lowertown Archives - Memos and Mirth

Miami, Minnesota, and Dallas: How I spent my 20’s

August 8, 2017

A view of Bank of America Tower from the Omni in downtown Dallas.

This week I undertook the humbling task of reviewing all of my blog entries.

This blog stretches back to my freshman year of college, so there are a lot of great (and not-so-great) memories archived in these pages.

Here’s a look at how I spent the last decade or so, from Miami to Minneapolis, and then down to Texas.

We start in Miami — there were long days in the library, bad drag shows, and misadventures in Little Havana.

Then there was the move to Minnesota, where I started law school and lived in a frat house during my first semester.

memories / Minneapolis-St. Paul

Goodbye Minnesota

July 13, 2015

Predictions of a Frenemie

It’s winter and I am at Lush Food Bar for brunch.

One of the guys at our table says that he wants to move to Chicago, and I mention that I will likely move too.

That’s when one of the salty guys at our booth puts down his mimosa and says:
“Shut up about moving, Dennis. We all know you hate Minnesota, but you’re not moving anywhere. If you were going to move you would have done so already.”
Well, I guess he was wrong – The move to Dallas is happening tomorrow!

Dallas / Life / Lowertown / Thomson Reuters

Preparations

July 8, 2015

Next week I’ll be in Dallas.

The logistics of moving are exhausting – choosing a power company, contracting with a new internet provider, closing accounts, getting paperwork together, and that nagging sense that I’m overestimating what fits into my car.

Almost all of my furniture is already gone.

I just have my ratty couch, my work desk, and a mattress on the floor (it kind of looks like a crack den.)

Also, apparently this is what $21 in used books looks like:

What $21 in used books looks like. I sold them at Half Priced Books in Roseville, Minnesota.

I hauled the books to the Half Priced books in Roseville.

That store is one of the strangest places I’ve ever been to.

It looks like a normal book store, but it’s staffed by very thin and bored-looking hipsters. The customers were equal parts young parents, old people, and tatted 40-somethings.

I sat around for about 30 minutes while waiting for my books to get appraised. I was so bored by the time they called my name that I would have accepted any amount. (This is probably not by mistake.)

Lowertown

The Fall

May 20, 2015

Mitchell and I are walking the dogs in Mears Park when we hear a thud.

We and several other dog walkers run over to a man splayed out in the middle of the park.

The man is unconscious and turning blue.

I dial 911.

Lowertown / memories / MJD / Thomson Reuters

Summer of Change

May 17, 2015

This summer marks the end of an era for me.

Mitchell and I are not renewing the lease for our Lowertown apartment. He may purchase a house closer to his job, and my boss approved an out-of-state move for me.

He’s keeping Hugo, and I’m taking Gunter.

Gunter the Chiweenie, who is thrilled that it is no longer freezing in Minnesota.

I’m still undecided of where to move.

My company specifically cleared me to move to California because we have offices in the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California. I also have a lot of clients in both places.

Both San Francisco and Los Angeles seem insanely expensive. Do I overpay for a closet-apartment in a trendy area, or banish myself to the suburbs?

I’ll likely have to sign a lease based on pictures – what if I end up with another nightmare building? Will I end up in a terrible situation and wish that I kept my Minnesota lifestyle?

dogs / Lowertown

My Homeless Neighbors

April 9, 2015

It finally happened – spring arrived in Minnesota!

February is a hard month. Like a Siberian prisoner, I accept my frozen circumstances and stop hoping for spring.

Then March comes, the temperature rebounds, and I’m shocked like this doesn’t happen every year.

So the snow completely melted, revealing five months of filth, trash, small dead animals, and dog crap. Yes, dog crap – there’s a subset of dog owners who don’t pick up dog shit when there’s snow on the ground. I don’t get it.

dogs / Lowertown

Frisbees and Fires

April 5, 2015

Gunter the Chiweenie and his Easter costume.

It’s around 7:30 a.m. when I walk into the Dunn Brothers Coffee shop near the Excel Center. There are three baristas behind the counter, and two cops inside.

Me: “Hi. I’m going to come back for coffee in a second, but first can I have three large cups of water? There’s a fire at McGovern’s.”

The baristas look at me like I’m crazy. (The cops too.) So I try again.

Me: “You know McGovern’s? The bar across the street? Well I was walking past it with my dogs and I noticed the planter smoking. I think someone tried to put a cigarette out in the dirt last night. I don’t want to come back around later and see the building gone…”

One of the baristas carries the water out with me. The planter is full of charred, smoking dirt, which we douse.

Life / Lowertown Apartment / picture of the day

The Flood

January 21, 2015

I knew something was wrong because of the smell.

It hit me when I unlocked my apartment door one evening.

The smell was not “dog shat the rug” foul, nor was it “old food in the garbage” foul… it was … just foul.

Sewage foul.

And this what I found in the bathroom:

My sink exploded while I was at work. Water and pools of sludge were everywhere.

I think the proper term is “backed up.”

2014 Summer / Life / Lowertown

The Farmers

August 21, 2014

Vegetables from the St. Paul Farmers' Market in Lowertown.

Summertime in Lowertown means that I have a standing weekend date with the St. Paul Farmers’ Market.
The optimal time to get there is between 9 and 10:30 a.m.

Before 9 a.m. most of the vendors don’t have their produce or price tags out yet. That’s a problem because the farmers’ market brings out my inner bargain hunter.

I actually turn into a 46-year-old sweatpants-wearing couponer named Blanche… and I need my deals!

That’s why I hate shopping before the farmers put their price cards out: I want to compare prices and I’m worried they’ll jack up the kale from $2 to $3 just because they see an eager buyer.

Blanche does not play that game.

After 11 a.m., the farmers’ market begins to resemble the Minnesota State Fair in the worst ways possible: The rows fill up with tourists, strollers, and kids who think navigating a crowd is a contact sport.

By 11:30 the marketplace is so packed that it resembles the opening scene of a horror movie about an airborne pathogen. The veggies also begin looking musty and bees start to gather around the flower venders.

No thank you, mam.

Vegetables from the St. Paul Farmers’ Market in Lowertown.

I’m also terrible at estimating how much food to buy.

The farmers’ market is really cheap, which makes it easy to overbuy.

I typically end of juicing at the end of the week just to get rid of unused vegetables. It’s less about health than avoiding my boyfriend’s side-eye as he watches me toss a rotten head of cabbage.

Running to Guizhou, Minnesota

I’m jogging near Eagan when I come across some fields being worked by elderly Asian farmers.

Asian Farmers in Eagan, Minnesota

The plots were small, and most of the farmers have manual tools. I feel like I ran to Guizhou, or that I’m coming down with some serious heat stroke.

Farmers in the exurbs of Saint Paul, Minnesota

It takes a second for me to realize that these must be the venders from the farmers’ market!
Although I go to the market every weekend, I’ve never thought about where the food is actually grown.
I was fascinated and amused – I go to the farmers’ market because it’s right next to my house, not out of some strong desire to buy local. I’m sure the food is a lot healthier than the imported alternatives though.

Lowertown / Minneapolis-St. Paul / MJD

Black Hawk, Minnesota

August 18, 2014

I’m washing the dishes after dinner when I hear a WAMP-WAMP-WAMP coming from Mears Park.

Mitchell: “There’s a helicopter outside. Oh, there’s another one – and it has a bunch of guys with guns hanging out of it! What the hell?”

We rush to the window and see several helicopters circling low over the park. Apartment windows around the park fly open as people take pictures.
We exchange uncomfortable looks with our neighbors. Maybe there’s a manhunt going on? Terrorist attack?
Eventually, we have to take the dogs outside despite Mears Park feeling like Little Baghdad. We run into another dog walker in Mears Park and she tells us that the helicopters are part of urban warfare games.

Neighbor: “Yeah, I had to call the cops to ask if we were under attack, and they said that it was some urban warfare drill. They didn’t say how long it would take or what the hell they plan on using helicopters for. This isn’t Ferguson…”

On Twitter, a there’s a flood of St. Paul and Minneapolis downtowners bitching about the helicopters while tagging local news anchors (who also seem to be unaware of the drills.) The local news stations didn’t even announce the Defense Department training exercises until after they began.

The helicopters continue circling our park until after dark. We watch as the unlit helicopters swoop really close to the Galtier balconies. A few times it looks like the helicopters would land in alleyways.

Flying helicopters over residential neighborhoods is sketchy enough – flying war choppers next to people’s balconies without notice is completely unacceptable.

My neighborhood isn’t a war game arena, and the police (or feds, whatever) should make us feel safe, and not be terrifying us with unannounced military exercises. The training is expected to continue for a few days, so hopefully it’s something that we can get used to.

Update: Apparently this happened in Minneapolis as well, and everyone’s pissed.

2014 Summer / Life / Lowertown / Minneapolis-St. Paul / pictures

St. Paul Under Water

July 7, 2014

Flooding in downtown Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Minnesota just got out of the wettest June in history, and downtown Saint Paul bore the brunt of it.

Shepard Road completely flooded near my apartment. Raspberry Island was close to disappearing too.

: Flooding in downtown Saint Paul, Minnesota.

: Flooded Raspberry Island in Downtown St. Paul, Minnesota

: Flooding in downtown Saint Paul, Minnesota.

: Flooded Raspberry Island in Downtown St. Paul, Minnesota

: Flooding in downtown Saint Paul, Minnesota.

: Flooding in downtown Saint Paul, Minnesota.

The flooding was quite the tourist attraction.

Wabasha and Robert Street bridges were covered with photographers and onlookers.

The pictures livened up my dull Instagram account, but downtown St. Paul is situated on a bluff, so the only things that actually got flooded by were a bunch of parks, surface lots, and the street by the river.

I’m glad that our tsunami season is over.

I had the horrible experience of being stuck in one of the storms during a dog walk – Gunter and I were halfway across the High Bridge when we saw a huge wall of rain rush down the river valley. We ran to a wooded area for cover, but eventually got so soaked that we had to start walking home.

I haven’t been soaked to my underbritches since leaving Miami, and I don’t miss that gross feeling at all.