The Taste of Minnesota festival hosted restaurants, food trucks and vendors from across the state in downtown Minneapolis last weekend, allowing visitors to savor the state’s unique and delectable cooking.

Festival goers could treat themselves to shrimp ceviche, flown in fresh daily by the haute-cuisine Oceanaire Seafood Room, and follow it up with an elote pizza served by Pizza Lucé.

Teke O’Reilly, the community ambassador for the festival, said the organizers wanted to include a diverse lineup of vendors to represent every culture and part of Minnesota. Vendors from around the state came to the festival, selling everything from jerk chicken to pierogies.

Five restaurants were featured by Taste of Minnesota as part of a “road trip round-up” to showcase some of the best cooking from around the state. 

Pimento Jamaican Kitchen, one of the featured restaurants, was so busy during the festival they ran out of rice multiple times throughout the weekend, according to David Riano, Pimento’s vice president of sales and development. He said he would love to return next year with another grill despite this year’s small hiccups. 

Another one of the five featured restaurants was Krewe, a Creole restaurant from St. Joseph that served a small selection of delicious foods from New Orleans in a tent on Marquette Avenue. 

Krewe Chef and Co-founder Mateo Mackbee prepared a special menu for the festival, combining traditional Creole cooking with influences from Southeast Asian cuisine. Mackbee said he was inspired by the popularity and influence of Southeast Asian cuisine in Louisiana.

Mackbee created a dish called boudin lumpia, which combines Creole pork sausages with the fried pastry shells of spring rolls, served with a tasty Vietnamese green sauce. 

“We take boudin, which is a classic New Orleans steamed sausage, braised pork mixed with Creole seasonings and rice and onions and garlic. Mix that together and then put it into a lumpia wrapper and fry it up like you would lumpia,” Mackbee said. 

For dessert, Krewe offered traditional Louisiana pralines and a mouthwatering cheese pie inspired by a recipe from Mackbee’s grandfather. They also gave out Mardi Gras beads with each order.

Krewe was not the only vendor specializing in cooking from the Big Easy. 

Taste the Real Nawlins food truck served fried seafood, New Orleans style. Crispy and light, fried catfish was served on French bread as a po’ boy sandwich or on a platter with fries and hush puppies. 

Soul food, barbeque and southern cooking seemed all the rage at this year’s festival. Different combinations of smoked meats and barbeque sauce could be seen on almost every menu at the festival.

The Purple People Feeder, a food truck whose name is an homage to the Vikings defensive line of the ‘60s and ‘70s, has a section dedicated to pulled pork delicacies. Their delicious pulled pork fries include coleslaw, jalapeños, gouda, bacon and, of course, barbeque sauce. 

Spread out around Nicollet Mall and the surrounding areas, Taste of Minnesota also featured four live music stages, a zipline along Washington Avenue and wrestling hosted by F1rst Wrestling. 

O’Reilly said the wrestling ring was a fan favorite at last year’s festival. He said festival planners sought to make this year’s festival both fun and weird. 

“We just wanted to make it kind of zany,” O’Reilly said. 

Throughout the weekend, large crowds gathered near the wrestling ring and roared as cartoonish wrestlers took turns slamming one another into the ring.

The Taste of Minnesota Festival doubled in size since its first iteration last year, something O’Reilly said he hopes continues as it grows.

“Cucarachalandia,” an art installation at the Northeast Sculpture Gallery Factory, combined artists and mediums to tell an immersive story about resilience, showcasing the importance of the cockroach in Chicano and Mexican culture. 

The installation ran from June 15 to July 6 and featured the prints and films of artist Tina Tavera. The show also included poems and songs written by poets Anaïs Deal-Marquez, Gabriela Spears-Rico and musician Erick Biard. 

The title “Cucarachalandia,” which roughly translates to “cockroach land,” was inspired by the name of the neighborhood where Spears-Rico grew up, in the Santa Maria Valley of California. She said she lived in a trailer park with a community of farm workers where cockroach infestations were common, hence the name.

“Growing up, I remember these very visceral images of living with cockroaches,” Spears-Rico said. 

Spears-Rico immigrated to the United States at a young age with her parents, who picked strawberries for almost 20 years. She said her work for the gallery is inspired by her childhood and her experiences in a community of undocumented immigrant workers. 

One of Spears-Rico’s poems in “Cucarachalandia,” titled “Bombas,” was inspired by her landlord setting off pesticide bombs in the trailers to rid them of cockroach infestations, exposing the residents to harmful pesticides in the process.

“I think about what it means to live in these kind of destitute, impoverished conditions, to have to live with infestations and at the same time be treated almost like an infestation ourselves as undocumented immigrant workers,” Spears-Rico said. “There was inhumanity in the way that we were also exposed to pesticides.”

Despite the extermination attempts, Spears-Rico said the cockroaches always came back, something she sees as a metaphor for the resilience of the farm workers she was raised with. In Chicano and Mexican culture, cockroaches are a symbol of resilience. 

The famously catchy corrido “La Cucaracha,” a narrative metrical tale and poetry that forms a ballad, tells the story of a cockroach missing a leg and struggling to walk. During the Mexican Revolution, the song symbolized the people and the working class. 

Inspired by the resilience and significance of the cockroach, visual artist Tina Tavera made a series of prints honoring Mexican and Chicano heroes in the Twin Cities. Cockroaches were present in each of the prints, keeping with the motif of the show.

Tavera honored local activist Jovita Francisco Morales, who founded and led El Movimiento Inmigrante de Minnesota. Morales spent over 15 years fighting for undocumented immigrants to be eligible for a driver’s license and state identification cards. 

In 2023, the “Driver’s Licenses for All” Act was passed, expanding identification eligibility to everyone, regardless of immigration status.

Manuel Guerrero, judge, attorney and former chair of the Chicano and Latino Studies department at the University of Minnesota, was depicted in Tavera’s work as a superhero based on Superman. Guerrero spent much of his career representing immigrants from Latino communities in rural Southern Minnesota who were often impoverished and underrepresented. 

Musician Erick Biard wrote a corrido about Guerrero, whose lyrics were displayed next to the print. Biard had a close connection to Guerrero, helping transcribe letters from Guerrero’s grandfather while he was a student at the University. 

Corridos are often “mythical and exaggerated” stories that fit the “larger than life” Guerrero, Biard said. His song, written in Spanish, focuses on the importance of Guerrero to the local community and the impact of his death. 

“Cucarachalandia” also honored local icons DJ Queen Duin and Susana De Leon Rivera, who worked to preserve the tradition of indigenous Mexican dance for over 30 years. 

Music is an influential part of the work exhibited. Anaïs Deal-Marquez said her poems were heavily inspired by the Mexican son huasteco music she heard as a child in the Mexican state of Veracruz. 

Deal-Marquez’s poems, written to the rhythms of son huasteco songs, centered around love, resilience and death. Inspired by her experiences as an immigrant, Deal-Marquez’s work featured imagery of nature, mountains and of course, cockroaches.

“I was thinking about the image of the cockroach as a witness to our history, to our people, to our community, to our resilience, to our survival,” Deal-Marquez said. 

The installation included a small room with videos of Chapultepec Park in Mexico City projected onto the walls, accompanied by audio of bustling crowds and the calls of street vendors. This piece was made by Tavera, who wanted to capture the beauty of Mexico City, where her family is from.

“Even though ‘Cucarachalandia’ had a very kind of a Mexican theme, it transcends that,” Biard said. “All these themes are commonplace amongst immigrants, and we all have similar themes and issues and problems we’ve overcome to live here.”

“Only Ugly Guys,” an original four-act play by local playwright Kurt Engh following the interconnected lives of four gay men, opened at the Open Eye Theatre last Friday.

Hilarious and deeply introspective, the play centers around the relationships between the four characters as they search for love and connections while navigating the struggles of dating and modern life. 

Engh said he wanted to write a story about queer characters that focused more on their struggles than their sexual identity. He said many famous queer stories were either about assimilation or AIDS, and he wanted to do something different with “weird, complicated characters.”

“All of these characters are very out, maybe still struggling with that, but they’re not coming out, and they’re also not dying,” Engh said. 

The four characters, Brad, Adam, Ciprian and Dean, are all based on different cliches of gay men, Engh said. Equally problematic and loveable in their own ways, the realistic dynamics and conflicts between them make the play so gripping.

As the four navigate their complicated relationships, the story jarringly shifts between intelligent humor and intense drama. The sudden changes in tone elevate the tension as the play continues, making the later scenes very emotional. 

“I just wanted to write this sort of anti-rom-com of what it actually feels like to look for love,” Engh said. “The stakes are just as high for finding someone to love you as if someone’s been murdered.” 

The play’s modern-day setting is made obvious by the dialogue, which is full of contemporary slang and pop culture references. Ciprian, played by George Kleven, uses words like “purr” and refers to gay Twitter.

“The script is aggressively contemporary,” Kleven said. “It’s been a really fun challenge because how to imbue modern language with theatricality has been very interesting.”

Each act centers on one character and is stylistically distinguished from the others, a choice Engh said was inspired by his fascination with how people tell stories to their friends. While the entire story takes place over a year, each act covers a different amount of time, ranging from a few months to a real-time conversation of about 20 minutes. 

Alex Cavegn, who plays Brad, said they played their character differently in each act, something they attributed to a suggestion from director Grant Sorenson. Cavegn was the main character of the final act, which happened in real-time without technological elements.

“It can be scary to suddenly just take up that space and just take your time and breathe through it all when suddenly, there’s not this soundtrack backing you up, and there’s not these microphones projecting you and it’s just kind of a conversation on stage,” Cavegn said. “It’s kind of jarring at points, but I find it really effective in how we tell the story.”

Technology is an important part of the story. Throughout the performance, text messages, Instagram live videos and YouTube videos are projected onto the stage. Even the end of the third act features a music video-like dance sequence, complete with electronic dance music and rave-inspired visuals. 

Sorenson said although technology was a prominent part of the performance, he wanted to make sure the play could still be performed as effectively without it. 

“If we got to the theater and the electricity was out, we should still be able to do the play, and it should still maintain its integrity without any of that other stuff,” Sorenson said. 

The actors rehearsed without any of the technological effects to ensure their performances were not reliant on that addition. Kleven said he had to learn a “new physical vocabulary” to convincingly act as if he were on the phone, without an actual phone. 

“Only Ugly Guys” opened on June 22 and runs until Sunday at the Open Eye Theatre in Minneapolis. Tickets are available for purchase here.

The Australian psychedelic rock band Pond released a dreamy tenth studio album on June 21 titled “Stung!”

Full of the reverb-laden guitars and atmospheric synth pads the band became known for, the 14 tracks off “Stung!” sound and feel as warm as a summer night in the band’s hometown of Fremantle, Western Australia. 

The album’s first track, “Constant Picnic,” encapsulates the mellow, summertime feeling and danceable musical experimentation present throughout the entire project. Beginning with a deep, pulsating bass drum beat and guitar feedback before a clean rhythm guitar drenched in reverb, the funky shuffling drum beat drives the rest of the track as lead singer Nicholas Allbrook gently croons about heartbreak.

At various points, Allbrook’s singing shifts from a sweet and gentle pop style to a more intense delivery like those from classic rock icons such as Mick Jagger. These sudden changes mirror the unpredictability of the instruments as the songs fluctuate between clean, acoustic sounds and dirty, overdriven electronic noise. 

This can be heard on the chorus of the track “Neon River,” where Allbrook’s singing intensifies and an overdriven electric guitar replaces the soft acoustic guitar of the verse, beautifully shifting back and forth from the sentimental verses and the raucous, noisy chorus.

Many of the lyrics on “Stung!” are quite sad and surprisingly dark, in stark contrast to the groovy psychedelia of the album’s instrumentals. Lyrical themes of heartbreak, love, sorrow and existentialism are present throughout the album, often juxtaposed to the rowdiness of the instrumentation. 

On the track “So Lo,” a funky post-punk-inspired song featuring a deep, energetic bassline and jagged staccato guitar chords reminiscent of Nile Rodgers, Allbrook sings about the cruelty of life as bright electric keys float in and out of the mix.

“All this suffering is all a part of being (Part of being) / Making sense at all seems so Sisyphean / And I pray that my dying is freeing,” Allbrook sings on “So Lo”, accompanied by vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Jay Watson.

Sometimes, the lyrics on “Stung!” can be very nonsensical, like when Allbrook sings “I’m thirty-five and I might start larping,” on the track “Black Lung,” which sounds like a wonderful mixture of Daft Punk and Black Sabbath.

The band’s musical prowess and proclivity for eclecticism is probably best seen on the track “(I’m) Stung,” the second track of the album. It combines drums, bass, electric and acoustic guitar with electronic instruments, like atmospheric orchestral synth pads, to form a four-minute, danceable song about a break-up. 

“I could’ve been your man / But damn, love’s so mean,” Allbrook sings over a squelching, acid-house-inspired electronic bassline. 

The seventh track, “Elf Bar Blues,” is a hazy instrumental track driven by a drum machine loop and featuring several layers of synths, samples and guitars, similar to the electronic psychedelia of Tame Impala, with whom Pond has closely collaborated in the past.

Since Pond was formed in 2008, many of its members have played with Tame Impala, including founding member Jay Watson who is still a touring member of Tame Impala. 

Kevin Parker, the man behind Tame Impala, played with and produced for Pond until 2019 when the band’s eighth album “Tasmania” was released. Although he no longer works with the band, the influence of the collaboration between the two musical groups is unmistakable.

The second half of “Stung!” is composed mostly of less energetic ballads, leaning heavily into softer, mellow tracks that become somewhat repetitive. However, the band’s signature experimentation and playfulness still shine through on tracks like “Edge of the World Pt. 3” and “Boys Don’t Crash.”

The beginning of the eight-minute track “Edge of the World Pt. 3” is an ethereal, jazz-inspired song featuring saxophone and flute parts, before shifting into a more synthesizer-heavy ending complete with an overdriven lead guitar. 

“Boys Don’t Crash,” the eighth track on “Stung!,” sees the band combine their modern sounds with influences of classic psychedelic rock. About halfway through the song, a flaming guitar solo, which sounds straight out of a Rush album, breaks out before fading out behind the synths. 

Although “Stung!” loses some of its energy as it nears its end, fans of psychedelic rock, pop, noise and musical experimentation are sure to find something to enjoy in this chaotic, yet mellow album.

From Thursday to Sunday, the Twin Cities Jazz Festival hosted over 80 performances across over 20 different venues in the Twin Cities. 

The festival’s main stage was in Mears Park in St. Paul’s Lowertown neighborhood. Many of the other venues were located nearby.

Dayna Martinez, who is in her first year as the executive director of the festival, said she wanted to find new venues within walking distance of the festival’s main stage that were willing to allow free entry to jazz festival attendees. 

Martinez said a priority was to showcase a diverse lineup. Musicians of various ages, genders, ethnicities and experience levels shared the festival’s stages.

The festival was musically diverse as well, featuring an array of different styles including salsa acts, hot-club groups, big bands and even R&B singers. Martinez said she worked with local jazz curators to select artists for the festival’s lineup. 

“It feels like I’m throwing a giant party out in the park and it’s just a really good feeling when you see people having a good time and enjoying themselves and coming together to listen to some fabulous music,” Martinez said. 

Kavyesh Kaviraj played on the main stage Saturday with his quintet, and said the festival organizers did a great job of selecting diverse artists who “represent the world and what it looks like.”

Kaviraj said he played at the festival for eight years as a part of local acts, and this was his first year performing original music. Aside from his performance and promoting his first album, releasing in July, Kaviraj said he was excited to see some of his students from the Walker West Music Academy take the stage before him.

“It wasn’t too long ago that I was a student myself,” Kaviraj said. “I’m very inspired by what beautiful originality comes out of them.”

Kaviraj was not the only artist returning to the festival. Salsa del Soul, a group specializing in music from the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, who first played at the festival in 2003, performed at the 5th Street Stage in Mears Park on Saturday. 

“We’re always honored to be included,” Shai Hayo, one of the group’s percussionists said. “We like to support the community, we like to support our peers, and we like to be able to represent some of the musical talent that’s available in our cities. And also, it’s just fun.”

Before Salsa del Soul’s set, Avant Garde, a multidisciplinary production and entertainment company, performed their first show. 

Chadwick Phillips, founder and CEO of the Avant Garde, said he was honored to perform at the Twin Cities Jazz Festival. For the show, Phillips wanted to create a “high-energy, amazing, classic moment in time right there on that stage.”

The Avant Garde’s performance, hosted by Phillips, featured two local singers, Jordan Avent and Jackson Hurst, who performed songs ranging from Michael Jackson to OutKast. A group of individual musicians came together and brought elements of jazz improvisation to the set, including a shredding guitar solo during a cover of the song “Killing Me Softly With His Song”.

The festival also featured contemporary jazz musicians, like JC Sanford, whose electric quartet used effects unfamiliar to jazz music, like distortion. Although he played at previous editions of the festival, this was Sanford’s first time playing it with his electric quartet.

“I like the idea that there’s music everywhere,” he said. “There’s just all these different venues, there’s a mix of the big acts that come from out of town and mixed with all the local players.”

The annual Stone Arch Bridge Festival celebrated its 30th anniversary this Saturday and Sunday along a mile-long stretch of West River Parkway in downtown Minneapolis, spanning from Gold Medal Park to 4th Avenue. 

With a rainy opening day, umbrella-toting visitors filled the festival grounds, finding refuge from the rain under the cover of the vendors’ tents. When the weather was more agreeable on Sunday, more visitors spilled out onto the parkway, enjoying the sunny weather and scenic surroundings. 

Although Stone Arch Bridge is partially closed for construction until 2025, the festival was largely unaffected by its closure. In fact, the festival has never been held on the bridge itself and has been hosted on the western bank of the Mississippi River for years, according to Sara Collins, the festival director.

While the festival has much to offer, the namesake bridge remains one of the most popular attractions, Collins said. Throughout the weekend, visitors were seen walking out onto the scenic bridge before turning back to enjoy the rest of the festival’s offerings.

In total, there were 255 artists, 30 musicians, 39 culinary arts vendors and 25 food vendors at the festival. Each artist, musician and food vendor was chosen from a large pool of applicants by festival organizers.

“We try to have such a diverse offering and try to invite such a diverse attendance,” Collins said. “To see it come together is really, really exciting.”

This year’s festival included a great variety of different artists, including jewelers, potters, printmakers, photographers, woodworkers and sculptors, among others. Each artisan had a tent where pedestrians could browse their work and meet the artists.

Collins said although the artisans are the “bread and butter” of the festival, the live performers made the festival special. She added her favorite part of the festival is the intersection of the performers, artisans and community. 

“We’re inviting them to experience all of this art, but then they also get to participate in some of these live performances,” Collins said.

Two stages hosted live music, near Stone Arch Bridge and Hennepin Avenue. Another stage hosted live dance performances. 

Pat Dougherty, the festival’s stage manager and talent organizer, said they aimed to showcase a variety of artists from the community on stage. Rock bands, hip-hop groups, singer-songwriters and country acts performed at the festival, including University of Minnesota alumnus Colin Bracewell, who closed the lineup on Saturday. 

“The Twin Cities just has one of those scenes where every genre has a thriving little pocket so I like to try to get as much from those pockets as possible,” Dougherty said.

Underneath the Hennepin Avenue Bridge was a culinary market, featuring local vendors selling specialty food products like hot sauces and cocktail kits. 

According to Stephanie Hansen, the culinary arts director of the festival, many of the vendors were returning favorites from previous editions of the event.

“For many of the vendors, that’s their best market in terms of sales,” she said.

This year’s festival also featured a plethora of food vendors, interspersed in groups between the artists’ tents throughout the festival. Right next to Water Works Park was the Native American food truck Tatanka Truck, which served a delicious wild rice bowl with elk taco meat on Sunday.

Hansen mentioned Thai Thai Street Food, Island Noodles and Amish Annie Donuts as other festival favorites. 

The festival also held a car show near 4th Avenue that featured all kinds of antique vehicles and a vintage clothing market near the Guthrie Theater.