Saint Paul By Bike

July 16, 2024

12.6 miles

Macalester-Groveland, Merriam Park, Lexington-Hamline, Summit-University (Rondo)

Macalester-Groveland

One of the most entertaining things about biking around Saint Paul is finding the unheralded or out of the ordinary. A home and fences decorated with hundreds of metal art signs, a yard covered completely with artificial turf, and on this trip, distinctive, decades-old vehicles.

Friction between cars, no matter the age, and bikes, or more accurately, riders and drivers, occurs far too often. However, at least one thing all can agree on is the simple pleasure offered by a fresh layer of asphalt.

Merriam Park

Two of the three classic cars I figuratively bumped into were parked on streets in Merriam Park.

Lexington-Hamline

Central High School borders the eastern edge of the Lexington-Hamline neighborhood. On the fence of Central’s tennis courts is a memorial for Philando Castile, who was senselessly shot to death by a police officer during a traffic stop on July 6, 2016.

A 2001 Saint Paul Central graduate, Castile was a popular nutrition services supervisor at J.J. Hill Montessori Magnet School, also in the Lex-Ham neighborhood.

Diamond Reynolds, the finance of Castile, and her daughter, were also in the car when police pulled Castile over in Falcon Heights for a burned out tail light. Vigils, marches and protests—both peaceful and violent—began almost immediately after news of the murder of Castile become public.

Following the June 2017 acquittal of the officer who shot Castile, protests erupted again in Saint Paul and across the country.

Memorials to Philando, some spontaneous or grassroots, others planned for years, have sprung up since, including one on Larpenteur Avenue in Falcon Heights near where Philando was killed.

Summit-University (Rondo)

The car parked in the driveway of 984 Rondo Avenue is one of the most distinctive and rarest from the 1980s.

The Classic Motor Carriages (CMC) Tiffany Classic was built between about 1984 and ’88 on the chassis of a Mercury Cougar. A couple of websites describe the Tiffany Classic as a vehicle that looks like “a 1930’s roadster but with the bells and whistles of a luxury automobile.”

Depending upon your perspective, words like ostentatious, gaudy, garish, opulent, magnificent or palatial come to mind. No matter your opinion, it’s impossible to miss the Tiffany Classic.

Its dual side mounted spare tires, partial vinyl top and bounty of chrome—on the bumpers, grill, lights, horns, wire spoke wheels and rear deck—declares the unambiguous intent to stand out.

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Elsewhere in Summit-University, some interesting but fading advertisements (or ghost signs) decorate much of the west side of 781 Selby Avenue at Avon Street.

A portion of the large Drink Coca-Cola sign remains legible on red brick building, despite time and vines clinging to the wall. However, remnants of other ads near the top of the wall, whether because of the smaller size, age or greater exposure to the elements were indecipherable.

Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church replaced a building that was a church, an Elk’s Club, and before that, a food market. The Rev. Carl Walker founded Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church in 1991, but is much better-known as the co-founder of Walker|West Music Academy. Located at 760 Selby, Walker|West is completing fundraising for a larger, better equipped building nearby at 650 Marshall Avenue.

Seven Hills Senior Living, built in 2019 at 733 Selby, is physically connected to Morning Star Church and offers about 100 senior rental units of independent and assisted living, extended care and memory care.

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What do you get when you cross a revitalized library bookmobile with a bookstore? A bookstore on wheels called Babycake’s Book Stack.

Zsame’ Morgan is the energetic owner and proprietor of the rolling bookstore, which is based in Saint Paul but crisscrosses the metro area. This day it was parked in a parking lot at 642 Selby, just west of the Mississippi Market Coop.

Originally Zsame’ planned to open a traditional store. However, she didn’t have a large enough down payment to qualify for a bank loan so she adapted. “One of my business mentors suggested that I look into doing a mobile bookstore. It hadn’t occurred to me, but it was a brilliant suggestion because my motto was already ‘around the world in a book.’”

That tied into how, as a child, Zsame’ used books to take journeys near and far. “I could travel around the world, I could travel to outer space, even. In a book, you can travel anywhere!’ So I just thought, ‘Wow, that really fits.’”

So Zsame’ set out to buy a vehicle she could craft into a mobile, youth-focused book shop. She was outbid on the first bus she tried to buy, but that ended up working in her favor. With help from a broker, Zsame’ found another bookmobile for sale in Henry County, Indiana. “The reason why the library was selling it is because someone had bequeathed them enough money to buy another bookmobile, and they bought the exact same model, but in the current year. So that gave me a lot of confidence that this bus was a good model.”

Of course she needed to inspect the bus before plunking down a tidy sum to purchase it. “My dad went with me the first time and they (librarians in Henry County) were just wonderful. They answered every question I had. We drove around for miles, and the people at the library, they accepted my bid.”

“Making it mobile was just like the cherry on the top of the cake because then I can go to the communities that need to have a bookstore or for the children to see themselves on the shelves.“

Zsame’ Morgan

The next move for Zsame’ was to return to Minnesota to get a friend to accompany her Indiana to pick up the bus. On the way back they stopped at the home of Zsame’s parents in Illinois so her mom could see the bus. “My mom was fresh off of a hip replacement surgery. She was able to get into the bus and I said, ‘Okay, if she can climb into the bus, then, maybe this is something that can work in different communities.’”

Once back in Saint Paul, Zsame’ had to craft both the inside and outside of the bus into an attention-getting, attractive, inviting place. “We want to have something that’s very fun and playful and colorful, but also include a lot of different cultures in it. I want everyone when they walk into the store to feel comfortable and say, ’This is a place where I belong and I belong here even if it’s not my cultural heritage month.”’

Zsame’s education, training and experience is expansive, but originally, had negligible relevance to owning a bookstore. She studied agriculture in high school and at the U of M College of Agriculture. Before completing her Ag degree, Zsame’ transferred to family social sciences and planned to become a marital and family therapist.

While at the U, she worked at one of the university’s bookstores. After graduation, Zsame’ took a job at a large bank in the Twin Cities, earning promotions until she became a municipal bond trustee.

After she turned her sights toward opening a bookstore, she interned at Moon Palace Books in Minneapolis and studied at what is now called The Bookstore Training Group, a company that advises and consults with people interested in opening a bookstore.

Babycake’s Book Stack is a unique name which Zsame’ said honors her late partner who was also the father of Zsame’s daughter. “Having lost her dad early on, I wanted to introduce her to him through our family values and also honor his memory. And by opening the bookstore, I was able to do that. Hence the name Babycake’s Book Stack, because Baby Cake was his nickname for her.”

Piloting a traveling bookstore demands that Zsame’ think differently. “Because we are mobile, people have to take an additional step to find where we’re located. They don’t know where we’re going to be at from one day to the next.”

On occasion, said Zsame’, customers are unclear about exactly what BabyCake’s Book Stack is. “I do have a fair amount of people ask, ‘How does this work? Do I check the books out?’ So there’s a good amount of explaining that we are a retail bookstore and that the books that you take from here when you purchase them, you can take them home and keep them and read ‘them and do whatever you want to, but just love on ’em really hard.”

Another complexity is sales tax. “The tax base is different in every city, so I have to set up my cash register and my credit card machine so that every time I collect tax, I’m collecting the correct tax for the city that I’m in, so that when I pay to the state, I’m paying the correct amount. That took a little bit of trial and error to figure out how to do it,”

Operational costs differ as well. “I don’t have the normal overhead that a brick and mortar (store) would have, but I have different overhead because my overhead is maintaining my vehicle.”

Of course, there are advantages to the mobile nature of Babycake’s Book Stack. “I can get to the communities that have children who need to see themselves on the shelves; that don’t have a bookstore in their communities per se.” And, Zsame’ added, it’s easy to show up at community events, wherever they are.

A terrific feature of Babycake’s Book Stack is the variety of languages of the books. The list reads like the United Nations—with tomes in Spanish, Hmong, English-Farsi, English-Chinese, Somali, Arabic, Urdu, Vietnamese, Khmer, Tagalog, German, Hmong, Karen, Amhari, Afaan Oromo, Arabic, Haitian Creole, Hindi, Japanese, French and Russian.

As for Indigenous languages, you’ll find books in Anishinaabe (Ojibwa), Dakota, Cree, and Haudenosaunee. “This section grows and shrinks,” said Zsame’, “and depending on what community we’re in, we try to get in another shipment of books ahead of events if we’re going to be in a community that I know that there is a specific language spoken.

Many of the books at Babycake’s are for children, but you’ll find plenty of choices for young adults and some for adults.

 ”I feel a great deal of joy when someone comes in the store and they’re able to find a book that really resonates with them, that they can see themselves in or that they can learn about someone else.”

Zsame’ Morgan

The bookmobile is great but Zsame’ hasn’t given up her dream of opening a traditional storefront. “I think that it would be really fun to have a space that we can just really make it into a home base for the bookstore and have people know where they can come at all times to see us.”

Zsame’ has a good idea of where she’d like to establish the store. “There is a renaissance or a push to get business back up and running [in Rondo.] Rondo Community Land Trust, along with Summit-University Council, are really working together to get some of these businesses back up and going in places that are affordable for incubators for small businesses. I hope to participate in one of the programs that they have and perhaps open up a brick and mortar location here.”

Reading and books have been a part of Zsame’s life since she was little. “My mom read to me a lot when I was a kid, and I think that’s part of why I felt like my childhood was idyllic. I was often in these worlds and my mom would say, ‘Okay, it’s dinner time,’ and the time was just like slipping away.”

Zsame’ added she hopes that Babycake’s Book Stack will elicit similar memories, “‘I remember going to the book mobile when I was little and we got this book that you read with me and I loved that book,’ and then later on read to their own child or their grandchild. Those are the seeds that I’m hoping to plant.”

You can find out where Babycake’s Book Stack will be by checking the website or Facebook page.