According to Ringside News, Superior High School 2010 grad Nikola Bogojevic is part of a group of new recruits training at the World Wrestling Entertainment Performance Center. (He’s the hulking mass at the far right in the image above.) These men and women “will have the chance to hone their skills and fulfill their dream of becoming a WWE Superstar.”
Mind Control fans the flames of Duluth’s underground community. Band members explain how the group’s self-titled EP could stand a test of time. Click on the image above to hear the interview.
The April 7 edition of WDSE-TV’s The PlayList featured this segment on Duluth piano man Max Morath, a member of the Colorado Music Hall of Fame. His ground-breaking work on The Ragtime Era series in 1960 for what is today Rocky Mountain PBS set the bar for television programs nationwide.
Duluthian Alexander Miles invented an improved mechanism for opening and closing elevator doors. It’s just one accomplishment of the man who was thought to be the wealthiest black man in the Midwest during the late 1800s. Read all about Miles on the Duluth Public Library’s Reference@Duluth blog. It’s the first new post on the blog in over two years, and it’s a doozy.
Real Estate agent Jim Aird in the balcony of the old Euclid Masonic Lodge in West Duluth. Aird’s grandfather was a member of the fraternity and had a room named after him in the building.
An historic and mysterious West Duluth building has stood abandoned for a decade after an ancient fraternal organization sold the property to a developer who died before initiating a renovation.
Euclid Lodge 198 erected the boxy, brick and largely windowless building at 611 N. Central Avenue in 1909, a period of great growth for the centuries-old, international fraternity of Masons. During its almost 100 years in operation, some of the most prominent West Duluth businessmen and civic leaders of the time participated in secretive ceremonies, jovial fellowship and benevolent works inside its walls.
Duluth’s Parks and Recreation division is seeking public comment on 11 neighborhood parks mini-master plans, which cover improvements and additions to neighborhood parks within the St. Louis River Corridor. The included parks are Piedmont, Midtowne, Harrison, Merritt, Irving, Grassy Point, Keene Creek, Norton, Riverside, Smithville, Morgan, Blackmer, Fond du Lac and Historical.
The draft plans and comment form are available at duluthmn.gov. The plan will be presented to the Parks Commission on April 20; vote for approval will be at the May 11 meeting. Public comments are being accepted through April 20.
Big changes are afoot at Perfect Duluth Day. It’s the final week of the PDD Calendar‘s current look. Starting Sunday, April 17th, we switch over to our new WordPress platform, which will make adding and viewing events easier and more pleasurable for all. For now, though, get your last gander at the soon-to-be-old-school calendar before it’s scuttled, and check out these upcoming events:
Empty Bowl 2016 is upon us, Big Science warms up for Homegrown with a feast of noise at the Red Herring, Renegade Improv brings the funny to raise money to fight Alzheimer’s, Marshall Performing Arts Center is the place to see the rock musical Spring Awakening, the Duluth Art Institute opens two sports-themed exhibitions and the rocking 60’s get sudsy at UW-Superior.
St. Scholastica Theatre presents the stalking-themed Boy Gets Girl, the Cabin Fever Festival brings a weekend of old-time music to town, the Duluth East robotics team is raising money, the 27th annual Fitger’s 5k Run and Walk takes place on Saturday, over 100 different beers from over 25 brewers can be sampled at the Gitchee Gumee Brewfest and guitarist Christoph Bruhn plays the Teatro Zuccone.
Duluth is home to some eccentric folks. How much do you know about your neighbors and their crazy pastimes? Let’s find out.
The next quiz will be on May 1 and it will be a review of everything that happened in Duluth in April. Well, 10 things. Yours could be one of them. Send your suggested questions (and answers) to lawrence @ perfectduluthday.com by noon on Wednesday, April 27.
Ben and Margie Regner
Steel Toe Pub quietly opened in February in the historic Androy Hotel’s lobby at 1213 Tower Avenue in Superior. Patrons of the former Androy Lounge might find the pub unrecognizable as the space has been extensively renovated in the past year.
Owners Margie and Dave Regner have also been proprietors of the hotel since 1986. Margie said her husband and sons did much of the work on the bar themselves, ripping out layers of false ceilings and taking down several walls to reveal exposed brick. “We totally gutted the whole place,” she says.
Adam Dargan, an animator from Duluth who now lives in Minneapolis, “captures the process of emulsion on 35mm film being dissolved in three-dimensional space” in this video. “It explores the feeling of nature and visual landscapes that are created from unconventional sources.”
After several hours of splashing around, I pulled myself up to the dock. I held onto the edge and floated. My daughter said, “Your wedding ring is gone.”
What kind of kid notices that? I thought she was kidding. Then, I looked at my left hand. No ring.
I spent the next hour swimming with a scuba mask trying to pull off a miracle. The lake water looks like tea because of the tannins. Or maybe even darker like root beer. As I swam down, I could barely see. I hoped to see a little glint in the gravel. It never happened.
So, now I wear a replacement ring. The ring I put on twenty years ago sits at the bottom of the Whiteface Reservoir, a permanent part of the St. Louis River watershed. I sit like Gollum on the dock, sip my gin and tonic, gaze out over the water, and wonder about my precious. My precious.
When I was a kid, I didn’t notice things like rings on my dad’s hand. But I noticed his finger and where it pointed on the topo map. It was deer season in Plymouth, New Hampshire. I was in high school and an important part of the game plan to fill the freezer with venison.
“I’m going to sit here at the top of this drainage,” my dad said. “You walk down the road on this side of the ridge to here. Come over the ridge and walk up the drainage toward me. If you hear a shot, sit down for five minutes. Then, when you hear two shots, it means I found the deer and you can walk to me.” He said drainage so much during the huddle, I thought he was talking about nasal passages instead of a small mountain valley.
Supermodel Christie Brinkley was in town with the John Mellencamp tour. Warning: She is a creative speller.
The 2016 Homegrown Music Festival Field Guide is off the presses, with 20,000 free copies piled up at various shops across the Twin Ports. This year’s cover art is by Carolyn Sue Olson.
So far there are two changes to the Homegrown schedule that happened after the Field Guide went to press:
We need to get in on this! Angry people in local newspapers blog (via Boing Boing)
![Upset-Community-Members[1]](https://www.perfectduluthday.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Upset-Community-Members1.jpg)
(Upset community + Cinnamon Roll, courtesy of Banjo Tom)
Video by Ali Rogers of Prana Lens. Narration by Rob Bell.
