Winter is a miserable time for smokers. You see them huddled in the streets, clinging close to one another, sometimes barely leaning out their office doors. They puff away with alarming alacrity in a race to inhale a satisfying amount of nicotine before the frigid air becomes unendurable. With the thaw, these breaks take on extended proportions. On a magnificent spring day, the entirety of Marquette Avenue is littered with smokers, cluttered around their buildings' entrances, staring at the sky and discussing the glorious weather while sending up noxious clouds. The public area at the Federal Courthouse is an open gallery of puffers lounging in the sun like so many lizards, some laying on the ground next to Tom Otterness's weird little creature statues. Life in the spring is what it should be—a time when work is just a short break between epic marathons of cigarette smoking.
Free on Saturday and Sunday
Let's face it: Drinking and driving isn't what it used to be. Sure, Daddy was good at it, but Minnesota has finally hopped on the .08 wagon. No more whipping doughnuts in the K-Mart parking lot with the toddler on your lap. There's good news for weekend tipplers, though, especially those who favor downtown Minneapolis and Loring Park. Steer into the city-run lot beneath I-94, right next to the Basilica, and your car is safe until Monday morning (sort of like your job). From there it's a short jog to Lurcat or Joe's Garage. The Warehouse District is a 10-minute walk down Hennepin Avenue, or you can catch the bus at the corner for 50 cents. Later, when your friends pour you into a cab, sleep soundly. You've got all weekend to remember where you parked.
Minneapolis
612.822.9134
It's no wonder some folks in south Minneapolis reacted with familial empathy earlier this year at the news of a robbery at the Pump 'n Munch. Alex, the morning attendee who was robbed in mid-January by a guy wielding a screwdriver, has been greeting the same Kingfield-neighborhood customers at the corner of 44th and Nicollet for more than nine years. And the evening attendee, David, who wears a baseball cap and a permanent smile, has spent more than six years working at the little South Side gas station. In convenience-store years, that's the equivalent of approximately three marriages, four kids, six grand-babies, and an anniversary cruise to the Caribbean. It's unlikely you'll find such a warm spot anywhere else in the Twin Cities that doesn't require customers to dole out daily 30 percent tips to gain such a simple but heartfelt human connection. For those who need reasons besides amiable chit-chat about your cat, reasonable gas prices, and grins before 11:00 a.m., be advised that the P 'n M also offers up a sizable porn collection and a wall of conveniences like toenail clippers and tiny turkey basters. Who knows when you might need to snag that last-minute birthday present?
The explosion of Irish Pubs in non-Irish cities over the last 15 years has brought to our shores traditions like watching soccer at 8:00 in the morning, drinking two-tone beer, and being expected to know which country besides Spain borders both the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. Kieran's, Kip's, and Keegan's, among other local Irish pubs, have monthly, sometimes weekly, pub quizzes, but when the scores are posted on the doors, it's that roomful of Englishers, Brit's, that comes out on top. On the first Tuesday of every month, the Long Room is packed to the rafters with teams of four or five, tossing down pints and taxing their brains. Quizmaster Shane Higgins asks six rounds of trivia questions, twelve questions per round, including current events questions, a celebrity picture round, and a music round in which snippets of tunes in need of an artist and title are played. Scores and answers are given after each round to cheers and groans. Keegan's is a bit of a free-for-all held in the middle of the bar with a roaming quizmaster and non-quizzing patrons mingling about, and Kieran's lost their star quizmaster John Cosgrove to Kip's last year, but he'll be back after he returns from Ireland. Reservations are required for the Brit's quiz, and it fills up almost immediately after the prior month's quiz takes place. Oh, and that other country? Morocco, for two points.
We baptized quite a few public restrooms in Minneapolis in our search for the best. Thankfully, our task was somewhat simplified by restroomratings.com, a web page that must serve as further evidence that anything that exists in the real world will eventually be digitized and commented upon on the world wide web. They seemed particularly impressed by the restroom at Cosmos and declared it "the gold standard of public restrooms," but we found it, like the rest of the restaurant, both gaudy and twee. They were also quite taken with the bathroom at Lakeview Cemetery, but we disqualified that one as not being sufficiently public; after all, you're not likely to swing by the boneyard for a cocktail anytime soon. It wasn't until we wandered into the bathroom at Ike's that we found the public restroom that truly meets out exact standards. Understated yet classy, this restroom mixes brushed steel ultramodern plumbing with subdued tiling. For those who can't stand to go a minute without checking the score of the current sporting event, Ike's has placed flat-screen televisions above their urinals. Other local bathrooms have similar televisions, but use them for advertising purposes, which tends to feel a little intrusive—after all, when we're home, we go to the toilet to get away from commercials. Ike's restrooms also feature tile floors (with the words "P-Nice" inset) and, for the luxury minded, genuine cotton towels. Best still, the restrooms are immaculate and free of offensive odors, which, half a block off Hennepin, is something of a miracle; you can actually duck in off the streets into a restaurant restroom to get away from the smell of urine.
Granted, meth (or crank or ice or glass or tweak or whatever else you call it) has wreaked horrendous damage on families and communities across Minnesota. Between the blizzard of scare stories in the media, the proliferation of those nasty "Life or Meth" billboards on the freeways, and the batch of harsh new meth laws passed by the legislature, Minnesotans seem to have come into collective understanding: meth is the evilest drug ever. Actually, not everyone agrees on this point. As it turns out, there are still plenty of enthusiasts in Minnesota. They value the drug for one reason: It provides a cheap thrill. Whatever else you want to say about meth, you can't deny that. In the "bang for the buck" category, meth blows away rival stimulants. At 80 to a hundred bucks a gram, a user (though not a high-tolerance addict) can stay energized for days on a single score. Before you have conniptions about the social costs associated with the meth abuse, we'll reiterate: It would have been best had meth not been invented. But remember this as well: In terms of overall social harm, meth still pales in comparison to the perfectly legal (and very lethal) drug of choice for most Minnesotans, alcohol. By the way, you've probably heard that a meth habit is all but impossible to kick. That does not seem to be the case. According to a study of 952 patients at the Hazelden treatment center, there was "no difference in outcomes between meth users and non-meth using patients as measured by continuous abstinence rates one year after treatment, satisfaction with psychosocial function, and satisfaction with health functioning."
Don't call it a comeback because it never went away, but smoking got more local press this year than at any time since the state of Minnesota sued the tobacco companies back in 1998. First, there was the constant finagling with local smoking ordinances, which included Hennepin County scaling back its total ban. And Tim Pawlenty spent the end of last year's legislative session targeting Big Tobacco to prop up the state's fiscal woes. Governor HockeyPuck's surcharge on cigarette packs around the state to raise revenue wasn't a tax, but rather a "health impact fee." Call it what you want, HockeyPuck, but you might just want to settle on "illegal." Last year, a judge ruled that the cigarette tax violated the 1998 tobacco settlement, and the state couldn't use some $200 million a year in projected revenue. Drat! The case is currently making its way to the state Supreme Court, but even money says Big Tobacco wormed its way out of another one. Comebacks, of course, are the sign of a true villain—especially those that are indisputably evil—ensuring that any battle will live to see another day. In short, even anti-smoking zealots would have to agree: Life wouldn't be nearly as much fun (although longer, certainly) if we didn't have Big Tobacco to kick around.
In January this improbable duo sent a letter to City Pages attacking a cover story that suggested their relationship was on the skids. The mayor and then-police chief of Minneapolis vigorously defended their working partnership while pillorying those who had suggested to CP that things were less than hunky-dory down at City Hall. "As a pair of reform-minded mavericks who don't always play by the old rules, we understand that some of our actions will ruffle feathers and generate undermining rumors from those who don't want us to rock the boat," they wrote in prose so nauseatingly self-congratulatory that even a politician should have been mortified. "We will stick to the work of public safety and let the rumor mongers do what they do best: talk." So what exactly happened two months later? McManus announced that he had accepted a job as San Antonio's chief of police. Now, a quick look at our atlas reveals that San Antonio is in Texas, approximately 1,250 miles south of Lake Street. Call us cynical, but that seems like a strange perch from which to work on public safety issues in Minneapolis. Then again, he and the mayor should get along just fine from here on out.
Unfortunately, not everyone who is charged with a duty to "protect and serve" does so in a positive or even legal manner. Communities United Against Police Brutality (CUAPB) aims to rectify this reality by empowering victims of abuse to seek justice while working for change in the system through direct action, court observation, lawsuits, and public education. It scrutinizes the decisions of judges, legislators, and community leaders to ensure appropriate action is taken to redress harms and that the laws extends protections for the public, not just the police. CUAPB offers many tools, including a 24-hour hot line, help with finding legal representation, and a website database of complaints against individual police officers. Making a complaint against a police officer can be isolating, and often the process is filled with roadblocks and intimidation. CUAPB steadfastly stands behind those who are taking this difficult and sometimes unpopular step, making the cause of one a cause for all.
Yeah we know: He's not mayor anymore and he's kind of a prick. But in the months since Randy Kelly suffered the most monumental electoral butt-whooping we can recall, we've grown sentimental for his boorish brand of Boss Tweed politics. The East Sider ran St. Paul like his own private fiefdom, with no one else (least of all his fellow elected officials) entitled to any say whatsoever in the city's affairs. It was a style peculiarly suited to the no-nonsense, strong-mayor system of governance in the Capitol City. (We can't for a minute imagine Kelly putting up with the flaccid mayoral scheme in place across the river.) Endorsing the reelection of President Bush proved a monumental, moronic miscalculation that he could not overcome. But aside from some budgetary shenanigans, life was generally decent for St. Paulites during Kelly's reign. Property taxes stayed down, crime remained low, and he didn't dump millions of taxpayer dollars into ill-advised development schemes (like his predecessor, Norm, now residing in Washington) in order to garnish his legacy. We'll miss Boss Kelly.
Last July, the city of Minneapolis installed cameras at 12 busy intersections and began snapping photographs of every vehicle that ran a red light. The owners of offending vehicles were then mailed $142 tickets. Naturally, the stated purpose of the stop-on-red program was "public safety." But it's a safe bet that city leaders didn't mind that these prolific ticket-writing machines were generating gobs of extra revenue. By the end of February, in fact, the city's photo cops had issued some 33,000 citations, thus providing ample justification for the program's half-million-dollar start-up cost. That is, if the program were actually legal. In March, Hennepin County Judge Mark Wernick ruled that the ordinance establishing the photo cop was invalid. In retrospect, it's not hard to see why. What is baffling is that the city's attorneys hadn't anticipated the problem. In issuing tickets, the police made no effort to determine the identity of drivers; they simply cited the registered owner of the vehicle. If individuals who were ticketed said they didn't run the light, it was up to them to prove it. This reversed the fundamental standard for burden of proof and, in Judge Wernick's view, violated the due-process provisions in the state traffic code. The city has decided to appeal Wernick's ruling, which—despite the major legal hurdles—is not very surprising. After all, throwing good money after bad is one of the hallmarks of the classic boondoggle.
Jonathon Albert Sharkey's gubernatorial campaign would have vanished in a puff of smoke even if he wasn't already back in Indiana, awaiting trial on charges of felony escape and probation violation. Unlike the organization that helped put Jesse in office, the Vampyres, Pagans, and Witches Party had no apparent resources beyond its hilarious website and Sharkey's eagerness to move his covens (he claimed to "own" two) into the Governor's Mansion. Still, how could we help but be a little intrigued by the self-proclaimed "sanguinarian vampyre, dark Satanic priest, and Hecate witch"? After all, he had a stellar sense of nomenclature malfunction and the vision to match. While impaling convicted murderers, rapists, drug dealers, and terrorists might have created a carrion bird problem for Capitol groundskeepers, it would have also guaranteed a few more bodies in downtown St. Paul at night—a major achievement in itself. Plus, Minnesota's fascination with batty politicos has been one of the state's crucial character traits since 1859, when Atlantis-obsessed Ignatius Donnelly (1831-1901) became our first lieutenant governor. But the charismatic liberal Republican was a scholar of some repute; poor Sharkey couldn't even get the credits for Edwin Starr's "War" right, erroneously attributing both music and lyrics to Bruce Springsteen on the aforementioned online disaster. That's one mistake The Body never would have made.
Mike Hatch is a mean son of a bitch. He prizes loyalty, demands competence, and ruthlessly culls out those who don't meet those standards. While he might not be the first guy with whom you'd choose to down Jell-O shots (his daughters are another matter in this regard), these character traits have made his tenure as attorney general tremendously successful. Most significantly, Hatch's dogged investigations of health maintenance organizations—Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota and Allina Health System, in particular—have resulted in page-one headlines for the attorney general, but also significant benefits to health care consumers. Hatch is probably the only Democrat in the state who has the tenacity and political guile to give Gov. Tim Pawlenty the sweats at night. If the attorney general can get through the September primary, we will have a fascinating showdown between the state's top two political magicians.
You might remember him better as "Caspian James Crichton-Stuart IV, the Fifth Duke of Cleveland." That's the hilariously pretentious moniker utilized by Gardner while posing as a British aristocrat considering enrollment at Stillwater Area High School. Gardner visited the school three times last fall, speaking in a British accent and distributing business cards adorned with a family crest. He claimed to have partied with Prince Harry and Hilary Duff, and to be 27th(!) in line for the British throne. Not surprisingly, the Fifth Duke of Cleveland cause quite a stir at the high school. So much so that the school newspaper, the Stillwater Pony Express, decided to write a profile of the prospective student. Unfortunately for Gardner, it didn't take long for the budding investigative reporters to sniff out some inconsistencies in his story. A few hours of internet snooping revealed that the would-be British aristocrat was actually a 22-year-old Austin, Minnesota, native who had previously been convicted of statutory rape and was currently violating the terms of his probation. But what really earned this award for Gardner was his response upon being exposed as a charlatan. "Maybe when I'm done with this," he told the Pioneer Press from prison, "I can go to Hollywood and convince them that I'm someone important on the big screen. I'm obviously good at it." Why can't more young people display such creativity and ambition?
"Money, money, money." That's how former Minneapolis City Council member Dean Zimmermann allegedly responded when asked by a developer how he could garner his support for a zoning change. According to an FBI search warrant affidavit, Zimmerman was taped making this seemingly incriminating demand on June 6 at a restaurant. Seven months later the Green Party member was indicted by a grand jury on four criminal charges. He's alleged to have taken $5,000 from the developer of the Chicago Commons condominium and retail complex in exchange for supporting a zoning change. In addition, the government accuses Zimmermann of snapping up $2,200 from the same developer as an incentive to support a retail development aimed at the Somali community. With this cloud of suspicion hanging over his head, Zimmermann was narrowly voted out of office in November. He has pleaded not guilty, and we hope he's ultimately vindicated. After all, Zimmermann is one of the nicest (and strangest) men ever to hold elected office in Minneapolis. But it's tough to get past that one phrase: "money, money, money."
Has a star athlete ever been less appreciated than Daunte Culpepper? The sporadically brilliant, psychologically fragile former Vikings quarterback was never embraced by Minnesotans. Even when Culpepper was performing at the peak of his abilities—as in 2004 when he passed for nearly 5,000 yards and tossed 39 touchdowns—there would be some booze-addled yahoo calling into the KFAN post-game show to belittle and berate his efforts. With this year's cavalcade of bad decisions and worse luck for Culpepper, this simmering hostility came to a full boil. Behind a beleaguered offensive line, he started out the season miserably. These troubles were quickly compounded by the infamous Lake Minnetonka boat cruise, with Culpepper one of four players facing indecency charges. Finally, the veteran QB saw his season derailed by a serious knee injury. When the team's franchise player was then unloaded in the offseason for the fire-sale price of a second-round draft pick, most Vikings fans greeted the news with delight. Even though the only quarterback remaining on the roster was a 37-year-old, mobility-challenged, Tampa Bay Buccaneer reject whose chief upside was that he didn't throw many interceptions. More telling was the response down in Miami: astonished glee. Dolphins fans realized that they had potentially landed the rarest of commodities—a gifted, proven, game-changing quarterback. And for practically nothing. So, kudos to Daunte. He'll finally get to play in front of some fans who'll appreciate his superb skills. And the Lake Minnetonka antics that threw Minnesotans into such a finger-wagging tizzy will hardly raise any eyebrows on South Beach.
The editors at the Minnesota Historical Society Press must have suspected they had a winner on their hands before they got their first glimpse of Helget's memoir, The Summer of Ordinary Ways. After all, Helget, a writing instructor at the Minnesota State University Mankato, had already been pegged as one of the state's fast-rising literary talents. In 2004 she won the Speakeasy Prize for Prose; last year, she collected Minnesota Monthly's 2005 Tamarack Award for short fiction. But it was The Summer of Ordinary Ways, published in October, that made her a name. The raves came from all corners: Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, People, the Washington Post, and, naturally, the usual local outlets. In its year-end roundup of notable Minnesota books, the Star Tribune deemed the memoir "clear-eyed" and "truthful." For our part, City Pages characterized Helget's depiction of her bleak upbringing on a Minnesota farm as a "gemlike haiku." By December, the book was headed for a third printing, talk of a movie deal was in the works, and a novel underway. Not bad, especially considering that just a few years earlier Helget was a stay-at-home mom with scant writing experience, zero name recognition and, evidently, a lot of unhappy childhood memories.
Memory, of course, is a tricky thing. No author of a memoir can reasonably assert that her remembrance of things past is absolutely accurate, that it is devoid of all embellishment. That said, there is a critical difference between the taking of poetic license in matters of dialogue and chronology and, say, cooking up a story about how your besotted dad stabbed a cow to death with a pitchfork. If you are to believe Helget's mother, siblings, and assorted family friends, Helget veered deep into the fictional realm in her depiction of the supposed pathos, violence, and poverty of life on the Helget family farm. Despite a profoundly unflattering depiction, Helget's father, Dale, has publicly defended his daughter. On the other hand, he also has acknowledged that he hadn't read her book and flatly denies having ever impaled any livestock. So what's the difference between James Frey and Nicole Helget? Well, Helget can write and she hasn't appeared on Oprah. Not yet, at least.
In his prime, Kirby was the most beloved athlete in Minnesota. It wasn't just a .318 lifetime batting average, the 10 All-Star appearances, or the two championships. Puck possessed a potent gift for setting people at ease. Some of that was attributable to garden-variety charisma. But some of it was more complex than that. Unlike a lot of the post-Ali black athletes, Puckett never seemed to make an issue of race. Given the demographics of the upper Midwest fan base (and the conflict-averse regional identity), Puck's "friendly black guy" persona was a big part of his popularity. After his retirement, of course, Puckett's reputation took an awful beating. An ex-wife, an ex-mistress, a former Twins employee, and a female bar patron all had stories to tell. If the details were cloudy and sometimes disputed, the overall pattern was not: Kirby—the orbital, cuddly mensch whom Minnesotans so loved to love—had an unseemly history of abusive behavior directed toward women. In the wake of these revelations, Puckett withdrew. He moved to Arizona, where he golfed, packed on the pounds, and largely vanished from public view. According to media reports, as recently as this year, Puckett rebuffed overtures from the Twins organization to rejoin "the family." Time, it seems, doesn't heal all wounds. Death is another matter. The first-day news coverage made perfunctory mention of Puckett's post-baseball troubles. But serious reflection about Puckett's character flaws was essentially obliterated in the media-fueled torrent of nostalgia, Peter Pan-esque adulation, and pious remembrance. The giant memorial at the Dome was the penultimate step on the way to Kirby's ultimate beatification by the fans and the press. That will be fully realized when the Twins finally get their new stadium—Kirby Puckett Park. It is sad but true: Kirby was worth more to the Twins dead than alive.
This season saw the usual farcical fare for our beloved but perpetually wronged 'Queens: bad calls from the refs, a plague of hard-luck injuries, a spate of off-the-field incidents that distracted from the simple task of winning on Sundays. Ho-hum. Slowly but surely, however, the steady accretion of those tragicomic, non-football-related things gradually turned the Vikes from hunters into hunted. Who among us hasn't carried a prosthetic penis and dried urine through an airport checkpoint? Or, for that matter, who hasn't scalped free Super Bowl tickets for a profit of thousands of dollars? And, really, who hasn't encouraged two willing lasses to engage, double-dildo, in front of a boatful of peers? This rather damning accounting notwithstanding, most purple-faced rubes were willing to look askance if the team would just make the playoffs. Sadly, forgiveness was not in the cards, so the heads at Winter Park and an army of lawyers and agents took a cue from the White House: Turn the tables in favor of the miscreants. Piss-specialist Onterrio "Scooter" Smith was a fall guy/bad apple cut from the team, scalper/head coach Mike Tice's million-dollar salary was too low for an average coach, and two players charged in the Love Boat incident claimed they were singled out because they were black. Boo-hoo. In the end, it probably doesn't really matter, because the Viking fan base has been forgiving a startling level of misconduct (and generally bad teams) for three decades now. Still, in terms of framing their scandalously embarrassing season, the Vikings behaved heroically in the all-spin zone: In fact, the whole team deserved a Purple Heart.
We here in the Twin Towns like to think we're blessed with a benevolent corporate community: Target, General Mills, 3M, and even the privately owned Cargill are all noted nationwide for their charitable giving. Still, none of them could match the outpouring generated by the one-man corporation known as Kevin Garnett. While he might be smaller than some of the local companies, bear in mind that Garnett once had a six-year contract for $126 million, and Sports Illustrated estimates that with salary, rewards, and endorsements, KG pulled in $30 million last year alone. Even so, the man is noted for his graciousness and generosity—he did, after all, take a pay cut to stay with the Wolves, settling on a paltry $20 million a year. But not many people noticed what Garnett did in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In November, Garnett contacted Oprah Winfrey by letter, which the surprised host read on the air. In it, Garnett pledged to contribute to Winfrey's Angel Network and its mission of rebuilding an entire neighborhood in New Orleans. Garnett's pledge was to pay for the construction of one house every month for the next two years—a total of 24 dwellings. Oprah choked up as she read the letter, and with little self-promotion or fanfare, Garnett had made one of the most significant gestures by any celebrity or athlete to help Katrina survivors. For this, Garnett was largely ignored by the media, a crime that didn't escape the notice of ESPN.com's Scoop Jackson, who noted the move in a column headlined "What mattered most in 2005." "In an era when it is too often publicly asked: 'Where are our kids' role models?'" Jackson wrote, "in a world where we have been conditioned to believe that every one of these young superstars is unappreciative, ungrateful, undeserving, and a void soul, a situation arose that could have shifted the entire perception of their existence. What Kevin Garnett did was just that big." Bigger, to some degree, than anything any of our other corporate citizens did.
According to the American Heritage dictionary, a gadfly is one of three things: "A persistent irritating critic; someone who acts as a provocative stimulus; or one of an array of various flies that bite or annoy livestock and other animals." So far as we know, Morrissey does not harass cattle. On the other two counts, though, he meets the definition to a T. Captain's Quarters, the political blog Morrissey has operated since 2003, can be a tiring read. It is chock full of predictable right-of-center talking points and, like most political blogs, is stained by its tone of chronic indignation. But if nothing else, Captain Ed—as he calls himself—is one persistent fellow. And per the definition, he certainly is willing to act as "a provocative stimulus." Just ask Paul Martin, the former prime minister of Canada whose long-ruling Liberal Party was ousted in the January elections. Martin's defeat, it is widely acknowledged, came in part due to Morrissey's tireless blogging on the subject of a kickback scandal involving Montreal ad firms with government contracts. How, you ask, could a middle-aged call-center manager from Eagan out-compete the Canadian media on such a matter? To understand that, you need to recognize the peculiarities of press restrictions in Canada, where media outlets were barred from reporting on the continuing investigation. Supplied with a steady stream of information from a Canadian citizen who attended the court hearings in Ottawa, Captain Ed faced no such constraints. Not long after he began publishing the particulars, hundreds of thousands of Canadians were soon visiting Morrissey's blog for updates. Why did Morrissey feel compelled to weigh in on clean government issues in Canada? Because he's a gadfly, that's why. And an effective one at that.
In the cattier circles in local media—which is to say, pretty much everyone in local media—the redesign of the Star Tribune has been the object of nearly constant guffaws since its launch this fall. As the state's leading news organ, of course, the Strib has always been on the receiving end of a lot of criticism, some fair, some unfair. Like most major dailies, the Strib employs its share of talented reporters, good writers, and total hacks; institutionally, it's chief "bias"—the Red Star trope nothwithstanding—is to appease whoever is complaining the loudest at the moment. Ergo the hiring of veteran non-journalist Katherine Kersten. But this is all digression. To both media types and casual readers, the new-look Strib begs this question: What's worse—the new website or the new paper? Certainly, there are problems with the latter. The stories are shorter, "soft" news is getting way too much play, and the graphics people seem to have defenestrated the editors. Ugly, but understandable in terms of the demographic panic that is sweeping the newspaper industry. But the redesigned website is a mystery. Pre-redesign, the Strib offered readers a highly functional, easy to navigate website. The new incarnation is a nightmare. Some stories are impossible to locate. Others linger on the front page for days. It is, in short, a textbook study in what happens when too many middle managers have too much time on their hands: They bollux up a perfectly good thing for no apparent reason other than to appear busy.
Who can possibly keep up with all the grim news transpiring around the world these days? Civil war in Iraq, mounting bloodshed in Afghanistan, nuclear rumblings from Iran, genocide in Sudan. It's all a bit bewildering to comprehend. That's why Cursor, with its peerless cataloguing of the day's important news stories, is so valuable. The site's tireless, crackerjack staff stays up all night culling through reports of the world's latest atrocities, and assembles them in an incisive, witty, easy-to-read digest. In addition, the site's collection of links to other essential, non-mainstream websites and blogs is first rate. Also of note is Cursor's "Media Transparency" project (www.mediatransparency.com), an encyclopedic look at the country's network of conservative philanthropists and operatives. It proves that, paranoia aside, there really is a vast right-wing conspiracy.
Minvolved is one of the newest lefty blogs on the scene, but it's proving to be one of the most prolific. Started by the folks behind Clever Peasantry (now defunct) and MN Publius (www.mnpublius.com), Minvolved, as with our right-wing choice, sticks to the facts with a dash of humor, a modicum of dismissive attitude, and the occasional post on furry lobsters. Minvolved keeps a close eye on unraveling stories, such as the recent demise of the Center of the American Experiment, while combing dozens of local political blogs and out-state newspapers, eschewing the bloviating and hyperbole, for useful news and information. It has an unfortunate portmanteau for a name, but it's a smart and comprehensive political site.
For the online voyeur, personal blogs offer the seductive charge of reading someone's innermost thoughts, akin to reading their diary, which, of course, you're doing, only the writer has been kind enough to publish it on the internet for all the world to see. Sadly, most blogs, like those old hardcover diaries, only hold the interest of the writers themselves. We cull through personal blogs for that rare opportunity to enter the lives of people unknown yet instantly familiar, the kind of folks Studs Terkel is so adept at unearthing. Kid Tiger at Driver2165 allows a daily glimpse into the life of an MTC bus driver, fueled by stories rich with quirky and eccentric passengers, and with situations both hilarious and dangerous. We learn of secret bus-driver bathrooms in underpasses, vomiting out the windows onto passing BMWs, and mobile bachelorette parties. With the birth of a baby girl, Kid Tiger's focus has shifted somewhat to the misadventures of first-time fatherhood, including all of the diaper rash and poop stories one can handle. It's another facet to his life that is still well worth the read.
A political blog not completely composed of spittle-spewing invective and pearl-clutching indignation? No smug harrumphing over opposition missteps or the echoing national committee talking points? 'Tis a rare breed indeed. The Nihilist in Golf Pants contributors take their cues more from P.J. O'Rourke and David Letterman than like-minded bloggers Michelle Malkin or Little Green Footballs. Instead of venomous diatribes, one is more likely to find hilarious Top 11 Lists on Ruth Bader Ginsburg's impromptu naps, Michael Brown's résumé padding, and groups the president won't allow to run U.S. ports, all of which say more about their topics than any rambling screed. NIGP's tongue-in-cheek approach to dissecting the day's political news wins over readers of any political stripe.
If your tastes have matured beyond the King of Beers, and you've grown bored with even the finer European imports, MN Beer will be your guide to finding local breweries, microbreweries, beer-related events in Minnesota and Wisconsin, homebrew information and pubs that serve unique and tasty microbrews from all over the country. Launched last September, the site also tracks which bars are serving new and interesting selections, and steers the reader to local press features on the pub scene. MN Beer pays homage to our state's brewing history with short pieces on Shell's, Finnegan's, and other breweries with touring schedules and current product lines. There are also fastidious updates on the beer menus of Twin Cities microbreweries. Whether you can tell a Maibock from an oatmeal stout or not, thanks to MN Beer you need never drink a lousy beer again.
No real surprise here, but hey, Rain Taxi isn't just the finest lit publication in town, it's one of the finest in the country. The quarterly just celebrated its 10th anniversary and has survived by giving the serious reader what she wants: no press releases masquerading as criticism, no celebrity and quasi-celebrity profiles, just lots and lots of reviews, essays, and an in-depth interview or two each issue. Not every review is a distinguished piece of criticism, but few are disposable, and the scope is always impressive and admirable: long and short takes on fiction well-known and obscure, poetry, graphic novels, and a variety of nonfiction. There's even a new column devoted to chapbooks. Rain Taxi also sponsors or co-sponsors a bunch of readings and other bookish events, including the Twin Cities Book Festival, which will mark its sixth year this October.
Beat reporting is a difficult job. To do it well you've got to report on the shortcomings and shenanigans of people in power—and then show up the next day to face their wrath. There's also the risk of tedium. How many insignificant zoning hearings and City Council meetings must you suffer through just to turn up one journalistic nugget? Nobody covers his beat better than St. Paul City Hall reporter Tim Nelson. Even after more than five years on the municipal beat, his reporting continues to display an insatiable curiosity about the inner workings of the Capitol City. Both in the print edition and at his excellent City Hall Scoop blog (blogs.twincities.com/city_hall_scoop), Nelson consistently provides the most detailed, intelligent coverage in town. Whether analyzing voter turnout in the mayoral primary or dishing on Mayor Chris Coleman's harassment at the legendary Mancini's Char House & Lounge because of his support for the smoking ban, he's made the Pi Press the indispensable source for St. Paul political news. In a year that saw incumbent Mayor Randy Kelly take a historic thumping at the polls, Nelson certainly had plenty to write about.
Pat Reusse and Jim Souhan are always solid, Garrison Keillor is reliably writerly and persnickety, and the Business section delivers some of the most insightful writing and analysis around. More and more, though, we find ourselves turning to the thoughtful prose of outdoors writer Anderson and travel writer Welsch. Both have a way of painting a scene and drawing us in. Both respect us enough not to waste our time, and inevitably deliver a purposeful point in their prose. And the love both men have for their jobs—the writing and the subjects they cover—is evident every time out. Here's hoping the McClatchy empire respects their well-honed craft enough to allow them to continue exploring their beats at their own quiet pace. It's our gain.
If you truly are judged by your enemies, then Minnesota AIDS Project is one helluvan organization. During last year's legislative session, the 23-year-old nonprofit group earned the enmity of Rep. Tom Emmer, a freshman Republican from Delano who can charitably be described as "eccentric." During his first stint at the Capitol, Emmer has proposed such novel legislative initiatives as chemically castrating sex offenders and permitting pharmacists to not fill prescriptions on moral grounds. MAP attracted his ire for its sexually explicit disease-prevention materials aimed at gay men. Apparently Emmer was not familiar with, nor supportive of, the practice of "fisting." His response upon learning that such sexual behavior was being openly discussed by MAP was to propose that the organization lose all its state funding, some $400,000. Never mind that state money wasn't even being used to generate the materials in question. Never mind that it's the largest AIDS-service organization in the state, providing vital, life-saving services to thousands of HIV-infected men and women across the state. From legal counseling to housing assistance, from HIV testing to case management, MAP offers a full array of programs to people suffering from the disease. In fact, last year more than half of the state's roughly 5,000 HIV-positive residents utilized the nonprofit group's programs at some point. And MAP's safe-sex materials aimed at gay men, however reprehensible Emmer may find them, are exactly the sort of no-nonsense publications that save lives.
It's hardly a news flash that too many festivals have been overrun by corporations and politicians. With endless product booths and glad-handing candidates, many a "festival" contains the ambiance of a crass, straining-to-be-joyful exercise in marketing. Not so the MayDay Parade and Festival. This annual pagan celebration of workers, nature, and winter's end remains delightfully odd and over-the-top. Loosely organized by In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater, it recruits a delightfully unclassifiable throng to Powderhorn Park on the first Sunday in May. Among this human potpourri are jug bands and jugglers, fire-eaters, and giant, papier-mâché puppets, with giddy, pop-eyed kids ogling from the sidelines. There are even going to be a few stray politicians, sporting permanent smiles that are among the scariest masks of the day.
Though suburban communities have recently been growing their farmers' markets—or creating new ones—the Minneapolis Farmers' Market is still the best place for a wide selection and good deals. And while the Minneapolis market might not be able to boast of an uppity ban on non-local items (cough, St. Paul), there's still plenty of homegrown fare. Local stuff is marked, too, so if you want to maintain your own uppity prejudice in favor of Minnesota's wares, you can ensure that your beeswax candles come from locally raised bees and not some foreign imposters. But the welcome attitude toward out-of-state goods means that there will also be bananas and mangoes among the array of foods and crafts and plants and other stuff cramming the tables. And we do mean stuff. While the first and main reason we go to the farmers' market will always be for the fresh sweet corn (and organic herbs and spices, and fresh flowers by the bundle, and...dammit, there's too much), there is increasingly more to buy in the way of homemade soaps, fancy little notebooks, and other un-farmed but quite nice doodads. Not that they'll ever replace that sweet, sweet corn.
We're excited about the opening of the new Minneapolis Central Library next month, but this branch location is a prizewinner right now. Nearly a century old and recently given a major restoration, north Minneapolis's Sumner Library is a Tudor Revival style building equipped with elegant woodwork and a hard-to-come-by mixture of coziness and seriousness. Its main selling points are the Gary N. Sudduth room, filled with a superb collection of African American literature and local history materials; a stately reading room for adults; and a generous children's area that includes another, less scholarly-looking reading room. The general fiction section, alas, leaves much to be desired, but hey, if you can't find what you want, have it transferred over and enjoy the sort of luxe, woody experience you probably thought only Ivy Leaguers got to enjoy.
The atmosphere in the Franklin Community Library is jubilant. Children—when they aren't parked with a book in the children's pavilion, teen arena, or stairwell—are run-walking the short maze of the small library's recently renovated footprint, often forgetting to heed the "inside voices" rule. Or they're staring slack-jawed at the kids'-area computer screen in front of them, too heavily weighed down with enormous earphones to be running in and out of the reading rooms. In short, the brightly painted library is consistently bustling with kids and adults taking advantage of its more accessible offerings. Built in 1914, the city's oldest community library reopened in May after an extensive reconstruction effort. The original stone and masonry on the building's facade was restored, as were indoor architectural elements such as the millwork and wood shelving. The elevator—a relic of an earlier renovation—was moved to regain some of the elegance of the front entryway. It worked. Other changes, such as removing interior walls and adding large rooftop skylights, open the library and manage to make it feel more spacious and cozier at the same time. An addition at the rear of the building makes room for a staff lounge, a kitchen, and unglamorous things like the mechanical room and storage space. Near the front, works by local artists hang above fireplace mantles. Above all, Franklin lives up to its name as a community library, with people streaming in and out of the building at a steady pace, some filing to the new tutor and technology rooms, others reading soundlessly wherever they can nab a spot.
The idea that taxes are inherently bad—and that most people don't want to pay them—is accepted as gospel truth in many quarters. Thankfully, it's not true. When politicians make their aims clear, the public can be remarkably game. Case in point: In 2000, the voters of Minneapolis approved, by a margin of two to one, a $140 million referendum to boost and improve the city's library system. Most of that amount—$110 million—was earmarked for the construction of a spanking-new central library downtown. The old building, a lackluster relic from the '60s, was falling apart and much too small. Now, opening in May, we've got a structure that may not win major architectural awards, and probably wouldn't deserve them if it did. In practical terms, though, it is everything a library should be. An honest-to-God public space, it will provide fingertip access to millions of books and other materials. It will have conference rooms, a café, hundreds of new computers, and even fireplaces (albeit fueled by gas) for feet-up reading.
While admittedly Le Parisien Flats and Marketplace reminds us of the French village at Epcot Center or the Paris Casino in Las Vegas (both elaborate efforts to capture the real deal in places that are nothing like the eternal City of Light) it still earns this year's nod because the 13-unit condo development incorporates a number of innovative, eco-friendly, and creative elements into its design. Developer Mark Dzuik offers up something called "building biology," which sounds a little germy but in fact encompasses a wide range of green building practices and products such as solar heat, a garden rooftop, and kitchen cabinetry composed of "agriboard" made from agricultural cellulose rather than wood. The lack of common hallways will cut down on noise pollution, and a courtyard will provide a small oasis and extra oxygen. There are also plenty of other attractive components, such as in-floor radiant heating and floors featuring the same herringbone parquet design that can be found in the Louvre near that diva Mona Lisa. The floor plans were even analyzed by a feng shui consultant, so aesthetic and architectural harmony are in line. Finally, buyers get a say in the decor by purchasing their condo "on the half shell" and working with a designer (developer and contractor approved) to complete the interior. The building will also feature a bakery and organic wine loft for those who wish to purchase an elegant repast while wearing their slippers. Ultimately, Le Parisien may only possess just a bit of that je ne sais quoi peculiar to the French, but the attempt at beauty and whimsy is appreciated, and the depth of environmental concern behind this project is to be commended and hopefully duplicated in other developments.
Face it: You yearn to waste time. But the older you get, the guiltier you feel about the naps, the Playstation, the beer. Luckily there are respectable, productive ways to while away the hours, and the best local example of this is the Minnesota Historical Society Library. Minnesota history, believe it or not, is colorful and a little twisted, and the library contains a breathtaking array of academically inclined goodies so you can discover the juicy details. In addition to federal and state censuses, there are records from state correctional facilities and asylums, court records, and indexes of birth and death certificates. You can't just look up your neighbors—these records are very old, mostly, and some require certain permissions for access, but most are available for perusal. There are also decades' worth of city and rural directories, various newspapers (Twin Cities and otherwise) on microfilm, all manner of maps and additional resources far too numerous to mention. Spend a lazy afternoon goofing off and indulging your inner egghead all at once. When you're done you'll walk away smarter. Can't say that about naps or beer, now can you?
Just because the 4-H competition is for kids doesn't mean it's for amateurs. No, this statewide youth agriculture program has more regulations than the American nuclear industry: The bylaws for parking fill half a page! Animal husbandry is no ordinary hobby; your average skate-boarder doesn't need to sign something like a Dairy Goat Ownership Affidavit to compete. Though you'll see the 4-H kids slouching on lawn chairs in the swelter of the afternoon, most of them harbor some serious ambitions. Otherwise, there would be no need for the rule book to caution that "the use of drenching, mechanical pumping devices or other abnormal methods to administer water or fluids into animals will not be permitted." The beasts, for their part, are not ordinary beasts. The roosters here have garish and spectacular cockscombs—sculpted red crowns that look like makeup from a Matthew Barney flick. The swine are grotesque; truly, the swine barn is tolerable only to those with an appetite for the monstrous. The rabbits have ears that would do Prince Charles proud; the beef cattle show off flanks that could be used in a butcher's diagram. Lest any of these kids get mushy-hearted about what they're doing in Falcon Heights, the 4-H auction at the end of the Livestock show delivers a classic Yearling moment. The winning kids are relieved of their pride and joy and go home instead with some American currency. And a colored ribbon.
It's true that there are many admirable foods served up at the State Fair. The $2 U of M milkshakes are filling yet economical, the deep-fried candy bars are a poetic ode to sugar-hedonism, the mac-n-cheese on a stick is weird yet tasty, and of course everyone is obligated to consume at least one cheese curd or else fail to understand the true meaning of the fair. But for those looking for something a little more off the beaten path—something for which you may only have to stand in a line behind a few people rather than one winding down the street—there's sunflower honey ice cream. Its stand is located in the Agriculture-Horticulture building, where you can order up a bowl or cone of vanilla-honey or chocolate-honey and gaze upon the wall of bees behind the glass, blissfully unaware that the product of their neurotically hard work will result in tasty treats for human consumption. Like a natural Rocky Road, this sweet treat is far better than pedestrian ice cream flavors like strawberry or chocolate chip—some licks are sweet and creamy, some swirled with threads of syrupy honey, and others are sunflower-crunchy. It's the perfect treat whether watching the parade, buzzing by an award-winning orchid display, or watching kids run screaming from the giant talking robot that roams up and down Cosgrove Street throughout the day.
Stillwater
651.430.8370
www.co.washington.mn.us/info_for_residents/parks_division/parks_and_trails/square_lake_park/
For years, there have been signs posted at the entrance to Square Lake Park warning of potential swimmer's itch. After years of patronizing one of the real outdoor treasures in the entire metro, we think somebody is just trying to keep the place a secret—the only itches we've encountered are from the occasional mosquito bite. On the contrary, the water is refreshingly cold and clear as a bell, drawing scuba divers from throughout the region. There's also a boat launch and a fishing pier on the grounds. The park strikes a perfect balance between commerce and DIY, with a beach for sunbathing and a copious, grassy picnic area with grills and benches. If you haven't brought your own, snacks are available at reasonable prices, along with a changing area and a push-button, spray-circle public shower to clean yourself off. Lifeguards are on duty during the summer season and a roped-off swimming area makes the place kid-friendly, but there are plenty of young singles, and a diverse array of Hmong, Mexican, African American, and Scandinavian folks around too. It's one of those charmed places where people feel comfortable and happy simply hanging out beside each other. But please don't tell too many of your friends—unless you complain about the swimmer's itch. Vehicle permits required, and no dogs allowed.
It is easy to pick on the suburbs. This explains why city folk have spent much of the last half-century engaged in the sport: It is the forensic equivalent of a prairie dog shoot. But not all 'burbs are the bland, homogeneous entities of the common caricature. Drive up Central Avenue in Columbia Heights and you'll come across a more varied and vibrant commercial district than you'll find in downtown Minneapolis. And truth be told, there are quite a few neighborhoods in Minneapolis and St. Paul that don't seem much different from certain quarters of Edina and Roseville. Yet the Twin Cities suburbs do curse their inhabitants to a hellish reality, one that should give you pause should you consider moving to the land of lawns and malls: horrible, ever worsening, soul-crushing traffic. In its 2005 survey, the Metropolitan Council asked residents of the seven-county metro area what the region's biggest problem is. A full 40 percent of suburbanites listed transportation. By contrast, just 22 percent of city folk shared that view. You may ask: Is that because city people are more worried about crime? Fair question. The answer is no. City dwellers and suburbanites, according to the survey, rank crime similarly. But traffic—that's the enduring curse of the 'burbs, and a good reason not to move from your crappy, crime-infested digs in the inner city.
When Coon Rapids City Council member Joe Sidoti recommended changing the name of his fair suburb back at the start of this year, we were all for it. Sidoti argued that the name conjured a sort of rural, backwoods sensibility that was, well, a tad embarrassing. "We've got a city of 65,000 people," he said. "Does the name Coon Rapids conjure up the name of a thriving city?" Additionally, there's the fact that the city's name innocently contains what for many is a hurtful racial epithet. Best still, how often do you get to rename a city? Our initial suggestion was going to be "Poon Rapids," as we thought it might prove a boon to tourism. Unfortunately, as it turns out, to Coon Rapids residents our marvelous bon mot was something of a stale witticism. Apparently, adjoining suburbs have been calling the city Poon Rapids for some time now, and not out of affection. On MnSpeak.com, alternate suggestions flew fast and furious, including "The City Formerly Known as Coon Rapids," "Not Overtly Racist" and the sublimely point-missing "Coon Creek." Our vote, however, goes to a suggestion from Sam of urtext.org that seems to get right through to the heart of the matter. Sam's suggestion: Increasingly Indistinguishable Minneapolis Suburb #41.
Are you one of those armchair adventurers who subscribes to Outdoor magazine or Men's Journal and avidly reads about people roller skating down the Himalayas, or surviving a summer on psychedelic mushrooms, owl dung, and the lint scraped out of their Swiss army knife? Well, get off your ass and get real. At the crack of dawn on Saturday morning (or Friday night if you want to spring for a motel), hop in your car and drive up to the North Shore. Get on the Superior Hiking Trail and go for a walk. Opened in 1987, the SHT is a 205-mile footpath that follows a rocky ridgeline from Two Harbors straight up near the Canadian border. Although named one of the top 10 trails in the country by Backpacker magazine, it is not especially arduous, although there are some momentarily steep climbs that frequently put you into clearings with gorgeous views of Lake Superior. But best of all, there are trailheads with parking lots every five to ten miles along the way, enabling you to choose a section and make a day hike out of it; or carve the hike into two days by staying overnight at one of the 70 back-country campsites—no fees, permits, or reservations are required. You can eventually traverse the entire trail through two or three dozen of these marvelous weekend hiking trips. Stop in at the Superior Hiking Trail Association store and office in Two Harbors for more information.
The Children's Museum? Costco? Unless you're a pro at chatting up strangers, connecting with other gay families can be a challenge, and seeing the ones you might already know is another kind of challenge, what with work and T-ball practice and trips to Costco and all. Minneapolis-based Rainbow Families' annual conference, then, is a must. Rainbow Families works year-round as a recourse and advocate for LGBT families, and their annual gathering, celebrating its 11th anniversary in '06, draws gay families and prospective parents from all over the region. The daylong event features workshops, a keynote address, games and sports activities for kids, and lots of opportunities to meet new friends. If you're reading this issue when it's hot off the presses, you're timing couldn't be better: This year's conference takes place Saturday, April 29 at Anwatin/Bryn Mawr School. If you missed the boat this year, Rainbow Families puts together various smaller community events, and has more networking opportunities and tips than you probably have time for.
Our survey of expat Minnesotans produced this go-to wish list: Big 10 Sub Shop ("for the sandwiches, extra crispy fries, pitcher of Leinenkugel's or Pabst in a pinch"), Cafe Lurcat ("for the little hamburgers in the bar"), Al's Breakfast, Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary, French Meadow, First Avenue, and Walker Art Center. All fine choices, but the falls is where it's at, and it's free. Ride your bike in the glorious spring, summer, and fall, and gorge on the frozen beauty of the ice cascades in the winter. Then stand by the Hiawatha statue and recite Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha," and head next door to the best off-leash dog park in town. Bring the pups.
Seriously, watch Blind Date if you want a decent blueprint for a good first date. The producers have a sound basic structure, even as they populate it with silicone augmented sociopaths and sleazy fame-whores: Combine light exercise with artistic endeavor, finish with a shared meal, and you can see whether a nascent love affair is going to spark or sputter. Short of a production company picking up your bar tab, one of the best first-date bets in town is Monday nights at Bryant-Lake Bowl. The aptly named "Cheap Date Night" features dinner for two, a bottle of wine, and a game of bowling for $25. If all goes well, cap off your night at the intimate attached theater, or share a dessert in the convivial bar. If it doesn't, your investment is minimal, everyone's too busy drinking or bowling to care, and you don't have a "loser" caption plastered under your face for syndicated television posterity.
Being at the Mall of America is tantamount to suffering a few hours of agony anyway, right? What's a little heartache to go with it? It might even make being at the mall more fun. Let's look at some key considerations in breakup-siting: Is there enough privacy to salvage your pride? Well, no, but there's loads of anonymity, which should be a suitable substitute. Would your memories of the place be tainted? Quite possibly. But do you really want to go back there again? Probably not. If you do, though, not to worry: The stores and kiosks change often enough, and the mall is so durn ginormous it's kind of like an entire city. You could probably just avoid the particular points of latitude and longitude at which the dumping took place. Now, on to the healing (the mall is so well equipped to handle your dumping needs, you'll begin to wonder if this is why malls were put on the earth in the first place): 1) Gorging. Getting dumped will require a Mud Pie Blizzard with chocolate-chip-cookie-dough bits swirled in, or a gluttonous facsimile. The mall has this extensively covered. It is an ice cream mecca. 2) Shopping therapy. Again, covered. We don't need to explain this. 3) Drinking. There should still be a few survivors of the great Fourth-Floor Bar Purge of 2005. By all means, get loaded. 4) Vegas wedding. At the Chapel of Love, you may legally exchange marital vows. Call an old high school pal and get yourself a 55-hour marriage to get over your Justin Timberlake, uh, boyfriend. 5) Self improvement. Spas, water massage joints, and hair salons abound. Shit, you can go back to school in an attempt to improve yourself/impress your former flame. (Well, you can go to National American University. It has a Mall of America campus.) 6) Transportation. When it's all over, you can hop on the light rail and get yourself out of there relatively not bad off. And let's not forget 7) Optimism. If Mallrats taught us anything, it's that Minnesota malls (the movie was shot at the Eden Prairie Mall, pre-makeover) are the perfect place to ruin a live, pilot episode of a rip-off dating-game show and win back your lost love forever.
Let's face it: If you're going to publicly dump someone, chances are you care less about looking like a callous ass than you do about ridding yourself of this clingy bastard for good. Unless you're a total weasel, it's likely you've tried ending it before in private, during an after-dinner discussion that almost always begins with, "Ummm, I think we need to talk," a sentence that turns the other person's thorax into a ball of steel that could choke Andre the Giant. Or perhaps you tried the next best thing, breaking up with them over takeout McDonalds: "You're McDumped." However, if neither of those worked, there's Southdale mall. Tell the creep you have to work late, and you'll meet at the mall instead of driving together. The best time to go is on a Saturday night, when the lines are eight layers deep. (With a mouth-breathing Vin Diesel fan delivering hot air on the soon-to-be dumped one's nape, there's little chance even the most volatile dumped dude will make a scene.) Determine in line that you'll see one of the 16-screen theater's completely innocuous offerings, like Ice Age 2 or Scary Movie 36, and then deliver the news: "I think we should just be friends...starting now." Then, while the recently dumped stands there stunned, suggest you stay and see the movie as friends, an event that will last less than two hours and, thankfully, requires silence. When the movie's over, simply get in your car, drive home, and turn off the cell phone for at least three days. Dumped well done.
Sure, everybody knows that the key to business success is "location, location, location," but we'd like to suggest another essential ingredient: signage, signage, signage. We've plummeted since the glory days of the mid-20th century, when businesses proudly announced themselves with all the flash they could muster, creating enormous monstrosities of neon and painted steel. Back then, if you wanted to find a building, you just scanned the horizon for its sign, and then followed the three-story-tall, flashing yellow arrow downward to its front door. It hardly seems possible that businesses have gotten more timid, so why the timid entryways? Too many contemporary signs are simple sans serif logotypes embellished with a small, tasteful icon. Thankfully, we still have Murray's Steakhouse, whose resplendent signage has dominated the Twin Cities since the 1940s. From the restaurant's curved, deco exterior to its two-floor-high marquee, the entire front of Murray's works as one giant sign. It's easy to become hypnotized with the sign, in fact, as evidenced by the Bill Griffith cartoon hanging in the front entryway that shows Zippy the Pinhead studying the exterior of the building and repeating the restaurant's slogan, emblazoned on the second floor in elegant, hand-painted letters: Home of the Silver Butter Knife Steak.
It's been a year since the Walker expansion opened to the public and while many still debate the merits of the architectural design by Herzog & de Meuron, most will agree that the new building has contributed significantly by providing new ways to appreciate downtown Minneapolis from the Walker rooftop. At night, the balcony outside the 20.21 restaurant provides a welcome respite from all the culinary posing within. Lean against the wall with a drink in your hand and enjoy the soft glow of the Basilica, the bustle of Hennepin Avenue, the whimsical pedestrian bridge, the skyscrapers blinking beyond Loring Park. A visit to the Skyline Room on the top floor affords a similar scene, with the benefit of being inside on a wintry night. The terraces by Gallery 8, atop the older Walker building, offer a complete panorama of the Sculpture Garden, the shimmering glass of the Cowles Conservatory, and the ever-popular Spoonbridge and Cherry. The view from the uppermost heights of the Walker proves that you don't always need to be dozens of stories off the ground to appreciate the grand sweep of an urban landscape.
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