This is not OK

I am from Minneapolis.

I lived a few blocks away from where Alex Pretti was killed. For somewhere around 12 years. It was so long that I’m even a bit fuzzy around exact dates. Like, I think I moved there in 1994 and moved out in 2006? So let's say it was a dozen years.

I have stood right where Alex Pretti stood.

I have been to every business on the 2600 block of Nicollet Avenue many times.

Glam Doll Donuts, my favorite donut shop in the whole world, wasn’t there when I lived nearby. It opened later, in 2013. But even after I moved away, I made a point to stop there when I came back. Every time I was in Minneapolis, I tried to get coffee and a donut at Glam Doll at least once per visit. Every time, I thought to myself, geez, I wish this had been here when I lived in the neighborhood!

A perfect weekend morning for me on more than one trip was coffee + donut at Glam Doll, followed by record shopping at Cheapo Records. With friends, or by myself. The picture above was taken by me on a 2023 visit to Glam Doll.

That section of Nicollet Avenue is called “Eat Street” because it holds some of the best restaurants in the Twin Cities. I’ve been to many of them. Some have closed since my time there, but many remain: Quang, Pho 79/Caravelle, Black Forest Inn, Rainbow Restaurant, and others. Little Tijuana was a famously dive-y Mexican Restaurant right around the corner, on 26th Street.

I used to be nervous to walk around that neighborhood when I first moved there in the 1990s. It took me a while to get comfortable with it. I learned to love walking to the corner store, to the hardware store, to the restaurants, to the coffee shop that used to be on the corner of Nicollet and Franklin, and then southward down to all the great restaurants of Eat Street.

I used to stop at Caravelle to pick up Chinese food on the way home from my job in the suburbs.

I used to love a good Paulaner Weissbier at the Black Forest Inn.

That neighborhood was home. It still holds a special place in my heart.

I am sad and angry for what happened to Alex Pretti on 26th and Nicollet.

I am sad for the fine people behind Glam Doll Donuts. I want the world to know about them, but because their donuts are fantastic and everybody there is always friendly … not because of this. This is not why their storefront should be on the national news.

What the government is doing is damaging Minneapolis. Hurting my onetime home. Hurting my friends. Hurting good people.

It must stop.