Secrets of the City

Hardcore Dave is definitely some Mpls that I don’t get to see often enough…

Schnapps.

How do you paint a white person eating really bland food? …oh wait, that’s Maple Grove. Sorry.

…a bipolar bisexual listening to ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ while drinking boxed wine while watching the river go by at Marshall Terrace with the hobo fire.

Close — a bipolar bisexual in recovery listening to “Let’s Go Crazy” while watching the river go by a at Marshall Terrace with the hobo fire.

Good call on Hardcore Dave!

“I’m pretty much synonymous with rock & roll,” Dave says. “People recognize me at shows and they’ll go, ‘There’s Hardcore Dave, Rock God of the Twin Cities.’ I mean, sure, I go to a lot of shows, but people are making a mountain out of a molehill. I love to rock out, but I’m open to lots of other things besides music. You can’t get by with being one-dimensional. I try to be like a diamond. Multi-faceted.”

Makes me want to get to work on my oil painting of Lyndale and 24th in the summertime. Too bad we’ve lost so many trees. Too bad I’ve moved out of the neighborhood. Too bad about the construction. Maybe I should paint from memory.

Maybe it’s just the times, but I’d paint a picture of Kirby Puckett, because he was all of us.

I keep thinking of more…

- summer nights on Nikki’s Cafe patio
- wanderer’s at red dragon
- lake calhoun on the first day over 50 degrees
- phil harder movie nights in somebody’s yard
- the big, beautiful bar @ Monte Carlo
- the dome and all of it’s wonders
- first avenue any night of the week
- the old loring

- the waterfalls

I’ll throw in my who/whats:

Adam Levy and Hookers & Blow
Garrison Keillor
Spoonbridge and the Walker
Prince
Jesse Ventura
St. Sabrina’s
Grumpy’s NE
Eat Street
MN Fringe Festival
Dr. Mambo’s Combo

The May Day Festival in Powderhorn (1st chance to see everyone emerge from indoors)
Dancing all night at an African after-party
Running around Minnehaha Falls & sitting on the rocks by the Mississippi
Board games @ the Chatterbox on a snowy day
the L Pigs at the Viking
Music and Movies in Loring Park
Ax Man (it’s in St. Paul [Wellstone], but…)
http://www.creativeelectricstudios.com
A mahi mahi taco at the Lake Calhoun fish stand
I could go on…

- Outdoor seating, drinking beer, watching traffic.
- A midnight bike ride downtown (or anywhere).
- Sweating in the shade on a neighbor’s porch in the summer.
- Sledding
- Sitting in a coffee shop, trying to decide what to do with the night.
- Looking up and realizing you’ve been in Cheapo for an hour.

A pick up summer soccer game at Pearl Park where none of the players are speaking English.

scott sekins. (shudder)

and dave, the guy who always asks me to sign his shopping cart/staff/jacket.

If I were a student, I’d enter these paintings or photos about Minneapolis, and hands-down win the show. Then I’d get to talk to local celebrity and activist Robyne Robinson.

Part One: Four groups of people wait in line a Cub foods. First is a young, slightly pudgy college girl with a grey U of M sweatshirt, with her hair in a ponytail and a nose piercing. She has a basket with some boxes in it and is looking through a checkout line magazine. Behind her is a middle-aged Somali woman wearing a head covering and with a cart full of food, just patiently waiting. Then there’s an older white couple both wearing glasses and both wearing outdoor-sy fleece jackets, with a basket full of fruit and a bottle of juice. The woman has long, dangling earrings and the man has a trimmed white beard. Last, a younger Latino couple has a small child in the cart seat and the man is holding a three year old who is pointing at all the different sights of a Cub foods check out isle. No group is talking to another.

Part Two: An early 30-something blonde woman with a obvious fake tan steps out a GMC Envoy in front of Chino Latino where a few people are smoking outside. Despite the inches of snow everywhere, she’s wearing tiny strapped shoes with designer jeans, a skimpy pastel tank top, and a light jacket. The valet is grabbing one hand, helping her out, and she’s clutching her tiny purse in the other hand, and stepping right in a snow bank. She has an annoyed expression on her face.

Hardcore Dave is a good example, but I haven’t seen him forever. I guess I work too much, or maybe he’s moved.

Mpls. is very diverse in its offerings be it Music , Art or the array of exceptional culinary choices we have. We have a flowing artistic community to say the least. We do have our own issues…but we seem to continue to grow. Maybe it’s because we have such high taxes on businesses.
It does get cold here. …some people like it.

“MN nice” is an odd term for it.
The Replacements were here. RIP.
Much more.

T

ps.. MGM (mid-town Global Market) is a god-send. More please.