Today at the top of the offramp from 35W to Diamond Lake Rd there was a middle-aged man standing on the corner with a homeless sign like you see so much on Minneapolis’s on and offramps. What made this one interesting is that the sign the fella was holding wasn’t a scrap of cardboard—it was an 15” Apple G4 Powerbook with a screensaver that displayed his veteran status, his desire for a job, and a phone number at which he could be reached.
Zakcq and Jessica probably remember that night. We now have new neighbors. They've been accused of dealing drugs and also of prostitution. A car parked behind the apartment building exploded a few weeks ago. Arson is suspected. There are fist fights in their yard in the daytime. I've heard gunshots. They're up screaming at each other in the alley almost every night.
I miss our old drug-dealer neighbors.
Wow, a car slammed into Heywood this morning.
--------I was wondering yesterday while I was driving if any other cities named a street after Minneapolis. After all, we have streets named for Chicago, Portland, Oakland, Ontario, Columbus (possibly not related to Ohio, but it's next to two other city-named streets, and Minneapolis usually has a theme to the street names in an area)
The best I could find was a Minneapolis Ave. in Amery, WI.
(Hey, we made out better than St. Paul. They had to name one after themselves.)
UPDATE: Kassie notes that we did have to name one after ourselves. When we're looking for a new pad I'm definately hoping my address will be 2121 Minneapolis, Minneapolis, Minnesota
This 6 route I had yesterday and today is super sweet. I felt like I worked for 3 hours. It's 12:52p to about 8p. And the schedule is possible. I actually had to wait a few times for my time.
On friday I drove the 17. Northbound, there are two 17s. The 17 Downtown and the 17W Washington. Going through downtown it's very common for somebody to ask if the bus goes to Washington, even when you're a 17 Downtown. The W bus goes down the Washington that is over northeast. There is also a Washington near the north end of downtown. Anyway after answering so many questions that have the same answer ("No, I just end downtown") I just sorta answer and sorta not answer. I mean people should be able to tell the difference between 17 and 17W, most of them are the same people multiple times. I usually just say "I only go downtown" and leave it at that. Well after four and a half years with the company somebody finally wanted to go to Washington downtown. Breaking news.
Today we woke up and went over to the Pearl District and had lunch at the Byways Cafe, a nice little diner type place with cheap breakfast. It kinda remined me of my grandmother's house. We spent the next five or six hours just basically meandering around the neighborhood. They've done a great job building it up. There are a lot of old buildings, but there are also a lot of new condos, most of which appeared to be less than 7 or 8 years old. Seriously, Minneapolis gets four new condo projects and all the sudden everybody starts complaining about "too many condos" and "the city is too vertical". To those people I say grow up. There was a real cool little home store called Relish that drove me crazy. It had all the things I've been drooling about online actually in the store! I saw Amenity sheets and Lotta Jansdotter designs in the flesh! We got sandwiches from the Whole Foods and ate them in a little park nearby. The streetcar was kinda cool. It's a Czech tram, I forgot who built it.
We went back to the hotel for a little for our little midday "pregnant lady needs to lie down for a bit while her husband frantically makes notes of addresses of stores and restaurants and bus lines" rest. We decided on more downtown stuff. We still haven't really gotten out into the neighborhoods yet but there's still time. There's more to do near downtown Portland than Minneapolis, Seattle, Chicago, and San Francisco combined. We made a quick detour by the world's smallest park, which was a severe dissappointment. The bush and the sign was gone and it was just a pile of dirt with half a dead cactus sitting in it. Imagine a sad face on Ryan. We weren't quite hungry yet so we went over to this place called Ground Kontrol. It's a 25¢ video arcade almost completely filled with pre-1988 video consoles. And they have a bar. And it's 21+. We really suck at video games so we went though four bucks pretty quickly, but still. We'll probably go back and waste more money there. Basically every single person I can think of would go apeshit in there. And it wasn't all lonely wierd dudes, there were lonely wierd ladies there too. After that we walked a few blocks down to Old Town Pizza. We sat in a little sofa in a little nook and had what is billed as Portland's best pizza. It was super cool looking in there, with couches, tables, little nooks all over the place, brick walls. After scoffing at "only 30 toppings" we got a pretty damn good Artichoke and Olive (big surprise there) pizza. We were walking down Burnside to the Bus Mall to try to find a late night coffeeshop to kill time in when somebody pointed at us and yelled "Hey I know you" which scared the shit out of me because I don't know anybody from anywhere near Portland. It was the front desk lady from the hotel. We talked for a little and told her we were looking for a late night cafe and she said her and her friend were going to a bar right next to one. We followed her down there and it was open, but it was small and had some synth emo band with indie girls bouncing all over the place. We decided to skip it and go down to this place called Tiny's on Hawthorne. The hotel lady told us there's a newer Tiny's on MLK Blvd. (which would make it much easier to get back to the hotel on the bus) so we went up to that one even though I didn't know the cross street. We finally found it, and it closed at 9. I asked some people in Seattle and Portland if there are any late night coffeshops. 10pm is the latest we've seen. In Minneapolis 10pm is the time the old lady coffeeshops like Anodyne close. I thought the pacific northwest was all up in that coffee shit, but I guess it's nothing like Minneapolis. We named 10 places in Mpls that are open past midnight. We really take that for granted. Add that to the list of reasons Mpls is actually pretty cool (next to the smallest city with 5 minute bus service, better artichoke dip, more tall bikes, and more pizza toppings than countries in Europe.
A naked dead man was found three blocks from where I live in some random guys front yard.
I have to say, it took me a while to figure out the difference between Rybak and McLaughlin, but in the end, McLaughlin is gonna get my vote. He's much better on worker's rights, knows a new baseball stadium will generate new revenue, and most importantly, thinks the city zoning code needs a major overhaul (as opposed to Rybak, who wants to keep all new buildings under 2 stories and focus on developing downtown).
We went out with a bunch of people for Chinese food at Village Wok in University Village. I ate there once about six years ago, and I was less than impressed with my visit. It had to do with a long wait to get in, only to be served below average food. Tonight I ordered fried rice with chicken. After a forty minute wait, it finally arrived. I took a bite -- YUK. It tasted like charcoal. I got the order replaced with sweet and sour chicken. Guess what? It smelled like a barbeque pit in the park. Disgusting. The bathrooms are gross too.
I wanna go to Little T's next time.
aerial pictures of houses in Hennepin County now.
--------We ate breakfast at the newly opened Bad Waitress on 26th and Nicollet today. We really liked it. The food was just fine, even though they don't have Pitchfork's Best New Music or the ironic music style du jour (is it still New Wave? WTF?) , and nobody ever says anything like "Pabst is so Minneapolis."
So, yeah, we'll go back. I wonder if they have drink specials.
--------I could have gotten Sunday, Monday, and Christmas off like the Ceejster, but I decided I should stick with the straight runs instead of those short splits I would have had to take, to spend more time at home. So I picked nine hour work and took Tuesday and Wednesday off. The good part of this is I'm 14th in line for overtime on Wednesdays, and I'm about 100th in line on Saturdays.
So I'll be spending fourteen weeks on the 6 and the 46, which isn't bad at all. Half the time I'll be driving around yuppies and college kids, and during the other half I won't be driving anybody around (heh heh I kid - the 46 can take it).
Sat: 2:45p to 11:24p on the 6
--------
Old headline: "Study cuts downtown Minneapolis down to size"
I stopped on the mall today and Transit Librarian was in the bus going the other way. He was waiting for his time at 8th. After I leaned out and said hey, he told me to apologize to the 10 bus behind him for making him wait (unlike on an actual transit mall, we're not allowed to pass on our mall). This is just my way of letting him know that I happened to stop by the 10 bus's window and I did apologize for him. The driver just shrugged and said "what are ya gonna do?"
I'm trying something I picked up from the drivers in Portland. It's really helping my mood, the mood of my passengers, and it makes the day go much more quickly. When I call out a street, I've been calling out points of interest. This has actually made me like Minneapolis a bit more. There's actually something worth calling at almost every stoplight. I'm not calling out chainstores, because they don't need any help. 28th street seems to be a wasteland though. I can't think of anything for Nicollet or Lyndale on 28th. (Help would be appreciated. The best part of doing this: "Nicollet and Lake! Big K in the Way!" The best routes for interesting points of interest, in order: 2 (all those co-ops and it never leaves the city), the 6 (yeah no kidding), the 4 (lyndale, obviously, but johnson is turning very cool), the 18 (Nicollet is the new uptown) When there's a transfer point, I'll call out the route number and the current time. I think it's been helpful, although in the last two days, three people have asked me "what time itizzz" within 3 seconds of me saying it. Oh well.
TC Sidewalks had a great idea involving taking the 18 layover north of the new library and turning it into a park, thus expanding Gateway Park from First St. to Fourth St. along Nicollet Mall. I think it would be perfect, providing the block directly east of the library is developed into something involving retail. It's right on the border of the North Loop and Downtown. With a large apartment building (albeit with a horrible setback and ugly street-level parking lot) and a brand new condo project directly west of the new library, a Whole Foods with residences and retail northwest, and the Mall to the east, that lot would serve as an ideal place for a park, making a true gateway. Who knows, maybe with that many people around, the Mall might actually be able to attract an actual retail magnet!
--------Hey, thanks Transit Librarian tells even better stories, but he'll not be driving the bus for a few months. So stay tuned over there for some new driver training stories! He also doesn't have RSS. Overtime tomorrow night, 146 and 115. I love the 115.
On the subject of people showing up to this site out of the blue, here's some of the better Google searches that resulted in people finding my blog lately:
Minneapolis is the single worst-run city I've ever been in. There are seriously no city services. And for once I'm not talking about how the city council spends two-thirds of its time telling developers that they can't build a four-story building on an empty lot because it's "too high". What got me going this time was the traffic signal on Hennepin and Lagoon. For those not in the know, it's a very busy intersection. It's also very important because it needs to work in step with Lake and Hennepin, just half a block away, to keep traffic moving, as it's part of the same one-way street system. Anyway, on Saturday, the traffic light at Lagoon was flashing red. The city said they can't fix it until Monday morning. That's fine, whatever, maybe they don't have anybody working weekends. Minneapolis isn't a 24-hour city, it's not a seven day per week city, and I don't expect it to act like one. It's a small little city with a 2:1 residents:cops ratio with an out of control violent crime problem. That's what's bothering me. With that 2:1 ratio (that's an exaggeration by the way, there aren't really 185,000 cops in Minneapolis, it just feels like it) you'd think they might be able to do something about something. On Sunday, there were four Minneapolice at 50th and James directing traffic for a church service, mainly for the pedestrians. I know the church probably payed the city for the service, but here's my point. When a traffic signal is causing traffic backups for eight blocks in four directions, why can't a city with too many cops send maybe just one of them out to direct traffic? Especially at a traffic signal that controls one of the four intersections in Minneapolis that actually has pedestrians (Q. What's Minneapolitan for pedestrian? A. Somebody who's car broke down). Maybe the answer lies in getting the Minneapolice to be useful. That is, stop harassing brown people and write a few traffic tickets. Of course if they did that, there'd be a huge backlash with groups accusing them of racially profiling because they'd end up with a majority of people stopped over North being brown people. You seriously can't win. Can some other city please hire me?
ACLU: You're way off on your siding with people who operate motor vehicles recklessly. Sorry, but the right to walk across a street in a marked crosswalk with a green light more than trumps any supposed right people have to drive their automobiles through a crowd of people because they're running late for a soccer practice.
Way to kill civil liberties while siding with the upper class. Sounds awful right-wing to me.
I because curious of what good music came out this year from Minnesota, so I went through what I heard. It wasn't a good year for Minnesota. It's telling that only two of this list made my Top 65 List, compared with four just in the top 21 from Washington (California and Illinois also had good showings). But here are 10 Minnesota albums that don't suck (New York albums with a part time Minnesotan drummer count):
Well, it looks like we're going to see some new buses rolling around the Twin Cities soon. According to the article, Metro has an order with New Flyer of Winnipeg (with two of the company's three plants in Minnesota) for 51 buses. 15 of them are high floor articulated buses (just like the double/accordian ones we've already got) and the other 36 are low floor forty-foot, which are not the high-floor forty-foot buses made by Gillig that we've been using for the last twenty years. It's not a completely new bus - we've got something like ten of this style that are the big blue hybrid buses (7100 series), and ten more that they tested in 1994 (I haven't seen one of these in a few years - they were cool but sloooooooooow) but we've never ordered anything like 36 of a tester bus. Maybe we're going a similar direction with agencies in Seattle and Portland, who seem to have low-floor on most of their new buses.. The benefit of low vs high floor (we've had twenty years of Gillig high-floor) is that low floor makes travel faster and is more accessible to the elderly and disabled. The tradeoff is that there are less seats, so on busy routes (which we have here like nothing in Seattle or Portland) more people have to stand. That's not a bad thing in my book, though. Could this be the end of Gillig in Minneapolis? I hope so.
I because curious of what good music came out this year from Minnesota, so I went through what I heard. It wasn't a good year for Minnesota. It's telling that only two of this list made my Top 65 List, compared with four just in the top 21 from Washington (California and Illinois also had good showings). But here are 10 Minnesota albums that don't suck (New York albums with a part time Minnesotan drummer count):
--------So making the local year-end list sort of depressed me a little bit. There were only two good albums released locally in my opinion, and one of them is a band from Duluth. I was thinking about the not-too-distant past when we had classic albums by Lifter Puller, A Whisper in the Noise, 12Rods, Tiki Obmar, Mr Projectile, Kid Dakota, and The Plastic Constellations, just to name a few. Sure some of those have broken up or moved to another city, but the magic isn't gone, it just didn't happen as much this year. Brother Ali has an album in the works. Next year's TPC pwns for the most part. Cepia still hasn't made an full-length. Ryan Olcott has a something going on; I've heard him play a couple tracks and it's ridiculously good. So in spite of the dubious honor of being the home of Fitzgerald and Har Mar, it's still not a bad town for music, even if Tapes n Tapes and Heiruspecs are supposed to be the hot acts (that's just a little embarassing).
On to the geekery! I have made a very scientific list of what the best areas for music for 2005, based on my top 80. I have the areas split in to arbitrary political borders. My formula is basically population per album, weighted for how good the albums are, and set to a curve with the top location getting a score of 1. I limited the list to locations with more than one album on the list. Sorry, Boston! So it turns out Minnesota's not that bad when you factor in population.
Countries
I just wanted to mention, because people need to know these things. 12am Saturday to 3am Sunday.
--------BookSense for what your local indie stores stock.
So apparently because I mentioned local band Tapes 'n Tapes a few weeks ago and Google picked it up, some of their fans have been wading through eight pages of Google results to find out who's mentioning the band. I'm getting several of these hits every day, which is sort of ridiculous. Some of these Tapes 'n Tapes apologists have even been declaring the band the greatest thing ever and mocked me for even thinking negative thoughts about them. That's some straight up Death Cab sty fanboyism. I feel sorry for the band though; they seem like the light-hearted sort that start bands just to have fun. And sure, looking back, I guess I do sound like I'm some sort of anti-tapesntapes zealot, but that's not even close to what's going on. I don't hate em, they're just not that great. They're not Cowboy Curtis bad. They're not Matt Marka bad. They're not at all Fiery Furnaces bad. They're just a slightly better-than-your-average-bear stroll down PFM lane. There's much worse things a band could do. Especially if they don't even take themselves seriously.
So here's some albums I've heard recently that I care to mention. I haven't heard anything too new in a few weeks. 
Oh wow, this looks cool. Mi & L'au are playing St Paul (Turf Club) and Minneapolis (Rock Rock Rock) on two consecutive nights. I can't think of the last time a semi-obscure (by which I mean unfairly overshadowed by Young God labelmates Devendra and Akron/Family in the indie rock press) pulled that off. My first thought was that it's too bad I can't go (I'm not taking a 3 week old baby to the smoky Turf or the very loud Rock Rock Rock), but maybe my wife and I can alternate nights? It's a thought. Who wants to take us out?
The bad news is Josephine Foster and Born Heller (is Foster doing solo and band sets? Hot.) won't be joining them until two days after the Minneapolis Show.
I haven't had much of a chance to listen to much music lately, but the TToTM mix should be on time, as it was 90% finished in the first 10 days of January.
It looks like we accepted the second contract offer with 67% in favor. I voted no. The only change I saw from the previous contract offer, which was terrible in my opinion [and was voted down] was that they added a $400 "signing bonus" [which will end up being about $250 after taxes, or did everybody forget the $1100 bribe to end the strike ended up being about $600?] and to make up for it turned the 30¢ raise into a 20¢ one. So what's different about it? We get $250 up front instead of slowly over the next 6 months. I don't know what we're so afraid of.
The bit I find personally insulting is that they could have given us a two-year offer instead of the three-year offer we got, which would have cost the state the massive sum of zero dollars. Instead, the next administration will be have an anti-transit policy towards the state's transit employees for the first half of the next term, whether they want it or not.
In better transit news, Peter McLaughlin's wife took the train downtown when she went into labor the other day. I like Rybak enough, but this is part of why I voted for McLaughlin. Sidenote: Whenever I hear Minneapolis heralded for electing a liberal mayor I always wonder if anybody remembers that he was the most conservative of the three main candidates.
I've been under a ton of stress lately. There are multiple reasons -- there's the general urban disaster that they call Minneapolis, I haven't had a full night's sleep in a month and a half, and my employer is "forgetting" to pay me in full in two cases so far [that's in addition to the far more sinister way they're found to screw with me that I'd rather not get into at this point in time] -- and it's been really taking a toll on my psyche. Today I found the solution. After weeks of non-stop sunshine, we had a few hours of an overcast sky before the sun went down. That is apparently all I needed. I need to skip town.
I added a links section for podcasts that I listen to. 75 Minutes is the only music one. Left, Right and Center is an interesting one that even my conservative friends may enjoy.
Today a guy on my bus yelled "Hey bus driver! She's got some booty, eh? F'shizzle!"
I like driving the 6 line. I don't mind working nights, i don't mind working weekends, i just don't like working weekend nights ['course on the other hand, i refuse to wake up before 10 on weekends, so mornings are out too.] The main problem are the idiot 952's that hang out downtown and jaywalk en masse all night long. I mean, I don't drive the bus on the friggin sidewalk, do I? I guess if you really boil it down, the problem is that a long ass time ago some idiotic city planner thought it would be great if we had blocks that are 3 miles long, and was followed by 150 years of local goverments that have never heard of crosswalks. Anyway, it sometimes makes for some interesting trips.
Tonight, I stopped at 8th and Hennepin and picked up a bachelorette party of about 30 women somewhere betwen the ages of 25 and 35. One of them put $3 in the bill slot and said "This is for me and my bitch." The woman standing next to her leaned in and said "I'm her bitch." They spent most of their trip to Uptown Station singing songs about how the bride-to-be "likes it better from the back." An elderly woman boarded at 10th, paid her fare. She took one look at the party, and looked at me and said "Maybe I'll just wait for the 4," and alighted.
One of the ladies in the party topped all, however. She showed me $3 and asked me "What do I do with this?" I patted the bill slot and told her to "just slide it on in there." In no kind of indoor voice, "Like a penis?" and held up a penis figurine.
Seawhores is the Minneapolis band that actually deserves the hype they get. Also, that new hotel on 9th & Hennepin is looking very cool. The new condos are a nice touch for the city; I do, however, think we need more row houses.
Star Tribune.)
It's been a great weekend. I had friday off work, which turned out to be a great day to take off. I would have been driving the 4 on Lyndale and through downtown on Hennepin, and, from what I saw when we went down to the Wedge to get Eliot some wipes while we wait for our Twin Cities Blend Peace Coffee [Peace Coffee absolutely murders Stumptown, while I'm at it. Other recent coffee deaths inflicted by Peace coffee include Intellegentsia of Chicago, and everything I had in Seattle.] But hear me out, I'm a huge fan of eggs+beans+salsa wrapped up in various combinations. Earwax (Chicago) previously held the title for Greatest Breakfast Burrito, and the Uptown Diner held the local version, but Anodyne has taken over. Insane.
But wait, there's more! The Twins are on a roll. Remember five days ago when people were freaking out about the Twins' 1-5 start? A slow start to a season on the road has never been reason for worry. We just swept the A's. Our supposedly terrible offense wiped oakland pitching all over the FieldTurf. Scott Baker put the supposedly incredible [offensively] Yankees in his back pocket and sat on a very… hard… something. Now we're suddenly one game behind the two hottest offenses in the American League, and tied with the defending World Series champs [soon to be once-World Series champs]. I'll admit I don't like the additions. But they'll help more than it looks like they will. Castillo batting second is better than whoever the heck we had there last year. Batista makes the seventh spot in the order upgrade from a hack to 25 homer potential. And at some point Gardy's going to realize that Morneau should be batting fourth or fifth and Rondell should be putting up his 25 homers in the six hole. Morneau is going to be sweet this year. It would be nice if he would have somebody on base when he's up. Liriano is smoking jerks. Baker's pitching like Greg Maddux. Lohse is in the way.
Anybody else notice that two of Tapes 'n Tapes to Tour, Get Hyped 'n Hyped I like the band just fine, but the hype is ridiculous.
We got a new tree as a gift from the city on Saturday. We even got a tree-loving DVD on how to care for it. As much as I think that anybody who has ever carried any power at all in Minneapolis in the last fifty years wouldn't know what to do with a city even if it was written in an easy to read book and read to them, I have to admit that the city of Minneapolis does trees better than anywhere.
I hope cutest kid ever, by the way]. Right now, by the way, she's staring at three wooden bears and cracking up.
Does anybody have any tips or good resources on refurbishing an old bicycle frame and converting a ten speed into a single speed? I need a new bike. The one I've got is a mountain bike I've had since middle school that must be made out of solid lead.
Last night was vaguely more interesting than the night before. Sure, a cantaloup surprised me by rolling down the aisle at 37th and Bryant, but that was just about all the excitement the evening could muster.
I've noticed this before but never remembered long enough to make it home, but the new neighborhood signs for East Harriet Farmstead are badass. Like most things in the city, they look even better in the rain. I love the rain. Especially when I'm working. I've never understood umbrella people. I have enough to carry, and it's not like an umbrella will keep you more than a little bit dry. I guess I'm a baseball cap person. The only bad part about the rain is that I was going to take my dad golfing for his birthday. There's always next weekend. Now, this is the kind of post that usually induces yawning than attracts awards [I can't get enough of that -- I haven't been written about in an arts weekly since the pulse made fun on the (essentially adult contemporary) band I was in when I was 19].
What's up with those crazy super aggressive drivers with Kerry or Visualize World Peace stickers? It pisses me off as much as the Bushies, but aggressive driving at least fits with the "me first and the gimme gimmes" ideology of the neo-cons. But the dems that drive that that just look stupid.
Our buses are in email me.
We took the kid in for her four-month checkup. Her 10% head has grown in and now stands at 50%. The rest of her kept growing, though, so her weight and length are both 90%. She's enormous. 26 inches and 16.5 lbs. Last time, she didn't mind the shots so much. Yesterday, she hated them. Such is life. She's been so much more verbal lately, like the other day, she rolled over for the first time, and would not shut up about it. She was so stoked and proud of her self, she was almost hyperventilating. Adorable. Also big new, I'm headed to the Wedge to get her some baby cereal. That's right, solid food. Time passes quickly.
Last night a guy put a five dollar bill in to pay for his buck-fifty fare. I told him I could give him a few passes for the next few days, but he just rolled his eyes at me and asked for a transfer. I thought it was interesting that low-grade gas was listed at $2.95 at the beginning of my shift at all three Hennepin stations at the start of my work at about 3. At about 6:30, the price was $2.85, and on my way back at 7:30, it was back to $2.95. It pisses me off when talking heads start talking about how that's still cheap for Europeans, because they get taxes out of the deal instead fat old men lighting cigars with our commutes, and their goverments don't limit the number of small cars to the extent that ours does. It's no wonder Americans have so sense of geography or world context.
I love the new ballpark plan. Not only is it great from a baseball point of view, it's great from an urban planning perspective. Take out everything about baseball, millionaires, public subsidy, referendums, and what you've got is somebody finally realizing that they nearly ruined the Warehouse District with their Interstate building and surfact parking lots. I view it as not only an apology, but also as a sign they're going to put us right again.
Now to the baseball. I'm hoping those mockups are true to the real deal. TC logos instead of those ugly M's is just the tip of the iceberg. Anybody else notice the complete lack of foul territory? And that looks like a short fence down the left field line. Looks to me like somebody's planning of keeping their left-handed power pitchers for awhile and giving their boys a shot at 30 homeruns for the first time in twenty years. I love the asymmetrical outfield fence. That's some character. It'll be a nice centerfield to watch Torii Hunter make his highlight reel catches seven games per year in his Red Sox jersey. I'll also like being able to watch the game while in line for hotdogs and beer. I'm excited. The best part is there's no retractible roof. When I come to Minneapolis to visit familiy and friends in 2010 from my new home in Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco, or Portland, we'll definately go to a game.
[Via Twins Official Site (complete with new pics)]
--------Talk about great news, this is the best news I've heard since they said beer makes you smarter.
Rough day today. I got yelled at for not stopping in not-a-bus-stop, I got yelled at for running late ["yes, sir, I arrived late on purpose just so you would miss your transfer"], and America's Worst Drivers were turning in front of me like gas was going to go up a penny and it would cost an extra forty bucks to fill their damn SUVs.
On the bright side, a guy started complaining about all the detours due to the Minnesota summer road construction season and told me "There are two seasons in Minnesota: Winter and Lose." [To be fair, he rode my 11 line for twenty minutes before he realized it wasn't a 10 line on a ferocious detour.]
I didn't ride my bike today because I haven't quite finished the weather-proofing, and it was supposed to rain. There were about three clouds today. I've got it in a semi-finished state, though, and I rode it to work on Saturday. It was great, but I'm embarrassingly out of biking shape [in spite of six months of regular exercise at the YW]. It's a singlespeed right now, but I'd like to get a new wheel at some point to make it fixed. I should take an awesome picture of it.
--------That rain the other night was awesome. Did anybody else see the manhole covers flying off? I have no idea what caused all the pressure, but water was shooting out of the manholes downtown. One was five stories high. Another tore the siding off a skyway. We got an all-call on the radio to pull over. Five years of driving and I've never heard that. The rain was so intense that one of the stoplights in Northeast decided to flash red and display solid green at the same time.
I saw a please complain here].
Recently Is Kirby Pucket Overrated? I'm arguing yes. Nobody else is, apparantly.
One last note: I apologize if anybody's comments didn't go through. I turned off the comment moderating system, so it should go through now if you put the 'D' in there.
So what's with brightly dyed hair coming back? It's starting to look like 1995 in a big way.
The idiots with the walkie-talkie toy phones are starting to drive me nuts. Every trip has got some clown who thinks she's got an inalienable right have one of these things blasting away at full volume. Another thing that's getting to me: Nicollet Mall. I'm looking forward two weeks when I'll only have one day on the mall instead of five. Plus, it's Saturday, when hardly anybody is there, because after all, Nicollet Mall is a complete failure as both a transit mall and a pedestrian mall [nobody bothered to tell them you can't make it both] and the only reason they haven't moved buses off permanently is because nobody would be there if it wasn't for thousands of commuters and teenagers waiting for their bus -- my proposal: put the buses and taxis back on Marquette and make it truly pedestrian-only. ]. During the week people are in such a rush. It's not a New York or Chicago style rush where people are focused. The Minneapolis rush seems to be based on a fear that there's going to be a sudden blizzard at any time and people don't want to be stuck downtown so they careen about while their mind wanders. The other day a hippopotamus-shaped woman walked right in front of me while I was driving down the mall [she didn't look, oblivious to the fact that there are actually large vehicles on the mall during rush hour -- blame the 10 mph speed limit. 15 mph would actually be safer for this reason], giving me about four feet which i used all of to slam on the brakes and honk. If i steered away, I'd hit an oncoming bus. She couldn't get through, so she yelled at me. "I hope this gives you a reason to get up." Yeah, exactly -- narrowly not killing people just brightens my day. She was forced to use a crosswalk, and walked into the Walgreen's across the street where she presumably bought a box of Hot Pockets and two liter bottle of Diet Coke. Later, somebody said I looked like Moby.
I'm enclosing a picture of Minneapolis transit circa 1950. Have a look at how many of the streetcars used Nicollet Mall.
Wedge. I cooked it last night in a Bolognese sauce with these cute little letter-shaped pastas. It's more fun now that we're beyond mashing up various fruits and vegetables, and she can eat more complex meals.
We took Eliot to the state fair yesterday. We went in to the Miracle of Birth barn where she loved the baby ducks and piglets and was unmoved by the calves and baby small horse pony things. She also went into the building with the fish, which are an animal that continue to amaze her. If we had a few bucks to rub together we'd consider getting her a fishtank. Bethany spent most of her time trying to win an iPod and taking candid photos of extremely fat people eating [deep fried Hot Pockets on a stick?]. That's not to say we didn't eat ridiculous food. We had a terrible bratwurst [bratworst, more like], mediocre french fries, really great locally-grown kabobs, and some decent fried vegetables from across the street. Bethany is still bitter that we didn't get a pickle. There were buffalo balls in the disappointing Eco building that were delicious. The fair pretty much blows. This is the part of the year where it's hard to convince me that Minneapolis is a cold Kansas City with a baseball team. Come to think of it, I'm trying to think of a part of the year where that's not the case.
We stopped at photo of the kid for awhile. It should be fixed soon and we've got a backlog just waiting to go up.
Morneau should be the MVP.
Honestly, the paper makes it sound like a complete reform. Really, however, it's not. Sure, let's make downtown streets two-way. It will slow down traffic, as they wish. Interestingly, the reason they (I keep saying 'they': it's obviously not Rybak's plan, but he's taking credit for some consultant's plan) want to limit the streets that buses are on is because, they say, buses slow down traffic. But what doesn't the plan do?
Well, it doesn't take buses off Nicollet Mall, like it should, like it pretends to. The main reason in the plan for limiting Mall buses is because the people that eat on the sidewalks don't like the exhaust from bumper to bumper buses in rush hour. We're changing the entire traffic plan of downtown Minneapolis because of people who eat out at 5 pm during the six warm months. They're still going to keep local bus service on the mall with this plan, which is the bulk of Mall transit traffic. That includes two buses that run every 10 minutes and one that comes every 15, and a couple other less frequent lines. Add each direction and you've got a bus coming from one direction every 90 seconds on average. That's during the time that people actually do eat out (6:30 to 09:30:00 PM).
The other thing is doesn't do is take buses off Hennepin, so the sky is not falling (I'm looking at you, Star Tribune). It also doesn't really change the routing. If they're going to make all the streets two-way, it stands to reason that they'll make the routes operate on the same street both ways.
It's really just a lot of excuses to change the traffic flow back to two-way traffic. The best part is that in the official language of the plan, they're patting themselves on the back for having "small walkable blocks" in Minneapolis [Giggle].
Maybe next they can focus on the four lane freeways that speed through the Wedge neighborhood called Hennepin and Lyndale. Yesterday, I was crossing Lyndale at 27th with the kid in a stroller, and a car saw us and sped up, then gestured and honked when we didn't run. It's not a goddamn highway, it's an inner city street, albeit with crosswalks every quarter mile (not an exaggeration). At 27th, there's no crosswalk. It's a major intersection with bike shop, an apartment building, three restaurants, two art galleries, a boutique toy store that specializes in japanese dolls, an award-winning tattoo shop, a hair salon, and a coffee shop. It sounds like a pretty nice corner when you list it off like that, but there's no way to cross the ridiculous 45 mph four-lane "interstate".
For the uninitiated, Lyndale is one of the two or three main retail corridors in the city, where you're most likely to find the cafes and restaurants, the boutique stores, and, theoretically, a lot of yuppies walking around. But this city is a strip mall with an out of touch mayor and city council.
Maps:
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I'm always complaining about the way people drive in general, and specifically in Minnesota. I was telling somebody who has lived in Los Angeles for the last sixty years that it's gotten awful around here, and when she started to give me the yeah-well-in-California, I mentioned that specifically, a new habit I've seen beginning this summer was that when people stop at a red light, they'll run right through it if there's nobody coming as if it's a stop sign [As of today, I've counted nine in my last five workdays]. She quickly changed her look to one of disbelief. A few months ago I complained about a guy trying to run me down on Lyndale while I was crossing with the kid in a stroller. On tuesday, I was crossing First Street at First Avenue to go to Origami, and some guy in a Buick decided it would be much funnier to run right through the stop sign and cut me off by a matter of inches than to stop and wait five seconds.
Finally, today at about 12:30, while riding my bike to work, I was hit by a car. I was stopped at a light at Franklin in the turn lane on Nicollet, ready to turn left. The light was about to change, so I looked left first to make sure no cars were coming. I looked right, and there was a retired squad car, a '97 Crown Victoria turning right into me. I had enough time to jump up off my bike, she rammed my bike into my left shin, I landed on her hood, and my bike ended up under her bumper. Five hours in the ER later and it turns out I have a fracture in my leg and a bunch of bruises. Yikes. Won't be cycling for a while. Or driving for that matter. The bike didn't fare so well either. I just bought brand new wheels about three weeks ago and new handlebars last weekend. So that's where we stand. I'm still a little foggy, so I'm going to bed.
Suddenly beer gives me serious heartburn. Anybody know what's going on there?
Eliot learned a new way to deal with something she doesn't like: revenge. She's been sick since Sunday, hitting the one-year-old trifecta with a cold, an ear infection, and popping a new tooth (number eight, if anybody's keeping track). We also found out she takes after me with a cat allergy. Because of this, her nose has been running uncontrollably, so we've been swiping her upper lip with Puffs. She hates it. After five days of fighting it, pushing us away, today she suddenly got a determined look on her face, grabbed my nose with one hand, and wiped my face as hard as her little arms could.
We've also found that she's rather listen to real music than children's music. She couldn't care less when we put on a Wiggles or They Might Be Giants CD, but when Deerhoof or Why? or the Advantage is on, she gets down, and when Joanna Newsom or Julie Doiron or Blonde Redhead is playing, she starts singing along (she makes up her own lyrics: "Yah yah yah yah"). She already has far better taste than the average listener of the Current [pdf].
Really, though, it's been a week and I couldn't think of anything worth talking about other than my sick kid. Also, I like pointing out how horrid the Current is.
So it looks like Borders is planning on closing shop in their Block E location. The company line on the closing is slow sales due to poor foot traffic. The Star Tribune's brilliant idea? A white guy got shot down the street last year and everybody's afraid to go there. They must have forgotten that nobody went to Block E before last year, either. There's a small sentence acknowledging the Barnes & Noble 300 feet down Eighth Street, but according to the Tribune, that couldn't possibly have anything to do with it. And Block E being the ugliest building in town, built below the lowest common denominator (Borders was how they 'niced it up' a bit) couldn't possibly have an effect, right? Because people just love spending time in places where they don't enjoy being? While every globalized chain store continues to move out of that eyesore [wasn't there a Snyder's for about three days?], how long is the Star Tribune going to blame the teenagers that spend their time there because they're the exact demographic the entire building was built for?
When is Minneapolis going to learn?
Borders prepares to leave Block E [Star Tribune]
Yesterday was my fiirst day back at work after missing a month with an injury. It went well; after driving 6+ years, coming back after an extended leave is just like falling off a log. It was ass cold yesterday. The low was -16° F and the high -7°, according to AccuWeather.com (it's not even supposed to hit a positive number until late Tuesday), so nobody was really out. That is, except for the fixie kids. I kept seeing them ride north on the mall and west on Washington towards One By One for Stupor Bowl X. I even saw the whole group ride by (so nice of them to stop for lights). I haven't seen a mass at work in a few years. I guess I'm just never in the right place at the right time (although I am in the right areas. Just bad luck, I suppose). There was also a cross country ski race. I left the bus once all day. It was cold, man.
Today I was on call at work. I normally do four hours on the 115, which is an express route from the University of Minnesota to Uptown and Kingfield. This week the university is on spring break, so the work was cut, and I'm on call for that time. Today I was sitting there reading a book, a guy I went to high school with walks up. He works there now. He turned in a week ago. Scuzzie from high school. Crazy.
And now for the opinion: Saint Paul is so much better than Minneapolis that it hurts. Minneapolis still has no idea. No longer 'Second City', Saint Paul has they're act together. They're narrowing streets, filling in parking lots, attracting businesses and turning into a cold Portland, OR. Minneapolis is removing crosswalks, widening streets, pushing automobile ownership, and turning into a cold Kansas City.
I just hope we can someday sell the damn wiener house (clarification: it's a nice house, it's just a damn wiener because 1] it hasn't sold yet and 2] "damn wiener" is a hilarious adjective that I use for everything, especially the kid) and move there.
I heard about something called Bus Tales from some lame local message board. Might be worth following if you like that sort of thing.
Speaking of the bus, this week I had three people who couldn't get off the bus as soon as I opened the door, and pretty much panicked. Two of them had one of their shoelaces from get stuck to the other shoe. The third had his backpack get stuck to the seat. I'm not sure I've ever had one before. A new trend, perhaps?
Napa Jack's closed this week. I didn't hear about the closing until late Friday, too late for me to stop by and say thanks. That place will be missed. Especially the build your own six-pack tub. I guess we'll have to start shopping at Trader Joe's or something now (not for food, the day we went and checked it out there was one brown banana in the produce section and it looked like that Aldi's on Franklin with yuppies). Maybe if we're in St. Paul, we can check out the Wine Thief. Any others worth checking out?
Here's Craig Finn doing Take me out to the ball game (video), and it's better than Boys and Girls in America
It's snowing today, and, while it made for a very nice ride home tonight, it's probably going to bring out the complainers (aka Minnesotans) regarding the new Twins stadium. It's as if people here think it actually doesn't precipitate anywhere but Minnesota. A whole season of rainouts (or snowouts) is still better than an indoor stadium.
The best part of snow in April, especially a week after an 75° day, is when funny people show how little they actually understand about the idea of climate change. On the one hand you've got pretend hippies complaining about an 75° day in March because all they can think about is coal exhaust instead of just enjoying a nice spring day, and on the other hand, you've got people who also can't think for themselves yammering about a little bit of snow in Minnesota in early spring just proves that there hasn't been an increase of greenhouse gases because of humans and their machinery (did I mention that it's Minnesota?). I just shake my head and wonder about these people. Then, I complain about it on my blog.
Regarding the Twins radio home, I love the new Gluek scoreboard, but I hate the horrible reception of the new radio station. Normally, poor reception on 1500 AM is something I'm not to worried about because it just means fewer people can hear the right wing Ahmadinejad wackos (somehow only the third most extreme station in the local market), but now we're stuck with them for Twins games. And without Herb.
Ugh. Aren't we finished with sandstone in this damn city yet? At least it's outdoors and they didn't waste our money on a $100 million roof that might be used a handful of times per year. Perhaps it should be noted that the extra millions don't include climate control, so if similar weather to last week's cold spell (that was worse in most of the country, including Texas) came up we'd all be sitting in 25° F temperatures with a roof over our head (blocking the warmth from the sun? maybe). Now, I may be strongly grouped with the tax and spend crowd, but there's no way that's a good investment. $500 million for a public trust, good urban design, and a cultural institution in one shot is a good idea. $100 million for a roof that will not keep anybody warm, will stop about 4 games per year from being rained out, and will hang out over the next block like Mr Burns' sun blocking apparatus (or the stupid library) is ridiculous.
Do they have outfield wall dimensions posted anywhere? [Update: They do.] It's not quite as small as it looks. Those 40 feet concourses are going to be enormous. What's with the knot holes?
Ramon Ortiz is awesome. It makes me feel smart when my baseball predictions from January are still true after one week of the season.
I'm going to see the Brewers and Astros in Milwaukee next week. Sweet.
I have my vacation this week. We don't have any money because we still haven't sold the house, so we went to Milwaukee for a couple of days and slept on Elizabeth's floor in Bayview. When you drive through Milwaukee (as I often have), it looks pretty much like a more industrial version of St Paul. Having spent a couple of days (there's really only a handful of small neighborhoods worth checking out), I'd have to say that I can't imagine a city more the complete opposite of the Twin Cities.
Milwaukee almost has a skyscraper. The Twin Cities are littered with them. Between skyscrapers we have a lot of surface parking lots (and the ugliest building ever, Block E). Downtown Milwaukee was almost completely filled with old 5-8 story buildings that had been kept in great shape.
The neighborhoods we spent the most time in, Bayview and Eastside, have narrow lots for the mostly single family homes, so that they were often only a couple of feet from each other. Maybe three feet on one side and six on the other for a shared walkway to the backyard. Houses in Minneapolis's urban core are so far apart it could be Eden Prairie. The houses were only setback about 15 feet, which just makes your neighborhood look that much more coherant. Minneapolis's streets feel like highways in comparison. Kinnickinnic St in Mke curved through Bayview, but it wasn't the only street with retail. There are galleries and shops a couple of blocks over and people actually spend time away from the main drag. It had narrow lanes and people actually drive between 25-30, without any traffic to speak of. There are no parking problems either. There weren't many bicycles, but there were a lot of bicycle lanes. I saw a lot of freds on sunday morning. The roads are at least as unkempt as Twin Cities roads.
For a city that prides itself on it's beer and sausages, the offerings at Miller Park are disappointing at best. The darkest beer I could find was an amber lager. The famous sausages that race each other turn out to be lukewarm little half-inch-thick weenies with a soggy bun squeezed tight around it. Nothing like our dome dog.
As you can see, Twin Cities are Cream City's evil twin.
We ate breakfast at Hi-Fi in Bayview - awesome egg sandwiches. Lunch at Cubanita's downtown - incredible cuban sandwiches and pretty inexpensive. LuLu Cafe for dinner - pretty good, I'd recommend it. That reminds me of a small difference between the cities. There are still way more natural food coops in Milwaukee than you'll find in your average American city, but they're not quite as nice as ours (It is, admittedly, tough to beat the Wedge). We stopped at one in Madison on the way back, and that one was up to snuff. They make up for it by selling beer. We got Furthermore IPA brewed with black pepper. Mmmmmmm. Neat labels, too. They have it at Surdyk's and Blue Max. Also a New Glarus cherry thing.
On the way back we stopped at the Weary Traveller in Madison. Good prices, we just had a drink and coffee with Jon (who may be moving back to Minneapolis - sweet). I ordered a "Lake Louie" IPA that was just delicious.
I thought that after a few days out of town, I'd come back and not be so constantly disappointed by Minneapolis. Now it's even worse. We got beat by Milwaukee.
This morning the driver (mid 20s rich kid daddy's boy type: the kind you see shirtless listening to Jay-Z and with a backwards baseball cap) of that car hit me while I was riding my bike to work on Lyndale and 32nd. It wasn't really that big of a deal, he really just clipped my elbow, but it kind of pissed me off. I was just going to yell at him and go on with my life. It was actually the second time in a couple of minutes that I had had a close call with a vehicle, but in the case of the earlier one, the driver parked a block ahead of me and I stopped to let her know that it's dangerous to drive that close to a cyclist. She apologized and I wished her a good day and left, no harm done. That had me feeling pretty good; you don't normally get to calmly talk to these people and have them calmly respond. Anyway, this guy hits me, and drives off. I caught up with him at the next stoplight, and I slapped the side of his car so he'd be paying attention when I yelled at him to "watch where yer going, willya?". I turned the corner and went into an alley so I wouldn't get hit again.
So the dude chases me down 32nd St and throws his sports drink at me, and nails my chainstays. Then he speeds off. Sounds like somebody needs to grow a pair. KZA 439. Hopefully somebody will pee on his car.