February 2017 Posts

Earth Rider Brewery coming to Superior

Feb 09, 2017 6 Comments

Tim_Nelson

Earth_Rider_BreweryTim Nelson and his company Bev-Craft have announced plans to build Earth Rider Brewery in Superior. The new craft brewery will service bars, restaurants and liquor stores throughout the Arrowhead region.

The brewery will reside on the north end of Tower Avenue at 1617 N. Third St., just across Ogden Avenue from Bev-Craft’s offices above the Cedar Lounge. The building being redeveloped for the brewery is the former Leamon Mercantile Co.

Nelson expects redevelopment of the structure to begin in the spring with the first batch of beer brewed in late summer.

Earth Rider’s brewing operations will occupy a 16,300-square-foot facility, with a project budget to exceed $2.5 million in private investment with support from the city of Superior, Superior Choice Credit Union, Wisconsin Business Development, Douglas County Development Association, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, Northland Foundation, Northeast Entrepreneur Fund and APEX.

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News and Current Affairs

Carnivores rejoice: OMC Smokehouse opens

Feb 09, 2017 No Comments

OMCCrewFor more than two years, Duluth carnivores have been salivating at the prospect of OMC Smokehouse, Tom Hanson’s new restaurant venture. The wait will be over when OMC opens Wednesday, Feb. 15.

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News and Current Affairs, Restaurants , ,

Answer eleven questions, potentially win $100

Feb 09, 2017 6 Comments

PDDMarketingWeaselEvery two years or so, the Perfect Duluth Day Marketing Weasel crawls out from behind his desk and demands a survey be conducted. The purpose is to gather information to aid in the selling of little square advertisements to fund the operation of this website. In order to make this infiltration of PDD’s blog content space seem tolerable, the survey is kept to a simple one-page, eleven-question, completely optional task with a $100 prize drawing when the survey period ends.

The survey is now complete; thanks to those who participated.

If you are offended about even being asked, we understand. All we can do is meekly apologize and point out PDD’s content is always offered completely free to readers. We don’t run pop-up ads, we don’t scramble our pages like ugly jigsaw puzzles with cheesy animations and auto-playing videos. We just run a few modest little promotional squares for businesses that are almost entirely local and reputable. (There is one ad dished out by Google Adsense that we roll our eyes at from time to time, but that’s as bad as it gets.)

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Random

Endion Owl

Feb 09, 2017 No Comments

OwlCop

Duluth police officer Richard LeDoux photographed this barred owl sitting on the hood of his squad car at the intersection of 21st Avenue East and Superior Street in Duluth. The owl stayed there about a minute and then flew off.

Duluth News Tribune: Owl lands on Duluth squad car


News and Current Affairs

Footage from the Surface of Ganymede

Feb 08, 2017 No Comments

Outdoors, Videos

Masonic building gets new life from sailboat accessory company

Feb 08, 2017 No Comments
ShipShape Canvas owners and employees, pictured from left: Thomas Welinski, Tami Sanders, Jonathan Fure, Alice Carlson, Andy Radtke, owners Barb and Jim Welinski.

ShipShape Canvas owners and employees, pictured from left: Thomas Welinski, Tami Sanders, Jonathan Fure, Alice Carlson, Andy Radtke, owners Barb and Jim Welinski.

A growing sailboat accessory manufacturer will move its operations into a historic and long-abandoned West Duluth property this spring.

ShipShape Canvas has purchased the former Euclid Lodge 198 at 611 N. Central Ave. Founded in 2006, the company is currently located at 732 E. Fourth St., where it makes custom canvas covers for sailboats in winter storage.

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News and Current Affairs

R.I.P. St. Margaret Mary Church of Morgan Park

Feb 07, 2017 2 Comments

St Margaret Mary Church 1 St Margaret Mary Church 2

The two photos above, posted to Facebook by Tim Beaulier, show yesterday’s demolition of St. Margaret Mary Church in Duluth’s Morgan Park neighborhood. WDIO-TV’s Eyewitness News reported last week the church was set to be razed.

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News and Current Affairs, R.I.P. ,

Lake Superior Aquaman in the News

Feb 06, 2017 No Comments


Outdoors, Videos

Duluth Smells Ocean Breezes

Feb 06, 2017 No Comments

Duluth Smells Ocean Breezes

Below is the complete text of a Duluth story from page six of The Observer out of Saline, Mich., from Thursday, June 14, 1934, reprinted from Collier’s magazine.

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History , ,

Duluth MakerSpace in full swing

Feb 05, 2017 1 Comment

Duluth MakerSpaceDuluth’s 10,000+ sq. ft. cooperative member workshop is in full swing this month. Duluth MakerSpace offers a different class or event every night in February — everything from welding to electronics to soap making. Wednesday nights are also free demo nights with a different demonstration each week. 

Paid membership is not necessary to take classes or attend demo nights.

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Art, Events, News and Current Affairs , , ,

Gaelynn Lea on Sexuality and Disability

Feb 05, 2017 No Comments

Gaelynn LeaDuluth’s Gaelynn Lea gave a lecture titled “Sexuality and Disability: Forging Identity in a World that Leaves You Out” during a TEDx event at Yale University in October. It made its way to YouTube a few weeks ago.

Lea once felt left out of mainstream dating and beauty culture due to her physical disability. In her talk, she recounts the epiphany that empowered her to pursue life, love and a musical career on her own terms.


Videos

Underwater Footage of Ice Stacking

Feb 04, 2017 No Comments

Outdoors, Videos ,

Sixteen Years on the Superior Hiking Trail: The Double Finish

Feb 04, 2017 4 Comments

Paul Lundgren Saturday EssayWriting about hiking the full 300+ miles of the Superior Hiking Trail hasn’t quite taken as long as hiking it, but it’s gone on long enough. At sixteen years and thirteen chapters, the story now concludes.

I had just a dozen miles left to go in 2015, which were divided into four slightly quirky hikes.

The first was a 1.8-mile section from Triangle Trail to Oak Trail near Jay Cooke State Park. Some of it I had probably already covered a few years earlier, I just wasn’t quite certain. So I embarked on a “van-bike-hike” adventure to make sure any possible gap there was covered. This involved driving to the Jay Cooke Visitor Center, unloading a bike, cycling the Munger Trail to bypass parts of the SHT I’d already done, ditching my bike at the Greely/Triangle trail intersection, completing the short hike, and cycling back.

You’ll have to trust me when I say that was fun. The description makes it sound like I was running a complicated errand. The thing is, being obsessive and task-oriented can be a method for forcing one’s self into situations that can be a bit more out of the ordinary. So, compared to hiking the trail behind my house for the 17,000th time, the van-bike-hike was a memorable event.

Two months later I took on what was the newest and southernmost segment of the SHT at the time, the 5.9-mile stretch from Wild River Road to Jay Cooke State Park. This also involved covering some ground I had hiked in the past, because parts of the trail are old segments of long-existing paths in the park, such as Bear Chase Trail. (No bears were chased.)

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Outdoors ,

Selective Focus: Jeff Lemke

Feb 03, 2017 No Comments

SF-TeaserJeff-Lemke

Jeff Lemke operates a web site, Twin Ports Rail History, and Flickr account where he posts photos he has taken as well as photos he has collected documenting the history of the rail business in Duluth and Superior. We are showing a very small sample of the images here, but you really need to check out the collection he has, as well as read his descriptions for each photo. If you are so inclined, you can also donate to keep the project going. It really is an impressive historical collection.

J.L: Most people look at my site and think it is about trains. Perception is reality in most cases. But for those who actually look closer and read the details of each image that I post, they discover that it’s really a developing story in pictures about the people who worked for the railroads and the industries that those railroads collectively served. The locomotives, railroad cars, and facilities that each railroad used were in a constant state of flux—right from the beginning. During the late 1880s railroads like the Northern Pacific and Great Northern established strongholds of land in Duluth and Superior respectively, on which they built their inland-port empires. Other railroads came along, prospered too, but to a much lesser degree.

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Art, Photos

Two Harbors photographer in Iceland

Feb 03, 2017 No Comments

Gregor in Iceland

John Gregor is in Iceland. So beautiful.


Photos