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  • Fido the Pimp

    Crotches are rarely sniffed or nuzzled within the first five minutes of a first date, yet even with ten first dates occurring simultaneously in a crowded Warehouse District coffee shop, this was no ordinary dating scenario. The distracting backdrop of panting, whining, pawing, and the occasional licking of naughty bits, in fact, might evoke thoughts of Roman orgies, or at least fond memories of a certain notorious Viking-laden pleasure cruise. But the wet noses pressed to stylishly denim-clad crotches in Java J’s in downtown Minneapolis on this sultry summer evening were anything but salacious—these were just the instinctive overtures of dogs being friendly in ways their owners could only dream of, particularly given the inhibiting presence of the Minneapolis police officer who made a cameo appearance during the opening moments of the latest K9-Connection event.

    For ages, people have wandered through parks with their pets, looking for encounters with dog-lovers who would overflow with girlish, or boyish, glee upon sighting a cute dog. In such instances, of course, the dog often serves as little more than a pawn in the dating game, and would be consigned to the floor at the foot of the bed if its owner were ever to actually arrange a doggy-style hook-up with that friendly stranger from the park. Replace the park with a small coffee shop full of dog owners in their thirties and forties and the challenge is right up there with shooting dachshunds in a barrel.

    Even before the opening bell rang to signal the start of their first “date,” single dog-owners, emboldened by a glass or two of pinot, congregated and made conversation. Sizing up the dating pool, and the competition, was the order of the hour as unsubtle glances appraised style, grooming habits, and dog choice, and friendly, if stilted, conversation and laughter filled the shop, broken up by frequent canine piss breaks outside.

    The event drew an unpredictably mixed group, including representatives from the arts, academia, nonprofits, and service industries. In one corner booth, a yoga instructor lounged with her eerily calm mixed-breed and chatted with an up-and-coming young executive and his German Shepherd, which was accessorized with a bandolier collar. A sleekly attractive aspiring doggy day-care owner was seated on a bar stool, twirling languidly while giving a polite, slightly strained, smile to an earnest but painfully out-of-his-league owner of a Golden Retriever which, clearly bored with the proceedings at the stool, was huffing the butt of the next dog over.

    Then there was Angie Gwiazdon, an irrepressibly friendly blonde seemingly hell-bent on ensuring that a good time would be had by all. A licensed marriage and family therapist, as well as the founder of K9-Connection, she holds a dog-oriented event about once a month—from speed dating to, say, a “Howling Harvest Festival” to celebrate the arrival of fall with fellow dog owners. The events have been wildly popular, and have all drawn near-sellout crowds.

    The speed dating operated as expected. Men moved from table to table, spending approximately ten minutes in awkward getting-to-know-you conversation with a fellow dog owner. The dogs provided fodder for conversation and an icebreaker for the daters. Of course, even the added spice of shaking hands with a potential mate while a massive Newfoundland, hovering like a hairy protective father, gave you the evil eye, didn’t prevent conversations from running together after the fourth or fifth speed date.

    “Hi, what’s your name?” There were consistently odd moments when both parties realized for the fifth time that this is a stupid question when everyone is wearing a name tag.

    “What’s [his/her] name?” This statement was often followed by the realization that the dog was not actually the gender specified, making one party feel idiotic and oddly apologetic.

    “Your dog is really cute!” An all too common phrase. Of course, honesty is at a premium on first dates, so some of these comments were merely an example of hormonally induced blindness.

    At the end of the evening, attendees filled out forms, checking “yes” or “no” in boxes next to numbers corresponding to each date. If positive responses matched up, the participants would receive contact information, allowing them to set up a dog-optional get-together. A “no” meant that neither party would have to endure even another minute of forced conversation. Yet dogs and owners alike lingered well past the allotted time, chatting and, unhindered by the pressures of the ticking clock and the bell, attempting to turn one more witty phrase.

    The dogs, however, seemed singularly unimpressed as the night wore on. Having recognized that their owners were too engaged in their own form of tail-chasing to provide much attention, they were sprawled across the floor throughout the coffee shop, lazily thumping tails when the situation seemed to call for it, but for the most part just waiting to go home to the reliable pleasures and routines of Science Diet, tug toys, and the full attention of their devoted and indulgent owners.

  • Scene Ripper

    “What do you know about the washability of Sharpie?” asked a curious onlooker as she watched Eric Inkala, a Minneapolis-based painter and graffiti artist, decorate an American Apparel T-shirt with the long strokes of his black Sharpie pen. “It usually fades to dull blue,” Inkala offered. 

    “I’m suggesting spot-cleaning,” said Emma Berg, a thirty-something fashion iconoclast dressed in opaque, teal tights and a long white tee that just barely passed as a dress. As it turned out, Berg, who had organized this first-ever Love’s Labourers: Art as Fashion/Fashion as Art event, had instructed Inkala not to fret over care instructions for his wearable artwork. Instead, his charge was to be as imaginative as possible—which seemed only fitting, considering that the event was part of MNfashion Weekend, a four-day festival designed to ignite enthusiasm for Minnesota’s small but extremely creative rag trade. At the same time, the weekend’s festivities launched a new nonprofit that, with any luck, will help local clothes-makers achieve some semblance of solvency.

    Joining Inkala at a long folding table (well-appointed with Sharpies, textile paints, and sewing machines) was another Twin Cities artist, Jennifer Davis, who also put a black Sharpie to use drawing a happy monkey onto a T-shirt. Yet another artist, Adam Garcia, used a Sharpie to bedeck a tee with the wide-eyed face of a doe. Together with three clothing designers—Annie Larson, Ra’mon-Lawrence Coleman, and Crystal Quinn—and in a matter of just four hours, the artists improvised twenty-four one-of-a-kind tops. In the case of an extra-long baby-blue T-shirt, the designers added an asymmetrical peplum while the artists lent it a little ghoul who cried (via speech balloon): “Here we go again.”

    Berg’s most populist gesture was instructing the artists to be friendly with the guests, many of whom were lined up to ogle the works-in-progress. (Some betrayed their cluelessness by asking practical questions.) Aside from that, unfortunately, her announcement to the general public failed to specify that admittance to the venue, a tiny marketing firm in the Minneapolis warehouse district, could only be achieved via a rear-entry loading dock. In my case, I rattled at the front door for five minutes before I decided to follow a pair of women who marched past in their platforms. And as if that weren’t enough to make an interloper feel conspicuously uncool, I arrived at the party only to learn that the coveted T-shirts had already been pre-sold, for just fifty dollars, to various V.I.P.s of the local fashion scene. A cursory glance at the list of buyers (it was left out in the open, after all) included such names as Anna Lee, founder of the fledgling MNfashion nonprofit, and Ben Olson, a Minneapolis painter and, perchance, the boyfriend of Berg.

    With fifty unspent dollars (plus two credit cards) in my handbag, I headed out the very next afternoon (Saturday) to hunt and gather other locally made clothes. How fortunate to have procured an invitation to MNfashion Weekend’s sole invite-only affair, the official Eclecticoiffeur Launch Exhibition and runway show. Who else had been so lucky? A handful of the creatively clad folks from the evening before, it seemed. Berg and Lee were there, of course, but so, too, was Matt Schmidt, a handsome fixture of the Minneapolis bar scene who founded the website mplshappyhour.com. There was also a tall, rail-thin blonde who, I noticed, made off with the most fabulous Love’s Labourers T-shirt. A trio of women in short dresses took their seats along the runway. They were killing time before the 5 p.m. runway show by flipping through an issue of L’étoile, a locally produced art and fashion magazine, when one of the women saw a familiar face amongst the spreads. “OMIGOD, that’s Heather!” she exclaimed.

    As it happens, the ladies of Eclecticoiffeur—an ultra-hip trio of hair, makeup, and fashion stylists—are also friendly with many players from the local fashion scene. Accordingly, they were successful in persuading some of the area’s hottest designers, such as George Moskal and Kimberly Jurek, to present their freshest fall ’07 looks. When the lights dimmed and out came the clodhoppers, a pair of jersey dresses by Katherine Gerdes stole the show. These beauties had bands of satin stitched across their necklines and shoulder straps, creating a more formal effect than usually encountered in offerings from the snowboarder and reality-TV star-cum-couturier. Yet they maintained Gerdes’s trademark casualness thanks to pouch pockets and soft jersey fabrics.

    An admirer’s impulse was to deficit-spend—anything to acquire these gems—but, sadly, there would be no cooperation from the operation’s supply-side. Gerdes couldn’t say how or when the dresses would become available at her online store or, for that matter, at the Design Collective, a local boutique dealing exclusively in local fashions. “I don’t know,” said Gerdes, smoothing the palm of her hand across a pale forehead. “I just finished these at three a.m.”

  • What I Saw on My Summer Vacation

    In celebration of thirty years of my wife’s profound ability to tolerate me, we went to France for ten days last month. We did the things we usually do when we go to interesting places. We got a very small and inexpensive hotel room (under the theory that we’re never there anyway) and spent all day walking from museum to café to art gallery to bar.

    Paris last month had much of the aspect of a boom town. The Rugby World Cup was in play, along with thousands of mostly well behaved supporters. The plaza in front of Paris City Hall was partially covered with artificial turf. An enormous high-definition screen covered the façade of the Hôtel de Ville, broadcasting the equivalent of French ESPN’s interminable updates on the condition of every team and player. Further evidence of the importance of the World Cup to the city could be inferred from the price of beer. Anywhere that fans were likely to congregate was charging about fourteen dollars for half a liter. Of course, the price could have just seemed high to Americans, whose currency is only slightly more valuable than that of Zimbabwe.

    We Americans quickly learned to embrace the spiritual refreshment offered by a glass of vin rouge, which was delicious, and cost only the equivalent of five dollars—two bucks less than one pays in most Minneapolis wine bars—and the tip is included.

    The French could have been in a good mood just because of the full hotels and restaurants supplied by the tourist influx, but they seemed genuinely hospitable to anyone who had bothered to learn enough French to at least start a conversation. In general, if you made an effort, they were happy to switch to English when you ran out of French, especially if that event didn’t follow immediately after bonjour.

    Their attitude extended to the tourists in the Louvre. Although the museum is peppered with signs prohibiting flash photography, the guards actually don’t seem to mind. That is perhaps because the Mona Lisa is now behind its own glass enclosure, and ropes keep the mob from getting close enough to admire the painting except through viewfinders set on maximum zoom. In fact, that seems to be how many find their way through museums: behind a digital camera. Someday someone will explain to me why, instead of stopping to look at a painting while you are three feet from it, you’d prefer to review a pale reproduction two weeks later on a home computer screen.

    Normandy, two hours northwest of Paris by train, was also thick with tourists. Some stop in Bayeux to see the famous tapestry that narrates the story of the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. But most are there for the cemetery at Omaha Beach. None of the boisterous revelry of Paris here; the European and American tourists are all struck silent by the manicured green field that stretches over the rolling plateau above the Channel. There are nine thousand marble-white crosses and Stars of David, but no physical signs of the battle. Like the panels of the Bayeux tapestry down the road, the visitor center’s tableaux offer explanatory vignettes of the Normandy invasion of 1944. But at Bayeux there were no choked-back sobs of the pilgrim who came upon the etched name of a young man he knew.

    Up the road six kilometers is Pointe du Hoc, where the detritus of battle is everywhere. The craters from the D-Day bombardment still pock the cliff-top site of the German shore batteries. Barbed wire rusts at edge of the precipice. The shattered walls of the pillboxes jut up at irregular angles from the overgrown meadow. Steel reinforcing bars sprout from the wrecked concrete, twisted by the heat and concussion of the explosions into grasping shapes that mock the men who reached up their hands that day to heaven for help that didn’t come.

    Unlike at the Paris museums, no horde pushes you along here. You can stand in one spot as long as you like and imagine every detail of the tumult that colored this landscape.

    Tom Bartel now blogs at Travel Past 50.

  • Celebrity Match Game

  • The All-Seeing Eye

    If you had to pick one person as the ultimate observer of the past, present, and future of design—from cereal boxes to sneakers to web architecture—it’d be hard to go wrong with Steven Heller. His name is on more than two hundred books as author, co-author, editor, or contributor; he produces a continual flow of articles, commentary, and criticism for magazines; now posts online at The Daily Heller; and was until recently the longtime senior art director for the New York Times Book Review. (Those obits for the main newspaper? Just a little sideline.) Throw in his post at Manhattan’s School of Visual Arts, as co-chair for its master’s program in design, and it won’t be surprising to learn that Heller’s workday begins at 4:30 a.m. How does he do it? “I just do it,” he says simply. “We all have obsessions and this one is mine. I wish I could be more profound or witty, but it is what it is.” 

    A lifelong and admittedly provincial New Yorker (he has acknowledged a certain kinship with Woody Allen), Heller is making a trip to St. Paul to deliver the third annual lecture for the “Leaders of Design” series for the College of Visual Arts. That talk takes place in conjunction with 365: AIGA Annual Design Exhibition, an annual survey of current design excellence.

    Given your protean career, what do you make of the groundswell of interest—bordering on mania—about design of all kinds in recent years? The American Craft Museum changed its name to the Museum of Arts & Design. All kinds of magazines, including titles like Newsweek and Fast Company, are producing special design issues and treating designers almost as celebrities. There’s Target’s “Design for All” credo, of course, and locally, Minneapolis is reveling in its new status as a “design capital.” It seems that design is working its way into, or being exploited by, every nook and cranny of the culture. What do you think is driving this?

    I could take the cynical view and say that as America’s industrial and agrarian might recedes, our main output is in the form of entertainment and crafts. Design straddles both realms. Good design can be quite entertaining and it can be perceived as craft. That said, design also frames and positions many of our greatest commodities. The mega-chains worshiped by us lumpen, like Starbucks and Target, have raised the bar of design and are not ashamed to give it credit. Apple is fifty percent design, and we love them for the way they’ve made things look. Yet design has long been part of American life. When I was a kid my mom read all the interior design magazines and bought her furniture and accessories accordingly. Fashion, cars, et cetera, it’s long been about design, as well as utility. We are simply in a period were the word is used more, because people identify with it more. But watch out that design and “lifestyle” do not become synonymous.

    One of your SVA students famously designed the new prescription bottle for Target as her thesis project. Have you come across other student projects that are worthy of that kind of attention?

    We are always looking for that spark in a thesis project. We see lots that have potential. A few years ago one of our stellar students created a project called “Ametrica,” which was a wonderful campaign to turn America metric. She received various grants to produce a book and other advocacy materials, and is still plugging away. These things take time. But more likely our “Designer as Author/Entrepreneur” students produce manageable products that do not require the millions necessary to launch the Target bottle. Quite a few have started small entrepreneurial businesses.

    You are part of an increasingly rare breed in the U.S.: a leader in your field who does not have a college degree. Do you regret not having gotten that diploma, or do you think college is overrated?

    I don’t honestly regret anything that I’ve done, so far, in my life. What I didn’t learn in college—I was an English major at New York University and then studied illustration, very briefly, at the School of Visual Arts—I learned in spades at jobs that offer great stories to tell my grandchildren. I kind of wish I had a broader education. But the fact is, I was not a good student, so I doubt that college would have made much of a difference for me. I needed the stimuli I received away from the classroom—in the streets, as it were.

    Could a young person today achieve what you have without a college degree?

    No, I think kids today—with certain exceptions— should have a college education that includes real-world experiences. As far as the degree goes, it is looked upon in many fields as a measure of accomplishment. In design, however, it’s the work that counts.

    You got your start in the late ’60s at an underground lefty paper, the New York Free Press, and worked for decades at the New York Times, one of the most esteemed newspapers in the world. But with the rise of all things online, is there anything to the continual proclamations about the “death of print”—or the equally common proclamations to the contrary?

    I wrote a bit about the death of print lately. I feel mixed. While I cannot believe it will happen in our lifetime, there is an incredible push for integration of print and web components, and this is to be expected as the shift in media appetites turns toward the web. Behemoth magazines, like Life and Look, folded after TV took all the advertising dollars. These things happen. What about the death of vinyl? Or the death of hot type? Or the death of CDs? For the most part these have become anachronisms. I used to joke that there was no paper on Star Trek, and why should there be?

    We’ve become familiar with the idea of corporate and consumer responsibility—tailoring actions with regard to the environment, to social and economic justice, and so forth. You make the same call for designers in your book Citizen Designer: Perspectives on Design Responsibility. How does that work?

    It’s simple. If you are in a profession that both uses and abuses resources, be aware of what you are doing. I think that’s the first step in design citizenship. From there one has the freedom and responsibility to decide how one’s talents are used. To knowingly hurt others through one’s work or wares is irresponsible, if not criminal. So don’t do it.

    And on that note, what are your thoughts on phenomena like “eco-chic,” Ethos Water, and the RED campaign, which revolves around specially designed goods—heavily promoted
    by celebrities—to be purchased in support of fighting AIDS in Africa?

    Whatever works. Hey, philanthropy began in this country with the robber barons. Of course, if we didn’t have a government that encouraged philanthropy by making it worthwhile for the rich, they might never have done it, but still, their contributions have been long-lasting. I think we have a tendency to write off fashion in the service of good works, but I believe if the quid pro quo helps someone other than the fashionistas, then bring it on.

    As a consumer, what are some of your design-related pet peeves, or things you find outrageously stupid, unjust, wasteful, etc.?

    What I truly hate is voice mail hell. The notion that we must talk to machines for basic services is infuriating. I think it wastes time, and reduces employment.

    And on the flip side, are there products or things you find simply irresistible? What about anything you’re drawn to for the “wrong” reasons?

    My guilty pleasures are antique, things from the past. But as far as contemporary objects or gadgets go, I’m as attracted to Apple products as the next person. I have four iMacs of varying years that are sitting unused in a bathroom. I’m also a sucker for sneakers, though I stick with just a few by New Balance. Still, I fantasize about buying them. Other than that I’m pretty ascetic.

    You’ve authored more than a hundred books and written introductions for probably a hundred more. Many of these titles, it seems, revolve around obsessions you have. There’s one on vintage Halloween graphics, and one you produced with your wife, the designer Louise Fili, on miniature countertop mannequins from now-defunct department stores. What are you collecting or obsessing over right now?

    Currently, I’m finishing a long and large project on totalitarian graphics of the twentieth century. I’m obsessing over this material because it contributed to the branding of the world’s harshest regimes. Sometimes the graphics were sensational.

    And what about an earlier title: The Swastika: Symbol Beyond Redemption? Have you found an answer to that question? How do you suggest we deal with swastikas as part of the ornamentation of buildings—many from a certain era?

    In my mind I’ve found the answer. In the U.S. and other Western countries it should not be redeemed for another fifty years. In other nations, and for peoples who have long owned the symbol for good, not evil, they should have their unabridged right to it. Of course, it was used in the U.S. as ornament long before the Nazis stole it, so I have no problem with these historical contexts. What I object to is the abject and idiotic use of Nazi emblems by those who use them flagrantly, like rock groups and skateboard companies.

    Finally, why did you choose this portrait by illustrator Cristoph Niemann to illustrate this interview?

    I hate having pictures taken of me, and worse, I hate seeing them. Vanity? Dunno. As for the image itself, it just makes me smile. I don’t see it as me, but as a little logo for something else.

  • Bev's Wine Bar: Haven by the Highway

    skyline2.jpeg

    Back in the late 1990’s, I lived for a year in a house that felt completely wrong. Liminal, oddly oriented. It was set sideways — or rather, along a street that somehow struck me as sideways — on a hill, facing the back parking lot of a school that ran perpendicular. What’s more, the main floor was interrupted by a built-in garage, so it didn’t form a circle or a horse-shoe shape or even an arc. It was an “L” with a little lip where the kitchen had been extended in back.

    Other people thought my home was just fine; they’d comment on the lovely cabinets, the prime location, and the spacious upstairs. But I didn’t trust it, and I spent not one minute in that house that I didn’t feel off. It was as if I were facing the wrong direction or buttoned backward into my clothes.

    Strange, perhaps. But all I’m trying to say is that I notice — unusually so — the way the buildings I occupy are oriented in space.

    Certain places feel right — the bar at jP American Bistro, for instance, which has a calming, nearly reverent sense of balance — whereas others strike me as precarious. While I love the food and admire the décor, 20.21 falls into the latter category. Upon entering its cubic dining area, I always have the tilted sense one gets while standing on one foot.

    Bev’s Wine Bar, unlike my former house, exists in a strangely perfect sideways pocket of space. Tucked behind J.D. Hoyt’s, next to the Washington Avenue on-ramp to I-394, Bev’s is a block of a building with its name painted on the stone exterior and as stark a decorating scheme as I’ve ever seen. When I first walked in last week, I assumed the proprietors were just moving in. . . .or out. . . .The walls are a soft peach verging to pumpkin, half-etched with a leafy stencil of some sort, but otherwise bare. The furnishings are blond wood, the shelves behind the bar mostly empty. I sat in a corner, wondering if there was any wine left or if, perhaps, it had all been drunk except for a bottle of something leftover and sticky, like port.

    Yet, I was quite happy sitting there, looking out oversize windows at the Minneapolis skyline and rush hour traffic bumping like little train cars onto the freeway ramp. And when the waiter came, I discovered Bev’s did still have wines after all — not so many as you might expect at a wine bar, but I’ve decided over the years that this is fine. Sometimes it’s better. A shorter wine list, carefully assembled, can be a soothing thing, and it was. I tried the “Bev’s Red,” a Protocolo Vino La Tierra de Castilla 2005, which sold for $5.95 a glass. It was like a dry cigar on the tongue, full of cardboard, tobacco, and crumbly soil, then fruit. Mostly dark cherry.

    On a whim, then, because it’s very easy to feel whimsical while sitting in a small, well-slanted place with great music (the soundtrack from Once happened to be playing, which made me quite happy), I switched to white. First, I had a taste of the Amano Fiano Greco 2006, which has a nose of pure banana, then a fruity apricot flavor and a finish that vanishes like a poof of dust. I’m not wild about bananas, so I passed on this one. However, the second white I tried, a Farnese Trebbiano d’Abruzzo 2006 from Tuscany was exactly to my taste: as clean as wind, smooth but flinty, with a crisp ascending pear-to-melon flavor that I found nearly musical. Trebbiano typically is a very ordinary grape — and it’s not held in high regard by most connoisseurs — but the Farnese is a perennial award-winner, and for good reason. At $7.50 a glass, it’s quite a deal.

    It turned out the young-looking guy wearing a faded t-shirt and standing behind the bar was the owner of Bev’s, Peter Karihara. And he is neither moving in nor moving out, he just likes to keep the place Spartan. In fact, Bev’s has been there, in that smoky little nick of downtown, serving a short list of wines, beers, and baguettes with Brie, for the past 13 years. Karihara also owns Moose & Sadie’s and Jetset, a gay dance club and bar on North First. “There is no Bev, not really,” Karihara told me. He named the place after the mother of a friend of his, a woman who liked wine. “It just sounded so cool: Bev’s Wine Bar. Don’t you think?” Then he grinned.

    I can’t tell you why one slanty, sideways place will make me feel queasy while another seems utterly grounded, as organic as if it had sprung from the concrete whole. All I know is that as Bev’s filled on a Friday evening in fall, it felt warm and safe. A strangely simple little haven off the highway, set apart from the chaos outside.

  • Generating Thermal Energy

    Here’s a fashion idiom indigenous to Minnesota: The piles of hoodies, scarves, polar fleece pullovers, and down-filled jackets that are just now getting unearthed from the closet. It bears mentioning, however, that there are two distinct paths to dressing for the frigid weather. The less inspired might insulate with a giant, balloon-like university sweatshirt and deflect the wind with tear-away nylon track pants. But we’ve spotted (and greatly prefer) a more polished approach as the temperatures drop, one that involves an “aerodynamic” micropolar fleece strategically layered over a thermal jersey, worn with dungarees or cargo pants and vintage sneaks. The best finishing touches are an extra-long, knotted scarf and wool earflap hat. This sporty mixture of fleece, track jackets, down vests, and colorful accessories lends its wearers a certain, covertly sexy je ne sais quoi. We call the look “Patagonia chic,” in honor of Ventura, California’s tasteful outfitter of climbers, skiers, and trekkers. The effect is just as well achieved with “technical gear” by other brands like Marmot and North Face, of course—the latter of which opens a boutique in Uptown this month.

  • Go{pher} Broke

    University of Minnesota Athletics Director Joel Maturi is a triple-A battery of a man. Walk into his office at the Bierman Athletic Building on the East Bank and he leaps out of his chair and shakes your hand as if you’re about to parachute out of an airplane together. Trim and fit at 62, Maturi is glib and empathetic. He’ll spread his hands in a “that’s all there is,” or “what are ya gonna do” fashion, but he searches for eye contact and listens carefully. Even under the best of circumstances, he’s not the kind of guy who relaxes easily.

    Personality aside, Maturi has had plenty of other reasons to be moving through life on the balls of his feet lately. The ramifications from the most turbulent thirty-five-day period in Gopher sports history are still in flux. Over the next three or four years, however, the fallout from the chain of events Maturi helped set in motion last winter will not only define his legacy as the University’s athletic director, but will have a huge bearing on the health and vitality of U of M sports for decades to come.

    Of the twenty-five varsity sports programs at the U, only three–football, men’s basketball, and men’s hockey–operate at a profit. Consequently, these programs are enormously influential, helping absorb the red ink created by other sports. On the last day of November last year, Maturi pushed his men’s basketball coach to resign just seven games into the coach’s eighth season. On the final day of December, Maturi fired a football coach who had compiled the best career winning percentage at the U since 1950 and taken the team to five straight bowl games. “I am probably the only AD in the history of NCAA sports who has dismissed the men’s basketball coach and men’s football coach within thirty days,” Maturi says. “I am not proud of that.”

    Three days after the football coach was canned, a special meeting of the University’s Board of Regents was convened to deal with the rising cost of a new on-campus football stadium scheduled to open in September 2009. In May 2006, the state Legislature had approved a funding package that had taxpayers forking over nearly fifty-five percent of the tab on a $248.7 million stadium. Since then, for a variety of reasons, the price tag had risen to $288.5 million. The revised budget approved by the regents precludes the U from going back to the Legislature or increasing the $25 annual fee levied on University students. Instead, the additional $40 million will have to come from an existing stadium fundraising campaign that was initially charged with soliciting $86.5 million from private donors. If local corporations and well-heeled alumni can’t hit this much more ambitious target, profits generated by the stadium will have to make up the difference. Either way, to sufficiently excite would-be donors or fill the stadium beyond the two- or three-year novelty period, the Gophers must field a quality football team.

    The faith healer
    Maturi is standing at the back of a small room in the bowels of the Metrodome. The Gopher football team has just been pasted, 30-7, by Ohio State, Minnesota’s fourth loss in five games thus far this season. Reporters and University personnel are filing into the room for new coach Tim Brewster’s postgame press conference, and Maturi offers them a curt nod or a tight grin. He is trying to strike an impossible pose, combining the ire a competitor is supposed to feel after his squad gets whupped by more than three touchdowns, and the brazen nonchalance required to quell panic or derision over what has become a spectacularly dreadful football season.

    About the only saving grace for Brewster and Maturi was that nobody seemed to be pining for the return of Glen Mason, an uncharismatic man who had come from the University of Kansas. Mason wielded his comparatively successful Minnesota won-loss record (64-57) like a cudgel, implying at every turn that without his extraordinary skills and savvy the football program would return to its previously dire straits.

    Mason’s critics—including many members of the media and influential alumni—contended that his “success” was merely the result of a devious formula for mediocrity. They noted that Mason padded his record by front-loading the schedule with a succession of nonconference patsies. Those easy victories, combined with an undistinguished record in the rugged Big 10—where Mason’s career record was 32-48 and his teams never finished higher than a tie for fourth—would be enough to secure an invitation to one of the minor, inconsequential bowl games that glut the calendar in December. This pattern played itself out in Mason’s last five seasons, ossifying the positions of both sides. After the Gophers pulled off the largest collapse in the history of NCAA Division I-A bowl games, blowing a 31-point lead in the 2006 Insight Bowl, Maturi saw his chance to pull the plug.

    Less than three weeks later, on January 17, Maturi made the stunning announcement that he was replacing Mason with Brewster, a 46-year old with no head coaching experience above the high school level. But Brewster was a successful recruiter for coach Mack Brown at both North Carolina and Texas, and rose to the rank of assistant head coach with the San Diego Chargers in the NFL. “When I started the search process, I had never heard of Tim Brewster,” Maturi admits, launching into a twenty-minute recitation of all the steps he took before settling on Brewster. What follows is the severely abridged version.

  • The Death and Life of American Imagination

    In February 1953, a violent North Sea storm crashed through the Dutch levee system, killing 1,835 people and leaving a hundred thousand others homeless. In the aftermath, the country responded by building the Delta Works, the world’s most sophisticated system of flood defenses. According to John McQuaid, a reporter for Mother Jones on assignment in the Netherlands, the system is “engineered to a safety standard 100 times more stringent than the current goal (not yet achieved) for New Orleans’ most heavily populated areas. Even Dutch pasturelands have more protection than the Big Easy.” As one government engineer told McQuaid, conceiving and building the Delta Works “was like putting a man on the moon.”

    That was half a century ago. Why the disparity between what the Dutch could accomplish then, and what the U.S. (the country that did put a man on the moon) has conceived to protect New Orleans, one of its most historic and treasured cities, and the surrounding region? You can call it foresight, or innovation, but beyond that, what the Dutch response required—and where we appear to be failing in our response to the aftermath of Katrina—was tremendous imagination.

    Imagination is an intangible, unlimited, and free resource. It is not, at least for the purposes of this discussion, the same as fantasy, where universal laws cease to apply, where elephants might speak Latin or humans travel back in time. Nor is imagination reserved for artistic pursuits, though imagination is the core of creativity. Applying imagination to problem-solving requires the ability to come up with an idea, and to break that idea down into the steps that will bring it to fruition. It also requires an alchemical mix of will, vision, discipline, and action, not to mention stubborn perseverance in the face of frustration or opposition.

    A prime example of this use of imagination would be George Hotz, the seventeen-year-old who spent all summer cracking Apple’s iPhone; he broke the lock that tied the phone to AT&T’s wireless network and freed it for use on other carriers’ networks, even overseas ones. Hotz spent five hundred hours with four online collaborators, and was motivated by the challenge and by “fun.”

    Presently, imagination of this sort is very much in demand. One wake-up call to the erosion of imagination in American culture came in 2004, when “failure of imagination” was cited in the 9/11 commission report as the primary reason U.S. officials misjudged the threat of the 2001 terrorist attacks. Maybe government officials couldn’t imagine terrorists flying planes into the World Trade Center, but plenty of others could and did—and not just those who actually carried out the long-planned and highly complex attack. The ability to prevent terrorist attacks depends on leaders who are as imaginative as those who would carry them out.

    While imagination is one key to national security, it’s also crucial to economic security. In 2004, executives at leading technology companies like Dell, Cypress Semiconductor, and IBM spoke to Lee Todd, president of the University of Kentucky, about creating sustainable jobs for the U.S. in the years to come. All said the same thing, according to Todd: Imagination and creativity represent the future of the U.S. economy. On a broader level, the World Economic Forum chose “The Creative Imperative” as the theme for its 2006 conference in Davos, Switzerland. Writers like Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind, point to the new “imagination economy” as a trend that’s just taking off. He sees it in quite simple terms: “People have to be able to do something that can’t be outsourced,” Pink told me. “Something that’s hard to automate and that delivers on the growing demand for nonmaterial things like stories and design. Typically these are things we associate with the right side of the brain, with artistic and empathetic and playful sorts of abilities.”

    Government leaders in education are joining the chorus, too. “American education’s single-minded focus on science, technology, engineering, and math (‘STEM’ subjects) is admirable but misguided,” wrote two former assistant U.S. secretaries of education in the August 12 issue of The Wall Street Journal Online. What makes America competitive in a shrinking global economy, they claimed, is “our people’s creativity, versatility, imagination, restlessness, energy, ambition, and problem-solving prowess.” As they summed it up, true success—economic, civic, cultural, domestic, military—depends on a broadly educated populace with “flowers and leaves as well as stems.”

  • Zoom In: Dona Schwartz

    Spend a few minutes with photographer Dona Schwartz and you’ll start to see a bit of grandeur hiding beneath humble day-to-day routines. “I want to see what’s amazing that’s right under my nose,” she explains. “To me, that’s really compelling. But to photograph daily life, you have to first really see it. You have to be really quick and really observant.”

    And so began In the Kitchen and Soccer Mom, two series that document, respectively, the comings and goings of family and friends in Schwartz’s own home, and parents at their kids’ soccer matches. Seen through Schwartz’s lens, these snatches of family life are surreal and evoke the changeable nature of parent-child relationships. Occasionally they’re funny; sometimes, they’re uncomfortably frank.

    “I think about how I can incorporate my photography into the life I lead,” Schwartz explains. “I can’t entertain the idea of leaving—photographing across the country or around the world for long stretches of time. I have these children, and I love these children. I can’t just go off and leave them. But I don’t think it’s trivial to look at things closer to home. To me, part of the challenge is to say, ‘Look at just how amazing and complex these things you take for granted are.’”

    For Schwartz, photography is about finding a good story and telling it as best you can. “Meaningful work doesn’t have to have exotic subject matter, ” she argues. “I can tell you this,” she says, leaning in. “It’s a ridiculously euphoric experience when you lock a truly decisive moment within the frame. It’s like recognizing your own thoughts crystallized in an image.”

     

    This article originally appeared in issue 15.1 of access+ENGAGE.
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