Racket

The Minnesota Lynx did not persist. They did not, in a favorite phrase of their coach, Cheryl Reeve, “meet the moment” of living up to their hard-earned status as the most likely team to capture the 2026 WNBA championship. On the contrary, they were brusquely swept out of the first round of the playoffs in two reputation-staining games by the New York Liberty.

If the small talk between me and the irrigation guy is any indication, this morning, in terms of crispiness, truly marked the beginning of fall. As such, we're gonna ask you to not just rank the seasons (an endlessly entertaining exercise if there ever was one), but also offer reasoning behind your picks. It'd be unfair for me not to go first, wouldn't it? Fall: The Onion's Mr. Autumn Man nailed this one—autumn is the ultimate season. Crisp, non-conditioned/furnaced air. Leaf-peepin' up the wazoo.

Freeloader Friday is your weekly guide to having fun no matter what your budget looks like. Each week we have a list of 100% free events like gallery parties, music, and films in the park, as well as free admission events like special happy hours, markets, and more. For our picks of the week's best events, cost be damned, click here.

Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories. On Thursday morning, the family of Renee Good, the Minneapolis woman killed in January by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, filed two federal civil lawsuits, stating that “the time is absolutely now for accountability." One suit names the U.S. government, and it's "essentially a wrongful death case," NPR reports.

I've got six new reviews for you below, ranked in order of my enjoyment: The History of Concrete, If I Go Will They Miss Me, Primetime, Resident Evil, Hope, and Verity. Over in the rep world, the Heights presents some classics in honor of its centennial and the Trylon starts a whole month of witch movies. The Naked Spur Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)Alamo Drafthouse This time, he’s our unstoppable killing machine from a dystopian future. $13.99. 6:15 p.m. More info here.

It's fall, a time for change and transformation. In Uptown, a late-night pizza joint has been replaced by another. Further down on East Lake Street, an Afro-Creole Southern restaurant has been replaced by another Afro-Creole Southern restaurant. And on Cleveland Avenue in St. Paul, one cafe has been replaced by another. The leaves are turning, and the restaurant spaces are turning over; there have been lots of new openings in September's installment of the Racket Restaurant Roundup, .

Rats can be excellent pets. They can be smart, affectionate, and curious. This story is not about those rats. I’m talking about Rattus in their wild state. In Minnesota, that means brown rats. Their classification as “Old World” rats, taxonomic family Muridae, is a useful reminder that European colonization is the entire reason rats exist in the Americas. And they’re thriving here.

Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories. Built in 1937, Duluth’s West Theatre is the type of Art Deco-style movie house every town should have, with neon lights and a prominent marquee that juts out over the sidewalk. But the theater's fate has been up in the air since July, when the West temporarily closed. To avoid foreclosure and a six-month court-ordered shutdown, owner Bob Boone needed to cough up $394,000.

Matthew Cunningham-Cook is a journalist and active in the labor movement. He has been published in The American Prospect, The Nation, The Intercept, In These Times, The Lever, Jacobin, Al Jazeera, and The New York Times. He currently works as associate director and labor educator at Labor Education Service, Minnesota Carlson. The views expressed are his own. Throughout my life, I’ve had the opportunity to answer a question posed countless times by workers I’ve met: How will a union help me?

Fifteen minutes before a ratio matcha pop-up opens, I sit in my car and scroll on Instagram. I sit there, lurking in my car—it’s become my pre-ratio ritual—while watching owner Meen Eversoll set-up her tiny tent. I wait until I just can’t anymore. I get antsy and in a world of viral pop-ups. Sometimes you have to be brave and brazen to be the first in line, and I want to be the first in line at ratio matcha (which Eversoll stylizes with lowercase lettering).