Welcoming The Neighborhood

Something is amiss with everyone's favorite Saturday morning puppet show! For years, the colorful cast of The Friendly Neighborhood delighted audiences across the globe with their cooky capers and educational adventures.

From apples and oranges to pawpaws and persimmons

In 1838, a rum trader named "Pig's Eye" Parrant built a small shack in a Mississippi bluff that became the first business in the city of St. Paul: a saloon. Since then, bars, taverns, saloons, and speakeasies have been part of the cultural, social, and physical landscape of St. Paul and Minneapolis. Serving as neighborhood landmarks, sites of political engagement, welcoming centers for immigrants, hotbeds of criminal activity, targets of ire from church and state alike, and, of course, a place to get a drink, the story of the taverns and saloons of the Twin Cities is the story of the cities themselves.