West St. Paul's Cesar Chavez Blvd.

One of the fringe benefits of being a Realtor is being exposed to parts of town outside your usual orbit.

So, in the course of showing homes earlier this year in West St. Paul, South St. Paul, and Maplewood (where my client ultimately bought), I discovered a two block stretch of Concord Ave. renamed Cesar Chavez Blvd (it's about a mile south of downtown St. Paul, and a couple blocks west of Highway 52).

Coming back from water tubing on the Cannon River yesterday, my family and I headed there to check out the varied selection of Hispanic restaurants and groceries.

Good move! (It also afforded a great opportunity to tell my kids who Cesar Chavez was).

P.S.: "Minnesota Nice" gets a lot of abuse from non-natives. But where else can you bum a few beers tubing on a river, as I did yesterday? (I think they saw my 3 small kids and took pity).