James Lileks

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James Lileks

Columnist | Metro

Phone: 612-673-7858

James Lileks writes a metro column and is an anchor/producer for NewsBreak, the webcast on startribune.com. He also blogs under The Blog O'Things.
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Here are some fair, but sticky, questions about our glorious fair

Every year we write about the State Fair as if its pleasures and peculiarities are known to all. Rather presumptuous, no?

Updated: August 25, 2011, - 08:02 PM

From race cars to reptiles, they celebrate with flair

A married couple from St. Paul's East Side, Bob Malos and Shelley Dugan are everyday folk who just happen to prove that A) anything is possible in Minnesota, and B) really, you have no idea how cool your neighbors might be.

Updated: August 15, 2011, - 08:22 AM

James Lileks: What's a fair ticket price for summer's last hurrah?

Some of us like to think of the State Fair not as the end of summer's play, but its long final act. We are, of course, kidding ourselves.

Updated: August 13, 2011, - 06:18 PM

Chupacabra, meet Sasquatch and Nessie, next to the runestone

A few weeks ago a strange, small, hairless beast stumbled into a Chinese village looking for food, and the locals made the natural assumption: That's not some kind of monkey, it's an alien. Because when creatures from other planets come to Earth in spaceships, that's how they roll: naked and hungry. Maybe their luggage was lost.

Updated: August 11, 2011, - 07:33 PM

Is it Fringe or is it reality? It's not always easy to tell

The Fringe Festival has begun, and the city of Minneapolis is absolutely saturated with theater. You go to Cub, see someone dressed up as a clown stuffing steaks in his pants, you don't know if he's shoplifting or performing. Whip out your Fringe guide and check for "Klepto the Sirloin Addict": A free-roaming exploration of transgressive criminality that pokes fun at McDonald's corporate mascot. Nope. Hint: If there are chairs around, it's theater. Usually.

Updated: August 06, 2011, - 06:45 PM

The letters you stole? They spell 'bad person'

To whoever pried the letters off the 35W Bridge Memorial: There are several possibilities to explain what you did. Let's go through them one by one.

Updated: August 04, 2011, - 11:17 PM

Local coffee bean buyer travels far for the right roast

Long before the rise of Starbucks, Minnesotans were a coffee-drinking tribe. It was always a joy to take a visiting Manhattanite to lunch at Perkins, and watch their expression when the waitress left the pot. In some New York diners, you have to send up maritime distress flares to get a refill. Welcome to the land of the bottomless cup.

Updated: July 30, 2011, - 08:36 PM

Don't stamp out the portals to an earlier, enveloped time

Went to the post office the other day, because someone had sent me a package with no stamps and no return address. Wanted to ask the clerk if we could plunge it into a bucket of water first; they would have obliged. It's a full-service place.

Updated: July 30, 2011, - 08:05 PM

When it comes to walking, use head over heels

Minneapolis made the list of the nation's most walkable cities! Unlike other towns with crippling gravity and sidewalks strewn with glass and flaming tar, we're walkable as heck. Doubt it? Go outside. Put one foot in front of the other. Repeat. Keep it up. Note the lack of resistance in the air? The way the sidewalk just keeps going? The lack of condors swooping above, waiting to pick off people and carry them off screaming? That's us. No. 9. No. 1 is New York; No. 10 is Oakland, Calif. Bottom of the list is someplace in Florida where it's all quicksand. You can take walks, but they're not very long.

Updated: July 28, 2011, - 07:45 PM

Signs of midsummer: Cicadas, and sales on school glue

The first robin heralds spring; the first cicada tells you summer is halfway through its course. Perhaps you've heard that cicadas spend 17 years underground, like a rock group with a small but dedicated following.

Updated: July 23, 2011, - 10:43 PM