New art gallery in LynLake PAGE A4 • Man drowns in Bde Maka Ska PAGE A7 • COVID cases by neighborhood PAGE A10
June 25– July 8, 2020 Vol. 31, No. 13 southwestjournal.com
INSIDE FUJI YA CLOSES
‘THEY SHOULDN’T BE TOSSED’
It was the state’s first Japanese restaurant A3
FIXING THE MPD
Uptown shooting highlights rise in violence Criminologist fears city entering a chaotic period By Zac Farber and Andrew Hazzard
Eleven people were wounded in a Saturday night shooting in Uptown that sent a large crowd of people fleeing a hail of bullets. The incident has sparked a conversation about public safety in the neighborhood and city. The shooting happened around 12:30 a.m. on June 21 at Lagoon & Hennepin. Some survivors were taken to Hennepin County Medical Center and others showed up at local hospitals in private cars. Police say none of their injuries are life-threatening. Police Chief Medaria Arradondo called the shooting “tragic and senseless violence.” He said there was no connection to George Floyd’s May 25 killing or to the boisterous celebrations and drag race-style burnouts at Lagoon & Hennepin the evening of June 19. With many Minneapolis entertainment venues closed, Arradondo said, activity is “being decompressed into other parts of our city where more crowds are gathering larger than they typically would.” Police initially believed a man who died from a gunshot wound that Saturday night was a victim in the shooting, but put out a statement on June 23 saying the fatality came from a shooting downtown. The man, identified by family and friends as 27-year-old husband, father and barber Cody C. Pollard, was shot in the North Loop area, police say.
Three opinions on what comes next A9
VOICES FROM THE PANDEMIC
PRESERVING THE MURALS MADE DURING THE UPRISING Stories from local residents A14
HOME GUIDE
Murals painted on the boarded up windows of Burch Steak in Lowry Hill. Photo by Isaiah Rustad
By Nate Gotlieb
In the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing, hundreds of brightly colored murals were painted on buildings around the Twin Cities with messages of grief, anger and hope. Illustrations of Floyd’s face and those of other black people killed by police. Phrases of protest like “Justice for George” and “Stop killing us!” Flowers, hearts, clasped hands and raised fists. Many murals were organized by businesses shuttered during the unrest. Some were coordinated by nonprofits. Others were made in the spur of the moment by impassioned artists. Discussions are now underway about how to preserve the painted plywood for posterity.
Hardware store sales soar — and more B1
HEATHER’S
SEE MURALS / PAGE A18
Shootings spike
The Minneapolis Police Department’s confusion over where Pollard was shot highlights the hectic nature of the Uptown shooting and the large amount of gun violence in Minneapolis this summer.
Pregnant in a pandemic
SEE UPTOWN SHOOTING / PAGE A18
Couples face isolation, missed milestones and hard choices
Lucia’s manager’s new restaurant delivers diner satisfaction B14
COVID COLORING BOOK
Co-written by a Lowry Hill doctor B15
By Becca Most
Laura Hanstad, a doula who lives in Kenny, delivered her fifth baby on the first day of quarantine, March 16. Because doulas are not classified as essential workers in Minnesota, many couples who were planning to have doulas present at their hospital births have struggled with the current rule preventing more than one support person from attending a birth. Forced to choose between having a partner or a doula beside them, some couples have opted to communicate with their doulas via laptop during labor. Since the coronavirus pandemic started, Hanstad has been taking more precautions when assisting clients. She’ll don a mask, talk through comfort level and personal boundaries and have two to three other doulas on-call in SEE PREGNANCY / PAGE A19
Kingfield residents Jocelyn Keller and Ethan Johnson with their baby Ilse Bea Johnson. Navigating pregnancy during COVID-19 has “been a wild ride,” Keller says. Submitted photo
Jeff Neppl vacuums glass outside John Fluevog Shoes in Uptown the morning of June 21 after a shooting the night before left 11 people wounded. Photo by Zac Farber
A2 June 25–July 8, 2020 / southwestjournal.com
southwestjournal.com / June 25–July 8, 2020 A3
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Galeria do Beija Flor is a new gallery seeking to feature emerging artists from Minnesota and across the world. Photo by Andrew Hazzard
LYNLAKE
Gallery seeks to promote local artists A new art gallery in LynLake is seeking to shine a light on new and emerging artists. Galeria do Beija Flor, a new mixed media gallery from married couple Byron Bradley and David Rubedor, is now open at 28th & Lyndale. Rubedor, a photographer, and Bradley, a curator, developed a love for art through extensive travel, mainly to Portuguesespeaking countries (Rubedor speaks the language) like Brazil and Mozambique. At Galeria do Beija Flor, they are curating a mix of work collected during their travels and pieces by emerging local artists. Rubedor said they try to look for artists from diverse backgrounds and disabled artists. They also try to have a mix of mediums. The bright gallery, in a former framing studio, is full of statues, paintings, photography, glasswork, jewelry, woodwork and more. “Our focus is really on supporting new and emerging artists,” Rubedor said. Trying to have work at different price points is also important to them. “Our thing is to make art affordable,” Bradley said. “Art should be for everybody.” Rubedor and Bradley live in Northeast, and they used to get together with other artists to rent restaurant spaces for pop-up sale events in Minneapolis, but they wanted a gallery of
their own. A two-year search led them to look at about 40 spaces in the city, mostly in Northeast. The old Opening Night framing studio was the only site they toured on the south side of town, but they instantly connected to the building and location. They worked with a contractor to create an environment they hope will feel casual and inviting — and be a good site for featured artist events when the coronavirus pandemic ends. “We wanted this to be a comfortable space,” Rubedor said. Galeria do Bejia Flor officially opened March 5, which Rubedor said will probably be remembered as the worst time ever to start a business. During the COVID-19-caused shutdown, they focused on building up their website and online store. The gallery reopened on May 20, only to shutter again due to civil unrest. Now they are easing back into business and inviting people to see the gallery and shop. Through July 1, 10% of all art proceeds will be donated to Second Harvest Heartland.
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The mall formerly known as Calhoun Square Uptown’s shopping mall will no longer be known as Calhoun Square. Northpond Partners, a Chicago-based firm that purchased the mall in late 2019, announced June 20 that it will “expedite” the process of renaming the property “in solidarity with the city of Minneapolis and the Black Lives Matter Movement.” The mall, which opened in 1984, was named after Lake Calhoun, which was named after John C. Calhoun, a former vice president known for defending the institution of slavery and who had no clear connections to the state of Minnesota. The lake has since been retitled Bde Maka Ska, its Dakota name, and a number of institutions around the Uptown area have followed suit. When Northpond acquired the building,
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A4 June 25–July 8, 2020 / southwestjournal.com
LYNLAKE
Fuji Ya, Minneapolis’ original Japanese restaurant, closes
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Fuji Ya, a longtime destination for sushi and Japanese cuisine in Minneapolis, has closed its LynLake restaurant. The popular dinner and happy-hour spot was open for takeout service during the early weeks of the statewide dine-in restaurant closures due to COVID-19, but on May 7 announced it would be temporarily closed “until further notice.” While no further posts have been made on social media, Fuji Ya’s website indicates it won’t be returning. “Thank you for your support. Unfortunately we are closing our doors,” Fuji Ya wrote on its website. Restaurant representatives could not be reached for comment. The Fuji Ya building is currently for sale, according to Adam Barrett, a director with commercial real estate firm Carlson Partners, the company listing the property. He confirmed that Fuji Ya is no longer operating at the building. Fuji Ya lays claim to being the first Japanese restaurant in Minnesota. Founded in 1959 by Reiko Weston, the restaurant relocated to a longtime home on the Mississippi River in 1968. After a hiatus in the 1990s, Fuji Ya reopened in LynLake in the early 2000s. The restaurant was well-regarded by residents and local media. Southwest Journal readers regularly voted it the best sushi spot
Fuji Ya, Minnesota’s first Japanese restaurant, has closed after 60 years in business. Photo by Andrew Hazzard
in Southwest. Local chefs like Hide Tozowa of Kyatchi and Matthew Kazama of Ramen Kazama both spent time in the Fuji Ya kitchen. — Andrew Hazzard
Fuji Ya Where: 600 W. Lake St. Info: fujiyasushi.com
UPTOWN
Western Governors University Offers Scholarships to those Impacted by COVID-19 The pandemic has led to an increase in unemployment and job insecurity for many. While businesses and the community at-large begin reopening, many who have been furloughed or laid off are still dealing with the difficulties associated with lost income. Those impacted may find now is the time to strengthen their professional skillsets. A great way to do this is by furthering education from the safety and convenience of their homes. Western Governors University is a leader in providing fully online education to adults interested in advancing their careers. The nonprofit university offers 60plus undergraduate and graduate degree programs in the high-demand fields of business, K-12 teacher education, information technology and health professions. WGU pioneered the online competency-based education model, which enables students to leverage previous education, training and work experience to move through courses at their own pace. This means spending less time on known subject matter and more time on material that still needs to be mastered. This model, coupled with WGU’s flat-rate tuition of $3,500 per six-month term, allows students to accelerate degree completion at low cost. People experiencing income loss may feel hesitant returning to school, but the investment is worth it. WGU grads report an increase in income of $12,600 within two years of graduation. Students can take advantage of financial aid and scholarship opportunities. In fact, WGU is now offering up to $3 million in Bright Future Scholarships to new students who have lost income due to the pandemic and want to earn a bachelor’s or master’s degree. Each scholarship is valued at up to $3,000. Eligible students can apply at wgu.edu. This pandemic has proven challenging, especially for those out of work. Use this time to begin completing a degree. It could open the door to future opportunities.
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Vegan destination Fig + Farro closes in Calhoun Square Known for its creative menu, upscale atmosphere and climate-centric mission, Uptown vegan eatery Fig + Farro announced it would be closing permanently due to the coronavirus pandemic. Jessi Fister, one of hundreds of customers to express their sadness on Facebook, said Fig + Farro stood out from other vegan-friendly eateries in the city because it went beyond just creating replicas of meat dishes. Instead of offering only a veggie burger, signature dishes like the jackfruit barbacoa and buffalo cauliflower wings helped elevate plantbased foods into mainstream dining. Fig + Farro hosted a number of events including climate change dinners, yoga lessons and movie nights that often centered on educating and introducing Minnesotans to environmentally friendly diets and habits. The restaurant also helped plant more than 71,000 trees since December 2018, one tree for each customer.
Owner Michelle Courtright said that though she was very disappointed to close the restaurant, she was proud of how much they had accomplished since opening two years ago. Courtright is currently planning to establish a nonprofit that will work under the same mission of plant-based cooking and climate change activism. She said she wants to write vegan cookbooks, train professional chefs and continue to work with the United Nations to advocate for climate-centric policies. The restaurant announced it would close on May 31, but damage sustained during the civil unrest accelerated those plans and it officially shut down on May 27. — Becca Most
Fig + Farro Where: 3001 Hennepin Ave. Info: figandfarro.com
Vegan destination Fig + Farro has closed in Calhoun Square. File photo
southwestjournal.com / June 25–July 8, 2020 A5
Restaurants take it day by day By Becca Most
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Ashlyn Kehoe and Allie Miller enjoy sweet potato fries under a tent at The Lynhall on June 16 as part of the eatery’s new patio dining. Photo by Becca Most
Erecting a large white tent spanning the length of its parking lot, The Lynhall took advantage of the easing of patio dining restrictions in early June. Although navigating the recent windy days and heat waves has been hard, owner Anne Spaeth said the pandemic has taught her team to be more creative and resourceful. Shifting some of its traditionally family-style menu items to single-serving plates and shareable, bundled to-go dinners, The Lynhall has tried to roll with the punches despite running its operation on 25% of normal sales. “We’re just going to have to continue as a restaurant industry to … meet people where their comfort level is, and that’s exactly what we’ve been managing through all of this,” Spaeth said. Restaurant owners have been hit especially hard by the pandemic, and although some have been able to open for limited patio or inside dining on June 1, many restaurants have been taking it day by day, sometimes even hour by hour, to adjust their menus and staffing to shifting conditions. Although she loves patio season and has a patio large enough to comply with the governor’s social distancing requirements, Niki Stavrou said she’s not sure when it’ll be safe enough to dine inside her Cuban restaurant, Victor’s 1959 Cafe. Because people can’t wear masks while they’re eating, the risk that comes with table service is one of the defining factors preventing her from fully reopening. “It might seem overly cautious to some,” she said. “But there are others to consider — our
Rachel Sher, The Lynhall’s delivery driver, poses next to the restaurant’s new delivery truck on June 16. The Lowry Hill East eatery recently started making its own take-out deliveries in order to have more control over the delivery process and save money. Photo by Becca Most
employees and our customers are important; they’re people.” Known for its “Love” sandwich made with pulled pork and a mango guava barbeque sauce, Victor’s has had to limit what’s on the menu based on the budget and nearly weekly changes in deliveries. At the beginning of quarantine, Stavrou had trouble finding mangos and the specific type of steak she usually uses in her dishes. Other ingredient availabilities change week to week, making it hard to keep some meals available. “Even looking as far as five months ahead is daunting,” said Sam Peterson, owner of the Kingfield Japanese eatery Kyatchi. “It’s been busier than I’ve expected us to be, but I don’t know if it’ll be busy enough for us to make it.” Many of Peterson’s hot noodles and rice dishes don’t transport well as to-go items, and since the pandemic, it has also been harder to find sustainably caught fish. Despite the pandemic, he said, people are always going to want sushi, delivery and takeout meals, so businesses like his are just going to have to adjust to this new market of desires and needs. Hector Ruiz, owner of the Latin-fusion bistro Cafe Ena in Tangletown, said he is planning to take the summer at a loss and focus on planning for the future. He considered himself lucky to be able to open his patio and has been tweaking his menu to fall back on simpler ingredients and comfort foods to make it more affordable for his customers. He said now is the time to step up to the challenge and be creative with what you have. “If you cannot adjust to the challenge,” he said. “I think you have to kind of look for another type of job.” One additional difficulty Ruiz and other owners are facing is finding staff to come back and work as their businesses reopen. Ruiz said some of his former servers are satisfied with receiving unemployment checks and didn’t necessarily want to come back to work when he opened again. In order to stay in business, half the servers he’s hired are new, and Ruiz has had to spend more time training them on the protocols and menus. If one of his employees gets sick, he said, he might have to close down. “To be honest, I’m really scared for everyone with how this pandemic is going to react in the fall and the winter,” Ruiz said. “I cannot afford to be closed for another two weeks to a month … everything is on the line.”
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A6 June 25–July 8, 2020 / southwestjournal.com
18 HOLES FULLY REMODELED Damaged businesses MINI GOLF IN RICHFIELD work through ice Mini cream Golf insurance claims Grants seen as critical gap funding
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When state officials held a meeting at Midtown Global Market offering free insurance claim advice for Minneapolis businesses damaged during the civil unrest sparked by George Floyd’s killing, the room filled quickly and a line went out the door. With millions of dollars in damage along the Lake Street corridor, mainly to businesses owned and operated by immigrants in the East African and Latino community, merchants want to make sure they are following the right steps to get back on track. Moe Amaro operates three tobacco shops on or near Lake Street. One, Quality Tobacco in Whittier, was burned to the ground. The others, Uptown Tobacco in The Wedge and Hennepin Tobacco in East Isles, had most of their inventories stolen. Amaro, who said he blames Mayor Jacob Frey and Gov. Tim Walz for not protecting the city during the unrest, has filed insurance claims, but he hasn’t heard back yet and is worried his coverage may not be enough. “We’re waiting, we’re seeing what the city is doing,” Amaro said. But that could be a long wait. While Minneapolis officials at Midtown said people should expect support from the city, municipal aid won’t come soon. “Don’t expect we will have answers and solutions quickly,” said Erik Hansen of the city’s Community Planning and Economic Development department. Monica Romero, a CPED worker at the Midtown event, told business owners damaged buildings will have property tax relief from the assessor’s office and that damaged businesses won’t be bothered about city licenses for now. Rebuilding costs have been estimated at $100 million to over $500 million. Getting a firm figure on the damage “is going to take a long time,” Hansen said. Much of the damage is to private properties and businesses that have a range of insurance policies and companies. “An insurance claim can be straightforward, but it often is not,” said Margo Brownell, a partner with Maslon LLP, a Minneapolis law firm that is assisting people impacted by the unrest pro bono. Brownell, who specializes in insurance claim litigation, said claims from the unrest are mostly at early stages right now and could take up to a year to be resolved. The worst cases, of total loss, are often the easiest, she said, because insurers simply pay out the limit of the policy. For most people her firm has helped, the insurance companies have been good to deal with, Brownell said. But she has also noticed a number of issues, including a large amount of underinsurance. Most people have coverage for their building, coverage for their wares and coverage for income lost, but not everyone has all three. Merchants vary in how well they have documented inventories and how well their insurance policies have kept up with their businesses over the years, Brownell said. One business owner who reached out to Brownell had an insurance company that wanted to run a credit check on them before processing their claim, which shouldn’t happen, she said. Many people who contact the firm want to get a full understanding of their policy and double check the policy against adjuster claims, she said. “If they feel like there’s a lot happening
Uptown Tobacco in The Wedge had most of its inventory stolen during the unrest. Photo by Isaiah Rustad
[that] they are not understanding, they should seek help,” Brownell said. In addition to the Maslon firm, the University of Minnesota Law School has a clinic specializing in insurance law that may be able to assist people with claim questions. Representatives from the Minnesota Department of Commerce, which organized the meeting at Midtown, told business owners the state can help them file claims. The state advised businesses to file their claims immediately and offered some general tips on how to best go through the process. If businesses have claims denied or don’t feel the process was fully resolved, owners can file a complaint with the Commerce Department, which can try to settle the dispute in formal or informal ways. But not every impacted business owner around Lake Street has insurance. Tomasa Cortez, who owns Joyeria Ashley in Plaza Mexico, said she has no insurance that can help her replace a door that was broken in the unrest. But she said she will be able to get some help from the Lake Street Council, a local nonprofit that has raised more than $6 million to help repair the area. Dan Bryden, an audit director in the Commerce Department’s enforcement division, said the state has been surprised by how many damaged businesses are uninsured and underinsured. That fact supports a claim for larger, broad relief for impacted businesses, he said. “A lot of people either don’t have insurance or are underinsured and will need to go to grants,” he said. The Lake Street Council has begun accepting applications for an initial round of $3 million in grants to impacted businesses and nonprofits. Applicants must have experienced damage to their physical location along the Lake Street corridor from the St. Louis Park border to West River Parkway. They must be located south of 26th Street and north of 34th Street. Eligible firms can apply for up to $25,000, though the council says it expects the average award to be about $10,000. About 250 businesses were damaged in the area, and 33 were destroyed, the council said in a press release. “We have a resilient community, but funds like these are essential to rebuild our businesses and our culture,” Henry Jimenez, executive director of the Latino Economic Development Center, said in a release. “Many started their lives and their businesses with little in their pockets except a strong work ethic and entrepreneurial spirit. That spirit might be hurt, but it’s not broken.”
southwestjournal.com / June 25–July 8, 2020 A7
Man drowns in Bde Maka Ska
Team Larry Trusted for Twenty Years
By Andrew Hazzard / ahazzard@swjournal.com
A 19-year-old man who was pulled from the waters of Bde Maka Ska died at the hospital, officials say. On Tuesday, June 16, Minneapolis firefighters responded to two men drowning at Bde Maka Ska’s Thomas Beach, according to the Hennepin County Sheriff ’s Office. One man died after being transported to the Hennepin County Medical Center for treatment, the sheriff ’s office said on June 19. The victim has been identified as Mickenzie Tyler Martin, of Santa Clara, California, by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner. The other man was treated at HCMC and released, according to the sheriff ’s office, which is investigating the incident. The drowning occurred when a group of young adults was playing with a flotation device that was blown into the middle of the lake, according to the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. A 20-year-old man got caught in the weeds when he attempted to retrieve the object, and his 19-year-old friend tried to help him and ended up underwater for a longer period of time. Both were treated with CPR at the scene.
Another near drowning was reported June 16 at Lake Nokomis, where beachgoers pulled a struggling man out of the water and administered CPR, according to the sheriff ’s office. He remains in critical condition at HCMC. The next day, a woman was pulled from the water near Minnehaha Falls and treated with CPR by first responders before being sent to HCMC for treatment. Beaches in the city are open, though they have not been staffed with lifeguards this summer due to the coronavirus pandemic. Signs posted at beaches have advised people to be cautious and swim at their own risk. The MPRB started staffing popular beaches, including Thomas Beach, with lifeguards on weekends beginning Saturday, June 20. Lifeguards will be posted daily at the five most popular beaches in the city by July 2, the MPRB announced. (See page A13.) For the weekend of June 27-28, lifeguards will be posted at Thomas Beach, Wirth Lake Beach and Lake Nokomis Main Beach. By July 2, lifeguards will be working daily at those, in addition to Lake Harriet’s North Beach and Cedar Lake’s East Beach.
A 19-year-old man from California died after being pulled from Bde Maka Ska, near Thomas Beach, on June 16. By July 2, lifeguards will be working daily at Thomas Beach and other area beaches. Photo by Isaiah Rustad
Northbound 46th Street ramp closing By Nate Gotlieb / ngotlieb@swjournal.com
Motorists wishing to travel north on Interstate 35W will not be able to enter the freeway at 46th Street for more than a year. As of June 23, the Minnesota Department of Transportation has closed the northbound 46th Street ramp through September 2021 as it continues I-35W construction between 15th and 43rd streets. The department says that motorists who want to travel north on I-35W should enter the highway at Diamond Lake Road.
Southbound ramps onto the freeway at 46th Street remain open. MnDOT has been reconstructing I-35W in South Minneapolis since 2017. The $239 million project includes the installation of new concrete, the rebuilding and repairing of bridges and the construction of new express lanes and ramps at Lake Street. The agency is also constructing a new bus rapid transit station there. The project is scheduled to wrap up in fall 2021.
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A8 June 25–July 8, 2020 / southwestjournal.com
Development
PUBLISHER
Simpson Housing to build new shelter, units
Janis Hall jhall@swjournal.com CO-PUBLISHER & SALES MANAGER Terry Gahan tgahan@swjournal.com GENERAL MANAGER Zoe Gahan zgahan@swjournal.com EDITOR Zac Farber 612-436-4391 zfarber@swjournal.com STAFF WRITERS
Simpson Housing Services is starting a new project that will replace its current emergency shelter with modern facilities to include 70 short-term beds and 42 units of permanent supportive housing units. “We are planning to create a modern and dignified shelter, intentionally designed to meet the short-term housing needs of our shelter guests,” the organization wrote on its website. Simpson United Methodist Church at 28th & 1st, where the nonprofit has operated a shelter since 1982, will be demolished. The congregation officially disbanded in 2019 and the building was donated to Simpson Housing, which plans to raze the existing structure and construct a five-story facility designed to meet the needs of guests. The project was approved by the Minneapolis Planning Commission on June 15. It required the property to be redesignated from Interior 3 to Corridor 6 zoning to allow for additional height. The first floor will contain a commercial
Simpson Housing Services will demolish the Simpson United Methodist Church and build a new five-story structure with 70 shelter beds, 42 units of permanent housing for the chronically homeless, a health clinic and other resources. Submitted image
kitchen and dining room designed to serve up to 100 people at a time and a medical clinic to be staffed by Hennepin County Healthcare for the Homeless. The second and third floors will
contain sleeping areas for up to 70 people, the same number the shelter has room for today, with designated spaces for women, men and SEE SIMPSON / PAGE A16
Nate Gotlieb ngotlieb@swjournal.com Andrew Hazzard
74-unit apartment approved in South Uptown
ahazzard@swjournal.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Michelle Bruch Hailey Haferman Sheila Regan Carla Waldemar EDITORIAL INTERN Becca Most CREATIVE DIRECTOR Valerie Moe
An E-shaped luxury apartment building with 74 units and 92 underground parking spaces has been approved by the Planning Commission in South Uptown, just north of Lakewood Cemetery. The half-block-long project from Lander Group and ESG Architecture will include 1,400 square feet of new commercial space. Two houses, a commercial building and a mixed-use building filled by Ophelia’s Salon and five one-bedroom apartment units will be demolished.
The new apartment building, at 3501–3525 Hennepin Ave., has a stepped design that ranges from three to five stories in height. Its northern tip will reach into the parking lot behind the nearly century-old, 10,800-squarefoot commercial building owned by Lander at the southeast corner of 35th & Hennepin. Plans call for six units to be affordable to families making 60% of the area median income. Project architect Bob Loken told a city study group in
December that the building would be marketed toward local residents downsizing from singlefamily homes — “people of means who drive cars.” Planning Commissioner Kim Caprini, who voted against the project, said the lack of more affordable housing is “kind of stunning to me.” The massing of the building is the largest sticking point for neighborhood residents. A steep grade differential angling down from Hennepin Avenue SEE 35TH & HENNEPIN / PAGE A16
Retail requirement reversed for LynLake apartment
vmoe@swjournal.com DISTRIBUTION Marlo Johnson 612-436-4388 distribution@swjournal.com ADVERTISING sales@swjournal.com 612-436-4360
A developer building a pair of mixed-use apartments in LynLake won’t need to devote a majority of ground-floor space to retail, a City Council committee has ruled. In May, the Planning Commission approved Lupe Development Partners’ plans for two seven-story apartment buildings — one with 132 market-rate units, the other with 95 more affordable units — on Lake Street between Garfield and Harriet avenues. In approving the project, the commission mandated that Lupe dedicate at least half of the ground-floor space in each building to
commercial uses. Lupe appealed, arguing that other retail spaces in the area sit empty and noting that its first-floor community spaces will be publicly accessible and that both buildings will include small retail spaces. Steve Minn, Lupe’s vice president, said including extra retail space would mean fewer affordable units. On June 16, the City Council’s Business, Inspections and Zoning Committee unanimously voted to overturn the retail requirement. City Council Member Lisa Goodman (Ward 7) said the city needs the affordable
units and predicted that the community spaces will be converted into retail uses should demand arise. The committee also denied an appeal of the project filed by a neighbor who said the buildings will shadow her home. Construction of the market-rate building could start this summer, and construction of the affordable building is expected to start in spring 2021. An adjacent 111-unit affordable building Lupe is constructing will open in November. — Nate Gotlieb
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Church-to-apartment plan to be reviewed A nonoperational South Uptown church will include 34 studio and one-bedroom units once restored, according to plans submitted to the city. Last summer, Brian Farrell of Northland Real Estate Group announced plans to renovate the 113-year-old Joyce Uptown Methodist Church at
31st & Fremont and convert it into apartments. The building, one of the city’s two California Mission Revival-style churches, was used for religious services through June 2019 and designated a local historic landmark this spring. City staff said the project wouldn’t alter the
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southwestjournal.com / June 25–July 8, 2020 A9
Opinion
What is to be done about the MPD? Abolish it
Right-size it
Reform it — now
By Peter VanKoughnett
By Steve Brandt
By Michelle Gross
My childhood experience of police was defined by the absence of it. Growing up white in Lynnhurst, I rarely saw police cars. I never thought about police — they didn’t make me feel particularly safe or particularly afraid. It was only when I moved into other neighborhoods, built community with people of different backgrounds and experiences and continued to educate myself that I realized my experience was a stark contrast to that of members of other communities. For the last several years, I have been organizing with a local collective, MPD150, that advocates for police abolition. In contrast to those who advocate for reforming police departments, abolitionists believe that policing is inherently flawed and must be replaced with other public safety institutions. After the brutal killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police on Memorial Day and the uprisings that followed, America is in a process of collectively examining its relationship to policing. Almost all of Minneapolis agrees that police departments are responsible for systemic racist violence and wants change, but the question remains: What does that change look like? I joined MPD150 after several years of organizing around policing, beginning after the police murders of Jamar Clark and Philando Castile. I participated in the Black youth-led occupations of the 4th Precinct Station and the St. Paul governor’s mansion. These occupations drew new public attention to police violence and led to a series of systemic responses: an unprecedented large-scale investigation into Jamar Clark’s case and body camera policies that were touted as major reforms. Philando Castile’s killer’s trial marked the first time in Minnesota history that a police officer was criminally prosecuted for killing a community member. But though they were novel, these actions did little to curb police violence in Minneapolis. The officers who killed Jamar Clark were never charged and are still on the Minneapolis police force today. The body
When I first heard of the unfortunately named movement to defund Minneapolis police, the idea sounded utopian and uncomfortable. But after digging deeper, observing the Powderhorn Park defund rally and talking to advocates, I’ve moved from skeptical to intrigued. That’s because except in the minds of a few diehard supporters, nobody expects this movement to end up with no law enforcement in Minneapolis to make arrests for violent crime. It was clear at Powderhorn that even the nine City Council members who committed to the idea admittedly don’t know yet where it will lead. That’s good. They’ve committed to a vast community discussion in which they pledge all voices — those who fear police and those who fear fewer cops — will have a say. Let’s hold them to that. But the intriguing part of this debate is that it’s likely to force us to think through when and how other professionals — such as mental health, medical or social workers — can be substituted for cops in police calls. That shifting of resources would mean less money for a smaller police department but more for services targeted at many of the situations that prompt calls for police. That means better help for vulnerable people. It also focuses police on the calls for which their expertise is most appropriate. Think of it as right-sizing the police department. But even though this debate was moved to warp speed by the killing of George Floyd, any potential action likely will happen on a slower track. A vast community discussion takes a long time — witness our recent 2040 comp plan debate — and if a resource shift requires a city charter referendum, we may well be into 2022 before any substantial shift would begin. We still need to sift through what works and what doesn’t, what’s been tried and what’s potentially feasible for curbing racist and abusive policing.
May 25 was a beautiful, sunny day — the perfect capstone to a long holiday weekend. But as night fell, the perfection of the day was pierced by a profound ugliness that will forever mar this date in Minneapolis. For possessing a phony $20 bill — which he likely didn’t know was counterfeit — George Floyd, 46, had a life-ending encounter with four Minneapolis police officers. The $20 is the most counterfeited bill in the country. Its possession, without intent to defraud, is not a crime. At most, Mr. Floyd should have been asked about the source of the bill and it should have been seized. However, because he was Black, Mr. Floyd was subjected to the kind of overreaction to a low-level offense that is emblematic of the city’s history of policing. Protests worldwide over Black people’s deaths at the hands of law enforcement make it clear this behavior is not unique to Minneapolis police, nor is it an anomaly. People are crying out for change. But before we can move forward, we need to understand the past. The evolution of modern policing stems from three threads:
SEE VANKOUGHNETT / PAGE A17
SEE BRANDT / PAGE A17
SEE GROSS / PAGE A17
• Slave patrols. Armed groups known as “patterollers” enforced the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 by intimidating slaves as a means of social control and brutally capturing escaped slaves for economic control. • Union busting. The Pinkerton agency was a private policing firm that formed “goon squads” to break up union organizing, sometimes by viciously attacking union events and brutalizing and killing union leaders. • Protection of property. Watch patrols protected wealthy homeowners from property crimes. Eventually, these homeowners determined that if privately hired agents
A10 June 25–July 8, 2020 / southwestjournal.com
Whittier, Lyndale have most COVID-19 cases in Southwest
Neighborhoods with more than 25 COVID-19 cases Neighborhood
Number of cases
Whittier
More than 125
Lyndale
101 to 125
Redeemer Health & Rehab Center
Windom
51 to 75
Mount Olivet Home and Careview Home
Cedar-Isles-Dean
51 to 75
Jones-Harrison Residence
East Harriet
26 to 50
Walker Methodist Health Center
Kingfield
26 to 50
Stevens Square
26 to 50 * Only facilities with 10 or more known cases are listed Data courtesy of city of Minneapolis as of June 21
By Nate Gotlieb / ngotlieb@swjournal.com
Minneapolis began sharing neighborhoodlevel data on cases of COVID-19 in early June. Neighborhoods in North Minneapolis and in the Phillips area have been the hardest hit by the pandemic, according to the data. Neighborhoods with higher numbers of Hispanic residents have seen more cases, said Luisa Pessoa-Brandão, who heads the city Health Department’s research arm. Those are less affluent neighborhoods, and PessoaBrandão said residents there are more likely to be working outside of their homes. As of June 21, Whittier and Lyndale were the only neighborhoods in Southwest Minneapolis with more than 100 confirmed cases (Whittier has more than 125). Pessoa-Brandão said neighborhoods with higher population densities have seen more cases. Whittier, with
14,800 residents, is the densest neighborhood in Southwest, while Lyndale, with 7,100 residents in about half the acreage, is tied with the Wedge as the second densest. Whittier and Lyndale are also the two poorest Southwest neighborhoods and have the highest proportions of residents of color. Across the city, Black residents make up 19% of the population but 32% of COVID cases. Hispanic residents make up 10% of the population and 30% of COVID cases. White residents make up 64% of the city but just 25% of COVID cases. Aside from Whittier, Southwest neighborhoods with elevated case numbers can partially attribute those numbers to patients at congregate facilities. Fifty-five of the fewer than 76 total confirmed cases in Cedar-Isles-Dean are from
Jones-Harrison. At least 28 of the fewer than 51 total cases in East Harriet are from the Walker Methodist Health Center. At least 26 of the 51-75 cases in Windom are from the Mount Olivet Careview Home. (The city says it is only releasing ranges for reasons of privacy.) Redeemer Health & Rehab Center, a 119-bed skilled nursing facility in the Lyndale neighborhood, has served 38 positive patients. (Redeemer is a designated COVID support site and all positive patients have been brought to the facility’s 17-bed isolated COVID unit from outside hospitals and congregate facilities; no residents have contracted the virus at Redeemer.) COVID-19 has hit all age ranges, but people 75 and over have accounted for about twothirds of the city’s 175 deaths as of June 21.
Early primary voting begins June 26 By Nate Gotlieb / ngotlieb@swjournal.com
Early voting for primary elections in Minneapolis and Minnesota begins June 26. Voters can vote in person or by mail, which the city and county encourage. Visit mnvotes. org to request a mail-in absentee ballot. The Secretary of State’s office recommends that voters apply for the primary absentee ballot by July 10. Ballots must be received by Aug. 11. There are two locations Minneapolitans can vote early in person. One is the city’s Elections & Voters Services center, located at 980 E. Hennepin Ave. The other is the Hennepin County Government Center, at 300 S. Sixth St. Hours are on the city’s voting website, tinyurl. com/vote-mpls. Voters who are already registered do not need to bring anything to vote early.
Those who need to register or update their registration will need to show proof of residence. Primary elections determine who is on the general election ballot. For partisan offices such as state House or Senate, one candidate from each political party is allowed on the ballot. For nonpartisan races such as School Board, two candidates are allowed on the ballot. On the primary ballot for all Southwest Minneapolis voters are five candidates vying for one open citywide School Board seat — William Awe, Lynne Crockett, Michael Duenes, incumbent Kim Ellison and Doug Mann. The two candidates who receive the most votes will move on to the general election. Rep. Ilhan Omar and Sen. Tina Smith each
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have four DFL challengers. GOP voters will choose between five candidates running for U.S. Senate and three running for Congress. Voters north of Lake Street and north of 36th Street between Bde Maka Ska and Hennepin Avenue also will choose between three candidates — Adriana Cerrillo, Christa Mims and Ken Shain — vying for the open District 4 School Board seat. In addition, DFL voters east of Lyndale Avenue and north of 50th Street will choose between two candidates running for state Senate, Omar Fateh and incumbent Jeff Hayden. The primary election is Aug. 11, and the general election is Nov. 3.
The city Health Department is working to identify people who have come into contact with COVID-19 patients and has completed over 1,000 investigations. It continues to require that masks be worn in buildings outside of the home and notes that anyone who has been at a large gathering in recent weeks is eligible for a test. Pessoa-Brandão said that residents need to stay vigilant, wear masks and physically distance from one another, even during the nicer summer months. “Just because some areas seem to have a higher concentration [of cases] doesn’t mean that it’s not everywhere else,” she said. “You just need to be paying attention to the recommendations and hopefully following those.” Zac Farber contributed reporting to this story.
MIA, Walker cut salaries, reduce staff Southwest Minneapolis’ largest art museums have announced layoffs and salary cuts in response to coronavirusrelated budget shortfalls. Twenty-two of 249 Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) staffers have been laid off, and 17 took a voluntary separation package, the museum reported on June 22. All non-union staff have taken pay freezes, and members of the museum’s leadership team have taken 15% pay cuts. On June 23, the Walker Art Center announced that it has laid off 33 parttime staff, all of whom work in visitor SEE MUSEUMS / PAGE A19
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A12 June 25–July 8, 2020 / southwestjournal.com
Customers feel loss of Lake Street post office By Nate Gotlieb / ngotlieb@swjournal.com
For over 25 years, Lake Street post office customers could count on Fred Brombach greeting them with a smile and a joke. “I would usually enter the post office kind of cranky,” longtime Kingfield resident Nan Marie Zosel said. “After my interaction with Fred, I would leave thinking, ‘OK, that wasn’t so bad.’” Southwest Minneapolis residents say the clerks at the Lake Street station, which was burned down during the unrest following George Floyd’s killing, were friendly and kind. They said they were sad to see the building destroyed and hope to see it rebuilt. “It’s just tough to see places that are so embedded in the history of the neighborhood get damaged like that,” ECCO president Dane Stimart said.
USPS ‘exploring options’
The Lake Street and the Minnehaha post offices were completely destroyed on May 29. United States Postal Service (USPS) spokeswoman Nicole Hill said the postal service is “exploring options” as far as rebuilding but declined to say more. The federal Postal Inspection Service is offering up to $10,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of people who destroyed the post offices and/or stole mail from them. Those who sorted through the building’s wreckage the day after it burned, removing charred letters with the intent to deliver them, will not be prosecuted. A window at the Loring Park post office has been set up so Lake Street customers can pick up their PO Box mail and mail held due to
damaged businesses or residencies. Home postal delivery to people in the Lake Street station service area resumed June 1. The Postal Service has also explored alternative ways of providing service to South Minneapolis residents affected by the unrest, bringing its mobile post office to the vacant Kmart parking lot on June 18 and 19. The truck offered residents the ability to drop off packages and buy stamps and money orders. Neighbors said they were appreciative of the service. “We don’t have a darn thing around us,” said Claudette Peters, adding that she has to travel longer distances to get medications and cash.
A community institution
The Lake Street station, located at 31st & 1st in the Lyndale neighborhood, had been operating since the late 1970s, Hill said. Brombach, who’s been reassigned to the Diamond Lake post office, said the Lake Street location drew people of different races and walks of life and was popular in South Minneapolis because it had a parking lot. South Uptown resident Mary Scavotto said she’s missed the Lake Street post office and the friendly staff who worked there — and Brombach in particular. You never knew if you wanted to be in his line, because he talked a lot, she said, but “you were sad when he wasn’t there, too.” Stimart said it was “heartbreaking” to watch the station burn down. He said staff who worked there were “incredibly friendly” and that he hopes they’re doing OK.
The Postal Service brought its mobile post office to the vacant Kmart parking lot on June 18 and 19. Photo by Nate Gotlieb
Most have been reassigned to the Loring Park station, Hill said.
‘Shocked and surprised’
Brombach said he tries to keep a positive attitude and be cheery for customers. He said he’d had opportunities to transfer to the station closest to his Lake Nokomisarea home but didn’t want to leave the Lake Street station. “You just build these relationships,” he said, noting that he got to know families as they
grew up and retirees who came in every week. “It really made for a community there.” Brombach hasn’t been back to see the charred remains of the site and was emotional when he talked about the destruction of the building, calling it a “personal loss.” He said he hopes it can be rebuilt and that he’s been humbled by the customers who have asked after him over the past few weeks. He’s even received cards from well-wishers. “I was just really shocked and surprised and blown away,” he said.
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southwestjournal.com / June 25–July 8, 2020 A13
By Andrew Hazzard / ahazzard@swjournal.com
City parks scale up summer programming After initially canceling events and announcing beaches and pools would not formally open for the summer, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board is easing into summer activities by offering adapted recreation programming and staffing lifeguards at popular beaches. “I think everyone is ready to get out and recreate,” said Mimi Kalb, a recreation manager with the MPRB. Updates to Gov. Tim Walz’s executive orders related to the coronavirus pandemic released in early June allow for more outdoor activities, and the MPRB is trying to ramp up its seasonal workforce to offer programming and facilities to residents. “We’re looking at Fourth of July as the kickoff to summer,” said assistant superintendent Tyrize Cox. By July 4, the MPRB will have lifeguards posted at its most popular beaches, including Cedar Lake’s East Beach, Bde Maka Ska’s Thomas Beach, Lake Harriet’s North Beach and Wirth Lake Beach in and around Southwest. A man drowned at Thomas Beach on June 16
when lifeguards were not posted (see page A7). About 25% of splash pads and wading pools in the city will also open by July 4, including those of Whitter and Bryant Square in Southwest. Beyond places to cool down, the MPRB is also expanding play options for kids in a summer when many traditional sports leagues are canceled. The new Fun on the Run program offers free sports and activities for kids under supervision of rec center staff at parks throughout the city on weekday afternoons from 1-4 p.m. In Southwest, the program is at Painter Park on Tuesdays, Kenny Park on Wednesdays and Pershing Park on Thursdays. “We feel it’s really needed, and kids are wanting to get out and be active,” Kalb said. Games range from cornhole and potato sack races to badminton and soccer drills, chosen for their natural socially distanced nature or adapted to keep participants spread apart, Kalb said. Staff try to keep the kids spread out and sanitize equipment, she said. The program runs through the end of August. For those seeking a less rigorous outing, the new Nature Nearby programming
encourages self-directed, socially distant ways to improve observational skills and learn about Minnesota plants and animals with events like orienteering challenges, nature quests, making ant amusement parks, story walks that spread book chapters throughout a park and nature-inspired yoga. “We heard from so many families, ‘We’re so tired of going on a walk,’” said MaryLynn Pulscher, environmental education manager for the MPRB. Typically, the MPRB brings in several part-time naturalists in the summer months to help with programming. But this year the pandemic slowed that seasonal hiring, so the programming is mostly done with sign-based instructions. “It’s a very different way to think about doing programs when you can’t lead them,” Pulscher said. Nearby Nature programming is being installed throughout the park system. In Southwest, activities are available at Bryant Square, Clinton Field, Lyndale Farmstead, Mueller, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Whittier.
The Park Board is beginning to offer more programming and recreation opportunities as the state allows for more activities during the coronavirus pandemic. Lifeguards are returning to popular beaches, like Thomas Beach at Bde Maka Ska, where a man recently drowned. Photo by Isaiah Rustad
Homeless encampments allowed in city parks The Minneapolis Park Board voted to allow homeless encampments in city parks on June 17 in response to a large gathering of unsheltered people that has developed at Powderhorn Park. Between 150 and 200 tents have been erected in Powderhorn Park, according to parks Superintendent Al Bangoura. Many of those people came to the park after a Sheraton Hotel that was temporarily converted into a shelter during the civil unrest removed them in early June. It is now about the size of the “Wall of Forgotten Natives” encampment that was established near Franklin & Hiawatha in 2018, according to David Hewitt, director of Hennepin Coun-
ty’s Office to End Homelessness. The resolution designates parkland as a “refuge” for unsheltered people. Previously the MPRB has not allowed people to camp on parkland. “I’m not willing to kick people out until we have a dignified solution,” said Commissioner AK Hassan (District 3), who represents the area. Bangoura said park staff have opened the bathroom facilities at Powderhorn Park, which had been closed due to coronavirus, in addition to bringing in shower and handwashing facilities and about 17 portable bathrooms. The services are costing about $7,400 per week. Bangoura stressed that MPRB staff are nature and recreation professionals and that help from partners will be needed.
“The level of physical care required of encampments and associated facilities is beyond the capability of park staff,” he said. The resolution was added by Park Board President Jono Cowgill. Hundreds of residents, organized by community groups like Parks and Power, submitted written comments to the board, asking it to support the resolution and not disperse the encampment. Commissioners are hoping a real solution will be reached soon. “We realize that this is not a permanent solution, so we are asking the City of Minneapolis, Hennepin County and State of Minnesota to step up and find a sustainable, dignified housing solution for folks who are expe-
riencing homelessness right now,” Cowgill said. “In the meantime, we are not going to push people out of public spaces when they have nowhere else to go.” Hewitt said the county is less equipped than normal to support a large encampment because of the work it has been doing to try to move people into hotel rooms during the coronavirus pandemic. He said the larger the encampment becomes, the greater the health risk there is to residents. “Especially in a pandemic environment, having so many in such close proximity really heightens the concerns I would have anyway in regard to large encampments,” Hewitt told commissioners.
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A14 June 25–July 8, 2020 / southwestjournal.com
Voices from the pandemic
Stories of coronavirus in Minneapolis How do you tell the story of what it’s like to live through a pandemic? Throughout this crisis, the Southwest Journal is keeping in touch with a selection of local residents including an infection preventionist at a senior home, a critical care physician, a retired couple, a pair of small-business owners and a schoolteacher. All interviews are edited for length and clarity. Reporting for this project is by Zac Farber, Nate Gotlieb and Andrew Hazzard.
Barb Joyce, infection preventionist, Jones-Harrison senior living
“The benefit is to their psychosocial well-being and the risk is to their physical well-being.” WEDNESDAY, JUNE 7 We finished the three rounds of weekly allresident and all-staff National Guard tests on June 9, and we found them to be very beneficial. We only have two residents left in our COVID unit, and they’re ready to come out. As soon as we get their test results back, our COVID unit will be empty. That feels really good. I think we have put the breaks on that runaway train. My all-clear would be no new cases for 21 days. The state gives us guidance suggesting continued testing until you get two rounds of negative. I can’t see us ever getting to a zero with the staff getting exposed in the community, especially if the community is opening up. We’ll play it by ear. If we see it pop up in the future, we might just do unit testing and not necessarily the full house — unless we see it move from unit to unit. It’s a quirky germ, so I’m grateful we have full-facility testing in our back pocket. In addition to testing, the KN95 filter masks have also provided a higher level of prevention. We’ve been able to provide them to everyone who shares space with our residents for the last three weeks. They’re one size fits most, but we use an ear protector designed by a 12-year-old Boy Scout. One of our IT guys with a 3D printer made us some to help create a seal for the masks. It’s a little tool that’s really saved a lot of people’s ears from pressure injuries. I feel like people who haven’t experienced the illness yet don’t understand how tricky this can be. We’re stronger and more knowledgeable because we’ve gone through this and will be better able to nip it in the bud sooner versus later in the future. One of our residents tested positive in May and spent 21 days in our COVID unit before finally testing negative on May 27, after which we moved them back to their unit. Yesterday, the resident tested positive again with no symptoms. The resident’s a little younger than our general population. This isn’t bad, it isn’t good, it’s just interesting. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. The resident didn’t have a caregiver who was positive or an outing to see strangers. So we’re trying to decipher what this actually means. We’ve had very few people take their family members out of Jones-Harrison. One was a hospice patient whose family wanted to be with her. We tested her before
she left, and she was positive. She had hospice services at home and has since passed. Another patient was in assisted living and her family readmitted her after about a month because they realized the COVID pandemic was not going to be just a month long. We’re very excited about the drug dexamethasone that’s a treatment for COVID. In the very beginning, some of our patients had a very sudden decline — you’d see them go from “I have a bit of a fever” to respiratory distress in one to two days. I think those people would benefit from this drug. Recently, we haven’t seen patients devolve as quickly, and we’re not sure why. It’s a mystery why this affects one person mildly and another person severely. We’re in conversations about starting visitations for families. We want to do them outside versus people coming into our environment and being asymptomatic carriers. We have a few wrought iron gates that we’ll attach plexiglass to. This will separate their faces, but underneath the plexiglass, they’ll be able to put their hands through the gate and hold hands or rub the knees of their mom or dad. The setup is kind of bank-teller style. Right now people are healthy and the weather is good. With the community opening up, it would be nice to get at least one visit per family. Maybe that will help them if we get into a second wave. There are risks and benefits. The benefit is to their psychosocial well-being and the risk is to their physical well-being. And we’re trying to balance that out for both patients and their families. Personally, I’m in a funk — no extreme highs, no extreme lows. I feel like I’m in this holding pattern. I need to break through this. I think I need a vacation. I need to let go of some of this so I don’t have to deal with it every day of my life. But when I have one or two still testing positive, that grabs a hold of me, saying, “You’d better pay attention.”
Matthew Prekker, critical care physician, Hennepin County Medical Center
“It did feel like: Now we’re back to business.” THURSDAY, JUNE 11 What we see in the hospital has lagged a bit behind what’s going on in people’s homes in the community. We’ve been watching case numbers closely and have seen an unexpected plateau, or even the start of a decrease, in Minnesota, though we’re not feeling that drop yet in the hospital. We’re very busy and still have a lot of people who need critical care. ICU volumes are still very high. Fortunately, we’re not having to do any rationing of ventilators, but we’ve realized what an asset our skilled critical care nurses are. Personnel shortages have limited our ability to expand services, and we’ve had to partner with other hospitals to share the burden of critically ill COVID patients who need ventilators. This is not because we don’t have machines but because we need the correct teams to take care of patients. To my knowledge, we haven’t seen many health care worker infections — certainly not serious infections. [HCMC is not publicly disclosing the number of staff who’ve tested positive for COVID-19. Prekker said the hospital hasn’t shared the number with staff internally. As of June 11, nearly 1,900 health care workers had tested positive for COVID-19 statewide after a workplace exposure, according to the Minnesota Department of Health.] Our personal protection equipment is working. That’s a credit to our infection-
prevention team and others for setting up a system that really protects people. As the weather has gotten warmer and more people have gone outside, there have been more serious injuries and trauma cases needing ICU beds — serious car and motorcycle accidents, watercraft injuries. Partner hospitals around the metro and the state have helped by taking some patients with coronavirus so we have room for these patients. We’re still not seeing patients with illnesses like strokes, heart attacks, serious bacterial infections and sepsis in the numbers we normally would, though that caseload does generally tend to taper off some in the summer. My work is still dominated day in and day out by patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome due to COVID. [George Floyd’s killing] has been something my wife and I have reflected a lot on and is something I think about every minute of the day at the hospital. It’s an absolute tragedy, and I can’t come up with words to describe the pain I see in my friends and family and community. I’m relatively sheltered in where I live [in Linden Hills] from the worst of the civil unrest, but I understand where it comes from, and we’ve been able to support the peaceful protesters and hope for change in the community. I’ve thought more and more about our neighborhood and the city of Minneapolis and a way forward in government and policing and public health. I think those are the risks in our community that need the most attention right now. I want things to be better at the end of all this. I’ve felt a very profound sadness about what’s been going on. It’s really a bizarre situation to have a surge of patients who are injured and otherwise very upset amidst us in full PPE and masks working during a pandemic. It’s not something I ever imagined I’d be doing. We treated injuries from exposure to crowdcontrol measures like tear gas. There were falls and broken bones and injuries from rubber bullets. The mood at the hospital was pretty tense. Through the spring, our volumes as a trauma center and a very busy emergency department were down 20% to 30% based on people sheltering at home, but during those days our volumes were picking up. It did feel like: Now we’re back to business. This virus has an incubation period of, we think, one to two weeks. So we need to watch carefully to see what happens. The patients we see affected at HCMC are disproportionately folks of Hispanic and East African descent. We haven’t seen a lot of the folks we watched protest downtown come to the hospital yet, but I am worried there may be viral transmission. A lot of testing and contact tracing is hopefully how the state is going to get over the hump of the pandemic. My wife and I haven’t returned to restaurants or fun things we used to enjoy yet. We’re keeping our kids very close to home. It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten together with my parents, who are in their 70s. So we’re still being very careful. I think the reopening that’s gone on has been very thoughtful. In our neck of the woods, people are wearing masks and sitting outdoors to eat, which makes me feel very good. I believe there is asymptomatic spread of the virus, so during an incubation period people can go about their lives and still infect others. The majority of folks we’re seeing with unfortunate outcomes from COVID are folks who are later in life and have comorbidities. The toll this has taken on our nursing homes and group homes and structured care settings has been remarkable, especially in terms of death. I direct the ECMO [extracorporeal membrane oxygenation] program at the hospital. ECMO is a specialized form of life support — the last step beyond a ventilator to keep someone alive. It uses a small portable heart-lung bypass machine to take lots of blood out of someone’s core, adding oxygen and removing carbon dioxide before returning the same blood back to the patient. It’s essentially a dialysis machine for the lungs. It’s been very helpful for our sickest patients who have COVID. People with acute
respiratory distress syndrome who we think have a risk of dying in the ICU of 50% to 80% are candidates for ECMO. It’s for people whose action levels are critically low despite all our conventional means of supporting their lungs and body — giving them mechanical ventilation, flipping them to their stomachs, paralyzing their muscles. We have strict criteria to ensure we’re not using ECMO too early, when it’s not actually needed, or too late, when the patient’s actively dying. There’s a small community of ECMO centers across the state with a total of 50 to 55 machines. We’ve had a couple times when we’ve used all four of our ECMO circuits, so we were able to arrange transfers to other centers. We’ve had well over 100 patients on ventilators at HCMC so far and have done seven ECMO treatments. Just a fraction of ventilated patients are able to benefit, but for those few, I believe, a lot of them would have died without it. In treating most COVID patients, we’re still using the fundamental principles we’re trained to use in critical care. We’ve had to learn to be very patient. The lung’s a very fragile organ. It’s the organ that’s exposed to the environment continuously — unlike the heart, the liver and everything else. When it gets injured from a viral infection, it takes time to get better. Without a proven treatment, we spend a lot of time waiting.
Arminta and Ron Miller, residents, Waters on 50th senior living community
“Who’d have thought at our age we would be troublemakers?” MONDAY, JUNE 15 Arminta: I just feel like we’re in prison. We have certain times we can go outside in the garden. They send out a list, and every Monday and Thursday we can go and sit out in the garden for 45 minutes. It’s like yard time, I think. Ron: If nobody else is out there, we can stay longer. Arminta: Some of the people are really having a tough time. One gal walks every day and is all alone and very lonesome, and she’s going blind, so she can’t read and she can’t watch TV. She saw us out there — we used to eat with her — and sat down with us. They kicked her out because it wasn’t her day. I felt bad because she got in trouble. Ron: If you sit down and touch something, they’re right behind you cleaning. Five minutes after I exercised this morning, everything was cleaned — the weights and everything. They’re very good about that. They may be going a tough way, but they want to keep us safe. This is a safe spot, but it’s a very boring spot. It’s not their fault. It’s just the times. You’ve got the virus, you’ve got riots. It’s getting to be the last days, for God’s sake. Every time you turn on the news, someone else is getting killed or you have another virus spike. Arminta: We’re safe though. Our daughter brought Dairy Queen one night for dessert, and they sat in chairs on the boulevard and we sat on our balcony, and we had a nice chat. My good friend Juliette Huber is a hairdresser in Bryn Mawr. So when she was able to open up, I was so excited for her and we went and got our hair cut. We looked terrible. I looked like an old witch and Ron’s hair was curling up in the back and the sides. She took our temperature and insisted we wear gloves. I was thrilled for her because she really lost a lot of money and I kind of wanted to repay her by going back there. When we got back here, we were in big trouble. You’re talking to the bad people at The Waters. They took our temperatures and
southwestjournal.com / June 25–July 8, 2020 A15
scolded us and let us know we broke the rules. If we were out walking around, they’d say, “Someone got a haircut” — they’d make these comments to us. Who’d have thought at our age we would be troublemakers? Ron: If people go outside, they don’t want somebody to bring the virus back. Arminta: We’re still free of the virus. They’re doing a good job protecting us. I bet they don’t like feeling like wardens either. [The killing of George Floyd] was just awful. Several of our grandchildren are peacefully protesting, as they should. Our Walgreens at 54th & Lyndale, where we were supposed to pick up medicine, had been completely vandalized and a clerk told Ron it wouldn’t be back for two to three months. My thoughts on the protests are that it’s about time. It was a horrible thing to watch him die. [Police Chief Medaria] Arradondo is very, very good. I worry about some of the people who marched without masks; I hope they’re going to be OK.
Jen and Marcus Wilson, co-owners, True Grit Society gym
“This is literally life and death, so we don’t want to cut any corners.” FRIDAY, JUNE 19 Jen: We saw a post online where a gym said they were opening June 10, and we were like, “How are we the last ones to know about anything?” I was a little shocked that it just happened. It felt like we missed something. It’s great news, but there’s a lot that goes around that. We still don’t have a front door.
We really felt caught off guard and didn’t think we’d be ready to go by June 10. We hadn’t started checking in with our instructors. It was a lot of running around and a very stressful lead up. I think there’s a general trust that some people have your best interest in mind, and we have that trust with a lot of our members. But we had a very small percentage of people reactivate. For us, it’s a bit of a mixed bag, because we still owe people about two weeks of membership fees from March when we had to close down in the middle of the month. So we’re running classes but not collecting dues while we’re paying that out. We also don’t charge for canceled classes, which a lot of people do, so because we have limited space in a class, we have to police it a lot more. We’re a mom-and-pop business, literally, so the amount of cleaning that falls on our shoulders means we can’t run back-toback classes anymore. We’ve had some people come back. We’ve also had some people say even with nine people in 3,000 square feet, they don’t know how comfortable they are. We’ve talked to everybody to make sure they feel safe and are protected and have enough moving air. One thing that’s different for us is we have three different rooms. We haven’t opened the other two rooms yet simply because we want to make sure it’s safe. This is literally life and death, so we don’t want to cut any corners. There’s a lot of stuff we’re doing on the back end. We’ve got no help financially for any program — we don’t qualify for anything. It’s almost a joke now that we don’t. I’m flabbergasted that we haven’t been able to receive any help. Honestly it feels right now like we’re just rolling with the punches. Marcus is injured; we found out he has a meniscus tear and might need surgery. You know, I feel blessed every day to be alive and safe and have a business but at the same time, it’s tough, man. It’s a good thing we’re so stubborn.
Tracey Schultz, science teacher, Clara Barton Open School
“I’ve never before had a point in my career where all my kids had my cell phone number.” MONDAY, JUNE 22 Today is my first Monday of actual summer vacation. My partner and I have a family place in the mountains of Idaho where we’ll spend July. I just ordered the book “How to Be an Antiracist,” and I’ll read that. I feel a real strong personal responsibility to continue thinking how we can best support all of our kids so that they can be successful. I haven’t had much contact with students this summer. A couple of kids have reached out about my leaving Barton and going to a different school. [Schultz has taken a position at Justice Page Middle School.] I’ve had one student whose life circumstances are just really hard who reached out and indicated that they maybe wanted to do some more work. If kids want to reach out, they certainly know how. I’ve never before had a point in my career where all my kids had my cell phone number. The new school year never goes away from your thinking. Districts have to create three models: distance learning, being fully back in school and a hybrid model. The state has said they’re going to announce their decision by July 27. Each of those plans has enormous challenges that come with it. I’m hoping we’re back in school. That’s the way to go for kids, and I’d be so excited to be in my new classroom and meeting my
new students face-to-face, but I do worry a bit about staying healthy myself, because I have parents who are older. I’ll be seeing 150-some kids a day, and how do we stay safe and healthy as teachers so we can be there every day for kids? On the other side of the equation, if we’re distance learning, how do you do that with kids you have never spent face-to-face time with? The middle scenario is kind of a quagmire, too. I can’t quite wrap my head around how I would be a live, in-person teacher and a distance learning teacher at the same time. It is really all-consuming to be a live, in-person teacher at the start of the school year. I cannot figure out how I would do that and have a quality online component for kids. For most people I’ve talked to, being in school is what kids and families want while also balancing safety. People have jobs and they need to be able to do their jobs. Because I worked at a K-8 school and had closer contact with teachers of the youngest learners, I think we all worry so much about what [remote instruction] means for literacy development. If we’re back in person, we have a whole new set of conversations that happen. I have to be really comfortable wearing a mask and really good about that so that I model that for kids. That doesn’t mean they feel great about wearing a mask, but I have to be at peace with that. My communication is hugely nonverbal, so to have this big part of my face covered up, that’s going to be hard. There will be other challenges like, how do we handle materials in class? I don’t want to fill the garbage cans with bleach wipes, but on the other hand, it’s probably not going to be realistic to blast all of our lab materials with UV between classes. I hope that kids are taking a break over the summer but not too much of a break. I hope that kids are reading. Hopefully they are keeping their mind engaged. I guess I say that with some feelings of hope but also some feelings of anxiety.
A16 June 25–July 8, 2020 / southwestjournal.com
By Nate Gotlieb / ngotlieb@swjournal.com
Report: Pandemic could increase extreme heat risks Older people could be particularly vulnerable to the effects of extreme heat events this summer, because of the physical isolation that COVID-19 requires, a new report says. Such events appear to be on the rise in Minneapolis, where the average summer temperature has increased 2.3 degrees over the past 50 years. Isolation, which has been forced upon millions of Americans because of the pandemic, is a leading contributor to heat deaths, according to the report, which was
authored by the nonprofit news organization Climate Central. Health experts say they’re worried about an increase of heat-related deaths because of it. “Everyone should be aware that this summer there may be more vulnerable people home alone and isolated than ever before,” New York University sociologist Eric Klinenberg wrote in the report. Approximately 12,000 Americans die each year from heat-related causes, and 80% are over 60, according to the report.
FROM 35TH & HENNEPIN / PAGE A8
encouraging density … is very important.” The building’s site encompasses six city lots zoned for both commercial and residential uses. The Planning Commission voted 7-1 on June 16 to rezone the six lots, to grant a conditional use permit allowing an increase in height from four stories to five and to approve several variances reducing setbacks on all four sides of the project. On June 17, community members attending a South Uptown neighborhood association meeting decided to appeal the Planning Commission’s decision. They voted 8-5 (via Zoom chat) to spend $450 from the organization’s unrestricted fund to file the appeal. South Uptown coordinator Scott Engel said that since the City Council is pro-density and pro-development, “I don’t know if our chances are great.” The Lander Group aims to start construction in spring 2021. — Zac Farber
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nonbinary people. Those floors will have showers, laundry rooms, community areas and office space for Simpson staff and partner organizations. On the fourth and fifth floors there will be 42 apartments, 30 of which will be designated for chronically homeless households identified as high-priority by Hennepin County, according to documents submitted to the city. The apartments will be around 400 square feet. The units will be designated as deeply affordable, with 25% reserved for households earning 30% or less of area median income and the rest reserved for those earning 50% or less of area median income. The housing units will have a separate entrance from the shelter space. Housing will be managed by the Project for Pride in Living.
At the new structure, Simpson Housing will offer extended hours of service, including a 24-hour check-in desk. “Centered on Simpson’s value of celebrating and embracing the uniqueness and dignity of every person, the new shelter model will create an uplifting environment – with windows and natural light – for participants to work with staff, overcome barriers, and achieve improved housing placement outcomes,” the organization wrote on its website. The Whittier Alliance and Council President Lisa Bender (Ward 10) wrote letters in support of the project. Simpson plans to relocate its shelter operation to a nearby commercial property during construction of the new facility. — Andrew Hazzard
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FROM SIMPSON / PAGE A8
buses as cooling centers. Such measures sometimes take the place of traditional cooling centers, such as air-conditioned malls or libraries. In Minneapolis, there are significantly fewer air-conditioned buildings open to the public than in previous years, with the closure of libraries and park recreation centers. Hennepin County maintains an online map of public buildings that have air conditioning at tinyurl.com/mplscool.
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means the five-story apartment will appear as six stories to those living behind the building in single-family homes along Girard Avenue. “We have concerns for the monolithic, intrusive wall that will impede into our neighborhood,” South Uptown president Max Ellis told the Planning Commission. “It places the tallest part of the structure toward the back of the lot rather than along Hennepin, where it would be more appropriate.” Loken said the building was designed “to enrich pedestrian space along Hennepin Avenue with courtyards,” and Planning Commission President Sam Rockwell said homes along Girard would still have sufficient solar access according to shadow studies. “There is bus-rapid transit [the E Line] coming to this corner,” Rockwell said. “It’s one of the most walkable neighborhoods in the city, so I think
There is no universal definition of an extreme heat event, according to the Minnesota Department of Health. But in general, it refers to an extended period of unusually hot conditions. Experts say that older adults’ best defense against excessive heat is social connection. The Climate Central report says that some cities are allocating additional money for air conditioners and utility bills, closing streets to allow more outdoor space for pedestrians and parking air-conditioned
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FROM BRANDT / PAGE A9
camera legislation was full of loopholes allowing officers to avoid filming. The officer who killed Philando Castile was acquitted of all charges despite a $3 million settlement paid to the Castile family in a wrongful death lawsuit. According to the Star Tribune, Minneapolis police killed more community members last year than any year in the last two decades. In these few years, the MPD has shown its reform-proof nature, remaining essentially unchanged despite the intensity of public outrage and action. Disenchanted by the ineffectiveness of those reforms, I was drawn toward the abolitionist perspective of MPD150 because it demanded the deeper, structural change Minneapolis and our country clearly need. MPD150’s work has been to locate police violence within a historical context, advocate for police abolition, provide resources for people to envision what will come next and provide ideas about how to get involved. Our central work has been publishing “Enough is Enough: a 150-year performance review of the Minneapolis Police Department.” Two key findings of the MPD150 report are worth emphasizing here. First, the report demonstrates that, from its inception five years after the U.S. Dakota War solidified the violent expulsion of the Dakota people from their ancestral homeland, the police department has consistently been an instrument of violence against Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) and against poor people. Second, the report illuminates how the cycle of failed police reform has spanned the last 60 years. For generations, the cycle has continued. Police commit an act of violence. There is public outrage. There are reforms or actions taken to placate that outrage. Those reforms are either proven ineffective or undermined. And the cycle continues as the violence continues. As abolitionists, we want to break this cycle. We want more than a public repudiation of an officer’s behavior. We want more than a few murderous cops prosecuted and convicted — as if their racism does not run through the veins of the entire police body. We recognize that killings of BIPOC people are only the most egregious examples of police violence and that people are abused, intimidated, jailed and fined by police in this city every day. We want this entire system torn up from the roots and we want to plant something new that truly keeps our people safe. I want to encourage the people of Southwest Minneapolis, particularly the majority of us who are white and middle class, to use this moment for deep reflection and action. Most of us grew up perceiving the police as an organization that promoted public safety. When the police show up, it is usually because we called them there, and we can usually expect the police to treat us with respect. But that has never been true for communities of color, poor or houseless people, and other communities whom the police have harmed instead of protecting. As people with the privilege of choosing whether and how to engage with the police, it is important that we push ourselves to uproot the oppressive systems both in our own bodies and minds and on a systemic level. We are in a pivotal moment in time and space right now where we have the possibility to make deep and lasting change so that future generations can know life without police violence. Our city council has committed to dismantling the police department, but we need to make sure this vision does not get watered down and replaced with reforms or that the institutions that replace the police department do not replicate its oppressions. This fight is just beginning, and we need to stay in it for the duration. When I talk to people about police abolition, many agree with the ideas but struggle to make the leap to imagining a police-free future. I have had the same struggle. Having spent my whole life in policed cities, it is a challenge to imagine something different. But while it may be challenging, abolitionists believe this imagination and collective creation is the necessary and urgent work to be done. A core abolitionist principle is that the best way to increase public safety is to meet people’s basic needs rather than policing them. Growing up in well-resourced and barely policed Lynnhurst, I saw that a world without police is possible. The task now is to provide these resources to all of our communities while dismantling the systems that harm them and replacing them with alternative public safety institutions. I have seen these systems come to life in places when people come together to support each other in the absence of police — at the 4th Precinct occupation, at Standing Rock and all across Minneapolis as people have spontaneously organized relief and community defense efforts over the last several weeks. From these experiences, I have developed a deep faith that abolition is not only possible but is the only viable way forward. Please check out our website (mpd150.com) and the websites of our partner organizations, Reclaim the Block and Black Visions, for ideas on how you can be part of building our police-free future in Minneapolis.
I begin with a bias as a union man. I believe in the right of all workers to unionize, including police, and to elect the leadership they desire. Unions exist to improve working conditions and to defend their members against arbitrary managers. I believe that arbitration is an important step in giving workers due process in discipline cases. Nevertheless, it’s time to rethink our practices. I don’t think that pending legislation, which would require racially sensitive training of arbitrators who would be appointed by the state, goes far enough. I think it’s possible to retain due process while modifying arbitration so that strong termination cases against bad cops result more often in their termination. There should be a high bar for taking away someone’s job in any profession. But granting a cop the right to use deadly force should be accompanied by zero tolerance when force is misused. That’s why it’s good that the City Council – under pressure from a state human rights investigation – toughened the force’s existing duty-to-intervene policy. It requires intervention by officers who witness other officers use force that’s inappropriate or goes on longer than conditions warrant. We also need to change state laws governing use of force to make sure they promote sanctity of life, and require that the force be reasonable, necessary and proportionate, as recommended last winter by a state task force. The legislative proposal by Gov. Tim Walz and DFL legislators seeks that. The state should also consider stripping an officer of their state license when an arbitrator upholds a termination for use-of-force reasons so that the officer doesn’t take malignant habits to another city. Some reformers nationally suggest stripping cops in cities like Minneapolis of their protections against damages in lawsuits brought by citizens, so that taxpayers aren’t left at risk. We could then require individual officers to purchase liability insurance against maltreatment lawsuits, say after two years on the job. The city could reimburse them up to the median premium cost for such a policy. But those whose records lead insurers to charge higher premiums would eat the marginal cost themselves. Those whose conduct makes them uninsurable would lose their jobs. The city also needs to shed the requirement that it pay for settlements arising from off-duty assignments. The Minneapolis Federation of Police is unlikely to accept such changes willingly. Labor bargaining usually requires trade-offs; you give up that if I give you this other thing you want. But the city has other ways to ramp up pressure. It recently stepped away from negotiations on a successor agreement to the police contract that expired in December. That delays any raises for cops. The city may well be waiting out the clock in hopes that federation president Bob Kroll will depart as he reaches retirement eligibility. The city could also make the high cost of huge settlements for police misconduct tangible to cops in other ways. The council and mayor control the department’s budget. Conceivably, they could convert the annual cost of settlements into a full-time equivalent number of officers, reducing the sworn force by that many officers to pay for settlement costs. Cops keep arguing for more cops; this would give them an incentive to behave better to preserve jobs. Minnesota law enforcement groups have built a powerful interlocking lobby at the state Capitol, often relying on conservative lawmakers, some of them cops themselves. That successfully overturned a former residency requirement in Minneapolis for cops. One former deputy chief suggests requiring new cops to live in the city for three to five years. That forces them to get to know their work environs as something more than an enforcement zone. But that is unlikely to happen if legislators kowtow to the statewide police lobby. However, the Legislature holds some leverage. Only it may appropriate the state funds needed annually to keep the state-aided fund for Minneapolis cop pensions solvent. Do lawmakers have enough backbone to play hardball? The death of George Floyd shocked us all – including some cops – with its callous and racist disregard for human life. Beyond the human cost, there’s a collective financial cost that affects all of us in Minneapolis. A settlement with Floyd’s relatives could well top the $20 million approved last year for the family of Justine Damond after her killing by a trigger-happy cop. The city’s estimated $100 million to $500 million in property damage also represents the cost of ignoring the long-festering issue of police behavior. Going forward, let’s change the rules so the bad cops are weeded out or conform to expectations. Let’s thoroughly explore a policing system that puts the response to a call on the shoulders of those best trained to offer help – social workers, homeless outreach workers, chemical dependency specialists, and yes, cops. That’s the policing that Minneapolis deserves. That’s the policing that might have kept George Floyd alive.
Peter VanKoughnett is an organizer with MPD150, a group founded in 2016 with the aim of working towards a police-free Minneapolis.
FROM GROSS / PAGE A9
could at least minimally work for the broader community, costs could be transferred to taxpayers. The successful PR move to turn private agents into forces sworn “to protect and serve” effectively leveraged tax dollars to offset the costs for the wealthy without decreasing the protection they received. This history is stitched so intricately into our social fabric that we routinely assess the quality of policing based on the degree to which non-poor people are protected from the “disorder” of poor people. It is unsurprising that police are less likely to be held accountable if their misconduct is focused on the poor or people of color. In addition to the heavy emphasis on protecting property, policing has also fortified itself against efforts to hold officers accountable for misconduct and excessive use of force. The strength of police unions is certainly one factor. But another factor has been our elected officials actively seeking endorsement from the police union during elections, signaling to a white electorate that they are not “soft on crime.” Elected officials routinely cater to law enforcement over the interests of the communities being policed. Over and over, our city and legislative leaders have failed to commit to needed reforms. Communities that are the most vulnerable and have the least power — Indigenous and communities of color, the homeless, immigrants and the poor — pay the price. For example, in 2007, under pressure by the police union, city leaders removed some of the oversight powers of the Minneapolis Civilian Review Authority, an independent body that investigated allegations of police misconduct. In 2011, the state legislature passed a law forbidding civilian oversight bodies from upholding complaints by issuing findings of facts, paving the way for the city’s 2012 gutting of civilian oversight. The city replaced the CRA with the toothless Office of Police Conduct Review, an agency with a dismal 0.48% discipline rate for complaints by civilians. In 2016, Communities United Against Police Brutality (CUAPB) was part of an effort to get a measure on the ballot requiring police to carry professional liability insurance. This insurance would incentivize good policing and provide consequences for bad policing. City leaders blocked the ballot measure, claiming it violated state law. Most recently, CUAPB and other organizations proposed 14 changes to the police federation contract aimed at eliminating officer fatigue, adding mandatory mental health screenings and requiring more flexible staffing. Our coalition met with council members, but Mayor Jacob Frey only granted us a meeting with his aides. The city and police union then blocked our access to the negotiating sessions where we could have seen whether the city was planning to include our recommendations. Instead, city officials have all but ignored input from the community and the suffering of victims of police violence and have willingly paid out nearly $30 million of our tax dollars in settlements and judgments between 2003 and 2019. The officers behind those payouts are almost never disciplined. Many leaders, including some state legislators, propose more “community policing” focused on improving relationships between communities and police, implicit bias training and a residency requirement for police. These proposals sound like common sense. Unfortunately, studies show they don’t work. A 1999 study in the journal “Policing” showed that cities with residency requirements “affect citizens’ perceptions of police in a negative way.” Likewise, a 2016 metaanalysis of 17 studies of implicit bias training showed that the trainings do not “consistently change behavior.” Finally, too many reform efforts center on the proposal of “police-community relations.” The underlying premise is that if police and the community could somehow just get along better, trust would be built and the problem would be solved. This framing is false. We need to be clear — the issue is and always has been police abuse of authority, the oppression that underpins it and the lack of accountability that encourages it. Some city leaders believe they can “put the genie back in the bottle” by creating the appearance of change without substance. Mayor Frey is bringing in the Minneapolis Foundation, headed by former mayor R.T. Rybak, under whose leadership civilian oversight of the police was gutted. Why would anyone think he is the “white knight” to bring forth police accountability? On June 7, City Council members announced their intention to disband the MPD. A few days later, they modified the language to “defund” the MPD. This has now been walked back to a “year-long conversation” on what to do about the police, largely because disbanding SEE GROSS / PAGE A19
A18 June 25–July 8, 2020 / southwestjournal.com FROM UPTOWN SHOOTING / PAGE A1
Arradondo said the department has seen a surge of violent crime and shootings in recent months that amounts to “a public health crisis.” More than 100 people have been shot in the city since May 26, according to the Star Tribune. Arradondo said the Minneapolis Police Department would be looking for help from the FBI and other outside law enforcement agencies. “Make no doubt, the gun violence has to stop,” he said. Hennepin County Sheriff Dave Hutchinson said deputies will provide patrol assistance in Minneapolis and investigative resources to help arrest those committing violent crimes. “Our communities are engaged in a dangerous spate of violence, disproportionately affecting communities of color,” Hutchinson said in a statement. “It might be easier for police, in these turbulent times, to keep a low profile and fly under the radar. But it isn’t the right thing to do.” Christopher Uggen, a criminologist at the University of Minnesota, said the increase of shootings in Minneapolis is starting to look like what happened after the police killing of Freddie Gray and subsequent protests and unrest in Baltimore in 2015, when violent crime peaked for about three months. “That’s my concern, that we’re entering into this period, ” Uggen said. Floyd’s death and the subsequent uprising was “profoundly destabilizing” in many ways across the city, Uggen said, and upended both formal systems of control from law enforcement and the less formal systems of community violence prevention that come from friends and family. With that destabilization, the chance of violence increases. Before Floyd’s death, criminologists were tracking an increase in violent crime in the Twin Cities, which was largely perpetuated by the relatively decentralized groups of gangs and cliques operating in the metro, Uggen said, but the increase in shootings since Floyd was killed is not a statistical blip. Violent crime is up 11% in the 5th Precinct this year over the five-year average, according to MPD data.
Community response
The weekend of the shooting marked one of the first where nightlife returned to the heart of Uptown, and on Friday, June 19, the streets near Hennepin & Lagoon were filled with people doing burnouts in muscle cars and onlookers who were more or less having a block party near the bars, which “got out of control fast,” according to Jill Osiecki, executive director of the Uptown Association. Fred Hwang, the manager of Hoban Korean BBQ, said local restaurants and bars have stopped hiring off-duty police officers for security because it’s now “seen as a liability.” He said he was frustrated he couldn’t get on-duty
FROM MURALS / PAGE A1
While interest in preserving the murals has been widespread, debate has centered on questions of who should be collecting them and how they should be displayed. “It seems like everybody’s on the same page that they shouldn’t be tossed,” said Brian Szott, head of curatorial affairs at the Minnesota Historical Society. In Uptown, some businesses are planning to keep their murals on-site. Penzey’s Spices is planning to disassemble the mural on its exterior walls and reassemble it inside the store. Infinite Vapor has placed one protest mural on the wall behind its counter. The Uptown Association is trying to find a permanent space in the community to display most of the 50 or so murals the organization commissioned — possibly inside the Uptown mall formerly known as Calhoun Square. The organization is deciding whether to auction off some murals to meet its funding needs. Others may be donated. A group called Memorialize the Movement is raising funds to collect murals for an exhibit at the Minnesota African American Heritage Museum & Gallery in North Minne-
Fred Hwang, the manager of Hoban Korean BBQ, and his friend Buddy Vegas ducked out of the way of gunshots on June 21. Photo by Zac Farber
officers to respond that Friday night. “Everyone called them; they didn’t come,” he said. Osiecki said “the plan on Saturday was to have an increased police presence.” Part of that plan included blocking off portions of the street near bars, and while that deterred another vehicular doughnut festival, the strategy did not prevent gun violence. On June 22, the Monday after the shooting, several area business owners, police officials, Mayor Jacob Frey and local Council Members Lisa Bender (Ward 10) and Lisa Goodman (Ward 7) participated in a meeting hosted by the Uptown Association to discuss safety in the neighborhood. The mayor and the MPD committed to putting more patrol resources in the area at the meeting. Bender, whose ward includes the corner where the shooting occurred, has spoken about the importance of gun control and the need to take proactive steps to stop violence, but in two interviews her staff scheduled before this issue went to press, she could not be reached for comment. Goodman, who represents the East Isles portion of Uptown, said local businesses requested increased patrols. There is a void of leadership in the city on crime, she said, and at a time when many of her colleagues are calling for the department to be dismantled, she said she wants the public to be confident police can be a part of the solution. “If we’re going to be a city without police, we need to be a city with much less guns,” Goodman said. With burnouts and other vehicle stunts in the area, one strategy going forward will be continuing to close down a few blocks to vehicle traffic. Goodman said McDonald’s and Lunds agreed to close their parking lots on weekend evenings to discourage large congregations of cars.
Car-based disturbances present several challenges to MPD patrolling areas with significant nightlife like Uptown, Goodman said, because officers are often on bikes and ill-equipped and inadequately staffed to break up large groups of people in vehicles. Even if people drive away, MPD policy limits officers from engaging in vehicle chases with nonviolent offenders for safety reasons. Some local residents want to help promote alternatives to police presence, she said, but she also sees limits to that approach. “What do we want people to do, go out in orange vests and stop people spinning in their cars?” Goodman said. In the long term, she said, the Uptown area will likely need to adopt a similar practice to the Warehouse District downtown, where nightlife businesses and residents meet weekly with police to discuss safety strategies. “There are going to be some long-term discussions,” Osiecki said. In the short term, some bars are considering temporary early closing hours of 10 p.m. on weekdays and midnight on weekends, she said. Mike Whitelaw, who owns Uptown Tavern, said security is a “monster issue” and that he has not had a similar concern in 15 years at the location. He said he was happy with what he heard at the Uptown Association from both Goodman and 5th Precinct Inspector Amelia Huffman and said Bender “is at least listening.” He said the bar is still trying to figure out its strategy going forward, but the priority is keeping the public and workers safe. “It’s a lot of moving parts right now,” he said.
apolis. Organizers of the effort said the art should be memorialized through a “Blackowned and oriented organization.” “I think it’s so important that we give space to the [museum] to tell this story because so often in this country black history is erased or told by white people,” organizer Leesa Kelly said. Memorialize the Movement has collected about 10 pieces and wants to collect enough to sustain an exhibit for six months, Kelly said. The hardest part has been securing the plywood boards before they are thrown out or collected by another organization, she said. She said the group is hoping to see meaningful conversations started around race and police accountability. “We want to keep this moment going even when the protests have gone down [and] even when #GeorgeFloyd has stopped trending,” she wrote in an email. The Walker Art Center and Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) said in separate statements that while some have urged them to collect protest art, they have no plans to do so. “As a large institution built on the foundations of white supremacy, it is not the Walker’s place to lead such efforts,” spokesperson
Rachel Joyce said, adding that the museum would be able to assist with transportation, labor, tools, packing and preservation advice as needed or requested. Mia is aware of the “complex history of colonialism and white supremacy that has informed our collection of art and artifacts from different cultures,” spokesperson Michaela BaltasarFeyen said. “We do not want to compound the errors of the past by presuming to be the institution that should acquire these murals.” Szott said the Minnesota Historical Society’s first priority is ensuring that community members decide what happens with the murals. He said he wants to prevent them from being landfilled. Two groups have started efforts to document the murals before they are taken down. One effort, out of the University of St. Thomas, has documented over 360 murals, tags and other installations around the world through a crowdsourcing effort. Preserve Minneapolis is also creating a public online exhibition of street art.
Chaotic scene
Hwang said he was standing outside Hoban, doing some crowd control, when a string of shots — at least 30 or 40 — rang out “bop-bop-bop-bop-bop-bop” from near the
‘Keep that conversation going’
In a June 18 online forum, an intergenerational
McDonald’s, about a half block to his north. “We hit the floor and then started scrambling inside for safety,” he said. “Bullets [flew] right next to my head and just barely missed me. … I could have been killed.” Police are investigating the shooting and have yet to say how many people were involved. Hwang said “it appeared to be a shootout between two or more people.” “We found bullet shell casings from three different guns — three different sizes,” he explained. Buddy Vegas, a friend of Hwang’s, was smoking a cigarette in front of Hoban when the shooting started. He said three women collapsed on top of each other on the sidewalk in front of him. “We had to peel the one girl off, then peel the second girl off to get to the third one,” he said. Hwang said he thought there was “a delayed response” to the shooting, given that a squad car was stationed near the Apple Store, a block to the south. Minneapolis police spokesperson John Elder said the first officer responded to the scene “within three minutes” of the shooting. As of press time on June 24, the police report on the shooting has not been made public. Elder told the Southwest Journal to file a data request in response to questions about how many officers were on patrol in the 5th Precinct June 19-21 and how many officers were stationed in Uptown. The request has yet to be fulfilled, and calls to the police record unit placed during business hours June 21, 22 and 23 have gone straight to a taped message requesting the public “call again the next business day.” Osiecki said she was encouraged by police response to the shooting and the way they worked with people to tend to the wounded. “Police were on the spot right away and they were being helped by the community,” she said. Some in the city have suggested the MPD is in a work slowdown in response to the uprising. Uggen said he has not seen evidence of that in Minneapolis, but he believes officers may be keeping their distance until called. “We do have reports that officers are getting much more pushback and resistance from community members, and that was certainly the case in the Uptown situation,” he said. Given the backlash they’re facing, Hwang speculated that officers might be scared. “But we are, too,” he said. “We’re also facing this unrest.” As conversations on dismantling the MPD and creating a new public safety model have begun, Uggen said that, as a criminologist, he supports investing more in social programs to divert people from crime to non-police interventions for low-level offenses. Getting this spell of violence under control will be key to progressing those discussions, he said. “We’ve had a tremendous shock, and we haven’t reached any sort of equilibrium,” Uggen said.
group of Black artists said that artists of color need to be involved in discussions around preserving the murals. The preserved boards should represent all emotions people have felt, they said. They also said they hope this moment leads to more opportunities for Black artists to create more permanent works. “All of the discussion about what to do with the boards is important, but what’s really important is how we keep that conversation going,” artist Alex Smith said. Robyne Robinson, a former TV news anchor and public art consultant who organized the forum, thinks the idea that people find most distasteful right now is collecting the murals for money. Robinson said she’s trying to foster conversations about how artists can help find solutions to societal problems. “We need to take a look at the power of art as not just something that you hang over your sofa,” she said. Andrew Hazzard contributed reporting to this story.
southwestjournal.com / June 25–July 8, 2020 A19 FROM PREGNANCY / PAGE A1
case she feels ill. Trained in some bodywork and massage techniques, she has had to find ways to adjust her practice. “Typically the doula’s the person who is right there in front of mom, whispering encouraging words to her and holding her hand, smoothing her hair, giving her a back rub and just kind of getting in her face like, ‘You can do this,’” Hanstad said. “Now I would … keep a little more distance and not necessarily be as hands-on.” Pregnancies have changed dramatically in recent months. Routine check-ups, prenatal visits and postpartum support have largely moved online. Fertility treatments are being delayed and baby showers are being called off. Many parents have been forced into self-quarantine, with the stress of isolation hitting many new mothers hard. Some have had to rethink their original birthing plans, shifting to birth centers or home births. “It’s been a wild ride,” said Kingfield resident Jocelyn Keller, who had her first baby on May 26. The two months leading up to the birth of her daughter were the most stressful, she said. Her appointments began transitioning to telehealth and, at 37 weeks, she was told to come to her weekly in-person appointments alone. Her original plan was to have present for labor a doula, her family and an all-female OB-GYN team from the Haugen clinic in Edina. But due to staffing changes related to COVID-19, she ended up with three physicians who weren’t from Haugen. Now at home with her newborn, she said she was saddened to not be able to introduce her to friends and family. “The beginning of life and the end of life now due to COVID have been very lonely,” she said. “These two big transition periods of life have been fairly isolated.”
Fertility treatments
For some in Southwest, changes in fertility treatment have created additional barriers for conception. Kara Yorkhall, founder of the Kingfield women’s health and fertility clinic Fertile Grounds, said the stressors of the pandemic
FROM GROSS / PAGE A17
or defunding the police would require a change to the city charter — an arduous process unlikely to occur before November 2021. While a “year-long conversation” on problems with the MPD is a welcome change from the deafening silence of the last two decades, the people on the receiving end of police violence really can’t afford to wait that long for solutions. Now is the time to rein in the Minneapolis police. CUAPB has issued a list of 44 evidence-based recommendations for how the city, county and state can end police violence now. Minneapolis, for example, could adopt a disciplinary reset mechanism and a “last resort” deadly force policy, post use-of-force data and lawsuit information on the city’s website and start to build a robust civilian over-
spaces designed to be inclusive and combat assumptions about gender and partnership in pregnancy. “Knowing that someone is there for you and is able to physically support you in a way that’s loving — it’s important, especially in a medical system where it’s easy to become dehumanized,” she said.
Missed milestones
Maria Wardoku and her husband, Reggie, sit with their son, Felix. They’re asking friends to get tested for the virus if they want to hold Felix. Submitted photo
can negatively affect fertility, though with time the body adjusts to the stress. “When we’re going through something traumatic and challenging, we need all the support that we had before and probably some extra,” Yorkhall said. Gwen Griswold, 36, has been trying to conceive a child for over three years. Her fertility clinic stopped all fertility treatment services, even prescription refills, in March, and she just recently found out she’d be able to resume treatment in July. “You want everyone to be safe, but it is that difficulty of also recognizing you know your own biological clock,” Griswold said. “You really only have a certain window.” For LGBTQ couples who cannot get pregnant biologically, barriers to conception are even more pronounced. Many local sperm banks, deemed inessential services, were closed at the beginning of the pandemic, said Janine Stiles, a midwife and member of the Queer Birth Project. The center, stationed near Powderhorn Park, provides queer couples around the metro
sight body now. Many of these recommendations are not new — our organization has presented them to officials for years. Every recommendation on this list is readily able to be implemented. All that is required is the will. Prior failures by elected officials to adopt these evidence-based solutions are what brought us to this place. The city has consistently failed to learn from past mistakes. The burning down of the 3rd Precinct was a plea for change. We need to heed that plea. Michelle Gross is the president of Communities United Against Police Brutality, an all-volunteer Twin Cities-based organization founded in 2000. You can read the group’s full recommendations for reform at tinyurl.com/CUAPB-report.
with culturally sensitive care and support. Sperm banks are now reopened but in vitro fertilization clinics remain closed, forcing many couples to postpone their pregnancy process. Other couples navigating foster care, surrogacy or adoption are facing difficulties as well, Stiles said. “[LGBTQ] folks have a hard time getting respectful care a lot of times, and now in a pandemic that just [is] an added complication,” Stiles said. “Mostly my folks are just scared and not sure about the decisions they’re making and whether this is a good time to grow their families.” Navigating birth options amid crowded hospitals can be difficult for LGBTQ folks who may have been misgendered by medical staff in the past, not given proper treatment or assaulted, she said. With hospital staff overwhelmed right now, Stiles said it adds another layer of concern for anyone in a marginalized group. Ellyn Wyman-Grothem, a doula who specializes in working with queer families, said it is challenging for them to find
FROM MUSEUMS / PAGE A10
services, in the galleries or in the gift shop. It’s also freezing salaries, reducing retirement contributions and reducing senior staff salaries by 20% for director Mary Ceruti and 10% for other senior leadership. In statements, leaders of both organizations said decisions to lay off staff were difficult. Both noted how federal Paycheck Protection Programs allowed them to cover staff salaries through the spring but said they anticipate reduced revenue in the coming year. “We are deeply saddened by this very difficult situation and are grateful for our staff ’s contributions and their dedication to serving our visitors,” Mia director Katie Luber said in a statement. Mia has been closed since March 13 and plans on reopening with reduced hours in mid-July. The museum reduced its fiscal year 2021 budget by $4 million because of declining revenue. A Change.org petition from Mia employees
For those who give birth, missing certain milestones of pregnancy due to COVID-19 can make coping even more difficult. Baby showers are being called off, and some families are now barred from taking home the placenta, which is used in some ritual burying ceremonies. Maria Wardoku said it was hard to not share the birth of her son, Felix, with friends and family. Wardoku’s husband, Reggie, is from Ghana and they had planned to do a traditional “outdooring ceremony” in which Felix would be taken outside and introduced to their friends. Instead, they’re holding outdoor one-onone meetings with close relatives from 6 feet apart. They’re also asking friends be tested for the virus if they want to hold him. “The instinct to hold and cuddle a new baby is so strong,” she said. “That’s such a special thing … how they smell and their micro facial expressions, and they can’t see you from 6 feet away … so that’s kind of heart-wrenching.” Amid the difficulties, couples are getting creative. Two of Wyman-Grothem’s clients set up a socially distant “meet the baby” event where the couple sat in a chair facing their glass front door and loved ones stood on the other side of the glass to talk and see the baby. Wardoku said her neighbors have come together to help her, too. After giving birth she posted online to see if anyone in South Minneapolis had a baby thermometer she could borrow. Several neighbors made it their mission to find her one. “One woman messaged all of her colleagues. Another was calling her daughter who’s a pediatrician in Florida,” she said. “It was so nice to feel like people were going to find a way to help us — not even people who knew us personally.”
calling on museum leaders and staffers earning higher salaries to take steeper pay cuts has been signed by more than 1,000 people. Luber started her job in January making $500,000, and 2015-18 tax forms show there are three other positions at the museum with average salaries over $250,000. “These proposed layoffs will disproportionately impact those already paid the least and in the most precarious financial situations,” the petition reads. “We also have serious concerns about the impact layoffs will have on Mia’s already meager staff diversity, considering most BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and people of color] staff at Mia are in non-managerial and grant-funded roles.” Mia spokesperson Michaela Baltasar-Feyen declined to comment on calls for deeper pay cuts. The Walker also has been closed since March 13 and plans on opening with reduced hours next month. The museum projects a $5.7 million drop in revenue. — Nate Gotlieb
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Southwest Journal June 25–July 8, 2020
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Owners work to restock as pandemic delays deliveries
Bryant Hardware manager Erin Fenske has seen more neighborhood business since the start of the pandemic. Photo by Isaiah Rustad
By Michelle Bruch
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eemed essential businesses, hardware stores never closed their doors, and now they’re busier than ever. “For instance: Mulch. I have sold, this spring, as much mulch [as] I have in five years combined,” said Mark Settergren, who owns the Linden Hills, Diamond Lake and 54th & Penn Ace Hardware locations. “Our hardware store has sold everything that we have in it.” Bryant Hardware sold more seeds this year than ever before. Frattallone’s Ace Hardware in Stevens Square has never seen so many online orders. “Everybody’s tired of watching Netflix, so they’ve started doing a few more projects,” said Guse Hardware manager Jason Menk. Lawn and garden projects currently top the Minneapolis to-do lists, followed by painting. During the stay-at-home order, people found themselves staring at walls they had long been meaning to paint, said Erin Fenske, manager of Bryant Hardware. “It’s an instant gratification,” said Elena Nelson, co-owner of Nicollet Ace Hardware. Along with the run on cleaning products and toilet paper, sidewalk chalk immediately sold out in stores this spring. Grills and kiddie pools are selling fast. Nicollet Ace Hardware quickly sold all of their baby chicks, as parents brought chickens into the at-home curriculum. “It’s just not business as normal,” Nelson said. SEE HARDWARE / PAGE B6 Owner Mark Settergren talks with Luanne Richards at the Ace Hardware store in Linden Hills. Photo by Michelle Bruch
B2 June 25–July 8, 2020 / southwestjournal.com
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southwestjournal.com / June 25–July 8, 2020 B3
Home gardening flourishes during the pandemic By Becca Most
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tepping into David Nicholson’s small Kingfield backyard, you see a couple of overgrown raspberry bushes expanding toward the back fence. Instead of a traditionally mown green grass lawn, Nicholson is cultivating a sort of urban garden.
In the center of the lawn he sprouts radishes, collard greens, rhubarb and asparagus. A checkered plastic trellis stands ready to support the vertical growth of melons and a large arctic kiwi bush hides a couple of former beehive boxes. “There is something special about being able to go into your yard and pick something right off the vine and eat it right then because the flavor, the texture, is so much better,” he says, breaking off a piece of lemony sorrel and putting it in his mouth. Nicholson has been gardening in Kingfield for about two decades, but he’s particularly grateful for this year’s growing season. With many working from home, gardening has taken off throughout the metro, resulting in more urban gardeners getting their hands dirty. During the pandemic, food shortages in grocery stores have challenged a long-standing
reliance on store-bought food. Much of that produce is grown internationally or shipped in from places like California. The satisfaction, self-reliance and therapeutic quality of growing fresh food has drawn many firsttimers to gardening this season. This do-ityourself movement has the potential to stick, and many gardening stores in Southwest Minneapolis have seen its effects. Sunnyside Gardens in Linden Hills saw more sales of vegetables and herbs this growing season than ever before. Tomatoes and other easy-togrow vegetables like cucumbers, broccoli and herbs are some of the top-sellers, said general manager Sarah Davis. Organic fertilizers and compost are selling in record numbers as well. “I think people are enjoying their outdoor spaces,” Davis said. “They’re reaping the benefits of gardening, not just the visual and the edible part of it but for [their] mental health as well.” For Lee Watkins, May marked the time to start working in the MLK Park Donation Garden. As a Kingfield Master Gardner, Watkins said gardening has been a way for her to relieve stress and connect with those in her neighborhood.
Collard greens are among the dozens of vegetables Nicholson grows in his Kingfield backyard.
David Nicholson stands barefoot next to a newly planted bed in his backyard on June 12. Photos by Becca Most
Spreading fertilizer and planting produce like bush beans, peppers, radishes and squash, Watkins says the MLK Park garden’s bounty is given to the Aliveness Project, which then distributes the fresh food to those living with HIV in the community. During the pandemic, Watkins said, people are realizing the importance of fresh food more than ever. She noted that some garden centers were out of seedlings and cedar, which is often used to make raised garden beds. “As you walk around, you see more people with gardens in their front yards,” she said. “Kind of like how everyone’s making sourdough bread, everyone’s starting to garden now because they have the time to do it.” Navigating available sunlight, proper spacing of plants and avoiding pests and bugs have been on the forefront of many homeowners’ minds. The Master Gardeners program through the University of Minnesota has seen double or triple the usual number of people reaching out with questions. Some of the most common include logistics about planting, insect identification and lawn care. “It seems to me that they were viewing the spring awakening of their garden and saw things they never noticed before,” Ellen Campbell, a Hennepin County Master Gardener, wrote in an email. “Especially weed infestations they hadn’t noticed for years and now they’re overwhelmed.”
For Sarah Woutat, the market manager of Neighborhood Roots — the organization that runs the Kingfield and Fulton farmers markets — gardening is not just a profession but a creative outlet. A former farmer herself, Woutat recently moved to Kingfield and has adapted to growing produce in her extra-small back lawn. With a plethora of hanging baskets and a series of potted vegetables on her patio, creating something fresh and delicious from something as small as a seed comes with a feeling of pride and joy. Faced with shortages of food in grocery stores during the pandemic, Woutat said COVID-19 has made more people aware of how reliant they are on the global supply chain. Growing some of your own food can not only be cheaper but fosters a sense of self-sufficiency, she said. “When something like this happens that is completely and totally unforeseen and our systems aren’t set up to handle it, well, then you don’t have food,” she said. Supporting local farmers markets and growing produce from scratch keeps dollars within the community and is a more sustainable food model to fall back on, Woutat said. “I hope that once we’re back to normal — whatever that means — people will keep these ideas going,” she said. “Once they can get everything they need at the grocery store again, I hope they don’t give up that garden.”
B4 June 25–July 8, 2020 / southwestjournal.com
By Meleah Maynard
Growing tomatoes is easier than you might think
I
’ll just say it: It took a global pandemic for me to actually grow tomatoes from seed successfully. Sure, I’ve saved tomato seeds and tried to start them under lights in my basement in the past, but something (or lots of things) always went wrong. I think that’s because I’m more of a big-picture person — details, schmetails, I think, as my loaves of bread fail to rise and the quilt I started 20 years ago is still in pieces in a box.
Meleah Maynard grew most of her vegetables from seed this season. Photos by Meleah Maynard
But this year, fearing that I might not be able to buy tomato seedlings because of the coronavirus quarantine, I planted a few varieties, using seeds I already had stored away in the basement — black cherry, Black Krim, red and yellow mini pear tomatoes from Renee’s Garden (tinyurl.com/renee-pear), as well as Cherokee Purple. I didn’t have high hopes, but I’m happy to report that every single tomato seedling survived in my care and, you know, it really wasn’t that hard. I might even start my own tomatoes from seed from now on. But let’s not get too carried away right now. Now that the tomatoes are all planted, the next challenge is to keep them healthy all season. Anyone who grows tomatoes knows
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weird stuff can go wrong. Sun is important, of course, and more is better. Now that the trees have matured around our yard, my tomatoes only get about five hours of sun, so it’s “not exactly Tuscany over here,” as a friend recently said to me. But we get enough of a crop to make loads of great salsa, so it’s worth it. If you’re struggling with not enough sun, one thing you can do is grow your tomatoes in large pots on rolling plant stands. I got mine at Ikea a long time ago, and a lot of garden centers carry them now, too. If you’re home a lot, like many of us are these days, it’s easy to roll your plants into the sun as it moves around throughout the day. And here’s a neat tip that you might not know: Tomatoes should be buried deeply at planting time. I know that sounds weird since most things should not be buried underground like that. But what you want to do with tomatoes is pull off the leaves along the lower two-thirds of the stem, and bury that part in a nice, deep hole so that only the top third is above ground. Doing that will help your tomatoes develop much stronger root systems
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because buried stems sprout additional roots to support the plants. Taking time to amend your soil will help your tomatoes thrive, too. Tomatoes will grow if you plop them just about anywhere that gets good sun, as long as you water them. But if you want plants to produce more fruit and be their healthiest, mix some composted manure into your beds and pots at planting time. You can have some delivered, or you can buy it in bags at most garden centers. Composted manure will help enrich the soil, but it isn’t enough to keep your tomatoes well nourished. Like you, they need some food, so get yourself some fertilizer. I prefer organic fertilizers to synthetic, but both will do the trick. I used to use fish emulsion for most of my gardens, and I still use it to feed perennials and annuals. But I’ve found that my vegetables and fruit do better when I use products with slightly higher levels of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium, as well as other organic ingredients. For tomatoes, my go-to fertilizer these days is Espoma’s Tomato-tone (tinyurl.com/tomato-tone). Let’s talk about watering. Tomatoes like water, but too much can be a real problem. Don’t just spritz your plants. Water when the soil feels like it’s drying out but not to the point of being a desert. Let the water run long enough that the roots get a good soaking.
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Try your best to water at the soil line because getting plants’ leaves wet all the time will increase the chance that your tomatoes will get all sorts of ugly and terrible blights and viruses. And that’s very sad after all the hard work it takes to grow these beauties. OK, on to pruning. It’s important to prune tomatoes because they will produce better fruit and be less susceptible to diseases if the foliage and fruit are not all tightly jumbled up together. The most important thing to know about pruning is that tomatoes are either bush varieties that grow to a reasonable, compact height and set fruit, or they are indeterminate varieties, which means they grow like vines and pretty much grow and grow until disease or frost kills them. You don’t really need to prune determinate tomatoes, aside from pinching off (or cutting) all of the foliage below the first cluster of flowers that appears. Pruning above those flowers (unless something breaks or is yellow) just reduces the amount of tomatoes you could have had. Indeterminate varieties need more intervention, and there are loads of videos online demonstrating helpful, clever ways to prune them but, as I said earlier, I am not a detail-oriented soul. So I’ve gotten the gist of what to do, but I don’t do everything because that would make my head pop off.
Most of my tomatoes are heirlooms, and most heirlooms are indeterminate, so here’s what I do, and it works pretty well. Pinch or cut off leaves and stems below the first cluster of flowers, like you do with determinate varieties. This keeps foliage away from the soil, which can splash up on plants and cause disease problems. Tie your indeterminate tomatoes to a sturdy support, using torn up rags or whatever you have that won’t cut into the stems, and keep tying up the plants as they grow. Once you start seeing flowers, it’s time to begin pruning out suckers, which sprout in the V-shaped spaces where branches meet stems. It’s good to get rid of most suckers because they can drain plants’ energy and keep them from producing well. The other things you need to prune are the branches. As indeterminate tomatoes grow, fruit-bearing branches will grow off the main stem. You want some of those, but not all of them or you’ll end up with a tangled mess. As you would with a tree, leave the main “leader” stem alone, but cut off some of those branches, leaving about four or five — or more. I leave more because I can’t go all crazy with that sort of thing. You’ll find your own way to do things. It’s not as complicated as you might think. Meleah Maynard is a Minneapolis-based writer and editor who blogs at Livin’ Thing — livinthing.com.
Tomatoes should be buried deeply at planting time.
3/6/20 4:04 PM
B6 June 25–July 8, 2020 / southwestjournal.com FROM HARDWARE / PAGE B1
Hardware stores across the country are reporting record-setting sales, according to Dan Tratensek, executive vice president at the North American Retail Hardware Association (NRHA), who said sales are driven by cleaning products and protective equipment, home office supplies and extra DIY time at home. “We always find that in times where there’s uncertainty in the economy, whether that’s a recession or something like this, a lot of people are not spending money going on big vacations, they’re not spending money right now in going to the movies or going out to dinner. The one place they see they can really spend that money, and see some kind of payback for it, is improving their homes,” Tratensek said. While business is very busy, Nelson at Nicollet Ace Hardware said they are operating with fewer staff due to COVID-19, and the pandemic is affecting the shop in new ways. Rapid purchasing from all hardware stores has strained the amount of mulch, dirt and paint available. Even things like sandpaper can be harder to obtain, as can drill bits made in China. Operating without workers for a period of time, some growers have fewer plants to sell. “We’re asking customers for patience on all fronts,” Nelson said. As soil and mulch have become harder to keep in stock, Menk said one supplier has reduced the number of mulch varieties to help meet demand. Settergren is seeing inventory stretched in lawn and garden materials ranging from raised beds to wheelbarrows. “We cannot keep in stock that kind of product and now we’re finding out that the supply chain is — they only built so many,” Settergren said. Supply chain challenges are evident across the industry, Tratensek said. COVID19-related slowdowns in production overseas
Employee Bri Davenport works at the curbside window at Settergren’s of Linden Hills. Photo by Michelle Bruch
started the backlog, he said. And industry distributors, trying to forecast demand 90-180 days in advance, often underestimated. “Understandably so, because I don’t think anybody would have predicted, if this was just an average year, that we would be seeing this kind of sales,” he said. “It really
has been a once-in-a-lifetime event.” Now there are points in the supply chain that have seen two-week shutdowns or are operating with a smaller staff to maintain social distancing at the busiest time of the year. “It’s more like a kink in the garden hose,” he said. “It might take another 30,
60 days to get back up to regular pace, but I’d imagine as all the additional challenges work themselves out, the hose will continue to un-kink and product will flow more freely to the retailers. … But if we see cases flare up again, then really who knows what could happen?”
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southwestjournal.com / June 25–July 8, 2020 B7
Open the DOOr... tO new pOssibilities
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The jump in demand is a particular challenge for hardware and grocery stores, which have predictable sales year after year, said Karthik Natarajan, assistant professor of Supply Chain and Operations at the Carlson School of Management. “It’s hard to rewire supply chains on the fly,” he said. Natarajan said most production in China is back at full capacity, but low-value merchandise made in China is typically transported by ships, rather than quickly airlifted at greater expense. When products arrive in the U.S., many ports and warehouses are operating with social distancing, loading fewer trucks per day and creating delays. “If it was a high-value commodity which is manufactured in the U.S., these issues probably would be solved much faster,” he said. He expects hardware store backlogs to resolve within a month or two as companies adapt. Frattalone’s Ace Hardware at 2737 Hennepin Ave. reopened June 8 and is working to restock much of its inventory, which was lost or damaged during the unrest following George Floyd’s killing. Store manager Jake Granheim said he’s hopeful that insurance will cover the loss. When patrons offer to help, he suggests donating to others who need it more. During the week of the protests, Nelson said Nicollet Ace Hardware didn’t receive new deliveries for a week because distributors didn’t want to visit Minneapolis. Her business partner spent several nights on the rooftop, shining a flashlight and yelling to scare off attempts to break into the business. A few of the windows were broken at Bryant Hardware, but there was no major
damage, Fenske said. Neighbors stood on the sidewalk for an hour to watch the business until staff arrived, and neighbors returned later to help clean up. Hardware store owners have noticed a surge in support from local customers. Fenske said Bryant Hardware typically serves maintenance workers at large apartment complexes, but after the stay-at-home order, neighborhood traffic jumped and has remained steady. “We have more community business and local shoppers, which has been awesome,” she said. Research by E.A. Langenfeld & Associates, a retail hardware consultant, shows that the Minneapolis area has seen a decrease in visits to major home improvement stores and an increase in visits to independent hardware stores. The firm speculates that areas of the country prioritizing knowledge of COVID-19 (as measured through web searches) are increasingly visiting independent hardware stores to avoid long lines, boost the local economy and head off difficulty with Amazon deliveries. An NRHA survey found that 72% of independent hardware stores started offering curbside delivery, which they suggest may have helped business as well. When the pandemic arrived in Minneapolis, Settergren’s stores stopped allowing customers to browse the interior sales floor, instead serving people at walkup counters. Running a fourth-generation business in operation since 1895, Settergren said it’s been fun to sell candy to kids through the walkup window. “We really are that old-fashioned general store that has a little bit of everything,” he said.
Bryant Hardware typically serves maintenance workers at large apartment complexes, but after the stay-at-home order, neighborhood traffic jumped and has remained steady. Photo by Isaiah Rustad
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B8 June 25–July 8, 2020 / southwestjournal.com
Unsung Architecture
By Hailey Haferman
A landscape designer at home in nature
W
hile Locus Architecture collaborates with our clients on every project, it’s rare to have the opportunity to truly work hand-in-hand with a homeowner in their area of expertise. For a 2018 home renovation in East Harriet, we worked with landscape designer Matt Davis to create a home for him and his family. Davis, the founder of Shaw Design, designed the grounds and served as general contractor as our team created a single-family home that blends building and landscape.
Although we considered numerous options to save a significant portion of the existing house, we determined the limitations posed by its substandard materials and poor layout were just too great to save it. Consequently, aside from three foundation walls and sewer and water hookups, the home is completely new. Landscaped stone terraces gradually lead up from the street level to the front entrance, an intentional move by Davis to soften the boundary between interior and exterior. “On my projects I tend to work with the ground plane quite a bit — how I can push the ground up and down to create interesting space,” he said. “It’s a very important part of any landscape, any architecture.” The home’s facade further softens the transition between outside and inside while accentuating different planes of space. Free of columns, a suspended pergola floats above the front patio, visually articulating the entry while enabling
Landscaped stone terraces gradually lead up from the street level to the front entrance of this East Harriet renovation. Submitted photo
the stone terraces to freely assemble below. A shallow hip roof and modest scale help to soften the otherwise modern exterior of the house, helping it to appear at home with its neighbors. Horizontal cedar slats interface with different tones and sizes of greenish blue siding, creating a palette that feels vibrant, but doesn’t steal the spotlight on this calm, tree-lined boulevard. Inside, it’s apparent that the relatively small footprint packs a lot of space. The second level includes two bedrooms, the master suite, a bathroom and a rooftop patio overlooking the backyard. In the basement is an additional guest bedroom, bathroom, laundry room and family room. On the main floor of the house, nearly floorto-ceiling windows welcome in an abundance of sunlight, so much so that Davis’ family can usually wait until sunset to turn the lights on.
When sitting in his office at the front of the house, Davis says the effect of the windows is “just short of installing a rollup door”. Moments like these help to create an almost seamless transition from exterior to interior, an effect enhanced by the open plan of the first floor. Views to the outside can be experienced from the kitchen, living, and dining rooms, as centralized circulation leads one naturally to the back patio. Throughout, a palette of soft, airy blues and deep browns bring the tones of nature inside the home, the colors shifting as sunlight fills and moves through the space. In the back of the house, multiple levels of horizontal planes are also used to connect the inside with the outside, echo nature and define space. A second suspended pergola lightly shades a south-facing patio, making it great for cooling down on sweltering summer days or
staying warm on sunny fall afternoons. Steps that appear to float (but are really just cleverly anchored) lead you off the patio down to the fenced-in backyard, where various stone landscaping elements and platform levels mirror the smooth transition into nature seen on the front of the house. Directly beneath the patio one discovers a covered enclave that leads into the walkout basement, an outdoor space perfect for taking in a summer thunderstorm. A large outdoor sectional (and matching armchair) invites the notion of staying here a while; this backyard has hosted many (pre-COVID) neighborhood and family gatherings, made possible in part by the cascade of decks and levels that provide ample seating and views. In a city of ever-increasing numbers of highrise condos and shiny steel towers, it can be easy to feel distant from the natural world. This house proves it’s possible to create a natural oasis in the middle of the city, a place to really slow down and absorb a little of what nature has to offer. Hailey Haferman is an architectural designer at Locus Architecture. This home was the recipient of a BLEND Award in 2018. BLEND is a local organization that recognizes the builders, architects, and owners of new buildings in the Twin Cities for successfully blending with the vibrant, historic character and identity of their surroundings. Visit blendaward.org to learn more.
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B10 June 25–July 8, 2020 / southwestjournal.com
The massive expense of a broken sewer line Homeowners can find themselves paying tens of thousands By Sheila Regan
I
f there is one marker of the dawn of civilization, it might very well be the Greeks’ marvelous invention of sewer systems, which allow many people to live in close proximity without all that human waste piling up. It may not be very pleasant to think about. But ignore the sewer line leading out of your house to the city line and there is nothing but peril in store for you.
When Kate and Nick Simpson were preparing to purchase their current home in Kingfield in fall 2015, things hit a snag when the property underwent a sewer inspection. In order to be sure of the health of their new home’s sewers, the couple had the sewer line scoped from the main line in the house to where it connects with the city sewer in the street. What they found is that the camera ran into tree roots that had made their way into the sewer line, which is a common issue. In
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addition to the roots, they found there was an offset in the pipe. “Two of the sections of the pipe were no longer connected flush and were offset by a couple inches,” Kate Simpson said. “Because we discovered the issue as part of the inspections process for the house, we were fortunately able to negotiate that the sellers fix the offset prior to the sale.” The price of the fix? $4,200. “The offset was located in the boulevard, so the sewer repair company had to excavate part of the curb and the boulevard and replace a 5- to 6-foot section of pipe,” Simpson said. A sewer issue often starts with what seems like a small issue, said Chris Stephens, a service manager for Hero Plumbing, Heating & Cooling. There might be a clogged floor drain, for example, which you discover
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southwestjournal.com / June 25–July 8, 2020 B11
Technicians can check for cracks, buildup and other issues inside the line by using a 50-pound sewer camera. Photo by Isaiah Rustad
doing laundry. During an inspection, the service people will look for roots in the line, offsets or bellies in the pipe — or even a complete blockage or shift in the pipe. Tree roots “are looking for water, and a major source of water is the main line of your sewer,” Stephens said. “They reach your [pipe] and, over time, build up and cause a backup.” The most expensive work you can have done is a complete line replacement, Stephens said. In that scenario, you have the plumber come out and excavate your yard, dig the line from the foundation of the home and trench through the yard to the city tap.
“That’s the last-case scenario if your line is in really bad shape,” Stephens said. “It’s the most expensive option.” According to Stephens, the price range for repairs that require excavations range from $5,000 for a spot repair to $20,000 to replace the line all the way from the house to the street. You can also put in a sewer liner, which is like a black sock that you shoot through the entire line, Stephens said. The flexible tube is coated with resin, which hardens, or “cures,” to create a supplementary layer of pipe, preventing future root growth. That procedure, he said, is a more perma-
Mike Romig, a drain technician from Ron the Sewer Rat, poses for a photo during an inspection of a home in the ECCO neighborhood. Photo by Isaiah Rustad
nent procedure that will make it so you don’t have to do regular preventative maintenance on the line. It can cost from $5,000 to $15,000, depending on the pipe’s length and width.
Older homes, more problems
“When you own an 80-year-old home in Minneapolis, there are quite a few things that can go wrong … and they do.” SEE SEWER / PAGE B12
Jill Hagen
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B12 June 25–July 8, 2020 / southwestjournal.com FROM SEWER / PAGE B11
So said former Linden Hills resident Santanu Chatterjea about his nightmarish experience with his sewer line. Chatterjea and his wife, Prachee Mukherjee, who have since moved from the neighborhood, weren’t expecting to find the floor drain in their utility room overspilling several years ago. “Apparently, older homes such as ours had the outside sewer line hooked up to the basement drain,” Santanu Chatterjea said. Add in the backyard beautiful majestic trees, whose gnarly roots broke into the ancient sewer lines, and sewage reflux ensued. The couple went through several services as they tried to figure out the problem. “One of them even snaked a camera into the line as far as he could and showed me a blurry image of a water trickle that confirmed his suspicion — drain tile collapse because of root intrusion,” Chatterjea said. They were given two options: a trenchless sewer line repair that wouldn’t disturb the yard but would be very expensive, or an elaborate archaeological dig, which would involve digging up the front yard and ripping out the sidewalk, going all the way up to the city’s main sewer line under the street. The cost? $25,000. “Needless to say, I was a bit distraught,” he said. Finally, Chatterjea got connected to Ron the Sewer Rat, whose worker came and, for $300, pushed a cutter with blades from the inside of their home’s main water line into the sewer drain. “He said the pine tree’s roots would probably return in a few years and cause the same issue, but that was normal in this part of the town. He’d have to come back.” The main problem is that the older houses use clay tiles as opposed to PVC pipes, said Peter Kroening, a co-owner of Ron the Sewer Rat. The clay tiles, combined with all
Romig uses a tool to reseal the entrance to the sewage line on June 15. Photo by Isaiah Rustad
the old trees with heavy root systems, can spell disaster for your pipes. Pipes located far belowground can drive up costs. In some areas of Minneapolis, such as near Lake & Chicago, Kroening said, pipes can be 25 feet deep and cost $45,000 to $50,000 to repair. “If it’s 8 feet deep, we can just put in wood shoring or a metal bin,” he said, noting the bin prevents the excavation from collapsing. A pipe over 8 feet, he said, requires multiple bins and a crane-type system.
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“Older communities tend to have deeper sewers,” Kroening said. That’s because in the early 20th century, the system relied on gravity. “The older your house, the greater the odds are of you having deeper lines.” Meanwhile, houses near 50th Street, south of the lakes, tend to be in swampier terrain, Kroening said, and if pipes aren’t fastened to the bottom of a house’s foundation, they can detach. He’s seen cases where a pipe dropped 2 feet, which can cost up to $20,000 to repair.
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southwestjournal.com / June 25–July 8, 2020 B13
“We had to get the sewer line snaked out,” Dena Hotchkiss recalled. “We had to tear up the carpet. Thankfully, we lost just a bit of trim.” Hotchkiss called Roto-Rooter and was able to get her sewer cleaned out without having to replace the entire line. She was told it would have cost about $30,000 to tear up her yard to put a new line in, or $15,000 to put a sleeve on the line. “We are really lucky,” she said. “If you are moving into an older home, you may have not gotten that particular lesson.” Kate Simpson said her biggest homepurchasing takeaway was “the importance of having the sewer line scoped as an additional inspection.” Leah Drury, a real estate agent with Lakes Sotheby’s International, said sewer inspections have become a standard part of the inspection process in the last two to three years. “It didn’t cross anyone’s mind in the first five to seven years of my career,” she said. “Now it’s fairly standard for buyers to request a sewer inspection as part of home inspection.” Unfortunately, it can be an expensive negotiation. “It’s not something you can prep your seller for,” Drury said. “If there is an issue, we have to find a resolution. It’s something you’ll have to disclose to any future buyer. Drury said she’s seen buyers on the hook
The best preventative measure, especially if you have an older home, is to properly maintain your pipes.
Soon after purchasing their Kingfield home in 2015, Kate and Nick Simpson had to pay $4,200 to fix an offset in the sewer pipe. Submitted photos
for $12,000 to $15,000, and savvy homebuyers come into the process wary. “Even sometimes in our showings, buyers are looking for trees,” she said. “‘Are there giant trees on the property?’ They are going to be curious about what that sewer line inspection is going to reveal.” One property seller, in Fulton, had two different plumbers each give an opinion. The property was set high on a hill and the yard was terraced. One plumbing company told the owners they could address the problem in the future, while the other company suggested digging up the pipes and replacing them, which would mean the entire yard would need to be re-landscaped afterward. “In this situation, the seller took on the cost of repair, and the buyer was responsible for the landscaping project,” Drury said. “All
in all, it was an expensive proposition.” Still, Drury thinks there’s an upside. When homebuyers and sellers deal with old pipes at the time of sale, there shouldn’t be as much of an issue 10 to 15 years down the road. “Hopefully, it’s resolved for future buyers,” she said.
Prevention and maintenance
The best preventative measure, Stephens said, especially if you have an older home, is to properly maintain your pipes. That means not flushing anything that shouldn’t be flushed. Wastewater and normal toilet paper only — no “flushable” wipes, no food scraps (put those in the green recycling bin). And get a screen for the hair in your shower or tub drain. Preventative cleaning — in which you
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Nick Simpson and his son Austin walk in front of their home not long after the work was completed. Behind them is the dirt patch where a hole was dug to access the sewer line.
take a 4-inch blade and run it through the drain line (similar to what Chatterjea ended up having done) — can stop roots from growing back. Whatever you do, don’t use Drano. Kroening, from Ron the Sewer Rat, warned against using any type of chemical to solve your sewer problems. “Chemicals are a ploy to charge people extra money,” he said. Kate and Nick Simpson now understand the importance of maintenance. “We weren’t aware, prior to our experience, that the homeowner has responsibility for their main all the way until it connects with the city’s main in the middle of the street,” Kate Simpson said.
6/22/20 10:38 PM
B14 June 25–July 8, 2020 / southwestjournal.com
r o f r e d n o p s e r t s s e t Fir a l a p g n i d n a dem BY C A R
T
he restaurant business has always been a dicey one, but, chances are, Heather Asbury didn’t anticipate launching her operation during a vicious pandemic, and at a site a mile or so from the epicenter of a killing that resounded around the globe. Yet here she is, serving through a take-out window of an unassuming brick building set amidst blocks of cozy bungalows. And business is booming. On my visits, customers lurked on the sidewalk like inept Secret Service agents rehearsing a drug raid. Well, the “drug” is some of the very best food I’ve tasted in a long, long time. Heather may be familiar to Southwest Journal readers as the longtime GM of Lucia’s in Uptown. Her front-of-the-house experience notwithstanding, she originally trained to ride the kitchen range at the esteemed Culinary Institute of America, and then helmed several Nordstrom cafes. No surprise that her cooking style resembles that of her longtime home at Lucia’s. It’s bright, it’s clean, it’s fresh and it has no need for glitzy showbiz tricks to gain our attention. Exacting technique, primo ingredients
and insightful recipe development team up to deliver diner satisfaction, starting with the starter du jour (much of the menu changes daily), a pair of fishcakes ($12). First off, they’re composed of fish — mild, modestly sweet, coral-pink flesh, spared of many a contender’s bready filler and overcoat of flour. They’re lightly sauteed, set upon a nest of micro-greens and sided with a lemon wedge and a smooth, full-bodied aioli visited judiciously by lemon and capers. For my entree, more seafood — the evening’s special — scallops ($23): a plump trio, maybe four bites to each, possessing that perfect balance-point of texture — neither frail nor overly compact, ideally fresh but not shy of their natural seaborne flavor. They command a bed of “summer succotash” — sweet corn, petite butter beans, bits of tomato and sweet pepper, and (hello, Minnesota) zucchini, all brightened with arugula. Or choose from a long list of sandwiches and burgers ($12-$17) and nightly specials, which run from salmon to pork loin, chicken breast and quesadillas ($13-$21).
HEATHER’S
DEM L A WA L
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I followed up with a peach salad ($13) generous enough to serve as a light meal or to share. Were the peaches fresh, I innocently inquired? A resounding “yes!” And perfectly ripened. The sweet slivers rested on a bed of greens dotted with clouds of whipped, (too) bland ricotta, balanced by husky snippets of sauteed prosciutto, rich Marcona almonds and bits (could use more) of mint. A full-bodied white balsamic dressing is packaged separately to DIY. Dessert? Well, you know me well enough by now: Just say yes. Heather’s butterscotch pudding ($5) again proved large enough for sharing, if you’re saintly enough to want to. It’s just like grandma’s: smooth, true-flavored and frosted with “proper” whipped cream (not over-whipped nor ultra-sweetened). Other indulgences range from cookies and soft-serve ice cream to brownies, eclairs, and cakes ($3.50-$5.50), including a signature chocolate-caramelsea salt number. Its three cake layers are deified by a supple chocolate buttercream and, on top, a drizzle of caramel sauce embedded with nuggets of sea salt to explode on your palate.
5201 CHICAGO AVE. | 612-445-8822 | HEATHERSMPLS.COM
Heather clearly knows how to bake, but does that translate to the pinnacle of the art form? We’re talking biscuits. And, unless she’s spirited a granny from Kentucky into her kitchen, she’s mastered the skill. They’re soul-satisfyingly light and mealy, and, in a breakfast order, slathered with gravy and topped with scrambled eggs. The eggs are straight-ahead and fine. And the gravy is light-years from the flour-andwater library paste of too many short-order diners. Hers isn’t gummy nor greasy and is livened with a shake of pepper. By the way, I wrote in my notes, before putting a fork in the plate, that this combo could easily feed two. Then I gobbled the whole darn thing. What’s different, and easier, at Heather’s about dealing with the constraints of the virus is, yes: You can phone in your order and it will be waiting for you at your specified time. But you don’t have to submit your credit info until you arrive. Nor do you have to order ahead; just show up and tell the server what you’d like to eat. Or have it delivered via Bite Squad. There’s also a deli case loaded with salads (potato, tuna, egg) and more. Wine to go and fancy coffees, too.
southwestjournal.com / June 25–July 8, 2020 B15
Lowry Hill doctor’s coloring book aims to inspire resilience By Nate Gotlieb / ngotlieb@swjournal.com
Roshan Khatri, a doctor who lives in Lowry Hill, said he wanted to help children and families develop resilience during the uncertainty of a global pandemic. This desire has led to the creation of a COVID-19-related coloring book made with the help of Headwaters Relief Organization, Khatri’s Golden Valley-based nonprofit. Khatri and psychologist Rebecca Thomley, founder and CEO of the organization, which focuses on disaster response, published “When We All Stayed Home” in April. He said artists who live in Duluth designed the book. The book “explores what coronavirus
is,” explains the concept of staying home, teaches proper handwashing and tells kids to “thank frontline workers,” Khatri said. The final section of the book has information for adults and caregivers. “We started with the idea of a storybook, but we know that resilience is best fostered through active engagement,” Khatri said. “In order to engage children and the communities, the coloring book was the best solution for now.” Khatri, 33, grew up and completed his medical training in Nepal. He met Thomley, who was inspired to start Headwaters after volunteering in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, during her 2015 trip to Nepal doing earthquake relief work. Khatri started working with Headwaters and in 2017 moved to the U.S. on a Fulbright scholarship to study public health at the University of Washington. When he graduated from the master’s degree program last spring, he moved to Minneapolis, where he began working for the nonprofit. He also works for Orion Associates, the management-services company of which Thomley is CEO. Khatri, whose title at the nonprofit is medical director — though he has stopped
Roshan Khatri, a 33-year-old doctor who lives in Lowry Hill, co-wrote a coloring book about COVID-19 aimed at helping children better understand the disease. Photo by Nate Gotlieb
practicing medicine — said he manages its daily operations. In the past few months, the organization has started a “phone pal” program connecting people confined at home with volunteers. It has also been collecting home-sewn masks and has started offering homeschooling assistance. The coloring book “arose based on necessity,” Khatri said. “Parents were having a hard time explaining to kids why they couldn’t go outside and see their grandparents. … In order to help the children and the families, we had to create something.”
Headwaters Relief Organization, which has created eight other children’s books, asks for a $5 donation for each copy of “When We All Stayed Home” ordered. The amount includes shipping. Books have gone out to Germany and Greece, and a Spanish version is coming out, Khatri said, adding that “demand has been overwhelming.” “We’re trying very hard to catch up,” he said. Visit tinyurl.com/covidcoloringbook to order a copy of the book or to learn more.
CROSSWORD PUZZLE ACROSS 1 Come or go, e.g. 5 Port in Yemen 9 Cheese with holes 14 Side squared, for a square 15 Jackson 5 brother 16 Foolish one 17 *Rock group since the ’80s with the worldwide hit “Creep” 19 Like Keebler’s animated bakers 20 2020 amt. so far, on paychecks 21 Exams 22 Upper crust 23 Turns loose 24 “East of Eden” son named for Moses’ older brother 25 *0-0, in tennis 28 *Improving trend 31 Fed. power dept. 32 Most draftable 33 Only Canadian MLB city 34 Author Beattie 35 Itemized concert songs in playing order ... and what all the words in answers to starred clues comprise 38 Here, in France 39 Stew holder 40 Had too much, briefly 41 Elliptical 42 *The two-engine F-15 Eagle, e.g. 44 *Greeting card for an ailing friend 47 Bird on Canada’s dollar coin 48 Poet Elinor or author Philip 49 Longtime SeaWorld attraction
Southwest would like to congratulate all of the 2020 graduates.
51 Rip to pieces 52 Enjoy Aspen 55 Peter, pumpkinwise 56 *Lack of subtlety 58 Online finance firm 59 One-named Deco artist 60 Adored singer, say 61 Harbor towns 62 Caught in the act 63 Wet with morning moisture
DOWN 1 Fluctuate 2 The “E” in Q.E.D. 3 Foxx of “Sanford and Son” 4 Ling of “The Crow” 5 Like an obedient dog on a walk
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6 Semi fuel 7 French states 8 Agreeing gestures 9 Shows contempt for 10 “Weeping” tree 11 It’s split in Captain Kirk’s “to boldly go” 12 Agitated state 13 “Auld Lang __” 18 Other, to Ortiz 23 Votin’ yes on 24 Copies 25 Jumped 26 Currently airing 27 Device providing fresh air 28 Prefix with form or brow 29 Lite to the max 30 Cook over coals 32 “__ King Cole”
35 Temporary stays 36 Barbara of “I Dream of Jeannie” 37 Hanoi holiday 41 Be indebted to 43 Vegetarian credo 44 Whirl on the dance floor 45 High dice roll 46 Neat 48 Word of location 49 Ooze 50 Angel’s topper 51 Cows and sows 52 Marquis de __
Stay safe, take care of each other, and we miss you all!
53 Don’t have to ask 54 In a shiftless way 57 Ducked out of sight Crossword answers on page B16
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B16 June 25–July 8, 2020 / southwestjournal.com
Stay In Guide. By Sheila Regan
VIRTUAL THIRD THURSDAY: PRIDE Pride is here, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art is ready to celebrate. For this month’s Virtual Third Thursday event, Mia honors the legacy of Stonewall activist Marsha P. Johnson, an integral figure in the Stonewall uprising, as well as other Black trans activists in history and today. The Zoom event includes the premiere of the Tretter Trans Oral History Project’s podcast “Transcripts,” which features Andrea Jenkins, the activist and City Council vice president; Diamond Stylz, the executive director of Black Transwomen, Inc; LaSaia Wade, the founder of Brave Space Alliance; and Myrl Beam, a fellow for the Tretter project and a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. The podcast is a chance to take a deep look at Black trans activism from history and how that work continues in the struggle today.
PRIDE AND MORE Southwest Minneapolis, it’s been a wild ride. After months of social distancing, the stay-at-home orders began to lift just as the tragedy of George Floyd’s horrific killing at the hands of police took place. Protests and unrest followed, as did clean-up efforts and mutual aid projects, not to mention patio seating at local restaurants. Things here in the Twin Cities are not as intense as they were at the end of May and the first week of June. The stay-at-home guidelines have been relaxed, the weather is nice, but we still can’t quite do all of the things we once could. The safest bet for arts and entertainment continues to be what you can experience at home. Here are our picks this week for you to check out in between your walks around the neighborhood.
When: 6-7:30 p.m. Thursday, June 25 Info: tinyurl.com/mia-transcripts
TOUR THE MUSEUM OF RUSSIAN ART Even after the Museum of Russian Art reopens on June 29, you can still take a virtual tour. On TMORA’s website, you can click on both highresolution photographs and a 360-degree tour of art that was on view in 2016 and 2017. The tour includes an exhibition of late-19th-century/early20th-century jewelry, countryside paintings by Valerian Formozov, a collection of etchings and lithographs and a holiday exhibition.
Info: tmora.org
KIDS AT THE VIRTUAL CASTLE: SIGRID AND THE DRAGON Harp, bowed lyre, and Swedish bagpipe player and singer Anna Rynefors takes you and your family on a Viking journey during this Zoom performance through the American Swedish Institute. Immerse yourself in tales of dragons and bravery as Rynefors shares the legend of Sigrid. In 2005, Rynefors became the first female riksspelman (a Swedish classification of folk music mastery) on the Swedish bagpipe. Enjoy her brilliant musicianship through storytelling and imagination.
When: 10-11 a.m. Friday, June 26 Info: tinyurl.com/sigrid-dragon
ASHLEY RUKES VIRTUAL LGBTQ PRIDE PARADE Twin Cities Pride looks a little bit different this year because of ongoing dangers from the coronavirus. There won’t be a festival in Loring Park and many planned events have been canceled. However, some things have gone virtual, like the Ashley Rukes Virtual LGBTQ Pride Parade. Since it would be impossible to hold the parade and festival safely, the virtual festivities mean you can get in on the fun on the internet. Twin Cities LGBTQ participants have been filming a virtual Pride parade prior to the event, so on the actual day, you can sit back and watch from a social distance.
When: 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Sunday, June 28
SOMALI INDEPENDENCE DAY CELEBRATION This year’s Somali Independence Day Celebration takes place online, with virtual performances by local Somali artists. There will be speakers, artists, spoken word performers and much more. In times like these, even when it’s impossible for large in-person gatherings to take place, virtual spaces are ways to bring communities together and celebrate history, culture and artmaking.
When: Noon-8 p.m. Wednesday, July 1 Info: facebook.com/Somaliweekmn
Courtesy of Twin Cities Pride
Info: tcpride.org
BOOKS & BARS: ‘CIRCE’ BY MADELINE MILLER It’s Books & Bars where the bar in question is at your own home. The Books & Bars book discussion series teams up with Friends of the St. Paul Public Library to take on one of the “it” books of the summer, “Circe” by Madeline Miller. Circe, the daughter of Helios, is a troublemaking practitioner of witchcraft stuck between the worlds of gods and humans. She was often portrayed as an antagonist in Homer’s stories, but Miller gives Circe a new look and some fresh empathy. Grab your beverage of choice as moderator Jeff Kamin leads a lively discussion about this fresh fictional take on Greek mythology.
When: 7-8:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 8
We’re open, stop by
Info: booksandbars.com (pre-registration required)
Spreading Hope to Families of Micro-Preemie Babies, One Potato at a Time. thepotatoheadproject.org
CROSSWORD ANSWERS
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southwestjournal.com / June 25–July 8, 2020 B17
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N TREEInc. ortheast
as seen on
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Questions about Emerald Ash Borer? We can help!
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612-789-9255 northeasttree.net
1/7/19 12:08 PM Trio Landscaping SWJ 040220 2cx2.indd 1
Byron Electric PG 3 ONLY
TO2cx2.indd PLACE2 3/24/20 11:37 Earls Floor AM Sanding SWJ 012518
26 yrs. Fully Insured
10-time Angie’s List Super Service Award Winner
YOUR AD CALL 612.825.9205 1/18/18
FREE ESTIMATES
612-750-5724
• Painting • Plaster repair • Ceramic tile • Light remodeling 8327 Little Circle, Bloomington
612 . 267. 3 2 8 5
10:16 AM
Our specialty is your existing home!® 11/6/19
That Handy Guy Greg SWJ 111419 2cx1.5.indd 1
Houle Insulation Inc.
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peterdoranlawn.com
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763-767-8412
Serving the Twin Cities since 1977
SWJ 062520 Classifieds.indd 2 Peter Doran SWJ 032119 2cx2.indd 3
1:46 PM
CALL TODAY FOR A FREE ESTIMATE ON ATTIC INSULATION • BYPASS SEALING SIDEWALL INSULATION
Window Washing
612-345-9301
8:45 AM
Residential & Commercial
Our Contractors 12/19/19 have local references
Byron Electric SWJ 010920 2cx1.indd 1
www.earlsfloorsanding.com
612.290.1533
612.562.8746 • triolandscaping.com
MAINTENANCE
Northeast Tree SWJ 011019 2x2.indd 1
Sanding • Refinishing • Repair Install • Recoat • FREE Estimates
6/23/20 11:30 AM 3/8/19 3:40 PM
Hammer Guy SWJ 2013 1cx2.5 filler.indd 3/26/13 1 10:55 Houle AM Insulation SWJ 010107 2cx2.indd 1
5/17/16 2:37 PM
southwestjournal.com / June 25–July 8, 2020 B19
MISCELLANEOUS
PAINTING
TO PLACE YOUR AD CALL 612.825.9205
EXTERIOR • INTERIOR
In the lakes area since 1970
• Interior/Exterior Painting • Wallpaper Stripping/Wall Repair • Wood Stripping, Refinishing & Cabinets • Plaster, Sheetrock, Texture Repair & Skim Coating • Ceiling Texturing & Texture Removal
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(612) 827-6140 or (651) 699-6140
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Classifieds 8/8/19 4:29 PM
612-227-1844
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Place your Ad
PLACE AN AD 612.825.9205
PLUMBING, HVAC
Local people. Local references.
612-825-9205
TO PLACE contractors 3/29/13 10:35 AM SWJ 2016 2cx1.5 filler.indd 6
Our Readers - Your Ad Here SWJ 20168/17/16 1cx 1 filler.indd 2:40 PM 4
YOUR AD CALL 612.825.9205 7/18/16
When in Disaster Think Pro Master!
612-804-3078 Licensed Bonded Insured Over 29 Years experience
Free Estimates
2:58 PM
Interior & Exterior Painting • Insurance Claims Wood Finishing • Exterior Wood Restoration Water Damage Repair • Patching • Enameling
Lic. #61664PM
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promasterplumbing.com
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MCQBROS.COM
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612.888.8207
WHOLE HOME CLIMATE CONTROL
Mention this ad to receive
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any plumbing or drain cleaning!
greg@chileen.com
763-425-9461
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McQuillan Brothers SWJ 043020 2cx2.indd 1
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www. tjkplumbinginc .com
TO PLACE Chileen 1 4/16/19 11:18 AMPainting SWJ 051916 2cx4.indd
4/21/20 10:36 TJK Plumbing AM SWJ 041819 2cx2.indd 1
EPA License #NAT-86951-2
“timeless design, seamless remodeling”
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bruce@knutson-architects.com
ADDITIONS NEW CONSTRUCTION REMODEL
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*
612-850-0325
MN Lic#: PC644042
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8/31/10 1:41 PM
YOUR AD CALL 612.825.9205 5/13/16 11:37 AM
EK Johnson Construction you dream it
we build it
Living and Working in Southwest Minneapolis Call Ethan Johnson, Owner
J3 Renovations and Design SWJ 043020 2cx1.5.indd 1
612-669-3486
4/29/20 2:50 AM
Your Sign of Satisfaction
ekjohnsonconstruction.com
952-512-0110
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Design/Construction 2
Remodel • Design • Build
7/28/15 3:01 PM
Specializing in Reproduction Kitchens & Baths
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you: do for n a c e w what Here’s
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MN License #BC451256
Fusion Home Improvement SWJ 021314 2cx3.indd 1
Lic: BC637388 5/31/16 4:49 PM
EK Johnson Construction SWJ 060216 2cx2.indd 1
1/31/14 10:44 AM
2/17/14 3:02 PM
ALL YOUR REMODELING PROJECTS!
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License #BC378021
CALL 612.825.9205 TO PLACE6/1/18 AN IN THE JOURNAL 1:05AD PM SWJ Sylvestre 031920 2x3.inddSOUTHWEST 1 3/17/20
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612-861-0188 www.SylvestreMN.com #BC001428
4:45 PM
6/23/20 11:38 AM 4/5/12 3:00 PM
McQuillan Bros SWJ 061120 FP.indd 1
*If installed before June 30
*If installed before June 30
*If installed before July 31
*If installed before July 31
*If installed before August 31
*If installed before August 31
5/29/20 3:09 PM