Adam Platt

No to Trader Joes

June 9, 2009

An interesting urban drama has been playing out in the Wedge neighborhood of Minneapolis, home to The Wedge co-op, arguably the Midwest’s best food...

An interesting urban drama has been playing out in the Wedge neighborhood of Minneapolis, home to The Wedge co-op, arguably the Midwest’s best food co-operative, and Hum’s Liquors, for whom similar plaudits are not warranted.

The issue revolves around a developer’s plan to bring national yuppie grocery legend Trader Joe’s to the stretch of Lyndale between 22nd and 24th Streets. Joe’s attracts big crowds wherever it goes, as evidenced by the ongoing difficulties in finding parking in the dedicated lot at its St. Louis Park store.

The Trader only opens where he can sell wine and therein lies the rub. Prohibition-era blue laws still in force require 2000 feet of separation (roughly four blocks) between all alcohol retailers; additional proximity restrictions to churches and schools often extend those boundaries past the half-mile mark. (Hum’s zone of monopoly extends well past the Joe’s site.)

So the developer went to the city to get a waiver, and the city said it would ask the Legislature. The Legislature, to the city’s chagrin, told Minneapolis it could waive the rules if it wanted to without state involvement. Now the city has to decide whether it wants to waive rarely touched blue laws to benefit an out-of-state company. Easy call for earnest liberal pols?

Not so much.

Apparently the powers that be want the Trader and are considering it, slowly. The Wedge and Hum’s are apoplectic. The Wedge because it cannot sell wine without adding an addition with a separate entrance (another blue law) and obtaining its own proximity waiver. Hum’s because it doesn’t want to see its geographic monopoly breached. (I’ve never heard a soul speak favorably of Hum’s wine selection.)

Because of the school/church stricture, these geographic monopolies have made it impossible for a new wine retailer to open in South Minneapolis without another one closing first. A friend and I considered opening a wine store in South Minny over a decade ago and couldn’t find a legal site in a viable neighborhood. I long ago gave that hobby horse up, but these laws still need to go.

Or the city could create a separate license for small scale retailers who do a majority of their business in wine, or allow such stores blanket waivers to the 2000-foot rule.

Would Trader Joe’s still come to the Wedge under those terms? Sure—it opened in St. Louis Park just a few steps from a wine store and a big liquor retailer.

But as things are presently constituted, the Wedge is right. You can’t give Trader Joe’s the right to sell something its immediate competitors can’t just because you think the new store would be a neighborhood asset. It’s less about local versus out-of-town businesses, family owned versus corporate, than it is a matter of a level competitive playing field.

On one hand, I’m pleased that the city of Minneapolis gets it enough to understand that vintage clothing, coffee shops, and tattoo parlors cannot alone underpin the city's retail base. But on another, I’m surprised it can’t see the basic unfairness in this—but not to Hum’s—it should have to compete for its trade. But to The Wedge.

I’m with The Wedge on this: No to Trader Joe’s until the laws are changed. And let's change them quickly.

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Coleman Is Right

May 12, 2009

Norm Coleman is right, Al Franken is wrong. It pains me to say this. I voted for Al Franken. I would like to see...

Norm Coleman is right, Al Franken is wrong. It pains me to say this. I voted for Al Franken. I would like to see him in the Senate. Norm Coleman is a friendly man whom everyone enjoys chatting up and schmoozing, but his finger to the wind politics is not for me.

The Minnesota Supreme Court is days away from hearing arguments in Coleman’s election challenge. It comes down to this: absentee ballots were rejected in different counties and municipalities with varying levels of rigor and adherence to the law. I don’t think either side denies this. The election challenge judges concluded that because Coleman could not prove this variance caused him to lose the election, it was not germane.

Because that court refused to reexamine every absentee ballot, we don’t know what they would tell us. (I suspect Franken would still win.) But if the shoe was on the other foot, and Al trailed by 300, wouldn’t Franken supporters be crying for justice? Would Al have bowed out? Let’s be intellectually honest here—no way.

To the extent possible (I’m not sure what’s been destroyed), the entire universe of absentee ballots needs to be reexamined and considered under a consistent set of guidelines. Election judges and county clerks don’t get to decide which parts of the law they adhere to based on how much free time and manpower they have. But this time they did, and it may have swayed the election.

We need to reform our absentee ballot laws or adequately fund the government agencies that handle our elections. (It is entertaining to see the anti-government types done-in by the very forces of public sector starvation they engender.)

But as goes this election challenge, there’s an obvious, if unintended, due process issue at play. You can’t wring all error and mistake out of a human endeavor. But you can go back and fix what you can. I’m with Norm on that.

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The Barnes Column Exposed: Tweet!

April 28, 2009

This website has received an advance copy of next weekend’s column, penned by the Star Tribune’s editor-in-chief, on topics of interest regarding the newspaper’s operations. Here’s the...]]>

This website has received an advance copy of next weekend’s column, penned by the Star Tribune’s editor-in-chief, on topics of interest regarding the newspaper’s operations. Here’s the text:

A New Box For a Changing World

Bringing the Twitter into your home.

By Nancy Barnes, Star Tribune editor

As many of you have explained to us, technology is changing the news business, rapidly in some cases. The proliferation of car phones and photostatic copiers is the tip of the iceberg. New devices are emerging every day and you’re telling us that they have meaningful roles in your home and work life and you expect the Star Tribune to understand these devices and modes and keep you informed about how they are changing the suburbs you live in and what’s coming next.

The result has been a series of “tech exchange” meetings where our best reporters and editors examined these devices, had them explained to us by several interns, and though we are awaiting batteries and chargers before distributing them (Lileks excepted), we have made coverage of them a priority.

The most important of these devices is the Twitter, which allows simultaneous information sharing among groups of people all over town or even in adjacent counties. We have made a commitment to offer at least one Twitter-based story each day, and you are noticing these changes. You’re welcome.

We will offer numerous areas of Twitter-related coverage:

• News briefs that explain that notable people are using Twitter around the world, particularly ex-Minnesotans, who are more relevant than other people.

• Feature coverage examining how minority and marginalized groups, such as women and gay men, are being excluded from or insisting on access to Twitter, and then mastering it just as a white, heterosexual man might.

• Deeply sourced and reported coverage of Twitter’s use in local businesses and the non-profit/public sector arenas. We will attempt, where resources allow, to explain why this is meaningful or relevant.

• Thoughtful trend coverage incorporating our arts and culture staff, who visit New York City frequently and encounter cutting edge ex-Minnesotans defining how Twitter will be used in the future.

• News of how Twitter is changing life in suburban communities and townships where life is simpler and the impact of technology farther-reaching.

Contingent on acquisition of resources, it is our goal to begin a similar process with the Facebook, which is not actually a book, but a new service available through the televisions many of us have on our desks. You can expect the same standard of deeply reported, broadly sourced, inequity aware, township-centric coverage when we have the cash.

In the meantime, tell me how you are using the Facebook and what impact it is or isn’t having on your face or the faces of those close to you. Write one of my staff at electonicmailA@startribune.com and please include your postal address so we may solicit your feedback on other ways to improve how this newspaper serves you. And if you are reading this column online, please press the button and make it "Delicious."

Best Seats in the House

April 2, 2009

I went to buy Yankee tickets last weekend. Some friends and I are headed out to NYC this summer to see the new ballparks there.... I went to buy Yankee tickets last weekend. Some friends and I are headed out to NYC this summer to see the new ballparks there. The thinking was that if we didn’t jump on day one, we’d be at the mercy of the scalpers. Lo and behold, what showed up when I asked the computer for five “best available” seats but a quint of prime ducats in the lower deck. Booya . . . no. Face prices on these babies were $2,600. A ticket. No, I didn’t leave a decimal out. (Anything under $50 was sold out, natch.)

I don’t begrudge the Yanks what the market will bear, but even the scalpers didn’t want these. Not this year. I mean, Ticketmaster’s “convenience charge” was $60. Talk about robbery.

But when the Yankees put their pricing together a year or so ago, they figured someone did want to pay $2,600 a seat, even though a helicopter ride from Wall Street wasn’t included in the deal. Make no mistake, these seats were to be sold to corporations or money-is-no-object status jerks in search of some sort of bragging rights. And the bulk of the debauched spending that flowed in New York flowed through Wall Street.

So when I hear that we’ve been too hard on AIG and the rest and that the sick bonuses that begat a $10K day at the ballpark and $45 entrées and $250 Cabernets and pet concierges are essential to keeping the best and the brightest in-house, I am appalled on many levels. But most profoundly, I’m appalled because this is what America’s best and brightest now see as their professional bull's-eye.

I don’t know about you, but I want our best and brightest solving global warming, curing diseases, coming up with an electric car that doesn’t need to be charged every night, figuring out where to put spent nuclear fuel. Not developing tax dodges for Fortune 500s and skimming 1 percent off financial transactions so they can treat their buddies and the models they shack up with to a five-figure day at the ballpark.

The root of the problem is two-fold: We are not using our tax code and other government initiatives to foster essential public efforts, and the Wall Street culture is just as depraved as that of gangsta rappers and NFL criminals. I don’t want this gang in jail, I don’t want to take back their ill-gotten gains. But I would gladly use the tax code to redirect this flow of money to places where it benefits more of us and by consequence, directs the best and the brightest into endeavors where foie gras in every course isn't the apotheosis of their achievement.

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Gambling Away Our Futures

March 11, 2009

One of the less-discussed aspects of the economic meltdown is that it exposed the fraudulence of how most of us are securing our futures....

One of the less-discussed aspects of the economic meltdown is that it exposed the fraudulence of how most of us are securing our futures. Whereas most first-world nations (Canada, Australia, the U.K., France, Sweden, etc.) provide for their citizens’ primary and secondary educations, lifelong health care, and retirement pensions, the U.S., in large measure, denies any responsibility thereof.

Instead, we developed throughout the last three decades a system of stock market-based plans to cover people’s retirements (401Ks and IRAs) as fewer and fewer employers offered pensions; college costs (529 plans), as they skyrocket well beyond six figures for a four-year degree; and are dabbling in Health Savings Accounts, where you invest your unused health care dollars and see them grow to cover the ever-burgeoning costs of medical care.

Had the Bush administration and your GOP elected officials, such as ex-Sen. Coleman, had their way, the federal government would have cut back already meager Social Security and Medicare outlays, but let folks invest them in the markets to offer returns well beyond what the government could.

So much for the fantasy.

My family’s 401Ks (which we have invested in for about fifteen years) have less value than if we had just stuck that money in a box in our basement after paying income taxes and forgoing the company match. Our college savings has been decimated. My wife’s stock options are worthless.

And consider us lucky. We have managed to hold on to our jobs, our health insurance, and our home. But I don’t feel so fortunate to be an American these days.

If I was a Canadian or Aussie, I would know that I did not have to gamble in the market (and for all but the insiders, it is just a big casino, and I say that as someone who covered the casino industry for three years) to provide my kids with a college education, secure our health care, and retire in some semblance of dignity.

The rap on those nations was that you could not “create wealth” there because of the draconian taxation on those with high incomes. Those societies were indolent, obsessed with leisure, and non-entrepreneurial. They would never have invented the twenty-four-hour sports cable network, erectile dysfunction pills, or iPhone apps that simulate forty-six different farts (see second half of Bill Maher's transcript for a very wise disemboweling of our culture.).

The U.S. is a can-do place filled with people who think they are one gimmick from striking it rich (flipping houses, say?) or God finally granting them that lottery win, so let’s keep those taxes low on the wealthy. What a crock of shit we’ve bought into.

We’re at a crossroads in America. We’re on a trajectory to become Argentina, a second-world country where insiders and the beneficiaries of a corrupt system live well, and everyone else is subject to wild economic swings, currency devaluations, and goes bust once a decade.

If we instead aspire to an economy and system that mirrors our neighbor to the north, where people don’t think as much about being rich and don’t worry as much about working hard but being left unable to care for themselves or provide their children with a future—we need to restructure our economy in massive ways. It’s not socialism, but it’s a more humanized, less depraved form of capitalism.

Which of us wouldn’t choose that option right now? Seems like a no-brainer. But that’s not accounting for all the no-brainers out there.

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