Featured Stories

Need a kicky pair of high heels or an affordable, eco-friendly coffin? Two shops sharing a building on Saint Paul's evolving Smith Avenue are ready to help with fashion or funerals.

In A Line or Two, I share some of my discoveries and enthusiasms as I make my way around the Twin Cities. Call it an editor's-note-as-blog-entry. This week: National Bike Month, with its galaxy of two-wheel events and promotions, has the potential to get me out from behind the computer.

The New Orleans-based public artist, known for whimsical, low-tech projects that get people talking about the intersection between their cities and their lives, was here to kick off an inquiry into the  transformation of Hennepin Avenue and the future of our towns.

In A Line or Two, I share some of my discoveries and enthusiasms as I make my way around the Twin Cities--call it an editor's-note-as-blog-entry. This week: Let's get our towns deeper into The City 2.0, the exciting urban-idea initiative promoted by TED.

Kate Nordstrum's genre-busting musical programming at Minneapolis' Southern Theater caught the eye of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra's innovative concert planners. Now she's teaming up with the SPCO to present a new series that explores the space between indie-experimental and concert-hall classical.

They've all ditched a "regular" job to work with their hands, creating beautiful and useful things. Their stories show what it takes: a vision, courage, a willingness to watch your pennies, and a lot of love.

In A Line or Two, I share some of my discoveries and enthusiasms as I make my way around the Twin Cities--call it an editor's-note-as-blog-entry. This week: an infographic that makes some amusing and very fine distinctions between two closely related species.

From books to documentaries to television appearances, Geoffrey Canada has earned accolades as an education reform leader and the head of Harlem Children’s Zone. Last week he was in Minneapolis to speak to a convention of youth and educators involved in the service-learning movement, where he told them "you never know when you'll be needed."

Saint Paul's Selby Avenue is the home of some celebrated and beloved local institutions. But for this issue, lensman Bill Kelley took portraits of Selby Avenue places that may be a bit below your radar unless you know the street well--plus some cool new businesses that have popped up in recent months. It's our effort to show how one of the Saintly City's most attractive, even genteel, streets is also one of its most dynamic and diverse.

In A Line or Two, I share some of my discoveries and enthusiasms as I make my way around the Twin Cities--call it an editor's-note-as-blog-entry. This week: SnakPak, one museum professional's off-the-wall online compendium of wit and beauty.

The teeshirts bearing the brand Forgotten are articles of faith as well as articles of clothing. The fledgling company was created to help the Ugandan farmers and cotton spinners who create the shirts and the inner-city Minneapolis teens who screen-print them. Now a major rock tour is set to take Forgotten gear to a new level.

Minnebar, our annual, semi-structured geek get-together, is becoming a tradition and a real force in the local tech community. This year's conference happened on Saturday, April 7--and two experienced tech bloggers gave their views of the confab soon after. Here are some excerpts.

In A Line or Two, I share some of my discoveries and enthusiasms as I make my way around the Twin Cities--call it an editor's-note-as-blog-entry. This week: A web site that makes hiking through our towns an exercise in historical imagination.

Fueled by ice cream, pizza, and rivers of Red Bull, hundreds of nerds recently gathered at the University of Minnesota’s St. Paul campus to help “good nonprofits with not-so-good websites.”

What do you do when the urban garden you've struggled to create gets sold out from under you? At the recent Community Garden Spring Resource Fair, New York gardening advocate Karen Washington told local growers that if they want their gardens to be really sustainable--i.e., permanent--they'd better get savvy about the political system.