Category Archives: Frugal Living

my various attempts at living a greener, kinder to our earth lifestyle.

Empty House Syndrome

Nation of Change

Houses are bigger, and we’re living with others less often. Not to mention all the empty houses in the country, that for whatever reason can’t be used to house people who live outside.

Doesn’t it all seem a little weird? Here we have both a terrible homeless problem and a terrible real estate problem. Empty houses on the one hand and on the other people who have no place to live. However, the people who have no place to live have no money to pay to live (either rent or buy) in those empty houses. So the solution – to let the people live in the empty spaces – can’t work, because of the “rules” we have.

We can’t have homeless people squatting in foreclosed upon houses – that just, I don’t know, just can’t happen? Why? Because it’s not the way “it” works. Blah blah blah. And the usual argument would follow, but then everybody would want to live in their house for free, etc.

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I’m sure there’s a million reasons why not to. I guess it all comes down to the kind of society we wish to live in and how we want to relate to our fellow human beings. Am I saying it’s wrong to deny the homeless shelter in vacant homes that someone else owns? Probably not. I know that’s not how the “system” works in this or other countries. I have a vacant porch and I have yet to invite a homeless person to camp there. However, I am curious as to when and how it got to that point, where an arbitrary economic model trumps compassion and extends misery.

Much easier to talk about the parts of the story which involve doubling up or living with friends, etc. Not only is there money and energy to be saved, there’s camaraderie to be had and loneliness to be stanched. There’s more people living alone today than ever before in history (myself included). Have you ever wondered why this is, and found it odd – after all, we are social animals. Cats and dogs have certainly benefited!

If you live alone, do you think you’ll always want to? Or would you like to live with other people, especially as a single older person?

Old Values, Mutualism Making a New Comeback

Just add beard?

Any neighborhood where the denizens have (nicely trimmed, please) beards, wear suspenders and sport a few tattoos would be a place I wouldn’t mind visiting – hey, a lot!

In Sara Horowitz’s story in The Altlantic on the new (old) mutualism, she describes the movement (at least in Portland) as thus. As in, the male folks involved in cooperative ventures have this aesthetic.

More important, of course, is the movement behind the fashion – cooperatives filling a void to which neither government nor the private sector has been able or willing to provide good solutions.

I remember back during my one year at the University of Wisconsin in Madison – where I lived within walking distance of the Mifflin Street Co-op, which was a thriving holdover from the 1960s countercultural movement (it seemed like a long time from the anti-war riot days, but it was really just 1977-78). I tried to support it as best I could, but I do remember the healthy offerings weren’t often what my college-age junk food-loving body wanted.

But I digress. Horowitz goes on to talk about some of the bigger successes, like the Freelancer’s Union insurance programs, as well as more glamorous enterprises like Etsy and Kickstarter, which has funded thousands of art/music/film/design projects over the last year.

The cooperative movement couldn’t be more American or traditional than Ben Franklin, who started a “fire insurance company, Philadelphia Contributionship, which still operates today.”
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I found this definition of a social-purpose venture: It needs to:

Be financially sustainable
Have a social impact

So that’s pretty broad. I think the main differences between the old mutualism and what passes as the new version will have to do with technology – specifically the internet and crowd-sourcing, avenues simply not available to our ancestors in the 1890s. Maybe that and the tattoos – I can see the men of the 1890s in suspenders and beards, but were tattoos really the thing back then? I think that’s a more modern wrinkle. Then again, I could be wrong.

And, I learned a new word: locavore. I bet you, smart reader, don’t even have to look it up.

Yes, Virginia, it’s Easy and Cheap to take Public Transportation from the Valley to Long Beach

View Larger Map

Last Thursday, I had a lunch date with my friend and colleague Krys Grondorf, down at a place in Belmont Shore (Open Sesame) which is near where she lives. Time not being an issue, I decided to take the train options we have in Los Angeles to get to Long Beach, and document that trip for you here on the blog.

The trip involved two buses and two trains. It’s a distance of about 40 miles or so, according to calculations. I live in Valley Village, about a mile from the end of the Red Line Subway in North Hollywood. So I took the Orange Line (an express bus line that operates like a train, dedicated roadway with few stops) the one stop from Laurel Canyon to the North Hollywood Station.

From there, I took the Red Line Subway through Universal City, Hollywood, Silver Lake, Koreatown, etc. and got off at 7th Street/Metro Center, where I transferred to the Blue Line light rail.

The Blue Line runs mainly directly south after going east along Washington for a short distance just south of downtown L.A. It follows the previous right-of-way of the famous Pacific Electric Railway (red cars) which was dismantled after WW II – and then rebuilt in the 90s. I got off at the Long Beach Transit Mall, the end of the line, a couple of blocks from the ocean. I still had to take a bus, probably about 2 miles, to Belmont Shore. It was Passport Bus A or D, which I picked up around the corner from the Transit Mall.

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Trip Time: about 2 hours each way

Cost: Each leg of the metro cost $1.50, debited from my TAP card. So that part of the trip cost $9.00, round trip. The bus in Long Beach was $1.25 each way, so the total cost of this trip was $11.50. According to the Trip Planner function on the Metro Website, the driving cost (round trip) would be $41.56 (which doesn’t include any parking fees that might be added). And actually, I think I could have used some kind of transfer for the Long Beach bus — but I didn’t know how to do that, so it would have been less than that $11.50.

So, it’s definitely doable. Would I do it every day? Hell, no. I did get a lot of reading done, and I did all my email and calls on the smart phone on the Blue Line. The nicest thing was the zero stress, and seeing parts of the city I don’t ever get a chance to see when driving. Oh, and there was a hooker on the Blue Line coming back, which was entertaining in its own way.

First, let me apologize about the crappy video below. I’m still learning how to use the smart phone video app, and the worst part about it is in bright daylight you can’t really see the image on the screen, so you’re pretty much shooting blind. Sorry about the last shot in Long Beach, I must’ve turned the camera off before I thought I did, and heaven knows why I turned the phone upside down. Ooops.

Enjoying Los Angeles Arts and Culture Without a Car

La Cienega/Jefferson Station on the Expo Line

Step-by-step intrux on how to: How to Enjoy L.A. Arts and Culture Without a Car.

Thoroughly enjoyed this enlightening and entertaining story by Alissa Walker in the L.A. Weekly blog. It’s really a blog post about a book, Car Free Los Angeles and Southern California, by Nathan Landau, a transit planner.

Walker, who navigates L.A. every day car free, writes about Landau’s ideas as how they work for a skeptical resident as well as someone visiting or a casual tourist. Both authors emphasize how Los Angeles public transportation has and is being improved, seemingly on a monthly basis — for instance, this week (on Saturday, April 28) the Expo Line light rail opens. Not only will this be the first light rail link to the west side in 50 years, it will also take one to museums in Exposition Park and some nice restaurants in Culver City.

Charlie Sheen, in contrast wears his dysfunction with pride, loudly proclaims vardenafil cost his narcissistic superiority and continues his self destructive path. Let’s cialis on line understand erectile dysfunction Though impotence is not an inevitable consequence of aging. It’s a sneaky form of advertising, that’s for sure, and one must give credit to those who have managed to end their problem. cialis generico uk However, some users feel shy when talking about this matter reading NF sildenafil viagra de pfizer Cure capsules and Vital M-40 capsules review.

I recently had the opportunity to show my brother and his family some sights of L.A. in one day – and we did make use of the Red Line subway for part of the trip. Sightseeing Goal: Staples Center. We didn’t need to park downtown, and we didn’t need to get on the Hollywood Freeway. That in itself, I’m sure, lowered my blood pressure a few points. Continue reading →

Personal car-sharing: yep, that’s right, not everyone needs to OWN a car

should I, could I, rent out this baby?

Personal car-sharing is a new twist on auto rentals

Click on the link above to read about the newest twist in car sharing – apps that allow the average person to “share” their vehicle by renting it out.

The brainchild of a guy who noticed how much of the time zillions of vehicles are just parked, not in use, not doing anything, sites like Getaround, Wheelz, JustShareIt, RelayRides and others allow the enterprising person (yourself, maybe? me, maybe?) to either rent or rent out a car.

This is brilliant, it reminds me of the old idea of the fugitive “hiding in plain sight” – only this time, it’s our consumerist mindset that’s hiding. We were conditioned to believe that we ALL needed to own these things, that otherwise it would just be too difficult to get around, do things, to live, etc. (And believe me it was planned conditioning – there was/is no innate “need” to have things like cars.)

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Continue reading →

Just say no to Christmas?

Alternative uses for a credit card!

link to Just say no to Christmas? from USATODAY.com.

See, being a non-conformist can get you into print! After I did this post a few weeks ago on Adbuster’s Buy Nothing Day and #OccupyXmas, I was contacted by the paper to contribute to their story on “Christmas without consuming.”

It’s good to know there are others out there (many, many others, I would imagine) who feel the same way I do about the consumerism that has taken over Xmas and has become responsible for so much stress and debt.

So what am I doing for Xmas? Dinner with friends on both Xmas Eve and Xmas day, and an open house in the neighborhood, where I’m told (yes!) there will be cookies.

This year in particular, because of the death in our family, since I don’t celebrate the crassness of Xmas there were no diversions, such as (un)necessary trips to malls, real or online, parking lot traffic jams, overdrawn checking accounts, and well, you get my drift. I’m grateful for the time I had with my family.

My best wishes to everyone for fellowship and light on the holiday – after all, the kernel takeaway from Xmas is “peace on earth, goodwill to men” – right? There doesn’t need to be more than that, unless of course you have to have all the rest. It’s certainly been enough for me, going on 15 years since I said goodbye to all that.

You know what? Once again, nothing bad happened.

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What if you just said no: Buy Nothing Day + Buy Nothing Christmas #OCCUPYXMAS

Buy Nothing Day #OCCUPYXMAS

So there’s all this crap out today about Black Friday, and about the scuffles, the tramples, the pepper-spraying, etc., all to be found in abundance today at the mall, apparently.

What if – what if you don’t have to do any of this? In fact, if you really do hate corporate greed and want to hit them back in the only place they care about – their pocketbook – a strategy you might consider is Buy Nothing Day, brought to you by Adbusters. You might have heard of adbusters – they’ve been around for more than a decade, trying to point out to people about the insidious power of advertising (take that, Don Draper!).

They also provided the match that lit Occupy Wall Street. So this is an act of “disobedience” that’s unbelievably easy to implement – simply don’t go shopping today. No driving to stores. No online clicking with credit card. Just. Don’t. Do. It.

Do something else, for instance: Nap. Read. Watch TV. Go to a Movie (or two). Go to the Gym. Go for a Hike. Clean the house. Try new recipes for Thanksgiving leftovers. Make love with your partner, spouse, or a new friend (or all 3). Read to a child. Take your pet out. Chat with your neighbors. See, that took me all of 30 seconds to type out, who knows what I’d think of if I really put my mind to it! Continue reading →

Black Friday becoming Black Thursday … (gimme gimme your dough)

get away from my dinner

Black Friday can’t come too soon for these guys – LA Times story.

As you might guess from the photo I chose, this story really disgusted me.

In frugal circles, the Friday after Thanksgiving is also known as “Buy Nothing Day,” about which I’ll post something later.

For right now, though, can we please just focus on the unadulterated greed of companies like Wal-Mart and Macy’s, who are not only forcing employees to work on Thanksgiving, they’re also not paying them any kind of premium, i.e., holiday pay.

Dickens couldn’t have written a better dastardly and cowardly villain! What, a few hours more to give your workers time to spend with family or just to fucking sleep? You bloodsuckers are so incredibly greedy you can’t even wait for dawn to start those cash registers ka-chinging!

Chops to Mr. Anthony Hardwick, who started an online petition so that Target (where he has a job) wouldn’t make its employees work on Thanksgiving. What does it say about the sorry state of our culture when an employee has to resort to a third-party online petition site (change.org) to get HIS OWN EMPLOYER to possibly listen to him?
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It’s not exactly like he’s a freeloader. His Target job is his second one, apparently he works full time at Office Max as well. Continue reading →

Carfree Week Wrapup

This is my car, a 2005 Scion Xa, parked in Shorewood on a visit

My one week long Carfree experiment is over today.

Honestly, it wasn’t all that much of an adventure, and there wasn’t any palpable angst involved. Meaning: it was really easy to not use a car for a week.

Why did I do it?

It’s a recommended activity in Chris Balish’s book “How to Live Well Without Owning a Car”, which I’ve been studying, wondering if I could really live in Los Angeles without one.

The answer is probably yes. I probably could, in fact with my current conditions for work (self-employed at home) and social engagements (so far I haven’t found any not within walk, bike, bus, train or taxi parameters) lend themselves well to not owning a car.
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Will I go carless? I don’t know. I love the idea of saving $6,000 a year (that’s what the Edmunds website true cost to own tells me I’m spending on the car I actually own) and I love the idea of walking and riding my bike a lot, and I also love the idea of reducing my carbon footprint and actually walking the enviro walk, so to speak, trying to do something more than recycle my soda cans.

And can we talk parking? I have never enjoyed driving all that much, but parking is an activity I absolutely loathe.

But it’s interesting. It’s the social thing. I don’t want to become a social pariah (more than I already am!). When you mention the very idea to people, they become confused, it really doesn’t register in L.A. You get questions like, “oh, your car is in the shop?” “If you didn’t have a car, how would you get anywhere, how would you do anything, how would you get food?” Etc. It’s true, many ~~white~~ people have never been on public transportation and have no idea how to go about it. Also, walkers in L.A., except in a few neighborhoods, can be few and far between, so you do feel exposed and vulnerable.

I was telling a friend last night about my carfree week when he realized I had ridden my bike to the restaurant where we met. It was like it didn’t compute at all, like why would a sane person do such a thing?

Why indeed?

Carfree Week: Getting to the Gym

It’s day four of Carfree Week. Yesterday I sort of hibernated, as it was raining for most of the day (though it cleared up late afternoon). Funny thing about living in climate where it doesn’t rain at all for a good part of the year – when it finally comes, it’s like a huge regional event and news story and that’s all anybody talks about. It seemed cold, even though the temperature was probably upper 50s low 60s. If I had a fireplace I would have made a nice toasty fire!

Any readers who live where there’s real weather will roll their eyes. Believe me, everything is relative. Also, having lived both in the snowy Midwest and desert Southwest, I can tell you, those Midwestern brick homes keep the heat in. SoCal, not so much!

Sorry for the digression. How to get to the gym? Very easy:

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When I realized where I was going to live when I moved back to L.A., I rejoined Gold’s, which lets me use their Hollywood, DTLA, or North Hollywood locations as part of the membership (and I think there’s a few more locations in the package, too, but those are the ones I’d mostly frequent). As you can see on the map, it’s an easy 1.5 mile bike ride from my place to the gym on Laurel Canyon, which has a bike lane. Still, the cars go very fast on that street and I’m super cautious. But there are a good number of cyclists and plenty of lights to slow things down.

So instead of driving to the gym, I got some extra cardio coming and going. My workout? Today it was chest and elliptical, which I hadn’t done in awhile.