Calatrava’s Folly

I was shocked to learn that architect Santiago Calatrava was interested in designing our new 35W bridge. His iconic designs are landmarks all over the globe and single-handedly put Milwaukee back on the map. Since the revelation in Tuesday’s Strib, I’ve not heard a word of it, and am left with the impression nobody who matters cares.

Calatrava apparently was involved with one of the construction teams that did not get picked and is now protesting the process by which a builder was chosen (with good cause, from what I read). What’s been so confounding in this whole bridge-replacement process is figuring out what actually is going on and who is driving it. It seems to be proceeding with a life of its own, but the Star Tribune always seems behind the curve.

The bridge’s design is controversial in that it could add cost and perhaps construction time (Calatrava says he could meet the state’s budget and time constraints).

But the sense I get is that this exurban and rural crowd that runs the state could care less about design. They are the Wal-Mart shoppers, the folks who live in massive homes lacking in detail and charm because raw square footage matters more than aesthetics. They are also, I’d suggest, the folks who want to live near “nature” and see the city as alien and place no value in it being beautiful or even pleasant to be in.

It’s hard to tell if Tim Pawlenty is in that camp, but you pretty much know where Carol Molnau stands. I fear the single-issue liberals are staying away from the topic because it doesn’t speak to their base either. (Perhaps if we banned circuses from using the bridge . . . . )

The problem is the rest of the western world and progressive America understands that design matters, and even pays. Architecture-driven tourism is transforming cities, ours included. Wal-Mart and its lowest-common-denominator mentality are on the outs.

I’d guess that Calatrava wants to design our bridge because the tragedy was a global story that resonated with him. (A colleague just back from Italy says the bridge is now what foreigners associate with Minneapolis.) If Minnesota intends to turn its back on this opportunity so politicians can pander to a Luddite base or because the Wal-Mart crowd can’t see the big picture, well, we are more provincial than I could have imagined.

What Do American Cars, Smokers, Splenda, Alice Waters, Overhead Bin Abusers, and Soggy Buns Have in Common?

I feel a rant coming on:

+ Smokers are uniformly some of the most inconsiderate narcissists around. We’ve driven them all onto the streets with clean-air regs, which is good, but try walking down the street or waiting for a bus without inhaling somebody’s nicotine exhaust. And why do smokers believe the entire world is their ashtray? They flick ash without regard for where it goes or who’s downwind, and then they dump the butt on the sidewalk. Maybe when the Minneapolis City Council is done saving the elephants it can do something about the 500 cigarette butts on every block.

+ There is a special place in hell for people who board airplanes before their row is called and then use the tactic to put their humongous bag in an overhead bin above someone else’s seat before they head back to row 34. And no, you don’t need an ID when you board. You haven’t needed it in more than five years! Five years! Put it away!

+ Why do about 20 percent of all the restaurants in town not offer Splenda with beverages? Yes, that’s you Ike’s at the Airport, yes that’s you D’Amico & Sons, yes that’s you Punch Pizza. C’mon boys, this is the first artificial sweetener that doesn’t taste like chemicals and you’d think it was foie gras. I know it’s a little more expensive, but it’s the one you need to have.

+ Another baseball season has come and gone and they are still precooking hot dogs and brats at the Metrodome and storing them in warming ovens for hours. Even my hot dog–loving kids won’t touch the tepid things after the gummy, wet bun has been peeled off. Please, Twins (the concessions at the Dome are under the domain of the Sports Facilities Commission, not the teams): don’t let this horrible concessionaire get anywhere near the new ballpark. Twenty-eight years of wiener abuse will be quite enough.

+ The auto workers are on strike as of Monday against GM and the American carmakers are all teetering on insolvency. I always argued that the millions of Americans who bought Fords, Buicks, and Dodges solely because they were American were only hurting the car companies. Today, the U.S. manufacturers make much better cars, but after years of turning out the lowest common denominator, huge swaths of Americans won’t even consider an American vehicle. Truth be told, I’m one of them. A poor reputation will haunt you far longer than a bad product lasts.

+ Is it just me, or has Alice Waters gone from a national culinary hero to a sour polemicist for a cause that she’s basically won people over to anyway? If the mark of success of the California-grown local foods movement is when kids choose beet salad willingly and their parents spend two hours preparing dinner after working ten hours, then there will be no victory. There’s idealism, and then there’s fantasy. The latter is just not sustainable.

The War: PBS’s Endurance Test

Ken Burns’ The War begins this weekend on PBS. The World War II documentary, told through the eyes of residents of four American towns, is already critically acclaimed and has special interest for us, as it trains its eye on the southwest Minnesota community of Luverne.

I would like to watch it, but I will not. And I’m sure when you look into the commitment involved, you will probably pass as well. PBS’s handling of the documentary illustrates much about the network’s flagging fortunes and inability to attract younger viewers. There are many closer to the TV business than I who question whether PBS will exist in a generation. (And I say this as someone who loves several PBS programs, most notably Frontline, the best American journalism on TV, which returns in October.)

Burns’ miniseries is fourteen hours long. That’s not an outrageous length by miniseries standards. But PBS has chosen to air the series in two-hour blocks over a ten-day period. This is PBS’s standard mode of handling multi-hour “specials” and it guarantees the network an audience of largely seniors and shut-ins.

In our busy culture, it’s wildly presumptuous of PBS to expect this level of time commitment over such a short stretch of time. Why it couldn’t air an hour each week, or even two, and run the thing over a period of two or three months is confounding. That’s how virtually every other network does it.

I don’t know about you, but hell would freeze over before I could devote eight hours one week, six the next, to a single television program. Yes, I know, that’s what DVRs are made for. But if I were to put fourteen hours of programming on my DVR at high quality, which a program like The War demands, it would require that I delete everything else I have on it and cease recording other programming until I view The War.

Ken Burns documentaries are not crowd pleasers. They are slow, often turgid, and frequently visually uninteresting. But they are scholarly and rich in originality for those who make the effort. By scheduling The War in a way only those with nothing to do can accommodate, PBS has guaranteed itself another critical success that never reaches its potential.

Another Journalistic Triumph for the Strib

Some are saying that recent purges and buyouts have left the Star Tribune lacking institutional memory. That there are no longer enough reporters who know where the bodies are buried or have the time to find out. Think again, I say.

Now, losing publisher Par Ridder is going to hurt, no doubt. But the newspaper’s ability to prioritize, to focus on the people and events that matter—right here, right now—is going to keep the newsroom strong and productive.

It’s comforting to know that despite months of turmoil and the predicted “death by a thousand cuts,” the newspaper has its priorities straight.

Good luck finding an audience, Joel Kramer.

Justin Morneau Mixes a Strong Drink

I was fortunate enough to be at an event Sunday night with about a dozen Minnesota Twins players. It was the annual Boys & Girls Clubs dinner at Morton’s, where the players act as waiters to raise money for a great cause. I rarely use this blog as a diary of sorts, but I found the evening so pleasurable and interesting I thought I’d share some observations.

Everything you hear about the Twins and their down-to-earth organizational culture was borne out during the night. Roughly half of the twenty-five-man April–August roster was in attendance, from rookies to big stars, and I chatted with most.

Some tidbits:

+ It felt really odd to have my water glass refilled by guys earning more money in a year than I will earn in a century. Wages aside, these players occupy such an exalted place in sport fans’ worlds that even making conversation with them was awkward at first.

+ The evening’s “hosts” were Michael and Claudia Cuddyer. Cuddy spent the evening strolling from table to table doing card tricks that would have made a professional magician proud.

+ Kevin Slowey was glib and friendly. He did spend much of the evening carrying a tray, so if he tanks against Texas Monday, blame Morton’s.

+ Joe Nathan told my son that there isn’t a hitter in baseball he’d rather not face, though he mentioned A-Rod as one of the tougher outs. His fearless approach to pitching seems to explain some of his success.

+ Boof Bonser is just about as tall as TC Bear, the Twins' strange mascot.

+ Matt Guerrier and Brad Radke would make a great “separated at birth.”

+ Justin Morneau tended bar, pouring generous drinks. Though Canadian, he revealed he has never eaten poutine (fries, gravy, cheese curds), the national specialty. My son seems to believe Morny committed himself to come over to our house for a social visit, but I suspect not.

+ Catcher Mike Redmond arrived fully clothed (he's known for his naked clubhouse "walks") and revealed that Joe Mauer probably passed on the evening because he’s a bit too introverted for that type of event. He says Joe gets such celebrity treatment in town that it’s hard for him to live a normal life.

+ Nick Punto seems genuinely shaken by his poor season at bat. His Gold Glove fielding is mentioned less frequently, and when I noted it, his comment that “it means a lot to me” reminded me that despite the salary and celebrity, the game has a way of humbling players.

+ I expected to mostly see the team’s young players and few stars. But none of the team’s Hispanic or black players attended. I know there are probably language issues for some, and guys like Torii and Johan have probably earned the stripes to pass on these events, but I was struck by the strict racial and ethnic breakdown.

Baseball’s fan base remains vastly white, but its teams are becoming increasingly Latin American (some teams predominantly), you wonder how ball clubs will remain relatable in mostly Anglo places such as Minneapolis, Seattle, and Toronto, especially if the Hispanic players remain less “integrated” into the general community. (If Rondell White retires and Torii Hunter relocates for next season, the Twins could be a team without a single black player.)

+ My son wanted to ask Joe Nathan not to leave as a free agent a season from now, but I told him it would put Nathan in an uncomfortable position. Baseball is now the only national sport whose players remain relatable and broadly admired in their communities.

So it does seem incongruous that $45 million dollars would not be enough to keep Torii on the Twins. Or that Johan will be looking for a $100 million deal next fall and wouldn’t settle for $80 mil. The money distances and divides today’s crop of players from the fans, but I understand both sides of the argument.

And fundamentally, ball players want to win. If the Twins are headed to a rebuilding phase and cannot keep guys like Hunter and Santana, then it makes it a lot less fun for guys like Joe Nathan and Justin Morneau. All food for thought while we “wait till next year.”

(Conflict of interest note: mspmag.com’s parent company publishes the Twins Magazine under contract to the team.)

Feasting on Alton Brown

I usually find the rest of the country’s take on Minnesota, particularly when it airs on TV, clichéd and vapid. Food Network gives us a fair shake typically, and I didn’t even mind Rachel Ray’s recent foray in her Tasty Travels series. (Yum-O.) And I have great expectations of my colleague Andrew Zimmern’s season two Minnesota-based episode of Bizarre Foods on Travel Channel. (It will air in 2008.)

But possibly the best nationally produced Minnesota show I’ve seen is the current episode of Alton Brown’s Feasting on Asphalt series where he motorbikes across America in search of the regional food and food culture. Brown is one of the most knowledgeable TV foodies out there, he’s funny, and because he lives in Atlanta, he’s not NY/LA-centric.

But I did not expect the episode “Lutefisk Express”—the final episode of season two, in which Brown biked up the Mississippi—to be quite as entertaining as it was. He starts in Alma, Wisconsin, at a fishing pontoon/greasy spoon, hits the Whistle Stop Café in Frontenac (gotta get there for pie, lard crust you know), restored my faith in Mickey’s Diner, did a turn at Olsen Fish on the lutefisk line, stopped at Bob’s Java Hut on Lyndale and got a tattoo upstairs at Uptown Tattoo, watched Soile Anderson make a smorgasbord, encountered some Viking-wannabes in Crosby, and ended up at Itasca State Park.

The fish platform in Alma and the Whistle Stop in Frontenac are real finds. I was shocked to learn how committed Mickey’s owners are to real food (and butter), laughed myself sick over Anderson’s Finnish accent (so thick the show used subtitles). Brown is not a camera hog and is content to let his crew share the stage, he really knows food and food science, and I find his personality to be mighty good viewing. Feasting was not a show I had on my DVR list this summer (or last) and now I regret it. Since it’s cable, I’m sure it will return many, many times.

If you’re interested in checking out “Lutefisk Express,” it airs Saturday at 3 p.m. and Sunday at 6 p.m. on Food Network.

What’s Wrong in St. Paul?

In a few days, after months of delays and postponements, restaurateur Doug Anderson will open his much-hyped Nick & Eddie. He promises New York–style sophistication, all-night hours, and the coolest vibe in town. He will open in Minneapolis.

Last week Anderson closed A Rebours, his once-lauded French bistro in downtown St. Paul. It had declined and been subsequently dumbed-down according to those who loved it. Anderson told the Pioneer Press that on non-NHL or -Ordway nights, downtown St. Paul is a ghost town. Months earlier David Fhima closed Fhima’s, and 128 Café disappeared earlier this year.

I have lived in the Twin Cities for more than a quarter of a century now, and spent more than half that time living in St. Paul. It has more vibrant residential neighborhoods than Minneapolis, better public schools, more responsive city government, and more charm. But it behaves toward restaurants like a community of rubes.

I can count on one hand the number of sophisticated food-focused restaurants in St. Paul (Muffuletta, Heartland, W. A. Frost, Zander, perhaps Pazzaluna). Add in the entire east metro and you might need two hands. In Minneapolis and the west metro, you’d need an abacus. Compared to population ratios or demographic breakdowns, St. Paul supports nowhere near the number of good restaurants its size would dictate. Name an interesting restaurant in Woodbury, Maplewood, or even Roseville.

St. Paulites will tell you it’s the restaurateurs who are at fault. That St. Paul is stigmatized and shunned by the restaurant community. And I believe that’s true to some extent. But there is an essential truth in the numbers.

Even the dynamism on the ethnic-food scene is moving west. The best Latino cooking is now in Minneapolis (though El Burrito Mercado is still great). Want African? Stay west. Even St. Paul’s dominance in southeast Asian and Chinese cooking has waned, though it remains the city’s one dynamic niche.

It’s long been joked that the west-of-downtown neighborhoods of St. Anthony Park, Macalester-Groveland, Highland Park, Merriam Park, and Crocus and Lowry Hills are, psychographically, really extensions of south Minneapolis. Their zip codes may not start in 554, but I have the feeling that’s where they’re doing most of their dining out.

In the coming months, Russ Klein will reopen A Rebours as Meritage and the guys from Town Talk Diner say they will open a steakhouse called The Strip Club. The latter sounds a better bet, but I have reservations about both. Not culinary, but viability. These days, what works in the east metro is cheap and/or familiar.

Every week my magazine gets missives from east metro readers demanding more coverage of their region. They decry the disparity of what’s written about the west metro versus their side of town. My retort is we can’t cover what isn’t there.

A Weekend Without Mike and Larry

If things hadn’t gone so crazy this summer, tomorrow would be a very special day in the Twin Cities, as both Michael Vick and senator Larry Craig would have been in town (the senator on his brief Friday layover going from DC to Boise). Though much has been written about these various kerfuffles, as Dan Barreiro would say, I’m most interested in the public reactions to each case, and the fascinating similarities. 

In the end, I feel sorry for both Craig and Vick, just a bit. In Vick’s case, I can’t defend his choices. He is surrounded by people who supposedly have his back, had been briefed at length by the NFL about the risks and scrutiny you deal with as a pro baller, and yet continued to fight dogs, and behaved quite cruelly toward them. Yet I accept the premise that dogfighting was normalized in Vick’s world and he lacked an understanding of the gravity of the consequences he was facing. And I wonder about the level of our communal outrage. Admittedly, it is hard to gauge collective outrage when cable news is constantly amping it up, but this time, it seemed disproportionate.

Two factors were at work: One, we are a nation of dog lovers. Many dogs in America are treated better than the people in their homes. Cruelty to animals is unforgivable, but when Vick will likely do more prison time than pit bull owners whose dogs kill children, something’s out of whack. I also believe collectively we were so hard on Vick because he symbolizes the depravity evident in so many young black males, personifies this cancer no social program seems big enough to heal. Hopefully the judge will figure out a way to use Vick’s notoriety for good rather than merely caging him up. He’s probably a lost cause, but perhaps the consequences or his faux-contrition will move some kid.

The Craig mess is less disturbing on some levels, more on others. Craig is inevitably the victim of the intolerance and rigidity his conservative ideology sowed, which mitigates my sympathy for him. (Though the greatest hypocrisy we seem to have unearthed on him is opposing gay marriage. I’ve seen no evidence of homophobic or bigoted statements.) But if this isn’t criminalization of consensual sex and/or entrapment, what is?

You wonder how far we’ve come as a nation on sexuality when gay or bisexual men feel compelled to hook up in an airport bathroom. I mean, I don’t even want to urinate in an airport bathroom, and it has nothing to do with the risk of encountering the dreaded wide stance.

I am unconvinced this problem is of a magnitude worthy of law enforcement activity. I have never walked into a public washroom and encountered someone having sex (well, once in college, but hey, I went to Macalester), and even if I did, so what? I’d rather sit in a stall next to a senator gratifying a constituent than someone who’d just made the mistake of a big dinner at the airport Chili’s.

As with Vick, I wonder how much of this Craig episode isn’t built around disgust over public displays of homosexuality? If senator Craig had been caught actually engaged in sex in the john with a woman, as opposed to appearing open to the idea with a man, would he be resigning from the senate? My guess is no. And my guess is if the court allows him to recant his guilty plea, he might be able to beat the rap. The legal one, not the sexual one.

The Balsamic Tsunami

If you step barely a toe into restaurants these days, you’re surely aware of the food craze that’s swept the nation, drizzled on everything from steak to sushi to salads and desserts: Balsamic Vinegar. This aged Italian specialty, the province of gourmands or Italians two decades ago, is now offered up in huge bottles that bear only the faintest resemblance to the stuff they use in the old country, and is deployed in ways that would make a Modena native blush. (If you’re thinking of drizzling some on your significant other, watch out for cuts or wounds.)

Balsamico, as the Italians call it, is not the first Italian import to be abused on these shores. The tiramisu craze of the 1990s became so oppressive that upscale restaurants were making versions without a single authentic ingredient, while chains were serving cheapened, sickeningly sweet hybrids. It’s been years since the fad faded, and I still can’t work up any enthusiasm for tiramisu.

Or consider the Caprese salad. Sliced tomatoes, fresh mozzarella cheese, a sprig or two of basil, and some really good olive oil. Summer on a plate. Except Minnesotans demand it year-round. And ten months out of the year we’re served hard, flavorless tomatoes and gummy, watery, cheese. Abondanza!

Balsamic is frequently splashed on that Caprese salad in these parts. Problem is, it’s more strongly flavored than any other ingredient in the dish. Balsamic overpowers olive oil in any dressing it’s used in. It subsumes the subtle taste of raw tuna in the tuna tartare we’re so fond of. Balsamic vinegar is a culinary hammer that every hack chef and chain restaurant is using like the staff of life. I was at an upscale (non-Italian) restaurant in San Diego where the chef was so fond of balsamico that it appeared in a majority of the menu. Ridiculous.

At times, I have been known to decry the failure of authentic foods and preparations to make their way to the center of our country. The balsamic tsunami is the flipside of that coin. A foodstuff cracks the barrier between foodie and mainstream fare, then quickly is abused by American food culture, where more is always better.

Modena, it turns out, is a sister city to St. Paul, sitting at practically the same latitude. Perhaps the Twin Towns can be the first American metropoli to throttle back on our abuse of this ancient and remarkable foodstuff. In the case of balsamic vinegar, less really is more.