Smells Like Green Spirit

This is the first blog in a series about car sharing companies, featuring I-Go!

My friend Jen and her husband Ryan have lived all over the US, from Chicago to Ann Arbor Michigan to D.C. to the east coast, all without a car. In addition to bikes and feet and public transit, they told me they use car sharing services. Wondering just how that differed from a car rental service, I thought I’d do some investigation.

Car Sharing Around the World

For a list of cities and companies where you can find Car Sharing, I’m going to guide you to the website www.carsharing.net, because this blog series will focus on car sharing in Chicago.

And on with Car Sharing…

The three major car sharing companies available in Chicago are Zipcars, I-Go, and Flexcar.

Car sharing differs from car rental services because you reserve and pay for cars by the hour, and they differ from carpool services because you have the car all to yourself for the length of your reservation.

Car sharing encourages less car usage and thus less traffic and pollution in cities. Can’t argue with that! Increased driving also funnels funding of public funds more towards highway and road construction and repair at the detriment of alternatives such as funding for public transportation.

I-Go, You Go, Let’s All Go to I-Go!

I-Go hails itself as Chicago’s only non-profit car sharing service. It was created by the Center for Neighborhood Technology, which strives to “invent and implement new strategies which make urban communities more livable and environmentally sustainable,” and they offer 100% low emission vehicles.

Once you join I-Go, it takes about 5-7 business days until you can start reserving cars, and there’s an annual membership fee of $75.

One of the rules of I-Go is that you must return the car to the location you picked it up from, but there are I-Go locations all over the city.

There are a list of added benefits to becoming an I-Go customer, such as the waiving of Flexcar fees in other cities and discounts at places like Ikea, G Boutique and the Apartment People.

I-Go Pricing

There is a one time membership fee of $75, and then each subsequent year costs $25. There are no monthly fees.

The Standard Plan costs $6 an hour, plus 50 cents per mile, or the Standard Plus plan, which costs $8.25 an hour, with 25 free miles.

The hours between midnight and 6 a.m. are always free for you night owls.

Contact Info

Website: www.igocars.org
Phone: 773-278-4446
Their Wicker Park Home Location: 2125 W North Ave

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So…I’ve promised myself that I am not taking up any more hobbies, because between making art, learning how to play drums, teaching myself French, watching movies, and reading, I have no time for anything new. Nothing new, you hear me?!

But… I think if I had a flat roof, I would defy my promise to self, and make a rooftop garden. Because I have the awareness of a cave person, I had never heard of rooftop gardens until recently! But they sound so cool!

Square mile after square mile of our cities are covered with cement and asphalt, generating heat and emitting smog out into the atmosphere. Yuck! Did you know that because of this, cities can be around 5 degrees hotter than the land around them? That was one thing that was so wonderful about my roadtrip through the midwest a few months ago…just the rolling hills of beautiful farmland.

The Advantages

Here are the exciting advantage of rooftop gardens:

*It reduces the CO2 emissions of your home, absorbing all the bad stuff you’re putting out there, and improving the air quality.

*It insulates your home (cooler in the summer, warmer in the winter…can’t beat that!).

*It creates a natural habitat for birds and butterflies.

*You can grow fun things like herbs and tomotoes and zucchinis!

*Since there probably aren’t as many trees blocking your roof as there are blocking your yard, it’s the ideal environment for plants to get full sunlight.

*I’ve never used self watering planters, but the website gardeners.com has a list of self watering products to make your rooftop garden even easier. (Note: I’ve never bought anything from them.)

*Rooftop gardens reduce stormwater runoff.

*It can double the life of your roof.

*I’ve heard that the city of Chicago also offers tax breaks for rooftop gardens…I’ll write more on that later!

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I want to start this restaurant review off with this: often times, I do not like vegan food. When I’ve bought vegan cheese at the supermarket, it tasted like feet and death. When I eat fake meats, unless it’s Smart Bacon, it just feels wrong on some level, and tastes either mediocre or bad.

My fella would never have knowingly (I don’t think) set foot in a vegan restaurant, so luckily I didn’t know that’s what this was when I suggested we go there today. A glance at the window, which read, “Karyn’s Concious Comfort Food,” led me to mistakenly believe it was an organic restaurant or something, and it wasn’t until we sat down that we realized what we’d gotten ourselves into. But I’m really glad we did!

The Menu

Nothing on Karyn’s menu has any meat, fish, chicken, dairy, or refined sugars, and they swear “you won’t even miss it!” Appetizers include several pizzas, some hummus and some guacamole, and we ordered the grande taco salad. They have several salads including a wilted spinach salad, several soups including a potato soup, and decadent sounding baskets of deep fried veggies. Entrees include the slab of ribs, the “Southern Comfort” (beans, rice, greens and cornbread), a raw plate and grilled polenta, hot sandwiches like the jerk or steak sandwich, and wraps like the grilled veggie.

The Grande Taco Salad was awesome. I hope heaven has at least one river that flows with whatever they made the soy cheese sauce with, and the guac was pretty killer too. The soy “taco meat” didn’t really imitate real meat, but combined with the chipotle sauce and a jalepeno, I forgave it.

I ordered the spaghetti and meat balls, and though it was good, the meatballs tasted very healthy. I don’t exactly mean that as a compliment, but it’s not exactly a knock either. The “buttered” garlic bread was thick and rich. If it wasn’t clogging my arteries, it had the nice flavor of something that was. I wouldn’t order the meatballs again. They were just okay. they should call them something else: spaghetti and greenballs, spaghetti and healthnuggets. Then I would not have been so saddened by the tempting ruse that I might be chewing on a meatball like substance, when really it was only meatball shaped.

My fella ordered the meatloaf. Again, the “meat”loaf tasted very healthy. It was good, but not the best vegan meatloaf I’ve ever had. The mashed potatoes, however, I wanted poured over my head from a chalice made of gold every evening: they were scrumptious and so good they felt naughty.

From the display of desserts, we chose the carrot cake. It was very very sweet, and very very good. Yum. And yum again.

The Service

Our host, and the gentlemen filling our water glasses were very nice, and very professional. My fella thought our waitress was bad/weird, but I think maybe she hadn’t slept the night before and was just very hungover, and didn’t really care if some people came, sat and waited for a long time and then left, which some people did. I think she was having a bad/weird day. It happens to all of us.

Pros
*C’mon! It’s gourmet, comfort vegan food!! Get in there!!
*Nice location next to art galleries in River North.

(Sort of) Cons
*Although parts of my review might seem harsh, I shouldn’t have expected fake meats to taste real. They didn’t taste real. And that’s not a bad thing.
*I’m hesitant to let one experience decide what the service at Karyn’s is like. I’m going to give the place another shot, because it’s gourmet, comfort vegan food! (Did I mention that yet??)

Contact Info
738 N Wells St
312-587-1050
Website: www.karynraw.com

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It seems like the best place in the Chicago area to buy a used bike besides Craig’s List (which I haven’t done), or a farm auction in Wisconsin (where my friend’s dad buys bikes for $10, but which I would have no idea how to go about doing…) is Working Bikes.

Working Bikes is a non profit collective which, besides selling used and refurbished bikes at reasonable prices, ships bikes to low income people in countries like Nicaragua, Cuba, Kenya, and Ghana to meet their transportation needs…pretty cool, huh?

Mostly run by volunteer staff, Working Bikes funds much of its operation from bike sales at its storefront, located at 1125 S. Western Ave, where you can also buy things like bike locks and bike helmets.

Location and Hours

1125 S. Western Ave

(312) 421-5048

Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday: Noon - 5 pm

Check out their website : www.workingbikes.org

They suggest you get there early on the weekends, especially in the summer months, as the bikes go pretty quickly.

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My friends and I drove out to Berwyn yesterday to see the Spindle. Never heard of Berwyn? It’s a largely depressing looking suburb west of Chicago, that has about two cool things in the whole darn place, one of which is scheduled to be destroyed in about a month by the powers that be, because there just aren’t enough Walgreen’s in the world, and those that exist just aren’t big enough.

Located in Cermack Plaza, the now deceased former owner of the plaza used his own money to commission artists to create works of art for the shopping center. One of the most interesting of these pieces is the Spindle, created by Dustin Shuler.

Strip malls are the bane of the American landscape. Sure, they are functional, but they are depressing eyesores. Does it really take that much more effort and money to make a strip mall even slightly pleasurable to visit or look at? One of my favorite things I remember from art history classes was the strip mall that artist Vito Acconci was commissioned to make beautiful…which I couldn’t find an image of to throw here, but look it up!

The Cermack shopping center already has a Walgreens in it…but they are planning to tear down the Spindle to create a larger, free-standing Walgreens. It hurts the heart!

Visit the Save the Spindle website (www.savethespindle.com) and help save a tiny bit of culture and whimsy in this world!

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The EPA’s Green Power Partnership was created to encourage businesses to switch from conventional fossil fuel based energy systems to renewable systems. You can visit their website to find lists of companies who are utilizing renewable energy systems.

Say, what are renewable energy systems?

Know exactly what renewable energy sources are?

These days, our choices are solar, wind, geothermal, biogas, biomass, and low-impact hydro generated green power.

Just a Bunch of Renewable Hot Air?

Looking at the list of companies that are using renewable energy sources, first I was suprised. So many companies whose products I would hesitate to buy (Pepsi, Johnson and Johnson, Starbucks), were listed as parters. Had I underestimated these companies?

Sure, every little bit helps, but some “award winning” companies listed on the EPA Green Power Partership website use as little as 3% renewable energy. Impressive enough to really be award winning? I’m not so sure. But, at least they’re doing something? Sure. We as consumers can let companies know that we appreciate what they are doing by supporting the products of companies that use renewable energy, and by encouraging companies to use more of it!

Goin’ All the Way: 100% Renewable

So, as some companies only use a small portion of renewable energy…what companies use 100% renewable energy? Well, the EPA has published a list appropriately called 100% Green Power Purchasers.

Some of those listed as 100% Green Power Purchasers are:

* Whole Foods
*Pepsi Co
* The EPA (Thank goodness, right?)
*NYU
*Coldwater Creek
*The City of Bellington, WA
*The City of Santa Monica, CA
*Burt’s Bees
*Tazo Tea

There weren’t a whole lot of places listed for Chicago or llinois specifically, but those listed are (none of which I’ve ever heard of):

*FPC - Construction
*Farr Associates - Construction
*Goodness Greenness - Food and Beverage
*Saint Xavier University
*PepsiAmericas

The website also lists the top 25 purchasers of renewable energy, which doesn’t by any means suggest they use even 50% green energy…

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All Business for Now?

When I first stumbled upon Indie Energy at www.indieenergy.com, I was looking for something that we could sign up for at our home. The website doesn’t clearly state whether or not it would provide renewable energy for a residential building, but it looks like it might be geared more towards businesses and larger projects. Which is still pretty cool, but do any of you know of a business that provides renewable energy to homes?

On Indie Energy’s website, they list several projects they are working for as the Hubbard Street office complex, the Church Street Village Apartments in Evanston, the Greenwood Live/Work lofts in Evanston, and, most interesting to me, the BooCoo Cultural Center and Cafe in Evanston, where one of my friends runs the cafe.

Boocoo Cultural Center and Cafe

Boocoo just opened in July, on 1823 Church St in Evanston. The founder of Boocoo played in bands for years, and now wanted to create a cultural center in Evanston where bands can record their music, where you can take all types of classes you’d expect from a top notch cultural center, and where you can eat delicious and healthful foods! Boocoo chose to use Indie Energy to save operating costs, using a combination of geothermal and energy recovery ventilation.

Support local businesses that use renewable energy! As the consumers, we are the ones with the real power (the power of our pocketbooks) to encourage change in businesses.

Check out Boocoo’s website at boocoo.org!

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