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Slide show: Managing Photographer Bill Kelley picks his favorite 2010 masthead images

Bill Kelley Wednesday, January 05, 2011
The large images that lead off each issue of The Line are one of the ways we express our feelings about the Twin Cities. Managing Photographer Bill Kelley strives to shoot pictures that convey what we love about our towns right now and what we hope for them in the future--a fusion of beauty, energy, fun, and promise. Here are thirteen mastheads that Bill has picked from the more than two dozen he's shot since The Line debuted back in May. We hope they help you see Minneapolis/Saint Paul as both a deeply familiar and a brand-new place.
animal train

Making the Holidazzle parade happen--the people behind downtown's lit-up holiday tradition

Susan Klemond Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Captain Hook is all lit up and the Joe Maurer snowman is spinning. The Holidazzle parade is nearly two decades old--a holiday tradition born of the urge to get people to experience downtown Minneapolis during the holiday season. It's impossible to miss the bright lights and music--but the people who make the parade happen aren't always as visible. From the folks who fit the fanciful costumes to the people who keep the floats on pace to the light-bedecked performers themselves, a bevy of workers and volunteers labor to make the magic seem effortless.
MONO

Minneapolis's mono is beating out the big ad shops with the message that simplicity sells

Michelle Bruch Wednesday, December 15, 2010
When USA Network needed a new brand identity, some of the biggest ad agencies in North America competed for the account. The winner? An 11-person agency in Minneapolis with a company brand so low-key that they don't even capitalize their name. Since then, mono has become one of the hottest shops in America, applying loads of hip midwestern creative power to the proposition that simple messages are the most memorable.

Editor's Note: Our Holiday Break

Jon Spayde Wednesday, December 15, 2010
The Line is taking a break for two weeks so our editorial/photographic team can switch into holiday mode. We won't publish on December 22 or 29. But we will be back and raring to go on January 5.
Jim Delaney at Work

The new corporate hybrids: socially conscious local companies bridge the profit/nonprofit divide

Dan Haugen Wednesday, December 08, 2010
Plenty of companies in the Twin Cities and around the country want to do good as well as make a buck. In order to make that easier in a time of shrinking resources, new forms of corporate structure are evolving, including the L3C--the low-profit limited liability company. At least one Twin Cities company has opted for that new status, and others are looking into it and other ways to combine the best of the for-profit and nonprofit worlds. But there are those who wonder of  these highly experimental new structures are anything more than good PR.
Chickens at Play

Coop de ville: chicken-raising goes urban

Elizabeth Millard Wednesday, December 08, 2010
There's a whole lot of clucking going on in the urban neighborhoods of Minneapolis and Saint Paul as heartland city-dwellers recover their rural roots by welcoming chickens into their lives. It's part of a growing national trend that's part nostalgia, part fascination with the birds themselves--they turn out to be oddly charming--and part hardy self-sufficiency. And you should taste the eggs.
Juxtaposition Arts Facade

Juxtaposition, the community-minded hip-hop arts center, gets ready for a growth spurt

Molly Priesmeyer Wednesday, December 01, 2010
In North Minneapolis, there's an arts center that's been tapping into, and amplifying, the energy of African-American youth culture for fifteen years. Juxtaposition Arts is a place where neighborhood kids fired up by hip-hop turn street savvy into beauty and visual excitement through art and design. "Juxta" has collaborated with the likes of the Walker Art Center and the Guthrie Theater, but its heart has always been in its neighborhood; and now, with a planned $8.2- million expansion, it's primed to be a major player in the cities' art scene as it amps up its impact on the North Side.
The shops @ Selby and Snelling

On a once-stodgy Saint Paul corner, boutiques blossom

Dan Heilman Wednesday, December 01, 2010
Time was when the northwest corner of Snelling and Selby was a meat-and-potatoes kind of locale: A sporting-goods store was there, and a shoe shop and a day-labor place. Then along came developer Ed Conley, who remade two buildings on the corner. The result: one of the city's plus chic shopping destinations, home to a designer handbag shop, hip vintage wear, lingerie, couture, and more. It's a peaceful, colorful touch of European-style savoir-vivre at one of the capital city's busiest intersections.
Bike Composting

Eureka: The offbeat recycling company that wants to go way beyond recycling

Karen Olson Wednesday, November 17, 2010
If you live in one of the cities and towns Eureka Recycling serves, chances are you've seen its big green trucks lumbering along, picking up waste. But if you think Eureka is just another green-bottles here, brown-bottles there outfit, you're in for a surprise. It's one of only a handful of nonprofit recyclers in the country, and its vision goes way beyond recycling to a world that doesn't produce waste in the first place. To that end, it collaborates with artists and restaurateurs, encourages manufacturers to think zero-waste, and in many other ways acts as if the green future has already arrived.
Trylon Cinema

Dale Connelly, Resident Tourist, visits Trylon Microcinema, the biggest little theater in town

Dale Connelly Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Dale Connelly--disc jockey, wit, culture maven, and for many years the co-host of Minnesota Public Radio's Morning Show, is back, and we've got him. As the Resident Tourist, he'll drop into The Line from time to time to share some of his favorite Twin Cities phenomena. This week: the tiny, elegant Trylon Microcinema, a cineaste's labor of love that lets fifty people at a time watch classic films in plush red seats. Does it have a chance against the multiplexes? Or is it playing an entirely different game?

Editor's Note: No issue next week

Wednesday, November 17, 2010
There won't by a Line next week--Thanksgiving week....
Josh Klauck of the Angry Catfish

In bike-culture cafes, java meets pedal power--and art

Molly Priesmeyer Wednesday, November 10, 2010
The Twin Cities' newest bike cafe, Angry Catfish Bicycles and Coffee, joins two predecessors, One on One Bicycle Studio and Cars R Coffins Coffee Bar/Cykel Garage in catering to the caffeination needs, and gear lust, of serious bike riders. These coffee house/bike shop/art gallery hybrids are celebrations of two-wheel culture in a town that's getting prouder and prouder of it.
Dan Hanson

One-wheelin': The Twin Cities are a Mecca for urban unicyclists

Chris Steller Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Sure, bikes are big in the Twin Cities--but the people who ride one-wheelers here may be even more intense, if that's possible. In fact, our towns are a world center of unicycling; all twelve of the unicyclists rated highest for riding skills--the black belts of the sport--have belonged at one time or another to the Twin Cities Unicycling Club. And just in case you think it's all about trick riding in parades or at the circus, meet the folks who ride fat-wheeled 36-inch unicycles to work--in winter.

Editor's Note: Welcome Anna Pratt to The Line

Wednesday, November 10, 2010
We're delighted to welcome Anna Pratt as our new Development Editor, and to wish her predecessor, Chris Steller, all the best in a new venture.
Sam Newberg

Afternoon with an urbanist 1: "Joe Urban" on the bottom-line reasons we need walkable cities

Jon Spayde Wednesday, November 03, 2010
In the first of a series of talks with urbanists about the future of our Cities, writer, blogger, and real estate consultant Sam Newberg, whose nom de blog is Joe Urban, lets us in on the street-level reasons why reasonably dense, pedestrian-friendly, walkable cities with good public transit make bottom-line sense. And he makes some recommendations for our Central Corridor light-rail right-of-way too--like keep the on-street parking and slow down the cars.
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