Hopelessly partisan, but I still enjoy good clown make-up:RNC Clown College.

Minnesota is blessed with three, the most of any state:

Minneapolis-St. Paul is the first area of the country to get DOCSIS 3.0 internet access, courtesy of Comcast. You get 50Mbps down / 5Mbps up speeds for $150 a month. That’s not quite consumer-level pricing and is still slower than Japan, but it’s a start.  Considering Comcast’s recent degradation of HDTV signal quality however, I’m not convinced they’re willing to upgrade infrastructure as needed.

Minnesota may not be able to grow coffee, but it imports the world’s finest green beans and consistently roasts them as well as any other specialty coffee producer.

Cafés

The Black Sheep Coffee Cafe is my favorite spot in the Twin Cities for an espresso drink. Although it only has six oversized arm chairs, there’s plenty of room to enjoy the artistic drinks for which they’re known.

Kopplin’s Coffee is a slice of whatever concept of heaven you may or may not believe in. I’ve never had a better cup of black coffee and probably never will. Andrew Kopplin is the quiet spoken coffee-based antithesis of Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi. With a changing menu of single origin coffees, you’ll invariably encounter micro-lot gems. The finest beans roasted to perfection and put through Clover coffee machines means many happy customers. You’ll pay market prices for the various beans, but they are worth every penny. You haven’t had coffee until you’ve had it like this.

Roasters

Paradise Roasters has been one of my favorite sources of beans. We were pretty much under the mercy of Caribou Coffee until Paradise Roasters came along. They have staple single origins that are in stock year-round, but the real value comes in the smaller lots from less common places such as Cameroon and Bali. These are countries known for their blend-only quality beans, but they sometimes produce crops good enough for independent consumption.

For those who like mild, subtle coffees, European Roasterie is your source for never-burned beans. I find them to be a good baseline, everyday coffee.