In Seattle, umbrella culture is vibrant — as you might imagine. People have big umbrellas, small umbrellas, black umbrellas, colored umbrellas, clear umbrellas, cane umbrellas, micro-umbrellas, and bumbershoots. You also have umbrella-haters who boycott umbrella use and simply dash from awning to dripping awning.
So there’s a lot of umbrella etiquette on a rainy day downtown, and while this partially-retractable umbrella concept might complicate your umbrella experience, on the whole it’s probably a good idea. I’ve seen good men die from umbrella wounds, and I myself bear scars from these monstrous, twirling razor-wheels.
I’m surprised the concept hasn’t been tried before, although I’m worried that the added complexity might contribute to frequent umbrella breakage (although the strings look like they’ll help it stay right-side-in). It also looks a little too much like a jellyfish or a metroid for my liking.
It’s not “polite” unless you partially retract it early enough for the approaching person to notice such that they don’t have to take evasive action (but perhaps the maker/user thought that would look dorky). Then again, in that the approaching person in this case did nothing to prevent a collision, forget about them; save yourself.
Devin,
Do we live in different Seattle’s? The standard joke around here is “how do you tell locals from tourists?” answer: umbrellas. I know maybe one person with an umbrella, and she keeps hers in her trunk.
I, along with everyone I know, fall into the “awning” category or the “who cares if it is raining” category.
I must be one of the umbrella haters who run from awning to awning, the true reason for this is I keep losing them, I don’t think I have managed to keep one for more than three days, the one thing that does annoy me about them is that I feel because I dint have I have to run the gauntlet every morning going to work on a rainy day, no body seems to move out the way just because they have an umbrella, some morning I feel like Mike Tyson with the way I have to bob and weave just trying to get by them and survive at the same time. I enjoyed reading your post and ranting about it to lol. thanks.