The four skyways jutting out from the IDS Center are among the busiest thoroughfares in Downtown. Despite the heavy traffic, there s something special and inviting about them. They are lined with large windows and don t feel as cramped as some of the other skyways in the city.
The New Central Library opened May 2006 and has quickly become a favorite Downtown hangout spot. The 353,000-square-foot library has all kinds of comfy places to nestle in with a good book.
The Cesar Pelli-designed library the crown jewel of the Minneapolis Public Library system has 25 community rooms, a Dunn Bros coffee shop, a Friends of the Minneapolis Public Library bookstore and a hip space for youth called Teen Central, a funky and relaxing space for teens to listen to music and read.
Beyond those spaces, each level features an inviting fireplace and lounging area for readers looking for a peaceful, quiet spot.
Compared to many Downtown streets, Nicollet Mall has some great assets the Farmers Market on Thursdays during the summer months, the friendly Mary Tyler Moore statute, Peavey Plaza and the New Central Library.
It s also the route for the annual TCF Holidazzle Parade that lights up Downtown during the holiday season.
In recent years, Nicollet Mall has become an outdoor dining destination during the summer months. Nearly every restaurant features outdoor caf/s. During the summer of 2005, buses were rerouted off of Nicollet Mall to make it a more inviting place for diners.
Another proposal under consideration would reroute express buses off of the Mall, reducing congestion on the roadway.
On a warm summer s day, there is perhaps no better Downtown destination than Loring Park. Framed by the skyline, the Walker Art Center and Sculpture Garden, Loring Park is a great venue for all kinds of festivals from the Loring Park Art Festival to the Walker s Summer Movies and Music Series.
Loring Park also features several walking and biking paths, a perennial garden and the Loring Park Community Arts Center a renovated Spanish mission-style building that hosts a variety of neighborhood activities.
Loring Park also features a statute of Ole Bull, the noted 19th-century Norwegian violinist, and the dandelion-shaped Berger Fountain, which ran dry last summer. The popular fountain might be turned on again next spring.
Ninth Hennepin the legendary corner made famous by a Tom Waits song was transformed this year with the arrival of the Chambers Hotel, a boutique hotel housed in the former Fairmont Hotel and ProColor building.
The posh hotel, developed by Ralph Burnet, features 60 rooms, an art gallery and the Chambers Kitchen, a restaurant concept by international chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten.
The hotel is filled with art from the 1980s Young British Artist movement.
Standout pieces include a lifelike, 3-D bust of an older man called (Old) No One, a piece by Canadian artist Evan Penny. The sculpture features real hair and is lined with wrinkles that make it look very realistic. A 1,750-pound sculpture of a gorilla with a missing arm, a piece by Angus Fairhurst, serves as the centerpiece of the hotel s courtyard.
The Chambers also just unveiled a new 256-square-foot ice bar for the winter that resembles a giant ice cube.
The freshwater eel, unagi, at Origami is a pale delight, and the mochi is a rice cream dream, but if you re a true sushi adventurer, you ll order omakase (the chef chooses the sushi for you). You won t know what you ll be served until you re actually ordering, but it s certain to be fresh, tasty to a startling degree and beautiful.
Remember? Those are the very reasons why you tried sushi in the first place, back when it was considered wild to do so.
The opening line on Oceanaire s website is a compelling pitch for the restaurant: As sleek as a 1930s ocean liner, yet as relaxed as a dinner on the shore, the Oceanaire provides the perfect setting to enjoy ultra-fresh seafood, flown in daily from around the world.
Fresh fish on the menu in late December included Ahi Tuna, Baramundi, Blue Marlin, Swordfish, Arctic Char, Mahi Mahi, Red Grouper, Shetland Island Salmon and Walleye.
It goes without saying that Palomino s lunch menu goes beyond the standard fare one might find at other lunch hot spots. Menu highlights include the Chop Chop Salad, a hearty helping of smoked turkey, wine salami, basil, garbanzo beans, Parmesan, romaine, tomatoes and balsamic vinaigrette; prosciutto and Roma tomato pizza; the rotisserie lamb dip sandwich; and grilled chicken breast with mascarpone.
For lunch, which is served 11 a.m. 2 p.
m., The Local Irish Pub has several sandwich options for 9.99, including a Reuben, grilled veggie melt, walleye, pot roast beef, grilled chicken or the Local burger.
The fish and chips are another popular entr/e.
Here s the tagline for Brit s Pub: There s no better place to tip a pint and play with your bowls. Serving scholars and scoundrels since 1900.
In the summer, Brit s 10,000-square-foot rooftop lawn bowling court is the place to be.
The pub opened in 1990 and has since gone through a number of expansions to accommodate its growing popularity.
Brit s menu includes traditional pub fair like fish and chips, shepherd s pie, and bangers and mash, among other things.
I have an antiphilosophy, he says. This whole fad of doing these protracted-name recipes that all look like phallic structures on plates, I loathe that. [They] are put out by cooks that want to be in the next pretentious chef magazine.
That s what I hate. We do comfort food, for the most part . .
. I m doing recipes that my aunt did, and my mom and dad, and some of my old recipes. It s a little more eclectic here .
. . we ve developed a niche here where we do the best breakfast in town.
Try the native-harvested, hand-parched wild rice (with dried blueberries), sweetened cranberries and roasted hazelnuts that make up Hell s porridge the whole thing is drizzled with warm maple syrup and cream.
Try, too, the lemon-ricotta pancakes and the huevos rancheros topped with Rosti potatoes (grated taters grilled with bacon, sweet onions, chives and scallions).
Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name and the names of your favorite sports teams.
Champps is just the place for those times.
Vikings fans dressed in signature purple and gold, and Timberwolves fans bedecked in their black, blue, white, green and gray (note to owner Glen Taylor: cut down on team colors) gather to cheer the hometown heroes.
They also gather to down the occasional brew and munch out on traditional sports chow (try the 4-Alarm Burger and its habanero sauce) while engaging in time-honored activities such as questioning the lineage of referees and opposing players.
How much of a good thing is too much? It s a question that has yet to be answered to everyone s satisfaction, though Manny s loyal clientele might well argue that even the three-pound double porterhouse steak served at the iconic man s-man steakhouse is not too much of a great thing.
Manny s Kansas City meats are dry-aged: hung in a special cooler for two weeks while bathed in ozone-enhanced air to retard spoilage.
Then the beef is shipped here in cryovac bags to be broiled to perfection.
As they say at Manny s, life is good at the top of the food chain.
If you re sick of the sameness of the chain coffeeshops, e.
p. atelier is your kind of independent java source.
Local authors will sometimes read to you or discuss their latest writings (typically on Thursday evenings), acoustic musicians will serenade you on Tuesday nights, and visual artists delight your eyes and challenge your brain any time you enter the Elliot Park s atelier (pronounced at l-yay; French for artist s workshop ).
The shop features a slew of good stuff from around town, including B W Specialty Coffee, Tea Source teas, At Last! Gourmet Foods, Naked Juices, and delicacies from Denny s Fifth Avenue Bakery and French Meadow Bakery.
The whole vision we have is blending coffee, community and culture, co-owner Diane Ingram says.
It s the place Downtown workers can gather after a hard day. They don t care that their pants are rumpled, their faces creased and their hair undone. Work is finished, and it s time to hoist a brew, curse the boss and exchange gossip at a watering hole that is without pretension or glitz.
It doesn t have bling, but it does serve terrific, vast expanses of burger and big baskets of deep-fried, heavenly fries.
Cuzzy s is where your nose gratefully goes from the proverbial grindstone to the lip of a frosty beer.
It s late, after bar close and your stomach is rumbling?
Where do you turn? Odds are it s Pizza Luc/. Menu highlights include the Ruby Rae, an upside-down pizza with a layer of red sauce topped with cheese, sausage, spinach and tomatoes, and the Rustler, a pizza topped with mock duck, banana peppers, pineapple, red onion and a variety of cheeses.
There are a few establishments around town who will try to lure the innocent (and even not-so-innocent) after-work Downtown employee to a happy hour with promises of food riches spread like Fort Knox s treasure before you only a lot more edible and cheaper. Typically, once you get in, plunk down a couple of bucks, you find out the shrimp are microscopic, or worse, were consumed 30 minutes before you arrived.
Not so at Rossi s.
The happy hour riches are real and plentiful and of a size fit for consumption by humans ravenous after a day in the cube.
Right now, their happy hour menu features steamed Canadian lobster tails, eight-ounce prime rib, steak frites and jambalaya on various weeknights; all you need do is pay 7 to get your plentiful portion. Drinks are cheap and the atmosphere is relaxed, making the cube recede into memory.
For the first time in major league history, a team that hadn t led its division all year, clinched first place on the last day of the season. Though the hometown Twins went on to receive a dismal thumping in the playoffs, their regular-season triumph has fans looking ahead to next year. (Meanwhile, continue to aim prayers toward Cooperstown on behalf of Bert Blyleven.
)
The team features a slew of young stars All-Star catcher, American League batting champ and heartthrob Joe Mauer, AL Most Valuable Player and first baseman Justin Morneau, and pitching phenoms Francisco Liriano and Boof Bonser all of whom figure to get even better in 2007.
Factor in Cy Young Award winner Johan Santana and the Piranhas (Jason Tyner, Jason Bartlett, Luis Castillo and Nick Punto), and the Twins will be favorites to repeat their role as Central Division champs next season.
If you take I-35 south for a while, you ll come to a place where there s a political party whose name provides an apt description of the Walker Art Center: the Institutional Revolutionary Party.
If you ignore the politics involved, you ll see the Mexican and Minneapolis entities both proclaiming a dedication to eternal change.
The Walker, as an institution, continually pushes itself to creatively present modern art to a public often reluctant to embrace the challenges presented by the form. It has, amazingly enough, been repeatedly able to make the form not only palatable to the mainstream, but downright fun certainly a working definition of success for any art gallery.
Like so many politicians, the Target Center might ve been chosen by the electorate as the lesser of two evils. It s not that it s such a great place to see Kevin Garnett playing out the string with the Minnesota Timberwolves. It s very possible that voters determined that the Metrodome is simply too hideous to approve of in any way.
Of course, the Target does also serve as host to the occasional truck pull, rodeo or Dixie Chicks concert, so it s not as if its 831,533 square feet are always empty when Garnett isn t being his spectacular self in town.
The names that have passed through its doors and been shouted out from the audience cover eras and genres like no venue or combination of venues anywhere in town. Kool and the Gang and Korn.
B.B. King, the Beastie Boys and Beck.
The Cramps, The Cure, The Kinks, The Ramones, Ray Charles and James Brown. Donovan, Duran Duran, Danzig and DMX. Pearl Jam, Public Enemy, Patti Smith and, of course, Minnesota s own Prince.
The name-dropping and stars cover the outside walls of the venerable institution that somehow stays alive, no matter how long the odds and how high the bills.
It s one of the triumphs of new-millennium Minneapolis, wherein major arts institutions have experienced unprecedented expansion of their physical resources.
The Guthrie s graceful curves might make it the most beautiful of all the new glittering arts buildings, while its three new performance venues have enhanced its national reputation as a must-attend theater.
There are no longer bad sightlines or What d he say? seats in the new, deep blue Guthrie.
The facility shines as surely and brilliantly as any of the stars it will embrace over the coming decades.
Some of the best of what we humans can do is gathered at the MIA. Art from around the world has been put together in what is arguably the best art museum in the Upper Midwest.
The MIA s stunning collections of Asian art (including the permanent Korean, Southeast Asian, Himalayan, Indian and Islamic collections), Native American, African, photographs and textiles, among others, are all available to the public for free.
The museum constantly seeks to expand its audience and please its current patrons, as upcoming exhibitions featuring San Francisco psychedelia, Uzbek embroidery, Georgia O Keefe and Nordic landscape painting make clear.
Quivering and quaking fantasies come to life at The Saloon, where the beats are spun out by DJs every night of the week. You can shake it to Latino dance music on Tuesdays, industrial dance on Mondays (for fans of Nietzsche and Spetsnaz), and retro tunes on Sundays, for example.
On Saturday nights, DJ David B. keeps the action undulating until three in the a.m.
Every time you walk into CorAzoN, a quaint gift shop carved out of an old building on Washington Avenue, there s something new a unique painting by a local artist hanging on the wall or a new line of thank-you cards by a local designer.
Retailer Susan Zdon opened the eclectic store in May 2005 to showcase a variety of unique gifts, including jewelry, furniture, home d/cor, stationary, beauty products and women s clothing.
Zdon and the other people who work at her store are always eager to share the story behind each item for sale in the store, too.
And here s another reason to drop in they always have a bowl of Swedish Fish candy near the cash register.
Macy s is the new kid on the block, but for many shoppers it still has a familiar feel. Macy s replaced the Marshall Field s flag in September 2006, but many longtime store traditions remain intact.
When Macy s took over, it announced plans to replace some designer labels at the store with Macy s private brands and expand the store s plus-size and petite sections.
Community leaders, meanwhile, have been eager to see the changes at the department store generate positive energy for Downtown s retail scene.
I m glad to see that Marshall Field s spirit of giving will live on through Macy s North, Rybak said in a prepared statement about Macy s arrival.
As a cultural and retail icon of our community, we value Macy s continued commitment to the people of Minneapolis.
It would be easy to spend an entire day browsing through the rows of books and other items at the two-level Barnes Noble and Nicollet Mall. According to its website, Barnes Noble boasts some impressive statistics.
Besides selling books, it sells tons of coffee and is the second-largest coffeehouse in the country. Between the stores and its online shopping site, it sells nearly 445 million books a year.
The Metro Market opened last summer and is open seven days a week, 7 a.
m. 11 p.m.
The store s owners opened the small market to fill a niche for a small market with in a couple of blocks from the new condo developments in the fast-growing North Loop neighborhood.
Besides basic grocery items, the store features a selection of specialty cheeses, fresh sandwiches, bakery items, a salad bar and a coffee bar featuring a special Downtown blend.
The Brian Graham Salon is located in the old Pacific Hotel building in the North Loop.
According to the salon s mission statement on its website, it serves as a contemporary sanctuary for beauty. The salon offers a variety of styling, waxing and make-up services.
Avant carries an extensive line of Aveda products and also offers a wide range of beauty services, from color treatments to permanents.
The salon bills itself as a comfortable and relaxing environment designed to make its customers happy.
Treadmill running can be mind numbingly boring, but at the Downtown YWCA at least you have passersby to watch on Nicollet Mall. The gym has a row of treadmills lining windows facing the mall.
New fitness classes include Hip Hop Aerobics and Triple Threat Express an hour-long class featuring aerobics, resistance training and stretching and yoga.
Antiques River has been selling collectibles and fine antiques in the Warehouse District for a quarter century. Besides a variety of furnishings, the antique dealer offers a host of other services, including appraising, consigning and providing assistance in purchasing antiques or holding estate sales.
Bachman s is one of the state s best-known florists and one of the largest floral and nursery operations in the world. The company has been in business since 1885, when its founder Henry Bachman started out with a plot of vegetables in South Minneapolis an area that serves as firm s headquarters today. The US Bank Plaza Bachman s is among several in the Twin Cities.
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