Otters Saloon

So a professor of mine had mentioned that there was such a thing as a meat raffle in Minnesota. I have never heard of or thought of this concept before, but now that it’s been brought up I can’t believe how many brilliant business headed people have NOT tried this before! Granted, meat has gotten a lot less popular nowadays. After all, every bite is basically condemning another chick, piglet, or baby calf to a life in prison AND the death penalty. However, now that eating ethically is the cool and expensive thing to do, meat raffles could really take off!

Anyways, I still love meat. And I love raffles. And I love Minnesota. I immediately set out to find a meat raffle near my home.

Otters Saloon was the closest location. Evidently Wednesdays and Saturdays. So after several weeks of unsuccessfully working to convince people that this would be well worth whatever plans they needed to cancel to see it, I finally managed to get an out of town friend to visit, and out of town friends are basically captives…

So we made it to Otters Saloon around 4 PM and started drinking, thinking the meat would come out any time now. Well the meat never came, and we examined the suspicious looking lottery machine, with strange pieces of paper being circulated, the multi-generational families that seemed to be having their own mid afternoon baby shower in this bar, and every other of the corners of this small triangular room. No meat. However, the bar tender gave us Grain Belt’s Nordeast beer on tap (named for this area of Minneapolis) as well as about 50 credits on the juke box and gave us each a free drink to top it off.

This Happy Hour at Otters Saloon has made me a regular customer at this triangular establishment. There are always interesting, cranky-looking old guys around, but them and everyone there seem pretty friendly, there’s only so much personal pride and distance you can keep in a small triangular room while drinking.

Karaoke every night of the week has showed some excellent talent (and quite a variety of it), although I would definitely suggest week nights if you want to avoid college students and hipsters, and get the two for one special on certain beers. However, fruit flavored chicken wings have showed up on Friday nights and it draws much more of a crowd.

While Otters holds a special place in my heart, I will keep you posted (literally) on the various other amazing looking weird dive bars around Northeast that I have yet to experience.

Minne the Lake Creature

Conversation with myself while running, the first month I have been in the cities:

“Umm is that a dinosaur in the Lake of the Isles?”

“Yes, yes it appears to be a Brontosaurus”

“That is kind of strange right?”

“Ya I think that’s kind of strange…”

“Uncontrollable laughter...”

So as I pass this brontosaurus with beautiful brown eyes, hanging out in some of the shallow lake vegetation (but not eating any, very impressive) I can’t help but be filled with pride that I live in a place where dinosaurs roam free, where someone has even thought to make a dinosaur to run free…

I imagine some college kids slaving away in their garage to put this together by three AM, then giggling, bundle it into the back of some very extended cab pick-up, only to bring it here and dump it before sunrise. Is it anchored somewhere? How long will it stay? Is it some sort of poltical-social commentary? A practical joke? So many questions…

I must investigate. After coming back a few more times in the next couple weeks, the friendly brontosaurus is still there… now I feel compelled to google it…

http://www.lakecreature.com/

Evidently her name is Minne, and she’s not a brontosaurus, she’s a lake monster, circulating between all of our beautiful lakes. And she’s funded by some city parks foundation! Only this city would fund a lake traveling dinosaur…

Hello

Here I am beginning a journey of sharing, sharing what I think have been the best parts of moving to Minneapolis. Each post will include something that has made me smile or laugh uncontrollably about this fantastic part of the world.

Some of you might not know this, but Minneapolis is the most ridiculously amazing city in the world (in my experience, which is pretty varied). We have city life, all the seasons (in as authentic of form as you can probably find), we have nature parks, insane amounts of bike trails, a healthy amount of weird bars and coffee shops, and a great variety of people (hipsters, hippies, ice fishers, you name it), that are almost ALL "Minnesota Nice" (that means at least nice on the outside, which is ideal for you if you're just passing through).

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