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Beautiful Days
So many things are happening around our city and the country that are confusing, difficult to understand and often display a certain degree of ugliness about our world. There are more people on the streets who are homeless, mass shootings, a rise in Nazi and fascist groups, the East Wing of the White House has been torn down, and ICE agents continue threatening and arresting our neighbors.
And from around the world, we’re dealing with climate change, wars in such places as Gaza and the Ukraine, and pandemics.
In times like these, how do we create and embrace beauty? How can you and I uplift the beautiful spirit that flickers in all of us, even in those darkest moments? How do we represent our better angels and bring beauty to our city by the lake?
Maybe, it begins by asking a simple question. How do I stay human? In a world of angry rhetoric, divisive politics, impatience, noise, growing disparity, self-absorption, and isolation, how do I stay human? The first steps could be embracing our humility, a search for meaning beyond our personal lives, and the resilience to find a moral compass that guides and directs us. (more…)
PDD Shop Talk: The Usual Spiel
Keeping Duluth’s Duluthiest website running with new content every day has been an ongoing financial challenge for 22 years, but Perfect Duluth Day is still here, still free to read and still kicking out the daily goods. Advertising revenue keeps the operation going, but donations help us do more and do it better.
That’s why we occasionally toss up a post like this one to remind everyone that donations are a big help. (more…)
The Most Read Saturday Essays of 2025
Perfect Duluth Day’s “Saturday Essay” series has now run for ten years. The second half of that decade has seen Jim Richardson dominate the annual list of most-read compositions. Since 2020, Google Analytics stats show Richardon’s essays have landed in 21 of the 25 top-five slots. Long live Lake Superior Aquaman! (more…)
Our Changing Relationship to Lake Superior, 1975-2025
The SS Edmund Fitzgerald. (Image via the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers)
A new collection of works by Duluthians speaks to their changing relationship to Lake Superior. I am including the intro, which I wrote, below. For more, visit openrivers.lib.umn.edu. (more…)
PDD Quiz: Christmas City
How well do you know the song “Christmas City”? Put your knowledge to the test with this edition of the PDD Quiz.
A 2025-in-review quiz comes your way on Dec. 28. Please submit question suggestions to Alison Moffat at alisonlinnaemoffat@gmail.com by Dec. 21. (more…)
Ripped at Tyomies in 2000
[Editor’s note: For this week’s essay we’ve once again pulled out a relic from the archive of Slim Goodbuzz, who served as Duluth’s “booze connoisseur” from 1999 to 2009. Twenty-five years ago the Sultan of Sot paid a visit to Tyomies, 601 Tower Ave. in Superior, and composed this article for the Dec. 12, 2000 edition of the Ripsaw newspaper. Tyomies closed at some point prior to 2014, when Sweeden Sweets took over the space.]
This restroom is huge! And everything is squeaky clean, but already there’s a dude in here christening the place with a bleeeeeeeee yyyyyyyyyy aaaaaaaaa kkkkkkkkkkk. He’s paying homage to the porcelain god, and the porcelain god is shiny new and still has a sticker on it. When he finishes, he positively springs back up on his feet — happy as can be — then flushes and gives me a wink and a thumbs-up before heading out the door.
I love when a new bar opens in town. For one thing, there are usually a lot of drink specials to attract new clientele. Also, unlike in every other bar in this rat-ass city, no one there knows me, so the staff is usually pretty friendly to me. In addition to that, new places are usually pretty empty, so there’s little chance of someone there ruining my buzz for me. I try to hit a new bar a couple of times before all of you losers discover it and wreck the place by making me deal with you. (more…)
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.
Ripped at the Saloon in 2000
[Editor’s note: For this week’s essay we’ve once again pulled out a relic from the archive of Slim Goodbuzz, who served as Duluth’s “booze connoisseur” from 1999 to 2009. Twenty-five years ago the Sultan of Sot paid a visit to the Saloon, 1807 N. 11th St., in Superior, and composed this article for the Nov. 1, 2000 edition of the Ripsaw newspaper. The Saloon later became Temple Bar and then Mike’s Place.]
I was just about ready to sit down to a drink a six-pack of Old Peculiar, devour a carton of grade-D chop suey and watch the USA cable network movie, when it happened. Now, I’m no psychic, but I could feel — I just knew — someone in this town was giving away beer. You can’t just ignore a feeling like that. I stuck my untouched food and drink in the fridge, jammed a tape in the VCR to record the Addams Family double-feature and headed off into the night to seek my destiny.
I remembered that the Bayfront Blues Saloon had recently closed and reopened as, simply, the Saloon. The blues version of the saloon was always a mediocre experience waiting to happen, so I thought I’d check out the new and improved action. (more…)
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…)
R.I.P Todd Eckart
News broke today that Duluth musician Todd Eckart was one of two people killed in a head-on automobile collision in the southbound lanes of U.S. Highway 53 at Berg Park Road in Amnicon Township on Oct. 22.
Eckart was one of the city’s busiest performers, playing gigs at virtually every possible venue. Below is just a small sampling of his vast array of gig posters. (more…)
“Opiate War” by ©ontainer
When you live downtown, you see some things. I’m just a guy with windows. (more…)
Mittens
This mitten thing started when I sent The Maker a message asking about scraps. Pretty sure it was sometime in 2022, which I’m also pretty sure was last year. He and I didn’t really know each other. I had admired his work for a while. Maybe we had already sold some bicycle parts back and forth. But maybe that came after. I know and I don’t. Time gets weird as it piles up and evaporates, and I am a partially reliable narrator at best about these and a lot of other things.
My message asked if his work, which includes cutting up wool blankets to make remarkably nice anoraks and jackets for winter expeditions, ever leaves him with leftovers. I was hoping he could give me a piece of fabric just big enough for patching a couple buttonholes and a pocket corner on a plaid wool shirt I’d worn ungently since paying $7 for it at Savers. He sent back something like, “I’ve got a couple garbage bags full. You can have it all if you want it.” I said I did without knowing why. My only use for wool scraps was fixing those small spots on that one shirt, and Ms. LaCount (my wife) and I try hard to minimize our clutter. (more…)
PDD Shop Talk: We’re looking to hire an event calendar editor
The event submissions keep flowing into the PDD Calendar and our crew of four editors just isn’t enough to stay on top of it. We need to hire one more part-time helper.
But before we get into that, we lead with the standard reminder that Perfect Duluth Day is run by human beings and not machines. So if you appreciate it, drop a few bucks in the PayPal account. (more…)
Ripped at the Pickwick in 2000
[Editor’s note: For this week’s essay we’ve once again pulled out a relic from the archive of Slim Goodbuzz, who served as Duluth’s “booze connoisseur” from 1999 to 2009. Twenty-five years ago the Sultan of Sot paid a visit to Duluth’s venerable Pickwick, and composed this article for the Oct. 4, 2000 edition of the Ripsaw newspaper. The Pickwick’s bar underwent significant renovations in 2010 and now features televisions.]
Call me romantic, but when my special lady friend said she was growing tired of seedy dives, I decided to treat her to a classy night at the Pickwick, where the two of us could get ripped in style.
It shouldn’t really be that difficult to make a bar a comfortable place to imbibe, yet it’s surprising how many truly annoying bars there are in this area. The Pickwick has it just right: extremely dim lighting, dark wood paneling, good furniture, no neon beer lights, no tacky antique signs, no TVs. And even though the room is decorated with taxidermy, it’s as tasteful and interesting as taxidermy can be. The only things lacking are a good sound system and a room full of couches and armchairs. But since the bar serves mainly as an area for diners to wait for tables on busy nights, it’s extremely unlikely that the Pickwick will be booking live music or ordering La-Z-Boys anytime soon. (more…)
Save Our Signs: Grand Portage Monument and Voyageurs Park
My colleague is curating photos for the Save Our Signs project, and just heard Grand Portage National Monument and Voyageurs National Park have basically no signs recorded yet. (more…)
The Days That Sustain Us
It’s about nine in the morning. I’m sitting on a bench at the Rose Garden. Enjoying the sun, slight breeze and expecting the temperature to reach the mid-seventies. Truly a beautiful day. Days like this, when I can be outside, definitely sustain me.
About a month ago, on Aug. 17, Mayor Roger Reinert wrote a commentary for the Minnesota Star Tribune entitled “We’re actively shaping our city’s future.” In that commentary, Reinert stated, “Duluth is growing and thriving exactly because we are taking the deliberate and measurable action steps necessary to secure the future of our beloved Zenith City.”
Within several weeks of that piece coming out, I heard and confirmed that the mayor had decided not to hire a full-time sustainability officer to replace the former officer, Mindy Granley, who resigned in February. In fact, Reinart announced that the city was no longer looking for anyone to fill that position and the sustainability initiative was not a top priority.
In reflecting upon the mayor’s decision, I thought of something I read in Jordan Peterson’s book Beyond Order: 12 More Rules For Life. Jordan wrote, “It appears that the meaning that most effectively sustains life is to be found in the adoption of responsibility.” So I had to ask myself, was Reinert being a responsible mayor and public servant when he decided to not hire a sustainability officer. (more…)
Author, artist and entrepreneur Richard Comely spoke at UMD
I’m tired.
I woke early on Wednesday to Zoom briefly with the Arrowhead Regional Development Commission on a an exciting upcoming project (this is a teaser sentence for a future post) and then to meet Richard Comely at Perk Place Coffeehouse. (more…)
Duluth-area Theater Primer 2025-2026
The time of year for giant lawn skeletons, crunchy leaves and the theatrical arts is upon us. Though plays are put up year-round, the fall is when most theatrical organizations fire up a new season of productions. This primer lists upcoming shows from a bunch of Duluth-area theater entities, but first gives an overview of other theater options in the region. (more…)
Where is the Statue of Liberty?
Yes, it was a bit cheesy, but my kid loved to visit her down at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center. After all, the supposed distant relative of the sculptor of the original Lady Liberty donated the replica to Duluth in honor of its children.
This is what I know … (more…)
Minnesota Poets — but who are the Duluthians?
I’ve been going through public library discards, looking for Duluth authors in the mix. (I teach a course in Minnesota authors that leans hard into Duluth authors.) (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…)
PDD Shop Talk: Failure
Perfect Duluth Day attempted to launch an update to its WordPress theme this week. It failed. So we are continuing with the old theme and attempting to regroup. (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.
These Summer Days
On July 27, Northern News Now reported that Duluth had a heat index of 101 degrees, with Eveleth hitting 104 and Two Harbors reaching 106. Three days earlier, the lead story on NNN was about Minnesota having another air-quality alert due to the Canadian wildfires. It was also the 27th day that Duluth had been under an air-quality alert since May.
And then three days before that, on July 21, Wisconsin Public Radio ran a story about the Great Lakes region warming up about 3 degrees and precipitation increasing by 15%. A study by the Environmental Law and Policy Center showed that summer water temperatures on Lake Superior warmed up by 4.8 degrees between 1979 and 2023. Also, the region would likely see more extreme weather patterns, including 30 to 60 days of temperatures over 90 degrees.
Also, on July 21, there was an article in the New York Times headlined “Climate change is making fire weather worse for world’s forests.” According to a study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the area of forests lost to fire in 2023 and 2024 was at least two times greater than the annual average of the previous two decades. It reported that climate change is making severe fire weather more common around the world. (more…)