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As most joggers are by now aware, there's a burgeoning movement readers of runners eschewing super-cushioned shoes for "minimal" ones inspired by running barefoot. Boston-based New Balance is helping lead the movement with its popular NB Minimus line, which provided the design foundation for the pared-down newSKY collection. The difference? The newSKY line is informed by sustainable design......read more
About eight years ago, Glenn Albrecht began receiving frantic calls from residents of the Upper Hunter Valley, a 6,000-square-mile region in southeastern Australia. For generations the Upper Hunter was known as the “Tuscany of the South” — an oasis of alfalfa fields, dairy farms and lush English-style shires on a notoriously hot, parched continent. “The calls were like desperate pleas,”......read more
Urban gardening used to seem subversive. People planted tomatoes in public parks, strung their hops to rooftops to make homebrew and reclaimed empty lots as community farms, never mind the property owner. Yet here in one of the more thoroughly tilled cities in America, subversive has come full circle: the federal government plans to plant its own bold garden directly above a downtown plaza. As......read more
How's this for bitter irony? Most forms of the color green, the chosen emblem of environmentalism since the 1960s, are not only not ecologically responsible but potentially poisonous. Writing in the Design section of the New York Times, Alice Rosthorn says that because the color green is so difficult to create, manufacturers have to use toxic chemicals to stabilize it. That means that......read more
SHFT.COM, an eco-conscious Web site with a high-profile pedigree (the actor Adrian Grenier and the film producer Peter Glatzer are the founders), is presenting a pop-up gallery in New York in a tie-in with pureDKNY, a scent that is packaged in recyclable glass and features the eco-activist model Angela Lindvall in its ads. ...read more
Here's an old but great holiday-themed animation by HunterGatherer (aka Brooklyn-based artist/designer Todd St. John). "Circle Squared," originally released in 2007, was commissioned by T Magazine for the Christmas season. The story is told through stop-motion animation, using toy-like hand-made wooden forms, which interact similarly to the way Russian dolls nest. These cube-animal shapes......read more
New York cyclists rejoice. Hot on the heels of a successful stint in London, Rapha Cycle Club will pop up on the Bowery in NYC in celebration of the Tour de France. Opening on July 3rd, the Rapha Cycle Club will present live daily screenings of the famed bike race. Part retail shop, part cafe, part gallery, the space will offer Rapha gear, serve up brews from Third Rail Coffee, and show an......read more
There's nothing new about urban gardening. The Romans grew food on rooftops. Schoolyards and vacant lots have hosted veggie plots for centuries. So today's city agriculture explosion is really just a reclamation of our heritage. And nowhere is it more prevalent than Brooklyn, where Patrick Nagel (no, not that Patrick Nagel) gets his green thumb dirty every day. Born and raised near Detroit,......read more
This week, the New York State Assembly approved a temporary moratorium on the controversial natural gas exploration technique known as "fracking." Combining hydraulic fracturing with horizontal drilling, fracking uses large quantities of water and chemicals to blast through the earth's surface and uncover natural gas reserves. The moratorium is aimed at the Marcellus Shale field,......read more
Good news for fracking opponents in New York state this week, as an N.Y. Supreme Court judge ruled that the upstate town of Dryden is within its rights to ban a company from drilling for natural gas within its borders. Last August, Dryden's Town Board passed a drilling ban and was sued a month later by the Anschutz Exploration Corporation, whose lawyers argued that the town had no power to......read more
