Twin High-Maintenance Machines

Well, that was a gap. Hello.

This fall has been bonkers. Between weddings, conferences, festivals and a couple of trips to see friends, I haven't spent two consecutive weekends in Boston since... well, since April. Madness! Strangely, it's still felt more like home than it has in years past - a testament to the excellence of my new neighborhood, the support of friends, and I think a real and tangible change in perspective that came about this summer. Suffice to say that after the holidays, I look forward to burrowing for a month or two before I leave town again.

But in the meantime: Minneapolis! I've been too crazed writing my first dissertation chapter (in and under revisions!) and on the road to get to this, but here 'tis. Video is, as usual for these stateside ones, a bit gappy, as I am incapable of remembering to pull out my camera when I'm with pals, but still gives a little hint of how great this spot is - still a city that I could gladly call home, and where I'm glad to have grown up. (Well, nearby anyway.)

All that and a coupla rambles after the jump...

(The song in that video became an anthem at some point this year - right before the election, David Rees used it in an election-based mixtape and it rocketed straight to my heart for just about every reason humanly possible.)

AUTUMN HAD SPRUNG

Minneapolis falls into a similar feel as some of the other smaller American cities I've bounced around this fall: with a later heyday than New York, Boston or Chicago, they're built a bit more for cars and less for pedestrians and mass transit commuters. They're cheaper, smaller, and in some ways friendlier, but still have avid art and performance scenes and superb food culture. And maybe it's hometown boosterism talking, but I think the Twin Cities are a cut above in all these ways.

Minneapolis is ALSO the first city in which I saw The Phantom of the Opera, which was an extremely important event as a child. I am pleased to see that the theatre where I saw it has kept up with my tastes (and was staging The Curious Incident... when I visited)

 For the long weekend I was there, I was unable to get out to do much of what I usually like to do when I'm in town - seeing shows at the Guthrie or Children's Theatre, getting to the science museum I remember loving as a kid, zipping out to the zoo in the suburbs or Como Park, getting to a concert, even visiting the Walker Art Museum. But I did duck out for a series of fantastic meals with dear friends, which confirmed that this is still an incredibly delicious and special place when it comes to confident cookery with local/seasonal/organic ingredients, and spent one afternoon walking along the river in one of the gorgeous park spaces that litter the city.

FOR INSTANCE, this vegetable tart from Heyday, which was basically the earthy secrets of autumn in tart form. I felt plunged into memory and fatness. It was: GOOD.

I was also taken again by how friendly the place is. Minnesota Nice can get a bad (and sometimes deserved) rap for being a vein of passive aggression couched in polite stoicism. But as often as not I find that people who live here - on the clock, off the clock, however they're living - are genuinely thoughtful, empathetic human beings who enjoy other such folk. And it was tremendously nice to reconnect to that (as I would again in Chicago over Thanksgiving weekend). It was also wonderful to see the thriving Somali refugee community in the city - it's been a success story from what I understand, and they're a visible and energetic part of the fabric of the region. That was a good thing to connect to given the dark turn of the following weeks. We're capable of better, and I hope we manage to make our way back to the model this area sets.

The Guthrie, whose "new" (to me) theater I'd never actually been to until this trip. It is a lovely and excellent public space!

It whetted my appetite, and I'll almost certainly be back sooner than later, hopefully in the summer for a Twins game and some more time outdoors or even up north into the lakes that provided innumerable family vacations growing up. I don't have especially profound thoughts here, I just... am happy to have gone? And cannot wait to return.

Nor can the rusted gates to the Mill City Museum wait for my return! THIS PLACE: ALSO COOL.

OKAY! I may have a li'l post up here about my two New York trips this fall when we get closer to Christmas break, and then... a little revival of Europa! More on all of that soon. Hugs and kisses, cats 'n' kittens. We're all making it!

View from one of the Guthrie's lobbies. C'mon, guys. C'MON.