Posted on by John Edwards

Wedge LIVE! News Brief – March 18, 2019

A digest of all the news you may have missed in the last two weeks.

🤑 💪 SW Minneapolis Power Grab

There’s a contingent of southwest Minneapolis residents who feel like the last few election cycles have left them disempowered. Now they’re out to change the rules of city elections.

👉 Read our coverage of what’s happening at the Minneapolis Charter Commission.

👉 See what this proposal could hypothetically do to the city’s Ward map.

📼 Devastating Doctored Video

I have taken Lisa Bender’s actual words and moved them around to form new meanings. Readers of the nextdoor website will surely want to tell their friends about this doctored video confirming everything they thought they knew about our City Council President.

🗳️ Reporting from the St. Paul caucuses

My report from the caucuses in St. Paul’s Ward 1, Precinct 8:

“People showed up to do democracy. We have no idea who they support. In a month or two some of the same people will show up to do more democracy and the party might or might not have an endorsed candidate.”

🗑️ St. Paul Trash Dance

St. Paul passed a sustainable to-go packaging ordinance two weeks ago, prompting sustainability advocates to break out in a trash dance. It’s the most outrageous thing to happen at St. Paul City Hall since that restaurant owner dumped a bag of trash in the Council President’s office.

⚠️ Carol Becker Keeps Happening

Carol Becker makes a comparison to Russian election meddling and the recent massacre in New Zealand in an analysis of how she and her “network” have lost political power in Minneapolis over recent election cycles. Is that a very dumb thing to have said?

🛒 Sponsored Content: Carol Becker would like you to know that the clothing items worn on the Wedge LIVE! broadcast are available for purchase in the Wedge LIVE! store.

🤑 “Parade of Homes” or “Parade of Bulldozers”?

This TV news profile of a $1.85 million mansion in southwest Minneapolis is a great example of how local news glorifies #bulldozing to build luxury single family homes, but never fails to controversialize apartments.

Make sure you read the listing: “When Mick Jagger wrote the words ‘You can’t always get what you want’ somehow I don’t think he saw 1907 W. 49th Street coming.”

☠️ Iced Over and Underwater

This year brought the most hazardous sidewalks I’ve experienced in my seven winters in the Wedge (thanks in large part to snow shoveling scofflaws and the auto-oriented business community). It’s time to start declaring Sidewalk Emergencies.

And if the ice didn’t get you, it was the flood: Lake Chipotle nearly overtopped its banks.

🌐 Uptown Geography Watch

📉 Neighborhood organization diversity survey

👉 Demographic survey shows Minneapolis neighborhood organizations are falling short of diversity targets.

😢 Planner Victimized by Trending Hashtag ️

There’s a guy on twitter who compares finished buildings to the promotional renderings published before their construction. He uses the hashtag #renderingvsreality.

But when a city planner ridiculed the exterior materials of Lyn-Lake’s Lime apartments at a recent Zoning and Planning meeting, I hijacked that hashtag and used it to demolish this planner’s status as a fashion icon.

Welcome Uptown’s Newest Resident

Say hello to Trevor.

📘 New book embarrasses John Edwards

It’s usually the case that I’m pretending to laugh when people make jokes about me having the same name as the 2000s-era presidential candidate John Edwards (who you’ll recall cheated on his cancer-stricken wife). But at an Uptown book reading last week, from an author heaping substantial praise on my significant accomplishments, I couldn’t get him to stop calling me Jonathan.

West Coast Author Guy Randy Shaw started the evening by calling me Jonathan Edwards. I corrected him. Then he called me Jonathan Richmond. I corrected him again. He goes back to calling me Jonathan Edwards. I shrug it off. But then I realize the great Jonathan Edwards is stealing all the credit for Wedge LIVE, because that’s what’s printed in this book.

The author is Randle McGraw. The book is Generation Priced Out. Please skip to the parts that single me out for praise by searching the index for “Jonathan Edwards.”

🧙‍♀️ Witch’s Hat Tower News

I went to Prospect Park last week, where the neighborhood group is trying to sort out which of their board members is involved in a lawsuit against a developer… while also trying to get that developer to come to their meeting to give them a progress report.

🚶‍♀️ Girard Ave Pedestrianization News

City’s Public Works department recommends a plan for Girard Ave that allows McDonald’s to keep all three of its curb cuts.

👶 Daycare Concerns

If we all oppose daycare in our neighborhood, then everyone will always have to drive to daycare, and we can use the fact that everyone is always driving to daycare, to protest any daycare in the neighborhood.

👉 Check out our coverage of last week’s Planning Commission.

🌉 Fremont Ave to Get New Bridge Over the Greenway