Video games are stereotypically cast as the bane of a productive, sociable existence. Yet, this image hardly matches the one seen every Saturday in Stephen Pfister’s Apple Valley home. The room is packed with some 20 odd people, mostly male, of varying age, ethnicity and profession, all chatting pleasantly about game nuances, jobs, girlfriends and the occasional wager on a match’s outcome. In the center of the action, two combatants tap away at specialized joysticks made to mimic those found on the stand-up arcade machines of yesterday. There’s no frantic mashing and swearing but rather a quiet, professional-like respect that passes between them. This is a ranked match, after all, and the winner will have more than his fair share of time to gloat once the round is over.

So goes the unique experience of a MN Street Fighter ranked tournament, the organization’s way of sorting the top-of-the-line from the relative newcomer. Tournaments work off of a ranked bracket system, with players earning points towards their overall scores, posted by Pfister on mnstreetfighter.com. Players compete for the highest cumulative total score over the course of several tournaments, with each different game having its own leaderboard. Games played for ranking are mostly 2D fighting games which include Street Fighter IV, III and II, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Guilty Gear XX Accent Core, and a few others, with the eponymous and recently released Street Fighter IV being the current main event.

The Street Fighter series is a classic of the genre, known for its Japanese quirks and dedicatedly old-school gameplay. The original Street Fighter is often considered a sort of prequel, released to arcades in 1987. The game featured only two playable characters, the series’ stars Ryu and Ken, and not much else. The worldwide smash hit success of Street Fighter II in 1991 set the series upon its throne as the king of fighting games, innovating the concept of multiple characters with unique move sets, creating a hitherto unknown amount of depth and replay value for the genre. Suddenly, the arcades became a proving ground of Street Fighter superiority, a competitive environment that Pfister says gamers his age (29) are starting to become nostalgic for. A newcomer to the league, Collin Pote, cites the arcade experience as a draw for him. “Arcades aren’t really a big thing anymore hanging out with a bunch of guys that have same mindset, you kind of get that same mindset again,” Pote says.
Nostalgia seems to be a driving force behind the group’s choice of 2D-style fighting games, called as such because of the onscreen characters’ inability to move in a direction other than up, down, back and forward. Once a limitation of gaming’s earliest epoch, the 2D fighter has now become the gaming equivalent of certain forms of French cooking: a Spartan exterior invites the newcomer into a world of unseen depth and complexity, ruled over by die-hards who have decided that the old way was the only way and that they had better get very, very good at it. Pfister speaks of MN Street Fighter as a way for players to hone their skills. “Part of the way to get better [at games like this] is just by practicing. People said that wanted to play tournaments, so I started hosting,” Pfister says. After the initial group of friends who formed the league needed a way to keep track of who had won their tournaments, Pfister got the idea to form a website to keep track of rankings, and MN Street Fighter was born.

Possibly the most interesting thing about MN Street Fighter is the fact that, from a technological standpoint at least, it need not exist. Innovations in gaming have led to the ability for gamers to play against one another via the internet, through services like Microsoft’s Xbox Live, with the abilityto play ranked tournaments without ever having to leave the house. But Pfister insists that there’s more to it than that.

“It’s a little different than the online experience,” he says. “You know you’re going to see the person next weekend, there’s more respect involved.” Indeed, the typical MN Street Fighter tournament chatter is a far cry from the usual semi-literate trash talk screed of Xbox Live. It’s this sense of professionalism and respect that makes MN Street Fighter’s community stand out against the unflattering portrayal of gamers we see regularly. Sure, trash talk is thrown around, but no more than at dad’s bowling league. In fact, MN Street Fighter seems to capture a bit of that atmosphere. It’s wonderfully unpretentious, a small group of gamers from all walks of life getting together for a bit of friendly competition and a chance at the glory of being number one. While the bestselling game titles may still be interactive versions of Micheal Bay flicks, MN Street Fighter keeps the competitive spirit of the arcade alive.

Bicycles and Coffee.

It’s the marriage of two ultra-hip products of our culture. And it’s arrived at the border of Standish and Ericsson neighborhoods in South Minneapolis.

So why should you give a damn about Angry Catfish Bicycles and Coffee? It isn’t because you’re looking for a new cup holder accessory to hold your coffee-filled thermos; it’s because you want quality.

Owner Josh Klauck cares both about quality of the coffee and bicycle-related paraphernalia served in his recently opened hybrid-store.

Currently, the coffee bar offer four kinds of extraction methods for their coffee beans. One of the more interesting of these is the Japanese siphon method – where a Bunsen-like burner heats up water until it is evaporated into a separate vessel and then drops back through the coffee beans to provide an ultra-pure, clean-tasting cup of joe.

Most coffee shops in the area offer one or two extraction methods – usually failing to produce a viable cup of coffee with either. These coffee shops feature baristas that are too busy stressing over a chemistry exam to create an even puck for an espresso shot or simply don’t care enough to discover what bean and brew style would best fit the customer’s desires.

This find-exactly-what-you’re-looking-for mantra is one intended to run through all aspects of the coffee-bike shop. For coffee, this means selecting the finest roaster in the region, which Klauck believes to be Intelligentsia based in Chicago (with another headquarters in San Francisco).

“Two people have told me they would drive 50 miles for Intelligentsia coffee,” says Klauck. The beans sold by Intelligentsia come from farms that are visited regularly by Intelligentsia employees; they can then assure both top-quality beans and fair business practice from their farmers. Intelligentsia takes the beans back to their facilities for roasting and testing. Because ordering a dark roast is akin to saying ‘give me a coffee without complex and satisfying flavors,’ Intelligentsia only features light-to-medium-roasted, in-season coffee beans. The roasters also research a variety of brew methods and machinery to report to their customers how different extractions alter flavors in the coffee and which ultimately gives the best tasting brew. For these reasons, Intelligentsia holds the quality of bean that Klauck demands for Angry Catfish coffee. And this quality may only be found in a few rare stores in the cities.

Klauck emphasizes a similar selectiveness on the bicycle half of the store. He intends to pick the best fabricators, parts and apparel to carry in his store. So far this means bicycles from Moots, Independent Fabrication, All-City, Surly, Salsa, Colnago and local builds from Capricorn. Customers looking to custom-build their bikes or upgrade parts of current bikes seem to be the target market for Angry Catfish, though the store features three bicycle stations for regular maintenance.

The biking clothing in the store is currently limited to a selection of Twin-Six gear but the store will carry what they know from experience to be the ‘best’ products from a variety of lines. Continuous testing and research into all of the gear that the store carries will be a regular part of the store’s business, according to Klauck.

What else is to come for the store? If correct number of hoops are jumped through for the City, Angry Catfish hope to have outdoor seating come springtime. The space behind the store is also being scouted out for murals and a patio. The space seems to be fairly adaptable at this point – where it could go a number of ways depending on wants and desires of the surrounding community.

Until then, Angry Catfish will continue to offer their customers a undeniable attention to detail and willingness to help people find what the what want in the things they love: bicycles and coffee.

This November marks the release of 2012, a Roland Emmerich movie seeking to capitalize on our decade’s hysteria du jour and general unease. Originally slated for July release, it was quietly pushed back to a timeslot thought to be more favorable. 2012 seems to embrace all of the cliché cheesiness that has characterized its director’s career. The trailer features a nearly incomprehensible series of calamitous events worldwide, with seemingly no central theme or purpose rather than “blowing stuff up real good.” It’s the ultimate culmination of Hollywood’s years spent driving home the fact that cobbling together random scenes of improbably-scaled cinematic carnage will amount to box office revenue.

On the other side of the coin is the fact that the Dec. 21, 2012, hysteria is real. It’s at least real enough to have gained the attention of the portion of the non-tinfoil-hat public. Wrapped up in this myth is a whole menagerie of misconception, wishful thinking and desperate escapism. Central to all theories is the concept that the Mayan “long count” – a calendar devoted to extrapolating celestial events in the long-term, is thought to mysteriously end on the Northern Hemisphere’s Winter Solstice of 2012. Theories are then cut with standard doses of Nostradamus, lizard people, the so-called New World Order – the usual suspects – and an internet-born cultural meme slowly comes about.

The movie trailer suggests the film runs the gamut on 2012 theories, but it’s safe to say that it cannot possibly cover it from all angles. These “theories” are often prefaced with “RE: RE: RE: RE: FWD: U GOTA RED THIS. SCARY STUF :O!”, as is the custom in scholarly journals. These writings then stumble through a melting pot of modern fringe paranoia, but usually involve a reversal of the Earth’s magnetic poles, the collision of a mysterious “Planet X” (also called Nibiru, from Babylonian mythology), a “galactic alignment,” and various permutations and paranoia revolving around human activities (particularly the currently-broken Large Hadron Collider).

These may appear to center around one central catastrophe unless one takes the time to examine the revolving-door nature of doomsday predictions. For its part, the movie seems to include massive and impossible flooding, asteroid impacts, the literal collapse and disintegration of California along the San Andreas faultline, and what appears to be enormous tsunamis cresting the Himalayas. That all of these images can be crammed into one two-and-a-half minute trailer is astonishing in its own right, but this fact also suggests that the movie was storyboarded with a grab-bag of pseudoscience.

The prevalence of film featuring disaster for disaster’s sake cannot be solely attributed to the proliferation of cheap, readily available special effects. The past 30 years have seen an unprecedented wealth distribution upward in Western society, and the prominence and breadth of doomsday theories may reflect a popular disconnect. Even in cases where there is an ounce of truth, embellishment and oh-so-convenient linkage is unfathomably common since the advent of the internet, and there is a slippery slope in theory-crafting that may very well achieve critical mass with the release of 2012.

From this perspective, 2012 and its predecessors are a tragic reflection of the idly destructive fantasies of a public with, by some accounts, less free time than at any point since feudalism, and even less willingness to chalk their plight up to the random machinations that drive modern commerce. For the workaday public, “Science” is cryptic and cumbersome, and is not nearly as fulfilling as the mad-lib media daydreams that characterize so much of downtime in the West. Our “news” is tailored to entertain and exaggerate, and it should be no surprise that popular science has become a loosely-interpreted spectre of failed high school curriculums’ past.

The most astonishing aspect of the 2012 hysteria, however, is that like most doomsday theories, it stems from anxieties that are at least somewhat rooted in truth. The science populist and gregarious physicist Neill DeGrasse Tyson has, by his accounts, devoted months of symposia and panel discussions to dispelling audience-queried myths of imminent doomsday. In short, none of them hold much water. However, the most surprising tale from Tyson, perhaps, is the acknowledgment that an object called “99942 Apophis” has a real possibility of striking the Earth in 2036. It is one of many “rogue” asteroids transiting the solar system, and has a diameter of roughly 270 meters (890 feet), and would impart a massive release of kinetic energy if it happened to strike Earth. This finding may be cause for real concern, but more likely it will simply be fodder for the creation of new and fresh myths. This object was marked for concern in December of 2004, and slated for impact in 2029, but new data showed that it would be a very near miss.

Among the leading “theories” there is hardly anything factual to be distilled. The “galactic alignment” is a very routine occasion, and in fact occurs at every solstice as the Earth and Sun align with the galactic plane in very mundane, predictable fashion. Impact by an entire planet is even more dubious, and laughed off within the science community. Fears about the Large Hadron Collider’s destructive potential seem to be a combination of sensationalist misinformation and residual doomsday fetishization leftover from the Cold War and possibly before.

Doomsday fantasy is a very human invention. While mass extinction events have occurred throughout natural history – in fact we are currently creating one of the quickest die-offs in Earth’s history – the concept of “the end of the world” doesn’t necessarily parse in practical reality. Whether people admit it or not, there is an undying fascination with humanity’s demise. The prehistoric Mount Toba eruption is an example of a proto-Apocalyptic, Black Swan event that ducks human memory. Roughly 70,000 years ago, the human population is thought to have bottlenecked to some 10,000 individuals. This is by far the largest proportional die-off of the human species thus far. Yet, because it’s so far removed by history, it isn’t regarded with the same finalistic reverance reserved for doomsday theories. Looking back, any notions the prehistoric victims of Toba had of “the end of the world” seem absurd in light of our current development.

Even if it isn’t articulated as such, most of our species seems to believe that we have a capital-D Destiny which we are either straying from or fulfilling, in varying degrees. On an individual level, speculation about our terminus results in numerous afterlife beliefs and unwavering commitments to doomsday predictions that, while entertaining, have universally proven to be apocryphal lines in the sand. If humans are going to be special, then our terminus is largely held to be special as well – ‘the “end” of humanity must be cinematic or it can’t really be the end.’ In extreme cases, it becomes apparent that many people just can’t imagine the world continuing without their personal presence to observe it.

As with other conspiracy theories like the 9-11 Truthers, or the New Age junk science that populates used book store shelves, the 2012 hysteria reveals more about the state of society as it exists today rather than its ultimate end. It represents the deep-seated fears and anxieties of a growing subculture of the populace and utilizes the guise of scientific reassurance to claim legitimacy. 2012 theories and mass media cash-ins reveal a deep-seated feeling of vulnerability just as much as they offer a superficial romp through civilization’s explosion-filled demise. Movies are more formulaic than they’re given credit for, and on some level this movie is likely just “[Relevant cultural anxiety] + too many special effects to comprehend.”  I’ll watch it, but I’ll hold myself back from becoming too engrossed to play the world’s tiniest violin in the theatre.

The Saint Paul Union Depot stands tall with the charm of 1923 neoclassical architecture – at its entrance are huge columns and large glass doors, the grass inside the half-circle driveway contains tasteful, well-trimmed shrubbery, and when it’s not a wintry abyss across the metro area, flowers line the rim of the drive as well. Inside, the Headhouse is complete with beautiful shiny marble floors, huge windows both on the walls and overhead. A bridge over Kellogg Boulevard connects to the concourse where the station meets the tracks. It’s a good looking train station. It’s just too bad there are no trains running through it. The last passenger train through the place was in 1971. Nowadays all that people do there is eat Greek food and send letters. But that may soon change.

Plans are developing to bring back commuter rail services to Minnesota. On Oct. 14, parts of these plans were unveiled at the Saint Paul depot itself when the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) held its second round of open houses to present new analyses of the state’s rail needs and to get input from citizens. The open house in Saint Paul was one of seven meetings that took place in different parts of the state, including Duluth, Rochester and Saint Cloud. The subsequent step will be to finalize plans and release them by the end of the year. The plans will then be used as a comprehensive framework around which individual projects can be oriented.

MnDOT, working with Cambridge Systematics, prioritized different train line projects according to the amount of usage they’d get. Cambridge consults offices of the U.S. Department of Transportation as well as a variety of other federal and state agencies having to do with transportation, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Transit Administration.

Ridership forecasts for various routes are “certainly the crux” of the decision making, says Marc Cutler, a planner with Cambridge Systematics. Lines that come first on the list of priorities are as follows: a line from the Twin Cities to Saint Cloud and then Moorhead , a line to Duluth, a line to Mankato, and a high-speed line through Red Wing and Winona over to Milwaukee and Chicago. The first phase of the project would give the high-speed line a top speed of 110 miles per hour, and the other lines a top speed of 79 miles per hour. The rails would however be upgradeable to 150 miles per hour speeds, at a significant additional cost.

Planners think the lines would get a lot of use – Cambridge Systems predicts that the Chicago and Saint Cloud lines would see over a million annual trips by 2030, and there could be 400,000 to 600,000 riders on routes to Duluth and Rochester.

Assuming funding for this massive undertaking can be found, the time could be now for a revamp of Midwest transportation infrastructure.

“This is a unique moment in time” for rail transportation in Minnesota, says Cutler. Federal funding “has suddenly appeared before us.”

Federal funding appears in the form of an $8 billion dollar chunk of February’s $787 billion federal stimulus package designated for high-speed rail via projects with the National Environmental Policy Act. To understand how high the competition is for this money, imagine 8 slices of pumpkin pie vied for by 50 pie-craving diners. According to Reuters, 24 states filled out 45 applications for a piece of this $8 billion train pie. The amount of money requested totals $50 billion. Though officials had expected to be able to begin doling out grants this month, they now expect they won’t be writing any checks until later this winter, due to the overwhelming number of applications. The New York Times reports that the only Minnesota project in the White House’s top ten rail priorities list is the track between Chicago and Minneapolis. MnDOT also lists an additional $40 billion in federal funds for the state to potentially glean, mostly in the form of loans, for various -to-city and intercity rail projects.

MnDOT announced its application for $382 million from federal stimulus money in August. This amount would go towards a Saint Cloud extension of the soon-to-open Northstar line from Minneapolis to Big Lake, as well as a high-speed rail system from Chicago to the Twin Cities up to Duluth.

The state has predicted that the project costs for their rail plan would cost about $8.4 billion, or $7.2 billion if the upgrades were done as one system. The projects outlined in the first phase would cost about $5.3 billion.

Cutler cautions that the rail plan is an “incremental, multi-generational task.” He uses the example of the interstate highway system – it didn’t appear overnight, and the early highways were not as good as the later ones. Each train line will be treated as an independent start-up project, meaning there will be different timelines for each project.

Cutler also stressed the importance of learning from other transit systems’ mistakes, referring to the New York City’s Penn Station and Grand Central Station. There is currently no direct connection between these two major transportation hubs. While the original plan for Twin Cities rails would’ve only put a depot in St. Paul, the state has since changed directions to include large commuter train depots in both St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Some lines are certainly coming along more quickly than others. The Northstar commuter rail, for example, is on its way. The line’s grand opening will take place on Nov. 14 of this year, and it will begin regular commuter travel on Monday, Nov. 16. The route will run from downtown Minneapolis out to Big Lake, a bedroom community of the Twin Cities that’s not far from Saint Cloud. The $320 million cost of the project is shared by state and federal governments, as well as by Anoka, Hennepin, and Sherburne counties, the Metropolitan Council, and the Minnesota Twins. It is estimated that 3,400 people a day will use the train on weekdays from the get go.

The Northstar can travel at a maximum speed of 79 miles per hour, and with six stops, the duration of the route will be about 50 minutes. It connects with the Hiawatha light rail by Target field and then goes on to Fridley, Coon Rapids, Anoka, Elk River, and finally Big Lake.

Dave Christianson, the project manager from MnDOT, also says that the train corridor between the Twin Cities and Duluth, dubbed the Northern Lights Express, is also far ahead of most other corridors. He says the project is one step away from final design, and that it has seen full support along the line. While there is the question of funding, he says the route could be in operation by 2015 or 2016. Christianson also alludes to additional rail corridors with grassroots support, such as a line to Eau Claire, Wis.

When looking at the future of the Minnesota railways, it is important to note that there was a time when the Saint Paul Union Depot was truly a bustling transportation hub. At one time there were 18 tracks serving the place, which 282 trains and 20,000 passengers used daily. This fact was brought up at the Question and Answer portion of the Rail Plan meeting on Oct. 14 when an audience member recalled a time in the 1950’s when there were three daily trips from the Saint Paul depot directly to Union Station Chicago that took little more than six hours.

Today, the Amtrak web site lists two daily trips that take eight hours – Google Maps estimates the drive time between Saint Paul and Chicago at 6 hours and 14 minutes. The Amtrak ticket costs $96 if you buy it within a few days of your trip, or $56 if you buy it in advance. The same trip by automobile would cost $47 in a car with a poor fuel efficiency of 20 miles per gallon.

The Union Depot is currently owned by the U.S. Postal Service and private owners. In June 2009, the Ramsey County Board approved the purchase of the depot’s concourse and the 9 miles of land connected to it from the U.S. Postal Service for $49.6 million, and is trying to purchase the Headhouse from private owners for another $8.1 million. The mailmen will be relocating to a space in Eagan in 2010, at which point the county will begin a $237.5 million project to revamp the space to once again be used for its original purpose. Dave Christianson says that Amtrak signed a letter of intent to operate out of the Saint Paul Union Depot in 2012.

Minnesota’s rail plans are in conjunction with a larger Midwestern rail plan which would bring high-speed trains to a number of major Midwestern cities. The Midwest Rail Initiative is proposing 110 mile per hour trains from Chicago to Milwaukee, Green Bay, Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinatti, and Saint Louis.

How would you like to be a novelist by December? No, we didn’t say a good novelist – just a novelist.

Over the last 10 years, National Novel Writing Month has inspired thousands write their own book. Bound by 30 days and a goal of 50,000 words, these writers have overcome the madness that writing typically creates. The University of Minnesota’s own NaNoWriMo group is actively seeking out this madness. The group’s president, Eric Dolski, says the experience is a personal growth of sorts – a discovery process. It’s an opportunity to forget structured essays and assigned topics and write without limits. And often, that’s exactly what must be done.

Hammering away an average of 1,667 words per day demands a great deal of discipline. There comes a point when each writer realizes that there can be no barrier between the author and the page. Thoughts must pour from head to fingers as freely as they might from your mouth after a heavy night of drinking. Unfortunately this sometimes means thoughts find their way to the page as jumbled as they were in mind. This isn’t the time for well-polished sentences and pristine word choice. In fact, if a writer stumbles into November with the mindset they are going to publish the beast they are about to create, he or she will likely fail. So why bother? If the purpose is not to produce the next innovative piece of literature, then what is it?

NaNoWriMo started as an excuse to call oneself a novelist – an impressive little something to casually say at parties: “Yeah, well, in my first book…”

Founders of NaNoWriMo wrote because they thought, “we would have an easier time getting dates than we did as non-novelists.” Professional writers would probably cringe at this statement; it’s one of the many reasons writers believe why someone should not write (among wealth, fame, and power).

The act of completing a novel is a confidence builder for participants. The event actively promotes quantity over quality – the idea being to accomplish something previously thought to be impossible. The fact that most of NaNoWriMo’s participants ultimately fail to finish their 50,000 words (only 18% succeeded in 2008) marks the event as a challenging endeavor. For those that do succeed, a great deal is owed to the support of their NaNoWriMo group.

While any individual can participate in the event worldwide, NaNoWriMo began as a group endeavor – getting together with other would-be novelists to type, eat junk food, and drink (caffeine and other mind-altering substances).

The U of M’s NaNoWriMo group organizes write-ins – gatherings of writers to simply write – throughout the month to push novelists to keep up with their word counts. The write-ins themselves can to be used as powerful motivators – the physical sound of other writers typing and progressing can be both comforting and encouraging. Stories will be exchanged. Snacks will be had. Struggles will be encountered and conquered.

Interested in becoming a novelist? Come to the next University NaNoWriMo meeting! Email Eric Dolski at dolsk002@umn.edu for details.

The quiet opening of Wally’s Falafel and Hummus went by unnoticed, even to those who live in Dinkytown. But the restaurant’s manager, Bader Jaber, says he is taking things slowly and is in no rush to publicize the joint by plastering local lampposts with flyers and the like.

“Each day is better than the one before,” Jaber says. If one were to walk into Wally’s the day it opened, one would have assumed it to be a mediocre, sparsely populated Mediterranean eatery. There were no special promotions, no free samples, no alcohol involved. Just Wally’s. Take it or leave it.

Jaber’s strategy is to first get accustomed to the swing of things – let the cooks master their speed and culinary tactics, become acquainted with the regulars – and then hold a celebratory evening in honor of Wally’s.

Jaber, 23, took this semester off from his studies at MCTC to devote himself to the business when his friend Wally, owner of Hideaway on Fourth Street, asked him to head the place. “Wally loves Dinkytown, and this is just a side business – he’s not looking to get rich. His main goal is to add variety to food in the area,” Jaber says. Every option is authentic Mediterranean cuisine – Turkish shawarma, Egyptian falafel and Lebanese tabouli, just to name a few. Jaber considers Wally’s shawarma the best in Minneapolis, which is made fresh daily. Chicken and beef are spiced and marinated in the kitchen for 12 hours – nothing is processed. In fact, one can see the rotating meats in the window display, awaiting passersby.

This display did not stop me, a vegetarian, from stopping in. Words such as falafel and hummus are enticing even if I am not hungry. Wally’s is home of the only $3 falafel I have ever seen, and after my first bite of tahini and soft pita I knew it would be a memorable one. The biggest delight of munching through a falafel sandwich comes right before – unwrapping the foil to discover what ingredients this particular restaurant has incorporated. The time flew past me as I devoured it in minutes. I even had room for cheesecake, the only non-Middle Eastern dish at Wally’s. Although almost any meal will come with hummus, one can also sample baba ganouge or foule, an Egyptian bean and veggie novelty that I have yet to experience.

For shy eaters tentative of ordering a dish whose name is too unfamiliar to pronounce, I would suggest a sample plate. They are quite bulky but representative of various menu items – great for sharing with a friend. Most sandwiches include sides of fries or tabouli, a parsley based salad with tomatoes, bulgur, and olive oil. Takeout is available with no extra wait, which includes my favorite choice – pita and hummus. Simple, cheap, yet extremely scrumptious.

Although the food at Wally’s is different enough not to stir up a competitive war with other restaurants in Dinkytown, the cheap prices may sway locals in its direction. Open until 3 a.m. on the weekends, Wally’s is sure to gain appreciation among the stumbling crowd of that hour. Will a grand-opening night ever be held? “Eventually,” says Jaber, but no date is set. Wally’s slow rise to power might not need it after all.

Buying books used is no secret among the university crowd – college is expensive. When book lists exceed ten novels or one textbook is $100, used, at the University of Minnesota bookstore, the budget gets tight. While Amazon and eBay lure consumers with low sticker prices, high shipping rates and two week turn-around times turn “great deals” into “minor inconveniences.” Not only that, the true condition of the book is subjective, especially when buying online. A book listed as “Used – Acceptable” that has “some minor highlighting” could have full pages colored in with pink highlighter; the book should instead be listed as “Slightly Used Coloring Book.”

Fortunately, great deals can still be found right here in our own neighborhoods.

If Dinkytown is on the list of daily sights, there are a couple used bookstores that cater to most course needs. The Bookhouse and Cummings Books can be found on 14th Avenue SE. Their proximity to the Minneapolis campus of the U of M make them prime shops for students to sell their books to, creating ample opportunity for future students in the same courses.

Both shops keep a variety of books – fiction, non-fiction, anthologies, recently released, old editions – that cover a wide range of topics, perfect resources for those research papers and midterm essays. Even better, a large portion of the books in The Bookhouse come from professors who have cleaned out their own libraries. One of the employees also noted that older books have better bindings and have an overall better quality than books printed today.

Mayday Books can be found on Cedar Avenue. just off West Bank campus. The books here tend to be politically swayed and can prove useful in CSCL, Politics, Gender Studies, History and Sociology classes. Even if your academic career doesn’t center on progressive banter, the slew of books, periodicals and zines is enough to pique and enhance general, political interest.

Magers and Quinn Booksellers is an absolute must check for used books. This shop is a bibliophile’s heaven. The depths of the store are inconceivable upon entry. Popular fiction and various book club books sit in the front and acts as a gateway to the expansive fiction collection. The back room opens to an array of genres and books written and almost anything you could ever want a book about. There are sections dedicated to Minnesotan authors, local authors, employee selections and popular titles. The trick in Magers and Quinn is once you find the book you are looking for, check to see if there are other copies stuck behind it – they are usually rougher in condition, but cheaper as well.

As for used bookstores in St. Paul, Sixth Chamber Used Books is a neighborhood shop to check out. Just off Grand Avenue., Sixth Chamber has a growing and varied selection of books in great condition. It has a quality guarantee that their books will be in nearly new condition. The store is neatly organized, and if you don’t find exactly what you are looking for, the store will put your name on a list and notify you when a copy of the book surfaces in the store.

Buying books used is not just about the bargain or getting a required book, however. John Sand, a student at the U of M and used bookstore frequenter, said “I like knowing someone else has read the book I buy, and it is great when they’ve written in the margins. I just bought a poetry book and someone had written their own poem in the back.” Journalism student Kara Nesvig also admitted, “Sometimes I don’t find the book I set out to buy, but I still find other books that are interesting to me.” Leaving any of these bookstores WITHOUT making a purchase is nearly impossible.

The wide variety of locations across the Twin Cities provides even more options when searching for course texts in a less antagonizing manner. In fact, the bookstores can make the task of book hunting enjoyable. You might not know exactly what you are walking into, but you certainly will be able to find a book or two that suites your fancy and your budget.

There was a feel of battle in the air at Neisen’s Sports Bar & Grill in Savage, Minn. on Saturday, Sept. 26. There was also beer, the stench of stink bombs, and an annoying woman yelling “elbows and knees!” to every fighter in the cage at Savage Entertainment’s latest Professional Mixed Martial Arts event.

Among the highlights of the 10-fight card were the amazing performances put on by Andy Selvig, of Lake City’s own Team Crazy gym, as well as the professional MMA debut of Bryan King. Selvig, at 140 lbs., faced off against an opponent making his MMA debut. After a quick takedown within a minute of the opening bell, Selvig gained mounting position and got caught in a combination armbar/triangle choke attempt. Keeping his cool, Selvig picked up and powerbombed his unfortunate opponent at least five times into the mat, each slam drawing a larger groan from the audience as his opponent’s head bounced further and further into the floor. After wrestling a bit, Selvig ended the fight in the first round with a rear naked choke, picking up an impressive victory and boosting his MMA record to 3-0.

Bryan King, of the American School of Martial Arts in Savage, picked up an impressive professional debut victory against Bruce “Armbar” Johnson of Team Crazy. King and Johnson exchanged blows for a bit, with King knocked down at one point. Yet King backed up Johnson into the cage, pressuring Johnson to rest against the cage and on the heels of his feet and catching him with a huge knee to the face as Johnson jockeyed for position. The fight was stopped immediately after, with King the winner by TKO and his opponent now 7-9.

The big announcement of the night was the upcoming tournament Savage Entertainment will host in November. Open to all serious featherweight, lightweight and light heavyweight MMA fighters, it will be at Neisen’s on Saturday, Nov. 7. Read The Wake for more details down the line.

Take a walk through the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood in Minneapolis. Amid the shops and sidewalks, around the Brian Coyle Community Center, you’ll find large congregations of Somalis and Somali Americans, whose move into the neighborhood en masse, due to almost two decades’ worth of trials and tribulations, is still creating excitement today. Yet despite being another group within Minneapolis’ vast racial spectrum, the Somali community deals with some of the most negative press around, due to the issues that plague their homeland, issues which still affect them half a world away.

Somalia has been mired in civil war since 1991, when militant factions and clans overthrew decades’ worth of dictatorial government under the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party; it was granted its independence in the 1960s after decades of semi-colonial control by Europe. Since 1991, infighting between rival factions and widespread panic and fear has left the country in a precarious position among African nations. The U.S. and U.N. have tried multiple times to send food, aid and even troops to the East African nation over the past 18 years, with little results and even less good news received. The biggest news to come from the region before 2004 was the infamous Black Hawk Down incident, where 18 U.S. soldiers were killed during a joint U.S. and U.N. attack on militias in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, in October 1993, which left a lasting impression on the minds of American society.

The Somali community in Minnesota, here since the first refugees and immigrants came in 1993, is the largest population of Somalis and Somali Americans anywhere in the U.S., with population estimates ranging from 60,000 to 80,000. Since that time, there’s been news aplenty about Somali issues, whether it’s Somali cab drivers refusing to serve people who carry alcohol, or the current hot-button issue of Somali youth violence.

“It’s really exposing people to only one side of the story,” says Fadumo Ali, a finance and accounting sophomore at the University of Minnesota. “I feel like people are only seeing the negative aspects of Somali people. There is a lot of positive aspects of Somali culture.”

Those positive aspects can seem hard to find in a 24-hour news cycle. Common perceptions abound that the news only reports on crises, tragedies and breaking scandals. Somali-related news is no exception. The recent spate of news within the Somali community in Minnesota was the September 2008 shooting death of Ahmednur Ali, a 20-year-old Augsburg College student who volunteered at the Brian Coyle Community Center and, unfortunately, was the fifth young Somali man killed in the community over a 12-month span. This unfortunate story illustrating the issues of Somali youth violence in Minneapolis was soon replaced by the stories of Somali piracy off the Gulf of Aden and the news of as many as 20 young Somali men leaving Minnesota to fight in their homeland as part of the Al-Shabab organization, considered by the U.S. to be terrorists with ties to Al-Qaeda.

It is no small wonder to see what happens from here. Stories of Somali piracy, of Somali terrorism connections, and of Somali investigations spread throughout the local media circuit through the summer, with the Star Tribune reporting in July that at least four of the 20 or so young men had died in Somalia during the infighting. Yet the recent tone in news concerning Somalia shows a positive shift as most, if not all, media outlets in the Twin Cities reported on Somalia’s president, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, and his recent 3-day tour in Minnesota, meeting with Somali families, elders, and even giving a highly publicized, packed speech at the U of M’s Northrup Auditorium. Ahmed, widely seen as the man who could unite the country in peace, was himself driven out of Somalia just a few years earlier, when as head of the Islamic Courts Union he lost power when Ethiopia invaded Somalia in late 2006 to try and restore order to an Islamic militant-held Mogadishu. Since his inauguration in February, Ahmed’s attempts at a moderate Islamic government have been met with large praise and support, making him the most viable president of Somalia to give it a bit of stability and peace since the beginning of the current conflict.

Other mixed news flows out of the Somali community recently, as The Minnesota Daily reports an increase of youth violence in the past month is causing Cedar-Riverside residents to call for more action in educating newly immigrated-citizens on the use of 911 and reporting crimes as well as educating Minneapolis police on the cultures and practices of the community at large. While the increase in youth crime is worrying, the calls for more understanding by both citizens and police signifies a good, improving climate and a way to shift misguided perceptions about the Somali community, among other communities of color in the area.

Yet the biggest problem is the sporadic attention Somalia receives. Although there is more news coverage now over Somalia’s troubles, the call to pay attention was first brought about by the piracy and terrorism coverage Somalia has received. According to Ali, a group of Japanese students recently came to the U of M in order to learn more about Somalia since the only information they had about the Somali culture was the recent news coverage on Al-Shabab and piracy. “I was really shocked,” Ali says.
Such misunderstandings have been at the forefront of the editorial pages of The Daily recently, as many have commented and debated about a recent opinion column questioning what the author perceived to be certain sexist tendencies by “East African males,” who may or may not practice Islam. This furor only echoes the negative perception Muslims face nationally, as even Ali admits her identity as a Muslim woman wearing a hijab or a burka is challenged more than her identity as a Somali American.

The answers to how the Somali community can garner better attention are beyond the scope of this article. Certainly, more dialogue between the Somali community and outside communities needs to be established. Ali hopes the more positive aspects of Somali culture can be seen, that both the Somali community and the communities in Minnesota can come together to discuss these issues. It will help to see more articles about Somali officials visiting the state, as well as Somali success stories like the New York Times article on Mohamed Aden, a Somali leader who has managed to bring stability and functioning government to about 5,000 square miles of land around Adado in the middle of Somalia. In time, this coverage may help in addressing the critical structural problems inside the Somali government. For now, identifying the problems and opening a dialogue may be the start of an answer.