Local Business: Potato Head

Three Potato Four’s new retail space on Shurs Lane feels a bit like a macro version of their beautiful, deliberately-chosen salvaged items and antiques. A former wool mill that’s over 100 years old, the converted space (once used as a dye room), has taken on myriad other incarnations in the last few decades, including a

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November Letters

Swim FanThanks so much for the Dispatch you printed in the September issue of Grid (“The River Wild”). Five years ago, I lived for a while in Heidelberg, Germany, and was able to swim in natural waters pretty often.

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Intersections: Brake Dance

Viridity Energy, local pioneers of smart grid technology (featured in Grid’s August Energy Issue), have announced an exciting partnership with SEPTA. The city’s trains already employ regenerative breaking, generating electricity when they come to a stop.

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Intersections: Fair Play

The Philadelphia Center for Architecture and the Ed Bacon Foundation have launched their Fifth Annual Ed Bacon Student Competition. This year’s theme—“Designing for the Fair of the Future”—asks local and international college students to transport themselves to the year 2026, designing a venue for the World’s Fair celebration, held on the occasion of America’s 250th

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Intersections: Sunny Days

By Mark Syvertson The Bourse at Independence Mall recently installed a 43-kilowatt solar array on its roof, becoming one of the first historic buildings in the city to employ photovoltaics. Due to the Bourse’s landmark status, there were concerns about preserving the integrity of the structure. SolarDock, a green energy company from Wilmington, DE, installed

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Spread the Wealth

After graduating from NYU’s Stern School of Business, Marina Levtov took a job with IBM. Her first client was a tobacco company. “My first day of work, I walked onto the site and people are smoking, in the office,” she recalls.

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Local Business: Into the Woods

Throughout Philadelphia, crumbling factories recall a faded past. But in the wooden beams that once held them up—century-old timber taken from vanished virgin forests—Steve Ebner sees beauty, opportunity and a chance at renewal. “You can’t get better than this,” he says, gesturing toward the massive stacks of reclaimed wood that make up the stock of

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Shoots & Ladders: Roll the Credits

Sigh. It’s that time of the year again—days are on the wane and winter is on its way. As much as I’d like to replace the contents of each container with a promising crop of hearty root vegetables, the Earth’s revolutions (and my neighbor’s bathroom addition) shelter my little blue roofdeck from most of the

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Local Business: Family Tiles

Jason Ferraro was born to lay tile. His grandfather taught his father and two uncles the trade; then they taught him. When Jason met and married Tiffany, a former interior designer, their overlapping skills inspired an idea. The result is Earthstone Tile Works, a boutique tile shop in South Philadelphia specializing in responsibly-made, long-lasting tile.

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