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…)
Selective Focus: Puppets and Poetry with Promontory Palace
Atlas posing at Studio Cafe with one of his puppet heads. Photo by Jess Morgan.
Since moving to Duluth from the South about two years ago, Atlas, or the artist behind Promontoy Palace, has been interweaving his solo artistic practice into local arts projects. His work can be found at the upcoming Dollhaus event, as well as an upcoming show in August at Studio Cafe. He utilizes puppets, poetry, paintings and ambient music to tell stories through a variety of mediums. To learn more about his current and upcoming work, check out the recent interview below. (more…)
Video Archive: Walter & Sheila’s Cheese Hole
To mark the 40th anniversary of the “Weird Al” Yankovic album Dare to Be Stupid, Nick Prueher posted a Facebook Reel with a clip from a July 7, 1985 AL-TV segment on MTV in which Yankovic runs down a list of fake tour stops, including Walter & Sheila’s Cheese Hole in Superior.
Yankovic actually did play a gig in Superior that year; he was a featured act at the Head of the Lakes Fair on Aug. 9, 1985.
Duluth to Liverpool in One Bottom
On June 19, 1920 — 105 years ago today — Scientific American published an article by Robert G. Skerrett editorializing in favor of the “Great Lakes being opened to the sea so that ocean-going craft can steam from Duluth to the Atlantic and thence along our neighboring seaboard or afar to the markets of Europe.” (more…)
Arrowhead Regional Arts Council 2025 Grant Recipients
The Arrowhead Regional Arts Council has announced its most recent grant recipients. (more…)
Selective Focus: Reverie with Kathryne Ford
Utilizing a variety of different mediums, including mirrors, projection, paint and a mold made for her actual teeth, Kathryne Ford curated “Reverie,” an installation exploring “thoughts and visions that rattle through my mind at 2 a.m.” The exhibit, containing images and objects nostalgic to childhood, are intended to make the audience feel both “lost and found,” said Ford, as “surreal moments are in a real medium.” To learn more about the Reverie art installation, open at Prøve Art Gallery through June 21, check out the interview with Ford below. (more…)
Rag Mag: More Duluth Literary History Hunting
This post, also looking for resources and connections for my fall 2025 course in Minnesota Writers, has two asks. (more…)
Radical Expression Through Self-Presentation
Participants in the third Dollhaus fashion show, held at the Main Club in Superior on Aug. 24, 2024. (Photos via Dollhaus)
More than half of Americans believe in some extraterrestrial form of life. Considering the size of the universe, it’s not inconceivable to imagine an alien touching down on our planet someday. So what would happen if, one day, an alien came to Earth? It would be nice to imagine a scenario where this unknown creature is embraced. However, our culture has proven time and time again that the unfamiliar is not tolerated. What can’t be understood, must cease to exist. If an alien came to America, it would be swiftly eradicated. (more…)
Music in the Weeds: Watershed Group
Watershed Group is an experimental jazz band specializing in improvised jams that can turn both ambient and psychedelic. Featuring Adam Kirsch on clarinet, Cory Quirk on drums, and producer Will Moore on bass, the band performed this original piece on the edge of a cliff high above the town of Grand Marais.
Music in the Weeds is a new video series from WTIP North Shore Community Radio that showcases northern Minnesota artists performing original music at scenic and meaningful locations around Cook County. It is produced by M. Baxley and Will Moore.
‘Cottage Core’ tea at the Loch
I recently attended an afternoon tea at the Loch. It was a joyful experience. (more…)
Writers, Artists and a Culture of Creativity in the Loch
Chance Lasher and Justin O. Rose meet to talk writing, art and creativity at the Loch game shop and cafe.
I visited the Loch on June 6 for an event celebrating and cultivating creativity. The event was sponsored by the Duluth Failed Poets Society. (more…)
PDD Quiz: Father’s Day Edition
Celebrate Father’s Day with a dad-adjacent PDD quiz!
A PDD quiz reviewing headlines from June 2025 will be published on June 29. Please submit question suggestions to Alison Moffat at alisonlinnaemoffat@gmail.com by June 24. (more…)
Lincoln Park salad shop moves to Lakeside; adds dining room
Ritual Salad owner Cori Zastera poses in the doorway of her new restaurant location in Lakeside. Zastera and friend Jenna Wersal, left, were prepping the building for paint June 11. (Photo by Mark Nicklawske)
A year after opening in Lincoln Park, a popular grab-and-go lunch counter and mystic shop is moving to a bigger building in Lakeside.
Ritual Salad & Apothecary plans to open a new restaurant in a former driving school at 4501 E. Superior St. this month. The business debuted last spring in a tiny, renovated building on the corner of Superior Street and 18th Avenue West. The move will increase indoor seating capacity from five to 25. (more…)
Poets from Minnesota in ‘Black Flag’ — but were any of them from Duluth?
At the Duluth Public Library sale, it seems that the Minnesota Poetry collection was weeded, deaccessioned.
I think that’s a loss. (more…)
Discovering Colleen Baldrica’s ‘Tree Spirited Woman’
In “Minnesota Writers Spotlight on Colleen Baldrica,” Kaelyn Hvidsten writes about discovering Baldrica’s Tree Spirited Woman tucked away in a Canal Park art shop.
Strings of Fire: The Soulful Sound of the Cimbalom
Moldovan virtuoso Ivan Curtean playing the cimbalom. (Photo by Janos Müpa)
This summer, audiences at the Northern Lights Music Festival in northeastern Minnesota will have a rare chance to experience a musical marvel: the cimbalom, an instrument both ancient and astonishing, brought vividly to life by Moldovan virtuoso Ivan Curtean. (more…)
Perfect Duluth Day Outdoor Summer Concert Primer 2025
Lu Starr performed in a backyard concert on June 7 to raise funds for Food Not Bombs, sharring the bill with Charlotte Montgomery, Elsa Krantz and Jerree Small. (Photo by Rich Narum)
The sun has put on its comically large sunglasses, which can only mean one thing — it’s time to soak up the rays and jam with some of the most anticipated musical acts hitting Duluth-area stages this summer. (more…)
Writing Communities: The Writing Group at Sara’s Table
Calyx Books was a significant creative force in shaping poetic life in Duluth. These two pages, from a Calyx Press book discussed in the Duluth Budgeteer, are a kind of evidence of that impact, creating and manifesting literary community. (more…)
Minnesota Historia: Top 10 Voyageur Statues
At long last, a countdown of the best voyageur statues in northern Minnesota, with tidbits on why the state is so fascinated by these colorful figures who worked as the long-haul truckers of the fur trade.
Minnesota Historia is a PBS North web series dedicated to Minnesota’s quirky past. It is hosted by Hailey Eidenschink and produced/edited/written by Mike Scholtz.
Wild Horses – “Sioux Falls”
Grand Rapids-based Americana band Wild Horses has released a new single, “Sioux Falls.” The lyric video was shot and edited by Cooper Baumgartner.
Coffee Landing Radio Theater premiere revives classic radio
Readers of Perfect Duluth Day know I am enchanted with International Falls and the Icebox Radio Theater. I write about it for the Duluth News Tribune too. For more than a decade, the Icebox Radio Theater has focused on the theater experience. The audio dramas developed under Jeffrey Adams’ artistic direction have been funny, moving, and technically well-executed. Some have won awards, including the Ambie Awards for Excellence in Audio. But, in many ways, as a podcast, the Icebox has focused on the theater and missed out on the charm of radio. (more…)
Lighthouse Live Sessions: Lydia Boyum
Lydia Boyum released her debut EP, Paradise Lost, in February. In this session from Lighthouse Recording Company in West Duluth, Boyum is joined by frequent collaborator Ryan Lane on background vocals and acoustic guitar. Together they performs three songs from the EP — “Beautiful Ruse,” “Eden” and “Psychedelic Daydreams.”
Minnesota Authors: Reading Like a Writer (Margaret D. Kennedy and Winnifred Elliott)
This Fall, I’m teaching Minnesota Authors: Reading Like a Writer (a subtitle I stole from my colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Superior). The goal of the class is to read like a writer, which is to say to be less interested in “what a text means” (that’s reading like a reader), but instead “how a text works” (that’s reading like a writer).
We also look at the mechanics of writing and publishing. The works of Michael Fedo are a gift in this. He has written extensively about being a writer. (more…)
Selective Focus: Robert Wildwood’s Outdoor Poetry
Outside the Poetry Dome in Chester Park. (Photo by Jess Morgan)
Duluthians wandering through Hillside-neighborhood parks or using the bus may have stumbled upon one of Robert Wildwood’s poetry collections hanging from a tree, or in other precarious or magical places. Wildwood shares about his latest outdoor poetry display in the interview below. (more…)