August 2013 Posts

Perfect Breakfast Restaurant: Duluth Grill

Aug 07, 2013 10 Comments

What’s not to like about Duluth Grill? It’s a truck-stop style diner in the friendly West End neighborhood that buys from local farmers and grows some of its vegetables around its parking lot in raised-bed gardens. Owner Tom Hanson and his family have plans to build an urban orchard on the lot as well, with plum trees, black-cap raspberries, lingonberries, choke cherries and other deliciousness. They even get their honey from hives on the roof of the building. Duluth Grill is much more than a simple breakfast joint, but readers of Perfect Duluth Day strongly agreed in a recent poll that it is indeed the best breakfast restaurant in the area.

Is it the Scotch eggs? The breakfast stir fry? The curried polenta skillet? The smoked salmon omelet? The caramel apple French toast? Yes, yes, yes, yes and yes. It’s all that and more.

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Polls, Restaurants , ,

Searching for Sophie’s Wreck (and Failing)

Aug 06, 2013 3 Comments

There’s a small boat wrecked off the 2600 block of Park Point, nicknamed Sophie’s Wreck after the girl who first spotted it through the clear ice of a few years ago. I tried to find it the other day and wound up meeting and talking with Sophie’s mom who said the shifting sands had covered it for a year or so now. I looked for it anyway and, failing that, goofed around in a few feet of water. It was an odd feeling knowing there was a shipwreck close by, perhaps right under me, expectantly prepared to see it at any time.


Outdoors, Videos

New album from the Electric Witch

Aug 06, 2013 2 Comments

… So We Burn, the new album from Duluth dark-synth duo the Electric Witch (myself and Marcus Matthews of Wino, WI / The Surfactants / The Virgin Marcus etc. etc.), has just been released! Five new original songs (one featuring Moleman aka Brett Molitor of the Surfactants / Both on guitar), a Mega Man 2 cover (complete with Japanese lyrics!) and remixes from Duck Duck Punch (Twin Cities) and Cities of Earth (Denver).

You can listen to it all for free and own it for whatever you want. And keep an eye out for a full live band coming for you in the near future!


Music

Calling Bluebird Enthusiasts

Aug 06, 2013 3 Comments

If you are in good bluebird habitat, have had bluebirds on your property, and would be willing to help Wildwoods “soft release” four juvenile bluebirds, please email us (duluthrehabber @ yahoo.com) or Facebook message us. Soft release entails offering live mealworms a few times per day and calling the young birds back with a feeding call we will teach you. Please help us transition these birds back to nature. Thanks!


Random

The Getarounds — “I Fell Away”

Aug 05, 2013 No Comments

New Getarounds video from a live show with the Roe Family Singers at Beaner’s Central.


Music, Videos , ,

Running race through the tunnels on I-35

Aug 05, 2013 11 Comments

Saturday, Sept. 14, will be the inaugural Tunnel 10K running race, starting at Fifth Avenue West and heading east on the freeway through the tunnels. At the 5K point you will turn around and finish where you started. This race is part of the Northshore Inline Marathon series of races. There is also a half-marathon running event, a half-marathon skating event, a 26.2 mile roller-skiing marathon and, of course, the race that made us famous, the 26.2-mile Northshore Inline Marathon.


Sports

This week: blues, baseball and the burnt part

Aug 05, 2013 4 Comments

  

Here’s a sampling of what you have to look forward to this week on the PDD Calendar.

This is the last week of the regular season for the Duluth Huskies at Wade Stadium, so you only have a handful of chances to take in a game.

Tomorrow night is National Night Out with neighborhood get togethers all over Duluth. Get out and meet your neighbors.

The Nettleton World Beat Drummers are playing with Mu Daiko at Bayfield this Wednesday. With Nettleton School now closed, I’m guessing this will be one of the last performances of the group. Anyone knowing differently, let me know in the comments.

Renegade‘s Burnt Part Boys, a musical about mining in West Virginia, opens at the Teatro Zuccone this Thursday and runs for three weekends.

At the Duluth Playhouse Metamorpheses and Grease open on Thursday and Friday and run for two weekends. These plays are part of the Summer Youth Intensive program where the cast for one show is the tech crew for the other show, so the kids you see on the stage on Thursday, will be running the show behind the scenes on Friday.

Bayfront Blues Festival is this coming weekend, running Friday through Sunday.

This weekend will also be the Festival of Fine Art and Craft at Glensheen on Saturday and Sunday.

So what are you doing this week? Can we tag along? Any upcoming events that you want to promote? Let us know.


Events

That pizza joint on the hill

Aug 04, 2013 9 Comments

Oh, my 40-year-old brain! I have been sitting in the same chair all day trying to remember the name of the pizza place that was up on the hill, I think, across from Shakey’s. It had a weird pizza joint / olde tyme candy shoppe / barbershop quartet theme. The logo was a guy with a handlebar mustache wearing a striped red shirt. My brother remembers enormous jaw breakers. Extra credit to anyone who can name the owners. They went to Holy Rosary.

Please help. I may never sleep again.


History, Restaurants

Art (class) becomes reality?

Aug 04, 2013 No Comments

My wife and I were having the usual musings on current society over dinner last night. We were barbecuing and she still had on her iconic McIlhenny Company Tabasco Sauce apron at the table.

Somehow the conversation turned to the smocks we had used in art class as fourth graders. These were the brown, excessively thick vinyl ones that were festooned with others’ clay frustrations and misguided painting experiments.

As I pondered this, of course my mind wandered to how this could fit into a business opportunity. The thought of mega retail in America came to mind, and the image of the stereotypical subculture of the unmentionable Walmart shopper we all know and shun — those who still find Zubaz a viable fashion statement and forgot to not sleep in their Crocs last night.

That’s it! Smocs! (Say it whilst tilting the head slightly and gurgling like a 1940’s radio character.) It could be the next huge retail trend — and not just a short-lived fad, but addressing a real need to promote the lifestyle shall we say by averting those unnecessary food droppings that mark up clothing, etc., and allowing a whole generation to sleep in their clothes for weeks on end.

Rubberized industrial Smocs in bright colors for any occasion could make for an excellent business opportunity. Might even globally increase the sale of pressure washers as well.


Uncategorized , ,

Where North of Duluth?

Aug 03, 2013 4 Comments


Uncategorized

Late July, Lake Superior

Aug 03, 2013 No Comments


Outdoors, Videos

Art at the Zeitgeist

Aug 02, 2013 1 Comment

Like Ed Newman, I was at the opening at the Zeitgeist on Wednesday for AJ Atwater. Unlike Ed, I am not a talented writer. So, I link you here to Ed’s account. For myself, I found that the pieces were amazing: they played with my sense of depth. At moments, some of the color seemed to be a rip through the canvas; some of the fields of color seemed to recede into the wall. There is a technical awesomeness to this work.


Art

Disturbing Lake Superior “Scars”

Aug 02, 2013 17 Comments

Can’t say I have identified any chemical trails over the Twin Ports (maybe they know that only the lake can control the weather around here), but this sad image has a strong effect.

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Random

Chef Yee’s serving it up at Foster’s

Aug 02, 2013 No Comments

Life just got even better on the hill — I discovered Chef Yee’s is serving up his fare Wednesdays and Thursdays at Foster’s on Arrowhead Road. I ate there tonight for the first time. It was delicious, fresh and quick — ah, just like we remembered! Paired well with a Great Lakes Brewing Co. Edmund Fitzgerald tap! Even my hubby who isn’t a Chinese food fan gave it rave reviews. We’ll be back!


Recommendations, Restaurants ,

Lost Cat

Aug 01, 2013 5 Comments

Via SirJeff for a friend: Full grown grey tabby cat lost in East Hillside near Sixth Street and 11th Avenue. Answers to Abigail, or friendly voices. Very friendly. Has claws, but are trimmed. No collar. We miss her very much and hope she comes home soon. Any info please call – 218-310-7050.


Uncategorized