1522 Hillside Cleaned Out - "Forty-One People in Forty-One Minutes"

Post by the Hawthorne Hawkman, photo by Blong Yang.

On Saturday, dozens of people from across the Twin Cities--and possibly beyond--converged on 1522 Hillside to do a volunteer clean-up.  Growing up in a farming community, the trash-out of the house held similarities to good, old-fashioned barn raisings.  What would have been a job taking up at least a full day's work was instead completed in less than an hour.  "Forty-one people in forty-one minutes" was how Nicole Curtis described the task.  Most participants had expected to work for a few hours, and others arrived late under the assumption that there would be plenty to do all day long.  The final tally was eighty-nine people who came to help.

I got to see the interior of the house for the first time, and it's quite the labyrinth.  The old house lovers did get to "geek out" a bit as we meandered through..

Northside Taproom Opens with a Boom

Shortly after its inception, Boom Island quickly became my favorite beer, and not just because it's brewed right here in north Minneapolis.  Every concoction, from the darker Hoodoo and Brimstone beers to the Silvus pale ale and Witness, have a unique taste and are well worth the price.  The only problem was that the hours at their former digs made it hard to stop in for a growler.  Plenty of local stores carry the beer, but the growler is definitely the economical way to go.

So imagine my disappointment several weeks ago when I pulled up to the old spot, empty growler in hand, only to find that it was closed down.  Not for lack of business; quite the opposite...

Open Streets Coming to North Minneapolis in May!

Post by the Hawthorne Hawkman, contributed photos used with permission.

Open Streets, the re-purposing of long stretches of corridors ordinarily used for vehicular traffic, is coming to the northside in May this year.  Over the last two years north Minneapolis has done the event on Lowry, but this year we will have an additional festival in the late spring.  The most likely route will be along Humboldt and/or Irving Avenues along the proposed greenway routes, between Plymouth and 45th.

The possibilities for the north/south bike corridor range from simply adding some bike corridor striping similar to Bryant Avenue South, all the way to removing vehicular traffic entirely a la Milwaukee Avenue.  When people think of a full-scale greenway right outside their own front door, the first thing that often comes to mind is...

Tuesday is Precinct Caucus Night. I Guess You Should Go.

Post by the Hawthorne Hawkman, image from www.my-broadsheet.com.

We're fresh off of a municipal election that used ranked-choice voting to create a nearly endless ballot that nobody could comprehend.  And our statewide elections use what I consider a far superior model:  an incomprehensible process that begins way the hell in February that nobody cares about.  Candidates can't even officially file for another three months, and already we're taking the first steps to decide who gets elected.  And since we're basically a one-party town, the DFL precinct caucuses are where the action is.  So unless you want your next round of public officials chosen by a few dozen party activists, you better find your caucus now.  Isn't democracy great?  USA!  USA!

The local senate district DFL page describes the precinct caucus, in straight, non-sarcastic typeface as

"...a way to meet your neighbors and talk about issues important to you. It’s also a gateway to getting involved in the political process; if you are interested in meeting your elected officials, learning how to make a difference in your community or perhaps exploring running for office, a precinct caucus is the place to start. People also attend precinct caucuses to support specific candidates or specific issues."

Last year I wrote a tongue-in-cheek description of precinct caucuses, and although the particular statewide and county elections are different, the dynamic is the same.  Instead of rehashing that,

Old North Minneapolis and Historypin

Top photo, Lowry Bridge 1958; bottom photo West Broadway Bridge, 1978.

In the fall of 2013, a new Facebook group started up called "Old North Minneapolis."  Its administrators tend to focus most of the content on items north of Lowry Avenue, since that's their part of the community.  But the page contains a wealth of photos from across the northside.  Over Christmas break, I downloaded ninety-five photos from the page, and there have been perhaps two dozen more added since then.

My goal is to get every picture that's posted on that page--and eventually the Camden Community Historical Society FB group as well, although there's some overlap of pictures--posted on Historypin. 

For the uninitiated, Historypin is a website and smartphone app that allows old pictures to be layered on Google street view.  Once the picture is "pinned," then anyone with the Historypin smartphone app can stand in front of the physical location of the photo and see, through the camera view of their phone, what was there years ago superimposed over what is there today.  Long-term, I would love to see this app used to coordinate historic walking tours throughout north Minneapolis.  But in order to do that, photos need to be pinned on the site.

And in order to pin a photo, I need three things:  a physical street address where the picture was taken (sometimes problematic if the actual address no longer exists; when a bunch of properties have been torn down and been combined in to one parcel, for instance, then photos can be jumbled together), a year when the photo was taken (and since that's not always clear from the picture or someone's personal knowledge, it's often guesswork based on cars and clothing), and the man-hours needed to layer the photo on the site.  The last item is the most important.  It can take 5-10 minutes to do one picture, which is not too burdensome unless you've got a few hundred pictures to wade through.

But if a few members of these pages made a habit of pinning a photo when the post to Facebook, then we could make our communal history far more accessible.

How the NAZ Ball Lost Its Luster

Photo from the envelope of this year's NAZ Christmas card.

First things first, I do think the Northside Achievement Zone is doing good work in north Minneapolis, and we're a better community for it.  And I chose to publish this now, instead of around the time of their gala, so as not to discourage supporters from attending.

The Peace Ball, now known as the NAZ Ball after the Peace Foundation changed its name, was the social event of the year for north Minneapolis.  I looked forward to it every year, as it was a chance to come together and celebrate our community.  But to me, it hasn't felt that way for a few years now.  The change in what the NAZ Ball meant to me happened when...

Buying a Home After a Financial Crisis Doesn't Have to Cost $350,000

Sunday's edition of the Star Tribune had a heartwarming story of someone who had bought her first home after significant financial obstacles.  In today's housing market, there are more and more of these "ready again" buyers--people who are purchasing a new home after recovering from a bankruptcy, foreclosure, or short sale.  I should know; I was one of them.  After a divorce, my home went into foreclosure.  My ex-wife remained in that house, but was unable to get my name off of the loan or keep up with the payments.  We notified the mortgage company when she decided to move out.  I returned at one point to explore moving back in and seeking a loan modification that would be workable under one income, but found a skating rink in the basement due to burst pipes from a poor job of winterizing the place.

Since I had neither the credit nor the assets to make the home livable again, a foreclosure was the only option.  I spent several years rebuilding my credit and saving for a home, so I certainly could relate to this story.  What I couldn't relate to, however, was the purchase price of this house, ringing in at...