The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

Gangsters

by Max Sparber   ::   posted on Jul. 15, 2009 - 9:26am

Piggybacking on the release of the John Dillinger movie Public Enemies, which followed the last years of John Dillinger, who spent a fair amount of time in St. Paul, the Landmark Center is having an exhibit of artifacts from St. Paul's shady past in the exact courtroom where both Alvin "Creepy" Karpis and Billie Frechette were tried. We visited yesterday, and it's excellent (Eda Cherry does a write-up); best part: A lunatic propaganstic newsreel commissioned by Hoover to explain why agents shot Dillinger in the besk. The answer: he was a murderous mad dog, as the narrator keeps reminding with dialogue like "Dillinger's mother died when he was three, which was good luck for her considering what a gorilla he would become!"

Walker Art Center: Who Decides If It's Crap?

by Max Sparber   ::   posted on Jul. 14, 2009 - 3:20pm

Paul Schmelzer links to an opinion piece by a student at St. Cloud State who who attended the Walker Art Center, didn't really get it, and proceded to declare it "crazy" and say it "bogs my mind." I offered a rather pointed response in the comments, and quite a lot of discussion followed on Twitter. Our own Erica sums of the column, some of the discussion, and offers her perspective. The crux of the discussion was: How informed do you have to be about art before you can offer a useful or worthwhile critique of it? And are all opinions equally valuable, or do they become more valuable with more information?

Autotune Michele Bachmann

by Max Sparber   ::   posted on Jul. 13, 2009 - 11:41pm

The always excellent autotune the news takes on Michele Bachmann, and, you know what? She sounds great!

MSPmag's Adam Platt locates the best NYC sandwiches

by noodleman   ::   posted on Jul. 13, 2009 - 11:41am

Food critic, Adam Platt, contributes this piece to New York magazine: a slideshow titled Heaven On Bread. He tracks down the eight best-tasting, best-looking sandwiches in the whole of Manhattan.

My vote goes to either the House-smoked BLT or the Cuban. If we knew what was good for us here in flyover-land, we'd be enjoying these marvelous creations, too, and depart permanently from our white bread existence.

Nom nom nom!

Travel by car: Minnesota's big public subsidy

by Max Sparber   ::   posted on Jul. 13, 2009 - 8:23am

Conrad DeFiebre, writing in both Minnesota 2020 and the Daily Planet, discusses the public funds spent on automotive transportation: Start with the $1.5 billion a year in Minnesota property taxes (100 times Hiawatha’s state support) that maintain county roads, local streets and bridges, a subsidy with no relationship to use of the system. Then throw in the $8 billion Congress and former President Bush appropriated from general funds last year to keep the federal highway trust fund solvent in the face of lagging gasoline tax collections.

Curious creature roams Minneapolis Lake

by Max Sparber   ::   posted on Jul. 10, 2009 - 2:44pm

Via KARE11: Loch Ness it is not. But a Minneapolis lake seems to have its own creature claim to fame these days.  On Wednesday morning, a dinosaur sculpture appeared in the southeast corner of Lake Harriet.