Best Neighborhood 2013
The North Loop. (How do we love it? Let us count the ways.) Martinpatrick3, which recently expanded (again), continues to remind us why online shopping will never replace the retail store as theater...
View ArticleFear Factor
College Tuition Check How to pay for college is at the top of parents’ “Things I Fear the Most” list. Ratchet up the terror by making the check out to a private liberal arts college, then spring it on...
View ArticleOur Time's Coming
The Twin Cities may rank high on every lifestyle survey imaginable, but in the objective standings of sports, we neither win, place, or show. Layer on a range of questionable ownership behavior and...
View ArticleLike Manna From Heaven
When Moses led the Israelites into the desert, he brought skeptics, those who thought it a poor idea to undertake a 40-year journey with nary a Noodles & Company in sight. But the Lord provided....
View ArticleBest-Kept Secrets 2013
While others are gorging on Netflix, true film aficionados find their way to the Walker Cinema, where the screen is a window to the world and international genius is on display almost every week....
View ArticleBest Neighborhood 2013
(How do we love it? Let us count the ways.) Martinpatrick3, which recently expanded (again), continues to remind us why online shopping will never replace the retail store as theater experience....
View ArticleSave the Strib!
The assumption, at press time, is that later in 2014 the Star Tribune will move its offices elsewhere downtown, vacating its 95-year headquarters to make way for the Vikings stadium-related scraping...
View ArticleTodd About Town, January Edition
Corn dogs, pizza, tuxedos, grilled cheese sandwiches. One of these things is not like the other. The Dawn of a Dream benefit for Children’s Cancer Research Fund, co-chaired by Cari and Angie Erickson...
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The Culture Meter: January
Keith Urban and Nitro Circus Live photos courtesy of Target Center; The Year I Was Born photo by David Alarcon
View ArticleDigital MIA
For many years, one of the perks of a Minneapolis Institute of Arts membership was a subscription to the museum’s excellent magazine, Arts. A large-format publication with thick, high-quality paper,...
View ArticleWe're Lovin': iDevice House Calls
Strike one: Your iPhone breaks. Strike two: It’s the dead of winter and now you need to brave icy roads to hit the lines at the Apple store—or do you? Not if you enlist the services of the Twin...
View ArticleTodd About Town, February Edition
Baby, it’s been cold outside, but that hasn’t tempered the number of events on my social calendar. Crowd favorite the Sevilles entertained a room of 700 Snowballers at the Saint Paul Hotel. Hostess...
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Cosmic Comics
Last fall my kids became obsessed with the Peanuts special It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. We watched it every weekend. “Aren’t kids cute and wacky?” I thought as Linus sat stubbornly in the...
View ArticleArt Haters
Sometimes it’s worth remembering why it’s preferable to be an artist in the Twin Cities than in New York. Prior to the most recent Art Basel in Miami, the online magazine Slate saw fit to reprint New...
View ArticleThe Midtown Global Market: What We Did Wrong
The recent controversy over whether to maintain subsidies and forgive debt for the Midtown Global Market raises issues Twin Citians should think about: most specifically, what we subsidize and why....
View ArticleTodd About Town: March Edition
"In with the old” appeared to be the theme at the inauguration of St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, who began his third term in January. The New Standards performed and poet laureate Carol Connolly...
View ArticleFaking It
There was a brief flare-up of liberal schadenfreude in the blovosphere recently over a news report that Michele Bachmann had been arrested in Colorado for driving stoned. At last, people thought, the...
View ArticleNeal Karlen's Gangster Paradise
Imagine a country gripped by a hot new period cable series, but it’s not Downton Abbey or Mad Men. It’s Boardwalk Empire meets Fargo, centered on Jewish gangsters in Minneapolis in the 1920s to 1960s....
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Barkhad Abdi: A Pirate's Life
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View ArticleIn the Dark on the Light Rail
Last month I went to an event that reinforced a long-held suspicion of mine: that most of us only pay enough attention to justify our own personal opinions. It was a Kenwood neighborhood meeting,...
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