Duluth Mystery Photo #18: BlueBird Landing on Lake Superior’s North Shore
This photo from the mid-1940s raises a few questions, and the Internet provides fast answers to many of them.
This photo from the mid-1940s raises a few questions, and the Internet provides fast answers to many of them.
There is a new coffee shop, deli and pizza place in Duluth’s Morgan Park neighborhood — and it also happens to be the only coffee shop or restaurant of any kind in that neighborhood.
Iron Mug opened on July 30 in the old Lakeview Store building, which was constructed in 1916 to serve as one of the first indoor shopping malls in the United States. The building once housed a grocery store and post office, among other things. The largest major tenant in recent years was Advantage Emblem & Screen Printing, which was located in the building from about 1991 to 2008, before moving to the corner of Haines and Arrowhead roads, near the airport.
Some Iron Mug facts:
The building at 531 Central Avenue in West Duluth was torn down on July 28, 2014. In its early years it served as the West Duluth Fire and Police Station, West Duluth Village Hall, Duluth Fire Department Engine House #8 and Duluth Police Department Station #3, among other things.
For it’s final three decades, the building was known as the home of Twin Ports Amusement, operated by the Kervina family until operations ceased a few year ago. (The business was also known as Twin Ports Vending & Amusement and Twin Ports Arrowhead Amusement). The most recent occupant of the building was Jody’s Auto Werkz, which was in the back of the building.
Prior to the Twin Ports Amusement era, the building served as Puglisi Toyota, an auto sales and service business run by Jack Puglisi in the early 1970s. Prior to that it was Crown Motors, operated by Leonard Caskey.
For more, read the history of West Duluth Village Hall on Zenith City online.
About a half-hour drive northwest of Duluth, in the unincorporated community of Saginaw, Swamp Sisters summer restaurant kicks out breakfast and lunch grub to fleets of mostly white-haired patrons who fill the gravel driveway with their cars and assisted-living-community shuttle vans. It’s open for about two months each year, on Fridays and Saturdays only, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., on the swampy old Armstrong farmstead. And all of that, of course, makes this place awesome.
Pretty much everything happening this time of year is part of a festival or concert series, so as we highlight items this week from the PDD Calendar, we’ll just pretend everything is part of a festival, even if it isn’t.
The Bayside Sounds concert series continues on Wednesday with
North Shore Sounds and Superior Singers performing at Billings Park in Superior. Earlier in the day, the Brothers Burn Mountain play a lunchtime gig as part of Lake Place Summer Sounds in Duluth. The Wednesday Night at the Races events for the kiddos begin on Wednesday as well.
On Friday there’s the Free Range Film Festival, Movies in the Park, the Current broadcasting live from the opening of Endion Station Public House and hosting a concert featuring Low at the Red Herring Lounge as part of CurrentFest, and the bars on North Tower Avenue host a Grand Reopening Celebration as part of the Superior’s Downtown Strip Isn’t Under Construction Anymore Festival.
Saturday events include the All Pints North Summer Brew Fest, the Board Across the Bay Race and Festival, Carlton Daze and the Mudman Race as part of Extreme Obstacle Course Daze.
And calendar editor Lawrence Lee should be back on the job at any moment, beginning PDD’s Back to Normal Fest.
It’s probably not worth remembering this, but an image from it resides in PDD’s archives and the controversy surrounding it occurred ten years ago this month, so we’ll give it passing mention.
There once was a satirical website at duluthtourism.com that was far more sophomoric than funny, but famously raised the ire of Duluth’s then-mayor Herb Bergson, who asked the city attorney to look into the legal means to have the site shut down.
A Dozen Excuses opened on Wednesday, serving donuts, coffee, sandwiches, coney dogs, etc. at 1112 Tower Ave., in the Still-point Building next to the Palace Bar in Superior. It’s the former location of Northwoods Guitar.
On the occasion of Duluth band Trampled by Turtles making a second appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman — tonight at 10:35 p.m. on KDLH-TV channel 3.1 — I looked back at notes from an interview with Banjo Dave Carroll from spring 2013. He told stories about being on the Letterman and Craig Ferguson shows that didn’t make it into the story I was working on at the time.
Here is Carroll sharing an anecdote about taking a break outside the Ed Sullivan Theater before the Letterman gig:
They have these barriers on the sidewalks that are kind of gated off for photographers to hang out and allow them to get a picture of celebrities — whoever’s coming in. … It happened to be Amy Phoeler. We were hanging out there, and there were all these photographers. Her black town car or whatever pulls up, the photographer looks at us and says, ‘hey are you guys in the band?’ We kind of looked at each other and said ‘yeah, yeah we’re in the band.’ And they just said, ‘hey, get out of the way!'” Amy Poehler was coming across the street and they didn’t want us to be in the background with her.
Guy Fieri is back in town shooting for future episodes of the Food Network’s Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives. So far he’s been to Gannucci’s Italian Market and Pak’s Green Corner in West Duluth, and Shorty’s Pizza & Smoked Meats and the Kounty Quarthouse in Superior.
A system of unseasonably cool air is expected to roll in today, but the various summer festivals will be every bit as fun while you are wearing jackets and long pants. Here come the highlights from the PDD Calendar.
The week starts as every week should — with a hardcore heavy metal concert at a Christian indoor skate park. Colossus, Conveyer, Strengthen What Remains, Lessons and Heart’s Bane all perform at the Encounter on Monday. You can choose instead to hang out in a wood shop and make beds for the needy, so there are at least two places to wear a sleeveless shirt this week.
Tuesday night the Chester Creek Concert Series continues with a performance by the Formal Age. Later in the evening, at Tycoons Alehouse, the Adam Booker Group will be playing jazz versions of Trampled by Turtles songs. Why? For fun, that’s why. But also because the hometown heroes are releasing a new album and appearing on The Late Show with David Letterman again.
Did those asbestos shingles last a century? Is the Luther Mendenhall residence still standing? Where is it, or where was it?
In a series for the New York Times, Damien Cave and Todd Heisler travel up Interstate 35, from Laredo, Tex., to Duluth, chronicling how the middle of America is being changed by immigration. They spend day 37 in Duluth.
On the agenda for next week’s Duluth City Council meeting is a resolution requesting the state legislature “amend state gambling laws to provide for the operation of a for-profit casino at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center or other location within Duluth.” (Update: Councilor Howie Hanson has told the Duluth News Tribune his proposal will likely be tabled and later taken up at a committee-of-the-whole meeting.)
Here’s the document text:
Purchasing and Licensing Committee
14-0365RResolution requesting the state legislature amend state gambling laws to provide for the operation of a for-profit casino at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center.
Streetcars ran in Duluth for the last time on July 9, 1939. Streetcar service had been gradually phased out by trolley buses for nearly 20 years before meeting its total demise. For more info check out Zenith City Online’s history of Duluth’s Streetcar Railways.
On this date 165 years ago — July 6, 1849 — Bavarian immigrant Anthony Yoerg opened Minnesota’s first brewery in St. Paul.
Interesting side note on Yoerg’s Brewery: In 1871 the operation moved to a spot adjacent to the Lilydale caves. Yoerg used the natural caves to store his product, and added the phrase “cave-aged” to the label. There are a number of places online to read about Yoerg’s Brewery, but of particular interest is the Substreet underground history site, which profiles Yoerg’s lost cellars.
