We Minneapolitans have a mayor who loves the arts. R.T. Rybak was live-tweeting from the Paul Simon concert last night, which doesn't exactly make him hip, but, then, he's 55 years old, and Lenny Bruce once said there is nothing sadder than an aging hipster. So he might not be going to basement noise rock shows (or maybe he is; I haven't seen his itinerary), but he makes a credible showing at a wide variety of arts events. Just a few nights ago, I crashed an Ivy Awards party, and there he was, microphone in hand, talking about the importance of the Twin Cities theater scene.

He's always at events like this. He's doing what I would be doing, were I mayor, although not to the extent that I would do it. I'd really abuse my position. When Lady Gaga comes to town, I'd be following her around, clutching a key to the city. She'd go back to her hotel room at the end of a concert and there I would be, presenting her with a "Lady Gaga Day" proclamation and a bottle of champagne. There are no velvet ropes when you are mayor.

Minneapolis has always been an arts town, but it seems especially so now, and I suspect that is, to a large extent, Rybak's influence. Just wander around the four or five blocks that surround City Hall in downtown Minneapolis; there are little art shows going on everywhere.

I love this section of town, by the way. It's so exciting! It's nonresidential and there aren't many retail spaces, so it's mostly politicians, lawyers, police officers, and criminals marching in and out of the various government buildings — sometimes they're frog marching! There's nothing like seeing a young couple on their way to get a civil marriage get startled by a group of orange-clad prisoners in handcuffs being walked into a building by guards with shotguns. But who else would you want to witness your special day?

We'll start with City Hall. There's an entrance by the light rail, presided over by a statue of Hubert H. Humphrey that is supposed to look like he's orating, but instead looks as though he's ducked outside for a cigarette — every so often pranksters will assist this impression by putting a Marlboro in his fingers. Skip this entrance. City Hall looks disappointing from this side, as though it consists of nothing but a series of small hallways and cramped offices that haven't been remodeled since the '70s — which is pretty much true of the building. But go in the Fourth Street entrance and you'll see a different building altogether. It has a rotunda with a vaulting stained-glass ceiling. Right in the middle is one of my favorite sculptures, an enormous neoclassical representation of the Mississippi River by artist Larkin Goldsmith Mead. And what did he imagine the Mississippi to look like? Like a giant, naked, bearded man sitting atop an angry alligator who seems ready to attack a snapping turtle.

The City Hall rotunda is currently home to not one but two different exhibitions. The first demonstrates how Minneapolis honors its public servants, so there are a variety of medals and pins and whatnot, including a group of eggs with caricatured human faces that are given to people for being particularly creative, apparently to punish civil servants for thinking too hard by giving them nightmares.

The second exhibit is a collection of political cartoons by Scott Long, who charted Hubert H. Humphrey's entire political career in a series of illustrations for the Tribune. This is a rather ingenious approach to telling the story of Humphrey, although most of Long's cartoons seem to consist of Humphrey looking thoughtful as a donkey stares at him. Nobody has yet added cigarettes to any of the Humphrey images, but it's probably just a matter of time.

Across the street from City Hall is our federal courthouse, and, for some reason, the plaza in front of the building has been covered in illogical clumps of dirt and grass, as though great balls of mud had just landed there. Atop these are dozens of little statues by Tom Otterness, an artist who is both famous for his public art and for having once killed a dog as an art project back in 1977, a piece he called "Shot Dog Film." He has offered a very sincere public apology for the piece, calling it "indefensible," but that's the sort of thing that will haunt an artist for life.

It's his sculptures that are likely to haunt people entering the federal courthouse. They're a series of cartoonish little creatures, some looking like anthropomorphized animals, some with bowler derbies and chewing on cigars. They frolic on the plaza, climbing the clumps of grassy earth, playing games with each other, and taking photographs. Considering that a lot of the people brought to the federal courthouse are there on drug charges, entering the building must be a disconcerting experience for them. I imagine more than a few have stopped in their tracks on the way in, seeing the statues, and thought to themselves "An acid flashback? Not now! NOT NOW!"

Across the street from this and kitty-corner to the City Hall is the Public Service Center, which, as I understand it, houses offices that perform such vital functions as human resources and tracking flu outbreaks. They were the recipient of a large number of images by photographer Wing Young Huie, all from his "Lake Street USA" project back in 2000. Many of you no doubt remember this project — Huie had spent a year or so taking pictures of people along Lake Street, and then he displayed them on the street itself.

The Public Services Center has a large number of these on display just now, and it's nice to revisit them, although it's a bit startling. Perhaps because he shoots in black and white, Huie's photos look as though they're from another era altogether, despite having been taken just over a decade ago. Huie captured a Lake Street that has since been transformed. Although he focuses on people, you can see the street in the background, and an entire section that is now a collection of Mexican restaurants, mercados, and cowboy-boot stores was once nothing but boarded up businesses, massage parlors, thrift stores and more massage parlors.

But, as I said, it is people that interest Huie. He has a little section called "hair," consisting of three images of women with extraordinary coiffures, including a group of three women in striped shirts standing across the street from Bryant-Lake Bowl, pushing babies in strollers who all likewise wear striped shirts.

Sometimes women like to wear their hair high (sometimes men too; see Christopher Walken for an example), but these women have taken it to truly envious levels. Their bangs stick straight up, a fountain of hair, a Krakatau of hair; one literally seems to be a foot taller because of her hair. All three wear sunglasses, and you don't usually see people who seem to affect precisely the same look and uniform as these women have. More should, though. When one person dresses in an unusual way, it's an eccentricity. When three do, it's a movement.