Via BoingBoing, a how-to video on foraging and preparing bamboo shoots. It’s splitting journalistic hairs, but we’ll note that the reporter at the beginning is actually in our hometown–Los Angeles.
We’ll close out bike to work week with a roundup of the week’s hijinks before we get back to our other obsessions–vegetables and booze.
Mr. Homegrown Evolution delivered a PowerPoint on behalf of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition at the Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative conference. We talked about the pragmatic details of biking in L.A. (hint–route choice!) and pitched the notion of changing our built environment to encourage walking and cycling. Here in Los 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 particularly angry bus driver and Mikey Wally managed to get banned for life from both Dodger Stadium and CALTRANS headquarters for doing skids on his fixie.
Lastly, the group calling themselves the Crimanimalz released a second freeway cycling video that has now gone around the world thanks to BoingBoing. No doubt, this ride will inspire debate.
In honor of bike to work week another round of cargo bikes, this time with photos courtesy of comrade Colin Bogart, former board president of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition. These bikes were part of this February’s North American Handmade Bicycle Show in Portland. Get our your wallet, because these wheels are spendy.
Here’s a very heavy looking bike for carrying your apples around with. It’s by Black Sheep Bikes of Fort Collins Colorado.
Frances Bike’s bakfiet. Looks to me like a giant colander with wheels.
A very beautiful, retro styled bike by Alternative Needs Transportation.
A bike from Ahearne Cycles.
Looks like the golfing crowd has a “plan b” just in case the shit comes down and there’s no way to charge the carts. Of course by that time we’ll have ripped up the courses to plant food and Tiger will use his swing to wield a scythe.
Bruce F. the creator of that nice rooftop garden we featured last week dropped us a note to say that he kept a diary about the process that you can read here, via the Daily Kos. Bruce also mentioned a few other interesting links:
Humanure Composting via Feral Scholar
A fiery essay, The Politics of Food is Politics via Counterpunch
and A 35-Point Practical Guide for Action by Bruce himself
Thanks Bruce F! And we’ll be back soon after we recover from our weekend trip to the emergency room (kidney stones–ouch!).
In the course of writing and researching our book, The Urban Homestead, coming out this June, we learned a lot about contemporary agricultural practices. And what we learned sure ain’t pretty. It has made our trips to the supermarket, to supplement the food we grow at home, a series of moral dilemmas. Where did this food come from? How was it grown or raised? What are these mysterious ingredients? Our book contains practical how-to advice for ways to deal with these supermarket conundrums by learning to grow your own food.
Journalist Michael Pollan, author of the Omnivore’s Dilemma, recently wrote an editorial, “Why Bother” in the New York Times Magazine arguing that it’s time for us all to think about planting some vegetables. He has a new book, In Defense of Food an Eater’s Manifesto, that addresses the ethical decisions we face in our trips to the supermarket. In this engaging, hour long lecture at the Google headquarters, Pollan gives some practical advice for navigating those dreadful supermarket isles. Put it on while you cook dinner:
