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Michelin Snubs St. Paul?
As you may have heard, Minneapolis was one of six cities that ponied up a quarter million for the privilege of being listed in a new midwestern version of the Michelin guide, the American Great Lakes Guide to Restaurants. We’ll sit alongside Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, and Pittsburgh.
You’ll notice that St. Paul is not on that list. Apparently they were not invited to participate. Jason DeRusha has more on that here.
As far as perspectives on the issue, I appreciated Racket contributor Kirstie Kimball’s take in her newsletter beyond beurre blanc, “Minnesota Dining Is Worth More Than Michelin Stars.” “Most of the writers who are dropped into Minnesota to review our restaurants from afar miss who we are,” she writes. “They’re comparing us to New York and Chicago, and I just… don’t care to do that.”
Cleanliness Is Next to Ungodliness
God bless Wedge LIVE!’s John Edwards for stomaching local TV news so the rest of us don’t have to. How else would I be aware that the guardians of public chastity at KSTP are freaking out that the Minneapolis City Council is considering legalizing the existence of bathhouses and other sex clubs.
The reasoning behind the change: Such places exist, and will always exist, and legitimizing them will allow people to frequent them safely. And many cities—including that iniquitous den of vice, Duluth—already permit such establishments.
Bathhouses were outlawed in Minneapolis in 1988. For a less sensationalist look at the history (and possible future) of sex clubs in Minneapolis, you can read this Sam Stroozas piece in MPR.
Yes but… today bathhouses. Tomorrow… sex forests???? (Please tell me that someone at KSTP has used the phrase “slippery slope.”)
Driven From Minnesota
The Strib’s Susan Du, our former City Pages colleague, is always worth reading, and her story today about how inhospitable Minnesota has become for immigrants who came here legally is no exception. Du addresses the federal government’s “unprecedented steps to make it harder for legal immigrants to work and stay in the United States.” Among the people she speaks to are a Ukrainian refugee with Temporary Protected Status who received an expired work permit in the mail and Nick Kramarczuk, who has watched the Ukrainian immigrants his restaurant employs struggle with new fees and restrictions. Anyway, feel free to pass this story along to your uncle who keeps clicking “laugh” emojis on Facebook stories about suffering immigrants and commenting “They’re woulbe no problem if hey came her LEGALLy!”
Pete Hegseth and the Last Crusade
I know we all (justifiably) feel good about ourselves these days, but it’s worth remembering occasionally that one of the worst people on Earth is a Minnesotan. I’m talking, of course, about Christian Nationalist warmonger/sociopathic Joe Isuzu doppelganger Pete Hegseth. Today on the Intercept podcast, journalist Sarah Posner discusses the Forest Lake native’s role in “Trump’s Holy War”—that’s “war” in the “let’s commit genocide against Iran” sense, but also in terms of the culture war the Trumplings are waging against American ideals of pluralism. For more on the subject, you might also read David M. Perry’s recent piece in the Star Tribune on what the administration’s use and misuse of the Crusades as a rhetorical device reveals about its dangerous goals.
