What’s in Your Disaster-Scenario Side Table?
A San Francisco couple share why they store gin, Shakespeare, and other survival items in a smashable, emergency-ready furniture piece.
A San Francisco couple share why they store gin, Shakespeare, and other survival items in a smashable, emergency-ready furniture piece.
Ben: Given this moment we’re living in, Nathaniel and I have talked about what we would do in an emergency. In response to the threat of disasters, Constance Hockaday makes these glass side tables and fills them with stuff you can’t live without. She includes a hammer to smash the table’s top and a cotton sack to pack things up before you flee.
Nathaniel: Ben was scrolling one night at dinner and saw that Constance had donated a table to a benefit auction for The Lab, a local San Francisco arts organization we love. We had a little slush fund from our wedding…
Ben: And because of the whole "in sickness and health, till death do us part" thing, we liked the idea of collaborating on what to include: It helped define what we value as a couple.
Nathaniel: We went into it as kind of a lark—clean underwear!—but Constance sent us a strongly worded email about how we weren’t taking it seriously enough. She assigned us homework—essays about San Francisco’s tsunami evacuation zones and our fire safety risk.
Ben: She had researched our third-floor apartment and insisted on a rope ladder in case the fire escape was blocked and a hand-cranked generator to power a phone. And obvious essentials, like candles, flares, emergency blanket…and, yes, underwear.
Nathaniel: She also asked what was important to us personally. And we said, well, if the world is ending, we need a cocktail—so there’s a bottle of Hendrick’s gin and some Castelvetrano olives.
Ben: One offshoot of reading the disaster essays made me realize we needed to have another escape route. We do not want to be the last people standing, so I had her include the book Final Exit, written by assisted suicide advocate Derek Humphry back in the nineties.
Nathaniel: And I asked for The Norton Shakespeare, the edition I had in college. I’m a big Henry V fan—I can get really excited about Agincourt.
Ben: We also told her we could not live a day without art. So it holds a few pieces, like a small watercolor by Cliff Hengst, who also did our wedding invitation. If the world is on fire and we’re out on the streets, we’ll still have art that’s close to our hearts.
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