The Deets

Thanks to Kenneth for sending this over:

Student arrested in bus tagging - Los Angeles Times

A 15-year-old sophomore at the Santee Education Complex in South L.A. was arrested late Tuesday on suspicion of being the student who scrawled his nickname on the outside window of a city bus carrying Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Schools Supt. David L. Brewer, among others.Santee Principal Vince Carbino, who was also on the bus Monday, said he believed the youth had no idea that dignitaries were aboard — but looked stunned, hid his face and stopped his tagging when he saw a photographer on the bus taking his picture.

Check out the picture after clicking through. The kid is tagging the windows of a bus with people on it. People including the mayor. That’s bold.

Sadly, the mayor doesn’t think the kid needs to be hit hard for this crime. I bet the people who’ve removed hundreds, if not thousands, of tags by this one kid have a different opinion about that. A vandal is caught red-handed and you’re not going to make an example out of him?

The Star Tribune has a write-up of Blue Plate Restaurants today. You know, the folks behind the Highland, Longfellow, and Edina Grills, and the Groveland Tap.

Blue Plate finding special niche in Twin Cities restaurant scene

The roster now includes the Highland Grill and Groveland Tap in St. Paul, the Longfellow Grill in Minneapolis and the Edina Grill on France Avenue near W. 50th St. There are plans to open two more stores in the next two years, Burley said.

The combination of higher-scale menus paired with a concept that successfully offers breakfast, lunch and dinner along with bar service makes Blue Plate a rarity in the business, said David Kristal, CEO of the Embers and Joey’s restaurant franchising companies.

I know Fritz is a big fan of Highland. Carly and I are partial to Longfellow. I could see Matt leaning toward the Groveland Tap.

Let’s find out which one tops the list among readers of The Deets.

Isn’t technology great? BeerMapping.com plots the locations of beer pubs, liquor stores, bars, breweries, and homebrew stores on a Google Map, making it easy to find beer.

This sort of thing could come in handy for people planning things like, “The Best Day Ever.”

Pre-LRT, Pre-Ford bridge, pre-Highland Park, Pre-South Longfellow.

Jackalope or Nathan, do your homes fall in this photo?

This seems like something I’d expect to hear about Hugo or Hastings well before Nokomis:

Bloomington explosives case expands with munitions find

Military-grade ammunition was found Tuesday at a south Minneapolis building linked to a man jailed the day before on suspicion of having military explosives at his home, Minneapolis police said.

A federal investigation that remains closely guarded by authorities became public Monday during a search of the man’s Bloomington house. The investigation continued Tuesday at a commercial retail building at 5200 47th Av. S., which is owned by the man’s wife, said Minneapolis Police Deputy Chief Rob Allen. The findings in Minneapolis are not as worrisome as those in Bloomington, he said.

Having military grade munitions along the Hiawatha corridor is probably looked down upon by the ATF. That’s a popular road for shuttling presidents from the airport to downtown.

I believe this takes the cake for most catastrophic event in the history of 46th Ave S in Minneapolis:

Retro: 50 years ago, a quiet Minneapolis block became an inferno

“On Saturday morning, June 9, 1956, about 20 children were in the small frame houses or playing in yards on the 5800 block of 46th Avenue S., a typical postwar building-boom neighborhood of young families on the north edge of Wold-Chamberlain Field.”

At 9:30 a.m. a stricken fighter jet wiped out the middle of the block, killing the pilot, a couple with two of their three small children, and a 7-year-old girl watching TV next door. The Navy Panther jet had developed engine trouble after taking off on a training flight from the naval air station and the pilot, Maj. George Armstrong, 33, of Edina, was trying to make it back to the field, now Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, for an emergency landing.

Does the government have a responsibility for protecting the food supply in America? I think in the wake of recent outbreaks of food illnesses, we can see what happens when the food supply is not safe. And self-regulation, while is sounds great on paper, doesn’t seem to be doing the trick.

Food problems connected to GOP cuts - AMERICAblog

“We already know what they’ve done to US vets and with this most recent outbreak of food illness related to the American kids staple peanut butter, it has become painfully obvious that GOP cuts continue to risk the lives of millions of Americans.

The federal agency that’s been front and center in warning the public about tainted spinach and contaminated peanut butter is conducting just half the food safety inspections it did three years ago.”

Thanks to Cariann for hooking me up with this Hard Rock Hotel charm from Hollywood, Florida. From one celebrity obsessed geeker to another.

For those who don’t keep up on The Superficial, the Hard Rock in Hollywood, FL is where Anna Nichole Smith’s life ended.

His name lives on in South Minneapolis:

Happy 200th birthday, Longfellow

Longfellow’s popularity accorded him an influence far beyond that of other public figures. His poems gave human voice to Indians and slaves, promoted strong women, and held forth on the horrors of the Civil War, witchcraft in Salem, the suppression of the Quakers and racial prejudice. His writings were discussed by Americans across the growing country, shaping both their self-image and their ethic of tolerance. Longfellow’s unique ability to combine history with rhyme sang to the nation’s soul.

The Longfellow House Minnehaha Park is a replica of his Cambridge, MA home.

Though Longfellow never traveled to Minnesota or Louisiana, his epic poems “The Song of Hiawatha” and “Evangeline” have influenced both those regions, where the stories unfolded, and each still celebrates the poet. Scores of towns, roads, scenic highways, bridges, housing developments and hundreds of schools are named after the characters and locales of these poems, as well as for Longfellow himself.

Plenty more can be found at Wikipedia.

There is a Longfellow, Minneapolis page on Wikipedia, but it’s just a stub at this point. Add what you can.

Maybe I’m late to the party on this, but better late than never. I’m on Netflix now. If you are too, let’s connect. Why? I don’t know why just yet, so let’s find out.