First the theater opened almost five years ago without an official city occupancy permit, after proprietor Jason McLean, tired of waiting for one, guessed at a capacity: 450. Minneapolis inspectors shut him down only weeks into operation.

“Every single [venue I've opened] has been subjected to city conniptions involving delays and pre-emptive closings,” McLean told the Star Tribune in 2005. “Do you think that there might be a bug in the system?”

Then in 2007, a ticketing snafu resulted in nearly 500 people filling the theater — about 200 beyond its permitted capacity. The Minneapolis Fire Department pulled the plug in the middle of a concert by the band Storyhill, the Strib reported.

Early this year, a sprinkler upgrade raised capacity to 814, though the theater manager vowed to cap ticket sales at 650 to preserve elbow room.

Meanwhile, Rybak has had his own capacity problems — online. He asked Facebook last summer to raise his friend limit above the social-media site’s maximum of 5,000. Now he has two Facebook sites: the old one, stuck at 5,000 friends, and a new campaign site, where he has logged almost 6,500 supporters.

As of 2 p.m. Monday, 288 guests have confirmed and another 580 say they may come.

The Varsity is a onetime vaudeville house remodeled as a cinema in the 1930s by the acclaimed Art Deco design firm Liebenberg and Kaplan. That’s when it gained its landmark marquee, since renovated with city funds through the Minneapolis Neighborhood Revitalization Program. Other past uses have included a nightclub (short lived) and a photo studio (longer), before McLean revived it as a performance and event space.

Photo: Wikipedia

Police Chief Tim Dolan, Mayor R.T. Rybak, Council Member Don Samuels. Photo: MayorRTRybak.com

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak announced today he is running for re-election. The announcement took the form of a mayoral message on Twitter directing people to a video on YouTube, which in turn directed viewers to his new campaign Web site, where surfers can further connect to his Facebook page. Rybak’s only announced rival (aside from perennial candidate Dick Franson) is Bob Miller, director of the city’s Neighborhood Revitalization Program.

More, including Rybak’s still-stirring gubernatorial ambitions and the mayor’s re-election announcement video, after the jump.

Rybak’s social-media rollout recalls the highly praised campaign of President-elect Barack Obama, for which Rybak was working even before its inception, during the early “Draft Obama” movement. It also punctuates a period of speculation that Rybak would get a job in the Obama administration or would instead announce a bid to run for governor in 2010. Whether that punctuation is a full stop, a comma or a dash is another question.

UPDATE: Rybak tells MPR he’s still not ruling out running for governor. 

Here’s the mayor’s re-election announcement video:

The comments are posted on a city website here. At first glance, they appear to mostly be in favor of finding a way to pay for the existing neighborhood program into the future. Read excerpts after the jump.

“I read the draft entitled, “Framework for the Future” and what a load of malarkey. Am I to understand that the city wants an average citizen to read, understand, and apply of this piece of literature and call it “Community Engagement”?”

“I think that NRP should be let go with the original end time frame in 2009. The little bit of money that would be available to the different neighborhood groups would be better spent on Fire & Police… I only have so much money and so does the city…let the neighborhood groups go back to the volunteers instead of the power crazed few that the NRP money has created.”

“The one thing the City must not do is kill NRP. Stop trying to destroy one thing that has worked in this poorly-managed, a**-backwards city!”

“I do think that some control by elected officials is in order. The heavy-handed tactics of some certain neighborhood activists in the Nokomis area while dealing with businesses on 34th Avenue a few years ago was unforgiveable… Projects utilizing public funds need to be scrutinized carefully, not pushed through by gung-ho special interest activists. If these few people are making neighborhood decisions, they should be elected by the voting public in the general city elections. We don’t need another unelected met council.”

“The NRP has taken less than 1% of the city budget and applied it directly to where it is needed, in the neighborhoods amongst the residents. While we have never received NRP funds, my wife and I have witnessed the neighborhoods throughout the city have indeed been revitalized. We think the NRP is a good use of our tax dollars unlike the massive baseball stadium robbery.”