2024: The Year in Duluth Gig Posters
As we reach the end of another year of rawk and/or roll, Perfect Duluth Day once again looks back at the posters that pimped the gigs.
As we reach the end of another year of rawk and/or roll, Perfect Duluth Day once again looks back at the posters that pimped the gigs.
Sherwood Terrace operated as a seasonal restaurant during the middle of the 20th century. Arthur and Ada Neeb were the proprietors. The location was either “on London Road” or “near Knife River,” depending on which old newspaper article is referenced.
Look back on the stories that made headlines in 2024 with this year-in-review quiz.
The first quiz of the new year, previewing 2025’s coming attractions, skis your way on Jan. 12. Please email question suggestions to Alison Moffat at [email protected] by Jan. 8.
For the fourth year in a row, Jim Richardson has dominated the top of the charts. He has authored four of the five most read Saturday Essays of 2024.
In celebration of the nasty habits of smoking and advertising, collected here are various Duluth-branded ashtrays representing a variety of establishments.
Recorded in 2019 at the Duluth Armory, this previously unreleased PBS North interview with Bob Dylan’s lifelong friend Louis Kemp offers insights into the life of the famous musician born in Duluth.
Perfect Duluth Day could not continue to be Duluth’s Duluthiest website without the support of its readers, donors and advertisers. So as another year comes to a close, we again say thanks for the love!
The Christmas-themed Elf on the Shelf doll is the protagonist character of a 2005 children’s book with the same name. Since its emergence to mainstream popularity, the decorative figurine has inspired parody photographs in which the Elf is staged in a wide range of holiday scenes causing chaos, or referenced in memes.
Below are some elves spotted and submitted by Duluthians, as well as some local art inspired by this internet trend.
This undated postcard, published by Gallagher’s Studio, shows the Good Shephard Church and School at 5901 Raleigh St. in West Duluth. The building was completed in 1959 and the first mass was celebrated on Christmas Eve, 65 years ago.
The Pali Platter from Falastin
If 2024 has a Twin Ports restaurant trend, it’s cultural cuisine. Two of the restaurants most anticipated by area foodies, Alto Pino and Falastin, brought unparalleled culinary options to Duluth this year.
The Black Water Lounge featured live music in a classy atmosphere. The restaurant closed in July after a 15-year run in Greysolon Plaza. (Photos by Mark Nicklawske)
Downtown Duluth suffered blows to its dining scene over the past year with two restaurants leaving prominent, historic buildings while Hermantown will lose a landmark establishment at the end of the month.
The 1984 Duluth City Directory (Photo by Matthew James)
As 2024 comes to a close, this post takes a look at Duluth 40 years ago using the 1984 Polk Directory of Duluth as an example for examining the history and use of city directories. This post includes ads from the directory for five businesses that have since left Duluth and five that still remain. It then concludes with two Geogeussr challenges featuring the historical locations of these ten businesses.
In this recent installment of “Jessie’s Drone Adventures,” Arizona-based video storyteller Jessie Nino dips into a little Duluth harbor history before heading up the shore to Palisade Head.
[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. Twenty years ago the Sultan of Sot paid a visit to Lost in the ’50s, 1809 N. Third St. in Superior, and composed this article for the December 2004 edition of the Ripsaw, which was the last issue of the publication in its monthly magazine format.]
Of the five bars located at the receptacle end of Tower Avenue, Lost in the ’50s is the shyest and most understated. Other bars in the neighborhood are known for their horseshoes or their burgers or for being a place to quietly drink yourself to death. Lost in the ’50s offers cheap drinks, a decent juke, bad karaoke and, as the name would suggest, a smattering of velvet Elvis art. For some reason, few people bother to take them up on the offer.
Location has as much to do with it as anything else. The layout of the Tower Avenue/North Third Street intersection tends to lead the drunken eye to the east, away from Lost in the ’50s and toward more dubious places, like Jo D’s Corner Oasis, JT’s or the deathly Tom’s Cedar Lounge. Besides, most people, once they get as far as the Anchor or maybe Molly’s, don’t even think of venturing any farther, because they assume they have all they need. They’re wrong, and I’m going to tell you why.
The Spirit Mountain Recreation Area opened for skiing 50 years ago today — Dec. 20, 1974. To mark the occasion, Perfect Duluth Day dusts off a relic from the video archive featuring Duluth businessman Manley “Monnie” Goldfine presenting the concept for developing Spirit Mountain to the Twin Ports Press Club. The date of the presentation is not known, but the year is most likely 1972.
