Adele and Beyonce fans get wet, but some also say they saw Prince in a Grand way (in St. Paul, no less):
— When Adele chatted and sang in the Twin Cities, the rainy weather was just as uncooperative as for the Beyonce show, which may be fitting because she had been expected to perform a song partly about such precipitation, Purple Rain by Prince, as a tribute to the late area icon. Many local people helped fill up the concert halls. It also was bantied about in the media that Prince has had about dozen backup musicians since his heyday, one of whom, a guitarist, I met in a gas station along White Bear Avenue around that time, very late at night. Another person I just met said he twice had encountered Prince while partying on a different avenue, that being Grand Avenue. A third noted that the intro to Purple Rain, as done by some of the dozens of local tributes in the past few weeks, sounds a lot like a Lynyrd Skynrd song. (Not that with their conflicting musical styles, they ever would have shared the same stage).
— One of the summer changes at the Smilin’ Moose, not just bands, has included a guy hawking a use-hammer-to-pound-nails-into-a-stump game, on the patio that’s also made of wood. That is so Wisconsin. Maybe more so than having a moose as your mascot.
— At local sports bars, you could see the draft choices being made by NBA teams. Or where they for some other type of contest, such as a video game, with names like Tome Maker and Dragan Bender? One of them was picked by the Milwaukee Bucks, who for sure won’t have a video game patterned after them.
— Advertised as “The World’s Best Husband,” via a local business card, and “The World’s Best Tacos,” via the Village Inn sign, North Hudson is the hallowed haven for a hospitable hubby, or the hottest hombre.
— A last word (I hope) from the whole Hudson traffic debacle. With the traffic rerouting down next to the water along First Street, and the slowing-to-near-a-haul driving behavior of (largely) Minnesota motorists, cyclists were actually traveling much faster than those in cars. And perhaps this sign in an alley between that street and the main drag says it all: A totally yellow figure — that’s much the same color as those annoying cones that enforce crosswalk pedestrian morality — and that looks like one of the Mario Brothers, has been seen holding up signs that suggest a slower speed for children of about the same stature. It may have been there prior to the construction, but I’m sure many more people seeking a detour saw it in the last couple of months.
— As summer rolls itself out, it can be manifest in literally hundreds of plastic boats and sand pails hung from the ceiling in two big rooms at Dick’s Bar and Grill. There also were dozens of chalk designs on the pavement outside Knoke’s Chocolates, together taking up about a dozen concrete squares that consist of two-dozen square feet each.