The Solar One staff has always included a lot of avid bikers and Transportation Alternatives, the city’s bike advocacy org, is a Solar One BFF of long standing. Back in 2009, we even tried to make our own stationary bike blenders and have hosted events that included bike-powered sound systems and other bike exotica. But in honor of today’s National Bike to Work Day, our dear friends at Voltaic Systems have created the awesome solar charger in the picture above, mounted on a bike trailer. This charger can handle 180 watt-hours of charging capacity, that’s a lot of cell phones!
Check out the rest of the article (and see some more great pictures) on their blog HERE. And don’t forget to wear a helmet on your bike commute!
Author Archives: Dina
Solar Off the Roof at the New Museum’s IDEAS CITY StreetFest
We had a great time at the New Museum’s IDEAS CITY StreetFest this past Saturday. We were demonstrating off-the-roof solar projects and giving kids hands-on lessons in the science behind solar photovoltaics: Photons knock electrons in the silicon panels loose, which starts up a negative electric current. That current flows through the wires embedded in the panel to power a small motor. If you put it in the sun, the motor spins a rotor; if you block the sun, it stops. Light makes it go!
We also demonstrated some small solar chargers from Voltaic Systems and Goal Zero.
And we were honored by the lovely urban garden and estuary creatures from the Earth Celebrations Hudson River Pageant!
We were particularly delighted by the Oyster…
All in all, a gorgeous day and a wonderful StreetFest. We also enjoyed visiting with our friends at Fourth Arts Block, they had a great exhibit of sound sculptures made from recycled materials. They’re a little hard to see in this photo, but they were super-cool:
Fabric sculpture by Amanda Browder, be sure to check out the project she’s doing with FAB this summer.
UPDATED! EVENT IS MOVING INDOORS DUE TO RAIN! Come to Solar One for the First Ever Annual Almighty Foot Clan Anniversary B-Boy Battle
UPDATE May 18: Because of unending rain, this party is being moved indoors and across the river. The new address and time is:
1270 Fulton St 2nd Fl
Brooklyn NY 11216
9pm
Take the A train to Nostrand Ave. we plan to have the Foot Clan back again next year for their 2nd Anniversary Party!
Breakdancing (or more properly, breaking) is a time-honored and essential part of hiphop culture. In fact, back in the early 1980s, when rap was first discovered by the mainstream, many people thought that breaking would be hiphop’s number one art form.
If African American culture supplied the beats and Jamaican culture the sound systems and friendly competition to the world of hiphop, Latino culture provided the moves. Dancers from the Rock Steady Crew, originally formed in the Bronx in 1977, were some of the most famous breakers who helped familiarize America and then the whole world with this athletic and original movement style.
On Saturday May 18, 32 local crews will battle for prize money and bragging rights at this free-to-watch, $5-to-participate event. And there are only 2 more battle spots available, so sign your crew up now!
The Foot Clan, along with Round the Foot Entertainment, brings to you
The First Ever Almighty Foot Clan Anniversary #1 B-BOY JAM
May 18, 2013 Saturday
2pm-10pm
Battles start at 4pm SHARP
Judges
-Gravity – 5 crew dynasty (NYC)
-Pete Nasty – Repstyles (Philly)
-Miego – Foot Clan/Soul Kings (Seoul Korea)
Hosted by
Ru AKA the Black Lion
Featuring NYC’s one and only DJ X on the Wheels of Steel, spinning your favorite breaks and house jams.
With live performances by
-Coalition 301
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MI6XZqcX3E
-DXA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhI8x5ctp6M
ONLY 2 SPOTS LEFT! CREWS SIGNED UP SO FAR:
1-Stick-Up Kidz MIA/NYC
2-No Control NYC
3-D.I.M crew
4-Ill Clan Rockers
5-Bronx Boys
6-Floor Obsessions NYC
7-United Outkast CT
8-Floorgasm
9-Ace Legion MA
10-Suicide Kings
11-Jersey Underdogs
12-Ruthless NJ
13-extreme kings/Dominican Beast
14-Straw Hat Dynasty
15-Sexual Napalm
16-The Titanz
17-Bronx boys rocking crew
18-Outlawed Angels
19-Ambassadors
20-Harlem Shake
21-YSB JAPAN
22-7 Sins DC
23-Monsters Inc
24-WTF crew
25-Ostrich
26-Inglorious Basterdz
27-X – Fenz
28-Fl!p’d Owt Crew
29-Big Booty Twerk Team
30-Full Circle Cadets
31-
32-
Come down and bring the whole family! We hope to see you there!
Solar One Family Day: NYC Wildflower Week Interactive Plant Fair
Come to Solar One on Saturday May 18 for a fun-filled day of wildflower and native plant activities! Kids and families can pot a native wildflower to take home, make wildflower seed bombs, get their faces painted, make flower costumes and color native wildflowers that grow in Stuyvesant Cove Park. The first in our monthly series of Family Days! Please RSVP to daisy[at]solar1[dot]org or to dina[at]solar1[dot]org.
Held in partnership with NYC Wildflower Week! Because native plants are a wonderful part of our natural environment…
Six Months After Sandy: A New Stage and a Budding Park
This past Monday, April 29, marks six months since Superstorm Sandy pummeled the east coast and caused extensive damage at Solar One and Stuyvesant Cove Park. But things are starting to come back because our stage is being rebuilt, and the plants that survived are sprouting up in the Park. We’re now looking forward to continuing to rebuild and produce an exciting summer of events, activities and lovely days in the Park.
As you can see in the picture, the stage is being rebuilt by carpenter Joey Rizzolo and a fantastic team of volunteers from Green City Force, a service organization that teaches young adults sustainable job skills. GCF has a long and wonderful history with the Solar One family: Their very first pilot corps, back in 2009, worked on a weatherization project with our parent organization, the Community Environmental Center, to celebrate National Weatherization Day.
We’ll be posting some new pictures of the Park and its spring progress soon!
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New Recycling Laws Are In Effect
Recycling is hard. Recycling is complicated. In fact, in NYC, recycling is so difficult that we have only a 15% recycling rate across the city- pretty weak. But that all that will change because we finally have a city-wide, enforceable recycling law allowing all rigid plastics, including yogurt containers, those plastic clamshells they have at every salad bar, the crazy plastic forms that everything from lightbulbs to scissors to lipsticks gets packaged in and pretty much any plastic that’s used as a container. You can read the whole article about it at the NYC.gov website HERE.
Come See Us at the New Museum’s IDEAS CITY Streetfest on Saturday May 4
IDEAS CITY StreetFest
Saturday May 4, 11 AM–6 PM
Artists, architects, poets, technologists, historians, community activists, entrepreneurs, and ecologists share their ideas of Untapped Capital and invite participants to actively shape their city. “MirrorMirror,” a new tenting design, will premiere at the StreetFest. This innovative, minimal-waste event takes place around the Bowery and in Sara D. Roosevelt Park, rain or shine!
Solar One will be displaying/demonstrating solar technologies primarily created for mobile and “off-the-roof” applications. Expect to see items from Voltaic Systems and GoalZero, info on how solar is used around the country and around the world, and some antique “green” technologies from the collection of the Museum of Interesting Things, as well as some solar balloons made from trash bags (we’ll even show you how to make one!). We’re also hoping to bring one of the generators from the Solar Sandy Project!
Solar One will be under the “MirrorMirror” tent near the corner of Stanton and Bowery, so please make sure you come over and say hello!
Holi Is the Greatest Way Ever to Celebrate Spring
On Friday March 29, Solar One celebrated the Hindu festival of colors that marks the beginning of spring, known as Holi. The word “Holi” is derived from Holika, a Hindu demoness (you can read her story by clicking on the link).
In India, Holi is celebrated by large groups of people gathering in white clothes and throwing colored powders at each other. For Solar One’s Holi, we made our own non-toxic powder out of rice flour, water and food coloring. Thanks to the staff’s enthusiasm, we were able to mix, dry and grind about 30 pounds of Holi powder by Friday afternoon.
But we hadn’t anticipated how much people would want to play! After about an hour we ran out of powder, so we started making paste. When we ran out of paste, we made liquid. When the people continued to ask for more colors, we went back to the store, bought more rice flour and made more paste.
As you can see, it was a very diverse crowd of adults, teens and little kids, and amazingly, everyone had an enormous amount of fun. While we weren’t able to produce huge clouds of gorgeous colored smoke the way they do in India, we were able to be outside dancing and running around on the first lovely spring day. Some people even saw what we were doing, went across the street to change clothes and then came back and joined in. And I’ve even heard the colors can be washed out of your clothes again…
So if you weren’t able to come this time, do come next year. And a very happy Holi!
All photos (so far) by Sarah Pidgeon! See more on Facebook
Disaster Preparedness Workshop with Parsons/The New School and Solar One
Do you live in Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village? Would you like to share your experience during Sandy to help design a more effective response to future disasters?
Building Community Resilience in Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village
How can we work together to develop plans to better serve the ST/PCV community during extreme weather in the future?
Please join us for a brief community-focused work session designed to help ST/PCV residents think about possible emergency situations and how we can better prepare for the future. The session will offer two short participatory exercises in which participants will learn about preparedness strategies and develop new ideas for improving community resilience. We hope to see you there!
This workshop will be lead by Parsons Service Design students and Solar One.
DATE: Monday, April 8th
TIME: 6:15pm – 7:30pm
LOCATION: Solar 1 Building in Stuyvesant Cove Park
24-20 FDR Drive Service Road East, along the East River just south of 23rd Street
COST: FREE
24-20 FDR Drive Service Road East, along the East River just south of 23rd Street
COST: FREE
Preregistration is required. Register here!
Come Celebrate Holi at Solar One
Come to Solar One to celebrate Holi, the Hindu Festival of Colors, on Friday March 29 from 4:30 to 7:30pm. This event is FREE and open to the public. Children and families are most welcome!
For those who may be unfamiliar with Holi, it is the festival that marks the beginning of spring for thousands of the world’s Hindus. The main activity of the festival involves dressing up in white clothing and throwing colored powders at each other. Because the changes of weather in springtime are often believed to cause colds and fevers, traditional Holi powders were made with medicinal herbs to ward off illness. For Solar One’s Holi festival, we will be throwing colored powders, but they will be made with food coloring and rice flour so as to be as benign as possible.
Holi originated in ancient Bengal as part of the veneration and worship of Lord Vishnu, the preserver diety of Hindu mythology. Holi is also closely associated with Vishnu’s avatar Krishna, who played holi games with the cow-herding girls (gopis) who were his companions during his childhood.
Got some more questions? Check out our Holi FAQs here!
Want to help us make our non-toxic, gluten-free Holi powder? Join us at 5:00pm on Monday March 25 at the Solar 1 building (map and directions can be found here).
We hope you’ll join us on Friday March 29, the first full moon of spring!