Back a long time ago, in the olden days of the last century, we all knew how to respond to a set of enormous fake breasts. We stared. We muttered, “Oh my Lordy.” It was new then, and comical in a grotesque, medically questionable kind of way. Pamela Anderson was nothing if not an absurdity, … Read more
Paula and George Lopuch, of downtown Minneapolis, take Red-Handed to a whole new level with three different trips and three different issues of The Rake. Africa: Our trip included a one-week safari in Kenya, where we held The Rake up exactly over the equator, much to the amusement of the locals. Mexico: San Miguel de … Read more
Gardening trends come and go. Vegetable gardens were big (literally) when families had great hordes of kids. English gardens had their day—along with Laura Ashley. “Naturalizing,” in the nineties, reflected a permissive era, but proved a natural habitat for neighbor complaints. Without coming right out and saying I wanted to school the scarecrow next door, … Read more
There was a time, not that long ago really, when a lonely and obsessive-compulsive man, unable to sleep, might have spent hours on his hands and knees, raking and grooming the floors of his apartment with his fingers, venturing into corners and hard-to-reach places to gather handfuls of hair, dust, random miniature tumbleweeds, and wispy … Read more
Nate Maddux and Mary Schwarz (Minneapolis) introduced the locals of Ronda, one of Spain’s southern “pueblos blancos”, to The Rake over a glass of sherry and some tapas…seen here perched above the town’s old arabic bridge spanning the 300 foot-deep Tajo Gorge. The Andalusian town, about an hour north of the Mediterranean, was one of … Read more
Melanie and Patrick of NE Minneapolis write: This picture is from our fantastic honeymoon through Scotland & England. Here we were enjoying the history & views of Rosslyn Chapel, which everyone knows by now is featured in The DaVinci Code. The chapel is ornate and entirely made of stone; and it’s location on the hillside … Read more
The ingenious inventions and dazzling artifacts left to us by the fallen superpowers of millennia past cannot help but raise the question, “What went wrong?” Ancient Rome, China, Britain, and other countries have enjoyed a few shining centuries in the sun, only to sink into the shadows of subservience and mediocrity when another region took … Read more
“I never had a business dream,” admitted Dave Kapell, founder of Minneapolis-based Magnetic Poetry Inc. “I aspired to be a starving artist.” In 1993, he was a thirty-year-old musician struggling to write song lyrics in his living room. He picked up a newspaper. He picked up a pair of scissors. He picked up adhesive, magnetic … Read more
The spring collections usually lend levity to our wardrobe, but this year, that’s not necessarily the case. Many of the season’s prettiest party dresses and tissue tops are coming fully loaded with all manner of heavy metal hardware. Surely you noticed such chains, charms, pendants, and toggles stitched onto last season’s winter things. Now the … Read more
We were expecting a bag-full of complaints for our slightly racy cover last month, but none arrived. Several readers, like Dave and Dave, did ask which of our staff members posed for the nudey photos, and we’re not telling. Thanks, too, to Dan, Joan and a couple others (see letters above) for pointing out that … Read more