Ruminations on digital media and technology will be back next week. Today we're embracing Valentine's Day, swimming in the sea of love that's kept me from spiraling out.
–DC
Nourishment through partnership
This weekend Minneapolis is thawing, literally, and the winter's accumulation is melting into runoff. The promised drawdown of the DHS occupation may be on its way, but locally everyone repeats the same refrain: We'll believe it when we see it.
Over the past six weeks I've felt nothing but love for the people of my adopted city and state who have documented ICE's actions, organized peaceful—even joyful—protests at intersections, protected children on their way to and from schools, and used their voices to speak out and show the U.S. what it looks like to actively guard democracy. Even on the worst days, where the violence and bitter cold dovetailed into immense despair, the Twin Cities persist. It feels like love, this decentralized civic partnership, a love rooted in history, place, and proximity.
I learned to love unconditionally in Minneapolis, through Minneapolis, fifteen years ago when I met Will. He was active in organizing local zinefests and comics shows, and I was running an online publication celebrating Twin Cities journalism and culture. Our partnership formed over a shared affection for Minneapolis and the hyperliterate, homegrown arts scene. We were married in 2014 on Eat Street, a place we'd both loved for its banh mi and birthday margaritas, and together built a palimpsest of shared memories in south Minneapolis over a decade and a half.
Will began planning The Eat Street Diners Club two or three years later, incubating the concept while he published and promoted his last graphic novel. ESDC was to be a web comic featuring a different meal every month. From 2018 on, he worked his way down every restaurant on Nicollet in the 20s and 30s, one by one, following a set of characters who gathered at the mostly immigrant-owned eateries in Whittier. For the last few years, Will published each comic on the first Wednesday of every month at 1pm, when the entire city tests its tornado sirens. ESDC published its final issue in December 2025, ending at Eat Street Crossing, a food hall built into the renovated venue where we were married 11 years before.
Eat Street Diners Club is Will's love letter to our home. He wrote the majority of the comic throughout what (we hope) was the most challenging era of our shared adulthood, in the years following George Floyd's murder and the unrest that followed. The comic started as a traditional narrative about the staff of a food website, but the stories and art grew more abstract as the years went on.
During the pandemic, he ordered food to-go and brought it home for us to share, but the comic didn't suffer: in 2020, Eat Street Diners Club won a prize from Slate for best web comic. In the following years, when we eased back into dining out, I'd occasionally join for the monthly research meals and share my ideas. Will, ever the independent artist, never used any of my story ideas directly, but I saw my influence and our relationship in every comic. Each issue celebrated the joy of sharing food, and in each panel I read Will's persistent love for our home, our friends, and our partnership.
Less than a month ago, Alex Pretti was killed at Nicollet and 26th, right at the center of Eat Street. Nearly every photo and video from the protests that followed on January 24, 2026, displays the locations Will had affectionately represented in careful line drawings in the years prior. Since 2020, we've become used to beloved neighborhoods morphing into zones of conflict, but seeing Eat Street tear-gassed was a new level of heartbreak. That part of Whittier has long represented love for us, and not only because we were married there. It represents everything we love about Minneapolis.
I have not been able to visit the memorial site of Pretti's murder yet; it's all far too raw, and I know I'll be a wreck. But Will mustered the courage and created one final drawing of Joe, the ringleader of the ESDC, revisiting Eat Street.
Processing the hurt of people and places you love is often worse than experiencing hurt yourself. The past five Februaries have been devastating, introducing new texture to fear and unplanned iterations of grief for the places and people we love that Will and I never expected. What keeps me going, what keeps me grounded is knowing that no matter what happens, we built a team that gets stronger amid some of the hardest hits our world can throw. When I can't believe what's happening outside, I remember to find awe in the lasting strength we built for ourselves.
When I was dating during my 20s, I never expected to marry. But my partnership with Will, and the love we have for our life together, keeps me operating from a place of hope and joy, even throughout the unimaginable cruelty inflicted on our neighbors and on our city. I don't believe marriage or long-term partnership are for everyone, but in my case the tiny team I've built with Will has rooted me and kept me alive.
Even if overt violence in our city ends, I don't expect the coming years to ease up on the bad news front. My advice is always: Love fiercely. Find your people. Find your places. Hold tight. Remember that love blooms over individual faults, over momentary setbacks, over personal tragedy, over beliefs and ideals we once thought set in stone.
Also, check out the full archive of Eat Street Diners' Club; it's brilliant. If you subscribe, Will will buy more ink and paper for whatever project is next (I have no clue what Will's new work is about, but the art I've seen is wonderful).
And to Will, who will be one of the first to read this newsletter, I love you, and I will always be your biggest fan.
The Content Technologist is a newsletter and consultancy based in Minneapolis, working with clients and collaborators around the world. The entire newsletter is written and edited by Deborah Carver, an independent content strategy consultant.
Affiliate referrals: Ghost publishing system
Cultural recommendations / personal social: Spotify | Instagram | Letterboxd | PI.FYI
