#block e

[annapolisrose]

Buchanan E

[hclib]

Great Northern Market and Downtown Groceries

Grocery stores and their employees have come to the front of our national consciousness in the last few weeks. The work of these stores is always important, but it is often easy to overlook. Grocery stores themselves might be taken for granted outside of food deserts. That is to say, they might be most obvious in their absence. This was the case in downtown Minneapolis in 1977 when Great Northern Market, the only remaining full-service grocery store downtown, closed its doors.

Great Northern Market opened in 1933 as the Grand Central Market. Located at 614 Hennepin Ave., Grand Central Market billed itself as “the Northwest’s most Complete Food Market.” In the midst of the Great Depression, Grand Central Market stressed its varied and affordable meats--pork roasts starting at 5 cents, beef from 4 cents, and lamb chops from 12 cents. 

Meat and fish continued to be a specialty of the Great Northern Market across the decades. Under the guidance of co-owner Reuben Silverman, the Great Northern Market’s butcher counter offered exotic proteins not often found in Midwestern grocery stores. Lobster was flown in each week. Buffalo and rabbit were offered for sale. Fresh fish was always in abundance.

By the late 1970s, however, downtown was no longer the shopping destination it had once been. Suburban supermarkets offered a more convenient alternative for many car-owning shoppers, and Hennepin Avenue was run down. After the Great Northern Market closed in July 1977, the site was briefly a church, then an adult movie theater. In the late 1980s, it was demolished as part of the Block E renewal project.

After decades without grocery stores, downtown has recently added several new grocery options, including Lunds and Byerlys, Whole Foods, and Trader Joe’s.

Photos taken by John L. Schneider in the 1970s. These and more photos of grocers and grocery stores are available in the Hennepin County Library Digital Collections.

[skjam]

Shinder's Is Gone

7/17/2007

I wasn't around for Shinder's golden era--after all, the newsstand chain had been around since 1916 or so, founded by a clan of Russian immigrants. Their big years were back in the 1940s and '50s, when huge stacks of newspapers and magazines were sold every day. I only discovered the place back in the early 1980s, when I came down to the big city. There were two Shinder's on Block E, one at each end on the Hennepin Avenue side. One was more a comic book store, and the other more heavily tilted towards the adult entertainment end of the spectrum. Of course, since Block E was at the time one of the more rundown and adult-oriented areas of downtown Minneapolis, neither store was exactly what you'd call family-friendly. I think my mother's hair would have stood on end just going near the block. Not too long after I moved to the Cities full-time, Minneapolis finally got serious about cleaning up Block E, and bought out the various businesses to knock down the buildings. (With the notable exception of the Schubert Theater, which was a historical landmark and wound up being towed several blocks to a new location.) Shinder's moved a block or so down to a former Burger King, where the downtown location remained until now. I have good memories and bad memories of Shinder's. They cheated me severely on some comics I had to sell to have bus fare; it was company practice to lowball as much as possible for maximum markup potential. But the service was usually excellent, they hired unusual-looking people, and they were a newsstand that still had out-of-town newspapers and small-circulation magazines. But this last year, it became increasingly clear that something was wrong. Some of their ancillary merchandise sold out and wasn't replaced. The selection of magazines and newspapers shrank. Their comics came in a day late. Their junk food selection dried up. Hours of operation were cut. Finally I learned that the new owner had been too busy allegedly taking drugs and getting in trouble with the law to take care of the chain's business, and he'd failed to pay many of the vendors, and worse, the bank that held his loans. Further cuts came in, and it was hoped that one of the Shinder clan would come out of retirement to fix things. That didn't happen, and as of Monday, all the Shinder's branches are closed. The sign on the door says "closed for inventory", which I take it means that there will be some sort of fire sale or auction of the remaining stock at some point to finish paying off the bank. Adieu, Shinder's. You will be sorely missed.

[thomaslowrysghost]

Block E. Hennepin Ave between 6th and & 7th St, Minneapolis. (year unkown)

(image via)

[agentjanefox]

Edible East End 

Making Ice Wine into Ice Cream

Online : 05 Feb. 2015

Words and Photos by Gianna Volpe 

Consulting winemaker Helmut Gangl travels to Macari Vineyards from Austria each year to oversee production of his famous Block E sweet wine, which has been served at the White House under the Obama and Bush administrations.

(Now that’s what I call clinking across the aisle.)

Gangl visits every January, like clockwork, pressing mostly chardonnay and sauvignon blanc grapes that have waited two or three months in Macari’s coolers for their chance to become Block E’s next vintage. But this year Gangl arrived to find his beloved wine had, in Southold, itself become a dessert.

Umbrian chef Marco Pellegrini of the newly established Caci’s North Fork recently made a handmade gelato from Gangl’s sweet wine and paired it with warm braised apple crosticine making for an oddly perfect dessert amid a blizzard.

“We make our gelato — everything — from scratch,” says Pellegrini, who is known for building dishes from the very ground up. “Ninety percent of gelatos are made with a chemical base, so it doesn’t freeze in the freezer. I make the gelato with Block E, fresh eggs, fresh cream, fresh milk and create our neutral ingredient, our base, from water and sugar.” It took the Italian transplant 10 days to create the recipe for Block E gelato, experiments he said ultimately yielded a recipe for any flavor.

Macari Block E ice wine ice cream at Caci's North Fork Restaurant

Pellegrini’s constantly changing menus means those who wish to taste his Block E gelato had best hightail it to Caci’s on an upcoming Thursday through Sunday; the same applies to Mattituck’s Macari Vineyards — named Winery of the Year in 2014 by the New York Wine & Grape Foundation — less than 20 cases of Block E’s 2010 vintage remain. Gangl says 2010’s “tropical” edge becomes one of “orange and honeysuckle with a nose of spring flowers” in the 2011 vintage, subtleties strongly extracted in the gelato. “The Block E integration with the ice brings up more flavor and is soft and refreshing in the mouth,” says Gangl. “It’s a real delicious style of ice.”

[lordmajowlennt]

I don't even know who I'm sharing a kitchen with but in a week and a bit I'll be seeing them a lot for a long time, hope they're friendly wah

[therakyatpost]

New Post has been published on The Rakyat Post

New Post has been published on http://www.therakyatpost.com/news/2014/05/10/nineteen-vehicles-fire-low-cost-parking-lot/

Nineteen vehicles on fire at low cost parking lot

KUALA LUMPUR, May 10:

Nineteen vehicles, including a car and eighteen motorcycles were engulfed in a fire at Block E parking area of Intan Baiduri People’s Housing Project near Batu Caves, early this morning.

The Star reported that a Kuala Lumpur fire control centre representative said they were alerted to the fire after receiving a distress call at around 6.30am.

Around 25 firefighters from Jinjang, Sentul and Hang Tuah stations were deployed and the fire was extinguished around 8.00am.

The cause of the fire as well as the estimated loss is being investigated by the state Fire and Rescue Department.

No injuries were reported.

[hclib]

Fire at Majestic Hotel, March 16, 1949

The fire was caused by an electrical short and also destroyed adjoining buildings like the Bridgeman Ice Cream Store.  The positive outcome of the fire was a clearer view of the Hennepin Avenue side of Block E.  The fire caused a loss of $483,500.14 or $4,749,712 in 2013 dollars.