Independent projects and experiments in fabrication, media, community, and storytelling.
Business plans and possible startup positions available for selected projects.
Let’s merge. Small businesses, stronger together: join the 5PM Cooperative →
Already doing something similar? Speak up. There’s no desire to reinvent the wheel; if you need better marketing, a website or a sales platform, let’s team up. Reach out on LinkedIn.
Let’s merge, without becoming a monopoly. A member-owned network where independent farms, shops, trades and makers share the back office, sell together and back each other up, while keeping their own names, customers and prices.
Members keep the full price of their work; the co-op runs at cost. One member, one vote.
A design flow the founder built for turning 3D scan data into custom pieces of a personal nature.
The plan: do for 3D what JCPenney did for portrait studios. Photographers capture the scan, we handle the modeling, and production happens down the line. A new revenue stream for photographers.
Forged urns and other funerary products are in the business plan.
Wish list: Miley Cyrus’s head. Other celebrities welcome. Short hair scans best.
A food-first local map for discovering food, sharing what is available or needed, and finding community events.
NFT licenses for audiobooks, music and video: creators mint and own them, fans pay the artist directly, and the license plays in our streaming library.
Hitchhiking for the brave, back on the map. Thumb out, phone up: free rides, couches, waystations and trail magic, plus a neighbor’s truck when you need one. Worst case, they’re out of your life by the next stop.
Family doesn’t call back? Put yourself up for adoption. A guided way for grown-ups to build family beyond blood: a couple, a small clan, a business that could use a hand, or a big loud household that just likes having you around.
More people are unmarried, child-free, or empty nesters whose kids moved three states away. People move on. This is a way to rebuild the safety net: Sunday dinners, holidays, a job lead, and someone to call at 2 a.m.
Could launch as part of doof.top, where neighbors already meet over food and community events. Name TBD.
A nonprofit that mails native seed matched to your zip code, plus a marketplace where property owners sell acorns and seed that would otherwise rot. Funded mostly by a small monthly or yearly subscription fee.
Semi-retired: other nonprofits already do this well, so rather than compete, the aim is to support, refine, and improve their mission. See existing seed-by-mail nonprofits.
Get scrap tires out of the city on trucks already heading to rural areas, and into retaining walls, sheds, root cellars, and Earthship-style homes for homesteaders and off-grid builders.
A lab-style catalog of dried mushrooms, sold by weight in standard forms from whole to powder. Every lot is sized, sealed and logged.
Brand and domain are still to come.
Not intended for food or any medicinal use.
Others farm insects too, and that's fine: insects as an alternate protein source is still a small idea, and it needs to grow.
A cricket and grasshopper farm: live feeders, roasted crickets, cricket flour, chapulines, pet treats, and frass.
Products that bring you closer to your animal companion friends.
Name and site TBD.
My cardiologist didn’t even know. Advertising methods planned to use could blow this up overnight.
Draft site available, but kept private: the plan is proprietary and not disclosed publicly.
The family story says our ancestors came to Detroit from West Virginia on a jailbreak involving moonshine. This is a return to our roots.
The goal is to sell it only for Monero (XMR) or blood.
The custom glass bottle cask is complete and sitting in Texas, made by a master glassworker friend. The vision ranges from one-off custom bottles to ceramic hooch jugs, XXXs and all.
The goal? Perhaps spike it with ginseng and bring an American Heritage story of Prohibition, jailbreaks, and the Detroit auto industry to Japan. The elegant domain name is still waiting for someone with about $30,000 to spare—it is very snug.
We need someone familiar with import/export and the spirits industry, plus a bottler or distillery partner to keep it all legal. I can learn it if I have to.
An open-source, privacy-first appliance for secure computing, private communications, and personal digital tools—built to put more control back in people’s hands.
Design specs exist; site TBD.
Late-night call-in therapy, hosted by a hog. He takes calls from the heartbroken, the lonely and the hopelessly confused, and talks them through it from a mud-caked couch under the string lights. His advice is mostly grunts. Somehow it helps.
Made entirely with AI video and voice tools, from character to final cut. The show has a fun name; it stays under wraps until launch.
Rescue and sanctuary animals get their own social media accounts, each with a personality, a voice and a story to tell. AI helps keep the posts coming; staff keep it honest and keep the animals’ dignity first.
The twist: philanthropists bid to take over an animal’s voice for a week or a month, likely NFT-driven, and every proceed goes to the sanctuary. Funding that keeps coming, told by the animals themselves.
Scripts and ideas for movies, documentaries and comedy sketches, drawn from my own life and ideas. Many are already written. The stories are ready; the crew isn’t.
Also looking for an author or publisher to support a biography of some kind: the interviews and source material are underway.
Producers, writers, filmmakers, authors and publishers: I’d like to talk. Reach out on LinkedIn.
A tribute to Jojo Baby (April 10, 1971 – March 14, 2023).
I believe Jojo’s estate wants to create a Greer Lankton / Warhol / Prince–style experience: a permanent exhibit, perhaps an attraction, in Chicago, and maybe a traveling one too. The estate should be reached out to for donor support.
To get in touch with Jojo’s estate, contact me on LinkedIn or the Center on Halsted.
See images of Jojo Baby
This was my brother, and his story and influence in my life needs to be told.
David Livous died on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2015.
Journalists: I’d love to speak with you before the crew is all gone. Reach out on LinkedIn.
The old crew. We're still alive. Roots in Detroit not required.
Some aren’t public, for reasons. Looking for donors to support some very interesting events that would be newsworthy and positive.
We need fun, art-driven moments that bring people together, not more gloom and doom and the detached direction we seem to be heading.
A tame one we’ve been noodling: on October 13, the anniversary of the 1307 arrest of the Knights Templar (often credited as the origin of Friday the 13th), dye the Chicago River red and throw a huge costume, Halloween and fire-performance party on the water: Mr. Pickles meets GWAR meets ICP.
GWAR plays from barges while the USS Juggalo fires Faygo cannons. Ticket holders ride a boat under a bridge for the “Dave Matthews Experience” and get doused in GWAR guts instead of the real thing.
We hope it spreads to other bodies of water around the globe.
Oh… we have way better ones too.
Sinéad O’Connor would be proud, and so would a few others.
Looking for donors, artists, performers, promoters, event managers and anyone else who wants in: reach out on LinkedIn.