Popular Palestinian restaurant among 2025 closings
Palestinian deli Falastin closed after a year of rave reviews and lines out the door. A new Hong Kong-style café has taken over the Lakeside location. (Photos by Mark Nicklawske).
Two of the most high profile restaurant closings this year saw their locations quickly replaced with new offerings. It doesn’t always happen that way — some abandoned kitchens sit for years before inspiring another project. (more…)
PDD Shop Talk: The Usual Spiel
Keeping Duluth’s Duluthiest website running with new content every day has been an ongoing financial challenge for 22 years, but Perfect Duluth Day is still here, still free to read and still kicking out the daily goods. Advertising revenue keeps the operation going, but donations help us do more and do it better.
That’s why we occasionally toss up a post like this one to remind everyone that donations are a big help. (more…)
PDD Quiz: 2025 in Review
Close out the year with this week’s quiz, which reviews 2025 headlines and happenings.
A quiz previewing 2026 coming attractions will greet you in the new year on Jan. 4. Please submit question suggestions to Alison Moffat at [email protected] by Dec. 31. (more…)
The Most Read Saturday Essays of 2025
Perfect Duluth Day’s “Saturday Essay” series has now run for ten years. The second half of that decade has seen Jim Richardson dominate the annual list of most-read compositions. Since 2020, Google Analytics stats show Richardon’s essays have landed in 21 of the 25 top-five slots. Long live Lake Superior Aquaman! (more…)
Vincent Gargiulo’s Fantastic
San Francisco-based writer/director Vincent Gargiulo was in Duluth in 2013 shooting his short feature Duluth is Horrible. A segment from his next feature, Vincent Gargiulo’s Fantastic, was also shot in Duluth. “I Found Myself Stuck in an Experimental Film,” featuring Kat Mandeville, starts at the 4:55 mark in the embedded video above. (more…)
A Texan from out near Duluth, Minnesota
The World War II film A Walk in the Sun premiered Dec. 25, 1945 — 80 years ago today. A song early in the movie mentions Duluth. (more…)
Former Duluthian Miles Spangrud releases debut novel
My friend and former Duluthian Miles Spangrud will see their debut novel released by Two Gun Publishing. Flesh and Bone: A Historical Western is interesting to me because Western feels like one of those genres that keeps happening no matter how far outside the field of my vision it is. Like Art Bell, maybe. Always there, and I only stumble into it once in a while, this time because the author was local. (more…)
PDD Bandcamp Playlist: Holiday Sampler, Volume Two
In the interest of making your yuletide as gay as possible, here’s another sampling of Christmas or “Christmasish” tunes by artists in the Duluth music scene. (more…)
Looking out from Enger Tower circa 1965
This uncredited photo shows a view of Duluth from Enger Tower looking out over Observation Hill to the downtown and waterfront. It is dated 1965. (more…)
Our Changing Relationship to Lake Superior, 1975-2025
The SS Edmund Fitzgerald. (Image via the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers)
A new collection of works by Duluthians speaks to their changing relationship to Lake Superior. I am including the intro, which I wrote, below. For more, visit openrivers.lib.umn.edu. (more…)
Bob Dylan’s Spirit Mountain Adventure
Bob Dylan arrived in Duluth for a holiday ski party at Spirit Mountain on Dec. 20, 1975. The ski hill had just opened one year prior. (more…)
Hauliwood Dreams – “Finns in America”
Duluth’s Steve Solkela partners with Maria Voltaine, Miska Kajanus and Jaakko Manninen to form the Finnish-American novelty band Hauliwood Dreams for this parody of Kim Wilde’s 1981 hit “Kids in America.” The “Finns in America” lyrics are by Voltaine.
Trailer: Ish Meets a Mermaid
Duluth artist Jonathan Thunder’s new movie, Ish Meets a Mermaid, is in the submission process for the national film festival circuit. The story invovles an artist in a slump who meets a mysterious woman from a realm beneath Lake Superior and finds success in the last place he ever expected — death.
Postcard from ‘Our Little Home’ in Duluth
This postcard was mailed 115 years ago from Duluth, and therefore presumably shows a home in Duluth that might still be standing. (more…)
Steve Solkela – “En Etsi Valtaa, Loistoa”
Steve Solkela performs the Christmas song “En Etsi Valtaa, Loistoa” or “I Seek Not Power, or Glory,” composed by Jean Sibelius. He dedicates the song to the recently departed Rev. Martti Hyhkö of Ontario, Canada. (more…)
Duluth: Dull is right there in the name
The animated adventure comedy In Your Dreams, which premiered on Netflix in November, references Duluth six times. The four relevant scenes are in the pirated video embedded above.
Plot: The family life of 12-year-old Stevie and her younger brother Elliot is threatened when their mother announces her desire to move the family to Duluth.
PDD Quiz: Christmas City
How well do you know the song “Christmas City”? Put your knowledge to the test with this edition of the PDD Quiz.
A 2025-in-review quiz comes your way on Dec. 28. Please submit question suggestions to Alison Moffat at [email protected] by Dec. 21. (more…)
Ripped at Tyomies in 2000
[Editor’s note: For this week’s essay we’ve once again pulled out a relic from the archive of Slim Goodbuzz, who served as Duluth’s “booze connoisseur” from 1999 to 2009. Twenty-five years ago the Sultan of Sot paid a visit to Tyomies, 601 Tower Ave. in Superior, and composed this article for the Dec. 12, 2000 edition of the Ripsaw newspaper. Tyomies closed at some point prior to 2014, when Sweeden Sweets took over the space.]
This restroom is huge! And everything is squeaky clean, but already there’s a dude in here christening the place with a bleeeeeeeee yyyyyyyyyy aaaaaaaaa kkkkkkkkkkk. He’s paying homage to the porcelain god, and the porcelain god is shiny new and still has a sticker on it. When he finishes, he positively springs back up on his feet — happy as can be — then flushes and gives me a wink and a thumbs-up before heading out the door.
I love when a new bar opens in town. For one thing, there are usually a lot of drink specials to attract new clientele. Also, unlike in every other bar in this rat-ass city, no one there knows me, so the staff is usually pretty friendly to me. In addition to that, new places are usually pretty empty, so there’s little chance of someone there ruining my buzz for me. I try to hit a new bar a couple of times before all of you losers discover it and wreck the place by making me deal with you. (more…)
Quiet Santa preserves tradition for kids with sensory needs
Patrick and Sandy Baumann, dressed and ready for families to arrive at the fourth annual Quiet Santa event in November. (Photo by Julia Guttenfelder)
Each year, as the snow begins to fall, families crowd into chaotic shopping centers and join the staggered lines, waiting for their turn to meet Santa Claus. It’s a beloved holiday tradition, but it can be overwhelming for children with sensory processing challenges.
Among the smiling, happy faces found on a Google image search for “kids on Santa’s lap” are many photos of wailing youngsters squirming on Santa’s knee while he tries to keep a pleasant and slightly strained smile, unsure of what to do next.
Recognizing the need for a more subdued St. Nick to greet children with autism or other sensory needs, Fairlawn Mansion in Superior held its first Quiet Santa event in 2021. (more…)
Chuck Haavik – “Nothing to Say”
Duluth’s Chuck Haavik has a new EP, Friend For the End of the World. The single “Nothing to Say,” embedded above, features Dave Mehling on electric guitar, Emily Haavik on backing vocals and Luke Mirau on drums. Mehling produced and mixed the album.
Haavik’s EP release show is Dec. 27 at Wussow’s Concert Cafe.
Chasing the Sunset in Duluth
The latest video from “The Frozen Photog” Adam Jagunich features scenes from sunset at Park Point and Brighton Beach in Duluth.
Save Time and Money: Read as You Ride
These photos of Duluth Streetcar 166 were purchased recently on eBay from a reseller who didn’t know anything about them or the other Duluth transportation photos in the lot. This one above is labelled with the time 2 p.m., date 10/27/30 and the initials ETM. (more…)
Postcard from a Bird’s Eye View of the West End in Duluth
This postcard of Duluth’s friendly West End was mailed 115 years ago today — Dec. 8, 1910. The recipient was Mrs. Joseph Lindquist of Kerkhoven, Minnesota. The perspective is from the Point of Rocks at West Fourth Street, looking southwest. (more…)
Duluth Deep Dive #11: When the Hollow Concrete-Block Building Boom Came to Duluth
Left: Cover of the 1908 catalogue for the Miracle Pressed Stone Company of Minneapolis; Right: The first hollow concrete-block house in Duluth. (Sources: The Minnesota Digital Library; The Duluth Evening Herald, Feb. 3, 1906)
A few months ago a friend of mine from elementary school moved into a house on Park Point. When he asked me to help look into its history, we learned he had purchased the first hollow block concrete home ever built in Duluth, and one of the oldest still standing in Minnesota. This Duluth Deep Dive looks at the start of the hollow concrete-block building boom in Duluth and where it led. It describes the links between local concrete homes and the Duluth shipping canal. It also challenges the claim that Duluth had the first concrete streets in Minnesota. (more…)
