Okay, we know, reader, we know—how is it possible to have any sort of socially aware, ethically conscious blog and not be posting something relevant to the Occupy movement, which— though it first may have seemed like another loud, confused, disorganized political version of Lollapalooza—now looks to be something a good bit more significant than I think any of us thought it would be.

True, hard to ignore, but we want to talk about something else really quickly, before the warm weather’s gone for aught eleven. All summer, we’ve been noticing these signs popping up on the chain link fencing of the many, many vacant lots of Brooklyn.

Maybe you’ve seen them yourselves, with a map of Brooklyn printed onto newsprint and the words “THERE ARE 596 ACRES OF VACANT PUBLIC LAND IN BROOKLYN” scrawled across the artwork.

The posters—designed by the talented Gowanus-based artist, Julia Samuels—act as both an awakening and a call to action. When you live in New York, you take for granted the fact that there are hundreds of vacant lots that we all walk or bike or drive by every day. Most of us don’t give them a second thought.

Think of the posters as a portal to that second thought.

Think of them also as an entry point to the activism of the organization behind the posters, 596 Acres, a “public education project aimed at making communities aware of the land resources around them.”

As 596 puts it—”With the goal of a food sovereign New York City in mind, 596 Acres is helping neighbors form connections to the vacant lots in their lives—from the smallest (throwing a seedbomb) to the largest (hosting a public meeting with the head of a City Agency that owns a vacant lot that was promised to the community as a park). Thanks to the Center for the Study of Brooklyn, we have learned that many of these lots are actually publicly owned and are developing a platform for negotiating interim and long term community uses for this warehoused public space. 596 acres is how much vacant public land existed in Brooklyn alone as of April 2010. If even a small portion of that was committed to neighborhood food production, we would have an abundance of fresh seasonal vegetables to eat! And think of all the grassy parks we could have! And composting sites! And whatever else Brooklynites and their neighbors know they need.”making communities aware of the land resources around them.”

Some of you may know that I used to work for a NYC public land organization, so this is an issue I’m both familiar with and excited to get behind. I also know it’s a long and storied battle in NYC and one that not new to the city or its long-time residents. But it’s heartening to see this issue spark up again with a whole new demographic of activists. Web-savy ones too—the group’s homepage features an interactive map that shows vacant lots, lots being organized around, and community gardens. It also provides pop-up street views of the areas, location details, and gives users easy-to-use organizing tools specific to lots near them.

I know. Where was this article at the beginning of the summer, when we can enjoy things like gardens and parks. Think of it this way—if you use the coming dreadful, rainy, snowy, death’s-grip months of winter to organize around a space, maybe you can have it ready for renovation by spring! And all that work will take your mind off how very, very shitty winter is in New York.

Picture above taken at the lot a block southwest of our studio…which we just signed up to organize around. Awesome basil, here we come!

As you can see from the photo below, the lot’s also been tagged by another public space group, Insert _______ Here, an interactive climate art project for re-imagining communities. I mean, youths are great and all, but basil, man. Basil.

We’ll work it out come summer. Now everyone back to protesting.

Just some GIF fun.

We just heard about the un-free one from our friends at Yellow Owl Workshop and it WILL NOT STOP BLOWING OUR MINDS. It’s a new digital sketch pen from Wacom called the Inkling, and it allows you to sketch on paper—like we’re all so used to doing—and capture the digital likeness of your sketches, translating them to vectors and even going as far as allowing for layer creation in programs like Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. If you’re not a designer or illustrator or at least familiar with digital design, you may well be like, “Meh? Meh.” Otherwise, you, like us, are probably a lot more like “WHA? WHAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” To you, we say—We totally agree. Now get it together, dude. Check out the video below. And yes, that robot is awesome.

The other design find was brought to our attention last week by our good friend, Jacob. Again, if you’re not familiar with the design field, you may not be aware that, as designers dealing with layouts for print or Web pieces you’re often in need of some filler text. Now, you don’t want to just copy a word and hit the paste key a million times because a) this looks lame, and b) this doesn’t demonstrate a dynamic layout or give a realistic impression of how elements like images will interact with the layout.

Enter lorem ipsum—placeholder text used since the 60’s or so, written in latin, and—most commonly—taken from Roman philosopher Cicero’s writings and rearranged so that it’s nonsensical when translated. I know—designers are total nerds. But after placing lorem ipsum, say, ONE MILLION TIMES IN A DAY, it can get a little old. Like reading latin. Now, enter Hipster Ipsum—the filler-text-generator created by LA-based WordPress savant Jason Cosper using a combination of latin and—you guessed it—hipster terminology. Here’s an excerpt we just created:Jean shorts chambray ut tofu mustache, aute sustainable id aliqua wayfarers banh mi Austin. Banh mi american apparel iphone, pitchfork consequat synth tumblr tempor tofu magna 3 wolf moon salvia blog delectus enim. Gentrify sustainable esse DIY occaecat dolor, wayfarers craft beer high life aesthetic. Mlkshk etsy sed placeat. High life thundercats aliqua aute etsy. Whatever et leggings, sustainable ethical synth cillum four loko velit id sunt ea carles. Carles cardigan lomo, farm-to-table bicycle rights portland photo booth nisi +1 consectetur craft beer.

Should latin be totally bumming you out, you can also opt for “Hipster, neat.” So, got a client with a sense of humor (we’re about to find out, by the way)? Get fillin’!

 

VOLCANO ERUPTS IN SOUTH BROOKLYN
BLOOMBERG URGES POST-EARTHQUAKE, PRE-HURRICANE CITY TO BRACE FOR POSSIBLE PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS, “OTHER HEAVY BIBLE SHIT”

We thought we’d take a stab at the whole Onion headline there. I know, I know—keep our day jobs. We will. But for real, Reader! An earthquake AND a hurricane in NYC in one week? We rarely embrace cursing, but what the F? Seriously. What. The. F.

In all seriousness, for anyone in New York who isn’t planning to leave town in the next 24 hours (which they’re actually advising us to do) and hasn’t yet checked this out, visit the city’s Hurricane Evacuation Map. Not only is it VERY well-designed (nicely done John Keefe), it’s handy on the whole ‘Hey, I wonder if my building’s going to flood/fall-down/be smote by god’ front.

Whereas we’ll be doing a little bit of disaster prep at the studio today (boooooo, Zone C), happily, our apartment is JUST inside this little Carroll Gardens bubble of safety. So, if you’re around, feel free to come on by Sunday. We’re planning a day of special hurricane-ready Smoky Jo’s Chili, Dark + Stormy’s, and some potential huddling in our windowless bedroom. Ooh! And maybe we’ll watch The Proposal if it’s on FX again this weekend. Oh, Sandra.

And for real, ya’ll—be safe this weekend.

Reader, last month, sadly, we could not bestow you with your regular dose of Pin-Up Pandas. Honestly, it was for your own good—that shit was depraved. I don’t know what WWF was thinking that month, but there was just some messed up stuff going on in those photos that we could not, in good conscience, share with you, our valued Reader. August is a TOTALLY different story though. Cute baby pandas AND nut jokes? Win-win, my fiend. Win-win.

OOH! Also Found—a really entrancing, beautifully composed piece of pop music (below) via our new best-blog-friend, Electric Panda, by Australian artist Gotye. Check out EP’s write-up the artist and track on his blog.

Somebody That I Used To Know (feat. Kimbra) by Gotye