April 30, 2008
Brooklyn Man Must Know Everything About What He Buys
Like No Impact Man before him, Brooklyn resident Scott Ballum embarked last month on a year long mission to radically examine his own patterns of consumption. He’s calling it the Consume®econnection Project, and his plan sounds simple yet exhausting:
The Mission: A year-long effort to meet the laborers and craftsmen who build what I buy – and put a human face on consumption. For every transaction, there must be a personal connection with someone along the production chain.To that end, he road-tripped to the Maker’s Mark Distillery in Kentucky and sneaked away from the guided tour so he could personally shake hands with Jude, one of eighteen barrel-rollers at the distillery. Now Ballum can suck down unlimited Maker’s for the year with a clean conscience. He also toured the Brooklyn Brewery to meet the folks and learn more about their process – turns out only 1/3 of their beer is made in Williamsburg; the rest is brewed in Utica. (A Sixpoint tour is definitely in order.)
Besides booze, the 30-year-old graphic designer's been surprised to find that 90% of his purchases are for food. So he’s decided that all his groceries for the next year are to come from Greenmarkets and the Park Slope Food Coop, where he’ll have “the opportunity to discover where everything hails from and visit as many (over time) as I can.” You can keep tabs on Ballum’s progress on his blog, where his first month is marked by agonizing over issues like whether eating an unidentified burger at Williamsburg’s MonkeyTown is “cheating.” [Via PSFK.]
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Sounds like his parents didn't give him enough attention as a baby.
Dripping with insincerity and liberal guilt...
i don't care that he does this, if he has the luxury of wasting time this way, good for him. i just am irked by the way he, and others like him, seem to engage on these little quests for the purpose of gettting attention.
I'm guessing a lot of New Yorkers tend to buy most of their groceries at only one or two stores.
i wish I was able to go on an adventure with every consumer purchase i made. Unfortunately i have a job and my parent's can't financially support my neo-hippie lifestyle.
Please post at least three more stories pronto so I don't have to look at his self-satisfied face anymore!
Is he going to write Omnivore's Dilemna #2?
For that roadtrip to Kentucky, I assume his car was manufactured in NYC and the gas was pumped from under Greenpoint?
Do these people not have jobs?
more self-absorbed navel-gazing ... keep searching dude, you're not even close.
is this what it takes to appear interesting to women these days?
I love how absurdly negative every single comment here is. Ok, the guy sure seems like a douchebag...but the idea is kind of interesting. But why does he have to blog about it?
wow you people are way off. i've known scott for years and, yes, he does actually have a full-time job where he works his ass off. maybe you all should just take this project for what it is instead of trying to give someone shit for learning about life and the consumer world.
Wow guys. I'm all for bashing the hell out of phonies and jerks, but I don't know about all the bile here. Are we really convinced this guy's endeavor is completely self-serving, ostentatious & full of crap? Or not worth the time? I think the disconnect in modern society between what's produced and who produces it is completely worth digging into and learning about. I see this whole thing as part stunt, part self-directed fame-grab (big deal), part self-challenge, and part way to expose something about what we consume. I hate to rain on the vitriol-parade -- cos that shit's fun -- but I don't think this warrants the spew.
more SWPL.
wow, shake the hand of the guy who rolls the barrels . visit where my beer was made.
give me a break.
Are we really convinced this guy's endeavor is completely self-serving, ostentatious & full of crap? Or not worth the time?
yes.
I hate to rain on the vitriol-parade -- cos that shit's fun -- but I don't think this warrants the spew.
so on the one hand, you agree that "this whole thing [is] part stunt, part self-directed fame-grab" but you acuse the people here who point that out of spewing hate?
I don't think anyone here hates this guy, they just think that it sounds more like he's a publicity-seeking douche than anything else. Should we all comment how wonderful he is instead?
If he really gives a crap, he should just try to become a self-sustaining farmer for a year, instead of going on a road trip to Kentucky to see where Maker's Mark is brewed, or making the decision to only shop at Greenmarkets and the Park Slope Food Coop like some kind of noble cause.
If you want vacant smiles of approval and a pat on the back, try L.A.
This is New York City.
I'm counting down the moments until he successfully monetizes this new found notoriety.
One... two... three... four...
Other thoughts: He looks kind of hot.
@12, @13, he might have noble goals but his writing style seems really smug and self-important.
maybe you all should just take this project for what it is instead of trying to give someone shit for learning about life and the consumer world.
learning about life and the consumer world?
Episode 1: Maker's Mark Roadtrip
location: Maker's Mark Distillery, Kentucky
Scott, a well-intentioned young man from New York, approaches a barrel roller
Scott: "Hi, my name's Scott."
Barrel Roller: "I'm Jude."
Scott: "I just road-tripped from New York, because I'm on a year long effort to meet the laborers and craftsmen who build what I buy – and put a human face on consumption. For every transaction, there must be a personal connection with someone along the production chain."
Jude: "uh, okay"
Scott grasps Jude's hand and shakes it, establishing a human connection with his bottled whiskey of choice
Jude: "please let go of my hand"
Scott returns to New York, aglow with his new-found knowledge about life and the consumer world
Tune in next week for our next touching episode:
Scott shakes hands with a Park Slope Food Coop cashier, establishing a human connection with his groceries.
"...his writing style seems really smug and self-important."
Well color me SHOCKED.
Imagine everyone doing this- millions of people traveling to see where their food and booze comes from. Travel business would be happy about this.
Ooh Big Daddy, put me down for a visit to the KY Jelly factory and the amil nitrate dealer. I want to shake their hands.
cliff claven already did this on his nationalistic show Made in America.
eyekantspel -- I hear you, solid points. I liked Episode 1 by the way. Anyway, I agree that this isn't perhaps the most effective way to bring attention to the subject, or to address it. & yes, becoming a self-sustaining farmer might have more impact. But an action can still have merit, to self and others, even if it isn't the most impactful possible.
Anyhow, it still feels to me like the guy is onto something interesting, as much as it is somewhat attention-seeking. I can't fault him for wanting his 15 minutes while also seeming to really want to explore his world a little, and share his findings. I'm not as eager to immediately view the project as flawed and useless.
Honestly, I was a little disappointed though to read that the first damn thing the guy does on his odyssey is go to a liquor plant.
Oh and regarding: "so on the one hand, you agree that "this whole thing [is] part stunt, part self-directed fame-grab" but you acuse the people here who point that out of spewing hate" -- It felt to me that people were invalidating it wholly as fame-grab. I was willing to concede, and still am, that it feels like partly fame-grab, but not entirely worthless because of that.
"Should we all comment how wonderful he is instead?" -- Definitely not. I'm just calling for a little open-mindedness to balance some of the spew that's all :)
Anyway, I'll be interested to see if anything comes of all this -- hopefully more than Maker's meet-ups.
Another fucking overmediated hipster on a mission. One goddamned Spurlock was enough. These fucks need to go back to their state university in Kansas and complete their Masters Thesis on 'micro-this' and eco-that' and get the fuck out of our 'macro-universe'.
Didn't Mr. Rogers do this on his show where he would go on trips, like a bicycle factory, to show how things were made and meet all the nice people happily working away. Unfortunately Scott needs to go to China today to see anything being made.
this guy has it wrong. Sure he can go to Brookln Brewery and have some peace of mind that his dollars aren't going to Slave Labor in China but he'd be wrong. You see. Nobody just makes something and that's it. Brooklyn Brewery has to get parts from somewhere, goods from somewhere, raw materials from somewhere, and the middle men and whomever are probably undercutting prices by using slave labor. Like al pacino said in godfather part II: "we are all apart of the same Hypocrisy"
I don't know why I ever bother reading the comments on this site. There are a lot of bitter, shriveled souls here.
And you have the nerve to call this guy "attention seeking"? Pot meet kettle.
I'm not sure where pots or kettles are made today. For a while Griswald made great cast iron frying pans and large kettles but I think they went out of business so it will be hard to visit their factory. I guess a trip to a iron strip mine in Minnesota might be a good substitute but then we would have to visit a Caterpillar factory to see how they make their quarry trucks and then the glass company in Toledo Ohio to see how the windshields are made then to... Well you gt the idea.
hey, at least he DID something and blogged about it. Whether or not its self serving or not doesn't matter. SO many blogs sink into introspective nonsense or just copy and paste other peoples'. The man did something, it was interesting, hes not Morgan Spurlock. Give him a break.
I'll be impressed when he tours the Nike factory in Viet Nam and tries to shake hands with someone:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/retail/2008-04-01-vietnam-nike-strike_N.htm
What men won't do to get the attention they need and get laid. Doesn't always work. Can you imagine a date with this guy?
I checked out his blog and by the time I scrolled down to the bottom, I wanted to put this guy out of his misery. All these shallow, meaningless "investigations" coated with a veneer of innocence and credulity makes me wonder where he was manufactured. No doubt, it's somewhere in Kentucky.
I think this looks like great fun. A great excuse for field trips. Why is everyone so mean? Jealous that you didn't think up the idea? Scott is certainly not hurting anyone, or asking for any money to do this, so what's the big deal? Maybe all the naysayers that obviously have time to bang around on their computers (at work, most likely)are just mad that they aren't imaginative enough to think up something similar.
Go for it!