Archive for the ‘Apple Valley’


Open Mic Night at Luxury Sweets: Apple Valley, MN

We got our print copy of Thisweek yesterday and Kim was leafing through their “Thisweekend” insert and noticed that Luxury Sweets in Apple Valley is hosting an open mic night on May 5th between 7pm and 9pm featuring five local folk/rock artists. Admission is free and their gelato is fucking awesome. This is right up our alley!

Scheduled to perform are (all except Chastity Brown are fucking MySpace pages, you have been warned):

1. Stook!

2. Carl Franzen

3. Chastity Brown

4. Katey Bellville

5. Erin Kate

For more information log on to bettermusicians.com. Apparently La Luz Cafe (who haven’t even opened yet AFAIK) is co-sponsoring the event.

I checked the listing at bettermusicians.com and they list Roger Flyer instead of Stook! You have been warned :)

Each artist will perform a three song set, the goal is to do this the first and third Monday of each month.

Kim and I are planning to go.

Enchanted Free Dinner at LeeAnn Chin

Two freebies to chat about tonight, since other than the pile of tainted dirt from the new Twins stadium site being dumped in the Minnesota River floodplain instead of in the “ultra-secure” lined landfill that will one day be directly adjacent to a nice lake and recreation area in Burnsville, there really isn’t anything worth writing about.

First freebie was a movie rental which we cashed in on Friday night for Disney’s Enchanted. While I had heard the movie was funny I didn’t believe anything I was told. Rarely do I find girly movies worth my time but knowing that Kimmy suffered her way through American Gangster I figured renting that would be an even trade. Unfortunately, it wasn’t terrible even because after the stupid cartoon beginning, the rest of the movie (well, minus the stupid cartoon ending) was quite enjoyable and I found myself pausing it several times to laugh, almost in hysterics and usually out loud, because it really was that funny. If you haven’t seen Enchanted yet and you’re looking to please the significant other in your life that might be into girlish movies, this is one that I promise will be at least tolerable for you.

The second freebie was also a Kim special which was to try out two of LeeAnn Chin’s three new menu items between 4:30 and 6:15 today only. Now, I despise LeeAnn Chin almost as much as I despise anything on this planet and even though I have been called hypocritical by plenty of douchebags on the Internet, there are just some things you must do to please your wife (thankfully, she doesn’t enjoy coffee enough to make me go into Starbucks) and this was one of those times.

We were greeted with a long line stretching out the front door and after we got inside we were offered a small cup of their “excellent” frozen yogurt. Having not ingested frozen yogurt since TCBY’s heyday in the late 1980s I found this taste test to be just like eating really cold yogurt. Before I could even open my mouth to form the words, they had already come out of Kim’s. While I eat yogurt every single day, and for the most part have come to tolerate it, this was pretty nasty and not something I would eat again, especially not in a large portion after eating fake Chinese food.

Their three new options were Mongolian, Bourbon, and Kalbi chicken. The free deal mandated that you get at least one of the three before getting another free but I decided to go with two new ones just for kicks. Anything had to be better than what they normally offer, right? Well, not so much in this case. The new offerings taste exactly like everything else they offer…the same. There are no distinct flavors in anything they serve and the Kalbi and Mongolian chicken were no exceptions.

My recommendation? Don’t bother with LeeAnn Chin, even if your wife likes it and it’s free but definitely rent Enchanted — funny flick.

Local News Roundup for April 24th, 2008

There is some new “News” in the South Metro but very little that’s worth an entire post so I figured I would give everyone a small taste of some tidbits that have shown up since yesterday that you might want to check out yourselves:

1. Deputy Joshua Williams, the Dakota County Sheriff’s Deputy who killed Billy Wallace when he cut across several lanes of traffic and clipped Wallce’s motorcycle while en route to a domestic disturbance call in Farmington without his emergency lights or siren activated, was convicted of “careless driving” in Scott County.

2. The Metropolitan Council has sweetened the Lakeville transit deal with an offer for $24 million in improvements to the I-35 and Cedar Ave transit corridors. Enhancements would include adding another HOV lane from Burnsville Pkwy to “The Split”, construction of a larger park and ride at the current location near Kenrick and 167th, peak hour bus routes planned and another park and ride further down Cedar between 179th and 185th. Lakeville will be holding a public open house on April 29th to discuss the deal.

3. Two people were arrested for fatally wounding a 22 year old Prior Lake man during a hit and run that occurred back in early April.

4. Two South Metro students were expelled for purchasing replica swords on a choir trip to the UK. Some believe the punishment is too severe but administrators believe it was necessary to keep up their zero tolerance policy on weapons.

Apple Valley Businesses Hate Cedar Transit Plans

From March on, Apple Valley business owners have been up in arms over preliminary plans to convert Cedar Ave into a highway which would include some different ideas for how mass transit would flow alongside regular traffic especially during rush hour.

The Apple Valley Chamber of Commerce met with Dakota County officials to try and persuade them to consider the “damage” they would do to businesses if they altered the way Cedar currently is (congested and miserable, especially on days with any type of precipitation — frozen or otherwise) to something that was more traffic friendly (anything is better than what it is like now — a vast parking lot caused by long traffic lights). In the Star Trib article linked above, there were some comments from other businesses such as Old Chicago and Valley Pontiac Buick GMC which are joining 15+ others under the group name of “Save Downtown Apple Valley” (if someone wants to register savedowntownapplevalley.com for me, I’ll be happy to have the domain point here — hey, after all it has a much better ring to it than clappingforcluelessness.com). I couldn’t be more pleased because I wrote up a little something before about how the Apple Valley Chamber of Commerce President agrees that the intersection of Cedar and 42 is the real Apple Valley downtown area and not 153rd and Galaxie. I’m so glad other businesses agree with me. I just wish that the City Council would too!

Now, while I agree that changing the traffic patterns, while excellent for the residents, may cause some problems for local businesses, I personally couldn’t care less if Old Chicago suffers. I thought what Michael Regnier, a regional manager for Old Chicago, said was hysterical and even made me seriously wonder if he had ever been to the Apple Valley Old Chicago or put any thought into what he was saying to the Star Trib when he said:

“We could lose our patio, or have buses screaming along 10 feet away from it,” said Michael Regnier, regional manager for the Old Chicago restaurant chain, with a unit located near the intersection. “And if we lose access points, it’ll kill us. We might as well open a heliport to fly people in. If it takes too long to get to us, they’ll go to Famous Dave’s instead.”

Now, I don’t know about any of you but their patio is already 10 feet away from the road where buses and cars already “scream by” on a daily basis — especially when people attempt to run the cautions to avoid being stuck in the Cedar/42 “parking lot”. Also, Old Chicago has no direct access off of Cedar or 42 so people have to drive to 147th and Glazier or Garrett and Glazier and then drive two+ blocks to get to the location. Then to go so far as to say that people would rather go to Famous Daves instead (who don’t serve pizza or beer on tap and might require waiting at yet another traffic light) is just fucking ridiculous. If anything, those people would instead go to Applebee’s or BW3 instead of coming back around to Old Chicago being that those two establishments offer beer on tap and are closer to the intersection of 147th and Glazier… If people are getting to Old Chicago now, they’ll get to it in the future too. Let’s cut out the poorly thought out comments shall we?

I believe that the County, the City and the businesses need to meet somewhere in the middle on this one. We obviously need much better transit options and much less congestion but we also need to support business owners, especially the local ones that are located in Times Square shopping center like Bucky’s Diner and Osaka to name only two.

Of All People to Blackmail, Teachers?

Obviously Eagan’s Eric Syverson didn’t do so well in school or hasn’t been paying attention to teacher salaries, because he and a friend delivered 22 letters to various male teachers around the South Metro in an attempt to blackmail them into forking over up to $23,000 to cover his own supposed blackmail debts.

Apparently Eric and his friend Joseph Schultz hand delivered the letters demanding $1000, stored in Ziploc bags, be dropped in four different parks otherwise rumors would spread of inappropriate behavior with either male or female students and/or DVDs of adult and child pornography would mysteriously appear.

After the letters were reported, officers from multiple jurisdictions tracked the suspect when he went out to pickup from the drop points and Syverson was eventually picked up and transported to the Apple Valley PD where he admitted to the blackmail but only because he himself was being blackmailed.

Genius: blackmail teachers for $1000 each… There is no better group to try and extort money from but our underpaid secondary educators — perhaps if he was smart he would have at least waited until they received their $1200 “economic stimulus package” as he would have had a much better shot of those poor fuckers having the $1000 he was looking to gank from them.

You can check out his photo in this article and for more info check here (Star Tribune), here (Pioneer Press), here (Rosemount Town Pages) and here (Dakota County Felony Complaint, PDF warning).