Minneapolis

The Aviator

Northwest Airline’s executives went to bed downtrodden on July 14, 1938. Their plans to meet and refuel Howard Hughes’ twin engine monoplane at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport had been dashed when his crew wired that they would land in Winnipeg instead. And this wasn’t just any old pit stop — this was the last stop on Hughes record-shattering round-the-world speed race. His previous stop was Fairbanks and Hughes was streaking more than 3 days ahead of Wiley Post’s previous world record.  

To make matters worse,...

All in all, June 19th, 1954, was a crazy day. Maybe surreal was a better word. A regular at the Brass Rail bar on Hennepin sauntered outside and had to do a double take at the passing rail car. Could it be? That sure looked like Hubert Humphrey, our famous senator wearing a Twin Cities Rapid Transit (TCRT) motorman’s cap and driving the eight carriage Oak-Harriet street car toward St. Paul. And as the trailing cars swoosh past, they are filled with well-dressed civic leaders dining on chicken salad over white table cloth tables. The bar patron shook his head and darted back in...

Construction on the $1 billion, "people's stadium," has been complete for almost a year now. The Vikings have already spent one season breaking fans' hearts after starting 5-0 and plummeting to an 8-8 record. But despite the price tag, issues with the palace still persist. The stadium, coined by many as the crown jewel of NFL stadiums, is still facing some of the same issues from when it opened -- issues with exterior panels. The water leaking into the stadium was actually so significant that puddles accumulated...

The sold out show filled First Avenue with hundreds of fans eager to celebrate 89.3 The Current’s 12th birthday on Friday evening. After the stress of a long and tumultuous week, the excitement in the crowd was palpable and it was easy to see why. The national and local lineup of bands and musicians were some of the station’s favorites including Jay Smart, Black Market Brass, Stand of Oaks, Joseph, and jeremy messersmith (At the start of the new year, he requested his name be lowercase). While everyone was there...

Everyone has a need to feel like we belong. One of the most intimate ways we express this is caring for one another. We express this in multiple ways by doing things such as helping an elderly person with various tasks around their home, helping a neighbor with a project or just being a friend. In a recent article, Wallet Hub ranked the most caring cities for 2016 among the 100 most populated cities in U.S. They used several metrics such as volunteer hours per capita, percentage of sheltered homeless people and percentage of...

There will be no indictments handed down in the fatal police shooting of twenty-four year old Jamar Clark.

On Wednesday, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman announced he will not pursue charges against Officer Mark Ringgenberg or Officer Dustin Schwarze for the shooting. In the investigation, Freeman said he was concerned with determining whether Jamar Clark was handcuffed and what the evidence suggested about the use of force by police.

Freeman decided not to indict either of the officers after he reviewed DNA, photographic, and autopsy evidence which suggested that...

One of Northeast Minneapolis’s most notable restaurants, Nye’s Polonaise Room, will close its doors in early spring after 67 years of service. Nye’s has given people around the area a chance to sit back, enjoy a Classic Martini and listen to the World’s Most Dangerous Polka Band. If you haven’t already had the pleasure of experiencing Nye’s, April 3rd is the last day...

It was almost midnight September 2nd as thousands of Gopher football fans streamed to the Green Line rail platforms. Metro Transit lined up trains like cord wood. Not that the riders minded the short wait. An orange crescent moon presided over a glorious summer night and temps were still in the mid-seventies. Indeed, the sound of the train horns could easily lead the mind to wander and reminisce: Were we dreaming or did this scene happen before? There certainly were a lot of clues to think it had.

1. Echoes of Twin City Rapid Transit (TCRT)

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On July 24th, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) suspended landings on the 2005-built South-North runway 35. A year ago that route over Apple Valley and Bloomington flowed an estimated 17 percent of landings into MSP. In the first two weeks of August, the new ban brought that traffic down to a trickle at .5 percent. The FAA imposed the restriction to prevent converging runway operations that could facilitate a midair crash if a pilot aborted a landing. While the directive affects planes arriving from Dakota County, it also dramatically reduces the MSP airport’s arrival capacity from 90 planes per...