Tiny surfing tender at Mollusk

I'm not much of a surfer, but I still enjoy hip surf shops which often feel more like art galleries than retail outlets. This interesting little boat is located in Mollusk Surf Shop, a few blocks from Ocean Beach in my Outer Sunset neighborhood. While the boat probably wouldn't survive the nearby surf it's elegant design, woodwork and glasswork look great in the shop.

Design Elements: Unique planters

Denim jeans re-purposed as eye-catching planters in San Francisco's Western Addition neighborhood.

Outdoor screening of TINY in downtown San Francisco

Last night I enjoyed an outdoor screening of the entertaining short film TINY - A Story About Living Small in a downtown San Francisco alley. The film, which recently premiered at SXSW 2013, was sponsored by the community nonprofit SPUR and is part of the upcoming SF Green Film Fest (which includes a number of intriguing films). Squeezed into a narrow alley amongst tall downtown buildings with an almost-full-moon in the background and a SolMan portable solar generator powering everything, we watched the story of a couple building and living in a tiny home.

I was selfishly hoping the movie would be a how-to about building a tiny home, but that probably wouldn't appeal to the general public. Instead, it's an interesting look at the ups and downs of building and living in a tiny home as well as brief interviews with a variety of people involved in tiny homes. It's actually a great introduction to tiny homes for anyone either unfamiliar or just starting to consider them. The screening even concluded with a Sundance-style panel discussion where the filmmakers along with Jay Shafer answered audience questions.

Filmmakers and tiny home builders Christopher Smith & Merete Mueller with SolMan solar generator to the left

"Tiny Cabin, Giant View"

I'm fortunate that both my parents continue to clip out and send me interesting articles from the various publications they read. I particularly enjoyed a recent Wall Street Journal article about a tiny, idyllic cabin in the Sierra Nevada mountains outside Tahoe. Snowboarder Mike Basich built his home from granite stones and wood he collected from his property and milled himself. The off-grid cabin, which is several miles from the road, also boasts a fire-heated hot tub and his own personal ski lift. Impressive and inspiring!

Tiny Snapshot

While skiing Canyons Resort this past Monday I enjoyed seeing the collection of tiny buildings scattered around the mid-mountain area. They help make the area feel like a friendly little Alpine village.

Tiny home goes skiing

There are a lot of tiny home videos that showcase the structure or highlight parts of the construction, which can be an invaluable resource for future tiny home builders. However, one of the aspects often missing from these videos is the passion for whatever the tiny home enables: art, music, travel or, in this case, skiing/snowboarding. People are drawn to tiny homes for a wide variety of reasons, but one of the most common motivations I've seen is a desire to focus on things for which the owner is passionate while avoiding the financial and psychological encumbrances which "traditional home" ownership may present. To be sure, this professionally produced piece will no doubt appeal to anyone, like me, who loves skiing and the epic skiing footage found in Warren Miller films. It also, however, effectively conveys the notion that the real benefit is not the tiny home itself, but the journey and the experiences and relationships the home enables.

Outdoor Research and others sponsor extreme skiers Molly Baker and Zack Giffin and helped produce this video as well as well as the Tiny House Tour episodes. Fortunately, the commercialization is relatively subtle. Actually, I think it's great to see a reputable company like OR indirectly promote tiny homes on their home page even if the end goal is simply to sell more clothing and gear. Design decisions may have been informed by the tiny home's role as a maximum-occupancy ski hut and branding opportunity. Curiously, there is no bathroom or shower, but that may be because they needed the space to accommodate five adults (cameramen included). The beautiful little wood-burning stove is probably great for drying ski gear, but the stove's footprint, including clearance from the walls, can make it impractical for many tiny home owners. The element I particularly like, though, is the unique stairs going to the loft. The woodwork is magnificent, yet the stairs are simple, sleek and keep the room open instead of acting as a barrier. The stairs look like they function effectively as seats or temporary spots for gear or drinks.

Sidebar: Warren Miller was a pioneer of documentary ski films starting with Deep and Light in 1949. He produced, directed and narrated his films until 1988 and remained involved until 2004. Interestingly, he got his start in the 1940's while living in a trailer at a ski resort (Sun Valley) parking lot, not unlike Molly and Zack.

Plastic bag bans, health, and the environment

I was very proud when San Francisco in 2007 became one of the first major cities to ban plastic checkout bags. Lightweight and durable, they're almost irresistibly convenient, but these same characteristics make single-use plastic bags so pernicious in marine environments where they persist beyond our lifetimes, traveling currents and endangering marine life. Reusable grocery bags seem like a no-brainer, but continuing buzz based on a couple of university studies now has us concerned reusable bags harbor potentially harmful bacteria. Let's forget the questionable methodology and conflict of interests (one study was funded by the plastic-bag-friendly American Chemistry Council), and assume reusable grocery bags, like just about anything that touches food, can potentially harbor bacteria. Fortunately, it's actually fairly simple to eliminate any threat freeloading bacteria might pose through cleaning (by hand or machine) or by simply letting the inside out bag sit in the sun for a few hours.

While bacteria can generally be managed with a dollop of vigilance, the reusable bag proposition becomes more complex when you consider their production. For example, cotton bags may be biodegradable, but their production requires resource-intensive cotton: an interesting British study found that cotton bags require 131 uses to equal the global warming impact of conventional plastic bags. Repurposing containers as grocery bags is the ideal. The truly committed can even knit their own reusable bag from discarded plastic bags. The bottom line is we should consider the entire life-cycle of reusable bags including production, use/cleaning, and disposal. Beyond that it's a matter of personal preferences and habits: if it's easier to store and bring a certain type of bag on a consistent basis then it's probably a good choice.