hip capitalism: kale from jail

A report on Soprafinna's and Cicchetti, restaurants in Chicago.

Isn't it so cool and hip and botique-y when restaurants promote local and natural food production? and use recyclable and biodegradable products? and produce tapas with a 'Venetian twist'? and use eco-friendly design?

And then there is, as Doug Henwood has quipped, kale from jail: 'Both new eateries will tap local sources for produce, including a new partnership with the Cook County Department of Corrections that's already underway with Mr. Rosenthal's other restaurants for naturally grown tomatoes, kale, squash, beets and more.'

(Thanks to Adolph for this one.)

Hipsterism explained

In this mindblowing article about the US prison system, from n+1.

"In gentrifying sections of Brooklyn, for example, steep drops in crime, combined with the virtual depopulation of entire city blocks, has underwritten a real estate boom. In neighborhoods like Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, wealthy people with children have reaped the benefits of climbing land values from apartments they never would have bought had it not been for the removal of tens of thousands of locals from adjacent areas. Neighborhoods like Bedford-Stuyvesant show the population exchange in its purest form. As African American Brooklynites are exported upstate for involvement in petty drug crimes, twenty-somethings reared in prison towns migrate south and reoccupy the same areas vacated by prisoners. Often, of course, the new inhabitants proceed to consume and sell the very same drugs that got the previous tenants into trouble. Since they’re white, they do so with impunity."