Chicken of the Woods

...calyptus. The very same mushroom pundits suggest thoroughly cooking all Laetiporus. I can report having consumed a lot of the mushroom we foraged with no ill effects. It was, in fact, one of the most delicious mushrooms I’ve ever consumed. But one should not trust the musings of an aging urban homesteading blogger when foraging for mushrooms. Find yourself a local mushroom nerd or run it past your cats. That said, don’t be too fearful either or yo...

Read…

Worst of NextDoor

...nity is somehow more “open minded” than other parts of the country or that urban people are more progressive than rural people. These are stereotypes that I’ve been guilty of harboring in the past. We are all, myself included, easily sucked into the sort of hateful trolling that Silicon Valley has found a way to monetize on social media. How do you keep people glued to a website like NextDoor? Just offer the spectacle of your elder neighbors teari...

Read…

Hey New York Times Let’s Dump the Wheels Column

...f communities, thanks to the insatiable hunger for space cars claim in our urban spaces. Failing to point out these objective facts makes your auto columns little more propaganda. Where is your bike column? Where is your transit advice column? Where is your walk-ability coverage? Sure, you touch on these issues elsewhere but these subjects have no dedicated column like “Wheels.” Perhaps it’s time to start treating cars the way you might treat ciga...

Read…

Saturday Tweets: A Big Excuse to Post Cats with Mustaches

...canyon streets” and “no setbacks” as a negative aspect to architecture and urban design: pic.twitter.com/RbVvKEN4EO — Pushing The Needle (@pushtheneedle) July 27, 2018 URL: https://t.co/zX4xznNBIV — Reader (@readiesresearch) July 22, 2018 Sharing Stuff without Apps – https://t.co/BqjMgOz84H — Eric Rochow (@GardenForkTV) July 22, 2018 How jeans are distressed at the sweatshop https://t.co/svVoG5rTSm — Root Simple (@rootsimple) July 27, 2018 Coffee...

Read…

For the Locals . . .

On that foot sign Alissa Walker, one of my favorite journalists, covers urban design here in Los Angeles. She wrote a great piece on our nieghborhood’s iconic podiatrist sign. Walker agrees with me that we need much more than kitschy signs to mark our neighborhoods. She concludes, We need more reminders of what history predates our presence. We need more streets that are designed to connect us instead of being fast-forwarded through in cars. We n...

Read…