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  • Sapor: Be Happy For TWO Hours

    Last time I went to Sapor Cafe, it was with a man who used to say things like, "Don’t you think that dress is a little low-cut?" and "I don’t think I could ever marry a woman who’s as smart as I am." Also, he was a Republican who lived in the suburbs and went antiquing on weekends.

    This was during a brief period in my life when I was trying to be traditional — more like my mom — but it didn’t work out too well. For one thing, it made me irritable. And for another, the man waffled a lot, telling me he couldn’t "handle" a woman like me and retreating, then calling to say he was still hooked and could I meet him for drinks. After a couple weeks of this, I told him we clearly had no future as I was actually quite a bit smarter than he was.

    Maybe this is why I hadn’t been back to Sapor until tonight.

    Well, for a smart woman who drinks quite a bit between the hours of 5 and 7 o’clock, this really was quite stupid. Because Sapor has an amazing Happy Hour menu: everything — from appetizers to beer to wine — is three dollars. And never have I had such a nice, stoutly-poured $3 glass.

    Currently, they’re serving a Luzon Mourvedre-Grenache blend from Spain, which is light, fruity, and not quite dry. The white is an Austrian Gruner Veltliner, aged in stainless steel with a flinty, citrusy edge. You can also get a quesadilla, a plate of French fries with aioli, a small hamburger, a wasabi potato cake, or a bowl of olives for three bucks.

    What’s more, the bar at Sapor is a lovely place to sit, looking out over Washington Avenue and all that rush hour traffic you’re not in. And apparently many people know this already, because while it was nearly empty when I entered at 5:15, by 6:30 the place was jammed.

    The restaurant next door is quite good, too, as I remember. Though I’m going to have to give it another try now that I’m with an enlightened man. Under the circumstances — what with $3 wine and Tanya Siebenaler’s fantastic cuisine and a partner who likes my necklines low and my I.Q. high, rather than the other way around — I’m bound to see Sapor in a whole new light.

  • Karaoke Night at Pancho Villa

    It’s Thursday night at Pancho Villa on Eat Street, and thejoint is jumping. The Mexican restaurant on Eat Street has karaoke four nightsa week, but Thursday night is contest night, and more than a dozen singers arelined up to compete. The prizes in tonight’s semi-final round are small stuff –a bottle of wine, a gift certificate, but the singers who make it to the finalson December 6 will be competing for a top prize of $1000; plus CD recordings of their performances and other prizes.

    Every seat in the house is taken – mostly, it seems, byfriends of the singers, there to cheer them on. It also happens to be 2 for 1night for Margaritas – actually, every night Monday to Friday is two-for-onenight at Pancho Villa: two margaritas for $4, or two beers for $3.65. So themood is festive and the decibel level is high. I thought the crowd was about three quarters Latino, one quarter Anglo, but owner Ivan Cardenas says most weeknights it’s about 50-50.

    We had just finished our dinners as the competition wasstarting, and were lingering by the door when a table of young women beckonedus to join them. We squeezed two more chairs around the table, and were quicklyintroduced to Carmen from Puerto Rico, Sandra from Mexico, and Marta fromColombia, and a guy named Jesse, who were all there to cheer on their friend Silvia from Guatemala.They’re friends from work – medical interpreters at HCMC – except for Marta,who worked with them, but now teaches English Language Learners at a Minneapolis elementary school.

     

    When the competition got underway, Silvia was the firstcontestant, and she wowed the crowd with her full-throated version of a song byPaquita la del Barrio. As she roamed the restaurant floor, mike in hand, sheflirted with the young men in the crowd.

    Most of the contestants, like Raimundo, who sangPepe Aguilar’s Por Tu Maldito Amor, and Samuel, who performed RosasBlancas by Los Johnnys, seemed to be from south of the border. But there were a fewexceptions, like Jeff, tall with blond hair and a pontail, who thrilled thecrowd with an uptempo version of Hank Williams’ Jambalaya On the Bayou, in whatsounded to me like perfect Spanish. Amanda from Burnsville made it into thefinals with a crowd-pleasing rendition of Luna by Ana Gabriel.

    It turns out that Amanda is a regular – she and hergirlfriend Stacy go to all the local Mexican clubs – El Nuevo Rodeo, El Pantano, evenJunBo in Richfield, a Chinese restaurant that hosts Mexican dances on weekends.Amanda and Stacy are both fans of Mexican culture: “we like Mexican food andenjoy the company of Mexican people.” Amanda’s fluent in Spanish, and startedmaking friends with her Latino co-workers when she worked at local restaurants. “To be honest, Mexicanguys love white women, and if you can speak their language, even better. We getbought drinks all the time, we get bought dinners, and we don’t even ask – theyoffer."

    Amanda says she tells the owners, Ivan and Patricio, that“it’s great that you are trying to get white people in, but don’t Americanize(Pancho Villa). People come there because they want to be in the Mexicanculture and we want them to stay true to that." When men at Pancho Villa try tospeak to her in English, she insists on answering in Spanish, Amanda says. “ Ifwe wanted to speak English, we would go to Champps.”

    At the end of the evening, the votes are tallied, and Silviaand Amanda have both made it into the finals, along with Raimundo,Samuel and Perla. There will be two more semi-final rounds thisThursday, and November 29 (they are skipping Thanksgiving) and then they willall compete in the finals December 6.

    The food, by the way, is great. My favorite dining companion ordered the camarones al aijillo, a generous serving of large shrimp sauteed with garlic and very spicy guaillo peppers ($12.99), while I opted for the filete patron, a grilled steak topped with mushrooms and garlic, and flambeed (not at tableside) with Patron tequila ($11.25) both accompanied by rice, beans and tortillas. There’s lots more on the menu that I would like to try, ranging from the huachinango (red snapper) a la Veracruzana ($15.95) to the menudo, the traditional tripe soup hangover cure ($7.99). We washed it down with another daily special – a very drinkable bottle of Abrazo Garnacha for $12 – regularly $24. That half-price offer is good every day, so I guess that’s really the full price.

    Pancho Villa also has some special promotions for parties – if you come in with a party of six, you get to spin a wheel when you leave – top prize is, all the drinks are on the house. And for birthday celebrations, the birthday boy or girl gets to drink on the house (again with a party of six or more.)

    Pancho Villa Restaurant and Bar, 2539 Nicollet Ave Minneapolis, 612-871-7014.

    For a sample of the musical delights, click the multimedia links at left, or use the links below.

     

    Listen to Amanda singing I Will Always Love You.

    Listen to more traditional Mexican selections.

  • Startribune.com Readers: Very Sticky Eyeballs

    Holy eyeballs Batman!  The latest newspaper website readership numbers were released today by Nielsen Online (and printed on the  Editor and Publisher website) and startribune.com placed third (behind the Arizona Republic and New York Times websites) in the amount of time readers spent on the site.  Readers in October spent an average of 27 minutes, 40 seconds on startribune.com as compared to 34 minutes, 53 seconds for the New York Times, and almost 40 minutes for AZcentral.com.

     

    Could it be, with circulation down, that readers are spending more time  reading the entire Strib online?  The website’s readership numbers (1.5 million unique readers per month) didn’t change all that much, ranking 26th out of 30.  The New York Times website ranked first , with more than 17.5 million unique monthly visitors, up from 14.5 million in September. 

  • Banana Republic Fades into the Sunset

    Damn! Over here I keep a list of great story ideas and names of people I’ve really got to get around to catching up with, just to see what their story is today. Like MPR’s Bill Kling. Like all the guys who played in The Warheads years ago. And like Kirk Anderson, the former cartoonist for the Pioneer Press whose heave-ho in April 2003 was early, solid confirmation that "local, local" was going to have more to do with "money, money" and "innocuous, innocuous" than reader appeal.

    So what happens? That bastard, David Brauer at MinnPost.com, posts the news that Anderson’s weekly, spot-on evisceration of the myriad Bush follies, "Banana Republic: Adventures in Amnesia" is being dropped by the Star Tribune. (Brauer likes being called a bastard when he beats someone on a story.)

    Much to my disappointment, when I called Anderson was not raging against the machine. "It had to happen sooner or later," he said. "I’m thankful to the Star Tribune for giving me the opportunity." And, "I wish that it could have gone on endlessly." Well, you and me both, Kirk.

    With 70% of the public saying they believe the country has jumped the rails and is wandering in a profoundly bad direction (not to mention seriously considering a 180 degree change next year) you would assume the topics Anderson was trading in — gross abuse of executive power, officially sanctioned torture, the decline of our international reputation, etc. — would be thoroughly mainstream fare — and in a novel, entertaining concept.

    Obviously the quarter page the Strib had been giving Anderson will not go to a Denny Hecker ad — (but let’s not give them ideas) — and most likely will be filled with … well what? More deep thoughts from Debra Saunders and Jonah Goldberg?

    Anderson is very complimentary to opinion exchange editor, Eric Ringham. The feeling is mutuial.

    "I think Kirk’s a genius," says Ringham. "I really hope we can find a way to work together again. I just wish his fans were more vocal than they were. I loved it. But I didn’t hear the kind of buzz I wanted to hear. But the decision was strictly about money."

    Being a classier guy than me Anderson wouldn’t
    divulge how much the Strib was paying him, (I’m guessing
    somewhere between a free-lance music review and a quarter the monster
    salary of one of those sweet old switchboard ladies). He did put it in
    perspective saying that he and his wife aren’t big spenders and "pretty
    much live like college kids".

    Ringham likewise insists that the decision to drop, "Banana Republic" was, "not content driven." And, as for the money involved, the intention, he says, really is to hire a part time writer with the Anderson money, someone who will have to be paid at Guild rates. (If Captain Fishsticks or John Hinderaker gets the job the Strib will take unholy hell from this quarter.)

    As Ringham describes it he approached Anderson around the time of the Strib’s expensive re-design with the idea of doing some kind of "graphic novel", (as Brauer also pointed out). "In very short order Kirk brought back four different proposals, all of them very professional."

    The decision to drop "Banana Republic", he says, was made by interim editor for the editorial page, Scott Gillespie, who was recently elevated (some say "pushed") into the Op-Ed department in the wake of the paper’s not exactly cheery parting with Susan Albright.

    "But," says Ringham, "I don’t know that I fault him for the decision, and I may very well have made the same decision were it mine to make."

    It is my opinion that Steve Sack does a very good job as the paper’s official cartoonist. But in an age of declining readership … yadda yadda .. when papers are supposedly on high alert for topics and concepts that attract the mythical "younger reader", the decision to drop a sharp-edged, "Daily Show"-worthy weekly cartoon strip/graphic novel arouses suspicions (again) that the new, "local, local, hyper-local" Strib’s idea of irresistible fare for "younger readers" and people hip to "new media" are celebrity consumer features on Hannah Montana, reviews of "Halo 3" and of course, the latest sighting of Josh Hartnett.

    Anderson also has no bitter rip for the PiPress, although literally everyone who might have had a hand in "right-sizing" him out of that building in ’03 are now gone themselves. (For all intents and purposes the PiPress editorial "department" has been reduced to a staff of one, Jim Ragsdale. He’ll be local enough.) Neither paper, Anderson says, rode him hard to mushify his cartoons, even in the run-up to the war in ’03, when almost every paper in the country (with the notable exception of deputy editor Jim Boyd at the Strib) was swallowing the Bush administration bit and charging hard for freedom and glory, shock and awe.

    "Of course," he says, "as a staffer at the Pioneer Press my cartoon ideas got shaped a lot more than as a freelancer for the Star Tribune. I’d be told to ‘tweak this’ and ‘change that’. But it wasn’t that bad. I look at some of the ideas I had and I’m grateful they said, ‘No’."

    This despite the prevailing mood at the recent Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, where, he says, most of the complaining was about "the push toward the mushy middle" and the "local, local" gimmick, the latter of which — as has often been said — serves to discreetly remove the biggest and most provocative themes and material of the moment from the playlist of editorial writers and satirists.

    "The war in Iraq is a huge national story and provides a lot of ideas," says Anderson, who by the way is free to re-launch "Banana Republic" anywhere he chooses. "It’s tougher doing a cartoon on the Chamber of Commerce. It’s not nearly as juicy."

    No kidding.

     

     

  • T-Day: Eight Days Out

    It’s go time.

    It’s the opening of Feast Season, are you ready? This is the week that my head starts spinning with potato options and I rip through the internet trying to find the cranberry recipe that will outshine last year’s. Thank goodness one of my kitchen walls is made of slate, because it is now chalked over with lists of ingredients crossed with possible permutations in a mad Kaczynski-esque fashion.

    While the lead-up may be crazed and insane, the feast must be about balance. I have 15 or so coming for dinner, some are food-driven (like me) and some aren’t. While I would love to break the mold on every dish, creating an entirely new feast each year, that wouldn’t be right. That wouldn’t serve my eaters very well. There are people coming whose food agenda is focused simply on the turkey and my husband’s creamed corn, they just agree to suffer through whatever cranberry concoction I serve.

    My ulimate goal is to create a spread from which you can assemble the perfect plate, however that suits you. Ignore the brussel sprouts, that’s fine, there are two kinds of potatoes. I’d love all to know the glory of ginger glazed carrots, but if not, there’s more room for pumpkin pie.

    Corny as it sounds, I am thankful for the challenge. It’s my industry background, only under pressure do I truly thrive. This is a week in which all cylinders are firing and I could yap endlessly about yams.

    So, tomorrow it’s turkey talk: to brine or not to brine.

     

     

  • Do I Repeat Myself? Very Well, Then, I Repeat Myself

    For many months, on her way to and from school each day, Gloria had
    paused at the pet shop window to gaze with a combination of adoration
    and desire at the pretty little accordion nestled there in wood shavings and newspaper confetti.

    Each night at the dinner table she would beg her parents to let her
    have an accordion –and not just any accordion, but the one, lonely
    accordion in the pet shop window. How she longed to have that accordion
    in her arms, to have it for her very own.

    Her father, however, was insistent that they would never have an
    accordion in their home; Gloria, he said, was much too young, and an
    accordion was a serious and expensive thing. The world, he proclaimed,
    was already full of abandoned and unloved accordions.

    Perhaps, her mother said, when she was a bit older, Gloria might get
    an accordion. But her father looked sternly at his daughter across the
    table and said, Not as long as I am in charge of this house. I don’t
    have a moment of peace and quiet and can barely make ends meet as it is.

    At this, Gloria’s mother winked at her and said, Someday you will be
    older and you can work hard and save your money for an accordion of
    your own.

    Finally, one day when she had all but given up hope, Gloria came
    home from school to find the pet shop accordion wrapped in a red bow
    and resting on her bed. She took it lovingly in her arms and was
    startled to discover how much larger it had grown since the first day
    she had laid eyes on it in the store window.

    And then, as she cradled the accordion in her arms, Gloria found
    herself seized with a sort of panic that cast a quick, dark shadow over her
    joy. An accordion, she suddenly realized, was a tremendous and perhaps
    terrible responsibility.

    What, she wondered, shall be my accordion’s name? And what will I feed it?

    Gloria studied her accordion intently, and again and again she ran her fingers gently over its beautiful body and sang to it all the prettiest songs she could remember.

    And that night, as she curled up next to the accordion in her little bed, she thought, How will I ever sleep again?

  • Dance, Sing, Love

    MUSIC

    Bad, Beautiful Women with Big, Bad Voices

    What do you say about a woman who describes herself as a Japanese classic music, Christian rap, regional Mexican artist? Holy crap?! Well, if anyone merits this phrase, it’s Meshell Ndegeocello. Or is it Me’shell Ndegéocello? Or Michelle Lynn Johnson? Who knows. And who cares. She’s utterly fascinating. The German-born American singer, songwriter, rapper, bassist, multi-instrumentalist packages herself, as well as her voice, in a beautiful, bald and bold androgeny. It’s hard to believe she started out in the go-go circuit in the ’80s. Or is it? She does it all: soul, funk, hip hop, reggae, R&B, rock, jazz. And who better to open the show than Black Blondie, of whom we’ve already written plenty. This is going to be one hot show.

    9 p.m., Fine Line Music Café,
    318 First Ave. N., Minneapolis; 612-338-8100; $25.

    MORE MUSIC
    Stravinky’s The Firebird

    In Russian folklore, firebird literally means ember bird, derived from the word for ember, flameless fire — a magical, glowing bird from a faraway land, which is both blessing and curse to its captors. Try as I may, however, I can find no curse in Stravinsky’s Firebird, and it has often been my captor. Perhaps my only curse is that I cannot capture it and reverse the roles, hold it in my hands, devour it, as I would like to do. I will continue the attempt, however. Will you join me? Let’s feast on the Firebird tonight. The Minnesota Orchestra will prepare the meal. Sarah Hatsuko Hicks will serve it. And Sam Bergman will give a special blessing.

    7:30 p.m., Orchestra Hall, 1111 Nicollet Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-371-5656; $20-$45.

    DANCE
    Pichet Klunchun and Myself

    It’s
    never an easy task to carve out a new path, or embark on an old one
    only to redirect it into as yet uncharted territory. Regardless of its
    merits, there is always resistance and doubt. Such was Jérôme Bel’s
    experience with his conceptual dance work across Europe in the 1990s.
    But when the "Parisian
    provocateur" finally got around to his first U.S. tour in 2005, The Show Must Go On
    was met with great praise — a true success. Maybe it was the many years
    in between. (Does it still take us that long to catch up?) Or maybe it
    was his fabulous French accent. (We still value the European ideal over our
    own. Do we have one?) I’d like to think it was his bold
    approach, his innovative style, his wit. And I’d like to think he
    hasn’t stopped pushing those boundaries. From the looks of it, he
    hasn’t indeed. Tonight, he teams up with Thai dance master Pichet Klunchun for a "fascinating exchange of ideas and movement in an understated conceptual performance that revels in our common humanity."

    8 p.m., McGuire Theater, Walker Art Center, 1750 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis; 612-375-7600; $22 (members $18).

    ART
    Home for the Holidays

    If you do a search for Jennifer Davis on our website, you’ll find at least twelve references to her work. What can we say? We love her. A search for Andrea Carlson reveals six articles. You will find Samantha French’s art in our magazine and on our website, as well as work by several of the other artists featured in the Soo Visual Art Center’s new group show, Home for the Holidays. Last April, in fact, we contacted SooVAC in search of information on Deuce 7‘s New York graffiti.
    (I heard of some controversy that arose, but was able to confirm
    nothing.) What can I say, this is an interesting group of artists — a
    group show with a little for everyone. You’re bound to find something
    you like. And what they heck, with the biggest consumer season right
    around the corner, you might even find something to take "Home for the
    Holidays."

    Noon-6 p.m., SOO Visual Art Center,
    2640 Lyndale Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-871-2263.

  • The Magnetism of Machu Picchu

    This ancient mountaintop city is a beautiful and mysterious place, sure. But our own Peruvian puzzler is this: Why on earth is Machu Picchu such a popular Red-Handed picture spot? Our records indicate it gets quite a few visits from Rake readers. And they look to be a tough bunch, too. St. Paulites Katie and Mike Waller, for instance, snapped this lovely shot on completion of a grueling hike along the Inca Trail. Wrote Katie: “I don’t think we made our high school Spanish teachers proud, but after our four-day trek through the Andes to Machu Picchu, our gym teachers certainly would have given us a passing grade.”

    Red Handed

  • A Clip Job

    I don’t save many magazine articles anymore (I filled up too many file cabinets that way while working as an Utne Reader editor), but I intend to save Jeannine Ouellette’s very fine feature on the death of the American imagination from the November 2007 Rake.

    This is the kind of sweeping, thorough thought piece that is much easier for an editor to assign than for a journalist to actually report and write. Ouellette did such a beautiful job of it that by the article’s end I was inspired, despite its somewhat dire assessment of the state of things.

    Too bad The Rake couldn’t have included a sidebar about Waldorf education (Ms. Ouellette is a veteran Waldorf teacher), which although no panacea, is at least one strong counter-cultural trend to the soul-deadening typical American education.

    Lynette Lamb, Minneapolis
    Letter

  • Brain Drain

    Jeannine Ouellette’s puzzling article [“The Death & Life of American Imagination”] seems to cite the regimentation of children’s lives and the role of technology as a threat to the development of imagination. As a girl in the ’50s and ’60s, I faced far more restrictions to my imagination and free play than any kid today.

    But the greatest threat to imagination goes unmentioned: the intrusion of religion into the schools. It may not seem so bad here in Minneapolis, but there are parts of the country where the schools are not focused on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). They are afraid to teach anything that might threaten third century AD notions of cosmology or biology. There is a brain drain due to restrictions on research (stem cells, etc.) and government science is censored on the subjects of reproductive health and climate change.

    Minneapolis doesn’t have to do all this to limit the development of its children, however. Its school board has merely decreed that education be withheld from anyone not rich, not white, or not a resident of the southwest quadrant of the city.

    Linda Mann, Minneapolis
    Letter