[Downtown, Minneapolis.]
[Hopkins.]
[Hopkins.]
[Location forgotten. Highland, Saint Paul.]
[Highland, Saint Paul.]
[Location forgotten. Midway, Saint Paul.]
[Milwaukee, WI.]
[Milwaukee, WI.]
Showing posts with label hopkins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hopkins. Show all posts
2019-06-17
2019-04-08
Signs of the Times #153
ATTENTION
FIND SOMETHING THAT
MAKES YOU HAPPY
[Door. Downtown Minneapolis.]
Do not touch
[Fence. San Diego, CA.]
ABSTOLUTELY NO
DELIVERIES OR PICK-UPS
BEYOND THIS TREE
[Tree. San Diego, CA.]
YES! WE'RE
OPEN
PLEASE USE
6TH STREET
ENTRANCE
[Window. Downtown Saint Paul.]
Push
Hard!!!
[Door. Hamline-Midway, Saint Paul.]
CLOSED,
FOR US TO
GO PARTY.
SORRY!
SEE YA SOON!
/US
[Door. Downtown Saint Paul.]
UNPLOWED
LOT
PARK AT
YOUR OWN
RISK
[Parking lot. Minnehaha Avenue, Saint Paul.]
44.9261ºN 93.4044ºW
[Metal railing. Hopkins.]
2013-04-04
The Top 7 Pizza Lucés of All Time
Here’s my methodology. One goes to a Lucé and orders a beer and a slice of pizza. Then you keenly observe the environment, paying close attention to a definitive list of prearranged criteria:
 |
| [The Punk-o-meter.] |
Punk-o-meter levels: Using a patented device, you can easily measure the tattoo and piercing density of the servers at each Pizza Lucé. (The punk-o-meter records metallic signatures and divides it by the square root of atmospheric angst in the room, corrected for total area.)
Music: What music is playing when you eat? How cool is it? What would Pitchfork Do?
Average patron age: Who is there? What are their ages? What kind of clothes are they wearing?
Building: You can tell a lot from just the building type, material, shape, and architectural style.
Add these up, and you get a definitive score for each Pizza Lucé that will tell you how it ranks on the definitive list of the Top 7 Pizza Lucés of all time.
#7 – Richfield
However, I did talk to one of the bartenders at one of the cooler Lucés about the Richfield Lucé. He had worked there once, and through him, I garnered enough information about this newest Lucé…
Apparently they have Miller Lite on tap, its really big, and feels like a sports bar. It’s “weird,” and is in some sort of large park area.
Also, the name “Richfield” couldn’t possibly be more bougie if it tried. Really, the only things worse would be “Moneytown”, “Yuppsville,” or “Edina.”
B/R Spectrum: Miller Lite
Punk-o-Meter: 2
Music: Moby?
Avg Age: Nobody under 30
Bldg type: I imagine the worst
#6 – Hopkins
Walking into the Hopkins Lucé you quickly wonder, was this a Chuck E. Cheese at some point? Then you realize that it used to be a Pizza Hut. It has that weird Smurf warehouse vibe. There is far too much space. Large booths and cavernous ceilings cultivate a suburban affect of isolation.
Servers wear baseball caps backwards. Other wear hoodies. Ours has a fedora, not any tattoos. (The only tattoo that the Punk-o-meter could detect was on one of the busboys, a “super Mario mushroom” on a bicep.)
The pizza tastes the same as any other Lucé, but the window looks out on the Deli Express warehouse, where they must manufacture those tiny shrink-wrapped ham sandwiches on squishy white bread that sit on the shelf at Super America for weeks.
There are tons of families. A little kid, probably about 12 years old, walks by me wearing a “student government” tee shirt. That is the Hopkins Lucé in a nutshell.
B/R Spectrum: Actual bar
Punk-o-Meter: 3
Music: Top 40
Avg Age: 40
Bldg type: Ex-Pizza Hut
#5 – Uptown
There is no bar at the uptown Lucé. If memory serves me correctly, this is the second extant lucé, the one right after the first one. Yet, the uptown Lucé seems somehow empty, lacking something. The main room is too small, the entry is narrow, refuses to breathe. The patio is too small, with a Coen Brothers view of the parking lot.
On the other hand, the bartender sets off the Punk-o-meter. He has a braided beard (a la Johnny Depp in that Disney pirate movie).
The rest of the staff, though doesn't really register. They're a bit too obsequious. They really want to please me, and this displeases me. The waiter tries to sell me a rice krispie bar.
Today, there are families in all the booths. Young children, on the cusp of junior high, eating with parents who brought them here to prove they are cool.
B/R Spectrum: Not even the pretense of a bar
Punk-o-Meter: 7
Music: Dinosaur Jr.
Avg Age: 27
Bldg type: Boring one-story commercial space, fronted by large parking lot
#4 – Saint Paul
Frankly, this Pizza Lucé is boring. At best, the bar area sometimes has a friendly vibe. You can imagine getting into interesting conversations late at night. Squinting my brain, I can imagine being semi-punk here. Then again, the Saint Paul cops hang out here all the time, slowly eating in booths.
The staff have plenty tattoos and piercings, just about on par with the Uptown Lucé (which is saying something). The bartender has five piercings all by himself, and puts the Punk-o-meter into the red zone (DANGER!).
There's a guy non-ironically wearing a Dale Earnhardt leather jacket dominated by his signature. Are we in a city or a suburb?
My mom just showed up. I have to go.
B/R Spectrum: They have a bar, but there's no whisky; it's an illusion
Punk-o-Meter: 6
Music: Foo Fighters
Avg Age: 44
Bldg type: Semi-boring one-story commercial space
#3 – Duluth
I’ve been to the Duluth Lucé! Really. It’s in Duluth. North of here a stretch.
People speak about the Duluth Lucé in hushed tones. Duluth is surprisingly cool, has young people and a downtown with old buildings in various states of disrepair. The Duluth Lucé, so they say, is unique. It's a world of its own because the cooks are so far from the pizza supply lines and Lucé civilization that they have to make their own ingredients. They do crazy things. The pizzas are not just pretending to be artisanal, they actually have to be artisanal. They grow their own wheat or something.
When I was there, the Duluth Lucé was displaying locally forged blacksmithery, like candelabras and some sort of large throne. It would have been goth except everyone was in flannel.
The fog rolls in off Gitcheegumi and onto a pizza. For what its worth, the Duluth Lucé is one of the coolest places in Duluth.
B/R Spectrum: They distill their own moonshine
Punk-o-Meter: 5, with the usual northwoods caveats
Music: They only play Low here, but they play it so low that you can only hear it subconsciously
Avg Age: 32
Bldg type: Downtown large building
#2 – Seward
 |
| [Looks like a Hopper painting.] |
The bar is tiny, but insists upon itself. The servers rate a solid 8 on the punk-o-meter, and it sits well balanced on Franklin Avenue, part of a neighborhood in a way that would be true in Saint Paul if Saint Paul actually had streetlife or businesses on Selby Avenue.
Seward is as diverse and vibrant as Minneapolis gets. Anywhere else, this Lucé would be inconsequential. Instead, it is a window on the Twin Cities, where hippies and somalis meet and eat pizza.
B/R Spectrum: Actual bar, if a bit small
Punk-o-Meter: 8
Music: Can't recall
Avg Age: 26
Bldg type: Ugly two-story mixed-use with great windows
#1 – Downtown
The Downtown Lucé is the original. It's also a surprisngly dynamic place. It can be a complete mob scene. Before sports, it fills with jerzee'd bros. After bar close, the servers body surf atop lines of too ebullient clubbers. Weekday evenings, bike messengers hang out at the bar drinking PBR. The hipper of the business types - ad people, architects - stop by at happy hour. Entering the Downtown Lucé, you are forced to choose: bar/restaurant or slice on a paper plate. You go to your appointed side, and never the twain shall meet.
Their patio is a tiny slice of sidewalk next to an alley where the deliveryperson leaves their Lucémobile for brief minutes, honking each time they pull out across the sidewalk.
This is the Alpha and Omega of Lucé. This where the pizza dough was born, and this is where it will die, someday when all things Lucé have lost their luster, when veganism is rampant, and no longer requires exceptional efforts, when the world becomes a garlic clove.
B/R Spectrum: The real deal
Punk-o-Meter: 9
Music: Hüsker Dü
Avg Age: 27
Bldg type: Awesome downtown warehouse
 |
| [Convince yourself that this is pizza.] |
Does the same slice of pizza taste the same in Hopkins and Seward? Is Parmesan less pungent in Saint Paul? Can a good or bad tattoo make or break a hoppy beer?
To move down the Lucé spectrum away from the original is to encounter Baudrillard's simulacrum. With each subsequent Lucé, the hipness fades. Exposed brick becomes a painting of exposed brick becomes a large wall painted the color of red brick. Giant artichoke murals fill the emptiness inside our hearts. Pepper flakes fade.
* OK So we didn't go to all the PL's, technically speaking. For example, we didn't bike to Duluth. And at some point during the journey, I mentioned to my friend that there was a Pizza Lucé in Richfield, and he was like WTF? And I said, yes, there is one there now. And he said, hell no. And so we didn’t go to that one.
2011-08-24
Signs of the Times #34
PLEASE,
Close door Firmly
behind you! Thanks
[Door. Selby-Dale, St Paul.]
Billy Robertson #4
Cretin-Derham Hall
His Home Run v. Johnson
Hit the Target Above in 1979.
[Brick wall. Ran-Ham, St Paul.]
Free
Pallets
[Fence. Obviously somewhere in Minnesota.]
No Animals
Allow Inside
The Building
Thank You
[Door. Marshall Avenue, St Paul.]
Nails
on
8th
[Wooden sidewalk apparatus. Hopkins.]
Alleged Shoplifters
[Door. North End, St Paul.]
Life
Life
Free
[Wall. Greenwich Village, New York City.]
Please close the
door slowly behind
you to prevent it
from slamming
Thanks
[Door. Upper West Side, New York City.]
Warning To
Bike Theives:
I can see this bike
from where I am.
The minute you mess
with it, I'll call the
NYPD.
[Bicycle. New York City.]
Please hand packages
for #3 to cleaners
across the street.
Thank You,
### #####
[Jane Jacobs would be proud of this door. Greenwich Village, New York City.]
2011-06-16
Sidewalk of the Week: Mainstreet
It's no secret that I'm not a huge fan of suburbs. They tend to be monotonous places filled with single-family lawn-moat garage-homes with no sidewalks and no downtowns and no history, places that segregate society and have little public space and are devoted to the automobile and its big box parking lots.
[long pause]
But... But, there is an exception to every rule. And if I was forced at gunpoint to pick one Twin Cities' suburb to live in, I'd choose Hopkins, a town that is decidedly not like the rest of them.
That's because Hopkins does have a past. Like many of our suburbs, Hopkins began as a 19th century small farm towns at the edge of the cities, but unlike most of those towns, Hopkins began to grow like gangbusters when streetcar magnate Thomas Lowry built a streetcar line out to Excelsior, ending at his company-owned amusement park on Lake Minnetonka. The streetcar line ran right through Hopkins, and so downtown Hopkins was born: a main street with actual sidewalks and old homes built around a tractor factory that existed way back in 1905. And today, while you might think that Hopkins is just another Minneapolis suburb, no different from [insert natural sounding adjective + natural sounding landscape feature], it really truly is different. As Gertrude Stein might say, there is there there.
[The old Masons' Lodge on Mainstreet.] Downtown Hopkins has a mainstreet called Mainstreet (all one word, used to be called Excelsior Avenue) that is actually quite nice. It feels intimate and not too wide, and is lined with two-story mixed-use buildings set up right against the street with real shop windows and doors abutting the sidewalk and street trees and buildings made from real bricks.
There are at least half a dozen different reasonable facsimiles of sidewalk cafes and they seem to have customers. There's even a large new condo building on the Eastern end of the street, no doubt a five-year-old remnant of the housing bubble. But unlike many of the new urbanist developments in suburbs elsewhere (e.g. St. Louis Park, Burnsville), this one fits really nicely into the already-existing downtown street grid. The city has also done a nice job with the brick streetscape, and invested in an arts school and a movie theater and community center.
[The new condo building on the East end of Mainstreet witha sidewalk cafe on the corner.]
[The West end of Mainstreet, bracketed by a busy burger joint, a movie theater, and the arts high school.]
[One of the many antique stores that line Mainstreet.]Despite the street life, Hopkins' Mainstreet main street is not exactly a thriving economic landscape. Like most of the Twin Cities, I'm sure that the vast majority of the retail activity in Hopkins takes place on a big-box strip out on a freeways, and what's left for downtown Hopkins is a smattering of antique stores, a hair salon, a tattoo parlor, a barely open vintage/thrift shop, a half-closed history museum, a liquor store, and a whole lot of empty storefronts. But, to my mind, that's not bad for a landscape where nearly everybody drives all of the time. Most small town main streets in the US have been pretty much abandoned in the Wal-Mart era, and the fact that downtown Hopkins can hang in there for this long is impressive.
In a way, historical Hopkins makes visible the paradox of trying to re-invent suburbs in the automobile age. Most people in Hopkins drive to get where they're going. And it poses the question: who would drive to the downtown Hopkins theater when a giant mall megaplex is more convenient? Who would drive to eat at a main street Mainstreet restaurant when parking is easier at a chain restaurant on the freeway? Who would go shopping in downtown Hopkins when Target is close by?
[An empty storefront on Mainstreet Hopkins.]If Hopkins is having this much trouble getting vitality on its downtown street, even though they've been blessed with all these beautiful buildings and history, where does that leave other newer suburbs that don't have these amenities as they try to reinvent themselves and create downtown areas from scratch? Is this a lost cause?
One possible solution may be the bicycle. I couldn't help but notice all the bikes parked along the main street. Hopkins is also at the crossroads of four popular bike trails, and I'd imagine it receives a lot of traffic from cyclists passing through from the city. Maybe downtown Hopkins can become a bicycle town, at least in the summer. At any rate, next time you're driving or biking along through the Southwest suburbs, get off the road and head down to Mainstreet Hopkins to see a wonderful slice of what towns used to look like a hundred years ago.
[Pedestrians walking down Mainstreet, Hopkins' eponymous century-old main street.]
[An abandoned service station on Mainstreet Hopkins.]
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