Still raining? Uff da. Here's some ideas for daytime activities in the rain in Minneapolis and St. Paul.
Bowling. Bowling alleys are open all day, every day. Memory Lanes and Bryant Lake Bowl, where the hipsters and Big Lebowski fans go, and neighborhood places like the ancient charm of the Ray-Ham bowling center which has to be a winner for the cheap bowling, and for being in the basement of the same building as The Nook Bar, the best Juicy Lucy burger in St. Paul. Before the Matt's vs. 58 Club hoopla starts, I said in St. Paul.
Museums and Galleries The Minneapolis Institute of Art is huge, free, peaceful, and almost overwhelming with the number and variety of ancient and modern artworks and objects literally from all around the world.
Or, how about visiting the Textile Center in Minneapolis? No fusty floral prints here. The current exhibit is Intimate Apparel, a collection of modern reinterpretations of merkins. My spell checker doesn't know what a merkin is. Well, spell checker, a merkin was originally a pubic wig worn by women in medival times to hide evidence of disease. Textile Center curator Linda Gass thought it would be fun to have female artists recreate merkins for the 21st century. The ones fabricated by international artists range from delicate, powerful, witty, unnerving and beautiful. Intimate Apparel is free and open until October 24.
Plants. The bucolic image of fall, with crisp days and scarlet leaves, not-really-necessary jaunty scarves and hot apple cider? We may have had all of that we are going to get now the rain is knocking all the pretty leaves off the trees and turning them into gutter filling slime and slippery goo all over the sidewalks. Perhaps you are not feeling too fond of trees and other flora when you have to rake their dead bits rather than have them look pretty for you?
You can see plenty of attractive plants that someone else cleans up after when they shed at the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory in Como Park. The steel-and-glass building is beautiful and I like the sound of the the rain pattering on the glass, making it even more rain forest-like, without the risk of malaria and venomous snakes. Yeah, I'm a wuss.
In Minneapolis, the greenhouse in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden is smaller than the one at Como Park, but equally tropical, also free, and has a gigantic Frank Gehry-designed glass fish. You can almost see some of the outdoor artworks in the Sculpture Garden from the greenhouse, but you really need to go and paddle in the mud to actually see most of them. The Walker Art Center across the road is a much better bet for art when it's raining.
Photographers II Both the above venues are great places for photographers. It doesn't matter whether you have a SLR camera or a point-and-shoot model. The rain, especially combined with the light we get in the fall, can make for dramatic photographs. Reflections from shiny buildings and water, and images of the sky and clouds should inspire you. Downtown Minneapolis, with its silver skyscrapers and blue Guthrie Theater, the lakes, and Mississippi River are obvious candidates, but if there's any of that fall foliage left, it looks at its most intense after rain, and photographing outdoor sporting events in a downpour makes the athletes look even more heroic, whether you have tickets to see the Gophers at the new TCF Bank Stadium (lucky) or the sports star is your kid at their Saturday morning soccer game at the local park.
Marjorie McNeely Conservatory on a gray day. Photograph Clara James
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