Archive for July, 2010

Escape From the Skyway Part 5: The Depot Tavern

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

No, not the Depot with the water park and ice rink. This Depot is part of the old Greyhound depot that is First Avenue (now celebrating their 40th year). Located at 17 North 7th Street with the same black brick and silver stars, The Depot provides a nice counterpoint to the Hard Rock Cafe across the street. If I was in a rock and roll band, I’d rather have my picture hanging in the Depot.

Formerly the UnBank (the unbanked have to go a block over to Hennepin, next door to the Skyway Lounge), the space has been recreated into a simple and comfortable bar restaurant. Two garage doors define the space with an exterior patio feel in the front room with an air conditioned bar behind the second door (it’s 90 friggin degrees today, so we sat by the bar).

Cool music is playing and great photographs of acts that have graced the stage at First Ave hang on the wall. There are 9 tvs of varying sizes, a few with baseball, others with old music videos. And if your grabbing dinner before a show, there’s a door allowing entry into the 7th Street Entry (with a new women’s bathroom, which I’m told was long overdue). The menu lists the upcoming acts in both the main room and the Entry – and you can buy tickets there, on the spot.

The Food

Three of us had a hard time choosing. There’s a build your own burger or dog option, plenty of vegetarian options, chili, and tacos. Plus a great tap beer selection. After much hemming and hawing, two of us went with items from the “Grilled Cheese” menu which were fantastic and are highly recommended. Bucking the trend, the third had The Depot Stretch – the only thing better than breakfast late in the day is when it’s served on top of tater tots! We topped it off with a little banana-walnut bread pudding with maple syrup. Goodness Gracious.

  • Monte Cristo – Ham, turkey, baby swiss, fried egg, blackberry preserves on marble rye – $8.50
  • Bavarian – Cambozola and granny smith apple with clover honey on 10 grain – $6.95
  • The Depot Stretch – Scrambled eggs with red beef chili, pepper jack cheese, and red onions served on top of tater tots (small – plenty) $6.95 (also available in large for $9.95 perhaps if you want to split it with a loved one)
  • Bells Two Hearted – $5.75
  • Banana-Walnut Bread Pudding – $2.95 (half)

Follow them at: http://twitter.com/The_Depot

Fan them at: http://facebook.com/thedepottavern

Front page of menu:

Back page of menu:

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Escape from the Skyway Part 4: NiceRide to One On One Bicycle Studio

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

This spring, Bicycling Magazine named Minneapolis the number one bike-friendly city in the United States surpassing the likes of Portland and Boulder. While not surprised, the Skyway My Way team was curious as to what makes Minneapolis such a great biking city. Looking for bike culture, we did what anyone else would do and followed some bike messengers to see where they hang out…and, aside from Jimmy Johns, they seemed to gravitate toward One On One Bicycle Studio at 117 Washington Ave N.

One On One Bicycle Studio
To be honest, we felt a little like we were pulling up to Whiskey Junction riding Vespas. Like Harleys, everyone in the One On One cafe had awesome Surly, Bianchi, Spot and Maverick steeds parked in back. The patrons of One On One are Minneapolis’ vanguard, the biking elite. They have no need to rent a NiceRide. Along with their racing bikes, they have customized bikes built for commuting–with studded tires for icy winter roads!

Putting our self consciousness aside, we walked in and were welcomed by a friendly guy behind the counter. Before sitting down to lunch, we admired the cool art posters hanging on the walls and browsed the diverse array of bikes in the middle of the shop. As we were looking, none other than the Godfather of the Minneapolis bike scene, the proprietor Gene Oberpriller, walked over and said hello.

We talked a little about the bikes and then asked him what he thought of NiceRide. While supportive, he said a lot of tax payer money went to fund it that could have been spent filling pot holes or finishing the bike lanes along 1st Ave, for example. But, it was clear NiceRide wasn’t for him or his customers, as they’ve got their own bikes.

In the end, I think what Bicycling Magazine sees in Minneapolis is a great diversity of people riding bikes on pretty good infrastructure. We’ve got community leaders like Gene Oberprilller that create and cultivate an ardent bike culture that enables a service like NiceRide to come in and take root allowing the novices like us to jump on a bike and go for a ride.

So, if you ride your own bike, there’s parking in the alley behind One On One. If you want to buy a bike, One One One has some of the coolest. If you just want to eat, the cafe has fresh soups and sandwiches made daily, A Baker’s Wife pastries, and B&W coffee from NE. Oh, and before you go you have to check out the graveyard or “bike museum” in the basement.

The Route
.65 miles

The Food
Chicken Chipotle soup
1/2 Turkey sandwich
B&W iced coffee from NE Minneapolis

Distance & Time
5 min. leisurely ride – .6 miles from “3rd & 5th Street” to “Washington & 2nd Ave N”
1 min. walk – 200 feet walk to One On One
6 min. to get there
30 min. to eat plus 18 minutes looking at cool art, bikes and the bike graveyard
6 min. ride back
1 hour

Cost
$5 for the NiceRide
$10 for soup, sandwich and iced coffee
$15 total

Stay tuned for next week’s Escape from the Skyway.

Click here for last week’s trip to the Sculpture Garden.

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Aquatennial Plaza Tennis

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

The plaza at One Financial Plaza (click here to see the location) is perfectly suited for an ad hoc tennis court. On any other day it would just be slabs of granite. But, during the Minneapolis Aquatennial and with a modular Sport Court® it is transformed into a USTA Northern championship tennis arena. A great place to eat your lunch and watch high quality tennis close up. Here’s the remainder of the schedule – don’t miss the finals on Thursday 7/22!

July 20 11:30 am – Visit from Aquatennial Princesses and Captains

11:40 am - Celebrity Media Challenge – Eric Perkins and Dave Watkins from KARE 11 will challenge Ingrid Neel and Alexis Nelson, two of the best junior players in the Northern Section

July 21 9:30 am – Mixed Doubles Semifinal

11:00 am - Women’s Singles Semifinal

12:30 pm – Women’s Singles Semifinal

2:00 pm – Mixed Doubles Semifinal

July 22 8:30 am - Women’s Doubles Final

10:00 am - Women’s Singles Final

11:45 pm - Sponsor Presentation

12:00 pm – Men’s Singles Final

1:30 pm – Men’s Doubles Final

3:00 pm – Mixed Doubles Final

For more information, contact Nancy Lundberg at the USTA Northern office at 952-358-3287, or visit www.northern.usta.com .

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Escape from the Skyway 3: Sculpture Garden

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

NiceRide KitOur NiceRide Key, map and coupon book arrived! We had to go the website and activate the key. Now we can track the number of trips, usage time, distance traveled, pounds of greenhouse gas and gallons of gas saved. Woo Hoo!

NiceRice Stats

Given that our last Escape from the Skyway was expensive and rather time consuming, we opted for a simple picnic at the Walker Sculpture Garden. We picked up our NiceRides at the “3rd & 5th Street” station (map) and took Nicollet Mall to the Loring Greenway, through Loring Park to the “Walker Art Center Station.”

The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden

In 1988 the Walker and the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board collaborated to turn a playing field into the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden with more than 40 permanent sculptures on display. We don’t have space to go through all 40, so we chose our 10 favorites below along with the who’s who list of philanthropists that have donated each sculpture.
Skyway My Way Top 10 (with obligatory map)

Spoonbridge and Cherry (1988) by Swedish-born Claes Oldenburg, aluminum, stainless steel, paint, Gift of Frederick R. Weisman – Seldom is there a photo of Minneapolis that doesn’t include this iconic sculpture. It’s much more impressive in person.

The Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge (1988) by Siah Armajani joins Loring Park and the Garden, finally reestablishing the physical link between these two public parks – The bridge, designed by Twin Cities-based artist Siah Armajani, allows pedestrians to cross the sixteen lanes of streets and highway that had severed the Garden from neighboring Loring Park for many years. Affixed to the upper lintel of the span and running in each direction across the bridge are the words of a poem–a meditation on movement, place, order, and crossing–which Armajani commissioned specially from the poet John Ashbery. *Armanjani also designed one of our favorite skyways over Marquette from Wells Fargo to 6 Quebec.

Arikidea (1985) by Mark di Suvero, Cor-Ten, Gift of Judy and Kenneth Dayton – The 3 ton sculpture invites interaction with a wooden swing in the center.

Selections From the Living Series (1993) by Jenny Holzer, Anonymous gift from a local resident – Twenty-eight white granite benches arranged symmetrically around the perimeter of a square, each with an engraved aphorism.

Two-way Mirror Punched Steel Hedge Labyrinth (1996) by Dan Graham, Gift of Judy and Kenneth Dayton – A large geometric maze with walls that provide both transparent and reflective surfaces through which we both see and are seen, view the surrounding environment and our own reflections.

Double Curve (1988) by Ellsworth Kelly, Gift of Judy and Kenneth Dayton – Two eighteen-foot, gently curving bronze arcs are insistently two-dimensional; viewed from the side, they almost disappear.

X with Columns (1996) by Sol Lewitt, Partial gift of the artist with funds provided by the Judy and Kenneth Dayton Garden Fund; materials provided by Anchor Block Company – 26 feet high cinder block columns provide frames through which views of the surrounding landscape are visible.

Molecule (1991) by Mark di Suvero, Gift of Honeywell in honor of Harriet and Edson W. Spencer – A monumental sweeping red gesture of three steel beams with one shooting 38 feet into the air.

Octupus (1964) and The Spinner (1966) by Alexander Calder, Gift of the T.B. Walker and Dayton’s respectively – Both sculptures sit on the “sculpture pad” in the northeast corner of the garden. The Spinner is a great example of Calder’s “kinetic” sculptures.

Standing Glass Fish (1986) by Frank Gehry, Gift of Anne Pierce Rogers – The 22-foot creature stands gracefully in a fantastic lily pond among the Mexican fan palms and calamondin orange trees of the Cowles Conservatory.

The Route
1.6 miles

The Food (brown bag)
Ham sandwich
Diet Coke

Distance & Time
14 min. leisurely ride – 1.6 miles from “3rd & 5th Street” to “Walker Art Center Station”
1 min. walk – 300 feet walk to Sculpture Garden
15 min. to get there
10 min. to eat plus 20 minutes for walking around)
15 min. to get back
1 hour total

Cost
“$0″ for the NiceRide with $60 annual subscription
$0 bag lunch
“$0″ total

Stay tuned for next week’s Escape from the Skyway.

Click here for last week’s harrowing tale of near Donner party proportions in “Stranded at Pracna”

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Escape from the Skyway Part Deux: Stranded at Pracna on Main

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

There’s good news and there’s bad news. Which do you want first?

The Good
OK, the good news: we love NiceRide and are committed to publishing at least 12 posts in this series, and 12 NiceRides is the break even for an annual subscription ($60), so we signed up for a one-year subscription.

As yearly subscribers, we’ll get a starter kit that includes a Nice Ride Key (no need for a code anymore or waiting in line) and a pocket map. And that’s not all! The annual subscription pays for itself 8+ times over with a book of coupons for local businesses valued at $500.

We’ll write more about this kit after arrives in our next post. But clearly having your own key will be nice.

The Bad
For our second installment of “Escape from the Skyway,” five of us gathered to cross the mighty Mississippi with an easy 1.5 mile ride across the Stone Arch Bridge and St. Anthony Falls to dine al fresco at Pracna on Main. Pracna is an “historic dining saloon” built in 1890 – “the oldest restaurant on the oldest street” in Minneapolis. Plus they’ve got 20 beers on tap.

Again, we picked up our NiceRides at the 3rd & 5th Street station (map). We could have taken the direct route across the 3rd Ave bridge (a measly 0.8 miles), but we wanted to take a leisurely ride across the Stone Arch bridge (1.5 miles). But, when we arrived at the “100 Main Street SE Station” under the 3rd Ave bridge there weren’t enough docks for all of us. So, two of us had to go find the “University & Bank St. Station” which was hard to find because it was blocked by a cement truck and a bunch of trucks and construction workers. Once we park, it was a bit of challenge to find our way back to Main St. But eventually we got back to Pracna on Main at 117 Main SE.

We ordered half sandwiches and Caesar salads that were okay. And, we ordered beers that came in small 12 oz plastic cups and cost $4.75 each. Service was good but slow.

The Ugly
The bike station at “100 Main Street SE,” while packed full with bikes, wasn’t working. There was a similar group of five ahead of us and they couldn’t get it to work either. We called the number on the rack – busy. We called again – busy. So, we hiked back up to the “University & Bank St. Station” but there were no bikes available! We called again – busy. Oh no! We had to get back to work!

So, we called a taxi, but it would take 20 minutes to get there. Then, we saw a bus coming. So, we hopped on the bus and got back to work 2 hours later. Oy vey.

The Route
1.5 miles

Note: If you’re pressed for time, it’s only 0.8 miles if you go straight across the 3rd Ave bridge (but, the bike station is under the bridge accessible only by stairs).

The Food
Half Sandwiches served with a cup of soup or side Caesar salad:

  • The 1890 (Shaved turkey on rye topped with swiss and cranberry cream cheese) $8.25
  • Pracna Cheese Steak (Shaved sirloin topped with sauteed onions, mushrooms and provolone) $8.25
  • Surly Furious $4.25 for 12 oz.

Distance & Time
10 min. leisurely ride – 1.5 miles from “3rd & 5th Street” to “100 Main Street SE Station”
1 min. walk – 100 feet walk to Pracna
15 min. to get there
70 min. to eat (we had to wait for two of us to park at the other station + slow service)
35 min. to get back (by bus)
Total: 2 hours

Cost
$5 for the NiceRide
$0.50 for the bus
$20 for lunch and two Surly Furious
$25.50 total

But, we’re not discouraged. We’re going to keep at it. Stay tuned for another exciting installment of Escape from the Skyway.

Click here for last week’s Escape to The Wienery

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