Unprintable Version

My Winonas

Maybe because I noticed that Lincoln Elementary was a blonde gravel parking lot, my first thought entering Winona was a more pungent variant on a thought I often have upon entering Winona: a home town is like a college. Once your time there is over, you can go back, but it’s sad. The fairly obvious point that the life of a place comes from the people in a place is often lost on me.  I drive around and let the town disappoint me. 

But then I kick into a new mode: make this Winona–this amalgram of past and present–my Winona. Have a bison burger at the Lakeview Drive Inn. Walk the Lake. Buy a book–Junot Diaz–at the Book Shelf. Call my sister and my nephew and, if they are not around and I am not exhausted (as I often am), contact the friends who still live here or near.

 
I noticed that it was Winona’s 150th Anniversary. I also noticed that there is not one Winona, but several. First is the Winona I see from my window at the Holiday Inn. It took Winona years to figure out a way to sprawl, but it has now sprouted a Target, a third McDonald’s, a Fleet Farm. This is the Winona that loves parking lots and logos the size of trees and unencumbered driving. I could condescend to this but that would make me a hypocrite. This is where I stay.  I like the zip and smoothness and predictability. Especially when I drive for more than an hour, especially when I am visiting a nursing home, I want to be comforted by brands. 

Then there is what I might call Classic Winona. It is the florist on Broadway who, when I tell them that my mother is 85 and losing her sight, puts together a bright bouquet. It is Bloedow’s, the bakery that forced Krispy Kreme out of town, because people are so loyal to its donuts. It’s my brother in law Tom, who’s had a barber shop here for over a quarter century and can’t stand on a street corner without encountering people he knows. 

Classic Winona includes Unintentionally Ironic Winona. Sometimes you realize that Unintentionally Ironic Winona is actually Exuberantly Ironic Winona. Fireworks broadcasts.  Fifty word billboards.   

A persistent part of Classic Winona is Hippie Winona. The wonderful Acoustic Café, the Co-Op, the boathouses on the river.

And under all that is Dakota Winona.  The Indians do not live here, but return here, with far more mixed feelings than I will ever feel

Hankering for Tanpopo

Even more so than most restaurants, Tanpopo makes a neighborhood a nicer, livelier place. When we first saw our condo, it was a chilly overcast Friday night in March and our real estate agent pointed us in Tanpopo’s direction. The restaurant combined the exoticness of Japanese cuisine with the comfort of soup (noodles in broth); the place was packed with people on dates, and groups of students, but also people who stopped by, by themselves, after a hard work week.  Tanpopo seemed somehow central to what the neighborhood aspired to be, and we were sad when it was forced out of its building. Our loss has long been Lowertown’s gain, and when we ate there Saturday night, we noticed that it is kid friendly.

This statue is located outside the Cenex station, as you enter the town of Sherburn, and I've been thinking about it ever since I snapped this picture two weeks ago. I hesitated to post it because I thought it was great but I was afraid it might be taken wrong, as a slight against Sherburn. But here's the deal: a farm town which puts up a really quite lovely statue of a pig has got oodles of gracious self-knowledge and has no trouble mixing self-deprecation with self-love. I grew up in Rollingstone, Minnesota. I know about these things.

To Winona Area Readers

We Need Your Help.
The Book Shelf looks to move our store in with The Blue Heron in their current location.  But we need your help.

Like many of you, I was devestated several weeks ago when I approached the doors at The Blue Heron Coffeehouse here in Winona to find their doors locked and Larry's note on the door explaining their situation.

We have also had some difficulties, with textbooks not performing as well as we had hoped, our space has become too big for our business to support.

An idea began to circulate after The Blue Heron locked its doors:  What if we combined forces with Larry and Colleen and took half of their space?  This would ensure the continued existence of their coffehouse, and the long-term health of our store.

We are looking to add the cofeehouse experience to your bookbuying experience, and both Larry and I are excited about what a "marriage" of the two businesses would mean for our customers.

There are still some details that would have to be worked out, but I have confidence that we will be able to settle those in the near future.

Here is where you come in.

We need to raise some funds in order to afford the move and other costs associated with relocation.

If all of our customers came down and purchased a few books from our shelves in the next few weeks, we would be able to accomplish our goal.

We believe that joining forces with The Blue Heron will add an energy (and not just caffeine-induced) to your book buying experience, and I am confident it will improve our sales.

I have already worked out a floor plan detailing how we would use the open space in The Blue Heron, and would be excited to share it with any of you who have an interest.  We also have plans to offer classes and seminars on writing through a new venture we are calling the Hawk's Well Literary Center.  I also have my sights on establishing a publishing company, with its first offering to reach bookshelves in 2009.

If you have any questions, or would like to discuss other ways you might help, feel free to contact me at any of the phone numbers listed below.

Sincerely,

Chris Livingston
The Book Shelf

(I received this email and have pasted it here with Chris's permission.)

The People of Mackubin Street v. January

Nina's Coffee Shop

Nina’s is what a neighborhood coffee shop is supposed to be.  It absorbs and invigorates its locale. Common Good Books is downstairs; art, often from College of Visual Arts students and grads, hangs on the walls, and soups from Zander are on the menu. It’s a high ceilinged place, with walls of peach-colored brick from the late 1800s when Western Avenue really was the western border of Saint Paul and Nina was a madam. Windows the size of walls look out on Cathedral Hill.

More importantly, this is where people gather–for their French lessons, for their English as a second language groups, for their client meetings. When you walk past some nights, the illuminated laptops can seem almost votive.   

The place doesn't have the "Go back and read some Sartre and I might consider serving you" attitude you might expect from a coffee house across from an art school. The staff is genuinely friendly. If you show up hungry, I can recommend the rosemary egg salad or the pulled pork. I know some people who know some people who eat some scones and they report that the ginger-fig-walnuts ones aren’t bad.  Surprisingly for a coffee house, the coffee used to be bad, but now it’s pretty good. The sheer gregarious roar of the place at lunchtime can make the more demanding work meetings a problem. And they do have the standard-issue unreadable chalk menus for their coffee drinks. But at this time in history, do we need to be told what a latte is?