Author: Joe Pastoor

  • Big Sister Is Watching

    Despite the overnight snowfall and a route through some of the metro’s most notorious traffic hot spots, I pulled into the well-salted parking lot almost fifteen minutes early for my appointment to look at the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s new Roseville compound. It’s a brushed aluminum affair, called the Water’s Edge building. Together with the…

  • The Kindest Cup of All

    When ex-president Millard Fillmore led a steamboat expedition up the Mississippi 149 years ago, it may have looked like a publicity stunt for the Know-Nothing party. Maybe he was just looking for a good cup of coffee brewed fresh from organic, shade-grown beans. Of course, in 1854, all coffee was organic and shade-grown by default.…

  • The Long Arm of Crop Art

    Lawyers are the ultimate insiders. Just ask anyone foolhardy enough to represent him- or herself in court. So just how does a lawyer get to be an outsider? Rob Lowe’s stunning 1985 haircut for his new TV series, Lyon’s Den, seems to be doing the trick for him. But around here, nonfictional lawyers do it…

  • All Shook Down

    It started with letters in the mail. Then there were the spies. Then one day at an unglamorous neighborhood coffee shop in South Minneapolis, the phone rang. “I’ve been to your café. I know you have a CD player,” said the voice on the phone. Paul knew he was in trouble. It was true; there…

  • The Bear Refreshing

    The Hamm’s Club brewery show this past September was pretty much what one would expect: a few dozen vendors in the parking lot of a defunct brewery hawking beer collectibles to each other. Some sold genuine antiques, some had kitsch, some not-yet-kitsch, and some never-would-be-kitsch. A guy named Jerry from Fort Worth offered Styrofoam Hamm’s…

  • Meat Wins!

    The character of 26th and Lyndale has changed little in the last few decades. The C.C. Club still has a decent breakfast and a better jukebox. Though Oar Folkjokeopus is gone, the ancient carpets in Treehouse records steeped so long in Oarfolk essence that a sniff can bring the old days back, as you wander…