Duluth Traverse Bike Ride Time Lapse
Lane Ellis presents this GoPro 10 time-lapse video showing most of his recent 43-mile west-to-east mountain bike ride on the Duluth Traverse, ending at Lester Park during the Lester River Rendezvous.
Selective Focus: Fall Colors 2024
For a few weeks starting mid September, the fall leaves in Duluth are at their most vibrant. Maples turn around Labor Day and birch and poplar closer to Lake Superior begin to turn in early October. Hike the North Shore or head to the top of the hill for a marvelous show of red, burgundy, orange, yellow and gold.
Featured here is Perfect Duluth Day’s annual collection of select images from Instagram showcasing nature’s palette. (more…)
PDD Geoguessr #27: Duluth’s Former Telephone Exchanges
Photo of the Hemlock Exchange in 1920 by Hugh McKenzie. (Photo from the Northeast Minnesota Collections of the Kathryn A. Martin Library)
A year after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, George W. Coy set up the first telephone exchange. Making a call to a specific phone required plugging the right cord into the right socket, and that required a person working out of an exchange building. Photos from the Minnesota Digital Library show the Duluth neighborhood exchanges that were operated by the Northwestern Bell Telephone Company in 1920. This post discusses the role of telephone exchanges as a source of employment for women in Duluth with a Geoguessr challenge that reveals what those telephone exchanges look like now. (more…)
Thoughts on Caesarean Section
Until recently, my vision of childbirth was driven by television. Situation comedies taught me to imagine a woman reclined in a bed. The husband stands slightly behind her and to the left, holding her hand, which is squeezed every time the birthing mom hears “push!” from the doctor.
Nearly every part of that picture was fabricated for television.
I have only recently come to understand that, while we imagine the mother or birthing person to be the center of the picture of birth in the United States, in fact, she is sometimes pushed to the side while the doctor takes over. (more…)
Mary Bue – “Right Now”
Mary Bue frolics her way across Minnesota in her new music video “Right Now.” The track is from her ninth album, The Wildness of Living and Dying, due out in early 2025. The video was directed by Jon Herchert of Deck Night Productions.
Envisioning Threats to Great Lakes Shorelines
Duluth features prominently in this segment from the latest episode of Great Lakes Now, a monthly program focused on developments affecting the lakes. The show is produced by Detroit PBS in partnership with a network of PBS affiliates around the region.
Inside the Leif Erikson Park Amphitheater
The latest video from Duluth Urbex explores the space under the stage at Leif Erikson Park‘s outdoor amphitheater. The structure, completed in 1928, was designed by Abraham Holstead and William Sullivan.
Illustrating Hunger and Homelessness: Chelsea Froemke
Art by Nelle Rhicard at reframeideas.com.
Food insecurity, housing insecurity, poverty and social justice are intertwined, a knot of problems facing our community. Thirteen percent of Duluthians face food insecurity, and more than 54% of renter-households are rent burdened. Often these difficult social problems are addressed by nonprofit organizations that run food pantries or housing shelters. They build affordable housing and support people living on the street. While these workers are heroes, they are also human, and their stories are also intertwined with larger issues like poverty and social justice. These frontline workers are also often former college students who enter the job market with the consequential task of supporting those who others have left behind. (more…)
Superior Porchfest 2024 Recap Video
The 2024 season of Superior Porchfest concluded on Sept. 5. The event is a free, family-friendly music and art series in which attendees can bring a blanket or lawn chair, pack a picnic and/or simply stop by to enjoy the show. The performances are typically held either on a residential porch or at a city park.
PDD Quiz: September 2024
Another month is in the books: how much of it do you remember? Check your memories of September 2024 headlines with this week’s quiz!
A Halloween-y PDD quiz comes your way on Oct. 13. Please submit question suggestions to Alison Moffat at aklawite@d.umn.edu by Oct. 10. (more…)
Mystery Photo: Zweifel Studio Composite Print
John Rudolph Zweifel was a Duluth-based photographer from roughly 1885 to 1935. Several of his cabinet card portraits have appeared in Perfect Duluth Day’s “Mystery Photo” series over the years. Now a composite print of his work samples has emerged. (more…)
Iconic Curious Goods building for sale in Superior
Taimi Ranta has owned the Curious Goods building for about 35 years. (Photos by Mark Nicklawske)
A widely photographed building on one of the funkiest street corners in Superior is up for sale after a long run as an antique store, warehouse and spare apartment.
The Curious Goods building, 1717 Winter St., just off Tower Avenue, has been put up for sale by owner Taimi Ranta after about 35 years of using the property for her antique and vintage sales business. While Curious Goods featured an enticing and colorful storefront the space has been used only as a warehouse for the past two decades. (more…)
Alan Sparhawk – “Heaven”
Alan Sparhawk‘s solo album White Roses, My God drops on Friday. “Heaven” is the third video release from the record. It was directed and edited by Rick Alverson.
More on Sparhawk and the new album in the New York Times: “Alan Sparhawk of Low Lost His Other Half. He’s Learning to Sing Again.“
Minnesota mystery beast stalking the northwoods
The Voyageurs Wolf Project posted trail-camera video one month ago showing a “wolf-dog like animal wandering forests of northern Minnesota.” The scenes were captured last winter and the release of the video garnered considerable media attention — with some organizations offering competent reporting and others maybe more focused on a clickbait headline than careful attention to detail. A new version of the video, embedded above, pokes fun at some headlines that emerged after the initial video was released. (more…)
Ichiro Sushi & Ramen wows guests on Miller Hill
Bella, the robot server at Ichiro Sushi & Ramen, glides through the Duluth restaurant. (Photos by Melinda Lavine)
A cat-eared robot buzzed around Ichiro Sushi & Ramen. “Bella” sported white digital whiskers up top, and in its fur-less belly sat plates of fried rice and sushi.
After a series of silent maneuvers, Bella stopped at a table of two, where Cody Tesser served fellow humans their orders from the robot’s racks. (more…)
Postcard from the Incline
This undated postcard shows Duluth’s Incline Railway, which operated from 1891 to 1939. The tram system carried passengers from a housing development at the top of the hillside into the downtown along Seventh Avenue West.
PDD Geoguessr #26: Duluth City Limits
Arriving in Duluth (Photo by Matthew James)
“Twenty-six miles long and an average of 2-1/2 miles wide, Duluth is squeezed between rocky bluffs and the waterfront of Lake Superior and the St. Louis River,” a National Geographic reporter wrote when describing the city in 1949. This post describes some of the stranger contours of our long and narrow city with a Geoguessr challenge at the end to test your knowledge of the city limits. (more…)
Hoodies Are Stupid
I have four hooded sweatshirts in my closet. That’s probably not an unusual number, because the hoodie is a popular shirt style. It also seems like a very practical garment, designed to keep people warm and cozy. It’s like an indoor/outdoor jackety blanket for people who don’t want to feel weird about wearing a jacket inside or a blanket outside.
Though I sometimes wear hoodies and appreciate the idea behind the design, I don’t actually like them. The reason is that there are really only two things that differentiate a hoodie from a sweatshirt — the hood and the kangaroo pocket. And both of those things are stupid.
Yet, somehow, hoodies are far more popular than regular sweatshirts. The reason, I think, is because most people believe they sincerely like the hood and the jumbo single-pocket abdominal pad. But really, they don’t. They just can’t.
Surely hoodie lovers have been waiting for decades for someone to come along and explain how stupid they are. Well, here I am. Society is now just a few paragraphs away from the end of the hoodie, because everyone is going to agree with me, change their ways immediately, and heap praise upon me for freeing them from their misguided perceptions of fashion and comfort. (more…)
Shaky Ray Records Reissues?
I don’t remember where I heard this, but is it true that Shaky Ray Records is planning to reissue its local music recordings?
Big Into – “Used to Go”
The latest music video from Big Into includes cameos by a variety of other Iron Range rockers, but the real star is a cheese-flavored cracker. The video was shot at Mesaba Co-op Park near Hibbing.
Guide to Duluth-area Blogs
The journey of blogging from personal to institutional has been slow and steady, but there are still individuals crafting creative narratives about their lives and the things they love. Of course, there are also organizations that want to promote tourism, hotel rooms and merchandise by mixing in lists of the ten best trails to lure in readers. Whether the medium is better or worse in 2024 than in 2004 is up for debate, but blogging is, at least on some level, still a thing.
Every two years or so, Perfect Duluth Day scans the web to see who’s active in the local blogosphere, compiling a comprehensive-as-possible guide to the region’s active web logs. Below is the roundup as of September 2024. (more…)
Homestead Aurora
Duluth photographer Tone Coughlin captured northern lights scenes from Monday night’s stronger-than-expected solar storm. “It peaked around 10:30 pm and was so strong you could see it with the moon lighting up the foreground!” Coughlin wrote in the YouTube description of his video. “Another wonderful light show.”
Climate>Duluth: Andrew Boyd
Climate>Duluth host Tone Lanzillo interviews author and activist Andrew Boyd in episode #29. Boyd is the author of the book I Want a Better Catastrophe,” published in 2023 by NSP Books, and co-creator and CEO of Climate Clock.
PDD Quiz: Superior School Daze
Hit the books and test your smarts with this week’s quiz about Superior schools. (And check out a similarly-themed PDD quiz on historic Duluth schools here).
The next PDD current events quiz will be published on Sept. 29. Please submit question suggestions to Alison Moffat at aklawite@d.umn.edu by Sept. 25. (more…)