saintpaulitan
life in the other twin city

For the, er, benefit of all Twin Citians…

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Created using info obtained from Vita.mn. Also check out RNC Bars.

I’ve never reviewed a restaurant before, but I guess there’s a first time for everything…

Last night, on our way to check out some amateur poetry at the Artists’ Quarter, Patty and I spotted what I can only describe as a giant glowing pink room through a window at the corner of Wabasha and 6th. Turns out that we had stumbled upon the new Pop! restaurant, which, as it happens, was celebrating its grand opening — just in time for the RNC.

It seemed like an interesting place, and we decided to stop and have a drink. I have to confess that I wasn’t even aware of the Pop! in northeast Minneapolis, and so really had no expectations before walking through the door. It’s a huge space — formerly occupied by a French Mediterranean restaurant that closed in June — and very inviting. The decor, despite the obvious nod to Andy Warhol in the form of a towering Campbell’s soup can screen, seemed more reminiscent of Ikea than of an overhyped 20th-century art movement, but the lighting and the overall atmosphere made it a pleasant experience. There were also a number of little touches — like a vibrating hand-held massager at each table — that I thought were original. And the staff were really friendly and eager to please.

We didn’t try any of the food, but most things on the menu looked good. Prices seemed comparable to Pazzaluna or some of the other downtown restaurants — which is to say, a little on the high side — but they offer a number of smaller plates of appetizers, soups, etc. that are pretty cheap. They also had what appeared to this (not totally discerning) patron to be a decent wine selection, and the beer selection was definitely above-average. (Any place with more than two different kinds of Surly is generally OK by my standards.)

Pop! seems like the kind of place that has potential to become a cool local haunt — that is, if there were ever any people to be found in downtown St. Paul outside of work hours. Like everything else after dark in my beloved city, Pop! seemed almost empty; the staff outnumbered the customers. That will almost certainly change during the RNC, of course, and hopefully they’ll have better luck after the convention too.

It’s a cool place. Check it out.

(More pictures here.)

A word about saintpaulitan:

I may be changing the look and possibly even the name of this blog very soon. The whole point of my starting this blog was that I was going to use it as an excuse to learn some XHTML, CSS, PHP, etc. Now, I’ve actually got around to doing that, and I hope to launch a much cleaner and more customized version of saintpaulitan in the near future.

‘Til next time.

If there’s one thing I hate, it’s the hassle of dealing with airlines and airport security; if there’s another, it’s the rage-inducing mishaps that occur when you ride on Amtrak. And although I’ve never ridden a Greyhound bus before, I’m pretty sure I’d hate that too. Consequently, I was genuinely interested — albeit skeptical — when my wife proposed an altogether different means of transportation for our trip to Chicago last weekend: The Megabus.

The Megabus is a double-decker bus service that shuttles people to and from various cities throughout the United States, Canada and Britain. It’s incredibly cheap: round-trip tickets for two adult passengers from Minneapolis to Chicago cost us a paltry $65.50. That’s even less than we would have spent on gas money if we had driven the same route in my 40 mpg Toyota Echo. And since driving in Chicago is a nightmare and parking there is financially ruinous, it wasn’t much of a choice.

Still, I had doubts. The thrifty price tag raised a red flag with me; why were tickets for this thing so cheap? Is their clientele so unsavory that they have to offer discounted tickets? I wondered. The image of my fair wife and I being accosted by lonely, desperate and/or unwashed lunatics for eight hours flashed grimly in my mind. On second thought, however, this potentiality seemed pretty manageable when taken in the context of my prior experiences with Amtrak in particular. I decided to chance it.

As it turns out, the Megabus is pretty awesome. The seats were more comfortable than your average 767, and there were no metal detectors or TSA employees to make me throw away my shaving cream and shampoo bottle. There were no lonely weirdos or gibbering sociopaths — or, if there were, they managed to stay quiet for the entire trip. I sat back and listened to an audiobook on my iPod for almost the entire ride, taking naps whenever I got bored. Patty did pretty much the same. There’s a small-but-functional bathroom on board the bus, and we had a half-hour lunch break at a truck stop just outside Madison. If I have a complaint, it’s that we arrived at Union Station more than an hour late; however, this appeared to have more to do with Chicago’s horrific construction-related traffic congestion than anything else. Also, getting our luggage on and off the bus took a long time because the driver, a friendly and competent guy, had to handle all of it by himself.

I’m trying hard to think of something I didn’t like about the Megabus, and I’m failing to come up with anything significant. Of course, it might be that after several years’ worth of miserable and harrowing travel experiences, nothing short of being knifed by a disgruntled passenger would faze me at this point. Regardless, I have only good things to say about the Megabus, and I would definitely ride it again.

Oh, and by the way, Chicago rules.