Grown-ups still connecting with Legos

You start by “doodling.” That’s what Rich Vogt calls randomly snapping together little colored plastic bricks without any goal in mind — yet.

“After a long day, it’s a fun thing to do,” Vogt said. “You’re free to suddenly go off in any direction you like.” How unlike enduring yet another business call, he quipped.

“As you get older, how many things do you have to pack up and put away?” Mike Matthews wondered aloud. “But you can keep playing with Legos, and not feel bad about it. It’s just fun.”

Actually, Claudia Martin argued, Legos are far more than “just” fun — they’re seriously educational. If there’s anything to feel bad about, she said, it’s the way little girls are automatically handed dolls instead.

“I lost time,” Martin said. “I wish someone had given me Legos as a kid. All I got was Barbies. Barbie is boring. I missed out on learning about building things. Legos are such a great tool.”

Martin is now making up for lost time in the world of adult Legos hobbyists — and said she’s glad to note that plenty of other women are, too. She shrugs off criticisms that new product lines of pink-colored bricks and “girly” Legos fantasy worlds are just corporate pandering — because, she said, it works.

Women were a healthy minority among the army of male Legos nerds who turned up on a recent Monday night for a “Bricks and Beer” outing at the Burgerville in Salmon Creek. Martin said more and more women — and their daughters — are turning up for monthly meetings of PortLUG, the Portland Lego Users Group, which has more than 200 members.

Legos are in transition these days, thanks partially to adults getting back in touch with their inner children. What used to be cleverly lockable building blocks for kids now seem more like lifelong brainstorm-and-construction tools for everyone, from serious hobbyists to artists, architects, even pediatric therapists who have found them useful in working with children on the Autism spectrum.

“You can do anything with Legos,” said event organizer Andy Parsons. “There’s really no limit.”

Kids and dads

The monthly “Bricks and Beer” gatherings that alternate between Burgerville and Pizza Schmizza in Salmon Creek are actually hosted by the nearby Three Creeks Community Library. They’re the brainchild of Parsons, the library’s senior public services assistant and a serious Lego lover.

Three Creeks regularly hosts Lego sessions for children, he said, where, of course, parents enjoy getting down on the floor to build stuff, too. When time’s up, the kids tend to be cooperative about quitting, Parsons said; it’s the dads who seem unwilling to accept that playtime is over. And the dads are always hungry to see their precious creations on display in the library, alongside their kids’ works, he said.

Clearly, we’ve got a dad constituency with unmet Lego needs, Parsons realized. He came up with the idea of the library hosting off-site, ever-so-slightly lubricatedLego sessions — following in the footsteps of popular brainy-beery events like “Geeks who Drink” trivia contests and “Science on Tap” lectures. It’s important to reach out to the community and demonstrate that the library is a source of creative family fun, “not just stuffy old bookcases,” he said.

On Oct. 12, Parsons showed up for “Bricks and Beer” at Burgerville with plastic tubs full of bricks, several examples of awesomely intricate construction projects that took up whole tables, and suggestions for folks with eager fingers but no big ideas. Parsons had them trying modest, seasonal creations like pumpkins, skulls and spiders. But he only provided notions, not instructions. The details were entirely up to the engineers.

It’s hard to say whether beer helped or hindered the process — does it unleash ideas, or just dull dexterity? — since few of the nearly 40 Lego lovers who turned out actually imbibed. Many were driving back to Portland after this meeting, they mumbled sadly, like responsible grown-ups.

On the other hand, let Vogt enjoy a few gin and tonics at home, he said, and he’s been known to spend too much money ordering too many Lego parts from Bricklink.com, “the world’s largest Lego Marketplace.”

Vogt’s wife isn’t crazy about that, he admitted.

But Parsons is lucky enough to be married to a Lego lady. Eight years ago, he said, he was building Lego creations that started taking over their small apartment; his brand-new wife started to object, but then got into the Lego act herself. This was long before they were parents. Now, the basement of their home is overflowing with bins of bricks and many finished Lego projects — “I have a hard time taking them apart again,” Parsons admitted — and he has painted their new baby’s nursery with a DUPLO-animal mural (DUPLO being an easier-to-manipulate version of Lego, aimed at younger children with littler fingers.)

You’re never too young, he said.

But some Lego lovers are too serious for that.

“This is no Lego, this is some DUPLO (substitute),” Tyler Swan complained — actually employing a less-nice word than “(substitute)” and ejecting one unremarkable little brick from the skull he was building.

“There’s only one Lego,” said Matthews — the owner of the Pizza Schmizza restaurant that hosts some of these gatherings during Happy Hour. They really do take over his whole restaurant, Mathews said.

Over in a corner, 4H Lego Robotics club leader Brenda Johnson — who usually works with sophisticated, electronic, programmable Lego vehicles — was building everyday objects with her bricks. “I spend so much time coaching the group, I don’t get time to play with Legos,” she said.

After 90 minutes, what began as vague three-dimensional doodles had taken shape on a side table: A dragon. A Mars rover. A black widow spider. A cat. A mini hovercraft, a “weird spooky pumpkin” and a flying car.

Vogt, whose original doodle morphed into a maze for a Lego minifigure and then, jokingly, a gas station, wound up the proud creator of a nifty multilevel Halloween fun house.

“Half the time I had no idea what I was doing,” he said. “And then — there it was.”