I still look a lot like I did at 17. Perhaps I shouldn't moan and roll my eyes as much when bouncers ask to see my ID... I mean I don't think I look like a 17 year old, but perhaps this proves otherwise...
I couldn't get my mouth to do this again though... at least I look a little older than 16 year old me...
I have a problem with Trader Joe’s. The more I shop at Berkeley Bowl and the Farmer’s Market, the more it bothers me. They ask you to bring in your own shopping bags but then almost everything in the store is severely overpackaged and nothing is local.
Roma tomatoes come in hard plastic boxes, zuccinis come shrink wrapped on styrofoam trays, Carrots that have been pre-peeled and sliced come in plastic tubs and cost three times more than a 2 pound bag of unprocessed carrots. You can buy delicious Indian lunches that come in sealed bags that have been packed in boxes and portioned just enough for one person. All manner of frozen veggies are available with little globs of seasoned butter included, also in serving sizes for one or two people… because throwing a handful of greenbeans in a sauce pan with water, rosemary and butter is too hard!
This brings me to the second problem I have with Trader Joe’s… everything that has been pre-packaged three times over is all ready to heat and eat. So much of it is little more than a glorified and improved TV dinner. It is helping to perpetuate the helplessness of the urban dweller. It encourages shoppers to think “I don’t have time to cook” “I don’t know how to cook, it’s too hard”. Seriously! I am not a gormet chef but from the need to eat economically I’ve learned how to make a few really good meals. Salads are not difficult but you can still buy those in a bag. Is it because it’s too time consuming to wash lettuce, and chop up a few veggies?
There are so many Americans who just don’t cook for themselves, they have no idea about what they are shoveling into their mouths, there is too little thought about food and nutrition. There is too much thought about calories and suppliments. TJ’s also has an amazing array of cheap vitamins by the way, because after all eating a balanced diet is just too hard… you will need to be ‘healthy’ and add these pills to your diet. Despite the good things about TJ’s I just can’t deal with how much of it is fully pre-packaged and designed to allow consumers to feel good about their ignorance.
I’m torn. On the one hand they do sell a lot of tasty things that I enjoy, but when I went in yesterday I wound up leaving with my bottle of cheap wine, a pint of sherbet and a seltzer water. All of the overpackaged produce in number 5 plastic containers (my city only recycles numbers 1 and 2 plastic) just made me ill.
Be sure to bring back your canvas bag to carry home all of the small plastic bags that your food comes in… you don’t want to kill the earth do you?
This is a "standard" Produce section three times larger than the organic produce section. This is eight types of potatoes, eight types of orange, every type of fancy exotic fruit and green thing available in North America...
I shop here every week and it still leaves me in awe... someday I'll show you the beer selection.
... interactive sculptures... (better photos HERE)
There was a pond for fighting model ships. There is a club thatmakes 1/44th scale WWII ships that have battles every hour with real ballistics. I imagine it would have been more exciting to be participating rather than just watching from behind this rather wobbly plastic sheeting. We did have to wear protective goggles and sign waivers that said we wouldn't sue for injury.
There was a shipping crate that had been hollowed out and filled with all of this metal sculpture made with reused pieces. I thought my Mom would really have liked this part because my Granddad was a creative welder who would have done things like this...
Steampunks ruled this festival. They had a steampunk villiage where they had skits about their strange Victorianesque "robots" and sold their wares. There were people dressed in steampunk clothes all over the festival and it made me a little sad for the SCA folks who were in rather shabby garb and weren't getting much attention for their fencing at the far end of the festival.
The Steampunks did have some neat inventions... yet again I thought I had taken all sorts of photos of them but in reality I just thought about it and was too overwhealmed by the scale of the festival and number of people to really focus long enough to pull out my camera. Anyway, here is their "steam" powered bike (actaully it runs on gas but that's not nearly as cool).
There were several buildings full of activities and trade show type promotions. In one booth I learned how to solder open pin circuit boards... I made a mini theramin. This booth made me laugh like crazy... "Paper airplanes made easy" Really? Because they're so hard? Wow.
This shot from inside one of the tents was of the ping pong ball LED mobius thingie... it looses a good deal in translation. It strobes through several sets of sequential LEDs and looks like some giant bio-luminescent creature.
Fire sculpture;
At the end one of my favorite new bands(Ok Go) played (separate post to follow) with fishbowls on their heads...
It's hard to sum it all up because it was so overwhelming. There were too many people. There were many vendors who didn't actually have any information or activity beyond telling you to go to their website... there were more vendors than I expected selling DIY kits for more than I thought they were worth. There were also interesting lectures and resources that I had never heard of. There was a Tesla coil band (separate post to follow) that played music amplified through 20' tall tesla coils. The next time I go I think I may take more time quietly listening to NASA scientists in the lecture hall and not trying to see everything there is to see.
