R.I.P. Posts

Johnson’s Bakery will close Lakeside location

Johnson’s Bakery announced Saturday on Facebook it will close its Lakeside location. Operations will continue at the original Johnson’s Bakery in Duluth’s West End.

“It is with regret that we must close our retail location in Lakeside,” the Facebook post stated. “We have GREATLY appreciated our loyal customers; our Lakeside employees have LOVED working with you. Many of you have been so kind to those employees as they have made different life transitions.”

An exact closing date has not been determined, but the Facebook post indicates it will be “no later than the end of April.”

R.I.P. West Duluth Video Vision, Mariner Mall Younkers

Two longtime Twin Ports stores will soon close. Fox 21 reports the West Duluth Video Vision store will close this week. The Duluth News Tribune reports Younkers in Superior’s Mariner Mall will close within 12 weeks.

R.I.P. Epic Restaurant and Lounge

Northern Waters Restaurant will close Dec. 31

Just two years after opening, the Northern Waters Restaurant at Mount Royal Shopping Center will close. A news release from owners Eric and Lynn Goerdt indicates the business has been sold and a new restaurant will replace it in early 2018.

R.I.P. MP: Morgan Park School preliminary demolition underway

Demolition of outbuildings on the Morgan Park School site began this week. Developer Aaron Schweiger plans to construct several 12-plex apartment buildings on the property. It will be called Morgan Park Estates.

R.I.P. How Sweet it is Cakes

Eileen and Bob Brown are closing How Sweet it is Cakes on Wednesday after more than 20 years in business.

“This has been the most difficult and painful decisions of our lives. Words cannot express our pain and sorrow,” Eileen Brown wrote on the How Sweet it is Cakes Facebook page today.

“There are a number of circumstances that have led up to this decision including but not limited to a significant decline in sales since we’ve moved to our new location, increased cost of product and labor, my and my husband’s health as well as numerous factors that we won’t detail here.”

R.I.P. Sneakers Sports Bar & Grill

Sneakers Sports Bar & Grill announced on Facebook today it has closed after 32 years in business. The bar will become part of the new Lyric Kitchen and Bar, which is also replacing Porter’s restaurant as part of a series of renovation projects at Duluth’s Holiday Center.

A news release by Holiday Inn & Suites-Duluth and Lion Hotel Group notes the Lyric will open for business on Oct. 30 and will feature “a full bar and light-hearted dining experience that celebrates all things Duluth.” The menu will include burgers, pizzas and steaks. Breakfast will be served seven days a week.

Jansen preparing to close the Main Club in Superior

Fox 21 reports the Main Club, Superior’s first openly gay bar, is closing after 34 years in business. Owner Bob Jansen told reporter Joey Nelson his last day of business will be shortly after the Duluth-Superior Pride Festival, which concludes with a drag show at the Main on Sept. 3.

Jansen said the bar has struggled in recent years because younger people feel less of a need for gay-specific bars.

“The younger crowd can go anywhere,” he told Fox 21. “So their support for some of the gay communities — institutions — have fallen by the wayside.”

Gunnar Birkerts, Duluth Public Library architect, dead at 92

Gunnar Birkerts, a Latvian-born architect who extended the vocabulary of Modernism using unexpected angular forms, folding planes and ingenious, light-suffused interiors, died on Tuesday at his home in Needham, Mass. He was 92.

Einstürzende alt bauten!

Photo from the Facebooks by James Gittemeier.

Goodbye old building. Say hi for me to House of Donuts when you get to old-building heaven.

Dead Chipmunk Floats By

Spent all day setting up the underwater camera to get the mergansers diving in the area, but they were pretty uncooperative. Then this dead chipmunk floated by, so the day wasn’t a total waste haha. Anyway you can see what I’d wager is a talon wound on its side. Chipmunks live (and die I guess) all along the water’s edge, I frequently hear their signature chirping. Lots of vegetal flotsam in the water today too.

Duluth artist Russell Gran dead at 81

Russell V. Gran, a Duluth native best known for his acrylic paintings and role as the unofficial “patriarch” of the Washington Studios Artist Cooperative, died June 14 of an apparent heart attack. He was 81.

“Endlessly curious and driven to create, his curmudgeonly exterior was merely a facade for a wonderfully humorous, sensitive and loving being,” fellow artist and friend Eric Dubnicka wrote on Facebook.

Goodbye, Peter Pestalozzi

Peter Pestalozzi lived outside Ely, but his art was often seen in the Duluth Art Institute and in local galleries. Peter passed away, and I lost someone who was distant but important to me.

R.I.P. Farmer Hank

STRAUSSBOSCORNThe Duluth News Tribune reports Farmer Hank Bos died Feb. 4 after battling lung cancer. He was 79.

Bos was known in West Duluth for selling his produce on Grand Avenue near the Minit Mart convenience store, formerly known as Little Store. The DNT reports Bos “for decades faithfully drove the 94 miles from his Shell Lake, Wis., farm to western Duluth daily from July to late October to sell produce from next to his pickup truck.”

R.I.P. St. Margaret Mary Church of Morgan Park

St Margaret Mary Church 1 St Margaret Mary Church 2

The two photos above, posted to Facebook by Tim Beaulier, show yesterday’s demolition of St. Margaret Mary Church in Duluth’s Morgan Park neighborhood. WDIO-TV’s Eyewitness News reported last week the church was set to be razed.

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