BY DEB KEEFER RAMAGE In the vibrant neighborhoods surrounding Chicago Avenue and 48th Street, it’s easy to forget about home-based businesses. Many are so home-based that there’s no sign in the window, no trucks pull up to the door, no clients park on the tree-lined block. One extremely private way…
BY STEPHANIE FOX Hennepin Avenue, in Uptown and north to downtown, is one of the older business districts in the city, always trendy, whether scruffy or upscale. For more than 100 years, from flappers to the hepcats to hippies to hipsters, Hennepin Ave. businesses have been a destination for folks…
BY MARIE BRAUN It was in the spring of 1999, in response to the U.S. bombing of Yugoslavia, that Lisa Pierce of Women Against Military Madness (WAMM) and Michael Bischoff of Friends for a Non-Violent World called on local peace groups and faith communities to come together for a weekly…
BY TONY BOUZA Around 1966, the NYPD was assailed by the police union as an unfit place to work. The cops were miserable. Morale had never been lower. The troops wallowed in lachrymose self-pity and the Fourth Estate lapped it up. What a fun time they were all having. My…
BY KATHRYN KELLY What do Powderhorn Lake and Hiawatha Golf Course have in common? Water!! The plans proposed by the Minneapolis Parks & Recreation Board (MPRB) for reduced pumping at the Hiawatha Golf Course will increase water levels in the Minneapolis neighborhoods as far away as Powderhorn Lake. The MPRB…
BY STEPHANIE FOX Unlike many American cities, bus shelters in Minneapolis are not privately owned. They are owned and operated by Metropolitan Transit Authority, a division of the Metropolitan Council. Buses carry nearly 70% of public transit riders on 123 bus routes, with thousands of passengers waiting every day at…
BY TERESA ENGSTROM Here I go again, banging my head against the brick wall that is the Minneapolis Park Board. Staff and commissioners all inclusive. I was totally gobsmacked at the Community Advisory Committee meeting held at Powderhorn Park Thursday night, March 7, 2019. The Park Board had the temerity…
BY STEPHANIE FOX Schatzlein Saddle Shop 413 W. Lake St. Monday – Friday, 9:30 a.m. – 6 p.m. Thursday, 9:30 a.m. – 8 p.m. Saturday, 9:30 a.m. – 5 p.m. Everyone who regularly travels down Lake Street has seen the Schatzlein Saddle Shop. But, for many, what’s inside remains a…
BY JOHN CHARLES WILSON Metro Transit has recently announced an initiative to get control of bad behavior on our transit system, especially on the light rail trains. The idea is to make the system more appealing to “choice” riders—that is, those who have a choice as to whether or not…
BY STEPHANIE FOX Mt. Olivet Lutheran Church in South Minneapolis, with a membership of 12,000, is the largest Lutheran Church in the country, perhaps in the world according to some accounts. It’s not the kind of church that actively courts controversy. Located on 50th Street in a liberal section of…
I was raised as a Methodist at a church in southwest Minneapolis and converted to Unitarianism about a decade and half ago. I know the mainline Protestant churches have struggled with GLBT issues recently (or GLOW, which I like more—the Gay/lesbian/or whatever label, which is even more open to others).…
BY LORENA PINTO As a native of Peru, I never imagined living in sub-zero temperatures, let alone walking snowy streets to provide outreach to sex trafficking survivors. But every week, staff from The Family Partnership’s PRIDE program and the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center (MIWRC) walk in the Phillips and…
BY ELINA KOLSTAD Many people support the Minneapolis 2040 Comprehensive Plan because they believe it will increase “affordable” housing in the city. Two arguments are put forward to support this claim. The first is that removing the requirement to provide off-street parking will reduce the cost for developers to build…
BY ED FELIEN Funding for neighborhood organizations has come mostly from the increased property taxes on downtown development. In 1989 the city gave developers a huge tax break to encourage development. Tax Increment Financing meant they would only have to pay property taxes on the value of the buildings they…
J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterpiece “The Hobbit” will be playing at the Children’s Theatre Company until April 14. Go and see two hours of excitement in this adaptation written and directed by Greg Banks. Altogether the show is two hours, counting the 20-minute intermission, but I count it all as excitement.…
