Heyo,
Tim's... got time on his hands. Inspired by Milwaukee-based Coffee House Stone Creek's offer to give a free pound of coffee to anyone that visits all their stores, Tim took 'em up on the offer. And did so BY BIKE. Check it on the Stone Creek website here:
A few weeks ago we launched our Stone Creek Anniversary Road Trip in which you can visit our stores in the metro Milwaukee area to get free coffee. We were delighted to hear that one of our amazing customers, Tim Cigelske went the environmentally friendly route and took the entire Stone Creek Road trip by BIKE! Which is about 100 miles! Tim also documented his journey, Tour de Stone Creek on his website TeeCycle.org . For every Stone Creek location on his trip he has a photo of himself in a cool vintage t-shirt that is available for sale on TeeCycle.org . Like Tim, we encourage you to share your amazing Road Trip story with us. Send your story or photos to cboivin@stonecreekcoffee.com. You still have a lot of time! (until August 31) So get out there and take the trip no matter what kind of transportation you have! Sip slowly and be safe! Thanks again Tim!
Tim at the finish in Oconomowoc with his free pound of coffee!
Anyway. This was an INSANE trip, 40+ miles one day, then nearly 70 miles the next. I decided to map the coffee & commerce bike trip on Google Maps, which you can check out by clicking here.
All this effort was not in vein, because Tim is not training for a bike ride from Colorado to Milwaukee at the end of this month. That shizzle's crazy.
Also, Go Go White Sox.
Whoa Baby. Lots of stuff to go on about. First of all, the love of TeeCycle is spreading. Check out these great comments from all across the blogosphere: (read 'em ALL here)
Talk about doing a fuck of a lot with a little, bravo guys -Tcritic.com
The reasons to buy used and vintage clothing are growing exponentially. There’s the cash-saving factor, the environmental factor, the ever-important hipster factor and there’s a charity factor.-onmilwaukee.com’s picks featuring teecycle
If you believe in Karma this is as ethical as you can get. -buy-tees.net
(Teecycle’s) broader, philosophical goal is to remind people you can reuse these old things and value them, rather than going to the local Target and buying another thing off the rack. -Marquette Tribune
I must say it’s a pretty cool concept. -Troundup
This is a genius idea for tee afficionados, enabling us to get our hands on an amazing variety of pre-loved tees at bargain prices. -Thunderfrogs
Awesome idea, cool blog posts, funny photos. I'd say check it out! -Katrina's Site
What a great idea! -T-Shirt Rater
T-shirts kick ass, green t-shirts kick even more ass. Teecycle.org is a cool new site that sells “gently used” one off t-shirts- a great price at about half the average cost of other cool tees online EarthFirst
Also, we've switched over to Wordpress which has proved to make the site better looking AND better working.
A bazillion more t-shirts are on the way, so much so that we need some people willing to model. As much as we love taking pictures of ourselves, we want to see your smiling face too! We'll be happy to plug any projects you're working on. Got a blog? Got a band? Got a cause? Live in Chicago or Milwaukee? I know you do.
By for now.
-Battle
The cab showed up. Always a small triumph, even though that’s what they’re paid to do.
“Ummm, Belmont and Sheffield,” I say.
From the back, I’m immediately impressed by the cabbie. The seat is tidy, no holes in the cushions, and the seat belts aren’t stuck in the crease of the seat where change, and crumbs, and God knows what else gathers. Plus, the guy looks like he was born to drive a taxi -- rugged but not really dingy at all, maybe mid 40's, black-to-grey hair, accelerating out of stop signs too fast, but very smoothly as cabbies are prone to do.
I wonder what that does for his gas mileage.
Anyways, he’s a solid pedigree of cab driver... as if generations of drivers have developed this man -- his dad must’ve been the Archie Manning of the Livery World. He’s even wearing a newsy cap slightly off-kilter -- a half century out of place but still fitting; an accessory that seems like cliché but something I had to mention anyway.
“Lemmie ask you something”, he says, turning a swift left west onto Logan Boulevard and simultaneously taking the lead in the taxi conversations I usually dread. “How long do you wait for a taxi out here?”
“It usually takes a while. I understand though, it’s pretty far west, there’s probably not any incentive for you guys to get this far out because fares are probably sparse.”
Thoughtful Silence.
“We’ve got this new computer system,” he says, unamused or just disregarding my assertion. “It tracks where we get our calls from, and how often ... ‘supposed to make it more efficient.”
“Huh,” I say.
We’re stopped at Cali and Diversey. Olympic Carpets has hastily changed their name to Olympia -- a small city-imposed copyright ordinance in the bid for the 2012 games. You wouldn’t notice it, except for at night, when the “C” in Olympic still shines through the “A” on their light-up sign, making the last letter look slightly exotic, Greek even. The sign on the building reads “Olympi”. I wonder if they’ve fixed their business cards.
With the last left the taxi took he’s already disregarded one of two shortcuts I know through the neighborhood. Avoiding the Western/Elston/Diversey intersection is paramount.
He zooms off the green light, cutting off a driver as we pass under 90/94, and it’s the feeling of an amusement park ride -- loose and freewheeling but secure in the knowledge this is a common experience. No one died yesterday on the ride and no ones going to today or tomorrow. ‘Course, the Tilt-a-Whirl never had to dodge bikes.
My taxi driver takes a right at condo development just past the Orbit Room. 670’s barely audible on the radio as he navigates a tricky diagonal across Elston.“Howabout them Bears?” he says.
Howabout them indeed. The season’s a joke and I could ramble off about it for the rest of the trip. I relish Bears Talk. It’s a source of pride for me, really. As inept as I am about sports talk, usually riffing on whatever I read last in the Red Eye, The Bears is something I can actually go off on. I don’t know if he knows this, but cabbing it into Lakeview 20 minutes before kickoff, it’s a good conversation to take up. And, anyway, when they’re terrible, it makes for better conversation.
“Oh man,” I say, “it’s rough right now, right? I don’t know about Grossman versus Orton, but Rex is our best shot.” He’s nodding and I know he’s got something to say but I’ve got to keep going. “Grossman’s a great fit for this city.” He makes no sign of finding this an interesting thing to say, but lets me continue. “Chicago runs hot and cold, and if we didn’t have something to complain about, we wouldn’t know what to do with ourselves,” I wax philosophically.
“I like Orton,” is the assured reply.
Visions of neckbeards flash though my head as we stop-and-go in a part of Avondale I’ve never seen before. We’re making good time. It’s my turn to wait for the continuation of his preposterous comment.
He doesn’t look over his shoulder when he talks, like other cab drivers. He’s ten-and-two as we whiz by lowrise industrial-looking buildings shutdown for the weekend. They line the North Branch of the river -- set up well-before waterfront apartments made a similar location choice. A spot just off the river wasn’t an aesthetic choice when these places were made, it was probably a rustbelt necessity before the city's collar color shifted.
“He’s not the solution either, but it’s the little things,” he follows up on his Orton retort. The right-turn signal is clicking, but he doesn’t lean towards the wheel to get a better view of traffic. We’re taking a right onto Belmont and there’s scaffolding for a new highrise blocking any chance to make a well-informed turn.
The scaffolding that blocks his view is for a building that, when the i-beam skeleton goes up, will be an imposing structure.
“When I watch Orton play,” says the driver, “he does the fundamentals right. When he fakes a handoff, he does it right. The defense is watching him, hell, WE'RE all watching him, and it’s that second of doubt he creates that makes him a pro.”
My driver swings a right onto Belmont, up over the river then swiftly under the Western Ave viaduct: The street that everyone dreads having to cross. I’m taking mental notes.
The shirts are sorted by tags, and will be on sale for a flat rate (including shipping), with one dollar of every purchase going towards local charity. I'll be posting tee's up on that site, so get the RSS fromhttp://www.teecycle.org/ and start shrit-shoppin':
Timbo to the rescue!
Thankfully Milwaukee's second-best export (just behind OldStyle),MKE Magazine's Tim Cigelske is letting me join up with his brilliant (and eco-concious) take on thrift-store shirt sales: TeeCycle.org. Tim was doing something very close to what I was thinking, except, you know, more selflessly and environmentally-friendly.
Tim makes some excellent points that I never even considered -- why buy mass-produced new shirts that go through extra processes to appear vintage, when you can buy a cheaper, rarer, actual vintage shirts? Especially with part of the cost going directly back into preserving urban green space. There's all sorts of good karma going on here.
Teecycle believes that your T-shirt says a lot about you, whether you know it or not.
When you buy off a rack in a department store, it says you have limited imagination, support giant corporate profits and have thousands of replicas. Who wants that?
When you own a Teecycle shirt, it says you have a unique one-of-a-kind item of clothing. It also says you care about the environment by keeping a perfectly usable item out of the landfill.
Each Teecycle shirt is hand-selected from rummage sales, thrift stores and, in a few cases, friend's closets. Just not a rack in a nondescript department store.
Your purchase also supports the River Revitalization Foundation. $1 of each sale is donated to restore urban river trails and waterways in the Milwaukee area.
First things first: Tim, Jess and I all agreed I'm going to need to find a model with a formidable rack to match pace with our Milwaukee neighbor.
I wish I was making these up:
- DuPage Children's Museum's "Wet 'N Messy" Series
- Lincoln Park Zoo's "I Love Furry Friends"
Check it. The new Spike Jonze-directed video for Kanye West's "Flashing Lights". Careful watching this one at work, kids.
Bullit Pointz:
- Stripper/Hooker
- Outskirts of L.A. (or Vegas) at dawn
- Burns clothes
- Dude in her trunk
- Shovel
- Shovel in dude
So yeah, obviously, this is a To Be Continued situation -- the track and video end abruptly at approx 2:41 and the "Flashing Lights" track goes on to nearly 4:00 minutes. I'm intrigued, and not just because of the gratuitious boob shots. I particularly like how it's on the cusp of the day so facing east, away from the city is warm and sun-lit, and facing west towards te town is darkness and streetlights. More motif's and motives to come.
Perhaps it's a "growing up" thing, maybe it's the fact that Winter is driving me crazy, or maybe it's just the fact I have WAY too many t-shirts. Either way. I need to get rid of most of my T's.
This is the first google image for the search "cotton orphans":
I digress. So, as the washer/dryer in my apartment basement is working over time this week, I'm ready to get moving on my little project.
Ideally, I'll like to commemorate my losses by making a huge, tiled poster of all my former colorful, sometimes ironic, sometimes stupid t-shirts. Like a T-Shirt Quilt but less stupid.
Auction winners (and anyone else that wants one) will also have the option of getting the final poster that will feature all my t-shirts in their new homes. I'll keep y'all posted but check ArmsDistance.blogspot.com for ongoing heart-felt t-shirt anecdotes, and check my ebay profile for the actual sale of the t-shirts.
H&M’s jumping on the philanthropic celebrity apparel bandwagon, unveiling their new “Fashion Against AIDS” line of t-shirts for Spring. Wonderful idea, terrible name. Though, I’d much rather grab one of these shirts than the Gap “(RED)” products which all feature, wait for it… the word “red” in them. Get it?! So clever. Below are a few of the musician-designed T's -- some hot, some not. (www.urchicago.com)
Chicks on Speed
Since CoS met in fashion school, I should hold them to higher standards. The tank is a little new-wavy and a little freaky – just like them, OMG!
Justice
I’m confused. By the picture I can’t tell if the Cross Bling is part of the graphic or some accessory -- same with the dizzying checkered cross-adorned vest. Hey, did you know Justice put out an album called “Cross”. Hooray for borrowed iconography... so PoMo.
Scissor Sisters
Ew. Stick to Elton John dance-pop. The graphic is clunky, way too big, and reminds me of some bad 90’s concert T’s I bought.
Tiga
Electro dude Tiga’s got THREE different hoodies -- Grey, Blue and Pink. Vertigo-inducing hoodies are all the rage for some reason but they’re all pretty fugly to me. These, on the other hand, are pretty rad.
Timbaland
Timbaland’s T features Timbaland's face on it. It also has an AIDS ribbon that reads “Super Producer”. Subtlety was never Timba’s forté.
Ziggy Marley
Ziggy Marley: International Reggae clichés ambassador.
Oh, there’s also sweet designs from Rihanna, Rufus Wainwright, Henrik Vibskov and others.
Beyonce -- Now attempting to crib Tina Turner's legacy after growing bored with all the Diana Ross references. Step one: wear a gold lamé diaper?
Kanye -- Actually not that bad. It sounded like he kinda lost his place during the end of "Stronger", which is odd, because the whole song is prettymuch the same few lines over and over again. Daft Punk looked pretty awesome, as usual. They also did a Daft Punk angle where you could see them manipulating the samples, which was actually really cool. I'm surprised this was the first live collabo with them -- I had hoped that Kanye would show up during D.P.'s incredible Lollapalooza set last summer.
Foo Fighters -- I don't care about Foo, but the live song (regardless of the promotional "win the chance to play in a symphony for Dave Grohl" thing) was really strong. Apparently, the orchestra arrnagements were put together by Zepplin's John Paul Jones. Cool, in theory, but it amounted to a second-rate James Bond theme.
Jason Bateman -- kept it loose on the outside stage. The emcee'ing was a little slow-moving but sometimes a cog in the works is appreciated. Award shows that are all glamor and planned spontaneity, Batemen was being sarcastic, making some mean-spirited quips and slipping over his teleprompter lines... "forgive me folks, I'm just learning to read." It was enjoyable. At one point he nicknamed the young, seated cello player "Lazy".
http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=ap-superbowl-threat&prov=ap&type=lgns
Believe it or not, this guy isn't from Germany or Florida. I'll just go ahead an bold the key learnings found below:
Feds: Angry restaurateur had rifle, 200 rounds of ammo for Super Bowl gunfire
Associated PressPHOENIX -- A would-be bar owner angry at being denied a liquor license threatened to shoot people at the Super Bowl and drove to within sight of the stadium with a rifle and 200 rounds of ammunition before changing his mind, federal authorities said.
Kurt William Havelock, who ultimately turned himself in, had vowed to "shed the blood of the innocent" in a manifesto mailed Sunday to media outlets, according to court documents. "No one destroys my dream," he wrote.
The documents say he was armed with an AR-15 assault-style rifle Sunday when he reached a parking lot near University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, where pre-game activities were happening.
"He waited about a minute and decided he couldn't do this," FBI agent Philip Thorlin testified at a detention hearing for Havelock on Tuesday.
Havelock's father testified that his son then called his fiancee and met his parents at his condominium in Tempe, like Glendale a Phoenix suburb.
"He was very upset; he was sobbing hysterically," Frank Havelock said. "He said, 'I've done something terribly, terribly wrong.' "
Kurt Havelock, 35, was charged Monday with mailing threatening communications. He is being held without bail, and additional hearings have yet to be scheduled.
Havelock's lawyer, Jeffrey Allen Williams, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Federal authorities say Havelock was upset over being denied a liquor license.
A few months ago, Tempe officials denied Havelock's application for a liquor license for a Halloween-themed bar called The Haunted Castle, city spokeswoman Shelley Hearn said.
Tempe officials never recommended the license to the state liquor board, Hearn said.
"There were some neighbors who came forward and said it wasn't the right business for their part of Tempe," she said. "They'd heard he wanted to call his place 'Drunkenstein's.' "
The FBI said in the complaint that Havelock had planned to attack Super Bowl fans at the stadium in what he called an "econopolitical confrontation."
"I will not be bullied by the financial institutions and their puppet politicians," Havelock wrote in the eight-page manifesto, according to the complaint.
"I will test the theory that bullets speak louder than words. Perhaps the blood of the inculpable will cause a paradigm shift. ... Someone has to start the revolution but no one wants to be first."
Authorities said in the complaint that Havelock first thought of targeting a shopping center in north Phoenix before planning to attack the Super Bowl.
"How many dollars will you lose? And all because you took my right to own a business from me," the manifesto said.
The FBI said in the complaint that Havelock had planned to attack Super Bowl fans at the stadium in what he called an "econopolitical confrontation."
"I will not be bullied by the financial institutions and their puppet politicians," Havelock wrote in the eight-page manifesto, according to the complaint.
"I will test the theory that bullets speak louder than words. Perhaps the blood of the inculpable will cause a paradigm shift. ... Someone has to start the revolution but no one wants to be first."
To Review:
-
Try to open bar which may/maynot be called Drunkenstein's
-
Get License Rejected
-
Write 8-page manifesto, employing an effective hybrid or cliche, terrorist threat, and Business Speak (ahem, paradigm shift)
-
Plan to shoot up a local mall
-
Set higher goal for yourself
-
Go home and cry to your fiance
Recent Comments
-
W. B. Mook said:
At first, I was all "who the hell is this and should I add them"? However, anyone with a Pantone... read more
on TeeCycle.Org: One Big Messy Circle of Love -
-
stephanie said:
bb - cheaters never win in the game of life. but apparently, they do get off easy - with free... read more
on Smoking is Banned: No Two Ways About It -
B*Dazzle said:
"Excited tourists grabbed the balls as artistic mementos, while Italian police proceeded to arrest Cecchini. Look for overpriced plastic balls... read more
on Last.FM: Good Music, Good Peeps
Links
Thrift Store T's With an Eco-Conscience
He's So Silent... Jens.
Together, Forever.
MKE's Tim Cigelske
thanks man! Lovin' your Last.Fm list... good stuff. read more
on TeeCycle.Org: One Big Messy Circle of Love