By the time I reached Boston, I’d been on the road for ten months. I’d already worn through a pair of boots, and repacked my entire bag with summer clothes. But one thing that happens when you’re traveling is that clothes just don’t last as long.

Part of it was due to the fact that I was washing things however I could: hot water, cold water, river water, bathtub water, laundry soap, shampoo, Dr. Bronner’s, scrubbing-with-gravel… and yes, that was wearing my poor threads to shreds.

But mostly, the demise of my duds was due to the fact that I wore the same thing every gosh-dang day. New outfit? Ha! Not on the road, not when you’re broke. Now, I’ve never been much of a clothing horse, but still… a girl’s gotta dress up sometimes.

And so there I was in Boston in my worn-out hand-me-downs, pirate pants, threadbare socks and stained shirts—and I said to myself, “Hun, it’s time for a new look.”

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Read the rest of Boston's Best Thrift? $1-A-Pound at the Garment District. (315 words)

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Post tags: alternative, cheap, counterculture, diy, dumpster diving, ecotravel, fashion, green living, recycling, reuse, starving artists, sustainable, thrift, tourism

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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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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)

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Remember when you got your first bike? Was it a Christmas present, or maybe a birthday gift? Remember how much fun you used to have on that bike, how fast you went, how great it felt?

Well, these days, most kids want an Xbox for their birthday; their parents ride around in cars with seatbelts, talking on their phones. Cycling is a thing of the past: a sport, a hobby, but rarely a mode of transportation. But I’m here to tell you: riding your bike is still fun, and still fast, and it’s the cheapest and most socially responsible workout you’ll ever get.

And there are no two ways about it: if you give a kid a bike, that kid will ride.

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Read the rest of Save the World, Ride a Bike (883 words)

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Nonetheless, later that day we drove right into Heidelberg Street by mistake. I’m glad we did: it quite blew my mind.

I’ll let you read the official backstory at heidelberg.org. Enjoy the video.

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Post tags: alternative, art, building, buy nothing, community, construction, counterculture, Detroit, free sources, freegan, garbage, ghost town, Michigan, outsider art, radical, recycling, reuse, starving artists, tourism, video

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Yesterday I told you all about Farmer John’s struggle to save his family’s farm and preserve his unique identity (The Real Dirt on American Counterculture: How Farmer John made ideals come true).

From a family farm, the place has grown a lot. These days, Angelic Organics does a lot of education, from on-farm training to urban workshops to sustainable-building courses. See all they do here.

I visited an urban garden in Chicago’s South Side, just one of many teaching gardens founded with the help of Angelic Organics. It was a sunny day and the birds and bees were out. Here are some photos of the garden and the things living in it:

The next day, we drove out to Caledonia to visit the farm where Angelic Organics began. Unfortunately, it was a gray day and the Learning Center was mostly deserted. The farm itself is off-limits to tourists, with good reason; unfortunately, this meant there wasn’t much for us to see. We wandered around the grounds a bit, pet the goats, and went on our way.

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Post tags: agriculture, agritourism, alternative, animal, biodynamics, Chicago, chickens, community, counterculture, ecotourism, ecotravel, education, environment, farm, farming, flowers, gardening, Illinois, insect, locavore, organic, outsider art, photography, radical, sustainable, teaching, travel, voluntourism

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Still from “The Bug” music video
photo courtesy of AngelicOrganics.com

In honor of Burning Man—which I’m reluctantly skipping this year—I’d like to talk a little about the counterculture in modern America.

After leaving Chicago, I stopped by Angelic Organics: a bastion of creativity in conservative Northern Illinois, a leader in organic and biodynamic agriculture, and the subject of a PBS documentary entitled The Real Dirt on Farmer John.

Teen John
photo courtesy of Angelic Organics

John Peterson grew up on this farm in Caledonia, near the Wisconsin border. His father died when he was young, and he wound up running the farm himself by the time he started college.

“To me, farming is poetry, drama. It’s a source of infinite fascination.”
- Farmer John Peterson

In school he met the counterculture: 60s idealists and artists, revolutionaries and back-to-the-landers. Farmer John believed in the importance of agriculture, and he was astounded that some of the city kids had never touched hay; he was also enamored of the free-spirited creativity they brought to his life. He opened the farm up to friends who wanted to visit and work, and created a place where openness, artistic expression and creativity mixed with hard work and good food. His farm, in many ways, realized the dreams of a million hippies—and it worked. For a while.

But the 60s ended, and times got rough for Farmer John. By the 1980s, he’d lost most of his land and had been ostracized from his community by a series of nasty rumors about his lifestyle and friends.

For small-town kids like me, the rumors sound familiar: it’s a cult! A satanic cult! They’re a bunch of gays and druggies doing animal sacrifice! I heard the same rumors about members of my own community, and accepted them as fact. So did many people in John Peterson’s hometown.

In the film, he talks about the pain of living as an outsider when you’ve done nothing wrong—which, in his case, was compounded by massive debt. Over the course of several years, Farmer John was forced to sell nearly the entire farm: he found himself destitute, hopeless and friendless in a town where his family had been pillars of the community.

(...)
Read the rest of The Real Dirt on America’s Counterculture (580 words)

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