The greater Twin Cities metro area had quite a few cities that made CNN’s top 100 best small cities to live in this year. Plymouth, Eagan, Eden Prairie, Apple Valley, Lakeville, Burnsville, Blaine and Maple Grove all
made the list.

Here’s the full link.

Okay, so I’ve only been in MN for 5 years and can’t remember driving through Plymouth. What’s so great about it?

The city of Minneapolis is conducting its second annual bike and pedestrian count. [last year's report (pdf)]

They need volunteers to click the counter button (or record a bunch of hashmarks on paper or however they do that) in 2-hour shifts, starting at midnight on Tuesday, 9/9. That’s Monday night/Tuesday morning. Counting will take place for all 24 hours of Tuesday and again from 4-6pm on Wednesday, 9/10, in multiple places around the city.

So open shifts will be:
12am-2am
2am-4am
4am-6am
etc.

Those interested in volunteering may contact Shaun Murphy at shaun.murphy@ci.minneapolis.mn.us or 612.275.5128. Please leave your e-mail address, phone number, a preferred day and time slot, and if desired, a neighborhood where you would like to volunteer. Since these counts are city-wide, we will do our best to place volunteers in convenient locations.

They’re looking for about 100 volunteers. Extra people are needed during the 4-6pm rush hours.

This is important because, while the state of biking in the Twin Cities is already pretty good, data like this helps make it better.

These important counts will begin to establish trend lines showing the impact of biking and walking on Minneapolis streets and trails. The counts will also measure the impact of several bike lane and path improvements…. 24-hour counts will help to establish new knowledge about non-motorized travel during the evening and nighttime hours.

The city is partnering with Transit for Livable Communities on this. TLC will also be conducting a count on these same days and is also in need of volunteers, according to the email I got from the city of Minneapolis, but I can’t find anything about it on their website.

P.S. Volunteers are also needed for the “Freewheelin’ & Bikes Belong” bike share program during the RNC. (pdf)

[Bicycling in Minneapolis]

The TC10 is a pretty sweet event, but unfortunately it’s so popular that not everyone makes it into the lottery. So if you already started your training only to find you didn’t get in but you would still like to complete the distance, try Women Run the Cities™ at Minnehaha Park.

Women Run the Cities™ is a running/walking event for women and girls featuring a 10-mile run, 5K run/walk, and 1-mile girls run. It is open to all women, from experienced runners and walkers to beginners.

The Minnesota Commercial Real Estate Women (MNCREW) organization created this event to encourage women of all ages to engage in a healthy and active lifestyle while promoting networking among professional women in the real estate industry.

[A] portion of the proceeds from Women Run the Cities™ will benefit the Ann Bancroft Foundation’s Dare to Dream mini-grants, which have helped nearly 600 girls and women in Minnesota.

The race course is a loop up one side of the Mississippi River, over the river, down the other side, and back to Minnehaha Park. This mirrors a portion of the TC10 and Twin Cities Marathon course.

It takes place the weekend before the TC10/TC Marathon. Late September is a good time of year for a road race. The weather should be good (last year’s record heat notwithstanding), the leaves will have started to change a little, and that part of town is just beautiful.

On the heels of June’s National Conference for Media Reform and last November’s stirring Life After Newspapers conference, the 4th Annual Fall Media Forum promises to be high-energy and a great opportunity to keep the discussion going about media ownership, net neutrality, evolving citizen journalism, and more.

Mark your calendar:
Saturday, October 4th, 2008
9:00am — 3:00pm
Minneapolis Downtown Central Library

The theme for this year’s event will be “Media Forum: Tools for Democracy, Strategies for Change”. Confirmed presenters include local Fox 9 news anchor Robyne Robinson and Amalia Anderson from the Main Street Project.

Registration will begin in early September. Watch for details on www.tcdailyplanet.net.

It appears that money is becoming a hot topic in keeping the Saint Paul Police in town. The police union is even mockingly threatening a mass exodus of cops to other towns.

This from TwinCities.com

Will St. Paul be suffering an exodus of police officers to the suburbs, where they can get paid more?  That’s the specter presented by the police union in a radio ad being released today.  “It’s a short drive to Eden Prairie and Edina’s next door,” the ad begins with a man singing. “Cops from St. Paul can move to either and make thousands more.”

The sticking point for the union, which represents nearly 700 people, has been salary. The city has offered an annual 3.25 percent pay increase for 2008, 2009 and 2010, which is what the city’s other bargaining units accepted, city officials have said. The union is seeking an extra 2.37 percent boost in the final six months of the contract

The cities suggested raises translates to the following,

“The city’s proposal would have St. Paul officers with five years of experience making $66,866, compared with $79,064 for Eden Prairie and $70,459 for Edina, Shannon said. “

 I think the Saint Paul police do a great job, but it seems to me that almost 70k before overtime is a pretty nice salary. Is it fair for the police union to demand more money when everyone else is getting paltry raise or,as is often the case these days in the private sector, no raise at all?

What do you think?

Now is probably not the time to bring this up as you are spending money attending shows, but maybe you are feeling the love so much that you are inspired to make a donation to the Minnesota Fringe Festival, which you can do at any time through out the year.

There are several Fringe events on tap for today (Saturday, Aug 2). All events are taking place at Fringe Central (aka the Bedlam Theater).

1. Noon–3 pm: Kids’ Fringe Ice Cream Social “Fringey families kick off the festival with their very own ice cream social. Cake! Ice cream! Kids’ shows buzz!”
2. 10 pm: Opening Weekend Party “Celebrate 15 years of Minnesota Fringe goodness at our very own quinceañera. We supply the piñata, birthday cake and music. You supply your funky self.”

There are art fairs aplenty going on this weekend, one being the Uptown Art Fair. Keep that in mind when heading to shows playing at Bryant-Lake Bowl.

On to the show reviews.

Nosdrahcir Sisters by Sara and Kimberly Richardson
This show was so freakin’ delightful. I love quirk and this show is full of it. For once, the show description is actually pretty accurate (instead of just trying to be catchy). “The imaginative lives of two quiet ladies. Teacups triumph, aliens say beep and mermaids shop in the produce aisle. A mishmash of clown, movement and object theatre, where everything is funny, even the sad.” There’s something really enjoyable about watching people (or characters) truly enjoy themselves even when you think what they’re doing is weird. This is my favorite show of the Fringe so far (all two days of it). Recommended!

An Inconvenient Squirrel by Joseph Scrimshaw Productions
I knew this guy would put up a great kids show and he absolutely did. It was clever, it had a good message, the kids clearly enjoyed it, it was visually interesting, there were a few lines in there for the enjoyment of the adults in the audience. It really was fantastically done. Recommended!

School of Rockstars by What Happened Productions
This is a show featuring many of the Twin Cities best storytellers, who all regularly do this somewhere else and who all have other shows playing in the Fringe. They sort themselves out into hosts, storytellers, and woodshedders. Who does what changes with every show, so each presentation will be different. This was the most disappointing show of the night for me. It’s good exposure to the best storytellers in town if you’ve never seen them before. I guarantee you’ll be inspired to see them again sometime, but if you have seen them before there’s a chance you’ll have seen some of this material already. The woodshedder idea is interesting — two storytellers on stage together try to one up each other — but I’m not sure how well it’ll actually work. I’d recommend you go see each of their respective shows instead.

National Geographic Traveler’s 48-Hour Guide to Minneapolis (July/August 2008 edition) lists local blogs and podcasts to check out, followed by newspapers and magazines, maps, and books and movies. We’re a design mecca on the prairie. (I didn’t know Building Minnesota had a podcast.)

TC Daily Planet: Copper Thieves at Coldwater. Exploring the effects of neglect of the Coldwater/Bureau of Mines land.

I knew there was the Minnesota Thunder, our professional men’s soccer team in the United Soccer Leagues. I didn’t know there was a women’s team, the Minnesota Lightning. They’re clearly affiliated, judging by the look of the websites. And by the extremely confusing navigation of the Lightning website, in which all of the links and even the site name up at the top of the browser point to the Thunder, but with a light blue color scheme instead of a dark blue one and a picture of women playing at the top instead of men. Boo! [twitter: @mnthunder]

Vote Yes MN implores you to protect the Minnesota you love. Everything you need to know about the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment, a proposed amendment to the Minnesota state constitution appearing on the ballot this fall. If passed it will dedicate funding to protecting the environment “by increasing the sales and use tax rate beginning July 1, 2009, by three-eighths of one percent on taxable sales until the year 2034.” [web: yesformn.org] [twitter: @yesformn] [facebook: group]

While the Lynx’s Seimone Augustus is off playing in the Olympics, the team and staff will spend the WNBA league break out in the community, putting on the 33 Days of Augustus.

Common Roots is celebrating its 1st year of operation with a Summer Celebration on Saturday August 9th from 2-9pm. “Featuring grilling on the patio, an heirloom tomato tasting, local beer and wine samples, family activities and live music.” [facebook: profile] [facebook: event] [twitter: @commonroots]

Are y’all checking the late night movie schedule at the Riverview Theater?

FringeFamous is a blog covering the Minneapolis/St.Paul independent theatre scene, written by a group of quasi-anonymous “Twin Cities theater professionals.” They do year-round coverage (as of March of this year, anyway), but you can imagine how frothy they are over the impending Fringe Festival. [twitter: @fringefamous]

Community Design Group is “an urban planning and policy consulting group” touting “a people-centered, asset-based approach to urban planning, policy and design.” (via mediation)

Edina Realty now offers foreclosure searching.

Previously, I had written a complaint or what you would call what I thought was an overreaching fee for being able to use the dog parks in Minneapolis. I guess I actually should be grateful that we have the amount of Dog Parks in Minneapolis we do. My dog still loves the dog park, but if I lived in St. Paul I guess I would have more trouble finding one.

According to this article on the Twin Cities Daily Planet St. Paul has only one dog park, but they are trying to get more. The article also talks about the Minneapolis fees and how they came about.

That’s the sign on the awning of Caffetto’s. It’s a coffee shop in Puerto Morelos, a town about 20 minutes south of Cancun. There’s a Caffetto’s here, at 22nd and Lyndale. Same owners. There’s a photo on the wall showing all three of their locations.

I had the pleasure of spending a week in Puerto Morelos. Apparently, there’s a huge Twin Cities connection. There are lots of people from here who have houses, condos, hotels, stores, tour outfits and whatnot down there. There are lots of people from here who retire down there. There are lots of people from here who just visit a lot down there.

If you know the right person, you can rent a house or arrange some other things for yourself if you go down there.
Read more

See the Declaration of Indepence in Saint Paul. An original printing will be on display for public viewing at Saint Paul City Hall/Ramsey County Courthouse, September 2-4. (via Saint Paul-itics)

MPR: Ramsey County creates gas siphoning report line. To which I say, “Isn’t that what the non-emergency police line is for?” Enh, just program it into your phone, I guess. That phone number is not actually included in the MPR story and I could not find it on Ramsey County’s website, so I’m assuming it’s not actually set up yet and suggest you just call the county in the mean time (651-266-8500). There is, however a nice Gather video demonstration of gas siphoning.

Twin Cities Streets for People has the scoop on the Streetcar Feasibility Study that was presented to Minneapolis City Council in January. In case you need it laid out for you in plain English, or in case you missed it the first time around (or both). I’m sloooowly coming around to the idea that, much as I like shiny trains and still firmly believe that the metro needs a comprehensive LRT system, there is a lot of opportunity in adequately funding and fleshing out our bus system and bringing back streetcars.

TC Biz Journal: I still can’t wrap my brain around this Denny Hecker/electric car thing. Just like my brain shorts when I see a bus drive by with Denny Hecker’s mug on it. (Y’all know I’ve been scarred by Denny.)

Northstar News and Updates: “Northstar Commuter Rail achieved another milestone recently when the first locomotive rolled off the production line.”

MPLS Mirror goes to the Lake Street Festival and Art Car Parade. Photos and video!