If your pockets are empty but you want to look like a million bucks, Aveda Institute at 400 Central Ave. S.E. (378-7434) is the place to go. The Institute, where customers are the guinea pigs for Aveda...

Bleed, baby, bleed. Selling your blood plasma for money can be quite lucrative and can also drain harmful excess fluids. Safer than donating an arm or sellin' yer melon, plasma donation has been called...

The urban commuter rises, unwraps his breakfast and heads out into the garage where his shiny, gold-trimmed Sport Utility Vehicle looms. It is the commuter's most important tool of urban professionalism...

As mad be-bop bounces off high ceilings and impressionist paintings, gourmet coffee brews and fuels the patrons of a Dinkytown icon. The Purple Onion, a dyed-in-the-wool spoke of the Dinkytown culture...

She had ironed her shirt, painted her nails, and done the liner with the long-wearing lipstick. Madoana Style was nearly ready for her night out. She deserved it; Style had been to all of her classes,...

The smoker cups her hands to her face, bending her neck as if approaching a taco. Pause. Then she grimaces. She flings a burnt-out cardboard stick to the ground, her Camel still unlit. Another match falls...

We like to think that some things are still sacred, that not everything has a price. We're wrong, of course. So are the scientists. The basic unit of matter isn't the atom, or even the quark. It's the...

The lava lamp: an enigma. A mystery wrapped in a riddle. A virtual paradox. What is the mystical power of this potentate of living room furnishings, and where the hell did it come from? Perhaps it was...

For the least amount of tears, time and stress, this year's Grapevine Award for the best place to break up goes to Alexander Graham Bell's lifesaving communication device ... the telephone. Whether it's...

Your eyelids are heavy. Your neck is getting weaker, barely able to hold your head up straight. You look at the clock -- seven minutes until class ends. Your notes are now chicken scratches. The professor...