The Rake Magazine

Now that E.L. Doctorow has been elevated to that rare pantheon of not-dead white writers worth reading, it will be worth checking out what has made him transcend the solipsistic excesses of Nobel laureate Saul Bellow and his ilk. World’s Fair, Ragtime, and Billy Bathgate were compulsively readable literature—and we have to thank Doctorow’s novel … Read more

The great news is that Pete is going to be a dad—the first in my little circle of friends. For no good reason at all, my little gang seems to have put off having kids. Even though Pete, Ben, Don, and I have all joked about being deaf to the ticking of the biological clock, … Read more

The now ubiquitous spoiler—that horizontal fin typically perched on the trunks of sports cars—goes way back, back before the elevated brake lights that now decorate them on every third Honda you get behind on Lake Street. In the early days of Gran Turismo racing in Europe, about forty years ago, the spoiler was the solution … Read more

After a long winter of channel surfing, The Rake took heed of the growing evening light and resolved to check out some of the local culture that those freezing nights had held at bay. The other night, we trekked down to a new local favorite, the Mill City Museum, where a lecture was underway by … Read more

O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo? My girlish companions at the modeling agency would make much sport of such a name. Yet my heart is thine. My bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep; the more I give to Romeo, the more I have, for both are infinite. Were not … Read more

Much is being made nationally of so-called “NASCAR dads,” allegedly a flag-waving bloc of voters who drive pick-up trucks, belong to the NRA, and tend to favor football and beer. The colloquial wisdom is that NASCAR dads are concentrated in the South, and in Indianapolis. But according to some experts, there is a healthy crop … Read more

I don’t know whether I was having a nightmare, but I recently woke up wondering what it takes to produce 48,000 meals a day. So I invited myself to the St. Paul Public Schools’ nutrition services headquarters to find out. The answer, supplied in the person of Director Jean Ronnei, is nerves of steel. District … Read more