METRO 100: More & More
| By Chuck Terhark , Erin Madsen , Chris Clayton |
ShareThis(86) Biking
The number of Twin Cities bikers has nearly tripled since the early 2000s, and in the last year alone ridership on the Midtown Greenway—Minnesota’s most trafficked bike commute—has risen more than 20 percent. Whether due to the recession or to increased awareness of bicycling itself, Twin Citizens more than ever are getting behind bars. And they’re safer for it: Despite a few high-profile fatalities on Twin Cities roads this year, bicycle crashes per rider were actually down in 2009. And Minneapolis recently moved the Hennepin Avenue bike lane to First Avenue, eliminating the city’s most dangerous route, which will only help matters. Other recent highlights in Twin Cities biking: A research team from the U of M launched Cyclopath, a bike-friendly route-finder; and the Three Rivers Park District inaugurated the Dakota Bike Trail, a scenic, 14-mile former rail bed stretching from Wayzata to St. Bonifacius.
(87) The Craig Show
We’re not sure what’s more impressive: the fact that local golf coach/rock guitarist Craig Teiken can take just about any rube off the street and transform him into an at-least-mediocre golfer, or the fact that he’s taken arguably the most boring television platform (the golf program) and turned it into an interesting, even hilarious, Web video series. Even if you hate golf, we guarantee you’ll get a kick out of The Craig Show. And if you're already a links hound, well, when he isn’t clubbing White Castle burgers with his new driver or making fun of his mute caddy, Teiken actually dispenses a wealth of useful advice for straightening out your slice, speeding up your game and mastering your putt.
(88) Rise of the Hybrid Business
When tough times hit, local businesses do all they can to survive. This year, that meant offering as many services as possible. Take the Bikery in Stillwater: It’s a bike repair shop, a bakery and a coffeehouse all rolled into one. It’s also one of the city’s most popular new businesses. One on One Bikes in Minneapolis has been running a similar operation for a few years: They combine the cozy atmosphere of a café with the greasy bustle of a premium bike shop, and even double (triple?) as an art gallery. Fox Tax in Northeast also moonlights as one of the hipper art galleries in town, destroying every preconceived notion you’ve ever had about tax offices. Record stores—some of the hardest hit businesses of the last decade—are also getting the hint, as evidenced by the new-ish concert spaces at Eclipse Records in St. Paul and Shuga Records in Minneapolis.
(89) Bison
The American bison—that mythic, hump-backed symbol of the Wild West—is having an “It” moment. Health-conscious food nerds are flipping over its sweet, lean meat (Burger Jones, the Dakota and Restaurant Alma all serve it), and indie musicians are naming songs after it (see Happy Apple’s “The New Bison”). For further evidence of bison-mania, visit Belwin, a 1,300-acre nature preserve in Afton that’s temporarily hosting a herd of the massive mammals. On loan from a ranch in Wisconsin, the bison are helping restore Belwin’s prairies by foraging out unwanted plants and spreading seeds. When they head home at the end of autumn they’ll be nice and plump from feeding on native tall grasses and ready to—how shall we put this?—move on to a better place. It’s not exactly what Elton John had in mind when he wrote “Circle of Life,” but if these particular bison are destined for our grills, they may as well do some good while they’re still kicking, right?
(90) Linden Hills Power and Light
Linden Hills, that little pocket of small-town paradise tucked away southwest of lake country in south Minneapolis, made strides in becoming the most forward-thinking community in the state this year thanks largely to Linden Hills Power and Light. The local group was instrumental in getting a curbside compost program up and running—an example that the rest of the city should note—and they’ve continued to raise awareness about their big dream: an anaerobic digester that would turn the neighborhood’s organic garbage into electricity.
(91) Jon Hallberg, M.D.
As an assistant professor in the U of M’s department of medicine and family health, he’s been known to take med students to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts to polish their observational skills. He’s the on-call doctor for the Guthrie Theater, the Ordway, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and other arts organizations. He recently opened the Mill City Clinic, which specializes in performing arts medicine. As his ridiculously impressive resume indicates, family physician Jon Hallberg considers medicine an art as much a science. This holistic belief makes him a top doc in our book and many others’ (the Minnesota Medical Alumni Society gave him an Early Distinguished Career Award in 2006).
(92) Kurt Rambis
In game four of the 1984 NBA Finals, Boston star Kevin McHale grabbed the throat of Lakers forward Kurt Rambis and threw him to the ground. The vicious foul proved a mental turning point for the Celtics, who were losing at the time of its delivery; they went on to win the game and, ultimately, the championship. Twenty-five years later, Rambis got his revenge, delivering a metaphorical takedown to McHale, whom he replaces as head coach of the Minnesota Timberwolves this season. We like to think Rambis planned it this way, Edmond Dantés-style, but he’s too nice for elaborate payback schemes. In addition to his good-guy rep, Rambis has coaching smarts, which he sharpened as an assistant to basketball’s Yoda (Lakers coach Phil Jackson). Here’s hoping he can pull the Wolves out of the five-year rebuilding mode.
The T-Wolves start their ’09–’10 season this month against New Jersey, 10/28
(93) Southside Family Charter School
How many kids do you know who are anxious to talk about the importance of waste and toxicity reduction at community meetings? Did we mention these kids are 9 and 10? At the K-8 Southside Family Charter School in Minneapolis, such things are all just part of the day, which is filled with not just the three Rs but also an impassioned social justice curriculum designed to teach children about the problems that lead to racism, sexism and other not-so-good isms. And they get much of their learning hands-on: Last spring the older kids traveled to South Dakota to study Lakota culture; this year, they’re headed to Milwaukee to delve into urban farming. So successful is the Southside program that, this past summer, the state designated them an official community-as-a-classroom magnet program, which will no doubt make the waiting list to get in even longer.
(94) Norman Borlaug
Once upon a time in Mexico, the country was on the brink of starvation. It had an exploding population and a wheat industry that couldn’t keep up. It was importing half its wheat crop in a desperate attempt to feed the hungry masses. That was in 1944, and Norman Borlaug, who two years earlier had earned a Ph.D. in plant pathology from the University of Minnesota, had just arrived. He spent 16 years in Mexico crossbreeding cultivars of wheat until finally hitting upon a strain that worked: high-yield, short-stalked (the better to support the extra grain) and disease-resistant. By the time he left, Mexico was producing six times the amount of wheat it had been in the 1940s. It was even exporting a surplus.
Which it could because, in 1968, the rest of the world was still hungry. Paul Ehrlich lamented that year in his book The Population Bomb that “the battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death.” Even as that book was being printed, though, Borlaug’s wheat was being cultivated in India and Southeast Asia. By 1974, India’s food supply was self-sufficient. Borlaug had proved the doomsayers wrong.
Conservative estimates put the number of lives Borlaug saved from starvation at 245 million. Some experts say it’s closer to a billion. In 2007 he joined Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela and Elie Wiesel as the only people ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. He passed away on September 12 at age 95.
The number of Twin Cities bikers has nearly tripled since the early 2000s, and in the last year alone ridership on the Midtown Greenway—Minnesota’s most trafficked bike commute—has risen more than 20 percent. Whether due to the recession or to increased awareness of bicycling itself, Twin Citizens more than ever are getting behind bars. And they’re safer for it: Despite a few high-profile fatalities on Twin Cities roads this year, bicycle crashes per rider were actually down in 2009. And Minneapolis recently moved the Hennepin Avenue bike lane to First Avenue, eliminating the city’s most dangerous route, which will only help matters. Other recent highlights in Twin Cities biking: A research team from the U of M launched Cyclopath, a bike-friendly route-finder; and the Three Rivers Park District inaugurated the Dakota Bike Trail, a scenic, 14-mile former rail bed stretching from Wayzata to St. Bonifacius.
(87) The Craig ShowWe’re not sure what’s more impressive: the fact that local golf coach/rock guitarist Craig Teiken can take just about any rube off the street and transform him into an at-least-mediocre golfer, or the fact that he’s taken arguably the most boring television platform (the golf program) and turned it into an interesting, even hilarious, Web video series. Even if you hate golf, we guarantee you’ll get a kick out of The Craig Show. And if you're already a links hound, well, when he isn’t clubbing White Castle burgers with his new driver or making fun of his mute caddy, Teiken actually dispenses a wealth of useful advice for straightening out your slice, speeding up your game and mastering your putt.
(88) Rise of the Hybrid Business
When tough times hit, local businesses do all they can to survive. This year, that meant offering as many services as possible. Take the Bikery in Stillwater: It’s a bike repair shop, a bakery and a coffeehouse all rolled into one. It’s also one of the city’s most popular new businesses. One on One Bikes in Minneapolis has been running a similar operation for a few years: They combine the cozy atmosphere of a café with the greasy bustle of a premium bike shop, and even double (triple?) as an art gallery. Fox Tax in Northeast also moonlights as one of the hipper art galleries in town, destroying every preconceived notion you’ve ever had about tax offices. Record stores—some of the hardest hit businesses of the last decade—are also getting the hint, as evidenced by the new-ish concert spaces at Eclipse Records in St. Paul and Shuga Records in Minneapolis.
(89) Bison
The American bison—that mythic, hump-backed symbol of the Wild West—is having an “It” moment. Health-conscious food nerds are flipping over its sweet, lean meat (Burger Jones, the Dakota and Restaurant Alma all serve it), and indie musicians are naming songs after it (see Happy Apple’s “The New Bison”). For further evidence of bison-mania, visit Belwin, a 1,300-acre nature preserve in Afton that’s temporarily hosting a herd of the massive mammals. On loan from a ranch in Wisconsin, the bison are helping restore Belwin’s prairies by foraging out unwanted plants and spreading seeds. When they head home at the end of autumn they’ll be nice and plump from feeding on native tall grasses and ready to—how shall we put this?—move on to a better place. It’s not exactly what Elton John had in mind when he wrote “Circle of Life,” but if these particular bison are destined for our grills, they may as well do some good while they’re still kicking, right?
(90) Linden Hills Power and Light
Linden Hills, that little pocket of small-town paradise tucked away southwest of lake country in south Minneapolis, made strides in becoming the most forward-thinking community in the state this year thanks largely to Linden Hills Power and Light. The local group was instrumental in getting a curbside compost program up and running—an example that the rest of the city should note—and they’ve continued to raise awareness about their big dream: an anaerobic digester that would turn the neighborhood’s organic garbage into electricity.
(91) Jon Hallberg, M.D.As an assistant professor in the U of M’s department of medicine and family health, he’s been known to take med students to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts to polish their observational skills. He’s the on-call doctor for the Guthrie Theater, the Ordway, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and other arts organizations. He recently opened the Mill City Clinic, which specializes in performing arts medicine. As his ridiculously impressive resume indicates, family physician Jon Hallberg considers medicine an art as much a science. This holistic belief makes him a top doc in our book and many others’ (the Minnesota Medical Alumni Society gave him an Early Distinguished Career Award in 2006).
(92) Kurt Rambis
In game four of the 1984 NBA Finals, Boston star Kevin McHale grabbed the throat of Lakers forward Kurt Rambis and threw him to the ground. The vicious foul proved a mental turning point for the Celtics, who were losing at the time of its delivery; they went on to win the game and, ultimately, the championship. Twenty-five years later, Rambis got his revenge, delivering a metaphorical takedown to McHale, whom he replaces as head coach of the Minnesota Timberwolves this season. We like to think Rambis planned it this way, Edmond Dantés-style, but he’s too nice for elaborate payback schemes. In addition to his good-guy rep, Rambis has coaching smarts, which he sharpened as an assistant to basketball’s Yoda (Lakers coach Phil Jackson). Here’s hoping he can pull the Wolves out of the five-year rebuilding mode.
The T-Wolves start their ’09–’10 season this month against New Jersey, 10/28
(93) Southside Family Charter School
How many kids do you know who are anxious to talk about the importance of waste and toxicity reduction at community meetings? Did we mention these kids are 9 and 10? At the K-8 Southside Family Charter School in Minneapolis, such things are all just part of the day, which is filled with not just the three Rs but also an impassioned social justice curriculum designed to teach children about the problems that lead to racism, sexism and other not-so-good isms. And they get much of their learning hands-on: Last spring the older kids traveled to South Dakota to study Lakota culture; this year, they’re headed to Milwaukee to delve into urban farming. So successful is the Southside program that, this past summer, the state designated them an official community-as-a-classroom magnet program, which will no doubt make the waiting list to get in even longer.
(94) Norman Borlaug
Once upon a time in Mexico, the country was on the brink of starvation. It had an exploding population and a wheat industry that couldn’t keep up. It was importing half its wheat crop in a desperate attempt to feed the hungry masses. That was in 1944, and Norman Borlaug, who two years earlier had earned a Ph.D. in plant pathology from the University of Minnesota, had just arrived. He spent 16 years in Mexico crossbreeding cultivars of wheat until finally hitting upon a strain that worked: high-yield, short-stalked (the better to support the extra grain) and disease-resistant. By the time he left, Mexico was producing six times the amount of wheat it had been in the 1940s. It was even exporting a surplus.
Which it could because, in 1968, the rest of the world was still hungry. Paul Ehrlich lamented that year in his book The Population Bomb that “the battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death.” Even as that book was being printed, though, Borlaug’s wheat was being cultivated in India and Southeast Asia. By 1974, India’s food supply was self-sufficient. Borlaug had proved the doomsayers wrong.
Conservative estimates put the number of lives Borlaug saved from starvation at 245 million. Some experts say it’s closer to a billion. In 2007 he joined Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela and Elie Wiesel as the only people ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. He passed away on September 12 at age 95.
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