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

On the third floor of the temporary library in downtown Minneapolis—a retrofitted office building that once housed the Federal Reserve Bank—a skinny man with a shock of white hair paced hurriedly up and down the aisles carrying a bouquet of roses wrapped in a wad of shredded newspaper. He looked disheveled, a little like Sam Shepard on a bad day or, maybe, Hume Cronyn on a good day. Though I hadn’t set foot inside the main library for years, I recognized the man immediately as one of the usual cast of unusual characters that inhabit the downtown branch.