Vote for Rebecca Noecker for Ramsey County Board

 

[Rebecca is the right choice for Ramsey County Board.]

There aren’t many elected officials that I’ve seen up close for their entire careers, but Rebecca Noecker is one of them. I’ve known Rebecca since we both joined the St. Paul Planning Commission together in 2011. We often sat next to each other. I remember her bringing her one-year-old to the meetings, literally juggling her duties. (He’d sleep through them, which often seemed like the wisest move to me.) She rose to become St. Paul Council President, and I want to endorse her for the open* Ramsey County board seat.

(* Noecker announced her campaign before long-time incumbent Rafael Ortega announced his retirement, i.e. she basically forced him out. That's already an accomplishment given the conventional wisdom about how County Board seats are effectively unassailable.)

Since our early days on the planning commission, and after helping with her first City Council campaign, I can say three things about Rebecca as an elected official: she pays attention to detail, is a good listener, and works hard. 

This last point is key; for years, Rebecca has gotten up early to answer emails before her kids wake up, way earlier than I ever do. She also knocks doors tirelessly, even in high heat or decent rain. (I’ve witnessed this!) 

She follows through, replying to questions and sending thank you notes, the kind of attentive constituent service that is often seen as superfluous to the job. She actually reads memos and reports, public comments and studies, and is eager to ask questions of staff and experts to learn about policy complexities. She shows up for public engagement work, and it's not always transactional; instead, she spends time actively listening to people’s gripes or dreams. 

Those are invaluable attributes in any elected official, but I think are suited to what we need at the county level. Ramsey County government is not know for being close to the people, and, to be fair, that’s largely a structural issue around Counties having less direct connections to most people. Still, it could be better...

Meanwhile, the previous County Commissioner had some weaknesses. To my mind, Ortega was neither transparent nor accessible, not someone who spent much time on outreach or engagement. Living in the district for years, I only saw him in person once: at a West Side caucus where he gave a 30-second speech before walking out of the room. 

My general sense, having observed County Board members and their staff, is that there's a lot of inertia. It’s not “Gondor-level" sclerotic, but let’s just say there’s a lot of downtime. The way I interacted with Ortega was that I heard second-hand pronouncements, most of which were meant assuring people that “everything was fine” or to “trust us” on key projects under his purview: improved transit on West 7th Street and big downtown development opportunities. Many, many years have gone by, and those projects are failures. 

Noecker and I don’t always agree, and to be honest, there were at least two major issues times where she voted against whatI thought was the right thing to do. (Thankfully, in both major cases — the Ayd Mill Road bike trail and Grand Avenue housing approval — she was in the minority.) Even so, I trust Rebecca to put in the work and be transparent. 

I won’t say anything particularly negative about the other candidate for County Board, Maria Isa Perez-Vega. I think she is a good state representative and a good fit for the legislature. In that role, giving speeches and being a strong advocate is a key part of the job. Legislators need to claim space on a few key issues and operate through their committees, all while working in a contentious, insular political bubble. 

(I worked as Minnesota House Page twenty years ago, so I’m an expert. /s) 

Ramsey County board is a different job. It requires administrative chops and bureaucratic follow-through. Rebecca’s work ethic will be a welcome change. Her attention to detail and experience with budget and administration are a good fit for the County, where big development failings have really damaged the regional tax base and local economy. Her experience with the city gives her good knowledge of its limits and potential, and where the County can fit in. 

If you’re still undecided about what to support in the August 11th primary, please support Rebecca Noecker.

PS. See also the indefatigable Naomi Kritzer’s analysis of the race, which comes to the same conclusion I do. Vote for Rebecca!

You're Not From Here #14: Cedar Rapids, Lima, and Flint on Wednesday August 5th

After a month off for our World Cup international break, I'm happy to report that You're Not From Here is back at the Black Hart of St Paul for an August 5th show. We have a great lineup of guests:

• Austin from Cedar Rapids
• Rodrigo from Lima
• Kareem from Flint

I'll be introducing the group with some fun facts about regional natural disaster patterns. As always, it's free. It's at 7pm and should be fun. Don't miss it!

Public Character #11: Trevor Born Walks Daily to Make a Neighborhood Newspaper

[Diving as deep as possible into local news with shoe-leather journalism.]

Most people, myself very much included, gather our news in front of a screen, scrolling through websites, RSS feeds and social media streams. Trevor Born does it the old fashioned way with shoe leather. Nearly every day, he walks the streets of Minneapolis' Longfellow neighborhood and tries to figure out what’s going on.

“I usually call it a newsletter, but if I'm trying to sound high-minded, I might call it a news project,” Born said.  

Trevor Born’s project, the Longfellow Whatever, has been around now for two years and, judging by several hundred subscribers, it’s thriving. 

According to Born, Minneapolis’ Longfellow neighborhood is bound by the Mississippi and the Hiawatha freeway on the east and west, and the Greenway and Minnehaha Falls / Creek on the south. In between lies a substantial swath of south Minneapolis, mostly middle-class housing with a few key commercial corridors like East Lake Street and Minnehaha Avenue. 

In other words, it’s just at the right size for a local newspaper. But since the decline of that industry, there’s a vacuum out there. 

That’s no longer true in Longfellow, where Born walks the streets daily searching for story ideas. After two years he hasn’t run out of them. 

“Today, as I was about to hit send [on the newsletter], I was walking down the street, and noticed people buffing out this piece of graffiti that I had noticed before,” explained Born, who included their story. 

It was a short 50-word blurb about the maintenance ot the wall of Longfellow Market, an East Lake grocery store, but it was the kind of irreplaceable detail that makes Longfellow Whatever worth the subscription.

Born publishes two articles a month with a wide variety of angles. This week the Whatever featured a piece on dog treat stations, profiling residents who have installed front yard boxes boasting Milk Bones (like little free libraries for dogs). Another recent piece covered the 1975 “freedom train” that ran through Longfellow in fifty years ago to celebrate the bicentennial. In February Trevor Born dug into the backstory of a mutual aid fund that opened up during the ICE occupation.  

Still, the bulk  of the Longfellow Whatever features cover business comings and goings, like what’s happening tho this building or if the old Chinese restaurant is every going to be remodeled, a new dispensary, or the history of the dog sauna business. 

That’s kind the kind of story that gave Trevor Born the idea for his news project in the first place. A few years after the COVID pandemic, he was at a gathering and a someone mentioned to him that the local long-shuttered wine bar (the old Riverview, on the corner of 42nd and 46th) was about to get a new owner. 

That was exactly the kind of thing he wanted to know.

“I really wish that it could just be somebody's job to stay on top of that stuff,” Born said. “So, I figured I would just try.”

Thus the Longfellow Whatever was born, beginning in March of 2024 when Born began recruiting subscribers from the neighborhood. It’s been growing slowly ever since. 

[Born leading a tour of old fast food joints for Preserve Minneapolis: here at the White Castle corner.]

Trevor Born got his journalism start quite young, as he describes it, with a childhood newspaper he ran out of his house during grade school. Growing up in Bloomington, he was lucky to have a friend Star Tribune who let him hang around the newsroom. When he went off to college at the University of Minnesota, he naturally gravitated to journalism at the Minnesota Daily, and became an editor. 

Over the years he’s had his byline in the Star Tribune more than once, and after graduating worked at the AP, along with a brief stint doing private public relations. Following the COVID pandemic, Trevor left that job behind, and went out on his own, essentially creating a dream job in his backyard.

“An amazing aspect of the job, because of the small folk geographic footprint of it, it has this ability to be just kind of old school,” Born said. “It’s almost a Mr. Rogers' neighborhood kind of thing, a lot of what I do is conducted on foot and it serendipitously happens just from running into people. It's kind of what you dream of: [For] most beats, it doesn't really get to happen.” 

[This building used to be an old-school Kentucky Fried Chicken.]

Two weeks ago, I tagged along with Trevor Born walk down East Lake on a local history tour, sponsored by Preserve Minneapolis. Titled “Lost Fast Food Joints of Longfellow,” the stroll was a blast: a trove of deep history like the first Kentucky Fried Chicken location (above: the building is now an eye clinic), a once-popular A & W restaurant at East Lake and West River Road, and the White Castle location on the corner of 36th Avenue.

In each case Born illuminated the landscape with histories of fast food in general and specific South Minneapolis franchises. The tour was supplemented with cans of root beer and enlarged photographs, and the audience of a two dozen mostly older preservation buffs was delighted. 

For the newsletter, subscribers are charged monthly or yearly, Patreon style. They receive twice-weekly stories about their neighborhood, and the results pay Born’s bills and even allow him to rent a desk at an East Lake co-working space.

A recent Longfellow Whatever newsletter blast included the following: a bakery (temporarily) closing, a cancelled art fair, an upcoming corn roast, the energy utility’s impending telephone pole inspections, park board arborists condemning diseased trees, a near-drowning at the falls, a closed wading pool, an office building for sale, a commercial building getting repainted, a new projection system at the micro-cinema, a new sign at the animal clinic, a brewery block party, three different concerts, and the news that the Japanese deli is now open for lunch on Fridays.

This is the kind of thing that once would have been the purview of print community newspapers you could pick up at coffee shops or grocery stores, all supported by local advertising and want ads. As readers well know, though local news is still vital, those days are far behind us. City papers have been cutting local newsrooms for decades, and where a four or five people might have covered city hall a generation ago, today it’s likely one reporter juggling that beat alongside a bunch of others.  

In that world, the Longfellow Whatever is the kind of solution we need: a micro-enterprise, where one person fills in gaps about business openings, the politics of neighbor disputes, and local development drama. If every neighborhood could have a Born on the beat, I would not be so worried about the future of local news.

Correction: the original version of this article claimed there were two separate buildings hosting White Castle franchises at the corner of 36th and Lake; in fact, there was only one. (Thanks Trevor!)

Twin City Doorways #82

 

[San Francisco, CA.]

[San Francisco, CA.]

[San Francisco, CA.]

[Downtown, Minneapolis.]

[Hamline Midway, St. Paul.]

[Downtown, St. Paul.]

[Summit Avenue, St. Paul.]

[St. Paul / Minneapolis.]

[Chicago, IL.]

[Chicago, IL.]

Metaphor #11: Twins Attendance / St. Paul Streets

[Target Field at minimal capacity, early summer 2026.]

I grew up on sparsely attended Twins games, spending a good percentage of my childhood being blown out of the Metronome with my dad and siblings. This was a time that spanned the Twins’ window of playoff success, but thinking back on it, most of the time the place seemed half empty (or half full, I suppose). Kids like myself had free reign to the building, wandering through the deserted upper deck, running around row after row of empty blue folding seats. 

Fast toward a decade or two into my 20s, not much had changed. The Twins had many lean seasons. Even when they were winning division championships, you could still find $5 tickets and dollar hot dogs. 

This year, too, Twins attendance is once again scraping the bottom of the AL Central's barrel. In a way, I like it! I wish they were winning, but I've been to a handful of games this year and tickets were cheaper than the beer. Once inside, I sit wherever I like outside of the luxury moat. Stadium lines were rare: not the ticket gate, the concessions, the bathrooms, the beer stands, nor even Kramarczuk’s delectable sausages.  

In a way, it’s amazing to move freely around a giant MLB stadium. What luxury! If it rains, go under an overhang. If it’s hot, move into the shade. If it’s cold, do the opposite. It’s nice to spread out, never sitting to next to someone unless you really want to. Being a fan of an unpopular team feels like the world is made just for you.

[Have a seat, anywhere you like.]

Of course, this isn’t the end of the story. If you’ve ever been to a playoff game, you know. The flip side of this life of half-full leisure is that sporting events are actually about shared experiences. Crowds intensity pay off exponentially. 

There’s nothing like a playoff baseball game. The stadium is sold out, and the crowd is electrics. Every pitch is a moment, alive with anticipation or crushing defeat. I remember the ‘23 playoffs, the '91 World Series, and a dozen other games packed to standing room. It doesn't compare to watching the Twins play the Royals in early May in 2026.

Cities are like going to a Twins game. A half-empty city is nice in lots of ways: it’s easy to park, there’s not much traffic, it’s relatively quiet, it’s affordable to be there in the first place. 

And yet...

Living St. Paul often feels like going to a Twins game during a losing season. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to a playground in the middle of the day with my kid, and we’re the only ones there. Quite often, it’s a very nice playground, too: new equipment, well maintained, reflecting one of the best park systems in the country. 

On another day, I walk down a street where I’m the only one around. Downtown St. Paul often feels this way, deserted half the time. I take my kid to the downtown library at least once a month; more often than not, we have the place to ourselves. She likes it that way, but it’s the city’s main library branch. It shouldn’t be empty! 

Even if being in a half-empty stadium or city is comfortable, it ain’t good. Visit an urban playground in New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago as I have in the last few years, and it’s wild to see how much use a see-saw receives in an average day. At any given moment, there are more kids playing in Brooklyn's Sunset Park than at every playground in St. Paul combined.  

[Sunset Park, Brooklyn, 2024.]

Dense cities brim with serendipity. Playgrounds and libraries are noisy, never boring. Likewise, other cites’ ball clubs sell out homestands against their division rivals. In other cities, stadia are crowded with people cheering, crackling with energy. There’s nothing like this feeling! 

Nobody wants the Twins to suck, but half the time it seems like locals are rooting for an empty city. It seems to me that there’s a vibe in the air: it’s worth the Twins losing, if it means people can save time on parking. Keep St. Paul Boring, after all. 

It isn’t worth it. Whether it's a ballpark or a downtown, it’s better to embrace crowds and excitement than to luxuriate in emptiness. I wish it was hard to get a Twins ticket! I wish St. Paul’s amazing playgrounds were well used, and our streets weren’t lined with vacant buildings. 

In short, I miss the crowds and the playoffs.