Every day on my way to the Jefferson St. L train I see this, read it, and think about it.  The creator is Skewville, a twin brother artist duo active in transforming the Brooklyn landscape.  A recent proposal, the Bushwick Art Park is visualized as a “green space” on a blocked-off Vandervoort Place, with murals painted on bordering buildings, and sculptures installed in the road.  With the park, Skewville aims to connect the long-existing population of bodega owners and industrial workers with the young people (often called “artists”) who arrived more recently, creating one thriving community.

This story, via my mom, a pretty radical knitter herself:

The book Yarn Bombing: The Art of Crochet and Knit Graffiti compiles photos of knit interventions all over the world, along with accompanying texts and how-tos.  They even give a handy guide of the measurements of major buildings, bridges, and monuments in case you want to go all Christo and Jean-Claude.

Though the book came out last fall, the phenomenon is nothing new. Magda Sayeg, a pioneer in yarn bombing, began taking her work to the streets in 2005 in “response to the dehumanizing qualities of an urban environment.”  Stephen Colbert reported on one knitter’s response to American institutions like guns and SUVs in 2008.

A lot more photos are here.

Catamaran made from 12,000 recycled plastic bottles crosses the pacific to raise awareness of our tendency to waste plastic like there’s no tomorrow …good idea? Here’s a cool video.

The smarties over at biccontrol.com are building an online HQ for cyclists and well…non-cyclists too, in the spirit of making San Diego safer, cleaner, healthier, and ultimately more livable. As we enter the Post-Petrol age, organizing ourselves as cyclists instead of motorists is a positive response to declining energy and rising rates of obesity. Now, go rescue your old Peugeot from behind the garage or jump on your buddy’s pegs and cut up the streets. Bangarang!

MXD MSG full version 7min from BREADTRUCK TV on Vimeo.

Adbusters posted this short film on their blog as “An urgent call to designers worldwide: It’s time to break free.” As a designer myself, I clicked. To my excitement, it was a short film created by one of my home-town heroes, Jeffrey Durkin. The film takes place in San Diego, and follows a graphic designer with ADD – and for me, that hits pretty close to home. Excited for Jeffrey and his blossoming production company, BreadTruck Films, I felt spreading the word was the least I could do. Keep it up Durkin – great stuff.

As for you creatives, I’m not done with you. For the last 6 decades we have basically tricked everyone into a lifestyle of false desires and consumption as remedy for the very stresses of life as a wage-slave. We coerce consumers in exchange for a paycheck. But the truth is we do not live in the Advertising Age nor the Space Age nor the Age of Industry. We live a Post-Everything world in which every product/corporation/government that still exists RELIES on you, the Creative. So just stop it. Make it obsolete. Advertise collaboration, thought & reason. Advertise health and love. You are culturally immersed, educated, constantly thinking and rethinking everything; what are you afraid of? We own them, and they know it. It’s time to switch sides.

>> Note to self: quit job.

We don’t need money – money needs us.

“Money is sacred in our capitalist society. And despite a lifetime of passing it around, very few of us have ever thought to destroy the lucre in our hands.”

-Micah White
via Adbusters

Come have breakfast with me at SDSU.

Beekeeping, Permaculture, the Farm Bill, NAFTA, you name it. The Ecological Intelligentsia is going to be dropping knowledge this weekend.

Volunteer if you have the motivation to do so. Otherwise, just come!

“Oh, I think one decent person with enough commitment, and enough integrity, and enough concern for their neighbors can turn the world upside down.”

Mitch Snyder, founder of the Community for Creative Non-Violence (CCNV), A D.C. homeless shelter that happens to be the largest in the United States, starved himself for 51 days in Lafayette Park (across the street from the White House) – forcing R. Reagan to allocate funds for the renovation of his decrepit building.

Watch ‘Promises To Keep‘, a documentary chronicling the formation of the CCNV.

View the CCNV on Google Street View.

p.s. now how do you like that for dinner conversation?

I don’t usually post TED talks but this is a good one and it’s only 3 minutes long. Derek Sivers breaks down the anatomy of a social movement… just watch it you’ll like it.