These guys are doing a whole lot of right. Pants that reflect when you roll the cuffs? Sign me up.

The Hardcourt Bicycle Polo Federation World Championships are happening this weekend directly across the street from my house here in Philly! I’ll be able to watch from my bedroom if I wanted.

I already posted this on my music blog yvynyl but I gotta share with all y’all who don’t read that (yet!). This is the new music video from my pals Free Energy. The vid was directed by m ss ng p eces and shot on location at the dudes’ house party earlier this summer. I’m really in love with this song and the video – and well, as I said on yvynyl:

Philly + bikes + summertime + my neighborhood + cute kittens + my buddies’ band + a great house party + cameos of dozens of my friends (damn, i didn’t make the cut!) + one kick-ass party song makes this my favorite music video of the week. Then again, I’m biased.

My neighborhood hosted it’s 3rd annual arts festival this weekend. I’ve been saying this is my favorite day of the year in Fishtown, a day when I’m extra proud to live here and be part of such a vibrant and wild-spirited community. What promised to be a rainy affair turned out to break free of the showers and even give me a sunburn. It was lovely, as always.

A big part of the festival, for those of you who don’t know yet, is the ‘Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby’. I took lots of photos of the derby and here’s a video of some of the best sculptures in action:

My pal Jay at Arthur Magazine recently mentioned a book that’s being passed around amongst my friends here in Philly recently (indeed, I picked up a copy for Audrey’s birthday just last week).

It’s called The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-sufficient Living in the Heart of the City. Though we don’t have a lot of free space to plant a big garden at our place, we’re very interested in finding better ways to live both here in Philly and wherever the future might take us. I feel like this book will be a good guide with some enlightened ideas for better living.

Oh, and as any good author team worth their salt, Erik Knutzen and Kelly Coyne are blogging about urban sustainability issues topics, too. One recent post gives some resources on creating your own self-irrigating planters.

Might be a good buy for all ye urban dwellers out there, especially in places like Detroit where things are getting so bad, people seem to be buying abandon houses for $100 a pop! Sounds like it’s time for some ‘recolonization’ up that way, huh?

File under: WANT. The ingenious folks at the sustainable product design and engineering shop called Studio Gelardi came up with this masterful lil’ tool for your bike. Seems as thought it’s still in ‘concept’ mode, but I can’t wait until it gets manufactured. Given the buzz it’s getting, I won’t be surprised if that happens soon.

Cool Hunting sez: “The small apparatus attaches to any bike’s seat tube and applies a thin layer of chalk powder in one of several colors to the rear tire. The result is an eye-catching streak that traces wherever you ride. In addition to visually enhancing the street, it serves as a directional guide for subsequent cyclists and a constant reminder to motorists that they should share the road.”

So I’ve been riding my trust old steel Schwinn single speed bike for about three years now and the poor thing is getting mighty ragged. I’ve been thinking about an overhaul, but also perhaps a whole new purchase. Every once in a while I see this one amazingly sexy bike parked where I park at the train station on my morning commute and I just salivate over it’s shear beauty.

All of a sudden, rather out of the blue I come across Republic Bikes of Dania Beach, Florida. They’ve got this slick web site where you can ‘build your own‘ track bike from the colors and sizes they have in stock. And wouldn’t you know it, a complete bike is just $344 bucks. Hmmmm. I may be on to something here. Just look at the fun designs you too can make:

I’m so excited about this film! When you live in Philadelphia, Zagar’s work creeps into your consciousness with this odd iconic ubiquity. So strange, and yet so beautiful and literally found in every nook and cranny of this city. The film was made by Jeremiah’s son, so it’s sure to be an intimate family portrait which tend to be some of my favorite kind of films.

Synopsis:
Over the past four decades, Isaiah Zagar has covered more than 50,000 square feet of Philadelphia with stunning mosaic murals. In A Dream is a documentary feature film that chronicles his work and his tumultuous relationship with his wife, Julia. It follows the Zagars as their marriage implodes and a harrowing new chapter in their life unfolds.

I can’t believe I missed the theatrical showing of this film last April, but now it’s coming out on DVD(?) and I plan on seeing it asap. Maybe it’s time for a documentary film house party! Who’s in?

[UPDATE: Luckily, I was wrong about that date - it's actually going to be in the Ritz at the Bourse starting April 17, 2009! Yes! Let's all go! Who's in?]

Now that it’s getting nice (relatively) out again, almost spring, we’ve been stepping it up a bit on the running regimen. Today was a gorgeous sunny winter day, so we decided to head down to the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge for a jog around the water. Turns out, this is a spectacular spot to go running.

The small loop trail is very well maintained, there is hardly anyone there, the visitor center is a great warming hut for cooling down and getting a drink of water, and the one loop is 3.3 miles around which is just about 5k. Perfect!

On top of that, it’s only about a 10 minutes drive down just past the PHL airport. And it’s terrific to be in a quiet nature preserve with lots of wild birds and information signs and bird lookouts like this:

Audrey and I went up to Brooklyn to celebrate the turning of the new year at my sister Becca and her husband Brandon’s lovely new apartment in Park Slope. Goodtimes!

It became a bit of a wee wild one, as you can see by this mid-evening F Train ride with some wine-toting strangers. The late-late-night photos, ahem, weren’t posted. But here are the rest of them!

Part One

Part Two

[via Joshua's blog]

Bright Bike from Michael Mandiberg on Vimeo.

Bright Bike is a Retroreflective Vinyl coated bike. It is like coating your bike with a big sticker that turns ultra-brite in headlights. Right now we are in the prototyping stages, and hope to offer a DIY Kit soon. If you can’t wait that long, contact Beacon Graphics in NJ for Scotchlight 680.

[Thanks, Rocketboom!]

I’m trying out a new service called StoryTlr (embeded below) to retell the event in ‘real time’ as I Twittered it.

And this, coming a week after a super-high and drunk junky smashed his SUV into our neighbor’s parked car, totaling it. Ah, life.

Audrey and her classmate Jesse are shooting a short film on 16mm this month and we all went out location scouting on the banks of the Delaware River just north of Port Richmond in Philly, nearly under the Betsy Ross Bridge. We just happened to stumble upon this fabulous little old overgrown jetty that was simply magical.

See the whole set here:

Philadelphia Phillies became World Champions last night, in case you didn’t hear. If you were in Philly last night, there wasn’t a chance in hell you missed it. The noise + celebertion + collective euphoria was unbelievable. Here’s a crappy, dark, blurry shot I took on my phone outside of Johnny Brenda’s in Fishtown. Probably 500 people in the street from all the bars in that area. Fireworks. Police. Crazed fans. Amazing.