Lake Street : Featured Stories

Most of us in the Twin Cities are aware that we've become a great town for bicycling in recent years, but urbanist and author Jay Walljasper--an avid biker for decades--has been digging into the trend to find out the what and the why behind it. In this adaptation of an article he wrote for Bikes Belong, he fills in the story and gives us some impressive facts about the sheer scale and promise of our new two-wheel era.

To accompany Jay Walljasper's take on bike policy and bike culture in the Twin Cities, here's a video by Streetfilms that shows just how valuable one of the crown jewels in our bikeway system is--the Midtown Greenway, running more or less parallel to Lake Street from Chowen Avenue to the Mississippi River.

Following our selection of some favorite public artworks in Saint Paul two weeks ago, here is our take on the beautiful and the quirky in Minneapolis outdoor art--minus the Spoonbridge and Cherry, which is terrific but a little overexposed. It's just a taste of the richness available, designed to get you outside looking at art before the snow flies.

In the past year or so, the Twin Cities have solidified their reputation as one of the bike-friendliest metropolitan areas in America. And we're not resting on our laurels. An expanded bike-share program, a brand-new online bike-rental business, new trails and connections, a new bike/coffee shop combo in the works, and more--they all point to a great spring for the human-powered-transport set.

When USA Network needed a new brand identity, some of the biggest ad agencies in North America competed for the account. The winner? An 11-person agency in Minneapolis with a company brand so low-key that they don't even capitalize their name. Since then, mono has become one of the hottest shops in America, applying loads of hip midwestern creative power to the proposition that simple messages are the most memorable.

In the first of a series of talks with urbanists about the future of our Cities, writer, blogger, and real estate consultant Sam Newberg, whose nom de blog is Joe Urban, lets us in on the street-level reasons why reasonably dense, pedestrian-friendly, walkable cities with good public transit make bottom-line sense. And he makes some recommendations for our Central Corridor light-rail right-of-way too--like keep the on-street parking and slow down the cars.

El Nuevo Rodeo is a a large, cheerful Mexican restaurant on Lake Street. It's also a gigantic, pretty sensational dance club upstairs, drawing huge crowds to hear the biggest names in Latin music, from Mexican banda and norte�o groups to pop and salsa superstars. For co-founder and owner Maya Santamaria, a music promoter who used to be an anthropologist, it's also a cultural and community center for the whole local Latino population--straight and gay--and a symbol of Latino entrepreneurship and enterprise in the Cities.

The palmy days of Prince, H�sker D�, the Replacements, and other iconic Twin Cities bands may have passed, but our music scene is just as vital, and a lot more diverse, today. Just as in the golden age, seeing and hearing the bands live is crucial to really getting to know the scene, so here is our list of definitive venues--from the legendary and cavernous former home base of the Purple One, First Avenue, to the beer-fragrant holes-in-the-wall where tomorrow's stars are plugging in their amps.

Nothing helps a new restaurant get off the ground faster than a fresh idea--a brand-new way to dine as well as great food and a hot location. Three new Twin Cities restaurants--the Uptown Cafeteria and Support Group, Barrio Tequila Bar, and Ringo--offer this special kind of conceptual freshness. But they give it an egalitarian Twin Cities stamp too, by fusing the drop-dead hip and the decidedly democratic.

David Byrne has seen a lot of the world as a touring mega-rocker--much of it from from the seat of a bicycle. Last Thursday he joined three notable Twin Cities bike advocates--Mayor R. T. Rybak, author and journalist Jay Walljasper, and walkability/bikeability expert Steve Clark--at the Uptown Theater for a celebration/exploration that looked at the future of urban pedal culture in the Twin Cities and the world. Hint: it's about a lot more than bike lanes.