It was Day 2 of the Republican National Convention and The Rake was seated proudly in the "minor local media" section. With CityPages at our side, God as our witness and no actual view of the stage, the event was underway. It was quickly apparent that, in solidarity with the folks displaced by Hurricane Gustav, … Read more
Photos by India Bell Hard to believe that as recently as Sunday, downtown Saint Paul was a bucolic paradise ringed in chain link, the peace kept by strapping young men with plastic handcuffs. Sadly, the photos below didn’t jibe with the reality of yesterday’s protests. While Minnesota’s, and the nation’s, eyes should’ve been turned to … Read more
As activists on the West Side get the shake down from the cops, and St. Paul frets and fusses over last minute preparations at RNC ground zero; Downtown Minneapolis geared up to show its artistic flair at Spark24! What is Spark24 you ask? Well, if you haven’t been living under a rock for the past … Read more
Save for the lack of scheduled appearances by Valerie Bertinelli, Tiffani Thiessen or Jennie Garth, over the course of the next two weeks America will be treated to two of the best-funded Lifetime miniseries of all time. Featuring exotic settings; heroes and villains a-plenty; a family dynasty forever shattered; and production values that would shame … Read more
Hordes of Jihadists, radical liberals and ancient clown-shaped abominations with fantasies of disrupting the Republican National Convention by rising from beneath the streets of Saint Paul like so many crap-coated Lovecraftian elder-beings wept bitterly as public works employees welded downtown manhole covers shut during the last week. Thanks to the astute foresight and planning of … Read more
One common blogging convention, that our Vicious Circle of intrepid arts writers has yet to employ, is what I am going to hereby dub the "Cavalcade of Links" (also sometimes called, by those who follow such things more closely, a "Blog Carnival"). For our purposes, a Cavalcade of Links is a posting wherein a lazy … Read more