Selective Focus: Virtual Cinema from the Zinema
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnTRcRtlML8
Tired of the choices on Netflix and Amazon? Zeitgeist and Zinema and doing some innovative programming; you can buy a pass and they will email you a link to see a streaming movie. View it with or without the chat comments of other viewers. They streamed one of the absolute worst movies I’ve ever seen on Wednesday, Love on a Leash. I won’t go into it, but it was bad. But the experience was fun, and organizer Matt Dressel was modeling it after a Midnight Movies event where the expectation is that the movie sucks, the entertainment is crowd reactions. As terrible as the movie was, the virtual event was a hit. The programming also includes movies that aren’t terrible.
Zinema’s April 3 feature is a film by a local director, Gravedigger Dave’s Halfway House. Filmmaker Keith Hopkins will also be doing a Q&A. (more…)
OMC Smokehouse Cookbook raising funds for Lincoln Park
Tom Hanson of Duluth Grill / OMC Smokehouse / Corktown Deli and Brews / Noble Pour had to lay off 200 people due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s a big blow to the Lincoln Park neighborhood.
So Hanson is teaming up again with Robert Lillegard of Duluth’s Best Bread to publish the OMC Smokehouse Cookbook. (more…)
UMD’s 125th Anniversary: The Rare and Remarkable
On April 2, 1895 — 125 years ago today — Minnesota Governor David. M. Clough signed legislation approving the creation of the State Normal School at Duluth. It would be seven more years before classes were held, but nonetheless, the University of Minnesota Duluth traces its beginning to that moment in 1895. (more…)
Monthly Grovel: April 2020 COVID-19 Edition
Typically Perfect Duluth Day’s monthly pitch for donations brags about how many events we publish on the PDD Calendar and notes all the labor required to do it. In the past three weeks, however, most of that work has shifted to marking events “cancelled” or “postponed.” We are still publishing new events, but most of them are either “virtual” events happening online, or concerts and neighborhood celebrations planned several months into the future. So our mission continues, but it’s a much lamer mission, at least for the short term.
Why do we need your help now more than ever? Because when life gets cancelled the advertising revenue that keeps Perfect Duluth Day in business slowly disappears. Nearly every enterprise in town is struggling in these challenging times. (more…)
A Bit of Ren to Lift Our Spirits
A little entertainment for you. My daughter, Ren, is in a Superior-based band called One Less Guest. With the band’s upcoming gigs cancelled for the foreseeable future, she has been taking violin song requests and live streaming every few days in the hopes of lifting our collective spirits. I thought someone here might be in need of a little music on a chilly, homebound Tuesday.
Fairhaven Farm: Segment 1 of Northern Roots 2: Revitalizing Local Food in the Western Lake Superior Region
Local food is where it’s at! This video profiles Fairhaven Farm, an organic farm featuring an outdoor pizza oven located near Duluth. Information about how to sign up for community-supported agriculture shares is at fairhaven.farm. (more…)
Duluth Trivia Deck Sampler #46: Grand Finale
Here it is, the last one in the set of trivia cards from an old board game purchased at Savers. (more…)
The Playlist Presents: Cory Coffman
WDSE-TV‘s The PlayList Presents is a series of 5-minute segments featuring emerging musicians, including interview clips and a live performance. This episode focuses on Cory Coffman, with a performance of the song “Canvas and Color,” shot at Duluth Cider.
The PlayList Presents airs Thursday nights at around 8:20 p.m., after Making it Up North.
Iceberg Ride one year ago today *Do Not Attempt*
Do Not Attempt
Dave Mehling – “The Catfish Song”
Duluth native Dave Mehling covers Townes Van Zandt’s “The Catfish Song” in this video with images based on Tina Higgins Wussow’s short story “Wilting Point.”
PDD Quiz: March 2020
Well … it sure has been a month. Take a brief reprieve from everything else going on by testing your knowledge of local headlines.
The next PDD quiz, on Superior parks, will be published on April 12. Submit question suggestions to Alison Moffat at aklawite@d.umn.edu by April 9. (more…)
The Duluth Psychedelic Sermon – UPDATE with Video
Sentient Duluth awakens! Praise it!
When did I come to consciousness? Its bars and venues the wombs I gestated in, the booths and stages framed my embryogenesis. Birthing me to myself, I walk between trees. Light and water conspire mysteriously. My shadow stretches to the lake and covers it in the setting sun. Praise it!
I am bridges staring down into darkness and depth. I am mirrored streams carving the hillside like molten silver from a furnace pour, the lake a great ingot. More than anything, I am the lake. Gleaming as if the sun has transferred its powers to Lake Superior in guardianship, Lucifer abandoning hell to an angel of water. The lake is a tectonic plate of fire subducting at the shoreline, trapping the light in water like amber, a bowl of liquid light. Golden honeyed light, silver light like photographic emulsion, sepia light. Ore boats sailing the surface of white stars, red giants, blue neutron stars. Ore boats sailing out of faded, flaking photographs. The lake like Io, blinding bright, sea planet of perpetual ice cover, Jupiter blots out the sky rising over Superior. The lake a reflecting mirror like a planetary laser defense system, peering into every south-facing window on the hillside, light pouring into every home as the lake searches them with its blazing eye. Praise it! (more…)
Northeastern Minnesota COVID-19 Community Archive Project
Hello, PDD Community!
Imagine that 100 years from now you are researching the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic in Northeastern Minnesota. It’s easy to find dry statistics and numbers, but you want more. What were people thinking and feeling during this time? What informational materials and public art did they create? How were they helping each other? What did the day-to-day experience of this time look like in Duluth?
What if there were an archive of those experiences for you to explore? (more…)
The 2005 Duluth Art Institute Riot
Academic and Critical Excerpts, collated and footnoted by the Richardson brothers (Jim and Allen Richardson) (more…)
Pak’s Green Corner closing March 29
Pak’s Green Corner, a Thai-fusion restaurant in Superior, has announced it will close on March 29. The restaurant’s lease ends at the end of May, but COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders in Wisconsin and Minnesota pushed forward plans to shut down.
“What will we do next?” a letter to customers from the Pak’s team asked. “We will keep you posted by our Facebook page.”
The restaurant opened June 1, 2018 at 1901 Tower Ave. in Superior, the former location of Kenny Wong’s Oriental Express. Pak’s previously operated for two years in West Duluth, where it found instant acclaim. It was voted Perfect Duluth Day’s best new restaurant in 2013 and was featured on the national television show, Diners, Drive-ins and Dives in 2014.














