see all 38 photos – The Giant Marionettes of Royal de Luxe
// Thx – Andrea Kuszewski
The zero-waste family
The Johnson family of Mill Valley, California has officially become a “zero-waste family,” meaning that they throw away 0.00 particles of trash each week. That’s right, they waste nothing!
The Johnsons bring their own containers to the grocery store and only buy products that come with no packaging. ”Recycling is a last resort,” they say.
via Manukan Change
The 10 best elements of a Tim Burton movie
1) The Skittish Outcast – Burton has built his entire career on the twitchy outcast.
- Edward Scissorhands – Edward Scissorhands
- Beetlejuice & Lydia – Beetlejuice
- Pee Wee – Pee Wee’s Big Adventure
- Mad Hatter – Alice in Wonderland
- Ichabod Crane – Sleepy Hollow
- Willy Wonka – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
- Ed Wood – Ed Wood
- Sweeney Todd – Sweeney Todd
2) The Blonde Ingenue – The other side of the lady coin in Burton’s world. This director’s obsession with the innocent, blonde ingenue is so strong he’s be-wigged countless brunettes to get that perfect bleached from all sins look.
- Sandra Bloom – Big Fish
- Katrina Van Tassel – Sleepy Hollow
- Kim – Edward Scissorhands
- Johanna – Sweeney Todd
- Vicki Vale – Batman
- Daena – Planet of the Apes
- The White Queen – Alice In Wonderland
3) The Punky Rebellious Young Lady – The misunderstood ladies trapped in a world of their own. These rebels are often the voice of reason in Burton’s mad, mad world.
- Lydia Deetz – Beetlejuice
- Ari – Planet of the Apes
- Carolyn Stoddard – Dark Shadows
- Alice – Alice in Wonderland
- Sally – The Nightmare Before Christmas
- Emily – Corpse Bride
4) Nightmare Face – Horrific, bug-eyed scare jumps that make the audience jump out of their chairs.
- Large Marge – Pee Wee’s Big Adventure
- Max Shreck’s Kiss with Catwoman – Batman Returns
- The bug-eyed witch in the woods – Sleepy Hollow
- Barbara’s rips off her face! – Beetlejuice
keep reading – 10 Things You’ll See in Almost Every Tim Burton Movie
// Thx – Raoul Pop
San Diego takes the lead in craft beer breweries
Not since Prohibition have there been this many craft beer breweries. It’s a small business revolution and I am lucky enough to live next to one, San Diego:
This year’s World Beer Cup lived up to its international name, with winners coming from all corners of the globe — including San Diego County, where breweries took 16 awards.
The annual convention boasted a record turnout (4,500 attendees) and the every-other-year World Beer Cup also witnessed an unprecedented 3,921 entries — 600 more than in 2010.
That may be one reason why San Diego’s breweries saw their total number of medals fall from 2010’s 21.
“We had a good showing,” insisted Marty Mendiola, brewmaster at Rock Bottom La Jolla and the San Diego Brewers Guild’s president. “But the quality of the beer is stepping up around the world.”
Yet local brewers had reasons to rejoice this year. Pizza Port Ocean Beach won three awards; Pizza Port Carlsbad, Lost Abbey, AleSmith and Green Flash all took two apiece; Alpine, Manzanita and Rock Bottom La Jolla one each.
Karl Strauss also captured two awards, including its second consecutive World Beer Cup gold for Red Trolley Ale
It’s exciting to see our tastes go beyond the massively commercial beers (Budweiser, Coors) to a more European-taste where beer making is an honored tradition and the quality is extremely high.
//Photo – Francesco Bartaloni, MacKinnon Photography
Housing recovery hits some areas – top growth in U.S. cities
Metros with the Most Construction Permits in 2011
- Houston, TX – 31,271
- Dallas, TX – 18,686
- Washington, DC – 16,501
- New York, NY – 13,973
- Austin, TX – 10,239
- Los Angeles, CA – 9,895
- Phoenix, AZ – 9,081
- Seattle, WA – 8,664
- Atlanta, GA – 8,634
- San Antonio, TX – 7,127
More permits were issued in the Houston metro area than in any other metro, by far. Four of the top ten metros were in Texas. But this list is dominated by large metro areas, and we’d expect bigger areas to have more construction activity. Looking instead at the number of permits issued per 1,000 existing housing units…here are the top metro areas by construction activity:
Most Construction Activity (per 1,000 existing units)
- El Paso, TX – 15.36
- Austin, TX – 14.49
- Raleigh, NC – 13.66
- Houston, TX – 13.55
- Charleston, SC – 12.80
- Dallas, TX – 11.26
- Little Rock, AR – 10.53
- Baton Rouge, LA – 9.51
- Washington, DC – 9.44
- Columbia, SC – 8.74
via – The Top U.S. Cities for New Home Construction – which includes cities with least construction activity
Continue reading “Housing recovery hits some areas – top growth in U.S. cities”
San Diego Surf Film Festival – beach clean-up and handplane demo
This weekend is the San Diego Surf Film Festival and if you’re attending, you might want to come to this community event.
On Saturday morning (8-10 AM) the festival is hosting a beach clean-up and handplane demo at La Jolla Shores.
There will be coffee, sweet treats, bodysurfing, and a give-away, in addition to the clean-up:
As a community driven event we’re inviting everyone to give a little back to the environment. Join us at La Jolla Shores for a beach clean up as part of the San Diego Surf Film Festival’s events!
The wonderful H2O Trash Patrol will be hosting with us and bringing buckets & trash pickers BUT if you have your own please BringYourOwnBucket!
Pannikin will be providing the coffee, there will be sweet treats from Healthy Creations, and we’ll be there with some Saturday stoke.
We’ll also be giving away four pairs of tickets to the film festival to the biggest trash collectors of the morning.
Look for the SDSFF and H2O Trash Patrol banners and a pop up tent set up on the grass near the north end of the La Jolla Shores parking lot.
The bodysurfing demo will be in association with *enjoy handplanes with all types of handplanes to try out.
Music Video: “Moves Like Jagger” cover by Pentatonix
“Moves Like Jagger” – Pentatonix (Maroon 5 Cover)
New corporation type – B Corporation – for sustainable “benefit corporation”
B Corporations are a new kind of company that uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems. (It’s like a LEED certification or Fair Trade certification, but for a business, not just a building or a bag of coffee.) B Lab, a non-profit, describes the B Corporation movement like this:
When you support a B Corporation, you’re supporting a better way to do business. Governments and nonprofits are necessary but insufficient to solve today’s most pressing problems. Business is the most powerful force on the planet and can be a positive instrument for change.
To read more about B Lab and the B Corporation movement, take a look at this companion post.
B Lab provides a rigorous independent third-party framework for assessing how you’re doing as a business when it comes to employee, community, and environmental interests. Etsy has gone through the assessment and we learned so much about what we are doing right and where we can improve. After successfully completing the independent B Lab assessment, we are proud to announce that Etsy is now a Certified B Corporation™. There are over 500 certified B Corps but Etsy will be among the biggest, along with mission-driven companies like Patagonia and Seventh Generation.
I think becoming a Certified B Corporation is one of the most important things Etsy has ever done. It helps us keep an eye on the “mindful, transparent, and humane” values we aspire to, and also keeps us focused on our intention to “plan and build for the long-term,” not just when it comes to Etsy but for the world at large. Like other Certified B Corporations, B Lab is publishing our scores from the assessment. In being transparent, we are openly challenging ourselves to continually improve how we impact the world with our company. Like most businesses, we are imperfect, but we are publicly committing ourselves to upholding our values and grading ourselves for the long-term. This is how we hope to make a better world and inspire other companies to do the same.
via – Etsy News
Etsy raises $40 million funding – giving craftrepreneurs an international marketplace
Etsy has closed $40 million of funding from a roster of investors who have been believers in Etsy for a long time. I couldn’t be happier to have such a committed set of partners who “get it” along for the next stage.
What do we plan to do with the money we’ve raised? Two simple things, really: we plan to grow Etsy into an economic force all around the world and we want to provide more products and services to help sellers succeed and build their businesses on the Etsy platform. You’ve seen a start in some of these areas — our Etsy in German and French launches…
***
Looking back, Etsy was quite small by today’s measures — the community sold $7.93 million of goods in September 2008. We had about 50 employees and we were in an office in downtown Brooklyn with a broken elevator that famously had a sign that read, “You gotta press up to go down.”
Almost four years later, many things have changed. We have different offices near the Brooklyn Bridge, a working elevator, almost 300 employees, and last month alone, the community sold about $65 million in goods. Each month, 40 million people around the world visit Etsy, with 15 million registered members and 875,000 sellers generating those sales in 150 countries.
(2011 sales – $525 million)
***
We believe, more than ever, that Etsy can help fundamentally change the way the world works by making it possible for individuals to make and sell things to other people around the globe — a people-powered economy.
…we published last fall provides an inspiring blueprint for the better world that we envision:
Decades of an unyielding focus on economic growth and a corporate mentality has left us ever more disconnected with nature, our communities, and the people and processes behind the objects in our lives. We think this is unethical, unsustainable, and unfun. However, with the rise of small businesses around the world we feel hope and see real opportunities: Opportunities for us to measure success in new ways… to build local, living economies, and most importantly, to help create a more permanent future.
via – Etsy News
The story of Ballet shoes
The story of ballet shoes, from the factory to the stage. Filmed on location at Freed of London & the New York City Ballet.
Client: New York City Ballet
Director + Editor: Galen Summer
Producer: Kristin Sloan
Director of Photography: Hillary Spera
Sound Mixer: Guillermo Pena Tapia
// Thx – José Vega