Obligatory post

After work, I met Laura at Rossi’s in downtown Minneapolis for a birthday party for one of her friends, Brenda. So where do I start with this?

As I was walking to Rossi’s, I couldn’t help but think of NYC. There’s a world of difference between the two cities. That much is obvious, but there are things that for me were glaring. Walking in a big city is interesting and sometimes fun. In NYC, there’s always people there, at nearly any time of day,Well, in Manhatten anyway. In Minneapolis, I walked a couple of blocks at 6pm without passing more than a handful of people. I thought about this and noticed some real differences. There’s no real residential in downtown, or really anywhere close to the heart of the city. And there isn’t the small commercial stores on the street for people to walk into. I like Minneapolis, but I thought this was a pity. Why do you think that Uptown is so popular? Or Grand Avenue in Saint Paul? The mix of residential and commercial where people are able to walk to nearly everything they could want is inherently appealing. Then I got to the bar.

It was pretty fun. I ordered a double scotch, my favorite, 15 yr old Dalwhinnie. There’s two reasons for this idea. The first is that I sip scotch. If I would’ve ordered anything else, I’d drink it and many of them. I just wanted one drink and didn’t want to pound down drinks, one after another, getting drunk and racking up a huge bill while trying not to think about the hangover tomorrow. Second is that I didn’t want to spend that much money. One drink would be plenty. The company was great, fun people to be around. There was some decent music being played by an accordian player and a bassist, then later a jazz trio. Good stuff.

But Rossi’s itself? I don’t know. I liked the atmosphere, located in a basement with exposed brick. As I said, the music was quite entertaining. Here’s the bad things. Our waitress was awful. I know we were a big table, but the bar wasn’t terribly busy and it looked like she didn’t have many other areas. Regardless, I wasn’t sure who our waitress/waiter was for quite awhile. I got there, she confused me about the drink specials, dropped off my drink and then disappeared for over 15 minutes while I was hungry and wanted to order some food. She didn’t pay any attention to us, which was too bad because we would’ve spent more money, drank more, ate more and tipped better. Beyond that, it was pretty expensive. Far more expensive than the service we were getting or the quality of the food. Definately a mixed bag. I’ll probably give it another try just to see if there is something different with the service and maybe I’ll change my mind.

Last note: it was brought out that I have a blog. I’m not sure if anyone will see this, but I was obligated to post tonight about this just in case someone who was there tonight happens to check it out.