The Metrodome’s a big, snowy bust. The Taste of Minnesota has drowned in its own debt. The art shanties on Plymouth’s Medicine Lake won’t be returning until 2012. Did you hear the news about the St. Paul Winter Carnival’s recently resuscitated ice-fishing contest on White Bear Lake? Well, it’s dead again.
A pessimist might call this the end of fun as we know it. Will we ever laugh, cheer or compete athletically again?
Um, yes. The St. Paul Area Chamber of Commerce, Winter Carnival organizers and other event promoters across the Twin Cities say the nips, tucks, reschedulings, relocations and outright event cancellations caused by an especially snowy winter and a languid economy are a pain in the posterior but hardly apocalyptic. It’s not like the world is ending within the next year or so … er, right?
You won’t see Gophers baseball, the Vikings or the “Monster Jam” monster truck show at the Metrodome this winter, but you will see plenty of snowplows. Isn’t that good enough?
Nah, we didn’t think so. Here’s a look at what’s been canceled, what’s been scaled back and what all these changes mean for participating businesses.
Metrodome: The now-infamous Dec. 12 roof collapse at the Metrodome meant Saturday’s “Monster Jam” show was canceled. The Vikings, Gophers baseball and a number of other teams and events will have to find new digs, at least through March. The good news for their fans is that many have already scrambled to do so. And recently, the concourses opened to runners and inline skaters.
The Home and Landscape Expo scheduled for the Dome the weekend of Jan. 14 was instead held at the Minneapolis Convention Center. TwinsFest, a fan celebration featuring 60 current and former Twins players, still will take place this weekend, but the location has been moved to a smaller venue at the National Sports Center in Blaine. It’s already sold out.
Of course, the relocations are no help to downtown Minneapolis bars, parking lots and other assorted establishments.
“It’s taking a good chunk of our business,” said Cody Walker, a bartender and manager at Huberts Bar & Restaurant on Chicago Avenue, across from the Metrodome. “We lost all those baseball games, and obviously, the football. The Gophers and the high schools, and all the other small college baseball — it’s an extra 20 to 30 people through the door.”
And some event organizers haven’t been nearly as lucky as others. The St. Paul-based Hmong American New Year Inc. was forced to cancel its Jan. 1-2 celebration at the Metrodome. “We have explored every available option, but due to unavailable space and limited time, the event cannot simply happen,” the nonprofit’s president, Tong Pao Yang, wrote on the HANY Web site on Dec. 23.
In an interview, he said there’s just no way to reschedule New Year’s.
“We couldn’t plan for another event because the time was too short,” Tong Pao Yang said. “The Target Center and the convention center were filled up. We lost so much money.”
For more on Dome events, see the calendar at msfc.com.
Winter Carnival/Ice-fishing contest: The annual St. Paul Winter Carnival will take place Thursday through Feb. 6, but one event recently revived after 27 years in the grave is being put back on ice. An ice-fishing contest that took place on White Bear Lake last year won’t return, because of cost concerns.
The “World’s Original Ice Fishing Contest” had, decades ago, been a winter staple, drawing up to 10,000 people to the lake. A smaller ice-fishing expo will take place on Lake Phalen on Saturday. See winter-carnival.com.
Before you let all these cancellations and a good dose of seasonal affective disorder ruin your mood, Beth Pinkney urges you to turn that frown upside down. Pinkney, CEO and president of the St. Paul Festival and Heritage Foundation, said this year’s St. Paul Winter Carnival will raise the bar on fun. The carnival is in its 125th year, and that alone is reason to celebrate.
“Every Winter Carnival, we work all year long to provide entertainment for everybody,” Pinkney said. “This won’t be any different. We have 3,000 volunteers and great corporate sponsors to make the carnival happen. We have 125 events — 125 years, it’s been going on.”
St. Paul Saints: The St. Paul Saints have canceled their annual Crispin Iceball Adventure series because there’s too much snow in the Midway Stadium parking lot, which has been used as a snow-dumping ground by the city. The softball tournament Saturday would have included live music, a tailgating contest and other festivities in said lot. Instead, the tournament will go on as scheduled as a St. Paul Winter Carnival event, albeit in Arlington Fields near Arlington High School.
The Saints had hoped to use the iceball tournament as a soapbox to rally for a new Lowertown ball field. Saints staff will instead attend the Beer Dabbler Showcase in Mears Park that day, featuring Crispin Hard Cider and 50 different local and regional beers from small brewers. The cost is $25 in advance or $35 on the day of the event. See thebeerdabbler.com and saintsbaseball.com.
Art shanties: Rarely, if ever, does any actual fishing take place in the ice houses that appear on Plymouth’s Medicine Lake for a few weeks each winter. The elaborately decorated “art shanties” are part habitat and part performance art, with designs that imitate submarines, disco dance halls, tea rooms, art cars and science fairs, to name a few.
A notice at artshantyprojects.org indicates the art shanties have become very popular in their seven years, so popular, in fact, that the event has become unwieldy to manage with a limited staff. The event is on hold this year, but a grant from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council will enable the organizers to craft a strategic plan with the help of a consultant, research a possible new location and perhaps partner with an existing nonprofit. In other words, look for bigger and better in 2012.
Taste of Minnesota: After nearly 30 years in operation, the Taste of Minnesota ended tastelessly, with a dozen creditors recently suing International Event Marketing LLC, the annual food-and-music festival’s latest organizers, and forcing them into involuntary Chapter 7 bankruptcy proceedings. The city of St. Paul put out a request for proposals for some kind of alternative celebration, complete with fireworks, but after reviewing four applications, decided against them all.
So how will St. Paul celebrate July 4 this year? The answer is … we don’t yet know. City officials have promised fireworks of uncertain duration, but they also caution that budgets are tight.
Holidazzle: An annual rite since 1992, the Target Holidazzle Parade was scheduled to take over Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis for 15 nights from Nov. 26 to Dec. 19. The 15 became 14, thanks to the unwelcome early arrival of Old Man Winter, who huffed and puffed and blew 17.1 inches of snow into the Twin Cities on Saturday, Dec. 11. According to the state’s climatology office, the blizzard brought the fifth-largest snowfall to hit the Twin Cities in a single snowstorm since 1891.
Blizzard: A Holidazzle parade wasn’t the only holiday fun frozen out by snow. The Dec. 11 storm triggered the cancellation of a whole host of Saturday evening celebrations, including a Canadian Pacific Holiday Train stop in Cottage Grove, the Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus annual Christmas concert, a Minnesota Orchestra performance of Handel’s Messiah, and a holiday concert by the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.
Did you hope to catch “A Christmas Carol” at the Guthrie Theater that night? Bah, humbug, said the weather. Some, but not all, of those events were rescheduled. The cute tykes in Cottage Grove, however, will have to wait until next year to enjoy the Christmas concert aboard the Canadian Pacific.
Frederick Melo can be reached at 651-228-2172.
Copyright 2011 Pioneer Press.
