There's a famous George Carlin routine where the late comic mocks our obsession with stuff -- clothing and cars and accessories that we buy in an effort to fit in, to make ourselves feel better, to feed the American nature of consumerism until these items rule our lives.

Now, four years after Carlin's death, the idea of doing more with left continues to grow in popularity -- in part, because of Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus. Calling themselves the Minimalists, the two high school friends quit their well-paying, but unfullfilling, corporate jobs and now preach the benefits of less is more on their blog and through a series of books. For them, this includes less shopping sprees, but also things like maintaining a healthy dietary lifestyle (both are pescatarians) and interacting with a close-knit group of people who motivate them. They also don't like defining people by job titles and will find creative ways to answer the ever-popular question of "What do you do?"

Although the Minimalist guys spend most of their time living quiet, low-stress lives in Montana -- "We wanted to go and do the Thoreau thing with Wi-Fi and 'typical writer in a cabin' thing" says Nicodemus -- they will be promoting their work December 18 at downtown's the Last Bookstore.

Before they make the trip to Los Angeles, a city whose inhabitants are not necessarily known for sharing similar values, Nicodemus offered some more insight into his and Fields Millburn's message.

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Drew Barillas

Alivia Hunter

Halloween has come and gone, but the costumes remain. If all goes according to Alivia Hunter's plan, this year's zombies and ninjas and red devils will re-emerge next year on different bodies. A go-getting former social media marketing consultant, the 42-year-old Hunter runs Los Angeles Costume Swap. Halloween, for her, has become a year-round preoccupation.

Last year, laid up in the hospital recuperating after a car accident, Hunter was casting about online for somewhere to volunteer or otherwise devote her considerable energy. She came upon the nonprofit sustainability organization Green Halloween.

A more ideal match could not have been made. Hunter is the type of person who, one year, decided to give out books to trick-or-treaters instead of candy. She owned about 300 books at the time and figured she'd get rid of every single title she could bear to part with. "Books?" people teased her. "Kids are going to egg your house." Well, kids didn't. Instead, they lined up for more. "Can I have two books?" one kid asked.

"Honey," Hunter replied, "you can have three just for asking that question."

Green Halloween recruited her to organize its costume swap event. Two hundred people showed up to the first one, in Mar Vista. It was, she says, "total chaos."

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Image by Parsons Brinkerhoff, via presentations from the City of LA Bureau of Engineering Sixth Street Viaduct Replacement Project website.

A digital rendering of Parsons Brinkerhoff's egret wings-style design for the Sixth St. Viaduct Replacement project.

See also:
*5 Artsy Things to Do in L.A. This Week
*Fugly Buildings: Our Series on the Most Hideous Buildings in L.A.

Finalists for the re-design of the Sixth Street Viaduct, a bridge spanning downtown and Boyle Heights, revealed their plans to the public recently. Depending on the mood at the Bureau of Engineering in the coming weeks, we'll soon see three golden "guardian angels"(a proposal by AECOM), a pair of egret's wings (Parsons Brinkerhoff), or a cartoonish row of arches (HNTB) take shape over the LA river.

The winner will be chosen this month, and the entire project, budgeted at $400 million, is scheduled for completion in 2018.

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Nanette Gonzales

The Hildebrand Construction crew builds a bubble house.

The AltBuild Alternative Building Materials & Design Expo, in its ninth year, is regarded as a place for the "green-curious" to make the leap to "green-committed." For people who had already waded past compact fluorescent bulbs deep into eco-consciousness territory, however, it was the place to show off, compare carbon footprints and otherwise feel greener-than-thou.

One of the greenest people at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium had to be David Karp, with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works. Karp stood in front of a bin of worms and plunged his hand into the wriggling mess. Worm feces, a powerful natural fertilizer, leaked out the bottom of the bin. Karp scrounged around in the catch tray and let the poop dribble through his fingers. "That's the good stuff," he said.

Sometimes he brews a cup of worm tea with the poop, using five gallons of water, molasses, fish food and an aquarium bubbler. The tea is not for him but his plants.

Karp, a worm aficionado, waxed poetic about their characteristics: how the components of the bin mimic the top six inches of jungle leaf litter; how worms are hermaphroditic ("They make each other pregnant"); how they live two years in the wild and five "in captivity;" how, like many convention attendees, they adore vegetables and abhor meat and dairy.

Stick their bin in a warm, shady spot, pop in a few melon rinds, and the wigglers will happily defecate a garden's worth of compost. "What if the worms leave the bin?" a woman asked Karp.

"Why would they leave? Where would they go? They hate light," Karp said. "They're not curious."

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Photographer: Riley Kern, Riley Kern Studio; Hair/Styling: Ivy D'Muerta; Model: Megan Renee

The cover of our fashion issue

We all talk, these days, about eating ethically -- how to fill our bellies without wasting carbon miles, poisoning the Earth or torturing animals. Restaurants boast about their organic ingredients; the best ones will even tell you where the pig you're eating came from.

All good. But we rarely talk about dressing ethically. Where did the T-shirt you're wearing come from? How were conditions for the workers who made it? And before that, what went into producing the fabric? How many pesticides were used? How many dyes were poured? How long before you get sick of it and it ends up in a landfill?

This year's Fashion Issue aims to talk about all of that.

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PHOTO BY RILEY KERN

Yael Aflalo of Reformation

More stories from our 2012 Fashion Issue on dressing ethically:
*West Hollywood's New Fur Ban
*Does L.A. Still Have Sweatshops?
*Yael Aflalo's Reformation Makes Vintage Cool
*Santa Monica's Main Street, a Green Fashion Hub
*Three L.A. Designers Who Do Eco-Fashion Right

When Yael Aflalo founded her first clothing line, Ya-Ya, in 1999, the 20-year-old made the same decision as many young designers: She arranged to manufacture primarily in China.

While she found the working conditions at the factory to be acceptable, their environmental impact was appalling.

"The air pollution is so intense I found it difficult to breathe or see distances clearly at 100 feet," Aflalo recalls. "I felt I could no longer close my eyes to my personal contribution to this pollution and was determined to return home and make a difference."

After nearly a decade, she closed Ya-Ya. "I became disillusioned with the fashion industry," she admits. "I hadn't enjoyed Ya-Ya for years, and I made the leap to close it and open up to new possibilities."

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PHOTO BY RILEY KERN

Natasha Gindin of Lavuk

More stories from our 2012 Fashion Issue on dressing ethically:
*West Hollywood's New Fur Ban
*Does L.A. Still Have Sweatshops?
*Yael Aflalo's Reformation Makes Vintage Cool
*Santa Monica's Main Street, a Green Fashion Hub
*Three L.A. Designers Who Do Eco-Fashion Right

It's not easy being green. But these three local designers do their best to dress their customers ethically.

1. Lavuk

Fashion designer Natasha Gindin spent much of her childhood in the former Yugoslavia playing dress-up in her fashionable mother's closet and even sliding around in her brand-name Italian shoes. In fact, although the shoes are still a size too big, she continues to wear them. They're just too fabulous to let a little size discrepancy stand in the way.

With such an innate sense of style, Gindin's road to the fashion world might have been a direct one had it not been for her economist father, who encouraged her to get degrees in marketing and molecular biology. But, she says, "you end up where you're meant to end up" -- which for her was in the United States, studying at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology and L.A.'s Otis College of Art and Design, and eventually creating her own line.

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PHOTO BY SUSAN SANCHEZ

Main Street in Santa Monica

More stories from our 2012 Fashion Issue on dressing ethically:
*West Hollywood's New Fur Ban
*Does L.A. Still Have Sweatshops?
*Yael Aflalo's Reformation Makes Vintage Cool
*Santa Monica's Main Street, a Green Fashion Hub
*Three L.A. Designers Who Do Eco-Fashion Right

The trees lining Santa Monica's Main Street don't much resemble L.A.'s signature palms, which rise tall and thin like supermodels; instead, they look like broccoli stalks. Bare-bellied girls with hip piercings slink to the beach a block away, as businessmen drink blue algae smoothies on the sidewalk. The bike lane here actually gets respect.

Don't bother trying to count how many times "green," "natural" or "conscious" appears on the storefronts. Main Street is the greenest street in Santa Monica -- a progressive city known for its eco-friendliness. But while Main Street has evolved into a destination for green trend seekers and trendsetters, it also offers a case study for the challenges faced by environmentally conscious designers and clothiers.

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