Friday, May 17, 2013
 |
|
|
September 14, 2011 Story contributed by Polina Selyutin.Bi-Rite, a grocery market nestled in the heart of San Francisco's hip Mission district, has been owned by Sam Mogannam's family since the 1960's. In 1997, when he reluctantly agreed to take over the family business, he decided to run the market his way. His way...
|
|
|
|
|
August 11, 2011 Every year, the theaters on Broadway in New York City create tons upon tons of trash. Sets, costumes, props, all so intricately designed to create an imaginary world for each specific production that they have no life left in them when the show closes. Theater walls are repainted again and again,...
|
|
|
|
|
August 4, 2011 Story by Stacy Edwards.Austin’s Black Star Co-op Pub and Brewery is anything but typical. From its delightfully quirky menu options challenging your rational and irrational taste buds, to its community-owned and employee-run structure, this first of its kind brewpub is boldly redefining the co-...
|
|
|
|
|
June 23, 2011 In politics, celebrity, the greenwashing business and the beauty industry, there is a religion based on the notion that perception is reality – that if an individual or an organization appears as something – and is perceived that way – then that perception becomes the truth. In essence, it’s a...
|
|
|
|
|
June 21, 2011 Story by Rachel TobiasWhen you walk into the newly surfaced Los Angeles butcher shop Lindy & Grundy, you’re likely on a mission for a little brown paper package of, if you so choose, pork tenderloin and perhaps a sausage or two for tomorrow’s breakfast. What you ultimately get, however, is a...
|
|
|
|
|
March 30, 2011 There are a lot of exciting and rewarding parts to starting a business: the rush of having that Big Idea, the freedom of being your own boss, the satisfaction of creating something from nothing. But there’s one part of building a business that is not a lot of fun for anyone: raising the money to...
|
|
|
|
|
March 8, 2011 In observance of International Women's Day 2011, I began tweeting about some of the amazing and inspiring entrepreneurs we've interviewed since this site launched in 2009. It was a wonderful experience to step back and see the scope and breadth of vital work being done by women all over this...
|
|
|
|
|
July 13, 2010 There's a neighborhood I've heard about, with the most remarkable sense of community. On one block there's a giant warehouse outfitted for woodworking, photo studios, computer rooms, and painters studios. Across the street two women collaborate with building owners to build rooftop gardens and...
|
In August of 2009, Juan Miron happened upon a magazine feature about the growing trend of hot food trucks in major US cities. "I thought to myself, 'This is it. This is totally us and it’s something that we can do, and do it well.' I immediately texted Kevin about it and he replied, 'Let’s do it.' We have not stopped since."By the following summer, the most ambitious San Diego mobile restaurant...
We're hitting the road! Sheepless founder Scott Ballum is driving from California to Maine—and back—to discover innovative and unique small businesses wherever they may be. Read more about the idea behind this trip here.
Wednesday, September 29: Denver, CO
Starting to get a sense of just how wide the middle of this country is, I finally wrapped up a day-and-a-half of driving to arrive in Denver...
Third and last, we need new mechanisms for channeling our investment capital in directions that nurture community and rebuild local economies.
The financial crisis has provided us all with a crash course on how much of our economy is based not on the creation of real value, but on speculation. Over the last year, we have learned that the speculative economy — the one that trades in exotic...
My second proposal is that we need to adopt planning policies that support local economies.
I live in a 19th century neighborhood in a small New England city. My mother-in-law, who grew up in this same neighborhood, often talks about what it was like during her childhood in the 1940s. What I find most striking about her description is how many businesses our little section of town once had....
About ten years ago, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance launched the New Rules Project to develop and advocate for policies that would democratize ownership, refashion the economy for long-term sustainability, and nurture strong self-conscious and self-governing communities. Today I would like to highlight three areas of policy reform that I think are especially critical.
The first is that...
While signs abound that people are rediscovering the benefits of an economy rooted in community and small-scale enterprise, all of this activity, though widespread, is still quite modest. It exists largely on the margins and is unlikely to coalesce into a wholesale reorganization of our economy unless we change the rules.
We tend to imagine that our economic system is the product of a kind of...
Magazine Shorts
Combine a punk rock
sensibility with an old casket factory designed with sustainable
materials. Then add a music venue, a trivia night, karaoke, a gallery
space, and a vegan bar and menu, and what do you get? The coolest
neighborhood bar in Brooklyn. Jeff and Heather Rush, along with
self-proclaimed “booze and music hound” Colin Peer, set out a few years
ago to make their dreams of building...
The stereotypical image of the writer is that of the reclusive shut-in,
most memorably–if sensationally–portrayed by Jack Nicholson in The Shining. And while there may be a kernel of truth in the stereotype of the recluse, as David Duhr, co-founder of Austin writing center WriteByNight
notes, “[writers] also like their community.” Located in Austin’s
burgeoning East Sixth district,...
Number of new independent bookstores that have opened since 2005: 437
Increase since 2002 in the number of small specialty food stores: 1,414
Increase since 2002 in the number of small farms: 111,839
Number of farmers markets active in 2010: 6,132
Percentage of active farmers markets started since 2000: 53
Average percentage of shoppers at a large supermarket who...
I know what you’re thinking: you already have a pretty solid grasp of
what sex and gender mean. But bear with me, because it’s the finer
points here that make a difference with regard to entrepreneurship. I
was recently asked for my thoughts on how to create a movement of women
entrepreneurs in the next generation, and gender, not sex, is a key part of my argument.Cherie Blair, British...
For some, the taste of chocolate is bittersweet. Seventy percent of the
world’s cocoa comes from small-scale family farmers in West Africa,
whose economy is critically dependent on cocoa (revenues account for
more than 33 percent of Ghana’s total export earnings and 40 percent of
the Ivory Coast’s total export earnings). In Ghana alone, one million
farmers supply cocoa to the international...
Event review contributed by Maura Dilley.What
is hyper-local and far reaching, saves you money, is good for the
environment, provides shelter from the recession’s storm by wrapping you
up in a community web with the coolest people in town? It’s the
emerging Share Economy. In
early May, Shareable.net hosted its first SHARE conference in San
Francisco, CA. In attendance were Share Economy...
