Shops to buy from to fill geek play areas
After reading Javier Cañada’s interesting comments on spaces to play in (Spanish) it made me realise that having a space to chuck stuff around and invent in while you’re growing up is probably quite essential to developing those inquisitive and inventive tendencies used for the rest of your life.
I was always lucky enough while growing up to have such spaces in abundance, from huge cold garages to my father’s Motor-home factory, and large bedrooms with my first electronics do-it-yourself kits and computers. Although I don’t get to play as much any more, I still yearn to open things up and learn how they work and continue using the same inventive tendencies in my programming.
There is another factor that I think is worth mentioning, and that is culture.
I was raised in middle-class England (like most English!) where personal space is far more precious and any thoughts of living in a flat are thrown very quickly out the window. The exceptions are of course students and living in large cities where space is a premium. Spain however, is different. Here they build Russian communist style building estates in the blink of eye. I have no idea why either, its certainly not for a lack of space! I guess they’re just so used to it that its not worth building houses if the punters will buy a flat without complaining, either way, the result of this cultural difference is less-space and less independence, and it shows.
The other missing link in Spain, is the lack of what I’d call enthusiast stores. In England, we have stores like Maplin that provide for every English experimenter’s itch. Indeed, from very young I had the Maplin Catalogue close by and frequently made orders for the odd resistor or soldering iron that I need to get my project to work. I loved it.
In Spain I’ve not managed to find anything even remotely similar. There is the odd corner shop with a few bits and pieces, but nothing on the same scale, and no catalogues to flick through for the latest gadgets. Just the other week in-fact I was looking for a magnifying glass for some soldering work, Maplin of course had the perfect product, a 60W Swing Arm Magnifying Lamp, brilliant and not too expensive. My search still continues to find something similar here…
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