The Sunday Read

Recent news about off-grid life from around the interwebs

Louis Theroux thinks you’re all weird. He’d like to spend some time with you.

Weird Weekends with Louis Theroux

Okay. Confession. This is actually a post about Louis Theroux, the uber (no, he’s not a car driving service)-smart son of renowned novelist and travel author, Paul Theroux.

But. Good news. This New Yorker story (warning: there might be a paywall ahead) does start with an off-grid anecdote.

The story has a typical (stereotypical, one could even say) New Yorker lede: name, place, date, action. As in: “One day in Plattsville, Edgar Allan Poe found a monkey’s paw on his front door stoop.”

Hold your breath. Here comes a big quote.

Big.

You ready?

“One wintry day in the mid-nineties, the British-American writer and documentarian Louis Theroux boarded a small plane bound for northern Idaho. He was on his way to Almost Heaven, a right-wing, off-grid survivalist community founded by a former Green Beret, James Gordon (Bo) Gritz, who had run for President a few years earlier under the slogan “God, Guns and Gritz.” Theroux—who was in his late twenties, was tall and gangly, and wore wire-framed Harry Potter glasses—was there to film an episode of his new BBC television show, “Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends.” In the episode, Theroux pads around snowy fields in an oversized plaid jacket, interviewing residents who had armed themselves against the federal government. He chops firewood, helps build a house, and jumps on a trampoline. In one scene, he visits the home of a man named Mike Cain and asks about his gun rack. “You know, for an American to live without a gun, it’s like you guys trying to live without tea,” Cain says.”

Damn!

Sure, the story is less about off-grid living and more about Theroux’s reporting on subcultures, but nonetheless: There it is. Off-grid. Probably not the way you and I live it. Bit still.

So, it’s official. If we’re in The New Yorker, and a subculture, then we off-gridders must really be a sub-culture. Just kidding. Not kidding. Great story. Give it a read.

Boss: I want an electric, solar-powered, off-grid bike that will help save the endangered black rhino population. Designer: Piece of Cake.

An electric, solar-powered, off-grid bike that helps saves rhinos. Seriously

Here’s something sweet from electric bike manufacturer Cake: a light, off-road bush bike with a solar panel and power station kit that allows conservationists to drive into the bush in pursuit of black rhino poachers. I mean, that’s some high-level James Bond shit right there.

Cake and the South Africa Wildlife College have formed a partnership where each Kalk AP bike a customer purchases results in Cake sending one to the wildlife conservationists, according to drive.com

Now I know you want to rush out and grab one of these straight away, but they don’t come cheap. Drive.com reports they are $30,340 each - a steal though compared to a Tesla. Only 50 of the bikes are being made, so if you want double bragging rights (Bro! Check my bike. Only 50 made, and its twin is busting poachers in Africa, man!), go for it.

The house of mirrors in Mexico

Mirror, mirror, on all the walls….

The ‘70s ska band, The English Beat, famously sang about Mirror in the Bathroom, but a build in Mexico takes that a bit too literally, and then some.

I know if I was going to build off-grid, I’d want to design a completely mirrored structure and drop it in Mexico.

Say what?

Yes, I know. It’s a bit wacky. But Mexico-based Singaporean writer and designer Prashant Ashoka threw one up anyway on the slopes of an extinct volcano 20 minutes from San Minguel de Allende, according to designboom

The online publication reports the house is clad in a mirrored facade, and draws all its power from solar energy and its water supply from collected rainwater.

“I wanted this interplay of light and scale to evoke a deep sense of awe and oneness with the wild, and to ultimately beg questions about our role as stewards in the preservation of our ecosystems,” notes Ashoka, according to designboom.

Well, as off-grid as it may be, putting up a house of mirrors on the slopes of an extinct volcano certainly calls into question our “roles as stewards in the preservation of our ecosystems.”

As Stan Lee used to end his editorials at the back of all the old Marvel superhero comic books (think Thor, Spiderman, Fantastic Four, and many, many more): “Nuff said!”

Our off-grid home. And, yes, there wasn’t a single financial institution willing to provide us with a mortgage

Financial institutions won’t mortgage off-grid homes. Here’s why

Sorry. I don’t mean to be self-referential in this next item (I’m a meme, I’m a meme!), but I realize not all of you are my friends who signed up for this newsletter out of love and pity for me. (Poor, deluded Charles. He’s writing stuff again. ~Sigh~ I suppose we should show our support.)

So you may have missed this opinion piece I published in the National Observer about why financial institutions won’t give mortgages to off-grid homes, and why I say they should.

Check it out. A few people (“We’d better ‘like’ this story or poor old Charles will be wailing all over Facebook about how unloved he is.”) seemed to think it made some good points.