July 2017 Posts

Park Point Fairfield Inn Construction

I’ve been watching the new hotel go up at the marina on about 10th Street and Minnesota Ave. and have noticed that a few weeks ago all construction suddenly stopped! Rumor has it that the city building inspector has put a stop to the construction. Anybody know what has really happened?

Human Fabric of Duluth

Trudy Vrieze has started a fascinating project documenting what it means to live in Duluth, who we are and why we are here. The Human Fabric of Duluth is a street-photography and storytelling project.

Martha’s Daughter to transform Original Coney Island

Duluth’s Original Coney Island restaurant. Image via Trip Advisor.

After several years of pleasing late-night palates with her pop-up restaurant, chef Nyanyika Banda is opening Martha’s Daughter, a brick and mortar eatery. She hopes to have the Original Coney Island space at 107 E. Superior St. transformed to fit her vision by summer’s end.

RoofTop Fable – “It’s All So Complicated”

Duluth band Rooftop Fable will be hosting a release party for their album “Nuanced” on Saturday, July 22 at Blacklist Brewing. The event will also feature Emily Jayne & The Blue Plate Fella’s, Honest Maude, The True Malarkey and cabaret performances by The Duluth Dolls.

The video above is from the album and features aerial acrobat and contortionist, Cheryl Birch, and was filmed at Ignite Studio in downtown Duluth by Brian Barber.

Duluth 2017 Primary Election Primer

Below are the offices up for grabs this fall and the names of those who filed to run before the July 18 deadline. The Primary Election will be held Sept. 12. The General Election is Nov. 7.

Actual Wolf – “Baby Please”

“Baby Please” is the first single off the Actual Wolf album Faded Days, available now digitally and on cassette. The record release is scheduled for Sept. 15.

Eric Pollard, aka Actual Wolf, splits time between Duluth, Grand Rapids, Nashville and so on.

The video is directed by Erik Nelson.

Joni Jurek – Great! Lakes Candy Kitchen

The Duluth Art Institute‘s Plein Air Duluth Paint du Nord exhibition opening last week featured a first-prize painting of the Great! Lakes Candy Kitchen storefront in Knife River. In the video above, Frank Sander interviews painter Joni Jurek while she works on the piece.

Jurek has exhibited work throughout Wisconsin and Minnesota, including at the Outdoor Painters of Minnesota in St. Paul and at the Red Wing plein air event. She has also shown statewide in Texas, Vermont, Colorado and New Mexico, and abroad in Italy.

City Girl Coffee in Forbes

Duluth’s City Girl Coffee was featured yesterday in the online version of nationally circulated business magazine Forbes. In the Q-and-A article, City Girl founder Alyza Bohbot shares how her coffee business aims to source from women-owned and managed farms while working to raise consumer awareness of gender inequality in the world’s coffee-producing communities. She also details how she approaches the challenges of small business ownership and explains why social missions should be more than just a marketing tool.

Article link: Small Company, Mighty Mission

Poll: Best New Restaurant in Duluth Area

It’s time for the 2017 edition of Perfect Duluth Day’s “Perfect New Restaurant” poll. In 2016, Northern Waters Restaurant won by a landslide. Since then, a variety of new eating establishments have emerged. Which one is perfect? That will be determined by the good ol’ democratic process. Now is the chance to give your stomach a voice, whether your tastes are frugal or fancy.

It’s a runoff ballot, so if your favorite drops out of the running you can vote again from the remaining pool of contenders. At this stage in the voting, it’s down to the final two: Boat Club Restaurant and Bar and OMC Smokehouse.

What is the best new restaurant in the Duluth area?

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This poll is now closed. The results were:

OMC Smokehouse: 82 percent
Boat Club Restaurant and Bar: 18 percent

Head of the Lakes Fair Demolition Derby 2017

PDD Quiz: Breakfast Diners of the Twin Ports

Cafe CounterInspired by a now six-year-old PDD post, we’re serving up a heaping platter of breakfast diner trivia. How well do you know your Twin Ports breakfast diners? Can you identify them using only a photograph of the counter and a unique menu item? Dig in and find out!

Our next quiz, reviewing July happenings, will be published on July 30. E-mail question suggestions to Alison Moffat at [email protected] by July 27.

How to Get In the Water 2

The sequel.

I Wonder

Long it’s been known the galaxy is a big place, but until 1922 it was thought the Milky Way was all there was. Then Edwin Hubble climbed Mount Wilson and had a look-see through the Hooker Telescope and realized those cloudy objects in the sky called “nebulae” were actually galaxies unto themselves. Later, a telescope named for Edwin himself beamed back the Deep Field images of a polkadot infinity. Ten thousand galaxies in a patch of sky one tenth the size of a full moon. Why weren’t people jumping up and down when we went from a hundred billion stars (no paltry sum) to a hundred billion visible galaxies, as far as the Hubble can see? From a distance you could mistake the Deep Field photos for a sky full of stars, but squint and see galaxy after galaxy shimmering in the void. When I notice one swirling down the drain of time, just like ours, I think, “hey — spiral galaxy — my people!”

Aldous Huxley considered the brain and nervous system a necessary reducing valve providing a “measly trickle of consciousness” shunted from “Mind at Large.” Necessary because you can’t go around immersed in Mind at Large while trying to pay the bills. So we float like croutons on the bottomless deeps, and notice what we can.

Merganser Cam

Finally got that merganser footage! These are juvenile Common Mergansers, diving waterfowl. They were with an adult with a red head and darker feathers. [Video stills here.]

Video Archive: KDLH-TV News Promo from 1997

in this 30-second news promo from July 14, 1997, KDLH-TV anchor Liz Brummond reports the Duluth City Council is set to vote on a living-wage ordinance requiring employers that receive taxpayer assistance to pay 90 percent of workers a minimum of $7.25 per hour or $6.50 per hour with benefits.

Councilors voted 5-4 in favor of the measure, putting Minnesota’s first living-wage ordinance into Duluth’s City Code.

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