Minnesota/Minnesotans C or D

Minneapolis road rage is among the most passive-aggressive in the world.

I miss Dayton's, the Lincoln Del, and Excelsior Amusement Park.

First Avenue/7th Street Entry
some restaurant a couple blocks away
some hotel (maybe it was by the airport?)
the mall in Edina
a gas station somewhere between Minneapolis and Moorhead
a Target somewhere between Minneapolis and Moorhead
a dumpy bar in Moorhead
some restaurant that kinda sucked in Moorhead
a Days Inn in Moorhead (we snuck into the pool later that night)
a Chinese buffet place in Moorhead
yet another gas station

Also, Husker Du.

Hah

I'd like to see more of the state.

Well you pretty much covered everything between Minneapolis and Moorhead (as well as Moorhead) so you can check that off the list.

Yet, somehow at the same time: Classic.

tom bernard: racist.

minneapolis was my traumatic home for about a month while i decided i did NOT want to be a flight attendant. it was hell. really and truly.

on a roadtrip a couple years later i decided to give it a second chance. it didn't help.

i don't know about the rest of the state, but i hate minneapolis.

When I was twenty and living alone in an apartment off of Franklin, a woman from the liquor store invited me to her family's house for Thanksgiving. I think that I may have been the only person there under 200 pounds, and the only man under 6'3". They fed me like a brother, got me drunk on Schnapp's, and it was TEH BEST THANKSGIVNG EVAH.

It was just one family in NE Minneapolis, but I'll stick up for Minnesotans any day of the week. Even the screedy James Lileks.

It's been awhile for me, but I always really enjoyed Radio K. College radio sounds so beautiful on the AM band.

God, sometimes I want to move back there so badly.

I can get it in from the cities all the way to Sauk Centre which is pretty damn good. I like it better than Radio K as well. But please don't forget KUMM the praries only alternative. We have to be classic if only for our call letters. Also worth noting is Rev 105 which all us kids thought was the coolest thing ever at the time.

Yeah, that's usually around where it cuts out for me, too. But I used to have an '82 Olds a few years back that would get it just about to the rest area right before Alex. Only good thing about that car.

I used to hate MN with a passion growing up (could be because it was way out in the sticks) but now that I've gotten a little bit older and done a bit of traveling I've realized that all in all it's a pretty nice to be.

Also, it's the only place in the U.S. (well most of the upper midwest according to A Short History of Nearly Everything) that doesn't have to worry about earthquakes!

C/D:

Don Shelby/Diana Pierce
Sebastian Joe's seconded - I know of no better way to completely negate the good work done on arse by 10 mile bike ride around Lake Harriet/Steve and Sharon aaaaahghghh
Red Dragon/food at the Red Dragon

HUGE shout-out to Chris K.

haha so so right

Funniest thing: Acieed House Helen and I were at Reading one year and bumped into Kevin Cole shepherding five contest winners around the festival; I was gobsmacked. She was doing Trance Europe Express then and so it was a bit of a meeting of minds, and we all had crazy fun.

I have long considered starting a microlabel to reissue his old Radio Depth Probes WHICH HE STILL HAS THE REEL-TO-REELS OF, EVERY GODDAMNED ONE OF THEM. cough, cough.

OH MY GOD.

Yeah, Kevin is just one of those people that can get things going and those people are always evident, even when the person is working in Platters. He's also notable for not succumbing to that evil bloaty big fish, small pond thing that a lot of old scenesters get in Minneapolis.

i relocated from mpls to pdx last fall and it's been unseasonably wet and cold here, and people are complaining, it's hilarious because i've been keeping track of y'alls winter... weather like that was certainly one of the underlying motivations for the move

Lol I’ve made friends with someone who at the turn of the year moved from Portland to here, and just this week he meekly asked “so this winter’s been one of the worst, right?” While on paper, yes, it has been, I couldn’t tell him that every March and April here inevitably brings you to the same mental crisis

xp global I am in Eugene and this has been the coldest wettest spring in my 32 years here, it's been brutal

it has also been a surprisingly wet and cold winter and spring in SF too, we got record rainfall this year, and from what I've heard from my friends and family, it has been the same in LA and San Diego too

it's spring, but most days so far haven't gotten up from highs in the 50s, and there have been no warm days. thankfully the rain has stopped now and it's starting to warm up

I’ve been keeping an eye on Palm Springs and thinking how much this winter must’ve sucked for those used to Palm Springs weather

It’s me, hi, I’m the biggest planning blunder in Minneapolis history, it’s me❗️ pic.twitter.com/qFAFHsWRwN

— Abigail Blonigen (@abigailblonigen) October 31, 2023

I haven't been around Minneapolis that much for a number of years but the moment I heard "k-mart fire" I knew exactly what building was burning!

I'm actually K Mart defender, it was a store where the local population without cars could get basic household goods and clothing.

I don't think the existence of a k mart on that block was what people disliked about it, but again, was never a local

Correct; no objections to the Kmart itself (though, obv, I don't speak for everyone ... I'm sure there were plenty of residents who hated it because it attracted lower class shoppers). It was merely the building's function as a bulwark, dividing the neighborhood in half.

I also believe that the largely immigrant restaurants that turned Nicollet North of Lake into "Eat Street" never could have thrived without that K Mart making it less attractive to developers. the only harm it caused was drivers having to drive around it, big deal.

I'm sure they are licking their chops to gentrify it now and drive the local low income population out.

look forward to a couple new ugly apartment buildings with a shitty brewery on the first floor

LOL, plenty of speculation lately that they'll do exactly the same thing to the brutalist Nicollet Mall YMCA building if/when they knock that down

Related-ish: https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/new-study-says-downtown-minneapolis-has-one-of-the-worst-post-pandemic-recoveries-but-there-are-questions-about-methodology/

Apparently Minnesota is redesigning the state flag, and there have been over 2000 submissions to date. Needless to say, there are some really good ones, if you are willing to dig:

https://serc.mnhs.org/flags

good riddance and FUUUUUCK YOU

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/15/business/uber-lyft-minneapolis-minimum-wage/index.html

I don't want to clog up another thread with a niche observation, but the new Taylor Swift album so far is very Cities 97 circa 1990.