ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENT No, the plastic and foam that protect your noodle aren’t recycled. (Smith is working on it.) However, the Hustle is lined with Cocona, a natural fiber made from coconut husks that regulates temperature and wicks moisture better than a standard synthetic liner. Thirty percent of the packaging is made with post-consumer products. $120;

Bag of Sunshine

Noon Solar Sawyer Bag

Made of naturally dyed hemp and leather, every inch of Noon Solar’s Sawyer messenger bag—more inconspicuous than it looks—is biodegradable. The flexible solar panel charges the Sawyer’s lithium-ion battery in about six hours and will keep your phone or iPod juiced for at least that long. $377;

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Power Trip

Eton FR500 Solarlink Radio

Just shy of two pounds, Etón’s do-it-all FR500 Solarlink radio—outfitted with an AM/FM tuner, shortwave radio with NOAA weather band, emergency beacon and siren, LED flashlight, cell-phone charger, and clock—runs itself on built-in solar panels. No sun? It can also be powered by a hand crank, batteries, or AC. $80;

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Mo’ Better

Gas-guzzling mowers account for 5 percent of the country’s air pollution, while most electric varieties restrict you to an outlet. Not the cordless Neuton 6.2. Thanks to the 36-volt battery, this emissions-free clipper allows up to 60 minutes of uninhibited cutting, runs quiet as a hummingbird, and comes with a mulching plug, bagger, and side discharge chute. $499;

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San Francisco » Dolores Park Café;, ; Caffe Trieste, ; more at

PORTLAND, OREGON » Oregon’s dreary winters can last through May. When the sun finally emerges, techies gather at the steps of downtown’s Pioneer Courthouse Square or at the Pearl District’s Ecotrust Building, a renovated warehouse that’s now a nexus for green stores and businesses, with Wi-Fi signals from the public atrium to the rooftop garden.

Portland » Pioneer Courthouse Square, the Ecotrust Building, and more at

NEW YORK » The East Village’s Tompkins Square Park attracts trustafarian artists and hedge-fund managers looking to hook up—online or in person—along its wireless tree-lined pathways. In the Financial District, you can refine your stock portfolio from the breezy back deck of the bustling South Street Seaport marketplace while looking across the East River.

New York » South Street Seaport, ; more at

AUSTIN » Open-air browsing in sultry Austin is best done beneath a stubby oak tree in Republic Square, one of a trio of downtown wireless parks, along with Brush and Wooldridge squares. When your battery runs low, head to the sidewalk tables at Quack’s, a favorite Hyde Park neighborhood coffee shop and bakery.

Austin » Quack’s, 512-453-3399; more at

HERMOSA BEACH, CALIFORNIA » L.A.’s South Bay wave-riding epicenter is also a prime locale for Web surfing: 35 percent of this oceanside ‘burb gets city-funded Wi-Fi along Pier Avenue. Compose that next work memo while draining a margarita at a café; on palm-tree-lined Pier Plaza until low tide draws you out for more longboarding.

Hermosa Beach »

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YOU ARE NOW FREE TO FLOAT ABOUT THE CABIN. This fall, Fort Lauderdale–based Zero Gravity hopes to begin offering daring customers the opportunity to make like astronauts. No, they’re not selling seats on a space shuttle. But if Zero Gravity has its way, passengers will soon be able to board a Boeing 727 at Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport for a “weightless flight” that simulates the fun and nausea of outer space. Once the plane reaches an altitude of 24,000 feet, the pilots will begin a 45-degree climb to 32,000 feet, then make a gradual descent. As the plane crests this arc, passengers—no more than 27 per flight—will have up to 30 seconds of total weightlessness, complete with spins, flips, and ceiling walks.

zero gravity

SIT AND SPIN: You, too, can space out in zero G

Known in space circles as “vomit comets,” such flights have been used in NASA training since 1973, as well as in films like Apollo 13 for scenes that required floating actors. “It’s very similar to what you’d feel in space,” says astronaut Rex Walheim, 42, who experienced the real thing on an April 2002 trip to the International Space Station.

Not surprisingly, the yo-yo flights have come under FAA scrutiny. Zero Gravity has already postponed its launch date twice this year while its partner, the transport company Amerijet, awaits official approval. “We’re taking a hard look at everything in their request,” says Kathleen Bergen, an FAA spokeswoman.

The companies expect to be cleared for takeoff by the end of the year, at which point they would begin offering a half-day of training and two hours of ozone grazing (time enough for 30 climbs and descents) for around $3,000 per person, as well as packages for private parties. The flights, all supervised by three coaches, also offer customers samplings of what gravity is like on Mars and the moon—about a third and a sixth of Earth’s pull, respectively. But the main draw will always be the big zero.

“If you can’t have fun in zero G,” says Walheim, “you don’t know how to have fun.”

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“The desire and intention to make photographs sometimes overpowers the truth in them,” James Fee says, seated at his home in Los Angeles. “The snapshot, for me, has always held more truth than professional photography.”

Dolores River photography

The dammed Dolores River

Given that Fee is a renowned photographer best known for his dark, somewhat ominously styled compositions, his comments are a little surprising. But flipping through the collection of photos he took for ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø‘s June feature article, “Dry Run on the River of Sorrows,” one begins to see what he means.


In April 2003, ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø sent Fee, 54, to photograph Colorado’s Dolores River for that story, written by Mark Sundeen, as part of a series of articles exploring America’s use and misuse of water. Fee seemed the perfect fit. His penchant for moody imagery seemed appropriate to the bleak condition of the Dolores, whose seasonal flow has been nearly sapped dry from years of drought, agricultural use, and damming.


Unlike other landscape photographers who favor shooting placid glacial lakes or imposing mountains, Fee is not a photographer interested in taking “pretty” pictures. Instead, he uses his camera as a critical eye to explore societal and environmental problems. “It’s a political landscape for me, not necessarily a beauty landscape,” he says. “I think that most landscape photography of our environment has really been an effort to glorify it in some way, to accentuate the beauty of being outside. My view has always been really different.”


“Dry Run on the River of Sorrows” chronicles Sundeen’s attempt to raft and kayak the Dolores, which was once a favorite of whitewater lovers but is now so low in spots that it can barely float a toy boat. But Fee left the paddling to the writer—in fact, he didn’t even set foot in a boat. Instead, along with river guide Thomas Klema and a photo assistant (who briefly and unsuccessfully attempted to raft the river), Fee followed the Dolores by foot, car, and plane from her headwaters near Colorado’s San Juan Mountains toward her confluence with the Colorado River in Utah.


Prior to this assignment, Fee had never visited the Dolores, and he intentionally avoided researching the river. He wanted to shoot with as few preconceptions as possible—which included not asking Klema too many questions. Instead, Fee set about discovering the river through his lens. “Mostly I wanted to work my own way through the project without too much information,” says Fee. “I tend to do my best work with things I know less about. A lot of times, that fresh view of not knowing exactly what’s going on and allowing the camera to do the exploratory process is much more beneficial.”


During the shoot, Fee and his companions found that the Dolores had been “bled dry” in many spots. But Fee’s exploratory eye moved beyond the flow of the river to the trash, junked cars, and radioactive-waste warnings littered along the riverbanks. His attention to such details is not surprising. After all, for much of his work, Fee’s muse seems to be the underbelly of America: an ironically beautiful land of abandoned and crumbling factories, murky forests, and people at the fringes of society. In the end, though, the Dolores project did toss Fee a surprise about his own photography: the truthful nature of the snapshot.


Throughout the trip, Fee took the melancholy black-and-white photos he’s best known for as well as a series of simple, color snapshots to record shot locations around the Dolores. He didn’t think much of the snapshots until he learned that ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø wanted to use them for most of the piece. At first Fee was surprised—he’d taken the snapshots quickly and without much thought, mainly for positioning his more composed photos. But after looking through the collection he realized that “the story wasn’t so much in the photographs that I was trying to ‘make,’ as it was in the positioning shots. There’s much more truth in those photographs than the ones I was trying to interpret.”


“I really shot two visions of the river on this assignment,” Fee said, “a more positive vision and a more negative vision.” His negative vision, the composed black-and-white shots, ultimately seemed less truthful to him than the direct statements made by the snapshots.


Though the Dolores River project hasn’t changed Fee’s rather critical view of the American landscape, the experience did give him a new perspective. “Your own ideas are always getting in the way of the simple process of making photographs and that’s why snapshots are so honest,” he says. Fee plans to integrate some snapshots into his newest collection, What We Saw, which will feature photos from Burma, Italy, and Costa Rica, as well as the Dolores River.


“Photography, for me, is a tool of communication and a tool of change.” Fee says. “The quickest way to get things moving and to change things is to go right to the heart of the problem and so I tend to focus on what’s wrong with our environment, what’s happening that we should change.”

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April 14, 2004

conservation, animal rights

Paris Hilton models one of Danny Seo’s seal-protest fashions

Canadian wildlife officials are currently tallying the number of seals harvested in this year’s Atlantic seal hunt—one of the largest seal culls to occur in decades. The hunt is part of a federally managed population reduction program that allows for the culling of 975,000 harp seals between 2003 and 2005.


Although animal-rights activists have protested the hunt, Canada’s government argues that the practice is both environmentally sustainable and economically justified.


Experts are attempting to determine whether this year’s quota of 350,000 seals was reached during the recent harvest, or if the 12,000 licensed seal hunters in Atlantic Canada—mostly off the coast of Newfoundland—can continue to hunt. Harp seals are the main target of the harvest, though the management plan also allows for culling of hooded and grey seals.


BBC News reported that during the most intensive part of the hunting season, which started on Monday, April 12 and ended Tuesday, April 13, up to 10,000 seals could be killed per daylight hour. It was estimated that nearly 140,000 seals would be killed by the end of Tuesday.


According to Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the harp seal population has exploded over the past three decades—nearly tripling in population to 5.2 million. The decision to increase the seal quota was meant to both control population and aid coastal communities economically depressed by the demise of the Atlantic cod fishery. But this year’s seal harvest has brought Canada under scrutiny by animal activists and the international media—in much the same way that, three decades ago, celebrities rallied behind the nascent animal rights movement and called for an end to seal hunting.


The Canadian seal hunting industry got a particularly bad rap in the 1970s when animal-rights groups circulated gruesome photos of hunters clubbing baby seals. The photos caused international protests and the U.S. banned the import of seal furs in 1972. Europe followed suit with a partial ban in 1983.


Canada eventually reduced the seal quota but never banned the practice entirely. “The industry needed to be cleaned up and it was, though perceptions persist,” Roger Simon, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans area director for the Iles de la Madeleine, told The New York Times.


According to The Canadian Press, the estimated value for top-quality pelts this year is $60 apiece and the entire industry is valued at nearly $15 million annually in Canada.


The fashion industry has largely driven demand for seal pelts as furs have made a big comeback on international runways.


Danny Seo, stylist to many of Hollywood’s most earth-conscious celebrities (see ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø‘s March 2004 article, ), spent the last few months working with The Humane Society to decry Canada’s seal trade.


“Furs as fashion accessories are completely irrelevant in our times,” Seo says. “The reality is that furs are being sold to luxury goods houses.”


During the seventies and eighties, celebrities like Brigitte Bardot used their fame to help shut down markets for seal fur in the U.S. and Europe. Seo is hoping the same will happen today. Many of his famous clients sport his signature shirts with slogans such as “Club Sandwiches Not Seals.” Seo’s next step is to target fashion houses, such as Dolce & Gabbana and Prada, that use seal pelts in their designs.


Despite international criticism, or perhaps nodding to it, Canadian officials have promised they will regularly review the seal hunt to make sure quotas are at sustainable levels. “If you are going to have an annual harvest you have to maintain a sustainable number,” Geoff Regan, the minister of Fisheries and Oceans, told The New York Times earlier this month. “We are going to come up with these numbers on the basis of what the herd can sustain.”

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