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On Friday 26 October 2001 06:08 pm, Rosalind Nelson wrote:
> The Strib Variety section has a profile of the Hard Times.
> http://www.startribune.com/stories/389/783778.html

Excellent article.

I'm glad there was a judge and some decent lawyers available to defend this
cafe. It does not deserve to be the target of continued persecution by the
city. That city hall continued to spend money trying to frame the Hard Times
as a criminal haven (even after it was obvious such sentiments were largely
unfounded) is indicative of the disregard this city has had for its diverse
population's needs over the last decade.

Historically, this idea that the city will just bulldoze (figuratively and
literally) its perceived problems, rather than try to solve them seems to
have been the destruction, rather than a serious attempt at rehabilitation,
of Block E. Now instead of replacing the parking lot with a tribute to an
established urban area, we are going to get an oversized video arcade and
movie-plex? Why couldn't we have subsidized a rehabilitation effort of the
Skyway? Why not leave the Shubert where it was and build something around it
that made sense as an integrated addition to downtown?

Let's leave the treasures of Minneapolis, such as the Hard Times, alone-- and
then let's figure out how to encourage similar locally-owned businesses that
serve not only the commercial needs of their neighborhoods, but businesses
that find ways to nurture the community itself (which I think a cafe like the
Hard Times does by providing a public space for meeting, discussion, and just
plain being somewhere other than in front of a TV at home).

- - -Michael Libby (North Minneapolis-Cleveland)
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