Echo Park Time Travel Mart: Time to Shop

With the Echo Park Time Travel Mart, shopping lists are now a thing of the past.

Whether you’re in need of some Dodo chow or a jar of Industrial Revolution Pollution, the Time Travel Mart adds a fourth dimension to the conventional convenience store. Why stop by the corner market for a jug of milk when you can step back in time for a tin of mammoth meat. In line with the tagline, “Whenever you are, we’re already then,” Echo Park bends time and space to bring you a continuum of consumer goods.

Such one-of-a-kind products like dodo chow and mammoth meat are brought to you by the Echo Park Time Travel Mart, storefront for 826LA and 826 National, “a nonprofit tutoring, writing, and publishing organization… dedicated to helping students, ages 6-18, with expository and creative writing.”

The shop also carries a variety of goods and sundries neither here nor there: the TimeLine Fragrance line of perfumes (Caveman, Aztec, Gold Rush, Studio 54), BC/DC travel stickers, and an array of commemorative posters celebrating everything from ice ages (“A Winter Wonderland All Year-Round”) to the butterfly effect (“A Flap of the Wings Today… Means Big Changes Tomorrow”).

 

Note: All proceeds from the Echo Park Time Travel Mart’s online store are used to support 826LA’s writing programs.

Rubber Souls: The Sheep in Wolves’ Clothing

Realizing every schoolboy’s fantasy, Canadian artist Maskull Laserre has pioneered the reintroduction of wolves and caribou onto the snow-swept streets of Montreal and New York City with nothing but a pair of shoes.

Laserre’s recent project, Outliers (Trace), involved re-engineering the rubber tread of everyday footwear to incorporate the footprints of wildland creatures. The result is part nature nostalgia, part wishful thinking, part social commentary, and part deviant delinquent. Imagine the thought processes that might be tripped when unsuspecting passersby do a double-take over bear prints window-shopping their way down Broadway.

To date, Laserre has molded the spirits of wolf packs, wolverines, white-tailed deer, caribou, and Kodiak bear into tennies and combat boots alike; there’s even a pair of runners sporting human footprints (see the galleries here and here). Be it introspective or retrospective, Laserre’s soles capture the soul of the wild.

Museum of Unnatural History: Primordial Soup

Never again need you ask yourself, “Which came first, the chicken noodle or the egg drop?”

With spoon in hand (and tongue in cheek), it is with great pleasure that I introduce to you the one product that could outsell the science museum-staple, astronaut ice cream: Wallace’s Condensed Primordial Soup. Following a time immemorial recipe and canned with a combination of wit and staggering genius, each can is packed with inaugural amino acids. It’s Earth-tested, Earth-approved (some exceptions may apply; sorry, Kansas).

Wallace’s Condensed Primordial Soup is brought to you by the Unnaturalist Society’s Museum of Unnatural History, storefront for 826DC and 826 National, “a nonprofit tutoring, writing, and publishing organization… dedicated to helping students, ages 6-18, with expository and creative writing.”

The museum gift shop also carries a variety of petrified wood personal crisis alternatives (confused, disaffected, existentially distraught) and a full Natural Selections line of biological imperative supplements and extracts (gills, opposable thumbs).

Note: All proceeds from the Museum of Unnatural History’s online store are used to support 826DC’s writing programs.

Limited Edition: Western Pond Turtle

As featured on the Ads of the World website, last year the Woodland Park Zoo initiated their “Animals Shouldn’t Come in Limited Edition” campaign featuring, among other species, a whimsical interpretation of the western pond turtle. The number in the corner – 1,100 – represents the number of western pond turtles remaining in the wild when the campaign kicked off in 2010.

In 1991, the Woodland Park Zoo in collaboration with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife initiated the Western Pond Turtle Recovery Project. The project was conceived to help recover the species after the population of western pond turtles in Washington was estimated to number as few as 150 individual turtles remaining in the wild. In the years since, the project has been responsible for the release of over 1,000 “head-starts,” turtles taken into captivity as hatchlings, reared at the zoo, and then released back into the wild the following summer at a size-class large enough to increase their chances of survival.  Today, Washington state’s western pond turtle population is estimated to be 1,500 turtles, and the project celebrated its state-proclaimed 20th Anniversary this June! Happy belated birthday!

Giclee prints of the Limited Edition artwork are still available for purchase.

Know Your Local Turtle: A Field Guide to the Western Pond Turtle

The western pond turtle, the sole turtle native to the Pacific Coast’s rivers, creeks, and ponds, is an ofttimes reclusive reptile whose first line of defense – plunging kersplunk to watery depths – makes it difficult to appreciate this species except from afar.

So what better way to learn more about the species than with the new Field Guide to the Western Pond Turtle, a diagnostic poster that draws the shy western pond turtle out of its shell. Each figure is annotated for the professional and layperson alike, making it easy to familiarize yourself with the western pond turtle’s general field markings and the traits that distinguish males and females.

Created by myself and illustrated with photos by my wife, Bay Area photographer Sarah Anne Bettelheim together with antiquarian engravings dating to the turn of the twentieth century, this visual field guide takes field guides to new heights. This poster is printed on heavyweight 7 mil semi-gloss paper using superior dye inks and is available in two sizes – 16 x 20 in. (small) or 23 x 35 in. (large) – making it perfect for the classroom, home, or office.

Posters can be purchased through CafePress.