Scooters? Not a New Idea

July 1, 2019

...8 · New York Herald (New York, New York) · Newspapers.com It turns out the urban scooter craze isn’t a new idea. From a story in an October 8, 1916 newspaper, “Skidding Through Fact and Fancy on an Autoped: Solo Devil Wagon Taken Up in a Serious Way Might Add New Terrors to City Life” is a description of motorized scooter not all that different than the ones we see today: You stand on the cute platform and get your feet neatly fitted on the rubber...

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Little Library Walks

Mr. Homegrown

June 27, 2024

Design

4 Comments

...relative in San Francisco, or pet sitting in Pomona I like to punctuate my urban dérives with visits to these little cast-off book sites. To navigate, I have a Little Free Library mobile app on my phone. With the app you can check in and note if you left or took a book. There’s also a web based version. The app and map have only the Little Free Libraries that someone has decided to list, so you can, of course, find many more unofficial libraries o...

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Aerated Compost Tea: Does it Work?

Mr. Homegrown

December 6, 2012

Composting, Gardening

15 Comments

...e’s a lot aerated compost tea brewers on the interwebs! I’ve been asked by Urban Farm Magazine to write a short piece on the pros and cons of aerated compost tea (ACT for short). I’ve been sifting through the peer reviewed literature on the subject. Most of the studies show, at best, mixed results. And, honestly, my bias is against gardening techniques that require gadgets or novel techniques with no analog in nature. I’ve also tried it myself and...

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On Living in Los Angeles Without a Car: A Debate

Mr. Homegrown

May 21, 2013

Bikes, Transportation

41 Comments

...elters here. Bus stops are ill-marked afterthoughts in an already unlovely urban landscape. I stand in the pole shade, wondering if the bus will ever come, and I seethe about the way this city treats its pedestrians. Erik: It’s a stereotype that LA is car-centric. If I had a dollar for every time some out of town journalist drops in here for a weekend and files a report repeating the “nobody uses public transit in LA” mantra I’d be a millionaire....

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Piet Oudolf’s Enhanced Nature

Mr. Homegrown

May 13, 2013

Garden Design, Gardening

5 Comments

...at’s pragmatic, recognizing both the need for natural ecosystems within an urban environment, while at the same time providing visual interest. Oudolf’s imprint is on the landscape, but to most people that human touch will remain on a subliminal level. It’s a brilliant “third way” strategy outside of the dualistic smackdown between the simulated nature of English style gardening and the rectilinear hedges of Versailles. Oudolf’s plan for the Serpe...

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