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Cheers to Scott Mayer, the irrepressible booster of the Twin Cities and multiple charitable causes for nearly three decades. His latest offering: Dinner du Nord, a 40-restaurant, seven-block meal for some 2,000 guests on Nicollet Mall with pricing friendly to all. Mayer’s the hype-man for the event sponsored by a handful of organizations, including the city, the Minneapolis Foundation and the Minnesota Star Tribune. A lawyer by training, Mayer has worked for Target and the Hennepin Theater Trust, but his true talents shine in civic boosterism, developing and producing events to celebrate and support the restaurant and theater communities as well as an array of charities. He’s a great guy who never met a stranger so if you encounter him, introduce yourself — he’ll be pleased to meet you and probably try to recruit you for his latest spark of an idea.
Jeers to amateur backyard fireworks. Those of us with pets and/or PTSD don’t enjoy the cacophony of explosions that arrive as July 4 approaches. Fireworks are indeed a holiday tradition, but unless you live in a remote area, give your neighbors some peace and leave the explosions to the professionals. Take it from the state Department of Public Safety, which warned that most fireworks are banned here. State Fire Marshal Dan Krier said if it explodes or flies through the air, it’s illegal in Minnesota. Fireworks also cause injuries — 26 that we know of in 2024. The state department encouraged everyone to stay safe with alternatives by attending licensed fireworks shows, using glow sticks instead of sparklers or squirting silly string or streamers. Or better yet just grab an iced beverage and have a conversation with a neighbor.
Cheers to free access to drinking water at all ticketed events with more than 100 in attendance. The change, sponsored by state Rep. Leigh Finke, DFL-St. Paul, went into effect July 1. “I want the public to know if you’re buying a ticket to an event, you get water for free one way or another,” she said. The law gives event hosts three options: Allow attendees to bring their own factory-sealed bottles of water, provide free bottled water at the event or allow guests to bring their own empty water vessels that can be filled from a source inside the event. Finke, in her second term in the House, said the bill is easily the most popular proposal she’s put forward. “Everyone who came in contact with this bill understood its purpose plainly: Water is life,” Finke said. We can all drink to that.
Jeers to the revolving nameplates on big buildings. It’s hard to get used to a new name for an old place. I always struggled with the spelling of the Xcel Energy Center, especially because it abuts the portmanteau that is the RiverCentre with the transposed E and R. In conversations, it was enough to call the Xcel Energy Center “the X.” Now we’ve got to get used to Grand Casino Arena and that’s going to take effort. Will it become the “G.C.?” I doubt the sponsors would like that. At least in Minneapolis, the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome had been reduced to rubble before U.S. Bank Stadium went up and got the new name. There’s no time to waste adjusting to this name change in St. Paul as the newly announced owners of the Minnesota Timberwolves and Lynx say they want a brand-new arena that most likely won’t be named Target Center Part 2.
Cheers to two female basketball stars who are multifaceted leaders. Napheesa Collier continues her remarkable rise, being named an All-Star captain by virtue of receiving the second-most votes, behind Indiana’s Caitlin Clark. Collier was 117,506 behind Clark’s league-leading 1,293,526 votes. That means the rest of the country’s taken notice of Collier’s play and leadership. Also getting notice as a national star: Duluth Marshall sophomore Chloe Johnson has been tagged by ESPN as the top point guard and third-best player in the country, making her the highest-rated Minnesota native since former Hopkins star Paige Bueckers was No. 1 in 2020. She is now in the conversation to become the top pick in the 2028 NCAA recruiting class. And like Collier, Johnson is a multidimensional leader. When she was just 14, she spoke openly about overcoming mental health challenges. Which makes her story even more compelling.
Jeers to New Prague for going ahead with construction of a $10.8 million public safety facility before conducting the requisite public hearing. The oversight is going to be costly. Construction has been halted on the project and former Mayor Duane Jirik resigned in May, but the city had already spent $575,000 on design work for the new building before the failure to conduct a hearing was revealed in May. As City Attorney Scott Riggs said, “The statute says you have to do a public hearing. And it wasn’t done properly, so you got to start over.” Ouch. The public oversight process cannot be ignored.
