Midway : Featured Stories

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.”

An aggressive, and unconventional, marketing campaign to keep people coming to Central Corridor businesses during light rail construction in 2011 appears to have paid off in less business decline than expected--and a mood of cautious optimism about the future.

A couple of distinguished local boutique chocolatiers, one big and one small, are helping holiday chocolate lovers forget the foil-wrapped Santa--with high-cacao-content, eco-conscious, elegant bonbons and truffles.

Often, says Concordia University economist and biz-school dean Bruce Corrie, our minority and immigrant communities are seen solely through the "problem" lens. Their struggles are real, but their contributions to our prosperity and potential for growth are greater than most majority Minnesotans realize. And Corrie's got the figures to prove it.

With winter nipping at our heels, we thought it would be appropriate to take a lingering second look at the beautiful Twin Cities community gardens that Managing Photographer Bill Kelley shot back in August--eight little paradises in Saint Paul and Minneapolis where community spirit is cultivated along with the flowers and vegetables.

Midway Stadium doesn't have enough showers for two teams, it's not fully handicap-accessible, and the outfield is actually sinking a little bit each year. Little wonder that the Saint Paul Saints want to build a brand-new stadium in Lowertown. But the old park is still a fine performance venue for a club that pioneered oddball baseball.

Nobody expected Central Corridor light-rail construction to be easy on the small businesses along the route. But now that the challenges of access and parking are hitting, business owners, the Saint Paul Area Chamber of Commerce and other local organizations are working to keep the Corridor as customer-friendly as possible.

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.

To celebrate the creation a graduate minor in product design, and raise awareness of the field within the Twin Cities' vibrant design community, the University of Minnesota's College of Design held a wide-ranging symposium on the discipline of designing objects to sell. Experts weighed in on everything from the role of humor in design creativity to the popularity of vintage clothing stores--and more than one presenter warned that the increasing geographical separation of design centers from factories is weakening product design in the US and favoring China, where designers and producers interact with ease.

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.

Our techno-skeptical writer (and master gardener) Meleah Maynard showed up at a gathering of Twitter- and Facebook-friendly farmers and garden folk--last month's Social Media Breakfast at the State Fairgrounds. The scene was a little strange (half the audience was tweeting or texting during the presentations) but Meleah found herself warming up to the new ways Minnesotans are using the social web to get the word out about healthy food.