It demands food, water and constant attention, yet it gives so little in return. Wasteful in its water consumption and often laden with chemicals (for that “natural” green look), the suburban front lawn is a symbol of upwardly mobile Americana, and like many status symbols, it serves no real purpose other than to look pretty.
Los Angeles-based architect Fritz Haeg envisions a more functional use for the labor-intensive American front lawn, one that builds neighborhood interaction and encourages families to look at private land use in a new way.
Haeg’s project, the Edible Estates initiative, aims to replace resource-sapping front lawns with productive fruit and vegetable gardens. But why not in the back yard, where there’s some privacy? Haeg believes the front yard acts as a buffer, isolating people from the greater community just as its homogenous green carpet fosters mindless conformity. “It’s kind of a default reaction to an empty space to want to put a lawn there,” says the architect, who also founded the eco-themed gardenLAb program at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design. Edible Estates are meant to do more than reinvent the uniform suburban landscape. “The project isn’t really about vegetable gardens and it’s not really about lawns,” says Haeg. “It’s about having a relationship with the environment and with other people.”
Fritz has planned nine Edible installments around the country, and two are already in place. As a follow-up to the inaugural garden sown in Salina, Kans. on July 4th of last year, the second Edible Estate now flourishes in Lakewood, Calif., 20 miles south of downtown LA. Michael and Jennifer Foti sacrificed their front lawn for more beans, patty pan squash and Hungarian cucumbers than they can consume, can or give away. Besides achieving near self-sufficiency produce-wise, Michael Foti’s new lawn has made him somewhat of a local celebrity, allowing him the chance to chat with many of his fellow Lakewood citizens on a daily basis. “You don’t really know what’s going on in the neighborhood unless you spend some time out there,” says Foti. “I didn’t want to look inward all the time. I want to look outward.”
For more information on the Edible Estates Initiative, or to volunteer your front lawn, visit www.fritzhaeg.com. —Jessica Ridenour
Om-Hum
AcroYoga tackles boredom on the mat
After 5,000 years, someone was bound to get bored.
Spicing up the ancient practice, AcroYoga melds traditional yoga techniques with a double shot of Cirque du Soleil and a sprinkle of Thai massage.
It’s yoga one better, enthuses Berkeley-based Jenny Sauer-Klein, who founded AcroYoga in December 2003 with fellow yogi and Olympic acrobat Jason Nemer.
“Yoga is infinite, which is what I love about it,” says Sauer-Klein, who has studied with yogi big guns like Gurmukh and David Swenson, as well as Elise and Serenity Smith, identical twins who toured with Cirque du Soleil’s Saltimbanco show. “AcroYoga is doubly so; it’s all the potential you have, combined with all the potential of your partner.”
As extreme as the marriage of acrobatics and yoga may sound, most of AcroYoga is straight out partner yoga. Every session begins with a Circle Ceremony, in which the whole class performs simple stretches and invocations that emphasize community and integrated movement. Then, pairs of practitioners work on traditional asanas together, spot each other in handstand, perform therapeutic Thai massage and “fly” each other, which is a little like playing airplane with your toddler.
The acrobatics portion of the class borrows yoga poses like backbend (urdhva dhanurasana) or shoulderstand (sarvangasana), but combines them in unique ways using teams of two or more. For example, two people stacked one on top of another in plank pose.
“There are certain postures I can access more easily upside down on someone’s feet than I could on the ground,” says Sauer-Klein. “[New] things are possible when you know the technique and the right tricks.”
Sauer-Klein asserts we’re all physically capable of more than we think, but she also admits AcroYoga isn’t designed for the beginner yogi.
“On the whole, AcroYoga is meant for more advanced practitioners who are looking to expand,” she explains. “There are parts that aren’t suitable for everyone, other parts take skill and time to cultivate, and some require extreme flexibility.”
And mastering the mechanics is just one part of the learning curve.
“You find out quickly if you don’t trust yourself, or you don’t trust your partner,” she says. “There’s a lot of self discovery.”
Michelle Bouvier was recovering from a car accident when she took her first AcroYoga workshop at Brian Kest’s Santa Monica Power Yoga studio last November. She had been practicing yoga for 13 years, teaching for six, and had just begun looking for places to learn circus arts in Southern California.
“AcroYoga made me realize that I wanted to dedicate my life to movement arts—as many forms as I could fit in,” says the Encinitas resident, who also practices Capoeira, modern dance and therapeutic yoga. “In addition to the anatomical and physical aspects, it brings up a lot of trust issues and internal resistance. You can talk about the concepts in other mind-body practices, but you’re not confronted with it.”
For Annie Carpenter, an instructor at Yoga Works in Santa Monica who has practiced Ashtanga and Iyengar for more than 30 years, fusion practices like AcroYoga have their share of benefits and losses.
“The idea of yoga is that it’s living and changing, so it’s important not to be too rigid about it,” she says. “But, without a solid, traditional, from-the-roots base, all you’re going to have is fluff.”
Whether you’re bored, bendy or just curious, AcroYoga is holding a workshop at City Yoga (cityyoga.com), 9/22-24. —Rachel Dowd
Your Ass Is Grass
When the “Happy Cows” ad campaign hit televisions, PETA smelled something stinky. Sure enough, facts confirmed that while dairy cows may hail from California, they’re more likely to have been raised trapped in feedlots, knee-deep in feces than frolicking in green pastures. Now, due to a proposed rule by the Department of Agriculture, similar concerns are wafting up regarding animals labeled as “grass-fed.” The rule would relax the requirements of the “grass-fed” label to allow inclusion of animals raised in confinement and injected with antibiotics and hormones—just as long as they’re munching on “harvested forage” (a term currently defined vaguely enough to include grains like corn, thus negating the side-benefit of increased omega-3 fatty acids in beef from cows grazed on actual natural grasses).
Naturally, grass-fed beef purveyors and farmers are udderly furious about the proposal. Ronnie Cummins, of the Organic Consumers Association—a nonprofit dedicated to maintaining food safety standards—doesn’t think the rule will fly. Still, Cummins encourages concerned consumers to write letters and stay up on the issue at sites like eco-labels.org. It’s yet another compelling argument in the long list of reasons to buy directly from a local farmer you know and trust. —Jenny Rough
Eat Your Plate
Biodegradable forks and spoons? Plates and cups I can compost? It’s an eco-conscious picnicker’s dream! Well, sort of.
As WLT has oft reported, a growing number of companies offer biodegradable alternatives to petroleum-based “disposable” plastic dishware. Like Earthshell, a Lutherville, MD-based vendor of cups, plates and plastic packaging made from potatoes, wheat and even (yum?) tapioca. Or Vegware (which makes stuff out of corn), Biograde (limestone and cellulose) or WorldCentric (doing wonders with sugar cane fiber).
The idea, of course, is that unlike regular plastics—which will live out their next several hundred years in a landfill somewhere—biodegradables break down into organic components, creating rich, fertile compost that will (conveniently!) nourish your garden, which will then (how practical!) produce food, which you can (aha!) chow down on with another corn-based fork. You get it: natural cycle of life, closing the loop, etc.
But there’s a slight kink in the works. If you’re lucky enough to live in a progressive town—Berkeley, say—then you’ve got access to municipal industrial composting services. (Even some slightly less enlightened cities offer such services—find out if your town is one of them at ciwmb.ca.gov). Oh, but wait—even enlightened waste facilities are unaccustomed to forks and spoons amidst the grass clippings. Mistaking them for misplaced trash, many workers pluck them out and banish them to the landfill with the rest of the refuse. According to Ferris Kawar, with the Community Greening Program at Venice enviro organization, Sustainable Works, “There’s still a lot of education that has to happen on many different levels [before biodegradable utensils will be fully effective].”
Of course, that’s not the last of the obstacles facing biodegradable plastics. In places where industrial facilities are hard to find, buyers of biodegradables are limited to either putting the utensils in a home compost bin—where, depending on the product and the temperature of the compost, they might take anywhere from three weeks to several months to break down—or throwing them away. But toss them in the trash and they’ll be carted off to a landfill, sealed off from the elements needed for decomposition.
Really only one question remains: is it environmentally smarter to toss a biodegradable cup in the trash can or a plastic cup in the recycling bin? In other words—here’s the moral—there’s really no perfect cure for our nasty disposability habit. Now that’s something to chew on while you’re sipping your morning coffee from your reusable mug. —Andi McDaniel
This Ice Cap’s for You
If global warming has got you looking to drown your sorrows in a cold one, then we’ve got the brew for you. Greenland Brewhouse, the world’s first Inuit microbrewery, has launched the world’s first beer distilled with water from melted polar ice caps.
The brewers claim the 2,000-year-old water is free of toxic minerals and pollutants, giving the ales a smooth, clean flavor. “Today, with all the pollution… you cannot get cleaner water than melted ice cap water,” boasts Salik Hard, a native Greenlander and co-owner of the brewery, which is based 390 miles south of the Arctic Circle. —Eliza Thomas