The Armory: Remains of Minnesota sporting glory
Remembering and understanding what the Lakers accomplished here is another way for Minnesotans to see themselves.
The Stroll
The Stroll, penned and drawn by Andy Sturdevant, is a weekly look at the art, architecture, history, and visual culture of the Twin Cities — with each article focused on one geographic area, shown in a hand-drawn map. The Stroll draws readers’ attention not only to traditional works of visual art but also to architecture, street art, historic sites, public art, advertising, artists’ projects, and events on the streets and sidewalks around town.
Minnesota State Fair T-shirt bingo, 2016 edition
Four all-new bingo cards specially created to reflect this year’s T-shirt trends at the Fair.
Charles Schulz’s St. Paul: Little pieces of Schulziana are still scattered across the landscape
The world Schulz created for his “Peanuts” comic strip is largely based on the landscape he knew growing up in St. Paul in the 1920s and 1930s.
Remembering the Twin Cities’ four aviation disasters in the 1950s
Decades later, these four accidents are seldom invoked by Twin Citians in recountings of the cities’ various civic traumas.
Summer at Lake Nokomis: Swimming among teens and triathletes, playing Spot the Airplane
Each city beach has its own feel, and each is great in its own way. But the main beach at Lake Nokomis is the one that, for me, represents the best of the city lake swimming experience.
Along Lake Nokomis, ’80s fitness course survives, complete with Helvetica signage
“What makes a run around Lake Nokomis memorable,” writes Gretchen Kreuter in her 1980 guidebook “Running the Twin Cities,” “is its Vita Fitness Course.”
Roseville trek: Retracing the path of ’81’s Har Mar tornado
How TORNADO MADNESS gave us a certain Richfield-based conglomerate — and other stories from the storm’s aftermath.
Slides, swings and dirt: a kid’s-eye view of Brackett Park playground
At 4, our subject, it turns out, is a sort of playground classicist. He wasn’t very impressed with the more contemporary equipment.
Minnesota license plates: Few design changes since ’78, when the canoe and boreal forest island debuted
The motto “10,000 Lakes” has appeared on the license plate since 1950. When you find a formula that works, you stick with it.
Windsor: A ‘cosmopolitan deadpan’ quality carries this throwback typeface into the 21st century
Windsor is like your favorite aunt, the one who used to live on an ashram, wears vintage cat-eye glasses and has a rent-controlled walk-up filled with foreign-language poetry anthologies.
Overgrown and hemmed in, 19th-century potter’s field still honors indigent Minnesotans
St. Anthony Township Cemetery was established in the 1850s. It does not appear on most maps, and it would be easy to miss walking by.
A satisfying civic ritual: Marking the summer solstice
On Monday, June 20, 2016, the sun set at 9:03 p.m., after almost 16 hours of daylight. The street and house lights across the landscape slowly begin to flicker on.
The nexus of New Age Minneapolis in 1984: Uptown
If you were on the look out for oils, incense, tarot cards, iridologists, raw vegetables, juices, astrological charts, self-help tapes or Alexander Technique practitioners in 1984, there was only one place for you.
A complete inventory of Rollins Triangle, one of Minneapolis’ smallest parks
There are much worse plans for a lazy summer afternoon than buying a book from Moon Palace, getting a drink to go at Peace Coffee, and sitting on a bench reading in the shade of a honey locust tree on a tiny public triangle.
Wheelock Parkway: St. Paul’s hidden passageway from Phalen to Como
Wheelock Parkway was laid out in 1909; the land was purchased piecemeal where it was available, which may explain the somewhat the eccentric route.
St. Paul folk poetry: network names, from ‘notyourwifi’ to ‘DadUseThisOne’
Culturally, the Wi-Fi network name more or less lands somewhere between a vanity plate (but more democratic) and a custom doormat (but more ephemeral).
St. Paul house is a folk-art stucco fantasia; Defiant Martin Luther statue watches over Concordia University
Two little known Twin Cities gems, a private residence and a singular Lutheran statue, are separated by centuries and a 15-minute walk.
A once-iconic office park in Edina offers an up-close look at how aesthetic styles change
Part of the 43-acre site has been demolished, and the rest awaits significant development in the near future.
Since Prince’s death, several sites are imbued with elevated meaning
So complete was his connection with the city that even physical sites with no obvious external association with Prince now seem intimately connected to him.
Flying Cloud Drive: Great burgers and views, Graffiti Underpass and the Valley of Vintage Beer Cans
The internal workings of Flying Cloud Airport remain a mystery. But the airport remains a somewhat glamorous backdrop for a walk through the valley on the edge of Eden Prairie.
