My neighborhood is cooler than yours

Fiona and I went to Sunnyside Environmental to play this morning and when we got home the much anticipated Sunnyside Neighborhood Newsletter was at my door. It comes once a month and is inevitably chocked full of all sorts of information that makes a person, like myself, smile. I live in a truly amazing place. First of all, it tells of the last meeting and how they showed clips from the film Portland:Celebrating America's Most Livable City as one of my fellow neighbors (an employee of PDX Office of Transportation) discusses on-street bike parking which will be going in soon on Belmont. Very cool. Other topics include an upcoming art stroll in September, the creation of the Sunnyside Sustainability Committee, details of the next Plastic Roundup, talk of the neighborhood swap shop co-op and other good stuff. My favorite article, however, is regarding the topic for our next neighborhood meeting on the 12th. ...."innovative community power generation and distribution opportunities." They want to create an energy "co-op" modeled after those used in Europe. Our neighborhood would be the first in the US to try such a thing. F-ing amazing. The article speaks of a pilot project in which they would convert the Sunnyside Environmental School's "current oil-fired boiler system to a carbon-neutral fuel coupled with integrated photovoltaic grid-tied electric. Excess energy would be used to heat and cool neighborhood residences, further integrating the relationship of the school as the center of the community." I am there. Rock on Sunnyside, you are rad!