Spelling Beer Names Is Tricky

I try to let local businesses off the hook. They're working hard, they're doing good work (patronizing local businesses keeps two thirds of the money you spend within the community, as opposed to funneling it off elsewhere), and they've got a lot on their mind.

Taken at the Herkimer, Mpls., MN

I don't let major corporations off the hook. When they make errors, I take no little delight in highlighting these and parading them before a public audience, whether here on my sad little blog or on my favorite message board (which shall go unnamed). I feel that they should be better than a struggling mom-and-pop, in terms of professionalism. It would fill me with dread to think that a juggernaut of ineptitude and "that's good enough, I guess" could emerge to stake a national claim and go after the checkbooks of hard-working, decent citizens such as you and me.

Is that a double-standard? I don't think so.

At the same time, this was quite a slip-up. I like the Herkimer because they make great beer right there on the premises. I like them even more now that I myself am into homebrewing. I would love to sit in and watch while their guy goes about his business, checking the vats, mixing the grains (though I suspect much of it is automated). Yet someone wrote out that chalkboard sign by hand, someone had to have sounded out the letters while they wrote it, and someone had to have stepped back to admire their handiwork. Not to mention, other workers must have looked at this sign, as well as countless customers from all walks of life. Hipsters tend to settle in at our local bars like a plague of tasteless, undereducated locusts, but the Herkimer enjoys a broad spectrum of clientele, I think.

Someone should have noticed this by now, is what I'm saying.

Piratical Typography

The Science Museum of Minnesota, which is awesome, is hosting a historical exhibit of what pirates were really like, as seen in the above bus shelter display. But if you're like me, what you notice almost immediately is the glaring typo. How did "takover" make it past all the levels of design, editing, proofing and print? It's not even a goof in the fine print: it's large, bold, and in decorative typeface.

I work in a marketing agency, and people in such agencies seem to know what each other are up to. I asked around to find out who was in charge of this campaign and someone thought, maybe, that this work might've been in-house. Trying to confirm that, though.

Stuff like this drives me absolutely crazy, having been an unemployed copy editor for eight of the past twelve months.

UPDATE: At least they're in good company.

• M8: Hostile Takover (video game forum)
• Kraft Lauches Hostile Takover Bid of Cadbury Chocolate (LA Weekly blog)
• Hostile Takover gift image (stock image forum)
• The Kochs and the Cato Institute: a hostile takover? (The Guardian)

Minneapolis Postcard Collections

Once in a while, I discover something interesting embedded in the details of my city. I hope that such is the case with everyone, that I'm not the only one learning new things about their hometown, or that everyone lives somewhere with interesting things to uncover.

Image: Old Minneapolis Postcards

I learned a new word, for instance, when I discovered the Twin City Postcard Club of Minnesota. They describe themselves as deltiologists, "deltion" being Greek for writing tablet or letter. While I have two boxes of new postcards waiting to go out and twice that in cards I've received from around the world, I wouldn't classify myself as a deltiologist: my own collection is haphazard and byzantine, while these guys seem disciplined and focused on accruing a thematically consistent collection.

Here is an online gallery of vintage Minneapolis postcards, but if you're in the Minneapolis area, you must visit the Central Library. It's a beautiful structure in itself—one cool feature is the digital display of books being returned, broadcast on the sides of the elevators as they rise and lower—but here you will find the historic Minneapolis postcard collection in the Special Collections department. It's my intention to set up an appointment and bring some friends to check it out, because now I'm curious to learn what treasures are stored.

More Postcards, Less Stationery

I did it! I finally crested 13 postcards at Postcrossing. Not that that's a major achievement, just a personal one. See, the maximum number of postcards you can send at one time is determined by how many you have sent. I was capped at 12 for a long time, but finally my sent postcards totaled 250, so now my limit is 13.

Well, I think it's neat.

Currently my project is to use up all of my present stationery. Have I mentioned that before? I've selected a felt tip pen as an arbitrary starting place, and I've been using up these Snoopy & Woodstock cards we found at my wife's house. I've been sending those to friends to apprise them of my new mailing address. We finally finished the contract with that horrific sublet and are finishing unpacking in our lovely Uptown apartment. I even have a few overseas pen pals who should know about the change, and when I send them a postcard I'm able to write tiny enough with a Slicci to insert my new address in the median or gutter. The downside to that, I suppose, would be if the reader were not expecting it or interested in the card in general, therefore not looking very closely, so I'm essentially tossing cards into the void with no hope of response.

Not that that would be unfamiliar!

Anyway. I'm trying to get back into blogging more. I don't have much to add here, though I will endeavor to continue to do so. I suppose I could profile some of the interesting postcards I receive? Lots of people do that, it's a popular tack. If any itinerant reader here had a request for something stationery- or language-related, I'd certainly be open to attempting to satisfy such a query.

Searching for Mailboxes!

Now that I'm back into my postcard exchange program, I had to get my mail forwarded from where it was being collected (my mom's house) to my apartment. No problem, except I wrote "St" instead of "Ave." Mail still gets to me, but with angry addendum scrawled around the destination address.

Easily fixed: I submitted new address change cards using (at the postal clerk's advisory) the address I'd been using for the last six months and my corrected address. Didn't need to make a note of the mistaken address at all.

Fine and good, but Postcrossing isn't just about receiving mail--it's about sending, too, obviously. There's a mail slot in my apartment building's bank of mailboxes, a slot crudely gouged out of the slender aluminum door, captioned with the taped note "OUTGOING." But this slot is barely big enough for a business envelope and can in no way accommodate a postcard without folding or mutilation. Spindling's not necessary.

Image: LifeHacker

So where do I send my mail? Where, indeed: more USPS mailboxes are being dismantled and removed all the time. In my leisurely perambulations about my neighborhood I've seen nary a one. This means all my outgoing mail has to accumulate in a pile until I have an errand that brings me downtown--if I can find a mailbox downtown, of course.

If I visit my in-laws at their senior living apartments, they have a perfectly adequate mail slot in their postal foyer. That's not always convenient, though, since my wife and I are against owning a car. It would be cheap to rent an Hourcar and visit them for a couple hours, and cheaper still to catch a bus (though the trip down there takes nearly an hour, and an hour back... if we leave while the buses are still running), but seriously?

Seriously? That's the best I can do if I want to send a letter?

Actually, no, I can do better. A very casual Google search turned up two mailbox locators, where you type in your city/state or your ZIP code, and they turn up results for mailboxes in your area.

LifeHacker found this Mailbox Locator program being hosted by Payphone Project (obviously, someone needed to find payphones). It's... okay... It seems to rely on anecdotal evidence for updating its database. People report in and note "this one's no longer here" or "got taken away a couple days ago or so." Maybe that's the best we can go on. Whose responsibility, really, is it to notify us where the mailboxes are? ...Arguably, that of the USPS, would be the first guess I'd hazard. But there's nothing wrong with the citizens rising up and contributing this information, answering a real need.

The responses are entirely text-based, there's no image or pictures here. It would be difficult for me to picture the address locations of each box and I'd end up typing them into Google Maps anyway. Additional confusion ensued when I wasn't keeping track of which search bar I entered my information into. Type it into the one on top for the results you want. Entering it into the search bar just below it (the more obvious one, I think) and you get a bunch of Google results that come up in the Mailbox Locator display window. They don't look like the list of addresses you'd get ordinarily, but both kinds of results do show up after a full window of ads.

But the one I like is Mailbox Map, which uses Google Maps as part of its function. Again, type in your city/state or ZIP code, and it actually provides a graphic illustration of mailboxes (including UPS and USPS offices proper).

I love Google Maps, and I love data aggregators, so this will be the application for me.

Now, the only thing to see is how accurate this tool is. It looks great, but it won't mean anything if the mailboxes aren't where it says they are. And I'd go out and check now, only we're currently experiencing a two-day torrential downpour, so... I guess my postcards will just have to hang out with me a while longer.

UPDATE: I went out looking for the mailboxes in my area when the rain let up. Mailbox Map listed three mailboxes within a three-block area of my apartment. Walking to each site, I confirmed that none of these exist anymore. I suspect the same is true for those mailboxes a few blocks further out in any direction. I tried to look up mailboxes in Mailbox Locator and it simply did not have anything listed for my area at all.

Further UPDATE: Duh. USPS has its own collection box locator. I didn't even think of that. I'm not sure how accurate it is: I found three mailboxes through Mailbox Map and the USPS site doesn't one of the ones I found (again, by walking out to each location). It did list five in my area, however, and I can confirm the location of one of these.

Postcards to the Edge

I sent out a couple postcards upon request. When I donated to Postcrossing and became recognized as a supporting member, a lot of people suddenly contacted me to exchange cards or begin correspondence. I don't know whether this is because now I'm considered part of some elite cadre or just because the announcement of my status raised me to the community's consciousness.

A woman in Russia asked if I could please send her a postcard of a jazz/rock musician or an actor. I asked my wife to pick up some suitable cards from the downtown Barnes & Noble, as the B&N I went to in Edina doesn't carry postcards, apparently. She selected images of Bob Dylan and Prince, as they are representative of my city, Minneapolis, and I applauded her decision.

Dylan used to live in Dinkytown, the campus town outside the U of M campus. I saw the building where his apartment once was, but of course there are no longer apartments there. Minneapolis manifests some attention deficit disorder when it comes to buildings and businesses, you see, and someone may point out exceptions like such-and-such farm that was preserved, but the fact is this: if you lived here, went around town for a couple months, then hid in your apartment for a year, when you came back out you would barely recognize the city. Not only would the businesses you knew have changed hands, they would have done so three times.

Uh, anyway. I never met Bob Dylan. I know he's popular to emulate at karaoke, for some people. I think there's an album of his, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, whose cover photo features a familiar location.

Then there's Prince. When I was in the Army, a fellow soldier asked me if I ever met Prince, because he idolized him (pronouns here are intentionally ambiguous as Prince idolized himself). He explained how Prince taught himself 28 instruments, and this soldier endeavored to do the same but started out with the tambourine, which he would play, rhythmlessly, all night long, prompting him to take naps all the next day when he should've been working. As a punishment to me, my sergeants used to pair me up with him for chores. He sucked and I hated him.

But Prince is just a huge ego trip on wheels. I worked with a former hairdresser to his entourage and she confirmed he hated to pay his musicians. They would barge into his office, demanding their back pay from however long ago, and he would sulk and order his guards to throw the bum out. He had a club in Minneapolis, Glam Slam, which I never went to until it was sold and became Quest. The pillars in that place make it difficult to get a good view of the stage, but the bartenders were exceedingly professional. I never met Prince, either.

Postcrossing Self-Spotlight

On the Postcrossing blog they occasionally feature one lucky participant for a brief interview of four set questions. It's interesting to see who else is doing this stuff, and I like the general concept of the spotlight because it makes a user feel special.

However, never in a hundred years will I be selected for this spotlight--one of my superpowers is the passive ability to disappear from lists, which really hurt me in elementary school but served me well in the military (only had to pull KP twice in seven years). So I'm going to profile myself in an extraneous off-site spotlight.

How did you come across Postcrossing? What got you hooked?

I was looking for pen pals on Facebook and I found a postcard exchange group. It wasn't working very well, as people would show up demanding cards but never responded to anyone else's ads, and when I tried to write to them they failed to respond to me. Eventually a couple avid collectors (Davide in Italy, Katrin in Germany) suggested I try out Postcrossing. I signed up immediately and have been thrilled with the service it provides.

Do you have any other interesting hobbies?

I used to be very into drinking, which isn't a very interesting hobby to other people until I got to scotch. The story of where scotch is brewed, the history behind each distillery, the conflict of copyright, royalty, politics, and family intrigue is just fascinating! I've also been practicing calligraphy just to help me tidy up my own handwriting. I don't know when or why they stopped teaching penmanship in school, but now we have college graduates and business owners whose handscript looks like the scrawl of a child. Finally, I (intermittently) run several blogs dedicated to photography, fiction, memoir, and stationery.

Show us your mailbox, your mailman/mailwoman, your postoffice or the place where you post or keep your postcards!


The first shot is of a postal clerk with whom I've done much business. I would have liked to have gotten a shot of my three or four favorite workers, since the guys who work at this station are just a pack of cards, but they were working and such a request was impractical. They joke around and keep each other upbeat, and even if they're having a bad day they are always at very least polite.

The second picture is my favorite post office, the Loop Station. We have a main post office in Downtown, too, but I can't speak to its efficiency. All I know is that this place delivers mail faster than I would've thought possible. If I can drop off a Netflix selection in the mail here before noon, it will arrive at its destination and be processed within 20 hours. When I write to my friend in Madison, WI, she gets my letter the next day.

Finally, this is one of the postal carriers who delivers to my apartment (I estimate at least three carriers share this neighborhood). I don't know much about him, I just wanted to include his picture. He's relatively good-humored and patient, as I tried to take his picture before but my battery had died, so this is the only successful shot after a few false starts. Also, it's no treat to deliver snow in sub-zero weather with a couple feet of snow on the ground, so kudos to him for his hard work in difficult conditions.

Here are some of the postcards I've received.

Show and tell us about your favorite received postcard to date, and what makes it special.

I've received many fantastic postcards, but this is among my favorites; indeed, this is what leaps to mind when I start to think of my best loved postcards. It's a profile of a castle overlooking the Yellow River in Shenzhen, China. The landscape is rugged, vast and breathtaking, and the castle on the cliff is incredibly romantic. This image touches on the grandeur affected by so many Hong Kong directors in their period dramas and action films. They're so in love with their own nation, it's beautiful to witness their testimony to their pride and affection. When I look at an image like this, I can easily understand that level of passion.