TV Turnoff week April 23 – 30, 2008

April 25, 2008

...l those evenings quickly filled with activities. We learned fencing, print making, bread baking and countless other skills. We never regretted exiling the TV to the garage. Recently the tube’s come back into our lives with a certain DVD mail service, but we feel like we’ve tamed the beast and can heartily recommend living without TV (definitely without cable and broadcast). It’s become a shock to see cable or broadcast television when we visit rel...

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California Dreaming

Mr. Homegrown

May 2, 2008

Thoughtstylings

2 Comments

...national. My 83 year old mom broke her sternum in an automobile accident, making her yet another victim of a city designed for cars that forces everyone to drive, even for distances of less than a mile. After the accident, many hours were spent dealing with doctors, auto body shops, insurance companies and the vile Automobile Club whose lobbyists, by the way, are busy in the state capital pushing for the auto-centric planning that ruins our citie...

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Cargo Bike Roundup

Mr. Homegrown

May 5, 2008

Bikes, Transportation

9 Comments

...cargo trike in L.A. With the Xtracycle, cargo cinches up tight in the back making for a narrow profile. This allows passage through tight spaces, such as our substandard bike lanes and busy traffic. You pretty much ride it like you would any other regular bike. Surly has recently come out with a sturdy frame/Xtracycle combination. Local biking comrade Josef Bray-Ali just picked up a Dutch cargo bike called a bakfiet similar to the one pictured abo...

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The kids are all bikin’

Mr. Homegrown

May 17, 2008

Bikes

1 Comment

...os Angeles, with the majority of bike commuters being poor folks of color, making our city more bikable is a civil rights issue. For an overview of the bike to work day festivities (which ironically, since they take place in the middle of a weekday, tend to involve mostly the self-employed or unemployed) read Damien Newton’s post on the excellent Streetsblog LA. Elsewhere the fabulous Enci, our actor/cyclist comrade, had another run-in with a part...

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Do Something Day

Mr. Homegrown

November 28, 2008

Thoughtstylings

4 Comments

...this animist notion of consumer objects to the next level, simultaneously making fun of our obsession with consumerism and, in a kind of post-modern mental judo, using that perceived obsession to sell cars (a healthy dose of sex doesn’t hurt). It’s this type of hyper-consumerism that provokes a backlash from organizations such as Adbusters, the folks behind Buy Nothing Day. Yet, I wish that Buy Nothing Day was, instead, Do Something Day or, perha...

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