The Year That Was
Image credit: Adam Marks
We’ve thrown a lot at you this year. And to be perfectly candid, it’s a rather slow time around the office (we’re currently sleeping off an egg nog hangover and enjoying our new Wii).
So to help kill some air time, we’re offering some of our favorite stories from the past year – our fifth in this noble business – listed in chronological order. We hope you’ve enjoyed reading as much as we’ve enjoyed writing. See you next year.
The Dayton brothers could do no wrong this year. Their restaurant, Bachelor Farmer, was on the top of a lot of best-of lists – including ours. Their Nordic-inspired cuisine was just one reason we loved eating out this year. Here are the other places we fell in love with. Photographer Peter Majerle also showed us that the housing apocalypse can be uniquely beautiful.
Editor-in-chief Chris Clayton took a long, strange, and ultimately revealing jaunt – nay, marathon – through the Minneapolis skyway. Among his takeaways: “up here, if you’re not moving with purpose, they will take you out.” Read into that whatever you want.
This year is the year we finally started taking sides. Our METRO 100 list – split between good and evil – took aim at everything from U2’s concert at TCF Stadium (good, even though the weather was bad) to pajama jeans and pink eye shadow (both obviously bad). Meanwhile over at the Walker, Merce Cunningham made a big splash.
After much number-crunching, we compiled our list of the top neighborhoods in Minneapolis and St. Paul. There was some hand-wringing over the results, but this was scientific objectivity at its folks. The top spot in Minneapolis: Downtown West; in St. Paul: Merriam Park. Spazz Dad also took the recession head on.
The future will be crafted. That’s what we learned in August when we covered the Twin Cities vibrant DIY culture. Whether it’s self-published zines or hand-made bags from J.W. Hulme, it’s evident that this is the little guy’s moment.
The first six months were a lot of work. We needed a drink. And no one makes them better than local mixologist Pip Hanson, who shared some of his drink-making secrets with us at the peak of summer. We’ve been thirsty ever since. We also caught up with Wanda Jackson, who told us, “I’m not at all sure I’m a sweet lady.”
Who knew we were so clairvoyant? Nearly five months before the Minnesota Lynx took the WNBA crown, we caught up with a host of supremely confident team officials and players in a prescient story about the Lynx’s unlikely rise. 
“We have the best ingredients. Now we just have to make the dish,” Candice Wiggins told us at the time. Consider this recipe a success. John Waters also told us he’s “officially a dirty old man” and Mo Perry joined the METRO team.
Sometimes, you just got to get away. That’s what we did in May when we left the Twin Cities behind in favor of rural Wisconsin, the Boundary Waters, Madison, Wisc. and Kansas City, Mo. When you travel like we do, you don’t bring PB & J, either. Use our travel and dining diaries to begin planning your summer today. For those looking to build a reservoir of good will, we also shared some ideas sure to attract a bit of good karma.
Minneapolis and bikes go together like Oreos and skim milk. We’re up for the ride – weather permitting – and spent our spring getting in gear. We also caught up with the Atmosphere family and predicted good things for the Twins (OK, so maybe we aren’t so good at this psychic thing after all).
No longer satisfied with a place in your mailbox, we invited ourselves inside for our inaugural edition of METRO Home. Our now bi-monthly insert looks at interior design and one great place (including that ever-so-funky castle that sits in the shadows of the Metrodome). Keep the light on for us.
If there is anything the Twin Cities doesn’t lack it’s imagination. Which is why we did our level best to wrap all those great ideas percolating in our midst into a single feature – The Rise of the Twin Cities’ Creative Class.
Like most of our days, our year starts and ends with food. In what has become a now annual tradition, we looked at the best morning eats the Twin Cities has to offer and listed our findings from A to Z (look for an update next month). We also indulged our inner farmer and looked at the cities’ growing number of backyard chickens.
+ METRO's archives can be seen in full here.
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