I ain’t gonna lie, I was scared to visit New York. Somewhere in my small-town hippie-chick psyche, I was convinced that city would eat me alive, and spit me out broke onto a westward-bound highway.

But my poverty and naïveté have never stopped me before, right? So I headed for the Big Cheese, and (thanks to good buddies Landry, YP & Eggie) found myself in safe and luxurious Brooklyn digs. All that was left, then, was for me to tackle Manhattan.

I saddled up The Navigator and hopped a subway, and soon became enthronged in the teeming masses of New York.

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Read the rest of Chicken in the City (934 words)

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Post tags: adventure, alternative, art, buy nothing, chickens, counterculture, diy, eco travel, ecotourism, ecotravel, featured posts, freegan, green living, hiking, how-to, New York, outsider art, photography, rubber chicken, starving artists, superhero, transportation, travel, walking

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Howdy folks! New Orleans was a blast, and I can’t wait to tell you all about it. But let’s pick up where we left off: the one, the only, the ever-fabulous New York City.

As you may have noticed, my blog’s a little out of date: this photo, for example, was taken back in August. I’ve spent the last couple of months traveling faster than I can write: now I’ve landed for the winter, and I’ve got tons of stories to tell.

That’s Luciano and Brian shakin’ they bacon at the roller skate dance party in Central Park.

For the next few weeks, I’ll be catching you up on everything I’ve done and learned since August. It’s been a great adventure.

From New York we’ll blast through New Hampshire to Maine, Massachussetts, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Louisiana, then stop off in Nevada before landing safely in California. You’ll meet hippies, foodies, party kids, dirtbags, volunteers, artists, normal folks, dogs, chickens and (my personal favorite) The Navigator.

Ready? Here we go…

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Post tags: adventure, eco travel, ecotravel, tourism, travel

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How did I do it? Baby, I took the Megabus.

Megabus bills itself as “America’s first low-cost inter-city bus service,” but it’s oh so much more. Its buses are brand-new, double-decker behemoths—practically limousines compared to Greyhound’s rusty clunkers—and what’s more, they offer wi-fi en route.

Megabus isn’t the only bus company offering dirt-cheap fares: $1 bus fares are popping up everywhere following Megabus’ success. Greyhound itself has launched a competing service, BoltBus, covering essentially the same service area at the same cost.

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Read the rest of How to Travel Cheap & Green: Take the $1 Bus! (467 words)

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Post tags: bus, eco travel, economy, ecotourism, ecotravel, energy-efficient, environment, green living, how-to, megabus, New York, starving artists, transportation, travel

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Added Value’s community garden in Brooklyn.
See more photos from New York’s community gardens

So there I was in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood. Just out of the way of public transportation and once heavily controlled by the Mob, this area has become somewhat of a car-oriented wasteland in recent years. Blocks are wide, full of brick buildings and parking lots. A brand-new Ikea sparkles in one corner, beckoning Brooklynites with all its fabulously disposable wares.

And right next to the Ikea? Why, a huge, flourishing community garden!

A garden grows in Brooklyn.
See more photos from New York’s community gardens

The Added Value Urban Garden is a volunteer-driven, youth-oriented community garden that also happens to be planted right on top of the asphalt here in Brooklyn. The farm is funded with grant money and is considered a public land in New York—which means that it’s open to everyone. Two days a week, volunteers come from all over town to help with planting, weeding, composting and harvesting. During the summer, a weekly farmer’s market brings in cash and public interest. And in between, Added Value works with young kids from the neighborhood, providing paying jobs.

That paid work is incredibly important. I talked to a Red Hook teenager who used to make money selling water on the streets. That’s a sight better than selling drugs, but still not a great job for a 14-year-old. He heard that the NY Department of Youth and Community Development was helping kids find work, and went down to the recruiting office looking for better work. They placed him here at the Red Hook garden, where he’s now a leader in the youth program.

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Read the rest of Try This at Home: Join a community garden (444 words)

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Post tags: agriculture, Austin, buy nothing, Chicago, community, Detroit, diy, education, environment, gardening, green living, locavore, New York, outdoors, sustainable, volunteer

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This is the Waterpod™.

If you live in New York—or if you’re a sustainability geek—you probably heard about this highly ambitious project: 5 artists living on a barge on the waterways of New York, creating their own food, water and shelter in a demonstration of sustainable technology. The Waterpod visited each borough of New York, hosting events and offering free demonstrations and information to all visitors.

Cool stuff, at least in theory. Apocalypse enthusiasts and Kevin Costner fans alike have long toyed with the idea of living on the water; finally, somebody (one Mary Mattingly) got up the gumption to try it. And as it prepared to launch this spring, everyone from Discover to Inhabitat was singing its praises.

However, by the time I arrived in NY, the project had gotten some mixed press. Questions of the barge’s true sustainability were rampant—and my interest was piqued.

I tried to find information on the technical details via the project’s website, but only found a lot of artist-speak and a long James Joyce quote about water. What was the Waterpod exactly, and was it actually a viable living space—or just a high-concept artpiece created by ambitious amateurs?

The answer, not surprisingly, was a little of both. What I found at the Waterpod was not so much a fully-functioning project as a demonstration of possibility. Maybe it doesn’t work perfectly, but it offers fantastic food for thought and a lot of inspiration.

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Read the rest of The Waterpod: life on a New York boat (883 words)

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Post tags: agritourism, alternative, art, biotecture, chickens, citizen science, design, diy, ecotourism, education, energy, energy-efficient, environment, experimental, farming, featured posts, gardening, green building, green living, habitat, New York, organic, permaculture, radical, recycling, reuse, river, solar, starving artists, sustainable, teaching, water

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I was going to write a post on the art of the underground bike scene, but these photos tell the story better themselves. So, for your Wednesday-morning consideration: the art, the fire, the fury and the girls of the bike world. Enjoy!

So you know what you’re looking at: the people in these photos have created everything you see with their own hands. They made their own bikes, costumes, hairdos, jackets, flamethrowers, circus rides and just about everything else they could think of. DIY, eat your heart out.

Big love to my friends pictured here, including Hollis, Eliza, Moses, Doyle, Big Daddy, Katy Bell, Cyclecide, Rat Patrol, Black Label, and oh Johnny Payphone do I see a bike or two of yours in there?

© jessicareeder for Uprooted, an eco/travel blog, 2009. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: adventure, alternative, art, bicycle, biking, buy nothing, citizen science, community, counterculture, design, diy, fire, freegan, garbage, green living, outsider art, photography, radical, recycling, reuse, robots, starving artists, superhero, transportation

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tallbike by Redskynight

This is a tallbike.

they do get more fancy: Paul and James by doviende

It’s pretty basic, really: you weld one bike frame on top of another, lengthen the chain, climb up and ride. Want to try riding one? You might need to lean the bike against a wall so you can get up. After that, it’s not too hard… oh, but now that you’re up, there’s one more thing: no brakes. And good luck getting down.

Why a tallbike? Because it looks cool. Because you can see over cars when you ride in the street. Because it makes a statement. Because it’s a challenge. Because we can.

In recent years, tallbikes have become synonymous with bike culture—and bike culture has flourished in every city and country from New York to Namibia.

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Read the rest of Change the World, Ride a Bike (1,004 words)

© jessicareeder for Uprooted, an eco/travel blog, 2009. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: adventure, alternative, art, bicycle, biking, buy nothing, citizen science, community, counterculture, cycling, environment, featured, featured posts, film, freegan, outsider art, photography, politics, pollution, radical, starving artists, superhero, sustainable, transportation

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