Redd's Week In Review

It's been a pretty crazy week here in our little corner of the Internet. Tonight I'll blog about the awesome stuff we did!

Seventh Street Entry - Blue Scholars, Bambu, Grynch, and Mally

Previous to getting here in town, Blu had raved about First Avenue as a venue for a while. He has played there before, but on top of that, he's a HUGE Prince fan and Purple Rain was filmed there.

First Avenue has played host to hundreds of amazing
 bands playing the Twin Cities.

Blu, the Prince fan.

So when I found out a hip-hop outfit that I am rather fond of was playing at the Seventh Street Entry, I bought tickets and requested the night off work.

Boy, am I glad I did! This show was epic, sold out, and had a ton of energy. The show opened up with Mally, a local hip hop artist that had a pretty big following of his own. Seattle artist Grynch followed, and was pretty great as well. But the highlight of my night, despite buying tickets specifically to see the Blue Scholars, was the artist called Bambu. He's from Los Angeles, just like me (I grew up in a small eastern suburb called La Puente), and according to Blu, a self described musical know-it-all, is one of the members of Cypress Hill.

I'm not going to lie here - Bambu is an angry, angry guy, but he's angry about all the right things. The topics he rhymes about are all very poignant social justice issues, from domestic violence to bullying to wage inequality in the US. These are all things we should be acutely aware of, especially when living in the city, where it's more difficult to turn a blind eye to the poor. 

After his performance though, he said something that I have to share with everyone reading. Listening to him or any other musical artist that preaches revolution is one thing - getting out and making the changes is another, completely. Anyone who considers themselves a community revitalizer or anyone that wants to become one needs to remember that change always starts with you. Those of us living in North, or any other Minneapolis neighborhood need to remember that to create a good neighborhood, we have to start by being good neighbors. That was my take home message. We may not be able to change the nation, but we can change our homes, and our blocks, and we just need to start with that.

The Lowry Café

I have been wanting to try this place since hearing about it from the realtor who first turned me on to North as a cool place to be. On Sunday, we finally got to have some eats, and they weren't too bad! It's classic diner fare, not too expensive, and close to home, all things I like to have in a restaurant. Food porn follows!

The Cafe features very spacious seating. You could probably
 squeeze 6 into this table.

This was some sort of sandwich...not quite up my alley but,
then again, I wasn't the one eating it.

Mushroom and swiss burger.

The Durango burger, which I was immediately envious of.

I was in the mood for breakfast, so I had a Denver omelette
with hollandaise sauce on top. The hash browns were AMAZING

The food here was good, but I'll skip the hollandaise next time - it didn't blow me away like the hollandaise from my two favorite Uptown haunts, The Egg and I and the Uptown Diner. The verdict here is: good food, good prices, close to home. I'll definitely visit again.

Minneapolis Indie Expo

The Twin Cities are home to lots of very talented artists in the community, many of which are involved in creating comic art. Blu, me, and our friends Daniel and Eleanor got to visit the Minneapolis Indie Expo on Sunday after lunch. It was pretty awesome, and I wish we would have gotten to stay for longer. We spent a few hours touring the various booths. I felt bad for taking pictures, so you won't see too many here.

MIX took place at the Soap Factory this year, an art space donated by Pillsbury in 1995. The Soap Factory hosts a lot of art shows and installations of Minnesotan artists, as well as artists all around the world. 

The place is boarded up quite creatively. If only they could do this
in our hood....

It's hard to emphasize that the place was PACKED. It was
awesome to see so many people interested in local artists!

I managed to score an awesome book, illustrated by Zander Cannon and Kevin Cannon, Minneapolis artists. It's an intricately illustrated, highly technical (do these even go together? wow!) book about DNA - everything from structure, to replication, to the basics of genetics. If I had had this book during some of my more difficult molecular genetics classes they might have gone just a little easier...

Very, very cool.

They also had a similar book about evolution, as well as some cute children's titles at their booth as well. I am definitely looking forward to purchasing more art from these guys in the future.

That's it for now! I hope you enjoyed reading. In my next post, I'll write about my adventures in knitting and wonder at how the hell I'm going to dress myself for winter (I'm still in denial).