South 12th

I did not know doodly-squat about football until I met Geoff Herbach, and really did not care doodly-squat about football; televised football games (usually the Bengals) were a thing at Thanksgiving family gatherings that rudely interrupted conversations about Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Tom Verlaine. But Geoff Herbach has a way of writing about these things in such a beautiful way, I have come around in the years that I have been his friend and collaborator. This essay about Brett Favre he’s just written for MPR sums it all up wonderfully.

In 1977, when I was 7, Mom got one of those terrible, tight perms everyone was getting. She didn’t look like herself, so she scared me and I cried and cried. Sometime in the middle of the night, me still crying, she came into my bedroom, exhausted, ready to let me have it. In the moonlight, I realized her perm made her look like Packers kicker Chester Marcol, and then I loved her more than ever.

Here, by the way, is a photo of Chester Marcol.

You’ve probably already read that there’s a funeral service planned tonight for the Hennepin Avenue bike lane, which is being repaved and then transformed as Hennepin Avenue is converted from a one-way street into a two-way. That will most likely be the end of zipping down the busiest thoroughfare in Minneapolis with two lanes of cars to one side and buses and taxis to the other.

I never gave much thought to the Hennepin bike lane, but now that I consider it, there’s been an experience or two worth recounting.

It is the only place I have ever been blown off my bike by a gust of wind. Last year or so, I was biking from an evening in Northeast back to a house party in Powderhorn. My idea was to cross the river at Hennepin, and then cut across to Portland once I got downtown. However, on Hennepin, a tremendous rain storm kicked in out of nowhere, and the attendent wind went whipping through the buildings in way I’ve never experienced here before. A particularly strong gust knocked me ass over end onto the street, where I sat dazed on the pavement for a second, then picked up and headed off.

I arrived at the party completely soaked and probably looking like a degenerate. The front room was full of twenty year olds dancing in their underwear. I scrambled into the bathroom to dry off and sent a panicky message to Herbach that said something along the lines of “Herbach, I think I’m too old to be at a party with all of these half-naked twenty year olds.” Clearly that was an evening where all sorts of natural forces had me at their complete mercy.

It is the only place I have ever been cat-called by three dozen gay bar patrons while wearing a sailor uniform. For the Safe House Boat show on the Mississippi in 2007, I wore a set of sailor’s whites I’d purchased at the Army-Navy surplus place downtown, complete with hat, scarf and white bellbottoms. When I was biking home for the evening, about 1am or so, I pedaled down Hennepin, past the cluster of gay bars at 4th Street. In the four seconds it took me to pass, a massive roar, a groundswell of cat-calls and variations on the phrase “hey, sailor” arose in unison from the patio where the patrons were seated. I believe I waved, or maybe saluted. It was the most massive group cat-call I have ever heard, and it was a pretty magical moment.

Yep, it’s Herbach is a Mess. “Check out the hoodie,” he says. “That’s a NIKE hoodie, with a swoosh, which makes you know that I mean business.”