Minneapolis Election 2009

Hey, did you know there is an election next week? And there is actually some importance here in the great city of Minneapolis.

First, it’s the opening day of Ranked Choice Voting 2009, so be prepared for a lot of confused voters.

Second, Minneapolis is voting on whether or not to get rid of the Board of Estimate and Taxation, while also electing two new members. Obviously, most of the candidates are pressuring voters to keep the board of which they are running for. Shocking. Even the president of the Board is pushing to end it in her excellent opinion piece to the Star and Tribune. Well worth a read. There is a feeling that by eliminating this Board will lead to the elimination of the independent Minneapolis Park Board, but there is no evidence of this at all.

Third, a major US city is electing a new mayor, but you’d never know by the lack of quality candidates (no offense) or media attention. Not that I’m complaining. I’m a huge RT Rybak supporter and thrilled to have him in Minneapolis. RT could run for Governor next year, but I really hope he stays in the city.

Below you will find what is on my ballot in my neighborhood of Minneapolis, a few important links, and who I am voting for. Special thanks to Aaron who explained a lot of the races to me over a chat session this morning. Hopefully he will do a blog post this weekend with more info on the races. Please add information of any race going on in your neighborhood and thoughts on the election.

What’s on the Ballot?

Mayor
-R.T. Rybak (web)

Minneapolis City Council Ward 12
Star Tribune Questionnaire
-Sandy Colvin Roy (web)

Board of Estimate and Taxation (2 at large members)
Star Tribune Questionnaire
Editorial: If board stays: Wheeler, Martens
-David Wheeler (web)
-R. Michael Martens (Independent/Republican, but better than Becker or Townsend)

Park and Recreation Board (3 At-Large and 6 District Commissioners)
Star Tribune Questionnaire
Star Tribune Endorsements
John Erwin
Annie Young (fantastic activist)
Tom Nordyke

District 5
Jason Stone (web) – (super nice guy, very genuine)

Change the Composition of the Board of Estimate and Taxation
BET President urges voters to vote YES
Vote YES for Mpls
-YES

 

Twitter Digest on Tumblr?

So, I kinda want to display my twitter posts on my Tumblr page, but having each Twitter post as a separate entry is a little unnecessary. So I thought of doing a daily digest. What do you think? Please vote in the poll…

First Game at TCF Bank Stadium

I was never much of a football fan growing up, only occasionally watching the Vikings, and never really getting into college football. Had I gone to the U, I probably would have, but my only college football games were at Camp Randall in Madison. Games were a lot of fun, but the Gophers sucked every time we played there.

For some reason, I really started to get into college football a few years ago, mainly because of the hype of the new on campus stadium at the University of Minnesota. So a friend and I bought season tickets at the Dome so we’d be able to get them at the new stadium.

I quickly realized how shitty the dome was for college football. There was no excitement on game day and the place rarely sold out. Heck, they only filled the place when we played Wisconsin or Iowa, and most of the fans were from those schools. That’s just not acceptable for one of the largest colleges in the country, in a major US city, and one that has the history of college football that Minnesota has had.

If Saturday is any example of how college football days will be going forward, Gopher fans are in for a treat. Campus was electric. Maroon and Gold filled University Ave, Stadium Village, and Dinkytown. Frat houses had parties with alumni of all ages, and there was tailgating! Everything that is supposed to happen on game day.

The Game was exciting, and the Gophers won, but that was hardly the most important part of the day. College Football is back at the U, and hopefully this will mean a return to national importance. Like it or not, college football is a major money maker for Universities, and something the U has had missing for over 25 years.

Here are some pictures from the day…

Why I gave up East-Lake.net

Earlier this week, I made the tough decision to stop blogging at my long time home of east-lake.net. Why? I’m still not exactly sure, I’m sure I’ll regret it later on, and might even go back, but I thought it was time for a change. I wasn’t posting often enough to make it what I wanted it to be, so it was time to move on. Here is a little history of my blog, why I decided to change, and what I look for going forward.

What I really wanted to do was make East-Lake.net a blog about my neighborhood, Longfellow and the whole East Lake St area, and I still think that is what the site should be. Unfortunately, I just wasn’t all that good at it. I’d read about local news and events online and in the neighborhood paper, but wouldn’t pass it on it time. I eat out at area restaurants but wouldn’t review them. My goal is to clear out the site and start fresh, but we’ll see if that ever happens. Life gets in the way too often.

When I started blogging, I used it as a journal, posting my daily activities, adding thoughts on politics and sports and music when they came up, and the occasional internet find. When privacy became more of a concern, I dropped the personal stuff. After the 2004 election, I became more apathetic towards politics, and so I stopped writing about that. I didn’t want to be a sports blogger so I tried to limit those posts. So I was left with occasional food, beer and concert reviews, but it wasn’t all that much fun anymore.

Blogging was all for myself, just a place to write what I wanted to write, and I used it as a way to keep in contact with my friends that were moving away from Minneapolis and those that I just didn’t see as often. Blog posts created comments which meant more interaction with those friends. Over the past few years, posting and commenting was way down and it kinda sucked the life out of it all.

At the same time, I started using Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook more often to connect with people and I started to change my thoughts on blogging. What started out as a more personal outlet, was becoming more community based. Only recently did I start to get out more and meet the people that had blogs that I had been reading for years. And that interaction was great.

Twitter is a great medium for instant news and conversation. Tumblr made reblogging and microblogging simple, as well as created a community of blogs, all visible from a dashboard. Facebook extended that social aspect to even more people, many of whom probably never blogged before.

Most personal blogs never really had that community feel, with the exception of those that really do a great job covering a specific topic, but there are very few of those. For Most blogs, I, and I will assume most people, just read them in a Feed Reader, rarely even going to the main site. This is fine for most people, writing just to write, and knowing that people will read it but not comment or continue the conversation. One of the better community blogs are those that have multiple authors, but then you lose ownership of your posts, and they just get lost in the site.

Tumblr isn’t perfect, but it’s probably the best platform I’ve seen that tries to make a community of bloggers. You still get your own page that you can take ownership of, but there is a Dashboard where you can view all the blogs that you follow. I’m a big fan of “liking” posts, just so I can tell the person that posted a story that I liked it. So simple, but effective. Commenting takes time, and most often there isn’t a whole lot to say. Google Reader has recently added the ability to like posts, but it still feels a little clumsy.

Tumblr isn’t perfect, but it’s close. I’d really like to see the ability to add comments without using disqus, and make those comments appear more inline on the dashboard. And I wish Tumblr had an export tool so I could take my posts with me if I decided to use something else, or just wanted to add them to my old archives over at wordpress.com. Actually this might be more of an issue than I first thought it was. Might have to think about this a little more :)

So, I think my plan is to use Tumblr for short term blogging, and use my WordPress.com page for long form entries, and then importing summaries of those entries into Tumblr. I don’t really care if I have some random post from Tumblr saved in my archives, but it would be nice to have the more traditional blog posts saved. I just don’t need to pay to host those random entries.

So, now that I’ve kinda decided to just use Tumblr as my main outlet for short form blogging, I still had the issue of wanting to collect all of my stuff in one place. Flickr, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook are all great for what they are, but it is nice to have a one stop shop for everything related to Brian Moen. I could have just imported those into Tumblr, but I assume that most people don’t want to see an entry in their feed reader for every twitter post I make or flickr photo I post.

This is where FriendFeed comes in. My friendfeed page will have everything I do, for those that want to see it all. FriendFeed isn’t perfect either, but it’s a decent place for now.

Basically, I didn’t want to completely stop blogging, but I was ready for a change, and hopefully it works out. I’m sure this is more than you care to read about this, since it’s not even all that much of a change, but whatever.

Minnesota State Fair

Sometimes I forget just how much I love the Minnesota State Fair. The people, the food, the live newscasts – it’s all a perfect way to end the summer.

We brought our camera, but didn’t take a single picture, except for this one camera phone shot from the Sky Glide. We were too busy eating and enjoying the great Minnesota Get Together!

We had:

• Nacho Mama Dog (Tex Mex beef dipped in batter, deep fried and topped with cheese and all of the nacho fixings)
• Cheese Curds
• Stanly’s Sugarbush Maple soda from Renewing the Countryside
• Roasted Corn
• Ole and Lena’s Krumkake (filled with whipped cream and topped with a strawberry / blueberry sauce)
• Wild Rice Burger
• Funnel Cake

The Nacho Mama Dog and the Krumkake were two of the better State Fair foods I’ve had in a long time. The Cheese Curds and Roasted Corn were as good as always. The Wild Rice burger was decent, and the funnel cake was something that I haven’t had in years, but really enjoyed.

Changing Things Up

East-lake.net as a blog is gone. Thanks for reading, commenting, following, and everything else. I’m not completely going away, just changing things up a bit. Check out the 8 years of archives or follow along on the main page, which is now just my FriendFeed (twitter, tumblr, and flickr). The RSS feed has been updated to show my Tumblr posts, which is where I’ll be updating things from now on, so you won’t need to update your feed reader. Thanks!

Palm Pre Review

It’s hard to believe that it’s the middle of 2009 and I’m just now getting my first smart phone, the Palm Pre. In the past, I’ve just used the crappy menu based and text only display of the web on a regular cell phone, and that worked just fine for me. All I really wanted to check was news headlines and sports scores. But in the last few years, the mobile web has really taken off, both with much better designed mobile sites, or even normal screen displays, as well as mobile social networking sites that used location services.

For the most part my old phone worked well enough for sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare. That is, until I got a iPod Touch. With Wi-fi available almost everywhere I went, I was really able to use the Touch like it was an iPhone, and I loved it. It was a lot faster than using the menu based web, and everything looked so much better. I told my wife when I bought the Touch that I wouldn’t regret it 6 months later, and decide that I needed an iPhone. Well that’s exactly what happened. I still like the Touch, but really, it’s a gateway drug to a real smart phone!

And I’ll be honest, I wish I had an iPhone instead of the Palm Pre, and even though I still really like the Pre, an iPhone would work a lot better for me. There are more apps, more games, integration with iTunes, and it just works better. But I get a discount with Sprint through work, and I just couldn’t justify the extra monthly cost. That and I’ve been very happy with Sprint and why change to a company that has had so many negative comments made about them, especially concerning the iPhone.

My two year contract was up last week so it was time to make the move to a new phone, and I had to decide between a Blackberry and a Palm Pre. I asked my Twitter friends what they recommended and everyone said to get the Pre, so I went to the Sprint store to check it out. The Palm Pre felt more like a lifestyle phone, something that would work a lot better with the social media apps I wanted to use. And the interface is more like the iPhone, which I really liked. That and I didn’t plan on using the phone to check work email, which felt like the main reason to go with a BB.

That’s the back story, now on to the review.

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What I Like:

- The physical design. Because of the hidden keypad, the Pre is a lot smaller than the iPhone, and it looks really awesome. There are three buttons on the phone, a menu button, a switch to vibrate mode switch, and a power button. It feels really good in my hands, and when the keypad is open, there is a slight curve to it which makes it more comfortable to talk on.

- Synergy. At first I just synced my Google contacts to the Pre, since my contacts are nicely organized. I was a little hesitant to let in sync my Facebook contacts, but I let it go last night. It worked perfectly. Contacts were merged automatically and now I have a great and up-to-date address book with me at all times. Not all users had their profile pics added to the Pre, but a lot did, which is very cool.

- Messaging. I just love the conversation style display of SMS on these phones. Makes so much more sense than just each message displayed separately.

- Notifications. Both SMS and Gmail messages are displayed by a simple bar at the bottom that doesn’t interfere with any other activity you may be doing. It just displays who it is from, and the subject. You can open the item by tapping it, or you can ignore it by just sweeping it away. I have my gmail checked every half hour which is frequent enough to still get important emails, but also save on the battery.

- Multitasking. It’s really nice to be able to have multiple applications open at once. I don’t use this all that often, but it does make things quicker.

- The camera. The Pre has a nice 3 megapixel camera, and the pictures looks pretty nice. And it also has a LED flash, extended depth of field, but no auto focus features or video.

- Sprint’s EVDO Network. It’s been very speedy, and I have had no troubles connecting so far, even while using it down in the middle of nowhere in Southern Minnesota this past weekend.

- Wi-fi. Sprint’s EVDO has been great so far, but having wi-fi is also nice. This is fairly standard these days, but still a nice thing to have.

- Sprint Navigation. While driving to Rose Creek, MN this past weekend for a friend’s wedding, I typed in the city as the destination, and it worked out the directions from our current location, and we had turn-by-turn driving directions by voice and onscreen. We took a detour and it did a quick job of rerouting our directions. I don’t get lost very often, but this will be very handy when traveling.

- MP3 Ringtones. I was able to download a few free ringtones from crackberry.com and transfer them over to the Pre using the USB cable. Super easy.

- Where. This is a location services app that combines weather, news, Yelp, movies, and gas prices in one.

- Tweed. It’s a free Twitter App that has worked great so far. Nothing super fancy, and not as clean as Tweetie, but it works.

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What I Don’t Like:

- Notification Sounds. Why on earth I can’t change the sound for when I get a new SMS is just crazy. This has been available for every phone I’ve ever seen. I am on call for work, and need to know when I get a page. On the Pre, all I get is a simple two beeps, and that’s it. It doesn’t even repeat if you don’t acknowledge it. This could be a deal breaker for me if I start to miss pages. There is a home brew app that fixes this, but I’d rather not add third party apps quite yet. I want it to work the way it’s supposed to work.

- The keypad. I have semi fat fingers and the physical keypad is a little difficult to type on. And I was really getting used to the on screen keypad that the iPod Touch had, especially in landscape mode. I wasn’t super fast at it, but a lot faster than with this one. Though it did take me a while to get used to it, so I assume I’ll get better with the Pre keypad over the next few months. I probably won’t be writing a novel on it, but it’s good enough for texting.

- Lack of Apps. I really hope we move away from apps, and over to more web based applications. It makes so much more sense to have a web app that works on all platforms, rather than having to develop a separate app and billing system for every platform. But Apple was smart and got out to a huge lead, and with the marketing of how great the App Store is, it will take a while for the change to happen. Foursquare is a lot better with the app, even though the mobile site works for checking in. Instapaper is another App I can’t wait to have on the Pre.

- Google Maps. The Google Maps app on the Pre is decent. It has the little blue dot displaying where you are, which is great for driving around and traveling, but it doesn’t have the option for transit directions. I don’t take the bus all that often, but this is one of the great things about the iPhone version of Google Maps. Hopefully this will be available on the Pre sometime soon.

- Calendar. The built in calendar isn’t as simple. It syncs with Gcal well enough, but I much prefer the list display on the iPhone. A calendar display isn’t very practical on a mobile device. List works a lot better, IMO.

- Browser. Safari on the iPhone is just better. It was smoother, it rendered pages better, and the double click zoom worked perfectly. The Browser on the Pre is just average. It has troubles with Google Reader, and doesn’t display the mobile Star Tribune page properly. My only complaint with the Safari browser was that it would reload pages when switching between tabs. I never liked that.

I think that a lot of my problems with the Palm Pre will be addressed over time. More Apps will become available, and they will get better, as long as the phone sells well, which I really think it should. One of my worries with getting this phone is what happens if the Pre fails. Palm will go away and I’d be left with a phone that no one was developing for. You don’t really have that concern with the iPhone or the Blackberry. That and this really is a first generation phone. Software updates can change a lot of functionality, as long as the form is solid.

Is it an iPhone killer? Definitely not, but it’s still an excellent phone, and I am very happy with my purchase, and look forward to watching the phone and the community grow.

If you have any questions or comments, please let me know.

Marshalling into Lake Street

TD Mischke takes on Minneapolis and St. Paul, by comparing one stretch of road, from Marshall Ave in St. Paul to Lake Street in Minneapolis.

Marshalling into Lake Street: A town sheds its skin on its way across the Mississippi

“Show me these two cities,” said the out-of-towner to the cabbie. “Show me them in a single stretch, on a straight line, where I can peer out the window and see one town become another and know where it happens.”

“Well, ma’am,” said the cabbie, “we ain’t taking River Road then. Nor are we crossing the Ford Bridge. There’s nothing jarring there, no transition. University Avenue doesn’t cut it either. You never notice the change. We take these paths and you’ll start squawkin’ like the others I take from the airport and back. You’ll claim it’s all one big metro now, one super-sized town.

It’s no secret that Lake Street is my favorite thing about living in the Twin Cities. No other street is as diverse, or covers as much of what makes Minneapolis a great place to live. From the wonderful River neighborhood of Longfellow in the east, through the diverse and historic Midtown, to the hip and youthful Uptown with Lake Calhoun. Minneapolis like to call Nicollet Ave “Eat Street”, but you could eat at a different place for a year along Lake Street, from the Longfellow Grill to Burger Jones.

But that’s just Minneapolis. Crossing the river into St. Paul is just as wonderful. From the beautiful homes near the river, through Concordia College and St. Paul Central HS, to the Cathedral. If only the section of Selby Ave, from Snelling to the Cathedral, was on Marshall, could it be any better as far as dining and drinking goes, but Marshall Ave is a better representation of the quiet city to the east.

Rock the Garden 2009

I’m still a little depressed that I couldn’t make it to Rock the Garden last year, especially after how much I enjoyed Saturday’s show. While the lineup wasn’t quite as great as it was last year with four of my favorites bands – Bon Iver, Cloud Cult, The New Pornographers, Andrew Bird – I still really enjoyed the flow of Rock the Garden 2009. And it was a great reminder of how fun outdoor concerts can be when done right. I was at the first Rock the Garden with Sonic Youth and Stereolab back in 2000, but the event has really taken off since then. I’ll take an event like RTG over an all day thing or full weekend festival anyday.

Tricia and I took the bus to Franklin and Lyndale and walked down to the Sculpture Garden to meet a friend that was buying our extra tickets. We arrived around 3:30 and the line to get in was fairly long, but 15 minutes later, we walked right in with no line at all. So props to the organizers for keeping things moving.

In years past, the stage faced to the east, meaning the crowd had to stand in the street. Part of this was because the Guthrie Theater used to be where the hill was, but also being of the neighborhood. With the Guthrie now gone from that area, the concert organizers worked with the neighborhood to get the stage moved 90 degrees, now facing the hill. This meant everyone had a great view of the stage, and giving it a more amphitheater feel. I had zero problems with the layout of the event.

The beer lines were quick (Summit Pale Ale and Scandia), and while I didn’t have any food, the burgers looked really good. I’m not sure which vendor was selling them, but my mouth watered every time somebody walked past with one. My only complaint with the concessions, is that the Rock the Garden sent out a Twitter message saying that we could bring empty water bottles and there would be places to fill them up. Well, I never found those, but luckily I ran into Kyle who filled it up in the VIP area.

The flat area in front of the stage and part of the hill were full when we got in, mostly with people sitting on blankets, so it wasn’t super packed together. We grabbed a spot just to the right side of the stage, even with the DJ booth. We probably could have moved a little closer, but it ended up being a great spot. Fairly free of drunk idiots or scenesters who were just there to be seen and heard. And one of the benefits of the new layout, was being able to sit on the grass between each set. That really gave the event a more casual feel to it.

On to the music.

Solid Gold:
Solid Gold really benefits from playing in a dark club, preferably late at night, so their opening set at 4:30 in the afternoon to a mostly sober crowd didn’t really do them any favors. But they really seemed to make the most of it, and the crowd, most of which had most likely never seem them live, was into it. It will be interesting to see what their next gig is like. Hopefully this will bring them some new fans.

Yeasayer:
After the first 3-4 songs I was completely unimpressed with this band, in fact, I was annoyed that they were even on stage, wasting my time. For some reason I had never heard any Yeasayer until this week, when The Current had one of their songs (“2080″) in their Song of the Day Podcast. I enjoyed that song, so I was looking forward to the show, but these first songs didn’t do anything for me. Then things seemed to change and it got a lot better. Had I not been so unimpressed with the first few songs, I would have said it was a great set.

Calexico:
Calexico was the perfect band for this spot, and I’m sure they picked up quite a few new fans, including us. Not sure why, but I just never got that much into Calexico before this. But their combination of alt-country, indie rock, and Latin music was perfect for an event like this. They knew how to entertain a crowd and felt really comfortable in front of 10,000 people. They are the one band I’m most looking forward to seeing again, though I know it won’t be as good as this performance was.

The Decemberists:
If you know me, you most likely know that I am a Decemberists fan. They’re not my favorite band by any means, but I have always enjoyed what they do. From their first albums and amazing 400 Bar show back 2004 to the new, more narrative/literal stuff. I didn’t like the last show at First Avenue, but that was basically because I had been listening to them non stop for like 6 months, and was sick of it. I just over did it on The Decemberists.

I was a little worried for the event having them as the headliner. People either love them or hate them, they either don’t mind Colin’s voice, or they can’t stand it. They either enjoy everything they’ve done, or stopped caring after the first two great albums. So I just wasn’t sure how the crowd would react to them.

When I heard that they were going to be doing Hazards of Love straight through, I was annoyed at first, because I didn’t love the album, and thought it was a cheap way to fill a setlist. And with a crowd that isn’t there just to see them, I thought they would have been better served to play a full set of all of their music.

But that is why I am just a fan and not in charge of things like this, because I was wrong on both levels. I now enjoy the album a lot more, and thought playing it straight threw was a great idea. Really, playing only a couple songs from it wouldn’t have made much sense, because it tells such a story. And I probably would have left the show thinking it was just another Decemberists set of all the songs I’ve already seen live multiple times.

The crowd was really into it, at least they were around us, and every where I looked. People were singing along, dancing, and really getting into it. Part of it was probably the beer, and being out in the sun all day, but that will happen at any show. And it was all because of the music.

In fact, the band didn’t even say a word until the encore, when Colin engaged the crowd like he would have at any other show. I usually get annoyed when bands don’t speak to the crowd, but I didn’t even notice that they hadn’t until he first did speak. It just worked.

Throughout the show, Tricia was thinking about how great of a voice Shara Worden has (and Becky Stark), and how much it reminded her of the band Heart. And what did The Decemberists end the show with? A crowd pleasing cover of “Crazy On You” (video) that really capped off a great night of music.

Now the only question is who will play next year, and will they be able to continue the high quality of acts year after year.

Top Beer Bars – Mpls vs St. Paul

My last post about the local beer scene, along with this post on Beer Advocate got me thinking about which city has the best beer bars, Minneapolis or St. Paul. I used to think it was St. Paul hands down, mainly because of the Happy Gnome and Muddy Pig, but after putting together this list, I think it’s pretty safe to say that Minneapolis takes it. It’s close, but I think that the bars in the Riverside/West Bank/University area is hard to beat.

I didn’t include any Irish Pubs in my list because I’m still annoyed that most of them still don’t include any American Craft Beers in their tap selection.

What do you think? Did I miss any places that have more than just a handful of great beers available?

Minneapolis
Busters on 28th, Acadia, Blue Nile, Nomad, Town Hall Brewery, Grumpy’s NE, Grumpy’s Downtown, Stub & Herbs, Bulldog NE, Bulldog Uptown, MacKenzie’s, Bryant Lake Bowl, Triple Rock Social Club, Mac’s Industrial, Herkimer Pub

St. Paul
Muddy Pig, Happy Gnome, Blue Door Pub, Great Waters, Bulldog Lowertown, Groveland Tap, Sweeney’s Saloon

Suburbs
Barley John’s Brewpub

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