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The Bitchin Bench That Started It All

The Playa Love Seat was our first product and it made Playatech the leading brand in the Black Rock. Our cute and cuddly Playa Love Seat is still the easiest, most useful playa art project your psyche can imagine. Each 4-foot wide Playa Love Seat offers comfortable snuggling to the person building it and one or two friends, with the following unique capabilities: – The six required rectangular parts line up like a puzzle on a single 4×8 ½” plywood sheet, and can be cut in under one hour pre-playa using any kind of straight saw, leaving zero moop – ask Home Depot to make the cuts for you! – The parts ship flat in a small car, and are easily assembled by one person in less than a minute using slots cut into the parts – no tools, fasteners or glue! Each Playa Love Seat is a canvas for art, and may be enhanced with paint, scrollwork, routing, wood burning, or whatever you can imagine. Making cushions is easy, and body pillows fit perfectly. – The design is easily modified for different seating angles or unique features – a really tall woman even built an Amazon Love Seat from one sheet. Underseat storage may be accessed by sliding out the seat, or by hinging it. And if you can’t stand those smelly porta-potties, you can even cut a hole in the seat, put a bucket below it, and voila, you have a Playa Privy! – Playa Love Seats may be burned by their creators at conclusion of the event if suitable paints are used, or shipped flat back to default for reuse should they survive the playa. Burnable paint ideas are on our Support page – do not burn it if you put acrylic paint or other toxic materials on it. You may not want to breathe burning plywood fumes either. Cost is around $20 for the plywood, at your local lumber yard. At this insanely low price, Playatech requests a $5 royalty for each seat produced, remitted to Black Rock Arts Foundation (www.blackrockarts.org) or your own favorite radical non-profit arts organization. We’re making wooden shareware, dig? Put your love for art where your butt is, and folks will hug you in thanks when we sit with you. But if you don’t put your wallet where your ass is we’ll put termites under them.

Playatech – We Really Know How To Cook With Wood

 

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Evolution Makes A Good Thing Better!

5 years after introducing the Playa Love Seat that made Playatech as indispensable in the desert as Kleenex, we never imagined we could design a better one. But we had to. So we did! And Burners Without Borders was kind enough to announce it for us worldwide.

The Anniversaire Chair celebrates 5 years of putting splinters in thousands of playa princesses and proud princes. It takes the ubiquitous Playa Love Seat and adds arm rests, side tables with drink holders (two per person for you lushes), and even adds a shaded area underneath for your cooler and fire toys. And you can still make the entire thing from exactly one sheet of ply! These days, you can get that for the price of a fast food lunch, and it will grow back before you wear out our product. We guarantee it, or your money back!

Designer furniture doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg to keep them both happy. Not anymore. All it takes is some legwork and an arm holding power tools. So get to work! Don’t buy American, build American. Or Iranian if that’s where you’re reading this.

Playatech – The Ultimate Art Class For Unemployed Construction Workers

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The purrfect place to plant some parts, indoors or out

You know you want to dump that bulky smelly playa couch, so here’s how to build an 8-foot wide version of the Playa Love Seat using exactly two sheets of plywood. It ships in under 2.4 cubic feet when broken down into 8 parts – how’s that for an inflatable couch that won’t go pop till you cook it! It will not fit in most cars due to 8-foot long planks, but WTF, call IKEA.

The new Playa Pew uses exactly the same design as the Playa Love Seat with the addition of two center supports. Each center support is exactly like one of the side supports, only the slots for the seat and seatback get continued all the way until they meet, which cuts the front top of the support away (so you can sit there; duh). The center supports push down onto slots in the front/rear supports just as the side supports do to help stabilize the whole base as a trussed box structure, and they help support the seatback from bowing along its long length.

To make a Playa Pew, cut the front support, rear support, and seatback out of one sheet of ply down the long way instead of the short way like the love seats. On the second sheet, cut the seat the long way, and then cut the large remainder into four identical 24″ wide rectangles. Clamp the four together to cut your slots just like the Playa Love Seat and voila. For all the long boards, do the end slots just like the love seat, and add an extra pair of slots to the front and rear supports 1/3 and 2/3 along their lengths to hold the center supports.

Once you have it all assembled, you might find that you can cut a slot in each of the pieces you removed from the center supports, and then shove one onto each side of the Playa Pew as a drink tray. Voila, exactly two sheets of ply, just like we promised! No moopage here but some sawdust. Please do not forget your $5/sheet royalty to the art gods, or your Playa Pew will give your ass splinters! That’s $10 per pew for those who can’t add.

Playatech – We don’t make your camp; we just make it collapse…

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The Black Rock’s Leading Soft Place To Land!

Playatech is ploud to plesent the plemiere ploduct in its Radical Seating line, the Larry-Boy Lounger!

The Larry-Boy seats 6, snuggles 4, and sleeps 2, making it the ultimate piece of desert camp furniture. With ample shaded space underneath for small ice chests and slippers, it even includes a night table on each side!

Made from exactly 2 sheets of ½” plywood, the Larry-Boy ships as 10 pieces taking up just over 2.5 cubic feet of space (padding sold separately). It can be assembled by one person in two minutes with no fasteners, tools or glue. Compare to the best inflatable couch or bed you can find, and after a couple days on the playa, you’ll know why we claim the Larry-Boy as the world’s first inflatable convertible bed that won’t go pop till you cook it!

Plans for the Larry-Boy are now available for download, and price is only about $35 of plywood and a $10 royalty to the arts. So go build yourself the ultimate playa entertainment center today! Only from Playatech.

Playatech – We don’t make your camp; we just make it collapse…

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The Bed That Lasts Longer Than You Do

On the playa we know you sleep all day and party all night, so we thought “what could be better than a day bed you can party on at night??!!” So here it is, the Desert Daze Bed.

A full 4×8 foot sleeping surface easily sleeps 2 when covered with a foam pad. Add some body pillows around the back, and invite some friends to snuggle! In a pinch, you can even remove the foam and use your day bed as a stage. Why not build two, and shove them together to make a Playa Playpen??!!

The Desert Daze Bed sucks up three full sheets of ply with no MOOP, and is worth it. Six feet of ¾” dowel will help support the back. Where else can you get a day bed this versatile, with a frame that ships just 1.5” thick, for the price of ply? Eat you heart out IKEA!

Playatech – The Brand More Hotties Hang On

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It’s a Sofa! No, a Giant Lounger! No, a Queen Sized Bed!

Just look what we made from 3 sheets of half-inch ply that cost $30 – a convertible couch you’d spend ten times that much to buy! If you ask nicely, Home Depot will probably do nearly all the cutting for you for free, or maybe $3.

Think of the Pluton Flame as the ultimate futon frame, a cross between our Playa Pew and Larry Boy Lounger. The back slides onto the sides three ways, including horizontally for sleeping. Just perfect for that den you use as a guest room.

To support the back’s eight foot lengths in the sofa and lounger positions, two little support pieces slide into notches in the base. To change between sofa and lounger positions, flip the support pieces and insert their other ends in the other base notches, move the back from one set of slots to another, and voila! Converticouch.

Playatech – Eat Your Heart Out IKEA

 

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A Task Chair and a Lounging Chair In One!

We found a really cool idea for a two-way chair in the book “Nomadic Furniture 2” and we just had to Playatech it!

Of course we like ours better. They used pipe, canvas, and other stuff, but we just use good old wood, and ours have little knick-knack shelves to boot! Just don’t sit on the back shelf or we’ll have to call them “Flip Your Face”.

Try them with our Turning The Tables dual-height table to create a “denette” – a dinette set that turns into a den in one minute flat! We hardly ever use our formal dining room, do you?

Playatech – Furniture That Will Flip Your Lid

 

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Will the real playa bench please stand up?

People insist on calling the Playa Love Seat a playa bench, so we had no choice but to create a real playa bench!

The Plench was actually the closest thing to a bar stool we could come up with for the 5 Elements Pavilion. They worked pretty well at first if seeming a little rickety. Then over the course of a week at BM05, they became kindling in a manner reminiscent of classic bar brawls in old Western movies.

We think they would last much longer if made from ¾” ply instead of ½”, so go build better ones – plans are on our Orders page, and each 4×8 sheet of ply nets exactly two Plenches. Just don’t cut the slots that hold the seat support too long – we did, and the seats had little support. Of course the sight of large drunk people crashing down through their Plenches can be quite amusing!

We have a real bar stool design concept now, but we’re saving it for our 2008 line…

Playatech – Shareware You Can Sit On


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This One Will Rock You!

The Black Rocker is one part hammock, one part rocking lounger, one part see-saw, and one part insane fun!

The Black Rocker even contains integrated attachment points for tethered recreation.

The Black Rocker is also the first Playatech product guaranteed to be dangerous when used as directed.

We hope you’ll like it, and we fear what will happen when you do…

Plans for this ploduct coming soon to a Playatech factory near you, so don’t bother clicking…

Playatech – Get Met

 

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A precarious place to sit still

We love interactive art and recycling, so we just had to recycle this interactive chair design from the 1973 book Nomadic Furniture. You just raise and lower your arms to rock it, or keep them up to meditate! How cool is that. And much simpler to make than our own Black Rocker.

When we build them, we’ll make the “part B’s” a few inches longer and slot them to reduce the use of screws & glue and increase portability. And we’ll make them with recycled wood!

Playatech – This Ain’t Your Daddy’s Desert Furniture

 


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A Little Something For Those Long Legs We Love

We don’t think our new Stilter Seat will be a big seller, but we do think those of you with six-foot legs are gonna love it! The Stilter Seat is a preview of our 2008 line now in development to support Burning Man’s planned “Tall” theme.

We haven’t built one, but it should work, and if not, you’ve fallen from that height before. And look, there’s even a place for your short friends to sit!

Try it today, and send us a picture of someone sitting on it, ok?

Playatech – The Jolly Green Giant of Playa Lifestyles

 


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