Tom Letness could cease his never-ending renovation of the Heights Theatre, in Columbia Heights, and it would remain the finest movie house in the Twin Cities, bar none. Yet he keeps fiddling with it. He knows its history inside and out—from a bombing back in the late twenties at the hands of a disgruntled former … Read more
Despite Daunte Culpepper’s departure for Miami, he’ll be making a few non-voluntary return trips. That’s because the Vikings Sex Boat scandal continues to play itself out in the legal system. We trust our courts of law, of course, but it was never clear to us what laws precisely were broken in that unseemly episode. Last … Read more
If you’re thinking of buying a car anytime soon you ought to test drive the BMW 330i. Hell, even if you aren’t thinking of buying a car, you should do it just for the rush. Because this is the car that all other sedans have to measure up to. You shouldn’t get to have this … Read more
Clothing designers aren’t yet as numerous as guitar players, but sometimes we wonder if the fashion-show circuit isn’t starting to look a lot like the indie-rock scene. Despite what seems like a near-weekly occurrence of runway events, DIVA Minnesota’s annual affair is among the few absolute must-sees. For its 2006 fund-raiser, which took place last … Read more
Death begins in the colon. I had incorrectly placed its origins in algebra class; nevertheless, I have it on good authority (Dr. Natura, as seen on TV, creator of the Colonix Program) that death begins in the colon. On this happy note, we enter into spring, a time of rebirth, renewal, refunds, and spring cleaning. … Read more
The Historian Dan Prozinski feels history creaking through the old floorboards of his storefront-turned-home. In fact, a few years back, a renovation project sent him and his wife, Sue Park, wriggling through a crawl space they had previously been avoiding, for fear of it being a gross-out. But that dust cell ended up being a … Read more
It was a Tuesday night. On the lobby wall, two-dimensional children in roller skates and blue jeans frolicked amid neon-green palm trees and smiling dinosaurs. Stars and swirly confetti twists glowed orange, yellow, and red on faded blue carpeting. Above the glass ticket window, a large sign offered these instructions: “Conduct yourself as a lady … Read more
One Saturday morning about six weeks before April 15, our national day of fiscal confession and atonement, an Orthodox Jewish man and his son walked along Highland Parkway. The two passed a nondescript side-by-side duplex, where a half-dozen tax preparers were knee-deep in paperwork—the kind of work, the onerous old stereotype goes, usually handled by … Read more
As I was standing recently in front of MinneNAPolis PowerNap Suites, a dimly lit store in the Mall of America, a herd of teenagers in hooded sweatshirts and sagging, crack-revealing jeans sauntered by and collectively stated the obvious: “Dude! Check it out. No way. This place is, like, for napping. Who would do that?” In … Read more
A few years ago, we had more interest in Canada’s hockey players than its ballet dancers. Les Grands Ballets Canadiens had a reputation for stodgy, brittle, ultra-traditional interpretations of classics, and, short of an underfed ballerina passing out mid-plie, nothing too exciting was going to happen on its stage. But in 2000, artistic director Gradimir … Read more