What's the problem with a new Trader Joe's? Just ask the Internet

If you're reading this in the print version, thank you! But you're missing something. I can help.

First, get a scissors and some tape, and I'll tell you how they come in later. We now rejoin the column, already in progress.

Perhaps you saw the story about downtown Minneapolis getting a Trader Joe's grocery store. Maybe you thought I hope it's soon, because I'm running out of pumpkin-flavored tongue depressors with Madagascar nutmeg. The best.

Good news, right? I mean, it's down below "Common Cold Cured, NyQuil Announces Plans to Rebrand itself as Liqueur," but if you remember the days when a downtown "grocery" was a skyway snack shop whose produce section consisted of apple-flavored chewing tobacco, it's a sign of a thriving city. It means more people will move downtown, and not have to suffer penury because the only other option is Whole Foods, where a stalk of asparagus washed in glacier runoff costs $47. It can't possibly be controversial.

Oh, but everything is controversial. The new location will have parking spaces. For CARS. Boo. For some that's like opening a vegetarian restaurant and selling pork sausage in the backroom. It's downtown. You should bike, or walk, or take the light rail. Or bike to the light rail and walk to the store and then walk back to the light rail and get your bike. Or walk to the light rail, rent a bike and go to the store, and walk home.

Sorry, no. When I go to TJ's I leave with four bags, and the only way to bike that load back would be to hang them from a pole and balance it on my shoulders. I will patronize the downtown store, because it's closer, and the one I visit has a parking lot the size of a wading pool. Before I go I take out a hammer and put a dent in my door, just to save everyone time.

Should the new store have bike racks? Absolutely. It's not as if they'll post sentries with 10-foot spears to keep bikers away. Begone, wheel-freaks, we don't cotton to your kind. Likewise the sidewalk will not be sprayed with silicone and strewn with banana peels.

But that's just part of the controversy. When you read the online comments — Ah, you say, there's your problem.

I know. I can't help it. I know what they're going to say and want my suspicions confirmed. You'll get the guy who marinates in his amusement that anyone wants to live in Minneapolis:

who cares I guess the people who get shot downtown will have a place to buy lettuse while they wait for the ambulence LOL

In his mind, the area around the Guthrie is heaped with corpses, and they have to send out a front-end loader to clear the streets when the play lets out.

Next up: the human toothaches whose souls seem to slosh with gray dishwater and who cannot understand why opening a grocery store is news. The comment usually goes like this:

I don't share your enthusiasm about this and so no one else should either. Just seems like more of the same old same old and everything is worse than it was before, thanks to political figures I work into every conversation. I only get invited to family events on Thanksgiving. Oh well back to the real world.

Thanks! Everyone's day is a little brighter now. Hope to see you over on the Star Wars movie review, where you say you never saw any of them and think it's stupid and how come no one talks about depleted frog population.

To my horror, I spied another story that would split our sense of civic comity right down the middle: Dunkin' Donuts will open 24 more stores in the metro. Brace yourself, because you know this is coming:

Great more fat peolpe! Have some more High Furctose Corn Suryp! Big pharma can't wait to sell you that diabeetus med.

Annnnd then arguments about doughnut quality and the inroads of chain outlets, and you're just thinking "I just want a glazed."

The most controversial story the paper could possibly run would be this:

New Vikings Stadium Parking Lot Will Give Away Donuts to Suburban Immigrants, Governor Says

I mean, people wouldn't know where to start on that one.

Don't get me wrong, he said, attempting to weasel out of his broad-brush slander. Lots of comments are thoughtful and amusing. If you only read the paper version, you might be missing out on some useful input by clever folk who want to enhance the conversation instead of driving into a ditch full of snapping turtles. But you would also miss out on the realization that everything is problematic these days. You can't open a grocery store downtown without someone pulling a groin muscle to fit it into their personal agenda. So if you're going to be print-only, please cut out the following sentences:

1. Haha enjoy your murder while doing that thing I don't do.

2. Your choices are destroying the world and society.

3. Halfhearted joke by guy somewhere with a made-up name.

Cut that out and tape it to the end of this column. I have the feeling that'll capture the online experience.

jlileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858