Nő Place

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Dancing at FON

I am a nerd, and I know it.

One of my hobbies is dancing in one of the local folk dance groups, Vidaki or the Hungarian Dance group to be precise. I love it.

Every year we preform a couple of different venues, but the biggest one is Festival of Nations. It is an entire weekend of dancing and gorging ourselves on a wide variety of food.

Last year it was an arduous weekend of hurry-up and wait, but this year was different. Instead of just waiting around we hung around the musicians and danced. It was awesome, and an added bonus...no major costume snafus during the performances thanks to my fabulous friends Elise and Paul, who last minute delivered me a blouse.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Coffee shop review OR No mom, this isn’t an excuse to support my caffeine addiction…this is for science

Coffee is a food group- right?

Recently VitaMN came out with a list of the best stuff in the cities, best coffee, best cocktail, best museum, best undiscovered neighborhood etc. And while they did give a little blurb arguing their choice, I decided long ago to quest on my own for the greatest coffee shop. So as I find ever new locations to add to this list, I think that the benchmarks for what makes a great coffee shop great, should remain the same. (As I add, I will try to group via neighborhood)

Also: if I am missing benchmarks which are VITAL for coffee shop evaluation, let me know!

1) Great plain black brew: Fancy cocktail-like beverages are great and all, but the true judge of any shop’s quality is in the plain brown beverage.

2) Menu/what snazzy item makes them unique: Everyone has something that makes them special…so does every shop. What is it known for, and is it good?

3) Easy access to outlets: What can I say, I am a student and I am judging you.

4) General atmosphere: date-y, study haven or does the shop cater mostly to the commuter addicts (in-out no time to chat)

5) Décor

6) Price and Wifi

7) Most likely to hear when eavesdropping

Neighborhood: Uptown

Uncommon Grounds

1) Maybe it was the time I went…but meh. Nothing special

2) Chai: They even advertise on the awesome-ness of their chai. They have several flavors from plain to Pumpkin or Coconut. These are good. Also, the giant slabs of cake are pretty good.

3) This depends. Upstairs I would whole heartedly agree, in fact it is a go-to place to study, as there are plenty of plugs and tables. Downstairs however, fat chance.

4) Again this depends. Downstairs, with its dim lighting, and smooth music, comfy chairs screams DATE ME. Upstairs is more utilitarian with a motley assortment of tables, plenty of plugs and light from both windows and lamps. This is a big chunk of why I like to study here, but only if I can be upstairs.

5) Again there is a split. The downstairs reflects what one would expect from the Victorian exterior, velvet and dim romantic-ness. Upstairs is again utilitarian, and fairly plain.

6) Price: $-$$ depending on what you get. There is a $5 minimum on cards, but one Chai should run you well over that. Wifi is free.

7) Something vaguely hipster-yish….so maybe “I liked breathing, before it was cool”

Plan B

1) Yes. I have to agree…this is the place where I became hooked on caffeine

2) Tripper’s Revenge, and dive-bar come coffee house vibe. Again, the tripper’s revenge with its saccharine and caffeine punch that knocks the exhaustion out of you, was my first coffee beverage…I may be biased

3) No. There are not a ton plugs.

4) Funky coffee house…what you would expect of uptown

5) Funky art, random garage-sale furniture

6) Price $ wifi-umm yes

7) To quote overheard.com : http://www.overheardinminneapolis.com/page/37?s=minneapolis

Hipster girl #1: You ate all the fucking hummus again!
Hipster girl #2: No, YOU ate all the hummus!
Hipster girl #1: Why would I eat all the hummus?

Neighborhood: Dinkytown

Purple Onion

1) Yum! Although I may be influenced by the fact that desperation for caffination often drives me here, but still tasty.

2) Being the purple onion…I do not know.

3) Yes. This is right next to the University of MN, and the Onion both knows and recognizes the major needs of its primary demographic

4) Clean, Open and nice. Not cozy, but comfortable and a place designed for students.

5) Snazzier than other student coffee shops, but not swanky.

6) Price: $, Wifi Free with password

7) As it is the closest stop to the Peik, a LOT of education majors hang here….so probably something along the lines of….”Wow, that is a great way to differentiate based on Language proficiency, while still maintaining the same higher order thinking skills as ascribed in Bloom’s Taxonomy”

Neighborhood: Cathedral Hill (Oh yes People, St. Paul has coffee shops too)

Nina’s

1) Yum and a great variety.

2) Famous for a few things – one: the name. It is pronounced N-ay-n-ah’s, and named after one of St. Paul’s most famous madams. two: The neighborhood atmosphere that it cultivates – there is a sign that says something along the lines of ‘This isn’t the bus, if there is an empty seat take it – share tables with strangers’ three: I forgot.

3) So-so. There are a few along the benches, but either they fill up fast or there is not a ton of space for computer and books.

4) Clean, genial atmosphere, like the bar on Cheers….although if you are a stranger sometimes it does feel like you are walking into someone else’s neighborhood bar.

5) Clean, interesting art, including some stained glass.

6) Price: $-$$, Wifi – Yes

7) St. Paul pride here, it is reflected in the name. Nina’s also sits above the original Common Good Books, and attracts a literary crowd…so maybe something along the lines of “Hmm I usually love the figurative language of (fill in local author’s name here), but I was disappointed that the latest book spent two chapters in Minneapolis.”

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Serving more than 101 people

We knew it would be a little busier than normal.

That is why I did not wear a dirndl that morning.

Part of the great part of running a German style breakfast, is the fact that if I do not want to wear the proscribed black and white, I have the option of wearing a Dirndl. Even better, I can borrow one from the GAI. But as beautiful as the Forrest green dress with gold and silver embroidery is, it is constricting. Better to wear black and white when I will need to run.

The other amazing part of my job is the people. I know, this is rather a repetitive meme in my posts, what can I say- I am blessed with good people. The GAI pretty much runs on volunteers. For example, there are only two employees to do all of the shopping, set-up, running, dishes and cleaning for our Breakfast. Do-able on a slow day, but way better with volunteers. (To give reference a slow day is about 35-45 people, and an average day is about 55 people).

Luckily we had a volunteer that day. L. is a long time volunteer, and super efficient, which turned out to be fantastic.

8:45 - Strudels were cooked, things were ready to go. Back-ups prepared.

8:55 - L. M. and I took traditional bet on how many guests for the day --- I believe L guessed around 80, I guessed 65, and M guessed 77-ish.

9:00 Breakfast opens

9:05 50 people are already in line

9:15 Back-ups already out...preparing new ones

10:00 Guests have already joked about our need for roller-skates with the constant in out of the kitchen.

10:05 Coffee Pot PANIC -- Yet another tureen is broken...sadly a late discovery in the game --- Contemplating re-enactments of office space with a coffee pot instead of fax machine

10:10 Scream as L. & M chase me through the kitchen flapping milk jugs - no matter how busy we need to be a little silly

10:30 worry about running out of bread.

10:30-12:00 --- all a blurry haze of cold cuts, eggs, strudels and coffee.

Chaos and Laughter aside, we soared past my personal goal of servign more than 101 people...with 131!

Update:
This past weekend we did it again with 112. I was chatting with one of the regular guests, remarking on my surprise and he said something along the lines of -

'The word is out...you will keep up being busy'

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

St. Paul's Most Notorious Tour

The first thing you need to know is: I have the MOST awesome friends in the world.

They are spread out on at least four continents, and most of them have not met one another, but the one thing they have in common is that they are all ridiculously awesome.

After all, how many people could you call at about 2:30 on a Saturday, with no previous plans and entice them out for a full day tour, water pistol fight and crime re-enactment super adventure?

Last weekend that is what I did. I called my friends D & N from school, proposed the idea and an hour later we were in the car.

A while back I had stumbled upon Erik Rivenes' St. Paul's Most Notorious driving tour. It comes with an audio CD, map, directions and a puzzle that you need to solve as you go. I had already tried it out with another friend, but hadn't bothered to do the puzzle - BIG mistake. The last track is left for you to solve with the puzzle, that is filled in with clues from the places that you drive to during the tour. I am absurdly curious, and no amount of Googling (well maybe more Googling than I did) turned up the answer.

My only recourse was to take the tour again (aw shucks...not more history...). This time we added the bonus of re-enactments, junk food and water pistols.

Some of our highlights:

The cop arresting a fugitive on the Street Car

The supposedly unarmed fugitive shoots the detective, who calls a beat cop over to help apprehend the fugitive

People jumped out of the windows of the Street Car

The beat cop clubs the fugitive.

Pig’s eye loosing the footrace for the land claim. Not only was St. Paul almost named Pig’s Eye, but the guy lost one of his land claims, when a judge decided to settle the two squatter’s claims with a footrace between the 60 something year old Pig’s eye and a guy 30 years his junior.