On Living in Los Angeles Without a Car: A Debate

May 21, 2013

...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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Bee Fever in Los Angeles

Mr. Homegrown

June 14, 2013

Animals, Bees

8 Comments

...the radical “backwards” approach to beekeeping advocated by LA’s maverick urban beekeeper Kirk Anderson, Anderson learned from apiarist Charles Martin Simon, who invented the concept of “beekeeping backwards.” Simon’s approach was stupidly simple: Give the bees a clean box, put them in it and leave them alone. If they get sick? Don’t medicate them. Let them die. Then get some more bees. Amen. Selecting for strong bees is an approach that, in my o...

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The Gathering Storm

Mr. Homegrown

January 11, 2025

Thoughtstylings

3 Comments

...amage I’d be saddened but not surprised. But the fire reached deep into an urban area at a great distance from the wilderness, much further than I ever would have expected. That this fire hit a place where so many people are aware of and working to counter the dangers of climate change shows, as Peter says, that no place is safe. As an Altadena resident said on Reddit, “Losing everything is an abstract notion until you lose everything”. Here’s a h...

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