LEAN Duluth Citizen Blotter: January 2022
The Citizen Blotter is the monthly newsletter of LEAN Duluth — Law Enforcement Accountability Network — a volunteer-run data-analysis group and public communications resource for organizers working for police accountability. To support LEAN’s work, email leanduluth @ gmail.com. (more…)
Duluth history used to illustrate white privilege on Netflix show
In the new Netflix series Colin in Black & White, former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick serves as the narrator for his own story of growing up in California’s Central Valley with white adoptive parents. At the very beginning of the third episode, a modified version of a photograph taken at the 1920 lynching of Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie in Duluth is used as part of a montage explaining the concept of white privilege. (more…)
Jane Yolen awarded Sophie Brody Medal for 2022
Duluth’s Holy Cow! Press author Jane Yolen, author of Kaddish: Before the Holocaust and After, has been awarded the Sophie Brody Medal for 2022. (more…)
Lake Superior Writers taking over NEMBA
The Northeastern Minnesota Book Awards have a new organizing body, Lake Superior Writers. As a fan of NEMBA, the University of Minnesota Duluth and LSW, I think this is good news for all. (more…)
Matchbooks from Superior-area Restaurants and Bars
One year ago Perfect Duluth Day published a collection of “Matchbooks from Duluth Restaurants and Bars.” Now we honor the neighboring city of Superior, and the rest of northwestern Wisconsin, with a collection of matchbooks from Superior-area restaurants and bars. (more…)
Postcard from a Typical Lumber Camp in Northern Minnesota
This postcard was mailed 110 years ago today — Jan. 18, 1912. It depicts a “typical lumber camp in northern Minnesota.” (more…)
Cloud Cult – “One Way Out of a Hole”
Cloud Cult released the first music video today from its new album Metamorphosis, due out March 4. The video is directed by Jeff D. Johnson.
The band kicks off its tour with a performance at Papa Charlie’s in Lutsen on Feb. 12 and hits Duluth on April 20 with a show at the NorShor Theatre.
Heely Tricks with JamesG: December 2021
Here it is, the last of the 2021 wheeled-sneaker stunts by former Duluthian James Geisler, also known as the hip-hop artist JamesG.
PDD Quiz: 2022 Coming Attractions
Glensheen – Minnesota History Theatre
This week’s quiz looks ahead to new things coming (or returning) to the Duluth area in 2022. As with everything these days, all future events and shenanigans are subject to change; quiz on to test your knowledge of things to get cautiously excited about!
The next PDD quiz, heading your way on Jan. 30, will cover January 2022 headlines. Submit question suggestions to Alison Moffat at [email protected] by Jan. 26. (more…)
The SuperiorLab-Marquette Disaster
Deep-sea explorer Ecclesia Hummingbird, August 23, 2001 on PBS: “I live and work here in SuperiorLab, a hyperbaric underwater habitat 950 feet deep, by a drowned petrified forest. Welcome to science’s first permanent presence at the bottom of Lake Superior, with our partners: the University of Minnesota, NASA, and our corporate sponsors. We are offshore between Two Harbors and Silver Bay, in a quarter-mile-wide underwater canyon whose sides slope hundreds of feet down. This scar cuts for thirty miles getting deeper and deeper. The lake’s canyons divide the bedrock like cracking skin, and this crack is one of its deepest, Bible black like space.
“SuperiorLab is manned by a rotating crew of divers and astronauts-in-training who live here for months at a time. Because of budget cuts, that is currently a crew of two. There’s myself, and there’s my half-sister Persephone Marrow, a geologist developing protocols for future Mars missions. We are the so-called ‘genius daughters’ of the university’s Professor Joseph Marrow. (more…)
Two new Nat Harvie songs: “Longbody” and “Every Woman”
Lyric video for “Every Woman” below. (more…)
Woodblind – “Watched Pot”
Veikko Lepisto and Jason Wussow of Duluth band Woodblind make soup in this new music video. Cory Coffman adds percussion to the track.
Woodblind performs Jan. 29 at Wussow’s Concert Cafe as part of the Soup & a Song showcase.
From the Dizzo Archives: Last Place on Earth
Aside from being an occasional radio show host, I’ve always fancied myself a bit of an archivist. Some will say hoarder, but I’ll keep saying archivist. I attended the Last Place on Earth auction in Superior last weekend hoping to find some local treasures. I’m mostly a music and clothes collector so I was excited to see there was plenty of both. (more…)
Video: Five wolf pups emerging from a cedar tree den
The Voyageurs Wolf Project has released more trail camera footage from last summer of pups from the Paradise pack of wolves at Voyageurs National Park, about 110 miles north of Duluth. The den is under the roots of an ancient cedar tree.
Postcard from the Duluth Yacht Club
The Duluth Yacht Club was organized in 1890 and incorporated 1905. It’s facilities were on Minnesota Point at South 14th Street. (more…)
Minnesota Point Lighthouse Painting
This painting by the late Sylvia S. Reasor was sitting among the Pink Floyd lighters, Bob Marley patches, bongs, sex toys and whatnot at the Last Place on Earth liquidation auction this past weekend. (more…)
Condemned Esmond building gutted by fire
The Duluth Fire Department tweeted this photo at 7:55 a.m. noting a heavy fire on the second floor of the Esmond building.
The former Seaway Hotel, more recently known as the Esmond building, burned for seven hours today while fire fighters struggled in sub-arctic temperatures to extinguish it. The condemned structure at 2001 W. Superior St. in Duluth’s Lincoln Park neighborhood has been vacant since 2020 with future plans for demolition and redevelopment. (more…)
The Slice: Claire Sahara
Claire Lemp, aka Claire Sahara, is an illustrator based in Duluth who showcases diversity in beauty in her illustrations and uses her life experience and everyday things for inspiration.
In its series The Slice, WDSE-TV presents short “slices of life” that capture the events and experiences that bring people together and speak to what it means to live up north.
Historic Floorplans
I recently bought an older home in Congdon. Nothing special, but I like it. The previous owner made many changes to the interior in a misguided attempt to modernize the home. I am thinking about restoring it to its former layout, but I’m not finding much historic information about the home. Does anyone have any ideas on where I might get some information? The home is likely an American Foursquare that had some arts and crafts touches. Thanks for any help!
Ripped at Pizza Lucé in 2002
[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. Pizza Lucé opened its Duluth location in 2001 and quickly caught the attention of the Sultan of Sot, who penned his review for the Jan. 9, 2002 issue of the Ripsaw newspaper. The restaurant has undergone several renovations in the past two decades, so we note here that the U-shaped semi-unisex restroom is no longer as it was. Also, the early morning openings are no longer a thing.]
As an old-fashioned Duluth rum hound, I want to dislike Pizza Lucé. When a Twin Cites enterprise expands to Duluth and sets up in a nice, clean new building, I pretty much go into auto-hate mode. But not this time. Pizza Lucé is a friend of the drinking class.
First off, there’s a decent happy hour seven days a week. Plus, there’s the extended hours — you can go there and get drunk at 7 a.m. (they actually have a list of morning-time cocktails for people who want to do just that), you can check out some live music in the evenings or you can go there for booze-soaking victuals after bar close. (more…)
Charlie Parr – “Blues for Whitefish Lake, 1975”
The new music video from Duluth’s Charlie Parr was shot and edited by Lei Shi, directed by Lance Lindahl and features Gar Lindahl as the boy. The song is from Parr’s album — Last of the Better Days Ahead, released in 2021.
Two Superior warehouses destroyed by fire
Warehouses at 1507 and 1515 N. First St. in the North End of Superior were destroyed by fire this morning. The Blatnik Bridge was temporarily closed due to smoke from the blaze. (more…)
Ferocious Finn falls to Polish strong boy in 1922 mat tussel
It was 100 years ago today that Henry Karhunsaari, “the Ferocious Finn of Virginia,” was knocked unconscious in the deciding fall of what Duluth Herald sportswriter Sandy MacDonald called “the most spectacular and most fiercely contested wrestling match ever staged in this city.” (more…)
Monthly Grovel: January 2022
We urge everyone to proceed with caution while the Omicron variant works to spoil the parties, but events go on and the PDD Calendar has all the details as usual. Each month we reach out with one beggarly blog post to remind everyone that human beings and not machines are at work editing and publishing calendar events. So if you appreciate it, drop a few bucks in the PayPal account. (more…)
Low – “I Can Wait”
The new music video from Duluth band Low follows five people bogged down by the realities of their world, dreaming of a better life. Directed by Manuel Aragon, it is the sixth video release from the Grammy nominated 2021 album Hey What. The nomination is in the category “Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical” for the work by mastering engineer BJ Burton. (more…)