"The Adventures of Brian Northside?"

Photo From The Blog Of Brian Reichow

Two people I'd never met before shook my hand at the Fourth Precinct meeting, and told me they were regular readers of my blog...

One of them will be serving with me on the Housing Committee for HACC, and shares a house with his boyfriend on 6th Street, not so far from the hell-on-earth which is 2207 6th St. N. (I wish I'd written down his name; my apologies cool 6th street dude and I'll see you at the committee meetings!) The other (pictured above) is Brian Reichow, who lives in the southern part of Willard-Hay, the area known as Homewood.

(I didn't know some of our neighborhoods have their own mini-neighborhoods...except, of course, for the "Eco-Village" within Hawthorne. I'm always learning something new about North Minneapolis)

Brian is quite the computer guy, and has his own blog. Click here.

It turns out Brian showed up at the "Dyna-mite" block party some weeks ago and was actually mistaken for me, Johnny Northside. He's becoming very involved in neighborhood issues, judging by all the events he's attending. I told Brian he should start blogging about North Minneapolis a bunch but, hey, when it comes right down to it: I'm just glad to see folks showing up at meetings.

Brian told me when he was researching North Minneapolis, he read my blog.

"And you came ANYWAY!"I laughed.

Well, it turns out Brian was one of the rare and intelligent birds who managed to get a coveted "Advantage Grant" of--how much were they? Ten grand, I believe? Well, good for Brian. And if these are the kind of people Advantage Grants are attracting, I say fill the financial kitty back up again and disburse more grants. As for my North Minneapolis advertising philosophy of "Market and Romanticize The Struggle," it seems to be working.

In regard to the meeting that night: you can feel the energy and excitement at such gatherings...well, not so much among the police officers and city officials, who seem to have "thousand yard stares" when the subject of crack houses and open air drug markets comes up, but you can feel positive, hopeful emotion among the residents...especially the very newest residents. Their very faces seem to broadcast this message:

THIS IS OUR NEIGHBORHOOD AND WE'RE GOING TO MAKE IT BETTER. It doesn't matter if the struggle has gone on for decades. A massive, transformative victory is within our reach. We just have to...keep going to meetings.

The photo above, taken from Brian's blog, shows him with "German singer Doro Pesch, undisputed queen of heavy metal." Yeah...um...I knew that.

OK, I had no idea but after checking out a few of her songs on YouTube, I think I could like her as much as AC/DC. And that's saying A LOT.