“Dirty Dancing” by Sarah Luck Pearson [June] presents a very one-sided view of the people who are impacted by strip clubs. For the past ten years, through my work at an organization called Adults Saving Kids, I have learned a side of stripping that most people never hear about and is seldom expressed in the … Read more
Imperialists come in all shapes and sizes. Some claim their god gave them the right to take away other people’s land and market the produce of their orange groves. Others never visit the places or people whose lives they dominate through the sale of brown sticky drinks and their cinematic equivalent. And then there are … Read more
He’s so vanilla, she said. She meant he was plain and simple, an accountant type with no spark, not an artist. She meant he was boring and uninventive, without passion and not worth my time. But when food is your language, definitions begin to skew. I understood her to mean he was delicious and seductive … Read more
Dave Neitzel’s view of the dog-eat-dog, mosquito-suck-bird world begins from his third-floor office in the faceless Minnesota Department of Health building, which sits quietly on the University of Minnesota’s East Bank campus. Neitzel is an ornithologist and entomologist who works on vector-borne and zoonotic diseases. He’s an expert on the West Nile virus. It turns … Read more
Katy is very proud of her pair of UPS brown socks. She bugged the UPS guy continually to bring her a catalog of all the UPS clothes she could order. Even after weeks of pestering, he never came through with this alleged catalog. One day, however, he handed her a brand new pair of heavyweight … Read more
In a world gone mad with wi-fi, razor-thin laptops, and Xboxes, Dave Slabiak is fighting to preserve a questionable American icon—the pinball machine. “I live, breathe, and eat pinball,” he said the other day, staring through his Buddy Holly glasses to make sure his interviewer took in the gravity of the statement. Slabiak is a … Read more
Tom Hazelmyer may not be the first guy you’d think of as an art gallery owner. An ex-Marine and gun collector, his greatest claim to notoriety is Amphetamine Reptile Records, the Minneapolis-based punk-rock label he founded that defined the angriest and most abrasive wing of the hardcore movement of the 80s and 90s. AmRep built … Read more
You’ve seen them: the new passenger vehicles with pickup truck beds sprouting from their behinds. The Subaru Baja, the Chevrolet Avalanche, the Cadillac Escalade EXT. An automotive slice of the 70s slid into this century, along with the bell-bottoms and halter-tops. Avacado-colored refrigerators can’t be far off. But can any of these freshly minted sleds … Read more
On a recent Wednesday evening, hundreds of overdressed teenage girls gathered outside Southdale’s MegaStar movie theater. Squeezed into their tightest jeans and tiniest tees, they hummed with excitement as they waited for Josh Hartnett, the movie star and Minnesota native, to arrive. Hartnett was making a rare appearance to raise money for a local charity … Read more
The true north is Canada, of course. But we like to believe that we’re essentially a northern people. True, that knob on the very crown of our state qualifies as the northernmost point in the lower 48. The legend on the street has long been that a mapmaker zigged when he should have zagged, creating … Read more