One advantage of living in St. Paul is the parking situation: since there are never any people here, you can basically park wherever you want. Even in Lowertown — the one part of downtown St. Paul that shows regular signs of human activity after 5 p.m. — you can usually find an open meter space. Street parking is ample, and generally free after 4:30; this means that, unlike in Minneapolis, you can have a night on the town without getting bilked at some overpriced parking ramp.

Until last weekend, I believed it was basically impossible for anyone with a modicum of intelligence to park illegally in St. Paul. On Friday, however, my wife and I apparently stumbled upon the one block in the entire city that has a weird, arcane parking restriction in place: Wall Street.

Specifically, I mean the stretch of Wall Street between Fourth and Fifth Streets, right next to the St. Paul Farmer’s Market. We parked there for about an hour and a half while we had dinner two blocks away at Trattoria Da Vinci. When we got back, there was a $33 parking ticket jammed under my windshield wiper. Huh? We double-checked the restrictions printed on the meter; nothing was there to indicate we were parked illegally. My wife checked the other cars parked in front of us; all of them had been ticketed too. Confused, I walked a little further up the street and finally noticed a sign stating that parking was prohibited between 6 p.m. Friday and 3 p.m. Saturday.

Not a bad deal for the city, I thought. My wife and I go out to dinner in Lowertown on a Friday evening, they get $33 of my money. But why? Maybe it has to do with the farmer’s market. They’re probably trying to keep people from blocking delivery trucks on Saturday mornings — which is fine.  But why can’t I park there on a Friday evening? The vendors aren’t going to roll up at 7 p.m. Friday, unload their merchandise and then wait around in the cold for 12 hours.

I’m surprised the uber-proactive Lowertown Entertainment District isn’t lobbying the city to change this. It’s an unusual, annoying rule that could discourage potential business patrons. Yeah, I know; it’s my fault. I should’ve paid closer attention to the street signs. But seriously, has anyone else ever heard of a street in downtown St. Paul where you can’t park after 4:30 p.m.? And if they’re going to have that restriction, why not print it clearly on the meters so people notice it? Better yet, why not have a parking enforcement officer put hoods on the meters? I mean, since they’re obviously in the area anyway…

Everyone knows phone books are basically worthless. I share local blogger Ed Kohler’s keen dislike for the things, which have basically been obsolete since the day my grandmother learned how to use Google. Yesterday, however, my friend Garrett and I discovered a use for them that doesn’t even necessitate taking them out of the bag.

The above picture probably doesn’t make much sense on its face, so let me explain: that bag of Dex phone books (and the shoe on top of them) are weighing down a 5-gallon kettle of wort, the raw liquid mixture used in fermenting beer. We recently started homebrewing, and we quickly found that cooling the wort after it’s done boiling is one of the most frustrating and time-consuming parts of the process. Most homebrewers recommend an ice bath, but we found that placing the kettle in a bathtub and circulating cold water around it is actually faster and more efficient.

Of course, the kettle has a tendency to float and bob around in the moving water, which is where the phone books come in. Drop that dirty old bag of yellow pages that Dex left on your doorstep six months ago (and that you haven’t touched since) on top of the lid and that kettle isn’t going anywhere! (In our case, a piece of footwear was also needed to effectively stabilize the kettle.)

I got a nice used Canon EOS 20D from a coworker last week, and decided I’d give it a spin by photographing St. Paul’s fireworks display from the Smith Avenue Bridge — which I consider to be the best Fourth of July fireworks vantage point in the Twin Cities. The results are a cut above what I’ve done in the past with my point-and-shoot, but probably not as good as what the camera is capable of. It’s my first DSLR, and obviously I’ve got a lot to learn. Fortunately, PC World had a handy guide to shooting fireworks that I found helpful (and that you should bookmark for next year).

That’s Harriet Island off to the right, flooded with light from A Taste of Minnesota. I didn’t make it there this year, but I hear it’s a lot better now that new management has taken it over. Any change is welcome, as far as I’m concerned; no disrespect, but the food is basically no different than state fair food, and last year’s Eddie Money set was by far and away the worst concert I’ve ever seen in my entire life. (Note to ’80s rockers: joking on stage about how you’re a washed-up has-been whose kids won’t return your calls, even if it’s true, is not cool.)

Anyway, see you around.

One of the fringe benefits of working at the Legislature is having a front-row seat to all the activity that goes on in and around the Capitol Building. Usually it’s some kind of protest, but there are a couple of unique events that happen every year that always make me stop and look. Yesterday, the Minnesota Street Rod Association held their annual rally on the Capitol Mall. I don’t know what it is about these guys, but they always seem to pick a day when the weather is absolutely perfect. While the House was engrossed in a protracted debate on — appropriately — a transportation policy bill, I walked outside and snapped some pictures.

I work for the state, which means it’s anyone’s guess as to whether I’ll still have a job three months from now. This more or less puts me in the same boat as everyone else in the country. And like everyone else, I’ve been cutting back on the amount of money I spend and trying to create a little financial cushion for myself in case the worst happens. In addition to not taking financial advice from CNBC, there are a lot of easy ways Patty and I have found to save some cash.

1) Switch to pay-as-you go cellular plans and use Skype for long conversations. I already don’t talk much on the phone, and if I can use my computer to make free calls when I’m at home, I can basically cut my cellular plan down to the bare minimum. For $3 a month, Skype lets you make unlimited domestic calls; if that saves you $25 a month on your phone bill, it’s definitely a good investment.

2) Ditch cable and watch everything on Hulu. Why pay $60 a month for high-speed Internet and then shell out another $60 for cable? You shouldn’t be watching that much TV anyway.

3) Learn how to manage your money better by using Mint, Geezeo or Wesabe. As long as you feel comfortable with their professed level of security, Web sites like these can help you manage your finances by tracking and analyzing your spending habits — or in other words, showing you how much worthless crap you buy and how easy it would be to save all that money. I use Mint, and it’s really helped me cut down on spending.

4) Add blogs like Lifehacker to your RSS reader. Since I started reading it a couple of months ago, Lifehacker has quickly become my favorite all-around blog. It’s useful, it’s entertaining and it’s got something for everybody. Some other blogs worth checking out include The Consumerist, Money 101 (Geezeo’s blog), The Simple Dollar and Wise Bread.

5) Do these other random things.
• Drink free beer.
• Fill your walls with cool, free, massive posters using this.

If anyone has other suggestions, I’d love to hear them too.

In hard times like these, it’s wise to get your kicks for free whenever possible. Yesterday, Patty and I (along with an eager group of friends) took Summit Brewing Company’s almost-too-good-to-be-true complimentary tour of its St. Paul brewery — and I have to say that it’s about as good a time as you can have for free anywhere.

Be advised that if you want to take the tour yourself, you’ll probably have to book it a few weeks in advance, as open slots fill up quickly. The tour is popular, and the source of its popularity can probably be summed up neatly in two words: FREE BEER.

Before I go further, let me emphasize that that this is neither only sole nor the best reason to take the tour. There is an educational aspect to the Summit Brewery tour that any true beer enthusiast will appreciate. (I, being among other things the proud owner of an autographed copy of Doug Hoverson’s excellent Land of Amber Waters: The History of Brewing in Minnesota, consider myself an enthusiast, if not a connoisseur, of beer.)

The tour guides, who are all volunteers (technically, though several of them said they are unofficially paid in beer) know a great deal about not only the brewing process but also the history of brewing. If you want to know why India Pale Ales are so hoppy or what the difference is between craft breweries and microbreweries (think production volume), the tour guides can tell you that and a whole lot more.

Of course, for those philistines who have no real interest in the art of brewing (shame!), the introductory lecture and the walk-through of the brewery itself are something you’ll just have to endure before you get to the free beer part of the tour. Summit is incredibly generous in letting patrons of their brewery sample their products. Each tour participant is given three tokens at the door, each of which is good for one “sample” of Summit beer. Luckily, Summit’s idea of a “sample” is pretty much a full-sized beer. My advice: bring along a spouse who doesn’t drink. That way you get extra tokens!

Last week, when Minnesotans stood in line at their various polling places to exercise their civic duty on Election Day, few probably gave much thought to the people they saw working at the polls — other than to perhaps wonder why they couldn’t make the lines move any faster. For me, however, last Tuesday was different, as I was one of the people controlling the lines.

For those who don’t know, the people who run the polling places during elections are called “election judges.” This year, after some encouragement from my coworkers at the House of Representatives, I volunteered to serve as an election judge in Ramsey County. It was a first for me, and I’m glad I did it. Not only was it a fascinating experience; I also learned more about elections than most people will ever know (or would probably care to know, truthfully).

Now that I’ve had a chance to collect my thoughts on what happened that day — and before they fade from memory completely — I wanted to share some ideas on things that I think could be easily improved about the way polling places operate.

But first, let me say that volunteering as an election judge was a great experience, and I’d highly recommend it to anyone who cares about the integrity of the electoral process. I was surprised to learn that, in Ramsey County at least, election judges are actually paid, but I honestly would have done it for free. The other judges I worked with were great, and it was gratifying to be able to work with such a dedicated group of people.

That said, it seemed to me like there are a few glaring weak points in the way that polling places are run, and I’d like to offer my thoughts on how they might be fixed, or at least improved.

1) Find More Judges

Okay, first a little background. After my application to become an election judge was accepted, I received notification that I was to attend a two-hour training session one weeknight in late October and then show up at the El Rio Vista Recreation Center (a.k.a. Neighborhood House, a.k.a. the Wellstone Center) on Election Day. At 6:00 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 4, I reported for duty and was selected (rather arbitrarily) to serve as a registration judge — making sure that unregistered voters are properly registered according to state law before they can vote. As it turns out, this is a fairly frenetic job.

I was extremely fortunate in that my partner at the registration table was a friendly and knowledgeable St. Paul librarian who had worked in several previous elections and knew the ins and outs of the registration process by heart. Without her, my day would’ve been a lot more difficult. (She also spoke fluent Spanish — something that comes in handy in the heart of District del Sol.) One thing I learned last Tuesday is that having a group of quality people running a polling place is critical — and there simply are not enough poll workers to go around.

Between me and the librarian, we registered 236 new voters during the course of the day — approximately 118 each. Many of these people had to be vouched for by voters already registered in the precinct — a process that basically doubles the amount of paperwork involved. Many of the new registrants spoke little or no English, which naturally made it difficult to explain to them what kinds of documentation they needed to produce in order to be eligible to vote. At various points throughout the day, communication issues ground the registration process to a halt, forcing frustrated would-be voters to languish in line. Adding a few more bodies to the registration table could’ve easily simplified things. The counties need more judges, so if you’re reading this, please, volunteer to be an election judge next time.

2) Get Some Computers

At my polling place, one of the most common problems we faced throughout the day was having to redirect voters who were attempting to vote in the wrong precinct. (A great many people seem to think that either you can vote anywhere you want to, or that your proper polling place is simply whichever one is closest to your house.) Unfortunately, our repeated attempts to steer confused voters to their correct polling places quickly turned into an exercise in futility — one that could’ve been avoided with nothing more than a laptop computer and a wi-fi Internet connection. Even an iPhone would’ve worked better than what we had.

What we had was a pair of “precinct finders” — red-covered, plastic-bound flip books that allow poll workers to determine a voter’s ward and precinct by looking up their house number and street name. These precinct finders, though accurate, are extremely difficult to read and serve as a virtual catalyst for human error. An inattentive poll worker can easily misdirect a voter to the wrong precinct — and in fact, an election judge in a neighboring precinct did exactly that when they mistakenly sent someone to our precinct, forcing me to explain to the frustrated voter that in fact they had been in the right place the first time and now had to go back if they still wanted to vote.

Moreover, since the precinct finders only included information for Ramsey County, anyone from outside the county who showed up at our location was basically S.O.L. We had a number of residents from Dakota County — and one from as far away as Park Rapids — who for some reason thought they could vote in our precinct. We informed them that they had to vote elsewhere; however, we had no phone numbers for their home counties or anyone else who could actually direct them to the proper polling place, so we essentially sent them away with nothing. Did they actually end up going to the right place and voting that day? Who knows.

And thusly did we squander untold tracts of time dealing with problems that could’ve been solved in a matter of seconds with a simple trip to the Minnesota Secretary of State’s Web site. But even when the precinct finder could tell us where a voter was supposed to go, we had no way of directing them there; all we had for them was a building name and an address. Almost none of the judges — myself included — knew where these places were — and the few who did were usually tied up taking care of other things. We had no phone numbers for the other precincts, and no way to provide directions to the locations of the polls. We had a pair of maps on hand, but they were utterly useless. (Try giving out driving directions to a Somali immigrant sometime using a map with no street names on it and let me know how it goes.)

God only knows how many people didn’t get to vote Tuesday because I didn’t have access to Google Maps. Perhaps this is a good opportunity for Best Buy or some other retailer to purchase some good will and remedy the problem by lending wireless devices to polling places on Election Day. Any way you do it, the outdated “precinct finders” should only be used as a backup, or as a way to double-check what can be found online.

3) Update the Literature

At one point during the day, a dispute emerged over whether cell phone bills qualified as acceptable documentation for proof of residency purposes. After some discussion, we determined (correctly, apparently) that, yes, a current cell phone bill is acceptable as proof of a voter’s current residence. The confusion resulted from the literature available to us at the table, which said “telephone” bills were acceptable, but did not discuss cell phones specifically.

Once again, if we had had Internet access, we could’ve resolved the dispute simply by consulting the Minnesota Secretary of State’s Web site, or perhaps looking up the relevant statute. Barring that, the literature made available to poll workers on Election Day definitely needs to be updated to include answers to specific questions that reflect the realities of a rapidly changing modern existence.

Additionally, some kind of posters or even handouts should be available at each polling place that explain in several different languages (especially Spanish, Somali and Hmong) the process of voting and the documentation needed from each voter in order to be able to vote.

4) Have Someone Observe the Observers

Apparently, it’s customary to have DFL and Republican observers hang around the polling place on Election Day to watch over the process. Our location had one of each — both of them young guys, both clean-cut looking. They sat off to the side of the registration table and watched attentively over us as we signed up new voters. Both of our observers were polite, respectful and even helpful at times; apparently, though, some polling places were not as lucky as ours.

After some careful consideration, I’ve decided not to get into any details about the shenanigans that I heard took place in other precincts that day. There were even some shenanigans in our precinct — not from the observers, but rather from members of the public — but I’m not going into any details about those either. Suffice it to say that someone should always be on hand to watch the watchers on Election Day.

The above is a slideshow of “traffic calming” artistic street signs currently located on George Street on St. Paul’s West Side. Patty noticed them on her way to work one day. According to this report by WCCO, the signs don’t really accomplish their intended purpose of slowing traffic, but they definitely add some eccentric charm to the neighborhood.

Update: You can also see the individual pictures here.

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Created using info obtained from Vita.mn. Also check out RNC Bars.