Neighborly

Palm Frond Sculpture Bus Stop, artist unknown, 2008.

This is a little story about 3 random neighbors in Noe Valley that don't know really each other. Neighbor #1 is a woman who has lived in her Noe Valley home for forever. Let's just say 40 years. The first time Blizz (neighbor #2) met her, she was trying to drag a gigantic palm frond that had landed in her driveway to the gutter. He noticed a tiny frail woman struggling with a giant heavy thing, so he helped. He's cute that way. She was very grateful and chatty. She hated that Palm tree, always dropping it's gigantic fronds in her way. She cursed an ex-husband who had sold that property out from under her, which resulted in new owners planting that tree. After their chat, he dragged it home and used the table saw to cut it down to fit in the bin. Last week Blizz found another frond blocking the sidewalk near Neighbor #1's house so he pulled it aside and out of the way. It was smaller but he still didn't want to drag it all the way home. Today, while on a dog walk I came across the results of unknown Neighbor #3.

Budcozy at Mission Indie-Mart, July 27

I'm very excited for budcozy’s first craft fair, the Mission Indie-Mart.

“The Mission Indie-Mart is a bi-monthly marketplace that has quickly grown from an underground backyard shopping party into a popular monthly event featuring a tantalizing combination of shopping, music, and food. This event showcases truly independent local designers, offering everything from one of a kind fashions and reconstructed vintage to offbeat crafts, handmade jewelry and fun antiques. Enjoy cheap beer, hot plates, local DJs and the cream of the crop of SF’s indie designer scene.”

It’s a big step for me. Lots to figure out in the next few weeks. Success today at Daniel’s Display on Market. Miranda gave me the scoop on Daniel’s when I asked about her hat display. Each step along the way with this new business is such a learning experience. Paula also threw me a great tip on a new local production company. Will definitely be checking them out, if the fair goes well. At the very least it will be a fun day with bbq, drinks and djs.

Will post more deets when it gets closer to July 27.

Effects of Composting

image from sfrecycling.com


We shifted our garbage-ing habits a few months back, and the effects have been really surprising. D noticed a blurb in some newsletter or newspaper that SF is encouraging folks to take advantage of the green bin for kitchen scraps and some food soiled packaging. We took their cue on a couple tips and combined with recycling, our regular garbage bag has been reduced to barely anything. SF now has an abundance of new dirt and has started a dirt program where everyone can get get a bucket of new dirt for their yards. It makes me feel like I’m back in little San Carlos circa 1975. It’s a nice feeling that a big city like SF can have small a town vibe.

The best tip I have to share is regarding storing your scraps. Use milk cartons, cereal boxes, and take out boxes to store your kitchen scraps. There is no need to buy composting bags. You’ll find you have plenty of containers on hand. And it makes perfect sense, don’t go buy more stuff just to hold your scraps that eventually goes into a bin anyway. That’s backwards. Just use what you have. We’ve got a pile of boxes under the sink waiting for their big moment.

At some point I’d like to take this even further. This personal composting bin handles pet waste. With Lucy and Depot we have plenty of that. For now we’re using biodegradable bags for both dog walks and cat box. I can't believe I used to mummify all that crap, literally, in regular plastic bags. What was I thinking?

SF Heatwave Strategy: 7 Steps

1) Ride Bikes
Avoid your car, it's evil. Get an early start and get your lazy-ass on your bike and slow the pace down. Buy a cold drink and sit on some steps. Look at the cracks. Talk about how your drink doesn't have high fructose corn syrup and how that's nice. Take a picture.



2) Look At Stuff
Pay 5 bucks to meander along exotic plants and butterflies. Talk to the gardener who is plucking slugs and snails. Bliz: I see you have some friends there. Gardner: Mmm, lunch.

3) Sit On The Edge
Just keep riding until you've reached the edge of the continent. Climb onto the wall and observe Ocean Beach as if it's really a summer beach with people, coolers, kites and dogs. Eat a cookie.

Don't take any more pictures for the rest of the day, leave phone alone.

4) Have A Mission
Need smoothie, must find. Arrive at Fillmore and Lower Haight to complete mission. Be excited that cup is made from biodegradable cornstarch. Remember to visit that Green Cafe Network website, that one we saw on that show. They're cool.

5) Commandeer Best SF Bench With A View
No sunny day should pass without a visit to Dolores Park. Be shocked to find that top-primo bench open. Check out cool haircuts.

6) Suffer The Uphill Ride Home
This basically sucks. Lay on the couch afterwards.

7) Realize Dinner Opportunities
It's early and everyone is still drinking at the beaches and parks. No one is thinking about dinner. Get yourself to that not-so-secret sushi spot that is always too busy, to find it not busy. Sit. Eat. Discuss day.

Reverse Graffiti

Following Laughing Squid on twitter provides a lot of quick access to cool-stuff-right-now. This one in particular is really neato. An eco-friendly cleaning product company teamed up with a graffiti artist to create public murals by cleaning away dirt, instead of using paint. I love this because it gets me to look at the world in a different way, what else can be flipped around like this?

Reverse Graffiti Project
“San Francisco’s Broadway tunnel is a highly traveled thoroughfare in the heart of the city. Over 20,000 cars, trucks, and motorized vehicles pass through it per day. Its walls are caked with dirt and soot, and lined with patches of paint covered graffiti from days gone by. It set the perfect canvas to create a beautiful work of art showcasing the talents of reverse graffiti artist “Moose”, and the power of Green Works plant based cleaner.”

Fort Funston: AKA Lucy’s fave

This photos shows my favorite part of last weekend: laying in the sand watching the hand gliders. Lucy, Bliz and I are perched on top of the cliff, overlooking the beach. The hand gliders make their u-turn here. We had PB&J, too.

On Foot

A really nice thing about not being in a car and being on foot is all the stuff you'll see. Bliz and I started the day off on bus to the Union Street Fair, and over to Cupcake Camp. On our way back from Camp we took a quick detour to the Water Garden with Kinetic Sculpture and Bamboo Grove. Forgot to note the name of this place, anyone know?


View Larger Map

Cupcake Camp 2008

Cupcake mayhem. Bubblegum cupcake showed strong. More photos here.

Carnival Zona Verde

Hopped off the bus and started on the parade route at 24th street, then walked over to Harrison for the vendors and food. Huge crowds lined the parade route to watch skimpy sequined girls, traditional costume, fire engines, cable cars, vintage cars, dragons, stilt walkers, candy throwers and all. The food was a big component with everything possible being grilled. We got a grilled corn. Yum.



A new addition to this years Carnival was the Zona Verde. It was contained in a parking lot separate from the other vendors and included solar companies, organic food, eco-travel, clothing, art and gifty stuff. It was a small but strong turn out and hopefully it will grow larger next year. Seems like this is a good trend in general for street fairs because it really allows for the public to see and talk to the people involved in eco-friendly businesses. Some highlights:

• Free Adina organic Iced Mayan Mochas.
• We talked to a solar guy about the interesting practices of PG&E's solar installations regarding panel angle optimization.
• Learned about an eco-preserve just outside of Mexico City that is under threat of development.
• Talked to Urban Edibles, a local gardener who specializes in edible gardens (my basil is so sad)
• Got the Nature in the City Map, A Guide to SF's Natural Heritage. It's a huge map that shows 49 square miles of natural areas in the city: view, hiking, picnic area, bird watching, wildflowers, etc. And it's printed on New Leaf Sakura 100% Recycled Paper. We had to promise we'd make use of it before they'd give it to us.
• Bags and wallets made from recycled bike tires and signage, Green Guru.



A few more photos on Flickr.

Crazy Wisdom: Final Show Tonight

We saw Wes Scoop last weekend. Good stuff. Tonight is the last night at the Marsh. You should go.

"The Marsh presents Wes "Scoop" Nisker's "Crazy Wisdom Saves The World Again!" Celebrating the publication of his new book, "Friends!Earthlings! Humans! Who are we, why are we here and how did we get into the mess we're in?" Nisker explores the foolish human condition and the joys and sorrows of living in the modern age. He will reveal the secrets of the Big Bang and anti-matter, explore the issues of war, species extinction and global warming, and expose the true heart of the New Age spiritual movement."

Making Stuff From Junk

Worth a trip over to the SF Dump, the artist in residence show is open today. We've been meaning to go to one of these for a long time now and finally got a chance to last night. The show is recycled pedal powered mechanical noise and circus gone wrong contraptions, by Paul Cesewski. It was a great turn out and all the kids were running around going bonkers. Hot dogs and booze too.

Weekend Butterfly: Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

I believe I've identified the butterfly that kept appearing this weekend. First on our walk to Twin Peaks, and then later that night on a mural. It's an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail.

Update: I added this sighting to the North American Butterfly Association website, Butterflies I've Seen archive. I had to enter Twin Peaks as a location (didn't come up as a known location on their site) and I had to search for this butterfly with the State Filter turned off. Good deed done for today.

To outer space and back to the couch

It was one of those busy-fast weekends and we were excited to get everything accomplished. D has been swamped at work so this was a necessary break to get recharged by seeing some great stuff other people are up to. We started the day off with a hike up to Twin Peaks with Lucy. We are really lucky to be able to walk right out the front door and just keep going up until we've reached the top like the surface of another planet. Spring is so here with butterflies, birds, alien weeds and flowers. It was so windy up there that Lucy's ears flew back like she was riding a motorcycle.

Once we got back down to earth, we bused into town to load up with a super taco and horchada and head to the historic Armory building. It was open to the public for the Mission Bazaar, an exhibition of art, design, music and performance. We drive by that place often and someone usually makes a comment about what sordid things go on in there. In 2006 it was purchased for $14.5 million by an adult production internet company, giving the ominous Moorish Castle style building on a edgy intersection an even grittier presence. So we have been really curious to see the inside. It was like walking back in time into an old airplane hanger, lots of brick and steel and huge windows with bright sunlight streaming into the dark space. Most of the vendors were clothing and accessories, with a burningman-steampunk-hippie aesthetic. I got a super cute red and cream striped wrist band made from a vintage tie, with a single silver snap. D tried on a tiny victorian top hat, which made him look like something out of Alice in Wonderland. I think I should get him one. We bumped into a friend who makes films. A favorite local clothing designer of mine was there, Miranda Caroligne. I'd really love to get to the point where budcozy could be part of an event like this. I was inspired to get back to work on some new limited editions themes. American Cupcake sent me a link to the Union Street Faire in a couple weeks, which happens to be an eco theme, but it's hard to swallow the $650 booth fare. Being creatures of habit and feeling a bit overloaded by the bazaar, we walked over to La Copa Loca for waffle cones of hazelnut sorbet and sat on the sidewalk to charge up for evening plans.

The rest of the weekend went like this:

Wes Scoop at the Marsh
Hard to cover the 90 min show, I kept wanting to write things down but didn't want to miss anything. One thing I remember him saying is the answer to our nations problems is to acknowledge our predicament and engage in an intentional decline with a Reverse Peace Corps, to learn how to siesta and make tasty dishes from rice and beans. Remember to breathe. Unlearn our overachieving.

icanhaz
An honest attempt to icanhazcheezburgers but gravitational pull of the couch won. Instead we went to witness with our own eyes a really big crossover moment between the internets and reality.

Opera.

That butterfly
More collisions between worlds with the butterfly from the hike now firmly embeded in a mural. It stopped me in my tracks.

Free samples
In between giant boxes of cereal, a moment of bliss at Costco: toasted ham-n-cheese croissant sammie samples.

iPhone
A new iPhone case that goes real cute with the Pow budcozy. But I find myself looking at my iPhone wanting to take a picture of my phone with my phone. Need to track down the camera.

Series of amazing events
D got 2 pairs of jeans and 1 pair sneaks, without even trying. Do you know how amazing that is? We were so tired and hungry but you just can't stop when shopping karma strikes. Nutella-banana crepe post spree prepared us for MUNI home. And then the most amazing series of events happened. The J arrived immediately. Only one crazy person on board talking into a cellphone with no one at the other end. It did not break down. I do not kid. Then as we sat waiting for our transfer on the 48 to take us home (estimated 17 min), Hoshi appeared out of nowhere in a skid and waved us aboard to deliver us to our door.

More couch.

Buttons and Smoothies

Fabric Outlet on Mission Street is my favorite fabric store. First of all, the staff is so incredibly friendly. They never rush you and always have helpful advice. I don't go on the weekends so that might help. Second, they have great sales and always a huge bin of discount and discontinued buttons for super cheap. One of the staff helped me dig through the bin and I got a bunch of red vintage style buttons for a denim limited edition budcozy I'm working on. The store is a bit worn around the edges but that gives it some old school character. I like how you enter on street level down a wide and open staircase which gives you a birds eye view of the store. Today, I stopped in to pick up my order of Samantha budcozy heart buttons and more pipe cleaners. MJ came with me and petted bolts of fabric in their vast furry section while sipping her berry bliss smoothie.

We got smoothies from a small window on a street I will not name. I hope this place stays quiet because even in today's heatwave there wasn't much of a wait. They seem to have steady business but it would really suck if it became as bad a wait like Sushi Zone (which I miss dearly). I had my usual fave, banana and acai. Yum.

Hemp Factoid

Wiki says: "Hemp requires little to no pesticides, replenishes soil with nutrients and nitrogen, controls erosion of the topsoil, and produces lots of oxygen, considering how fast it grows. Furthermore, Hemp could be used to replace many potentially harmful products, such as tree paper (the process of which uses bleaches and other toxic chemicals, apart from contributing to deforestation), cosmetics (which often contain synthetic oils that can clog pores and provide little nutritional content for the skin), plastics (which are petroleum based and cannot decompose), and more."

While hemp is still illegal to grow in the US, I get my hemp fabric (and bamboo and organic cotton) from a local SF importer Pickering International.