Written by: André Salkin asalkin@sfnewmexican.com Jul 5, 2025
The miniature shopping cart, toting a plastic baby and various fake food items, screeched to a halt about halfway down the racetrack.
The drag-racing cart dubbed “The Grocery Grabber” was doubly powered by both the torque of a handsaw and “ the determination to get all the snacks to the end,” said Andrew Garcia, 12, the builder of the cart and one of the youngest-ever competitors. He said he received help from his family — including the use of his baby sister’s plastic baby doll — to craft the speedster.
Andrew’s was one of 16 mini-vehicles that faced off Saturday afternoon, using components like belt sanders, saws and drills to create salvaged vehicles to race on a straightaway track at MAKE Santa Fe, a nonprofit “maker’s space.” The organization has for five years held the event to drum up interest in both its array of maker’s equipment and the plethora of experienced makers who use the space and offer their expertise to newcomers or those lacking in technical expertise.
Though she has experience as a craftsperson and is comfortable with industrial tools, Kristina Nethaway, 77, wanted to step outside of her comfort zone for her vehicle — a political piece entitled “Ugly Trump” consisting of a miniature figure of the president atop a globe, jury-rigged to a platform of boat paneling, skate wheels and a circular saw to power the whole thing.
A goldsmith from Colorado, she had focused on ceramics in her years at the maker space, only now opting to learn the mechanical side.
“It just seemed like it would be fun,” she said. “And I kind of wanted to be the oldest competitor.”
She moved to Santa Fe during the coronavirus pandemic, when she found MAKE Santa Fe to be a “ maker nerd paradise” where she was able to be seen not as a “little old lady,” she said. “Everybody takes me seriously.”
But the race wasn’t all that was offered. There were various circus games that used pieces of “maker” equipment to make a games to test who can hammer a nail the fastest; who could fish items from across a long table using only a tape measure; and “BattleBots,” which sets two rival players up with robots armed with jousting needles on the front and balloons on the back, the goal being to pop the other person’s balloons.
Watching an attendee struggle with the tape measure game, John Miller, 65, offered a message of advice: “Be the tape measure.”
Miller is one of four founders who started MAKE Santa Fe 11 years ago. He’s a longtime postdoc at the Santa Fe Institute and a Carnegie Mellon professor of economics and social science whose “ inclination has just always been to make stuff.”
“We just thought Santa Fe is this wildly creative place, and we were sort of surprised they didn’t have some outlet like this,” he added.
The space has grown in the past few years, going from 30 to 40 members to more than 200 now, according to staff. The event’s attendance of over 100 was similar to past years, said Miller, but the number of racers has doubled.
The many rooms in the building, which used to belong to a company building tiny homes, now offer prospective makers access to everything from 3D printing, laser and plasma cutting, woodwork, robotics, ceramics and sewing. Though the nonprofit only has three on-site staff, many makers said that number belies the community of support from fellow makers using the space.
Santa Fe native and Los Alamos National Lab employee Ian Canfield, 25, has been with the space for three years, recalling how it has gone from “a tiny little shed with a couple of tools to this massive operation.”
“It’s an amazing place,” he said, recalling how he’s visited maker’s spaces in places like Pittsburgh and Austin which have “warehouses of stuff, but nobody cares.”
“ They have a lot of tools, but they don’t have anybody with the passion to take care of it,” he said.
Canfield was all smiles despite the loss of his vehicle, “Flipper,” made of a shark toy attached to a set of skating wheels, all powered by a single motorized saw blade, which tore up the wooden track but not his stiff competition. Flipper sputtered, whirred and tried its best but was no match for the rocketing speed of “ Pink Barbie’s Bruising Battle Bus of Busted Bearings and Blazing Glory,” crafted by the nonprofit’s executive director, James Johnson.
This event and other semi-regular community events, Johnson said, are about “ planting the seed” of interest for those who aren’t accustomed to the world of making. Johnson himself comes from a theater background, which “has a very similar mentality in terms of recycling,” he said.
For him, the work is most about education — to give others the tools to reuse items to both lead more sustainable lives and gain better understanding of how things work.
“To reuse or adapt or change it into something … and being able to have the knowledge and the tools required to be able to make all of that happen is kind of why we’re here,” he said.
But it’s not about knowing everything, he said, pushing back on the idea of a “community of experts” to help the less-experienced.
“It’s a community of makers,” said Johnson. “Because not everybody’s an expert. … We’re trying to upskill everybody, but really what we want to do is create a community where everybody is allowed to try and to fail, and then to be supportive when that happens.”