The Next Best Thing

It's said that pop artist Andy Warhol never threw anything away. In fact, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh has a whole warehouse full of cardboard boxes of random stuff that Andy collected then put away -- the theory being that if you keep something long enough, it turns into art.

Now we're from Pittsburgh, Andy's home town, and we can tell you something about Andy: his family was (and still is) in the recycling business. Truth.

Now, this story IS going somewhere. It's going to Houston, actually, where another work of pop art, the Beer Can House, was rededicated last week. This spectacular landmark, the residence of the late John Milkovisch and his wife, is covered from foundation to rafters with carefully sculpted aluminum siding, cut from Our Favorite Product. John apparently had two things in common with Andy Warhol: an eye for the beauty of ordinary things, and the inability to throw any of them away.

You can see from the pictures that John used the can bodies for siding and created a shimmering wind chime curtain of the can ends. According to the Beer Can House web site, the unique siding not only gave the house a distinct look that Andy Warhol would have envied; it also protected the place from the elements and saved energy. Presumably the aluminum reflects the Houston sun and thus cut down on John's air conditioning bills.

John and his wife have both passed on, and the house had begun to fall into disrepair. A Houston folk art foundation acquired it and has just completed a full restoration, funded by contributions and donated (authentic) vintage beer cans.

Stop by and see the place if you can. From our point of view, if you're going to keep aluminum out of the recycling stream, you'd better have a darn good reason.

This would be it.