BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE The corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue is a little world of its own. There is a strange mixture in the businesses there, a clash between the quotidian and the exotic, the aspirational and the gritty. It’s not all art and food, but there are…
BY POLLY MANN Several months ago in the Star Tribune was a tiny article about nuclear waste that caught my eye. I consulted my computer and the story it gave me was important. Recently a tunnel containing radioactive waste at the Hanford nuclear weapons complex collapsed at the Hanford Nuclear…
BY POLLY MANN It is a magnificent but somewhat ugly flying machine called the “Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, the Joint Strike Fighter,” a U.S.-built “fifth generation” stealth jet with super-advanced avionics, which has been under development for over 20 years at a cost of many billions of dollars. Over…
BY ED FELIEN Jerry Mullin told a crowd of about 100 supporters on Tuesday, Aug. 15, “You don’t need to close this golf course. Right now, 58% of the water pumped out of the golf course goes into the lake and then back into the golf course. We could pipe…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Grand Avenue is widely thought to hold some of the best shopping and dining venues in Saint Paul. Grand Avenue starts in the west near the gates of St. Thomas University, and stretches eastward several miles, passing by the Macalester campus in the Mac-Groveland neighborhood, going…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE This year Franklin Avenue’s Open Streets celebration will be on Aug. 27, at the usual times: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The boundaries of the Franklin Avenue festival are Portland Avenue in the west and 32nd Avenue in the east (four blocks longer than last year).…
BY TONY BOUZA I wrote a piece in this space years ago with that title (excluding “still”), and the passing years have only deepened and confirmed that view. And how many objections/refutations did I receive for such an outlandish claim? Zip. Well, save your pennies, because your pocket is about…
BY ED FELIEN There wasn’t much to do after losing the election, so I started hanging out with Mo Burton. He was a 6-foot, 2-inch, 290-pound black guy who had a great political analysis and wanted to start a local chapter of the Black Panther Party in Minneapolis. We’d drive…
BY ED FELIEN We do not need a change of the Palace Guard. Replacing the chief of police is not the solution to the problem with the Minneapolis Police Department. The problem is there is no accountability. The MPD officers believe they are above the law. They believe their badge…
BY ED FELIEN At its Aug. 9 meeting, the Park Board voted 6 to 3 to stop pumping water out of the Hiawatha Golf Course by the end of the season in 2019. That means the course will be flooded because there is a dam holding back 2 to4 feet…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE On Treehouse Records’ web page there is a little tagline that says “The World’s Last Record Store.” I suspect this dates from the dark days of waning fortunes for record stores, before the Great Vinyl Resurgence of 2009. (I just made that up, but it’s vaguely…
BY ED FELIEN And they burned the bridges behind them. A new generation came to take their place, so they fought back. They wore the machinery down; ground the process to dust; exhausted them; outlasted them, and they remained intact. The DFL establishment that ran the City DFL Convention was…
BY POLLY MANN CEO pay may not be quite as high as it once was, but the numbers still dwarf the pay earned by the typical worker. Chief executives of America’s 350 largest companies made an average of $15.6 million in 2016, or 271 times more than what the typical worker…
BY ED FELIEN At its meeting on Aug.9, the Park Board will hear a recommendation from staff to close Hiawatha Golf Course and turn it into Camp Swampy, a wetlands theme park. In spite of a crowd of more than 70 frustrated golfers, a Park Board committee voted 5 to…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Although primarily a residential avenue, Bloomington Avenue has a plethora of small businesses, quite a few of them dedicated to wellness of one kind or another. There are also a few venerable but unconventional churches on or near Bloomington, which adds up to many varied resources…
