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By Sarah McKenzie
Donny Dirk’s Zombie Den — the reincarnation of the old Stand Up Frank’s space north of Downtown — bills itself as a “drinkery.”
“One of only a handful of lounges where you can relax and drink … and there is no pressure to eat,” they explain on their website. “Donny Dirk’s … denying moral and intellectual superiority every day.”
I recently sampled the Donny Dirk, the $6 house cocktail — a take on an Alexander with a chocolate kick and sprinkling of nutmeg. I tried to guess the ingredients when quizzed by my server, but she remained tightlipped about the special recipe.
The menu describes the beverage as a “dainty drink for disgraceful zombies” and a “classic return to the dead and forgotten.” The cocktail is very rich, so you might want to share it with a friend.
If you’re looking for a deal, the time to hit the bar is for the daily “happy horror,” which runs 4–7 p.m. There are two-for-one tap beers, house wine for $3 and if you’re feeling especially devilish, Voodoo Zombies for $6.66. Head over there early if you want to secure a table.
After washing down the cocktail and a glass of wine, my friend and I started to get hungry, so we headed to the bar’s Batphone — a direct link to Psycho Suzi’s in Northeast (one of Donny Dirk’s sibling businesses). Owner Leslie Bock also owns St. Sabrina’s in Uptown.
No bar food quite satisfies like Psycho’s pickled roll-ups and Barbie Q pizza topped with roast chicken, tangy barbecue sauce and red onions.
Besides the fabulous cocktails, it’s worth making a trek to the bar just to take in the décor inspired by the zombie craze sweeping the city and the 1950s-era Las Vegas lounge scene. A neon green sign reading “Undead Frank Lives” hangs above the bar — a tribute to the joint’s former life as Stand Up Frank’s. There are deer heads and cheesy horror movies playing on two TVs to entertain patrons as they sip the vintage cocktails.
Bock said the idea for the bar started with her desire to have a place focused on “smart drinking and conversation.”
“As for the theme, it’s more of a riddle than reality. Just as there is no Psycho Suzi and that our pizza parlor is hardly a motor lodge,” Bock said. “The naming of Donny Dirk’s Zombie Den was meant to be a bit grandiose, obtuse, confusing and delightfully flawed. Like a former Miss Teen America still telling the story of her crowning moment 45 years later with menthol cigarettes and whiskey made in Idaho on her breath.”
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Donny Dirk’s Zombie Den
2027 N. 2nd St.
588-9700
donnydirks.com
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Combating cancer
UPDATED August 30, 2010, 11:42am
By Dylan Thomas
Decorated in neutral tones and blond wood flooring, the infusion room at the Hennepin Comprehensive Cancer Center was designed to feel calm and welcoming to the roughly 500 patients who receive chemotherapy treatments there each year. Center Manager Kelly Porter said one session may run up to six hours, so patients — who receive their infusions in recliners in one of 11 small patient bays ringing the room — are made to feel comfortable. They read, watch TV or, like 48-year-old Desiree Jackson of Minneapolis, three months into chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer in March, simply relax as much as possible. “I just try to nod off a little,” Jackson said. “I just like to get it done and over with.” From his desk in the center of
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The poison patrol
UPDATED August 30, 2010, 11:39am
By Dylan Thomas
A typical call to the Hennepin Regional Poison Center begins at a home on laundry day. A parent pours out a cup of bleach, preparing to add it to the wash. The phone rings and the parent leaves to answer it. A child reaches up for cup of the clear liquid. We’ll let poison center Managing Director Debbie Anderson take over from here: “A child takes a swig [and] they immediately throw up. So, what do parents do? They panic; they call 911.” Anderson said that call would be patched through to her call center in HCMC, where a staff of specially trained pharmacists and pharmacy students take calls 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The staffer would assure the parent vomiting was
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Savvy about sleep
By jake weyer
There’s little question that folks today are hooked on finding ways to stay awake. The massive collection of energy drinks on display in a room at the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center is a testament to that. Voluntary sleep deprivation, not surprisingly, is the most common cause of drowsiness during the day. Neurologist Mark Mahowald, director of the center, sees it all the time. “People always ask, ‘well how do you know if you’re sleep deprived?’ Our first question is, ‘do you use an alarm clock to wake up in the morning?’ If you use an alarm clock, you are by definition sleep deprived because if your brain had collected as much sleep as it needed, you would have awakened before the alarm went off,” he said.
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Triage time
By Sarah McKenzie
No one wants to end up here. But if you do end up in HCMC’s Emergency Department, you’re in place that has a long and successful track record in trauma care. The department, housed in the hospital’s Red Building, 730 S. 8th St., takes up an entire city block and has six specialized team centers. In 1989, HCMC became the first hospital in the state certified as a Level I Trauma Center by the American College of Surgeons. The distinction means that the hospital has significant operating room capacity and surgeons available to deliver emergency medical care trained in a variety of specialties. The hospital’s Emergency Department is the busiest in the state with more than 100,000 visits a year, said Michelle Noltimier, director
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Fruit-themed hallways and anti-smoking posters
By Cristof Traudes
Welcome to the part of HCMC that handles severe accidents but also cuts, scrapes and bruises, the part that deals with burn victims and pregnancy but also tonsil trouble and literacy. This is “peeds” — as staffers of pediatrics call it — where health care is only half of the story. Anybody up to age 18 is sent to the department and sometimes 21-year-olds are, too. As a result, peeds is set up much like a tentative parent — to entertain and educate wee ones but steer clear (as much as possible) from stepping on the toes of teens. It’s a department with yellow walls and fruit-themed hallways in one section and sleek grey walls and self esteem-boosting posters in another. Every child that walks through the door is given a
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Politics. Change. Prevention.
By Cristof Traudes
// Art Gonzalez talks about the health care landscape, General Assistance Medical Care and the future //
Art Gonzalez, CEO of Hennepin County Medical Center, sees change on the horizon. More than just health insurance is getting an overhaul; the way hospitals will be graded on success is, too. In the second and final part of his interview with the Downtown Journal, he talks about what that means for HCMC right now and what it will mean down the road.
Downtown Journal: What’s your sense of state leaders’ views of HCMC?
Gonzalez: I get the impression that we’re well known and well regarded. They recognize the impact that we provide in the region.
Obviously, the
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More than one way to give birth
By Sarah McKenzie
Hennepin County Medical Center is home to the state’s first Nurse-Midwife Service. Since 1971, midwives at the hospital have been helping women have natural birth experiences. Rita O’Reilly, director of the hospital’s Nurse Midwife Service, said HCMC practices the “true midwifery philosophy.” “We believe in the normal birth process; keeping birth as natural as possible,” she said. “We discourage elective inductions of labor without a medical indication. We encourage families to be participants in the decision making affecting their pregnancy, labor and births.” The hospital’s nurse midwives deliver more than 800 babies each year. The nine-bed unit’s cesarean section rate is 12.7
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