Let’s see, the first and pretty much only order of business is this:
There is now an official moratorium on eating breakfast with me downtown. It’s just not worth it. I love you guys dearly, but two weekends in a row I had to start my Sundays off snapping at my boyfriend and cursing the pull of the urban center. Uptown, Longfellow, Northeast, Franklin, Dinkytown, Lyn-Lake, South…any of these places! They’re great, fine, wonderful neighborhoods to get a bite to eat and the reward balances out better with the journey.
The problem is this, there are good and fine restaurants downtown, but driving and parking is a hassle. No convenient place to park that isn’t a ramp trying to suck next week’s paycheck out from under you. So you drive around and around and around. You drive down one-way streets, you have to strategize your journey, go too far down 7th and suddenly you have no choice but to cross hennepin and go over to 1st and things get a little futzy for a few blocks. When you drive down a 2 way street you focus on the parking on your side. Drive down a one way and you have to freakily pay attention to the car in front of you AND both sides of parking and inevitably, if a spot presents itself it’s on the far side and you’d better be willing to cause a major traffic disturbance to get over there because it’s not like you can just circle the block. You leave that spot and 2 Cooper Mini’s will have wedged themselves in there by the time you return.
You will find a spot, 1/4 mile away. You will be late to breakfast. You will snap at your boyfriend and secretly blame him for the Marquette-Nicolet-Hennepin aves one-way scheme fuckedness. If you go down 7th (a one-way headed west) you eventually hit Marquette, a one-way going north, after that comes Nicolet, logically that should be a one way headed south. It’s not. You’re not allowed to drive on it. It’s for pedestrians and buses and homicidal bike messengers. After Nicolet comes Hennepin, a one-way that goes north. huh. Now you must cross Hennepin, which in your mind is the dividing line that takes you out of downtown and into pointless-town (it also makes clear to you that you will be late and this road configuration is clearly your boyfriend’s fault).
All of the restaurants that everyone wants to eat at are located on 8th street (a one-way headed east) just east of hennepin or nicolet or marquette. No parking, no easy navigation and the food at the places just doesn’t have the excess of plus points that bring us above even.
I can stay in bed and break even.
And this leads me to another concern of mine. I’m becoming cynical. Nothing dazzles me anymore. Nothing is new and exciting. In everything from food to performances to movies I see artifice and method and gimmick. I’m especially getting irritated with restaurants lately. I’m just not DAZZLED with the food. The food is only ‘okay’, more often than not all I see is gimmick. And I’m not talking about chain places or fast food, we can all agree that the food there is mediocre at best. You eat at Chilis or Applebees you get exactly what you deserve. I’m talking about the places where you have a chef, someone who creates dishes and menus, places where they craft recipes, not places where they throw a frozen steak on the grill and serve it in a lake of cheese.
I’m tired of big portions shoved in front of me as though that’s the trade-off for artistry. I’m not amused by neo-pseudo-fusion cuisine anymore. It’s wonderful that you want to be creative, I do indeed want new and exciting combinations, but don’t just plunk 3 disparate ingredients in front of me and expect me to be impressed with the novelty. I’m not going to sit there and eat it and think “i know I should like this, a professional made it” I’m going to thing “you’re just trying to be amusingly different but you’ve come across as inattentive”.
and I’m tired of being that person! I want to be the person that gets excited by food again. I want to go see a movie and love it from beginning to end for all it’s flash and color.
I want to look at things and see the possibility for success and joy. I spend too much time and energy dealing with people who too easily see the distant disaster.
I was going to also write a great big long thing about how much I love my dogs but now I’m cranky and Ghengis is barking and Maddie has the foulest breath I have ever come upon. And I have to go make dinner.