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Can you smell it? Can you feel it? It is State Fair time y’all. Hey-Ho let’s go!

The Family Fair Stage at Baldwin Park offers daily kid friendly entertainment. The Monster Shop Bump n’ with The BC Characters (shows daily at 12:30, 4, and 6) is a hip-hop troupe that performs acrobatic dance and features life size Muppets-ish characters. Helicopter back spins and Fuzzy Wuzzy? Count me in. Also performing daily is Sean Emery (shows at 1:30 pm and 5pm), a juggling unicyclist who’s act is filled with the sort of shticky humor that makes kids giggle and squirm.

Probably the best attraction for a Citidiot (a City Idiot) like me is The Little Farm Hands exhibit, which is a crash course in agriculture for urban families. The hands-on exhibit provides a mock farm for children ages 3-12 to play in and experience real farm chores. There are animal barns, tractors, garden plots, apple orchard, and a grocery store for the kids to roll up their sleeves and get to it.

If you prefer your family entertainment a little spicier, head on over to the X Zone (located on Murphy Avenue and Underwood Street). 3rd Lair, the legendary Twin Cities skate park, hosts a whirling dervish of gnarly action. Skateboarders, in-line skaters, and BMX riders perform tricks daily (11am, 12:30, 2:30, 3:30, and 6:30). There is also a battle of the bands in the X Zone that will offer your little head banger a chance to burn off some of the sugar that surely will be running through the veins.

The North Woods (located just east of Little Farm Hands on Cooper) offers up daily activities that fill the deep-fried Fair air with sawdust and sweat. Take a break from stuffing your face and watch some grizzled dudes partake in some kick-ass timber events. These world class foresters cut, climb, grapple, and buzz saw through a whole course of wood splittin’ games.

Want more cowbell? Shenaniguns! is a Wild West comedy show that features some cowboy screw ball antics in a performance that is family friendly.

Adventure Park offers kids a wide array of activities that range from The Butterfly House, Carousel, spooky Haunted House, River Raft Ride, Sky ride, and the old stand-by, the Space Tower. Separate tickets need to be purchased for each and tickets can be bought near the entrance to the attraction.

And finally, there are the classics: The butter heads, the fattest pig, the giant slide, machinery hill, the Bazaar, the bucket of Sweet Martha’s cookies, roasted corn, the Midway carnies, watching a sheep get shaved (Don’t laugh. I’m from the city. It’s amazing what those farm kids can do), and of course, people watching.

Want to impress your kids?  Take them to a comic book shop.  Seriously.  It’s just that simple.  By taking kids to a store that is filled with Jedis, SpongeBob, Fantastic 4, Scooby, Superman, The Simpsons, and Spidey, you can officially no longer can be called “fuddy-duddy”.   And pound for pound, the best comic book store in the city is Uncle Sven’s Comic Shoppe, which is located on St. Clair Avenue in the Mac Groveland neighborhood. 

Not too long ago, comics were considered to be strictly the domain of nerds.  That is no longer the case.  Like a two-faced, power hungry, hooded villain running havoc over a mysterious metropolis, comic books have taken over our American pop culture landscape.  The art of comics has now saturated every aspect of our media.  From movies (Star Wars, Batman, Iron Man, G.I. Joe, Transformers, X-Men), books (the saga of Harry Potter is a cultural juggernaut), and television (hello, Cartoon Network),  pop culture is now super charged from the fantasy goings-on of idiotic yellow sponges, robotic cars, futuristic soldiers, and mutants with bone claws.  (Note:  During my research for this story, I noticed that the single advertisement above the Box Office chart on Yahoo! was for a new Captain America comic book.)  So now is the time to let your inner geek out.  Come on.  You know you want to.  There is no better place to start than Uncle Sven’s.

The place is old school.  The store is tiny, but feels just right.  A man in a Hawaiian shirt and bucket hat sits behind a counter near the entrance.  When you walk in the front door, bells jingle.  The man greets you as if you are the only customer who matters.  Which of course, you are (this isn’t Best Buy).  Your kid’s eyes will light up when he sees Yoda on the wall.  Then you walk a little further and you see Wonder Woman.  There is no need to worry about finding adult material here.  Even though stories of apocalyptic meteorites and henchmen fill the racks, the place is as clean as a church on a Sunday morning.  In the back of the store, Colonel Dave’s .25 bins offer boxes of affordable comics.  Both DC Comics and Marvel Comics have tailored made comics for young kids: These comics have softer art, zero violence, and go by the name of “Team Titans” and “Super Friends”.  Boys and girls will equally have more than enough material to choose from.  Up near the register, pick out some lemonheads or jawbreakers while the man in the Gilligan hat adds up your loot.  Uncle Sven’s Comic Shoppe actually stocks awesomeness.  And by taking your kids there, you’ll look like the biggest hero in the bunch.

What:  Uncle Sven’s Comic Shoppe          651.699.3409

Where:  1838 St. Clair     St. Paul. MN  55105 

Hours:   Wed-Sat `11am-8pm      Sun        12pm-5pm

If the fabled counter at Mickey’s Diner could talk, I imagine it could tell some of the greatest stories of our generation.  Mickey’s has been open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, for the last 70 years.  In that time, it has seen and fed a group of characters so thick with dudes, nut jobs, and hilariously normal working folks that the place is a real life Coen Brothers movie.  On a recent visit, my son and I got in line with ten other folks who looked like they were straight out of Central Casting.  After a short wait, we took the last two seats at the counter.  Murphy sat right up against the window, swirling on his stool. 

It was a mass of humanity at Mickey’s.  A pair of United States Marines sat down on my right, warmly nodded at us, and quickly got down to the business at hand.  Then a no-necked guy (wearing a shirt that said “You Talking to Me?”) plopped down at an open stool and snapped open a newspaper.  A few minutes later, a family (fresh from the Children’s Museum located across the street) squeezed into a booth and joyfully ordered some lunch.  Next, a man with a Santa beard and plaid shirt walked the length of the counter and tried to sit down next to me on my left.  He couldn’t see my five year old son behind my big head and the row of Marines, so the man got his rear end about a foot away from crushing Murphy.  I set my arm out to stop him and it awkwardly looked like I was trying to hug the man’s waist. 

“Ohhh, I’m serry,” Santa man said, as he put the brakes on his landing pattern.  “I couldn’t see da little guy there.  Thought the stool was empty.”  The man returned to the throng at the front door and dutifully re-took his place in line.    

A waitress shimmied her way down the counter towards us and asked, “What-a-ya-havin’ down here?”

“Grilled Cheese and fries.  Bacon Cheese Burger, onions, and fries,” I answered.  (Note: When faced with a waitress that looks likes she could calmly serve up food in a hailstorm of bullets, it is best to keep your order simple.)

“Got.  It.”  She replied and walked away. 

Then the line cook went to work.  On a small stove, he flipped buttermilk pancakes, scooped up hash browns, and put a huge steel plate on top of some Canadian bacon.  Eggs were fried up in split seconds.  Waffle batter was poured into a black coated griddle that looked so old it just might have been the very first waffle maker ever made.  After a few minutes, the cook then flung out seven plates of food like a ninja throwing stars.  The no-nonsense waitress made her way down the length of the legendary counter and dispersed all the plates of food in single file fashion.  We were the end of her line, so she put a little extra zip into serving up our plates.  She paused and held a sweet eye on Murphy. 

“Enjoy,” she said.  How could you not?

What:  Mickey’s Dining Car

Where:  36 W. 7th Street

Hours:  Whenever you want.  It’s open 24 hours.   

With sweltering heat currently suffocating the Twin Cities, it’s now time to head indoors into the cool comforts of air conditioning.  Better still, now is the time to escape the heat with a visit to the Wabasha Caves. Is there anything cooler than a cave?  While the temps outside soar into the 90s, the Wabasha caves are permanently chilled.  They are so cold, in fact, that furnaces have to be on at all times.  Just a few feet inside the front entrance, visitors are greeted by the sweet and natural cold conditions of the historic caves.

Throughout history, the Wabasha Caves have served as a mushroom farm, speakeasy, and gangster haven.  A guided historic tour (about 45 minutes) leads patrons two hundred feet straight back into the caves.  Along the way, attendees learn a small but unique piece of St. Paul’s past:  Etched into the rock are bullet holes and various markings; Old timey photos of Prohibition beer swillers and lolly gaggers enjoying the seclusion of the caves adorn the walls; Mug shots of some rough looking boot leggers and criminals who visited the caves make-up a wall of shame.  The tour leads through the finished area of the caves, where weddings and swing dancing lessons are now held, to a series of unfinished caves.  Under the bare rock and shadows of the unfinished caves, patrons can feel the cold dampness of natural earth and stone.  The caves are well lit and offer a gritty look into an unseen world.  Oh, it might sound a tad bit spooky.  But the tour is peppered with light-hearted and funny tales of ghosts, gangsters, and manure covered floors.  I mean, how scary can a tour be if the first thing you see as a visitor to the Wabasha Caves is a giant Snoopy statue that is dressed in an adorable pinstripe Dillinger gangster suit?

For a more extensive look into the storied history of St. Paul, the Down in History Tours offers deluxe tours that showcase St. Paul’s rich Irish heritage, Scandinavian heritage, Victorian Homes, and of course, Gangsters.

What:  Wabasha Caves

Where:  215 Wabasha Street South
St. Paul, MN  554107-1805

When:  Thursdays   5:00pm
Saturdays and Sunday 11:00am

Cost:    $5.00/person

After a summer-full of Staycationing with my son, a well deserved dad break was in order.  I decided to attend The Guy Expo at the River Centre Convention Hall in downtown St. Paul and participate in a chicken wing eating competition.
My first foray into the world of “Competitive Eating Contests” started with a simple question.

“What size Elvis jumpsuit would you like to wear?”  The coordinator of the Guy Expo asked me, as I was preparing to partake in an Elvis themed Chicken Wings Eating Competition.

“Medium,” I replied.

“The Elvis suits are quite see-through,” the coordinator said, “So you might want to wear underwear, you know, just in case you weren’t going to wear any to the event.”

“Good to know.”

In the days leading up to the event, I prepared for the competition by pumping my entire digestive system with Imodium, Prilosec, and Tums.  I ate rice cakes to expand my stomach.  I solicited advice from a duo of carnivorous all-stars:  My friends Gumbo and J.R.

“There’s a difference between Wings and Drums,” Gumbo told me, sounding like some sort Meat Professor  “If they give you drummies, you gotta stick it in the back of your mouth, by your molars, and chomp, then spin it, and then chomp it again.”

“But if they give you wings, there will be two bones.  Use your two index fingers to push the meat out.  Then rotate the wing like a top,” J.R. said.  Then he demonstrated a technique that can only described as a “cannibalistic mouth harp”.

On the day of the event, I was greeted at the competition stage by a man dressed as Elvis.  His ivory white jumpsuit was bedazzled with jewels.  His Elvis inspired twitching and snarling made it look like he had a case of Las Vegas Turrets.

“Are the wings in the competition spicy?”  I casually asked Elvis Guy.

“Oh, yeah,” he said.  “You gonna feel it the morning.”

Yikes.
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Saturday August 8th and Sunday August 9th, Historic Fort Snelling will be hosting a Civil War Weekend.  Costumed staff will be participating in artifact displays, weapon demonstrations, crafts, dance, and civil war reenactments.  The costumed guides will also be demonstrating 19th century life through hands-on activities in the school, shop, hospital, wheelwright shop, and blacksmith shop.  Infantry and cannon drills will also be offered.  What doesn’t say “Thank God it’s the Weekend!” like the blasting of a cannon?

At Fort Snelling, frontier life is all around you.  Costumed guides are staged in various rooms around the grounds and regale visitors with 19th century speak.  A soldier with tiny bifocals and mutton chop sideburns meets you at the front gate and says in a blustery voice, “If a door is open at Fort Snelling, then sir, you may go in that room.”  A soft spoken woman in a bonnet sweeps the floor next to a kettle fire and says, “The good people at Fort Snelling wouldn’t hire bad people like fur traders and such, who will, you know, start wars.”    In the hospital, you will learn about a soldier named Peter Trainer, a native of Monaken, Ireland, who lived at the fort and got drunk on duty, ate spoiled meat, and was given Peruvian tree bark to drink to heal his wounds.  The Round Tower, the looming defensive structure seen from the freeway, is the oldest standing structure in Minnesota, having been built around 1820, gives you a stunning view of the ancient walls that tower above the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers.

Plus, there still is rock candy for sale (come on, you know you were thinking about it).  Don’t worry: It still tastes awesome.

What:  Civil War Weekend

Where:  Historic Fort Snelling (At the Highways 5 & 55 near the Airport)

When:  August 8th and 9th 10 am to 5pm

Cost:  $10/adults, $5/kids 6-17, and kids under 5 are free.

In our nation’s current landscape of political double-speak and diminishing returns, very few things deliver what they advertise.  It is a sad state of affairs when we greet each new announcement with a skeptical shrug.  But Circus Juventus, a performing arts circus school for youth in St. Paul, is one of the rare things in this world that actually delivers the goods.  Circus Juventas is so kick-ass, in fact, Mayor Chris Coleman recently declared August 1st “Circus Juventas Day” in the city of St. Paul.  By teaching two thousand kids per year circus artistry, Juventas has inspired generations of Twin Cities youth.  It is a true organic triumph in our tough times.
Celebrating its 15th season, Circus Juventas presents “Yulong:  The Jade Dragon,” a story of emperors, battles, courage, love, and peace.  It is also a tale of Mulan, the young woman who fights to bring honor to her family.  This, of course, is all spectacularly staged and choreographed with aerial acrobatics, drumming, sword fighting, trapeze, and wicked contortion.

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The remarkable kid friendly play, “The Nightingale”, finishes its month long run this weekend at the SteppingStone Theatre and is a St. Paul Staycation jackpot.

Now, I’m by no means a theater critic.  But how can you not love a kid’s play that begins with the crash of a loud gong, moves into a song about cheese, and features a giant gold toy bird that looks like C3PO from Star Wars?  Heck, the hilarity starts even before the curtain even goes up.  On a recent visit, the Stepping Stone house manager came up on stage and instructed the audience of children and their adults to actively practice laughing, clapping, and cheering.

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My son and I strolled into ArtScraps, a creative materials reuse-it shop on the corner of Pascal and St. Clair, ready to make someone else’s waste our own personal treasure.  ArtScraps collects leftovers, overstock, factory rejects, and a vast array of miscellaneous items normally destined for the landfill and gloriously turns them into art supplies.  If the “Ax Man” married Martha Stewart, ArtScraps would be their spunky love child.  By connecting environmental conservation with the creative process, ArtScraps has built one of the most unique stores in the Twin Cities.  Amongst the barrels and bins of supplies, we found a bucket filled with baby doll faces.  Murphy juggled a few of the plastic head pieces and smirked, “What the heck could we make out of these?”

“Something spooky,” I quipped. 

Murph giggled and said, “We should make somethin’ and scare mom.”

“Ohhhhhhhhhh…yeah,” I replied.

Welcome to ArtScraps, a place where anything is possible (even the supplies to scare the bejesus out of your spouse!).  In the Dr. Seuss spirit of creativity, a giggling slap-happy world filled with whirligigs and doohickeys and unfathomable creatures (Ever box a Gox in your sox?), the ArtsScraps store in St. Paul opens the gates of our imaginations and lets it run hog wild.  The place is packed with so many wacky art supplies it unhinges your brain, deconstructing what you previously believed was possible for an arts and crafts project. 

Next, my son plunged his hand into a massive barrel filled with metal bottle caps.  It was pure organic joy.

“This.  Is.  Sooooo….awesome,” Murphy said, as he twirled his hand around in the barrel.  Then we found fabric samples, day-glo orange prescription bottles, cookie tins, medical tubing, tongue depressors, stamps, stickers, feathers, tiles, corks, flags, tiny hockey sticks, and dinosaur stencils.   

By removing both the financial (you can fill a grocery bag and it’s only five bucks!) and physical (have we talked about the bucket of women’s shoulder pads?) limitations on the creative process, ArtScraps allows shoppers to come up with their own projects.  You don’t have to have your creative impulses reduced to a pre-determined store bought kit.  Plus, they are constantly taken donations from corporations. So the stock is always changing.

“We want people to come up with their own projects and explore the whole creative process,” Megan, the cheery ArtScraps clerk, told me.  “And we also want people to try and reuse things instead of just throwing them away.” 

As she spoke, Megan sorted through a box of donated glow-in-the-dark stickers.  The lime green tablets would retail for a lot of money just down the street at Creative Kid’s Stuff.  But at ArtScraps, I could afford several reams.  I grabbed a few so that Murph and I could cut them up and make our own space world for the ceiling in his room.  This is the very goal of ArtScraps:  reduce waste through the reuse of discarded material and make some art while you’re at it.

On our way out, I noticed a “Back to School” kit for sale that included glue sticks, paper clips, binders, crayons, etc.  But there were a few items in the pre-boxed kit that struck me:  tennis balls and marbles.

“Our interns put those ‘Back to School’ kits together,” Megan said, as she let out a short laugh.

“Oh, really,” I replied.

“Yeah,” Megan said, “Our interns were actually middle school kids.  They put those kits together for their peers knowing exactly what they would want.”

How cool is that?

What:  ArtScraps          651.689.2787  http://www.artstart.org/

Where:  1459 St. Clair             St. Paul 

Hours:  Monday-Friday 10-5 Saturday 10-4

Captain Curly, the St. Paul Library pirate, prepared for his typical day of buccaneering.  He whipped out a foam sword, a bandana, and a pair of big black boots.  As he searched for his beloved pirate hat, Curly prowled amongst forty squirmy kids who were attending the “Treasure Beyond Measure” program at the Merriam Park library.  Then Curly found a gaudy red top-hat that was bedazzled with valentines and hearts.  He stuffed it on over his skull cap bandana and was all set for some summer time plundering.  All of the kids went berserk and shrieked with fake hysterics.

“No!  No!  No!” The kids mockingly yelled at the playfully dimwitted pirate.  Curly tossed off the cutesy hat and found the appropriate one (a black flop hat with cross bones).

“Yes!  Yes!  Yes!”  The kids yelled in comic relief.

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