Any good places to shop in Minnesota?

Several Minneapolis members here. My knowledge is limited to where to buy walkers and incontinence supplies.

BlackBlue in St. Paul is great. I was only in once, but the owner was incredibly friendly and knowledgeable and had a nice selection of things that would undoubtedly be SF approved. http://blakblu.blogspot.com/

Check out the Nordstroms Rack for some discounted mid-range clothes and H&M at the Mall of America. Also they have a great Ralph Lauren store downtown.

Two or three years ago...

Check out Uptown, Grand Ave. in St. Paul, 50th and France, The Galleria, Mall of America...

There are others, but they aren't coming to mind right now.

Len Druskin has several SF approved brands: Rag & Bone, Wings + Horn, KMW, Nice Collective, etc. Intoto has fairly boring buys as it caters to an older crowd but they do get things like Trovata, Paul Smith shoes, CP Company, Rag & Bone, etc. BlackBlue, as previously mentioned, is okay also. APC denim (and their clothes in the fall), Red Wings, Rachel Comey, Hyden Yoo, Shades of Greige, etc. That's about it from the SW&D side of things if I judged your tastes correctly from the EG sale in your sig.

My knowledge is somewhat old but...

In Toto/Get Dressed in Uptown Mpls: http://www.intotogetdressed.com/

Hubert White in Downtown Mpls.: http://www.hubertwhite.com/index.php

Heime's Haberdashery in Downtown St. Paul: http://heimies.com/

The epicenter of "seeing bands" in the TC is the legendary First Avenue: http://www.first-avenue.com/

But it's a healthy independent music center, so there are a lot of venues.

Stuff to do? Yes, especially in summer.

The Cities are a medium-sized metro area (about 3 million) with a few lively neighborhoods, but nothing over the top. A little more detail on you is helpful: Are you 18 or 58? Gay/straight? From a bigger city or a small town? Living with people you know? Will your summer job pay handsomely or will you be living on savings? Do you know where you're going to live? Some sense of what you like, want, need might give people some guidance on what to tell you.

Oops looks like it closed, it has been awhile since I went.

Check out Town Talk Diner for some food and cocktails. www.towntalkdiner.com

Well you just need some basics, then like weekend activities, etc.

The main areas with stuff to do are...

Downtown Mpls. - obviously lots of offices, but also the new baseball stadium, the Walker Art Center/Sculpture Garden (contemporary art), Guthrie Theater (great big new theater complex), the Warehouse/North Loop bar and restaurant area around the baseball stadium, some bars and restaurants on Hennepin and Nicollet Avenues. You've got lots of weekend activities here, and occasionally some street life.

Uptown Mpls. - more of local eating, drinking, shopping area. Very mixed area, with a few hipsters, frat-boy types, etc. Nothing stupendous, but worth knowing about for stuff to do. It's about 1 - 2 miles south of downtown, and next to a few lakes that are nice to walk around in good weather.

There are some similar areas to this throughout the city, some more yuppie than others: "Victoria Crossing" in St. Paul (older, yuppie), 50th and France in Minneapolis (younger, yuppie), Nicollet Avenue south of downtown, which is referred to as "Eat Street," (mixed ages, hipper), Lyndale-Lake (younger, hipster), Nord'east which is across the Mississippi River from downtown Mpls. and has Punch Pizza and the beloved "Nye's Polonnaise Room" (younger, yuppie), etc. The NY Times just had this article, for example, about an area in North Minneapolis I've never been to: http://travel.nytimes.com/2010/04/25...tml?ref=travel.

Mall of America area in Bloomington

Some other stuff to check out that may not be apparent to an out-of-towner -- Global Market, which is a large Ferry Building-style food market inside an old office building near Uptown Mpls. where you could spend a nice afternoon eating and shopping (http://www.midtownglobalmarket.org/), walking Summit Avenue in St. Paul and visiting the some of the old mansions like the James J. Hill House (near Victoria Crossing), stopping by the (still?) free Minneapolis Institute of Art (near Nicollet's Eat Street), great Farmers' Market in Lowertown St. Paul (downtown St. Paul, which is typically dead), seeing Prairie Home Companion if you're a big NPR-loving nerd.

The Twin Cities are lively in summer, so that's good for you. Generally, I find it to be a smart, under-stated Metropolitan area, that loves its bookstores, coffee shops, live music and un-pretentious brunches. If it were a person, it would be a 40-something, Volvo-driving, liberal anthropology or economics professor, who lives in a turn-of-the-century house he/she is slowly rehabilitating, but it's still drafty in the winter. Folks aren't too well-dressed or too showy and tend to be somewhat shy (hold-over from German-Scandinavian culture), but are generally extremely polite and welcoming.

^The Minneapolis Visitor's Bureau owes you.

Welcome to Minnesota!

There's a Len Druskin outlet in one of the -dales too.