PARK(ing) Day!

Almost two months ago- I was advised by a reader to look up PARK(ing) Day…I followed the trail through various websites until I was led to Matthew Shaffer, Associate Director of Marketing for the Trust for Public Land (TPL).  Matt was nice enough to chat with me for a while and told me about how PARK(ing) Day, which originated in San Fransisco in 2005 via the art collective REBAR group has transformed into a one-day global event. Local volunteers gather to temporarily transform metered parking spots into ‘PARK(ing)’ spaces, or temporary public parks (I checked out photos- and this is ART, folks). This year, PARK(ing) day falls on Friday, September 19.

 

For more info (and to set up your own temporary PARK/art installation), check out the PARK(ing) day website: http://www.parkingday.org/.

 

Or check out the Trust for Public Land’s website: http://www.tpl.org/tier3_cd.cfm?content_item_id=22093&folder_id=3428.

 

The aim of the whole thing now is to promote the need for parks in cities. Research has found that more than half of the kids in any given city don’t have access to a local safe place to play. Part of the goal is to help communities realize the importance of parks and to then assist communities towards creating new parks where they are needed.

 

Back in 2005, REBAR found out that you can lease a parking spot for any ‘safe and legal’ purpose. So what did they do?! They decided to create a park. Spunky creativity is always awesome. From that initial experiment- the reaction by passer-bys inspired them to keep at it.

 

In 2007, PARK(ing) day was held in SF, Cleveland, NYC and London…hopefully this year more folks get at it. Matt said that last year someone did create a PARK(ing) spot in DC. However, this year, a guy named Brandon Schmidtling (you can Facebook him) is organizing it- so I can’t wait to see pictures of a nasty DC parking spot transformed into a mini park. Unfortunately, I am not in DC at the moment (more on that and the long blogging absence in a bit), but maybe one of my friends will read this and be inspired enough to get involved!? For the SLR folks, this would be an amazing photo opportunity…and it’s for a great cause!

 

-greenDCgirl (From Corvallis, OR)

 

Washingtonian’s Ecofriendly Guide to Washington

Emily over at the Washingtonian forwarded this great resource to me: Go Green!.

-greenDCgirl

 

Earty Day Update – Green Technology & Buildings Bloom on the National Mall

4th Annual National Sustainable Design Expo and People, Prosperity and the Planet (P3) Awards

WHO:
Stephen L. Johnson, EPA Administrator (speaking Monday, 9 am – 9:30 am)
George Gray, Assistant Administrator, EPA Office of Research and Development
More than 50 Student Design Teams and 40 Exhibitors

WHEN:
Sunday, April 20 – from noon to 5 pm
Monday, April 21 – from 9 am to 5 pm
Tuesday, April 22 – Earth Day – from 9 am to 3 pm

WHERE:
National Mall between Constitution and Independence Avenues and 3rd and 4th Streets, N.W.
(Federal Triangle Metro stop – Orange and Blue Lines)

On April 20–22, 2008, EPA will hold the National Sustainable Design Expo which showcases new sustainable or “green” technologies. More than 50 college teams from across the country will exhibit their innovative solutions for an environmentally sustainable future, including: generating wind power from kites, solar panels made from plant chlorophyll, producing plastic from wastewater, green parking lots near floodplains to reduce runoff, new technologies to provide clean drinking water to developing nations, and much more!

On Monday morning, Administrator Stephen L. Johnson will announce EPA’s new strategic approach to green building, which aims to help the agency facilitate mainstream adoption of effective green building practices.

The Expo is also the showcase for EPA’s Annual P3 – People, Prosperity, and the Planet – Award Competition. Previous P3 winners have taken their innovations to new levels including starting successful businesses. This is a great opportunity not only for an Earth Day story, but to tell your readers about new green technologies.

More information about the P3 event: http://www.epa.gov/P3
Video of the exhibits and teams (after the event): http://www.epa.gov/multimedia
(EPA’s new web multimedia portal)
EPA’s Green Building programs: http://www.epa.gov/greenbuilding

 

Earth Day on the Mall!

Green Apple Festival

Starting at noon on the mall on the 20th. Also – if you bike they will have free bike valets!

Click here for more info: Green Apple Music Festival.

Free music (the roots, thievery corporation and etc.) and speeches from folks like Edward Norton, Fenty, Thomas Friedman and various green members of congress.

-greenDCgirl

p.s. Sierra Club is also having Moonlit Hike on the Mall from 7-10pm on April 18th. Click here for more info on that: Moonlit Hike .

 

Java Green – Yay Small Businesses!

I’d been meaning to visit Java Green for months and I finally visited with my roommate for a weekday dinner. I’ve been on detail in the McPherson Metro area and my roommate works nearby so the two of us just walked over to 19th St (between K and L).

I started snapping away with my camera as soon as I could see the large circular Java Green logo and just as I was sitting down spotted a recycling truck picking up from Java. So I quickly rushed outside to snap pictures of the truck which had a large yellow bumblebee emblem on the side of the black truck. Only after taking a couple shots did I notice that there was a person sitting on the passenger side of the vehicle, I smiled in an embarrassed manner and sort of pranced away. Later, the truck driver approached me to ask why I’d taken those pictures and I felt my cheeks heating up as I explained that I had a silly blog I liked to post green items of interest on. But he smiled and said, “Yeah, lots of people doing the right thing now – like Java, okay, I was just curious”. And he walked away.

After much deliberation I ordered the Boolgogi & Kimchi ($10.00). Boolgogi is traditionally this Korean dish that is made with beef. However, Java Green being the progressive restaurant it is had managed to compose a faux boolgogi that tasted great! I mean you can tell it’s not meat but I don’t think I would have noticed right away – and I know my Korean food. The faux boolgogi was accompanied by organic rice, jobche (vermicelli) noodles, mushroom, spinach, lotus root, gobo root and kimchi (a traditional Korean staple dish of pickled cabbage). Now, I absolutely must mention the rice because it was just great, not to mention much healthier than white rice. My father was recently diagnosed with diabetes and simply changing his white rice intake to brown rice or even brown rice mixed with a variety of bean types has improved his blood sugar level a great degree- so I’m a big proponent of the brown rice. My roommate ordered the jobche noodles ($9.50) which were accompanied by ‘chicken’. My roommate and I debated over what exactly the chicken was composed of- and I think we settled on it being either a type of mushroom or fermented tofu that was marinated to be spicy chicken-ish. It was actually pretty spicy but my roommate inhaled it.

My roommate and I also ended up ordering a Ginger Chai Tea Latte which was amazingly fresh. The manager (owner?) of the store later told me that they used fresh ginger (you could definitely tell by the spicy undertones) and raw organic agave. I asked for soy milk and I was amazed at how frothy they managed to get it. Every time I try to froth up soy milk at home it only stands for a couple moments before it fades into the beverage. Perhaps next time I’ll ask for their secret frothing technique.

Before my roommate and I dashed out of Java to watch The Jane Austen Book Club whilst curled up on our couch, we had a chance to meet the manager/owner of Java and after raving about the food learned that he was having a meeting that very night about expanding to other locations in the D.C. area. Of course, I pushed to have one in the Eastern Market location, but we’ll see.

The food was great, especially considering the cost/value and the social reasoning’s behind Mr. Kim’s sourcing. I could definitely see why Java was voted most progressive restaurant. They are a member of the Clean Energy Partnership (i.e. purchases 100% wind power), support fair trade and organics, and use real chinaware when possible while also providing the to-go crowd with biodegradable serving ware and carry-out bags (though I will have to write a note about the corn-based cups…). With a diverse menu that includes sandwiches, soups, noodle dishes, rice entrees and a variety of smoothie options – everybody should be able to find something to satisfy their palette. Java Green was great – I feel so lucky to be able to get Korean food that is in line with my social values – how random is that? I definitely plan on dropping by again very soon.

  -greenDCgirl

p.s. Click here for practical info on Java Green

p.p.s. Click more to see additional pictures from our Java Green adventure.

 

It’s All In The Details: Hearing the Whos

For her birthday, my friend Annie organized a D.C.-wide scavenger hunt and just the weekend prior I participated in a pub crawl/scavenger hunt; the difference being that in the pub scavenger hunt all the items to be located were solely to be found within the pubs. What was amazing about these scavenger hunts was that it drew out our attention to detail to the environment that we witness daily. I realized that that most of us run around without actually absorbing the amazing amount of details and minutia that surround us: the red brick, golden-domed Starbucks next to the Archives Navy Memorial metro stop; the Chinese calendar zodiac symbols that adorn the sidewalks of China Town; the colorful bear that greets us in front of Ben’s Chili Bowl; or the fact that the Canadians thought that trees were significant enough to their national identity to include them in the architecture of their new embassy.

It made me think about a friend of mine who recently brainstormed out loud about starting a blog that would note all the instances of ‘true’ nature she found amongst the sidewalks of D.C. She noted how during a romp with her dog, she’d run into some English ivy (hedera helix) and how happy it had made her because it reminded her of the forests back home – except, as she trailed on, she noted that the particular ivy she had run across was actually a non-native invasive species and that even back home it had ‘escaped’ into the woodland areas from people’s gardens and was now displacing native flora. I don’t know why, but this type of information just really interests me: the details. Another group of friends recently discussed all the bird songs they had started to hear in the mornings from the returning migrants.

A recent New Yorker article tracked a couple from Italy and how they started their version of Slow Food- but for living…slow living. One of the funnier anecdotes from their traverses included handing out ‘speeding’ tickets to pedestrians in NYC that they deemed were living/moving too fast. I loved the idea and really identified with the philosophy; coming from the south to attend college on the east coast – I thought initially that the pace of life was greatly speeded up and also noticed that everyone walked too quickly. Yet now, I’ve become an easterner myself and when I head south, the slow pace drives me crazy. There is definitely a difference between being inefficient and lazy versus simply taking the time to notice the everyday beauty that surrounds us. Traditionally, art has been the medium that helps us notice the beauty in the everyday objects surrounding us – but what happens when the natural world becomes a blur?

When I first moved to D.C. and was working a balancing act of interning for free, working part-time as a consultant and catering on the side, I went a couple weeks without actually looking up at the sky. I mean, of course you know that the sky is always above you – but I was so stressed and concerned about the details of my work and personal life that I simply forgot to lift my head. When I finally remembered to, I realized that stress should have been one of the main reasons that I absolutely should have glanced upwards. The details that the natural world provides, even in our urban setting -especially in our urban setting, should not be taken for granted. So especially in this time of celebrating the blooming cherry blossoms – I hope everyone takes note of the random details that only the natural environment can provide us with. Whether it’s the contrast of pinks, whites and greens against the cement grey federal buildings populating our city streets or the thrashing and whistlings of birds in bushes along Pennsylvania Avenue. Perhaps all of us will soon be lucky enoug to hear the Whos.

See below for pictures of the details I’ve noticed recently around the District.

 

Farmers Markets in the District

Eastern Market

Metro: Eastern Market
Times: South Hall – Tues-Sat/7am-6pm & Sun/9am-6pm
Farmers’ Line – Sat-Sun/7am-4pm
Location: 7th St. & North Carolina Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C.

There are two components to the food available: the South Hall Food Merchants who are operating in the “East Hall” temporary structure directly across the street and the open air farmer’s line that is only open on the weekends.Both the Eastern Market building AND its interior are designated National Historic Landmarks. The market has been in continuous operation since 1873. For more information click here . There is also an on-going arts and crafts fair and a flea market adjacent to the market that is open every Sunday from 10am to 5pm.

Dupont Circle

Metro: Dupont Circle
Times: Regular season (April-December): Sundays, 9am-pm. Winter Hours (January-March) 10am-1pm.
Location: 1500 block of 20th St., between Massachusetts Ave and Q St.

Established in 1997, it has been named one of the top farmers’ markets in the country by The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times of London. During the peak season, there are more than 30 farmers offering fruits, veggies, meat, poultry, fresh flowers and potted plants, seafood, cheeses, fruit pies, breads, fresh pasta, soaps and herbal products. There are also a variety of eco-friendly foods.

USDA Farmers Market

Metro: Smithsonian
Times: June 1 – October 26; Every Friday 10am-2pm
Location: USDA Parking lot, corner of 12th St & Independence Avenue, SW

Foggy Bottom

Metro: Foggy Bottom
Times: April to November – Wednesdays 2:30 to 7 pm
Location: I Street between New Hampshire and 24th Street, NW (Right off of the Metro)

Established in 2005, the Foggy Bottom farmers bring their premium pickings of tree and field fruits, vegetables, eggs, organic and grass-fed meats, handmade cheeses, breads/desserts, preserves, herbs, flowers, plants and more.

H Street

Metro: Union Station (Red line)
Times: May 5 to October 27, Saturdays, 9 am to noon
Location: 624 H Street NE (parking lot directly across from the H Street Self Storage)

Penn Quarter

Metro: Gallery Place (Red, Yellow or Green lines) or Archives (Yellow or Green lines)
Times: April to November, Thursdays 3 pm – 7 pm
Location: North end of 8th St. NW, between D and E Sts. NW