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To notice the skatepark building boom, you’d have to know what you were looking for. Driving Excelsior Boulevard through the 169 interchange in Hopkins, it’s eminently easy to miss the chain link enclosure of “The Overpass,” a newborn skatepark sponsored by the city of Hopkins. True to its moniker, the park is tucked into a concrete wedge beneath the freeway where it spans SuperValu’s headquarters and Excelsior Boulevard. Another city-sponsored skatepark in Minnetonka easily escapes notice folded into the Glen Lake shopping area. Others have sprouted in Burnsville, Oakdale, Mankato, Northfield, Duluth, and Moorhead. Edina and Richfield have a cooperative skatepark planned for the Southdale area. And for more than four years, Third Lair has operated in south Minneapolis as an indoor, commercial skatepark.

Curiously, this ascendence of the legit skateboarding scene corresponds to a proliferation of city ordinances that explicitly forbid skateboarding in almost every public place. Depending on who you talk to, the gradual crackdown on the streets and the opening of parks has ghettoized, mainstreamed, or liberated skating. Against this background, a group of geriatric (over 30) local skaters gathered the other day to have a few beers and unwind some yarns about then and now.

“Then” means the 80s to most skaters of the older vintage. Without exception, anyone who skated seriously then has a fistful of tales about the Twin Cities’s thumper cops, predatory jocks, and illegal spots. Brian Kevitt recalls assuming the position at least once for Bloomington police for the crime of skating in an empty parking lot. Steve Gareri and Mike Kleitz, both of Minneapolis, swap stories of beatings at the hands of the MPD. And while police were not a problem for Hopkins native and former pro skater Justin Lynch, he recalls how much fun Main Street rednecks had pummeling him with his own board.

Even the punks were hard on skaters, says Gareri. The “McPunks,” and “greenhairs” who populated the Hennepin/Lake intersection in Uptown Minneapolis circa 1984, were often seen with boards. They frequently used them as weapons and formed a defiant core of the early skateboard menace. But, says Gareri, “They would give you shit for skating, and they were sitting there with their boards. You had to be a tough ass to skate in the ’80s because you were challenged every day–jocks, punks, skinheads.”

To escape such unwanted attention, says Gareri, skaters built their own ramps in out-of-the-way spots. (These early plywood ramps were a persistent splinter risk, says Mike Kleitz, who claims to have witnessed a complete gluteus impalement on one.) But these were usually discovered and destroyed by police.

And so, in a crucible formed by the torment of peers and cops and the fight for habitat, a subculture was forged. Skating’s anti-authority bent was cemented with Black Flag anthems, MDC emblems, and Agent Orange rantings. And the 7th Street Entry added skateboard check-in to its door service. Leather jackets were decorated with hand-painted messages designed to give suburban housewives nightmares, and the slogan “SKATEBOARDING IS NOT A CRIME” found its way onto a bumpersticker.

Now, in the 21st century, skateboarding is, in fact, a crime. And some suburbs have skateboard-specific enforcement plans that include warnings, tickets, and board confiscations. And to this day, skaters still find inventive new ways to chafe the law. “Grinding” on rails and benches has taken its toll in property damage near 50th and France, according to Edina police Lt. Ken Kane. Skating the irresistible downward spiral of parking ramps has also generated complaints in Edina and St. Louis Park. Main Street Hopkins, where Justin Lynch remembers being treated like a freak on a board has become a magnet for any kid with wheels underfoot. “Wherever the space is, the kids help themselves to it,” says Hopkins police spokesperson Connie Kurtz, adding that “Razor”-type scooters have now made the list of prohibited conveyances.

Petty skate-crime notwithstanding, the skateparks sprouting in almost every ‘burb and city (with helmets required under age 18), have yielded a low-risk threat assessment of the sport from cops and parents alike. While nearly 100% of skaters over 30 report at least one hassle with cops in their history, only one in four teens questioned at Third Lair have ever encountered law enforcement when skating.

A canvass of parents at Third Lair revealed no greater concern than whether they should stay and watch their kids shred. For suburban cops, the skateparks are a great place to check in on kids and see what’s going on, says Minnetonka officer Jerry Cziok. Skate activism has gone mainstream, too. Hopkins spokesperson Kurtz notes that teens promoting the skatepark agenda in Hopkins attended city council meetings and participated with the forestry department in getting the Overpass built. “The kids were very organized,” she says.
Despite the hell-bent rebellion and the hard dues paid in the early days of skating, the mellowing of the culture and the actual criminalization of skating seem to sit well with the old crowd.
“No one ever got into skating to be persecuted,” says Ole Gilbertson, who cut his teeth at underground Minneapolis ramps in the ’80s. Indeed, most skaters would rather show off a kickflip injury than get cuffed and hauled downtown.

To Gareri, who now manages Third Lair, a legal location where skating can be done the way it should be–without hassle or fear–is the prize for all the sound and fury of the ’80s. “I run a business, too. I respect the work that cops do. I respect that other business owners don’t want kids grinding their rails or getting hurt on their property with liability being a problem. A lot of the media stories are about showing what a bunch of maniacs skaters are. But the kids at Third Lair, when they’re skating, look at all the things they’re not doing. They’re not smoking dope, they’re not stealing, you know.”

A true shock, perhaps, to their boomer parents, many of whom probably did a great deal of both.

From the air, the river looked innocent enough: A mocha-brown flow etched its way through the forest in lazy S’s. But paddling it was another matter. An unusually dry season reduced the normal torrent to a trickle. The shallow bottom and exposed rapids compelled us to carry our canoes more than they carried us. After four grunting sodden days, tragedy struck. Just before sunset my brother Nick, the team technologist, jumped out of the canoe for another pull when he stepped on a freshwater stingray. Its stinger whipped upward three times and impaled his foot, injecting massive amounts of venom.

According to the indigenous Machiguengas here, these stingrays are among the Amazon’s most feared creatures. Though their venom is not as lethal as, say, the surucucu snake’s, stingrays are harder to avoid, maddeningly well-camouflaged in the river’s murk. Few people die from the poison itself (ensuing infection is more dangerous) but as our Machiguenga companions warned, humans know no greater pain than stingray venom. We didn’t bother to ask if an antidote exists.

Nick yelped and leaped and performed a Christlike scramble across the water. On shore, he collapsed in a heap, writhing in pain. I hurried over to see what happened. Blood oozed from all three puncture wounds. The venom turned the surrounding flesh white and red, making his foot look like raspberry revel ice cream. We could see the poison working its way up Nick’s ankle. Where would it stop?

I tore apart my pack looking for the satellite phone Globalstar had graciously loaned us, and I dialed Hennepin County Medical Center (out of mindless, panic-stricken impulse, I suppose). In moments, I was miraculously put through to Dr. Dan Keyler, a co-director of toxicology research for the University of Minnesota. More miraculously, he is one of the world’s foremost snakebite experts. But when I told him I was phoning from a remote Amazonian tributary, he thought my call was a prank.

Somehow, my adrenalin-fueled jabber kept Dr. Keyler on the phone. “I’ve heard of these stringray attacks,” he told me. “But never actually treated one. They’re exceedingly painful.” I could hear him rifle through pages of medical text in search of a field treatment. Meanwhile, our Machiguenga companions had carried my moaning brother to a clearing in the jungle and were moving about. After 30 seconds which took an eternity, Dr. Keyler finally had an answer: Submerge the foot in water as hot as Nick could endure. “The heat will denature the venom,” he said.

I thanked Dr. Keyler profusely, promised to call back in a few hours, and hurried over to the Machiguengas to pass along the treatment, but they were way ahead of me. They had already started a fire, put water on to boil, and prepared to submerge the foot.

That glimmer of hope you see on the springtime motion picture horizon could be the return of Robin Williams from his teeth-hurting escapades as Sad Clown of the 90s. Patch Adams, Jakob the Liar, and Bicentennial Man—a cinematic trifecta from Hell. We are thankful Mr. Williams appears to be seeking redemption. In January, the Sundance Film Festival premiered the R-rated One Hour Photo, starring Williams as Seymour “Sy” Parrish, a nebbishy photo-lab employee who becomes obsessed with a family whose pictures he develops. Before Photo’s April release date comes Death to Smoochy, in which Williams portrays Rainbow Randolph, the host of a children’s television show. When Randolph is fired over a bribery scandal, his show is taken over by Smoochy, played by Edward Norton (Fight Club) in a fuscia rhinoceros costume. To make matters worse, Randolph finds out Smoochy is sleeping with his ex-lover, a top programming executive played by Catherine Keener (Being John Malkovich). Randolph begins to plot his revenge. Death to Smoochy also features Jon Stewart (The Daily Show) as a network president, choreographed midgets in rainbow wigs, costumes Liberace and Elton John would have clawed each others’ eyes out for… did we mention Edward Norton as a fuscia rhinoceros? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you, Robin. Don’t screw this up.

Like Prince and Loni Anderson before him, Hollywood It-boy Josh Hartnett is proving to the rest of the free world that Minnesota can pull its weight on the breakout-sex-symbol production line. As we see in Black Hawk Down and the underappreciated Virgin Suicides, it doesn’t hurt that Josh can actually act. Oddly, his real debut as a big-time romantic lead (we don’t count Pearl Harbor) casts him as a recently dumped dude who swears off sex for Lent. As if the hormonal ramifications of his sudden celibacy weren’t grave enough, he’s got a new drop-dead gorgeous love interest in the picture to crank up the temptation quotient—A Knight’s Tale’s Shannyn Sossamon. With an R rating attributed to “strong sexual content, nudity and language,” it’s unlikely that 40 Days is a glorified instructional video for born-again virgins, if you know what we mean. Knowing Miramax, we think they’ll not only find a way to bring Hartnett’s character back into the carnally knowledgeable world, but they’ll do it with panache. Teen-movie slump be damned, we haven’t been this excited about a local boy making good since Apollonia’s skinny-dip in what she thought was Lake Minnetonka.

With due respect to Dirk Diggler, there’s never been a better film about empty sex and failed optimism than 1975’s Shampoo. As dim-witted hair stylist Warren Beatty dutifully knocks boots with Goldie Hawn, Julie Christie, Lee Grant, and Carrie Fisher, you can almost hear the cynicism of the Nixon era grabbing hold of the American consciousness. A new print of this titillating and politically tinted gem is the centerpiece of an inspired Oak Street retrospective, revisiting the career highlights of the late director Hal Ashby. He may never have picked up a Best Director prize on Oscar night—he was only nominated in the category once, for 1978’s fearless Vietnam flick Coming Home, which will be included here—but he remains responsible for some of the coolest and most distinctive movies this side of whatever Wes Anderson is working on now. From the dark comedy and unorthodox romanticism of the cult-favorite Harold and Maude to the gently intrepid satire of the classic Peter Sellers pic Being There, Ashby specialized in sharply scripted, character-driven fare.

Here’s the feel-paranoid hit of the season. Nicole Kidman was originally slated to star in this dark, suspense-filled doozy from director David Fincher, but one too many can-can kicks on the set of Moulin Rouge forced her to back out at the last minute. Thankfully, her replacement is the all-too-scarce Jodie Foster. Fans of the original Clarice Starling can count on more than a little of her sizzle in this claustrophobic thriller. Panic Room centers on a hellacious night in the life of a New York divorcee whose spacious new brownstone is invaded by a trio of treasure-seeking felons (Forrest Whitaker, Dwight Yoakam, and a brutally corn-rowed Jared Leto). She and her daughter hole up in a special high-tech mini-fortress built into the house for just such a terrifying occasion. With a tension-monger like Fincher (Seven, Fight Club) at the helm, you can smell the shadowy interiors and perilous scenarios already—no wait, that’s the stale popcorn and “butter-flavored” topping. But you get the idea.

What ever happend to alt-rock? By now you’d think lanky white twenty-somethings armed with cheap guitars, drum kits, lightweight keyboards, and the odd sampler would’ve more or less exhausted the possibilities. Think again. In different ways, both Washington state’s Death Cab for Cutie and Washington, DC’s Dismemberment Plan prove there’s still room for growth in the American indie rock marketplace, even if most of their peers are content to spend semester after semester in a dreary post-Archers of Loaf purgatory. True, you can hear Death Cab for Cutie’s pretty collegiate pop for free on Radio K any day of the week. But the Dismemberment Plan’s Change is a roundly rewarding album you prolly won’t hear on the airwaves here. The lowest common denominator between rock and rap isn’t Fred Durst. It’s urgent self-affirmation. Plan singer Travis Morrison flaunts his anxious affinity for everything from quirky art-core to lovelorn poetics to Public Enemy and D’Angelo, and he never fakes the funk. Even though they’ve opened for Pearl Jam, these guys are not rock stars, nor will they ever be. Which tells you, after nearly ten years of fiercely independent music-making, there’s lots more to them than a graduate-level interest in literature and a really bad name.

An anonymous friend recently referred to Alison Krauss as the “prom queen of bluegrass,” and as snarky as that sounds, she oughta take it as a compliment. Already a favorite among fans of credible new-country and sprightly contemporary folk, her profile was raised a few extra notches last year by the unexpected success of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack and the old-tyme-music feeding frenzy that followed. Besides her lack of facial hair, a major difference between Krauss and other bandwagon beneficiaries is that her skill as a musician is both immediately apparent and way beyond novelty. She’s been a first-rate fiddler since puberty, and her versatile voice can muster high-lonesome laments the same as rollicking down-home pop. She’s gifted, popular, and easy on the eyes—which might make some of the cool kids jealous, but that’s their problem, isn’t it. If she’s as smart as we think she is, Krauss will acknowledge our appetite for the uppity old-school folk she and her Union Station cohorts do best, though they’ll undoubtedly dig into a few of the deeper, more modernist tracks from last fall’s New Favorite, too.

Cynics say he’s “pulled a Santana” by collaborating with Matchbox Twenty’s Rob Thomas and a host of other greenhorn superstars—Kid Rock, Sheryl Crow, and Lee Ann Womack among them—on his latest album, The Great Divide. But you can’t accuse Willie Nelson of selling out, because his plainspoken country-folk has lost none of its substance in his decades as an eclectic master of the singer-songwriter mode. The new stuff is less twangy and lots more radio-ready than 1998’s captivating Teatro, or even the best of his outlaw heyday, but if re-entering the pop charts after a long, awkward hiatus is such a crime, then that Bono guy should have been deported months ago. Live, Nelson is no more prone to stage dives or explosive outbursts than he is to getting a crewcut, and that’s as it should be. Even when he’s indulging a jones for drippy romance on the Thomas-penned “Maria (Shut Up and Kiss Me),” or dusting off a nugget like “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In),” he’s the kind of sturdy, soulful, instantly engaging cowboy poet that more jukeboxes could use. Nobody needs a “comeback” less than this handsome stranger, and though his output shows no signs of slowing, it’s a good idea to catch him while you can.

In the late 1950’s, when comics like Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, and Nichols & May were storming club stages across the country, turning stand-up on its head, a mumbling, unassuming accountant from Chicago was supplementing his income by writing and performing comedy bits for local radio. His tapes made their way to Warner Brothers, who propped Newhart on a stage to do his routines before a live audience for the very first time. It was in the Tidelands Club in Houston, and the recording, released in 1960 as The Button-Down Mind, sold over 1.5 million copies. Newhart received a Grammy for Album of the Year and Best New Artist. His follow-up albums led to success in two sitcoms, portraying the same character—that mumbling, stammering, basset hound-eyed Everyman—throughout his career. We can only hope routines like “The Introduction of Tobacco to Civilization,” “Driving Instructor,” and “The Man Who Looked Like Hitler” are in the line-up when Newhart picks up the mike again and stammers live at Orchestra Hall.