Going green has to start at the roots…of your hair that is! The common thread with the green movement has been to reduce the use of plastic bottles and other non-biodegradable items. I’m starting with my shampoo bottle. Lush and Rawganique are two brands that sell shampoo in bar form, so there is no bottle to dispose of once you’re done! I just purchased The Blonde from Lush, which is just one out of the 11 different shampoos they carry.

[Image via Eccdom]

Yesterday, we woke up with a definite case of the mondays, and to banish the little bugger, we devised the most scenic run our final-ravaged brains could imagine( if you’re interested, we started at Tompkins Square, ran through the rest of the E.Vil and took Houston to the East River Park, and stayed along the East River until it became the Hudson, turned just before pier 40, and came back through Greenwich village). Turns out blossoms and dapply sidewalks work far better than endorphins alone, well enough, in fact, for us to bestow them upon you. Below, we present our top five places to enjoy with the birds and the bees. What are yours?

1.) The garden of Saint Mark’s Church

This one is, we admit, not incredibly sunny, but it’s tranquil, verdant, and you’ll rarely be sharing it with anyone besides Peter Stuyvesant’s skeleton. Plus, the church itself is gorgeous in a classic, New Englandy sort of way. More»

So we just realized, via facebook album titles, that today (well yesterday now), was 4/20. A further reminder of our impending youths. Well, you know what that means? It’s time to pull out “Reefer Madness” for its annual viewing. Such a historic period piece movie. We hope you had a great Sunday, whether you decided to “smoke ‘em out” or not. We will be “going green” on Tuesday instead, for EARTH DAY…an actual ACCREDITED day.

[Photo via PPS]

There’s something about spring that lets down even the most guarded Manhattanite’s barriers. When the sun’s out, the way it is today, the city shrinks, and people smile at strangers, or at least don’t frown. Yesterday, outside the garden behind St. Mark’s church, a construction worker and an elderly head-scarved babushka leaned in silence against the fence, staring at the magnolias. Two little boys, holding 99-cent slices from 2 Bro’s Pizza, join them. Suddenly I feel I’m in a small town….

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No not sex silly! (Now we know what’s on your mind). Rather, they are going green. Everyone and their brother is doing it, and its no longer just the granola crunchy patchouli drenched set, or crazy left-winged urban liberals. I’m proud to say that in New York City, the average carbon footprint is almost 4 times lower than the average American.

Already, the average denizen of New York City produces 7.1 metric tons of greenhouse gases each year, according to statistics compiled for the city government, compared with 24.5 metric tons for the average American. [New York Times]

Luckily for the environment and our children’s children, yuppie suburbanites are starting to follow in the footsteps of their urbanite brethren. More»

[Photo from Gothamist]

Everytime we go to a big European city such as Rome, we wonder when American metropolitan areas will start being “smart” and catch on to the smaller forms of transportation.  Sure there are a handful of Vespas that may be spotted here and there from time to time in the village, but it certaintly isn’t mainstream yet.  Perhaps it’s the weather, or the fast paced street traffic that halts people’s purchases of that powder blue two wheeler… this year, a compromise will arise in the form of the Smartcar.  Created by the saavy Mercedes-Benz, the Smartcar is a member of the Penske autogroup and has already taken Paris, Rome, Barcelona, and London by storm.  Upon placing your order for the car that runs around $15,000 you have the ability to choose your own color and style.  The cars are only 8.8′ long but can run up to a hefty speed of 90mph.  Already 30,000 people have paid the $99 reservation fee in New York City alone to assure they will score a Smartcar this January. With dealerships sprouting up all over the country, expect 2008 to be the year of the Smartcar.  We will be anxious to see if this is just another “fad” like the Beetle, or if this car is smart enough to stick around.

At around 3am PST today (6am EST), the Burning Man figure caught fire.  He is supposed to be burned on the 6th day (Saturday) of this 8 day festival….sources suspect arson.  The 35,000+ person experimental community festival  is held annually in Black Rock City, Nevada.  The figure is still standing, but damage has yet to be assessed as to whether figure needs to be rebuilt…

Could it be the business men disguised as business hippie douchebags trying to sabotage the anticorporate hippie douchebag lifestyle?  On second thought these guys are most definitely too high on designer weed to pull off something like this.  Its probably the green hippie douchebags from Coolingman, peeved about the festival’s carbon footprint…developing…

We know a good thing when we taste it.  That’s why, when we had our first salad from Just Salads on Park Avenue we weren’t fooled by the free cool bright-colored reuseable containers, the hip music, or the wickedly good-looking patrons (which apparently NY Mag has caught on too as well)….we were just smitten with the salads.  They are unmistakeably good.  The dressings and breads are amazing and the cheddar cheese! My god it’s like a little bite of heaven for less than $10.  So apparently it’s also the new cool place (along with the Bowery Whole Foods store) to meet hot singles in their 20s. Our thoughts?  We think that this is just about the healthiest way to meet a date ever.  No waking up the next morning with a massive headache wondering who is beside you, no pretentious dinner parties, no booze, no drugs,  just salad. 

From the NY Mag article: “There are always attractive girls and guys my age there,” says Michele Waldman, a 25-year-old regular. “And Nick and Rob are so cute and flirt with all the girls in line—it’s great,” she says. And, of course, there are also those healthy salads. “Cute guys plus carb-free dressing?

Nick and Rob are of course the young 20-year old owners and founders.  They quit their hedge fund jobs to sell salad.

We also think the people they found to interview were cute:

Steve Newhouse
25, investment-research manager
Why are you here?
There are a lot of attractive women in here. And the dressings are great. I come here for the dressings and the girls, basically.

Dressing and Girls…sounds about right

Albert Gore III, the son of Al Gore has been pulled over for speeding, and was arrested for having a bunch of Rx meds in his car (that he didn’t have prescriptions for).  Gore has been in trouble a couple of times before for marijuana and the likes, and we hope he can solve his problems and settle down a bit.  A somewhat of a quiet fellow when he attended Harvard University, he generally kept to himself and was not a very visible student. 

No word on whether he will be serving jail time, etc. but he certainly seems to be following the general trend of younger people increasingly abusing Rx Meds, a lot more than Marijuana experts say.  People have been snorting Ritalin and Adderall for a long time, so I guess we can’t say we are too suprised (and the prescription rate on these things has skyrocketed).  But question:  Who ever figured it was a good idea to snort these things, or that it would do anything?!  I guess kids a boarding schools have WAY too much time on their hands.

The Gore’s seem to be tacking the issue head on, and we hope they can figure it out so Al can continue his Green efforts!

Today the New York Times reported on Freegans, a growing group of people who actively scorn consumerism and live off the detritis we normal people create.  No word yet on whether they espouse the ethos of free love, but don’t be surprised if you see one of these guys scavenging around a dumpster near you.  But like most reactionaries, Freegans revolt against the very system that supports them, namely consumer waste.  We certainly applaud their move to go Green, but lets not completely go bonkers, we still need like our ipods and cell phones, etc.

Take for Example Adam Weissman, who states:

“If a person chooses to live an ethical lifestyle it’s not enough to be vegan, they need to absent themselves from capitalism,” said Adam Weissman, 29, who started freegan.info four years ago and is the movement’s de facto spokesman.

 Sorry Adam, but if we just up and did what you said, you’d have nothing to live off of.  Don’t bite the hand that feeds!

Lastly, just because you find something free in a dumpster, doesn’t mean its worth smiling about.  Wtf is this girl going to do with angel wings anyways? 

[Photo: New York Times]

Wow, New Yorkers really DO care a ton about the environment, that or they want to be seen with the new, hard to find “it” bag, even if it is only $15. Anya Hindmarch’s cotton “I’m not a plastic bag” tote goes on sale at her two store in Manhattan today. We stopped by the 60th and Madison location yesterday to check out the calm before the storm:

This store opens at 10:00 today, yet word on the street was that there was a line forming around 6:00am and we are beginning to wish we had pre-ordered (which is now, due to the overwhelmingly large demands, over with). Anyway, we plan on checking out the situation later this afternoon….Because we really do care about the environment…..oh who are we kidding, we want the new special bag too!