We All Have Our Triggers

...s and fruits have seasons, The former head of a major produce company said Amazon told him it wanted to sell marquee fresh items at low prices every day. The executive said he had to explain that certain products, like berries or lettuce, may be available all year thanks to global supply chains, but that they cost more in the off-season. Forcing flat, low prices would put too much risk on growers. Amazon executives, the person said, were caught of...

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Dystopia Report: The I-710 Corridor Aesthetic Master Plan

...reeway builder’s utopian promise of speed and liberty delivers, instead, exurban sprawl, congestion and waves of urban decay and gentrification. That utopian vision of Freeway building is personified in mid-century figures like Robert Moses and the city fathers of early 20th century Los Angeles. But Jameson goes on to question, “does anyone believe in progress any longer? . . . are the architects and urbanists still passionately at work on Utopian...

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Is the Urban Homesteading Trend Over?

...re, they can just buy it at the store. She is correct that interest in DIY homesteading books wane during good economic times. But I was curious to see whether Google search trends for DIY topics would back up Sack’s hunch. Above is the result for “bread recipe” searches and you can definitely see a slight decline over the last two years. “Jam Recipe” searches “Jam recipe” shows a similar decline as well as seasonal spikes that coincide with canni...

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Self Irrigating Planter Resources

Homegrown Evolution is up in San Francisco this weekend to do a talk about the world of self-irrigating planters (also known as SIPs or self-watering planters or a couple of other variations on that general verbiage). In our opinion SIPs are the food growing tool of the aspiring urban agriculturalist. Make or buy one of these things and vegetable container gardening is a breeze. No need to water your pots three times a day during the summer! For...

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June: National Bathroom Reading Month

...the punk rock (not to mention murder/suicide) reference? Arthur Magazine. Homegrown Evolution, being cheap, can never pass up a free publication when we see one though we usually skip stooping to pick up the senior citizen rag Not Born Yesterday. Arthur is always worth picking up. Lot’s of great articles here from The Center for Tactical Magic, Erik Davis and our favorite media theorist Douglas Rushkoff. The May issue has a column by Chicago’s ma...

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