Phantom Gallery
February 2007 | Mindful Living
LA Bike Scene Shifts Into High Gear
Amidst LA’s legendary traffic and diehard car culture, a hipper, healthier revolution of urban cyclists is underway… and thoroughly enjoying the ride. The city’s long-thriving underground bike scene is getting a boost as reasons to ride multiply: great exercise, less $$ to petroleum interests, zero parking hassles, an instant community of energized adventurers — and now, the first annual BIKE WINTER festival.
The two-week bicycle celebration kicks off Friday, Feb. 2nd with a late-night launch party, and continues with 12 solid days of social rides and bike related events. For those needing a reason to dust off their Schwinns and roll up their pant legs, BIKE WINTER 2007 offers a little something for everyone:
• Java junkies – 2/03: the “Giro de Caffe,” a rolling tour of local coffee merchants who roast on site. Sip fresh java while riding progressively faster with each caffeinated cup.
• Art enthusiasts – 2/09: the “Cheap Date Ride” to the Getty Museum, with art and architecture guide Lisa Auerbach.
• Social gourmets – 2/12: a dinner-party-hopping ride to various homes, each offering one course in an extended, mobile meal. Work up an appetite between stops, and enjoy some cycling-culinary hospitality.
• Chocolate lovers (AKA everybody) - 2/14: the “Chocolate Aphrodisiac Ride,” sampling hot chocolate at LA cafes, finishing with a chocolate martini nightcap.
And that’s just a taste. For the full calendar, or to submit your own event, check out the Bikeboom Calendar at bikeboom.com. With Valentine’s Day fast approaching, BIKE WINTER might be your best chance to kiss gridlock goodbye.
— Anna Cummins
A Tree Grows in Watts
It’s a trend we’ve noticed lately: self-appointed eco warriors hitting the highway in vegetable-oil-powered busses to spread the green gospel. From Sustainable Solutions and the Punta Mona Sustainable Caravan, to Dartmouth College’s Big Green Bus, earth evangelists are taking to the streets en masse to educate on everything from permaculture to biofuels.
This month, NorCal-based Common Vision brings their wide-eyed message to urban youth on their fourth annual Fruit Tree Tour. A peek at the web video of last year’s Tour may either spook the cynic or fire up the true believer; A flower-painted hippie bus full of dreddlocked activists turning students — who might not otherwise have a chance to get their hands in the dirt or touch an earthworm — on to treehugging.
It’s easy to find some irony in the prospect of a bunch of white hippies demo-ing African dance and hip-hop at an urban school. But Common Vision’s earnest idealism is perfectly matched to a child’s sensibility — an inclusive, playful place where magic exists, patchouli smells a lot like you’ve been playing all day in a sandbox, and hugging a tree seems perfectly reasonable.
Megan Watson, Operations Director for Common Vision, hasn’t a cynical bone in her body when it comes to her work: “My favorite part is the excitement of the kids. It’s really fun to watch students go from looking at the ground as something to walk on [to seeing it as a] source of food and learning.”
It’s that childlike pleasure in planting a tree, or watching kids giggle when they learn french fry oil can power a car, that keeps Megan and her fellow crusaders fired up for the cause. “A lot of it revolves around the specific tree [the students’] planted,” Megan explains. “The kids say, ‘In 30 years I wanna come back and harvest fruit from this tree.’ But they also get excited about the bigger implications. When asked what they think about today, they say ‘I just wish the world could be a better place.’ ” With 78 percent of the children they visit taking part in California’s abysmally unhealthy school lunch program, Common Vision may just be the healthiest part of an inner city kid’s day.
Common Vision’s Fruit Tree Tour 2007 visits various cities from San Diego to Sacramento from February to April, quite likely topping last year’s record of a cumulative 9,000 miles traveled on veggie oil. To see if they’re coming to a school near you, check out commonvision.org.
— Lucinda Michele Knapp
Who Resuscitated the Electric Car?
On January 7th I fell in love. Her name is the Volt, a new electric concept car developed by GM. Rumors had being circulating for months about the kind of drive train she would have, and if she would just be a carbon copy of my last electric love from GM, the EV1 (subject of the recent documentary Who Killed The Electric Car?). But I’m glad to say she turned out to be more than I had ever hoped for, and if brought into mainstream production, she could be nothing short of revolutionary.
GM is calling the Volt a hybrid car but it’s not like any hybrid we’ve known so far. It’s primarily an electric car with a small gasoline motor to charge the battery once it reaches 30 percent of its capacity, giving it a maximum range of 640 miles. Its 53 kW power plant is fed by a 136 kW lithium-ion battery pack that pushes it to 60 mph in 8.5 seconds, with a top speed of 120 mph. The Volt can be fully recharged from a conventional wall outlet in 6 hours and has a maximum fully electric range of 40 miles. The equivalent miles per gallon you can expect depend on driving behavior. If you travel long distances you’ll get about 50mpg, but if you travel under 40 miles per day (like 80 percent of Americans) you’ll see the equivalent of 400-500mpg. With the performance of an average sports car, her sleek modern styling, and an astounding fuel economy, you can see why the Volt is turning heads.
Sherry Boschert’s book Plug-in Hybrids (New Society Publishers, 2006) examined this kind of configuration, a large electric drive and small gas generator, but many agreed that we would not see a carmaker attempt to produce one for several years. The Volt has effectively leapfrogged the industry’s expectations. GM has broken my heart before with the recall of the EV1 so it is with trepidation that I take her hand for one more dance and wonder, will GM bring the Volt to my eager arms or will she forever remain a dream car just of reach?
— Damien Somerset
Ghost World
To most people, empty storefronts usually signify one thing — a community facing hard times. How many of us see an abandoned building and think anything other than “eyesore?” Or, possibly, “graffiti magnet?”
Maybe we’re just lacking imagination. When Liza Simone, executive producer of Phantom Galleries LA, looks at an abandoned building, she sees something more. She sees space — space that could potentially be filled with art.
Inspired by a similar organization in San Jose, Simone broke ground on Phantom Galleries LA, a Los Angeles County based organization that transforms vacant storefront windows into public art galleries, about two and a half years ago.
“It’s an inclusive organization that promotes the art and culture of Los Angeles in general,” explains Simone. And, although she insists Phantom Galleries LA is not a revitalization organization, but rather a public arts organization, there’s no denying the fact that putting art in the window of an abandoned store is a revitalizing act. The program offers artists a place to display their work and communities a chance to attract pedestrian traffic and a general cultural buzz.
So how does she find the spaces for the shows? Sometimes through her contacts in the art world, and sometimes by “just call[ing] the number on the sign” on an empty storefront.
This month, Phantom Galleries LA has a number of exhibits taking place throughout the county. In Pasadena, light artist Richard Godfrey displays “Luckyboy II” at the Homestead Furniture shop, 680 Colorado Blvd. Meanwhile, at the Santa Fe Lofts (6th and Main St.) in downtown LA, a number of Phantom Gallery LA events will be taking place to coincide with the Downtown LA Art Walk on Feb. 8. For more information, visit phantomgalleriesla.com. Artists, curators or businesses interested in participating in Phantom Galleries LA can contact Simone at [click to e-mail].
— Stephanie Kinnear
Batten Down the Hatches
Climate Change Melts the American Dream
In the year following Hurricane Katrina, more than 600,000 homeowners’ insurance policies were either cancelled or not renewed in Louisiana and Florida. In Massachusetts and New York, private insurers have terminated coverage for more than 80,000 coastal homes since 2004 — despite the fact that a major hurricane has not hit the region in decades. And in Southern California, climate change — the likely culprit for the East Coast’s escalating hurricane activity — is poised to endanger homes with intensified flooding, landslides and wildfires in the coming years.
This dark prospect has not gone unnoticed by SoCal home insurers. Some have already issued moratoriums on Laguna Beach, where a June 2005 landslide destroyed 17 homes and severely damaged 11 others. And in an October 2006 report, the World Wildlife Fund and the Allianz Group (one of the largest insurance providers in the world) predicted that increasingly destructive weather patterns and rising sea levels triggered by global warming could make insurance unaffordable for customers in high-risk areas. The report calls for US insurers to incorporate future potential climate change impacts into their planning, in order to address what WWF-US president and CEO Carter Roberts deems “the greatest environmental threat facing the world.”
To safeguard your own home, Allstate California spokesperson Rich Halberg recommends meeting with your insurance agent once a year to review your coverage. “You should discuss the environmental risks in your area, whether it’s flooding or wildfires, to see whether you need to get a supplemental policy,” he says. Coastal homeowners take note: A quarter of all claims received by the National Flood Insurance Program come from homes in areas not designated high-risk, warns Halberg. “The areas at risk of flooding are more widespread than people realize,” he says. “So if you’re not in an area designated high-risk, you might consider spending just a couple hundred dollars more a year to protect your home.”
Owners of high-risk homes might also consider putting their properties on the market while they’re still insurable. Most mortgage companies won’t make loans to home-buyers without an insurance policy to protect the property being purchased. And on the East Coast, some unhappy homeowners are finding that the now uninsurable homes they were counting on to fund their retirement have dropped to a fraction of their value.
—Elizabeth Barker
Don’t Just Get Mad… Get Active
You’re busy. You have a job, family and social life. You don’t always have time for activism. We get that. So in honor of our shortest month, and keeping in the spirit of brevity, we’ve collected some quick and easy activism opportunities so you can help those in need — in 15 minutes or less.
15 minutes: Wish you could give legislators a piece of your mind? Want to tell mega corporations what you really think of their shady business practices? ActForChange provides contact info and sample letters to help you fire off an impassioned missive to the powers that be. Visit workingforchange.com/activism.
10 minutes: Sixty percent of the US population is eligible to donate blood, yet only 5 percent do. A person who gives blood six times annually can save up to 18 lives. It only takes 10 minutes, so what are you waiting for? Find your local blood drive at givelife.org.
5 minutes: While some people feel the need to upgrade cell phones the second the latest model hits stores, others simply need the means to dial 911. Mail in your outdated celly to victims of domestic violence at ncadv.org/takeaction/DonateaPhone or to seniors in need of a lifeline at phones4life.org.
1 minute: In the ultimate act of insta-activism, purchase bottled H20 at $20 a pop from charity:water to help build clean-water wells in Ethiopia, Malawi, Uganda and the Central African Republic. Click on charityis.org.
—Jessica Ridenour
![[Send]](http://wholelifetimes.com/sendlink/send.gif){kind=small}
Recommend this page to a friend
Top Ten pages recommended to friends:
