"Driving Jersey represents and reflects the most misunderstood and misrepresented place and people in all of America." In this series of calmly paced, short documentaries featuring profiles, atmosphere, landscape, and interviews, filmmakers
Steve Rogers and
Ryan Bott travel 21 counties to capture some of the true character and cultural nuance of the Garden State.
[more inside]
posted by Miko
on Sep 12, 2011 -
54 comments
Davis, California is a small town by almost any measure, yet is home to one of the
busiest local wikis in the world. The Davis Wiki chronicles the
mundane and the
bizarre, but also serves more practical information, such as lunch specials, housing guides,
news events, and the hours of the local
bike collective. In recognition of the outstanding success of the Davis Wiki, the founders were recently awarded a $350,000 grant to develop their
Local Wiki software for more general application, including intensive development of wikis in a number of pilot communities.
Many communities already have a wiki, though only a few have really taken off; with luck and a bit of a kickstart, the
experience of the Davis Wiki founders can be applied to make this invaluable resource available in more cities.
posted by kaibutsu
on Jul 29, 2010 -
46 comments
In September of 2004, a Superior Court in Washington state ruled
the state's 1998 "Defense of Marriage" act unconstitutional, a ruling which would have allowed the state to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. In 2006, the state Supreme Court issued in an opinion in
Andersen v. King County overturning the lower court's ruling, noting "that
our decision [pdf] is not based on an independent
determination of what we believe the law should be." The legislature, in response,
created the state-registered domestic partnership in 2007, expanding many (but not all) marriage-related rights to same-sex couples. Last month,
a new law expanded the partnership to cover the remaining rights, creating an "all-but-marriage" partnership.
This year, the Washington Values Alliance has
filed Referendum 71, which would put this expansion to a ballot vote. The referendum will need 120,000 signatures to make it to the ballot.
WhoSigned.org intends to make these signatures searchable.
Predictably, this is
creating some controversy.
[more inside]
posted by 0xFCAF
on Jun 2, 2009 -
114 comments
Everyblock has launched. It's local news culled from (any and all available) services, including photos, news, restaurant inspections, classified ads, and civic announcements. Sounds pretty dry, but looking at
my old neighborhood in San Francisco, there's a wealth of hyperlocal information that you can't get in one place. They're currently in three major metro areas of the US with many more to come --
their launch announcement has more. This site was spearheaded by
Adrian Holovaty, a pioneer of the intersection between journalism and computer science, and
winner of a $1million grant last year to build such sites.
posted by mathowie
on Jan 23, 2008 -
34 comments
In the grand scheme of things, eating locally grown food may be more important than eating organically grown foods. To help you reach that goal, there's
100-Mile Diet, a blog that deals with the benefits and pitfalls of trying to eat only foods grown locally;
The Eating Well Guide, which will help you find markets, restaurants, etc. that go along with the sustainable foodthink; and
Local Harvest, which will help you find local
and organically grown food sources. (PS. Now's probably the time to start signing up for your favorite
CSA!)
posted by Dave Faris
on Apr 12, 2007 -
55 comments
the new urban jungle . . . is a growing movement led by cities like
San Francisco,
New York, and
Leiden to restore active and vibrant natural systems in urban areas. Far from the eden-like depictions of nature of yesteryear, i.e.
the garden of earthly delights (nonetheless, still attracting some dynamic
new christian converts), the movement has morphed into today's backyard and grassroots environmental movement which is more and more a picture of hybridity, compromise, mixed-use, and ultimately, taking nature out of the walled islands of zoos, aquaria, national parks and other thick-walled institutions and offering a different kind of everyday
"unmediated" community experience with the new
urban wilderness.
VIDEO LINK
posted by huckhound
on Jul 6, 2006 -
1 comment
At
kuro5hin a couple of weeks ago there was a
post about what life was like in your area of the world. The idea led some enterprising person to create a
website built for the same purposes using the original questions. Seems like a cool way to read about
far away places from real people. It's not too full yet, but I'm sure that will change soon enough.
posted by rhyax
on Aug 12, 2002 -
19 comments
"Tooonight, we're going to have A TERRRRIBLE time! Boo ha ha ha ha," Sammy Terry used to say, and he was usually right, because he'd then show a movie like "The Monolith Monsters" or "The Tingler." Unless you grew up in Southern Indiana, you probably never heard of Sammy Terry. He was the local host of all B-horror movies, like Elvira only cornier (if that's possible!). His "cohost" was a rubber spider, dangling on a string. And his costume included dishwasher gloves (look closely at the picture). Of course, this being the Internet, someone has a created a Sammy Terry fan site:
here. Did anyone else grow up with wacky local shows? I'm not even gonna talk about "Cowboy Bob" and "Janie."
posted by grumblebee
on Jan 15, 2002 -
33 comments
Sundance is a little ski resort about twenty minutes up the road from me... it's quiet during the winter, and a great date in the summer ...and aside from it's eponymous (and off-site) film festival,
who would have guessed that it was so famous? Do you have any local favorites in your neck of the woods... places that are surprising local hotspots (a la "a prophet in his own country")?
posted by silusGROK
on Aug 28, 2001 -
6 comments
If you're lucky, it's not too late to sign up with a Community Supported Agriculture (
?) program in your area. Imagine getting more
fresh, often organic, locally-grown produce (of sorts familiar and un-) each week from late spring through fall than you probably eat in a month! Some friends did this in college and I was thrilled to find a farm near me this year. Is there one
near you?
posted by sudama
on Mar 23, 2001 -
15 comments
