The Deets » Minneapolis

Minnehaha Dairy Queen’s New Bike Drive Thru

Ed Kohler — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:00:17 +0000

What what I’ve heard, the window on the side of the new Dairy Queen near Minnehaha Park is going to be used as a bike drive thru. As far as I know, this is the first of its kind in Minneapolis. I can imagine this filling up with families in their 6-person bike rentals from the park.

While in the ‘hood, I found an interesting display of handicap parking failure where this SUV managed to screw things up for not one by two handicap spots by parking in the buffer zone between the spots.

It turns out that there is a reason for those stripes of paint on the pavement.

Run Minneapolis: Holland Neighborhood

Ed Kohler — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:30:45 +0000

I did a quick run through the Holland Neighborhood last week on 26th and 27th Avenues NE, starting from Stinson and heading West to the rail yard. I forgot my decent camera, so didn’t get any good shots, but I couldn’t resist capturing the Holland Neighborhood’s street sign:

That is one pragmatic sign. “You are in the Holland Neighborhood” along with a frame of the border streets. Here’s where you are. And don’t forget that you’re being watched while within our borders. Noted.

One other highlight was running through a frozen lake at Central Ave NE and 26th. Somehow I didn’t notice this meltwater until I was ankle deep with a long way to go to reach the far shore. Refreshing.

26th & 27th Ave NE
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El Norteno Update: Closed for Funeral

Ed Kohler — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 19:08:17 +0000

I’ve had a few conversations with people recently who’ve mentioned that El Norteno has been rather dark during normal restaurant business hours lately. This caused some concern that they may have shut their doors. However, upon closer inspection, here is the explanation:

To the ladies at El Norteno: sorry to hear about your father passing away. I look forward to stopping by for lunch this coming week.

Run Minneapolis – 20 Along the River & Stuff

Ed Kohler — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 16:36:51 +0000

Carolyn, Meg, Carly, and I knocked out a 20 mile tour with a taste of St. Paul on Saturday morning. Starting from the Dunn Bros at the Lake Street Bridge, we ran South along W River Parkway, across the Ford Bridge and up to the Lake Street Bridge. At that point we dropped off our friend Fran who was good for 6 miles only months after a hip replacement (hard core).

We then crossed back across the Lake Street Bridge (the sidewalks are an ice rink) and headed up to the U of MN. We cut down to the tracks to make our way to St. Anthony Main, then ran around Nicollet Island and stopped to snap the above photo.

Leaving Nicollet Island, we took the Hennepin Ave bridge into downtown and a left on 1st, which took us past the old Fujiya location. We shifted up to 2nd St and worked our way down past Maxwell’s. From there, we took the path along the LRT past the Bedlam Theater and crossed Hiawatha on the Sabo bridge to hit the Midtown Greenway for a while.

We stopped for some water at the Midtown Global Market, then went East on the Greenway to W River Road. Unfortunately, we were only at 19 miles when we got back to Lake Street, so we ran down to 36th St and looped back on 47th Ave S to hear Carolyn’s GPS watch beep for the 20th time. Good times.

River Road 20-Miler
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Absentee Owner Issues: The Data Challenge

Ed Kohler — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 21:21:37 +0000

Slumlords have an information advantage over people who give a crap about their community. For example, the Hennepin County property website provides information on individual properties, but doesn’t allow people to cross-reference by owner. Once a problem property is identified, it would be valuable to be able to cross reference other properties owned by the same person or company. That’s not to say that every property is automatically a problem property because it has the same owner. For example, the property they actually live in is likely in much better shape than many of their rentals.

This may help us gain a better understanding of festering housing issues before they erupt, like this case that Jeff Skrenes has been reporting on at Johnny Northside’s blog. In that case, a husband and wife team formed a business partnership and appear to have purchased over 50 Minneapolis properties that later all fell into foreclosure. Here is a map of what they own in North Minneapolis, according to Jeff Skrenes’s sources:

Pulling back, here is a city-wide look at their empire.

See how this could be useful? If someone in the Hawthorne Neighborhood figures out that a particular landlord is behind a series of problem properties, they could tip off involved community members in Whittier or Phillips about properties that may deserve a closer look. People from various communities could work together to identify who’s making life difficult for people across the city.

But, this can only be done with better data. Community activists shouldn’t have to stumble upon cooperative gatekeepers to public data. If the data is truly public, it needs to also be more readily accessible than it is today.