Asheville Street Style

Hey Ya'll! Check out my pictures in the Mountain Xpress, in the Asheville Street Style section...
xoxo

Reason #161 Why I Belong In The Woods

Because ever since I have moved to downtown Asheville my favorite place to go is riding my bike in a patch of trees a couple blocks away. And I never want to leave.

(These low-fi pics were taken with my cell phone)... xoxo

Holiday Bike Ride!

This is Part 2 of my holiday plans - I rode my bike around my neighborhood and looked at holiday lights, saw X-mas trees lit up in windows, and wished that all these lights were LED or solar! Asheville doesn't have nearly the amount of decorated houses that New Orleans had - or maybe no one can afford the electric bill this year... either way it's a bonus for the environment. Enjoy the pics...

PS- My good friend Bort used to work for an X-mas tree farm and said not only are the trees sprayed with pesticides but they are sprayed with PAINT too! Now that is f-en gross! Buy Organic :) xoxo

Winter Woods

For the holiday I have two plans... to walk in the woods and then at night to ride my bike and look at holiday lights on houses. Here are pictures from Part 1 of my X-mas Day. After all the crazed consumerism mixed with a slumpy economy the woods are a breath of fresh air (literally)! Happy Holidays! xoxo

Eco Crochet With Natural Fiber Yarn

Yesterday I rode my bike to the local Yarn shop called Purl's to get some eco fiber yarns to crochet with. I am crocheting some cool + wacky leg warmers and other goodies for The Oko Box and wanted to use not only locally purchased but natural fiber yarn. I found a pretty good selection of alpaca, merino & organic wool, organic cotton, Llama, silk and bamboo fibers. I was wishing they carried the banana fiber yarn since it is soooo silky smooth and shiny but the owner said she doesn't like the quality (pulls apart too easy & not consistent).

This is a picture of the organic wool rack which had a really awesome color selection but was rather pricey depending on what your project is... each roll ran between $7.50 and $13.50 a piece. I bought some bright red organic wool, and also some merino wool silk blend that didn't go quite as far as I hoped for my project, it's puffy nature was deceiving. (And of course I don't know what all those numbers mean on the tag that tell you exactly how much you are buying ;) ...)
Oh but look at her cute little doggy in the window! ruff ruff!

Would be awesome if natural fibers were more in demand enough to bring down the price- so all you eco crafters get out there and start buying these yarns!!!

Lex Fest In Asheville

Lex Fest in Asheville NC is the festival for freaks, it's just like any cultural celebration, except this one creates a space for everyone who feels they are on the fringes of society. It's a place to sell crafts, listen to alternative bands, mingle with other punks, and generally enjoy the creativety that makes the pulse of the city. The groovy, the goth, the hippies, punks, and zombies can all come together and flaunt their stuff...

The first cool thing I noticed while walking to Lex Fest were tons of people where riding bikes and also walking, bikes were chained to every pole & bike rack downtown. So does this mean "freaks" tend to be more on the ecosexual side? :)

Lots of ladies were strutting their stuff and completely happy to have their photo taken, even posing.

Asheville has a addiction to hoola- hoops , is this also nation wide? I feel rather out of the 'cool' loop as of the last, oh 7 years or so....

Many Gothic fairies took to the streets carrying Artist Donation hats.

There was some totally awesome upcycled steam punk jewelry and in the pic below upcycled bike tubes made into these super sexy black chokers!

And ZOMBIES!!!!!!! They have a thriller style zombie crawl through the street!

I was amazed at how beautiful this fashionista looked while eating a huge piece of pizza...the food was pretty American, all I saw were people licking ice cream and eating pizza. Then i saw BIKE JOUSTING! Each jouster would get up a hill opposite each other, fly down on bikes towards the hay bail wall and then...here are a few pics illustrating how it works...

This woman was slowly turning in circles on the American Flag & making a sad face- while holding dead flowers - a strong political statement? It was freaking me out.

Last but not least is the totally New Orleans worthy marching band - which rocked way more then the band on stage or the drum circle!

PS- Here's an extra picture my friend took at Lex Fest during the night, of a glowing hoola-hoop!

BBT Bank Downtown Asheville Is Getting More Eco

Asheville NC is known for it's eco friendly businesses and atmosphere - but I still like to play eco scout and search out some environmental surprises. The BB-n-T bank downtown was kickin' it eco style when I dropped by yesterday. First off, they have a bike rack out front, which was perfect for me to lock up my bike at. Then as I entered the building there was a revolving door - you may not know this but revolving doors save energy by not leaking out air & heat being pumped into a massive building. When I was sitting with a banker he told me that some rare falcons had made two nests on top of the building and they were taking steps to make sure they were not disturbed in any way! How cool is that!? And the grand finale came when I went to use their restroom and found out they were using 100% recycled toilet paper.
These are the kind of small steps I would love to see every business taking, because change will happen faster when we are encouraged by mainstream interactions out in the world.

Photo: Jim Jamesson

Asheville Green Drinks

How did I miss this before? Or maybe it just started, but Green Drinks is in Asheville NC! I have read with envy about the cool Green Drinks events in Los Angeles and other eco minded cities, wondering how Asheville (home of eco villages) wouldn't be in this loop.
So here's what's on their calender:

Upcoming Green Drinks Events...
August 22nd - Dogwood Alliance's Adam Macon will speak about fast food packaging and how it is destroying our bio-diverse southern forests and wha we can do to stop it.
August 29th - Yuri Koslen from the City of Asheville will speak about sustainable transportation.
Sept 5th - Asheville Living Wage Campaign's Sarah Olsmer will discuss Asheville's new Living Wage Employer Certification Program, spearheaded by Just Economics. Just Economics is a grassroots, community organization based in Asheville dedicated economic justice and sustainability issues.

*Join us each Friday night at 6:00pm for socializing, 6:30pm speaker, 7:00pm socialize again! BoBo Gallery, 22 N. Lexington Ave. *

If you don't have a Green Drinks in your city, why not start one! It's all about socializing with like minds and learning about eco related issues. Check out what these guys are up to on their website and then go for it!

Trapping Stray Kitties

Asheville NC is full of stray kitties, pretty much like every big city in America. I had found these little kittens a few months back living under the shed in the back yard, there were three total plus the intensely wild and vicious momma. There is luckily a program here that will get these guys fixed for free, but we had to set out wild animal traps.

The traps are long and when the cat goes to the back to eat the food it trips a trigger that shuts the cage door. We caught the first two kittens within minutes, but the third one saw the whole horror show and is now in hiding. (Nothing a little tuna won't fix!)
This is my awesome neighbor & friend Heather who got the traps and found the place to get them proper care- and just in time! The little yellow kitten was apparently bit by another animal and has one disgusting wound on his neck.

If you live in the Asheville area and would like to adopt one of these cuties, send me an email at info {at} theokobox dot com or leave a comment here.

Eco Treasure Hunting at Festivals

This weekend is Belle Chere, the biggest festival in Asheville NC. To overcome my fear of giant crowds, funky smells, and crappy music I decided to turn it into a eco treasure hunt where I would seek out the most eco friendly booths! (For a focused review of the green crafts check out my article at Crafting A Green World). What I was surprised and happy to have found was that 1/3 of the booths were environmentally focused - which signifies awesome change. Upcycling, recycling, saving parks & trees, petitions, native herbs for sale, eco crafts, biodiesel, and unplugged music....


Here is a little sample of what I discovered along the way:
There were recycle bins everywhere! And the there was a whole booth dedicated to surveying people about their recycling habits. Only weird thing was the survey questions asked if I attended church, played video games, watched TV and enjoyed the outdoors. And then they were giving away free bottle openers and pens... I didn't get to ask if they were recycled.

Check out how much this cop is loving his little electric vehicle, he was smiling while he made little circles.

Eco minded Jackpot here! An entire booth dedicated to teaching about biofuels, and what Asheville NC has to provide.

Plus the biofuel "not a concept" car for people to look at- Yay!

The handmade, natural, and organic crafts were abundant. Romantic upcycled clothing, handcrafted soaps with essential oils, sculptures made from scrap metal, handbags with straps made from men's neckties, purses made from cereal boxes, necklaces from bottle caps and paper made from elephant poo! BTW, elephant poo paper has no smell at all.


There was a sampling of booths dedicated to charity & causes , like the "Hats For Humanity" and the "Save the Magnolia Tree".

But then as it seems all festivals can not resist, there are wasteful gigantic air pumped ads like this "Ingles" grocery balloon full of super bad junk food poking out. Sugar, pizza, peanuts and chips! Bleh.

At this point it finally began to get crowded, since I had arrived rather early to beat the expected swarms of people. Yikes, anxiety!

This is what I look like when I feel like there are so many people around that I might throw up, kind of pale and very serious. But check out the pretty wall behind me, and the "blood root" native plant I have in my hand!

Then I saw this happening (pic below)... if you have been to The Oko Box website you have seen some pics with vibrant graffitti in the background - this was that building, and it was torn down to the ground.

But I found these used red cowgirl boots at the second hand store called Madam Butterfly on Lexington Ave ... Yay! I think I will wear them everyday forever. (Btw- the tank dress I am wearing is made of hemp and is by Funk Divine on Etsy.)

Go Asheville, for being mostly green!!!!!