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By Aaron Vehling
 All throughout their childhoods, people sometimes hear the familiar refrain: “You can be anything you want to be.”
Alexis McKinnis, a native of North Branch, took this advice to heart.
She is a columnist and writer for the Star Tribune’s entertainment magazine Vita.mn, a popular blogger and restaurant critic, a successful small business owner, and an aspiring author of books.
Her star has even crossed into the realm of television. This month alone, she appeared on HGTV’s “Decorating Cents” and on “Bizarre Foods” with Andrew Zimmern on the Travel Channel.
To promote her relationship column, the Star Tribune planted McKinnis’s photo all over Minneapolis - on billboards, buses, bus stops and even on bathroom stalls in bars, the latter which she said was “in hindsight, a horrible idea.”
When the Post Review caught up with her at a coffee shop just northeast of downtown Minneapolis early this month, she was working feverishly to meet the deadline for a cover story on the hottest man and woman of 2009.
Though she is poised for bona fide celebrity, McKinnis never strays too far from her family in North Branch, the place that provided her with the foundation for her life.
McKinnis’s photo was planted all over Minneapolis - on billboards, buses, bus stops and even on bathroom stalls in bars, the latter she said was a horrible idea. Photo supplied.
Beginnings
McKinnis comes from a home that harbored creativity and tolerance.
“My parents are really non-judgmental,” she said. “They have never pointed out flaws in people, whether in personality or physical appearance.”
McKinnis’s sister, Stephanie Edoff, runs Willowbridge Center, a holistic health mecca in Cambridge and North Branch. Edoff said their mother’s creative spirit definitely rubbed off on McKinnis.
“Our mom was an artist and photographer,” Edoff said. “She gets a lot of that from her.”
At her family’s hobby farm six miles east of town, McKinnis grew up with a profound love of animals.
She would go on long walks through the fields with her dog, Brownie, her only companion. She would also play with the various cats and sheep that shared the land.
This strong connection to animals influenced her intensely.
“I was and still am such a sensitive animal lover,” McKinnis said. “No one in my family was surprised when I became a vegetarian.”
Once she reached high school, she became a wild one, McKinnis said.
“I was a bit of a risk taker,” she said. “My classmates voted me the ‘most daring.’ ”
On those first spring days, the ones in which the weather is too nice for anyone to sit still after the long, cold winter, McKinnis said she and her friends would cut class and drive to Taylors Falls or, if it was warm enough, head over to Kost Dam.
“Those first warm days of spring, it was impossible to stay indoors,” she said, “even when that’s where you were supposed to be.”
A few teachers at North Branch High School, from which she graduated in 1995, left an impression on her that to this day persists. Barbara Paetznick, Jan Kozlovsky, and Jill Birk each contributed to her success, she said.
“I think about those women on a weekly basis. They were all very influential for me,” she said, and then proceeded to list their qualities, “funny, intelligent, charismatic and unique.”
Shopping and blogs
In 2001, McKinnis founded her own personal shopping service called Personal Touch Errands and Assistance. During this time, she spent much of her days running errands and shopping for her clients. She went to every kind of store and restaurant and used every kind of service out there. This came in handy when she started blogging in 2005.
Her blog, Girl Friday, was a repository for her vast knowledge of where to shop, eat, party and exist in the Twin Cities metropolitan area.
“I had all this stuff in my head,” McKinnis said. The blog featured reviews of her favorite places and best experiences to later inclusions of relationship advice. Girl Friday still features reviews that ardent adherents follow almost religiously.
Moving into print
With her personal shopping business and blog taking off, in 2006 McKinnis was pulled in the sphere of the Star Tribune’s then-new Vita.mn, an arts and entertainment magazine aimed at competing with City Pages.
The editors of Vita.mn were looking for a new kind of columnist, McKinnis said. They had heard about Girl Friday and requested two sample columns.
“I have been through a lot relationship-wise,” she said.
She made the grade. Without her knowledge, the Star Tribune had her visage all over town gazing over Minneapolis’s cityscape.
“All of a sudden, I was everywhere,” she said.
McKinnis’s relationship column has been a boon for her. She was a frequent guest on food guru Andrew Zimmern’s local radio shows and this month appeared in a “Bizarre Foods” spin-off with him called “Sexy Foods.”
“Andrew is a wonderful man who has given me many great opportunities simply because he believes in my abilities,” she said.
Her fame has also allowed her to consult experts nationwide for help with the kind of relationship questions she just cannot answer, such as those that involve being in a ten-year relationship.
Today and beyond
McKinnis calls her bar and restaurant reviews her “first love,” and she proudly posts them on her Girl Friday and Vita.mn blogs. Wherever the hot spots are, there she is.
Her columns and cover stories for Vita.mn still paint that publication with her intelligent, acerbic prose and her vast knowledge of relationship woes and delights.
For the future, McKinnis said she is working on a book about creative, inexpensive weddings. In “new weddings,” she said, “smaller wins.”
McKinnis married her husband, Luis, a native of Mexico City, about a year ago, and they have plans to start a restaurant with authentic Mexican food straight from the various rural regions of Mexico. They are looking at either Northeast Minneapolis, where the couple lives, or North Branch.
Her interest in restaurants began at a young age.
When McKinnis was nine years old, she would play restaurant with her family, creating menus and table settings and then actually cooking food for them.
Her love of food and the art of the restaurateur persisted throughout her life, she said, some of which could explain her attraction to reviewing restaurants.
“I have a good idea of how a restaurant works,” she said. Since she moved to Minneapolis after her semester at the University of Minnesota, she has befriended general managers of restaurants and the barkeeps of bars, researching the minute intricacies and vast networks involved in running a restaurant.
McKinnis said Luis has acute culinary instincts and the combination of their skills will lend itself nicely to their future venture.
Nestled under this busy, participatory life of hers, McKinnis said what powers her is that she is doing what she wants to do.
“I am motivated by my goals,” she said. “I think I will always be a writer no matter what, but that secondary career might shift every 10 years. Who says we have to do the same thing until we die?”
McKinnis looks back fondly on her life in North Branch and tries to get back as much as she can.
“It is important for me to see my nephew,” she said, “and to stay close to my family.”
The tight-knit community and small-town sensibilities that comprise North Branch are what always stick out in her mind, she said.
“You kind of know everyone and it’s not really cliquey,” she said. “I was friends with every different type of social group.”
McKinnis urges those with goals to engage in deep reflection and pursue what it is you truly want to be. To be sure, this is a method that has suited her well.
“In my work, I’ve used everything I’ve ever done, all my life experiences,” she said.
As for her goals, she has stuck with them, she said, “it’s important to not let them hang out there untouched.”
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