Esprit de Cream

Edward, dishing the scoop.

I recently had the pleasure of wandering in downtown LA on a balmy summer's night. Once you leave the shiny business and museum district and head South and East, the streets start to feel softer, freer, like old familiar shoes (well worn, a bit scuffed, perhaps a bit pungent, too). People were hanging out on corners, browsing at the Last Bookstore, waiting for the bus - it's a real live gritty city, alright.

So imagine my surprise when I saw a brand new housing complex and what I took to be a hipster bike store near Fifth and Main. A cacphony of spinning gears and bobbing wheels in a tall picture window, a queue of people staring into their phones.

Peddler's also does house calls - with a portable churn.

Once inside, it became clear that something else was going on. A dapper fellow on a roller-racer was peddling away, cranking the whole moving window art piece with every stroke - but also churning ice cream! A long chain through the wall was turning an iced tub in the back room, churning out oodles of delicious ice cream and sorbet.



"Peddler's Creamery" is the brainchild of Edward Belden and a dedicated crew of idealists who are determined to think different. PC is a Benefit Corporation, a new class of business that considers social and environmental costs, as well as profit, in their business planning.
Hey, maybe corporations can be people after all...


Edward says the hardest part was the initial funding. Once he got a few committed partners, the momentum took off. Now, there is a 'Peddler's Club' - a de facto waiting list for the honor of spinning the ice cream churn.

Sophie churns, the kinetic window art turns like a clockwork.

Their excellent ice cream and sorbet features local, organic, dairy, non-dairy and vegan ingredients. They are committed to their local neighborhood; 5% of profits are donated to social and environmental causes.
Nouveau Cyclistes are alive and well in South LA, and the food scene is all the better for it.

Hungry for more info? Check out www.peddlerscreamery.com for the, ah, scoop.

Free Mending Library

 Michael Swaine mends clothes for people for free. Let me repeat that. Michael Swaine - an artist and ceramics instructor at CCA - takes a day each month  for mending, sewing and repairing clothes for people in the Tenderloin neighborhood in San Francisco. He calls this the Free Mending Library and he's been at it for more than a decade.

 What first caught our eye is the simple economy of his operation. His rolling cart with a foot-treadle sewing machine, mending storage and built-in umbrella is spare and to the point. Michael started this - project? endeavor? -  as "Reap What You Sew" pushing his cart around town, basically looking for people who might want his services. Before long he figured out two things: 1) the Tenderloin was the most interesting neighborhood for human interaction, and 2) it's easier for people to find you if they know where you will be.

Michael eventually settled in outside the Luggage Store, an art collective at 509 Ellis Street, where he mends for free on the 15th of each month. He has hope that the Free Mending Library will expand naturally, as others with talent or time show up to simply help fix things - be that clothing, appliances, resumes or whatever. All are welcome - to give help, accept it, chat, debate or just share some time.

This may be a trend - the Amsterdam the Repair Cafe was founded 3 years ago, with all the community and government support one might expect from the Dutch.

In San Francisco, Michael Swaine remains a solo act, but there is real work happening here. Not commerce, not emerging technologies, not automation. For Michael the reward is that human interaction.


You can read more about the Free Mending Library HERE.  thanks to Darby Minnow Smith and GRIST.
You can see a short feature HERE

Facebook: Faceless workplace?

The wiley Mark Zuckerberg has hired the wry Frank Gehry to design a new, massive workplace for Facebook employees, and some folks think this is just playing it safe. It is true that Mr. Gehry is several decades past being l'enfant terrible, but all that experience may well be a good balance for the impulsive tendencies of newly-minted silicon valley billionaires. Allison Arieff is doubtful that Gehry can deliver something meaningful for Facebook - but I am more hopeful.

Frank O and Mark Z play with blocks

 Gehry has a public reputation for remarkable but expensive buildings that leak. That opinion is not well supported by fact, however. Among clients, he has a reputation for developing great building programs - the functional space layouts that make his buildings pleasant and efficient places to work. Developing a single, cohesive workplace for 2800 employees will not be easy. The idea of 2800 people of any profession all under the same roof is frightening; the more so when they are all young, flailing engineers trying to figure out what in the Hell they are producing . But if anyone is up to the task, it's Frank O. Gehry Partners.

The Architecture that architects love to hate.

You can read more about this - including an unsubstantiated jab at open offices  - at Allison Arieff's design blog.

Working from a Boat

Measuring the Heartbeat of a City

David Byrne always seems to be at least a step or two ahead of the curve. He's not an urban planner, but he sure could teach a thing or two to those who are, simply from his powers of observation. His book "Bicycle Diaries" holds great insights gathered while pedaling his bike in cities around the world.

Recently he reported from London that the tempo of that city seems to be about 122 beats per minute. How did he get that? Some lightweight field recording gear, a walk around the city with a simple video camera, sound and video editing, a little studio music overlay and viola - a lovely little piece of urban art.

There is more to this story and you can find it HERE.
David Byrne is a well-known creative genius, founder of the Talking Heads, writer and keen observer.