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Articles by Andy Sturdevant
Brunch Buds: We Went to Dumpling Eatery to (What Else?) Eat Dumplings
Keith Harris and Andy Sturdevant have been meeting for brunch on Saturday mornings for over a decade. The tradition began when they pledged to work out at the Midtown YWCA every weekend, and decided they deserved a reward after that. Somehow, the workout portion of this arrangement fell by the wayside. But they kept eating, and have probably hit about 30 new restaurants a year since then.
Brunch Buds: Let's Visit a Cozy Throwback in an Age of Steel and Concrete
Keith Harris and Andy Sturdevant have been meeting for brunch on Saturday mornings for over a decade. The tradition began when they pledged to work out at the Midtown YWCA every weekend, and decided they deserved a reward after that. Somehow, the workout portion of this arrangement fell by the wayside. But they kept eating, and have probably hit about 30 new restaurants a year since then.
Introducing Brunch Buds, a Recurring Column in Which 2 Buds Go to Brunch
Keith Harris and Andy Sturdevant have been meeting for brunch on Saturday mornings for over a decade. The tradition began when they pledged to work out at the Midtown YWCA every weekend, and decided they deserved a reward after that. Somehow, the workout portion of this arrangement fell by the wayside. But they kept eating, and have probably hit about 30 new restaurants a year since then.
Videoland: A Visual Catalog of American Video Store Logos, 1980-1995
Home Books Videoland: A Visual Catalog of American Video Store Logos, 1980-1995 by: Andy Sturdevant Regular $10.00 Sale $10.00 Regular SALE Out of Stock Unit Price /per Email me when this is available Videoland: A Visual Catalog of American Video Store Logos, 1980-1995 / a 28-page zine from Birchwood Palace Industries, 5.5 x 8.5 inches.
Fall is the best time for a very long walk
A couple of years ago, I made it my business to take a long walk every September or October. Annual rituals are the rewards you give yourself for paying enough attention to the passage of time that it eventually accumulates some sort of meaning, even if it's only for you and you alone. These solo walks have become a reliable marker of the end of summer and beginning of fall.
5 Public Art Treasures in the Twin Cities
facebook twitter pinterest instagram RSS Remnants of Twin Cities past are hiding in plain sight all around us—you just have to know where to look. by Andy Sturdevant May 20, 2021 5:50 AM Tags Things to Do News Visual Art by Andy Sturdevant May 20, 2021 5:50 AM More Art & Culture
Last Call for Liquor Lyle’s
PHOTO BY WILL CONLEY / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS There wasn’t ever a “Liquor Lyle,” or at least Lyle never seems to have given himself that honorific. “Lyle” — just Lyle — was Lyle W. Dorrian, who in 1963 moved his establishment Lyle’s Bar from 1011 4th Ave. S. to its current (and potentially final) location at Hennepin and Franklin. Dorrian’s bars had meandered across town since the 1930s, staying just ahead of the wrecking ball.
Iconic Clocks Around the Twin Cities
Jack Nelson’s Sculpture Clock S. 11th St. and Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis Created in the late 1960s by New York sculptor Jack Nelson for Lawrence Halprin’s Nicollet Mall design, this playful kinetic sculpture was a local landmark for years, featuring prominently in the background of WCCO weather reports. After it had been inoperable for years, a team of art conservators was able to locate Nelson’s original plans and blueprints from his widow, and they restored the clock in 2017.
Since Prince’s death, several sites are imbued with elevated meaning
REUTERS/Craig Lassig Fans gathering outside First Avenue on April 21. Most cities don’t get a Prince. For such a major figure to have such a deep and enduring connection with his or her hometown is actually pretty rare in the annals of popular culture. There are places where major figures grow up, but then leave, stopping back only to pay respects or burnish some sort of heartland credentials. Most light out for the capitals, leaving the provinces behind.
How to Get to Know Your Neighborhood
A lot of my career as a writer has involved putting a small notebook and smartphone in my pocket and stepping out the front door to walk around and look at things. For several years (five, but who’s counting?) I wrote a local column called The Stroll based largely on this idea. I initially pitched it to my editor because the subject matter seemed inexhaustible. I’d encounter no shortage of interesting things in the built and natural environment, right?
How to Save Summer: Appreciate Local Architecture
When we talk about real estate, we gossip: price, address, status. When we talk about architecture, we pontificate: blah, blah, blah. But talking—knowledgeably—about houses doesn’t require an advanced degree. In truth, we’re all studying buildings these days on those marathon walks through our neighborhoods. So what do you call those houses with the half-timbered beams? What’s the difference between Italianate and Queen Anne?
Minnesota Book Awards 2020 Finalists: Minnesota Nonfiction
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What if Canada had acted on its 1921 Defense Scheme No. 1 and invaded the U.S.?
In Kevin Lippert’s recent book “War Plan Red,” he details a plan by the Canadian military in the interwar years to hold off a hypothetical attack by the United States on Canada with a pre-emptive invasion. This would have been mounted in the years after World War I, when geopolitical alliances were more fluid, and before they fixed themselves into the now-familiar Axis and Allied powers of the Second World War.
The evolution of Harmon Place: from mansion district to automotive center to campus connecter
Those old newspaper writers sure had a way with hyperbole. Consider this passage from a 1922 issue of the Tribune, describing a certain seven-block stretch of road on the edge of downtown Minneapolis. Some streets, like the old Washington Avenue, are born great. Some, like Hennepin Avenue, achieve greatness, while others have greatness thrust upon them.
Minneapolis taking first steps into the future of skateboard parks
Over the last 50 years, skateboarding has gotten a bad rep. I can easily conjure the cliché: grumpy building managers or weary parking-lot attendants shaking their fists at hoodie-wearing teenagers on skateboards disappearing into the alley, the eternal struggle for vacant space. And for much of Minneapolis, that’s how skateboarding has remained, a DIY practice thriving at the margins or in large, privately owned suburban complexes. But skateboarding is changing fast.
Author Talk: Bill Lindeke and Andy Sturdevant
In Closing Time, Bill Lindeke and Andy Sturdevant dive into tales from famous and infamous drinking establishments from throughout Twin Cities history. Lindeke and Sturdevant highlight neighborhood dives, downtown nightspots, and out-of-the-way hideaways, many of which continue to thrive today. Closing Time brings together stories of these spaces and the people who frequented them.
Kate Nordstrum’s next chapter; Bong Joon Ho’s ‘Parasite’ to open at the Film Society
Photo by Cameron Wittig Kate Nordstrum Tonight marks the beginning of the end of Liquid Music as we’ve known it for the past seven years. Starting tonight (Thursday, Dec. 5), continuing through Saturday, Seattle-based choreographer Kate Wallich, her dance company the YC, and queer indie pop artist Mike Hadreas, aka Perfume Genius, will perform an evening-length collaborative work called “The Sun Still Burns Here” at the Walker’s McGuire Theater, in a co-presentation with the Walker.
Red Dragon’s timeless 20-ounce cocktails
The Red Dragon has been serving cocktails on Lyndale Avenue since 1977. Photo by Anna Botz The following is excerpted from the recently published book “Closing Time: Saloons, Taverns, Dives, and Watering Holes of the Twin Cities.” The book, published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press, also dives into the histories of The Blue Nile, the CC Club and the Black Forest Inn.
‘Patrick Sansone: 100 Polaroids’ to open at new Jon Oulman Gallery
Before taking on the Amsterdam Bar and Hall in St. Paul, the 331 Club and Sheridan Room in Northeast, and (briefly) Como Dockside, Jon Oulman, restaurateur, was Jon Oulman, gallery owner. The first Jon Oulman Gallery opened in 1983 on 7th Street in downtown Minneapolis. In 1986, he moved to the Wyman Building and stayed into 1999, a period that spanned the glory days of Warehouse District galleries. From 2003 to 2008, he had a gallery in the Keg House on 13th Avenue.
O’Shaughnessy names new ED; Bloomberg to speak at Northrop
Paul Organisak Paul Organisak will head the O’Shaughnessy at St. Catherine University starting Monday, Nov. 18 – coming right up.
Looking back at a stellar weekend in dance: Black Grace, Ashwini Ramaswamy and Bruno Beltrão/Grupo de Rua
You never know what you’ll see in dance, especially contemporary dance. You might have a general idea if you’ve seen a company before, or other examples of a choreographer’s work. But you might be wrong. Live performances are ephemeral. Films of complete dances are rare. Written descriptions can be puzzling. There’s no narrative or plot. Dance has been called the art that disappears at the same time it is created. It is only retained by memory. How much, and how accurately, will you remember?
SteppingStone Theatre to put its building up for sale; five Sound Unseen films to see
The first time we went to SteppingStone Theatre, we thought we had the wrong address. How could this imposing building – a former Methodist Church in the Summit-University neighborhood, built in 1908 in Greek Revival style – be a children’s theater? But it was, with an equally surprising 430-seat performance space inside. The company moved into the building in 2007 after extensive renovations. Now it wants to move on.
TPT serves up ‘Relish’; Minnesota Opera’s ‘Barber of Seville’ to open
TPT is serving up a new web series called “Relish.” On the surface, it’s about food, but it’s also about diversity, cultural heritage, immigration, and the abundance of culinary choices available to us in 2019, in a place that’s still relatively homogeneous, inland, and out of the way. As the Star Tribune’s Rick Nelson wrote earlier this year, “Twin Cities diners can circumnavigate the globe several times over and never leave the seven-county metro area.” Isn’t it great?
Four irresistible dance performances; Erika Lee at St. Kate’s
Is there some kind of dance explosion going on? Because after mid-October’s big weekend for dance, then the Twin Cities Tap Festival, Dorrance Dance and Ireland’s Teaċ Daṁsa, here come four more irresistible performances. If you time it right and your budget allows, you can see all four, each expressing different perspectives and aspects of humanity. Thursday (Nov. 7) at Northrop: Black Grace.
Deer murals and bullet holes: 50+ years of art and mischief at the Black Forest Inn
Tomorrow (Thursday, November 7 at 7 p.m.), Bill and Andy will regale attendees with tales from the book to celebrate its release at the Black Forest. Hard copies of their work will be available for purchase. Don't think you can make it? Find the authors in St. Paul on December 12 at Waldman Brewery & Wurstery as part of Ramsey County's History Revealed series. *** Standing next to his Black Forest Inn mural 50 years later, artist Mike Lynch looks at it again.
‘The Winter’s Tale’: Shakespeare is back in full force at TTT
During Marcela Lorca’s first season as artistic director, Ten Thousand Things Theater did not stage a Shakespeare play. Shakespeare had been a regular thing at TTT during founder Michelle Hensley’s tenure. We were worried, a little. Because not only had TTT produced Shakespeare regularly, it had done so brilliantly, blazingly well. Marcela Lorca It has been said that TTT produces the best Shakespeare of any theater in our community.
Art Attack and a new era at Northrup King; ‘Hausu’ at the Trylon
This year’s Art Attack will be different from all the rest. An annual tradition since 1998 at the Northrup King Building, the Twin Cities’ largest collection of artists’ studios under one roof, it will be more than art, artists, live music, food and demonstrations. It will also be the final Art Attack before the building’s ownership and leadership are transferred to Artspace Projects, Inc.
In this pet cemetery, the phantoms are all still waiting to please
It is appropriate, maybe, that the first headstone I come across in Memorial Pet Cemetery in Roseville on a ferociously rainy Sunday afternoon is one that reads, through a layer of mud: “With me through rain and snow and mailman.” It’s been pouring for hours, but like a faithful pet or a terrorized mailman, I must make my own appointed rounds.
Chris Larson’s ‘Depression Groove’ to open; Park Square cancels two musicals
Minnesota-based multimedia artist Chris Larson is never boring. For his 2008 video “Deep North,” he built a full-scale New Orleans-style shotgun house, then hosed it down with hundreds of gallons of water, inside and out, in the deep winter of February. Everything froze solid – curtains, a tablecloth, a book upside down on a table – and icicles hung from the roof. Images showed up on T-shirts made for Mia’s 100th anniversary in 2015.
How Two Frontier Bars Helped Invent the Twin Cities
When we told people we were working on a book about bars in the Twin Cities, most of them made the same joke: “Ah, I’ll bet you enjoyed doing the research, huh?” They’d throw up air quotes around “research” and then they’d make the universal “glug glug” sign, as if all we did was go to bars and drink whiskey doubles. Which, OK, sure, we did. It’s a part of the job when you need to talk to people in those bars: about the year that the old man bought the place and if F.
Remembering Minneapolis’ most infamous bar: Moby Dick’s
The following is an excerpt from the forthcoming book “Closing Time: Saloons, Taverns, Dives, and Watering Holes of the Twin Cities,” by Bill Lindeke and Andy Sturdevant. The book, published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press, is “a multigenerational pub crawl through speakeasies, tied houses, rathskellers, cocktail lounges, gin mills, fern bars, social clubs, singles bars, gastropubs, and dives.” A launch event for “Closing Time” will take place at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Nov.
Five to receive Sally Awards; ‘Six’ event at MOA
The Sally Awards aren’t given for things like best picture, best play, best novel or best rock performance. Their categories are far less glam and buzzy: Arts Access, Arts Learning, Commitment, Initiative, Social Impact. But for Minnesotans in the arts, and others who care about the arts, the Sallys are a big deal.
A Rock 'n' Roll Walking Tour of South Minneapolis
Memphis blues has its Beale Street. Los Angeles hair metal has the Sunset Strip. So where would you go to see Minneapolis’s rock ’n’ roll history? We’ve assembled a handful of sites just east of the Chain of Lakes and south of downtown, in a sequence that bridges time, space, and genre. What holds it together? Noteworthy musicians lived, worked, and played here. This is a walking tour that is, above all, meant to be walked. You’ll cover three miles on foot, preferably clad in Converse All Stars. 1.
Nininger City, Ignatius Donnelly’s lost Atlantis on the Mississippi
In early 1857, a Philadelphia-born lawyer named Ignatius Donnelly stood in the center of a small Minnesota town called Nininger City he’d helped found on the Mississippi River banks, surrounded by eager onlookers. He had a reputation as a dazzling orator, so their expectations were probably high, and they weren’t disappointed.
Minnesota State Fair T-shirt bingo
People-watching is one of the best parts of the Minnesota State Fair, and one of the specific things that makes watching them so much fun is their T-shirts. My colleague Jim Walsh was well aware of this when he posted his State Fair fashion photo essay earlier this week. As great a statement as a hat or dress or pair of shoes can make, for cross-generational, pan-cultural personal expression, the humble T-shirt is the greatest tool humankind has at its disposal.
1873: In one fell swoop, legions of Minneapolis’ streets get new names — or numbers | MinnPost
MinnPost illustration by Andy Sturdevant The world-famous music venue: Utah Avenue and Van Buren Street Entry Buried beneath all of the numbered streets and avenues, there is another, less orderly Minneapolis, one that shares more in common nomenclaturally with its easterly neighbor. It’s a shadow city with street names that are poetic and evocative, but don’t necessarily convey a good sense for where you are in relation to anything else.
The surprising history of Cuzzy's in Minneapolis
Maurer’s Saloon circa 1919 // Photo courtesy Minnesota Historical Society The women in the Maurer family did not choose to become saloon keepers. It was forced upon them when their husbands committed suicide or were sent to prison. Elizabeth Maurer’s husband, Louis, was a German immigrant like her.
Stones lore: Jagger and Mr. Jimmy in Excelsior
Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society A 1949 photo of the Excelsior Amusement Park. In the summer of 1964, a fledgling British band rolled into town for a one-night stand at a suburban dance hall. Not yet the international rock icons they would later become, the Rolling Stones played to an unimpressed group of fewer than 300 concertgoers at the Danceland Ballroom at Excelsior Amusement Park.
Hardcore Architecture: Punk bands and underground culture rise from often unremarkable homes
Hardcore Architecture is a project by Chicago artist Marc Fischer exploring the relationship between domestic spaces, urban and suburban neighborhoods, and underground hardcore and punk bands of the 1980s. For the project, Fischer pulls the street addresses from contact listings for bands both reasonably well-known and impossibly arcane, as listed in back issues of the punk magazine Maximumrocknroll from the 1980s.
For city dwellers, viewing the subtle pasqueflower requires a pilgrimage
MinnPost illustration by Andy Sturdevant Pasqueflowers are a feature of the prairie landscape, and are most abundant in places where the prairie has been managed or restored – that is, very few places in the city proper. Around Easter every year, you can find the pasqueflowers making their way through the vanishing snow cover and tramped-down brown prairie grass on the prairie.
For a few years in the late sixties, Jonathan, Minnesota was the city of the future
Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society Jonathan had a city center with offices, stores, and restaurants. The 1960s and 1970s were a time of rapid suburban growth. City planners were frustrated by the growing pollution, traffic, urban sprawl. One solution to these problems was the “new town” movement. Designed as planned communities, these “towns” were intended to control population growth in a systematic way.
At Minnehaha Falls you can see LBJ, Little Crow and Jorge Luis Borges
One of the best parts of early spring is taking the first trip on the Hiawatha light rail — which we may now appropriately refer to as “the blue line” — down to Minnehaha Falls for an afternoon of beer and fried fish and walking around in the outdoors. This past Sunday was Easter, and although it wasn’t even particularly pleasant out (hovering around 50 degrees), I had an out-of-town visitor in for the weekend, and got it in my head that she ought to see the falls on that holy day.
45th parallel: Markers make note of this Minneapolis distinction
Here is a somewhat dubious superlative for the city of Minneapolis, suitable for any boostering or anecdotal purposes: It is the largest city in North America to be located exactly halfway between the Equator and the North Pole, right on the 45th parallel. Minneapolis (population 400,700, despite what the signs on the freeway say) would be the largest such city in the world, but unfortunately, there are two Eurasian cities with larger populations also crossed by the line.
Pete Shelley asked all the right questions
I barely needed another tape. Pete Shelley and company’s first compilation was an entire self-contained world of an album that sounded and felt great blaring from factory speakers on an unending loop. The only thing that would have endeared the album to me more would have been if it included “Fast Cars”—a great driving song about how lame cars are. Pete Shelley, who died last Thursday at age 63, had a gentle way of upending pop music conventions.
Wayne Kramer and his punk all-stars resurrect the MC5’s revolutionary joy at the Varsity
It was a lot easier to look at photos than to actually hear the band’s records at the time, but the consolation here was that the MC5 looked cooler than almost any band in the world. In the photo I'm thinking of here the five of them are shirtless, wearing bandoliers, arms crossed, with badges pinned to their actual flesh. They look less like the Rolling Stones than like a revolutionary cell plotting to kidnap Mayor Daley on the eve of the 1968 Democratic convention.
Minnesota State Fair T-Shirt Bingo, 2018 edition
Once again, a survey of the T-shirts of the State Fair in 2018 reveals all kinds of cultural preoccupations cutting across demographics (sports, guns and rosé!), with an election year sprinkling of gubernatorial and congressional candidate representation. As in years past, the outline of the state of Minnesota acts as a FREE space in the center of the card. You will see a T-shirt with the state of Minnesota on it within two minutes of stepping foot onto the fairgrounds.
Natural Science
The thermally modified white-pine cladding on the exterior of the University of Minnesota’s new Bell Museum in St. Paul is rough. Rougher even than the surfaces of many of the two-by-fours you’ll find in the lumber aisle of a hardware store, stacked vertically and waiting for you to throw them in a cart.
White Spaces
You may recall, from a period in your life when you were watching a lot of movies, the ending of Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi spectacular, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Not the very end, with the Star Child, but the part right before that, where astronaut Dave Bowman is transported to what looks like a high-end hotel suite completely done up in faintly luminescent, smudge-less white.
Skateboarding videos create 'a mental and visual map' of the city
MinnPost illustration by Andy SturdevantThis emergence of a local skateboarding video aesthetic and its accompanying scene coincidentally aligns with downtown Minneapolis’ 1990s nadir: the city as a gray, featureless, largely empty placeholder.I was once talking to a professor about public spaces and how artists use them. At some point, the topic of skateboarding — that most public of activities — came up.
‘Not from here’: Turns out a lot of Minneapolis mayors fit Jacob Frey's path to office
“They said we were too young, too ambitious, not from here,” said Mayor-elect Jacob Frey on election night, rattling off some of the perceived criticisms he overcame on his path to the victory. While I don’t remember anyone specifically telling me, “I’m not voting for Jacob Frey because he’s not from here” over the past few weeks, I was struck by the idea that this might have been an underlying criticism of Frey as a potential mayor.
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