Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to cool people who did cool stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy. I don't have a clever thing,
Speaker 2: so instead I'm drawing attention to the fact that I
Speaker 2: don't have my guest today is kinda boo. Hi cat,
Speaker 2: How are you, Margaret?
Speaker 3: I'm good. I'm relatively good.
Speaker 2: Wild Life updates between when we totally recorded this on
Speaker 2: a totally different day, not five minutes ago, yeah.
Speaker 3: Six hours. Oh yeah, it's totally different day because it's
Speaker 3: coming out on a different day. Anyways, I got laid
Speaker 3: off today, but I'm really enjoying hearing about community gardens
Speaker 3: and after this, I'm going to get a penia kolata.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you come to DC, there's this place that
Speaker 3: has the best penia kolatas. Like it's unbelievable.
Speaker 1: You know, I haven't had it seen at Kilata in
Speaker 1: so long, But like you're saying, and I'm like, why
Speaker 1: haven't I that's so weird.
Speaker 3: Why haven't you. I'm a big fan. When I was
Speaker 3: like a bar tender, I was like really into whiskey
Speaker 3: and drink all these whiskey bands. And then after I
Speaker 3: stopped bartending, I was like, you know what, whiskey's great
Speaker 3: and I appreciate it and all this stuff, But what
Speaker 3: if I just drink really fun stuff, like really.
Speaker 2: Might as well.
Speaker 1: I recently just had Cosmopolitans are delightful, apple tinis. Prosecco
Speaker 1: goes with everything. Name one food that doesn't taste good
Speaker 1: with prossecco.
Speaker 3: I can't, I dare you. I simply cannot, Margaret, I
Speaker 3: dare you.
Speaker 2: I barely drink anymore. Well, it started because I started
Speaker 2: living rurally and so I had to drive everywhere. So
Speaker 2: I only drink at home because I don't drink and drive.
Speaker 2: And rural areas in this country are just designed for
Speaker 2: people to drink and drive. There's no way to go
Speaker 2: to a bar where I live without driving home after drinking.
Speaker 2: It's not Yeah, so if you live in a city
Speaker 2: like bars make sense to me in cities, and they
Speaker 2: don't make sense to me in the country. And I mean,
Speaker 2: the answer is that everyone here just drinks. And but yeah,
Speaker 2: I refuse to all that education as a kid actually
Speaker 2: worked on me. I'm like the one person that dare
Speaker 2: worked for it. That's not true. I did a bunch
Speaker 2: of drugs when I was younger.
Speaker 3: Sorry, parents, we're living like drinking and driving for that
Speaker 3: not not condoning it at all. This is this is
Speaker 3: not a pro drinking drunk driving statement, but it's so
Speaker 3: much more empathetic to drive drunk in the suburbs, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean? Yeah, it's like, I really do.
Speaker 3: You didn't have to do this, and people, you know,
Speaker 3: you can make as many conspiracies you want about fifteen
Speaker 3: minute cities. I live in a neighborhood where I can
Speaker 3: walk to everything and it's amazing, and I have transport
Speaker 3: and all this shit. Guess what, I don't have to
Speaker 3: drive drunk. And I also don't have to go live
Speaker 3: in a house that has molding that's going to fall
Speaker 3: off within eight months.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I hate suburbs so much.
Speaker 2: No, it's okay, because that's actually what we're going to
Speaker 2: talk about. First. You all are listening to part two
Speaker 2: of a two parter about community gardens, specifically around New York,
Speaker 2: although obviously we mostly talked about Detroit last time, because
Speaker 2: I love context and where we last left our heroes.
Speaker 2: We actually don't have any named heroes, but community gardens exist. Kat,
Speaker 2: I don't know if you knew this but overall, do
Speaker 2: you know that white Americans act kind of racistly? Wait
Speaker 2: what I know? I know it's in data. I wouldn't
Speaker 2: believe it if it wasn't in data.
Speaker 3: Because what if the data is racist against white people?
Speaker 3: Do you think about that?
Speaker 2: It probably is. I'm white and I've never met anyone
Speaker 2: being racist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that checks out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the least truth thing. Well, okay, the first
Speaker 2: half of that sentence was right, I am white because
Speaker 2: of social anyway. Whatever. Okay, So in the nineteen sixties
Speaker 2: and seventies, you've got what's known as white flight, when
Speaker 2: white people abandon the cities on moss and redlining and
Speaker 2: other explicitly racist property laws allowed white people better opportunities
Speaker 2: to leave cities and head for the suburbs throughout the fifties.
Speaker 2: Often they relied on welfare to do this, because low
Speaker 2: cost mortgages were provided through the GI bill.
Speaker 3: I did not even think about that. Yeah, the true welfare.
Speaker 2: Queens, No, them meant farmers, honestly, Like, look, don't get
Speaker 2: me wrong, love me some farmers here and there. But
Speaker 2: if you are a farmer and then you complain about
Speaker 2: welfare of people in the cities, I got nothing nice
Speaker 2: to say to you. So cities were getting poor fast,
Speaker 2: which sped up the exodus of people who were able
Speaker 2: to leave again because of systemic racism. It's mostly white
Speaker 2: families that were able to leave. There was also a
Speaker 2: social cause. In nineteen fifty eight, the social scientist named
Speaker 2: Morton Grodsen's said quote, once the proportions of non whites
Speaker 2: exceed the limits of the neighborhood's tolerance for interracial living,
Speaker 2: whites move out. Studies in the nineteen eighties and nineteen
Speaker 2: nineties showed that black Americans are fine with a fifty
Speaker 2: to fifty ethnic composition, but white people, the white people
Speaker 2: who were willing who checked the yes, I'm willing to
Speaker 2: live inter racially, were mostly only willing to do so
Speaker 2: if they were still the majority. So it's like what
Speaker 2: we all kind of knew, we now have. Well, you know,
Speaker 2: for the past forty years, we've had data showing that
Speaker 2: white people are like, yeah, yeah, as long as there's
Speaker 2: only a couple people of color around them, chill, you know.
Speaker 2: So white people left the cities because suddenly there was
Speaker 2: no white people in the cities. Because the people were
Speaker 2: the white people were able to leave the cities because
Speaker 2: of a combination of welfare and racism, and with less
Speaker 2: financial investment in the cities, the cities got poor. By
Speaker 2: the early nineteen seventies, there was something like ten thousand
Speaker 2: vacant lots in New York City that had become public
Speaker 2: property as a result of unpaid property taxes. So those
Speaker 2: are just the ones that were abandoned by people who
Speaker 2: stop paying taxes entirely. People started taking over and I'm
Speaker 2: going to talk about the squad and scene there sometime,
Speaker 2: but today is not that day. People started gardening the
Speaker 2: lots and it started with a meeting. I think community
Speaker 2: organizing meetings have to be the biggest like discrepancy between
Speaker 2: how cool the stuff they get done is versus how
Speaker 2: boring it is to go to the meetings in all
Speaker 2: of history, or I'm too fidgety to sit through them.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure. I've been in a lot of meetings
Speaker 2: in my life. Often what you plan to do is
Speaker 2: very exciting, but it takes a certain kind of thinking
Speaker 2: to decide. The meeting itself is exciting. But this meeting.
Speaker 2: You shouldn't be afraid of meetings, because this meeting in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy three started a movement that has fed uncountable
Speaker 2: millions of people across the globe since it started. Because
Speaker 2: at this meeting, they started the Green Gorillas, which in
Speaker 2: turn started the modern community garden movement. I haven't have
Speaker 2: you ever heard of the Green Gorillas.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: I knew a lot about New York City community gardens
Speaker 2: from my time living there in the early aughts, but
Speaker 2: I didn't know as much about its origins.
Speaker 3: It sounds like a cute little school club.
Speaker 2: I know. They were really wholesome, they like, I mean,
Speaker 2: the Green Gorillas. Yeah, And that's the thing, is like
Speaker 2: people kind of whitewash a lot of the community garden
Speaker 2: history and they only started talking about when, like the
Speaker 2: Parks Department gets involved in stuff. But it's like wholesome.
Speaker 2: But it is like crime, and wholesome crime is like
Speaker 2: my whole vibe sometimes.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy three, a woman named Liz Christy, alongside
Speaker 2: others who aren't named because history likes to pick one
Speaker 2: person to single them out, called for a meeting but
Speaker 2: what to do about a vacant lot in the Lower
Speaker 2: East Side of Manhattan. She was tired of watching kids
Speaker 2: play in broken glass. She'd already seen three dead bodies
Speaker 2: carried out of the lot as people died of exposure
Speaker 2: or violence. I actually looked up there's like basically a
Speaker 2: squatty museum and Lower East Side, and some of their
Speaker 2: photos and exhibition stuff is online and there's a photo
Speaker 2: of kids playing in one of these abandoned laws. It
Speaker 2: looks like a war zone. There's way more than I
Speaker 2: expected as someone who lived in New York in the
Speaker 2: early odds. So the neighbors got together and they were like,
Speaker 2: we're going to garden this space. And they posted flyers
Speaker 2: in multiple languages because again that's the important thing to do,
Speaker 2: and they started raising funds for equipment, but mostly they
Speaker 2: ended up paying for everything out of their own pockets.
Speaker 2: They actually tried to do this properly. They talked to
Speaker 2: the city about their plans and they even paid for insurance,
Speaker 2: and the city was like, nah, you can't work this
Speaker 2: property because you don't own it. And the people were like, hey,
Speaker 2: we were asking to be polite, we're going to do
Speaker 2: it anyway. And so they hauled out trash, they hauled
Speaker 2: in soil, and they split the place into lots for
Speaker 2: neighbors to have gardens. They called it the Bowery Houston
Speaker 2: Community Farm and Garden, And so the city came rushing
Speaker 2: in and was like, all right, if you're going to
Speaker 2: do it anyway, well, now we wanted to be proper
Speaker 2: and have paperwork. They got a one month, one dollar
Speaker 2: a month lease from the city.
Speaker 3: That's like Planet Word over here in DC.
Speaker 2: Yeah, tell me about it.
Speaker 3: It's a this museum that's dedicated to like literature and
Speaker 3: linguistics and stuff like that, and it was founded by
Speaker 3: a second grade teacher. It just it's like one of
Speaker 3: the newest museums in the city. And she was a
Speaker 3: second grade teacher and then she married I think like
Speaker 3: Thomas Bridman and was like, let me use all this
Speaker 3: money for something good and created this really cool, like
Speaker 3: the most accessible museum I've ever been to that's all
Speaker 3: about like how words formed. There's like this giant library
Speaker 3: where you can just pick the books off the shelves
Speaker 3: and sit there all day. It's pay what you wish.
Speaker 3: It's all donations, and it's in this old big schoolhouse
Speaker 3: in the middle of DC. And the city gave them
Speaker 3: a I think it's ten dollars a year rent for
Speaker 3: the next hundred years.
Speaker 2: Nice That next hundred years is a big important part
Speaker 2: of it, and it's going to come up a lot
Speaker 2: because they don't have this, these folks when they're getting
Speaker 2: their one dollar a month. That's cool. I really, I'm
Speaker 2: really spoiled. I grew up near DC, and so in
Speaker 2: my museums are free, and I don't understand the idea
Speaker 2: of paying for museums. It's like, I mean, I pay
Speaker 2: for it a lot out of my taxes. Like I
Speaker 2: should be done paying for it at that point.
Speaker 3: Is how I tend to always like explaining to people that, like,
Speaker 3: if I'm in Penn Quarter, I just go into the
Speaker 3: portrait gallery and hang out with my favorite painting for
Speaker 3: ten minutes. Like that's a completely impossible to like comprehend
Speaker 3: idea in pretty much everywhere else. Yeah, but yeah, go
Speaker 3: to planet where if you're in DC. It's just when
Speaker 3: I plug that real quick.
Speaker 2: That's cool. I honestly love museums and I'm going to go. Yes.
Speaker 2: So this park that they started, the first community garden
Speaker 2: of this style that was started in New York in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy three. It's still around. It is now over
Speaker 2: an acre and it is renamed the Liz Christie garden,
Speaker 2: and they was renamed that nineteen eighty five after Liz
Speaker 2: died of cancer. Twenty gardeners still work there, maintaining mature
Speaker 2: trees and ponds of fish and turtles and shit. But
Speaker 2: it's never enough with these hippies, right, they saved one
Speaker 2: vacant lot, and now they're trying to save all the
Speaker 2: other vacant lots in the city. When will they read
Speaker 2: these people? I know, I know. So they started the
Speaker 2: Green Gorillas, and sometimes they ask for permission from the city,
Speaker 2: but quite famously, they often didn't. If you ever want
Speaker 2: to read a one sentence description of their tactics, it's
Speaker 2: usually they went around throwing condoms full of tomato seeds
Speaker 2: over fences into empty lots.
Speaker 3: Awesome, I'm guessing that tied up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I assume so too. It's an oversimplification. They usually
Speaker 2: used water balloons or Christmas ornaments, which I'll be sleeve
Speaker 2: would work better. These are called seed bombs. And now
Speaker 2: I'm going to go on a long tangent and talk
Speaker 2: about seed bombs because they're fucking cool. Fuck. Yes, seed
Speaker 2: bombs are fucking cool. It's written into the script. Most
Speaker 2: of the time they're made from compost clay and seeds,
Speaker 2: and they're developed. According to everything you'll read about them,
Speaker 2: they're developed from an ancient Japanese practice. And if I
Speaker 2: see a lot of articles that say in ancient Japanese
Speaker 2: practice without sources, I'm going to side eye the shit
Speaker 2: out of that. They were rediscovered in nineteen thirty eight
Speaker 2: by a Japanese gardener who seems pretty cool, and so
Speaker 2: it is a practice that has come out of Japan
Speaker 2: and might be ancient. The guy who reinvented them, his
Speaker 2: name was Masanobo Fukuoka. And in the West, you've got
Speaker 2: these early organic moves, like he's doing this stuff at
Speaker 2: the early twentieth century, right, and that's before the organic
Speaker 2: mat movement really kicks off. It's during this period where
Speaker 2: everyone's like, we want to turn agriculture into industry because
Speaker 2: we're really excited about destroying the entire world. And so
Speaker 2: one of the Western version of hey, what if we
Speaker 2: didn't do that was this Austrian guy who invented biodynamic
Speaker 2: farming named Rudolph Steiner, and he's real fucking strange. His
Speaker 2: thing is organic farming meets wingnut religious stuff, and it
Speaker 2: is considered one of the antecede into the modern organic
Speaker 2: farming movement. Have you ever heard of this stuff?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 3: But I love things that sound insane, and this sounds insane.
Speaker 2: Yeah. There's like stuff like, in order to grow certain food,
Speaker 2: you'll like take an animal manure and put it into
Speaker 2: a horn of an animal and then you'll bury it
Speaker 2: for like a month under the right phase of the moon,
Speaker 2: and then you dig it up and then you use
Speaker 2: that as fertilizer. Yes, and it's kind of cool, honestly,
Speaker 2: Like I can't actually hate it. I just stayed on
Speaker 2: a biodynamic farm in Finland when I was anyway whatever.
Speaker 2: But it's like it's also like not always great in
Speaker 2: a lot of ways, and it's like not particularly scientific.
Speaker 2: So the Japanese antecedent to the organic farming movement seems
Speaker 2: cooler overall and has had a little bit more staining power.
Speaker 2: Japan seemed pretty head in terms of alternative agriculture. Masanobu
Speaker 2: was an early advocate of stuff that's becoming more popular today,
Speaker 2: like no till farming and organic farming. He called his
Speaker 2: method and do nothing farming, and basically he was like,
Speaker 2: what if we don't do any work, doesn't that seem
Speaker 2: like a better way to live, and I can't argue
Speaker 2: with him. He was a scientist who had a religious
Speaker 2: experience that made him be like, I think Western agriculture
Speaker 2: is no good, which is true. At first, he kind
Speaker 2: of tried to go like a little bit too far.
Speaker 2: He was like, well, what if I just don't even
Speaker 2: prune the tree? And then he was like, oh shit,
Speaker 2: insects are fucking it up and all the things and
Speaker 2: doesn't make his good fruit, and so he has to
Speaker 2: do like a little bit of cultivation. But he did
Speaker 2: a lot of no till farming of rice and barley.
Speaker 2: His most famous book is called The One Straw Revolution,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't work necessarily for feeding people at scale,
Speaker 2: but it is a really interesting concept. He traveled around
Speaker 2: the world with his life.
Speaker 3: Wait, I want to hear about those So I don't know.
Speaker 2: Enough about no till farming, yet I'm like starting to
Speaker 2: learn more about that stuff, even just through my own
Speaker 2: gardening and things like that. Basically, like people are more
Speaker 2: and more starting to say, like instead of having like
Speaker 2: these carefully cultivated plots where you only plant the one
Speaker 2: plant and then you have to like water it constantly,
Speaker 2: if you use like the right kind of cover crop
Speaker 2: and all these things. Things can take care of themselves
Speaker 2: a little bit more and then like you can do
Speaker 2: a lot of stuff without tilling. I don't know enough
Speaker 2: about it yet. Cool, but yeah, he I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's interesting. I fell down a rabbit hole about it,
Speaker 2: and I've like read about it a whole bunch before,
Speaker 2: but I like don't feel like I'm an expert at
Speaker 2: at any any level. And so with his life, he
Speaker 2: traveled around the world trying to do cool shit, like
Speaker 2: you vegetate deserts that were expanding and things like that,
Speaker 2: and he just like did that. He went on to
Speaker 2: do it until he died at the age of ninety
Speaker 2: five in two thousand and eight. He's enough of like
Speaker 2: a interesting and wing nutty guy that I'm like waiting
Speaker 2: to find out that he's like some terrible you know,
Speaker 2: there's like something going on, but I I'm not aware
Speaker 2: of it yet. And he was into seed bombs. You
Speaker 2: throw him everywhere you see what grows up on its own.
Speaker 2: The classic seedball is five parts clay to one part seeds.
Speaker 2: You dry it out and then you toss it somewhere
Speaker 2: and then the seeds may or may not stick. When
Speaker 2: I was a baby activist, gorilla gardening was all the
Speaker 2: rage and all the big protests would regularly have like
Speaker 2: seed bomb workshops the day before so people could toss
Speaker 2: seeds into abandoned lots along the march routes.
Speaker 3: Wait, oh my god, I just realized, like the gorilla
Speaker 3: garden in New York, that's not gorilla, like the animal.
Speaker 3: I was like, that's a green gorilla.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 3: I was like, that's so cute. It's like green gorilla
Speaker 3: is like an elementary school club. Okay, nevermind, Sorry, so embarrassing.
Speaker 2: All good. So these days you can buy seed bombs
Speaker 2: and stores or like on Etsy or whatever, and honestly,
Speaker 2: I'm not mad about that because as long as you remember,
Speaker 2: you can make them yourself. On my fortieth birthday, my
Speaker 2: family came out to my property and we had a
Speaker 2: big bag of seed bombs that they had bought of
Speaker 2: like wildflowers, and we just like stood on my porch
Speaker 2: and through seed bombs as far as we could. It's
Speaker 2: a very nice way to spend an afternoon and just
Speaker 2: for fun. And by that I mean because I want
Speaker 2: people to make their own seed bombs, although don't do
Speaker 2: it exactly this way because it involves a little bit
Speaker 2: of glittering. I'm going to read from the Green Gorillas
Speaker 2: fact sheet that they circulated about how to make the
Speaker 2: seed bombs that they made. You take an ornament, you
Speaker 2: take pelletized time release fertilizer, peat moss, crumbs, tissue, and seeds.
Speaker 2: You start with the seeds in the fertilizer, then you
Speaker 2: add wet peat moss, and then you stop it up
Speaker 2: with tissue, and then quote choose a lot that has
Speaker 2: a fence and is legally inaccessible. Calculate in advance how
Speaker 2: many grenades will be needed to cover the area. Check
Speaker 2: carefully before throwing, observe all normal safety precautions. Suggested throwing
Speaker 2: techniques are for Christmas ornaments and underhand throw. For water balloons,
Speaker 2: use an overhand throw. And then they have a list
Speaker 2: at the bottom of suggested seeds based on the season,
Speaker 2: mostly flowers, sometimes grass or soybeans. And they just went
Speaker 2: around and flour bombed New York.
Speaker 3: Awesome.
Speaker 2: The Green Gorillas coined the term gorilla gardening. Gorilla gardening
Speaker 2: is one of the clearest and most beautiful examples of
Speaker 2: direct action. It's a protest tactic that highlights a problem,
Speaker 2: but does so by directly addressing that problem. Basically, gorilla
Speaker 2: gardening is when people, without asking permission, go out and
Speaker 2: plant gardens. Sometimes these are carefully constructed and maintained gardens,
Speaker 2: whether for beauty or food or both. Sometimes you apparently
Speaker 2: throw a condom full of seeds over a fence. Don't
Speaker 2: do that, by a way, unless you find biodegradable condoms, which.
Speaker 3: I say, what if there are biodegradeab all condoms, in.
Speaker 2: Which case, probably don't trust them for reproductive health. I
Speaker 2: don't know. They'd be kind of cool if people figure
Speaker 2: that out. It's also an example of a protest tactic
Speaker 2: that is easily recuperated. When I was younger and living
Speaker 2: in the Netherlands, I knew all these graph kids and
Speaker 2: they consciously refused to do murals and like graffiti art
Speaker 2: because the city was using legal graft style murals to
Speaker 2: attract tourists and gentrify the city. So the kids only
Speaker 2: tagged because it didn't raise property values and it didn't
Speaker 2: lead to the displacement of squatters and low income homeowners
Speaker 2: and residents. Basically, they were like, we're going to fight
Speaker 2: gentrification by fucking up the city. Visually. But I went
Speaker 2: back eight years later and those same folks, who I
Speaker 2: could no longer call kids at this point, were doing
Speaker 2: beautiful street art. They were still squatters and anarchists, but
Speaker 2: they had changed their perspective on this issue. I asked
Speaker 2: one guy what changed, and he shrugged and he was like, ah,
Speaker 2: I grew up. I wanted to make something pretty. And
Speaker 2: that's just a tension that is going to exist whenever
Speaker 2: people take direct action to beautify their environments. But what
Speaker 2: isn't attention is the tension of running an anti capitalist
Speaker 2: podcast sponsored by capitalist products. I feel no tension whatsoever,
Speaker 2: she said, while lying.
Speaker 3: Everyone knows Margaret loves ads. She's always saying I love ads,
Speaker 3: are my favorite thing in the world. They call her
Speaker 3: Margaret ad lover killjoy.
Speaker 2: I know, and I'm always trying to interject them now
Speaker 2: into regular conversation. I'll be like talking to my friends
Speaker 2: and I'll be like, but you know who else watched
Speaker 2: this TV show? Here's some ads, And then they stare
Speaker 2: at me because I know, yeah, and I don't read
Speaker 2: the ads, so they just stare at me, and as
Speaker 2: I wait a little while and we're back. So it's complicated,
Speaker 2: but I am one hundred percent pro gorilla gardening. It's
Speaker 2: just not without complicated knock on effects like community gardening itself.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy three, the Green Gorillas got their start,
Speaker 2: the gardeners expanded like wild and the Green Gorillas were
Speaker 2: working eighty four gardens by nineteen seventy five. They intentionally
Speaker 2: went around and taught everyone how to do what they
Speaker 2: were doing and helped new gardens do surveys and get plants.
Speaker 2: By nineteen eighty six, they had two hundred and fifty volunteers.
Speaker 2: By nineteen ninety one, they were working four hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty gardens out of the about seven hundred gardens total
Speaker 2: in the city. It wasn't all just peaceful and non destructive.
Speaker 2: Bolt cutters were as much a part of their Arsenal's
Speaker 2: paperwork was those kind of this thing, we're in retrospect
Speaker 2: because all this is very above board, and the Parks
Speaker 2: Department runs it now, and so everyone's like wacky, like
Speaker 2: they threw some seeds around and doesn't like to talk
Speaker 2: about like the crime and property destruction part of it,
Speaker 2: as if they're ashamed of that was. I think it's
Speaker 2: part of what made it cool in nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 2: the Parks Department started to step in more formally, seeing
Speaker 2: how popular all this shit was. And I don't want
Speaker 2: to necessarily say that the people at the Parks Department
Speaker 2: were being opportunistic or that their goal was recuperation, because
Speaker 2: I think that all of these people were looking for
Speaker 2: ways to try and make it last, right. You know,
Speaker 2: when you have a squatted space, you're waiting for the
Speaker 2: cops to come and take it from you. And so
Speaker 2: they wanted to work with the city. But of course
Speaker 2: the Parks Department's involvement has in some ways sheltered and
Speaker 2: in some ways imperiled many of these gardens. The Green
Speaker 2: Gorillas were anxious to get formal recognition so that the
Speaker 2: gardens could survive bureaucracy, and it sort of worked. In
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy eight, this Parks Department started its Green Thumb program,
Speaker 2: originally called Operation Green Thumb. And there's no space between
Speaker 2: green and Thumb, but there is between operation and green
Speaker 2: and that annoys me.
Speaker 3: You wanted it to be one ward, No.
Speaker 2: I probably want a space between all of it, honestly, But.
Speaker 3: If it's all one word, all ower case, that's tallicized
Speaker 3: MM hmm yeah, okay, letter underlined. Uh then it's just
Speaker 3: pussy and bio but about gardens. Yeah, and I hope that.
Speaker 2: One day someone's going to hear this five years from now,
Speaker 2: no fucking clue what that reference was, and.
Speaker 3: Just especially someone who's like thirteen right now, and they like,
Speaker 3: they're like, I don't even know what twitter is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, iesssics if they only that sounds a basic I know.
Speaker 2: Most community gardens that go legit go through Green Thumb.
Speaker 2: The Green Thumb license agreement with these gardens is quote
Speaker 2: terminable at will by the Commissioner in his or her discretion,
Speaker 2: at any time upon sixty days written notice. And the
Speaker 2: licensee shall have no recourse of any nature whatsoever by
Speaker 2: reason of such termination.
Speaker 3: And this is about the gardens that feed people. Okay,
Speaker 3: So these things they want to sound like super villains.
Speaker 3: I know, I know they're like, Hey, this thing that's
Speaker 3: been around for thirty years that everyone is like, yeah,
Speaker 3: if we want to turn into a music venue, we'll
Speaker 3: get into that later. It was an example where they're like,
Speaker 3: what have we just turned into a music venue?
Speaker 2: And fuck you? You know, enter our first real villain of
Speaker 2: the week. Mayor Rudy Giuliani. What a villain. I know,
Speaker 2: I kept thinking he's dead. I know he's not.
Speaker 3: He's shilling some like shitty coffee right now. And also
Speaker 3: he peed on a hot mic he did, mike. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like he was in a zoom call and he still
Speaker 3: let his microphone on when he went to go pee,
Speaker 3: and you can hear him pete.
Speaker 2: He's a winner.
Speaker 3: He's so hot, you know, as he's as in.
Speaker 1: He's literally melting and the flush is coming off.
Speaker 3: Exactly, yeah, yeah, exactly. I think it's really brave of
Speaker 3: him to be a sentient wax figure.
Speaker 2: I'm surprised that centient wax figures need to be urinate. Honestly.
Speaker 2: That's probably the reason he did it, is there's too
Speaker 2: many rumors that he was a sentient wax figure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so like he didn't actually even piss.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was like it was a setup play to
Speaker 2: sound effect.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he hired someone else that he hired a task grab,
Speaker 3: a person to come in.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean a lot of people hire people about pe.
Speaker 2: Usually it's a different yeah.
Speaker 3: And you know that's fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I'm not sure whether that was a sex
Speaker 2: work reference or a smoking weed reference. But I made
Speaker 2: it either way. So if you google America's mayor, you
Speaker 2: get fucking Rudy Giuliani. I, however, much prefer mister Potato man,
Speaker 2: who had tried to clean up Detroit by cracking down
Speaker 2: on corruption and monopoly, to Rudy Juliani.
Speaker 3: We should make him America's mare again.
Speaker 2: I agree. What was his name again, Pingree? I remember
Speaker 2: it was his first name.
Speaker 3: Okay, it was something kind of silly.
Speaker 2: I know, it was like brazen, but it wasn't. And
Speaker 2: it's like, yeah, it was like.
Speaker 3: A like a white guy name, but like he could
Speaker 3: be like kind of a fun character and historical movie.
Speaker 2: Anyways, Yeah, I like him more. Rudy Giuliani is like
Speaker 2: the inverse of this man. Rudy Giuliani wanted to clean
Speaker 2: up New York City by opening it for business and
Speaker 2: has been investigated for corruption and profiteering, the kind of
Speaker 2: thing that you know, Pingree spent his life fighting against.
Speaker 2: Giuliani was elected in nineteen ninety three. He too was
Speaker 2: a Republican, just the modern version where you suck. He
Speaker 2: too was raised working class. His father was an Italian
Speaker 2: mafia man. This is the broken Windows mare. If you
Speaker 2: brutally crack down on minor infractions like graffiti, turnstile jumping, loitering,
Speaker 2: et cetera. Somehow that stops all the murder and robbery
Speaker 2: and shit. I lived in New York City during his reign,
Speaker 2: and I had friends spent three days in jail for
Speaker 2: like hopping turnstiles or getting caught with a joint on them.
Speaker 2: The idea is that if someone sees a broken window,
Speaker 2: they figure it's not a place where the law is enforced,
Speaker 2: so you can kind of do whatever you want. I
Speaker 2: mostly I used to hop turnstyles all the time, and
Speaker 2: it was like fucking crazy adrenaline rush because I was like,
Speaker 2: if I get caught, I'm gonna spend three days in
Speaker 2: jail just to save like a dollar fifty or whatever.
Speaker 2: I wasn't. I wasn't the smartest person when I was younger,
Speaker 2: like cost benefit analysis, poor whatever. I also believe that
Speaker 2: it's lush every day. It would keep you young.
Speaker 3: I mean, you said your fortieth birthday something earlier, and
Speaker 3: I was like, I had no idea you were forty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so and adrenaline russia day keeps aging away.
Speaker 2: That's in some cases, Yeah, maybe you're just special. There's
Speaker 2: this whole thing where people talk about how like punk
Speaker 2: Stone age, But I think it's because we stay dressed subcultural. Now.
Speaker 2: It is true that during his reign, crime went down
Speaker 2: significantly in New York, but so did crime in all
Speaker 2: the major cities nationwide. When this policy ended in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: there was no statistically significant effect on major crime. Broken
Speaker 2: window theory is a crackdown on loitering, not on property
Speaker 2: that you leave derelict. Rudy Giuliani fucking hated the community
Speaker 2: gardens because he wanted development. Most of the community gardens
Speaker 2: were on city owned property, and he wanted to buldoze
Speaker 2: the green space to build housing.
Speaker 1: None of that is surprising religion. Being like I hate
Speaker 1: planned is like okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, no totally, Like he's just a bastard. He
Speaker 2: just sucks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would actually love a bastard's episode about him.
Speaker 2: Who would be good for that.
Speaker 1: I'll make a note, h.
Speaker 2: Sometimes articles will talk about how he wanted to buldoze
Speaker 2: these gardens to build low income housing. This is a lie.
Speaker 2: It's even a lie to say that he claimed he
Speaker 2: wanted it. He was really blunt in nineteen ninety nine
Speaker 2: and in January on like a radio show. He said,
Speaker 2: this is a free market economy. The era of communism
Speaker 2: is over, and by that he I mean one like,
Speaker 2: you know, the Soviet Union had collapsed. But I think
Speaker 2: he's also specifically being like this era of these community
Speaker 2: gardens just doing communism like whatever. In January nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 2: one hundred and fourteen gardens were put up for auction
Speaker 2: by this city with the intention of selling the land
Speaker 2: to developers. And when they would sell it to the
Speaker 2: land to developers, it was not to build low income housing.
Speaker 2: It was eighty percent market rate housing and twenty percent
Speaker 2: moderate income housing. I saw this myself a few years
Speaker 2: later while I was living in a squad in the Bronx,
Speaker 2: and it was the squad was run by an Indigenous
Speaker 2: run nonprofit had been around since I think the mid eighties.
Speaker 2: We are in a tenement building surrounded by project buildings.
Speaker 2: The city wanted to bulldoze the building to put in
Speaker 2: market rate housing that would have a few low income
Speaker 2: units as available as well, which would massively increase the
Speaker 2: overall cost of living in the area. So they wanted
Speaker 2: to gentrify that area by bulldozing a squat to build
Speaker 2: quote unquote low income housing, most of which was market rate,
Speaker 2: and then in two thousand and four they burned the
Speaker 2: squat down to get the squatters out because we kept
Speaker 2: tying them up in the courts, and once it was
Speaker 2: burned down then there was no thing to fight about
Speaker 2: legally anymore. But that's a different story that I don't have.
Speaker 2: I was just there. I don't know. I haven't looked
Speaker 2: up the details a very long time. Fuck those twenty
Speaker 2: years ago, I feel old. Whatever. So one hundred and
Speaker 2: fourteen community gardens were put up for auction without doing
Speaker 2: a round of community input, like they're supposed to fucking
Speaker 2: do lip service to, you know, when they pretend like
Speaker 2: they care what the community has to say, so they
Speaker 2: like community meetings and everyone can wait to say they're
Speaker 2: like bit to city council and then get ignored. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they didn't bother even doing that.
Speaker 3: That's so rude, I know.
Speaker 2: But the movement stepped the fuck up during that auction,
Speaker 2: and we we win this one. You could say, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna make a pop culture reference, Sophie. You could say
Speaker 2: that the community was the wind beneath the movement's wings.
Speaker 2: It's a Betty Middler joke, totally modern pop culture. That's
Speaker 2: what I'm doing here.
Speaker 4: Hello, dear listener, Yes, I heard it too, and fear not,
Speaker 4: Margaret has been informed of the correct pronunciation of Bette
Speaker 4: Midler's name. No need to come after her on the internet.
Speaker 4: Enjoy the rest of the episode.
Speaker 2: Goodbye, that's your reference.
Speaker 1: I was like, is Margaret gonna like name drop Arianna Grande?
Speaker 2: What's happening? No? No, I'm gonna name drop someone who
Speaker 2: hasn't been relevant to anyone besides like an old person
Speaker 2: sometimes getting confused by modern activist language and saying the
Speaker 2: wrong thing and then having everyone get mad, but is
Speaker 2: still a good person. Betty Midler wrote a song called
Speaker 2: the Wind Beneath My Wings or Your Wings or whatever.
Speaker 2: The fuck. I don't know. She's a singer, she's great.
Speaker 2: I don't know if she's great as a singer or not.
Speaker 2: It's not my cup of tea, but she fucking saved
Speaker 2: the day along with some other people. She had been
Speaker 2: a New York City activist for decades. At that point,
Speaker 2: she was heavily involved a supporting game end during the
Speaker 2: AIDS crisis. In nineteen ninety five, she founded the New
Speaker 2: York Restoration Project a trust which went to that auction
Speaker 2: and bought sixty of the one hundred and fourteen community
Speaker 2: gardens and put them into a trust. And a trust
Speaker 2: is a way more secure thing than the green Thumb
Speaker 2: program with like the month a month leases and shit
Speaker 2: like that. I think Middler herself put millions of dollars
Speaker 2: into that. Another fifty two were purchased by another trust.
Speaker 2: The total cost of buying a one hundred and twelve
Speaker 2: out of one hundred and fourteen was like four point
Speaker 2: two million or something. That people raised, and these are
Speaker 2: probably still the most legally protected community gardens in New
Speaker 2: York City, the ones that are in these trusts.
Speaker 3: That makes me very happy.
Speaker 2: I know Juliani, though, would not be deterred, so he
Speaker 2: put another six hundred up for auction, and I lose
Speaker 2: track of the ins and outs of each garden at
Speaker 2: this point. Many of them ended up bulldozed, many of
Speaker 2: them ended up being saved, and a lot of that
Speaker 2: saving wasn't just rich philanthropists, which is don't get me wrong,
Speaker 2: thank you, Betty Midler. One group that was involved in
Speaker 2: that fight was a Puerto Rican direct action and squatters
Speaker 2: group called Charis, which is an acronym for the first
Speaker 2: initials of its founders. They squatted a place with some
Speaker 2: former Black Panthers in nineteen seventy nine, and then they
Speaker 2: left it in exchange for being given a different building. Basically,
Speaker 2: the city was like, oh, fuck, not that one here.
Speaker 2: Do you want this empty schoolhouse instead? And they're like, yes,
Speaker 2: we'll take this empty school whose which they built into
Speaker 2: the Elboheo Community Center, which means the Hut. It is
Speaker 2: a five story former public school. That community center they
Speaker 2: ran as a community center. They taught classes, they lent
Speaker 2: out bicycles, they offered meeting space. A ton of local
Speaker 2: theater companies practiced in that space for years. In nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety eight, a Giuliani supporter bought it for three point
Speaker 2: one five million dollars and then didn't do anything with it,
Speaker 2: and it is still empty as of twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna throw it.
Speaker 2: However, during the auction, a group called Jiminy Cricket released
Speaker 2: ten thousand live crickets into the auditorium at the police Place.
Speaker 3: Awesome, Okay, that's great.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And Charis fought for community gardens. One of the
Speaker 2: founders was this guy named Armando per who was born
Speaker 2: in Puerto Rico, moved to New York when he was younger.
Speaker 2: If you want to hear a whole bunch of really
Speaker 2: amazing stuff that Puerto Rican New York New Aurekans that
Speaker 2: I think they would call themselves got up to. We
Speaker 2: did a four parter our first four part about the
Speaker 2: Young Lord's movement that did amazing things. Armando Perez was
Speaker 2: murdered in nineteen ninety nine in a murder that people
Speaker 2: tend to assume was a political hit because of his
Speaker 2: fight against development. It's also possible that he was killed
Speaker 2: by some folks who are dealing drugs that he confronted
Speaker 2: about dealing drugs, which apparently would have been in character
Speaker 2: for him too. The most telling line in the New
Speaker 2: York Times article about his death is quote, because mister
Speaker 2: Perez had been drinking, the police did not initially treat
Speaker 2: his death as a homicide. Fuck, yeah, is this bad? Yeah?
Speaker 3: It's just bad. Also means cops, I have no numbers
Speaker 3: on this, but like, there have to be a sick
Speaker 3: in a number of people when homicides happen that are
Speaker 3: drunk on both sides.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I would I would presume a majority of
Speaker 2: people who kill and or are killed in fights. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I assume alcohol is involved in an awful lot of
Speaker 2: these things, right, Yeah, And so for it was like
Speaker 2: months before they found anyone and started like the police
Speaker 2: found anyone and started like reporting on it at all.
Speaker 2: And I think that they like went and tracked some
Speaker 2: people down because of people starting to be like, y'all
Speaker 2: put a hit on him, And it's possible that that happened.
Speaker 2: It's also possible that he was confronting. He apparently was
Speaker 2: known for trying to convince people that they should not
Speaker 2: be dealing drugs on the project building where his wife lived.
Speaker 2: But La Plaza Cultural de Amando Perez is one community
Speaker 2: garden that's still around in the East Village and it's
Speaker 2: named after him. Charis first started that garden in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy six. It wasn't named after him. To start, it
Speaker 2: was like all the groups coming together to start that garden.
Speaker 2: You had the green gorilla seed bombing it for them,
Speaker 2: and Charis was like really into geodesic domes. This is
Speaker 2: some seventy shit that you probably had to be there, right.
Speaker 3: I fell into like a rabbit hole about geodesic domes yesterday.
Speaker 2: Oh amazing.
Speaker 3: There's like a whole thing of like there's like a
Speaker 3: I was on the off grid living Stubreddit and there's
Speaker 3: like a whole thing just about like various things you
Speaker 3: can do with geodesic domes. I didn't know they went
Speaker 3: back that far.
Speaker 2: Buckminster Fuller showed, who's the guy who like popularized them,
Speaker 2: showed up personally to help them build one on this
Speaker 2: garden when it was not legal, and when was that
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy six.
Speaker 3: I thought these were like a thing that started in
Speaker 3: like the night. That's crazy.
Speaker 2: No, see yah, some hippie shit. Yeah, that's so sick. Yeah, no,
Speaker 2: it's it's it's cool. And like I remember actually during
Speaker 2: Occupy there was some I was part of Occupy Santa
Speaker 2: Cruz and those people who are like really into geodesic domes.
Speaker 2: There's so they like built one as they like place
Speaker 2: in the occupation and stuff. It was cool. I like
Speaker 2: don't get it, but I think it's cool when people
Speaker 2: have liked their thing, and I just get really excited
Speaker 2: for them, you know, Yeah, and I want to hear
Speaker 2: more about it. Yeah, the fights to defend all these
Speaker 2: community gardens in the nineties and the early aughts were creative,
Speaker 2: theatrical and confrontational, which was the style at the time.
Speaker 2: It's kind of the stuff that built into I'm sure
Speaker 2: there are other things that built into it, but it
Speaker 2: built into the alter anti globalization movement of the late
Speaker 2: nineties and early aughts, which set up a ton of
Speaker 2: the protest culture around the world that we still have today.
Speaker 2: All of the like horizontal direct action, like theatrical protest
Speaker 2: movement stuff that's been going on all over the world.
Speaker 2: A lot of that comes from the anti globe era stuff,
Speaker 2: and this stuff immediately preceded that and then tied into it.
Speaker 2: And it just makes me happy that it like when
Speaker 2: I find these like lineages that then carry all over
Speaker 2: the world. There's an article about this particular fight written
Speaker 2: by Civil Eats in twenty twenty two. Quote. At the
Speaker 2: height of the protests, as a city was preparing to
Speaker 2: bulldoze the East Village's Esperanza Garden, organizers built a structure
Speaker 2: shaped like a cookie, a small tree, frog, and a
Speaker 2: cultural symbol of Puerto Rico, with enough room for five people,
Speaker 2: so we slept in it every night, said Bill de Payola,
Speaker 2: a longtime community organizer amid a court battle to prevent
Speaker 2: the auctioning of gardens. He recalls how the city bulldozed
Speaker 2: the land in two thousand and one with the help
Speaker 2: of the police, forcing out one hundred protesters. And so
Speaker 2: they did all of this, like civil disobedience and all
Speaker 2: these things to try and protect these While they were
Speaker 2: also working in the courts, the green guerrillas would like
Speaker 2: dress up as vegetables and raid city hall. Folks kept
Speaker 2: starting new gardens. One of the best articles about all
Speaker 2: of this was written by an anarchist journalist named Brad
Speaker 2: Will who was and it was written in I want
Speaker 2: to say these articles written in two thousand and one
Speaker 2: and two thousand and six. Brad Will was murdered by
Speaker 2: the Mexican government while covering the teachers uprising in Ohaka
Speaker 2: in two thousand and six. He filmed his own death,
Speaker 2: he wrote down at the Fifth Street squat, which I
Speaker 2: think is where he was living at the time. We
Speaker 2: cleared out the adjacent lot of rubble, drunk carts, piss, bottles,
Speaker 2: and rot. We started a green space. The neighborhood kids
Speaker 2: ran wild between the fragile beds. The nuns from the
Speaker 2: Cambrini old folks Home came across the street to praise
Speaker 2: our goodly green emergence. The year before they had been
Speaker 2: lobbying for our viction like because so basically, the nuns
Speaker 2: didn't like the squad and then they opened a garden
Speaker 2: and now the nuns are like, hey, these squaders are cool.
Speaker 2: He went and taught Earth First blockade techniques to the
Speaker 2: gardeners at the Chico Mendez Mural Garden and they set
Speaker 2: up barricades and they named it Fort Chico. It was
Speaker 2: eventually bulldozed. Activists were doing things like chaining themselves across
Speaker 2: the street. And it was like all of these techniques
Speaker 2: that have been developed and forced defence and by Earth
Speaker 2: First brought into community garden defense in the middle of
Speaker 2: one of the densest cities in the country. And it,
Speaker 2: I don't know, makes me happy. Because in two thousand
Speaker 2: and two the movement one again, sort of four hundred
Speaker 2: or five hundred gardens depending on your source were transferred
Speaker 2: into the Green Thumb program, while one hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: were developed. And I have no clean and clever transition
Speaker 2: from this sentence into an ad and yet I'm doing
Speaker 2: it anyway, because now here's ads and we're back. So
Speaker 2: basically what happened is right. So these four hundred five
Speaker 2: hundred gardens are now part of that Green Thumb program,
Speaker 2: and this is the one where it's like a month
Speaker 2: a month lease where they can get fucked over at
Speaker 2: any time. But it still was the like they were
Speaker 2: about to all be destroyed. And now they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's like safe until we specifically come up with reasons
Speaker 2: why we want the land, you know. Yeah, And the
Speaker 2: Green Thumb gardens are precarious. Disaster capitalism, for example, took
Speaker 2: out a Coney Island community garden. It had been running
Speaker 2: for years and having green space actually mitigated some of
Speaker 2: the worst flooding from Hurricane Sandy in twenty twelve. That
Speaker 2: it destroyed a whole bunch of that area well, and
Speaker 2: it buried the storm buried it Undersand I wonder if
Speaker 2: they knew that when they named it Sandy. Anyway, the storm,
Speaker 2: the community came together immediately and restored the garden, and
Speaker 2: then the mayor was like, yeah, but what if we
Speaker 2: put a music venue here? And the gardeners watched their
Speaker 2: work bulldozed in twenty thirteen. The death cycle of the
Speaker 2: community garden is the cycle of gentrification. An area gets
Speaker 2: poor and is neglected and often winds up trashed. Community
Speaker 2: residents clean up that trash and beautify the neighborhood, which
Speaker 2: invites new wealthier residents, which displaces people who cleaned up
Speaker 2: the neighborhood. Eventually, the property is too valuable to leave vacant,
Speaker 2: and the people who move there because of gardens are
Speaker 2: no longer there. This is the cycle we see. Like,
Speaker 2: you know, artists move to a place because it's affordable,
Speaker 2: and then richer artists move there, and then all the
Speaker 2: artists have to leave and whatever, you know, to quote
Speaker 2: Robert Gottlieb, writing for the MIT Press, quote in a
Speaker 2: neoliberal age, private property, Trump's community benefits once private owners
Speaker 2: and sometimes public entities decide that the land value has improved,
Speaker 2: often due to the community gardens, and that development can proceed.
Speaker 2: Gardens are plowed under, even when developments are then postponed,
Speaker 2: with the former gardens sometimes reverting to public land, and
Speaker 2: of course recuperation comes for us. All there's now a
Speaker 2: real estate company that I'm not going to name that.
Speaker 2: In twenty fourteen, trademarked the term agrihoods for agricultural neighborhoods,
Speaker 2: and then I need you to unsay that. Thank you,
Speaker 2: thank you, thank you, yep. For the low cost of
Speaker 2: half a million bucks or five million bucks, in the
Speaker 2: right neighborhood, you can buy a house around a centrally
Speaker 2: planned farm with composting in solar panels. Isn't that exciting?
Speaker 3: You can just do that, you know, you could just
Speaker 3: do that with I was saying five million dollars.
Speaker 2: The next sentence in my script is, honey, I used
Speaker 2: to live in a solar powered cabin with composting toilets.
Speaker 2: That cost me about five thousand dollars. And it annoys
Speaker 2: me because the idea of an agrihood is a good one.
Speaker 2: It is closer to the way that humans develop to live.
Speaker 2: And there are like people trying to do this but good.
Speaker 2: There's a nonprofit that runs an agricultural neighborhood in Detroit
Speaker 2: where the meati the in home value is under twenty
Speaker 2: five thousand dollars and is run by a guy born
Speaker 2: and raised in the neighborhood whose grandmother lived in that neighborhood.
Speaker 2: People living there share tools and can harvest whatever they
Speaker 2: want from the farm once a week, and that's like
Speaker 2: the tech billionaires get all the stuff that we should
Speaker 2: all just have, that we develop as ways to live
Speaker 2: despite being poor, and then they're like, oh, we want
Speaker 2: all that stuff. It seems classy and interesting, like all
Speaker 2: the fucking boho chic stuff, which whatever I mean it.
Speaker 2: I'm not above like making farmhouse style furniture because you
Speaker 2: can make it out of two by four us. But
Speaker 2: I guess I am above paying ten thousand dollars for
Speaker 2: farmhouse style furniture. Yeah, that sounds right, ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: Furniture should be old as shit and really interesting in
Speaker 2: card with ornate, weird scenes. That's my one day. I'm
Speaker 2: going to start an interior design show and no one
Speaker 2: will listen to it, but I'll be happy.
Speaker 3: I think it'll be a really great counterweight to Chip
Speaker 3: and Joanna Gains. Yeah that is Oh wait, sorry I
Speaker 3: got I'm like I got.
Speaker 2: The response trans later. Yeah. Please. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it will be original, that's the thing. It'll be
Speaker 1: original and goth.
Speaker 3: It won't be the people that do all of the
Speaker 3: barn doors.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it will be the same house over and over
Speaker 1: and over again. There won't be barn doors. A big
Speaker 1: clock and a sign that says, yeah, basically gray floors.
Speaker 1: Gray floors.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, but they were all you said gray not great.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, it was like great gray floors not great.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah yeah, because a great floor system, but it
Speaker 2: shouldn't be gray. You can get a nice It's.
Speaker 1: This Magpie, really Magpie really knows how to pick like
Speaker 1: a faucet fixture and like cool mirrors and like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, don't you have like a swan fawcet fixture
Speaker 1: or something fantom?
Speaker 2: Yeah, all my sinks. I put in black Swans as
Speaker 2: the fawcet fixtures, including the like weird basement bathroom that's
Speaker 2: covered in graffiti that when people come over, I like
Speaker 2: hand them paint markers until them to because I you
Speaker 2: know whatever. Anyway, Yeah, I really like interior decorating.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm redecorating right now with Facebook Marketplace, and it's
Speaker 3: hell improved my space so well that.
Speaker 2: Is the only good thing left about Facebook, or maybe
Speaker 2: it was the only good thing ever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like I don't use Facebook at all. I actually
Speaker 3: had to create an account to use Facebook Marketplace. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's all I use it for is Facebook Marketplace. I
Speaker 3: got this bang and chair, this ikea like prolong chair
Speaker 3: or whatever for you know, good price. Just picked it
Speaker 3: up from a roll that was moving, and now it's
Speaker 3: my cat's favorite for best friend.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that is you can have nice stuff by
Speaker 2: doing things with people instead of whatever. I'm supposed to
Speaker 2: tie this into a.
Speaker 3: People that can afford it by it and then you know,
Speaker 3: you give it to someone else instead of throwing it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And so as of last year, there's still five
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty community gardens in New York City, seven
Speaker 2: hundred school gardens, seven hundred gardens on public housing, and
Speaker 2: one hundred gardens in the land trusts. And that's fucking cool.
Speaker 2: And that is because of the work that people did
Speaker 2: for years, but especially in the late nineties and the
Speaker 2: early odds. It's the people who dressed up like tomatoes
Speaker 2: and ran into city Hall, the people who released crickets,
Speaker 2: the people who locked down to things, the people who
Speaker 2: wrote hit songs that you all don't appreciate and then
Speaker 2: donated money. And the gardens still exist and they still
Speaker 2: do essential work. For example, rather than shut down during
Speaker 2: COVID despite being ordered to, gardeners formed the Bronx Community
Speaker 2: Farm Hubs to grow and donate food to places that
Speaker 2: needed it. They gave away forty three thousand pounds of
Speaker 2: food in twenty twenty, then one hundred and sixty two
Speaker 2: thousand pounds of food, and twenty twenty one then they
Speaker 2: also just started feeding people, but then Green Thumb shut
Speaker 2: them down for that because they were like, couldn't social
Speaker 2: distance properly or whatever, even though it's all outside and
Speaker 2: they regularly donate to community fridges. Also, I know, it's
Speaker 2: just like I love these legacy projects that are still
Speaker 2: around because of the work that people did. These gardens
Speaker 2: help compost the city's waste. The governor recently cut all
Speaker 2: the compost programs funding, but a private, anonymous donation kept
Speaker 2: it going. I assume, as Betty Midler, the nonprofit Grow
Speaker 2: NYC runs fifty two food drop offs and composts eight
Speaker 2: point three million pounds of organic waste every year. And
Speaker 2: I don't know there's You could also tie this story
Speaker 2: back to Detroit, where their entire urban farms that grew
Speaker 2: up after white flight and the oil crisis left the
Speaker 2: city derelict. And one day we'll talk about them too,
Speaker 2: but we're not going to talk about today because today
Speaker 2: we're out of script. I'm at the end of it,
Speaker 2: because I did the thing that I was going to
Speaker 2: do and now it's the end of this episode.
Speaker 3: And that's what I loved hearing aboutmmunity gardens. I learned
Speaker 3: a lot, and I think that there's be more of them,
Speaker 3: and I'm going to try to figure out ways to
Speaker 3: actively get involved in one nearby me.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, yeah, no. I if I lived in the
Speaker 2: city at this point, I would absolutely be looking for
Speaker 2: this kind of thing because it's fucking cool and it's
Speaker 2: you know, they're not always like a lot of them
Speaker 2: are open to the public and that you can like
Speaker 2: go and walk around like being the pretty ones or whatever,
Speaker 2: but like you know, they're often people working specific plots
Speaker 2: and you can't necessarily just like immediately start having one.
Speaker 2: But they're worth defending and being involved with. But what
Speaker 2: else is worth being involved with is your content. In
Speaker 2: the plugs section of the episode.
Speaker 3: You can find my YouTube channel and my TikTok online
Speaker 3: it's kat m aboo abu like a monkey in Aladdin.
Speaker 3: I also have other social media. You can find it
Speaker 3: on a link tree because there are so many and
Speaker 3: they have different names. Additionally, I just got laid off
Speaker 3: from media matters. I'm good, but I have a lot
Speaker 3: of really great colleagues that are looking for work and
Speaker 3: if we have funds for them in the future, I'll
Speaker 3: make sure to keep you all updated on that. So
Speaker 3: please keep an eye out and follow them and hire
Speaker 3: them if you have a job that's open.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, And I'm on a bunch of things. You
Speaker 2: can follow me on Instagram Marder Kiljoy. You can follow
Speaker 2: me on ex at Magpie Killjoy and oh god, I
Speaker 2: just said X and ironically.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was like, wow, that was really impressive. I
Speaker 3: don't know, it's an impressive derogatory.
Speaker 2: No, it's yeah, brains wormed me so. But more importantly,
Speaker 2: I have a book coming out this fall in September
Speaker 2: twenty fourth from Feminist Press. It's called The Sapling Cage
Speaker 2: and it's a young adult book about transwitch who saves
Speaker 2: the world from a magical enclosure of the commons. It
Speaker 2: does not don't worry, it does not say a magical
Speaker 2: inclues the comments anywhere in the book. I'm it's more
Speaker 2: fun than that. And it is being kickstartered in June
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty four. And if you look up The
Speaker 2: Sapling Cage Margaret Kiljoy or whatever. I'm sure you can
Speaker 2: figure out how to find the kickstarter page and you
Speaker 2: can sign up there to get information about when that
Speaker 2: kickstarter lunches so you can get copies of it. And
Speaker 2: I'm really excited about it's the best book I've ever written,
Speaker 2: and I have written a good number of books, and
Speaker 2: so that's saying something. Well, I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 2: all my books could be trash, but I think they're good.
Speaker 2: And Sophie, you got anything like, is there any new
Speaker 2: podcasts coming out from her network?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we got two relatively new podcasts. One is Better Offline,
Speaker 1: hosted by ed Zitron. It's a weekly sometimes twice weekly
Speaker 1: podcast about the tech world and why it's so fucked
Speaker 1: up and how it impacts everybody's lives. The other is
Speaker 1: a podcast hosted by my best friend Jamie Loftist called
Speaker 1: Sixteenth Minute of Fame weekly podcast.
Speaker 3: It looks back at some.
Speaker 1: Of the Internet's main characters and how their viral moments
Speaker 1: affected their lives and our lives. So, if you haven't
Speaker 1: listened already, we have two really great episodes that just
Speaker 1: just came out recently about the dress that was white
Speaker 1: and gold. Sorry, and about the Boston slide.
Speaker 2: Cop Oft slid down the slide.
Speaker 1: And went off walk and then it went as all
Speaker 1: over the internet and it's a really great episode and
Speaker 1: it's super interesting to check that out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I listened to both those podcasts. I like everything
Speaker 2: cool Zone Media does. I know that, and you know
Speaker 2: that I'm not chilling because when I have to say ads,
Speaker 2: I look like someone just hit me in the face.
Speaker 2: But I actually like all cool Zone Media's content. And
Speaker 2: better offline is Angry Tech podcast and nothing that Jamie
Speaker 2: Loftis records as bad and this one's particularly good. So
Speaker 2: next week you can hear more Cool People Who Did
Speaker 2: Cool Stuff by listening to it. That's all I got.
Speaker 3: Yay Yay.
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3: For more podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 1: Coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.