[Photo by Don LaVange]

Culver City isn’t actually that far — it’s about 7 miles from me. But taking the bus there takes a full hour, as I discovered on Sunday when I went to Hannah’s Kombucha Kamp –

Getting to USC takes me about an hour too, though that’s 13 miles from me. In any case, the Santa Monica to Culver City bus trip goes so slowly I wanna do it as infrequently as possible –

Which brings me to Green Drinks, which is tomorrow (deets on my calendar) in Culver City. Anna’s suggested biking it again — so that’s prolly what we’ll do. It’s a rather long distance on my pink townie, which is really intended for leisurely biking….

Which makes me think that what we really need is a Green Drinks Santa Monica.

After all, a new Green Drinks in Hermosa Beach, organized by one Nicky, has just launched! That one’s 7 pm on the 2nd Thursday of every month at Sangria, 68 Pier Avenue in Hermosa Beach.

So Green Drinks Santa Monica, anyone? And if so, which bar?

Update, 2/07: A lil more planning on Santa Monica Green Drinks — and another reason why I don’t plan on taking the bus to Culver City anymore –

Tags: greendrinks, bike, bicycle, cycle, transportation

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A Carless culture’s a series of posts that examines how we can make de-car-ing a sexy and viable travel solution for Angelenos.

Picked this up on the bus today, on my way to school. It’s a new MTA map (PDF) that shows you all the bus lines that run every 12 mins or less during the day on weekdays!

If you’re relying on public transportation, scheduling can be tough if you aren’t carrying a super hi-tech gadget that lets you log on to check bus schedules.

Meaning, if I took the bus to Green Drinks in Culver City, I basically need to know when exactly I’m leaving beforehand so I can make sure I’m at the stop in time to catch it.

The problem is — What if I want to have another drink? I then risk waiting at the bus stop for a long long time, if it’s one of those once an hour buses — or in the worst case scenario, I might miss the last bus.

Now I can just pull out this handy map to find the nearest bus line that’ll take me home whenever.

Actually, I just realized that Green Drinks wasn’t the best example cuz that happens at night, while the map’s about daytime services. But still — the map could be very useful for extended happy hour days.

I found out about this nice lil map via one of Zach’s post on LAist — which has now gotten Zach dubbed the 12-minute man.

Tags: bus, mta, losangeles, map

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• TreePeople’s diplomatic work in the LA area. “We know it doesn’t work when you go in and tell a community ‘This is how it’s going to be.’ (thanks mark)
• Six ways to rewild consumer culture, according to adbusters. Step 1: subvertise.



• My congressman Waxman’s getting frustrated he can’t get Bush’s admin to release docs that would prove whether or not the Bush admin covered up global warming info. “The committee isn’t trying to obtain state secrets or documents that could affect our immediate national security,” said Waxman …. “We are simply seeking answers to whether the White House’s political staff is inappropriately censoring impartial government scientists.”
• Google and its effort to digitize all sortsa books. My current opinion is pro-Google’s efforts, as it obeys fair use laws and already lets authors who don’t want their digitized works avaliable online to opt out —

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A series that runs every Tuesday, where I ask questions unrelated to the environment, fair trade, or local politics that I’ve been wondering about but haven’t been able to google the answers to. Any advice is appreciated.

First: So I know my bio & faq sez I’ll respond to all comments. But lately — while I heart the majority of the comments that come in — cuz green LA girl readers are intelligent and thoughtful people :) — Sometimes the comments are BOTH off-topic AND self-promotional, and it kinda bugs me.

So I’m thinking of changing that bit in my bio & faq, to read that I’ll respond to comments that seem to require and merit a response. This would, of course, be the vast majority of comments — I just don’t like feeling bound to respond to comments that don’t seem to seek my response, or that seem to seek my response but don’t deserve it.

Let me know if you have violent reactions about this, one way or the other, regarding this new move.

More importantly: My iPod headphones are not working properly. The left ear part is half dead, so the music in my right ear is much louder. That, combined with the fact that these fucking headphones fall out of my ears constantly when I’m running makes me think I need to ditch Steve Jobs’ headphones and get something altogether new.

What’s your recommendation for runner-friendly, uncrappy headphones?

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You may have to be me to feel as fascinated by this as I am, but I did a lil interview (MP3) with ORF, which Janko, the interviewer, described as something akin to the NPR of Austria.

The whole thing was in English, of course — but in the MP3, a German-speaking woman does the voice-over for my soundbyte. This is what fascinates me more than whether or not anyone Austria listened to this.

The convo’s about the green blogosphere, the Starbucks Challenge, green LA girl, advertising on blogs, WorldChanging LA, etc. Not sure what the copyright issues are here — I think Janko put this up personally to be nice so I could hear it — so the MP3 might not be up for long.

So if you’re interested, listen to it now, and try to ignore all the “um”s and “you know”s I managed to insert in the short sections when I wasn’t voiced over. I hope the woman speaking over me didn’t “um” and “you know” in German –

Tags: radio, orf, austria

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• A quick primer on the difference between Shia and Sunni. Also, self-flagellation on Park Ave., NYC.
• “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” That’s Michael Pollan’s quick & dirty advice on what we should eat to be maximally healthy.



• President Siel was v. good for the environment and had a 70% approval rating. However, she left the economy in ruins — which I have a hard time reconciling with the approval rating, but whatev. (via Celsias)
• CBS News’ kitchy report on TED (video). You may, however, have to watch an annoying Oral-B commercial first.

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Last night, I cleaned out my closet, and this afternoon, biked over to Crossroads, then Wasteland, to sell the lil bag off stuff — and got $20.75 for it.

So I decided to get a black hoodie from Crossroads for $16.50. And I dropped off the rejects at Goodwill and biked home.

Then I walked over to 18th St. Coffee House for a cup of coffee ($1.50) and read Christopher Isherwood:

To live sanely in Los Angeles … you have to cultivate the art of staying awake…. Wake up, wake up — before you sign that seven-year contract, buy that house you don’t really want, marry that girl you secretly despise…..

You’ve got to think, to discriminate, to exercise your own free will and judgement. And you must do this, I repeat, without tension, quite rationally and calmly. For if you give way to fury against the hypnotists, if you smash the radio and tear the newspapers to shreds, you will only rush to the other extreme and fossilize into defiant eccentricity. Hollywood’s two polar types are the cynically drunken writer aggressively nursing a ten-year-old reputation and the theatrically self-conscious hermit who strides the boulevard in sandals, home-made shorts and a prophetic beard, muttering against the Age of the Machines.

Afterwards I went for a lil run, showered, then graded papers. Now I’m thinking of watching Nea.

I de-car’d and de-junk’d, did what I wanted to for the most part and have time for myself — and made $2.75.

I have a pretty good life, though I still often have trouble seeing it –

Tags: crossroads, wasteland, santamonica

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Zach — the guy I interviewed for this post — was so kind as to take the bus to our meeting. In fact, he initially offered to bus it all the way to Santa Monica, but I met him half way (actually, only like 1/4 of the way) in Westwood.

Read, be inspired. And let me know if you decide to run for your local neighborhood council, cuz maybe I’ll stump for ya –

What’s in a neighborhood council? Ask Zach Behrens, a 26-year-old member of the Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council, and you’ll hear about the opportunity to get directly involved in local government, making tangible, specific changes to improve your neighborhood. And while neighborhood councils are not primarily made up of 20-somethings, government newbies have a wide-open shot at getting one of these elected positions.

Behrens’ position with SONC interested me partly because of Zach’s age, and partly because I was trying to get a better sense of what a neighborhood council does. Many — perhaps most — Angelenos don’t even know that our city has neighborhood councils. These councils were created in 1999 as part of a major charter reform initiative designed to “provide a forum for raising local issues, as well as providing a way to comment on city-wide matters,” according to the Neighborhood Council Review Commission.

More on WorldChanging LA.

Tags: losangeles, government, shermanoaks, neighborhoodcouncil

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• Fair Trade Valentine’s Day Action Kit, yours for $15. I heart chocolate.
• Tony Blair to meet to talk about the Ethiopian coffee trademark issue with Tadesse Meskela, the Ethiopian coffee co-op guy featured in Black Gold. The two will also watch Black Gold. “Meskela already has the backing of Ed Balls, economic secretary to the Treasury.” More about the trademark issue here.



• Jewel cases are so 90s — So get recycled CD sleeves. I mentioned them before, and now they’re avaliable for your eco-consumption –
• LA fishies still have lots of DDT :( Another reason for me to curb my sushi habit.

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I netflixed Blue Vinyl on Worsted Witch’s recommendation, and now wished I’d moved it up my queue! (sidenote: I have 187 films in my queue. You? Also, when is Weeds season 2 coming out?)

This is a personal story turned documentary. Judith Helfand (one of the creators of the film) watches as her parents replace the former wood siding on their house’s exterior with baby blue vinyl siding. The vinyl’s cheap, durable, supposed to be safe — and even comes textured with a wood-like design.

But Judith isn’t so convinced. So she decides to investigate where exactly vinyl comes from, and if, indeed, the stuff is benign.

Turns out, vinyl’s far from safe — and is especially unsafe for workers producing the stuff, many of whom have died or survived a rare cancer closely linked with vinyl production.

In fact in Venice, Italy, executives of a vinyl manufacturing company were tried for manslaughter, for willfully hiding info about the cancerous effects of working in said factory. We see a scientist who reported to this vinyl company — before everyone started dying — that the chemicals in vinyl production did indeed cause a rare form of cancer, testify to this fact at the hearing. The scene when a man who’s lost his larynx speaks through his monotone, mechanical voice box about all his dead co-workers is especially painful.

You hear Americans ask questions at a meeting convened by a vinyl company in an attempt to assure nearby residents that what they’re doing is super safe. One resident asks about an incident when the company factories spewed pollutants that were visibly big enough to rain onto their bodies, forcing residents to run into their houses covering their faces. Another asks why, when the trees in the ‘hood are all green, the trees facing the factories are brown.

The film isn’t simply a one-sided tirade against vinyl. You hear residents of towns where vinyl companies do business, saying that yes, there are downsides, but that’s just the cost of business and that these companies provide jobs. You see Habitat for Humanity create homes made entirely of vinyl donated by vinyl companies — and brand new homeowners crying because they’re so grateful to have a home of their own.

And yet, what becomes very clear is that the big winners are the vinyl companies, and the big losers is the public at large.

Judith takes this huge, worldwide issue and applies it to the personal — by slowly trying to convince her parents to replace the vinyl siding with something more eco friendly — in a symbolic gesture that’ll hopefully start getting people to think twice about vinyl.

Most of you reading green LA girl already know about the horrific ills of PVC, the main stuff vinyl’s made of — partly due to the work done by Blue Vinyl in educating us about PVC. If you haven’t already, stop buying anything new that contains vinyl / PVC –

And if you have a minute, check out Blue Vinyl’s consumer advocacy site, My House is Your House. Then check out its tips for direct action.

Tags: vinyl, bluevinyl, pvc, environment, toxic, poison

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