Ursa Minor Brewing cooks up new Bean & Bear Bagels shop
Amanda Agamaite, left, and Ben Hugus of Ursa Minor Brewing stand in front of the future home of Bean & Bear Bagels. The Lincoln Park brewery is remodeling the north end of its production facility at 202 S. 26th Ave. W. A deck will be built in the current parking lot. (Photo by Mark Nicklawske)
A Lincoln Park brewery famous for its beer and wood-fired pizza combination is opening a new restaurant space that will specialize in made-from-scratch bagels for the breakfast and lunch crowd.
Ursa Minor Brewing will open Bean & Bear Bagels, a grab-and-go bagel shop, on the north end of its brewery and warehouse facility at 202 S. 26th Ave. W. this spring. The new location will feature fresh bagels, bagel sandwiches and specialty coffee. (more…)
Making it Up North: Catherine Meier
Visual artist Catherine Meier shares her journey from hauling cattle across the Great Plains to creating deeply immersive animations and drawings on Minnesota’s North Shore.
Making it Up North is a PBS North series that explores stories of creative artists, artisans and entrepreneurs engaged in honing their skills, following their passion and realizing their dreams.
Cloud Cult – “It’s All Burning to Begin”
The new song and video from Cloud Cult “feels like the prelude birthing of a new album,” according to bandleader Craig Minowa’s description on YouTube. “The ground this new musical nursery stands on was Ho Chunk. The Kickapoo River hugs this recording studio on three sides and is considered by some geologists to be one of the oldest in the world — 2 million years. There is spirit here, and it has stories to tell.” (more…)
Duluth Deep Dive #14: The Last of the Transporter Bridges
Germany’s Osten-Hemmoor Bridge with a postcard of Duluth’s transporter bridge in the foreground. (Photo by Matthew James; postcard from the University of Minnesota Duluth, Kathryn A. Martin Library, University Archives)
Growing up in Duluth, I often heard that the lift bridge was the only bridge of its type in the world. I later learned that the world is full of lift bridges. Wikipedia lists 137 of them. But that doesn’t mean the claim isn’t true. The lift bridge was once a transporter bridge, a far more rare type of bridge. Aside from various hand-cranked bridges that basically amount to art projects, fewer than two dozen transporter bridges have ever been built anywhere in the world. Only eight of those are still in use. And the world only has one converted transporter bridge in operation: Duluth’s Aerial Lift Bridge. This Duluth Deep Dive takes a closer look at what Duluth’s bridge was like before its conversion by recounting my visit to two of the world’s remaining transporter bridges. One is the closest surviving counterpart to Duluth’s original canal bridge. The other gives a sense what the Duluth bridge might have looked like if the city had modernized the gondola instead of making the conversion to a lift bridge. (more…)
The S.S. Meteor Placemat
Found at a thrift store in Webster: a packet of 50 paper placemats promoting tours of the SS Meteor in Superior.
Making it Up North: Java Moose
From starting a makeshift weather update during a forest fire to becoming a daily staple for locals and tourists alike, Java Moose is more than just a coffee shop, it’s a community hub.
Making it Up North is a PBS North series that explores stories of creative artists, artisans and entrepreneurs engaged in honing their skills, following their passion and realizing their dreams.
Duluth looked best on paper in 1906
Some harsh criticism from a postcard sender 120 years ago.
Jonathan Thunder’s Digital Tampering Reel
This compilation shows various animation projects Duluth artist Jonathan Thunder has worked on in the past decade, including his own projects, collaborations and works for hire.
Postcard from a Bird’s-eye View of the Duluth Post Office in 1916
This postcard was mailed Feb. 23, 1916 — 110 years ago today. It shows the beginnings of the Duluth Civic Center, with the old Duluth Post Office at the center. (more…)
Arrowhead Community Garden seeks new members
Arrowhead Community Garden has a 35-year history of growing fresh vegetables and building community by providing space for gardeners to grow food on land in Duluth’s Kenwood neighborhood. Openings are available for the 2026 season, so the group is seeking new members. (more…)
Exhibitions celebrate Indigenous art
Illustration by Carl Gawboy.
Two fine-art exhibitions and the music of a Minneapolis recording artist are featured at the Duluth Art Institute in shows running through April 3. A reception for the artists is on March 26 from 5:30 to 8 p.m. (more…)
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…)
Nimrods vs. Lake Superior: A Giant Ski Quest
The Nimrods, five-time champions of the six-man American Birkebeiner Giant Ski Race in Hayward, recently attempted to conquer their biggest challenge yet: giant skiing across Lake Superior* as part of the Book Across the Bay race from Washburn to Ashland.
*a very small portion of Lake Superior
S.M. Garbers has published her first novel, Reaper of Resistance
Former Duluthian Samantha Garbers, writing as S.M. Garbers, has published her first novel. Reaper of Resistance was released on Jan. 16 and develops Garber’s passions as a writer, student and human being. (more…)
Making it Up North: Bailey Builds
Meet the couple behind the wood art seen all over Duluth. After 15 years in production management, Anna and Nathanael Bailey took a leap of faith to join forces and create Bailey Builds.
Making it Up North is a PBS North series that explores stories of creative artists, artisans and entrepreneurs engaged in honing their skills, following their passion and realizing their dreams.
Walking Duluth With Chris Arnade
Chris Arnade is walking around the world, publishing dispatches from different cities. The most recent stop on his “Chris Arnade Walks the World” website is Duluth, a place he calls “a fantastic underappreciated town.”
Alan Sparhawk – “JCMF” and “No More Darkness”
Alan Sparhawk has new lyric videos for the songs “JCMF” and “No More Darkness.” Both are “a response to all of the turmoil that (has) occurred locally and globally over the past couple of years,” according to Sparhawk. (more…)
Video: Sledding at the 2026 Laskiainen Finnish Festival
Videographer Adam Jagunich shot this aerial footage in the small Iron Range town of Palo, about 40 miles north of Duluth, capturing sledding scenes from the 88th annual Laskiainen Finnish Festival.
UMD’s Dancing Tales: Vasalisa
This weekend UMD Theatre is presenting an anthology of dance pieces exploring myths, folklore and legends from Eastern European and Southeast Asian traditions, including the retelling of the Slavic folktale Vasalisa. It is a collaborative multimedia dance performance co-directed by Professor Rebecca Katz Harwood and Emerita Professor Joellyn Rock. The college’s Motion and Media Across Disciplines Lab student staff had the opportunity to operate cameras for green screen shoots, provide video documentation and design and animate a 3D motion capture Vasalisa robot doll.
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…)
Ripped at the Red Lion in 2001
[Editor’s note: For this week’s essay we’ve once again pulled out a relic from the drunken compendium of Slim Goodbuzz, who served as Duluth’s “booze connoisseur” from 1999 to 2009. Twenty-five years ago the Sultan of Sot paid a Valentine’s Day visit to the legendary Red Lion Bar in Duluth, and composed this article for the Feb. 21, 2001 edition of the Ripsaw newspaper. The ol’ “Roar by the Shore” closed in 2007 and is now the location of Zeitgeist Arts Café.]
So, it’s Valentine’s Day and here I am at one of my favorite watering holes, the Red Lion — the fucken Roar by the Shore. By all standards, this is not supposed to be the day to get ripped out of my godforsaken gourd. This is supposed to be the day to wear pink and purple, eat a whole helluva lot of candy and watch Richard Gere movies. I ask you this: Could there be a better day to puke your guts out?
The Red Lion is always awesome; it doesn’t matter if it’s full of pathetic drunks or young hip-ocrites slumming with Black Labels (the beer or the band). Either way, it’s full of my favorite folks on earth. Tonight it seems to be a good mixture of wasted middle-aged sots and good-looking lesbians: Yes, these are my people. (more…)
Postcard from Lincoln Park in 1916
This postcard showing a scene from Lincoln Park in Duluth has a handwritten message on the back dated Feb. 13, 1916 — 110 years ago today. It is postmarked on Valentine’s Day. (more…)
Making it Up North: Sol Café
From the vibrant immigrant neighborhoods of Houston to the tech offices of a software engineer, Chef Antony Gor has always been guided by one thing: the power of nourishment. Now, he’s brought that vision to Duluth with Sol Café.
Making it Up North is a PBS North series that explores stories of creative artists, artisans and entrepreneurs engaged in honing their skills, following their passion and realizing their dreams.
Bathing girls frolic in Chester Park snowdrift
As an addendum to the “High spots from West Duluth Day at the 1926 Winter Frolic” post we present this digitally enhanced photo from the cover of the Feb. 11, 1926 Duluth Herald. It appeared in the paper with the headline “Bathing girls frolic in Chester Park snowdrift.” (more…)