Homegrown photo banners
Once again, we’re looking for Homegrown Music Festival photo banners to rotate at the top of pages on Perfect Duluth Day. Photos of bands, friends, events or general shenanigans. Keep in mind, the photos get cropped to extreme horizontal proportions. If you want to crop ’em yourself (1135 pixels wide by 197 pixels high) and send them, super dooper. Or you can send them uncropped and I’ll do my best to make them fit.
Click here for complete submission guidelines, but the basics are: 1135 pixels wide by 197 pixels high, e-mail them to banners@perfectduluthday.com. We’ll get them in the rotation during the Homegrown Music Festival, starting this weekend. (more…)
Lutsen b roll
[arve url=”https://youtu.be/m6rcSwrtkZ0″]
Brianna Hall-Nelson and 10 of her friends gathered for hygge, music, snowshoeing, and general merry making on the North Shore this January. It’s almost enough to make one nostalgic for winter. Almost. Videography by Sam Tuthill.
National Bank Notes of Duluth
There are still a few national currency bank notes with Duluth bank names floating around, mostly held by collectors. This type of currency was eliminated in the 1930s. The note above is from Northern National Bank of Duluth and was issued in 1908. In the portrait is U.S. Treasury Secretary Hugh McCulloch, who also named the streets in Duluth’s Lakeside neighborhood, including one after himself. (More on McCulloch in the comments.) (more…)
Duluth Band Profile: Charlotte Montgomery
Charlotte Montgomery wrote a somber coming-of-age story with Lonesome Ghost of Me. During a frustrating period, she found strength in unlikely places. Click on the image above to hear the podcast.
Upcoming gigs:
May 3 at Legacy Glassworks during Homegrown Music Festival
June 21 at Lake Superior Brewing Company
Mystery Photo #90: Duluth Photo Engraving Company
This old photo is from the Duluth Photo Engraving Company. Is that stage recognizable? Is this the cast of a play? What’s the deal with this image?
Duluth Superior Film Festival 2019 Trailer
Here’s the official trailer for the 2019 Duluth Superior Film Festival. May 29 to June 2 with a kick-off at the NorShor featuring Mike Scholtz’s hilarious new documentary Riplist.
We still need volunteers, so if you’d like to help out, please e-mail Marin Molander at marin.molander @ gmail.com. Volunteers get a bunch of cool stuff for helping out (four hours minimum).
Mousecanceheimer’s
Tig Notaro famously did a stand-up routine in which she announced she had cancer. It was lauded as one of the most incredible moments in stand-up history, and she was extolled as a pioneer in comedy for really working the fine edge of the tragedy + time = comedy equation many comics venerate as the best method of joke construction. I’ve listened to the routine — it’s as good as it’s rumored to be. Better, maybe, because of Notaro somehow putting into the fewest possible words the absurdity of human life in an undeniable way. A laser cut around the heart, but in the shape of a fart.
In this magnificent routine, Notaro jokes that people always say that “God never gives you more than you can handle,” and then goes on to imagine the angels watching God handing down Notaro’s few months of life, questioning God’s sobriety: in just a few months, Notaro almost died from an intestinal infection, her mother died in a household accident, and then she was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer in both breasts. The space between these events was long enough for her to make the phone calls necessary to tell anyone that one of the things had just happened. It’s preposterous. And inexplicably shitty. (more…)
Francis Chapin at the Art Institute of Chicago
Railroad Yard, Duluth, 1918–1965
There are a few works by Francis Chapin at the Art Institute of Chicago. More info about Chapin can be found on Wikipedia. (more…)
The Slice: Astronaut John Harrington
John B. Herrington, the first member of a federally recognized tribe – Chickasaw – to travel to space, was in the Twin Ports last month as part of the UW-Superior Distinguished Diversity Lecture and Art Series. In this clip he talks about his work on the International Space Station.
In its series The Slice, WDSE-TV presents short “slices of life” that capture the events and experiences that bring people together and speak to what it means to live up north.
Coal Depot, Duluth Harbor
Coal Depot, Duluth Harbor, Stuart David Klipper
The Art Institute of Chicago has many cool works of art with a Duluth connection available online. (more…)
Duluth Band Profile: The Great Unwilling
The Great Unwilling blends fuzzy guitar tones with heavy distortion. Band members explain how EP was a chance to rediscover themselves. Click on the image above to hear the podcast.
Upcoming gig:
May 4 at Pizza Lucé during Homegrown Music Festival
Video: Duluth State of the City Address 2019
Duluth Mayor Emily Larson gives her fourth State of the City Address in the gymnasium at Myers-Wilkins Elementary School.
Eric T. Anderson of Duluth
This photo of Eric T. Anderson, age 56 circa 1963, born in Duluth, is part of the collection at the Art Institute of Chicago. It was taken by Danny Lyon.
I don’t know the story or the man. Do you?
The Saturday Evening Post’s Duluth of 1949
Seventy years ago — April 16, 1949 — Duluth was featured in The Saturday Evening Post as part of the magazine’s series on “America’s most colorful cities.” The lengthy article by Arthur W. Baum was the 65th in the series, and features photographs by Frank Ross.
The intro text reads: “Once a bleakly unpromising village, this now great grain and ore center has survived many a stunning setback — thereby making her smart-aleck detractors look foolish. The cheif hazard of life here is this: You never know when a wild bear will drop in for breakfast.”
(more…)New York Times looks at Duluth as climate-change refuge
“As the West burns, the South swelters and the East floods, some Americans are starting to reconsider where they choose to live,” writes New York Times climate reporter Kendra Pierre-Louis in an article suggesting people might someday migrate to Duluth to escape global warming. (more…)
Woodchucc Szn
John Degelau sends one out to the woodchucks in this 2018/’19 video of ski stunts.
Jack Schmid, Peter Lochner, Gordon Buffington, Kendozer, Ben Thelen, Garret Schwindt, Mitchell Kasper, and Dylan O’Connor are credited for shooting the clips.
Duluth Band Profile: MRS. & the Sordid Affairs
Moriah Skye of MRS. & the Sordid Affairs explains the backstory behind Thick. She opens up about the challenges of being a transgender musician in contemporary society. Click on the image above to hear the podcast.
Upcoming gig:
May 3 at Pizza Lucé during Homegrown Music Festival
PDD Quiz: Homegrown Innovations Edition
In honor of the upcoming Homegrown Music Festival, this PDD quiz examines inventions, innovations, and ideas that were “homegrown” in the Duluth area.
The next PDD quiz will review headlines from April 2019 and will be published on April 28. Please email question suggestions to Alison Moffat at aklawite@d.umn.edu by April 25. (more…)
Selective Focus: 2019 Frozen Four Champion UMD Bulldogs
Instagram images related to the UMD Bulldogs 2019 Frozen Four championship. (more…)
Ripped at Score Sports Bar & Grill in 2009
[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. Few people will remember Score Sports Bar & Grill; it existed for a brief period spanning 2008 and 2009 at 21 N. Fourth Ave. W. in Downtown Duluth. The location is best known for Duluth Athletic Club Bar & Grill, but six different bar/restaurants occupied the space during a 15-year span at the turn of the millennium. Ol’ Slim paid a visit in April 2009 to file this report for the weekly Transistor.]
Considering the proximity to Duluth Police headquarters, not to mention the cops actually working right inside the door, it’s a bit surprising to see the sidewalk outside Score Bar slippery with a fine, fresh spray of urine, and littered with an array of beer cans. Then again, I’d bet that none of the kids sucking on Michelob Golden Light inside the place are attending the University of Minnesota Duluth on a scholarship.
And sure enough, as I walk in the door, some sorry tyke is leaning against the wall and mopping tears from his cheeks as one of Duluth’s finest writes him up. The crime undoubtedly has something to do with pulling out his trouser snake right there on Fourth Avenue West, which will be his claim to fame in the newspaper’s “Matters of Record” column, his greatest achievement before flunking out of business school, hopping into the 2009 Chevy Silverado his proud parents bought for him and driving back to Anoka or wherever the fuck sorry losers like this spring from. (more…)
Selective Focus: Sometimes it Snows in April
https://www.instagram.com/p/BwKDJuPlAo8/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
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Duluth Homegrown on Rockin’ the Suburbs podcast
https://embeds.audioboom.com/posts/7226155-rarities-bob-mould-paul-westerberg/embed/v4?eid=AQAAAEinrFwrQ24A
Duluth’s Homegrown Music Festival gets five minutes of attention on Rockin’ the Suburbs, a “podcast dedicated to exploring all forms of rock and pop music, from the perspective of two music-crazed suburbanites, Jim Lenahan and Patrick Foster.” (more…)
The Slice: Quiltfire
Scott “Starfire” Lunt’s quilt show is on display in the Kruk Gallery at the University of Wisconsin-Superior until the end of April.
In its series The Slice, WDSE-TV presents short “slices of life” that capture the events and experiences that bring people together and speak to what it means to live up north.