duty as the Miller or Vulcan,
so better left in the shop
than taken to the job site.
$524
B / Vulcan MigMax 140
LIKES: Harbor Freight’s
new line stands against
the best welders available.
Sturdy construction,
easy-to-use automatic
settings, and a wide range
of applications.
DISLIKES: As a new prod-
uct, there’s no history of
performance.
$500
@PopularMechanics
C
WHAT IS
FLUX-CORED
C / Hobart ARC WELDING?
Handler 130
Any welding consists of BONUS REVIEW!
melting base metals and THE ALL-IN-ONE
LIKES: Great welding then usually adding a filler WELDER
arc, especially on thicker material to join them. For more advanced weld-
steel, combined with a Think of it like a glue gun, ers, the Vulcan OmniPro
useful EZ-Mode with auto- but thousands of degrees 220 ($800) does flux-cored
matic settings, means a hotter. In most cases, the and MIG welding, along with
consistently stress-free stick electrode and tungsten
metal is melted using an
experience. More compact electrode and filler rod (TIG).
than the competition and a electrical arc, like in
It’s versatile and powerful,
good price point. spark plugs. This arc is and it works at 120 and 240
DISLIKES: Limited acces- created by passing elec- volts. To test it, we took it to
sories, such as extra tricity from the tip, or JJ Cunningham & Sons in
welding wire or gas gauges electrode, of the welder to Bristol, Pennsylvania. Mike
(for those looking to also Cunningham ran the Omni-
the metal you are work-
run MIG) compared to the Pro with flux-cored wire and
competition. ing in order to melt the
a variety of stick electrodes.
material and create the His take: “Anybody can weld
$400 weld. When steel and with this thing.” You use
other metals are in a liq- an LCD screen and dials
uid state, however, they to set the welding mode. I
become very reactive to wondered if Mike had exag-
D / Millermatic 141
gerated the “anybody” part,
air and can become brit-
so I tried my hand with a stick
tle and useless. Special electrode, a first for me, and
LIKES: Great power and shielding gases are usu- pulled a neat bead. I guess he
a well-earned reputation ally needed to prevent this was right. —Roy Berendsohn
for top performance mixing from happening.
makes Miller a sure bet.
In flux-cored arc weld-
Heavy-duty and able to
handle a wide range of ing, however, a shielding
projects. “flux” in the core of the
DISLIKES: Expensive, wire evaporates during
and set up more for MIG welding to automatically
welding than flux. protect the weld.
$799
DECEMBER _ 2017 87
 The author at work. Simple equipment
and a little experience enable you to put
a razor-sharp edge on your knife.

The Right Way to

Sharpen Kitchen Knives
P H OTO G R A P H S BY M O L LY D E CO U D R E A U X

B Y J O S H D O N A L D , O W N E R O F B E R N A L C U T L E R Y, S A N F R A N C I S C O

People have the wrong
ideas about knives. A knife
doesn’t cut like a razor or
a plane iron on the push
stroke. It’s somewhat like
a saw with teeth that cuts
in a sliding motion as it’s
pushed or pulled. A properly
sharpened knife is honed
to a fine edge, yet has an
appropriate roughness so
that it has bite, or an ability
to sink into the cut.
Understanding the sub-
tleties of sharpening is
what we’re about at Ber-
nal Cutlery, in the Mission
District of San Francisco.
We’ve sharpened thou-
sands of knives. We also
sell knives and teach people
how to sharpen anything
from a kitchen knife to a
meat cleaver.
We’ve learned there’s
more to sharpening than a
fine edge. Sharpening takes
into account whether the

88 DECEMBER _ 2017 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M

knife is Japanese or West- Move the knife
straight down
ern, its material (stainless an imaginary
or carbon steel), and how center line, pull-
the knife is used (slicing ing the handle
away from the
meat or fish, chopping veg- stone as you go
etables, paring). The user’s to hone both
the straight and
preferences must be con- curved part of
sidered. We also think the edge.

sharpening is fun, and one

of the best parts of my job
is talking to the amateur
and professional knife users
that we serve.
We sharpen all our
knives by wet grinding, typ-
ically finishing by hand on
Japanese water stones (see
right). How fine we hone the
knife depends on the knife
and sometimes the user’s
preferences. To sharpen a
knife, you need a basic but
comprehensive set of water
stones. In the Japanese grit
numbering system, coarse
stones are 220 to 600 grit,
medium stones are 800 to
1,200 grit, fine stones are
4,000 to 8,000 grit. These
stones and a strop might
cost as much as $150, but
you’ll get many years of use
out of them, and there are
inexpensive alternatives
(see “Low-Cost Sharpen-
ing,” on the next page).
USI NG JA PA N E SE
I can’t tell you how to
sharpen every type of knife WAT E R S T O N E S
because that would take an
extensive chart to match A water stone is an abrasive block that And use enough pressure so that the ends
uses water as the cutting lubricant. Its of your fingernails on the blade go white,
each knife and steel alloy
stone particles wear away as you sharpen, but don’t press harder than that. It’s the
to the appropriate method. exposing fresh, fast-cutting surfaces. motion, not the pressure, that does the
I can say that the best way To sharpen a stainless-steel Western- work. Raise a burr with the first stone and
to get a knife with a cutting style kitchen knife, soak the stone for a few then work up to a finer stone to remove
action that pleases you is minutes and place it on a non-slip utility those scratches, just like using sandpaper.
to experiment. Make notes mat (a $10 accessory available online). As The burr forms where two intersecting
to record what works and you work, splash some water on the stone angles are formed in the honing process.
or use a small spray bottle to keep it lubri- To remove the burr, use a leather strop,
what doesn’t. cated. And let the “mud,” which consists of one of rubberized cork or softwood with
Also, it’s important to stone particles and water, build up. It helps a polishing compound on its surface. Lay
understand that you don’t the stone work better. the knife over the strop’s face and draw
need to take a knife through Hold the knife at an angle (the height it backward. Two to four passes on each
all three grits every time of two quarters from the spine of the bevel are probably all you need. Hold the
you sharpen. For an over- blade) so the bevel makes complete con- knife up to the light to check for a thin,
tact with the stone’s face, and draw the bright line that indicates the burr’s pres-
haul, you need all three knife straight back and forth along the ence. Strop again if needed.
grits, but for a tune-up, your length of the stone, starting at the knife’s Rinse the knife and wipe it dry. Wash
knife many need just a few heel, slowly working up to the tip. Pull the the stone and metal particles out of
passes on the medium and handle away from the stone as you go. Be the non-slip mat. Then try the knife on
Continued on page 90 sure to travel along the center of the stone. some food.

@PopularMechanics DECEMBER _ 2017 89

fine stones, and a couple of
passes on the strop. Beware
overly aggressive sharp-
ening, and make sure to
maintain or produce a thin
tip geometry. The heavy hit-
ter of coarse stones is the
220, and it removes metal
in a hurry. If the knife is
chipped or has lost a proper
edge profile, you can bring
it back to shape with this
stone. But if you don’t do
much repair work, skip this
grit size. Instead, a 600-grit
stone is better to begin the
sharpening process.
To sharpen a dull West-
L OW- C O S T
S H A R P E N I N G
Suppose you’re cash-
strapped and can’t afford
a set of water stones. Take
an 8-inch piece of 2 x 4
and staple sandpaper to its
ern stainless-steel knife take
a few strokes on the 600-
grit stone, proceed to the
800- to 1,200-, and finish
with a 2,000- or a 4,000-grit,
then strop. If you have an
ordinary carbon-steel (non-
stainless) Western knife,
you can use up to an 8,000-
grit stone to produce a finely
honed edge with a pleasing
cutting action.
To sharpen Japanese
stainless knives, start with
a 400- to 600-grit stone,
proceed to an 800- to 1,200-
grit, and finish with a
6,000-grit.
wide face. Use 220- to 320-
grit for coarse, 400-grit for
medium, and 600-grit for
fine. Strop on a pine block
with honing paste. —J.D.
Instruction
Manuals Rated
McLaren F1 Best
OVERALL
Only 72 McLaren F1
road cars were built. Each
came with a hardcover
manual with immaculate
pen-and-ink drawings that
could serve to educate gen-
erations of technical artists
on clarity and wit (example:
A humanized crash dummy
is used to show seating, exit,
and entering positions).
DISLIKES: None, but we
wish McLaren would license
the printing of these just
so the rest of us who will
never own an F1 can enjoy
its artistry.
Browning A5
semi-automatic
shotgun
Honoring the
long history of
this gun, the manufac-
turer didn’t skimp on its
manual. The gun’s parts,
assembly and disassembly
operations, and basic gun-
smithing are covered with
plentiful labels, large red
arrows, and high-resolu-
tion photos.
DISLIKES: None.

Bosch HDH183
and DDH183 GE electric range
drills

This is a no-frills manual

If every manufacturer
took its owner’s manuals
as seriously as Bosch, the
mechanical world would be
a better place. Its illustra-
tions are magazine worthy,
and its instructions on drill-
ing, driving, and hammer
operation are clear.
DISLIKES: None.
for coil-top and radiant-top
appliances. All use and care
topics are covered. Included
are bonus tips on cooking
everything from a ham-
burger to a lobster tail.
DISLIKES: Includes out-
dated topics, such as the
danger of drying soggy
newspapers in the oven.

H A L L O F FA M E

Stanley 55 hand plane

My favorite low-cost
sharpener is a simple
Chef’sChoice Diamond
Hone by EdgeCraft ($30).
When I don’t have time to
break out my water stones,
I pull it out and take a few
passes on it.
—Roy Berendsohn
The Stanley 55 was the most com-
plex hand plane ever built. It cuts
grooves, dadoes, and moldings,
shapes window parts, and slits thin
panels. In its 22 pages, this manual
affords a succinct view of the
essentials with perspective views
of hands holding it as a wood-
worker goes about its use.
DISLIKES: If you buy a 55 someday, expect a long
learning curve because no manual can do it justice.

90 DECEMBER _ 2017 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M

 BLACK FRIDAY SALE

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 BALL TOSS!
D I F F I C U LT Y

EASY REASONABLE HARD

Time: 1 hour Ages: 9+

Learn basic woodworking and drafting skills—
and end up with a new favorite game.
MATERIALS
D E S I G N E D BY JA M E S S C H A D E WA L D
4 1-inch round-head
wood screws
1 ¼ sheet of 5.2mm
(approx. ¼ inch)
H OW TO PL AY
lauan plywood
• Stand four feet
6 ¼-inch x 3-inch x
from the board
2-foot poplar boards
and bounce a
1 piece of 2 x 4 scrap, at
ball into the
least 30 inches long
holes.
6 balls (1 1/2-inch
• The biggest
tennis, practice golf,
holes are worth
or nerf-gun balls)
1 point. Medium
holes, 3. Small
holes, 5.
• Alternate turns
with an oppo- T O OLS
nent until one
of you reaches • table saw and 80-tpi
21. blade
• miter saw
• drill
• 2-, 2 1/2-, and 3-inch
holesaw bits
• wood glue
• tape measure
• rafter square

DIRECTIONS

KID PARENT PARENT

AND KID

Use a table saw with

1
an 80-tpi blade to rip
the plywood to 16 inches
wide, then crosscut it into
two pieces. One piece, the
target board, should be 21
inches long. The other, the
P H OTO G R A P H S BY R E B E CC A M C A L P I N

base, should be 24.

Cut five 24-inch-long

2
spacer strips from the
1/4-inch poplar boards with
a miter saw. Crosscut one
piece of poplar to 16 inches
to create the stop board at
the bottom of the game.
OU R BU I LD E R : Ten-year-old
Joshua Toole from Pennsylvania. Mark the spacer-strip
3
locations on the target
board and the base using

92 DECEMBER _ 2017 P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M

 THE PLANS
plywood
target
board
wood
screws
poplar
stop
board
a pencil, tape measure,
and rafter square [Fig. A].
The space between each
strip should be about 3 11/16
inches, but there’s no need
to get fussy about place-
ment. As long as you mark
both boards with identical
spacing, everything will
line up.
I L LU S T R AT I O N BY G E O R G E R E T S E C K
Clamp the target board
4
to a piece of scrap
wood for a cleaner cut. Use
a drill and the holesaw to
bore holes in the target
board [Fig. B]. Use the same
holesaw for each verti-
cal segment of the board,
making sure the holes are
centered between the lines.
Glue the spacer strips to
the target board and let the
glue dry for an hour.
@PopularMechanics
poplar
spacer
strips
Fig. A
Fig. B
2 x 4 leg
Apply a band of glue
5
on top of each spacer
strip [Fig. C] and press the Fig. C
backboard into position.
Place a weighted object on
the board to hold it down
while the glue dries.
Glue the stop board
6
to the bottom of the
spacer strips and let the
glue dry for 15 minutes.
Use a miter saw to
7
crosscut two 2 x 4
boards to 15 inches, then
to cut a 56-degree angle
on the end of each piece to
Fig. D
create the legs.
Attach the game
8 Start a child you know on a lifetime of projects
board to the legs with G IV E ! with a gift subscription to Popular Mechanics.
the round-head wood Go to popularmechanics.com/gift.
screws [Fig. D].
DECEMBER _ 2017 93
 THE C ON T I N U E D F R OM PA G E 73
POPULAR bleed. There was something wrong with
her brain.”
MECHANICS
“Children?”
“They live with her parents.”
“Her parents? My God. How long has
BOTTLE
this been going on?”
“Thirteen years now.”
“Marc. Thirteen years you’ve been
OPENER
going into this simula—?”
“They’re real.”
“They most certainly are not.”
“They are. They experience the
BY BEN AROH world just like us, they have feelings and
dreams.”
“Do they know who you are? Who you
Stained and sealed really are?”
bourbon barrel “Rhea did.”
She begins to put the nesting dolls back
staves catch your bottle
together, one inside the other.
caps before they can hit “This is very bad. For your mind. Your
the ground! mind.”
“I need your help.”
Handmade by A clap of laughter escapes her.
“I need to quarantine your system.”
craftsman Ben Aroh She slowly calculates what I intend.
in an exclusive “Oh no.”
partnership with “I’m not ready, Ivanov. All I need is a lit-
Popular Mechanics. tle bolt-hole for my family. I can’t chance
it on my own machine. Besides,” I set the
simcell next to the single Russian doll,
“this is the manifestation that works. We
GET YOURS WHILE might need it later, you never know.”
THEY LAST AT She reaches into a bottom drawer and
AR-H-------! fetches out a clear bottle of vodka. She
pours two. We drink as she studies me.
“The orphan longs for home, yes?” She
flicks the ovoid doll. “Even more so when
there is no home. Even more when he is all
alone.”
The doll rollicks.
“I’m not alone,” I say, “if I have your
help.”
She nods, sighs, and I get to work.
W H E N YO U G O I N, you can feel it in your
teeth, they ring like tines and your real
body wants to puke, and so I’m worried that
Ivanov will watch me go under attached at
the node plates, kecking and kicking. So I
take some minutes to settle in. I lay in the
TED
L I M II O N ! tall breezegrass and hear a cricket. A single
EDIT lone cricket. Trills and clicks.
I hear a bird. Going fee-chee fee-chee.
I’ve never heard a songbird before. But that
must be what it is. Maybe this is Rhea’s
doing. She’d drawn it and in drawing it
made it so. What is real anyway, but the
execution of a wish, a story, a design....
I walk along the river and the air off the
water is cool. Except...the cool is not off
the river, the cold rushes over the dunes
from the ocean, the pole. The hairgrass
dances in violence. It’s nearly cloudless.
There could be ice out there.
There is singing from the village. A
throng gathering before the longhouse. My
mood is too good to see it right. To recog-
nize the dirge. To sense the loss. But then
people grip my arm and set their faces in
that way of saying they’re sorry, and I see
the funeral. Several biers of dead, young
sudden dead. I push to the front, fran-
tic that among them are not Jay or Ruby
or...no. The baker, a farmer, another
woman, a child. Their still faces.
A grieving mother bends over the child.
She dabs the white sleeve of her mourning
clothes on the child’s face, his nose. The
hem comes away bright red.
Blood.
What killed Rhea killed these people too.
I sprint through the understory of
bramble and the trail through the aspens,
the golden leaves slapping my face. Over
the Irvings’ fence, hollering as I run up
to the back door. Anna opens it, Lee right
behind her.
“Where are the kids?” I squeeze out the
words, my lungs afire.
“Inside.”
“We have to...there are people...they
died...in the village,” I gather my breath,
slow down some. “And it...it’s the same
thing that happened to Rhea. There was
blood. Do you feel all okay? Are the kids
feeling all right?”
Anna and Lee look at one another, then
me.
“We’re fine, Marc.”
Lee has his hand on my chest. Jay and
Ruby come out of their rooms and stand
behind their grandmother in a shaft of
sunlight from the window. How immac-
ulate they are. Ruby holding a book, Jay
reaching for his grandmother’s hand. Lee
gently pushes me back.
“Marc, let’s step outside.”
“What’s that sound?” Jay asks his
grandmother.
A high whine growing louder. And
louder.
Lee’s hand falls away. No cello. Exit Pro-
tocol just the same.
“Stay away from the village!” I shout.
Jay covers his ears, Ruby is running to
me.
“Don’t go to Olympia,” I say but no one
can hear me, the whine has grown, we’re
all squinting at the might of it.
And then I wink out.
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¨
A F R E S H A G O N Y, yanked out like that.
My eyeballs ache as I make out the con-
tours of the infirmary ceiling. I hear
screaming, the screaming is me. And then
I am done. The quiet hum of Ivanov’s deck.
I see Shen. The radiant lines around her
eyes, the severity of her thin lips. She rolls
away on the doctor’s stool, the casters clat-
tering like thunderclaps.
“I’m sorry,” Ivanov says, removing my
nodes. “She insisted on getting you out.”
I sit. I nearly vomit.
“Have fun?” Shen asks.
“It’s a quarantined system.”
“There’s only one way we’re going to
beat Little Sister. It all goes dark.”
“People are sick in there.”
“No kidding. I wonder why that is,”
Shen says.
STRONG • STICKY • WATERPROOF* “No.”
“It’s a highly evolved virus, Marc.”
Trust Duck® brand duct tape to deliver the quality “No.”
and strength needed for every project. “Made to mimic and infect—”
duckbrand.com “No!”
“This?” She holds up the simcell. “This
Made in the USA with American and globally sourced materials. ©ShurTech Brands, LLC 2017/70676
*Waterproof Backing is poisoned.”
She drops the simcell on the floor,
makes to step on it, but I’m on her before
she can. She is a backward blur. Instru-
ments clatter onto the floor. Then Ivanov
is between us. The simcell skitters against
the wall. I crab over to it, grab it, and wedge
myself into the corner.

To end disease tomorrow,

Shen shoves Ivanov away from her.
“You’re endangering everything!”
she shouts. “THIS IS REAL! That is

begin with Trials Today. NOWHERE!”

I can see sparks in the noise she makes.
The hasty exit from Olympia. My vision
pins. I might pass out.
Researchers across the country are getting closer and “Give us the simcell,” Ivanov says.
closer to unlocking the science that can lead to cures. But “I’ll swallow it,” I say.
they need you. Health care can’t advance unless people “Shut up,” she says.
Ivanov sighs. Sits on her own exam table.
like you volunteer to participate in trials. That’s why Shen wipes her lip and pulls her jacket back
there’s ResearchMatch Trials Today, a new way to search down. Composure regained. I don’t move.
for clinical trials at the non-profit ResearchMatch.org. I wonder if I even can swallow the simcell.
And then what, Marc? Figure it out later.
“He’s been years in there, Shen,” Ivanov
When you use ResearchMatch to finally says. “So long. Let him say goodbye.”
find a trial, you just might help a Shen looks at her watch. An antique
Timex. You can hear the second hand tick.
researcher find a cure. “You have about two hours.”

U N D E R T H E R A I N I can hear wails as I

skirt the village in lamentations. All the
lights are low and I pass by in the dark-
ening of evening, the going tough in the
Trials Today mucked road. I trudge through the tall
at researchmatch.org grass. The rain tings on the metal roof of

P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M
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C ON T I N U E D F R OM PA G E 9 6
the house. I let myself inside. Two hours. I
call to them.
No answer, only stillness. I call again.
A fire in the hearth. Don’t panic. I rush to
Ruby’s room. Her mother’s things set out,
arrayed here. Rhea’s pants and her slip-
pers. Her shell comb. I call to Jay. I call to
Ruby, my voice papery and worn.
The village. They must be in the village.
I told them not to go.
A flicker of light. Way out there. On the
Transom. I have two hours only two hours.
I run.
I T’S F I F T Y M E T E R S U Pthe ladder
to the landing. Fifty rusted meters past
warning signs in Russian, Chinese, and
English. Fifty meters, how many minutes,
honestly I’m angry at them.
They are huddled under the concrete
awning on the observation deck. The sea
plashes in the dark out there, the trees
whisper. The tower towers above us, disap-
pears into the swirling dark. Jay turns.
“Hey,” I say.
“When were you gonna tell us?” Ruby
asks.
No questions. I yearn for Ruby to just
let us be.
“Tell you what, Ruby?”
She slides something to my feet from
under their blanket. A notebook. I crouch
dripping to look. It’s Rhea’s. I turn the page
to her scrawl, her naked thoughts.
...and I don’t tell him how scared I am
because what would be the point? I can’t
go with him. I can’t see with my own eyes.
What are we doing?
I flip through the pages, skimming
my dead wife’s thoughts, her worries and
anxieties.
I used to think it was great—to be loved
by him. But now I see I can’t ever
really have him.
...sometimes I wish I didn’t know. It’s too
much to know what you really are.
I look around and think about how he made
all this. And then that it’s just an image.
...cut myself and I feel it but I always feel
like pain is just reflection.
I’ve married a god...
...and it’s awful.
98 DECEMBER _ 2017
I N T H I S S I T U AT IO N you tell your
children everything. That you live in
two worlds. That theirs is the better
one. The future one. You explain slow
and try not to think about what’s going
to happen. That’s how you spend your
last moments with them. In courage.
“Will you disappear again?” Jay
asks.
“No, I’m staying here, Jay. I’m never
leaving.” This is a lie, but somehow you
have to believe it. That you’ll fall asleep
and wake up here. With them.
“Really?” Ruby asks. “You’re not
leaving?”
“Really.”
“Maybe Mom went to some other
world,” Jay says.
“I think she did, Jay.”
“Maybe we can go there. Maybe we
can all be together?” he asks.
You believe it can’t be over. It just
can’t be.
“I’d like that Jay.”
Ruby is buried in your arm.
“What’s that?”
It’s snow. You’ve heard of it but never
seen it.
“You made snow?” Jay asks. “And
the trees and the sky and the ocean?”
“That’s nothing,” you say. “You’re
the best things I ever made.”
I AM LOOKING at a single flame.
“Marc.”
I am hearing a single voice. Iva-
nov. Her soft, kind smile. She says she’s
sorry. So sorry.
I touch the naked node plates. I
make to stand, but fall back. My head
swims. Unbalanced.
“Marc, you’ve a nosebleed...”
The salty tang. I touch my face. Red
glistening fingertips in the candlelight.
A nosebleed.
“This is how Rhea died,” I am saying.
“Okay,” Ivanov says, her eyes shin-
ing, her jaw set. “Just sit.”
I am dying. It doesn’t make sense,
but I’m dying like Rhea. Little Sister is
killing me.
T H E I N F I R M A R Y.Three tries to sit
up. Legs knock walking. I have to slide
the door open manually, the thing
groaning on its track and motor. I have
to see by the light of candles and the
cold glow of lithium lamps. The glass
access panels and monitors and all the
vestiges of our digital hubs and nodes
are dark like onyx plates in the walls.
Ivanov’s not in her office. I take the
simcell. I take the nesting doll.
I walk several miles in our warren of
tunnels. People sing. People play cards.
The air is thick and it recalls my oldest
memory, a crowded transport mechan-
ical. Being passed forward, I must’ve
been an infant. Anyone in the chain
could’ve dropped me, but no one did.
I find Ivanov in the launch bay,
sitting on a loading dock. The light-
ning cracks and in the charged air her
hair wavers up on an electric draft. So
beautiful, like strands of tinsel. The
Transoms dark towers of hope. It will be
all right. I’ve felt the cold again.
Ivanov hands me her bottle.
“It was Little Sister,” I say.
She nods in acknowledgment.
“How did she manifest?”
“A virus that went after host cells in
your brain. Core systems.”
“How’d you get rid of her?”
“Protease inhibitors. Nucleoside
analogs. Then your body’s own inter-
feron. Simple really.”
“Where’s Shen?”
“Out there,” Ivanov says pointing out
to the cracked horizon.
“Why?”
“She went mad, Marc. We’re soft-
ware. This is all...” she flits her fingers
in the air. Pours a drink.
I take apart the nesting doll and line
all thirteen of them before her.
“This is us,” I say, picking up the
penultimate one. A little ruddy-faced
thing the size of a thimble. “And this is
Olympia,” I say picking up the small-
est doll.
“I know. You’re quite the god.”
“A god who needs a doctor.”
I L E A D I VA N O V U P the rusty ladder,
snow falling in thin helixes all around
us.
I’m home. Not Olympia, per se, but
way out here. This far from base reality,
the haywire way that things go—Rhea’s
death, the narrow and fragile window
of our moment in all the cold eons, even
Little Sister ravening to survive—make
a kind of sense now. Spinning down and
playing out. Scenario. Version. Mani-
festation. Story, program, prayer. No
author, no creator. No orphan either.
Which is the blessing, for there is much
left to do, and it will take all of us, dream
and dreamer.
P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M
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C ON T I N U E D F R OM PA G E 4 4
has to sell.” He knows it’s not the same for the
stores around him. “Malls in this country,
it feels like two to three more years. We stay
on a year-to-year contract because of that,”
he says. He looks around, sanguine. He says
he’ll shift his business model when the time
comes. He doesn’t blame the internet: “At
the end of the day, people still want a deal.”
At the end of his career, after returning
to Europe, Gruen came to despise the malls
he’d built in the suburban U.S. I called John
Fayko, a retired architect who worked with
my father in the field office for construction
on Midtown Plaza, and asked about Gruen.
“He was a very elegant guy,” Fayko said. “He
used a cigarette holder, wore bow ties. He kept
his overcoat draped on his shoulders like a
cape. He was impressive. Convincing.” And
his model for malls? “Great ideas, sure. Great
design principles for what a mall might be. In
the abstract. But he didn’t anticipate people
would go there for reasons other than shop-
ping. Like, no reason at all.” Fayko speaks
plaintively, without derision for the cliché of
the American mall. “Over time, as malls got
better they became a place for people to hang
out and spend time instead of money. The
people walking the mall, the teenagers hang-
ing out, people killing time—they see the mall
as a public space. They feel it’s theirs. But they
aren’t buying. They don’t pay the rent.”
AT MOST EN T R A NCES to Eastview (and
there are nineteen) there are no benches, no
trash cans, no ashtrays, and no shade. They
don’t want you out there. But sometimes you
have to see the sky without looking through
a glass ceiling. One afternoon I stepped out
at 3:40 p.m.
There was a young woman sitting on her
butt, right on the cement, about forty yards
from the doors. Kethry Bruce, twenty-four,
from Rochester. She had an impressive,
vaguely purple Mohawk, wore a short skirt,
and kept her tattooed arms wrapped around
her knees. “I’m not smoking,” she said as I
approached. Again: the mall cop thing. (I
need a new haircut.)
I told her what I was doing. She raised an
eyebrow and stared at the distant L.L. Bean.
“I moved here from New York City,” she said.
“I’d never been in a mall until I got here.”
I told her I grew up in a mall. She ignored
me. “I hate malls. I like smaller businesses,
handmade stuff. You can’t get that here.
Not really. And...well, look at it.” She nod-
ded at the parking lot, stretching hundreds
of yards toward the theater complex, a vast
surface of bone-colored asphalt surround-
100 DECEMBER _ 2017
ing the entirety. There were about forty cars
dappled across it, and a gray-blue summer
storm in the distance. “I’ve never bought
anything here.”
I asked why she was there at all. “I style
hair,” she said. “I like the place I’m working.
I like the people. And this is where they are.”
She felt like a stock character: the disaf-
fected punk philosopher on a smoke break.
“I think people need a hub,” she said. “I know
people come here for that. But, people are
sheep, too. They go where they get herded.”
SP EN D ENOUGH T IM E in a mall and you
start to notice the subdermal layer of the
place. The cracks in the floor joints. The
too-shiny, too-purple tiles from the late
’80s. Dust in the skylights. Chipped grout.
Unpolished floors. I walked down every util-
ity hallway, tried to open every access door.
No one approached me, no one stopped me.
I followed standpipes and examined HVAC
panels. I walked with purpose, unlike the
shoppers, so that concerned employees
might think I belonged there. My only con-
clusion? Eastview, at least what I could see
behind the curtain, is absurdly clean. Like
hospital clean.
In the mall itself, many storefronts were
covered, framed out and covered in Sheet-
rock, plywood, or Homasote, painted in the
inevitable ceiling white. Signifying vacancy.
My dad hated the sight of a boarded store.
“Dress it up all you want,” he said to me once.
“But it’s still boarded windows. It stinks of
decay.”
And yet nearly four thousand people
working in 170 retail spaces has to indicate a
bottom-line economic health. I counted four-
teen vacancies. Management later asserted
there weren’t that many. “Some of the spaces
you’re talking about are already rented.
We’re at 93 percent occupancy right now,”
Eastview general manager Mike Kauffman
told me. “That’s 1 percent above the industry
average.” He acknowledged that online shop-
ping takes a toll, but he pointed out that only
8 percent of all retail business is done online.
The rest is still brick and mortar. “Eight per-
cent doesn’t seem all that bad,” he says.
It depends on your margin, I point out.
“We simply believe that there’s still time
for people to reinvent the retail model, to
mesh online and in-person price points,” he
says. But he’s murmuring a little, and I can
tell he has to state and restate some version
of this optimism every day. How long will
this last? I ask finally. He thinks for a while
and says, “The infrastructure is sound. Cus-
tomers are still here. I think you’ll still come
to this mall in the middle of this century.”
E A R L I E R T H AT D AY, I sat at the bar in a
mall restaurant called Biaggi’s, alone, save for
the bartender, who visited me every so often
from her station at another bar, deeper in the
guts of the place. I ordered chicken parm and
beans and greens, my dad’s favorite soup.
My father and I used to eat every Satur-
day at the Top of the Plaza, which sat fourteen
stories above the Broad Street entrance
to Midtown. You could see the whole com-
plex from there. The mall, with its distinct
clearstory, the original department stores
between which the mall spanned. Once I
asked my father at lunch, high above a snowy
Rochester: When do you think you’ll retire?
He was fifty-one then, and he told me he
never thought about it. Then he said, “I guess
I think when I’m seventy-six, I’ll still be com-
ing into work here. The mall will be standing,
so I guess I think I’ll have someplace to go
every day.” It made perfect sense to me then.
It was far enough away, yet the end was so
much nearer that he never lived to see it.
The bartender brought me my soup. My
dad’s soup. Then she asked if I was going to
watch the eclipse. I looked up at the television,
and saw the silhouette of the moon against the
sun, broadcast from the west. I’d forgotten.
I walked outside, to that huge sundial
and the statues of Chinese horses. No one
was looking up just then. The sun was still
too bright for even a glance. When I looked
in the mall, through the glass doors, I could
see a crowd gathered there, looking up
through the glass ceiling. I went into the
mall once more.
One person had eclipse glasses. The oth-
ers were shading their eyes, trying to catch
a little bit of it. The guy with the glasses
was describing the eclipse to the rest of the
crowd. More people pressed in, because they
wanted to hear. “It looks like a large animal,
and hot steel,” he said. Eventually one very
tall woman said, “I can see it!” And a me-too
guy said, “I think the glass here cuts down
on the sunlight.”
People looked up, and murmured. I
couldn’t see anything.
“You’re saying they planned on it when
they built the mall?” someone asked.
“I’m saying the mall is a good place to be,
right here and right now,” the tall woman
said. Nobody argued. People laughed. Peo-
ple crowded in around each other, trying
for a look at whatever the mall would allow
them to see.
P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M
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What are the odds of having a white Christmas
anywhere in the United States today versus in 1942,
when the song was written?
ack when Bing Crosby first sang Irving Berlin’s
“White Christmas,” his dreams came true about
33 percent of the time, which actually is a very
respectable batting average, dreams-wise. Our
own experience with dream realization has been
considerablylesssatisfying.Wearenotbitcoinbillionaires.We
haven’twonanOscar,CongressionalMedalofHonor,Heisman
Trophy, or the local Rotary Club drawing for a free car wash.
The world hasn’t perfected a grilled-
cheese ATM, nor do we own a pygmy
zebra named Octavius. Suffice it to
say, then, that one out of three seems
pretty darn good to us.
That 33 percent comes courtesy
of Ethan Gutmann, a hydrologist
at the National Center for Atmo-
spheric Research in ever-atmospheric
Boulder, Colorado. In assisting us,
Gutmann had his work cut out for
him, as weather data is collected at
thousands of stations scattered across
the United States, not all of which
measure the same things. In short,
old weather records are an imper-
fect, fragmentary morass, and a bit
of a pain to sift through and compile.
Undaunted, Gutmann was kind
enough to review data from about
1,000 weather stations—skipping places like Miami and San
Diego—to analyze snow depth from December 20 to 31 (our
“white-Christmas window”) between the 1930s and 1950s, then
compare it to the same span from 1996 to 2016. Putting aside the
customary array of caveats, qualifications, and nerdy-scientist
niggles, what he discovered, more or less, was that the chance of a
whiteChristmasnowadaysisabout10percentlowerthanitwas
Do you have unusual questions about how things work and why stuff happens? This is the place to ask them.
Don’t be afraid. Nobody will laugh at you here. Email greatunknowns@popularmechanics.com.
104 DECEMBER _ 2017
BIG QUESTIONS.
A N S W E R S YO U
CAN’T FIND ON
T H E I N T E R N E T.
back in Bing’s prime. Why’s that? “Almost certainly anthropo-
genic global warming,” Gutmann says. (Those preparing for the
SAT should know that anthropogenic means “caused by man.”)
Really, though? Global warming? What about all those mon-
ster storms in recent years—the ones hyperventilating news
channels refer to by such scientific names as “Snowmageddon!”
“Snowpocalypse!” and “Snowfrickinwayyouregoingtowork-
tomorrow”? Turns out that as the winter months warm up, we
might actually see more snow. “The
largest snowfalls occur when the tem-
peratures are just below freezing,
around 28 to 32 degrees Fahrenheit,”
says Gutmann’s NCAR colleague
Kevin Trenberth. As temperatures
drop, the atmosphere holds less water,
meaning that, ironically, it can be “too
cold to snow.” Warmer air means more
moisture, which means more snow
per storm—generally those heavy
flakes that drag down tree branches
and power lines, adding to the sense
of wrack and ruin.
If you’ve followed this far, you
not only deserve to have one of your
dreams come true, you’re also proba-
bly wondering how a white Christmas
is 10 percent less likely when big snow-
storms are more likely. Great question.
While rising temperatures produce more snowfall per storm,
they also cause that snow to melt much faster than it might have
in the 1940s. So while you may enjoy a white Pearl Harbor Day
(December 7) or a white International Migrants Day (December
18)—and, hey, who doesn’t?—that doesn’t mean your Christ-
mas will be snowy. We may as well sing along with Bing and hope
for the best (while reducing our carbon footprints, of course).
P O P U L A R M E C H A N I C S.C O M
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