Answer eleven questions, potentially win $100
Every two years or so, the Perfect Duluth Day Marketing Weasel crawls out from behind his desk and demands a survey be conducted. The purpose is to gather information to aid in the selling of little square advertisements to fund the operation of this website. In order to make this infiltration of PDD’s blog content space seem tolerable, the survey is kept to a simple one-page, eleven-question, completely optional task with a $100 prize drawing when the survey period ends.
The survey is now complete; thanks to those who participated.
If you are offended about even being asked, we understand. All we can do is meekly apologize and point out PDD’s content is always offered completely free to readers. We don’t run pop-up ads, we don’t scramble our pages like ugly jigsaw puzzles with cheesy animations and auto-playing videos. We just run a few modest little promotional squares for businesses that are almost entirely local and reputable. (There is one ad dished out by Google Adsense that we roll our eyes at from time to time, but that’s as bad as it gets.) (more…)
Endion Owl
Duluth police officer Richard LeDoux photographed this barred owl sitting on the hood of his squad car at the intersection of 21st Avenue East and Superior Street in Duluth. The owl stayed there about a minute and then flew off.
Duluth News Tribune: Owl lands on Duluth squad car
Masonic building gets new life from sailboat accessory company
ShipShape Canvas owners and employees, pictured from left: Thomas Welinski, Tami Sanders, Jonathan Fure, Alice Carlson, Andy Radtke, owners Barb and Jim Welinski.
A growing sailboat accessory manufacturer will move its operations into a historic and long-abandoned West Duluth property this spring.
ShipShape Canvas has purchased the former Euclid Lodge 198 at 611 N. Central Ave. Founded in 2006, the company is currently located at 732 E. Fourth St., where it makes custom canvas covers for sailboats in winter storage. (more…)
R.I.P. St. Margaret Mary Church of Morgan Park
The two photos above, posted to Facebook by Tim Beaulier, show yesterday’s demolition of St. Margaret Mary Church in Duluth’s Morgan Park neighborhood. WDIO-TV’s Eyewitness News reported last week the church was set to be razed. (more…)
Duluth Smells Ocean Breezes
Below is the complete text of a Duluth story from page six of The Observer out of Saline, Mich., from Thursday, June 14, 1934, reprinted from Collier’s magazine. (more…)
Duluth MakerSpace in full swing
Duluth’s 10,000+ sq. ft. cooperative member workshop is in full swing this month. Duluth MakerSpace offers a different class or event every night in February — everything from welding to electronics to soap making. Wednesday nights are also free demo nights with a different demonstration each week.
Paid membership is not necessary to take classes or attend demo nights. (more…)
Gaelynn Lea on Sexuality and Disability
Duluth’s Gaelynn Lea gave a lecture titled “Sexuality and Disability: Forging Identity in a World that Leaves You Out” during a TEDx event at Yale University in October. It made its way to YouTube a few weeks ago.
Lea once felt left out of mainstream dating and beauty culture due to her physical disability. In her talk, she recounts the epiphany that empowered her to pursue life, love and a musical career on her own terms.
Sixteen Years on the Superior Hiking Trail: The Double Finish
Writing about hiking the full 300+ miles of the Superior Hiking Trail hasn’t quite taken as long as hiking it, but it’s gone on long enough. At sixteen years and thirteen chapters, the story now concludes.
I had just a dozen miles left to go in 2015, which were divided into four slightly quirky hikes.
The first was a 1.8-mile section from Triangle Trail to Oak Trail near Jay Cooke State Park. Some of it I had probably already covered a few years earlier, I just wasn’t quite certain. So I embarked on a “van-bike-hike” adventure to make sure any possible gap there was covered. This involved driving to the Jay Cooke Visitor Center, unloading a bike, cycling the Munger Trail to bypass parts of the SHT I’d already done, ditching my bike at the Greely/Triangle trail intersection, completing the short hike, and cycling back.
You’ll have to trust me when I say that was fun. The description makes it sound like I was running a complicated errand. The thing is, being obsessive and task-oriented can be a method for forcing one’s self into situations that can be a bit more out of the ordinary. So, compared to hiking the trail behind my house for the 17,000th time, the van-bike-hike was a memorable event. (more…)
Selective Focus: Jeff Lemke
Jeff Lemke operates a web site, Twin Ports Rail History, and Flickr account where he posts photos he has taken as well as photos he has collected documenting the history of the rail business in Duluth and Superior. We are showing a very small sample of the images here, but you really need to check out the collection he has, as well as read his descriptions for each photo. If you are so inclined, you can also donate to keep the project going. It really is an impressive historical collection.
J.L: Most people look at my site and think it is about trains. Perception is reality in most cases. But for those who actually look closer and read the details of each image that I post, they discover that it’s really a developing story in pictures about the people who worked for the railroads and the industries that those railroads collectively served. The locomotives, railroad cars, and facilities that each railroad used were in a constant state of flux—right from the beginning. During the late 1880s railroads like the Northern Pacific and Great Northern established strongholds of land in Duluth and Superior respectively, on which they built their inland-port empires. Other railroads came along, prospered too, but to a much lesser degree.
(more…)
Two Harbors photographer in Iceland
John Gregor is in Iceland. So beautiful.
Underwater Ice-scapes
Footage from the icy shallows of January.
Juice Pharm taking over Vintage Kitchen space
Set aside the biscuits and gravy, and get ready for freshly squeezed. The Juice Pharm has announced it’s taking over the space formerly occupied by Vintage Kitchen at 12 S. 15th Ave. E. (more…)
Ear to the Ground: Charlie Parr
A session and interview with Duluth musician Charlie Parr filmed and recorded in Saranac Lake, N.Y., in July 2015. It’s part of Beehive Productions‘ “Ear to the Ground” series featuring sessions and interviews exploring the artists and places that make up roots music culture.
Upcoming Charlie Parr gigs:
Feb. 8 at Red Herring Lounge with Devil’s Flying Machine
Feb. 9 at Clyde Iron Works with the Boomchucks
Feb. 11 at First United Methodist Church
Bob Monahan gives Duluth music scene ‘some backbone’
This week’s issue of the Twin Cities tabloid City Pages is dubbed “The People Issue” and focuses on “18 who make Minnesota a better place to live.” Among those featured with the likes of Minnesota Vikings tight end and humanitarian Kyle Rudolph and craft beer entrepreneur Kathleen Culhane is Duluth’s Bob Monahan, owner of Chaperone Records and the Red Herring Lounge, referred to as “Duluth’s music mayor.”
Postcards from First United Methodist Church of Duluth
Before there was a “Coppertop Church” in Duluth, First Methodist Episcopal occupied the corner of Third Avenue West and Third Street. The 1,800-seat brownstone structure was dedicated on Feb. 5, 1893, closed in November 1966, and was razed in 1969. It was known as “the Meth” … because those were simpler times.
The new First United Methodist Church was built on seven acres of land on Skyline Parkway bought at public auction in 1959. Construction began on “The Coppertop Church” in 1966, based on architectural designs by Pietro Bellushi.
Shooting the Life-Line at Duluth, Minn.
This postcard was mailed from Duluth on July 24, 1907, and arrived two days later in the mailbox of Mr. A. G. Pack, Jr. of 823 Colorado Ave., Colorado Springs, Colo. It does not necessarily depict a Duluth scene; versions of this postcard exist for Wildwood, N.J.; Atlantic City, N.J. and probably other cities. (more…)
Where in Superior?
For the 155th installment of Perfect Duluth Day’s ultra-thrilling photo-trivia sensation “Where in Duluth?” we cross the bridge to ask, “Where in Superior was this photo taken?”
Superior Siren – “Nightmare”
Another round of NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest is underway, with the winner to be announced in March. Duluth’s Gaelynn Lea took top honors in 2016.
Local band Superior Siren‘s 2017 submission is for a song called “Nightmare.” (The video was embedded here but has since been removed from YouTube.)
Superior Hiking Trail Association seeking new executive director
The Superior Hiking Trail Association, headquartered in Two Harbors, is seeking a dynamic leader to serve in the role of executive director.
The SHTA is dedicated to constructing, maintaining and promoting a world-class 310-mile natural surface trail paralleling Lake Superior from Wisconsin to Ontario. The 5,000-plus member organization has a small knowledgeable staff, a passionate group of volunteers and a committed, active board of directors dedicated to the success of a new strategic plan. (more…)
PDD Quiz: January 2017
[This post originally contained an embedded quiz created on the platform Qzzr. It is no longer available at its source.]
How much do you remember about this first month of 2017? Take the quiz and find out.
Duluth is a Giant Ice Rink: Bombing Chester Creek Trail Edition
I would NOT do this further up the trail where there are sheer drops.
Hell of a View
Not having grown up in Duluth, I missed the purported crosstown rivalry. My tribe lives next door, across the border: the People of the Cheese.
Duluth: “Where rail meets sail.” Where rustic meets rustbelt. Where woodtick meets moonbeam, and uphill meets down. You’re a microcosmic casserole, a dichotomous hotdish, Duluth, where stone meets water, and water meets sky. Actually, between water and sky is a thin slice of Wisconsin, appearing blue because of the way light scatters across the distance, and sometimes distance is good. You see, people often end a sentence with the phrase, “but there’s always Wisconsin,” as in, “we can’t get no drunker here, but there’s always Wisconsin,” or, “we don’t make lampshades from human skin, but there’s always
Wisconsin,” and so on, lending a certain comfort to the color blue, and the distance it conveys.
Driving into downtown from the west feels like entering an architect’s model, as the street burrows between stubby office buildings along the table of land between harbor and hill. When I moved here, freeway and mall had already drawn and quartered the business district, and it was the nadir of the Reagan recession. The industrial boomtown started busting as the high-grade ore played out in the 1950s, and by the late ’70s competition from abroad arrived, along with bumper stickers reading, “ Eat Your Foreign Car.” While the early ’80s were cloaked in a campaign slogan touting, “Morning in America,” around here we wondered if there was a bottom to this freefall, which might at least afford a dead-cat bounce. (more…)