Last December I was in Minnesota, chatting with workers at Peace Coffee, a Minneapolis-based one-hundred-percent Fair Trade coffee company. To these guys, who make local deliveries on bicycle, Starbucks is the enemy. It’s a huge, non-transparent corporation; only a small percentage of its coffee is Fair Trade; and it doesn’t re-invest in the communities where … Read more
If your cardboard and paper-lace valentines box wasn’t exactly overflowing on the big day, don’t despair. There are plenty of potential sweethearts posting regularly to the Minneapolis Craigslist “Missed Connections” page. Functioning as an online “I Saw You,” this forum gives shy-types a chance to yearn in public, or sort of in public, whether mentioning … Read more
Like any budding artisan, Omar Ansari spoke with great pride when he offered a visitor a taste of his creation. “Try that,” he said, pulling a shot of Furious Ale from one of the giant stainless steel tanks. “What do you think?” I think the Surly Brewing Company, the Twin Cities’ newest producer of craft … Read more
March is a month we are especially fond of, for a couple of reasons. It’s our birthday—four years old! No presents, please, we’re laying low this year—and it is also the month that we haul out the twelve-inch, black-and-white television in the office. Why? So we can attend to Minnesota’s secular high holidays, the State … Read more
Dear Column, This is definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever had to write to a column I write. We need to talk. Lately, it’s seemed like we still love each other, but just aren’t “in love” anymore. First and foremost, let me make it clear that there isn’t another column involved. I couldn’t do that … Read more
The proof that Minnesota has soul lies in Jackie Williams’ sweet potato pie. Or perhaps it’s in her rib tips, smothered pork chops, or fried green tomatoes, which warm your belly and your disposition. Williams has been a chef-around-town for years, and she’s occasionally even catered for stopover celebrities before opening Abundant Bistro, her own … Read more
There really is only one thing that can melt through our puritanical will to stay home and hunker down through the cold months: barbeque. Now that we have a Baker’s Ribs in Eden Prairie, we’ll brave any weather to bask in the inner heat that only good sausage can kindle. The smoky barbecue links at … Read more
Fiery, doomed love isn’t just for gay cowboys; prairie girls can get it real bad, too. In this play by local writer Melanie Marnich, a young, small-town wife succumbs to a crush on a handsome neighbor, and becomes entangled in a dangerous constellation of personalities and tempers. Based loosely on the 1622 play The Changeling, … Read more
It’s heartening to note that this annual event has added themes in recent years–perhaps it means that so many women are now making films that the focus has been narrowed. In its thirteenth year, the Women with Vision festival showcases filmmakers from Chile, Iran, Kenya, Cameroon–as well as Europe and the U.S.–who have faced political … Read more
Jeune Lune has gotten so good at opera that almost everything it does in the genre deserves mention. The company’s strategy involves stripping away layers of orchestration from the score, because it can neither afford a full orchestra nor fit one into its space. The result has been opera productions that are short, punchy, and … Read more