Secrets of the City

When I saw this: Dinosaurs in St. Paul I thought you were referring to:

a) Mazaspazza’s Family Reunion

b) Republican National Convention

c) Norm Colman Sr.’s Sexual Exploits

Nonetheless if MNspeak gets the pop up ads for this one they won’t make me as sick as the BodyCorpse Exhibit did.

Jeez…I put the kids down for a nap and Raindog steals all of my material for the weekend. Guess I’ll go back to my book.

Just when we are about to give up on maz and/or raindog, they give us something like this.

Good doggie! LOL.

My understanding is that Savoy Pizza is offering a hide-the-sausage pizza special in honor of Norm, Sr.

Someday we will share the top secret RNC 10 Ten lists from the St. Paul cynics. But back to dinosaurs. . .

We had our summers of Peanuts statues and that got pretty lame — except for when Snoopy was beheaded on Rice Street. There’s a great story about how the head was recovered through an error in an East Side neighborhood newspaper — reporting not that there was a $500 Crimestoppers reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction, but simply a reward.
That error led to a quick phone call from someone claiming to have found (make your air quote marks here) the head and wanting the reward. No reward was paid, even though Crimestoppers really wanted to send the woman a check. (No wonder that group almost went belly-up!)
In my past life on Rice Street as a community volunteer, one of my stranger tasks was to retrieve the head from the police department evidence room and then deliver the head for repairs. Those Snoopy heads are incredibly heavy. The police advised me to wrap the head in a tarp so I would not be turned in as the Snoopy vandal and head thief.
It WAS fun to tour the Tivoli Too facilities but I am still reminded of being the ONE vote against sponsoring a Snoopy, during a North End Business Association meeting.

But I’ll try to have a better attitude this time around. . .
How about. . . a drunkasaurus statue near the colleges? An empty-storefront-asaurus downtown?

I like how KARE11’s coverage of the story on this evening’s news included footage of random (dark, snowy) street corners in St. Paul. Perhaps to show where a dinosaur could hypothetically be located?

Why does everyone hate the Peanuts? The Peanuts were way better than dinosaurs. Although the whole dinosaur tie-in is neat. Maybe the Peanuts just dragged on too long.

If they don’t have Nanshiungosaurus, why bother?

My quarrel with Peanuts on Parade was:
(a) it did drag on for too long, although I was waiting for PigPen
(b) vandalism was an issue citywide. That’s why I didn’t want the local business association footing the cost on Rice Street. That took money away from other community activities. . . then we wound up raising more money to get the vandalized Snoopy repaired.
Our intent had been to auction the Snoopy statue for charity, but the repaired statue wound up at the neighborhood library. We weren’t sure anyone would buy it. The kids like it. . . but. . . when you think of what you can do in a neighborhood for a few thousand dollars, why spend it on a hunk of plastic?
We wound up putting the next Rice Street statue inside a neighborhood school, which meant access was very restricted. But at least we didn’t lose the head.
(c) The distribution of statues was somewhat controversial. The Peanuts statues were sponsored and most sponsors wanted their statue close to their business. . . which meant some neighborhoods had many statues and others had none. Don’t ask me why it became an issue, but it became an issue.
(d) While I respect the fact that folks had fun driving around to see the statues, it wasn’t something I chose to do.
(e) No one was ever able to put a figure on what the city tourism industry was able to bring in from this promotion. I’d be more supportive if we had some kind of figure beyond rough estimates.

And no one even commented on my Savoy joke!

And no one even commented on my Savoy joke!

It wasn’t funny.

Don’t know what’s worse — a bunch of ads or the fact that just saying needs to go to Midway Target and buy himself/herself a sense of humor.
I’d love to know how much we had to spend in St. Paul to arrest and prosecute the father of our former law and order mayor. When we can’t get cop cars in my neighborhood to deal with the college students or the drug houses, we joke that we need Norm Sr. and a whore in a car and we’ll get the whole West District to respond.
And that’s my point with these cute little statue campaigns. They take dough. The city put money into “marketing” itself with the Peanuts on Parade stuff — money we could have used to extend library or rec center hours. My guess is the science museum will seek sales tax dollars for this stunt.

Those blue things on Marion Street are rumored to have cost six figures.

The city is spending money trying to get a neat-o slogan… at least we’ll all get to enjoy (or mock) the dinosaurs.

Marion Street’s sculptures are part of the Western Park Sculpture Garden.You’d have to ask Public Art St. Paul what those cost to erect and maintain. Six figures — maybe the high end?

“Those blue things on Marion Street are rumored to have cost six figures.”

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Those are police officers, and only a few of them actually cost that much.

Maybe the cost I heard then was for the whole garden.

This excited me until I clicked on the story and saw some cartoony dinosaur asshatery. Yeah, a dinosaur wearing pants and a gun holster! Woo!

WTF!

So can we talk about the awesome buffalo statues scattered around Fargo? Obviously putting little statues on street corners has worked so well in the past for revitalising dead cities.

Apparently Minneapolis has erected statues of crack dealers at the bus stops around 7th & Hennepin…whoa…they’re actually moving!

It would be totally awesome if they put a life-sized T. Rex on 7th & Hennepin!

According to enchanted learning.com T. rex’s were 40 feet long and up to 20 feet tall.

That would be scare away some crack dealers!

By a happy accident at the tail end of a scotch tasting, I found that the sound of live bagpiping makes crack dealers scatter. If only this guy were still alive…he could clean up downtown.

Apparently Minneapolis has erected statues of crack dealers at the bus stops around 7th & Hennepin…whoa…they’re actually moving!

I totally thought this was going to be a Mary Tyler Moore Joke. Then I realized all the crack is to be had on Hennepin.

I think we should stage a massive satirical anti-evolution rally. We could talk about the city promoting its religion of “Secularism” and its belief system of “Evolution” and we can rant about how dinasaurs didn’t exist. We could carry signs that say “Keep the mythical dyno-creatures out of our city!”

Are you sure? No crack on Nicollet? Can it be?

Some nights you walk through beautifully lit Rice Park before a hockey game when there’s something at the Ordway and maybe a Roller Girlz gig and it feels like an incredibly happenin’ town. Hopefully before I leave this world St. Paul will get to a place where it doesn’t need copycat “art” gimickry to lure folks downtown.

But until then, bring on the dino-bores!