HENGE BLOG
Celebrate the life of George Braithwaite, member of the US table tennis team that broke open relations with Red China in 1971, through the Friendship Games, dubbed “Ping Pong Diplomacy”.
Next Week on Saturday Oct 23, 2021, 10:30 am , the table tennis community will honor the memory of George Braithwaite, at Capobianco Field on Roosevelt Island.
Special music and dance composed for the occasion; food, table tennis. Come one, come all.
Second Annual tournament ends with a Runaround to unite everyone. Location Roosevelt Island, Capobianco Playground, George Braithwaite Memorial Court. Saturday, May 26, 2019.
National Geographic has a video about the genius of ping pong located in a city crossroads. Who mixes, and how.
#propertybrothers. One designs, one constructs. They listen well, bring joy to their work, bring sense into the home.
We bet they work a lot of stuff out when they play ping pong.
All play is good and fun.
The table tennis slam—and its return—is one of the most ballet-like moves in the game. Draw crowds, oohs and aahs. A player falls back to return a withering series of slams.
When no one expects it, the superior player can slam back, from thirty feet.
You have to see it to believe it.
Our Prism net is tongue-in-cheek.
Speaking totally in theory, if your ultra-slam were to be a wee bit low and hit into the net, the Prism rings with a soft gong sound. It sounds like a 1970s videogame blooper tone. The shot loops back to you in a gentle arc. If your slam were particularly vicious, the arc is higher, and takes longer to sail back to you. Unfortunately this means all the people watching your ordinarily great shots get to watch you wait for it.
The effect is an ever-so-gentle comment.
On the other hand, dinky shots into the net roll right back— the 60˚ slope returns them like in a bowling alley. If you play from a chair or wheelchair, you’ll grab the balls easier.
The round top allows any number of dramatic ricochet angles.
Nappers rest their heads on it.
Skateboarders grind it.
It’s our stronger net, and it talks back to you.
The table seats at least 6.
The Prism net doubles as a candelabra, or removes and reattaches easily.
Candle wax scrapes off with a credit card.
It seems there are two kinds of company names. Some, like Ford Motor Co, tell you what the company does. Abercrombie and Fitch tell us the founders’ names, and suggest that while they have passed, their company deserves our trust. Others like Google or Zoetrope coax you out of the left brain, make you poke around for the spirit that drives the company.
A henge is an oval ridge of earth dug two thousand years ago. It was the social media of prehistoric England — a place to gather. People built them for worship and ritual (the most famous is Stonehenge). The name seemed like a natural fit.
Alan grew up around science and art and European New Wave films in a medical family. Summertimes at his grandparents’ house in Germany he saw the country rebuild after WWII.
After college he danced for 15 years in a world-class avant-garde dance company. In the aughts he led his own troupe. One day he hurt his foot. Doctor’s advice: don’t jump, maybe for a year. Alan put the troupe on hold.
Stir crazy during recuperation he checked the web to see if the US has concrete tennis tables like he saw in Berlin. He found only three hobby projects—in Tempe and Dallas.
Ultimately, it wasn’t a big leap from a ballet company to an outdoor ping pong table company: both seek to bring together people.
The company started out as Public Ping Pong the same month Susan Sarandon opened SPiN — the great table tennis social club in New York. The name Public Ping Pong says it all: a utility that belongs to all, like a library. When we enter we can see each other.
Unfortunately it turns out that there’s company that owns the term ping pong. Alan’s concrete ping pong table company needs a new name.
Contact us to request Pricing, CAD Data, and Specification Sheets.
