Moving to MPLS

what I'll miss about San Jose

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 07:32:45 -0800

[I’ve been prompted to get started on the posts that have been waiting for me to write them down. Thanks, prompters.]

Most of this blog has been about what’s so great about Minneapolis, and it really is great. But back in September, I sent myself a short list of things I planned to miss about San Jose. Annotated, here they are:

Thai dentists. Okay, I don’t know any Thai dentists. But they’re in the phone book, and this has become my mental shorthand for a diverse, integrated middle class. The Twin Cities are more ethnically diverse than you’d think from A Prairie Home Companion, but the doctors and lawyers seem to be almost all white. In Silicon Valley there are working professionals of many descents, and - this matters - their kids all know each other from school. It’s not “It’s a Small World” but it’s not bad.

Related: The back page of the travel section. I grew up in a small town in rural Minnesota, reading books about the wide world, and although I didn’t think about it at the time, my concept of travel was basically white people in exotic places. When I started reading the San Jose Mercury-News, I would turn to the back page of the travel section and see pictures, sent in by local readers, of their Indian-American family at Versailles, or their Sino-/Franco-American family in Egypt, and I was surprised! And then uncomfortable with my surprise; it was because I had made unconscious assumptions like “people who look different from me are ‘foreign’” and “‘foreign’ people would mostly want to travel to their ancestral homelands.” Working through those assumptions led me to a deeper understanding of my community and its place in the world. I checked that page every week.

I hate writing about this stuff, because although I mean well I’m afraid I will offend somebody. But I will miss it.

Fresh, local produce all year round. It’s wonderful to be able to get up on a Sunday morning in January, head over to downtown Campbell, and get just-picked fruits and vegetables from Watsonville or Corralitos. (Minnesota has a lot of farmers markets, and some of them operate in winter but I guess I just assume it’s all meat and dairy.)

The West Coast. Not the coast as such, but “the rest of the western coastal states,” and specifically Los Angeles, San Luis Obispo, Portland, Olympia, Seattle… all these places I love, and people I’d love to see again, but it’s harder to visit them from across the Mountain West, especially for a flight-hater like myself. It’s a long drive from Minnesota to the west coast, and even when the drive is beautiful, it’s still long.

The ocean. I’ve never spent that much time with it, but every once in a while, when the sorrows and worries of my life seemed too much to bear, I’d drive down past Santa Cruz, find a deserted beach, and gaze out at the waves rolling in, or at the far horizon, until I started to understand again how big the world is, and how little my troubles matter to it. It’s very comforting, being reminded of your own insignificance. Even when I couldn’t get there, it was good to know that vastness was there, just on the other side of those hills. I don’t know where to find that in my new old home.

So that’s the list. When I made it, I didn’t mention my band or my friends - let’s not get mushy. But I’m gone now, and I miss them.

packing

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 10:39:04 -0700

This morning I decided I’m not worried about getting packed: Worst case, in our last week, we just dump everything we might want into boxes, and everything else into Goodwill, etc. But it’d be better to have actually decided what we want to keep, and better to have found good homes for what we don’t.

I also decided that although I’m not worried about getting packed, I’ll feel better as more of our stuff finds its way to boxes, and off the walls, floor, shelves… basically the less our stuff looks like it looks when we live with it, the happier I’ll be. I’m looking forward to living with it someplace new, though!

so many neighborhoods!

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 13:44:47 -0700

A long time ago I wrote a post about what neighborhood we should move to. Our main ideas were and are Uptown-ish and the Northeast Arts District, but there are so many great places! SO MANY! I realized today that we could live within two blocks of the new Peace Coffee Cafe, the Hub Bike Co-op, the Trylon microcinema/XYandZ Gallery, Patrick’s Cabaret, and the East Lake Library. Just a little farther to the Midtown Greenway and the light rail. Longfellow!

Assuming there’s an apartment building with an available unit we can afford right in the middle of all that, of course. Small matters of reality do not interest me.

I spent some time stewing over what neighborhood is best (I developed a theory that Uptown would be a great place to consume, and Northeast would be a great place to produce, and to make a choice would require deciding once and for all what I truly value) and then suddenly, like a fever breaking, realized that we had an incredible array of good options, and all I really had to do was wait and see what’s available when I get there, and be happy with whatever neighborhood we end up in.

Minneapolis has, every year, a film festival about music. This...

Fri, 08 Oct 2010 17:12:29 -0700

Minneapolis has, every year, a film festival about music. This weekend there are movies about David Byrne, Charlie Haden, Seattle funk and soul, Harry Nilsson, Fishbone, and more. Plus, live concerts! In case there isn’t enough music on film.

metromag:

Sound Unseen Festival trailer. Get the day-by-day rundown of films here.

east-lake: Tim Shindler of Go Green Beans | The Heavy...

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 14:22:20 -0700

east-lake:

Tim Shindler of Go Green Beans | The Heavy Table

It’s basically a standard Zap Xebra electric pick-up truck outfitted with a solar panel. It’s completely electric; you can just plug it in with a regular extension cord. The back end is made of Baltic birch — like a marine grade plywood, more or less — and a sustainably harvested mahogany if you can believe that …

I love this idea. And I love that creative business people like him are popping up all over the city. It’s an exciting time to live in Mpls for sure.

Moving to MPLS

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 21:32:41 -0700

I had this idea as we were talking about our planned move to Minneapolis that we could start a blog where we documented the process - for our friends and family, or anyone who was interested, but also for us. A place to write down how we were going to do it, and why.

So far it’s really been all about the why (Minneapolis is awesome! and we like Saint Paul too!), and not about the how. But we’re still moving! And things have been pretty thin here for a while. So from now on I’m going to try to post less MPLS, and more moving.

Starting with a date, of a sort: The plan is for me to hit town by Thanksgiving, enjoy a nice family holiday, and then start looking in earnest for a place to live while Kate finishes stuff up in San Jose. There. It’s a theory. Now to decide how I’m getting there.

Research at the Red Stag

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 14:19:46 -0700

Research at the Red Stag:

“Research at the Red Stag is NCED’s new science salon - a chance to hear about new and exciting research over beer, in a cool bar… a happy hour forum that offers the opportunity to talk with researchers about their current work, its implications, and its fascinations. Each month we feature guests from a variety of fields discussing Earth-surface dynamics, global change, and environmental restoration.”

Upcoming topics: self-organizing landscape patterns, and what happens to a river when you remove a dam.

Views from the Open Field: 10 things to look forward to!

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 11:22:48 -0700

Views from the Open Field: 10 things to look forward to!:

Including Lewis Hyde! Also human chess.

Minneapolis had not one but three art fairs (featuring somewhere over 500 artists) this weekend,...

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 07:52:07 -0700

Minneapolis had not one but three art fairs (featuring somewhere over 500 artists) this weekend, with a free shuttle between them. Minneapolis is obviously a great town for artists, or will be once they’ve solved that whole law of physics about being two (or more) places at the same time.

Bonus weekend art: Lutefisk Sushi mini-comics publication and gallery show, and St. Paul’s monthly Lowertown First Friday. And this is just visual art - never mind the performing arts.

Cities tackle traffic head-on with commuter options

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:29:32 -0700

Cities tackle traffic head-on with commuter options:

Via pencilthin:

The Twin Cities… has 300 miles of bus-only lanes, in which the right shoulder of highways is opened for buses during peak traffic; that’s more than the rest of the USA combined.

Bedlam to leave its West Bank Social Hub! « Bedlam Theatre

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 11:40:42 -0700

Bedlam to leave its West Bank Social Hub! « Bedlam Theatre:

We’ve been to some cool shows at Bedlam Theatre’s current space, but I guess we won’t get to any more of them. Their lease ends August 31. They’re asking people to help them find a permanent space, and more immediately to “join the party, support Bedlam, volunteer, have dinner and see some final shows in the space.”

(via fresh.mn, basically)

Summer Dance

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 03:26:42 -0700

Summer Dance:

Free dance lessons every Thursday in downtown St. Paul, with dance movies the next night.

EGG|PLANT Urban Farm Supply

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 06:56:42 -0700

EGG|PLANT Urban Farm Supply:

St. Paul store for city-dwellers farming in their backyards.

I’ve now seen a life-size Operation game twice in my life,...

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 13:18:43 -0700

I’ve now seen a life-size Operation game twice in my life, both times in Minnesota: Once at the Hack Factory (shown here at the Science Museum’s Make: Day), and once in the MST3K episode Ring of Terror.

Free Geek Twin Cities

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 13:06:27 -0700

Free Geek Twin Cities:

Inspired by Free Geek Portland, FGTC aims to reduce electronic waste and the digital divide by teaching people to build their own computers out of donated parts. It’s three blocks from the previously mentioned Chicago Avenue Fire Arts Center.

David Byrne’s bike-centric visit to Minneapolis (and...

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 16:38:00 -0700

David Byrne’s bike-centric visit to Minneapolis (and Chicago), via shardlow

Yards to Gardens

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 22:06:19 -0700

Yards to Gardens:

“Whether you have extra space in your yard, extra tools in the garage, extra seeds or seedings, or just looking for a space to garden, Y2G makes it easy to share what you’ve got or find what you’re looking for.” (via freshmn)

Not the same thing, but it reminds me of San Jose’s Village Harvest, a volunteer organization that “harvests fruit from backyards and small orchards, then passes it along to local food agencies to feed the hungry.”

Photo by mylowercase. The Midtown Global Market is a collection...

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 16:17:54 -0700

Photo by mylowercase.

The Midtown Global Market is a collection of local, independent shops and restaurants representing the international diversity of Minneapolis: lefse, sure, but also bánh mì, jerk chicken, saris, sambusas, falafel, tamales, Himalayan and East African clothes and crafts, and regional cheeses of the Upper Midwest. It’s a great place to eat lunch, obviously, but it also sounds like a great place to watch the World Cup.

Storefront in a Box

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 18:18:31 -0700

Storefront in a Box:

This summer, 2441 Lyndale Avenue is a different store every week: art swap, hoedown, nerd party, bike shop, theater festival, and the list goes on.

ericaaaaa: What Might Happen If You Visit

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 13:32:00 -0700

ericaaaaa: What Might Happen If You Visit:

Earlier this month Time Out Chicago published a batch of “road trip” guides to the Twin Cities, but for my money they should’ve visited Erica:

I had friends in town last weekend, and we stopped at the following places:

Mango Thai for dinner, Muddy Pig for post-dinner beers

Mill City Farmer’s Market (including Chef Shack, omgggg), with a stop in the Guthrie because it was raining

A bunch of vintage/resale stores: …

(Keep reading…)