creative economy : Buzz

The New York Times recently featured Minnesota's statewide “museum month,” which is coming up in May.

It’s the first celebration of the sort to spring up nationally, according to the newspaper.

Several local museum administrators came up with the idea, the story states.

“The rich history of Minnesota’s museums invites such a focus,” says the Times, citing the 1849 founding of the Minnesota Historical Society in St. Paul.

The Walker Art Center’s chief of operations, Phillip Bahar, is quoted saying, “There are stories that we each try to tell individually, whenever a special exhibition is happening,” but “What we want to do is tell the stories that we don’t have the opportunity to tell very often, about the broader community of museums across the state.”

An episode of the Food Network TV show “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives” this week spotlights Pizzeria Lola, a popular pizza joint in Southwest Minneapolis.

Pizzeria Lola, which features wood-fired artisan pizzas, is known for a creative menu that includes everything from a Korean barbecue-style pizza to the “Sunnyside” pizza, which is topped with an egg.

The neighborhood eatery is a favorite of chef and TV/radio personality Andrew Zimmern, according to a summary on the show’s website.

Another part of the episode takes viewers to a destination diner in Georgetown, Texas, with actor Matthew McConaughey.

The Huffington Post includes the Twin Cities in its recent list of top 10 places for bicycling.

It recognized cities of over 100,000 residents that “feature an abundance of great rental shops, municipal bike racks, exciting trails, and dedicated bike lanes,” the story states.

“The Twin Cities' emergence as a bike-friendly superstar coincided with a general plan to make the area more livable,” according to the story.

In Minneapolis, the Nice Ride bike-sharing program has seen plenty of use, while bike-friendly events are abundant.

Last year the city “added 37 miles of bikeways, installed hundreds of bike-specific street signs, and created a citywide bike map," says HuffPo.

Minneapolis is among the top 10 U.S. cities to make a comeback in population terms after the recession, according to Forbes.

The magazine used IRS data to draw its conclusions.

It looked for “counties that were losing population in 2005 but that were either gaining in 2010 or losing far fewer people,” the story states. “Every city on this list saw more people move in 2010 than in 2005, so we aren’t merely recognizing cities that have already lost all of their mobile population.”

Demographer William Frey says in the story that places such as Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Washington, D.C., have a strong group of people he calls “windfall stayers” or those “who otherwise would have moved out either to their own suburbs, or to more economically vibrant places,” plus others making a return move to the city.  

In Minneapolis, “inbound migration has grown, attracted to a region whose diverse economy has kept unemployment low throughout the recession, and to a vibrant city center.”

In a review of the film's release on DVD, Pop Matters points out that Minneapolis is one of the stars in “Stuck Between Stations,” which stars Josh Hartnett.

The couple upon whom the film centers “may or may not love each other, but they clearly love their city,” it says.   

Minneapolis becomes a character in the movie, and its “signature characteristics are on display: its art, its architecture, even its bicycling culture,” while local bands are also featured.

The author also praises the film’s cinematography, which shows “visually stunning” views of the area.

Director of photography Bo Hakala, who lives in Minneapolis, demonstrates his “love for his home city and its visual appeal manifests itself gloriously on screen.”  

 

A recent USA Today story highlights the makeover of the Hyatt Regency hotel in downtown Minneapolis.

As a part of a $25 million project that started in December 2011, the hotel charged its designers with creating a “sleek, new look with an eye towards all things “local”--including Red Wing Pottery,” the story states.

Michael Suomi, design chief for Stonehill & Taylor, which came up with the architectural and design plans, is quoted saying "We had a specific goal of bringing as much of the manufacturing and sourcing back to America to promote job growth, increase speed to market and celebrate American craft"--adding that this way, “we saved money!"

The Walker Art Center blog features artist Aaron Draplin’s graphic map, called, “100 Things I Love About Minneapolis.”

The image shows a map of the state, which is filled in with words and illustrations that touch on everything from the iconic Grain Belt Brewery sign to the common phrase, “You betcha.”

It includes landmarks along with bits and pieces of pop culture. Among the destinations it pictures are the Ideal Diner in Northeast Minneapolis, Ax-Man Surplus store in St. Paul and downtown Minneapolis skyways.

The American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis recently announced its June 30 grand reopening with the addition of the Nelson Cultural Center.

The expansion and other campus enhancements will get a visit from Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia in October. During their Minnesota trip, the king and queen will also go to the Swedish-founded Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, which will be celebrating its 150th anniversary.

“The Nelson Cultural Center’s innovative design and handcrafted, Swedish-inspired detailing embrace Nordic values--including respect for nature and quality materials, as well as for the environment, through energy conservation and sustainable building practices,” the statement from the American Swedish Institute reads.  

The Knight Blog features a couple of its local grantees who were recently profiled by Minnesota Monthly. 

Dana Nelson of GiveMN and Laura Zabel of Springboard for the Arts are Minnesotans who are “changing the way we think about the world--and its future," according to the magazine story.

Nelson is giving philanthropy a new twist while Zabel is empowering artists, it states.

A recent posting from The Atlantic highlights an interesting crime-fighting strategy at work in Minneapolis.

Classical music is being played at various light rail stations to “dissuade criminal behavior,” it states.

The strategy, which the city began using last summer, is based on the idea that “potential criminals find classical music so detestable that they won’t hang around the station long enough to realize their criminal potential: 'If it encourages some people to wander away because it's not their favorite type of music, I guess that's okay,'" said Acting Transit Police Chief A.J. Olson.”  

Minneapolis took inspiration from Portland. “Oregon lawmakers liked the tactic so much." says the Atlantic, "that they proposed a bill that would require light rail stations in high-crime areas to play classical music as long as they remain open.”

Minneapolis is full of opportunity for job seekers looking to work in social media, according to a study on the Mediabistro/All Twitter web site, City Pages reports.

The city comes in number 13 nationally, “second in the Midwest only to Chicago,” City Pages states.

New York, San Jose, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Boston top the list.

In Minneapolis, the highest-paying job in this niche is social media marketing manager, which has a salary range of $54,000 to $85,000. “Minneapolis may not be the home of new-media giants like Twitter and Google, but we're aren't the social media backwoods, either,” says City Pages.

The recent premiere of the Travel Channel’s new show, “Bizarre Foods America,” hosted by local chef Andrew Zimmern, featured a number of outstanding local delicacies.

In his column in Mpls. St. Paul Magazine, Zimmern lists some of the distinctive places to which the new show goes, including area farms, streams, and lakes and a Hmong market.

The Minneapolis restaurant Piccolo offers a “lesson in meat glue 101” from Doug Flicker; a local VFW hall has a hot-dish cook-off, and at Haute Dish in Minneapolis, Zimmern pitches in with offal hot dish. St. Paul's The Blue Door Pub also makes it into the show.

Zimmern adds, “I couldn’t be prouder of the show, our local crew, the fans who came out to watch, and the local stars [who] opened up their farms and restaurants to us. “  

A January posting from Publishers Weekly praises Minneapolis' Coffee House Press for its recent accomplishments amid a change in leadership.

Two of its fall 2011 releases, Leaving the Atocha Station, a first novel by Ben Lerner and Song I Sing, a debut poetry collection from Bao Phi, “have been published to critical acclaim in major media publications," it states.

“Leaving the Atocha Station,” PW writes, “landed with the sort of bang that most book publishers can only dream of,” with a lengthy and positive review in the New Yorker.

It’s also been talked about in the New York Review of Books, National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air” show, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Foreign Policy.

In a regular column in USA Today called, The Pop Traveler, local writer Amanda Fretheim Gates makes a list of top 10 reasons to visit the Twin Cities.

The iconic First Avenue, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Chain of Lakes, skyways, Hennepin Theatre District, local brews, public art, and Jucy Lucy hamburgers are just some of the things that she enjoys about the area.

From her home, “I'm never more than 15 minutes from a play, museum, park, lake, farm-fresh dining, and tax-free shopping,” she says.

In general, “The people are friendly, the cultural offerings stellar, the sports exciting (if not depressing at times) and the outdoors flourishing all year round,” she writes.

The Atlantic magazine features Kopplin’s Coffee in St. Paul in a compilation of 35 top-notch neighborhood coffeehouses around the country.

The article starts out with a point about coffee trends in the U.S.: “Despite, or perhaps because of, the rapid expansion of Starbucks and other standardized chains, small coffeehouses are flourishing,” and Americans are getting more sophisticated in their coffee tastes.

Kopplin’s Coffee in St. Paul stands out in part because it’s “truly about supporting the local community,” with milk from locally raised grass-fed cows and Fair Trade and organic coffee.

The magazine also suggests stopping by Rustica Bakery in Minneapolis for a pastry.