St. Paul

In June 1947, the Milwaukee Road Railroad introduced the streamlined, herculean Olympian Hiawatha train on the Twin Cities-Chicago route. Adam Burns of American Rails reported that the new “trains became instantly successful and regularly cruised over 100 mph with nary a bump or shudder during the ride.” He added that the “trains could make the jaunt between the two cities in roughly six hours.”

The 1952 afternoon Hiawatha from Chicago to St. Paul was scheduled at 6 hours and 15 minutes. In the pursuit of safety, Milwaukee Road installed “Reduce to 90” (miles-per-hour)...

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...

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...

One recent start-up that has been gaining interest (and distribution) is Burning Brothers Brewing. Their specialty is gluten-free beer; not just gluten-free in the legal sense, but an actual zero parts per million sense. They do this by brewing in a completely gluten-free facility and by using sorghum, an ancient and drought hardy crop that has changed little through the modern era. We decided to pay them a visit. We had to stop in and give it a try. ...

The northwestern corner of St. Paul has followed the lead of nearby northeast Minneapolis and started brewing in earnest. The most notable of these newcomers is Urban Growler; Jill Pavlak and Deb Loch (who is famous among home-brewers for her accolades in beer competition) established this St. Anthony Park brewery over...

Living on the Eastside of St. Paul, my attention has been brought to Payne Avenue and the rising of restaurants and little shops along the route. Following an East Sider residents's Facebook group, the new restaurant Cook St. Paul has been getting quite the hype on lots of posts. Cook St. Paul is owned by two cooks, Eddie Wu and Charles Cook. Their restaurant sits where Serlin's Cafe grew to popularity for multiple decades until the owners closed down for their retirement. I decided to check it out this new place, and interview owner Eddie Wu. The restaurant...

The City of St. Paul has taken another step to support its local beer scene. The St. Paul City Council passed an ordinance on Wednesday to allow taprooms to sell alcohol made on site on Sundays. The change will go into effect in 30 days and will apply from 10 a.m. Sunday to 1 a.m. Monday. Taprooms will need to get a special...

This Wednesday marks another effort to make St. Paul a friendlier city to local St. Paul taprooms and micro-distilleries. Beginning at 5:30 p.m., a public hearing will address a motion to allow taproom beer and micro-distillery cocktail room sales in the capitol city on Sundays. Though the oft-mentioned “Surly bill” of 2011 set precedent for the evolution of taproom sales in Minnesota, Sunday sales were left to the same fate of off-sale...

 

Minnesota based photographer Caroline Yang is bringing a two-month-long photo exhibition to Grand Central Cafe. Yang, who specializes in documentary photography, covered the Tour de France from 2004 to 2006 (in 2006 her work was featured in the Sports Illustrated - "Best Photos of the Year" edition); her images capturing the Tour's alluring landscapes, exasperated...