Category Archives: THE MIDWEST

July 7, 2010 · 10:33 pm

Going to Kansas City?

Here’s what I recommended to friends looking for places to stay and eat and things to do during a trip this week to Kansas City:

– A good recent NYT travel article (http://travel.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/travel/16hours.html) on the city – recommends staying at The Raphael which is what I was going to suggest (although I’ve never stayed there but heard good things about it.)  My husband, a former Kansas City resident, also  recommends this:
www.bestwesternmissouri.com/hotels/best-western-seville-plaza-hotel/

I don’t know most of the restaurants mentioned in the NYT story (except the BBQ places  Gates and Bryants, which are favorites). We also like the BlueBird Cafe (although it’s out of the way and hard to find) and Lidia’s – http://www.lidias-kc.com/, a good contemporary Italian place.

The new wing of the Nelson Atkins well worth a visit – including walking outside on its green roof/sculpture garden. We also like the Kemper Museum – although we haven’t been to its restaurant, which is mentioned in NYT story.


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April 26, 2010 · 10:29 pm

Minneapolis – new place to explore?

Apparently there’s a new area of northeast Minneapolis to explore – I thought we did that when we were there last winter but according to a story in yesterday’s NYTimes we didn’t do it all. The story mentions a stretch along 13th Avenue with a bunch of bars, restaurants and galleries including Northeast Social (a bistro); Modern Cafe (good brunch); Spinario Design (“mid-century” antiques…not sure what that means. 1950’s?); and Anchor fish & Chips (i usually only eat fish and chips in London but this place has a cool bar – made from the beam of a 115-year-old barn.)

This area appears to be about 1.5 miles northwest of the other NE Minneapolis neighborhood we explored along East Hennepin Ave. in December.

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April 23, 2010 · 1:11 am

In and out of Indy

Quick trip to Indianapolis for a writing project and I had just enough time to wander around for a few hours in the Mass Ave Arts & Theater District which is still fledgling but has potential. Kind of makes the East Village in Des Moines seem like a long-established hip neighborhood by comparison. It dawned on me today – and I don’t know why it didn’t earlier – that I’m drawn to these revived neighborhoods where small entrepreneurs open up little galleries, boutiques, cafes and restaurants in old renovated brick buildings because my mom and dad did the very same thing in the 1960s when they opened their gallery in a then-very-unhip Royal Oak, Mi. (The hipness there came, alas, after they moved the gallery.)

Anyway, it was a gorgeous day in Indy – in the 70s and sunny so fun to walk the few blocks down Mass Ave. I stopped at a good gift shop – Silver in the city – and bought some tchotkes for friends; then ate at Yat’s, a hippie dippie fast food creole/Cajun restaurant. It had a line out the door at noon – and better yet a fast moving line – so I joined the crowd. Didn’t care much for the jambalaya (where’s the sausage?) but liked the moch chous or macque choux (or”mock shoe”) a lot – a sweet spicy  cajun dish made w/carmelized onions, sweet corn and chicken. Also found a cute cupcake store and great old shoe store. I wished I had a bike to ride around some of the residential streets just west of Mass Ave which looked like they were filled with restored wood frame houses re-painted in lovely bright colors. Next time.

Walked past the amazing Soldiers and Sailors Monument/fountain downtown which was full of sunbathing office workers lounging on the steps leading to the tall ornate tower erected in the 1860s to honors Hoosiers who fought in various wars. Reminded me a bit of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square – so I got some postcards of it to send my London pals.

I stayed overnight at The Canterbury Hotel – (yes, someone else was paying ) a lovely boutique hotel right downtown. I had a tiny room on the 12th floor – the door looked like it would open right into the wardrobe but narrowly missed smashing it.   I had a great view of downtown. Ate dinner at 14 West Restaurant – nice ambiance, so-so food – too much mayo-or-cream inspired sauces on things. Word to wise – instead of paying $39 for a cab to the airport (which we did on the trip into town) the best deal around is the $7 airport shuttle which stops near various hotels including mine.

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April 17, 2010 · 6:34 pm

Macalester College…in St. Paul

I’ve had a little time to catch my breath after long day to and from Macalester. Pretty campus right on Grand Avenue, a little west of the area D and I used to visit now and then – near Cafe Latte (as usual – my landmark is a restaurant. It used to be a bookstore but that’s long gone, as is the case with many an independent book store.) Cafe Latte is still going strong – we picked up a sandwich to take on the drive home (note to self: next time, skip the guacamole on the turkey sandwich, much of which ended up on my black sweater as I tried to eat while driving.) and resisted the temptation to take home a piece of luscious german sweet chocolate cake too. Did get a bread for home and our neighbor, who kindly walked our dog yesterday. Noticed a new (or new to me) store across the street “Bread and Chocolate” (the kind of store I’d notice!) as we were leaving but didn’t have time to stop and later realized that on the other side of my Cafe latte carryout bag it said “Bread and Chocolate” so guessing the two are related. Also a Brasa in that neighborhood – a branch of the rotisserie place loudly advertising it’s good ingredients that we visited in Minneapolis last year.

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March 4, 2010 · 10:29 pm

Cleveland: takemewithyou

For my neighbors who are heading to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (BRUCE!!!) over spring break, here are a few finds in Cleveland:

– West Side Market (1979 West 25th Street; 216-664-3387; www.westsidemarket.com) – cavernous old indoor market made of yellow brick (as I recall) and dozens of stands selling good stuff – meat, cheese, middle eastern food, sweets. It’s not  THAT far from the RR Hall of Fame, downtown. It’s a National Historic Landmark to boot.

– Guarino’s, an old-fashioned southern Italian restaurant in Cleveland’s little Italy – There are hipper places but nothing older, apparently. This is Cleveland’s oldest restaurant – opened in 1918 – and has an old world feel, and a mean red-sauce. http://www.guarinoscleveland.com/

– Little Italy isn’t far from Case Western, which we visited briefly to see the Frank Gehry building on campus. (also worth a drive by.)

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February 17, 2010 · 9:13 pm

Kooky Kansas: pt. 5 Lucas


One attraction I’ve longed to see during several trips to Lucas – but haven’t yet caught up with – is a traveling museum  featuring  “The World’s Largest Collection of the World’s Smallest Versions of the World’s Largest Things.”

I’ll give you a moment to absorb that properly.

It’s a clever idea – by an artist and free spirit named Erika Nelson who moved to Lucas, next to the Garden of Eden. She drives her museum (inside a van)  to kitschy roadside attractions, often in little towns  that overcompensate for their littleness by producing a LARGE version of something or other that, with hope, puts the town on the map. Then she makes small versions of  these large things and exhibits them in her  van, err museum.

Nelson has also compiled a state-by-state list of the world’s largest things and I’m pleased to report that I’ve seen several including the World’s Largest Swedish Coffeepot and Cup in the small Iowa town of Stanton (which doubles as a water tower); the World’s Largest Ball of Twine in Cawker City, Ks. (although this claim is disputed by Minnesota twine-ballers)  and the World’s Largest Tire near the Detroit airport (a highlight of my Michigan youth).  There is a larger point – that these quirky things make these towns and cities distinctive and, as such, should be celebrated. (Nelson is into “combating genericana” i.e. all the generic fast food restaurants and chain stores you see in one town after another that makes them all seem the same.) Check out the list at – www.worldslargestthings.com/wllist.htm

One final (as if) note about Lucas: this is the only place where I eagerly look forward to eating baloney – in this case homemade Czech bologna made at Brant’s Meat Market, an 85-year-old store on Lucas’  tiny main drag. The beef jerky is good too!

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February 16, 2010 · 4:36 pm

Kooky Kansas: pt.4 Garden of Eden

I never like making errors but maybe it’s a good thing I was tired last night when blogging (that’s my excuse) and made two errors in my post about the Garden of Eden BECAUSE I got an email today from the great-grandson of S.P. Dinsmoor (yes it’s S.P. – for Samuel Perry, not E.P. as I mistyped yesterday) politely setting me straight. Which I appreciate.  And it’s interesting to hear from a vigilant member of the Dinsmoor clan.  The great-grandson also noted, rightly, that technically S.P. is entombed, not buried, in the mausoleum. Again, I stand corrected.

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February 15, 2010 · 11:48 pm

Kooky Kansas: pt. 3 Garden of Eden

What really put Lucas, Ks. on the map, is an astonishing place called The Garden of Eden, which was built by an eccentric Civil War Veteran named S.P. Dinsmoor. The Garden is in the backyard of Dinsmoor’s small cabin made of limestone logs (vs. wooden logs.) I’ve struggled for years to describe it properly. It’s a true concrete jungle, made of concrete and stone vines and pillars with statues of  Biblical figures (Adam and Eve are there) as well as pro-working Joe tableaux (such as the working man being crucified by the banker, the lawyer, the preacher, and the doctor.) One of my favorite parts is the large limestone mausoleum where Mr. Dinsmoor is entombed. A guide hands you a flashlight so you can enter and look through a plate of glass at Dinsmoor’s disintegrating skeleton.  I have a priceless photo of my sister, who was visiting from the east coast during the late 1980s when I lived in Kansas, outside the mausoleum looking at me with a “You’ve got to be kinding me” expression.

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February 14, 2010 · 11:02 pm

Kooky Kansas: pt. 2 Lucas

While grassroots art can be found – as it should be – scattered in random rural locations throughout Kansas, there also is  a self-conscious concentration of it in the small Kansas town of Lucas which has a  storefront museum in some old  limestone buildings devoted to grassroots art. This is the art stereotypically practiced by self-taught, iconoclastic loners – like  farmers and ranchers –  but also by  trained artists and savvy hipsters living in remote places  and it ranges from enticing odd to childlike to a little scary.  A relative of folk art, grassroots art sometimes is called visionary art, naïve art, or primitive art.

You’ll see it all in Lucas – not only at the Grassroots Art Center but at a few other locations in town. When we visited a few years ago in December, someone from the museum took me, my husband and two young-teen kids, to a plain little unheated bungalow on a quiet street a few blocks away – and inside was the most astonishing sight. Every single room was covered with Barbies – yes, that Barbie – and other dolls.  There were  Barbies dripping from walls covered in aluminum foil and  piled up in the bathtub, Barbies exotically-decorated and decked out in every which way. If this hadn’t been labeled “art” it might instead be viewed as a  “cry for help.”  We were all a bit spooked walking around this ice cold bungalow of Barbies – including my daughter who was never a huge Barbie fan but played with them occasionally.  Check it out yourself at http://www.kansastravel.org/isis.htm

In the backyard is local Lucas legend Florence Deeble’s  Rock Garden – a rather worn collection of “concrete postcards” – sculptures depicting famous places Florence visited, such as  Mount Rushmore.  A few blocks away, is the real Lucas masterpiece (which inspired young Florence and spawned the Grassroots Art Center) known as The Garden of Eden.  Again, stay tuned.

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February 13, 2010 · 9:08 pm

Kooky Kansas

A Wall Street Journal reporter seems to be mining the kooky Kansas beat, which I used to fancy as my own.  After writing about the Big Well in Greensburg, Ks., she wrote a piece on the eccentric roadside sculpture in nearby Mullinville, Ks., pop. 202,  which has long been a source of fascination for my family as we drive to and from my in-laws house in western Kansas.   Last December, in addition to slowing down on the not-that-busy state highway to look more closely at the ever-growing line of scrap-metal whirligigs, many of them with political references of an indeterminate nature, we turned north on a country road in town and past the sculptor’s workshop – a shed with heaps of scrap metal and half-finished whirligigs (maybe that’s gigs.)   There must be several hundred by now along the road  – made of junk metal, glass bottles, presumably pilfered road signs, toilet seats, tractor gears, bowling balls, all whirling in the wind.

From the WSJ story, we learned that the sculptor  is 79-year-old farmer named M.T. Liggett, that his subjects include three former wives and many girlfriends including one portrayed as a mouse in pearls holding a piece of cheese, caught in a mousetrap. (Guess that relationship didn’t go so well.) Among his favorites is one of Bill Clinton with a padlock welded to the zipper of his pants. Word  has it that the American Visionary Arts Museum in Baltimore – which I was dismayed to discover was closed on the Monday I visited – is displaying Liggett’s  work.

It’s part of a genre of art by self-taught folks known variously as grassroots art or naive art – and Kansas is full of it. Stay tuned.

For more, see: http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052748703894304575047461204497670-lMyQjAxMTAwMDAwOTEwNDkyWj.html

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