Fashion Board 12-09-03 through 1-08-04

[ThurgreedMarshall]

So, is there anything you love this much that you would take this kind of paycut for?

Newsday article
For the Love of Legos

Why would a successful corporate lawyer abandon his career to earn $13 an hour playing with plastic blocks? Nathan Sawaya will be only too happy to tell you.



Sawaya desired Legoland.

Don't laugh. The theme park is real, believe it or not, on a 128-acre plot 30 miles north of San Diego. (There are three others, all in Europe, but Sawaya's dreams go only so far.) There, Lego diehards - and there are Lego diehards - can roam a world of intricate statues and colorful figurines, all made from the tiny plastic blocks.

"It's a mecca," says Sawaya, who visited a couple of years ago. "The greatest thing I've ever seen." Yet, in his dreams, Sawaya did not simply tour the park, an experience accessible to anyone with $41.95 and some free time. No, Sawaya's fantasy was to spend his mornings, noons and nights behind the magic wall in a corner of Legoland where six lucky men and women, known in the park as Master Builders, are paid to build and build and build and build and build. In case you misunderstand, here's their job description: Build - with Legos.'

For the, oh, 73,103rd time, he is asked whether he'd really, truly, honestly, sincerely consider leaving his serious adult life in New York. Leaning back in his chair, Sawaya smiles..."Let me put it this way," he says. "If I were offered the Lego gig, I'd be making five times less than my current salary. I'd be leaving a city I love, and my girlfriend and I haven't even worked out the logistics. It's be a whole new world to me, and it'd be scary."

Sawaya pauses. "In other words," he says, "absolutely. In a millisecond."

Follow up question: FB Ladies, would you date a guy who had a roomful of LEGOS and seemed obsessed to this extent?

Newsday article
But in college, especially in the too-cool-for-words city of New York, how would people react to an 18-year-old college student fiddling with a boy's bricks? Sawaya messed with Legos in the privacy of his dorm room, but nobody except his roommates knew. Through four undergrad years and three at NYU law, it was was pretty much his secret.

"Let's just say it doesn't get you a lot of dates," he says. "People [would] think you're a little strange ... a little off."

http://www.newsday.com/features/

Some of his stuff is pretty cool, like the life-sized Han Solo frozen in carbonite.

http://nathanbrickartist.com/

TM