[Image by Jeremy Price]

LA City Council Prez Eric Garcetti’s Council District 13’s hosting a new workshop: Planning 102: Parking Regulations and Policy.

The informational workshop’ll offer info on city parking requirements, an update on the proposed parking code amendments, and presentations on parking by experts Mott Smith and UCLA professor Donald Shoup.

My main curiosity ’bout this workshop has to do with parking meters. Will Shoup’s suggestion about upping meter fees to reduce congestion be taken? Is there’s a concrete plan to replace our ailing parking meters?

It happens Saturday, June 16, 2007, 9:30 am - 1 pm at the Will and Ariel Durant Branch Library, 7140 Sunset Blvd. RSVP by June 13.

Tags: parking, losangeles

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DWP here means the LA Department of Water and Power — which, BTW, offers a green energy option customers can opt for. But DIYers might consider producing their own (gray)water and power, saving some cash and reducing pollution through your effort:

Learn to install your own solar panels. If you’re in the Bay area, volunteer for Grid Alternatives to learn how to install solar panels. Plus you’ll be “helping low income residents cut costs on installing a new solar system for their home,” according to Sara Holt of Green Options, who blogged a 2-part series on her first-hand volunteer experience.

Put in your own water recycling system. Would-be water recyclers might wanna check out Dam Nation: Dispatches From the Water Underground, a recently-published DIY guide cum manifesto for the gray water movement. The book comes from Greywater Guerrillas, a women-founded team that promotes and installs gray water systems — coverly, because California’s complicated laws make these systems expensive to put in, even though gray water use is legal in the state.

Encourage water conservation — by making a film about it. The Intelligent Use of Water Film Competition, run by the Rain Bird Corporation, wants to see your short films (1-20 mins) about water conservation. Finalists’ll be invited to a screening event on September 30, 2007, in my sunny town; winners’ll receive $6,000 for judges’ selection and $3,000 for audience’s pick.

[crossposted on BlogHer]

Tags: graywater, recycle, solar

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• Death to the chip clip. A v. short YouTube video instructs you on how to fold your chip bag so you’ll never need those plastic clippy thingies again.
• Death of the water heater, as we know it, cuz a solar water bill in the state assembly would offer millions in incentives to install solar water heaters. “A residential solar water heating system can cost $4,000 to $6,000, but with the incentives proposed under Huffman’s bill, consumers could recoup their costs in less than 10 years through reduced gas bills.”



• Death of the desk — now replaceable with a windshield. If you have a desktop though, you need to be able to hang stuff from the ceiling…. Prolly not practical for most, as intact windshields aren’t all that easy to scavenge either. [image from Lifehacker]
• Death of the spelling bee. Okay not really. Better title: Spelling contests in nonalphabetic languages. Not everyone does spelling bees, but this Slate article spells out the details of some interesting language contests around the world.

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[The kickoff post’s here; dark red lines mark the streets I’ve walked so far]

If Santa Monica seems to you a crunchy city — well then the hippies living on Palisades Ave. must’ve invested in Whole Foods way back when cuz their houses are huge now.

This short, 2-block street has gigantic houses and even its own park — aka a glorified roundabout. Goose Egg park, it’s called, on account of the shape, I presume. Happy dogs were prancing on it with their happy owners when I walked by –

Georgina’s a residential street I used to run down all the time with my marathon training buddies way back when. We’d start at the Senior Center on Ocean and Broadway, run up Ocean, then turn onto Georgina, going through its breaks and bends before popping up to San Vincente on 26th.

Theoretically, I know that I must’ve gotten up at like 4:30 am some days to make it to these long runs that started a little after 5 am. Where that driven, punctual girl went since, I have no idea.

My past selves are like distant strangers I never got to know very well.

As you get farther west, Georgina’s trees get taller, making it a nice, shady road for runners. When I hit 26th yesterday, I realized I was right in front of my shrink’s office.

Which made me think maybe I shoulda saved this run until today, when I actually have an appointment –

Update, 6/3/07: La Mesa is here.

Tags: walk, santamonica, walking

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• Wine triumphs over beer. “Wine, even when it’s made at oil-refinery volume, can trade on pastoral associations; beer seems somewhat industrial, no matter how handcrafted the brew.”
• Art Walk gets a DASH. Downtown LA’s monthly museum and art gallery event gets a shuttle to take people around from 7 pm - 10 pm for free. If you prefer to bike it, join the Art Ride.
• World Environment Day happens June 5. The day’s apparently “one of the principal vehicles through which the United Nations stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and action.” Closest event’s in San Francisco….



• Starbucks is slowly switching over to rGBH-free milk. Before, 37% of Starbucks’ milk was hormone-free; now the mermaid’s up to 51%. A Starbucks rep told me December 2006 that Starbucks plans to be 100% hormone-free by the end of 2007 — Glad to hear progress is happening! [image by Food & Water Watch]

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A weekly series of questions unrelated to the usual topics that I’ve been wondering about but haven’t been able to google the answers to.

Been tagged by a meme that asks for Seven Random Facts from my life. But since I’ve done the 5 thing you didn’t know about me meme, then added an item for the 6 things that not many people would know about me meme, I’ll just add one more:

I have 3 balls — 1 tennis ball, 1 softball, and 1 larger synthetic thing — rolling around on my balcony cuz the kids next door play this “bounce ball against my wall” game all the time, inevitable throwing the ball into my balcony from time to time.

I’m keeping the balls for now, as a silent protest against the noise :P

I don’t wanna tell the kids to stop because kids need a space to play….

What would you do with the balls?

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Recycling is for party people, and girls know how to turn anything into a party, I discovered on the blogosphere today. Actually, the posts’re more just about recycling — I just tried to give ‘em party-related titles. Still, a good brief look at recycling efforts happening on the web and beyond –

Girls get TRASHed. Kate Sheppard of Grist went to the Sasquatch Music Festival in George, Wash., volunteered at the TRASHed Recycling Store — and found that, aside from the TRASHed booth, the festival offered ZERO recycling options. Get festivals to change their unrecycled ways, Kate urges, and gives you the Festival’s email addy to get you started.

Bottles and cans, just clap your hands: Umbra of Grist gives you the skinny on beverage container recycling laws. In California, recycling pays — which is why we have scavengers digging through trash for recyclable materials. However you feel ’bout scavengers, California’s 61% redemption rate in 2005’s almost double the nationwide average of just 33% — although we’re still below the state mandate of 80%. Do you get paid for recycling in your state? If not, you might be interested in backing federal and state Bottle Bills.

Dancing in the rain (collected in a barrel). Amy Stodghill at Green Options shows you how to get the most out of your water. I don’t think I’d get much use out of a rain barrel since it doesn’t rain much in Los Angeles, but I do water my herb garden with my dish-rinsed water –

[crossposted on BlogHer]

Tags: recycle

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A twice-weekly sharing of eco-shwag.

This week’s giveaway’s for dog-owners or walkers: Skooperbox, a 100% recycled and 100% biodegradable alternative to carrying plastic bags to pick up dog poop.

I have 3 packages to give away, each conaining 30 skooperboxes and a leash clip.

Comment or email by Friday to get into the drawing; 3 winners’ll be selected on Saturday. US addresses only.

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[Find eco-flipflops here, slides and clogs here]

At long last, a post about green shoes that actually cover your heels.

El Naturalista — which btw has a store in Santa Monica — offers some very cool eco-leather options,

To the left’s the El Naturalista Leaf — Vegetable tanned leather treated with natural oils, yours for $87.

To the right’s the El Naturalista Slip On. More vegetable tanned leather, this time for $95.

The Cali-based Simple Shoes also has a couple options.

Left: Simple Shoes GT Jane are like green Keds, with bamboo lining, recycled tire, water-based cements, and 100% post consumer paper pulp foot forms. Fork over $80.

Right: Simple Shoes Coos Toes are way too crunchy-looking for me, but they’re made of jute, bamboo linings, recycled tire, sater based cements, and 100% post consumer paper pulp. Fork over $85.

A green pair I own are Camper Wabis. I bought these in a magnaniomous moment, and while I like them, I also do wonder what I was thinking, paying what I believe was $80 or so for shoes to wear around the house. Still, these were very eco-friendly — biodegreable, recycleable. I’m not sure if this design’s still avaliable, but you can stop by a Camper store in town and ask ’bout the current green options.

Sneakers are next.

Updates, 2/2/08: These VivoBarefoot slipons are made by Terra Plana, which uses mostly recycled materials, chrome-free leather, and rubber. Their soles are puncture-resistant but very thin, and are supposed to make you feel like you’re walking as close to barefoot as possible. Cost: $116.

Simple Shoes have added more eco-slip-ons as part of their eco-sneaks and green toe lines. Eco-features vary, but include hemp uppers, bamboo lining, recycled PET pedbeds, recycled PET wrapped natural latex gore, organic cotton linings, recycled tire outsole, and 100% post consumer paper pulp foot forms.

Eco friendly company Patagonia makes a few different slip-ons, made of a variety of green materials including eco-treated leather, recycled EVA, jute, and recycled rubber. Pick from the Nuka, Rimu Sei, or Cardon, priced at $80, $110, $90 and $110, respectively.

Terrasoles slip-ons are made with recycled microfiber fleece and look comfy. Not sure what the soles are made of. Cost: $30.45 - $49.95.

Pick from 3 different cute slip ons from Teva, a shoe company with an entire collection of shoes made from post-consumer recycled materials, including post-consumer recycled PET canvas upper and lining and 50% post-consumer recycled rubber outsoles. Cost: $70.

And finally, a post on eco-friendly sneakers.

Tags: shoe, sandal, camper, simple, elnaturalista

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What would you do for 15 minutes of fame? Would you drink 29 cups of Starbucks coffee in a day for a chance at micro-celebrity?

At least one boy would. That’s Winter, whose goal’s to visit every company-owned Starbucks store. Fans and voyeurs have been tracking Winter’s journey via his website, Starbucks Everywhere, for years; now, Winter’s got a whole film — titled Starbucking — documenting his bizzare adventure.

Why? Well, it’s basically the one unique idea Winter thought up to distinguish himself.

Strangely, Winter seems hyper-aware of the utter meaninglessness of his quest. No, the project has no purpose, and no, the project actually helping anyone, Winter says more than once in Starbucking.

Winter basically spends his days racing from one Starbucks to another. And despite its admitted meaninglessness, this lifestyle, Winter says, makes him happy.

Happiness, of course, can be widely defined. This is a guy who’s taken lotsa meds, who’s suddenly changed his name to Winter, who fails at even strange, cerebral, long-distance romantic relationships, and who nurses a heavy strip club habit.

Mostly, the guy seems sadly lonely — which explains why he derives so much pleasure from the bits and pieces of attention he culls via his Starbucks project. He saves the holiday cards he gets from Starbucks employees. He shows off the signed copy of Howard Schultz’s book about Starbucks.

This narcissistic project, of course, requires a rather myopic view of the world. Winter opines that his project shows people should spend less time working and more time on self-actualization — yet doesn’t quite connect the similarities between the meaninglessness of an unfulfilling job and the equal meaninglessness of trailing new Starbucks stores.

Perhaps Winter’s myopia’s most visible in his seeming conceptualization of Starbucks as a benign force that just is. While Winter acknowledges that Starbucks probably does unfairly drive out local stores by engaging in predatory practices, he dismisses this problem as that of a few bad apples employed at Starbucks. Similarly, Winter stays conveniently oblivious to Starbucks’ coffee sourcing and labor practices.

The oblivion lets Winter to frame his project as a sort of meaningless, dada-esque endeavor — as opposed to one that’s instrumental in funding and driving a predatory corporation desperate to market itself as a simple, benign, perhaps even positive part of our increasingly homogenized landscape.

I mean, do ethics matter in desperate tactics for attention-getting? On his website, Winter provides links to reviews of Starbucking. “some good, some bad,” he notes, “but publicity is publicity.”

Tags: starbucking, starbucks, coffee

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