31 Things I Want You to Know I Love About the Twin Cities When We're Not Under a Violent Occupation by Federal Agents
1. We're the home of A Klingon Christmas Carol, a.k.a The Christmas Carol "in the original Klingon." Actors in Klingon make-up, speaking Klingon, tell the story of a cowardly Klingon who is visited by three spirits and regains his honor.
2. People's Pride in Powerhorn Park, an escape from the corporate Pride downtown, with free food, free clothing exchange, and amazing local artists.
3. If the sidewalk in front of your house in St. Paul cracks, you can get it replaced with one with a poem stamped into it. Any resident of the city can submit a short poem in English or another language to a contest to be added to the bank of poems used.
4. The beautiful murals and mosaics down Lake Street, illustrating the different groups that have immigrated to the area over the years and the amazing artists they brought with them.
5. The Smallest Museum in Saint Paul, a defunct fire hose cabinet outside of Workhorse Coffee that features ever-changing small but beautiful, thought-provoking, and wonderful exhibits.
6. The cat tour where you walk through the Wedge neighborhood taking pictures of cats.
7. The secret art gallery in the alley behind the Mississippi Market co-op where someone has painted words onto shards of mirror.
8. A 20 foot pencil that gets annually sharpened.
9. Going to the closest Native American coffee shop every October and stocking up on bear grease for my aching back.
10. 2nd highest number of theatre seats in the country after New York, baybeeeeee!
11. I can't just list theatres or we'll be here all day, but the May Day Parade put on by Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre with the most amazing and evocative puppets and masks.
12. When you're marching in a pro-immigrant rally down Lake Street and everyone is cheering and whooping and honking their horn and the Somali community members run out of their businesses with cold drinks in the summer and hot sambusas in the winter
14. That moment when all the cottonwoods shed their fluffy white seeds in spring and it looks like we've been covered in snow again
15. That other moment in spring when the lilacs are blooming and you can't walk five feet without smelling a lilac
16. And then it rains and all the cherry trees bloom and the entire city smells like candy
17. All of the art on the Green Line stations tying directly into the history and culture of each neighborhood
18. Midtown Global Market, where you can get delicious Lebanese cheese, bubble tea, tacos, camel burgers, Scandinavian sandwiches, Alaskan Native hot sauce, and more, all under one roof
19. The Hmong farmer's market near my library, the most reliable place to get the vegetables I want that I can't find anywhere else and also a place I could buy an entire bushel basket of hot peppers if I wanted
20. Whoever is drawing fat chickens all over town
21. Whoever is drawing pubic hair on lamp posts
22. Fireweed Community Workshops, a masks-required woodworking workshop dedicated to making woodworking welcoming and accessible to people who aren't straight white men
23. Naomi Kritzer's incredibly specific local election guides every year, and the way she uses it to raise money for local classrooms
24. The little faucet at the back of the Saint Paul Cathedral with the sign that says 'free holy water'
25. The Ecuadorian women selling mango with tajin on the street corners when work lets out
25. The trails by the river where you can make a turn onto the beach and have an equal chance of coming across a beaver or a live college production of "Dune"
26. The U of M experimental garden where they've found a cactus that can survive Minnesota winters (it's from the mountains of Peru)
27. The way I have seen lost keys and ID badges get hung up on branches of trees and left there for the person to return and find, untouched, for months
28. Urban foraging wild grapes, serviceberries, and mulberries
29. That morning I walked into downtown St. Paul, frozen, silent, still, empty but for the pervasive and delicious smell of bacon, a mystery until I came upon a whole pig being slowly roasted over the coals in front of a fancy French restaurant
30. The roving bands of wild turkeys
31. The fact that you are never more than a 5 minute walk from a coffee shop, bike repair shop, or combination coffee shop/bike repair shop
