Category: On the Detour

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Editorial On the Detour Vermont

Inconceivable Style: Condom Jewelry & Fashion

Sarah Hoffert and Angie Hilow are tackling the inconceivable: Creating jewelry that’s fun, fashionable and prevents teen pregnancy.

They’ve created a line of condom-centered styles, which includes earrings, necklaces, boutonnieres, headbands and even a condom dress that is fashionable and 100% usable.

“We wanted to make it as easy as possible for someone to go out and feel great and to put on a splashy piece of jewelry that is different and fun and at the same time gives them easy access to condoms,” says Hoffert, the Teen Pregnancy and Outreach Specialist for Lund Family Center.

Hoffert says the condom creations are a way to celebrate Vermont teens making great decisions around safer sex. In fact, Vermont has the second lowest teen pregnancy rate in the entire country, and of the 40% of Vermont teens that have had sex, 65% use condoms.

“There are not a lot of opportunities to celebrate when it comes to teen pregnancy prevention, but we have this great local arts festival and part of it is a fashion show. We thought what a better way to promote how well Vermont is doing and to talk about the great decisions teens are making,” says Hoffert.

29-year-old Hoffert and 16-year-old Hilow, who is the Outreach Assistant, consider themselves the dream team fusing a multi-generational fashion viewpoint into each accessory.

“I am so lucky to have a 16-year-old perspective,” says Hoffert. “(Angie) is the height of cool so I always know if I’m going in the wrong direction she will bring me back. We’re really a dream team because we represent two women but different age groups and different populations that use condoms and we’re really have a fun time being creative and taking fashion risks with condoms,” says Hoffert.

Hilow says its been a lesson in thinking outside-the-box, “Nobody wears condoms but why not,” she says.

And as for the future, Hoffert and Hilow are hoping the Art Hop debut of their outside-the-box thinking will generate much more than a fashion trend.

“People (often) have this idea that teens are acting crazy and they don’t have an accurate idea of how great teens are doing in Vermont,” says Hoffert. “We’re trying to present a more accurate perception because we’re on the right track.”

 
Come see it at the Art Hop Strut Fashion Show:
Saturday, September 10th 2011
Under the SEABA tent
Behind the Maltex Building
431 Pine Street, Burlington, VT
SHOWTIMES 6:30 & 8:30 PM
$12 admission or $5 with an Art Hop Hero Button

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On the Detour

A Good Buzz

Beekeeping has some sweet benefits—the most obvious being honey and then there’s the pollination perks of a plentiful garden.  In fact, bees help grow a third of our food, so when you keep them near your plants, you’re bound to see the payoffs in fruits and vegetables.  And beekeepers say the hobby nourishes them in other ways as well by relieving stress and triggering creativity.

Some of that creativity has even spilled over into the beekeeping itself.

Multimedia Producer Eva Sollberger captured a group of beekeepers in Shelburn, Vermont, who have been harvesting bees for more than 3 years.  What’s surprising is where these folks are living: A retirement community.  Eva’s video shows how both residents and visitors are getting much more than a sweet fix from this community beekeeping project. Check out her Stuck in Vermont video here.

And some beekeepers are taking the hobby to new heights, raising bees in locations that guarantee great views; that is Rooftop Beekeeping.  Last spring I produced a video on Urban Beekeeper Cameo Wood who opened up Her Majesty’s Secret Beekeeper in San Francisco, which Cameo said was the only Urban Beekeeping store in the world. The store closed last summer, but the swarm of Urban Beekeepers continues buzzing in cities around the world.  Check out the video “Buzz Kill” below.

And some beekeepers have even found a very entertaining way to wear their bees.

During The annual Clovermead Bee Beard Competition in Ontario, Canada, beekeepers compete for the “Best Bee Beard.”  This is a beard competition that might even scare the heavyweight beard builders from the Petaluma Whiskerino, which I posted about last October.

This year’s winner, Tibor Szabo, had 22,500 bees covering his entire face, neck, shoulders and hands.  Talk about a bee in his bonnet, It’s unclear how this man was even breathing.  See photos here.

“Buzz Kill” video produced last May on Urban Beekeeping in San Francisco

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On the Detour

I Hate to Burst Your Bubble

Jamie Marraccini must be a teacher’s worst nightmare.  Not only does he chomp gum regularly, he’s always sticking it to inanimate objects. But he has a good excuse; he’s a professional Gum Artist.  The Virginia native does things to Bubbalicious that would make even the strictest of disciplinarians soften.  Check out his work here.

And right up his alley would be Bubblegum Alley in San Luis Obispo, California.  Equally interesting as it is gross, this has to be of the most chewed over passageways on the planet. Forty years worth of cold gum layer the walls of this alleyway saturating it with both color and saliva.

Some believe the gum-sticking started in the late 1950’s as a rivalry between San Luis Obispo High School and Cal Poly students while others say the tradition traces back to after WWII.  It even survived two cleanings in the 70′s.

But this landmark has stuck and paved the way for more recent gum attractions likeThe Gum Wall in downtown Seattle.  This conglomeration of used gum began around 1993 and was named one of the top 5 germiest tourist attractions in 2009, second to the Blarney Stone.

Now there’s some eye candy that won’t lose its flavor anytime soon.

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On the Detour

Thunder Mountain Monument, Imlay, NV

(Editor’s Note: Story compiled from a 2008 interview with Daniel Van Zant)

Thunder Mountain Monument rises like a bizarre mirage in the middle of silence and desert, 2 hours east of Reno in the land where they say VW vans come to die.
The 80-foot petrified carcass of rusty cars and eroding statues has survived alongside Highway 80 for more than 40 years.

It’s easy to blow by this roadside monstrosity, but difficult to forget you saw it.

The man behind the Monument was a former police officer and WWII vet named Frank Van Zant who reinvented himself in his latter years. Renaming himself Chief Rolling Thunder, he moved his wife and 3 young children to the side of the highway in Imlay, NV, to spend his retirement scavenging the desert and building Thunder Mountain out of man’s trash.

He began constructing the junk-art monument in 1968 with two goals in mind: to illustrate the plight of the Native Americans and to make an ecological statement about man’s wastefulness.

Eldest son Daniel Van Zant, a man of 22 at the time, recalled in a 2008 interview that his father would work from daylight till dark to construct the monument.

“I thought he’d slipped a cog for sure. I’d say, Why do you want to do this? This is a lot of work. Most people retire and play golf, go fishing,” said Daniel , caretaker and owner of Thunder Mountain since his father’s 1989 death.

Daniel said his father had no more than a quarter of Creek ancestry but had always been passionate for Native American culture. He told some that an old medicine woman predicted he would build Thunder Mountain. To others, he said an eagle had instructed him to “build a nest” in a dream.

“He was a pretty good story-teller. I never know how much to believe. I don’t know how much he believed,” said Daniel in 2008, and admitted he didn’t initially share his father’s enthusiasm for the monument.

But many hippies did share that enthusiasm and gravitated to Thunder Mountain in the 60’s and 70’s to help with the construction. Some stayed years building the monument by day and huddled around Chief Rolling Thunder’s storytelling by night.

But by the late 80’s, Chief Rolling Thunder was battling poor health and depression. He had gone as far as he could go. January 5, 1989 he wrote a letter to Daniel before he turned a gun on himself.

After his father’s death, many encouraged Daniel to maintain the property. Despite the 5-hour commute, Daniel and his wife Margie have spent the better part of the last 20 years cleaning and repairing the property with their own blood, sweat, and tears.

“Its hard for me to believe its been 20 years since my father passed away. Its quite a milestone that I will have owned the property as long as he had owned it,” said Daniel in 2008.

And although Thunder Mountain might be in the land where VW vans come to die, nothing about this monument is dead. Instead, it’s a pulsing reminder that everything can be salvaged and anything can be saved. Every discard here has purpose in this enormous mosaic-like mystery that pulls people in off the highway everyday and sticks with them long after they go.

And like a telepathic hitchhiker, Thunder Mountain Monument has found a way to get its messages out without ever leaving I-80.

Still, spending weekends and nearly every vacation in a camper beside it might seem unnerving to some people, but Daniel said in 2008 that he enjoys the diversion from his desk job as an account executive and he appreciates his father’s messages more than ever now.

“I understand [now] what he was trying to do,” explained Daniel. “It was definitely a Holocaust. There was a deliberate attempt to wipe out the Indian culture. He wanted to build something that people could be reminded.”

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On the Detour

Contortionist Fleeky Flanco, San Francisco

“People are so wrapped up in being people that they forget they can be so many other things. Being human doesn’t mean anything. Think of how much more interesting it would be if people sometimes saw themselves as unicorns,” says Fleeky Flanco who makes a living transforming himself into other shapes. Literally.

Fleeky is a professional contortionist. He first fell in love with the art of contorting when he was 16, living near D.C., and his name was still Paul Flink. Fleeky saw a picture of a contortionist on his friend’s wall.

“It was love at first sight,” says Fleeky. “I just thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. You could change yourself so much. You could look so much not like a human anymore,” he says.

For the next year he trained on his own in contortion and adopted the name Fleekyafter a musician commented that he sounded like a Fleeky.

“It took me by surprise because no one had ever said I sounded like something. It really stuck with me. Basically, it’s an anamanapia name,” he says.

His self-taught training included practicing yoga to try to learn more about stretching. He admits trying to learn contortion on his own was risky.

“I had no idea what I was doing,” says Fleeky. “Its dangerous if you do it wrong. If you do it right you can still get hurt,” he explains.

He eventually enrolled in contortion classes at the San Francisco Circus Center, although building strength was difficult at the beginning.

“They called me noodle boy for the first 5 years because I was just so disconnected in my body, and I would just flop around like a noodle,” he remembers.

Some people are naturally built for contortion, but Fleeky says he is not one of them.

“A body with looser connected tissue is good. I wasn’t particularly flexible. I really had to work for what I have,” says Fleeky who presently trains 5 days a week for 4-5 hours per day.

And despite his professional instruction, Fleeky has sustained many injuries in his 12 years of training, including busting his knee and dislodging his Adam’s apple to the point where he couldn’t swallow for two minutes.

But his most severe injury was breaking his back after he twisted 180 degrees and snapped his vertebrae. He had to stop practicing for a year.

“I definitely enjoy pain, but at the same time, you have to really listen to your pain because there’s all different types of pain. And you have to be able to relax while you’re in pain,” Fleeky explains.

Fleeky currently performs in Germany, Canada, and America. He also works with his San Francisco-based group Circus Flim Flam.

“We’re trying to create our own thing. We want to do rated R circus shows. We want to make something we haven’t seen before–something a little more dark,” he says.

And as for the future of this 29-year-old, he plans to practice until his body gives out.  He says he admires contortionists like Natalia Vasylyuk who have tested the limits of physical transformation.

“In a lot of ways you get very addicted to performing. Its something you’ll just keep dong compulsively until you can’t. My act is always as hard as possible because I want the audience to feel something really intense. If I’m not sweating after my act I’ve done something wrong,” says Fleeky.

And he believes staying alive in contortion takes a lot more than physical strength.

“There’s so many days that I’m like, ‘What am I doing with my life?’ Basically, in the circus, if you can just survive, you’ll do great.”