LA Has the Goods

When I moved to the Bay Area I was fascinated by the news that Berkeley had a tool lending library. So people could steal the city’s hammers and hurt their neighbors with public property? (It’s worth noting that I grew up close to Detroit.)

But the model has its fans–so much so that it’s entered the citizen sharing space online. Micki Krimmel (who gave a fantastic presentation on learning lessons for romantic relationships from roller derby at December’s Ignite Bay Area) was frustrated upon having to purchase a rarely-used backpack for a trip to Thailand after being unable to find one to borrow. Knowing she also had a slew of stuff that only gets used rarely, she created NeighborGoods.net, a platform for sharing items with friends and neighbors.

It seems that her timing for an LA launch in a down economy this year was ideal given that the site encourages people to save their resources (not to mention the environment’s). “With all my experience in the ‘green movement,’ I was very excited to see it go mainstream, but I was disappointed to see it co-opted and become a marketing scheme,” said Krimmel, who contributes to Worldchanging and led the interactive media efforts for Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. “Everywhere I look some other company was selling ‘green products,’ encouraging people to live more sustainably by buying their stuff. That’s what got us into this problem in the first place! We are never going to shop ourselves to sustainability.”

Early users can choose to lend their items for free or charge a rental fee, and an option to manage a profitable Pro Account is said to follow. Borrower ratings and transaction tracking is intended to make sharing safer for lenders, and I’m looking forward to trying the reservation calendar and wishlist alerts.