The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

ABOVE: This is how I prefer to see a Land Rover. Don't believe that stuff about their ladder frames. Even the bodies break.

NOTE: I have been receiving personal e-mails related to my recent Edina Mom post. What I find most enlightening about this gentleman's well-crafted commentary is that God in Edina, it appears, remains in the automotive details. 

Green is the new watchword for consumer products and goods. We can track our carbon footprints, find out how many miles our food traveled to our plates, and make a point only to have toe-curling carnal gymnastics with Prius drivers — so why do we insist on persecuting those entrepreneurial souls trying to provide a local option to area

...and in the same breath--the Prius, indisputably an automobile for ryhmes-with-wussies...

If only for the simple fact that buying "green" right now is just plain dumb. And please, before you cleanse your computer screen with Mommy's blood-decorated stole, consider these three logical points:

a) With a hybrid you are buying into a somewhat untested technology that is merely fashionable at the moment.

b) You are buying at a ridiculous premium.

The first thing I do is research the customer service program of the company that makes that new car I have my eyes on. The last thing I want to do is buy a product that makes one go to the dealer and pay $100 to ask a question. The Internet and all its frauds has also taught me that I don't want an 800 number thrown at me with someone on the other end who is struggling with my language and knows nothing about the environment my car and I live in—mostly near zero many months of the year.

Home Game # 6: Cleveland 97, Minnesota 86

Season record: 1-8

1. Shoddy Shaddy

John Herou isn’t your typical electric-car ideologue. The founder of e-ride Industries possesses a bright strain of idealism to be sure, but fundamentally he’s a practical man, an inventor and classic car buff, more entrepreneur than tree hugger. The cars he builds, called neighborhood electric vehicles because by law they can go only twenty-five miles per hour and drive on streets with commensurate speed limits, are distinctly Minnesotan.