the local efforts to capitalize on Florida's maxims we're well intentioned but missed the mark. Reducing support of the creative class here to "retention of 18-35 year olds" is mis-guided and merely feeds the narcissism of the XGen. Creatives dont need/want to be pandered to, they want high fiber healthy enviroments, neo-post-modern nods to local kitschy-quirk and JOBS! For as "savy" as the PDD set is, it cant offset the weight of entrenched "old" money clutching to a post-industrial anti-inertia which locks us in a stagnant cesspool of profit before progress. All the $$ that was thrown at thedusu.com should have been disbursed to local creatives in micro loans to foster culture and creative/tech start-ups with national legs. That website was an artificial and non-organic slap in the face failure. Also why the hell is there no Higher Ed presence in downtown Duluth. WTF?!? Look at Florida's success stories .. ALL have a connection with Higer Ed in the Downtown ...NO BRAINER! .. Oh, that's right, the rich few here control our future .. hording it for re-sale to the baby-boomer retirees who will flock here b/c we have fresh water for their AZ golf courses ...

Creative ventures in the twin ports area seem to have had a short lifespan, be it music, food, drinking establishments, tourist attractions.  I'll bet that 80% of the local population, if they choose to enjoy a drink, it will be a budweiser or miller or a cheap mixed drink.  Along the same lines, you'll find the palate tending towards Old Country Buffet or americanized "asian" food, instead of the more interesting exotic (don't get me wrong, we have plenty of cool places to eat, thai, sushi (my god, what were they thinking :), and they work).

I wish I was educated enough to quote something clever, but I know I heard once that you can judge a society by their choice in food.

There's also the disparity between classy and non; meaning you have the cliché wannabes that mostly consist of white collars and college kids trying to pretend they're clubbing in "Sex in the City" or some such, and you have a lot of middle-class people that really don't want to change and want steak and potatoes for dinner.

Many people want Duluth to be upscale, but as long as I've been alive, a strong sociological resistance is apparent, blatant even; possibly caused by a strong religious upbringing.  How to invigorate?  I've no idea, but it seems to me a large uphill battle, let's say an hors cat. climb.

Richard Florida has perhaps the right idea, but bad execution of it.  And also, who's to say the analysis afterwards was sound.

Oh, and what "trends younger" said.

It sounds like Mr. Florida has been corrupted by the capitalists. Of course they want all the creative types to move to the big cities. The increased competition for jobs/gigs/wages will drive the price down! A community thrives when it appreciates itself. Seriously, if Duluthians hate it so much, why are they still Duluthians? I'm not ready to write off any place- except Texas.

Duluth Skateboarders GTFO.

"All the $$ that was thrown at thedusu.com should have been disbursed to local creatives in micro loans to foster culture and creative/tech start-ups with national legs. That website was an artificial and non-organic slap in the face failure."

This is right on (except for the past-tense conjugation of the verb to be in the final quoted sentence, unfortunately). The dusu is a metaphor for everything that is wrong with everything. This summer I watched a man chalk the dusu logo onto a sidewalk downtown. As far as I can tell, I witnessed the single most affective moment in the history of the project. 

Al Sparhawk's head-jerk keeps/attracts more of your precious target demographic than the entire dusu dream - chalk and all. Shit, these days Gartman may be able to make that claim. (But not with the head-jerk, per say.) 

I live here precisely because the "creative class" doesn't. Don't fuck that up, straights. You know the whole "Duluth is a terrible place to do business"-thing? That is a colloquial manifestation of everything good and poor and righteous and beautiful about this town. Try and not sell that away for a shot at a circle-jerk with Lex Luther at the Chamber. I'd rather suffer a Panera Bread than Duluth's version of a Boing-Boing contributor. But maybe that's just me.

I appreciate this post as I make fun of Dick Florida and the "creative class" fucking constantly, but mostly it elicits blank stares.

Well, I agree that Florida turns out to be a "snakeoil salesman." However, I think some good did come out of that too-expensive endeavor on the part of our community. 

I was asked by my dean (I teach at UMD) to participate in a reading group of Florida's book (which I found pretty useless--the book, not the reading group). But I went ahead and attended a couple of the meetings associated with this effort, and suggested to the conveners of the "We Mean Green" group (one of several working groups created through this initiative) that they connect up with a nascent group called "Sustainable Duluth."

The two groups did coalesce (not through my efforts, but their own--I'm not looking for any cred. here), and created an on-going group, Sustainable Twin Ports (http://www.sustainabletwinports.org/), that has been conducting a project they call the "Early Adopters" project. See their web site.

It may not result in drawing or keeping "the Creative Class" (meh) in the Twin Ports, but I do think it's a positive contribution to our community.

So, yeah, "snakeoil," but sometimes even snakeoil can be used to grease some of the bearings of community.