THE CITY GRITTY >>

• BEST ARGUMENT AGAINST MINNESOTA NICE
  What's worse, a tornado or a Minnesotan determined to do good? As you answer, consider what happened to St. Peter after the Big Wind. Between the town's high ranking on the cuteness scale, the location within easy commuting range, and the saturation TV coverage, the area was the perfect... More >>
• BEST BED & BREAKFAST
  Tucked in among the mansions of Minneapolis's highbrow Lowry Hill neighborhood, this 102-year-old Colonial Revival residence became a B&B a decade ago, when current owner Chris Viken bought the place. The four well-furnished rooms go for $89 to $129 a night (including a breakfast of... More >>
• BEST BOONDOGGLE
  This stretch of pavement would test the patience of a saint. At random times throughout the day or week--say, 8 p.m. on a Sunday or 10 a.m. on a Tuesday--drivers face the kind of stop-and-go traffic usually associated with grisly car wrecks. The cause of this particular headache is that the... More >>
• BEST BUS STOP
  Here's a sweet spot: a covered waiting bench across from the old Modern Café, backed by a full city lot lined in daylilies, daffodils, ribbon grass, barberries, peonies--really a three-season public garden that comes alive in spring and stays vibrant until the killing frost. Even after... More >>
• BEST CAR WASH
  The test: A 4-year-old Toyota Paseo that was last washed as it departed the dealership where it met its owner. The time: 15 minutes before closing, just when we thought car-wash workers would be least interested in scrubbing traces of Big Gulp off the dash or picking cat hair out of the back... More >>
• BEST CHARITY
  The brainchild of a group of women who all served as staff or trustees of local foundations, the Women's Foundation was formed as a response to research showing that only about 5 percent of philanthropic dollars go to programs aimed specifically at women or girls. Since the organization's... More >>
• BEST CHARITY CASE
  Two years ago it at least seemed like the man once considered the most powerful pol in town might get his day in court, if not a chance to re-enter political life vindicated. No such luck. Since 1996, the former Hennepin County Board chair has been conducting a one-man crusade against the Star... More >>
• BEST CHEAP THRILL
  We're Minnesotans, fer chrissakes, and there is nothing better than making slippery road conditions work for you. How? By crafting the proverbial "donut," also known as "the shitty." Here are the simple instructions: You need a car and someone to ride shotgun (i.e., an extra set of eyes looking... More >>
• BEST CHURCH
  This congregation celebrated its centennial in 1993 after weathering a remarkable century of white flight, racial and economic tension, and soul-searching among its members. Today, Park Avenue Methodist ministers to the most integrated black-white flock in town, working into its services a host... More >>
• BEST COFFEE HOUSE
  Unlike South Minneapolis, where the coffee-house wave has swept from block to block like a synchronized swim team, the North Side doesn't have many venues for gourmet java. Perhaps that's why Destination X manages to assemble such a wonderfully variegated clientele. On a recent Wednesday... More >>
• BEST COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER
  More often than not, SW Journal staff writers Martiga Lohn, Mark Engebretson, and Anne Discher scoop their monolithic daily competition on big stories that affect not just the people who live in their circulation area (Minneapolis's Lakes district, Uptown, Linden Hills, Tangletown, and... More >>
• BEST DEMOLITION
  There was, admittedly, a kind of eat-the-rich glee among the small crowd that gathered to watch the Conservatory implode just before 7 a.m. on March 16. Ka-boom went the marble halls that had been home to Mark Shale, the Sharper Image, the Nature Company; kablooie went the... More >>
• BEST ELEVATOR
  For nearly 60 years after the Young Quindlan Department Store opened in downtown Minneapolis in 1926, elevator operators shepherded the well-heeled between six floors of merchandise, eventually depositing exhausted shoppers at the Tea Room. The store closed in 1985 but the operators remain,... More >>
• BEST FARMERS' MARKET
  You know by now why grocery-store produce tastes like soggy newspaper (no offense to the fine product you're holding in your hands): Really good vegetables, no matter how fancy the label, won't tolerate long journeys and refrigerated storage. So what are you doing freezing your butt off under... More >>
• BEST FESTIVAL
  With the exception of In the Heart of the Beast's annual May Day celebration, Pride puts all other festivals to shame for sheer visual spectacle, yummy food, hard-core babe-watching, and genuine community vibe. The parade is a particularly thrilling declaration of interdependence: Where else... More >>
• BEST FIBERGLASS CRITTER
  We almost picked the giant smiling critter impaled outside the Gopher Campus Motor Lodge in Dinkytown, but we weren't sure what it was. (It's got the teeth of a beaver, the tail of a squirrel, the body of a gopher, and a metal pole running up its butt.) But there's no doubting the big trout... More >>
• BEST FIREWORKS DISPLAY
  Are you the kind of fireworks fanatic who hunts down the biggest holiday display and gets there two hours early? Do you fantasize that just once, the fuse guy will slip and shoot off the whole enchilada at once? When the rest of us are singing "Auld Lang Syne," are you jonesing for the Fourth... More >>
• BEST FOOD COURT
  With ManchuWok, Subway, Greek Garden, Hardee's, DaVinci Express, Pizza Hut, and the Great Steak and Potato, it covers most of the fast-food spectrum. But the vendors are not the star attraction here. What separates this food court from the competition is the central fountain two floors below.... More >>
• BEST GADFLY
  When she finally decided to make a run at the mayor's office late last spring, Carlson told CP she didn't have a snowball's chance at unseating Sharon Sayles Belton. Her sole goal was to bring issues to the table, get people gabbing, and light a fire under Her Honor. She did just that, and... More >>
• BEST GIFT FOR A TEENAGER
  For a nominal honorarium (determined by the client), one of the two sexuality educators at Planned Parenthood will sit down with three or more teens and answer all those questions you'd never ask Mom or Dad. They cover the old standards such as how to avoid disease and pregnancy, but also help... More >>
• BEST GROUND ZERO
  A decade ago, when Minneapolis city officials got their skivvies in a snarl about crime on Block E, they did what their predecessors since time immemorial have done when faced with such weighty matters: They broke out the wrecking ball. But then they did something uncharacteristically... More >>
• BEST HAPPY HOUR
  Kieran's is an oasis of grungy humanity in the unlikeliest of environs, the sanitized steel-and-glass labyrinth that is the Minneapolis habitrail--er, skyway--system. And its popular happy hour is the perfect antidote to a long day at the white-collar hamster wheel. Unlike some downtown happy... More >>
• BEST HOTEL
  When the Saint Paul opened in 1910 as the only four-star hotel in town, the 12-story Italian Renaissance Revival structure contrasted sharply with the dirt road and burgeoning city just outside its gilded doors. But the service was stupendous and the surroundings sublime, so the likes of... More >>
• BEST LOCAL BOY GONE BAD
  In the last chapter of his tell-all-say-nothing book No Room for Crybabies, the Vikings head coach sent the Twin Cities' white-bread sports fans and their thin-skinned columnists into a snit. Complaining about mistreatment from management, he outlined a plan to overthrow his bosses. Then, after... More >>
• BEST LOCAL BOY MADE GOOD
  At a time when the post-Pulp Fiction thriller has run out of gas, erstwhile Minneapolitan Garret Williams filled up the tank with Spark, which uses the outlines of the road-movie thriller as a springboard for exploring the nuances of race relations in America. Williams's debut premiered earlier... More >>
• BEST LOCAL GIRL MADE GOOD
  Right on, sister. Proving that neither the Church's sacred orders nor Uncle Sam can get in the way of a righteous babe, this 70-year-old Minneapolis native joined some 600 civil disobedients last November in a mock funeral at the U.S. Army's School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia.... More >>
• BEST LOCAL LANDMARK
  Wilbur Foshay made a fortune in public utilities, and he built the first Midwestern skyscraper outside Chicago as a monument to himself. Italian, French, Belgian, and American marbles, along with gold- and silver-plated ceilings, were installed throughout the art deco interior. Wilbur's office... More >>
• BEST MONTH TO BE IN THE TWIN CITIES
  Let's start with the heat. The 16-hour days. The horror-movie jingle of ice cream trucks in the long shadows of crepuscule. The stampede at Target for floor fans. The beads of sweat snaking down the swell of the bike messenger's calf. The exposed stripe of leg between the top of the knee-length... More >>
• BEST MONTH TO LEAVE THE TWIN CITIES
  It may be the shortest month of the year, but it feels like the longest. The holidays are distant memories, but there's still no reprieve from the cold and the snow. Even El Niño can't budge the mercury. And then there's Valentine's Day, that moment when the flower, greeting-card, and... More >>
• BEST NEWSPAPER BEAT WRITER
  Sweeney is the perfect guy to afflict the comfortable. Eschewing the chummy, chat-'em-up school of beat reporting, he's a tireless researcher and dogged interviewer who doesn't much care whether or not his sources like him, so long as he gets the story straight. That was evident in his biggest... More >>
• BEST NEWSPAPER COLUMNIST
  He calls himself a moderate, but from week to week for the past 11 years this sports-columnist-turned-news-junkie has been in the trenches for the little guy, taking shots at the Man. As a journalist, he continually scoops his opinionated peers, unearthing people, places, and things Strib... More >>
• BEST OLE AND LENA JOKE
  Professional and amateur Scandinavians alike recognize that the Ole & Lena joke is a necessary and inescapable ethnic albatross. So, just like an Italian-American with a pasta sauce, or a Scot with a plaid wallet, the Scando-Yank might as well keep a good Ole & Lena handy for those... More >>
• BEST PLACE FOR A FIRST DATE
  At $4 a ticket, you can afford to take a date to the Minneapolis Planetarium and have things not work out. That's not likely, however, given how much fun this indoor sky-gazing venue can be: It's dark, the ambient music's not half bad, and you watch from a low, cushy bench as the Minneapolis... More >>
• BEST PLACE TO DUMP SOMEONE
  As Big Muddy's waters ooze past, you think of where it all began and where it will end. This mighty river, you consider, starts as a naive little spring, growing with each tributary until, grown grand and polluted, it ends in a Mardi Gras climax at the Gulf. The ocean accepts, changing the... More >>
• BEST PLACE TO GET DUMPED
  When you're looking into the abyss, faced with the love of your life wielding the heartbreak ax, you might as well stare into your postrelationship future. Take time to look around you. Mortimer's is filled with auguries of the long, lonely months ahead. Gone are the intimate hours of cuddling;... More >>
• BEST PLACE TO MEET SINGLE MEN (GAY)
  The amenities--three bars, Web access, regularly scheduled DJs and VJs--aren't that unlike those of any well-kept downtown watering hole. But it's the Saloon's commitment to offer a haven for both scene vets and novices that makes it stand out. "It's pretty hard to disentangle the Saloon from... More >>
• BEST PLACE TO MEET SINGLE MEN (STRAIGHT)
  The advantages: If his head's not on straight, at least it's pointed in the right direction; you have weeks to ponder his character, as well as his assets, before making a move; and if you're in the "bad boy" phase, the pickings are plentiful. On the downside is the fact that these guys have... More >>
• BEST PLACE TO MEET SINGLE WOMEN (GAY)
  Judging by her choice of reading material--Dorothy Allison, Audre Lorde, Alison Bechdal--she's definitely an Ellen. (Didn't we see her at the Dinah Shore Open?) The question remains: Is she yoked or free-range? You strut, you stare, you sigh. She fails to take notice. As k.d. lang croons in the... More >>
• BEST PLACE TO MEET SINGLE WOMEN (STRAIGHT)
  It's the adult version of the kid-in-the-candy-store principle: The selection is astounding! (And you can pick your playground, too.) From Hooters to Planet Hollywood to Players--acre for acre, there's more drinking and mingling at the Mall than anywhere else in the five-state area. If you... More >>
• BEST POLITICIAN
  He's not cool. He's not even funny. He's annoying as hell, running around with that tight-lipped smile, that rumpled shirt, that voice that never quite broke. He's your grade-school civics teacher, your senior-high student-government enthusiast writ large; worst of all, he seems to actually... More >>
• BEST PUBLIC ART
  The 45-minute drive north may deter those who like their art parks nice and close, but the ambling peace of Franconia Sculpture Park would be impossible in the busy confines of the city. On a 14-acre plot in the rural nowhere between Shafer and Taylors Falls, local and international sculptors... More >>
• BEST PUBLIC BUILDING
  There's nothing quite like stepping into the Great Reading Room for the first time and having your gaze drawn up, way up, to the dark-paneled ceiling; like straining to see the walls of books, two stories high and ringed by wrought-iron balconies; like running your hands over the granite... More >>
• BEST PUBLIC REST ROOM
  Sci-fi author Robert Heinlein once said that the first sign of a decaying society is unsightly public washrooms. If that's true, then the people at Bloomingdale's are trying to lift us all to a new level of civilization. Pinks and peaches adorn the couch and love seat in the sitting area of the... More >>
• BEST PUBLIC WORKS PROJECT
  In an era of government cost-cutting, public-works projects that display both civic-mindedness and artistic value are rare. But the 200-foot span of galvanized steel lofted above the east entrance to Chanhassen is both pragmatic and pretty. With a price tag of $850,000, construction of the... More >>
• BEST REASON TO LOVE THE METRODOME
  "Baseball Museum" doesn't begin to do justice to Ray Crump's monument just across the railroad tracks from the Marshmallow Mausoleum, and with major-league baseball still threatening to skip town, there may be no more perfect time than this summer for a jaw-dropping visit. The front of the... More >>
• BEST RENOVATION
  England has its ruined abbeys, Greece the Parthenon. Minneapolis has the legacy of flour, and this picturesque ruin to commemorate it. In 1873 Cadwallader Washburn built what was then the largest flour mill in the world at the foot of Portland Avenue. Powered by the water from St. Anthony... More >>
• BEST RESURRECTION
  Two winters ago the only signs of life around this property were a set of dog tracks in the snow and a small, scraggly pine weeping ice in the side yard. The 112-year-old Central neighborhood grande dame had been condemned by city inspectors, boarded up, nailed shut, and slated for demolition.... More >>
• BEST ROAD TEAR-UP
  Veterans of war and urban planning say you should always suspect incompetence ahead of conspiracy as a reason for the otherwise inexplicable. And so we won't assume that when Minneapolis plunked a Kmart smack in the middle of the Lake-Nicollet intersection, it wasn't consciously trying to... More >>
• BEST SANCTUARY FROM THE FAST TRACK
  Established more than 90 years ago by a schoolteacher and naturalist who foresaw the urban sprawl that has made many Minnesota birds and wildflowers rare sights, these 14 acres are a sliver of lovingly tended paradise. All the environments we've paved over are represented: woodland, wetland,... More >>
• BEST SHOW OF SPINE
  History has a few choice examples of what happens when people of otherwise good sense turn off their bullshit detectors. History also shows how hard it is to go against the current: When everyone around you believes that the emperor is fully clothed, who are you to state the obvious? Which is... More >>
• BEST SOCIAL SERVICE AGENCY
  It was lawyers at the Neighborhood Justice Center who recently defended Juan Garcia, accused of joining four women in a drug-related robbery. It's also NJC attorneys who are handling several cases involving elderly Southeast Asian shamans charged with possession of opium, a substance used in... More >>
• BEST STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
  Let there be no mistake: Both Kirk Hill and Charles Disney are certifiable oddballs, at least compared to a lot of the soft-spoken process-heads who pass for community activists around here. But like most eccentrics, these two--one representing poor tenants, the other the landlords who rent to... More >>
• BEST THING TO HAPPEN AT THE TWIN CITIES AIRPORT
  So they're rebuilding the runways to send more jets roaring over more backyards; so they're putting up a $150 million parking ramp that might have to come down in 10 years. Let's give the Metropolitan Airports Commission credit for one job well done: letting Icelandair have some gates for... More >>
• BEST TILT AT A WINDMILL
  You may have seen the billboard, heading back from the airport on that winding stretch of Hiawatha Avenue that hasn't yet been turned into a semi-freeway: "STOP the Reroute," it says in a multicolored script nestled amid pictures of trees and a kindergarten sun. It's almost heart-wrenching in... More >>
• BEST TOURIST ATTRACTION
  With its myriad breast-enlargement devices, phrenological contraptions, and the type of foot X-ray machines once found in fashionable shoe shops, this pint-size museum would shake even the surgeon general's faith in modern medicine. The home of the 250-item collection--the once-thriving,... More >>
• BEST TOURIST TRAP
  If we were apt to argue with God, we'd point out that absorbing 2.5 million square feet of retail is not necessarily something for a metropolitan area to be proud of. We'd complain that we'd like 18 square feet of affordable housing, not shopping, for every man, woman, and child. We'd gnash our... More >>
• BEST UNPAVING OF PARADISE TO FEND OFF A PARKING LOT
  Folks in Richfield like their cars as much as the next suburbanite, but it turns out they like their trees, too. When citizens woke up in December to discover a 3-acre section of Veterans Memorial Park had been denuded of 208 old oaks and cottonwoods in preparation for the construction of a... More >>
• BEST USE OF TAXPAYER DOLLARS
  Make that the central library's eight reference desks: Business and Economics; Technology/Science/Government Documents; History and Travel; Literature and Language; Art/Music/Video; Sociology/Religion/Sports; Children's; and Special Collections. (This last one houses the library's Minneapolis... More >>
• BEST VICTIM
  Used to be ships got stolen, and they called it pirating. Then planes, and they called it hijacking. When it was kids, it was kidnapping. Now it's houses, and they call it honeycombing. Sometimes the owner's there and the jackers still just move in and set up shop until things get too hot to... More >>
• BEST VIEW
  For a split second as you drive west across the bridge carrying I-94 across the Mississippi, it's possible to imagine that you're not in your car, that you're not about to slam into the I-35W gridlock or the stream of office workers fleeing downtown Minneapolis. Below, the muddy waters meander... More >>
• BEST WEEKEND GETAWAY
  Less than a hundred miles south of the Twin Cities, the Mississippi widens to form Lake Pepin. The lake straddles the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin; on the east side, nestled at the base of soaring bluffs, sits the miniature town of Pepin. The setting is spectacular, and so are the... More >>