What is your niche hobby?

This came up as I have some odd niche hobbies.

1. Restoration of straight razors and a few other antique items.
2. Starting to get into watch making

What is your niche?

Conducting. Mostly amateur/hobbyist brass ensembles and bands. I love working with them and seeing their enthusiasm.

My actual job is playing tuba so I guess my whole life is niche?

Also, Hobear, do you sell the razors? I've been doing wetshaving for a few years but haven't attempted a straight yet.

Bike mechanic, cycling, Volkswagen restoration, and I've recently started dipping my toes into vintage record player restoration.

That last one is a bit tough, though, as-- from what I was told at the restoration place recommended to me-- everyone that worked on the stereogram that I own is dead. So I go play Elite: Dangerous instead

In terms of niche hobbies, mine would probably be finding four leaf clovers as a way of helping other people understand luck has nothing to do with it.

Osiran wrote:

Conducting. Mostly amateur/hobbyist brass ensembles and bands. I love working with them and seeing their enthusiasm.

I love conducting! Did a year of lessons, then a song with my college band and led an opera pit. Man, that was an arm workout. So much music with no break! Haven't gotten to do it since moving a year ago, but I do play bass trombone and flute in a jazz band these days. I guess that's pretty niche.

I'm not really sure what counts as niche, but I am all over the place. Calligraphy, knitting (made some sweet dragonscale fingerless mitts with actual scale mail), playing lots of instruments (including Irish ones), baking pies and cupcakes based on cocktails...

Video games. Ask the rest of my family.

Mm, I suppose cigars and pipes. Dunno how niche it is but I'm definitely the only one in my social circle that does it.

Everything I do is a niche hobby that borders on being a niche career. I write screenplays, write plays, act in both theater & film, MC burlesque shows, perform in burlesque shows, train dogs, and teach corporate people how to speak publicly.

TheHarpoMarxist wrote:

Everything I do is a niche hobby that borders on being a niche career. I write screenplays, write plays, act in both theater & film, MC burlesque shows, perform in burlesque shows, train dogs, and teach corporate people how to speak publicly.

I need to work on speaking publicly. I have much less of a fear than I once did. I can do it but my issues usually center around organization and knowing how to proceed through a presentation without getting myself lost and doubling back a few slides.

Osiran wrote:

Conducting. Mostly amateur/hobbyist brass ensembles and bands. I love working with them and seeing their enthusiasm.

My actual job is playing tuba so I guess my whole life is niche?

Also, Hobear, do you sell the razors? I've been doing wetshaving for a few years but haven't attempted a straight yet.

Osiran, yeah I still do razor restoration and would love to chat about any face wetshaving questions you'd have. PM me or hit me up on steam for chat too.

Hobear wrote:
TheHarpoMarxist wrote:

Everything I do is a niche hobby that borders on being a niche career. I write screenplays, write plays, act in both theater & film, MC burlesque shows, perform in burlesque shows, train dogs, and teach corporate people how to speak publicly.

I need to work on speaking publicly. I have much less of a fear than I once did. I can do it but my issues usually center around organization and knowing how to proceed through a presentation without getting myself lost and doubling back a few slides.

If you work for a firm that's willing to pay my travel and fees, I'd happily go to MN for a few days and run a few sessions.

I tend to work with both groups and individuals at offices, sometimes specific people in senior management want polish for a particular presentation, sometimes companies just want their employees to get some basic training.

Every time I get sent to one of those courses, Harpo, I get a job offer. Seriously. Hobear, consider starting with a Dale Carnegie public speaking course. (And maybe that's what Harpo does, although it's more likely he's with one of the dedicated corporate training companies.) It's a great grounding, and it will help you learn how to prepare (and practice) a presentation, not just give it. Your company will likely pay for it.

I guess my niches are martial arts and historical re-enactments. Neither of which I'm very active in now, hmmm. And reading as a hobby has become niche today, sad to say.

I'm totally independent actually. It started when I was at my day job and some of the wholesalers were doing a presentation contest. Someone on that team knew I was an actor, and pulled me aside for private help, then everyone wanted help and the next thing I knew I was the official public speaking coach.

I found liked it a lot and was really good at it, so I've started pimping myself out to other companies. It is actually a relatively new thing in my life that I'm excited about.

I delve deep into my culinary hobby which results in some niche areas: I barbecue, built a whole log smoker and entered several competitions. I homebrew and have entered competitions for several of our (I have a brewing partner) brews. I make my own ice cream, butter, and sausage. I've dabbled in candy making and cheese making. Overall I have strange culinary projects going; right now I'm trying to perfect my wasabi bagel recipe and making ramen (I've spent the previous year perfecting my ramen broth). I'm also making my own bread from scratch - and from scratch I mean I've been growing wheat to mill to flower for that bread.

Reading manga is my obscure hobby. Is it still obscure?

LarryC wrote:

Reading manga is my obscure hobby. Is it still obscure?

Is it translated?

Making Gyotaku prints from fish I catch.

I actually really like finding images to use and optimizing them to print out cover art for UGC (game cases) for my retro games. I've outfitted almost everything I own with some really sweet covers.

I don't know if I have any "niche" hobbies (is seeking out old man dive bars a hobby?), but with the news that Playboy is dropping nudity in their magazines, it has me interested in collecting old/vintage Playboy issues.

A quick search on eBay returned plenty of, uh, source material if I want to start collecting for relatively inexpensive prices. But do I want to be "vintage Playboy magazine collector guy"?

Probably not niche here, but I collect vintage board games. I have about 500. The core of my collection is a complete set of 3M and NBC "Bookshelf" games.

tanstaafl wrote:

Probably not niche here, but I collect vintage board games. I have about 500. The core of my collection is a complete set of 3M and NBC "Bookshelf" games.

Niche and awesome!

I do some video game collecting (games and memorabilia), although don't do it as much as I used to. Saying that, I recently received the Fallout Anthology set (the one in the shape of an atom bomb), which has a button that makes a bomb dropping noise followed by a cash register sound. Was very happy with that! I'd love to put pictures up of some of my stuff some time, my prized possession is a First4Figures Shenmue exclusive statue!

I also enjoy playing squash (Americans call it racquetball, I think?) a lot.

I try to make time every year as well to travel around the world to see football (Americans call it soccer, I think? ) I've been to see the Rome and Milan derbies in Italy, I saw Barca play (which unfortunately didn't involve seeing Leo Messi, as he got injured the game before I went!), Anderlecht V Brugge (which is the top game in Belgium), I saw PSG lift the Ligue 1 trophy in May against Reims, and I saw Toronto FC play a lot when I lived over there for a few months! I also go to a few away games to see the club I support, Newcastle United, although the less said about them the better My dream is to see River V Boca in Argentina, although they're not too keen on the English over there, so it may never happen!

Leatherworking - though haven't done much in the last year or two, due to time contraints with a new to me house, school and full time job.
I used to do stained glass but got bored with it.
Baking - again, due to time contraints, just don't have time

I want to get into woodworking/making furniture as I have idea for multiple pieces for my mancave, but don't have the time or the equipment at the moment.

Tanstaafl wrote:

The core of my collection is a complete set of 3M and NBC "Bookshelf" games.

Oh! I have Ploy and that game with the plastic castles and troops... Had lots of fun with those back in the day.

I've got a silly huge collection of Sharpies (1000+) and I do artwork on old paper, notebooks, printer paper, acetate, foam core, etc, etc. Pretty much any paper or board-like surfaces is defaced with Sharpies. I collect old Christmas lights, decorations, and light strands, but as they break I toss them out.

Robear wrote:
Tanstaafl wrote:

The core of my collection is a complete set of 3M and NBC "Bookshelf" games.

Oh! I have Ploy and that game with the plastic castles and troops... Had lots of fun with those back in the day.

Feudal?

Feudal

and while I'm at it

Ploy

Full site

Anybody work with neon as a niche hobby?

Rainsmercy wrote:

Leatherworking - though haven't done much in the last year or two, due to time contraints with a new to me house, school and full time job.
I used to do stained glass but got bored with it.
Baking - again, due to time contraints, just don't have time

I want to get into woodworking/making furniture as I have idea for multiple pieces for my mancave, but don't have the time or the equipment at the moment.

For woodworking the tools are a barrier for sure but often there are woodworking clubs that you can join. I found one when I was interested in doing the same. It is just up the street in a warehouse. Now I just need the time to take the plunge!

Too many, but I'd probably put axe restoration near the top of things sitting in my garage that I need to get to, some day, but aren't necessary by any means.

Otherwise, games.

I collect university lanyards.

A lot of the time when I was traveling overseas it was related to school somehow (going on exchange, overseas internships, etc.). When I was there I would pick up a school branded lanyard at giftshop of the university that I was affiliated with. I got the opportunity to do this a few times and ended up with the lanyards of about 5 universities abroad.

Even though I finished uni a couple of years ago, whenever I travel to a new city I'll try to drop by one of their local universities and pick up a lanyard as a souvenir (like when I visited NYC last year I got an NYU lanyard).

I'll also keep lanyards if they have some meaning to me somehow (e.g Vancouver Canucks, my local computer store, etc.)