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.

Our new apartment!

I never planned to become a home owner -- it just sort of happened. But it's good to live indoors, and rents are going to keep going up.

Here's two walkthrough videos of our wonderful new space in Chicago. First, right after closing, and next, about a month later after we've gotten some furniture in place.

Reasons to Live in Minneapolis

Here are just a few of the reasons you should live in Minneapolis.

Reason #1: The view from your balcony looks like this.

 

Reason #2: Cool things like Berger Fountain, this whimsical 1970s dandelion-shaped fountain.



Reason #3: Cool music festivals like Rock the Garden and the Basilica Block Party are held right outside your door, letting you see bands like Spoon, Belle and Sebastian, Courtney Barnett, Fitz and the Tantrums, Wilco and more, while barely having to cross the street to get there.

Reason #5: Just out your back door, there's tons of green space--parks, lakes, and trails, almost all suitable places for walking your best friend.

On living in Minneapolis

My wife was published in the "Your Voices" section of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune today, talking about what it is like to be a recent transplant to Minneapolis.

Bluetooth at Home

Few statements can be considered more exciting than the following: Finally, I have a use for bluetooth at home!

OK, I'm lying, but still.... We stumbled across a very simple and satisfying solution to an annoying problem. In our new apartment, we have fairly poor cell reception. Believe it or not, with Verizon, not with AT&T. The phones work, but calls drop pretty regularly if you're not actually near a window.

A friend of ours has AT&T and mentioned buying a microcell to solve that problem -- but that's kind of expensive and it irritates me that I have to pay so much to solve the cell provider's issue. So, here's what we stumbled upon instead: The Cobra PhoneLynx Bluetooth Cell to Home Phone Connection System.

What does it do? It connects to your fancy smartphone over Bluetooth, and then it connects to whatever regular telephones you have. We've got ours connected to a cordless phone system with two phones and two base stations. When we're at home, we drop our iPhones into their chargers, conveniently located by the window, where they get great reception. Then, if a cell phone rings, the house phone rings. The house phone is thus an extension for your iPhone. Since the cell phones remain near the window, reception is always great. And the thing supports two phones/two bluetooth connections. Caller ID tells us if phone #1 or phone #2 is ringing.

Wasn't sure if we'd find this all that useful, but it turned out to be a life-saver that we use every day.

And when you pick up one of the cordless phones, you get a dial tone. Dial like normal, and your call goes out over your cell phone.

Alive in Rogers Park

Well, we found our fabulous new dream apartment, right here in good ole Rogers Park. Have already connected with a couple of neighbors online and at the corner bar -- and they seem ecstatic that we're replacing the college kids who had a drum set. (There's a diaper-wearing story to be told over beers sometime.) More on how we got that apartment later, but for now, here's a picture of our fabulous new, huge patio.

You can't really tell, but I had just spent a couple of hours sweeping up all the dirt and detritus, followed by a good hosing down. Confirmed: the drain works. Can't wait to load this up with chairs and be able to sit out here drinking wine after dark.

And the deck above it is ours, too.

Busy Bee/Late Spring Cleaning

It's been a busy past few days here in Rogers Park.

My wife is in NYC, leaving me behind to fulfill my dreams of....cleaning, I guess. We have too much stuff. A lot of it is old computer parts and old printing/design materials from my designer days, so I've been thinning the herd. The goal is to turn my home office into a den, dump/donate everything we don't need/want, and fill up our storage area in the basement with any of that inbetween stuff, the things we're just not sure we can part with, even though we haven't done anything with any of it in five years. I hit up the local Target to get some plastic boxes and have slowly been filling them up.

On Sunday I planned to take my first box down to the basement. I scoped out where our storage locker was supposed to be, and lo-and-behold, it was entirely packed with somebody else's crap. Not sure who, couldn't tell by locking at it. The locker wasn't labeled, either. I contacted the landlord, who confirmed that the space is ours, and got her permission to displace all the stuff that's currently in there. I did that yesterday, moving stuff to a common area in the basement. Some of the beat up plywood furniture they were hiding down there was hella heavy, so now I'm sore. Ow.

And now I'm realizing that some of the stuff I want to move to the basement is too heavy for me to do it by myself. So, do I hire movers to help me move stuff down flights of stairs? Feels lame, but I'm probably going to have to do it.

I'm still hoping to make our second bedroom, what was my cluttered home office, into a much more appealing den, by the end of the week. Wish me luck.