The Deets

Photo by jvstin

Attention parents, young lovers, and carousel connoisseurs of all ages.

This Monday, June 16th, Cafesjian’s Carousel in Como Park is offering free rides from 11am - 4pm.

They do this once a month. Dates are listed on their website.

Here is a sample of the carousel’s organ music to get you fired up: Click to play

St Paul police officer Dean Koehnen explains what’s come out of this program at around 1:50 into the video. It sounds like it has done as much to bridge the gap between the work done by police and social workers as it does that day for the homeless people themselves.

Another great story from 612 Authentic for MinnPost.

The Dayton’s Bluff Neighborhood is hosting a vacant home tour this weekend for people interested in investing in the neighborhood.

Real Estate Snippets: Vacant Home Tour

If you’ve ever considered doing rehab on an old St. Paul home, this might be a way to check out your options. The tour starts at 798 East 7th Street in St. Paul with FREE trolley rides to the homes! The trolley ride alone is an attraction for me! More info can be obtained at the Dayton’s Bluff website.

A neighborhood that’s organized enough to hold vacant home tours is a neighborhood worth checking out.

Go find an affordable home to fix up within walking distance of The Strip Club Steakhouse.

MPR has more.

An argument can certainly be made that ducks don’t belong in hotels. That’s a subject for debate.

But just about anyone would agree that you shouldn’t go around ripping the heads off ducks. A Ramsey County judge agrees:

Man who killed hotel duck sentenced to 21 days in workhouse

Twenty-six-year-old Scott Clark plead guilty in January to felony animal cruelty. He said he was “extremely sorry” and had never hurt an animal before.

The incident happened at the Embassy Suites in downtown St. Paul last September.

St Paul’s Embassy Suite has a great happy hour and free popcorn. Great stuff. But be nice to the ducks.

One of my favorite things to watch at the Winter Carnival and parades is the bouncing team. It’s just amazing watching how high the always-enthusiastic girl flies into the air.

It turns out that this is the oldest event at the St. Paul Winter Carnival, going back to 1886 when a bunch of dudes set down their PBRs for the first time and launched a girl high into the air.

Tryouts are this Friday evening inside the Landmark Center (that would be fun to watch) and details can be found on Craigslist. I love some of the the criteria:

Experience: No prerequisite experience is needed, and practice bounces are allowed.

Height/Weight: There are no restrictions, but the lighter she is, the higher she flies; aerialists typically weigh less than 115 pounds.

Judging: Candidates are judged on altitude, poise, control, and, most importantly, enthusiasm.

There also looking for pullers, so if you’re a dude who’s particularly good at pulling, check it out.

I checked out St. Paul’s newest steak house last night, The Strip Club, where I got the obvious order: A NY Strip:

They offer 8 different toppers. I went with the blue cheese option since cheese makes everything better. It didn’t really need the cheese, but that’s not to say that I didn’t appreciate it.

Given a choice, I’d recommend sitting on the 2nd floor facing the front of the building. You’ll get a great view of the St. Paul Skyline and/or sunset depending on when you’re there. You may even get to see someone use the secret door.

I also tried a starter of salami, bread, honey, and (of course) cheese. The honey was some of the best honey I’ve ever tasted, providing a thick sweet kick for the salami and bread.

The pear concoction looked pretty tasty:

Jeremy & Ang sat at their usual table (or what will soon be their usual table).

And Aaron shot me.

So, where is this place? It’s at the corner of Maria & 6th in St. Paul. Very easy to find. If you’re heading East on I-94, take the Mounds Blvd left-land exit off 94, taking you up the hill. That exit turns into 6th, so all you have to do is head 2 more blocks East. It’s on the corner.

The service couldn’t have been more friendly.

Give it a shot.

While tonight was their official opening, Moe has a great review from a friends & family night over the weekend. Considering that I dined with almost a dozen bloggers, I’m sure more takes and photos from the evening will pop up over the next day or two.

St. Paul’s High Bridge Power Plant, owned by Xcel Energy, is going to be converted from coal to natural gas burning. If the plant doesn’t immediately ring a bell, this photo should do the trick:

The photo comes from a great new local photo blog, ViewFromTheTundra.com.

Switching to gas from coal is a good thing because coal’s not exactly clean burning, which is one of the reasons for that tall smoke stack. That’s probably tall enough to turn St Paul’s pollution into Wisconsin’s problem.

The gas burning plant doesn’t require that smoke stack, so it’s on the demolition list. However, not everyone thinks that’s a good idea, including the Twin Cities’ top real estate blogger, Teresa Boardman, who’s campaigning to have the smokestack preserved:

I understand why people don’t get all excited about saving a smokestack but I think we should consider it. Once the plant is removed the land will be green space. No one would dream of demolishing the vacant Island station plant just up river.

I think Teresa has a good point. We should maintain examples of structures that help tell the story of our cities. What better example of how St. Paul has powered it’s businesses and resident’s homes than this landmark smoke stack?

Since Gabe reports that Caribou’s own site sucks for looking up store locations, I tried Google. And Google sucks too. It basically says there are 700+ locations near 55401. WTF?

But Yahoo narrowed things down a bit more. I first searched by zip (55401 then 55101) and then by business for “caribou coffee” and here is what I found:

Minneapolis has 17:

St. Paul has 11:

This isn’t exact, since I think 2-3 of the Minneapolis locations were outside the city boundaries in St Louis Park and other first ring burbs. And I think two of St Paul’s are technically in West St Paul.

So if we call it 14 to 9.

Based on Wikipedia’s population figures for each city, that gives Minneapolis one Caribou Coffee for every 26,629 residents and St. Paul only one for every 31,905, making Minneapolis much more Caribou-dense than St. Paul.

St. Paul Realtor, Bonnie Erickson, has put together some observations on St. Paul coffee shops and takes a swipe at Minneapolis in the post:

St. Paul Coffee

If a business associate suggests meeting at Caribou, you know they’re not local. They’re probably from the other side of the river where our sister city sports more brand names than independents.

Bonnie, we have quite a few independents on our side of the river too. The Longfellow Community alone has Blue Moon, Riverview, Minnehaha Coffee, Hiawatha Coffee, and the only chain is Dunn Bros. Much of South Minneapolis follows similar patterns with unique places like Nokomis Beach, Tillie’s, Java Jack’s, Anodyne, Caffe Tempo, etc.

I’m sure Northeast has a fair representation of independents too.

I’m just trying to decide which St. Paul Coffee Shop I should go to on my next trip to St. Paul:

The Caribou at Snelling & Grand?
The Caribou at Lexington & Grand?
The Starbucks at Lexinton & Grand?
Or the Dunn Bros at Snelling & Grand?

The one time I went to Fhima’s, I really liked it. But apparently not enough to ever go back. The downtown St. Paul location isn’t particularly convenient of centrally located for the peeps I’d hit this type of a place with, that that probably played a roll too.

Fhima’s restaurant to close this weekend

A Pioneer Press article last year detailed mounting financial difficulties for the chef, who was lured to St. Paul by city planners hoping to bring a hip, cutting-edge vibe to the downtown area.

At the time, Fhima vowed to straighten out his finances, and shortly after closed his troubled Louis XIII restaurant in Edina.

However, Louis XIII never had a chance, in my opinion. Yes, that’s easy to say about a place that’s been out of biz for some time. But, as someone who went there when it first opened and experienced Applebee’s style service with pricey meals in a mall-attached restaurant, it’s not like I didn’t warn some people off the place and certainly NEVER recommended it.

I’d like to see the Fhima concept tried at a location in the Twin Cities that may better support the cuisine, such as Moroccan style dishes. Washington Ave in Minneapolis near the Guthrie may draw the right crowd.