As usual, in no particular order:

• Today is Wednesday, and for those who try and eat local, enjoy the sense of community that comes with just being present, it’s the Union Street Farmers Market. Good music, good friends, dancing, hula-hooping, and did we mention fresh, locally grown, locally made food?
• Anyone interested in an indiegainesville shirt? E-mail us!
  Have an idea for a design or want to help us? E-mail us!
  (Repetitive much?)
• ArtWalk Gainesville is Friday! Excited? So are we. You can find the map here.
• If you weren’t aware, on Fridays, a hate group that’s a spin-off from a certain church  that may be better known for their “burn the Qur’an” hoopla (we are not naming either groups on purpose)  tends to be downtown Friday.
  One of us had our young children with us when we were told “You’re going to hell” and then later, “We feel sorry for your children.”
  And we, yours.
  But it’s their First Amendment Right to be. . . . like that.
  And why do we love Gainesville? Some awesome citizens organized a counter protest to fight the unwarranted hate with love. We cannot encourage you enough to check out: Jesus’ Love Bomb. Support them! Dress up! Spread love!
  After all, indiegainesville is not about hate.
• On a more somber note, Veterans for Peace will be displaying more than 6,000 tombstones from dawn on May 26 through dusk on Memorial Day on Eighth Avenue just east of 34th Street as part of their Memorial Day Weekend event to remember those who have died in the wars in Afghanistan since 2001 and in Iraq since 2003. Please take the time to do the walk, to read the names of those who have died, no matter the weather. This is such a moving exhibition, and we thank Veterans for Peace in advance.
• Many of you have been talking to us about this story: County kills referendum on transit surtax.
  If you aren’t aware of what’s going on, read the article. And as always, feel free to discuss in the comments below.
• Have you been able to eat a little more local throughout the month of May? Regardless of your answer, we’ll be at the 2012 Eat Local Challenge Community Celebration. Do we have to bribe you? There will be local ice cream…and you know it’s going to be hot this Sunday!
  We do hope you plan on trying to eat local–we know we will!

Life is short. Live local, support independent businesses. Love your community.
See you around!

The following was sent to us by a dear friend and supporter of ours. We thought it worthwhile to share. (We added the image.)

5/21/2012

Dear Michaels:

The following is why I won’t be patronizing Michaels, and why I will tell my art students to go elsewhere.

I teach art at the University of Florida and also run my own arts school here in Gainesville, FL. I know a lot of my students frequent Michaels. I am eager to make that experience worth their while as artists.

Today I tried to go to the local Michaels store to make a personal connection, to discuss my school and my classes with someone, to maybe put up a flier, to discuss the kinds of art materials I tend to put on my required materials list.

No one was helpful in allowing me to feel anything else but a Michaels consumer code. Though the assistant manager, filing in while the manager was away, did discuss with me the fact that all the art supply ordering is done by computer at a higher-than-store level, and that they have no influence over the process. I believe he would have helped me if he could, but clearly the Michaels rules are otherwise.

An art student should have a relationship with his or her art supplies, and especially with his or her art supply store. An art students should be able to have conversations -not just be guided towards a sale- with knowledgable retail staff, who gain some of their knowledge from the working artists in the community. If an artist or art instructor visits the store at recommends a material not currently for sale, a wise retailer would consider whether or not his or her customers, whom he/she knows personally, might be interested in them and order some and discuss them accordingly.

The Michaels system does not allow this. It stifles dialogue between artist and retailer.

Additionally, there is no place in Michaels to advertise or promote an outside arts or crafts class. Michaels seems to have no in interest in doing this. This is ridiculous.

Why is this ridiculous? An art store should be a part of an arts community. A community which has a free-flow of ideas between artists, art students, art stores, art schools, etc. Part of this free-flow of ideas is a bulletin board of nearby art classes posted at the art store, as well as a public and shared belief at the art schools that the stores share an interest in what goes on in their classrooms.

The current model of stonewalling managers and ordering computers breaks the chain of this dialogue. It removes Michaels from the chain of community. For Michaels, there seems to be the Michaels community and none other. Or it seems that if Michaels is a part of the Gainesville, FL community, it will be on the company headquarters’ terms.

When I began teaching in town, I visited the local art supply store, Central Florida Office Plus (CFOP). I mentioned a paper I was fond of that they didn’t stock. The employee ordered some on his own will to test out with his clientele. It sold successfully, and now they regularly stock it.

I will tell my students to go this store, to try supplies and to talk with the staff. I in turn will go to CFOP myself to discuss new materials that have come my way, or see what they have recently stocked that I don’t know about.

I can’t do this at Michaels. Students will not have a personal relationship there. The Michaels corporation does not want to be a part of the local arts community. This is why I will tell my students not to go there.

I’m guessing the corporate nature of this store system is good for the profits, so I wish you well with those.

Yours sincerely,

Tom Hart
Instructor, University of Florida,
Director, Sequential Artists Workshop
Gainesville, FL

• Feel like signing a petition? Check out this, then.
  More than one indiegainesville supporter and friend has boarded pets at the kennel.
  We think this is a worthy cause.
• Today is, of course, the vastly popular Union Street Market. Rain or shine, come on out. We’ll be there. And afterwards you can check out. . . .
• The American Craft Beer Week Downtown Pub Crawl with Swamp Head. What an economy-saving event!
  Why—well, did you miss our post about . . .
• Can Beer Save America? (good read, folks, good read!)

See you downtown soon!

Can Beer Save America?
(The entire article is worth the read. Thanks to MA for the tip.)

Though thinly veiled as a mechanism for better drinkability, the new “punch-top” can is obviously developed as the first specifically engineered to shotgun beer — that is, specifically designed to drink beer in a way that makes sure you don’t actually taste the beer. The unique selling proposition of the campaign is incredibly blatant in its embrace of the low-price/high-volume model: It is screaming at you to buy the cheap product exclusively because everything about it — the beer and even the can — is aimed at helping you pour it into your body without even having to taste or savor it. In this “punch top” innovation, Miller is effectively acknowledging that its customer base is those who drink only for volume — and it’s trying to thus convince more beer enthusiasts that speed drinking is a virtue.

The craft brewing industry, by contrast, is going in the opposite direction, trying to direct the beer-drinking population away from volume for volume’s sake. Visit a liquor store with a wide selection of microbrews and you’ll find an ever-more diverse selection of specialized offerings, from double IPAs to sour beers to barley wines. Notably, many of these products are sold in smaller sizes — four-packs or single pint-size bombers — making their price-per-ounce of beer far higher than the typical macrobrew. Additionally, what innovations the industry has made to beer technology tend to be fundamentally different from those of the macrobrew companies: They tend to be aimed at making the beer itself actually taste better (best example: Left Hand’s breakthrough creation of a bottled, widget-free milk stout on nitro).

In the competition for the future of drinking, both sides are obviously trying to exploit their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. The massive macrobrewing corporations are trying to take advantage of their size and corresponding ability to produce volume — all while playing down the fact that their beers have little local character or quality. The craft brewing industry, composed mostly of independent small and medium-size businesses, know they can’t compete in a volume game, and so they are trying to promote quality and diversity. It’s a straightforward fight — one that may seem only interesting to drinkers, but one that truly transcends the inebriation industry. It underscores both consumer shifts and questions about what kind of economy we want in the future.

Will we be a country of high volume and low quality? Or can we become an economy of quality and price premium? Whether it’s drinking, buying computers or choosing what industrial policy to support, we are in the process of answering those questions.

A Macrobrew Economy — a high-volume, low-price model — asks us to compete with other such economies throughout the world, and the problem is that countries like China will always have lower-priced labor, more lax environmental regulations and lower production standards to win a battle that rewards more and cheaper for more’s and cheaper’s sake. By contrast, a Craft Brew Economy — a high-quality, lower-volume model — is a different proposition. It follows the German model, which, as Time magazine notes, is all about being “committed to making the sort of high-quality, high-performance, innovative products for which the world will pay extra.”

The choice is ours — and it starts with the beer in your fridge.

Put on your thinking caps…

So we’re proud to share that Indie Gainesville and Dragonfly Graphics have joined forces for our latest contest: Dragonfly Graphics’ new slogan!Post submissions here, by commenting here.

Their next media exposure will honor the author of Dragonfly Graphics‘ winning slogan.

Joy Revels, CEO of Dragonfly Graphics, will judge.
Contest ends Friday May 25th.

• What: Inni by Sigur Rós
  When: Monday (tonight!) May 7th, 2012 from 7-10 pm (one showing at 7, one at 9)
  Where: The Hipp
  Trailer here: http://youtu.be/AyK7d8ENePY
• What: Terra Blight
  Info below:
  We hope you check at least one of these out and enjoy!

Lots has occupied us, but one very exciting, delicious event that’s kept us busy is our attempt to eat even more locally than we usually do. (To be honest, we usually are locavores.)

 Perhaps you missed it, but Tuesday ushered in the 5th Annual Eat Local challenge.

You can register and officially accept the challenge here. Or you can accept the challenge quietly, though the more who sign up, the better.

Suggested reading (aside from our previous blog posts about local food sources):

• WHY Eat Local
• “When you buy direct from local farmers, your dollars stay within your community, and strengthen the local economy. More than 90¢ of every dollar you spend goes to the farmer, thus preserving farming as a livelihood and farmland.^“
• 8 Reasons to Eat Locally
• And from the Gainesville Sun about our own Eat Local challenge–http://www.gainesville.com/article/20120424/articles/120429858

Of course, there are thousands of other reasons to eat locally. But if you’re reading this site, we’re willing to bet you’re a big supporter of independent businesses, including supporting local food sources.

Feel free to share with us how you support local food sources . . . We can’t wait to hear from you and we’ll see you at Sweet Dreams in a few weeks to celebrate what we, as a community, have accomplished!

Going to the Kick-off for the 2012 Eat Local challenge at the Co-op

Look for this sign throughout local grocery stores to help you eat local!

Everytime we're at the Co-op, he helps us out. You rock!

April showers bring early May flowers.

Luellabird's hot dog!
He DID enjoy the Eat Local Kickoff

Morningside on Saturday--hot but fun.

Goodies from Thrive Handicrafts

Stefanie Samara Hamblen (in blue), locavore extraordinaire, working the crowd despite the heat.

Gainesville Compost--check them out! (Yes, that is a finger at top. Pardon.)

The Smokin' Mullet gives mullet a good name (the fish, not the hairstyle).

Bamboo + iPad covers = Technology, naturally.