Alan Sparhawk announces solo album in New Yorker article
The Heart of Low | The New Yorker
Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker’s marriage was one of the most extraordinary collaborations in rock. Now, a year and a half after Parker’s death, Sparhawk is back on the road.
newyorker.com
The New Yorker published an article today on Duluth musician Alan Sparhawk, chronicling his career in the seminal indie-rock band Low and concluding with news about his latest recordings. “The fruits of this work will be released this fall under his own name, as a record called White Roses, My God,” reads the article’s final sentence.
Two miracles inspire new cannabis grow store in Lincoln Park
Marios Glitsos, right, and fiancé Brooke Joyce are opening Grow Your Own Garden Supply at 1801 W. Michigan St. in Lincoln Park. The store will specialize in cannabis cultivation. (Photo by Mark Nicklawske)
It took at least two miracles for longtime cannabis grower Marios Glitsos to open a new Duluth garden supply store. (more…)
Emerging Artist Showcase: Nolen Sellwood
The Current’s Emerging Artists Showcase at the Duluth Masonic Temple in January brought together musicians from communities across the region to showcase and develop the next generation of songwriters and performers.
On the bill was folk musician Nolen Sellwood, a student at the University of Minnesota Duluth. His full performance is in the embedded video above.
A & Dubs won’t open in summer 2024
A & Dubs, Duluth's first and last drive-in restaurant, won't reopen this year - Duluth News Tribune | News, weather, and sports from Duluth, Minnesota
Owners say health concerns forced them to forego reopening for the summer season.
duluthnewstribune.com
A & Dubs owners Syl and Sandy Hantz posted on the restaurant’s Facebook page that they will not reopen their drive-in Lincoln Park burger joint this summer. It was founded as an A & W in 1948 and parted with the chain to become A & Dubs in 1973. (more…)
PDD Geoguessr Challenge #15: Duluth’s Sister Cities – Växjö, Sweden
Växjö, Sweden. Photo based on an interpretation of aerial imagery by Microsoft Flight Simulator.
Växjö – pronounced Vequa according to the YouTube videos I watched — has been Duluth’s sister city since 1987. With a population of 80,000, it’s approximately the size of Duluth. Also like Duluth, it has a significant student population, with Linnaeus University just outside the city center. In 1991, Växjö became the first city in the world to set a goal of becoming fossil fuel-free. In 2007, it won the Sustainable Energy Europe Award for being the greenest community in the EU. (more…)
Ripped at C.W. Chips Bar & Grill in 2004
[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. Twenty years ago the Sultan of Sot paid a visit to C.W. Chips Bar & Grill and composed this article for the April 2004 issue of the Ripsaw magazine. At the time, there was a Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of Duluth City Hall, which was moved to Canal Park later that year. C.W. Chips closed in early 2005 when the building was purchased by the Whole Foods Co-op.]
Because I’ve spent the past several years trolling the suckholes and boozehalls of this wreck of a city, because I’m cheaper than a Mexican proctology exam and because I like to control my own drunken experience, I like to drink at home. Preferably alone.
Tonight, however, my sometimes pal Ricky Flours is in town and we’ve pissed away enough time together in my cramped, dingy apartment to know that we need to remove ourselves from the sticky, bottle-filled dungeon I call Chez Goodbuzz. I’ve become a hermit, and Ricky is little more than a purring cat lying around on my floor. We don’t have to go to C.W. Chips, but we can’t stay here. (more…)
Duluth Mail Bag: Safe Streets, Tabling
As a two-time former Duluth city councilor, one of my goals is to make city government more accessible, or at least help citizens become more informed. I figure there are many Duluthians who would like some simple answers to some simple questions. I learned in school that if there is something you don’t understand it’s likely there are many others who feel the same way. Hence the idea of the Duluth Mailbag column.
I won’t divulge who is asking the questions, but I’ll answer them in this format about once a month. Feel free to put a question in the comments for next month’s “Duluth Mailbag” or tweet me via @Hobbs_Duluth or email me at hobbsforduluth @ gmail.com.
Also, if you want to have a longer conversation, you can sign up for a 45-minute cup of coffee through my 100 Cups of Coffee project.
OK, here we go! (more…)
Abandoned Scrapbooks from circa 1939 to 1947
“Someone dropped a dozen scrapbooks with Duluth newspaper clippings on my front porch,” began the email from Tony Dierckins. “Would you like them?”
“No,” I said out loud to myself before replying to Tony with questions about what the scrapbooks might contain. (more…)
Nolen Sellwood – “Lavender”
Nolen Sellwood‘s 2024 NPR Tiny Desk Contest submission is a video for the song “Lavender,” a track from his upcoming album Cadence to the Flame, scheduled for release June 7. The video was shot by Tanner Miller.
Screaming at Lake Superior
Last year, Duluthians gathered behind Leif Erickson Park to scream at Lake Superior. The April Fools’ Day screaming session was initiated by Ryan Glenn. “I originally posted the event […] to be sort of a joke, so in case it flopped it was on April 1,” they said. (more…)
PDD Quiz: March 2024
Close out the month of March and see how many newsworthy events you remember with this week’s current events quiz!
The next PDD quiz will preview the 2024 Homegrown Music Festival; it will be published on April 14. Submit question ideas to Alison Moffat aklawite@d.umn.edu by April 10. (more…)
Attention Billionaires: Get Bent
“And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.”
― William Gibson, Count Zero
Attention billionaires: get bent. As the recent “Cheerios” kerfuffle illustrates, Minnesota billionaire Karen Kathy Cargill is acting like a terrible neighbor in Duluth. Google her name to see the universally bad press she has unleashed upon herself. Basically, Mayor Roger Reinert had the temerity to point out that Cargill was not actually being helpful, and she ran crying to the Wall Street Journal, like ya do. It was there Cargill laid bare her toxic billionaire’s view of the world: “The good plans that I have down there […] forget it […] I think an expression that we all know — don’t pee in your Cheerios — well, [Reinert] kind of peed in his Cheerios right there, and definitely I’m not going to do anything to benefit that community.” Imperious much? Get bent. (more…)
Hermantown Fleet Farm property sold to North Dakota investors
The Fleet Farm property in Hermantown has been sold to a North Dakota investment firm for $30 million. (Photo by Mark Nicklawske)
The Fleet Farm big-box retail store property in Hermantown has been sold to a real estate investment firm based in Fargo, North Dakota for $30 million. (more…)
The Slice: KEBS Records
Tim “Edwards” Verthein and his daughter Stacia Rom operate what is believed to be the smallest record store in the world. KEBS Radio and Records is located at 311 Second St. in Bovey, about 80 miles northwest of Duluth. It opened in 2017.
In its series The Slice, PBS North 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.
Big League Manager Baseball Game from West Duluth
To mark the start of the 2024 baseball season we take a look back at the Big League Manager Baseball Game, which was made in Duluth beginning, as near as can be determined, 70 years ago in 1954. (more…)
Duluth Art Institute exhibitions moving to U.S. Bank building
The Duluth Art Institute has announced the location of its new gallery space. After 50 years at the St. Louis County Depot, the region’s foremost public art venue will move its galleries to the fourth floor of the U.S. Bank Building at 130 W. Superior St. (more…)
Duluth Van and Storage Company
The Looney Tunes animated short Design for Leaving was released on March 27, 1954 — 70 years ago today. One-minute into it, door-to-door salesman Daffy Duck shoves Elmer Fudd onto a nonstop bus headed to Duluth. Fudd returns moments later on a Duluth Van and Storage Company truck after Daffy has updated his home with futuristic appliances. (more…)
Park Point Land Grab
This Duluth News Tribune article talks about Kathy Cargill’s comments about Duluthians in the Wall St Journal.
Said a billionaire Heiress named Kathy
“The locals are yokels
Their houses are crappy”
No accounting for taste
She bulldozed in haste
And wonders why the neighbors aren’t happy
Selective Focus: When the winter that wasn’t, suddenly was
Instagram
1,738 likes, 6 comments - umnduluth on March 25, 2024: "UMD Bulldogs made the most of today’s snow day☃️
#UMDProud #UMDBulldogs #UMNDuluth".
instagram.com
Select images from Instagram showing scenes of what might normally be considered a very typical late-season snowstorm … if there had been a winter in winter. (more…)
Indecent Proposal – “Behind Her Eyes”
The music video for Duluth band Indecent Proposal‘s romantic tragedy “Behind Her Eyes” was shot in the historic auditorium at Denfeld High School. It was released in November and has since amassed more then 195,000 views. (more…)
PDD Geoguessr Challenge #14: Duluth’s Sister Cities – Rania, Iraqi-Kurdistan
Rania, Iraqi-Kurdistan. Photo based on an interpretation of aerial imagery by Microsoft Flight Simulator.
The next of Duluth’s sister cities in this challenge series is its most recent. Rania officially became Duluth’s fifth sister in November 2015. According to the webpage on Duluth’s sister cities, Rania is located in a partially autonomous Kurdish region in Northern Iraq near Lake Dukan. With a population of 95,000, it is about the same size as Duluth. Exchange activities have included a visiting professor from Rania at the University of Minnesota Duluth and a visit to Rania by a Duluth choir group. (more…)
Live from Studio A: Charlie Parr
Charlie Parr‘s 18th album, Little Sun, is out today on the Smithsonian Folkways record label. The Minnesota native and longtime Duluthian stopped into Studio A at WDSE FM 103.3 “The North” on Feb. 28 to talk with Katelyn Brinza about the new record and play a few songs. (more…)
R.I.P. Viking Lounge & Liquor
Fox 21 reports crews were demolishing the Viking Lounge & Liquor building in Superior yesterday. The bar at 1501 N. Fifth St., and its upstairs apartments, were condemned after a Thanksgiving Day fire.
Postcards from the Fish Fry Lodge
The undated postcard above, published by W. A. Fisher Company, shows the Fish Fry Lodge on Highway 61 near Duluth. (more…)
Alan Sparhawk Live at Le Guess Who?
Alan Sparhawk, backed by a trio of fellow Duluthians, played six European Union shows in November 2023. The first was at Jacobikerk, a Protestant church in Utrecht, Netherlands, as part of the Le Guess Who? music festival. The embedded video above is from that performance. (more…)