Spotted

You and Your Friends Drunk: Live on Webcam

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The New York Times tackled the topic of webcams in bars, and the Twin Cities is at the core of the story. Among the central examples is Park Place Sports Bar in St. Paul, who use a local company called Barseenlive to show a live stream of the night's business. 14 bars in the area currently run such webcams.

That sound you heard is hundreds of your neighbors frantically clicking to see if their drunken exploits have been being streamed live from the neighborhood watering hole.

Continue reading "You and Your Friends Drunk: Live on Webcam"

Posted by Jeff Shaw at February 19, 2008 11:27 AM | Comments (14)

 

Spotted: iPhone line, AT&T store, Ridgedale Drive, Mtka, 10:00 a.m.

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City Pages art director Nick Vlcek spotted a dozen people patiently waiting outside of the AT&T store near Ridgedale at 10:00 this morning. The trucks should be rolling in around 4:00 this afternoon, delivering the coveted iPhones that will go on sale at AT&T and Apple stores at 6:00 p.m., as well as at apple.com.

Posted by Corey Anderson at June 29, 2007 3:41 PM | Comments (1)

 

Paging Jack Bauer...

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Spotted: I-94W, just past the Basilica. The time: 9:00 p.m. on a Sunday night.

A convoy of four spotless, unmarked white passenger shuttles rolls down the middle lane doing 65 mph. The windows are heavily tinted and the sides have no markings. None of the vehicles has front or back plates. There are no temp plates in the windows.

Harmless? Probably. But you couldn't shake the feeling that if you asked the wrong person where those shuttles were going, you'd end up in one of those shuttles going someplace you wouldn't want to go.

Posted by Michael Tortorello at May 10, 2007 11:19 AM | Comments (0)

 

Spotted: Rice noodle vanity

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Shortly before 5 p.m. on Saturday, pulling into the parking lot of Saigon Restaurant and Bakery, in St. Paul, a black Hummer with vanity tag that reads "PHOKING".

Posted by Paul Demko at April 3, 2007 10:53 AM | Comments (1)

 

Spotted: a kinder, gentler Tommy B

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For those of you who consider the KQ morning show to be the leading purveyor of tired, oafish, and bigoted local morning radio (admittedly, competition is a little more crowded on the dial these days), it seems important to note a time when Tom Barnard was slightly less jaded. Okay, way less jaded.

As a June 1986 story from Minneapolis-St. Paul City Business proves, Barnard was once not only a cutting-edge talent, but very nearly a thoughtful one as well.

Continue reading "Spotted: a kinder, gentler Tommy B"

Posted by G.R. Anderson Jr. at October 23, 2006 3:59 PM | Comments (1)

 

Graffiti watch: "Santa Is Real"

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Residents of Prospect Park may have noticed a new graffiti popping up in their neighborhood, just in time for the holiday season: "Santa Is Real," scribbled in cursive spray paint, often illuminated with a fanged, flying Santa-monster (which frankly looks more like Batboy than ol' St. Nick).

Continue reading "Graffiti watch: "Santa Is Real""

Posted by Chuck Terhark at September 6, 2006 1:15 PM | Comments (3)

 

Spotted: A cop with a sense of humor

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Walking in downtown Minneapolis today, I encountered two bicycle cops at the intersection of Hennepin Avenue and 5th Street. They seemed to be engaged in casual conversation with a civilian. Everything about the scene was entirely unremarkable. That is, until I glanced over at one of the cop's and noticed that he had affixed a plastic pig head to his handlebars. Chief Dolan, that officer deserves a commendation for humor in the line of duty.

Posted by Mike Mosedale at August 2, 2006 4:04 PM | Comments (0)

 

Spotted: Urban Timberwolf

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Thursday, 12:15 p.m., at Winner Gas, a service station on West Broadway near Lyndale Avenue North.

An electric-lime-green Hummer with huge spinner rims and Florida plates pulls into the lot and parks next to a pump for fueling.

One excited customer comes into the store and asks no one in particular, "Hey, man, you wanna get an autograph?"

Continue reading "Spotted: Urban Timberwolf"

Posted by G.R. Anderson Jr. at July 14, 2006 9:52 AM | Comments (2)

 

Forgive me father, my face got in the way of my boyfriend's fist

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A thousand-dollar pickup stops in the middle of the street outside 22nd Avenue Station, Nordeast's neighborhood strip club. The woman in the driver's seat rolls down her window and hollers toward an older lady in a Subaru.

"Are there any churches around here?"

Subaru must be baffled. Is the woman with the sloppy Sunday pony-tail looking for a Ukranian Catholic or a Polish National Catholic church? Maronite or Greek Orthodox? Because you can find all of them, and a dozen others, within 10-odd blocks.

The woman in the red pickup elaborates, then. "My boyfriend just hit me," she says. She turns her head and points to her right eye. "I want a church."

God help her. And if that doesn't work, there happen to be a couple of bars in the neighborhood, too. Her boyfriend may be familiar with a few of them.

Posted by Michael Tortorello at June 20, 2006 2:45 PM | Comments (0)

 

Spotted: Minnesota's future revealed in a pastry, and it doesn't include a weeping Jesus!

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Last weekend, we spotted what looked like the Son of God outlined in grease/rain/beer/urine on a 35W underpass. It was a sign that, surely, the highway will be infinitely awash in God's good blessings and Milwaukee's Best. A few days later, Minneapolis muffin makers Sanja Petrovich and Sara Troy happened upon another sign about the future of Minnesota, this time slightly less theistically themed and in a homemade baked good. During the days last week when the U of M Gopher stadium debate was heating up, a distinct and pain stricken gopher face emerged from one of their blueberry muffins. Perhaps it was an apology from the ashamed Gopher gods, or an ominous threat. Either way, the gopher didn't lie. And as to be expected, the $10.3 million price tag the state will have to fork over for the new Gopher stadium never did appear on their pastries. Afer all, who would've been able to swallow that?

Posted by at May 22, 2006 3:28 PM | Comments (0)

 

Spotted: Posing as a panhandler is fun!

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The SW corner of Stevens and 46th Street is a prime location for the city's homeless: It's a high-traffic area in the heart of south Minneapolis where hundreds of vehicles either coming off or heading onto 35W travel in a given afternoon. So a panhandler standing on the curb with a homemade sign isn't such an unusual sight on a sunny Sunday , unless, on closer inspection, you realize it's simply a dude in a camouflage hunter's jacket and expensive Birkenstocks pimping KTNF AM 950, the home of Air America, by posing as homeless.

The guy's sign, which for the most part was illegible, read something about being "down and out...," and then had "AM 950" scrawled across its lower-half in red marker. Despite his attempt to gather attention by looking like a panhandler, KTNF AM 950 station manager Janet Robert says the station isn't paying anyone to beg for listeners. "He's so excited about the station that he's doing that on his own," Robert says. "Can you imagine someone being so passionate about something that they'd do that?" If it's anything like being so hungry you have no other choice, then yes, we can imagine it. But who imagined it'd be making light of the homeless that would finally unite the city's lefty "moonbats" and right-wing "wingnuts" as one? We always knew moonbats and wingnuts would make such a good couple.

Posted by at April 12, 2006 5:39 PM | Comments (3)

 

Spotted: Random panhandler in '08!

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Mid-morning both Wednesday and Thursday, African American man begging at the off-ramp on the southeast corner of I-94 and Highway 55, Near North side of Minneapolis.

He looks to be in perhaps his late 50s, and despite the recent spate of warm weather, is adhering to the Minnesota principles of layering. His cardboard sign, heavy with text scrawled in black marker, reads:

Running for president
President Bush took my job
I want his

Posted by G.R. Anderson Jr. at March 30, 2006 3:32 PM | Comments (6)

 

There's a reason we call them "vanity plates"

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Apparently, all that self-esteem curricula has started to do its job. A few weeks ago I wrote about the sclerotic commuter whose Mercedes plates boasted I ERNIT.

A lot of us are proud of what we're driving these days. A few nights back, I spotted the lard-laden backside of a bloated American SUV trolling the backstreets of North Minneapolis. It was an Earthquake or an Escalade or a Mudslide or an Expedition--one of those names that suggests massive geological forces and heroic perseverance.

The plates read: YNV ME.

Now if I'd seen this car winding its way up a mountain pass to a Basque alcazar, hauling ten cases of Krug Champagne, a dufflebagful of cannoli, all 1082 volumes of the complete Penguin Classics, a koi pond, and Monica Belluci, there might be some envy issues to work out.

But a muddy gas guzzler crawling between the abandoned refrigerators and the blighted scrapyards on a Wednesday night in industrial Minneapolis--nah, I don't think envy is going to be a big problem here.

Posted by Michael Tortorello at March 14, 2006 12:59 PM | Comments (1)

 

Has medical science conducted any formal research on whether David Brooks is a proven laxative?

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In the annals of anonymous mitzvot, there may be few stranger chapters than the case of our toilet philanthropist. There's one stall here on the sixth floor of CPHQ, and beyond the unsettlingly high-pressure flush, nothing unusual can be said about its commode. Except this: Every day, someone prints up highlights from the New York Times' Op-Ed section and leaves them folded over the handicap rail.

As many readers probably know, in September of last year, the NYT began charging for online access to its columnists in various sections of the paper. For $49.95 a year, subscribers can read "premium" content--that is, business and sports and opinion pieces that they'd long read for free. The paper's management has crowed that more than 150,000 users have signed up for the service. That said, I don't know a single person who has, and I don't know anyone who knows anyone who has, either.

And so it is a singular act of benevolence to share the fruits of one's private account with everyone else who works on the floor: the Russian computer programmers, whose whiteboard is always festooned with inscrutable diagrams; the casting agency that attracts a steady stream of nubile, floral-scented women into the sluggish elevator. I naturally wonder who it is, this patron of the WC, this doo-doo do-gooder. Why doesn't he read the columns online during lunch break? How clean does he keep his hands?

But none of those questions troubles me as much as this: What kind of sad-boweled bastard can't occasionally wait for the privacy of his own throne?

Posted by Michael Tortorello at March 8, 2006 12:52 PM | Comments (2)

 

Is there a word in the English language that describes the behavior of someone who believes he's the subject of envy, although he is not?

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The man in the car on 12th Street and Hennepin is at that particular stage of a man's life when he needs to have his prostate examined on a biannual basis. Possibly more. What hair that remains after decades of deforestation has been polymer-affixed to his scalp, from right to left. He wears a a boxy sport coat and shades that Ben Gazzara would hide behind in one of his seedier roles. He doesn't seem to be talking into his Bluetooth--although he doesn't look like the kind of guy who spends a lot of time listening.

The car is a Mercedes S430. The color is indeterminate: As is customary with the Mercedes Benz, the paintjob represents less a particular hue than a specific tax bracket.

The vanity plates read: I ERNIT.

The man in the Mercedes S430 gives no appearance of understanding what it is he has erned.

Posted by Michael Tortorello at March 2, 2006 1:30 PM | Comments (0)

 

Spotted: Norm and his morning cup

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"He looks like I just poured ice water down his undies"

One of the (sometimes) nice things about living in the Twin Cities is how aw-shucks small town it really is. Case in point is this recent run-in citizen Jeff Johnson had with Norman Coleman, junior U.S. Senator from the great state of Minnesota (Johnson assures blotter it is absoluely 100 percent true):

Continue reading "Spotted: Norm and his morning cup"

Posted by G.R. Anderson Jr. at January 23, 2006 4:49 PM | Comments (6)

 

Spotted

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St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington, enjoying the breakfast buffet at Fabulous Fern's Bar & Grill during yesterday's Vikings game. At halftime Harrington and his dining companion won a t-shirt and a gift certificate. The Chief, however, had to be chided by the raffle administrator into reporting to the bar to claim his prize.

Posted by Paul Demko at December 5, 2005 10:55 AM | Comments (0)

 

Spotted

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At approximately 1:05 p.m. Thursday on the third floor of City Hall in Minneapolis. City Council member Dean Zimmerman, greeting a constituent. "Congratulations on your re-election," the constituent says cheerfully. After a long pause, Zimmerman conveys the bad news: "I didn't get re-elected."

Posted by Paul Demko at November 18, 2005 12:38 PM | Comments (2)

 

Spotted: hit and near-run

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At around 3:15 on Tuesday afternoon a guy who seemed to appear from the cracks in the pavement darted across Nicollet from 27th Street. It looked like he was attempting to evade two oncoming cop cars, and another that was stopped on 27th. One cop car, going north on Nicollet, screeched to a rolling stop before hitting the black late-teen/early-twentysomething male. There was a thud, the suspect rolled to the ground, and then wobbled on bent ankles as he tried to pick himself up and run again.

A few staggering half-steps later, he again was brought to the ground by the cop who struck him with his car, though by this time the cop was out of the car and using his hands to wrap the man's arms around his back. The suspect lay face-first on Nicollet as the cop cuffed him, picked up something that had fallen from the young man's pocket, and then placed him in the back of the cop car and drove off, two other cop cars in tow. So why was this guy sprinting from the cops, only to literally run into them? According to the 5th Precinct, there is no record of the incident or the arrest.

Posted by at October 27, 2005 4:55 PM | Comments (0)

 

City Pages finds Che Guevara

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Spotted: Marx's only son, the liberator of Latin America, and the uncle of the Cuban revolution, on the sidewalk along North Fifth Street in Minneapolis.

Let all who love revolution come unto this spot and sing "Guantanamera."

Posted by Michael Tortorello at September 29, 2005 12:48 PM | Comments (2)

 

City Pages finds Jesus Christ

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Spotted: God's only Son, imprinted on the sidewalk along North Fifth Street in Minneapolis.

Let all who know the Prince of Peace come unto this spot and make it holy.

Posted by Michael Tortorello at September 29, 2005 12:45 PM | Comments (1)

 

Spotted

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Brian Herron, celebrating his 50th birthday with friends and family at BabaLu in the North Loop neighborhood last night. The former Minneapolis City Council member, who served a year in federal prison after pleading guilty to extortion, was dressed in a sharp, double-breasted, all-white suit. "Friends and family stand by you," Herron observed.

Posted by Paul Demko at September 9, 2005 10:36 AM | Comments (0)

 

Spotted

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On Dupont Avenue, in the Uptown neighborhood of south Minneapolis, an older pickup truck with a bumpersticker that read: "Is it 2008 yet?"

Posted by Mike Mosedale at September 2, 2005 2:25 PM | Comments (0)

 

Spotted: The very first day of a child's madonna/whore complex

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Location: The LRT platform in the Warehouse District. A fresh-faced blond mother with limpid blue eyes--an escapee from a photo spread in one of the more innocent women's magazines--holds the hands of two young children.

"Mommy, mommy, can I have my picture taken in front of the waterfall?" the boy says. He points to the display of pulsing neon lights that covers the building on the other side of the tracks.

"We said we would do that, yes!" she says. The little boy breaks her grip and tears off toward the dark portal that leads to the inside of Dreamgirls.

Posted by Michael Tortorello at August 19, 2005 11:13 AM | Comments (0)

 

Spotted

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Orphanage advocate Mary Jo Copeland, exiting the Dry Dock Cafe (where she frequently lunches) in the Warehouse District of Minneapolis shortly after 1 p.m. today. She departed in a late-model silver Lincoln. Vanity license plate: "Empathy."

Posted by Paul Demko at August 17, 2005 4:11 PM | Comments (0)

 

Spotted: Campaign sign conflict

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At the southeast corner of East 42nd Street and Fourth Avenue South in Minneapolis, there's a faded, gray one-level house with a couple campaign lawns signs in the yard. Nothing too unusual--the citywide election cycle is upon us and heating up before primary season in September. But in this case, the signs were for two competitors for the city's Eighth Ward seat, Dennis Tifft and Jeff Hayden.

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Posted by G.R. Anderson Jr. at August 11, 2005 3:18 PM | Comments (0)

 

Spotted: The end of an era

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That's what I thought as I motored north on Highway 10 this weekend. I spotted this sign in Anoka County, a place long and proudly associated with the mullet. And now comes the hard evidence that the barbers of Anoka County are scalping mullets for free.

While I never saw the deceased TV show,The Mullets, I blame it for the imminent demise of this brave hairstyle. Why? Because television wrecks everything. (You can thank Google Scholar for the afore-linked article on the recent surge in TV-induced anorexia among adolescent girls in Fiji.)

Posted by Mike Mosedale at August 1, 2005 4:40 PM | Comments (1)

 

Spotted

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Report from the Department of Strange Garage Sales, northeast Minneapolis division.

Two weird sightings. At one large and locally notorious perma-sale--where the merchandise is usually left overnight in the side yard, covered by enormous green tarps--there was a beer bong for sale. I have been to a lot of garage sales over the years, but have never before seen a beer bong on the merchandise table. As I recall, the funnel was beige and the clear plastic hose was somewhat discolored. Rendered weak-kneed by vague memories of a junior high mishap, however, I neglected to note the price.

Later, I went to a nearby sale with scores of videotapes, which were neatly arranged in boxes placed on card tables. There was a lot of porn for sale. Porn is a relatively rare thing at garage sales. These tapes were second generation--copies of mainstream, professional stuff that had been dubbed to store-bought blanks.

But that wasn't why this was strange. The strange thing was the handwriting. It was perfect. Each tape--$5, I did notice that price--was hand-labled in identical, utterly flawless cursive. And then it hit me: I was in the presence of a porn enthusiast whose unnervingly, uniform handwriting would have made my grandmother blush with pride.

Posted by Mike Mosedale at July 20, 2005 2:57 AM | Comments (0)

 

Spotted

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Late Friday afternoon I dropped off my friend and her niece at Jim Lupient Water Park in Northeast Minneapolis. I was about to pull out of the parking lot when I noticed a man, late-60s or so, his back to me, positioning a camera between the wrought-iron fence slats. He took a quick shot, glanced around nervously, then walked along the fence and took a few more photographs.

I got out of my car and stood a few feet behind him, hoping to get a better view of what he was doing: Was he taking pictures of his grandkids, maybe? When he spotted me, he took off on foot, swiftly heading behind the building. So I did what any woman one would do on a 98 degree day: I ran after him. When I caught up with him and asked him what he was photographing, he replied, "The crowd. It's a hobby of mine." He was jowly and wore wide-framed glasses, long pants, and a crew cut. He was breathless and walking so quickly I could barely keep up with him. "Crowds of little kids?" I asked. (The kid to adult ratio looked to be about 80/20). "Don't worry," he said, still outpacing me and never looking at my face. "These are just for me. They're not going to go up on the Internet."

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Posted by at July 18, 2005 3:11 PM | Comments (2)