Grid Magazine prototype

towards a sustainable

Philadelphia

fresh perspectives on philadelphia

food | energy | shelter | culture | ecology in this issue

Bike Share

n

d

pr this ot i s j o u ď ą ty st t pe he

Is it right for Philly?

a

g r i d p h i l ly . c o m

Production Schedule fall 2008 | the prototype

mar–apr 2009

Comment 4 30

David Should Win A Different Philadelphia

Shelter 6 7

Do More With Less Living Sustainability: 10 tips for renters

Food 8

You Say Tomato: One man’s adventures in preserving tomatoes the old fashioned way.

10 Squash It To Me 12 A Honey of a Time 13 Spicy, Sweet and Savory: Three locally made foodstuffs

Bike Section 16-17 Bike Philly: A map of cycling 18

22

24 25 26

routes through the city.

Whither Bike Share: Is a city-wide bicycle sharing system the best way to change the way Philadelphia travels?

Robin Hood-at-Law: Philly’s bike lawyer protects injured cyclists.

Bike Buyin’ Cruisers and Compacts and Road Bikes? Oh My! Safe Riding

Ecology 14

Powering Ourselves

Culture 28 29

Movies That Matter Good Books g r i d p h i l ly . c o m

energy issue

the

food issue

For this issue, we’ll focus on how and where Philly gets its energy.

We’ll delve into the state of our current electric grid and the various ways energy is produced, and how those can change to be more sustainable. More pragmatically, we’ll look at what the average Philadelphian can do to save energy to benefit their bank account and the environment.

On newsstands February 15th!

For our food issue we’ll look at where and how local food is grown.

We’ll profile local farms and plans to build foodsheds for our area. It will also feature guides on how to grow your own food and how to start your own community garden, orchard or farm.

On newsstands April 15th!

july–aug 2009

sep–oct 2009

the

culture issue

the

ecology issue

Philadelphia is a vibrant home to art, music and performance to rival anywhere else. We’ll take a look at how local people are promoting sustainability through their personal art. Additionally, we’ll take a look at how ordinary Philadelphians are creating a culture of sustainability in their own communities and how the city can help.

On newsstands June 15th!

Philadelphia is a post-industrial town, meaning our ground, water and air contain the nasty remnants of times past. We’ll focus on how badly damaged the local landscape is and how to start fixing it. Resident polluters that are still around—hey, Sunoco— will also get a good going-over.

On newsstands August 15th!

nov–dec 2009

jan–feb 2010

Take This River and Dredge It: Plans to dredge the Delaware may have stalled.

Energy 27

the

may–june 2009

the

shelter issue

Figuring out how to stay warm and dry in a sustainable way is one of the big challenges facing us. We’ll look at the state of Philadelphia’s public and private housing infrastructure and the needed changes to make it more sustainable. Another section will include tips on how to winterize your house, saving energy and money in the cold months ahead.

On newsstands October 15th!

the

recycling issue

Reusing waste will be the focus of this issue. We’ll look at community initiatives to increase recycling in Philadelphia, and why our city has lagged behind others in recycling numbers for so long. Another section will include DIY guides on reusing common household goods for new purposes and how to cut down on your consumption.

On newsstands December 15th! *Content Subject to Change

c o ver il l u st rat io n by dewey saunders

editor’s notes

I

f I was wondering whether the time is right to launch Grid, a magazine devoted to sustainability issues in Philadelphia, I received the answer the other day when I invited my fiancée Ellen to can tomatoes with me.

She was excited, but not in the least bit surprised. It turns out that, a few days earlier, her friend Annie had extended a similar invitation. Sounds like a can-tastic canning craze is afoot! Imagine how amused our great grandmothers would be to see so much enthusiasm channeled into, what was for them, a routine task. Then again, imagine how astonished they would be to see how distant our society has grown from food preparation in general.

Things are changing in this country, especially here in Philadelphia. More and more people are reconnecting with their food, joining CSAs (community supported agriculture, basically a subscription to a local farm), planting gardens, cooking and patronizing restaurants that source food locally. When they do, they feel empowered, the food tastes better and it encourages more independent thought and action. Sure, it takes some work. Sure, my slippers are sticking to the kitchen floor, which needs a good scrubbing after yesterday’s late-night canning session. However, I’ll bet the figurative farm that when I uncork those fiery red orbs of deliciousness in January, it will taste better and have more meaning to me than 10,000 cans of brand X tomatoes from the supermarket.

You know what else feels good? Zooming past cars knotted up in traffic on your bike. (If you can live without the car you have; canceling your car insurance, forgoing gas purchases and never worrying about parking tickets are all thrilling things to be savored, too). In this, our Bike Issue, we’ve provided a map, places to buy bikes in Philly, an overview of bikes to help you choose the right one and, should an untoward car door unexpectedly open in front of you, the lawyer you should call to get you and your bike back on the streets.

While there will be plenty of how-to and getting-started features in this magazine, the idea of Grid isn’t to create a sustainable you—it’s to help foster a sustainable us. The threats of global warming and peak oil are the byproducts of the outdated systems we continue to rely on. We want to talk about how everyone can live, and perhaps live more richly, within different systems—some that exist and some that should. We’ll be investigating public policy issues through the lens of sustainability and documenting the efforts of citizen-driven community initiatives.

This is first and foremost a local magazine, and one of the key elements of sustainability is community self-reliance. Grid will accept ads from locally-owned companies only, and keep out the corporations who (they’re people, right?) think that sustainability is an opportunity for their marketing departments.

As you might expect, we’re hungry for feedback. This is just the prototype, and Grid’s newsstand launch will be in the early part of next year. On the facing page, you’ll find our production schedule for 2009 and a brief overview of our issues’ themes. Please let us know what you like, and what you think will make the magazine better.

OK, I’m finished for now—and I didn’t use the word “green” once. Welcome to Grid.

publisher

Alex Mulcahy 215.625.9850 ext. 102 art director

Jamie Leary 215.625.9850 ext. 104 associate editor

Will Dean copy editors

Andrew Bonazelli, Patty Moran, Albert Mudrian production

Lucas Hardison it

Scott Hungarter circulation

Mark Evans 215.625.9850 ext. 105 writers

Sean Crane Samantha Drake Paul Glover Dana Henry Lise Monty Betsy Teutsch Kerry Trueman Judy Weightman photographers

Shawn Corrigan Eric Harman Krysta Knaster Alex J. Mulcahy Editor alex@gridphilly.com

illustrators

Jude Buffum J.P. Flexner Bruno Guerreiro Melissa McFeeters Dewey Saunders published by

Printed in the usa on Leipa’s 43.9 lb Ultra Mag gloss paper.

It’s 100% recycled, and 80% of it comes from post-consumer waste.

Red Flag Media 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor Philadelphia, PA 19107 215.625.9850 g r i d p h i l ly . c o m

pho to by jam ie l eary

Choosing Small

essay by kerry trueman

T

he big picture in America is changing. From where I sit, it’s starting to look like a whole new ballgame—in a sepia-toned, Ken Burns-ished way.

I’ve seen the future, and I’ve gotta say—it’s not looking so futuristic.

Think black and white, à la It’s a Wonderful Life. Frank Capra’s Depression-era fable features a run on the Bailey Building & Loan (hello, IndyMac), a predatory lender (Mr. Potter, meet Countrywide’s Angelo Mozilo), and a town angsty about its soldiers overseas (tie a yellow ribbon ’round your old Humvee!)

Does that ring a bell? I hope so, because—as the movie famously notes—every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings. Hey, even us secularists would welcome some divine intervention to lift us out of the tar pit we’re stuck in.

The message of Capra’s 1946 classic—that true wealth is measured in friends, not funds—is downright heretical at a time when so much of our economy’s based on convincing folks to buy stuff they don’t need with money they haven’t got.

It’s a Wonderful Life was deemed subversive in its day, too; in 1947, the FBI issued a memo entitled “Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry,” which read, in part:

“…the film represented rather obvious attempts to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a ‘scrooge-type’ so that he would be the most hated man in the picture. This… is a common trick used by Communists… “…this picture deliberately maligned the upper class, attempting to show the people who had money were mean and despicable characters.”

But as Professor John Noakes of Franklin and Marshall College noted: “What’s interesting in the FBI critique is that the Baileys were also bankers, and what is really going on is a struggle between the big-city banker [Potter] and the small 4

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banker [the Baileys]…

“The FBI misinterpreted this classic struggle as communist propaganda. I would argue that It’s a Wonderful Life is a poignant movie about the transition in the U.S. between small and big capitalism, with Jimmy Stewart personifying the last hope for a small town. It’s a lot like the battle between Home Depot and the mom and pop hardware store.” illus t r at ion by b r uno gu errei ro

The message of Capra’s classic—that true wealth is measured in friends, not funds—is downright heretical at a time when so much of our economy is based on convincing folks to buy stuff they don’t need with money they haven’t got.

The locally owned mom and pop shop may have a fighting chance to compete with chain stores and malls now that the cost of gas and goods is skyrocketing.

While big business rarely thinks outside the big box, even Walmart is seeking more local sources for its produce—not, mind you, out of any burning desire to give a boost to the locavore movement, but to burn less fuel. Higher gas prices are forcing all of us to think different—and I say that as a blogger who can’t breathe without my (MacBook) Air or leave home without my iPhone. Some of us didn’t leave home at all this summer, choosing a “staycation” in our own neck of the woods and opting to hike or bike instead of driving or flying to some far-off destination.

A lot of folks are thinking that this downshift’ is only temporary—that gas prices will come down, the housing market will rebound any day now and we’ll go back to shopping for shiny, shoddy crap. I don’t think so.

You’ve heard of “voluntary simplicity,” the movement to adopt a life that’s simpler, materially speaking, but richer spiritually? Get ready for involuntary simplicity, in which we’re forced to rediscover that the best things in life are free, like biking to work, playing Scrabble with your friends, or dining on the dandelion greens and purslane that pop up in your yard.

Some of us have high hopes that high tech can solve the energy crisis, preserve our standard of living and avert catastrophic climate change. But why wait for some ingenious new technology to come along? That’s just playing into the hands of the carbon cabal. They’ve spent the last century fighting any effort to develop renewable energy, because they’re hell-bent on extracting every last drop of oil and chunk of coal from sea to shining sea and beyond.

Did you know that Thomas Edison designed an off-thegrid house back in 1912? He helped Henry Ford design an electric car, too. But the power industry Powers That Be couldn’t afford to let these early experiments with alternative energy pick up steam. In 1931, shortly before he died, Edison reportedly told Ford, “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”

Seventy-seven years later, we’ve hardly begun to tap into the sun, but the good news is that we have the tools we need today to cut our carbon footprint dramatically, according to University of Vermont economist Joshua Farley. Thanks to things like more efficient household appliances and tighter building standards, energy efficiency has just about doubled since 1969. Unfortunately, the size of the average American home has doubled, too.

But if we’re willing to go back to the standard of living we enjoyed 40 or so years ago, Farley figures we could reduce our energy use by half. Are you ready to party like it’s 1969? ■

+

get involved Interested in contributing?

We’re looking for people to help out: muckrackers, illustrators, agitators, innovators.

Drop us a line and tell us how we can work together. Email getinvolved@gridphilly.com today.

SEPT 20 0 8

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Frugal Living More Life, Less Money by betsy teutsch

CatalogChoice: Stemming the Flood How terrific is CatalogChoice.org? This site helps you opt out of receiving catalogs. Open an account and you can track when you canceled and the companies’ responses. (It usually takes 10 weeks for cancellations to kick in.) Some companies are cooperating; they don’t want to waste resources inundating customers who detest their catalogs, and certainly don’t want to antagonize people who specifically express junk mail hatred.

One company, though, sent us a letter threatening more catalogs if we didn’t confirm our cancellation.

Maybe I hadn’t realized when I opted out that I wouldn’t receive any more catalogs? Duh!

Trash Into Treasure Composting Americans waste more food than most countries produce. Fight that trend by starting a compost bin for food waste in your kitchen. Flip-top containers work best and you can often reuse your old bulk food containers, like the ones that store dry pet food.

Throw in all your nonmeat peels, trimmings and coffee grounds. Not everything can go into your compost, though, so check online, or at your local library for a guide to correct composting.

That container will fill up pretty soon so you’ll need to set up an outdoor compost pile. Use a corner of your yard or get fancy and purchase a bin. Watch for Penn State Extension Service’s composting classes, which give out free bins.

Composting keeps nutrients out of the waste stream and can create useful soil and fertilizer to grow food and produce more compost (like a circle of life, perhaps?).

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Happy Planet Microwave Popcorn Microwave popcorn may look complex, with all the diagrams on the packaging, but it’s actually the easiest thing in the world to do yourself. ➊ Take a lunch-size paper bag (used is ideal) and 2 put in 2-3 tbsp. popcorn kernels. Gourmet white popcorn is excellent, but any kind will do. 3 Tightly fold the top over a few times and 4 microwave on high for 2-4 minutes, depending on your microwave’s strength. Dump the popcorn in a bowl and season. There will be a ton of unpopped kernels left, which you can toss back in the bag and pop next time around.

Popcorn is literally cheaper than dirt, and a pound can keep you happily snacking for at least a week. You’ll also avoid worrying about whatever horribly toxic chemicals make up the fake “butter” topping.

EnergyStarWars: the New Fridge After the third freezer meltdown, we agreed: time to buy a new fridge. Unless you’ve dug your own root cellar, the most energy efficient possibility is an EnergyStar appliance.

When the fridge arrived I noticed the vegetable bins had their very own lights. Who needs high wattage views of old greens? I simply unscrewed the bulbs to save on energy use.

While I was at it, I took out the main bulb and replaced it with a more efficient CFL. Now debate rages in our household. Is the fraction of a second delay waiting for the bulb to come on tolerable? Do we let more cold out or save enough energy by using the CFL to offset the door being open for an extra second? illus t r at ions by j.p. fl exn er

Renting Efficiently:

10 steps 01

02 03 04 05 06

Break out the bulbs. You’ve heard this advice before and with good reason: Switching to 10 CFLs in a one-bedroom apartment will save you about the price of one month’s electric bill each year.

See sidebar →

07

Use laundry facilities labeled as Energy Star or high efficiency.

Let your landlord know if the hot water is too hot; it could mean they’re using a wasteful water heater.

Point your landlord towards www.recyclemyoldfridge.com and let her know that she can earn a tax credit with the purchase of a 2010 standard refrigerator.

Put good quality shades on your west and east windows to limit heat losses in winter and heat gain in the summer. Also try covering windows with plastic in winter for extra insulation.

Do whatever you can to provide an overhang over south-facing windows and doors with glass in them to prevent overheating in the summer. Use a dining canopy, an awning or make an exterior curtain of landscaping shade cloth.

splurge protector by dana henry

08 09

10

Close all doors and windows and throw a pair of 20-inch box fans in the bedroom windows blowing out. Run your hand around the edges of doors and windows, checking for drafty spots. Mark the spots with post its or masking tape. Call in the maintenance person, make him lunch, and ask him to caulk or weatherstrip wherever he sees a Post-It. Encourage recycling in your quad, unit or building and ask your landlord to get on board. This includes a spot for batteries and hazardous stuff like paint.

Let your landlord or rental agent know that renting green is really important to you and is growing in importance to tenants everywhere.

Competition among landlords is fierce and green renters’ operating costs are lower. Even the government is looking for basic efficiencies in Section 8 units.

Register to vote and share your concerns, successes, and failures with your PA State Senator and Representative. They need you to call every now and again to remind them of what’s on your mind, and that you are the boss.

Y

ou probably know that each appliance kept pluggedin is a constant energy hog. But think about it—your refrigerator, TV, computer, fax machine, cable box, stereo, lamps, coffee pot, clock, fish tank, DVD player, phone charger, washer and dryer, blender and anything else with a cord are draining your pockets and releasing CO2 as we speak.

Fortunately, BITS Limited has developed the Smart Strip, a power strip that gives you options. See, not all the appliances that stay plugged need energy all the time. With Smart Strip, there’s a Control Outlet for the main appliance, three Hot Outlets for appliances that stay in use and six Auto Outlets for all the lesser used ones. Here’s how it works: SEPT 20 0 8

To a Greener Apartment by sean crane

bulb wars

compact incandescent v flourescent

60

s

13

watt

watt

Usage

4 hours a day

4 hours a day

Watts per day

240

52

Watts per year

87600

18980

Cost per Kwh

0.1

0.1

Cost per year

$8.76

$1.90

Bulb life

8 months 1000 hrs

3.42 yrs 5000 hrs

Bulb cost

$1.00

$2.50

Bulb cost per year

$1.50

$0.73

Annual cost

$10.26

$2.63

Net annual savings

none

$7.63 per year!

Plug the TV into Control, the cable box, fish tank and fax into three Hot outlets and the DVD player, lamp, computer monitor, stereo, speakers and phone charge into the Auto outlets. Anything Auto shuts off when it’s not being used, everything else stays on. Basically, it takes the thinking out of home appliance energy savings. At just over $30 for a basic unit, Smart Strip more than pays for itself, with an average savings of 230 watts per hour per home. In our increasingly electronic world, this product is not only smart, it’s essential. http://bitsltd.net/ConsumerProducts/ g r i d p h i l ly. c o m

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Yes, We Can! We eat what we can, and what we can’t, we can by alex mulcahy

I

nspired by Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and armed only with a dangerous dose of enthusiasm, I decided to try my hand at canning tomatoes. ¶ Why can? The process saves the flavor of the veggie (or fruit, fish or even meat) while removing the harmful microorganisms and deactivating the enzymes that cause spoilage.

That means on the coldest winter day, the best of the summer sits on your shelves, waiting to simultaneously remind you of the past year’s bounty and your own industry and thrift.

The filled jars are beautiful, and when displayed on a shelf will please you aesthetically and amaze your not-yet-but-soon-to-be-canning friends. Beyond that, buying a mountain of food at the end of the season will help our good friends the local farmers as they head into a less plentiful season.

We might can for culinary or visual delight, but the process was originally developed at the behest of an up-and-coming autocrat. Napoleon, who noted, “An army marches on its stomach,” urged the French newspaper Le Monde to offer a reward of 12,000 francs to anyone who could invent a cheap method to preserve food to feed the troops. By 1809, a confectioner named Nicolas Francoise Appert observed that foods cooked inside sealed jars

a

Preparing tomatoes: you need boiling water, tomatoes, a bowl of cold water, tongs and a knife.

a. Drop tomatoes into boiling water for a minute or until the skin begins to rip. b. Place the tomatoes into cold water for one minute. c. Peel the skin off. d. Core the tomato and halve or quarter.

8

didn’t spoil until the seals were compromised.

It took another 50 years before Louis Pasteur provided the explanation: microbes were responsible for food spoilage.

As an absolute beginner to canning, I was a little wary. Sure, Kingsolver makes every gardening and cooking process sound simple and obvious, but canning done improperly can allow botulism to flourish and will, um, kill you.

I decided to enlist a partner—my fiancée—to help, and to share some blame if necessary.

Mistakes were made, but none fatal. Using a very basic method found in Ball’s Complete Book of Home Preserving, we successfully canned four jars of tomatoes. (Mistake number 1: You really should have enough tomatoes, roughly two-and-a-half pounds per jar.) Odds are good

you’ll make a mistake or two as well, but the learning curve isn’t too great, and it’s really a series of simple tasks that, in their repetition, become joyful.

To state the obvious here, you need tomatoes. I got my first batch from the Headhouse Farmer’s Market at 2nd and Lombard, and the second batch, documented in these photos, was a combination of ’maters from the Almanac Market on 4th and Poplar and the Fair Food Farm Stand in the Reading Terminal Market.

We bought a canning pot and rack for $29.99 at Kitchen Kapers on 17th and Walnut, and some canning jars at Rittenhouse Hardware on 20th and Pine. We did not initially buy the canning tool set, which Kitchen Kapers also sells for $9.99, but we did before we attempted our second batch. Almost forgot: I also needed a ladle, which cost $2.49 at the Trenton China Pottery kitchen supplies store on 2ndand Arch.

A parting thought: Keep in mind that this is just one of the myriad of options you can use to preserve tomatoes. Master this, learn the rhythms of canning, and you can branch out to salsas, relishes and chutneys—and that’s just tomatoes. Wouldn’t it be fun to make some jams and jellies, too?

b

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d

phot os by luca s h a rd i s o n

b

Preparing the stove: Canning requires three burners on

your stove top. You need two small pots, a canning pot with a canning rack, seven quart-size Ball jars, jar grabber, tongs or lid magnet, a ladle, lemon juice and a dish towel.

a. Place canning rack in the canning pot. b. Fill all 7 jars with water 2/3 full and place them in rack. c. Fill the canning pot 2/3 full with water and heat at medium-high. Water should be hot but not boiling.

c

Canning

a. When water in the canning rack is simmering, remove a jar with the grabber. b. Place the jar on a towel (if the counter is cold, the jar will break). c. Using a hot pad, pick up the jar and dump the water back in the canning pot. d. Put 2 tablespoons of lemon juice in the jar. e. Fill jar with halved tomatoes. f. Ladle boiling water into the jar until the water is 1/2 inch from the top. g. Take a wooden spoon or a plastic spatula (nothing metallic) and place it between the outside of the tomatoes and the inside of the jar (this removes air bubbles) Do this 2-3 times. h. Ladle more water into the jar to get the water 1/2 inch from the top. i. Wipe the rim and threads of jars with a clean cloth to remove any food particles (to ensure a good seal). j. Using lid magnet, remove lid from hot water. k. Place lid on the top of jar, put on screw band and tighten to an easy resistance level. l. Return the jar to canning pot using the jar grabber and repeat with remaining jars.

d

d. Boil 6 cups of water in second pot. e. Simmer lids, but not screw bands, in a third pot without boiling.

a

c

d

e

f

g

i

j

l

The home stretch

a. Once all seven jars have been filled and placed in the canner, add more water, covering the jars, and place the lid on the canner.

b. Bring water to a boil, and leave the jars in the boiling water for 45 minutes. c. Remove the canner lid, wait five minutes and then remove the jars to cool, careful not to tilt them.

d. Leave the jars undisturbed—no need to even dry the lids—for 24 hours. e. You may want to place a towel over the jars to protect them from drafts.

After 24 hours, check to see that the seal has taken. The lid will be curved in, and you should be able to pick up the jar by the edges of the lid. If you have any doubt about the quality of the seal, you either have to use the food within the next 24 hours or can it all over again.

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← Despite the similarity of their names, buttercup (left) and butternut (center) squash are easily told apart. These two varieties, plus acorn squash (right), are widely available throughout autumn.

beans to climb and the beans anchor the top-heavy corn plants. The sprawling, shallow-rooted squash provides a living mulch and repels predators with its prickly leaves. Not only does the trio grow cooperatively, it serves as the basis for a healthy diet: The corn-bean combination provides balanced protein and the squash adds a rich variety of vitamins.

The squash grown as a “Sister” is winter squash, which belongs to the same genus as summer squash like zucchini. The difference between summer squash and winter squash isn’t when they are grown—they’re all grown during the summer—but when they are harvested. Summer squash varieties are at their best before they are fully mature and are eaten—seeds, rind and all. Winter squash varieties, on the other hand, are allowed to ripen completely, so they have fuller taste and greater nutritional value than their summer brethren. They also have tough outer by judy weightman skins that make it possible to store the t’s ok to laugh at the strange looking squash at your fruit for weeks or even months. The local farmers’ market: They have tough skins (rinds actu- “winter” in “winter squash” thus refers to when it is eaten, not when it’s grown ally). Their weird shapes—look up a picture of a turban or harvested. The long storage period squash sometime—are part of their charm and some of the very made winter squash a godsend for the odd heritage varieties available at the Headhouse Square mar- early settlers with whom the Native ket look like freshman pottery projects. Squash don’t just look Americans shared the Three Sisters.

You’ll find at least a couple of varietinteresting, though, they make good eating and have been a food ies of squash at any supermarket, but staple in our area for thousands of years. farm stands and farmers’ markets ofOriginating in the Andes 10,000 years ago, squash quickly ten have wider selections. Check out www.buylocalpa.com/ spread throughout North and South America and became markets.php to find a farmers’ market near you. Though an integral part of the Native American diet. The tribes of squash comes in many different colors, shapes and sizes, the Eastern Woodlands, including the Lenape of our area, taste differences aren’t huge. The main difference is sweetdeveloped the system known as the Three Sisters, in which ness: The sweetest varieties are buttercup and kabocha. In squash is grown along with corn and beans. The three plants general, though, you’ll probably have criteria other than taste grow cooperatively: The corn provides a structure for the to choose.

Squashing the Winter Blues Rediscovering the humble winter squash

I

Eat Your Squash!

For an easy side dish, take an acorn or butternut squash, cut it in half lengthwise and scoop out the innards. Place it cut side up on a greased cookie sheet, add a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of brown sugar to each half and cook in a 375 degree oven for 20-30 minutes. You can also cook small (up to 2.5 pounds) squash whole: pierce the rind and bake at 350 degrees for 45-60 minutes,

10

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using a fork to check for doneness.

Cut medium (3-4 pound) squash in half lengthwise and scrape out the seeds. Place the halves cut side down in a shallow dish, add ¼ cup water, cover tightly and microwave for six minutes per pound. Cut large squash into pieces and boil or steam; use minimal water to preserve nutrients. Once the squash is cooked, cut it in chunks for use in stews or side dishes, or puree it for baked goods or soups.

Squash has both a sweet and a

savory side. To make baked goods like pies or breads—or to tempt kids to try it—go sweet with maple syrup or with brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. In soups and stews, go savory: Cayenne, cumin or lime will emphasize squash’s rustic, nutty character. Either sweet or savory dishes can be enhanced by using other seasonal produce, like apples and pears. In addition, because of the similarities in taste and texture, you can substitute squash for sweet potatoes or pumpkin.

Smaller varieties like acorn and carnival squash are best if you’re cooking for two or want to provide individual servings for a larger crowd. If you’re cooking in bulk, either to make soup or to freeze puree for later use, pick big, meaty varieties like Hubbard. One specific cultivar of Hubbard, the Fordhook, is named for the Burpee test garden in Doylestown where it was originally grown. Another large and tasty variety is the banana squash. All of these are often sold pre-cut into chunks, in case 20 pounds of squash is more than you want to deal with.

In general, the rind of mature winter squash is too thick to peel before cooking, but both butternut and delicata have thinner, edible rinds. Butternut, with its distinctive beige skin, is one of the most common types. Look for the old Amish favorite, Pennsylvania Dutch Crookneck, an enormous variety usually reaching 10-20 pounds. All the seeds are in the bulbous lower part of the fruit, so you can just cut rings from the neck and cook those.

Speaking of rinds, there are several decorative but edible

in the gar den

varieties available. These tend to be less flavorful than their homelier kin, but they make for a festive presentation. Carnival squash is appropriate for single-serving recipes and turban squash can be hollowed out and used as a tureen for serving soup.

Finally, let’s not forget everyone’s favorite novelty vegetable—spaghetti squash. After baking the whole squash, cut it open, remove the seeds and fork out the long strands of flesh, which not only look like spaghetti but can be used as a lowcalorie alternative to pasta.

When it’s time to shop, look for fruit that feels heavy for its size. Except for soft-skinned varieties, the rind should be tough and not easily pierced. Inspect squash carefully before buying it; you don’t want any soft spots or breaks in the skin.

Once home, you can store intact squash in a cool spot for weeks before cooking.

Enjoy the season’s bounty by enjoying an old favorite or try a variety that’s new to you. Winter squash is easy to cook and loaded with nutrients—its hearty taste is just an extra benefit. ■

+

All the Leaves Are Brown Mother Nature doesn’t “do” fertilizer. In a balanced ecosystem, nutrients are recycled when dead plant material decomposes, enriching the soil and nourishing new growth.

In our region, autumn leaves are the most important form of dead plant material. You could just let the leaves lie where they land, but even if you don’t mind how that looks, your neighbors probably will. Instead, give Mother Nature a hand: Gather the leaves and chop them up to use as mulch and compost.

Mulch provides a protective layer for the soil, keeping it moist and deterring weeds. It is organic material in the first stage of decomposition, so the constituent parts are still identifiable.

As it breaks down further, it becomes compost, a rich, crumbly material that has reached the point where you can’t recognize its constituent materials. Compost is the ideal soil amendment, adding nutrients and improving texture. So how do you get from piles of leaves to piles of mulch and compost?

It’s incredibly simple: Just gather the dry leaves and chop or shred them.

Chopping is essential since if you leave the leaves whole, you’ll end up with a soggy mess that will smother your plants (if used as mulch) or slow down the activity of your compost pile to a glacial pace. There are a few different ways to chop leaves. A mulching lawnmower is the easiest: Do the final mow of the season after the leaves have fallen, catching the combination of grass and leaves in the mower’s attached bag. Another possibility is to use a leaf-blower, if yours has a “reverse” feature and can suck as well as blow.

Mulching attachments are available for reversing blowers. Even folks who lack mowers and blowers, though, usually have weed-whackers, which you can use to chop small quantities of leaves: Put the dry leaves into a large trash can and use the weed-whacker like you’d use a hand-held blender, stirring it through the container. This is by far the most tedious way to chop leaves, but luckily only those with small yards (and

SEPT 20 0 8

by judy weightman

thus relatively few leaves) will have to resort to it.

Use chopped leaves as you would any mulch, spreading them about 3 inches deep under trees and shrubs, around perennials, or to cover bare beds. You can also use leaf mulch to insulate and extend the season of hardy vegetables like Brussels sprouts: Make chicken wire cages around the plants and fill the cages with chopped leaves.

When making compost, you need roughly equal parts “green” and “brown” materials by weight—dry leaves are the quintessential brown material. Since browns are so much lighter than greens like grass clippings and spent annuals, you need 10-20 times as much of them by volume. That is a lot of dry leaves!

Add as much to your compost pile now as you have green material to balance it, and store the rest for next summer, when brown material will be in short supply. To store leaves for use next year, bag them and stash them in a covered area like a shed, carport or garage.

A note on needles: Pine needles have a waxy covering that delays decomposition, so they work better as a mulch than as a compost ingredient. They are quite acidic, but the plants native to our region, like azaleas and blueberries, tend to be acid-lovers and will thrive with a pine mulch.

Stop putting your leaves out for collection, and use them the way Mother Nature intended. Once you discover what a versatile resource they are, you’ll start begging your neighbors for their leaves as well!

g r i d p h i l ly. c o m

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Nothing's Sweeter Than Honey

P

hilly has hundreds of great restaurants and many, like Honey’s Sit ’N Eat (4th and Brown), use ingredients grown within and nearby our city. Situated in hip Northern Liberties, Honey’s is famous for its brunches, although it is also open for dinner, and has always used the abundance of food possibilities around Philly. These three plates are just a few examples of some of the local goodness you can have at this corner diner-like eatery.

Honey’s Sit ’N Eat serves up local eats by will dean

Sunny-side Eggs

S

ourced from Lancaster with home fries and bacon → County, these eggs have a firm yolk that patriotically doesn’t run and consistently gives a rich taste. The bacon, also from Lancaster, has a rich, smoky flavor and is crispy enough to stand up on its own. Glenn Brendle of Green Meadow Farm provides the eggs and bacon for Honey’s and 30 other restaurants. The eggs come from cage-free chickens raised without antibiotics and fed local feed in Lancaster County. He also collects the pigs, which are raised without antibiotics and vitamins, from various farms in Lancaster and takes them to a butcher and smoker, also in Lancaster. Then he brings them, plus produce grown at his own farm, into the city every week. Spicy, almost Cajun, homefries, with small potato wedges, onions and peppers, complete the meal, but sadly are not local.

B

ursting with fruit, these soft pancakes yield easily to the teeth and have a satisfyingly sweet and tart flavor. When they have them in ← stuffed with fresh berries stock, Honey’s uses blackberries from the 8th and Poplar Teens for Good garden, but they were out when we stopped by so we got Jersey strawberries and blueberries, which is fine with this Jersey boy. Your order gets a generous helping of flapjacks, with syrup, powdered sugar and a piece of watermelon from Almanac Market down the street (4th and Poplar). Almanac gets the delicious melon from Lancaster Farm Fresh, (www.lancasterfarmfresh.com) a coop that provides local, organic produce to the Lancaster and Philadelphia areas.

Buttermilk pancakes

fried okra

W

ith its green skin and long shape, you might think that okra is a vegetable, but the seed pods of this useful African plant are actually with honey mustard → classified as fruits. The pods are fresh from the 8th and Poplar Teens for Good garden, which is run by local teens to teach urban farming (www.teens4good.orbius.com). Breaded and fried, these bite-sized fruits are crispy, with a soft hexagonal center of seeds. The honey mustard dipping sauce tends more to the sweet than spicy, complementing the fried breading. Served on top of a bed of micro greens and carrots from Gap, PA’s Green Meadow Farm, which gets used fry oil from restaurants and uses it to power their greenhouses (www.glennbrendle.com).

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phot os by ja m i e l ea ry

Our Area, Our Food Get out and grab these locally produced goodies by lise monty Kimchee You Can Love Wills Valley Farms brings a whole new personality to kimchee, the pungent condiment that Koreans enjoy at every meal. Dare we call it complex, or refined? Probably not, even with its colorful variety of vegetables and nuances of ginger. But this is one fine kimchee that outclasses any we’ve sampled from Korean markets. Added to the blend of shredded Chinese cabbage, carrots and onions is daikon radish, which adds a touch of sweetness. The seasoning is equally well-balanced.

Celtic sea salt, ginger, garlic and hot peppers give the 100% organic relish just the right kick to make it pleasantly sassy.

Wills Valley Farms, based in Holtwood, PA, has been producing fermented vegetables—sauerkraut tops the list—for more than 20 years. Its kimchee shows that experience counts. Since all ingredients are raw, 100% organic and unpasteurized, it’s healthy, in case you need to be reminded. Keep it refrigerated and it’ll last a long time. Available at The Fair Food Farmstand in the Reading Terminal Market and other specialty food outlets. www.willsvalley.com

Viva Gelato!

Warning: The rich, ultra-creamy mouth feel of Capogiro Gelato Artisans’ superb gelato and intense fruit flavor of its sorbettos might make you swoon. No wonder its name means “dizziness caused by something wonderful or beautiful.”

Owner Stephanie Reitano has bonded with Lancaster County farmers, using nothing but their hormone-free milk and luscious fruit, plus some herbs, too, in the 27 flavors she crafts daily. The distinctive texture of perfectly-ripe Bartlett pears boosts the ultra-fruitiness of the Pera sorbetto, which holds up well when frozen, too. A bit of bourbon kicks up the Pear Wild Turkey, a certified crowd pleaser. And to think this gelato

growing

locally

delivers all that culinary joy yet has less fat than ice cream.

That’s because there’s less air incorporated in gelato making than in ice cream making. This allows for a creamier texture without as much fat. Two Philly locations: 119 South 13th Street (215) 351-0900; 117 South 20th Street (215) 636-9250. www.capogirogelato.com

Earthy Eggplant Dip Most folks know how to pronounce it, and many savor its distinctive flavor. But few agree how to spell baba ghanoush. That’s our preference and we’re sticking with it. What matters is that more and more dig the Middle Eastern eggplant spread or dip that’s been called the “poor man’s caviar.” Helen’s Pure Foods’ “Baba Ghannouj” shines for its savory down-to-earth taste that lets the roasted eggplant’s personality prevail. Its creaminess comes courtesy of tahini, the crushed sesame-seed paste or “butter” that’s key to good hummus. The excellent balance of tahini to eggplant, enhanced by olive oil, lemon juice, garlic and salt, makes it a dipping winner. Some baba makers add parmesan, but not Helen’s, because as owner Richard Goldberg notes, its 100% vegan foods prohibit dairy. The Cheltenham, PA company makes a variety of vegetarian dips, salads and sandwiches. Goldberg says the baba’s a basic good seller, but the tofu tahini’s on a roll. Available throughout the area in health food stores. 215-379-6433 or fax: 215-663-5340.

Philly’s Future Needs Local Food

O

ne of the biggest changes in the 20th century was the reduction in cost and increase in availability of most food products. Philly supermarkets are full of potatoes from Idaho, salmon from Argentina, beef from California and olives from Spain—all brought to us by the magic of cheap oil. As that dream fades into a nightmare of high prices and climate change, people have started looking back to how cities and communities fed themselves before we had everything at our fingertips.

Philadelphia, beyond the ring of suburbs, is surrounded by fertile farmland and has plenty of abandoned and unused lots that could soon fill with gardens. Local food is regarded

pho to by l u c as h ard is on

by will dean

as a niche right now, and a wealthy niche at that because of the domination of agribusiness, but we can change that. The Food Trust (www.thefoodtrust.org), a non-profit founded to help lower-income areas get access to fresh food, has started over 30 farmers’ markets in the city, bringing local food to residents (2008 schedule of markets here: www.thefoodtrust.org/catalog/resource.detail.php?product_id=145). Other groups, like the Mill Creek Farm (www.millcreekurbanfarm. org) and Greensgrow Farm (www.greensgrow.org), have turned our city’s abandoned land into growing food sources.

By focusing on local food production, we can relearn how to live within our means and survive in the changing future.

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A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers hopper dredge is tied up to a discharge barge while off loading dredged material from maintenance dredging in the Delaware River.

Bottoms Up? T

he controversial project to dredge 102 miles of the Delaware River recently cleared one of many hurdles when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority (PRPA) signed a partnership agreement on June 23.

Governor Ed Rendell hailed the event in a statement as “a historic agreement that will officially begin a five-year $379 million project to deepen the Delaware River’s shipping channel.”

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But environmental groups opposing the project barely blinked at the latest development.

“The partnership agreement is just one of many, many things that have to be dealt with,” said David Conrad, Senior Water Resources Specialist for the National Wildlife Federation, one of several regional and national environmental groups that oppose the dredging project. First of all, Conrad said, while the federal government has promised to pay for two-thirds of the project, funding has not been finalized.

Maya K. van Rossum, who leads lo-

Despite announcing otherwise, Governor Rendell’s plan to begin dredging the Delaware River may have run aground— at least for now.

by Samantha Drake

cal enviromental group Delaware Riverkeeper Network (DRN), called the partnership agreement announcement merely “theater designed to support Gov. Rendell’s political aspirations.”

She said the fact that Congress still has not provided funding for the project “speaks volumes.”

Back to the drawing board lans have been in the works for more than a decade to deepen the river’s shipping channel from 40 to 45 feet, from Camden’s Beckett Street Terminal down to the mouth of the Delaware Bay. The plans are so old at this point that the Army Corps and the PRPA must revise and update the project details—particularly on the impact dredging would have on the environment—before they can proceed, according to the environmental groups.

“I think the project is essentially going to have to go back to the drawing board,” Conrad said.

Dredging is the underwater excavation of sediment from the bottom of rivers or other waterways to establish or deepen a channel. Maintenance dredging, which is conducted on the Delaware River periodically, keeps an established channel clear for navigation. These days, dredging relies on global positioning systems and computers to determine the location of material to be dredged.

However, dredging stirs up sediment and releases heavy metal and chemical contamination buried at the bottom of the river, environmental groups point out.

Toxic contaminants released by dredging may include arsenic, copper, lead, mercury, zinc, antimony and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), all of which can seriously affect the environment and human health. A plan that complies with the Clean Water Act must be in place to clean up the contaminants, although no plan will be able to clean up all of the pollution dispersed by the dredging process, said Tracy Carluccio, Deputy Director of the DRN. Then there’s the issue of where to put the dredged material, known as spoils, and how to prevent the spoils from continuing to discharge contaminants once they are disposed.

The Army Corps states that dredging the Delaware River will remove 26 million cubic yards of material, including 18.6 million cubic yards of sand, clay and silt. The remaining 7.4 million cubic yards of sand from the Delaware Bay will be used for “wetland creation and beach nourishment.”

Current plans call for the spoils from the river portion of the project to be disposed of at six existing federal sites, called confined disposal facilities, in New Jersey and Delaware. But another battle looms there. New Jersey Governor Jon S. Corzine maintains he and Rendell agreed that no dredged materials would be dumped on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River.

In any event, potential disposal sites for the spoils must be revisited because some are no longer appropriate, said Carluccio. At least one site is now a park and environmental changes have occurred at other sites. “That’s the situation up and down the river,” she said.

P

Outdated information he Army Corps has pledged to design and operate the dredging project in an environmentally responsible manner, but has not drafted a specific plan to do so that incorporates recent data. Dredging opponents maintain the current proposed project plans are grounded in faulty or outdated environmental and economic information.

The federal government agrees. The Government Accountability Office said in May that it would review the

T

← Podium Power U.S. Senator Arlen Specter talks about the dredging project, eliciting a gubanatorial smile from the plan’s biggest proponent, Gov. Rendell.

Army Corps’ proposed plans for the project again. The GAO’s new review of the project’s benefits and costs could begin by the end of the year.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimates that the Delaware River “We hope nobody would try to move dredging project will take five a project of this magnitude forward years to complete but, so far, no without GAO approval,” said van Rosstart date for the project has been sum. projected.

Perhaps most importantly, an upThe plan to deepen the river’s shipping channel faces anything dated environmental analysis of the but smooth sailing ahead. A few dredging project, known as an environrequirements need to be in order mental impact statement, must also be first: completed to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, according »» Confirmation of federal and non-federal funding. to the DRN. The last such analysis was »» Update of the environmental done in 1997 and therefore does not take impact statement. into account any of the changes to the »» Issuance of a subaqueous project or environment since then. wetlands permit for the project For all this trouble, dredging might by the state of Delaware. »» Finalization of proposed not even be necessary to maintain a dredging project plans. successful port. »» Award of contracts to Conrad points out that at least one conduct the work. cost-effective alternative to dredging is already in use on the Delaware. A practice called “lightering” reduces the load of large oil tankers by transferring some of its oil to another ship, allowing the large vessels to come upriver in the existing shipping channel depth.

For now, the environmental groups appear content to wait until more definitive progress is made in securing funding, updating the environmental impact statement and complying with other regulations (see sidebar above). In their eyes, the Delaware River port is already a success and deepening the channel is unnecessary and possibly dangerous. ■

What Comes Next

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SEPT 20 0 8

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Girard St. Bridge

Did you know that paved roads were first developed for bicycles?

Considering all the problems with cars— pollution, noise, gas prices—it's time Philly seriously looked at the time tested, humanpowered bicycle. We've got a whole special section on Philly's bike culture, covering everything from how to get them to who to call if you get hit and starting with Grid's own bike map with routes from hood to hood.

LEGEND Bicycle Lane

Fa

Philadelphia Zoo

Cobblestones Trolley Tracks Recommended Route

76

Av e

37th

nc as te r

38th

39th

44th

46th

48th

50th

La

Fairmount

Ave

Haverford

FROM

36th

Beware of the Ducks!

Ave

arden

WEST NORTH

Spring G

TO

33rd

38th

40th

42nd

41st

43rd 44th

45th

46th

47th

48th

t 45 h

Woodlands Cemetary

th

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Gray’s Ferry Bridge

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Wharto n Reed

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Two options: the Girard bridge and the Spring Garden bridge. Girard has a messy intersection with I-76 and trolley tracks, but it's closer to Fairmount Park if you're going there. The Spring Garden bridge also connects with I-76, but in a much more cyclist-friendly way.

FROM NORTH TO WEST

FROM WEST TO NORTH

SEPT 2008

Same as N to W except reverse the directions. Use Powelton Ave. to get to the bridge.



SPECIAL NOTE

Eakins Oval in front of the Art Museum is confusing and dangerous: Bike lanes start and stop in the middle of four-lane traffic. Be very alert and stick to the edges (right or left depending on where you want to go).

28th

ay nw

th 49

g r i d p h i l ly. c o m

8 4

h

t 49 th

16

ng

si es ns

S

rd 53

Both bridges have twoway bike lanes so either one works to go west. Take Washington Ave. for Gray's Ferry and Lombard to go south. (There is no bike lane route, but Lombard runs right into the bridge).



S

n 52



FROM SOUTH TO WEST

University of Pennsylvania

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in pr



Two bridges here: the more northern South St. Bridge and the southern Gray's Ferry Bridge. For Gray's take 48th south until you hit Kingsessing, hang a left and a quick right onto 47th, then make a right onto Woodland Ave., and a left on Gray's Ferry Ave. For South Street follow Spruce St. all the way down.

Walnut

Ki

THE BEST CROSSTOWN

FROM WEST TO SOUTH

Spruce

Clark Park

GUIDE TO

ROUTES IN PHILLY

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THE

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WEST SOUTH 50th

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Drexel University

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13th

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2nd

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4th

5th

6th 3rd

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FROM

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8th

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9th

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11th

12th

13th

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Car p 20th



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Ellswort h Federal

SPECIAL NOTE

6th



Lombard

Christia

21st

7th

9th

8th 7th

Pine

n Ave

Yell really loud Stay away from in the 5th St. tunnel trolley tracks. under the Ben Franklin.

Your wheels could The extra speed you get from the get stuck and you decline and the reverberation of your will fall over in an shouting will make you feel like a embarrassing motorcycling badass for a minute or manner. so. Riding around the Parkway in front of the Art Museum at night is invigorating. Not many cars use it after 11 so you'll have lots of space and nice scenery (especially good in the spring, or a cool summer night).

Independence Mall

Bainbrid g

Washin gto

22nd

8th

8th

9th

10th 8th

10th

11th

Spruce

Washington Square

South S t

Broad

15th

16th

17th

9th

Walnut

 18th

19th

9th

13th

t

FROM

20th

Old City

Chestnu

SOUTH WEST

23rd

676

Market

13th



Franklin Square

Arch

15th

16th

17th

18th

19th

City Hall

12th

S N

Chinatown

Convention Center

Rittenhouse Square

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11th

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Fr an

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22nd

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24th

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Northern Liberties

Spring Garden in

13th

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Markward Playground

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17th

18th

19th

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23rd

24th

25th

26th

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27th

Girard College

27th

Fairmount Park

28th

29th

Girard

95

Queen Village

ingt on A ve

FROM SOUTH TO NORTH

There's no direct way to skirt around Center City so you're probably going to have take some non-bike lane roads. 5th St. is an almost perfect way to go but be wary of the cobblestones near Independence Hall from Walnut to Chestnut. 22nd is also good for more western parts.

SEPT 20 0 8



FROM NORTH TO SOUTH

4th St. is pretty good but has a lot of potholes.

6th is smoother, but you'll have to deal with those Duck tour buses outside of the Constitution Center. Farther west the roads are less crowded, so 21st is also a good bet. Columbus Blvd. has a bike lane, but the cars go fast and are known to run into each other a bit too often.

g r i d p h i l ly. c o m

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story by will dean

photo by scott hungarter

THE

BIKE ISSUE

Will a Bike Share help Philadelphia?

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Yikes.

Your alarm clock didn’t go off again. Rush hour is already turning the streets into gridlock soup and the walk to and from the bus and train stations will make you late. Sneak in through the back and pretend you were in the storeroom?

Buy some donuts and pretend you were late bringing a gift? If Philly follows the example of other cities across the world, and increasingly the nation, there might be another possibility to run through your sleep-addled, panicking mind: a public bicycle.

Public use bicycle, or bike share, programs are not a new idea—they were first tried in Europe in the ’60s—but they are rare in a country that distrusts on principle anything that seems “European” (remember Freedom Fries?). The idea, though, is very simple. Offer bikes as a part of public mass transit along with some kind of system to keep theft and vandalism down. The benefits similarly seem simple: less congestion, faster and cheaper commutes, a more fit populace, less air pollution and lower greenhouse gases.

So how possible is it for Philly to have a bike share program of our own? Well, there are a slew of problems to be overcome, including some serious challenges to whether a bike share system is feasible and even desirable.

other places. The public forum idea came from a similar attempt in New York last year and the idea for a city-wide system comes from places like Copenhagen, Lyon, Barcelona and many others.

BSP did not just want to stir up public interest; they wanted to influence policy makers.

“We decided that we were also going to do a forum in Philadelphia, a public thing like New York,” says Meddin, “but really and truly what was going on was that we were going to take the people who were going to speak at the forum and have them also speak at an invitation-only symposium [held on January 18] directed towards strictly government officials—PennDOT, Streets Department, City Council members, Health Department—you name it. We invited everyone in the Delaware Valley who had something to do with transportation.”

The direct push at area harrumphers and officials yielded some results. On April 30 City Council held hearings on the idea of a bike share and on June 12 passed a resolution re-

who trade providing a bike share for an exclusive contract to sell outdoor advertisements.

That’s also where things start to get a little more complex.

B

ike Sharing has garnered some broad support in Philly. The Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia (BCGP), the Bicycle Club of Philadelphia, Mayor Nutter, the Inquirer and the Daily News have all voiced support for it.

“Bike sharing would be a great step towards making Philadelphia a world-class bicycle

We walked out of the train station [in Lyon] and the very first thing I saw was a Vélo’v bicycle sharing station. I said ‘This is spectacular.’ → Russell Meddin, Bike Share Philadelphia

O

n January 17, momentum for a bike sharing program in Philly was looking good. A public forum was held at the Academy of Natural Sciences on Logan Circle on the topic and, despite a late snow, hundreds of people attended.

“For the public forum we had an overflow crowd,” says Russell Meddin, a member of the advocacy group Bike Share Philadelphia (BSP). “We had to put video out in the hall. So, well over 400 people [attended]. We even had to set up valet bicycle parking.”

Heads of both foreign and domestic bicycle sharing programs spoke along with members of local government, including the newly elected Mayor Michael Nutter, who opened the forum. Getting speakers from other programs was important to BSP, because they are drawing inspiration from the programs of many

portrait by krysta kn a ster

quiring the Mayor’s office, through the Deputy Mayor of Transportation and Utilities, to commission a study about setting up a public use bicycle system in Philly.

There were a few other important guests at the symposium: representatives of the three largest bike share vendors in the world. Vendors? you might say. You mean companies offer this service? I thought this was some kind of European socialist thing.

Surprisingly enough, the largest public use bicycle systems in the world are actually funded and managed by some of the world’s largest media companies, including Clear Channel Outdoor and JCDecaux, which have both set up systems in France and around Europe.

That’s because the seemingly innocuous idea of letting people use a bicycle anytime can also mean big money for media companies,

city,” says Alex Doty, executive director of BCGP. Statistically it increases interest in bicycling, which results in more bicyclists on the street and generally an increase in safety for bikers. It also usually means more business for local bike shops. According to Meddin, who was inspired by the Vélo’v system in Lyon while visiting his daughter in France, to see it is to believe it.

“We walked out of the train station [in Lyon] and the very first thing I saw when I got out was a Vélo’v bicycle sharing station. I looked at it and said ‘What the hell is this?’ I quickly figured out what was going on and said ‘This is spectacular.’ ” Vélo’v and Vélib’, in Paris, have added 3,000 and 20,000 bikes respectively to their cities.

The programs are administered by a company called Cyclocity, which is a subsidiary of [→]

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Evolving Sharing

1

st gen erat i on

bikes are painted a solid color, often yellow or white, to deter theft, and are released into an area for the use of anyone.

JCDecaux, a massive French outdoor advertising corporation (like a French Clear Channel). They are 3rd generation systems (see sidebar) and everything is electronically controlled via computers and swipe cards. The cities are partners in the program and receive all revenues from the system, which requires a sign-up fee and deposit, and bike trips are free for the first half-hour, then carry a charge after that. The cities also receive a yearly stipend (3 million Euro in Paris). The Paris system cost an initial investment of 115 million dollars. The cost of a similar Philly system is uncertain but it would probably follow the 3rd generation model and feature 300-400 stations and 4-5,000 bikes, according to Meddin.

In exchange for setting this up, the company in question gets exclusive rights to sell advertisements on all of the bus shelters, honor boxes and THE billboards in Paris, along with new stand-alone lighted boards and digital screens on the sidewalk. That’s also the part that causes some people to oppose the whole idea.

BIKE ISSUE

2

nd g e n e r at i o n

bikes are still painted a distinctive color but are locked at specific stations and are releasable through a reusable token or combo lock system.

M

3

rd g e n e r at i o n

systems use an electronic system of personal cards, which users must sign up for, and can keep track of where bikes are, how many are at each station and some information on the condition of bikes.

ike McGettigan is a co-owner of Trophy Bicycles in University City, a former board member of the BCGP and a cofounder of Neighborhood Bike Works (www. neighborhoodbikeworks.org), a non-profit that teaches children to repair bicycles and distributes free bikes through their classes. He also vehemently opposes a bike sharing program similar to Vélo’v in Philly.

“Billboards and outdoor advertising are a medium in which they use the actual cityscape as the content and jam their advertising into it,” the graying, but very energetic McGettigan says. “What they’re doing is they’re using the city skyline as their medium, as their content, and they’re then placing their advertising against the content of our actual reality and debasing it and making it a crappier, crummier, more depressing place to live because they’re selling you your own scenery, your own skyline back.”

Concerns about the loss of public space to advertising are common in Philadelphia, home to the non-profit Society Created to Reduce Urban Blight (www.urbanblight.org), which among other things fights against billboard ads, and neighborhood groups who aren’t afraid to raise a ruckus. Just this past June graffiti-style ads for Pabst and Colt 45 drew media attention and the ire of SCRUB and neighborhood groups for breaking zoning rules and exacerbated longstanding negative feelings about malt liquor ads in inner-city areas.

McGettigan has additional concerns about letting a huge corporation like Clear Channel Outdoor, the world’s largest outdoor advertising company and a part of media behemoth Clear Channel, run a local bicycle program. “[You’re] swiping a card to get permission from Clear Channel to ride a bike, and Clear Channel’s now your mom

4

th g e n e r atio n

incorporates a bike share system with other mass transit options into a single electronic card, so one can ride the bus, train, trolley, car share or bike using the same device.

or your dad because if you don’t get that back into a kiosk in 30 minutes you’re going to pay a charge. Right now that charge might only be a couple bucks, but I guarantee it, if the program becomes popular it will go up.”

Instead of giving a contract to an outside company, he would like to see money and attention put into encouraging Philly’s alive and active homegrown bicycle culture. Just last year bicycle trips over the Schuylkill bridges increased an average of 15 percent.

“What are we, chopped liver?” McGettigan says. “Help us, give us bike lanes that go everywhere, give us enforcement against drivers who speed and hit bicyclists and do hit-andruns, and control the speeds in the neighborhoods.”

Investment in education and engineering infrastructure would go much further to making Philly a better biking city, according to McGettigan. “Just throwing millions of bikes on the street with no education does not automatically create cyclists,” he says. Education about bicycling in schools and of motorists, a plan to prevent bicycle theft and bicycle-friendly streets are all things he thinks will help cycling in Philly more than a bike share.

Using advertisements also opens up some deeper sustainability questions. Bicycle sharing is, at least in part, meant to reduce Philly’s dependence on cars and thus make it a greener, less polluting city.

Yet the advertisements used to fund it will no doubt urge on, probably successfully, more consumption of unsustainable products.

“If the program does as it’s intended—and let’s assume that Clear Channel knows what they’re doing—if they’re selling these billboards it’s to increase consumption for their clients,” says McGettigan. “Does the bike share program in the end send carbon down river through additional consumption and the electrical power used up by the flatscreen televisions [a new form of street furniture advertisements] that run 24 hours a day?”

Just throwing millions of bikes on the street with no education does not automatically create cyclists. ← Mike McGettigan, co-owner of Trophy Bicycles

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port r a it by k r y s ta kn a s ter

M

cGettigan readily admits that his perspective is a minority voice, perhaps the only such voice, in the Bicycle Coalition. “They think I’m insane,” he says.

Bike share advocates see an advertisement contract as a necessary reality in a city that could not afford the millions of dollars it would take to set up a high-tech system. Although BSP does not champion any particular way to set up a bike sharing system, Meddin points out that most other cities with a public bike system have gone the advertising route.

“How do you pay for that [3rd generation bike share system]? The solution most of the countries in the world have chosen is to use the companies I mentioned, who sell advertising.”

Other possibilities, like public funding or using a non-profit (like PhillyCarShare), run into the problem of raising the necessary funds for a program that would cost at least in the high tens of millions. “The major drawback for a non-profit is the capital cost,” he says. “There’s no reason a non-profit wouldn’t work.”

With SEPTA facing deficits, and the city certainly not flush with extra cash, an advertising contract is probably the only option for setting up a city-wide system in the immediate future.

However, Meddin sees the city’s progress of only commissioning a study so far as evidence that views like McGettigan’s are more widespread.

“I think there is this bias about whether these people [ad companies] make a lot of money,” he says. “There’s a bias against billboards in the city and over the last 20-25 years there’s been an anti-billboard campaign in Philly.”

the Flies at this point in those intersections,” he says. “I don’t want to provoke the need for better bicycle infrastructure by exposing more people to the dangers of an inadequate bicycle infrastructure.”

He proposes a gradual approach in which more riders would lead to more investment in infrastructure, which leads to more riders, in a self-reinforcing cycle.

Advocates aren’t losing steam and are certain bike sharing will happen. “It’s not a matter of if, but when,” says Meddin.

Doty estimates it will happen in about two years.

If and how it happens presents a challenge to the new administration that has promised to embrace forward thinking and sustainable ideas and make Philly a city of the future. Is bike sharing part of that vision? Time will tell.

One other thing is certain, though: McGettigan, and his complaints, aren’t going anywhere.

“I’m gonna be a minority voice and try and make sure if it’s done, it’s done right.” ■

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Bike Shares Around the World

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s of now, the fate of a bike share in Philadelphia remains up in the air until the city finishes its study on feasibility (due in December). Beyond the debate about ads, though, there are some infrastructure issues that might need fixing first.

Anyone who has biked in Philly knows that the streets can be dangerously cramped or poorly maintained, and relations between cyclists and motorists are strained to say the least. Many cyclists are scared to bike on the street and choose to go on the sidewalk instead, causing yet more problems. More choose simply not to bike at all.

Nutter has promised to make Philly friendly to bikers and is supposed to appoint a Bicycle and Pedestrian Coordinator within four weeks. It remains to be seen, though, if there will be an investment in the city’s bicycling infrastructure.

Mark Allen Hughes, Nutter’s new Director of Sustainability, supports bike sharing in general, but is worried that Philly’s biking infrastructure needs more work. “I’m nervous myself about my teenagers riding their bikes around the city. It’s a little too much Lord of

Amsterdam: One of the first bike sharing, or community bicycle, programs was started here in 1964 as part political stunt and part useful transport system.

Bikes painted white were left around the city for anyone to use. Unfortunately, many were stolen and some ended up in the city’s famous canals.

Copenhagen: ByCyklen (City Bikes) started in 1995 with 1,100 bikes placed in various centers around the city. Using a coin-operated unlocking system, ByCyklen avoided some of the problems with theft seen in earlier systems. The system is funded by advertising on the bike wheels and is still popular and in operation today.

Lyon and Paris: Starting in 2005 and 2007 respectively, the systems in these French cities use a smart card system to keep track of bikes electronically. Users sign up for a small fee and receive a card with a magnetic strip allowing them to unlock any bike in the system. Sponsored by advertising companies in exchange for the rights to public ad space, the systems feature 3,000 bikes in Lyon and 20,000 in Paris.

In America: Cities like Portland, Boulder and Madison tried out systems similar to the one in Amsterdam in the ’90s and have since made changes to them to prevent theft. On Aug. 13, 2008, Washington, DC began a 4th generation system where a single card will allow access to traditional public transport and bikes.

DC SmartBike will feature 120 bikes at 10 stations, which critics say is far too small to succeed, and is funded by media behemoth Clear Channel Outdoor.

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THE

BIKE ISSUE

Street Law

Stuart Leon fights for Philly’s cyclists in court

story by dana henry photos by shawn corrigan

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J

ude still can’t recall the accident. One moment he was on his bike at the intersection of Broad and Spring Garden, waiting for the light to change. The next, he was waking up in a hospital bed with a broken leg, two broken ribs, a shattered shoulder, about eight head staples and a bill of $360,000. ¶ The driver, who’d sped through a red light, left Jude for dead and abandoned the car less than a mile from the scene. There were no police charges and no locatable witness, and Jude didn’t have health insurance.

Luckily, he did have the name of Stuart Leon.

SEPT 2008

I represent people who are using their bodies— often couriers—to make a living. I’ve got a lot of respect for them.

Leon is Philly’s bicyclist defender. He’s an avid cycler with 25 years experience in accident cases. After graduating from Weidner Law, Leon gradually moved away from defending cars and construction and, for the past 10 years, has worked exclusively with bikes. His private Center City high-rise office vaguely resembles a college dorm, with degrees covered in Post-Its and family photos, a hanging electric guitar, a snowboard, a poster of James Dean and a photo of a North Philly youth drumming band that Leon helped fund. There are also pictures of busted body parts, including Jude’s new metal shoulder. “Everyone wants to be a sports agent nowadays,” Leon explains. “I represent people who are using their bodies—often couriers—to make a living. I’ve got a lot of respect for them.”

Leon hears stories like Jude’s all the time; he handles about two cases a week. Someone in the bike lane got clipped, someone was hit on an intersection, someone was doored.

The vehicle’s occupant, trained to spot cars and pedestrians, will say the biker came out of nowhere. The victim usually won’t even admit to being hurt. He’ll just say he needs compensation for his bike and, maybe, his hospital bills.

Leon deals with the bikes and the bills. After the numbers are churned out, his first step is to hold hospitals accountable to government-mandated service fees pertaining to car accidents, which means he gets the bill down to about 10 per cent of its original amount. Then he tracks down hospital records, photos and affidavits to confront the driver’s insur-

ance company and get the bill’s remainder paid. He usually has to go to court to get compensation for the destroyed bicycle and lost wages. For Jude, Leon had to buy $900 in police investigator photos and do a white paint transfer on the abandoned vehicle to prove it hit Jude’s bike. But even after a police investigative report was compiled, the insurance company refused to pay until Leon’s civil lawsuit against the vehicle’s owner resulted in a testimony that iden-

tified the driver.

Fortunately, Jude’s case wrapped up in less than a year with the driver’s insurance awarding $100,000 with an additional $5,000 in medical benefits and payment for the totaled bike. His hospital bill had been reduced to $37,000 so he walked away with some cash. Leon was also able to get Jude into intensive physical rehabilitation. After a year of rehab, court and doctor’s exams, Jude says he’s on the mend. He’s had to quit his former courier job, but he now works as a Fuji mechanic and continues his hobby of mountain bike racing with a brand new appreciation for the use of his body. “I’m still alive,” he says.

The Urban Cyclists’ “I’m not interested in having something Legal Handbook: like that slow me down.”

Leon claims that if you call him he When riding with cars, will get your bike recovered and your there’s a few Pennsylvania bills paid. Anything after that, well, its laws you should know: a bonus. It’s not the most glamorous, high profile venue, but it’s the least he Roadways can do to help fellow bikers. Recoverand Pedalcycle Paths ies like Jude’s are part of the reward, “I »» Bicycles are considered vehicles appreciate what my clients have been and must abide by traffic guides. through,” he says. “Cyclists [cases] just »» If it’s a highway, stay on the shoulder going the same direction aren’t profit-driven. I enjoy representas the cars. ing them, its more satisfying, the inter»» If you pedal slower than they action is more fun, and they seem more drive, stay as close to the right appreciative of what I do.” . m hand curb as you can.

3505

»» If the traffic is one-way and the lanes are at least two, you may ride the left-hand curb, but be careful, especially if you’re trying to pass a car. »» No more than two single-file bikes together at once, unless you’re on the bike lane. »» If the road has a bike lane, use it.

3507

Lamps and Other Equipment

3705

Applicable Portion of the PA Motor Vehicle Code

»» When riding at night, have a white light to see 500 feet in front and a red light to be seen for 500 feet.

»» If you are in a car, do not open the door until you’re sure that no bicycles are coming.

Giving to the Poor Leon rides an aptly branded vintage English cruiser

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Wheelin’ & Dealin’

THE

BIKE ISSUE

Where to go to get a bike story by will dean | photos by eric harman

←

Firehouse Bicycles

701 S 50th St., Philadelphia, PA 19143 (215) 727-9692 www.firehousebicycles.com

This worker-owned shop in West Philly specializes in knowledgeable service, repairs and refurbishing used bikes. Located on top of an old firehouse, hence the name, they have a good selection of used bikes of all types as well as accessories and specialty parts, like colored wheels and cranks for fixed gears. Their prices for bikes, parts and labor are probably the lowest in the city.

Jay’s Pedal Power Bicycle Shop ↑

512 E. Girard Ave. #12, Philadelphia, PA 19125 (215) 425-5111 www.jayspedalpower.com

Via Bicycle ↑

606 S. 9th St., Philadelphia, PA 19147 (215) 627-3370 www.bikeville.com

Trophy ↑

3131 Walnut St., Philadelphia, PA 19104 (215) 222-2020 www.trophybikes.com Trophy is conveniently open every day of the week and boasts a wide selection of new bikes, including many folders. The staff has good knowledge of bikes and the store has a lot of accessories for the average cyclist. Their newly opened garage in Northern Liberties means they can do full repair work as well.

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A bike geek’s paradise, Via has a wide selection of odd and unusual bike parts for the connoisseur and the tinkerer. The jam-packed store is full of bike arcana and the sidewalk out front is usually overrun with more ’cycles for sale. The staff knows a lot about bikes and the shop is a favorite of the bike modification crowd because they sell lots of weird and hard-tofind parts.

← Bike Line

A home for the oddities of the bike world, Jay’s in North Philly specializes in unusual styles like the tandem and recumbent.

They also sell traditional styles like road and mountain bikes at fair prices and have a good knowledge of bicycles. If you’re looking for something even odder than almost laying down on a recumbent, they also sell parts for electric scooters and police bikes.

1028 Arch St., Philadelphia, PA 19107 (215) 923-1310 www.bikeline.com On the edge of Chinatown, Bike Line has a good selection of new bikes for sale and accessories for the typical cyclist. The staff is knowledgeable and the prices are what you can expect in Center City. They also have an online catalog for home ordering. If you can’t get enough pedaling in on jaunts around the city they also sell exercise bikes for your home.

Type Does Matter What bike is right for you? by will dean

Road

Sleek and streamlined, the road bike is built for speed and maneuverability. You can spot them by their frame’s thin poles and even thinner tires, which make them very light.

Many local cyclists modify their road bikes into fixed gears, trading in their extra gears for extra speed and control (and hipness). Favored by the kids, bike messengers, speed enthusiasts and professional riders.

Most associated with leisure riding at the beach, the cruiser has made a comeback as people realized you can buy these heavy bikes used for very little money (which should tell you something). Riders are recognizable because they are sitting up and enjoying their nice bicycle ride. They’re not very maneuverable, but they often have a ’50s auto look to them and sweet chain guards.

cruiser

Pros: Comfy and smooth ride.

Medium size tires mean less flats. Pee-Wee Herman rode one.

Cons: Usually only three gears. Not very fast or maneuverable.

»» An adjustable wrench for tightening bolts and taking off wheels on older bikes. »» A set of Allen, or hex, wrenches for the same. »» A mini air pump. »» A tube patch kit. Most punctures are easy to fix and these kits are dirt cheap. »» An extra tube in case you have a catastrophic tube incident. »» A tire tool for easily stripping off your rubbers. »» A snack and water bottle.

Don’t forget to stop and help your fellow cyclists!

Cons: Higher maintenance.

Thinner tires mean more flats.

Extra speed can go to your head.

mountain

Fit for riding in the hills, or jumping curbs. Mountain bikes are the all-terrain member of the family and their thick, knobby tires mean that, unlike an SUV, they can actually go out into nature and survive. With heavier and thicker frames than other types of bikes, you’ll feel more secure (not that it will really make much of a difference if you get hit by a car).

Bike Kit There’s no AAA for bicycles, so prepare yourself. Bring along a little kit of essentials and you can handle most any bike situation short of a bad crash. Attach a rack to the back of your bike to carry a bag or get one that attaches to the frame or seat. Your kit should include:

Pros: Fast, and can be modified to go faster or travel long distance. Look like they can go fast. Dodge through traffic like a butterfly.

Pros: Thick tires equal less flats and you can run over most anything.

Very durable frames. Can go on trails.

Cons: Slow, oh so slow.

Not very maneuverable in traffic.

compact

Formerly a niche bike model, the folder is forging into the mainstream. As its name suggests, or Folding Bikes this small vehicle can fold up into the size of a small box or briefcase. Perfect for traveling on planes, trains or buses because you can stow it easily. Small wheels mean you probably will not achieve very much velocity, and you’ll look a little silly.

Pros: You can fit it in many small spaces.

Cons: Generally slower. Looks kinda like a scooter.

parking priorities?

auto

Citizens Bank Park Penn’s Landing

bike

spots

spots

20,000

32

1,980

8

did you

know?

The average cost of an automobile parking ticket is

$26-51 The cost of bicycle parking ticket?

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Keep Your Chain Up Staying safe on Philly’s streets by will dean

C

ontrary to what most medieval scholars thought (four humors? c’mon, guys), the brain is where all that “you” stuff happens, and keeping its little house intact and not cracked is important when navigating streets full of steel, plastic and rubber death machines. So wear a helmet. Yes, they look kinda dorky but until personal force fields are available, this is the best way to protect your head. Make sure the helmet fits over your whole head, doesn’t have any previous cracks and the straps are snug. ¶ The best way to avoid joining the ranks of sad American health stories is to be aware of your surroundings and make yourself visible. Many accidents happen because someone wasn’t paying complete attention. While it’s sometimes the THE fault of a motorist who didn’t think about the possibility of a cyclist being on the road, the person on the bike is far more likely to end up hurt. So follow these car-minding tips:

BIKE ISSUE

did you

know?

26

How do Philadelphians commute to work?

I drive alone: 50.8% I take mass transit: 26.4% I walk: 8.0% I ride my bike: 1.2%

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SEPT 2008

✚✚ Look for turn signals, or other indications that a car is going to turn. If you’re on the right of a car at the intersection, watch for a blinker or a shifting of the car to the right.

Same for lefts from cars on the other side of the intersection. Expect the worst (i.e. no signal and an abrupt turn) and you’ll avoid getting hit. ✚✚ Don’t assume a car is going to stop at a stop sign. ✚✚ When riding next to parked cars, make sure to stay a couple of feet away to avoid getting doored (hit by an opening door).

You’re better off annoying some drivers than meeting a door handle up close. ✚✚ Ride with traffic, not against; you’re not a salmon. ✚✚ Keep a straight course and don’t swerve in and out of lanes; this makes it harder for cars to see you. ✚✚ It’s also important to make yourself visible:

What do they pay each year in transportation costs?

Small Sedan: $6,320 Large Sedan: $9,769 Minivan: $8,644 SUV: $10,448 SEPTA TransPass: $936 Bicycle: $2-300

Wear bright clothing, attach reflectors to the front and back of your bike and use a headlight at night. A mirror and a bell are also very useful.

Hand signals are part of this, too. Left arm out means left turn, left arm down means stop, and a right turn can be signalled by either the left arm bent up or the right arm straight out. ✚✚ Stay off the sidewalk; just as a car can hurt you, a bike can injure a pedestrian. ✚✚ Stay in bike lanes when possible. ✚✚ Watch out for trolley tracks (which can catch your wheels), grates with large spaces and big potholes that can pop your tubes.

Like your mother or father said, always look both ways.

Even on a one-way street, it’s best to assume every driver is drunk and part of a highspeed chase. ■

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Where do they park?

Metered auto spots: 14,500 Auto spots at Airport: 17,000 Off-street spots in Center City: 65,000 Inverted U Bike Parking Stations: 1,200 (1,400 more planned for 2008) illus t r at ion by j.p. fl exn er

Community Power The Energy Co-Op gets cheap fuel and renewable energy

F

by will dean

or almost 30 years, a small group of people have been using the power of collective action, through buying power, to change the energy landscape of southeastern Pennsylvania, and lower energy costs. The Energy Co-Op, a member-owned non-profit, was founded in 1979 as an offshoot of the Weaver’s Way Food Co-Op in Germantown, and now boasts over 6,500 members. In a co-op, all the members pool their collective ability, and need, for certain goods—such as heating oil or electricity—to negotiate cheaper bulk prices.

The original mission of the Co-Op was to get cheaper heating fuel, which it still does to this day, saving members 10 to 20% a year, and now also offers electric services. Its local roots and member-owned nature help it provide better service than its main competitors, like PECO, says Dave Weinar, a member services associate for the Co-Op. “We’re locally owned by the members instead of what is essentially a faceless corporation based in Chicago [where PECO’s parent company Exelon is located],” he says.

Their unique model also allows for more flexibility.

Consumers who feel mistreated by their energy provider gain more power with the entire strength of the Co-Op membership behind them. The Co-Op is also one of the first to offer biofuel for home heating, which has proven popular. Biofuels are derived from organic sources, like corn, and are renewable, although

“PECO has shown a lot of leadership having biofuels in their fleet,” “[They have] biofuels— which by the way they buy from us—and a wind program, though it’s inferior to ours.”

In PECO’s wind program, Weinar points out, some of the money you pay goes to invest in future wind energy production instead of actually paying for direct power from a wind source. There’s also a a danger in investing in just one form of renewable energy. not necessarily cleaner than fossil fuels.

“We believe strongly in diverse sources of Heating oil, though, is only one part of what energy. We say the wind doesn’t always blow, the Co-Op offers. so we mix solar, wind and hydro.”

For a couple of reasons, their renewable After Pennsylvania deregulated electrical utilities in 1996 the Co-Op became an electrici- electric services have been more expensive ty supplier in ’98, and is now the only available than traditional sources or PECO’s wind prosupplier to offer 100% renewable energy from gram. One important reason is the energy caps wind, solar and hydroelectric sources. Not that that have been in place since Pennsylvania deregulated utilities. After deregulation the state they’re bragging too much. instituted caps on the price of electricity to protect consumers from a large upswing in prices. The main utility company for the area—in our case PECO—is currently forced to keep their prices low while alternative producers, like the Co-Op, have had to charge a realistic price for the cost of —Dave Weinar, The Energy Co-Op their electricity. In 2010 that protection will run out and prices are estimated to rise by 20 percent or more.

When the caps expire, the Energy Co-Op expects PECO’s prices to rise to match theirs, which might make more people switch to a more renewable plan. They may even be able to offer lower prices because they source their power as locally as possible, which reduces transmission costs.

“All of our solar power comes from 54 members’ houses in Philly,” Weinar says.

With all of the bad news in the energy world—peak oil, energy caps coming off, rising gas costs—groups like the Co-Op show a way for communities to organize their own energy needs, cut costs and start producing their own power. Plus, they’ve survived for a long time, and plan to keep going indefinitely.

“We’re still here, we’ve been here and we’ll be here when the caps come off,” promises Weinar. ■

We believe strongly in diverse sources of energy.

We say the wind doesn’t always blow, so we mix solar, wind and hydro.

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illustr at io n by m el iss a mcfeeters

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←

The makers of Every Third Bite consider their cuts.

sues of our day. The festival debuts at the IFC Center in New York City, but also screens, in its entirety, on the Media That Matters website (www.mediathatmattersfest.org).

Better yet, the website provides background information on each short and “take action” links so that you can learn more and, you know, take action.

This year’s shorts hopscotch around the globe to focus on Senegalese hip-hoppers, Tibetan nomads, factory workers in Argentina, a Lebanese cluster bomb survivor and the perils of e-waste. Back home, there are shorts about post-Katrina New Orleans, our draconian drug sentencing laws, living with HIV, post-9/11 America, the Lakota Tribe’s struggle to preserve its language, our preference for celebrity by kerry trueman gossip over hard news and the mystery disease that’s killing our honeybees. hat documentary filmmaker wouldn’t love to The films are as diverse in style as they are in subject matbe the next Michael Moore—or Al Gore? Sadly, the ter, and many are from indie filmmakers not yet 21. They’re inconvenient truth about most documentaries is that no mat- more heartfelt than artful, some more polished than others, ter how compelling they are, only a handful of folks ever get but all equally passionate. to see them.

Among my favorites: A Loud Color, a profile of Louis That’s too bad, because these films are often labors of love Harding, a New Orleans activist who refused to let Katrina’s made by folks with a burning desire to light a fire under our floodwaters drown his dreams of a revitalized community. collective ass about Their Really Righteous Causes. You’d The camera follows Harding as he sifts through the watercare, too—if only you knew. soaked debris of the Marcus Garvey Resource Center he’d But getting us to watch these films, whether in a theater opened one month before Katrina hit to “teach youth how or on a DVD, is only half the battle. How many times have to attain economic independence.” Harding wants the kids you seen a documentary that did a stellar job of raising your in his neighborhood—and the rest of us—to understand that awareness about some crisis, but left you feeling deflated by the history of African-American achievement doesn’t begin the seemingly intractable nature of the dilemma? and end with hoops and hip-hop.

The Media That Matters Film Festival solves both these Another standout is Every Third Bite, the “bee” movie that problems via the Internet. Every June, Media That Matters examines the disturbing phenomenon of colony collapse premieres a new lineup of 12 handpicked shorts about the is- disorder and celebrates the amateur beekeepers fighting to preserve our partnership with these industrious insects, who pollinate a third of our food crops.

Media That Matters lives up to its name with this en↗ Images from the award-winning gaging, entertaining collection of free shorts and “take acdocumentary Every Third Bite. tion” links to give you the chance to do something that matters, too. That’s priceless. ■

Forward Motion The Media That Matters Film Festival: Shorts with a long reach

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Reading Material

Book Reviews by kerry trueman

Edible Estates:

Attack on the Front Lawn

by Fritz Haeg Metropolis Books, $24.95

Bottlemania:

How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It by elizabeth royte bloomsbury, $24.99

Before we got carried away with Perrier and enamored of Evian, folks used to quench their thirst from public drinking fountains, or slake it from the tap. Elizabeth Royte questions the commodification of our water supply in Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It. How did a handful of multinational corporations manage to take one of life’s essential elements, available for free, and convince Americans to spend 15 billion dollars a year on it?

A manifesto for the No-Mow movement and a hymn to homegrown produce, Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn documents architect Fritz Haeg’s campaign to create a new generation of homesteaders by convincing homeowners to tear out all that petro-centric water-wasting turf and grow fruits, vegetables, and herbs instead. The book—a why as much as a how-to—charts the progress of Haeg’s edible installations across the U.S. and London. Why be a lawn lemming when you could be a frontyard farmer?

break the chains

Advertise your independence in Grid.

Nowtopia: The End of Food

by Paul Roberts Houghton Mifflin, $26.00

Paul Roberts, author of The End of Oil, shifts gears from peak oil to peak soil in The End of Food. Our corroded food chain is squandering resources and poisoning the planet, without achieving the one thing that food is supposed to do: nourish us. Folks in underdeveloped nations starve while affluent Westerners eat ourselves sick; turns out Agribiz is as efficient at distributing disease as it is cheap convenience foods. The End of Food makes the best case yet for a more sustainable, localized system of food production.

How Pirate Programmers, Outlaw Bicyclists, and Vacant-Lot Gardeners Are Inventing the Future Today!

By Chris Carlsson | AK Press, $18.95

Feel like you’re the one being consumed by our consumption-driven culture? Chris Carlsson, one of the freewheeling founders of the ad hoc bicycle advocacy movement Critical Mass, takes us for a spin off the beaten path through alternative communities, both online and real, where folks are opting not to bow at the altar of the not-so-almighty dollar, trading in the currencies of creativity and camaraderie instead. If you haven’t found happiness on the Highway of Hedonism, Nowtopia might just be the destination for you.

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for the issues that matter SEPT 20 0 8

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Philly’s Choice

essay by paul glover

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hiladelphia is ready to become one of the most beautiful and enjoyable cities in America. It’s fully capable of being a model green city. Our city is also ready to become hell on earth, due to rocketing fuel and food prices.

With the collapse of fossil fuels, normalcy is no longer practical and we have to choose either to rebuild this city or be bystanders at its decline. Within 30 years Philadelphia will be either a green city or a ghost town.

So let’s imagine a Philadelphia that works well with one-tenth the oil and natural gas. Prepare to laugh at some of these suggestions. Then prepare to work. Rebuilding Philadelphia so it secures and delights all of us, and our children, will require hundreds of thousands of new jobs.

Assuming that rising fuel costs will mean no more cheap food from far away, we’ll need to grow much of our food inside and around the city. With 40,000 vacant lots, Philadelphia can jump-start its local food production by filling them with orchards, gardens and farms.

Assuming that heating and air conditioning homes with gas, oil and electric becomes too costly (and nuclear has a limited fuel supply plus other problems with waste storage and security), we’ll need to superinsulate our houses and build entirely new housing that’s earthsheltered, needing no fuel to heat and cool.

Assuming that cooling homes with conventional fuels also becomes too costly, we’ll need to tear up as much paving as we can to reduce the urban “heat island” that boils our homes.

Assuming that cars will cost too much to fuel—even fuel-efficient cars— we can fill the streets with trolleys again, as well as bicycles, and wild mosaic pathways.

Assuming that fuel costs for running our water system will make water too costly to poop into, we’ll need to replace flush toilets with National Sanitation Foundation-approved waterless toilets, which convert humanure into safe, sweet-smelling garden soil. Keeping our rivers free of waste will also bring back edible, healthy fish.

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Assuming that more of us will be unable to afford health insurance, we’ll need to create our own nonprofit co-op health plans and create our own member-owned free clinics.

Assuming that the dollars with which we buy food and fuel and housing and health care continue to lose value, we’ll need to print our own inflation-proof money that’s backed by neighborhood and business networks providing local skills, tools and time.

Assuming that global markets continue to invest in wars, prisons, rainforest destruction, junk food and cars, we’ll need to create our own regional stock exchanges which reward investment in the processes above.

Assuming that the media continues to emphasize that people are violent rather than kindly, that it’s risky to trust one another and that we are not capable of organizing our own neighborhoods to make this city beautiful, we will need to create our own media.

Assuming that government will be unable to raise taxes enough to maintain crumbling centralized infrastructure, we’ll need to create neighborhoods that thrive on decentralized technologies.

These neighborhoods would be full of proud self-sufficient people who, using the ideas above, can grow their own food using their humanure, start microindustries in vacant buildings, work together to provide preventive medicine, recycle goods to spur on new indusSEPT 2008

try, teach neighborhood management at their schools, fill their streets with greenspace and support one another through mutual-aid local currencies and health programs. Powerful local neighborhoods need fewer government services for police, courts, jails, streets, trash and sewage and less government subsidy for food, fuel, housing, medical care and mental health.

These bold notions have proven practical in small scales in various cities.

Welcoming them all to our city, through respectful and orderly transitions, will set an example for the world and make the future fun. paul glover is founder of Ithaca HOURS local currency, Citizen Planners of Los Angeles, Philly Orchard Project, PhilaHealthia and other groups. He is author of Green Jobs Philly, Health Democracy and Hometown Money, and teaches Metropolitan Ecology at Temple University.

illus t r at ion by jude bu ffu m

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