Long Live the New Twin Cities, Long Live Old Saint Paul
COVID is chasing my family. I caught COVID in Seattle at the beginning of August. Miraculously, none of my family caught it. Then, we bring the kids back to daycare and we find out on day one that our youngest had an exposure so she’s out for the rest of the week. This is a long way of saying I’ve been taking a lot of long walks lately which is what you do when the weather is nice and you can’t go to things as easily. I took both of my daughters down to the greatest park in the universe, Mattocks Park in St. Paul. Don’t tell anyone about it please, it’s perfect.
When you walk back to my house from Mattocks Park you get to see a nice slice of New St. Paul. First let’s go back at get some definitions.
There’s an exciting group of media professionals led by a guy named Fresh that work under the name Motivation to Hustle. Best place to follow them is Instagram. They share new artists, they share hilarious traffic interactions, they call out BS in the Twin Cities. The term they’ve coined and I’ve embraced is the “New Twin Cities”. I think this phrase can mean a lot of things but I take it to mean a more representative celebration of the Twin Cities. I’ve spent plenty of years living in and seeing a different Twin Cities than I was ever able to read about in major publications or here represented on the radio. To me “The New Twin Cities” celebrates the idea of actually celebrating, amplifying, and monetizing the truly diverse metro area we are. So, I love the phrase the New Twin Cities and I love Motivation to Hustle. Let me tell you what I love even more. . .old St. Paul.
There may be no better representation of old St. Paul than the yard behind Spyhouse at the corner of Palace and Snelling. Let’s cover some things.
It’s kind of a coup that Spyhouse is in St. Paul at all - I think of Spyhouse as specializing in coffee in fancy neighborhoods for fancy people who have 24-inch MacBooks and rode to the coffeeshop on a $1,000 bike while wearing a blazer. I believe Spyhouse in St. Paul replaced an antique shop that was open maybe twelve hours a week total. That place was old St. Paul. Spyhouse is all sorts of new St. Paul. It’s filled everyday with people I never see otherwise in my neighborhood, $500 eyeglasses, dogs that look like they have last names and wills, sandals with a single strap that seems to float above the toes et cetera. More power to them (and even more power to the dedicated employees who attempted to unionize Spyhouse). But here’s the great thing; the Spyhouse yard is a war between new St. Paul and old St. Paul and old St. Paul has won.
If you head to the backyard of Spyhouse what you are going to see is a beautiful angular, dark wood patio that occupies let’s say 44% of the grassy area. It is comfortably appointed with bolted down furniture that can accommodate skinny people drinking espressos while talking about “ideation”. It’s beautiful and the people who hang out there are beautiful. I’ve sat there, it feels spectacular, I felt beautiful.
Occupying the other 56% of the yard is presumably the domain of one of the renters who lives above Spyhouse. For years this backyard has belonged to this lady and she could give exactly zero shits that there is now a fancy coffeeshop taking up some of her real estate. She has one iron-wrought table out there with a couple of those iron-wrought chairs and the grand majority of weekend days you can find this sun-kissed early 40s blond sitting out there with a 72 oz. cup full of ice that is melting something, a hard pack of cigarettes with a lighter perched atop, and a full serving of “fuck off today is my day off and I’m smoking these cigarettes”. I LOVE HER AND EVERYTHING SHE STANDS FOR. Here’s why I love her:
she is the actual greener grass.
When I walk up Palace en route to Mattocks Park I first see the hipsters, the parking of bikes, the saucers, the full charged iphones sitting on notebooks with charcoal pencils. I think to myself, that’s the life, that’s what I need. I bet if I use that planning software I downloaded I’d truly be happy.
AND THEN I SEE MY SUNKISSED OLD ST. PAUL GODDESS and I think “screw you Koffeeboi, this is the life, catching a sunburn in the 55105, playing Thin Lizzy off of a cracked screen iphone from a free Spotify account while pulling on a couple Spirits before heading to Costco for reinforcements for the week ahead.”
Dear Snelling Ave Sun Goddess,
I love you, I want to spend my life at that table with you slightly irritating the hipsters. Can I bum a smoke? Can we spend eternity together. Can I borrow your lighter?
N.B. - If you are looking for the Old St. Paul coffeeshop in the neighborhood in humbly submit J&S Coffee on Randolph and Saratoga. Do they still sell CDs from local artists? Do musicians sometimes play shows there? Are there picture of people holding bags of J&S Coffee all over God’s Green Earth? Is the coffee incredible? Does a dude named Dakota work there who my daughter is obsessed with? The answer to all these questions are a definitive yes.
Now that we’ve established Old St. Paul let me tell you some of the Old St. Paul highlights of my life:
I was with a woman who tried to order a Budweiser at a brewery in St. Paul. Amazing.
I adore everyone who will not entertain the possibility of any better burger in the universe than the Nook. Old St. Paul
We have a grocery store in the neighborhood called Oxendale’s. Until maybe 2019 it was called Korte’s. If you’re new St. Paul you don’t even shop there, you go to Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s if you have to. But if you have to utter the name of the grocery store you call it Oxendale’s. If you’re St. Paul you call it Korte’s. IF YOU ARE OLD ST. PAUL you call it Knowlan’s which is what is was called when I was in high school.
Old St. Paul doesn’t call it Ayd Mill Road, they call it the Short-line.
Martin Devaney’s dad is old St. Paul, he crosses himself when he goes into Minneapolis
I was with a dude who tried to order a whiskey-diet at a brewery in St. Paul. Also amazing.
If you see Betsy Hodges, Mayor Frey or any other Minneapolis mayor they are always doing something to be noticed. They are doing the electric slide poorly, or fake scooping food at a soup kitchen with a ring light next to them. One time I saw St. Paul mayor Chris Coleman just demolishing a plate of fried rice from Lee’s Express by himself at a random table in the skyway. Old St. Paul. I wonder if he wrote that off. Probably not. Old St. Paul.
If you’re old St. Paul you first park where the Cheapo used to be and then risk your god damn life crossing all four lanes of Snelling to get some record you wanted
If you’re old St. Paul you are still amazed at the route changes for the 21 that they introduced legitimately 10 years ago
If you’re old St. Paul none of your favorite places to see movies are still open.
If you’re old St. Paul you are unironically excited about meat raffles
Long live the New Twin Cities. Long live Old St. Paul and long live the suns out guns out goddess of the Spyhouse backyard.