Won't You Take Me to. . .Dinkytown?!

I hope that this first posting in the year 2009 finds you safe and well.

I myself have recently thawed out after visiting my parents in the great frozen state of Minnesota. And yes, it was as cold as it sounds.

Luckily, despite being a (second time around) California transplant, I spent the majority of my formative years in Wisconsin and therefore did not curl up in a little ball on the sidewalk, where I would undoubtedly have gotten stuck (think that flagpole licking scene in A Christmas Story) and whimpered like a little girl.

And it's a good thing too because had I not been made of hardier stock I would have missed my friend Petey's gracious tour of her stomping grounds of the Twin Cities.

Though my parents live in a rather nice suburb of St. Paul, I am unfamiliar with the layout of St. Paul and Minneapolis as they moved there after I had graduated from college. As far as I can ascertain, the two cities are several miles apart and are interconnected with many, many highways, which will also route you to the various suburbs that surround the major metropolises.

Petey is an architect and she knows that I am going for a master's urban planning so she tailored a comprehensive, but concise tour of her towns. For example, in some perverse trek to a structural engineering's Mecca, we drove over the I-35W bridge that had collapsed on August 1, 2007 and which has since been reconstructed. We were driving too fast and it was too late at night to admire the new details, but it was a sober reminder that civic improvements should never be neglected.

We also went to Dinkytown, which, according to Wikipedia, is an area within the Marcy Holmes neighborhood in Minneapolis. Dinkytown can be found at 14th Avenue Southeast and 4th Street Southeast and is also part of the north side of UMinn's Twin Cities East Bank campus.

Full disclaimer: Dinkytown is not a slander against the hard-working Midwestern folk that live in that neighborhood, it is its official name and if you ever have a chance to go there, I strongly encourage it.

Not to sound like some pretentious new urbanist idiot but it is an "adorable" community- quiet streets lined with trees festooned with twinkle lights, cozy Mom and Pop shops and untouched, unscathed by Pottery Barn, Barnes and Noble, or Starbucks. More disclaimers are in order- if the IRS were to pull up my bank records they would see that the majority of my free money does go toward padding the coffers of Barnes and Noble and Starbucks. But even my favorite Saint Arbucks/Starshmucks and Noble Barn cannot compete with an old school used bookstore or coffee shop.

Tempting restaurants abound in Dinkytown and Petey and I caught up over perfectly chilled Strongbow ciders, the official drink of the Queen of Denmark (!), at the Kitty Club, or something like that, which is an awesome bar, not what you probably think the name implies.

Unfortunately, the Loring Pasta Bar (formerly Gray's Drug) was too crowded to eat at, which is a shame because Bob Dylan lived in that building. There is a mural dedicated to him around the corner from the visually spectacular Varsity Theater.

But I did indulge in my number one vice, used bookstores and purchased several works, including a work entitled, Cities & People by Mark Girouard, which will be reviewed in an upcoming blog. The fact that the publisher chose Gustave Caillebotte's Paris Street: Rainy Day, for the cover, wins them extra points.

(it's the huge mid-19th century rainy day street scene that Ferris Bueller and friends stand in front of in Ferris Bueller's Day Off when they visit the Art Institute in Chicago. Yeah, yeah, once an art historian, always an art historian) ;-)>

[Unfortunately, my literary indulgence almost meant that I had to check a bag at United at the airport and pay their baggage fee lest I inadvertently tear my shoulder from its socket. Grrr.]

Starving, we then headed to downtown Minneapolis, which I had visited as a child. Upon my initial visit I had been enamored by the everpresent skywalks- enclosed glass and steel bridges that jut out from buildings like tree branches, allowing people to traverse from building to building without being exposed to the frigid weather. Still a genius idea as until global warming kicks into high gear Minneapolis is going to continue to be a frozen tundra in the dead of winter and the less exposure to the elements the better.

Petey knew of an excellent Irish pub, Kieran's (330 2nd Ave., Minneapolis) whose offerings did not fail to delight. I had a fork tender pot roast and she enjoyed a chicken pot pie with puff pastry crust. The music, was sadly, not anything resembling Irish folk or punk, instead we tuned out Fastball and other musical oddities.

Alas, I had a plane to board the next day and our fun had to end. I promised Petey that I would visit her when the weather is warmer and we could explore more. And as you know dear reader, a review of those adventures will be in order. In the meantime, if you have a chance to visit the Twin Cties, there is much in store for you too! Happy 2009!