Featured Stories

This week's Line or Two looks at a web site that showcases a wide range of colorful, informal images of the Twin Cities--sketches done on site in Saint Paul and Minneapolis by local artists who belong to a worldwide network of urban sketchers.

It's weathered industry exoduses and foreclosure--but now the proud old East Side Saint Paul neighborhood is home to a hot new bar/restaurant, Ward 6, that's both a sign of, and a force in, a wider renewal. 

On March 15, the nominees for this year's Minnesota Book Awards got together with the general public--not for the award ceremony, which isn't till April, but for some informal reading, book-buying and pressing of the flesh. Free (or mostly free) of the award-night jitters, it was a chance to celebrate our extremely vibrant literary community--and Bill Kelley was there.

This week: You've heard of "yarn bombing," knitting as a kind of graffiti (knitted cozies around trees and phone poles, yarn symbols strung through the links of chain-link fences, etc.). But how about knitting as out-there performance art? Our most fabulous local yarnmeister, StevenBe, will be doing just that on March 23rd. How will he turn knitting into performance? By weaving in stories--yarns?--from his glamorous life.

Once the exclusive province of privileged young white men heading for law degrees, debate is flourishing in inner-city schools here, thanks to the Minnesota Urban Debate League. The disciplined, demanding, and fun "mind sport" is helping kids of color and of lower income develop study and thinking skills--and get into college.

On the frontier of urban development today are some big players: major medical, educational, and other institutions with a stake in the growth and well-being of their communities. They're not just building new buildings--they're revitalizing neighborhoods in partnership with government, nonprofits, and citizens.

Despite a feisty ongoing effort to keep it open, Saint Paul's much-loved College of Visual Arts is slated to close--all the more reason to hurry over there to hear a talk about a fascinating Baroque artist, given by a fascinating local art historian/entrepreneur.

When Heather and Brent Fredrickson bought a modernist house in a historic Saint Paul neighborhood that was something of a midcentury architectural showcase, they had one big problem: an awkward bathroom. The remodel they did added a 21st-century environmental ethic to the whole home.

Both St. Paul and Minneapolis have committed themselves to making their downtowns more residential, with major projects to develop the infrastructure a genuine residential neighborhood requires. But, says Minnesota 2020 fellow Agata Miszczyk, an emphasis on rental units and luxury buildings is holding back the vitality that the downtowns need.

Stumbling upon the blog/online magazine that may be the one place to go if you want to know what smart young millennials in creative industries here are thinking and feeling. Hint: there's a lot of pop culture, irony, and a self-consciousness about hipsterdom that's intense but cheerful. And some serious stuff too.

Last Wednesday's kickoff event for the linkup between the search-engine giant and the local coworking space was full of energy, ambition, and promise for local entrepreneurs, some of whom think Silicon Prairie's ready to bloom.

From "road diets" to "advisory bike lanes" to Complete Streets programs, Twin Cities suburbs are beginning to create infrastructure and policy to turn their familiar auto-only paradigm into a new vision of walkable, bikeable streets.

This week: A greeting card in a coffee shop sends me to a Minneapolis West Bank memorial that recalls a beloved, vanished building and honors the history and traditions of generations of West Bankers.

The University of St. Thomas's Minneapolis campus is home to a quiet program that's incubated and helped fund some of the Twin Cities' most prominent (and promising) tech startups--including several run by women. It's a place where professors turn into business advisors and colleagues and the help just keeps on coming.

About a third of college students today, writes John Van Hecke, are 25 or older, and they have very different issues from 18-to-22-year old "standard" college kids, including family responsibilities, time constraints, and special financial needs. Dealing with these concerns, he argues, is crucial for developing Minnesota's 21st-century workforce.