Stray Hawkeye

I went to the dentist last week.  While most people seem to dread dentist visits, I actually kind of look forward to mine.  So, I thought I’d recommend mine in case any of my fellow Minneapolis residents, especially fellow transplants, are looking for a good dentist – Isles Dental.  They’re in Uptown along Hennepin, and they have a website, though it’s, um, a little less than awe-inspiring, but useful for getting the address and phone number I suppose.

Anyway, they’re always really nice and fairly upbeat, especially their receptionist, who may be the most consistently pleasant and chipper person I’ve ever come across.  Their equipment is new and clean and seems very up to date.  For instance, when they take x-rays, they show up on a laptop right next to you, and they can pull up past ones and compare them side by side, and show you what they’re looking at.  They’re also pretty good at having it not be painful (though admittedly I haven’t had any cavities recently, so I might not be the best gauge of that), and are good at having some pleasant conversation leading up to the exam, but letting it trail off just before you get to that whole trying to have a conversation with your mouth hanging open while someone hold a sharpened pick in your mouth thing that some dentists do.  They’re also just generally considerate of the small things like if the light is shining in your eyes, or if you need to swallow, or if they’ve gotten all the crunchy gunk out of your mouth.

Thought I’d pass it along in case any of you are looking for a good dentist.  I dig them.

On the flip side, does anyone know of a decent optometrist in the Twin Cities?  I’ve been to two different ones since I moved here, and really, really, disliked both of them.

Continuing the driving theme I seem to have established over the past couple of days, the free idea this week is a Pothole Spotter website.

As bits of pavement are thawing here on the frozen tundra, the potholes seem notably worse than in past years.  Now, I’m no stranger to potholes, having lived in the upper Midwest my whole life, but some of the ones this year seem pretty exceptional.  Perhaps it’s the particular combination of weather this winter, or maybe it’s the result of reduced preventive maintenance on roads with budget cut back, I don’t know.  And mind you, I’m not talking about a little bit of pockmarked road acne here, I’m talking about the tire swallowing, axle breaking caverns.

I’ve got a few on my way to work that are so substantial that I’ve modified my usual route by a few blocks to get around them, because I’m worried I’ll end up with a flat tire one of these days if I don’t (again, these are no “just swerve around them” sized pot holes).

From what I’ve seen in past years here in Minneapolis, the city’s way of patching these is to methodically drive up and down every single street on the warm days, starting when it gets up to the 40’s or 50’s, and patch every single divot on a given street, from fist sized hiccup to black hole of death, all at once.  Which sort of makes sense in a “it’s the government” kind of way.  After all, how would they know where the really bad ones are?  Or the ones that the most people drive over in a given day?  And really, what are you going to do about it anyway?

Make a Pothole Spotter website.  That’s what.

The people who are going to know best where the really bad potholes are are the people who drive through them (or swerve around them) every day.  The commuters.  So, this week’s idea is to make website where users can submit their favorite / most hated potholes.  Ideally, you would set it up so they can send in picture messages of the potholes from their phones, so you can actually see how big / bad they are.  The users should also include a description of the location (for example, 31st Street E, about 10 feet west of Stevens Ave, all of the right lane), or maybe a Google Street View link (http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Minneapolis,+Hennepin,+Minnesota&ll=44.946643,-93.275565&spn=0,359.997299&t=h&z=19&layer=c&cbll=44.946644,-93.2757&panoid=dtMqU1RZFncbKp_RddLBew&cbp=12,30.94,,0,1.07 – those two close parallel cracks at the end of the white stripe have each opened into tire sized gaps in the pavement).

The commuters would have incentives to use the site, because it could potentially help them get the worst of the potholes they have to deal with fixed quickly.  Additionally, you could offer a weekly prize for worst pothole, and let users vote on it.  The worst pothole each week would be displayed at the top of the home page. It would strike me that you could get a tire company or an auto shop (especially one that does alignments and tire balancing) or a tow truck company to sponsor the thing, and give related / amusing prizes each week.

Additionally, it would basically publicly shame the cities / street maintenance crews that are in charge of the areas where the potholes reside into fixing them.  Or, more positively, help the cities and crews to identify where they can have the greatest effect improving drivers’ experience with the least amount of manpower and resources.

You could also pit cities against each other to introduce a bit of competition to it for both the government officials and the users, and maybe get a bit of press for it in the mean time.  “Will Minneapolis or New York have the worst pothole this week?”  “Hey, did you see Miami beat us this week?!?  They don’t even have winter!  We gotta get out and find some big ones!”

Additionally, this would also give the cities a good resource for concrete data (pardon the pun) about which streets have the most issues, which could drive the choices  on which ones get priority in replacement, as well as better analysis of layouts / materials that lead to the most / worst potholes.  It could also give the ability to track which spots have potholes that reoccur each year, which could lead to analyzing the effectiveness of patches done at different temperatures, at different times, or by different crews.  In that way, you even potentially charge the cities a small fee to mine the data, or sell some consulting to analyze the data for them.

People would have smoother commutes, the city would have a greater affect of peoples daily lives with fewer resources, we gather more data to prevent future problems and promote accountability, and have some potential to make some cash on the side.  Make it so.

In driving through the Crosstown Common (where 35W and 62 overlap for about a mile) I had a thought.  If you’re not familiar with the area, as 35W approaches the Commons it narrows to two lanes, and 62 narrows to one lane, and they combine to be 3 lanes for the length of the Commons.  62 merges on to 35W from the left, and then exits off the right.

So, most people on 35W who want to stay on 35W bunch up in the left lane of 35W as they approach the Commons, as that’s the only lane that remains 35W through the Commons.  In doing so, they form a bit of a wall, which is all well and good, except that anyone who is on 62 and would like to remain on 62 has to move from the furthest left lane to the furthest right lane in order to stay on 62.  As you can imagine, fun is had by all and traffic tends to back up in all directions around it.  (They’re currently doing some massive construction to try to fix this, but at the moment, it’s still very much intact this way.)

Now, on most days this is the low light of the commute, by far, especially given the merging skills of the average Minnesotan.  But today it occurred to me while driving through this mess that, really, the highways are just playing a large scale game of Red Rover.  It made me smile the rest of the way home.

On the drive home from work, I saw a Honda Civic with the following on a bumper sticker:

Think about honking

if you [heart] conceptual art

I think in terms of flair which defines my neighborhood (Uptown), that may well take the top spot.  It knocks off the previous favorite, which I saw briefly after moving here, which was on an old VW bus and said something to the effect of:

Zero to sixty

in about twelve and a half minutes

I heard a while back (about a year ago, because, yes, I am about that far behind on some of the things I’ve been meaning to blog about) that Intermedia Arts, a local arts group/space/organization, was closing it’s gallery and laying off all of it’s full time staff because they, and the arts in general, were being hit particularly hard by the recession, and it was the only way to stay afloat.  From their website, it looks like they’re back in their space and hosting things again (admittedly I haven’t followed it all that closely), but I would tend to imagine selling art and managing galleries still isn’t exactly a booming enterprise as the moment, and that both artists and galleries are probably still squeezed pretty tightly.

Another fairly visible symptom of the recession that I’ve noticed is that there are lots more empty store fronts than usual.  Businesses close, and they leave their spaces empty, and it takes a bit longer for property owners to find someone else to rent the space.

So, putting two and two together, there are empty store fronts that look vacant and depressing, seem to be magnets for graffiti, and which are drawing no rent, and you have galleries closing and artists with no places (or less visible places at least) to sell their work or get it in front of people.  So, the free idea for this week is to set up some sort of organization / program to connect property owners and artist to display works in the front windows of empty store fronts until the space gets rented again.

Here’s a few reasons why I think this particular match up would work well for everyone.  First from the artists’ perspective:

• Your work is put in a place people are used to looking at to buy things and it gets it in front of people who may not generally go to galleries.  It’s not only a sales outlet, it’s advertising.
• In this idea, there wouldn’t be any active curator working at the store, just a locked store front with art in the windows and number to call if you wanted to buy something, or an email address, so the fees/commissions would be notably less than you would usually pay to galleries.  Also with the cheaper space and more of, there would be potential for many more artists to get exposure than usual.

From the property owner’s perspective:

• Though the rent may be notably less than if you had an actual tenant / business, it’s some income.  If the group that organizes this is set up as a charitable organization, you may be able to write off some of the difference for reduced rent (not sure about that part, but I would imagine).
• It keeps people looking at your space, noticing it, and thinking of it as a place where people sell stuff.  Again, basically free advertising.
• Reduced graffiti.  This one takes slightly more explaining.  From what I’ve seen, totally empty / basically abandoned store fronts get tagged pretty quickly.  Ones with “For Rent” signs get it slightly more slowly, but not much.  Murals almost never get tagged.  My guess is that this is because most people who tag and do graffiti on other people’s property think of themselves as artists (I think of them as jackasses, but that’s a topic for another day), and/or they have some resentment against corporations and/or they see it as much more justifiable to tag something that’s just a blank space than something that’s already decorated in some artful way.  So, my guess is that while abandoned looking store fronts get tagged in a hurry (making the property look worse, incurring costs for clean up, and making it harder to find a new tenant, because who wants to rent a place that looks like it gets tagged all the time / is in a rough neighborhood), ones that have art in the front of them, especially art from local, community artists, would get tagged much, much less.

Additional benefits / reasons these groups should love each other:

• Artist looking for a place to show their work will probably be much more flexible in lease dates.  If the property finds a tenant while there’s art in the windows, the art can be moved out and the new tenant in on basically no notice at all, especially if one art organization manages this for lots of artists and lots of spaces.  In effect the property owners don’t have to worry about losing any potential tenants.
• Without anyone being at the storefront on a regular basis, you might think theft would be a problem. However, I would have a hard time imagining it being too big of a problem, because unlike commodities such as TVs or cell phones or whatever, art’s pretty unique, and it would be hard to get any money out of reselling it without being detected.  Which means theft isn’t very profitable.  A good chunk of the worth of art is identifying who made it, and doing so is basically turning yourself in. And again, you have the fact that I would think most thieves would think it’s more justifiable to steal from a large corporation / store / chain than from a local artist who may well be just as financially hard up as they are.  Plus, if you rotate things through fairly often (once a week maybe, which would still be practically no labor cost), the space will still seem active.  Plus, if people get used to looking at it to see what’s new, people will look more, and probably report a broken window or other damage pretty quickly (another bonus for the property owner – casual strangers watching out for your store).  You could also have a very simple / cheap (maybe even fake for the deterrent factor) security camera pointed at the front window.
• The other obvious use along these lines would be advertising, but there’s lots of reasons this is better.  Basically this part ties back to the graffiti argument.  The only things that get vandalized faster than abandoned store fronts are Bebe ads.  Put some ads in an empty store front and it will look like a 3 year old playing with MS Paint in about 5 minutes.  The property owner might make a couple of bucks off the ads, but they’ll have a much higher liability for having to clean up graffiti later.  Beyond that, who wants to advertise their product in an empty store front?  Doesn’t really give the impression that most advertisers  want to get across about their product.  And, again, people tend to (at least consciously) tune out ads and/or purposely ignore them, where as art that’s new on a weekly basis would draw attention (I think).

Really, all you would need to get this going would be one or two people with a phone and the numbers of some local artists (or galleries that have artists they’re turning down) and some local property owners (and those number are already in lots of the store fronts).  The artists get exposure and potential sales, the landlords get at least some rent they wouldn’t have otherwise gotten and get it on a very flexible basis.  I would think there could be very low overhead / middleman costs, especially if a group like Intermedia Arts, or the Walker, or MIA (would seem to fit perfectly with their “Foot in the Door 4” exhibit), or MNartists.org, or Artspace were the ones to set it up, with a relatively low commission being charged on each work sold.

There could definitely be things I’m missing here as I’m neither a property owner nor involved in the business of selling art, but it seems like a win-win for everyone involved to me.  And really, it could be done any time, it just seems like there’s a lot more opportunity and need on both sides of the deal when the economy’s down.

In light of the recent Bigfoot / guy in a hoodie sighting here in Minnesota, I’d like to see a late night talk show where the host is Bigfoot.  It would be just like a normal late, late night talk show – monologue, short skits from the desk, interviews with washed up second rate actors – except that it would be hosted by a hairy, seven foot tall woods creature that never seems to be well lit and in front of the camera at the same time, and who is rather skittish.  And he would talk like this for the entire show – that part’s important.  If nothing else, it would at least make for some entertaining interviews.  A sort of Borat from the North woods, but, you know, funny.  You could always start it as a series of videos on youtube and go from there.

And while we’re at it, here’s a Bigfoot vs Paul Bunyan t-shirt – especially fitting since the recent sighting was in Bemidji, which is also where Paul Bunyan is currently residing.

Previous post in the dino-saga here and here.  And yes, it took me forever to get around to downloading the pictures from my camera for this episode, so it’s a little behind the times, but it keeps you up to date with the saga.

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Sinclair has been hanging out at my place for quite a while now, and after getting rested up after his long journey from Florida, we started our search to see if we could find Minne.  So far we’ve had no luck, but it appears from her twitter account that she’s planning to come back in the spring.  After much consoling and a few cookies, I got Sinclair to accept that he won’t be able to see her until then.  In the mean time I’ve been distracting him with Hawkeye sports.

Sinclair took me up on the suggestion that we go down to the Iowa vs Minnesota game this year and go tailgating.  Nessie sent me a letter and said that she was going to swim up to meet us there, but that Mississippi current was too strong for her, and unlike Sinclair, every time she asked a barge captain for a ride, he’d scream in fear and mutter something about needing to “cut back” and run away.  However, she told me that she had a certain feeling we’d meet another Iowa fan at the game if we told her where we’d be tailgating, so I sent her the address.

We drove down to Iowa for the game the night before so we could sleep a little there and go tailgating.  We got up early, but Sinclair was pretty restless.

So I told him to go for a little walk to burn off some energy, since he seems to be good at that.

“Come to think of it, Sinclair, are you old enough to drink?”

“Oh, I suppose that makes sense, kind of.  Ready for another?”

“Sure.  Are you guys hungry?  We’re a little too lazy to do actual grilling tailgate food, but we do have some cookies and chips.”

“Sinclair, that’s an awful lot of beer to drink that fast, especially for someone your size.”

And I think we all know where that leads.  About 20 minutes later it was almost time to go to the game…

“Here Sinclair, have some water.”

“Thanks, I think I might stay back and take a little nap.  Parker can use my ticket and go to the game with you guys.”

“Are you sure you’ll be alright?”

“Yeah, though it is a little chilly.  Do you have anything I could borrow to cover up with?  I’m cold blooded and all…”

“Sure, here, hop in the car.  I happen to have an old Iowa Marching Band raincoat that you can cover up with.  It even has the old fuzzy fleece liner in it.  I’ll even tuck you in.”

So, we started walking to the game.

Parker made some friends along the way too.

It took a little while to get in, but we got there just in time.

It was a little quiet for a while after that.

Parker got a little bored during half time…

He takes after the defense.

A little while later, they got ready to kick off the second half, and we’re all lucky Parker was there.

Parker quickly ran down and restrained the unruly fan.  After all, we’d hate to see the Minnesota team catch fire for the first time since Decker got hurt.

The second half was, shall we say, less than photogenic.  But at least one fan in front of us did get pretty excited.

Until we finally arrived at the greatest (if also most blurry) play in football, the victory formation.

A side note, dinosaurs are incredibly slow on steps.  So, it took a little while to get down there and we missed Floyd, but we did get to see…

So, after the meanie security guard, we decided to go meet the band.  They were much nicer, one even let Parker try his horn.

Then we went over to meet the cheer leaders, they were pretty nice too, and seemed to like Parker…

Over all it was a fun game and a great day.

Until next time Mr Kinnick, until next time.

After my post suggesting Halloween costumes for our local lake creature, and Nessie’s comment on it, Nessie sent me another note:

Hi Kearn,

I forgot to mention, I have a little buddy down here too.  His name’s Sinclair.  When he saw your post about Minne and her website, he couldn’t wait to get up there.  He’s pretty young, and has lots of energy, and kind of wears me out, so I thought it would be good for him to burn off a little energy with an outing, so I let him go ahead.  I gave him some directions to Minneapolis, but my directions might not be the best since I haven’t been there before.  I also gave him your address so he could get a hold of you when he gets there.  Hope you don’t mind.  He’s quite friendly.

Oh, and be sure to have a little extra food on hand.  I packed him a lunch before he left, but I’m sure he’ll work up quite the appetite on the trip.

I’m moving a little slower these days, so I think I’ll just plan to meet up with you at the Iowa Minnesota game if these fins can hold up to that strong Mississippi current.  See you then,

Nessie

Sure enough, tonight I heard a little tapping at my door, and when I opened it, there stood a little tiny, shivering green dinosaur.  I could tell from his tattoos that this must be Sinclair, so I brought him in and got him some hot cocoa, a blanket, and some lawn clippings.  He thanked me, and I asked him how his trip was.

“It was good, and there were all sorts of wonderful things and nice people along the way.”

“How did you manage to get up here so quickly?  It’s a long ways from Florida, I didn’t think I’d see you for at least a few more days yet.”

“Oh, well, I didn’t walk the whole way, I made friends with a sea captain, and he gave me a ride over to New Orleans, and then a barge friend of his gave me a ride up the Mississippi.  It was a really fun ride, he even let me ride up front!”

“Then, once we got up to Minneapolis, I saw a waterfall in the river, and I got scared, so I jumped off the barge and swam over to the shore.”

“As soon as I got out of the river, I saw a little path going up the hill, so I thought I would go up and see if anyone could help me find my way.”

“As luck would have it, as soon as I got to the top of the hill, there was a big guy sitting right there, so I asked him if he knew how to get to Lake of the Isles, but he didn’t say a word.”

So, I asked one of his friends there.

“Thanks Mr Guthrie!”, I shouted, and headed toward the big bubble.

It seemed sort of quiet, but it must be a wonderful place to have all the huge inside space when it’s so cold out, they must use it for everything thing here.  It must be busy all the time!  I guess I must have caught it on the one quiet day of the year.  So, I kept going, and turned right, like Mr Guthrie told me to.

Then I saw all these giant square rocks sticking up into the sky.

Then I saw a building that I read about on Stray Hawkeye, the headquarters of the Star Tribune.

I had to get my picture with their sign.

But then I wasn’t sure where I was going again, so I decide to ask someone.

“Sorry, I’m terrible with directions,” he said, “Lucy might know though.”

“Thanks Lucy!  And my that’s a pretty colored dress you have on.”

“Thank you Sinclair, and good luck on your trip!”

So, the directions said I’m supposed to follow the train tracks to Nicollet Mall, and then turn left.

I decided to stop for a snack, I was getting awfully hungry from all that walking.

That should hold me over for a little bit.  After a couple blocks, I check for directions again, just to be sure.

So, I started walking down Nicollet Mall. It’s a busy place!

I was getting really cold, especially with no hat, so I decided to go inside for a little bit, and try out the skyways.

Let’s see, just up the escalator here.  Hmm, I might stop for a little snack while I warm up.

I decided I should go back outside, so I could get my bearings again, and right there were some of Minne’s goose people friends!

I decided to go make some friends.

I was just thinking, I could use another snack, and then…

I didn’t see any trays, so I just helped myself.  I got a full tummy.  And you know what I saw next when I started walking again? A playground!!!!

That was awesome.  But, I should probably keep walking.  Bye bye playground!

Okay, over the bridge, through the garden, and then through Kenwood.

So, I rinsed off my feet, and then walked through Kenwood.  Not much interesting there, just lots of big houses.  The people back there must have huge families to need that much space.  Even a lake monster would have a hard time filling some of those houses!  So, I just kept walking.

So I eventually found my way over to the part of the lake where Minnie was supposed to be, but she wasn’t there.

Then I remembered that Nessie had given me your address, so I decided to come visit you before it got too dark out, and see if you knew where Minne went?”

“I’m sorry Sinclair,” I said, “but I don’t know where Minne went.  Actually, I don’ think anyone knows where she went. We’ll need to investigate.  But first, let’s get you ready for bed.  You must be exhausted from your trip, we can work on figuring all this out in the morning.  Now go brush your teeth.”

“Do I have too?”

“Yes Sinclair.  We don’t want you to end up with cavities from all those snacks you had today.”

“Okay.”

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Where did Minne go?  Will Sinclair ever find her?  Why did he travel so far to see her in the first place?  And what does all of this have to do with Iowa Football?

Find out next time, on another exciting episode of Lake Creatures Of Our Lives!

Like giant flippered boulders through the hourglass, so are the pleosaurs of our lives.

So, I feel bad pointing out errors in web design publicly, because I completely realize how hard it is to get it right across all browsers, and operating systems, and all their different quirks.  This site admittedly has its bugs from time to time as I mess with it (just fixed one (I think) that’s been bugging me forever with IE where it says “to here” under the date on each post), and I’ve worked on plenty of sites at work that have had far larger issues.  However, for a really, really little spacing issue, that happens to line up just so, this one made me laugh, so I thought in good humor, I’d share it.

I was reading about the new Lyndale Tap House on Because Emily Says So, and it sounds absolutely delicious.  So, I clicked through to their website to see where exactly it is, so I can go some time.  And, on my particular computer, with my OS and web browser, and, in particular, whatever fonts I happen to have installed on my machine, the home page looks like this:

It looks fine in IE on Windows (the title is notably more narrow), in Firefox on Windows it’s wider but still okay, but in Firefox on Linux, well, I’m not sure that’s the image they’re going for, though sort of a nice overlay effect none the less.  And I really like the cow in the bottom corner.

I… I… I don’t know what to excerpt.  Usually when I go to a site or a blog post or whatever and I find something I like, I grab a little quote or a picture or whatever to excerpt here, to show you how cool it is and prove that it’s worth clicking over to.  But,… what do I do when it’s all awesome?  When there’s just plain too much awesome to find a best one to excerpt?  I… I don’t know…

Now would probably be a reasonable time to explain what I’m talking about.

I read Swiss Miss, and a while ago I came across this post, and bookmarked it because I really liked it.  And then today, I clicked through to the site for the artist/designer that made it (Jennifer Daniel).  And… it’s all awesome, in so many ways.  So, let me try this again, maybe a bullet pointed list of why it’s all so awesome:

• There are visual puns, and playing with expected shapes, and just general cleverness without the sort of annoying “Look at me, I’m clever” kind of feel that sometimes gets.
• Almost everything on the page makes you look twice and then think.
• So I’m saying it both looks cool and makes you think, without being full of itself.  Which is painfully rare.
• It’s all really simple (or perhaps a better word is clean).
• Each one has it’s own little style that is cohesive to itself, and each one is a little different from each other one so they don’t get hackneyed, but they still all have this same sort of clean, witty, cool style to them, so they all sort of go together.
• There’s a joke all the way at the bottom, and a tiny bug that crawls around on the left hand side of the page, and even the URL and page title are funny.

The only downsides I can find:

• I’m baffled by the left navigation, so I’m not real sure how to find more awesome.
• It would seem some of it gets archived / taken down over time (I think I remember seeing a few other ones there a while ago) which means some of the awesome is hiding / gone away.

So, what I’m really saying here is, go look around, it’s worth the five or ten minutes.

Bonus:

So, I emailed Jennifer while I was writing this post, and she was nice enough to send me an alternate version (with a few extras) of one of my favorites (thanks Jennifer!!), so that’s going to be the excerpt.  And thus, in a maybe kind of sort of Stray Hawkeye exclusive, I present a case study in awesomeness:

A short list of forms of awesomeness embodied in this:

• It takes a second to figure out what it’s about.
• It covers what would generally be viewed as a vulgar theme in a clean, straight forward manner and in a style that you would expect in a science poster on the wall of a high school classroom, which adds to the humor.
• The color complements the theme.
• I tend to think of myself as being quite up on vulgar slang, and there are a few in there I hadn’t heard before, including:
• Bottom row, third from the right.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at the Minnesota Twins baseball team the same way again, especially since next season they’re leaving the Metrodome and going topless.

I got a flyer in the mail today about the upcoming Minneapolis elections.  Apparently, we’ll be using ranked choice voting:

I know people tend to have pretty strong feelings one way or the other about ranked choice voting, though I have to admit I’m not really well informed enough on the issue and how it affects things to really have a strong opinion.  However, in reading over the flyer, I did find the candidates and their party affiliations interesting, let’s zoom in on that a bit:

I like it.  Though a little odd that a couple of the parties fielded multiple candidates for the same race.  Someone dropped the ball on strategy there, or there’s some rebels in the party.

On a vaguely related note, does anyone remember the Giant Sloth Party (named for the full sized (huge) giant sloth in the University of Iowa Museum of Natural History) that used to run for positions in the University of Iowa student government?  Are they still around?

Quick back story: There has been a lake creature floating around the Chain of Lakes in Minneapolis this summer (seriously).  She appeared in early July and has been touring the lakes since.  In mid-July it was “adopted” by the Minneapolis Park Foundation, and has since been nicknamed Minne.  I think she’s the great great grand niece of Nessie.  She looks like this:

Now, onto the actual post, and yes, this is the most coherent way I could think of to put all the thoughts together…

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Dear Minne,

I was out running around the lakes and saw you out there again, over in the west part of Lake of the Isles now.  Sorry I haven’t written sooner, but you keep moving around and are a little hard to keep track of.  Besides, where does one address a letter to you?  “Lake Creature, About 50 feet off the west shore of Lake of the Isles, Minneapolis, MN 55405″?  So, I figured I’d try a blog post instead and see if you happen to read it.  Anyway, while I was running, I was thinking, with it getting cold out like it is, we really need to get you ready for the winter here.  After all, I figured I should do what I can to help out a fellow stray.

The winters here can get pretty rough, and the lakes freeze.  Don’t worry though, even though it’s cold, you’ve still got a couple months.  The lakes take a while to cool down that much, plus, I’ve got a plan, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

So, I’m not sure where you’re from originally, but we celebrate Halloween here.  We dress up in costumes, and go around asking for candy, and people actually give you candy on this day!  So, I thought we should get you a costume to help you fit in a little more.  While I was running tonight, I was trying to think of how we could dress you up.  The first thing I thought of was that we could put a jack-o-lantern on your back.  Like this:

It would be pretty festive, really simple and easy to do, and would really get you participating in the holiday.  Then I thought about it a little more, and it would probably roll off in the wind, and you’d have to hold pretty still.  Besides, who wants a rotting hunk of gourd on their back?  Not me.  So, I kept thinking.

My next thought was that you could dress up as a pirate.  It’s a pretty classic Halloween costume, and you’ve already got the nautical theme going:

But then I thought about that a little more too.  The hat would probably fly off pretty quickly, and I’m not sure how you’d hold onto the pirate flag.  Plus, we can’t really see your hook / peg flipper (do you have flippers or legs under there?).  So, I kept thinking.

Next I thought zombie.  But that would probably be way too scary for little kids around the lakes, and you already missed the zombie pub crawl this weekend.  So, I kept thinking.

My next idea was Superman – a classic first Halloween costume!

I like it, but I’m not sure the cape will look all that good when the wind isn’t blowing just right, and I’m not sure how you feel about spandex, being a lake creature and all.

So, I kept running and kept thinking.  Anyway, it’s getting cold out, and some birds are starting to visit the lakes.  And then I thought of the perfect Halloween costume for you, something that would be a great costume, fit you perfectly, and really make you blend in to the Minneapolis lake scene.

A little down for the body, maybe some foam or cotton stuffing to make the tail stay up, a little face paint, and a beak with an elastic strap to keep it on.  Not only will you fit right in, it will keep you warm for the next couple of months too!  Plus, you totally have the neck for it!

Besides, this way you can make some friends with the geese out there as they pass through, and get some good tips on where to spend the winter months.  I’m sure they know all sorts of great places!  I think you might like the everglades.  Some of them might even let you travel with them.  I’m sure they’d love to have you leading the “V”!  Of course, maybe you were thinking this already, I saw on your Twitter account that you said “When it becomes cold, I turn into a snow bird”.  Maybe we strays think alike after all!

Anyway, let me know if you need some help with the costume, I’m not great at sewing, but I could give it a shot,

Kearn

You know, they could have just gone to work for the Empire and then formed a union too.  That totally would have stuck it to them.

Man, I need to get out of Minnesota.

Via Boing Boing

As a side note, just because I like this particular video, I’m not really trying to promote the guy who made it or his view of how to fix things.  He’s absolutely crazy.  Like his whole own brand of crazy so far beyond bat-shit crazy it needs its own new term.  This guy is llama vomit crazy with tinge of gopher bile psycho.

It was announced on Monday that the Star Tribune, one of the Twin Cities two major newspapers, has finally emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  Not a whole lot of news there, they’ve been struggling for a while, had lots of layoffs, and as long as I’ve lived here there’s been speculation about their impending doom (you know, being a newspaper and all).  Especially with competition from bloggers, who can publish stories immediately and who can update their stories to be absolutely current as new facts come to light, where as, due to the printing and distribution process of newspapers, everything in newspapers is necessarily from the previous day.  Perhaps the traditional news industry could compete better if they just rebranded themselves as the recents.  The Star Tribune, one of our two major recentpapers.  That sounds about right.

But one of the things that has always struck me as a little odd since moving to the Twin Cities is that we have two major recentpapers here, the Star Tribune and the Pioneer Press.  It would seem that with the challenges that are facing the dead tree edition of the news, that it would make sense to combine these papers – half the writers / double the potential circulation for each.  It would seem like the smart business move.  I’m sure there are tons of reasons this hasn’t happened, and admittedly I’ve never really cared enough about ink on pulp action to really investigate why this is, but it does set my mind wondering, to the really important question facing the recents industry…

What would they name it if they combined the two?

Now obviously, they couldn’t just keep one name and let the other one die.  Too many hurt feelings that way, wasted name recognition, and it doesn’t really signal the new start they need.

No, they need a whole new identity, something that would really give them a presence that people would take note of.

The Star Press?

The Pioneer Tribune?

No, neither seems quite right, still pretty bland.  Maybe we could combine the names more…

The Stress?

No, though not bad.

The Piobune?

No, sounds like a new medication or a medical condition.

What about….

I’ve got it!!

Now that would put those pesky bloggers on notice.

First off, this post has been brewing in my head for a while, so it’s the culmination of a lot of frustration and anger built up over a long time.  Not to mention the combination of lots of not totally related bicycle themed anger.  And it’s long.  Just warning you.

Second, let me tell you about the particular incident that happened today (one of several today in fact), that caused me to finally snap and get around to writing this rant.

On my way home from work, I was driving down 26th St.  If you’re not familiar with Minneapolis, 26th and 28th St are both one ways (going opposite directions) that are 2-3 lanes wide (varies as they go across town) that run from one side of Minneapolis to the other, and are accordingly the fastest way across town most of the time, and generally very busy.  They have stop lights about every 5 block on average, and a speed limit of 30, so most people go 35.  Scene set.

So, driving along 26th, with the 35 mph flow of traffic during rush hour, I notice a girl (okay, woman, probably 20’s-30’s) on her bike coming from my right down one of the side streets that crosses 26th.  There’s a stop sign on the cross street, and 26th doesn’t have a stop.  As this is just a couple blocks past a stop light, there’s a pretty large clump of cars coming down 26th, and I’m the second one back in the right lane.  The bicyclist doesn’t seem to be slowing much, even though she’s approaching a stop sign at a busy street.  I slow down a bit (to probably 30) because I’m an exceedingly cautious driver (not trying to paint myself in a glowing light here, just noting I regularly get made fun of for driving like a grandma).  I assume she’ll either stop somewhat quickly, or just turn and ride on the sidewalk, which I see bikers do all the time along 26th / 28th, because with all the traffic and the speed of traffic, biking on them is kind of nuts.

She does the biker not stop or turn on to the sidewalk, she doesn’t even slow down or look before blowing straight through the stop sign into traffic and half way across the lane in front of me.  Not even a glance.   I slam on the brakes HARD, and swerve into the other lane to avoid killing this girl, without being able to check if there is a car in the other lane first.  I still only manage to miss her by maybe a foot as I go careening, skittering what’s left of the loose gravel into the other lane.  Not only did I come incredibly close to ending up with this girl under my car, I also came within inches (like I’m not totally sure if my rear view mirror of my car touch their trunk lid or not) of clipping the car in the other lane just in front of me.  And when I say brake HARD, I mean pulling up the seal-coating hard.

A good half an hour later now my pulse is starting to approach a normal rate again.

The point I would really like to stress in all of that is that not only did I almost accidentally kill this girl due to her flagrant disregard of her own safety and traffic laws, she didn’t even glance to see if there were cars coming.

Not just that she didn’t slow down and turn her head a little.

No.

She didn’t even look in the general direction of oncoming traffic.  If she had been a half second later, or if I hadn’t slowed down just a little when I noticed her, she would have driven directly into the side of my car without even having seen me coming.  Even with the sound of cars screeching and swerving around her, she never glanced back that the pile up she almost caused.

So, let me now get to the main point of my post: Bikers, I’m trying to not kill you.  Please stop making this such a difficult task.

Now, I realize, like with all things, there may be 1,000 sane, respectful, safe bikers out there for every idiotic jack-ass like this one.  But this is still by no means an isolated incident of idiotic suicidal jack-assery.  I quite frequently see bikes fly through stop signs and cars having to slam on their brakes to not hit them.  Or bikes weaving on and off of the sidewalk to pass people or get around one-ways.  Or just flat out go the wrong way down one-ways.

Just TODAY, prior to this near homicidal experience, not 5 blocks before it in fact, there was a biker going the wrong way down the same one way street.  About two weeks ago I saw someone biking not only the wrong way down that same street, but he was going the wrong way while riding squarely DOWN THE CENTER STRIPE of the one way into a ton of traffic.  Every car slowed down and moved over so the biker could continue going the wrong way down the center of the one way safely (well, as safely as one can do that).

Here’s another one that wouldn’t usually be notable, as it falls more into the rude rather than suicidal category, except that it also happened TODAY.  I was going the other way, down 28th, on the way to work this morning. There was a biker in front of me going 12mph.  Exactly 12 mph.  In a 30.  Okay, it’s a bike, I try to be nice.  Again, I drive like a grandma, minus the perpetual left hand turn signal.  So, I go 11.5 mph for about 3 blocks until there is space to get in the other lane and pass him. I go around him and pull back into the right lane because I have to turn right in a few more blocks.  About a block after I pass him, we reach a stop light that’s red.  There’s five or six cars ahead of me already stopped.  The biker then cuts over into the gutter of the street, and passes all of us, on the right, while we’re stopped at the light.  He then pauses (not stops) at the light and goes through the red light, and pulls back out to take up the whole lane on the other side of the intersection.  So, several cars that were pretty courteous in giving him enough space have to go 12mph for another 5 blocks until they can pass safely again.  But why bother, because he’s just going to do it again at the next light, and every one after that, all the way across town.

Again, not something I would usually blog about, but rude, and something I see a lot.  Beyond that, it was on 28th.  Which is LESS THAN ONE BLOCK from the Midtown Greenway, which parallels 28th.  If you’re not familiar with the Greenway, it’s a dedicated commuter bike path.  It goes all the way across Minneapolis, one side to the other, and then lots more.  It’s bikes and pedestrians only.  It used to be rail road tracks, so it’s dead flat, and almost all the streets it crosses have bridges over it, so you don’t even have to cross streets as you bike.  It’s a bicycle highway.  It even has exit ramps.  Seriously.  Exit ramps.  It is, in short, the perfect place to bike.  Even more so if you’re trying to get across town.  Like you would on 26th / 28th if you were driving.  Which again, is the scene of all of the above.  Which just compounds the stupidity / rudeness of it all.

Now again, let me point out again, I have nothing against bicycling or bicyclist in general.  Overall I’d say it’s a great form of transportation / exercise / recreation.  It’s much better for the environment and communities in general than driving (less parking = less sprawl = less need for cars = less parking …. = more active and personable neighborhoods).  I’ve actually just been learning to bike (though that’s a post for another day).  And I’m fascinated by all the variations of bikes out there and all the modifications and so on.

But, it just seems like bikes bring out the self-righteous jack-ass in so many people.

Another bike related rant/story, while we’re on it.  Once, at a party, I was talking to a guy who is what I would deem a bicycle zealot.  We were discussing commuting to work and I mentioned that I couldn’t ride a bike (hadn’t learned yet), so I took the bus to work.  His response was, and I quote, “you actually ride in those fossil fuel burning behemoths?”  That’s right, I was taking mass transit rather than driving alone, and I was riding in “those fossil fuel burning behemoths.”  He then worked the phase “fossil fuel burning behemoths,” that exact phrasing, into the conversation 6 more times in about 3-4 minutes.  He may have said it more, but after the 6th time in a row with the same phasing and disdainful tone, I had to go refill my beer and remove my teeth from the tight clamp they had formed around my tongue.

Perhaps part of my anger on the subject of bicyclist and their interactions with cars comes from the status of bikes.  As any biking zealot will tell you, bikes aren’t in the way of traffic, they are traffic.  And I couldn’t agree more.  I’m not sure if it was my parents, or my driver’s ed teacher, or just the laws in Iowa, but I always learned that as far as traffic laws go, bikes are cars.  Period.  A car has to signal when it turns.  So does a bike.  When you want to pass a car, you can only do so when there’s a striped center line, and you have to give the other car the whole lane as you pass it.  Same with bikes.  You have to stop at a stop light that’s red, and stay stopped until it turns green, even if there’s no traffic.  Same with bikes.  You can’t drive your car on the sidewalk.  Same with bikes.  You should follow at a distance far enough back so that no matter what stupid thing the person in front of you does, you can stop without hitting them.  Same when following bikes (bearing in mind they can come to a complete stop immediately if they fall over).  You can’t pass on the right, or in intersections.  Same for bikes.  You have to stop at stop signs and wait there if the cross traffic doesn’t have a stop.  Especially if you don’t want to be nearly run over.  With out looking.

This brings me to my secondary point / plea for bicyclists.  If you want to be treated like traffic, act like traffic.  Just like if you want to be treated like an adult, act like an adult.

If you keep jumping from the sidewalk to the street and back as is convenient to you, chances are good people won’t give you much space as they pass.  If you pass people on the right at stop lights, chances are pretty good that people won’t think twice of blowing right past you on the next block and will barely move out of their lane to do so.  And if you act responsibly, you’ll (probably) be treated with more respect.

This is also why I profoundly hate Critical Mass.  The “logic” for which seems to go something along the lines of: “We are traffic, so to prove it, we’ll ride around and violate every traffic law we can think of.  Not to mention we’ll purposely try to piss off the car drivers we would supposedly so like to have share the road with us.”  I also hate that they do this at 5pm, on Fridays, down town.  So, not only are they making drivers hate and loath bikes while reinforcing that bikes have no concern for their own safety and are self-righteous jack-asses, they’re doing it to people who are down town at 5pm on Fridays.  You know who is driving down town at 5pm on Fridays?  People whose live already suck.  They work in cubicals down town for massive faceless corporations, and not only that, they have already had the only great part of the work week (leaving an hour or even a half hour early on Friday) violated because their boss has decided that whatever deadline they were working on was more important than the weekend, happiness, or a social life.  You want to know when they should have Critical Mass?   At 2pm on Tuesdays.  Why?  Because if you’re out driving around at 2pm on a Tuesday your life is awesome already and could use a little evening out.  Plus, you’d probably be more sympathetic to the cause than overworked, burnt out, end of the week corporate slaves.  But I digress.

Not to say for a moment that every car driver is a saint or respectful either.  After all, there are plenty of BMW’s and Volkswagen Jettas on the road to attest to car driver jack-assery as well.  This isn’t meant to be a one sided argument.  We’re all on the road together here. (For Red Green fans, I’m pulling for you.)  And until there are a whole, whole lot more bike lanes than there are now, it’s going to stay that way.

I”m just saying that the more often that people see bikes do stupid, dangerous things when driving near cars, the more likely cars will be to do stupid, dangerous things when driving near bikes.  After all, if bikes (as a generalized whole concept in people’s minds) feel safe passing me one foot away, then they must feel safe if I do the same.  Right?  Again, the give and take of both sides figuring out what’s socially acceptable.

I’m still sticking to my bikes are cars view though.

And again bikers, I’m trying not to kill you.  I nearly wrecked my car today trying not to kill you.  Now would you please stop making it so damn hard?

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Bonus side note:  Number of times jack-ass or some derivative was used in this post: 5.  Though counting this note, it’s 6, you fossil fuel burning behemoths.