Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of what local media outlets and Twitter-ers are gabbing about.
Garth Brooks's Mystery Minnesotan
"This has been the biggest city for us in our career," Garth Brooks told the Star Tribune's Jon Bream in 2019, before his record-setting back-to-back nights at U.S. Bank Stadium. Now, that just sounds like the kind of thing big-time country stars say in every city, don't it? Well, for some evidence to the contrary, Bream is back today with another Brooks report. It seems the country superstar just released a song about a mystery woman he met here called "St. Paul/Minneapolis (A True Story)." "I don't have a clue who she is. It's the weirdest thing," Brooks told Billboard Monday in an interview about his new album, Time Traveler. "It was the easiest thing I've ever done. When she started talking, there was something in me that unlocked. In my dream of dreams, I'd love to run into her again and see if that easy feeling was really that or am I just imagining things." Time Traveler is available today exclusively at Bass Pro Shops/Cabela's locations, to which we say: lol hell yeah.
PR Guy for State of MN: No, It's the Reformer Who is Wrong
The state of Minnesota took on $454 million in debt for renovations to St. Paul's 90-year-old State Office Building, which houses the offices of members of the Minnesota House. Yesterday, Minnesota Reformer's Michelle Griffith shared an update on the financial breakdown of that project: $275 million over 20 years in interest alone. That's... that's a lot of taxpayer money!
Griffith took interest in the interest and asked Minnesota Management & Budget spokesperson Patrick Hogan about the high price tag; he dodged the question, saying that the $729 million figure is the max the state would end up paying and “in reality, the cost could be less.” Sure. But then ol' Hogan goes ahead and criticizes the Reformer for reporting on it in the first place. “It continues to trouble me that the Reformer would treat this one project differently than all others in the way the cost is reported,” he says. I dunno, seems like a worthy amount of money to want to know about?
As Reformer editor J. Patrick Coolican notes in today's Daily Reformer newsletter, the total cost of the renovation means Minnesotans will be paying $3 million per month for the building. And in a broken-clock scenario, there may be good reason why the worst orgs out there are gravitating toward the phrase "boondoggle"...
Go Vote!
It's election day, folks, and you know what that means: The barrage of mailers you've been funneling from mailbox to recycling bin over the last few months will soon relent! Also, it's time to get out there and cast your ballot. The Star Tribune has a great guide to what's going on statewide today, but we'll keep it local. In Minneapolis, the only thing you need to decide is which City Council hopeful gets your vote, with 38 candidates duking it out over eight seats. There's also a City Council race on the ballot in St. Paul, along with four School Board seats and the question of whether to raise sales tax by one cent to improve roads, parks, etc. Find your polling place here, and as always, the quick cheat sheet for progressives is Naomi Kritzer's guide. If you missed it last year, we chatted with the sci-fi writer about putting together the most comprehensive voting guide in town.
It's Opening Day for Kim's
Ann Kim's new restaurant in the Sooki & Mimi space? It opens today. (Our apologies if this is how you're finding out that Sooki & Mimi closed, taking the life-changing mushroom birria tacos with it to Restaurant Heaven.) At Kim's (1432 W. 31st St., Minneapolis), the menu is made up of snacks (beef and kimchi mandu, bubbling egg soufflé), plates and bowls (stir-fried bulgogi, grilled prawns), and sammies (Kim Burger, Spam 'n' cheese—does Ann read Racket?), plus banchan and desserts. No call ahead seating or reservations, it's first come first served. Bronto Bar in the basement will follow on November 9.
