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You’re probably most familiar with Tom McCarthy from his acting roles in Meet the Parents and TV’s Boston Public, but you may soon be hearing more about him as a director thanks to the impressive Sundance debut of his first behind-the-camera film, The Station Agent, which picked up both screenwriting and audience-favorite awards. It’s a … Read more

One recent afternoon in south Minneapolis, we looked on in horror as a torch-wielding mob chased a pale, fedora-clad man down an alley past the grease-clogged kitchen vents of a Chinese restaurant. Rounding a corner ahead of the mob, the fugitive ducked through an oddly small lavender-colored door in a nearby storefront. As the mob … Read more

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to do some fill-in work at a radio station. Handed a pile of standard forms to fill out, I sat staring at question number four. “List three people to call in case of emergency.” Three! Didn’t it used to be one? Just how dangerous is this gig? … Read more

Scientists argue about a lot of things that most of us don’t care about. But the researchers who observed about ten years back that sperm counts were falling—nationally, about one and a half percent per year—found themselves in the news. Naturally, the average guy on the street worries about his sperm being headed for extinction. … Read more

A yellow electric scooter lies on its side in the middle of 38th Street and Park Avenue. It’s just past 2 a.m. (hooray, new bar time!), and I swerve my Mazda into construction to keep from running it over. The scooter lies among flashing orange-and-white traffic horses and chunks of broken pavement, like a glowing … Read more

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 … Read more

Tea is a crop we could grow in Minnesota, but the end product would be so foul that no one with working taste buds would go near it. The mountainous soils of Nepal, though, produce some damn fine chai, as they call it. Swadesh Shrestha and his brother Saujanya serve it at their Uptown Minneapolis … Read more

If you peer off the north side of the Lake Street Bridge this time of year, you’ll often spot a dark blue, double-masted sailboat anchored on the Mississippi. For most of the past seventeen years, Captain John V. Caola has sailed from points south—Key West, Miami, and the Bahamas—to beat the heat and visit his … Read more