Minneapolis Tour Diary (Part 1)
[Housekeeping: Click here for the lowdown on this month's mix contest. Pretend Readers, you are beating the Geography Nerds by a Clinton-ly slim margin.]
I arrive in Minneapolis with half of Canasta on Tuesday night, with the other half driving directly from Chicago to soundcheck the next day. In the morning, miraculously, there are pancakes made for us at the house we're crashing in. I can't imagine future tour accommodations will be this hospitable. In the house with us are two very young children who speak more German than I did after a year of night classes. If that doesn't encourage you to start learning another language right away, I don't know what will.
The rest of my car has social and professional visits to pay, so I have a full day to do some solo exploring. I've heard the city has great neighborhood hangouts (a trait it shares with Chicago), so I set an aggressive agenda of hanging out in various places for the day. My first stop is a queer-friendly coffeeshop near the river. In Chicago most queer-oriented businesses predominantly attract either men or women, rarely both, but this shop reminded me that in smaller cities don't get to be so picky or self-segregating.
My second stop is "Eat Street", a strip with a self-explanatory commercial plan. What I don't expect is a plethora of Vietnamese grocers and competing Banh Mi sandwich shops. I have a "mock duck" sandwich and move up the street to coffeeshop #2, a joint a few blocks away from the art school with a correspondingly artistic interior. Extending the theme, I kill a few hours at the modern art museum before soundcheck. While I'm there, I notice a lot of teenagers dressed in (their version of) club clothes and overhear various pre-concert plans being made. This does not strike me as an Iron & Wine crowd (playing next door to us tonight), and eventually I piece together that Kanye West is playing across the street. I'm reminded of the scene in Hedwig and the Angry Inch when Hedwig opens the door of the little seafood shack she's performing in and is cartoonishly blasted by light and sound coming from the competing Tommy show, also across the street.
There's enough love to go around for all three shows, though, and we have no trouble getting our share of club kids to fill up our corner of Minneapolis' music triangle. Getting back to Chicago the next day is a different story.
[to be continued...]
I arrive in Minneapolis with half of Canasta on Tuesday night, with the other half driving directly from Chicago to soundcheck the next day. In the morning, miraculously, there are pancakes made for us at the house we're crashing in. I can't imagine future tour accommodations will be this hospitable. In the house with us are two very young children who speak more German than I did after a year of night classes. If that doesn't encourage you to start learning another language right away, I don't know what will.
The rest of my car has social and professional visits to pay, so I have a full day to do some solo exploring. I've heard the city has great neighborhood hangouts (a trait it shares with Chicago), so I set an aggressive agenda of hanging out in various places for the day. My first stop is a queer-friendly coffeeshop near the river. In Chicago most queer-oriented businesses predominantly attract either men or women, rarely both, but this shop reminded me that in smaller cities don't get to be so picky or self-segregating.
My second stop is "Eat Street", a strip with a self-explanatory commercial plan. What I don't expect is a plethora of Vietnamese grocers and competing Banh Mi sandwich shops. I have a "mock duck" sandwich and move up the street to coffeeshop #2, a joint a few blocks away from the art school with a correspondingly artistic interior. Extending the theme, I kill a few hours at the modern art museum before soundcheck. While I'm there, I notice a lot of teenagers dressed in (their version of) club clothes and overhear various pre-concert plans being made. This does not strike me as an Iron & Wine crowd (playing next door to us tonight), and eventually I piece together that Kanye West is playing across the street. I'm reminded of the scene in Hedwig and the Angry Inch when Hedwig opens the door of the little seafood shack she's performing in and is cartoonishly blasted by light and sound coming from the competing Tommy show, also across the street.
There's enough love to go around for all three shows, though, and we have no trouble getting our share of club kids to fill up our corner of Minneapolis' music triangle. Getting back to Chicago the next day is a different story.
[to be continued...]
Labels: shows canasta, tour diary, travel
posted by Ian at 6/15/2008 04:34:00 PM
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