New Era Team Snap Backs - REUP!

Flavour just got a re-up of New Era sport snap backs along with the newest addition: Retro Vancouver Canucks! Fresh. As you can see in the picture below we've got a ton of hats in stock - fitted, flex fit & snap backs. G'yeah.

NEW ERA | Hockey & Baseball Snap Backs...

NEW ERA Snap Back Caps have arrived! A bunch of classic Hockey & Baseball caps to choose from. Only $29.99! Limited quantities, don't sleep.

Vintage Sport Jackets

Peep the dope vintage sport jackets we just brought in! All still in amazing condition and going fast (sold 2 today!) Limited edition ya'll. $49.99 each!

NASCAR Going Green?

I should admit up front that I am no NASCAR or Indy 500 fan, and that I have a limited understanding of the sport and what goes on at these events. What I do know is that race car driving is not only the single most popular spectator "sport" in America, but that it is also not exactly “environmentally friendly.” Enter Leilani Munter. I was listening to NPR a few weeks ago and heard the following interview with Leilani, a professional race car driver. As it turns out, not only is she one of a mere handful of women in this male dominated sport, but she is also an ardent environmentalist committed to doing everything she can to “green up” this carbon intensive activity.

Listen to the NPR interview here

Basically, Leilani has been an environmentalist her whole life. She is a longtime animal lover and vegetarian, and she didn’t even get into race car driving until after receiving a degree in biology (specializing in ecology) from UCSD. When she did finally get behind the wheel of a race car, it didn’t take her long to come to the conclusion that her environmental views were somewhat at odds with her new profession. However, instead of abandoning race car driving altogether, she decided to use her platform as an important figure in the nation’s number one spectator sport to help move it in a new direction. As Leilani says, “It's a hugely popular sport, and… you can't leave behind a hundred million race fans.”

Since she started speaking out, Leilani has definitely run into mixed reactions. “Some people were telling me that they… wanted to see more people talking about our environmental problems on the racing circuit. But then, there were also others that were… very negative and kind of saying I was brainwashed by Al Gore.” Even with the mixed reaction, Leilani is hopeful, saying that “the important thing that I tried to look at is that I was getting them talking about it… to go into a NASCAR forum and see them arguing and talking about global warming and talking about climate change… Those kinds of things weren't necessarily taking place in NASCAR forums before.”

But Leilani's general awesomeness doesn't end there. In addition to bringing awareness of the green movement to racing fans, Leilani is also opening the way for smaller, green businesses to advertise in the racetrack. The way sponsorships usually work (based on my extensive research ie. Google) is that one major company will sponsor a car, meaning that each car becomes a giant billboard for that one company. Leilani’s vision is to buck that trend by breaking her car up into several smaller sponsorships placements that mid-size green companies can afford, and to have the main spot on the race car reserved as a "call to action" message for race fans: “One of the messages I wanted to send was about CFL light bulbs, and I would like to run a race car that has a CFL label on the side of it… And then the next race we'd run something different. It might be a race car that says, no more paper, no more plastic, and then I can talk about the plastic bags and how many of them aren't getting recycled.”

And as if all that wasn't enough, Leilani is also trying to take her green message directly to the fans. Apparently, another aspect of the race car world that I was unaware of is that each driver gets some space at the racetrack to sell their merchandise. Usually, this means action figures, jerseys, hats and bobble head dolls. Not at Leilani’s booth: “I'm going to be selling CFL light bulbs and canvas grocery bags and just giving them tips on things that they can do to go green.”

While I still don’t personally understand what people find entertaining about cars going around a circle for five hours, and while there is absolutely no escaping the fact that car racing will be one of the most carbon intensive sports for some time to come, I can’t help but be inspired by one woman’s efforts to bring her passion to her work in a way that will (hopefully) get all of us a little closer to a sustainable planet.

Read all about Leilani's newest actions at her blog: carbonfreegirl.com

Image provided by Wikipedia

Las Vegas Goes XERISCAPE

We all know that Las Vegas is the least sustainable place on the planet west of Dubai. As a born and bred LA native however, I still have a special place in my heart for Vegas as the only spot north of the border to do certain “unmentionable things” that would probably get you arrested just about anywhere else.

For this reason, and because I still love making my way to this Mecca of debauchery once or twice a year to blow a couple hundred bucks on blackjack and AMAZING food, I always cheer when I hear about some new green project Vegas is working on. Whether through the massive solar initiative they are pushing or the stricter building codes now being enforced for environmental reasons, there are undoubtedly some bright green spots in the tale of Sin City.

The latest one however caught even me by surprise.

Of all the wasteful things Las Vegas is known for, one of the most wasteful is its expanse of lush golf courses. Few landscaping techniques require as much maintenance, and produce as much waste, as golf courses. Acres and acres of fairways and greens require hundreds of thousands of gallons of water a year, in addition to pounds of fertilizer and pesticides.

Enter Xeriscape (yeah, the name is pretty corny), a new way of designing golf courses meant to include as much local landscape in the layout as possible. In Vegas, this means losing some lush and beautiful (but unnecessary) decoration and fairway to rock and sand. It also means getting as much of your water as possible from greywater resources. A quick statistics on how much of a difference this makes:

Palm Valley

185 acres of turf – 34 acres replaced by xeriscape in 2002

Estimated water savings since then: 50 MILLION Gallons per year.

It may not be perfect (if they saved 50 million gallons a year by converting 34 acres, I wonder what the other 151 acres guzzles), but as there are few more perfect ways to spend a sunny day than out on the links with some good friends and good beer, it is definitely a step in the right direction.

Image provided by danperry.com

Japan Beats the US in Awesomeness Again

I like to tell people who don't live in my fair state that the best thing about California is the ability to wake up in the morning and go surfing, then head out to the mountains and go snowboarding, then cruise down to a lake and go wakeboarding, and still be home in time for dinner.

This awesome day is theoretically possible from just about anywhere in the state, but it carries a rather large carbon footprint, and you would still spend less time enjoying all these fun activities than you would driving from one to the next. Probably why this sentiment is more descriptive than it is literal.

Enter some Japanese train wizards, who are planning on making a feat of this sort not just greener, but actually practical.

According to this article in the Los Angeles Times, Japan plans to build a train by 2025 that will get a passenger from Nagoya to Tokyo (a trip of about 220 miles) in less than 40 minutes. That's right - they expect this train to travel at more than 300 miles an hour.

What up US inventors! Why are we letting the Japanese leave us in the dust with this crazy amazing train! If we brought this tecnhology to California, I could wake up for an early morning surf session at Ocean Beach, change, and hop on abullet train to Northstar in time for first tracks! Hell, at those speeds, I could leave the slopes at noon to hit LA for some early afternoon waves, and STILL make it back to SF in time for dinner.

Wait a minute - That some train from LA to Vegas would only take an hour? Might need to take a rain check on that dinner back home...

The Green Dude

As this is my first post, I thought it might be appropriate to make it an "About Me" post. You can see this same thing on my blogger profile, but what the heck you know? Anyway, this is my story and I'm stickin' to it.

I’m an environmentalist and proud to say it. I also love some things (read: many things) that aren’t good for the environment. This does not make me a bad person. It doesn’t even make me a bad environmentalist. Living a more sustainable life doesn’t mean not lusting after fast cars and juicy burgers; it means supporting the coolest new green technologies in our rides and making sure that when we do eat a burger, it’s grass fed and not pumped full of hormones. It means I can love snowboarding, waterskiing, and mountain biking, while understanding and accepting that there are certain places I shouldn’t bring my board, my boat or my bike. Most importantly, it means that I can continue to love doing the things I love doing, while consciously trying to do them sustainably.