Jim Richardson (aka Lake Superior Aquaman)
Mark Twain and Joseph Conrad Destroy a Duluth Hotel Suite
Introduction
Historic hotels worldwide falsely claim the globe-spanning author Joseph Conrad was a former guest. However, it should come as no surprise that, while struggling with the untitled manuscript that would become Heart of Darkness, Conrad stayed the winter of 1898-1899 in a top-floor suite of Duluth’s Spalding Hotel. It was a suite he destroyed with Mark Twain after the two writers met in the gilt-muraled hotel bar and things got out of hand. The incident might have been forgotten but for the young Duluth Herald reporter on the scene who wrote an article about it.
Conrad, 41, the Polish exile living in England, was stranded in Duluth because he’d missed the departure of his cruise ship. He’d dashed into town to get a tooth pulled and it simply took too long. He was going to catch the next steamer out, but the freighter Marchande wrecked at the mouth of the canal. Then winter arrived and shut down the shipping season anyway — and he was only interested in traveling by ship. So although he missed his wife of two years back in England, he decided to winter in the Spalding, dreaming up ideas for his manuscript, and hopefully, a title. (more…)
Lake Superior: Biggest Skate Rink in the World
One last skate.
Duluth in the Olympics
Big news from a few days back, posted now because it must be acknowledged here.
MPR News: “Duluth curling team claims silver medal at Winter Olympics” (more…)
Skating the big lake
I saw ice houses out there so I got my skates.
The Last Duckbilled Dinosaur in Duluth
Final entry in the field journal of UMD paleontologist Franklin Hall Moore, Sept. 1, 1984
The last duckbilled dinosaur in Duluth, down and out on the sand beach in the tropical climate of the late Cretaceous, feels drunk from the fermented newly-evolved berries of a now-extinct genus. Minnesota is closer to the equator, the constellations strange. He chases the scent of increasingly rare juicy ferns along the beach toward prehistoric Wisconsin.
The duckbill whips his tail against the harassing blue-feathered velociraptors trying to run him down like a pack of dogs. He’s ten feet tall at the hip but they see he’s got a small limp from a wound that won’t heal on his right foreleg. They also see the sore tumor on his tiger-striped orange back. So they’d separated him from his herd — over the hill in what will evolve into the mallscape of Hermantown — and chased him to this strip of sand, the border between a retreating lagoon and the forested rift valley that will become Lake Superior. (more…)
Become the Dark
It took me 25 years to acclimatize to Duluth, and the big hurdle was these long winter nights. Here’s how I did it.
One day I thought, as long as I’m hopelessly depressed and dysfunctional, maybe I should dig a crawlspace under my all-time low and sort of, you know, make it cozy in there?
Step one: Uncouple your mood from the weather, to the greatest extent possible.
This took me two decades to get the hang of, but it can be done. Duluth is going to give you some ass weather. Conversely, when Duluth is nice, it’s God’s country. But if you let Duluth’s ass weather get to you, you’re effed. It’s a bad place to be sensitive to gray days and one of the coldest, longest winters anywhere in the country, the world even. Duluth in February — when winter is more than half over! — may be compared to the ice moons of Jupiter. And then you might get a chilly summer. So, welcome to town, buckle up, get ahold of yourself, and appreciate the city for what it is besides the weather.
We’re so far north, the path of the sun weaves dramatically across the sky as the seasons progress. You can feel the wobble of the globe. Don’t let it dizzy you or give you motion sickness as the sun stays out a different number of minutes per day. We can have extreme and long winters, and short summers of varying quality. It’s not personal.
Dirty Knobs – “Squid Crow Pro”
Dirty Knobs, a music project of Duluth’s Zac Bentz, part of The Electric Witch and The Surfactants, released the new album Scorcher on Halloween. On Youtube the tracks come with psychedelic visualizers as above for “Squid Crow Pro,” a track I have on repeat. I would loosely characterize the album as a collection of ambient electronica soundscapes, textured and chewy. These tracks are going to get me through winter.
The True Story of the 1963 Duluth Third Place Little League World Series Champions
The 1963 Little League World Series was played Aug. 24 in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania, at the Howard J. Lamade Stadium to 10,000 spectators. The series has since been given a cover story by the deep state, including the first-ever little league television footage, which was faked to keep America calm. The true story of the Duluth All-Stars is so explosive that it could not be told until now, more than half a century later.
A Midwest ring of Soviet spies developed a signaling mechanism invisible to the CIA, or so they thought. Eschewing radio and microfilm dead drops as vulnerable to interception, the Russians infiltrated the global little league ecosystem, and used manipulated game statistics to convey coded messages to agents in the field. One or two closet communist coaches in prime positions, a handful of greedy assistant coaches tactically placed, and a blackmailed umpire were enough to communicate covert instructions to sleeper assassins from Missouri to Manitoba, printed in every regional paper in the local sports stats. (more…)
Duluth tourism concept art
I made these dank memes. (more…)
Adrift in the Duluth Triangle
[Author’s note: This originally ran in the 2024 Boubville zine. My title does not refer to the “Bar-muda Triangle” promotions of the West Duluth bar scene. This story was intended to be the start of a novella, a roman-à-clef about a barfly surviving depression. Each chapter was going to take place in a different establishment and be based on actual events, a “hero’s journey” bar crawl through the underworld one night. But after writing this first chapter, it seemed complete in itself as a short story, so I am calling it done. Borges wrote, “It is a laborious madness and an impoverishing one, the madness of composing vast books — setting out in 500 pages an idea that can be perfectly related in five minutes.” That said, this story of life before Covid could be a prequel to this essay about when Covid hit.]
2019. From Sir Benedict’s Tavern on the Lake, to Vikre Distillery, to the Pizza Lucé bar, then back to Sir Ben’s: This is the Duluth Triangle. Stranded in its vortex for five years, between myself and my hillside home lies a gauntlet of the finest distilleries, tap rooms, and bars in the world. It is a puzzle solved differently every night. Like the doctor in Nightwood said to Djuna Barnes: “The night is not premeditated.” (more…)
Lakewalk Panoramas
In which I appear in panoramic shots by Allen Richardson. (more…)
Overheard
Q: What is Duluth like in winter?
A: Have you seen The Shining?
The Aerial Lift Bridge as impossible cube
Not too long ago I looked at the Aerial Lift Bridge, and for a moment my mind mis-read it as having the wrong angles of an Escher-like “impossible cube,” pictured here. The optical illusion has stuck with me and now I have to force myself not to see it. It is beyond me at the moment to produce my mental image as a drawing or doctored photo, but I wanted to get the idea out there in case the vision inspires anybody. Post images as comments if you’re feeling it, otherwise I am content to just keep privately seeing an impossible lift bridge.
Sir Duluth Historical Timeline
Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Luht, was an influential French explorer whose name anglicizes to Sir Duluth. He signed his letters “Dulhut,” participating in his own casual anglicization despite the constant conflict his nation had with England. I call him Duluth, synonymous with our present-day, American city, whose name he inspired.
1639: Duluth is born in Saint-Germain-Laval, France.
1650: Duluth is 11 when the first modern philosopher René Descartes dies age 53 in Stockholm, Sweden. A letter from the young Duluth lies on the bedside table, offering a common-sense critique of Descartes’ notion that animals are automatons who may be vivisected. “I guess you’ve never owned a pet,” the boy’s careful handwriting says. The letter continues, “‘I think therefore I am’ is meaningless since grounds for doubting existence do not exist. You torture language like you torture dogs.” It has been suggested that Descartes was so distressed to have his life’s work effortlessly eviscerated by a child that he quickly succumbed to pneumonia and died.
Lakewalk Photobomb
(Photo by Allen Richardson)
Weird clouds on July 11
Images taken over the span of a few minutes as dark rollers split off the main cloud bank like sideways funnel clouds, conflicting air masses in turbulence. (This kind of thing scared the heck out of me when I first moved here.) (more…)
Dollhouse City Lift Bridge
Photos of the Richardson brothers Dollhouse City taken by their mommy Nell Richardson, except the last image by the Richardson brothers. Dollhouse City is a Duluth-based psychogeographical freakout representing the city and oh yeah the universe in fractal miniature. It is our joint toy collection plus the toys of my adult daughter which I never discarded, including most of the dollhouses. This three-sided collection was displayed locally at many of Sarah Heimer’s Dioramarama shows. (more…)
On Board a Great Lakes Fireboat
Local YouTuber Vibe with Mike took a ride on the Duluth Fire Department’s fireboat.
Duluth in the novel ‘The Horn’
John Clellon Holmes’ 1953 beat jazz novel The Horn contains a couple references to Duluth. In the 1988 edition by Thunder’s Mouth Press, the first mention occurs on page 131. I cite it below with a couple paragraphs for context, which make it clear “Duluth” is used synonymously with “some out-of-the-way city on the road.” (more…)
Ice Racing Getaway Driver
1983 St. Louis County jailhouse interview with “Turbo” Ted Van Brunt
Interviewer: Tell me about your escape from Duluth.
Turbo Ted: Escaping Duluth is a coin flip. Half my friends tried and couldn’t reach the velocity, came back after two or three years of getting kicked around out there. I tried a couple times.
What you’re really asking about started a couple springs ago, when it rained then the temperature plunged. The city woke up with a coating of clear ice on every surface. Branches falling in the road. Whole city shut down, nothing could move.
Except my black, street stock, ice racing stud car, a 1976 Chevette with a roll cage and 500 spikes on each tire — sheet metal screws we screwed in ourselves. Fender all chewed up. Commonly called the worst car of all time but it did everything we asked. And Johnny said it was go time. He was the brains, had it all worked, how to disarm the system at the Superior Street jewelers there. He got that with a bribe. It was only a question of when, and this was our crisis of opportunity. “The cops won’t stand a chance,” he said, and they didn’t. They even had chains on but they still didn’t know how to drive. Anyway so Johnny robbed it, but he didn’t get all the alarms. And I was the getaway driver but I still get half. Which wasn’t much — a couple display cases worth of diamond jewelry. Pulled him behind the car on a tether as we blew down Superior through deserted intersections, cross-training for frozen lake ice races at the same time we’re robbing a jewelry store. Just on his feet — no skis, just boots. And of course the cop shop is right there. But their interceptors fell behind. It was beautiful. (more…)
What Does William S. Burroughs Owe Djuna Barnes?
A lot of William S. Burroughs kind of sounds like Djuna Barnes. The prime example: Barnes created the character Doctor Matthew O’Connor in her 1936 novel Nightwood, and Dr. O’Connor could easily be confused with the 1938 Burroughs character, Dr. Benway (no first name). Each fictional physician is a comically amoral addict abortionist. I think it’s likely Burroughs created Dr. Benway within a year of reading Nightwood. Burroughs owes Barnes a debt of inspiration, and not just in the creation of Benway — many of his other characters could also be walk-ons in Nightwood, fitting in well among Barnes’ cast of liars, pretenders, and cheats. So it’s safe to say Barnes influenced the characters Burroughs created. I will also show her influence on his voice, style, and themes.
Since the 1980s, a Burroughs blurb appears on the back of every Nightwood edition, saying in its entirety, “I read Nightwood back in the 1930s and was very taken with it. I consider it one of the great books of the twentieth century.” That’s all he ever said about it; it says it all. It is commonly acknowledged that he admired her work, but I think Barnes had a larger influence. I think Burroughs took what he learned from Nightwood and then, in 1959, he wrote the actual number-one greatest book of the twentieth century, Naked Lunch. Barnes’ influence is found there, and throughout Burroughs’ work. (more…)
Essentia Health campus vs. a panel from ‘Ronin’
Essentia Health campus in Duluth on Aug. 4, 2022. Steve Kuchera / Duluth News Tribune
Panel from Frank Miller’s “Ronin” as shown in the Comics Journal.
In the graphic novel Ronin, by Frank Miller, an AI named Virgo grows its organic technology over and through a dystopian New York City. As the story progresses, the city completely transforms. I wondered if I could find a photo of the expanding hospital complex that matched this comic panel.