More Minneapolis Notes - Tuesday

[jbsegal]

(More pictures will follow.)

• Al's breakfast. Thanks to ambar's pointer, I headed to Dinkytown on Tuesday morning to partake of Al's Breakfast. It was quite yummy and quite the experience. What that page doesn't mention is that the space used to be an alley between those neighboring two buildings.
  Win.
  
  
• After breakfast, I wandered over to The Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, primarily to experience Frank Gehry up-close and personal. He still sucks. However, he did meet his mandate: "They told me not to build another brick lump."
  
  
  Wednesday afternoon, I went to the The Minneapolis Institute of Arts and I discovered what Gehry'd been told not to build:
  
  
  
• From the Weisman, and a wander around a bit of the tc.umn.edu campus, I headed over to Uptown, wandered around bookstores and music stores (including Cheapo, with an amazing collection of Local artists - not that I knew 98% of the names - but I did pick up a couple of Lojo Russo albums. I would have picked up Todd Menton's newest, but I thought he might be at the show on Weds and I could get it straight from him.
  
  
• I dug through the Citypages and failed to find music that I knew I wanted to see. It seems that the Tim Malloys have a regular tuesday gig, but I didn't notice that...and, at least as represented at the BiL St. Pat's shows, I don't really like the Tim's audiences. It's too bad, however, as it seems that Folk Underground (featuring The Fabulous Lorraine) were also at the Tim's gig that night.
  
  
• With nothing else on the schedule for that night, I went to the Lagoon and saw The Lost Skeleton Of Cadavra. Oh my. That's really impressive. I really enjoyed it.
  
  
• Then it was finally dinner time. I was in the mood for something local..and what's more MSP than Cambodian/Laotion (M'nong (or maybe Hmong?)) food? Unfortunately, despite a large refugee population, it seems that the M'nong are the one people in the world who moved to a new country and DIDN'T open restaurants. The phone book listed _one_ restaurant that was identifiably Cambodian, if you don't happen to know what words to look for in the midst of an alphabetical listing, and there was nothing under 'Cuisine: Asian' or ':Cambodian' or such.
  
  So I went looking for the one place...but with bad notes, I ended up driving the length of University Ave. in St. Paul, at 9:30+ at night, in the snow. It was actually a nice drive... I got to see a bunch of non-residential neighborhood, found where all the Vietnamese population eats, discovered that EVERYTHING is closed by then, other than the fast food chains, and found the statue of the viking in front of the state house. Pictures of him, covered in snow, to follow.
  
  
• So dinner ended up at White Castle. No, it's ok. I LIKE White Castle and there are none nearby here.
  It was actually a kind of Zen experience...on the bottom of the boxes they've started putting trivia and notes and such, including the following gems:
  
  • "On a cheeseburger, a lasagna noodle is no substitute for pure, delicious cheese. We've tried it. It doesn't work."
    
    and
    
  • "One man's cheeseburger is another man's looking at someone else's cheeseburger."
    
  
  
  
• Finally, back to the hotel and to sleep.

Comments

[ivorjawa.livejournal.com]

"Hmong".

[quietann.livejournal.com]

Yes, Hmong, and they don't seem to have restaurants, even in California where a lot of Hmong settled. However, I am a bit surprised that you missed the various veggie-Asian restaurants around UMN...

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

I didn't miss those - went to a (non-veggie) asian place in ?stadium city? on Sunday Night - but I was specifically looking for hmong/cambodian/laotian...

gehry

[cthulhia]

After breakfast, I wandered over to The Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, primarily to experience Frank Gehry up-close and personal. He still sucks.

O I so disagree. His buildings are always fun.

[infinitehotel.livejournal.com]

Yeay, White Castle!!! I always wondered why they never made it this far north. The freezer-section sliders are no substitute.

(And I still haven't figured out how to encase one in lucite...)

[jencallisto]

Stadium Village.
yeah, afaict there are essentially no hmong/cambodian/laotian restaurants, just vietnamese. it's stellar vietnamese, though.

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

oooh! sexy Gehry building! :)