Jim Richardson (aka Lake Superior Aquaman)
Become the Dark
It took me 25 years to acclimatize to Duluth, and the big hurdle was these long winter nights. Here’s how I did it.
One day I thought, as long as I’m hopelessly depressed and dysfunctional, maybe I should dig a crawlspace under my all-time low and sort of, you know, make it cozy in there?
Step one: Uncouple your mood from the weather, to the greatest extent possible.
This took me two decades to get the hang of, but it can be done. Duluth is going to give you some ass weather. Conversely, when Duluth is nice, it’s God’s country. But if you let Duluth’s ass weather get to you, you’re effed. It’s a bad place to be sensitive to gray days and one of the coldest, longest winters anywhere in the country, the world even. Duluth in February — when winter is more than half over! — may be compared to the ice moons of Jupiter. And then you might get a chilly summer. So, welcome to town, buckle up, get ahold of yourself, and appreciate the city for what it is besides the weather.
We’re so far north, the path of the sun weaves dramatically across the sky as the seasons progress. You can feel the wobble of the globe. Don’t let it dizzy you or give you motion sickness as the sun stays out a different number of minutes per day. We can have extreme and long winters, and short summers of varying quality. It’s not personal.
Dirty Knobs – “Squid Crow Pro”
Dirty Knobs, a music project of Duluth’s Zac Bentz, part of The Electric Witch and The Surfactants, released the new album Scorcher on Halloween. On Youtube the tracks come with psychedelic visualizers as above for “Squid Crow Pro,” a track I have on repeat. I would loosely characterize the album as a collection of ambient electronica soundscapes, textured and chewy. These tracks are going to get me through winter.
The True Story of the 1963 Duluth Third Place Little League World Series Champions
The 1963 Little League World Series was played Aug. 24 in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania, at the Howard J. Lamade Stadium to 10,000 spectators. The series has since been given a cover story by the deep state, including the first-ever little league television footage, which was faked to keep America calm. The true story of the Duluth All-Stars is so explosive that it could not be told until now, more than half a century later.
A Midwest ring of Soviet spies developed a signaling mechanism invisible to the CIA, or so they thought. Eschewing radio and microfilm dead drops as vulnerable to interception, the Russians infiltrated the global little league ecosystem, and used manipulated game statistics to convey coded messages to agents in the field. One or two closet communist coaches in prime positions, a handful of greedy assistant coaches tactically placed, and a blackmailed umpire were enough to communicate covert instructions to sleeper assassins from Missouri to Manitoba, printed in every regional paper in the local sports stats. (more…)
Adrift in the Duluth Triangle
[Author’s note: This originally ran in the 2024 Boubville zine. My title does not refer to the “Bar-muda Triangle” promotions of the West Duluth bar scene. This story was intended to be the start of a novella, a roman-à-clef about a barfly surviving depression. Each chapter was going to take place in a different establishment and be based on actual events, a “hero’s journey” bar crawl through the underworld one night. But after writing this first chapter, it seemed complete in itself as a short story, so I am calling it done. Borges wrote, “It is a laborious madness and an impoverishing one, the madness of composing vast books — setting out in 500 pages an idea that can be perfectly related in five minutes.” That said, this story of life before Covid could be a prequel to this essay about when Covid hit.]
2019. From Sir Benedict’s Tavern on the Lake, to Vikre Distillery, to the Pizza Lucé bar, then back to Sir Ben’s: This is the Duluth Triangle. Stranded in its vortex for five years, between myself and my hillside home lies a gauntlet of the finest distilleries, tap rooms, and bars in the world. It is a puzzle solved differently every night. Like the doctor in Nightwood said to Djuna Barnes: “The night is not premeditated.” (more…)
The Aerial Lift Bridge as impossible cube
Not too long ago I looked at the Aerial Lift Bridge, and for a moment my mind mis-read it as having the wrong angles of an Escher-like “impossible cube,” pictured here. The optical illusion has stuck with me and now I have to force myself not to see it. It is beyond me at the moment to produce my mental image as a drawing or doctored photo, but I wanted to get the idea out there in case the vision inspires anybody. Post images as comments if you’re feeling it, otherwise I am content to just keep privately seeing an impossible lift bridge.
Sir Duluth Historical Timeline
Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Luht, was an influential French explorer whose name anglicizes to Sir Duluth. He signed his letters “Dulhut,” participating in his own casual anglicization despite the constant conflict his nation had with England. I call him Duluth, synonymous with our present-day, American city, whose name he inspired.
1639: Duluth is born in Saint-Germain-Laval, France.
1650: Duluth is 11 when the first modern philosopher René Descartes dies age 53 in Stockholm, Sweden. A letter from the young Duluth lies on the bedside table, offering a common-sense critique of Descartes’ notion that animals are automatons who may be vivisected. “I guess you’ve never owned a pet,” the boy’s careful handwriting says. The letter continues, “‘I think therefore I am’ is meaningless since grounds for doubting existence do not exist. You torture language like you torture dogs.” It has been suggested that Descartes was so distressed to have his life’s work effortlessly eviscerated by a child that he quickly succumbed to pneumonia and died.
Weird clouds on July 11
Images taken over the span of a few minutes as dark rollers split off the main cloud bank like sideways funnel clouds, conflicting air masses in turbulence. (This kind of thing scared the heck out of me when I first moved here.) (more…)
Dollhouse City Lift Bridge
Photos of the Richardson brothers Dollhouse City taken by their mommy Nell Richardson, except the last image by the Richardson brothers. Dollhouse City is a Duluth-based psychogeographical freakout representing the city and oh yeah the universe in fractal miniature. It is our joint toy collection plus the toys of my adult daughter which I never discarded, including most of the dollhouses. This three-sided collection was displayed locally at many of Sarah Heimer’s Dioramarama shows. (more…)
On Board a Great Lakes Fireboat
Local YouTuber Vibe with Mike took a ride on the Duluth Fire Department’s fireboat.
Duluth in the novel ‘The Horn’
John Clellon Holmes’ 1953 beat jazz novel The Horn contains a couple references to Duluth. In the 1988 edition by Thunder’s Mouth Press, the first mention occurs on page 131. I cite it below with a couple paragraphs for context, which make it clear “Duluth” is used synonymously with “some out-of-the-way city on the road.” (more…)
Ice Racing Getaway Driver
1983 St. Louis County jailhouse interview with “Turbo” Ted Van Brunt
Interviewer: Tell me about your escape from Duluth.
Turbo Ted: Escaping Duluth is a coin flip. Half my friends tried and couldn’t reach the velocity, came back after two or three years of getting kicked around out there. I tried a couple times.
What you’re really asking about started a couple springs ago, when it rained then the temperature plunged. The city woke up with a coating of clear ice on every surface. Branches falling in the road. Whole city shut down, nothing could move.
Except my black, street stock, ice racing stud car, a 1976 Chevette with a roll cage and 500 spikes on each tire — sheet metal screws we screwed in ourselves. Fender all chewed up. Commonly called the worst car of all time but it did everything we asked. And Johnny said it was go time. He was the brains, had it all worked, how to disarm the system at the Superior Street jewelers there. He got that with a bribe. It was only a question of when, and this was our crisis of opportunity. “The cops won’t stand a chance,” he said, and they didn’t. They even had chains on but they still didn’t know how to drive. Anyway so Johnny robbed it, but he didn’t get all the alarms. And I was the getaway driver but I still get half. Which wasn’t much — a couple display cases worth of diamond jewelry. Pulled him behind the car on a tether as we blew down Superior through deserted intersections, cross-training for frozen lake ice races at the same time we’re robbing a jewelry store. Just on his feet — no skis, just boots. And of course the cop shop is right there. But their interceptors fell behind. It was beautiful. (more…)
What Does William S. Burroughs Owe Djuna Barnes?
A lot of William S. Burroughs kind of sounds like Djuna Barnes. The prime example: Barnes created the character Doctor Matthew O’Connor in her 1936 novel Nightwood, and Dr. O’Connor could easily be confused with the 1938 Burroughs character, Dr. Benway (no first name). Each fictional physician is a comically amoral addict abortionist. I think it’s likely Burroughs created Dr. Benway within a year of reading Nightwood. Burroughs owes Barnes a debt of inspiration, and not just in the creation of Benway — many of his other characters could also be walk-ons in Nightwood, fitting in well among Barnes’ cast of liars, pretenders, and cheats. So it’s safe to say Barnes influenced the characters Burroughs created. I will also show her influence on his voice, style, and themes.
Since the 1980s, a Burroughs blurb appears on the back of every Nightwood edition, saying in its entirety, “I read Nightwood back in the 1930s and was very taken with it. I consider it one of the great books of the twentieth century.” That’s all he ever said about it; it says it all. It is commonly acknowledged that he admired her work, but I think Barnes had a larger influence. I think Burroughs took what he learned from Nightwood and then, in 1959, he wrote the actual number-one greatest book of the twentieth century, Naked Lunch. Barnes’ influence is found there, and throughout Burroughs’ work. (more…)
Essentia Health campus vs. a panel from ‘Ronin’
Essentia Health campus in Duluth on Aug. 4, 2022. Steve Kuchera / Duluth News Tribune
Panel from Frank Miller’s “Ronin” as shown in the Comics Journal.
In the graphic novel Ronin, by Frank Miller, an AI named Virgo grows its organic technology over and through a dystopian New York City. As the story progresses, the city completely transforms. I wondered if I could find a photo of the expanding hospital complex that matched this comic panel.
Avant Garde Women: Elsa the Dada Baroness, Djuna Barnes and Margaret Anderson
Introduction
The story of Elsa the Dada Baroness transpired in a milieu of literary queer feminist icons circa World War I. This story was best told in 1930, in the book My Thirty Years’ War by Margaret Anderson. Anderson was the radical publisher (with Jane Heap) of the Little Review, the international modernist-Dadaist-anarchist magazine that punched above its weight and first serialized Joyce’s Ulysses. I bought my copy of My Thirty Years’ War hoping for a great first-person account of the landmark obscenity trial that ensued over Ulysses, but Anderson barely mentions it. However she does say a lot about the Baroness. Anderson got to know the Baroness by publishing her poems; every history of the Baroness goes through Margaret Anderson.
My Thirty Years’ War is in the public domain and, as evidence of that, my copy has a typo in the title on the front cover, and a couple pages are in the wrong order. But it has the goods. I also read Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada, and Everyday Modernity — A Cultural Biography by Irene Gammel. My copy of that has no typos and a hundred pages of footnotes, and it’s where I found accounts of the Baroness by another writer Anderson was publishing: Djuna Barnes. Like Anderson, Barnes became a supporting character in the Baroness’ story. (more…)
Fun with Google AI Overview
Google search results are now summarized by an “AI Overview.” I tested it with three questions. (more…)
The FBI Paid for My Co-op Membership: Minnesota Food War 1975
Transcript of interview with former co-op volunteer / FBI confidential informant
Interviewer: How did you become an FBI informant during the Minnesota food co-op wars of 1975?
Name redacted: Well, when co-ops started forming in the late ‘60s, the FBI thought it was a communist plot. That theory got a lot of traction because many early co-op’ers were actual, literal Communists, mimeographing typewritten Leninist newsletters. You would’ve thought downtown Minneapolis was the Red Square. So it was a case of “let’s just keep an eye on these people.” But since there was a cooperative warehouse in Wisconsin serving as a distribution hub, when co-op-related violence broke out, it crossed state lines. So the FBI went from passive surveillance to active infiltration. When the Minneapolis co-op wars spread to the North Shore in ’75, I was on the short list to infiltrate the Duluth one. A native Duluthian, I had worked undercover before, and I was already a Co-op shopper. I was not a member, but knew some of the early Co-op’ers from church. I wasn’t on the anarcho-communist continuum, and I wasn’t a hippie — I just wanted better food. This made my handlers a little nervous. They started thinking I was a pinko. But I told them, “You couldn’t find a loaf of whole wheat bread in Duluth until the Co-op opened in 1970.” They were eating Wonder Bread baloney sandwiches with mayonnaise, but that convinced them. So the FBI paid for my Co-op membership. Then I signed up for member volunteer work shifts to get on the inside. I stirred buckets of nut butter with a drill attachment, but I heard stuff. I wasn’t the only one, the Feds had an informant in Grand Marais too, and some as far south as Iowa. Minneapolis was the hub, of course; the co-ops down there were popping off like popcorn. (more…)
Christian Boarding School Texas Football
I still have bitter high school football recriminations. My 1980s Episcopal boarding school in Texas glorified football above other sports. I attended on a scholarship from family connections, not through any academic or athletic merit. And I learned the wrong lesson about authority from the sports program.
A recent obituary in the alumni newsletter helped spur me to write this, although I’ve been kicking it around for 40 years. Nothing personal against Coach P who I don’t have to name. For the purposes of this story he is the universal coach. This is not to disrespect his essential personhood or whatever. But I learned things I did not want to learn about society and all the rest of it — universal things I never forgot.
Coach P’s obituary said he was the decades-long athletics director, had coached thousands of games and taught thousands of history classes, too. He is fondly remembered by nearly everyone, including myself. He was a real Texas character. His knees were busted up and it crabbed his walk. I assumed it had happened on a football field in his younger days, a brutal hit or series of hits marking him, claiming him for the sport. You knew he was committed. He was gray and had the hairy ears of an old man if he let it go, something I noticed sitting behind him in chapel once or twice, and it made me swear to never get old or sentiments to that effect. He wasn’t really that old but he was weathered. He was not without warmth or humor, and he bonded with his players particularly. Like in the Lou Reed song, they “wanted to play football for the coach.” They liked how, when he was consternated at you, he would exclaim “Hellfire, son!” (more…)
Last Call at the Pilot House
Duluth Herald late-edition special report
Thursday, Jan. 28, 1915
By Joe Crisp, Senior Shipping Reporter
A famed local maritime drinking establishment has shut its doors. This is the ship’s pilot house on the tip of Timber Point in the harbor. For 16 years it has operated as the Pilot House bar. Initially serving a clientele made up exclusively of members of the Great Lakes Life Saving Service, soon it caught on with sailors and dock workers. Older Duluthians recall its origin, as the pilot house of the doomed Marchande which stuck out of the water in the shipping lanes for weeks in 1899. She had sunk by the stern as her cargo shifted, but her nose bobbed up. Using a floating crane, the Life Savers salvaged the pilot house and installed it on Timber Point. There they collectively owned and operated it as a business, until last night.
Because today, as the war in Europe heats up, the 45-year-old Life Saving Service has been officially subsumed into the Revenue Cutter Service. The resulting compound organization forms the newest branch of the armed forces, the United States Coast Guard. The Pilot House is a casualty of new regulations and a wave of retirements. Some old-timer Life Savers don’t wish to adapt, nor to compete against much younger men in basic training, to re-qualify for what will be different jobs. Many jobs are being eliminated. All three of Duluth’s Life Saving stations — at Park Point, Lester River, and Stony Point — have been officially replaced by the single new Coast Guard station in the harbor. The oars and battered wooden surfboats of the Life-Savers have given way to a steel steam-powered Coast Guard cutter, and a modern Life-Saving station complete with radio equipment and a machine shop. Among the sweeping changes are rules prohibiting Coast Guard personnel profiting from salvage. And since all the booze served at the Pilot House was salvaged from local shipwrecks, this effectively puts the bar out of business. Last night was last call. (more…)