While Ian was on vacation, he got a delightful text from his parents asking if they could stay at his apartment to explore Minneapolis more. Let’s chat with them about how the experience went!
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Attributions
Our theme song is Tanz den Dobberstein, and our interstitial song is Puck’s Blues. Both tracks used by permission of their creator, Erik Brandt. Find out more about his band, The Urban Hillbilly Quartet, on their website.
This episode was hosted, edited, and transcribed by Ian R Buck. Many thanks to Amy & Eric Buck for coming on the show. We’re always looking to feature new voices on the show, so if you have ideas for future episodes, drop us a line at [email protected].
Transcript
[00:00:00] Ian: Welcome to the Streets.mn Podcast, the show where we highlight how transportation and land use can make our communities better places. Coming to you from beautiful Uptown, Minneapolis, Minnesota, I am your host, Ian R Buck. During my recent vacation, I was delighted to receive a text from my parents saying that they wanted to explore Minneapolis more, and asking if they could stay at my apartment for a while. I thought it would be fun to check in with them about what the experience was like, staying in another neighborhood of their home metro area. Dad, this is probably your podcast debut, right?
[00:00:40] Eric: This is my debut.
[00:00:41] Ian: And Mom, you were on one episode of like Second Opinion, one of my tech related podcasts way back in the day.
[00:00:48] Amy: Oh, that’s what it was.
[00:00:50] Ian: Yeah. Yeah. ’cause we were like reviewing a map. Uh. Like Google Vacations or the, the travel app or whatever that they had.
[00:00:57] Amy: Yeah. When we went to Chicago.
[00:00:58] Ian: Yeah. Yeah. Um, related. This is another travel, uh, you know, topic, but it’s kind of an anti-travel topic. Um, so everybody, this is Eric and Amy Buck. They’re my parents.
I’m gonna be calling them Mom and Dad for the rest of this episode.
[00:01:13] Eric: That’s okay with me.
[00:01:14] Ian: But that, but that, but they’re Amy and Eric to, to the rest of you. Um, so Mom and Dad: While I was gone for three weeks out, out in Canada and Michigan and you know, traveling around, uh, I was very surprised to get a, a text message from you saying, “Hey, we want to do like a staycation kind of thing, but we wanna do it at your house so that we can explore Minneapolis” because you two have lived in St. Paul for my entire life and a little bit longer than that. And wanted to see more of Minneapolis, so like, let’s talk about that. Mm-hmm. I was delighted when I got that text message, honestly.
[00:01:53] Amy: Good. And we were glad that you said yes.
[00:01:57] Eric: Yeah. Part part of it was that, you know, realizing we weren’t really gonna be able to or wanted to travel somewhere else, but vacations or time off is always better when you go somewhere else than staying at home.
And so the house was taken care of, you know, whatever for a few days we’re good. So I thought, all right. Where can we go? Right. Venture across the river.
[00:02:21] Ian: And so when you say like, things are always better when you leave the house, like are you thinking about, you know, oh there are chores that are gonna like occupy my mind while I’m here, whatever?
[00:02:33] Eric: Some, sometimes it’s okay to stay busy with chores. I don’t mind that sometimes, but it’s, it’s more exotic. Mm-hmm. When you get away from your own, your own house.
[00:02:42] Amy: Mm-hmm. Well, the other thing is I’ve been trying deliberately every other month to have Dad and I go on a little like long weekend.
Just the two of us, because we didn’t have much opportunity to do that.
[00:02:59] Eric: Oh, busy raising children. Sure.
[00:03:01] Amy: We, we are still not empty nesters, so it’s important for us to get away. And be in a different space.
[00:03:09] Ian: Yeah. Um, and instead of like choosing an adorable Airbnb that is, uh, you know, all put together and has all the, the cutest artwork, everything’s chic. You chose my little apartment that like, I’m, I’ve been here for so little time that I don’t even have, like, I’m looking at the artwork in a pile over there in the corner right now.
[00:03:28] Amy: Right, right, right, right, right. Well, but it felt familiar. Mm-hmm. It felt comfortable and I was surprised actually at how quiet your apartment building and the neighborhood, a few blocks, you know, the neighborhood, right? Mm-hmm. Here where you are. Yeah. Um, and for us, that was perfect. It’s, you know, we’ve taken a couple of other trips where we went, you know, to like Hayward, Wisconsin, where you’re, you know, you rent a little cabin, but then when you wanna see people, you go into town. But you know, or we went up to, uh, Grand Marai in the off season and Yeah. You know, and it was kind of the same thing.
[00:04:11] Ian: And you stayed in a place that looked like a lighthouse.
[00:04:12] Amy: Yes! Yeah, it was so cute. Um, but you know, when you wanna see people, you go to the folk school, something like that.
[00:04:21] Ian: Yeah, yeah, that sounds right. Um, anyway,
[00:04:22] Amy: Or yeah, you go to a restaurant or whatever.
[00:04:27] Ian: Yeah. And actually I can tell you that right now during this summer season, uh. It is louder than usual, right near my apartment because Hennepin is currently like one way, one lane only.
And so all of the trucks that need to make deliveries to the Kowalski’s, they come right here on 25th, um, which is not going to be the case, you know, when we reach December or whenever the, this construction ends. Uh. So.
[00:04:55] Eric: That’d be good to have that done with.
[00:04:56] Ian: Yeah. Yeah. So I’m glad to, I’m glad that you say like that you’re surprised how quiet it is here because like it will be even quieter yet very, very soon.
[00:05:03] Eric: Well, we didn’t notice trucks, we didn’t notice a lot stuff.
[00:05:06] Ian: I, I mostly noticed them like in the mornings. Yeah, yeah. When they’re making their morning rounds. Yeah. Okay. So you wanted to do, to explore Minneapolis a little bit like.
What, how far out were you thinking in terms of exploring Minneapolis or like, were you mostly exploring the Uptown area here or were you like kind of far ranging?
[00:05:25] Amy: Well, to be honest, it’s, we’re the type that like to walk and just explore nature. So I just wanted to walk the lakes.
[00:05:36] Ian: Heck yeah.
[00:05:36] Amy: That’s, that’s actually what I wanted to do. That and we wanted to. Uh, go out for an evening with Jonas and Myles.
[00:05:44] Ian: Sure. Yeah. So, that’s my brother and his boyfriend, uh, they live what, like three or four blocks from me. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:05:51] Eric: So yeah, we dropped in on them. Um, yeah, it was nice that it’s a couple of our stops were within, you know, I mean driving distance, but a very, very short drive. And then we would park and walk around that lake, you know, hour, whatever it took us or saw one of the parks, the parkway, the garden. Oh, what was that called? Anyway…
[00:06:14] Amy: You mean the Rose Garden and the Peace Garden at Harriet?
[00:06:16] Eric: Peace Garden and stuff like that. Yeah. And so those are nice things that, I mean, ideally, I mean there was a lot of good stuff to, within walking distance here, but we also didn’t wanna spend all of our walking energy just getting to the place.
That we wanted to walk. So it was just really cool to have beautiful lakes around here.
[00:06:33] Amy: Can I also tell you how friendly your neighborhood?
[00:06:36] Ian: Oh yeah.
[00:06:37] Amy: Oh my gosh. So the first day we. Walked from here across Hennepin and got like one block over. And this lady looks at us and she goes, “the tulip lady died.”
And I didn’t know who the tulip lady was. Yeah. But I thought she must be really important to this neighborhood. So I was like, “oh, I’m so sorry.” You know? And then we realized later when you look it up. Literally we were a block from the tulip lady’s house. And obviously she was really important in the neighborhood.
And, um, uh, anyway, it just showed how friendly and, you know, neighborly Yeah. Your, your neighborhood is.
[00:07:21] Eric: Yeah. Well, and like Jonas and Myles, like you said, they live very close to here and they haven’t been in this neighborhood very long either. Mm-hmm. They knew about Yeah, they knew the tulip lady.
[00:07:29] Amy: Right. They knew who she was like, yeah. We did choose not. To go on the Cat Tour ’cause it looked like there were. A lot of people.
[00:07:39] Ian: Oh yeah. That’s hundreds of people.
[00:07:41] Eric: That’s not why we were here. Yeah. That’s not why we were here.
[00:07:45] Amy: Our vacation was more, you know, us and nature and and select people that we wanted to see.
[00:07:53] Ian: Well, I could’ve lived vicariously through you if you had hung out with all of my friends during the Cat Tour. That would’ve been really funny.
[00:07:59] Amy: Yeah, that would’ve been.
[00:08:01] Eric: Uh, still probably no, that’s just a lot of people to hang out with.
[00:08:06] Ian: Well, maybe my friends would understand better why I am the way I am if they met you.
[00:08:10] Eric: You know, see, there you go.
[00:08:13] Ian: Especially without me around.
[00:08:15] Eric: Ooh, that’s true. Don’t need to filter.
[00:08:18] Ian: Yeah. Yeah. So speaking of like Lake of the Isles, one, one thing that I regret about this is that, um, I do wish that I had known that you two were gonna be staying here before I left because. I would have loved to have given you a little like, um, tutorial on how to use my raft.
Oh. You know, to go paddling around. Yeah. Now, of course the park board does have kayak rentals over there on the, like, so if you wanted to paddle, you absolutely could have figured out a way to do that. Yeah, yeah. Um, but like, yeah, like, you know. All of the amenities of my home and my home as it relates to where I live.
Yeah. You know, is like, like I know all of the little things that I have built around here, but that’s not necessarily going to be obvious, um, you know, to somebody else who’s staying at my place unless I like point it out. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah.
[00:09:11] Eric: We know where your bikes are.
[00:09:12] Ian: You do, you do, um, one of,
[00:09:15] Eric: One in the living room and one right there by the front door.
[00:09:17] Ian: One of them would fit you, Dad. And then, uh, the, the Brompton, which lives under the bed, uh, that would’ve fit you Mom. Oh, yeah, because that one’s a, you know. The seat goes all the way up and it goes all the way down.
[00:09:29] Eric: I would be lowering your seat though, ’cause probably, probably I don’t ride it the way you do.
[00:09:32] Ian: Yeah. Um, which is why you would be allowed to ride my commuter bike and not my touring bike because the touring bike is dialed in exactly where I want it. And we are not changing that.
[00:09:42] Eric: No touchy.
[00:09:43] Ian: No touchy that one, aside from the, the price, which obviously was free. Like what, you know, what, what is the appeal of doing a home stay, like a home swap kind of thing, rather than staying at – you know, I mean, we have hotels in Minneapolis.
[00:09:57] Amy: Right, right, right. Well, again,
[00:10:00] Eric: Or Airbnbs and all that stuff. That you pay for.
[00:10:04] Amy: Well, and like I said, on our outings, just the two of us, you know, I, I look at hotel stays as more: Yeah, you go to a conference. You know, and there’s this purpose that you’re there. Mm-hmm. And you’re with other people and da dah, dah.
[00:10:21] Ian: And often the conference is in the hotel building as well. Exactly.
[00:10:25] Amy: Or you go to a family wedding and people are all staying in the hotel.
You know, you have a reason to do that. For these outings, for us, I want more of an intimate space. You know, that’s just for the two of us.
[00:10:41] Eric: Well and in hotels, quite often you’re gone for the day. You come back. Maybe after dinner, whatever, and you crash for the night. Get up in the morning, have the continental breakfast, and off you go for the day right here, you know?
Yeah. Staying overnight and then we’re relaxed. It’s a very comfortable place, a way to stay during the day. If we wanna relax a little longer or come back for a nap or whatever, go off and do something and come back for a while. You can make our dinner here or whatever.
[00:11:08] Amy: Well, we had one day where it rained and it just sort of felt like you were, I mean, I know it’s.
Doesn’t feel like a cabin, but you know what I mean, like Yeah. Yeah. We just stayed in and played games and hung out and read books and napped and whatever, you know? Yeah. And it, it feels different than in a hotel room, you know?
[00:11:28] Eric: Right. Like Right. It doesn’t have the same comforts.
[00:11:31] Amy: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is comfy.
[00:11:34] Ian: And, and I mean, American hotel rooms, which are larger than hotel rooms that you find in a lot of the world are still. Yeah. Like you said, it, it’s a space that definitely feels like its purpose is just sleeping. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And showering. Yeah.
[00:11:51] Amy: And I, I don’t know if you know this, but because it was so hot the very first night mm-hmm. Yeah. We took your mattress off and pulled it into your living room.
[00:12:00] Ian: I heard about that. Yeah.
[00:12:02] Eric: Right in front of the, right, in front of the air conditioner.
[00:12:04] Amy: Right in front of the air conditioner. And we just kept it there because it’s like, you know what? It actually feels more like. Cabin-y or you know, comfort, comfort, sleeping on the floor, like comfort. Yeah. You know.
[00:12:16] Ian: You made my place into a studio apartment.
[00:12:18] Amy: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:12:19] Eric: And your bedroom is your bedroom.
[00:12:21] Amy: Right.
[00:12:21] Ian: Okay. Fair.
[00:12:22] Eric: Yeah. You know, I mean, it’s kind of that too. I mean, yeah, sure. We’d sleep on your bed ’cause you’re not there and it’s mm-hmm. Whatever, but it’s just added a whole different feel to it. Yeah. Sleeping on the, on a mattress, on the floor, in the living room and Yeah.
[00:12:33] Ian: Yeah. And it’s, and it’s not like I do have my place thought out and set up enough to be able to host other people here. You know, like I have a profile on Warm Showers, which we have talked about on the podcast before. Mm-hmm. You know? Mm-hmm. And that’s a very specific context of like, oh, you know, bike tourists and like people who are traveling by bike ha uh, are happy with pretty much anything that you’ll throw at them in terms of a place to stay.
[00:12:56] Eric: The culture, that’s part of it.
[00:12:57] Ian: But, you know, but I do have like, oh, there’s an extra set of sheets that are in my closet that, like, I only bring those out when it’s a guest who’s gonna be sleeping in the bed, you know? And, um, and then I, like, I usually go and sleep as Stina’s place when there’s somebody else who’s sleeping here.
Mm. But you know, like the, the infrastructure is in place enough for, you know, for me to, you know, like, yeah. I’m not weirded out by like, oh, somebody else is like sleeping in my bedroom right now. Mm-hmm. Because like, you know, I mean, being able to have guests over is like part of the reason that I have my own space.
[00:13:33] Eric: Right. Got it.
[00:13:35] Ian: So what was your favorite thing that you did over here in Minneapolis? Was there anything like new that you hadn’t ever seen before? ’cause mom, you grew up in Robinsdale, you know.
[00:13:45] Amy: Right. In my, my experience of the Lakes…
[00:13:48] Eric: Which is a neighboring suburb of Minneapolis.
[00:13:51] Ian: First, first ring suburb.
[00:13:52] Eric: For those of you out there who don’t know Robinsdale.
[00:13:54] Amy: Right.
[00:13:54] Ian: So, so it’s not like you’ve never been at the Guthrie or something like that.
[00:13:57] Amy: Right. Well, no. And like I said, our focus was the lakes. Mm-hmm. And historically, Lake of the Isles was always my favorite because it wasn’t just round. It’s curvy and it’s, yeah.
And I was a runner back then and. It was just a really interesting lake to run around, right?
[00:14:17] Ian: My hot take is that it’s also the most interesting lake to paddle around because there are the islands in the middle of it, right? Yeah.
[00:14:24] Amy: Right. Which I’ve never done. Mm-hmm. And we will have to come back and do that.
[00:14:28] Eric: Do you go onto the islands?
[00:14:29] Ian: No. You’re not allowed to. I didn’t think so. Those are, those are like wildlife preserves.
[00:14:33] Eric: Okay. Yeah.
[00:14:34] Amy: There were signs on them. Yeah.
Um, our second lake that we went to was Cedar and we did not realize. We went up the west side side, and then you come to this meadow and you could see downtown and you can see that people are actually biking their, you know, biking from to and from downtown.
Mm-hmm. You’re like, oh, wow, that’s really cool. 394 is right there. And we just kept walking, and then all of a sudden we’re like, oh, there’s construction. There’s like a light rail being put in here.
[00:15:06] Ian: Oh, yep. That’s gonna be the green line extension.
[00:15:09] Amy: Yeah. But it was, uh, blocked off to get back on the east side of Cedar.
Mm-hmm. So you had to keep going on the path and you keep going along 394 north and north and north, and you keep going and you up, uh, end up in Kenwood and I’m like, oh my, we are way up in Kenwood. Like, wow. So I took a little break there. Yeah. Yeah. And then you kind of go down Kenwood Parkway and you come back.
To Lake of the Isles. Mm-hmm. Before you get back to Cedar.
[00:15:43] Eric: Yeah. I’m a transplant from the Chicago area and so, um, Amy’s the one who brought me here and, uh, I moved into St. Paul and that’s where I’ve always lived. For, you know, 35 years, whatever it’s been, and I don’t make it over here to the side of town very much.
The Minneapolis side. And I think I’ve walked around Lake of the Isles maybe once with you. I don’t know, long time ago. But I think too, that this gave you the opportunity to show off these really cool trails going around the lakes. ’cause I think you really enjoyed kinda reliving them, but also introducing them to me so we could have that shared experience.
I hope.
[00:16:24] Amy: I never walked around Cedar before though. No, I think that was new.
[00:16:27] Ian: So Cedar is an interesting example of like, um, all of the lakefront is public property, but a bunch of the houses along the east side of the lake, they. Have kind of manicured their lawns to make it feel like the lawn goes all the way to the lake.
Ah. And some of them even put short fences that go all the way to the water. And so a lot of people when they’re walking around the lake are under the impression, “oh, I’m not allowed to hike there.” That must be private property. But it is in fact public land. And you can just keep walking, you know, as long as you’re like-
[00:17:04] Eric: Step over the little fences.
[00:17:06] Ian: Yeah. Yeah. You can. Yeah. And I, and I think, I think the Park Board has like made those people take down the fences. Mm. Um, but, you know, other than that it’s like, it doesn’t like, feel like a welcoming space. It doesn’t feel right to be walking there. Even though you’re totally allowed to.
[00:17:22] Amy: Well, in this, in this, and we, and we didn’t even get close to that.
[00:17:24] Eric: Right, right. The detour brought us further out. I’m drawing this from my point of view. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You know, further to the. East and so we were, yeah. So one of the, one of the things that I really, you know, got into with this too, is we, we enjoyed looking for some geocaches while we were out walking around, you know, there were a few here and there.
And so we would, you know, look at the geocaching map and it’s like, all right, this one’s along the lake, we’ll find that one. Or try. And sometimes there were others a little further out in the neighborhood, whatever, and, and find some of those. So that was two, one of the things that led us out on some of our walks, that it helped us to, okay, we’re gonna look for these caches that are off in this direction. There’s three of ’em out there. We’ll go this way. And so that also brought us into other parts of…
[00:18:09] Amy: Yeah, we even found, I mean we found a couple on the Greenway. Mm-hmm. And then we found a third one on the Greenway that was, uh,
[00:18:17] Eric: Well, premium membership find, and I don’t have premium membership.
But the, the little dot on the map showed where it would be and
[00:18:24] Amy: we found it anyway.
[00:18:25] Eric: We found it anyway because it was in kind of a classic place. So once I get a premium membership, then I’ll log that one in. Yeah. But anyway, so that was another cool thing that there’s just a lot of neat, that’s another way to get you out from your usual track.
[00:18:38] Ian: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:18:39] Amy: And then one day, um, we spent probably more of a day down at, uh, Lake Harriet and. I had forgotten how canopied it was. It was the trees. So nice. If there hadn’t been so many airplanes…
[00:19:00] Eric: Oh yeah. The airport.
[00:19:01] Amy: That would’ve been my fave.
[00:19:02] Eric: Minneapolis, St. Paul. Well, MSP. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:19:04] Amy: Because, you know, it was kind of a warm week and so mm-hmm. You know, having that canopy was just wonderful. And then we went to the Peace Garden and the Rose Garden and the Bird Sanctuary, and we sat and ate near the band shell. And watch the sailboats and it was just, yeah, it was a lovely morning down there.
[00:19:29] Ian: Yeah. I don’t suppose that you guys caught any, like, you know, events going on, like, you know, was it any music at the band shell or anything like that?
[00:19:37] Amy: No. No, we didn’t.
[00:19:38] Eric: Yeah. It was during the day and it was during the week.
[00:19:45] Amy: Yeah. ’cause we were there like noon-ish. So. We were trying to get our walks in in the morning.
[00:19:50] Ian: And that’s something that I kind of struggle with still is like keeping up on when and where like free public events are gonna be happening, you know, interesting things to go and see and do. Which I guess is kind of, you know, that like that’s what you get for living in a city is like, well, there’s always something going on.
[00:20:07] Amy: Well, like I said the cat thing was the big thing that week.
[00:20:11] Eric: That’s a big thing.
[00:20:11] Amy: That was the big thing that week.
[00:20:13] Ian: The route didn’t like come right past this window or anything, I don’t think. No. Yeah.
[00:20:19] Amy: And um, but we did have a really good time with Jonas and Myles. Mm-hmm.
At the Bryant Lake Bowl. Yeah. I had really good vegetarian chili, I would highly recommend it. And the bowling was so fun, so old school. Yeah. You had to keep track of score yourself. Yeah.
[00:20:39] Ian: I enjoy that experience occasionally. I don’t think that I would want like Bryant Lake Bowl to be the only place that I go bowling.
Yeah, yeah. But like, yeah. It’s, it is, it feels quaint, right? Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Yep.
[00:20:52] Amy: We got lost one evening. Um, we decided to. Try to walk the east side of Lake of the Isles. Mm-hmm. And then kind of make our way over to the ice cream place, the Milkjam. Mm-hmm. But. We got a little lost, so we kind of took more of a house tour, you know?
[00:21:14] Ian: Sure.
[00:21:14] Eric: Yeah. There beautiful homes around you look at too, while we were, yeah,
[00:21:17] Amy: we were, we were wowing at, you know, just
[00:21:19] Eric: we got our steps in and our heart points in that day, that’s for sure. We kept going and going.
[00:21:24] Amy: we were kind of like, I think we kind of missed Lyndale. Where, where did Lyndale go? That was our fault.
[00:21:33] Eric: Went the one way.
[00:21:34] Ian: So did you Oh, oh, so you were like going west instead of east?
[00:21:37] Amy: Well, we went down along the lake and then we went east, but we kind of kept going east instead of…
[00:21:45] Ian: Ah, so you ended up like somewhere over in Whittier or something?
[00:21:47] Amy: Yeah. Only a few blocks. But you know, we, we kind of realized, yeah, we, but all the, we weren’t finding Lyndale ’cause we, I think I was mixed up as to what the roads were north, south, and east, west.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Because it is a little confusing.
[00:22:03] Ian: The numbers go east-west, the alphabetical streets go north-south.
[00:22:08] Eric: I’m still confused over here on this side of town, like, oh, I don’t know what we’re doing. But anyway, but it was still a beautiful walk. It was a really nice walk. Mm-hmm.
[00:22:15] Amy: It was, it was, it was very nice.
[00:22:16] Eric: And we got, we started getting the giggles. ’cause you know, it’s like, how lost are we? Yeah. How out, how out of place, you know, are we from where we were meant meaning to go.
[00:22:26] Amy: And that part of town is a little more hopping. You know, there’s more people out…
[00:22:31] Ian: Getting down towards like, like Lake & Hennepin or Lake & Lyndale?
Yeah, yeah.
[00:22:35] Amy: Yeah. We were like, oh, it actually feels like we’re out and about on an evening. As you can tell, we are not late night people.
[00:22:45] Eric: Out on the town in our t-shirts and shorts.
[00:22:48] Amy: Yeah. Trying to find the-
[00:22:49] Eric: Dressed in our finest.
[00:22:51] Ian: I mean, you, you definitely wouldn’t stand out in t-shirts and shorts in Uptown.
Yeah. No.
[00:22:55] Amy: Right, right. Yeah. I think we fit in.
[00:22:58] Ian: Mm-hmm. The, the most like high profile, the most famous, uh, portrayal of this neighborhood that I’m aware of is, Dad do you remember the movie Contagion that we went to see in the theater? Like you and me and Caleb and Jonas?
[00:23:14] Eric: How long ago that came out?
[00:23:17] Ian: I was probably in high school or early college.
[00:23:20] Eric: That’s when we would’ve seen it over here?
[00:23:22] Ian: I think so, yeah. ’cause we saw it at, I, ooh, we, we probably saw it at the Plaza, so I think so. I think it was, it was probably like, you know, six months after it came out kind of thing. Right. Matt Damon was one of the, one of the stars of that movie.
The story starts with this family. In, I don’t know, Edina or you know, some somewhere. Yeah, yeah. Some, some suburb of Minneapolis. Right. Uh, who where, yeah. Like you said, the wife comes back from a trip to China, I think.
[00:23:50] Eric: From Yeah. She was coming back from China, had a layover in Chicago.
[00:23:54] Ian: Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Um, and, and she ends up being like patient zero in the US for this contagion that becomes a global pandemic. And there’s a. A scene that I very specifically remember where Matt Damon, you know, after his wife gets home and then like the next day he’s on his way to work on the bus and they like, they knew that she had gotten sick and she was in the hospital, and so the doctors were telling him like, well, you can still go to work, but, but you know.
Keep an eye on your symptoms and call us if anything, you know, comes up. And he realizes that he’s getting a bad cough while he’s on the bus. So he calls them with his cell phone and he’s like, what should I do? And they’re like, where are you? And he looks out the window and he goes, I’m at Lake & Lyndale.
Oh my gosh. And they’re like, okay, get off of the bus. Try not to be in contact with anybody else. We, we will come in a car and pick you up. Hmm. And so, of course he gets, you know, the busiest intersection in this part of town. Right. You know, like trying to avoid other pedestrians, everything. It is not gonna happen.
Yeah. Yeah.
[00:24:56] Amy: Oh my gosh. So I guess we need to rewatch this.
[00:24:59] Eric: It was a very good movie.
[00:25:00] Ian: Yeah. I enjoyed it. Not that we’re five years out from the start of COVID-19. I feel like, uh, I, I feel like I’m at a point mentally where I could watch that movie again. Yeah.
[00:25:09] Amy: Geez. Well, there’s, yeah, I don’t wanna, don’t wanna relive COVID. No, no.
[00:25:14] Eric: Anyway. Yeah. So right there. Wow. That is fun. When you see, when you have a space. In a movie that you know.
[00:25:21] Ian: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And of course, at the time, I didn’t know. Like & Lyndale from Adam. Right.
[00:25:27] Eric: Because you were right in high school on the other side of the river. St. Paul. Yeah.
[00:25:29] Ian: And like you said, you know, you moved, you were a transplant dad, you have only ever lived on the east side of St. Paul. Mm-hmm. Here in the Twin Cities. Mm-hmm. And like I grew up on the east side of St. Paul, so like sometimes people will talk, you know, we’ll be talking about like the 35W bridge collapse or whatever, and they’re like, “oh, you must remember that super well ’cause you grew up here.” And I’m like, “Minneapolis was a different planet.”
[00:25:51] Amy: Well, plus you guys were in Iowa anyway… when it happened.
[00:25:54] Eric: Well, when it happened, but still the reference of 35 W Bridge. That wasn’t a bridge that… we had 35E, exactly. 35E in our neighborhood. Yeah.
[00:26:01] Ian: And like when I was in, that was probably when I was in middle school and you know, so it’s like how often did I make it to Minneapolis for student trips or whatever, like never.
Never. Right, right.
[00:26:13] Amy: I grew up in, in the Twin Cities and. I never went on that bridge. That was just not a bridge I ever went on.
[00:26:21] Ian: Yeah. Well it kind of goes diagonal from where you lived, right. So yeah. It would not have taken you to or from home.
[00:26:27] Amy: Yeah. Yeah. No, no. Well, the other things that we did, um, we went swimming at Cedar Lake.
Mm-hmm. On the south end. Mm-hmm. Lovely beach. That was lovely. Lovely. Lovely, lovely.
[00:26:40] Ian: Did you know that the beach on the east end has a mud pit near it? You could have, you could have gone and had a mud bath.
[00:26:47] Amy: No way. Yeah. Wow.
[00:26:49] Eric: What are you doing after this? [laughter]
[00:26:53] Amy: Let’s see, what else did we do?
[00:26:55] Eric: Um, well at the beach we saw a guy catch what?
A large mouth bass.
[00:26:58] Amy: Oh yeah. He was, uh, was a young, young guy. He was so excited. Caught. Uh. You know,
I don’t know.
[00:27:07] Eric: We’re, we’re in, we’re in Minnesota, so we’re in Minnesota. How big is the fish? Right. But the mouth was huge. It was like this!
[00:27:12] Ian: Uhhuh uhhuh.
[00:27:13] Eric: So they were right off the swimming area.
[00:27:15] Ian: That was I, I’m guessing that you held up a diameter of like four inches, Mom. That’s a very large mouth.
[00:27:20] Amy: Yeah, it was. It was.
[00:27:24] Eric: And, and this 12, 12 inch fish was about three feet long, you know, because we live in Minnesota.
[00:27:30] Amy: Yeah, yeah. Anyway, and we appreciated that the grocery stores were within walking distance. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Because of course, you know, good soups and salads from Lunds & Byerlys, and
[00:27:42] Eric: Aldi was right here…
[00:27:43] Amy: bought some stuff from Aldi.
[00:27:45] Ian: Lunds & Byerlys?
[00:27:46] Amy: Yeah, we walked down.
[00:27:47] Ian: Oh, that’s, uh,
[00:27:50] Amy: on the other side of the Greenway.
[00:27:51] Ian: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm.
[00:27:52] Eric: Well, yeah. And the Greenway is really close, so that was a nice walk.
[00:27:55] Amy: Oh, you’re right. There is Kowalski’s, but there was, yeah, there was, um. I didn’t realize that it was right there because there’s so much, uh, construction.
Oh, right. Yeah. And we did go eat at the Uptown Uptown Cafe.
[00:28:08] Ian: The Uptown Cafe? I love that one.
[00:28:10] Amy: Oh my gosh. Like my food was four meals for me.
[00:28:15] Eric: Yeah. And I got a, I got like three meals outta mine. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Sweet. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:28:20] Amy: Anyway, so mm-hmm. That was kind of what we did. Yeah.
[00:28:23] Eric: But it was nice that, you know, going back to kinda your original question that the staycation the place is familiar enough, but it’s also exotic enough, you know? Mm-hmm. Familiar. ’cause there’s enough things around that we know about or maybe have seen once upon a time, but, um mm-hmm. The nature of there are things here that are new to us, um, which, you know, made it special in that regard.
So it’s, it is really cool to have, you know, both sides. On that one.
[00:28:56] Amy: And the rainy day, we did think about going to the MIA. But we decided to just kind of do a cabin thing instead. Yeah. We wanted to rest. Yeah. You know, rest that day.
[00:29:08] Ian: Yeah. That was one of the other apartments that was like at the top of my short list is are the brick buildings that are right across the street from the MIA.
Oh wow. So that, oh, those are beautiful. They’re beautiful.
[00:29:20] Eric: I eyeballed those apartment buildings from the outside many times from. Kid field trips and stuff like that. It’s like, oh, those look cool. Yeah.
[00:29:27] Ian: Yep.
[00:29:27] Eric: Maybe I should have one of my kids live in one of those some days. Oh, so close.
[00:29:32] Ian: I think. I think that your stay – if I had lived there – your staycation aswould’ve been significantly different, even though it feels like it’s very close to here.
Like the fact that, that this apartment in the Wedge is a 10 minute walk from the lake. I think is like kind of the defining feature of this apartment. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Whereas the other one is like, what? What have you got within a 10 minute walk? Hmm. 35W.
Yeah. Right. Yeah.
[00:29:59] Amy: That wouldn’t have, that wouldn’t have felt the same as what we would’ve been looking for.
Right. This really quiet, natural, yeah. This really was a wonderful place to stay and…
[00:30:11] Eric: I’m amazed when you started talking about all these lakes. I know that Minneapolis is full of lakes, but you’re talking about how far around they are to walk them. It’s like, wait, there’s that many lakes of that size in the city?
Mm-hmm. That, you know, that surprised me. And so that was really cool to like, okay, a lake a day isn’t gonna do…
[00:30:33] Amy: Oh yeah. There’s so, so we’re gonna have to do this again sometime. Okay. You got the Eloise Butler garden, and then you go up further to. You know, Theodore Wirth.
[00:30:40] Eric: And so let us know the next time you’re outta town.
[00:30:42] Amy: Okay. There’s, you know, it could bring a bike next time and go up further and, mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You know, we got the Grand Rounds. Mm-hmm. And so, well, and Minneapolis is known for its, um, recreational. Recreational, you know, a working paths and all of that. So. It’s, it’s the lakes.
[00:31:02] Ian: St. Paul is no slouch either. Of course.
No. Yeah. But, but you’ve explored a lot of those trails already.
[00:31:07] Eric: Are the lakes connected by channels and things like that?
[00:31:09] Ian: They are called the chain of lakes because yes, they are.
[00:31:11] Eric: The chain of lakes, and I’m just seeing, you know, yeah. So you could take your kayak or a canoe or whatever and go from one to the next and paddle through.
[00:31:19] Ian: The farthest north that you can get is, um, just on the other side of Cedar Lake, there’s another really teeny tiny little lake called, um, Brown Lake? Okay. Something like that. And then you can get through Cedar through Lake of the Isles and to Bde Maka Ska, but there’s not a a direct, I think it’s like underground culverts that to get that that connect Bde Maka Ska to Harriet.
[00:31:44] Amy: Harriet, okay. Yep. Um, and then Nokomis is over a little further.
[00:31:48] Ian: Yeah. I think, um, does Minnehaha Creek touch Harriet? I don’t know. You can. So yeah. Minnehaha Creek takes you to Nokomis and… Um, what’s the other lake over there? There’s one more.
[00:32:03] Amy: Is there?
[00:32:04] Ian: Yeah. Um, Hiawatha! Yeah.
[00:32:08] Eric: I’m not, don’t look at me!
[00:32:09] Amy: I’m not familiar.
[00:32:11] Eric: There comes a map, there’s, yeah.
[00:32:13] Ian: Hi, uh, Minnehaha Creek goes into Lake Hiawatha and then it comes back out and like, and it goes to the river city. And Hiawatha and Nokomis are, uhhh, I don’t think that they’re connected by… oh. There’s a channel. Oh, Minnehaha does connect both of them. Yes, yes, yes, yes.
[00:32:31] Eric: Looks like it’s a controlled waterway.
[00:32:33] Ian: Probably, yeah.
[00:32:35] Amy: Oh, we got even more lakes to check out.
[00:32:37] Ian: But of course, the, those two, uh, are over in the part of town where everything is named after, uh, Longfellow’s, you know, Song of Hiawatha. Right. Um, so Nokomis is a, like a, a princess, you know, uh, in that story.
And Hiawatha is like the, the warrior.
[00:32:54] Amy: And you know, my great, great grandmother was Minnie Haha Tuttle.
[00:32:59] Ian: Oh my god. That’s right.
[00:33:02] Eric: First name Minnie, middle name Haha. Yeah. And unbelievable.
[00:33:06] Amy: Hey, that shows they were educated. Come on.
[00:33:08] Ian: It shows that they were into the thing that was most popular in this country at the time.
[00:33:15] Amy: Right, right, right. Because she was born in like, uh, 18… I gotta think about this. 1863.
[00:33:24] Ian: Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I feel like that that’s like the equivalent of, I don’t know, naming your two children like Thor and Loki, if they were born in, you know, 2014. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:33:41] Eric: Dang. Should we have some more kids?
Uh, we’re kind of beyond that. We’ll leave it up to our children to have the kids with those names. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
[00:33:50] Ian: Yeah. So one of the, one of the arguments that comes up time and time again is somebody’s always claiming that, uh, uptown is dead. What is, what is your take on that now that you’ve, uh, done a little staycation in this part of town?
[00:34:05] Amy: Well…
[00:34:06] Eric: Is is the Wedge within Uptown?
[00:34:10] Ian: So Uptown is like the four different neighborhoods that are all centered on, uh, Lake & Hennepin. So that would be…
[00:34:18] Eric: I can’t remember. I’m a transplant, so I’m…
[00:34:20] Ian: So you’ve got the Wedge, uh, which is Lowry Hill East. You’ve got East Isles, um, South Uptown and whatever is across Hennepin from South Uptown.
[00:34:33] Eric: Southwest Uptown.
[00:34:35] Amy: I don’t know if we’re the right people to ask, because we’re not-
[00:34:37] Ian: That’s why I’m asking.
[00:34:39] Amy: Oh! [laughter]
[00:34:39] Eric: So, so for, for us, it had the right, well, for our pur, especially for our purpose in being here. It was, it was a perfect balance of what we were looking for. You know, it was quiet, but there were people around if we wanted something to do, there were things around that we could find.
That would give us something to do, but we’re also totally fine with not having anything to do, and we’ll just go out and, and wander and to see what we happen upon. That’s not all, you know, glitzy and cosmopolitan and all that stuff.
[00:35:14] Amy: I mean, come on. We’re from St. Paul, which just quiet and quiet.
[00:35:21] Eric: So Yeah, we like, yeah, quieter and peaceful, the, the nature, whatever. And to us that’s hoppin’. You know? So it is not the kind of thing like, oh yeah, okay, we’re gonna get dressed up and where are we gonna go down? Right. You know, and see some expensive show or. Whatever, you know, or, now granted we were here during the week.
[00:35:40] Amy: We didn’t go to the theater. We didn’t, you know, yeah.
[00:35:41] Eric: We were here during the week. Not a weekend. So maybe if we were here on a weekend, there might’ve been some shows that, you know, live band, you know, local, live band kinds of things or something like that. Other place might have, that would’ve been of interest.
And that’s one of the things I’ve appreciated about what I see about Minneapolis at least, is all these little places have these house bands or. Traveling bands that come in and, or stuff like that, whatever. But, you know, we were, we were here at a different time, you know, the week for that. And it served our purpose to just relax and be quiet.
[00:36:09] Amy: Yeah. It was perfect for us.
[00:36:11] Ian: Yeah. So, so to give you a little bit of insight about the whole Uptown Is Dead conversation, um, I think a lot of that started because I wanna say 15 years ago, you know, like the commercial space right around Lake & Hennepin, uh. There were a lot of like well-known national brands that all kind of moved in, you know, that had like, like the Patagonia store would’ve been there, the, you know, like, oh, like direct to consumer kind of, you know, like the, I don’t know, The North Face that what, you know…
[00:36:46] Amy: Kind of like on Grand in Victoria.
[00:36:47] Ian: Kind of. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then a few years ago, a lot of those companies started moving outta there and, you know. And now those, uh, storefronts are all just kind of empty. Because the, the rents for commercial spaces were very high because they were being taken up by well-known national brands.
Right. Mm. And so nobody had, like, could afford it. The market has not like corrected yet for that. And so a lot of the people who claim that Uptown is dead are thinking about the fact that like, this used to be. A retail space that had regional draw, like people would come to uptown instead of going to Southdale Mall.
[00:37:31] Amy: Mm. Right, right, right, right, right.
[00:37:33] Ian: And so in that sense, yes, it is not serving the purpose that these people are remembering. But does that mean that uptown is dead? Well, it means that it’s evolving into something else.
[00:37:45] Eric: Right, right, right. In those places you mentioned are, are, I don’t know, I, how to say, upscale kinds of places.
Right. You know, with those name brands like that, that Yeah, I can see where, yeah, that’s the place to go. ’cause I got money and I like this high brand stuff. And let’s go shopping there. And while we’re there, there’s other stuff we can do. Restaurants or whatever. Yeah.
[00:38:06] Amy: And so, so you know us, we’re not shoppers anyway. Exactly. Exactly. It doesn’t really matter.
[00:38:11] Ian: That’s why it amused me to ask you that question. Yeah. Because I knew that!
[00:38:14] Eric: We would be going to, “oh, hey, look at this little antique shop!” Right? Right.
[00:38:19] Ian: If uptown were still alive, as you know, in those people’s minds, it would not have been, like that would not have been a positive for the two of you having your staycation experience here anyway, right?
[00:38:30] Eric: Yeah. I do like camping gear though, so, yeah.
[00:38:32] Amy: That’s what I was gonna say. If it was more like a Midwest Mountaineering or something.
[00:38:35] Ian: Well, I do not remember exactly which brands were here. I, I cannot guarantee that it was Patagonia or North Face or whatever. That’s because I moved in here after, long after Uptown was “Dead.” Yeah.
[00:38:47] Eric: Yeah. But you got my attention with those names. Yeah.
[00:38:48] Ian: Yeah. Um, yeah, nowadays, like Uptown has a lot more, um, there’s some really fancy apartment buildings right down there along, right along the Greenway.
[00:39:00] Amy: Oh yeah.
[00:39:01] Eric: Oh, those are amazing.
[00:39:02] Ian: Yeah. And so like, there are, I feel like we’re at a point where everybody thinks that what we need is a coffee shop.
[00:39:12] Eric: So all of these apartments have a coffee shop on main level.
[00:39:14] Ian: There’s a lot of coffee shops and think that we’re about to see a market correction in that regard of like, some of the coffee shops are going to be closing because there’s a lot of, there’s too many. There’s just too many of them. Yeah, just too many.
So like, like things are always shifting and evolving and like, you know, figuring out what, what does the community actually need in this space.
[00:39:30] Eric: The next: More bike shops, right? Yeah. Mm-hmm.
And walking shoes.
[00:39:38] Amy: That’s true. They should have a shoe shop.
[00:39:41] Ian: That would be good.
[00:39:42] Amy: Mm-hmm.
[00:39:43] Ian: Since it’s such a WaLkAbLe NeIgHbOrHoOd.
[00:39:45] Amy: Exactly.
[00:39:47] Eric: Exactly. Sound like a nephew, whatever.
[00:39:49] Amy: We did appreciate that. We had the same spot like every day.
[00:39:56] Eric: The parking spot?
[00:39:57] Amy: The parking spot across, across the street. From here. Across the street. Across the street.
[00:40:00] Ian: There you go. That was the other question I was gonna ask you.
[00:40:03] Eric: And I think it’s still… I think it was open when we pulled up. It was open, open today. Yeah. But we parked since we came from the other direction.
[00:40:08] Ian: Yeah. So I, yeah. Everybody When, when, uh, both Lyndale and Hennepin, you know, are being, they’re, uh, what the configuration of the street is going to be once it’s reconstructed, you know, those – that debate already happened for Hennepin. It’s currently ongoing for Lyndale. And the question is like, oh, how much of this on street parking do we need? You know, how hard is it actually to park in Uptown? Um, and of course a lot of the people who are. Advocating for keeping parking or thinking like literally right there on that street.
You know, how am I going to park right outside of the business that I want to go to. Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. Uh,
[00:40:44] Eric: And there is something to consider though. So you’re not parking all in the neighborhoods and blocking everybody else’s. Yeah.
[00:40:48] Ian: Yeah. But yeah, I mean, we are, we are, uh, one and a half short blocks from Hennepin and, uh, there’s plenty of parking right here.
[00:40:58] Amy: Yeah. There’s plenty of parking.
[00:40:59] Ian: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So anything else that, uh. That you wanted to talk about with the staycation experience?
[00:41:06] Eric: No, I was just wondering, when you’re leaving town again. [laughter] We’re welcome to, you know, we we’re, we’re, we’re willing to offer our services for watching your space if we needed to do that again.
Some time, you know, there’s a lot more to explore. I mean, that’s one of the things that we discover, is that what we are here for four days? Yeah. Something like that. And just with our mindset of what we were looking for. There’s still a heck of a lot more to do, you know, a lot more lakes, a lot more trails, a lot more, you know, green space, um, little quaint places to go and drop in on, you know, so it’s, it’s, it’s really nice to have.
Such a variety right here. And so, yeah.
[00:41:47] Ian: You know, what I always like to do when I am exploring a new neighborhood, uh, is I’ll go on alley walks. So instead of seeing the side of people’s property that they’re actively presenting to the world, you know. Um, sometimes you can find some really quirky little, you know, garages and things that are painted in weird ways, and, you know, what, what are the, what’s going on in the backyard?
[00:42:11] Amy: Okay, well, we should go walk down the alley on Summit. Mm-hmm. Because there are some really cool garages. Mm-hmm.
[00:42:19] Eric: Do they have alleys they do on summit?
[00:42:23] Amy: Oh, yeah.
[00:42:24] Ian: I think it depends on what section of Summit you’re on, but Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:42:27] Amy: Well, I’m thinking down by Lexington.
[00:42:29] Ian: Okay.
[00:42:30] Eric: All right, sounds like a date. Yeah.
[00:42:32] Amy: There’s some cool, some cool garages over there.
[00:42:34] Eric: Sounds like I need to paint my garage. Make it more fun.
[00:42:37] Amy: You do!
[00:42:38] Eric: Okay. Yeah. Uhoh, what have I just said? I need to paint it anyway. Yeah, you So I’ll just make it more fun. All those half cans of paint that we have in the house.
[00:42:47] Amy: You can make it rainbow.
[00:42:48] Eric: Sure. Nice. Rainbow’s. My favorite color.
[00:42:54] Ian: Is that a quote from something?
[00:42:55] Eric: No, the kids at school, the elementary school that I work at, you know, what’s your favorite color? “Rainbow.”
[00:42:59] Ian: Nice.
[00:43:00] Eric: You know, so a lot of them do say that. It’s like, oh, that’s so cute. But yeah, it’s legit.
[00:43:07] Amy: Yeah. I, I have absolutely no complaints at all.
One, once we figured out where the air conditioner was. It was really hot, hot and stuffy when we first got here. Oh yeah.
[00:43:19] Eric: We felt, and we felt, you know, totally safe where we were. You know, and us going out on our walks and stuff like that. Oh yeah. Yeah. Um, so there were no issues with any of that.
And uh, I know you, earlier on you had asked about the possibility, like house swapping or whatever you called it.
[00:43:34] Ian: Oh, yeah.
[00:43:34] Eric: You know? And would that be the, you know. That allows for a more personal connection with the people that is coming into your space.
[00:43:44] Ian: I don’t know how common that actually is, but I remember the movie, The Holiday was very good.
[00:43:49] Amy: Yes, it was. That was very sweet. Yeah. That was amazing.
[00:43:50] Eric: Yeah. But you know, that, that sort of thing like here is, is more familiar and obviously you’re our son, so. You’re familiar in that regard, but, uh, yeah. Staying in somebody’s home is much more comfortable than a commercial.
[00:44:08] Ian: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:44:09] Eric: That’s kind of a word I’m looking for.
[00:44:10] Amy: What were you gonna say?
[00:44:11] Ian: I did have to hold myself back from, you know, being like, since I knew that you two are staying here, I was like, oh, there’s like X, Y, and Z like chores that I want. Wanted to get done at my home, like maybe I could ask my parents to do like one of those things for me.
And then I was like, “Ian, they’re on a vacation.”
[00:44:30] Eric: Well, like I said, one of the things is sometimes when you’re relaxing, it’s like, okay, she’s taking a nap. I want to, you know, me, we got stuff we to do. But sometimes like, okay, I need something to do. And you notice all your dishes were clean and put away from the one, the ones that you had left on the drying rack were put away, and we did.
And then the ones that we used and washed, we put those away.
[00:44:49] Amy: We took the sheets home and washed ’em.
[00:44:51] Eric: Yeah. You know? Right. It’s like, did Stina have to run over here before we got here to put some things away? That might be embarrassing or whatever. I, oh, Mom and Dad are gonna see that.
[00:45:01] Ian: Well, there is a book right behind you, uh, that, like literally a day before we left that I left spotted this, this like.
Romance book in a little free library. And I thought it was so amusing that its title was The Captain of All Pleasures.
[00:45:18] Eric: Well, I saw that.
[00:45:18] Ian: I was like, well, I, I’m gonna bring that home, even though, even if I don’t read it. Like this is just a funny book.
[00:45:24] Eric: It’s, it’s so classic for those that kind of a novel. It’s like, oh golly.
[00:45:30] Ian: So, um, what advice would you have for anybody else who wants to do this kind of thing? You know, having a staycation, doing like a house, like not maybe a house swap or just like staying at your son’s apartment.
[00:45:41] Eric: Are, are you talking about the people who are visiting or the person that’s hosting a place?
[00:45:45] Ian: Oh, I guess either.
[00:45:47] Eric: Okay.
[00:45:47] Ian: Tell them all what I did wrong.
[00:45:50] Eric: Well, obvi obviously, whatever. Well, one thing is, I mean, to us, you’re our son, so everything’s forgiven. Like you’re not, you’re totally not packed, unpacked. Yeah. You know, so like, there’s no decor on the walls, you know, there’s, you just had you, I mean, you left.
And then we contact you to say, “Hey, can we come and stay at your place?” And your, your place has just lived in. Mm-hmm. You know, you got your blankets laying around, you got, you know, a bag full of laundry or whatever, sitting out, you know, da, da, da. It’s like, okay. You know, if you knew that you were hosting, there’d maybe be a little more cleanup.
[00:46:18] Ian: I probably would’ve. Yeah.
[00:46:19] Eric: You know, so, so there’d be…
[00:46:21] Amy: It would be nice to have a longer couch. You know, somebody can actually lay down.
[00:46:27] Ian: It would like, it would be nice to have a bigger living room for the couch. [laughter]
[00:46:31] Amy: Yeah.
[00:46:31] Eric: It’s, it’s a nice space though for, for watching. You know, your tv, that’s a,
[00:46:35] Amy: Oh, we don’t watch tv, so.
[00:46:36] Eric: No, we don’t. But for other people who might be, yeah. Um.
[00:46:40] Ian: Right.
[00:46:41] Amy: I’ll help you put your art up.
[00:46:42] Ian: Oh, thank you.
[00:46:44] Eric: Which means I need to bring a hammer and nails. Okay.
[00:46:46] Ian: I also, I need, uh, I need to borrow a stud finder from my friend Brennan so that I can hang up the bike hooks on the walls.
[00:46:53] Eric: I found one.
[00:46:53] Ian: Yeah. Ah ha. He’s pointing at me, calling me a stud.
[00:46:57] Eric: A stud. It’s right. Let’s see. Um, I think that for people that are coming to stay at a place, obviously the internet is a wide resource of mm-hmm. You know, what kinds of things are available, but somebody coming into a new area might be like, okay, host, you know, like you, Ian, what are some really cool things that the local folks like to do?
You know, because like when I, like if I were to be traveling internationally, someplace else I’ve never been to, I would do much better staying at somebody’s place that we know might be a friend of a friend or whatever, that can kind of host and say, here’s where we go, or “We’re going out to dinner. Why don’t you come with us?” Or, Hey, you, you know, whatever. Rather than just the internet saying, here’s the tourist kinds of things to do, which might be what shows up. Here for this neighborhood, but, you know. Yeah. What do the, what do the local folks here.
[00:47:50] Amy: Well, going along that, I remember seeing a welcome to the neighborhood type of brochure or something.
[00:47:59] Ian: Are you talking about the Wedge Adventure Book that’s sitting back there? Yeah, yeah.
[00:48:03] Amy: Yeah. And I, and I glanced at it and I was like, oh, this is really nice. I mean, it’s that kind of thing. You know, where it’s like, oh. You know, what’s, what’s there to do or whatever. You know? Or having, so, you know, having this, the American Swedish Institute brochure or the MIA brochure?
[00:48:22] Ian: Oh, sure. Oh, yeah.
[00:48:22] Amy: You know, I mean. Yeah. If coming from outside of the Twin Cities and they don’t know about these places. And they’re literally a mile from here.
[00:48:32] Eric: And those tend to be the more tourist kinds of things that, you know, they have the money to put those brochures together.
Right. So that along with what the host says, oh, you need to go down to this corner place. ’cause that’s a cute little, right. Right. Or that beach is really, everybody goes to this one, this other one is better because… Right. You know?
[00:48:51] Ian: Right. I would’ve told you about the mud pit.
[00:48:53] Amy: Right, exactly. Well, now it was interesting ’cause the place we stayed in Grand Marais. Um, they actually made videos of-
[00:49:02] Eric: the host, did
[00:49:03] Amy: the host, that are not public accessible, but they email it to the people who stay at their places.
[00:49:13] Eric: Um, and it’s ahead of time.
[00:49:15] Amy: Yeah. Ahead of time. Yeah. And, and they knew that we wanted to hike around, so yeah, they sent us several, um, videos of…
[00:49:24] Eric: where to go, where to go and what you’re gonna find and…
[00:49:26] Amy: and yeah, what hiking places and dah, dah, dah.
And they actually. Were hiking and they showed, you know, or they showed how to get to the…
[00:49:36] Eric: which actually helped on some of it, because there was one time where, like on this particular trail, we didn’t know which way to go and it was not very well marked. Wasn’t marked really, but the locals did. And you could tell on the videos, like, wait a minute, they scampered up these rocks.
And then there’s, you can see the trail going on. Yeah. But you would not have known that otherwise. So that was a, a local eye on what’s going on there that. Somebody else might totally miss it.
[00:50:01] Amy: Yeah. And not everybody’s gonna know, oh, you can only go around the lake, if you’re driving, you can only drive one way around the lake. Or you know.
[00:50:10] Ian: and you can only bike one way around the lake.
[00:50:12] Eric: What have been your thoughts on what might be some things like that then could key in some other thoughts that Oh yeah, there. Well, uh, you as a host or your, as a potential guest?
[00:50:21] Ian: I mean, I think a recommendation I would’ve given would, would’ve been Bebe Zito. That’s a really good-
[00:50:26] Eric: Versus the big corporate Exactly. Places that everybody in the country knows about. Mm-hmm. Right, right, right. Mm-hmm. So, um, shop local. Yeah.
[00:50:34] Ian: Yeah. And I mean, unfortunately, like a lot of the things that I have taken note of about my neighborhood. Are things that are important to me as a resident and not probably important to, you know, I’m like, oh, I know which game shop I go to when I want to buy, like, you know, sleeves for my Magic: The Gathering cards. I know, I know where to go for my hardware store. Like, you know.
[00:50:59] Eric: Well, okay, so like a game shop, there are probably visitors who would be like, “okay, let’s go check out the local game shop.” Sure. Mm-hmm. Because they probably have different decks, different cars, different equipment than maybe-
[00:51:09] Ian: And if they have Friday Night Magic, you know, different people to play with.
[00:51:12] Eric: there you go. Mm-hmm. Right.
[00:51:13] Ian: Yeah. Um, right. Sencha Tea Bar is really nice for, you know, a, a nice space if you want to just like hang out and be in a third space that’s, you know, public and, you know, drink a little tea or, I think they do boba tea as well and bring a book. Mueller Park is really nice for like, you know, “oh, I, it’s a hot day and I just need to like dip my feet into, you know, there’s, there’s a little kiddie pool there.” Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good hammocking spot as well.
[00:51:41] Eric: Is this the one that had the geocache spot that we?
[00:51:43] Amy: Yeah, it was geocache there. Mm. Just FYI, mm-hmm.
[00:51:45] Eric: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just, I’m not telling anything. [whistling nonchalantly]
[00:51:52] Ian: I mean, I am like, as soon as you two said. Uh, we’re coming back to do a couple of geocaches along the Greenway. I was like, “oh, along the Greenway??” you know? Mm-hmm. Like right. That’s a space that I like. I don’t have to be Zoom zooming on my bike.
I can spend some time on the Greenway and like, you know, take it slow and go explore.
[00:52:12] Eric: Offered you opportunities to slow it down a little bit. Uhhuh Uhhuh. Yeah. Right.
[00:52:15] Amy: Yeah. Yeah. It’s a nice place to stroll. Mm-hmm. Okay. This makes me wanna. Promote our neighborhood.
[00:52:22] Ian: Yeah. Yeah. What kinds of stuff would, uh, people wanna do if they visit the Dayton’s Bluff area?
[00:52:27] Eric: That’s true.
[00:52:28] Amy: Yeah. Well, we have a new ice cream shop that’s really good.
[00:52:32] Eric: Oh, the Hispanics. Oh. There’s a lot of good Hispanic stuff: restaurants.
[00:52:37] Amy: And it’s where the, um, that thrift store used to be.
[00:52:41] Ian: Oh, in the Sun Ray?
[00:52:43] Amy: No, no, no, no, no. On seventh.
[00:52:45] Eric: There was the, on the Seventh, the Ark Thrift Store, which may have been it, it didn’t have a big splash.
Okay. In our neighborhood. Okay. But, uh.
[00:52:52] Amy: Anyway, and there’s a Hispanic bakery, like a block from there. Mm-hmm. And then you got, um, Mañanas, which is Ecuadorian. They, they’re the ones with papusas. And, um, well then there’s…
[00:53:05] Eric: Kitty corner, that other little taco place, whatever. There’s Swede Hollow Cafe.
[00:53:12] Ian: Classic.
[00:53:13] Amy: The folks who dance!
[00:53:15] Eric: Indigenous Roots. Yes. There you go.
[00:53:16] Amy: Indigenous roots. Roots. And they have a little, a coffee shop in there now too. And then they have a space that you can, you can rent out like for a graduation party or a birthday party across, or a quinceañera or whatever. Whatever you wanna rent it out.
[00:53:30] Eric: Across the street is that little park that, well not maybe right across the street from there is that little park where there’s art. Always outdoor art installations.
[00:53:37] Amy: Yeah.
[00:53:38] Eric: It is kind cute.
[00:53:38] Amy: It’s right next to where the dancing goat used to be, which is now a law firm.
But anyway.
[00:53:45] Ian: Oh, yes. Mm-hmm.
[00:53:47] Amy: But, and they’re gonna be showing movies once a month.
[00:53:50] Ian: In the little park with all the art?
[00:53:53] Amy: Yeah. So that’s pretty cool.
[00:53:55] Eric: Indian Mounds Regional Park, which I believe is getting a name changed to a more appropriate Native Oh. Name. And I don’t know, I don’t know what it is, but they’ve done some really nice changes to that in recognizing the original Indigenous peoples that were there.
[00:54:10] Amy: So they, they have a sign now that says “this is a cemetery.” Yeah, yeah. Right. And then they have-
[00:54:15] Eric: having respect and a lot of stuff on there that tells non-indigenous people like what? What does this mean? You know, cultural things, but the park overlooks, you know, it’s the Bluffs and it has the Mississippi River down below, and it has the, the train, I don’t know what, I don’t know what company it is that runs through there.
[00:54:35] Amy: And you can see the airport,
[00:54:37] Eric: well, the St. Paul Airport.
[00:54:38] Amy: St. Paul Airport. Yeah.
[00:54:39] Eric: Holman Field it is down there. But it’s a, it’s a fun, it’s a fun, beautiful park. And with the view of the river and the airport and the train. And the train yard and all that, that’s going on. Up there is really cool and the respect of the space that it is, of its Indigenous origin as a, you know, cemetery, a place for those spirits.
To be there. It’s kind of a, you know, I think it’s a really nice place. I like to go down there and when I can to go and visit and just be.
[00:55:08] Amy: And for people who bike, I mean, you can bike downtown one way or you can go the other way and go down the road and then go down, um, Warner Road. Um, or you could go to Battle Creek.
You know, so there’s, so there’s lots of biking that you can do.
[00:55:25] Ian: And there’s also Swede Hollow Park is near you.
[00:55:28] Amy: Oh yeah.
[00:55:29] Eric: Yeah. Nice little. Yes. So right behind Swede Hollow Cafe.
[00:55:33] Ian: Kind of the opposite vibe of, you know, Mounds Park has you’re up high, you get all the views. Yeah. And in Swede Hollow Park, you get to feel nice and enclosed and kind of cozy.
[00:55:43] Eric: Yeah. Hollow too. Yeah. Uhhuh. Yeah. Great. Um, and the history of that space.
[00:55:47] Ian: Yep. Yeah. People can pick up, uh, Bill Lindeke’s Public Staircases of St. Paul. And there’s, uh, one of, one of the sections of that little booklet is all a bunch of East Side, uh, staircases that are, many of them are right there in your neighborhood.
[00:56:03] Amy: Ian and I, uh, rode our bikes and did that on a Mother’s Day one here.
[00:56:08] Eric: Are these like staircases for homes or?
[00:56:10] Ian: No, no. Public staircases like that are part of a sidewalk or
[00:56:16] Amy: A bridge.
[00:56:17] Ian: Like it has to be public right of way. Okay. You know, in order to be included in this booklet.
[00:56:21] Amy: It’s cool. Yeah. We should, we should do it sometime. All right. I had a lot of fun with Ian doing that.
[00:56:26] Ian: Okay. Uh, if, if people like infrastructure, like staircases, they might also be interested in the brand new pedestrian bridge. Uh, the Maple Street Bridge that goes over I-94.
[00:56:36] Eric: We were just on that yesterday.
[00:56:37] Amy: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yesterday we walked on it.
[00:56:39] Eric: Or this morning, what was it today? I don’t know when it was, but I dunno. Yeah. Nice, nice bridge. Well done.
[00:56:45] Ian: Much more ADA accessible than the old one.
[00:56:47] Eric: Well, right. ’cause that one was quite significantly older.
[00:56:50] Amy: For those who wanna venture a little bit further. We got our own little chain of lakes.
You got Lake Phalen that attaches to Keller. That attaches to Jarvis. I mean, you’re getting out into the suburbs there, but…
[00:57:05] Ian: it’s all, you know, yeah. You can paddle. There’s, there are trails that go alongside them. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep. And the Gateway State Trail crosses that and that’ll take you all the way out to Stillwater.
[00:57:16] Amy: Yep.
[00:57:17] Ian: So, yeah, mom and dad. Yes, sir. Eric and Amy Buck, it’s us. Thanks for coming on the show.
[00:57:23] Eric: Pleasure to be here.
[00:57:24] Amy: Yeah, thank you!
[00:57:25] Eric: Thanks for the invitation.
[00:57:29] Ian: And thank you for joining us for this episode of the Streets.mn Podcast!
The show is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NonDerivative license. So feel free to republish the episode as long as you are not altering it, and you are not profiting from it.
The music in this episode is by Erik Brandt and the Urban Hillbilly Quartet.
This episode was hosted, edited, and transcribed by me, Ian R Buck. Thanks Mom and Dad for coming on the show!
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