Green Jobs…update

I love when smarter, more qualified, legitimate pundits echo my thoughts. I just wish they were around to back me up when naysayers are piling up on me!

Here’s a great article about green jobs, green economy, from the CEO of the David Suzuki Foundation, Peter Robinson.
GREEN JOBS ARTICLE.

It’s too bad it needs to come from the CEO of the Suzuki Foundation to make an impact for some.
But, if that’s what it takes…read away!

Over-packaging

Jhoan went to Zehrs the other day.
She picked up one of the dirty little chickens.
Damn, how I love those scrumptious, oily, brown little chickens.

I knew she was getting it. I knew I’d be digging into it, ripping every shred of meat free as soon as I got the chance.
I could see it. Though the clear plastic top-bubble, as it sits in the black plastic bottom-bubble.
I want to eat another one, just thinking about yesterday’s.

When Jhoan arrived with the food, I couldn’t wait. But I couldn’t see it. “Where’s the chicken? You said you were getting one,” I said.
“It’s right behind you,” she said.

When I turned, it was indeed on the table. However, I saw immediately why I had glazed over it (mmmmm…glaze).
It was different in some way.

Zehrs for some stupid reason, decided to add packaging to this plastic bubble. It wasn’t enough that they were selling like, like…hot and greasy chicken. They decided to add a comfort handle to make them MORE appealing. God forbid that someone has to use two hands to pick up their dinner.

This kind of thing must seem like a great idea in the design headquarters, but in reality, it is a disgusting waste of paper in lieu of a sticker with the nutritional facts on it.
Am I being too picky or is this an irresponsible move? How many thousands of these babies are going to sell, and with them, stupid paper carriers that are going to end up in the recycle bin (assuming they’re recycled)? It’s like the silly paper sleeve that covers the hot take-out coffee cup. The waste is numbing. I really can’t see how this was brought to a board, approved, and rolled out.

Zehrs, this is so dumb.

NIMBY on CJAM for January 13th, 2009

Adam and I had a great show today.
I had to record my interview very last minute (yesterday), and edit it very late last night.
Maya Ruggles from FedUp Windsor Community Gardening, came to Phog last night so I could interview her, as she had knee surgery this morning, when I might have been able to do a phone interview. She was game for a phone interview, from home, no less than two hours after her surgery, but having had two knee surgeries (including something very similar to her procedure today) there is no way I would expect ANYONE to talk to me for 10 minutes after that gruesomeness.

The piece was maybe one of the best I’ve done since Adam and I started recording Not In My Backyard. I just got a real sense of groundbreaking, up-and-coming buzz around the work that Maya and FedUp is doing. It was great to talk with her and to get a greater appreciation for what they’ve done and for what lies ahead. I think I see some volunteering in Jhoan’s and my future with FedUp.

Adam interviewed Chris Mangin of Artcite over the phone, and discussed Art’s Birthday. No, not the dude, Art…but art, the expression. It’s having its 1,000,046th birthday this year, and is being celebrated at Phog Lounge. During the interview, I was surprised to learn that The Situationists (Socialist Parisian artists in the 60s) had a hand in how this event is celebrated. For those of you paying extra-close attention, The Situationists were the “originators” of psychogeography, something I’ve been involved in locally a bit, and would often travel through Paris with a map of London, TRYING to get lost in order to see the city from different eyes.

If you missed the show and you want to listen, go OVER HERE!!

Winter Biking

No, I don’t use my bicycle in the winter.
No way.

Why not? Well, I look at the dudes on their bikes, huffing and puffing on clear-road days, wearing a mixture of Mountain Equipment Co-op gear with a hodge-podge of knitted hats and scarves or balaclavas with mismatched gloves…and they look like they had to spend 20 minutes getting dressed for their ride. Also, some folks have these super-pants (all I can think to call them) with seemingly light jackets. They look like they’re going to freeze. But likely, their jacket is some sort of ultra dense polymer-mix weather-resistant beast that MUST’VE cost a fortune.

So I have to either look like a Value Village on two wheels or pay through the nose to justify riding my bike 20km every work day.

Well, I began feeling like both of these two options is totally worth it. Worth the money or worth the look.
Last night, reading some older issues of Spacing Magazine, I was dumbfounded by some of the statistics about cars. Not the pollution. Forget that for a second. Just the space these things need is silly. Parking where you live, parking where you shop, parking where you’re going, and almost for FREE.
The author of one of the article postulated that raising the cost for parking WAY UP would only serve to discourage car rides when walking or biking is a doable option. I kind of love this idea. A lot (pardon the pun – hahaha). If you live in Boston and you want to go downtown, you may pay $50 for a day of parking. I can already hear the conversations of people anticipating this cost, “Screw that! Let’s take the subway, or the bus.”

Yes, Windsor would need a respectable transit force before any of this was possible, but I like the idea of discouraging car use by intimidating the wallets of the users. Should NO ONE have cars? No. I don’t think that. In fact, the idea of car-sharing in Toronto and New York, and other cities is hugely intriguing too. The bummer of car sharing, and many of these forward thinking shifts in transportation ar that they have to start in MAJOR urban centres…unlike Windsor. We get to sit around and wait for these initiatives to get used, proven, popular, and then passed on…

Parking is such a stupid thing, when it’s examined in terms of space. I fully plan on mapping all the parking downtown on a Google Map. All of the dead, mostly unused or underused space. I always hear that there’s no parking downtown from people, especially in the Windsor Star Letters to the Editor, but what they mean is that there’s not enough FREE parking. Like at Devonshire Mall. They want downtown to be a mall. FREE!! Well, the mall wants you to drive from the moon and back to get their stuff. I think the goal of urban retail and entertainment spaces should be to expect fewer cars and less traffic in areas of retail. I mean, I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but it has been proven to improve business when traffic is significantly lowered in urban areas.

I digress. I wanted to look at something I seem to remember from when we first opened Phog Lounge. There was a discussion about paying for parking, as a business owner, for any parking space that we, the business, could not provide to the customer. If we didn’t have a huge lot attached to us, we would (supposedly) pay for enough spots, corresponding to our capacity. How in the hell is this making sense? The business owner is being penalized because of the HUGE space-gobbling vehicles that people drive to their business? And for me, I have tons of customers who WALK, drive scooters and bikes, and don’t USE parking spaces on the street, in the lot, or anywhere. I think this kind of gouging for the city to offset infrastructure costs is just dumb. If they want to discourage cars from overloading downtown or their BIA, don’t charge the small-business owner, charge the person who chooses to drive alone in a car designed to tow, pull, carry way more than it is ever used to do.

Which brings me back to the bike thing. I just keep realizing how dumb cars are, in the capacity that they are currently used. They don’t get to use their speed (congested traffic), space (single drivers are rampant), power (moving one person only and almost never transporting goods), and are becoming more and more silly. They are, obviously, way more of a status symbol and inhibitor of exercise and connecting to the environment around us.

Jane Jacobs has suggested that as people think trucks get in the way, it is in fact cars that are in the way of trucks. Trucks employ people, they move goods, and they are economic pluses. Cars are buzzing around, taking up WAY more space than needed (which is extraordinarily expensive), and they are not contributing financially the way trucks do. If trucks were the road owners, and loads of cars left the roads, it would actually improve environmental situations with fewer vehicles on the road (less congestion, less idling). Which would beg the question…if we were a city who thought progressively, and we raised prices for parking, reduced car use, implemented a solid transit system, and consolidated our interests in a less-sprawling nature, and trucks were the kings of the road (the few bits and pieces that would still be in use), where in the heck would the next bridge crossing go? What would be made of the DRIC/Greenlink stuff? Where would it make sense to put it then? Hmmmm….

As for biking…I am anticipating warm weather LIKE CRAZY so I can bike to work every day. But should I wait? How much will I have to pay to outfit myself with warm gear that will keep me dry? Where would I buy this stuff? Why isn’t there a bigger bicycle persona in this area? I know lots of cyclists who tell me about all these other HUGE cycling enthusiasts and bike shop owners, but they’re almost invisible when it comes to encouraging new riders, bike education (like what the hell to wear in the winter), etc. Maybe it’s just me, but I had to almost fall into this biking thing by watching Phog customers biking and praising it. Where are the leaders of Windsor’s bike movement hiding? They should be prominent, respected, and referred to when discussing city planning and other such important issues.

My wife and I are seriously considering getting rid of a car from this two-car, two-person household. Save money, get healthy, get connected to the environment. Anyone want to help? I just feel so stupid rolling around in a car these days.

Broken City Brilliance

Broken City Lab is at it again.

They’ve got this great concept, at least, they’re borrowing it. Kind of like I do with every event I run.

From brokencitylab.org:

Katy Asher, a student in Portland’s MFA in Art and Social Practice program, along with Ariana Jacob and Amber Bell, have initiated a project that “aims to make a vending cart of maps made by people from Portland.”

I love the idea of collecting maps that people have DRAWN! As Broken City Lab posits, it makes for a great outlet to see how people exaggerate distances and sizes of things on a hand-drawn map. We all do it. We run out of room on a map we’re drawing for someone, or we leave a ton of room and find that things are much closer, and we don’t need the allotted space.

It’s a new way of investigating the “psychogeographic” influences that driving a car has on the way we draw a map. Or, conversely, how walking or biking influences the drawing of a map.

I LOVE the idea of a possible mixture of Google Maps and simple hand-drawn maps, much like the recent walk that we held at Phog Lounge. I envision an art show consisting of hand drawn maps overlapped with ACTUAL maps of the area from, Google maybe. And maybe commentary with the person who drew the map to discuss the inconsistencies and reasons for them.

It’s yet another great tool to investigate what works in our (your) city and what doesn’t.

Awesome.
Justin, I absolutely love everything your group is doing! Dammit!
I feel inspired now. Thanks you.

Neon signs

In The Windsor Star a few days ago there was a front page article about a Windsor relic. This blew my mind, because very little attention in the mainstream population goes toward heritage sites and our fine city’s history. And then wham! This article announces several places slated as heritage sites, making them harder to simply knock down for another mini-mall or Wal-Mart.
Here’s the article about the old 1950s era sign in South Windsor that I’ve always liked.

This stood out to me because just last night I was reminded of neon signs when looking through vacation photos. You see, some people buy mugs, ashtrays, hats, or some other ephemera when visiting a new place. Jhoan and I decided to start taking photos of old neon signs in the cities we visit on vacation. They pop up every once in a while. Last night, leafing through the pictures, I was reminded of this project when I saw a sign Jhoan photographed in Key West, Florida, about 2 miles from one of Ernest Hemingway’s residences. The one with the 6-toed cats.

I figured I’d share that.
Also, there’s an amazing Flickr group of photos from a “Neon Graveyard” in Las Vegas where decommissioned neon signs go to wait, or die.
Here’s the link.

Am I crazy, or was the N&D sign on the east end of Tecumseh Road also an older neon sign?

Glimpses of Ontario 1942

The video above was posted on Spacing Magazine’s blog, and I absolutely loved watching it. Listening to it alone would’ve sufficed, but seeing the grainy Technicolor technology was fantastic. It reminded me of all the film I used to watch in class on reel-to-reel when the lights would be shut off and the screen pulled down in front of the blackboard.

I specifically remember the “film” about apple cider production in Ontario, tornadoes, volcanoes, and many others.

So, if you want a nice, brief history of Toronto and Ottawa, watch the video…it was nice to get rebuffed on that information.