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To notice the skatepark building boom, you’d have to know what you were looking for. Driving Excelsior Boulevard through the 169 interchange in Hopkins, it’s eminently easy to miss the chain link enclosure of “The Overpass,” a newborn skatepark sponsored by the city of Hopkins. True to its moniker, the park is tucked into a concrete wedge beneath the freeway where it spans SuperValu’s headquarters and Excelsior Boulevard. Another city-sponsored skatepark in Minnetonka easily escapes notice folded into the Glen Lake shopping area. Others have sprouted in Burnsville, Oakdale, Mankato, Northfield, Duluth, and Moorhead. Edina and Richfield have a cooperative skatepark planned for the Southdale area. And for more than four years, Third Lair has operated in south Minneapolis as an indoor, commercial skatepark.

Curiously, this ascendence of the legit skateboarding scene corresponds to a proliferation of city ordinances that explicitly forbid skateboarding in almost every public place. Depending on who you talk to, the gradual crackdown on the streets and the opening of parks has ghettoized, mainstreamed, or liberated skating. Against this background, a group of geriatric (over 30) local skaters gathered the other day to have a few beers and unwind some yarns about then and now.

“Then” means the 80s to most skaters of the older vintage. Without exception, anyone who skated seriously then has a fistful of tales about the Twin Cities’s thumper cops, predatory jocks, and illegal spots. Brian Kevitt recalls assuming the position at least once for Bloomington police for the crime of skating in an empty parking lot. Steve Gareri and Mike Kleitz, both of Minneapolis, swap stories of beatings at the hands of the MPD. And while police were not a problem for Hopkins native and former pro skater Justin Lynch, he recalls how much fun Main Street rednecks had pummeling him with his own board.

Even the punks were hard on skaters, says Gareri. The “McPunks,” and “greenhairs” who populated the Hennepin/Lake intersection in Uptown Minneapolis circa 1984, were often seen with boards. They frequently used them as weapons and formed a defiant core of the early skateboard menace. But, says Gareri, “They would give you shit for skating, and they were sitting there with their boards. You had to be a tough ass to skate in the ’80s because you were challenged every day–jocks, punks, skinheads.”

To escape such unwanted attention, says Gareri, skaters built their own ramps in out-of-the-way spots. (These early plywood ramps were a persistent splinter risk, says Mike Kleitz, who claims to have witnessed a complete gluteus impalement on one.) But these were usually discovered and destroyed by police.

And so, in a crucible formed by the torment of peers and cops and the fight for habitat, a subculture was forged. Skating’s anti-authority bent was cemented with Black Flag anthems, MDC emblems, and Agent Orange rantings. And the 7th Street Entry added skateboard check-in to its door service. Leather jackets were decorated with hand-painted messages designed to give suburban housewives nightmares, and the slogan “SKATEBOARDING IS NOT A CRIME” found its way onto a bumpersticker.

Now, in the 21st century, skateboarding is, in fact, a crime. And some suburbs have skateboard-specific enforcement plans that include warnings, tickets, and board confiscations. And to this day, skaters still find inventive new ways to chafe the law. “Grinding” on rails and benches has taken its toll in property damage near 50th and France, according to Edina police Lt. Ken Kane. Skating the irresistible downward spiral of parking ramps has also generated complaints in Edina and St. Louis Park. Main Street Hopkins, where Justin Lynch remembers being treated like a freak on a board has become a magnet for any kid with wheels underfoot. “Wherever the space is, the kids help themselves to it,” says Hopkins police spokesperson Connie Kurtz, adding that “Razor”-type scooters have now made the list of prohibited conveyances.

Petty skate-crime notwithstanding, the skateparks sprouting in almost every ‘burb and city (with helmets required under age 18), have yielded a low-risk threat assessment of the sport from cops and parents alike. While nearly 100% of skaters over 30 report at least one hassle with cops in their history, only one in four teens questioned at Third Lair have ever encountered law enforcement when skating.

A canvass of parents at Third Lair revealed no greater concern than whether they should stay and watch their kids shred. For suburban cops, the skateparks are a great place to check in on kids and see what’s going on, says Minnetonka officer Jerry Cziok. Skate activism has gone mainstream, too. Hopkins spokesperson Kurtz notes that teens promoting the skatepark agenda in Hopkins attended city council meetings and participated with the forestry department in getting the Overpass built. “The kids were very organized,” she says.
Despite the hell-bent rebellion and the hard dues paid in the early days of skating, the mellowing of the culture and the actual criminalization of skating seem to sit well with the old crowd.
“No one ever got into skating to be persecuted,” says Ole Gilbertson, who cut his teeth at underground Minneapolis ramps in the ’80s. Indeed, most skaters would rather show off a kickflip injury than get cuffed and hauled downtown.

To Gareri, who now manages Third Lair, a legal location where skating can be done the way it should be–without hassle or fear–is the prize for all the sound and fury of the ’80s. “I run a business, too. I respect the work that cops do. I respect that other business owners don’t want kids grinding their rails or getting hurt on their property with liability being a problem. A lot of the media stories are about showing what a bunch of maniacs skaters are. But the kids at Third Lair, when they’re skating, look at all the things they’re not doing. They’re not smoking dope, they’re not stealing, you know.”

A true shock, perhaps, to their boomer parents, many of whom probably did a great deal of both.

Jazz fans can be such snobs. For all our High Fidelity obsessiveness and occasional lapses into cultural myopia, at least we rockers are rarely elitist out of a sheer, simple disdain for populism. I mean, the Beatles stand as one of the most successful rock bands ever (the best-selling group of 2001, in fact), and they also happen to have had considerable artistic merit. I’ll truck no high-minded, post-feminist defense of Britney Spears’ lowest-common-denominator pandering, but I’ll fight long and hard on the merits of Smash Mouth, and I have a rock-critic peer whose eloquent parsing of the charms of the Backstreet Boys is almost enough to convince you. (Almost.)

Not so with the high-minded jazzbo. He (and it’s almost always a he) is spending an awful lot of time these days kvetching and wailing about the success of Diana Krall, that comely blond Canadian who has become the best-selling jazz artist of the new millennium. The rap on Krall is that not only is she successful, but she’s actively courting and enjoying success! As if the only career model for the modern torch singer should be the miserable downward spiral of Lady Day or the cloistered cabaret cultdom of the Rosemary Clooney/Bobby Short set.

Granted, Krall’s willful acquiescence to the image-mongering of the modern music biz can seem a little over the top. Witness her progression of cover photos, from the polyester-wearing frump of 1992’s Stepping Out, to the black/white, good girl/bad girl dichotomy of 1996’s All for You, to the leggy vixen in the little black dress on last year’s The Look of Love. She’s even hotter inside the CD booklet, posing as a casually tussled backseat bimbo with a fetching come-hither look that recalls Olivia Newton-John’s post-enlightenment slut in Grease.

Then there were those appearances on Melrose Place, and Krall’s anointing as an icon by Target department stores. She showed up on the cover of Target the Family, the chain’s holiday advertorial/magazine, dreamily gazing out amid cover lines such as “Beautiful Buffets: Service With Style” and “Special Handbag Size!” None of this did much for her cred among serious musos.

But hey, in these culturally-constricted, corporate-dominated times, there’s an argument that says advertising is actually doing more to bring good art to the masses than radio or the music press. (Call it “the Moby defense.”) And even if you insist that Krall is an over-eager sell-out, well, if you’d been raised in the nowhere burg of Nanaimo, British Columbia with a sister who became a Mountie, you’d probably be anxious to buy into something a little more glamorous, too.

There are mitigating factors that give the skeptics pause, including the 37-year-old’s respect for jazz tradition and her exquisite taste in material. She has toured with Tony Bennett, and New York Times critic Stephen Holden has called The Look of Love “the most satisfying collection of orchestrated popular standards to be released since the heyday of Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald.”

Krall has been choosing songs wisely from the beginning. She tackled Rodgers & Hart and Duke Ellington on her debut, and Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Leslie Bricusse on 1999’s When I Look in Your Eyes. With All for You, she paid an entire album’s tribute to the smoothie who is perhaps her ultimate favorite, Nat (King) Cole. And she’s always found the right vehicle to deliver these classics.

Strings are always a controversial subject in jazz—Charlie Parker got crap for using ’em—but Krall’s foray into orchestral turf is done right. The Look of Love alternately utilizes the London Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles session orchestra (no hacks here), and the arrangements are all crafted by the much-revered Claus Ogerman, whose collaboration with Michael Brecker on Cityscape was a big influence back in Nanaimo. Keeping things moving with countless variations of a slinky, sultry bossa-nova groove is the world-class rhythm section of bassist Christian McBride and drummer Peter Erskine. But ultimately it all comes down to The Voice.

It takes a lot more than chops to do something new with the Gershwins’ classic “S’Wonderful” or the standard “Besame Mucho” (which even the Beatles covered), but Krall claims them as her own via sheer force of personality. Here’s where a rocker’s perspective comes in handy. Like Debbie Harry, Chrissie Hynde, or Justine Frischmann of Elastica, Krall’s dark, sensual, smoky vocals deliver more than just lilting and lovely notes. They convey an attitude, and that’s what’s at the heart of her appeal.

There is a hint of irony, a bit of cool postmodern detachment, but most of all an underlying strength and self-assurance that brings new depths of meaning to the traditional romantic lyricism of Look’s 10 tunes, which are carefully sequenced to chart the arc of a very-today relationship. Krall takes us from the first blush of infatuation (“S’Wonderful,” “Love Letters”), through betrayal (“Cry Me A River,” “The Night We Called It a Day”), to arrive at the modern woman’s uneasy truce between self-reliance and lusty co-habitation (“The Look of Love,” “Maybe You’ll Be There”).

Jazz and rock extremists alike may dismiss this as lounge music, but if so, Krall commands a lounge that could at any moment reveal itself to be a clandestine bacchanal, or maybe an after-hours S&M club. It’s about time jazz had a riot grrrl, and it’s the purists’ loss if they don’t appreciate her. Meanwhile, like much of America, I say to Diana, “Take me, I’m yours.”

Diana Krall appears at the State Theater March 15.

Kent Barnard is a road-salt aficionado. He is also a public relations expert for the Minnesota Department of Transportation, tirelessly striving to let you know that much is being done to keep your automobile out of the ditch this and every season. If breaking news about all kinds of alternative de-icers and road sensors kept him busy last winter, there’s something about MnDOTs errands that transcends all seasons. “We’re always ready,” Barnard. “If it snows in July, we could get out there.”

Widely reported to be yellow, the darling of new de-icers this year was a corn based product from Minnesota Corn Processors subsidiary Glacial Technologies. This space-age compound can push melting points down to 40-below zero Fahrenheit. This winter, it was tested on the Lafayette bridge in St. Paul and two other undisclosed metro locations.

Still, the largest story by weight is salt. Because salt has, over the years, saved so much of the time that might have been spent prayerfully greeting loss of traction, riding in tow trucks, and sipping burnt coffee in body-shop waiting rooms, it deserves consideration in proportion to the hundreds of thousands of tons MnDOT keeps on hand.

Each year an average of 200,000 tons of rock salt are
applied to Minnesota roads. That amounts to about 102 pounds annually for each vehicle registered in the state. This is certainly a large amount, but as a percentage of body mass, it compares favorably to the 10 pounds of salt the vehicle’s driver can expect to consume over the same period. So called “nutritional salt,” though, is less likely to contain sodium Ferro cyanide. (Barnard says this anti-clumping agent is not nearly as nasty as it sounds).

Still, however you cut it, 200,000 tons is a lot of anything, and while this writer has no idea how many times it would circle the earth if each grain was laid end to end, it’s quite true that if the annual dose were dissolved into Lake Superior, it would become more saline than the Atlantic Ocean in less than two years.

While no one at MnDOT has proposed the salinization of Lake Superior, road salt does go somewhere after it’s done its work on the pavement. George Hudak, Assistant Professor of Geology at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, has discovered chlorine levels in fresh surface water that can’t be explained any other way. The environmental implications are not necessarily clear, but, Hudak speculates, “It’s not so good for your steel canoe.”

Most commercial rock salt began as efflorescent deposits from evaporated prehistoric oceans. In order to form the massive domes of halite from which it is mined in Michigan, Kansas, and Louisiana, Hudak says these evaporates must spend millions of years compressed under millions of tons of rock. Being of lower density, it gradually pushes up through faults toward the earth’s surface, where Cargill and Morton lie in wait for the harvest.

Salt had been established for millennia as a fundamental element of political and military force. The Roman empire, known for its roads if not for the salting of them, nonetheless coined the word “salarium” (salary) from the occasional use of salt as payment to soldiers. Hundreds of years later, Marco Polo reported watching Roman authorities mint salt-cake coins bearing the emperor’s seal. The power and influence of Danish kings was once estimated by the amount of salt each guest could expect at a feast.

By these standards, King Jesse Ventura is a mighty lord indeed, with his sovereign rule over 292,000 tons this year alone. But before he is duly venerated, forget not the kingdom that lies to the east. Wisconsin reportedly treats its roads with as much as 700,000 tons in a single year, says Kent Barnard.

Barnard and Hudak speculate that the “lake effect” accounts for Wisconsin’s larger share of the salt pie. Yet it may be worth noting that Wisconsin’s inhabitants, according to the Beer Institute, consumed an estimated 1,165,251 more barrels of beer than Minnesotans in the year 2000. Even when adjusted for population that’s more than a third of a barrel more per person. Which raises the possibility that Wisconsin roads merely seem more slippery.

There’s a new dining movement in this country: the small, upscale, funky, limited-but-interesting menu, wine-friendly, neighborhood restaurant. Even though they’re generally called cafes, we think of them as American bistros. Minneapolis and St. Paul are lousy with them. And if you’re lucky, it’s a great meal within walking distance.

It may look like a basement rec room, but the kitchen at the 128 Cafe turns out dish after dish of fabulous food. The barbecued pork ribs have a spicy orange flavor which the roasted garlic mashed potatoes complement beautifully. The chicken breast comes with couscous and a lemon, garlic, and caper sauce. Start with an arugula salad or an appetizer of roasted garlic bulbs and apple-raisin chutney, and you’ve got yourself a great meal.

This is a trend in full flower. Marimar, First Course, 3 Muses, and N.E. Thyme all opened in 2001. Others like Zander, the 128 Cafe, Modern, and Mildred Pierce Cafe have been around a bit longer.

Of course, neighborhood restaurants are old hat, at least in cities with real walk-around neighborhoods, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. These new restaurants are not the greasy spoon mom-and-pop family restaurants of old. You dropped into that kind of restaurant because it was there, it was cheap, and you were hungry. They didn’t take reservations, and the menu changed nearly every decade. For a truly special night out, you drove to your family’s particular enclave. (Lowell Inn on Grandma’s birthday, anyone?) But now a new generation owns the field. Chefs—often the owners—are experienced and innovative. The food doesn’t follow the old salad-meat-starch formula; it’s complex and interesting. And while the menu may not have a wide selection, it changes regularly. Heck, you can even get a nice bottle of wine with dinner.

At N.E. Thyme, the menu changes every week. The last time we were there we had a choice of five entrees, two of them vegetarian. The mahi mahi was covered with cilantro pesto and pineapple-mango salsa, and came with lemony potatoes and delicate haricots vert. And the chicken breast came rolled up with proscuitto, truffle cheese, and spinach.

Let’s invent a name for this kind of cooking, shall we? American Melting Pot. Not fusion cooking, which conjures up lemongrass ravioli and other unfortunate collisions, but a clever and stylish blend of several cuisines and ingredients.

One of the things we like about these places is that you can go in for a quick bite or make an evening of it. The appetizers are filling; the salads interesting. You can even go just for dessert; Modern’s chocolate crème brulee is worth a trip.

At First Course, we loved the barbecued chicken quesadilla and the minestrone soup, and had mixed success with the entrees. Best is probably the meatless lasagna stew. It’s called “open-faced lasagna” on the menu, which is a funny way of saying that it doesn’t hold together like a real lasagna does.

Mildred Pierce Cafe also shakes up comfort food. Try the BLT with white truffle aioli, pork chops with sun-dried tomatoes and pistachios, and delicious variants of club and grilled-cheese sandwiches. Modern serves pot roast with a horseradish cream sauce.

That’s what you get at an American bistro: traditional favorites with a twist, and new and interesting dishes. Sometimes the kitchen’s reach exceeds its grasp, but that’s part of the fun.

It’s wise to remember that you’re not here for the decor. Modern looks like a grubby diner right out of the 1940s; Zander like the 1950s. 128 Cafe looks like the neighbor’s family room, and 3 Muses turn funky into an affectation. And service can be spotty; we won’t mention that one visit to First Course.

Nothing has brought the Twin Cities restaurant scene into the 21st century faster than the well-chosen and reasonably priced wine list. What works is a good selection of wines that go well with the food, with lots of by-the-glass options. At 3 Muses, most bottles are under $30. N.E. Thyme offers thirteen choices by the glass. Marimar prices its bottles at around $20, half-priced on Mondays. You can bring your own wine to First Course—they don’t have corkage, so you won’t be socked for an extra $20.

These American bistros are not cheap, but they’re a wonderful value. Entrees run north of $15; appetizers $7-$8. We plan on spending $30 a person total: each having an entree and a glass of wine, and sharing an appetizer and dessert. Sure, that’s a yuppie food coupon and a half, but you don’t have to order three courses. $20 will get you a smaller meal and change. Sure, you’ll spend less at Curran’s. But the point is fresh, interesting food in a pleasant little place right in the neighborhood.

Bruce Schneier and Karen Cooper live in Minneapolis, but eat all over the world.

Marimar
5001 34th Ave S, Minneapolis, 612-728-1123
First Course
5607 Chicago Ave, Minneapolis, 612-825-6900
Mildred Pierce Cafe
786 Randolph Ave, St. Paul, 651-222-7430
Modern Cafe
337 13th Ave NE, Minneapolis, 612-378-9882
NE Thyme Cafe
4257 Nicollet Ave, Minneapolis, 612-822-5155
The 128 Cafe
128 Cleveland Ave N, St. Paul, 651-645-4128
3 Muses
2817 Lyndale Ave S, Minneapolis, 612-870-0339
Zander Café
523 Selby Ave, St. Paul, 651-222-5224

One recent evening at a Walt Disney World resort called Caribbean Beach, the tikki bar was entirely empty. The only customer turned out to be an off-duty bartender. Like all other Disney World employees, bartenders here are officially called “cast members.” This particular cast member talked shop and flirted a little too loudly. He and his attractive on-duty colleague discussed how to locate the surveillance cameras (they’re hidden in the bookshelf speakers) and how to give away unauthorized freebies (zip the keycard and void the transaction).

It’s peak season at Disney World–that’s the one in Florida, not California–and 51,000 Disney employees are celebrating the centenary of Walt Disney’s birth. It’s not clear how many tourists are celebrating with them at Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom, and the handful of other Disney theme parks here in Orlando. Judging from the short lines and vacant seats at Space Mountain, attendance is down. Way down.

Many guests have the misimpression that Disney World itself is 100 years old. It isn’t. A cast member in a blue jumper tells me that Walt Disney himself personally cut the ribbons here in 1952. But I instinctually distrust everything at Disney World, especially the histories.

It’s true that security is a little tighter since September. Friendly security guards rifle through backpacks, purses, and fanny packs at the entrances to every park. But one senses there are too many Disney targets in too many Disney places, tucked into too many acres of Florida swampland, to attract a serious terrorist plot. Cinderella’s castle, which is essentially a 600-foot façade on a cramped one-room gift shop, somehow doesn’t seem like much of a prize in the global war on terrorism.

On the other hand, Disney’s two new cruise ships are sitting ducks. At nearby Port Canaveral, security is waterproof and vacancies are rare. Since launching their luxury Carribean cruise business in 1999, Disney Cruise Lines has been a resounding success. Scores of sun-starved Midwesterners like me buy all-inclusive packages that admit us to the theme parks, then we climb aboard the Disney Magic or the Disney Wonder for a three-day cruise to the Bahamas. Each time we make port, we are required to bring our keycards and photo IDs, and our bags are X-rayed. A bomb-sniffing dog wags its tail.

One port-of-call is Castaway Cay, a 1,000 acre Caribbean island which Disney purchased a few years ago. Formerly known as Gorda Cay, it was an uninhabited drug smugglers’ stopover with an airstrip and not much else. Disney dredged a deep-water harbor for their ships, which weigh anchor here twice a week. At each anchorage, about 2,500 slightly overweight professionals from Minneapolis, Columbus, and St. Louis are disgorged, steering their children to Disney’s exclusive beach, playground, and restaurant.

On the paved trail to this island paradise, Disney has also built a rustic two-room shack that serves as Castaway Cay’s official post office, a bureau operated by the Bahamas Postal Service. Here, you can buy real Bahamian stamps that feature a beautiful image of the cruise ship from which you just disembarked. The Postmistress, Miss Carmita Roker, says there are 40 permanent residents of the island. How many of these are Disney cast members? All of them, she says. “Except me. But I don’t live here.”

Minneapolis and St. Paul are self-confident enough, thank heavens, to recognize that the Windy City has some things to recommend it. Chief among them, the Chicago style hot dog, one of this magazine’s life forces. In recent years, there have been just two vendors in the Twin Cities from whom a hungry fellow can reliably purchase this toothsome delight.

First things first: Understand that a Chicago dog bears little resemblance to your usual ballpark frank. There are a number of highly refined and specific ingredients–a recipe and alchemy that must strictly be observed. First, of course, the dog itself. It must be a Vienna Beef hot dog, with natural skin casing, the kind of high-quality wiener that provides the “snap” which repels the uninitiated and simpleminded. Then there are the toppings. Sport peppers, tomatoes, relish, onion, and yellow mustard. Pickle spear. Celery salt.

Jerry Petermeier, former owner of grubby West Bank institution The Wienery, says the sine qua non of an authentic Chicago dog is the poppy seed bun. It may seem a trifle, but poppy seed buns are actually available from only one local distributor. And without the poppy seeds, in the common vernacular, you got squat.

The other day, Pat Starr was trying to pass off non-poppy seed buns. The Weinery’s current operator is a sturdy and smiling man of thirty-something who takes orders from behind the grill, and shouts greetings to the constant stream of regulars coming in the derelict door. He wears a stocking cap in all weather. “This isn’t really a Chicago dog,” he said apologetically. “But I ran out of buns.”

The next day, Tommy Dennis tut-tutted in mock disapproval. He and his brother Bobby run Joey D’s in South Minneapolis, a “Chicago style eatery” which native Chicagoans treat as a local consulate. Wearing a Blackhawks away jersey over his barrel-shaped chest, Tommy said there’s no single ingredient that makes a Chicago Dog authentic, because “you gotta have it all.”
And it’s all gotta come from Chicago. Pat Starr gets his stuff–the celery salt, the day-glo Chipico relish–from a local distributor that specializes in Windy City fare. But the Dennis brothers rent their own semi and drive it down to Chicago every couple of months. “This is the real deal,” said Bobby Dennis, with a photo of Mike Ditka peeking in agreement over one shoulder, and Stan Makita peeking over the other.

The other day, we noticed the streetlights on the Lake Street-Marshall Avenue bridge were lit during daylight hours. But just on the Minneapolis side. The Twin Cities appear to share responsibility for the bridge. Both Minneapolis and St. Paul cops cruise the span, and the electric company has the bridge’s faux-Victorian lamps on two separate circuits. Minneapolis seems to be less shy about running up their half of the bill.

This accident of circuitry calls attention to the bridge’s symbolism as a passage between light and dark, life and death. Just a few months ago, a St. Paul boy fell from the girders beneath the overpass. A youthful romantic like many before him, he died trying to spray paint the name of his beloved on the undergirding.

Then there are the suicides. Bridge jumping’s surely not the most popular way to go, but it’s a provocative one. Unlike running your car in the garage, or knocking back a bunch of sleeping pills in your own bedroom, the jump is desperately anonymous. Many bridge suicides go unidentified for weeks.

Every six months, someone jumps off a bridge somewhere in the Twin Cities. It’s most common where high stress, lofty overpasses, and youthful angst converge–at the University. Washington Avenue bridge, towering a hundred feet over the Mississippi, is the site of at least one jump each year. Here, 25 years ago, Pulitzer poet John Berryman hurdled into eternity. It’s fitting and ironic that another poet, John Ashbery, is excerpted on another of the area’s most celebrated bridges– the Armajani footbridge at the Walker.

The Golden Gate bridge is the site of 30 suicides per year, prompting the city of San Francisco to install telephones on the bridge with direct connections to a suicide hotline. There’s no plan to do the same here, since relatively few people do it. Still, they may not be jumping from bridges, but in Minnesota suicides out number homicides 3 to 1.

A Minneapolis water truck is parked among pylons on the Lake Street-Marshall Avenue bridge. Roy, a Minneapolis city worker spraying down the bridge deck, doesn’t know what the deal is with the lights. He just shrugs. “Must be the full moon,” he says. “C’ est la vie.”

If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, think of The Rake as a work zone. Slow down, give us a brake. We aim to fill the potholes, maybe add another lane. If it’s all going to a hot place in a hurry, we want to make the ride as smooth and enjoyable as possible.

This is a rich town. There aren’t all that many American cities that still support two daily newspapers, two city magazines, and two alternative weeklies. Media as a topic of media, of course, bores us all to tears. Bear with us a moment, though. Like pro sports teams, art museums, light rail, and an openly bald governor, a vibrant local media is one of the things that helps us believe we matter, helps us believe the Twin Cities are something more than the last stop before Seattle.

Just so, this town may not need another magazine, any more than it needs thousands of square feet of new development right outside our door in downtown Minneapolis. Indeed, recent numbers suggest that vacancy rates in the metro area are the highest they’ve been in five years. Nevertheless, the building boom continues. We guess we’ll take our cues from the developers: We aim to be the biggest and the best, and the vacancy rate will become someone else’s problem, yeah? Perhaps it’s the patriotic thing to do.

Seriously, though. Magazines like all other enterprises need an excuse for conducting business. We felt that most of the worthy publications already in print here were for somebody else. Edina housewives, in particular, seem to be a well-served readership. And a handful of Gen-Xers who somehow are still stuck in the bar scene without serious jobs or families still have their Lovelines and refugee-of-the-week stories. But the rest of us–folks who live, work, and play in the city, folks who have a passion for life that goes beyond the area’s terrific crème brulee and cosmetic surgeons, folks whose politics have never been as predictable as the newspapers–we don’t have a periodical to read and enjoy. It’s not a commonly known fact to the general public, but there’s nothing in the International Code of Print Media that says reading and entertainment have to be mutually exclusive–it just happened that way.

Our hope is to rake up some intelligent and entertaining stories for ourselves and for you. Our intentions are good, and the road is smooth, and who cares where it goes, anyway? It’s the journey that counts, not the destination, right?

On Nine One One, while the whole of America was in fear and shock from those true believers diving our own commercial airlines into our skyscrapers, Larry Kegan was unable to get his tracheotomy suctioned and he couldn’t breathe. The lack of oxygen caused him to have a heart attack and he was gone before Jose came out of the Seven-Eleven with the batteries. Not one television reporter noticed that September 11 was the day Kegan returned to his God.

If he could have stood up he would have been six feet tall, and he wasn’t any wider than a beer truck. It always looked like the wheelchair had two flat tires and he was riding on the rims because of all that weight. Larry hated being overweight, and was not heavy until late in life when his organs went more and more haywire and they had to keep adding machines to keep him alive. He never saw anything wrong with himself, just some bad luck as a teenager, and a broken body. He used to say, “If I was on my feet I would never be fat.” So his friends became extensions of his arms and legs and tried to stay out of the way.

Larry Kegan the musician never brought up his Dylan connection except if you knew. Sometimes he’d mention Bob with a grin. He’d always put an emphatic spin on Bob. He’d open his eyes real wide, look dead at you, slowly shake his head, and smile like that cat outta Alice in Wonderland. The tone of his voice and smile said he was telling some kind of secret, important, inside joke. I never saw anyone put so much English on a name.

Larry knew he was mortal and that quads don’t tend to live as long. He would always say, “If I can just make it one more year…” That was his mantra. “One more year.”

Geno LaFond wrote songs and played guitar with him. They toured off and on for 15 years. “I would fly out and meet up with them, hang for a few days and then fly home,” Geno says. “Larry would go for weeks sometimes, and different people would meet up with him and help him. First time I traveled on tour was 1975. The Rolling Thunder Tour. Incredible!” Kegan and LaFond called themselves The Mere Mortals. They came up with the name when Geno first met Bob. “Larry and I laughed that even Bob was mortal. Although maybe we were a bit more so.” When The Mere Mortals played, Kegan avoided saying Bob’s name. Instead he’d say, “Here’s a song by a friend of mine.”

On the wall over Larry’s bed there were snapshots: Bob, Kegan, and Louis Kemp at 13 and again at 50, three boyhood buddies who kept in contact their whole lives. Below that was a snapshot of Kegan and Muddy Waters. Leaning on the top of the dresser there was The Bridge Concert poster featuring Neil Young, Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians, Cheech Marin, and The Mere Mortals. (Neil Young throws The Bridge Concert every year to raise money for the school his two disabled kids attend.) Over the years, The Mere Mortals had played front act for Bob, Neil Young, Eric Clapton, and a who’s who of some of the biggest names in music. Kegan was always in the middle of things with Scarlet Rivera, Kinky Friedman, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Kris Kristofferson, Rick Danko, Jackson Browne, and local blues and folkie players such as Willie Murphy, Paul Metsa, and Larry Long. It’s like the old joke where the Pope comes out with Kegan at St. Peter’s Square, huge crowds cheering. Somebody pulls your coat and asks, “Who’s the guy with Larry Kegan?”

Larry was a hip and talented guy, but only a mere mortal, with all the failings that come with the territory. Take this, for example: Larry was a high quad, so he had to get someone to brush his teeth, feed him, wipe his ass, or it didn’t get done. Let’s say it nicely: Larry was skillful at “motivating” people. He was among the best at playing the players because that’s how he got his nose scratched.

Kegan and Marty Keller were trying to market a film script, written from their unpublished book, Some Get The ’Chair: A Memoir of Sex, Disability and Rock ’n’ Roll. Knowing Kegan, Marty did most of the work. (“Some Get The ’Chair” is also a song by Kegan and LaFond.) It covers the sex resort Kegan started in Mexico for disabled Vietnam Vets—an achievement commemorated by the Willem Defoe character in Born on The Fourth of July. It covers the SAR, the sexual attitude reassessment program for disability now required at medical schools across the country, which was founded by Kegan with Dr. Ted Cole. It covers Kegan and Dylan as kids.

Last fall at Easy Creek was one of his best shows, but things were changing. Kegan and Geno were not tied to each other as they had been for years. Kegan always took the spotlight, but Geno wanted more recognition and Kegan resented that. Kegan’s living situation changed a few years ago when he and his significant other, Carol, bought a house together. He was not as “accessible” to his pals. She gave him something to live for and encouraged him to take better care of himself. He focused on Carol. He stopped saying “One more year,” stopped taking so many risks.

There was strain between Geno and Kegan, but it never erupted. I’d hear nasty behind-the-back comments from Kegan. About 3 one morning after he died, I got a call from Carol, saying it had been about a song. Kegan had tried to finish writing “Just Because of Your Kiss” with Geno and Tom Greenwald, but here the stories diverge. He did finish it with Dennis Morgan, a Nashville songwriter originally from Sleepy Eye (“Sleepin’ Single in a Double Bed”). To me, it looked like Dennis, a songwriter with a wall full of gold records, finished it. Larry finally agreed that Geno and Tom had a part of the song, and it ended up that Dennis got half ownership while Larry, Tom, and Geno split the other half. That incident put a strain on Geno and Larry’s 30-year friendship. The fact that Larry loved a woman and shared a house with her—pushing 60, he was starting to settle down—and that Geno wanted more recognition meant they needed to renegotiate their relationship. What would have happened is anybody’s guess because Larry died first.