Pollugraphies

via Wooster Collective

I thought this was a cool concept. Alexandre Orion, a Sao Paulo based artist has created his pieces utilizing the pollution expelled directly from a truck exhaust. The process is not easy. If the truck bumps too hard, the piece will be damaged. And if it rains, the piece is totally ruined. For every 4 pieces he attempts only one makes it to final product. He calls this "Pollugraphies". The pollution is collected for one week. So disgusting and awesome.

Container City

Let's all go live in crates! Two hours outside of Mexico City, Container City is an eco-friendly metropolis made entirely out of recycled shipping containers. Restaurants? Yup. Bookshops? For sure. Your Momma? You know it.

CC is open Monday - Saturday from 10am - 8pm and Sundays from 11am - 6pm.

More info here.

Starbucks: Debranding

In an effort to go back to their original company manifesto of being a funky indie coffeeshop, Starbucks is set to open one of three unbranded stores in the chain's birthplace of Seattle. The first - to be called 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea - will serve alcohol, stock unbranded coffee and have space for running poetry evenings and open mic nights.

All is an experiment by head office to debrand and deglobalize... the question is why.

Pedestrian traffic has been down for Starbucks since the recession hit, and consumer tastes are changing to be more receptive to something that supports both the local community and the environment instead of a tie in with Chapters Indigo.

Head office's turn back to the funk is proving to be a hilarious Office Space esque quest for "flare". An excerpt from the Seattle Times:

'Sebastian Simsch, co-owner of Seattle Coffee Works near Pike Place Market, became frustrated last year after large groups of Starbucks employees kept crowding into his 300-square-foot store to look around. "I thought it was funny," he said. "We're this little store, and I thought Starbucks didn't need to learn from me."

During the third group's visit, Simsch let them know what he thought. "I said, 'If you want to buy something that's great, but just to look, that's not cool,' " he recounted. "I called the PR department and said, 'Never again.' " They did not come back, even after he moved into a much larger store next door.

Victrola Coffee Roasters saw the Starbucks people a lot more often. "They spent the last 12 months in our store up on 15th [Avenue] with these obnoxious folders that said, 'Observation,' " said Victrola owner Dan Ollis.

He thinks it's interesting that they spent all that time in his shop, which serves wine and beer, then applied for a liquor license to sell wine and beer at 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea.'

How's about leaving the local business to the local businesses and spending the debranding money and research on improving the existing brand instead? Consumers are well aware of being marketed to. If you want to appear more environmentally friendly, Starbucks, then let's try and do it properly. Have you heard of these?



Let's get them in your stores. I assure you that the public will be much more receptive to this than a weekly poetry reading.

And on the poetry reading rant, why don't we lift up our sleeves and move some chairs and use those funky chalkboards in your existing spaces to do so? Did we really need to print up "Observation binders" to think of this?

I am fully supportive of the debranding if it leads to more environmentally friendly rebranding of all Starbucks. For that, I say debrand away. Unfortunately, I don't believe the heart in this scenerio. Debranding in order to rebrand as being quirky and independent is only a scheme to be making more money and paving the way to exactly the same corporate trap they found themselves fall into in the first place. It's the Britney Spears syndrome. They won't be able to help themselves.


To see the Seattle Times article, click here.
Also, a great article from Marketing Mag here.

What to do with your wall of stank

With the City of Toronto finally reaching an agreement on the four week, 36 day garbage strike, as of next week Torontonians can kick it to the curbside once more.

Unfortunately, rumors are that part of the agreement is for households to only put out one garbage bin at a time, so additional recycling goods and garbage stores that have already become a treasured part of your Stank Family across the last month could still remain a house guest for at least another 3 weeks, yippee!

The question is what to do with your wall of stank...

Lucky for us we have Paris resident and sculpteur du papier extraordinaire JUNIOR JACQUET, who likes to transform left over toilet paper rolls into sculptures of faces:



Perhaps one could create a porch full of angry toilet paper roll faces for when the eventual collection does occur??
Just sayin'...

More on Junior Jacquet here.

Snowing Ice Cream: The Cloud Project

I am still very confused by this very yummy process and will do my best in trying to explain it.

This is an icecream truck:



It likes to shoot liquid nitrogen particles out to the sky that are flavored like icecream in order to produce icecream flavored clouds, which [according to some beautiful, heavenly plan] will start to snow icecream:



My understanding stops here, but I am more than prepared to give all my tax money to support this project.
For the rest, I hand you to the scientists. I'm off to get some icecream.
For more info, click here.