THE CITY GRITTY >>

• BEST BLOW FOR CIVIL RIGHTS
  Last fall, while thousands of high-profile citizens were courting arrest to protest the Diallo police shooting in New York City, a lone anesthesiologist in Eagan struck a blow for the rights of the elderly. When 41-year-old Thomas J. Valente narrowly avoided a collision with 69-year-old... More >>
• BEST BOONDOGGLE
  On the drawing board forever, the plan to bring a trolley line to the Twin Cities is starting to look like the costliest public project since the pyramids. The official public cost, according to the Minnesota Department of Transportation, is $548.6 million in public money from various sources.... More >>
• BEST CAREER MOVE
  Yes, we know it was all the way back in December 1998 that Erica, Nicole, and Jaclyn Dahm, University of Minnesota students from Jordan, took it all off in triplicate for Playboy. But this was the year the 22-year-old identical sisters parlayed their playmate status into something (nearly)... More >>
• BEST CEMETERY
  It may not have the rolling hills of Lakewood Cemetery or the removed tranquillity of St. Paul's Calvary Cemetery, but it sure has historic value. Stretched along a few otherwise busy blocks of Lake Street, this burial ground is simply quiet. With many of the graves more than a century old, the... More >>
• BEST CHARITY
  Break down the name to its Greek roots and you'll see why this charity has a place in our hearts. "Phil" derives from the word for love, and "anthro" is for humankind. Basically, this organization's mission is to help those who love other people for who they are. What better reason could there... More >>
• BEST CHRONIC VANDALISM
  If a new Cotty Lowry poster goes up the day you read this, trust that by nightfall it will be transformed. Vandals will have used thick black markers and spray paint to add a mustache or beard, big ears, horns, and maybe a pig snout or eye makeup to the face of the smiling Coldwell Banker... More >>
• BEST CHURCH FOR THE NON-CHURCHGOING
  Between the ages of 18 and 35, an interest in actual organized religion (as opposed to "spirituality") is roughly on a par with an affinity for Garfield dolls: It's tolerable, man, but it's not that cool. There are the basic theological questions--how could just one religion be right? What's... More >>
• BEST CHURCH FOR THE TIMIDLY RE-CHURCHING
  So you're shopping for a church, and it's a personal process. You don't want to stand up during the service and introduce yourself. You don't want to wear a nametag; you don't want to put your name on any mailing lists; and you don't want to be publicly "saved"--not today, anyway. Rather, you... More >>
• BEST CITY STATUTE
  We were tempted to choose the Minneapolis provision governing "hats, conduct in theaters," which bars the wearing of "any headgear" in a "theater, auditorium or place of amusement." Or the one that says, "No person, in any public or private place, shall enter a toilet designated for the use of... More >>
• BEST COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER
  Since its inception 15 years ago, every issue of the Minnesota Women's Press has featured a front-page profile of one noteworthy woman, from maverick St. Paul schools superintendent Patricia Harvey to Terry Ventura, plus hundreds of poets, rabbis, soccer moms, and entrepreneurs. More than... More >>
• BEST CRAZIEST IDEA WE'VE EVER HEARD
  Since first getting elected mayor of St. Paul in 1993, Norm Coleman has played the role of civic cheerleader to the hilt. The pom-poms seem to suit him. He lured Minneapolis-based Lawson Software to relocate in downtown St. Paul and helped engineer the National Hockey League's return to... More >>
• BEST DAD
  Senator Rod Grams only did what any parent would do. Last July, when his troubled son Morgan had been missing for a few days with a borrowed rental car, the elder Grams placed a call to the Anoka County Sheriff's Department, asking for their help in tracking him down. When deputies caught up... More >>
• BEST FARCE
  It all began on July 2, when Apple Valley Mayor Mary Hamann-Roland took her kids on a day trip to the city's Aquatic Center. By all accounts, Hamann-Roland dutifully forked over for the entry of her three daughters. But according to the pool worker on duty, she declined to pay for her own $2.50... More >>
• BEST FARMERS' MARKET
  Oh, we had ideas. For once, this year, we were going to tab a winner other than St. Paul. Maybe somewhere out in the suburbs, closer to the source; maybe in a neighborhood parking lot, where we'd see kids selling produce from community gardens. And we did find other markets--complete with the... More >>
• BEST FESTIVAL
  While more fuss is usually made over the Declaration of Independence, as liberation documents go the Emancipation Proclamation should not be sold short. That speech is the source of Juneteenth, a celebration of the day--June 19, 1865--when Union general Gordon Granger read the document in... More >>
• BEST FEUD
  Minnesota politics is often just too dang polite. Lucky for us, controversy follows Steve Minn... or is that: Steve Minn follows controversy? After five years of playing the loyal (and vocal) opposition on the Minneapolis City Council, the 13th Ward resident was tapped by Gov. Jesse Ventura to... More >>
• BEST FREE MAGIC SHOW
  Larry Kahlow says it's as common as a rabbit in a hat. The close-up conjurer started hanging around Eagle Magic shop in 1958, got a job hawking behind the glass counter in 1971, and became the sole owner in 1976. So he ought to know: Son tells father he's interested in magic, and Dad agrees to... More >>
• BEST FREE TOUR
  Two words: Free beer! Every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at 1:00 p.m., all drinkers of legal age can sample Summit's collection of barley sodas at the company's own bar. There is a catch, of course: You must endure a chat-heavy tour of the swelling Summit empire. Tour guides narrate the... More >>
• BEST GADFLY
  Leslie Davis is no stranger to headlines, having leaped headlong into such high-profile causes as the anti-logging fight in northern Minnesota, the battle against the garbage burner in Minneapolis, and the acrimonious fight against the rerouting of Hiawatha Avenue. But as a 1998 write-in... More >>
• BEST GARAGE SALE
  The word on the street last August was that The Artist Formerly Known As Prince was having a "garage sale." Would he sit outside selling lemonade? Would he haggle with us over the best price for a pair of rhinestone-studded boots? The lines became longer and the TV crews circled. As it turned... More >>
• BEST GOLDEN PARACHUTE
  We don't object to the cheating. The NCAA stopped being about academics when Jerry "The Shark" Tarkanian made sure America knew that the University of Nevada was in Las Vegas. And let's face it, after the media circus that followed the St. Paul Pioneer Press's investigative report on fraud in... More >>
• BEST GOSPEL SERVICE
  Sometimes you just want to praise Jesus. (What's that?) Said praise Jesus. (Tell it.) Said praise him in the morning. (Uh-huh.) Said praise him in the evening. (Amen, brother.) Said praaaaaise. Said praaaaaise. Said sometimes all of God's children want to get the juice out and praise the Lord.... More >>
• BEST GROUND ZERO
  Nearly a decade has passed since the local NAACP joined with public-housing tenants and the Legal Aid Society of Minneapolis to sue the city, state, and federal governments for creating a segregated public-housing district along Olson Memorial Highway just west of I-94, and it has been five... More >>
• BEST JESSE VENTURA QUOTE
  It would be so easy to pick one of the many sage insights from the now-famous Playboy interview, wherein the First Rube offered excuses for sexual harassment in the navy, professed his profound desire to be reincarnated as a 38DD bra, and mocked suicide. But for our money, Ventura's downright... More >>
• BEST LANDMARK
  It takes out-of-town--make that out-of-country, out-of-continent--visitors to remind us: "Where is it?" they inquire, barely out of the airport. And they're not talking about the St. Paul Cathedral, the Minnesota Zoo, or Nye's. They want to see the feature that places Minnesota on the world... More >>
• BEST LIBRARY
  For researchers (especially procrastinating ones), we must recommend the Wilson Library on the West Bank of the University, as it's open until midnight on Sundays. Problem is, if you're not a student or faculty member you'll have to shell out $60 a year for a borrowing card. So Minneapolis... More >>
• BEST LINE IN MAYOR SHARON SAYLES BELTON'S STATE OF THE CITY ADDRESS
  Maybe to you February 10 was just another day in the chilly city. But for City Pages it was the time to hear Minneapolis Mayor Sharon Sayles Belton deliver her seventh State of the City address at Plymouth Congregational Church in south Minneapolis! Only 9 of 13 council members made it--fairly... More >>
• BEST LOCAL BOY GONE BAD
  The news dribbled out slowly, as if from a cracked sewer pipe: Ramsey County commissioner admits to gambling addiction. Ramsey County commissioner charged with check-kiting. Ramsey County commissioner denies renewed allegations of cocaine problem. Ramsey County commissioner linked to... More >>
• BEST LOCAL BOY MADE GOOD
  In 1990, Marshall-born Steve Zahn quit his job in a machine shop and took a gig in a Chanhassen Dinner Theater production of Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues. Next was a two-year stint with the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a turn on the New York stages and, finally, a... More >>
• BEST LOCAL GIRL GONE BAD
  Who knew? More >>
• BEST LOCAL GIRL MADE GOOD
  Immediately after stopping China's soccer team from scoring a game-winning penalty kick in last summer's World Cup Championship and setting up Brandi Chastain's photo-finish goal, the soccer star from Dayton was publicly slighted. Instead of making her the center of their postgame coverage, the... More >>
• BEST LOCALLY GENERATED WEB SITE
  Before you mutter, "What the fug--a government site?" take a peek. Too many Web hot spots offer nothing more than a quick chuckle, which grows old after a visit or two. But bookmarking this baby can actually help make you a more informed Web citizen. During the legislative sessions, you can... More >>
• BEST LOST CAUSE
  We know the oddball collection of vagabond protesters, lost souls and assorted activists who waged the long and ultimately futile fight against the rerouting of Highway 55 in south Minneapolis were sometimes hard to stomach. Their rhetoric was both overblown and strategically ill-conceived; the... More >>
• BEST MEDIA EVENT
  Yes, the first 16 months under Gov. Jesse Ventura have certainly been, uh, er, ahem. What we mean to say is that the Ventura Era has redefined, well... Let's be frank: In the governor-as-celebrity age of Ventura, about the only thing that seems different from politics-as- usual is the insane... More >>
• BEST METH-LAB STORY
  Back in January 1999, Wright County authorities busted three men for operating a meth lab in an ice-fishing house. Comedic value aside, the discovery fueled the widely held perception of meth as a trailer-trash drug, a notion reinforced by a succession of highly publicized drug busts in rural... More >>
• BEST MONTH TO BE IN THE TWIN CITIES
  At its hottest, stickiest, and buggiest, July can make one yearn for winter. But given the length of winter in these parts, that is a perverse virtue. Besides, the month has other allures. On weekends, most everyone with means has fled town, leaving those remaining behind with plenty of elbow... More >>
• BEST MONTH TO LEAVE THE TWIN CITIES
  Sure the Lovin' Spoonful's John Sebastian once made 80 percent humidity and air pollution sound, well, cool. But even he'd have a hard time with a Twin Cities summer. Where's the poetry in getting strafed by wasps while choking down a charred bratwurst at a backyard barbecue? Shoving your way... More >>
• BEST MURAL
  Highway overpasses are among the least glamorous spaces in urban environments. So what a pleasure it is to drive along Olson Memorial Highway heading west over the eight lanes of I-94 and discover stately African masks lined up along the sound wall, gazing toward the Minneapolis skyline with... More >>
• BEST OBITUARY
  A lot of folks think we at City Pages are a hard-bitten, jaded lot of cranks. Well, yeah, so we are a hard-bitten, jaded lot of cranks, but we do have a soft spot, and the Star Tribune's January 27 obituary for 84-year-old Beatrice Rutman hit it dead-on. The piece included what was purported to... More >>
• BEST OPPORTUNITY TO CLEANSE YOUR SOUL
  In the down-and-out crowd, the Simpson is known as the best place to sleep, short of a pad of your own. The staff is stern yet understanding, never dispensing so much as spare change for a bus ride, but offering effective programs geared at helping homeless people onto their feet and into... More >>
• BEST PARADE
  So this guy--thirtysomething, hint of a paunch, touch of a mustache--bounds up to us, stops dead in his tracks, and beams: "May I mark you?" And before we can so much as blurt out a "Huh?" the greasepaint is on our cheek, and the guy is gone, and we turn slack-jawed to our native-born... More >>
• BEST PLACE FOR A FIRST DATE
  If there is such a thing as a failsafe venue for a first encounter, this has to be it. The brand-new building gives you a lovely excuse for initiating the date (You: "I've been dying to see the new Science Museum." Date: "Me too. Let's go this weekend, there's a new critter show opening.") The... More >>
• BEST PLACE TO DUMP SOMEONE
  The sagacious Billy Corgan once said the fall from our expectations and idealism is much harsher than the fall from reality. Using this as our koan, it is only appropriate that Apache Mall, once one of only two indoor malls in the world but now nothing more than a sad relic, serve as the... More >>
• BEST PLACE TO GET DUMPED
  The stark lighting at Sebastian Joe's will illuminate your response--recalcitrant, guilt-inducing, whatever the situation inspires. Once the exchange is over, the atmosphere will remind you what's really important. Little girls in patent leather shoes, launched into glee by sprinkles. Sebastian... More >>
• BEST PLACE TO PEOPLE-WATCH
  For the professional and the serious dilettante, there's no place like the Mall of America to refine the art and science of people-watching. The sheer diversity and quantity of subjects can't be beat; add the variety of potential approaches and locations (Preteen social initiation at Camp... More >>
• BEST PLACE TO TAKE THE TOTS
  Get those screaming tykes out of your claustrophobic house even in the dead of winter--and without ever having to set foot inside the Mall of America! If the smaller members of your household can tear themselves away from the arts and crafts and storytelling stations set up throughout the... More >>
• BEST POLITICAL EMBARRASSMENT
  When Renee LaVoi first expressed interest in running for the school board last spring, her colleagues in the Minneapolis GOP knew she was conservative. During the endorsement process LaVoi, a therapist with a Bible-based private practice, had espoused boilerplate party rhetoric. In the course... More >>
• BEST POLITICIAN
  Never mind whether state Attorney General Mike Hatch's corporate watchdoggery is motivated by altruism or political self-interest: We're just glad someone has come along who's willing to split hairs and pick nits on behalf of Minnesota consumers. The Duluth native and former sailor did battle... More >>
• BEST PROPOSED STADIUM SOLUTION
  As both the Minnesota Twins and the Guthrie Theater were searching for a new home, St. Paul Pioneer Press theater critic Dominic Papatola hit upon what he modestly termed "a solution so simple, so elegant": A combination baseball stadium and theater. "Can Guthrie patrons learn to do the wave?"... More >>
• BEST PUBLIC CLOCK
  Back in the good old days, before the banks began plastering their bland digital clocks in every strip-mall parking lot from Burnsville to Coon Rapids, the public clock was a stylish thing. It was designed to be appreciated by pedestrians rather than speeding motorists; thus form was given its... More >>
• BEST PURGE
  After Dennis Green became the Minnesota Vikings head coach in 1992, the "new sheriff," as he called himself, quickly embarked on a wholesale housecleaning; within two years, all 11 assistant coaches who'd worked under his predecessor, Jerry Burns, were gone. In most businesses, a new manager... More >>
• BEST RENOVATION
  A beer hall at the state capitol? Okay, you can't get a beer here, but the recently renovated subterranean cafeteria was originally designed with a rathskeller theme. The 1905 décor was painted over in 1917, amid a wave of anti-German sentiment during World War I. In 1930 some of the art... More >>
• BEST SELF-PROMOTION
  Our jaw dropped when we first saw Serving Time: America's Most Wanted Recipes last December. On the cover, a chipper Sara Jane Olson (formerly Kathleen Soliah and currently accused of helping the Symbionese Liberation Army place bombs under police cars back in 1975) glibly holding a spatula in... More >>
• BEST SETTLEMENT
  It's the classic David-and-Goliath story, except that Xena the Warrior Princess is a more appropriate protagonist for this version. Amazon Bookstore, now celebrating its 30th anniversary as a haven for women's literary minds, has been around a heckuva lot longer than its similarly monikered... More >>
• BEST SIGN OF THE LONG-RUMORED RENAISSANCE OF DOWNTOWN ST. PAUL
  Now that we're done wailing and gnashing our teeth over Norm Coleman's use of tax dollars to spiff up RiverCentre, we'd just like to say how secretly pleased we are that hockey will be back in St. Paul come October. It's been a long seven years since those turncoat Stars moved to the other end... More >>
• BEST STATE FAIR FOOD
  Let us tell you something about those most splendid young people who operate the Gopher Dairy Club concession a few cows' lengths from the public milking parlor. Every one of them is a virgin. This is a fact; you can tell just from looking at them. Only the purest hands are allowed to attach... More >>
• BEST STATE FAIR RIDE
  While there are those who come to the Great Minnesota Get-Together for a fix of excitement--witness the line of folks waiting to get slung or dropped or twisted about by one of the fair's daunting diversions--we like our rides tinged with nostalgia. Our vote goes therefore to the Ferris wheel,... More >>
• BEST SURPRISE APPEARANCE OF UNLIKELY FAUNA
  In 1998, an old female lake sturgeon washed up on the shores of Lake Harriet. No one knew that sturgeon, a prehistoric and pollution-sensitive species, still lived in Lake Harriet, yet here it was--six feet and 105 pounds of evidence that nature retains the power to surprise. The sturgeon's... More >>
• BEST TOURIST TRAP
  While the city pours its treasury into the drama of underwriting a Hennepin Avenue theater district, artless entrepreneurialism rules on First Avenue. It is here that the people flock in droves any time the mercury climbs above 50 degrees--like animals strutting to the watering hole come... More >>
• BEST URBAN LEGEND
  Some day a few thousand years from now, anthropologists from another solar system will sift through the fading digital traces of once-urgent chain e-mails (PASS THIS ON!!! YOU'LL NEVER EAT CHICKEN AGAIN!!!) and form a pretty good picture of the strange culture that dominated Earth around the... More >>
• BEST URL
  The Web address for Progressive Anesthesia Services, Inc., a Twin Cities nurse-anesthetist group. More >>
• BEST VICTIM
  It's a good guess former Gophers coach Clem Haskins never thought a 50-year-old, somewhat frumpish office manager would or even could take him down. But that's exactly what Jan Gangelhoff did on March 10, 1999, when she blew the whistle in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, alleging academic fraud in... More >>
• BEST VIEW
  First things first: Forget climbing the IDS--we're thinking rustic. So bring along the picnic basket, be sure to invite your significant other, and head up to Tower Hill, nestled above southeast Minneapolis's professorial Prospect Park neighborhood. A spectacular vista awaits those who climb... More >>
• BEST VILLAIN
  During football season the Viking faithful have two favorite teams: The Purple and whoever's playing the Green Bay Packers. Since NBA sensation Stephon Marbury packed up his ego and left for New Jersey last season, fans of the Timberwolves have reveled as the Nets struggle to play .500 ball.... More >>
• BEST WEEKEND GETAWAY
  There is something absurd and wonderful about a hot tub fronted with fake rocks in the corner of a Victorian bedroom got up to look like colonial Burma, particularly if it's the middle of July and you have to turn up the air conditioning before taking a bath. And yet, we can say with authority... More >>
• BEST WINDOW DISPLAY
  Walk into this Burch Pharmacy and find yourself transported back to the 1950s or thereabouts. They have lots of food, much of which will bring back memories--like those little wienies packed in that weird, salty yellow broth; all that's missing is a soda fountain. Several of the employees have... More >>