News & Views of Phillips Since 1976
Thursday December 25th 2025
AWE OF LONGEVITY
Oppressive Rent Increase = 25 Year Old Business CLOSED!
A Farewell to Sophal and Tevy Nhep
Sophal and Nevy Nhep greeted scores of past customers and served “one last meal” to long time customers like these two women in front of their new Food Service truck replacing their Best Steaks and Gyros business at Chicago Crossings (Franklin Avenue/Chicago Avenue Intersection).
BY PETER MOLENAAR
Best Steaks and Gyros, an original tenant at the Chicago Crossings mall, due to an oppressive rent increase, is now CLOSED after 25 years. That the proprietor had achieved iconic status in the neighborhood, as was evidence by the gathered farewell throng on Friday September 15th.
One wonders how Sophal and Tevy met, given the exodus from war torn Cambodia in 1975. Phal would do a stint as an engineering student at the University of Minnesota before the couple reared their three children in Burnsville, MN while Phal was working as a production manager at the Bremer Corporation.
Why the move to this “neck of the woods?”… Read the rest “AWE OF LONGEVITY”
The Alley Newspaper Editor Harvey Winje was on FIRST PERSON RADIO with Laura Watermnan Wittstock on Wednesday 9.13.17
Laura Waterman Wittstock at her First Person Radio program at KFAI RADIO 90.3 FM-Mpls. 106.7 FM- St Paul interviewing The Alley Newspaper”'s Editor Harvey Winje on Sept 13th. available on kfai.org/archives. Download or listen at http://bit.ly/2xpwLNO.
Listen to Laura Waterman Wittstock as she talked with Harvey Winje about the history of the Phillips Neighborhood, KFAI”'s neighbor and home to a large American Indian population. The area of the Phillips Neighborhood began as Indian land but as settlers moved in and Indian families were pushed out, Philips became a welcoming point for newly arriving immigrant families, which in the late 20th Century meant, Hmong, Vietnamese, Somali, other Asian and African groups. Indian people never completely left Phillips. Once rail, bus, and automobile transportation became available, Indians began moving back and forth from reservations to Phillips and back. Harvey has many, many stories to share about his newspaper, The Alley, and the history of the area.
Harvey Winje is a first generation born American, albeit not until his 1940 birth in the community named in the 1960”'s  for the abolitionist Wendell Phillips. He serves as the stipend-paid editor of The Alley Newspaper, a 42 year old monthly newspaper of the Phillips Community.… Read the rest “The Alley Newspaper Editor Harvey Winje was on FIRST PERSON RADIO with Laura Watermnan Wittstock on Wednesday 9.13.17”
AUTUMN IN OUR HEARTS
This future leader will be able to walk through the English curtain at will and leave it all behind having learned Objibwe and/or Dakota culture, traditions, and language; and the wholeness of the circle of life. He will understand how important autumn is”¦the timing of the leaves that turn to color ”“ bronze, yellow, orange, red ”“ signal when they choke off the flow of nutrients to their leaves whether winter will be early or late. Photo: Jewell Arcoren
BY LAURA WATERMAN WITTSTOCK
Before cars, before buildings, before the incessant consumption of natural resources, there was another population that went through the seasons, adjusted to disasters, fell in battle, and buried their dead.
In less than 100 years, European settlers managed to wipe out over 90% of the old growth forest in what is now Minnesota. Before the arrival of the French and the Ojibwe, the river along what is now St. Paul, bustled with the canoe and watercraft traffic of the Dakota people and their Hidatsa allies. The canoes, heavy with rice and other grains, headed down the river to what is now St. Louis where a huge trading center was supported by the exchange of goods and services of many tribes.… Read the rest “AUTUMN IN OUR HEARTS”
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