2023: The Year in Duluth Gig Posters
Behold another year of Duluth rawk and/or roll as visually displayed via Perfect Duluth Day’s traditional year-ending gallery of gig posters.
Behold another year of Duluth rawk and/or roll as visually displayed via Perfect Duluth Day’s traditional year-ending gallery of gig posters.
Season eight of Perfect Duluth Day’s “Saturday Essay” series has drawn to close, and it’s time to look back with the usual popularity contest. For the second year in a row, Jim Richardson authored three out of five works deemed by Google Analytics to be your favorites. In 2021, he swept the whole top five. It makes sense, because he’s Lake Superior Aquaman. Superheroes get all the clicks.
It was 50 years ago today — Dec. 30, 1973 — when the Minnesota Vikings defeated the Dallas Cowboys at Texas Stadium to win the National Football Conference Championship, sending the team to its second of four Super Bowl appearances in the 1970s.
The 27-10 upset of the Cowboys preceded a 24–7 loss to the Miami Dolphins in Super Bowl VIII at Rice Stadium in Houston.
The Video Vision movie rental business at 1418 Belknap St. in Superior is holding a closeout sale. Owner Brian Augustine expects most of the DVDs will be gone before winter ends and his indoor tanning business, Superior Tan, will expand.
The identity of the woman in this photo is likely lost to history, but the photographer’s last name is right there in print — Westberg. The Minnesota Historical Society’s Directory of Minnesota Photographers lists two Westbergs who operated in Duluth more than 100 years ago.
Comedian Mary Mack presents this short holiday video as a gift to you, noting “I think it may be one of those ‘if you know, you know’ things.”
You know the spiel. All of the content on Perfect Duluth Day can be read for free. It is produced by people who are paid either poorly or not at all. Advertising revenue keeps the operation going; donations help us do more and do it better.
Silver Bay, a city on the shore of Lake Superior about 50 miles northeast of Duluth, is planning for the second-largest investment project in its history. Minnesota Public Radio reports the nearly $25-million plan includes “a mixture of townhomes, vacation rentals, and seven residential lots, along with an event center.”
This undated postcard, published by Northern Minnesota Novelties, shows the Aerial Lift Bridge and parts of Canal Park and Park Point circa maybe 1960. The back of the card credits the aerial photo to maritime photographer Jean Basgen.
Cropped photo of a Christmas Eve service by Patrick Sweeney CC BY-SA 2.0
As this Sunday Geoguessr challenge is appearing on Christmas Eve, a topical theme seemed appropriate. I thought finding five local churches with midnight services would be a rather simple map to put together. It was not.
Greg Cougar Conley has a new album, Cougar Country, set for release Dec. 29. The video above delves deep into the KSTP-TV St. Paul archive for footage of the maestro’s 1962 debut on the Minneapolis-Moline Power Implement Company Variety Hour.
Dan Lefebvre at Burger Paradox
Duluth’s Lincoln Park neighborhood has burgeoned with new businesses of late. Three new restaurants opened there in 2023, including Bali Asian Cuisine, Burger Paradox and Oasis del Norte. A fourth, Ritual Salad, is slated to open in early 2024.
The Sunshine Café in West Duluth closed at the outset of the pandemic in March 2020. Owners announced this year it will not reopen. (Photo by Mark Nicklawske)
One of Duluth’s most significant restaurant closures of 2023 technically happened in 2020. The Sunshine Café closed more than three years ago as COVID-19 swept the country. What was considered a temporary closure at the time was finally announced as permanent in September 2023.
The Twin Ports restaurant scene has stabilized and grown as the pandemic has wound down, but the closure of the beloved diner at 5719 Grand Ave. in West Duluth can be seen as evidence the coronavirus fallout lingers. The Sunshine Café had been a neighborhood gathering place for more than three decades.
Duluth native Sydney Hansen has a new, original Christmas song. “Kringle Tingle” was written with Corey Lee Barker and produced by Kent Wells.
This post is about the new Minnesota State Flag, about abstract art, and about the exhausted feeling I get in contemporary politics.
