With all the breweries popping up in Duluth and surrounding communities, it’s hard to keep the names straight. In casual conversation, no one really cares if you say “Earth Rider Brewery” or “Earth Rider Brewing,” but if you are one of the last copy editors in town who still has a job, for example, you might consider it important to distinguish which brew-suffix goes with each entity.
When I was a kid I had a blue Schwinn Sting-Ray Fastback 5-speed banana-seat bicycle with ape-hanger handlebars. It was classic and beautiful. I hated it.
That bike was a relic handed down from my significantly older brother, Scott, who bought it in the late 1960s with his paper route money and used it to expedite his collections process. I took it over just as the 1970s turned into the 1980s, and by then banana bikes weren’t cool. Freestyle bikes were the new rage.
In West Duluth at the time we called freestyle bikes “dirt bikes,” a term that would get them confused with motorized dirt bikes in other neighborhoods or other periods in history, but there was no confusion among us. The Huffy BMX is a popular dirt bike I remember, along with Diamondbacks. I wasn’t really tuned into what all the hot brands were, nor was I much of an enthusiast for stunt biking, I just knew I wanted one of those bikes so I could blend in and not look ridiculous when it was time to jump over stuff and race through mud or whatever. But I didn’t want it bad enough to get a paper route and pay for it, I just wanted fate to hand me one. Because if fate hands you anything in this life, it immediately entitles you to think it will hand you things over and over again.
There are plenty of federal and state offices up for grabs in 2018, and a little bit of St. Louis County action, but no Duluth City Council or Duluth School Board races.
Remember: Aug. 14 is one of those Primary Elections in which voters must choose a party. One can’t, for example, vote for a Republican governor and a DFL congressman. On the partisan portion of the ballot citizens must vote for the same party in all races. Below are the contests that will be on that ballot, and some notes about what will be part of the Nov. 6 General Election.
All candidates representing the Minnesota Green Party, Legal Marijuana Now Party, Independence Party, Libertarian Party or Grassroots-Legalize Cannabis Party are unopposed in the Primary Election and will appear on the General Election Ballot, as will any unaffiliated candidates.
Duluth, Duluth, Duluth is on fire. On June 5, 1948, Downtown Duluth was recovering from the “worst commercial district blaze in history.”
Young and old, rich and poor, Minnesota nice be damned, Duluthians can get just as upset as folks in the rest of the world. And their newspaper of record, the Duluth News Tribune, is there to document all the crossed arms and frowny faces.
An important sidebar to the history of Sears, Roebuck & Company in Duluth is the fascinating tale of the shopping-center-on-pillars that wasn’t. A plan was hatched in the late 1970s for Harbor Square, a roughly $70-million, 574,000-sq.-ft. shopping plaza to be built on stilts over Interstate 35 in Downtown Duluth. Failure to lure Sears as an anchor store was a key element that led to the project’s downfall.
Sears, Roebuck and Company’s Downtown Duluth department store; 1963 photo from the Kathryn A. Martin Library’s Northeast Minnesota Historical Collections at UMD.
The news broke this week that Sears Holdings will close 15 Kmart stores and 48 Sears stores, including the Sears at Miller Hill Mall and the Kmart at the Spirit Valley Shopping Center in West Duluth.
Sears has been in business in Duluth since 1929, when Sears, Roebuck and Company opened a department store at 129 E. Superior St., the modern-day location of Fond-du-Luth Casino.
A few years ago I came across this photo, saved it on my computer with just the title “Duluth,” and then forgot about it. I probably didn’t know much about it then, or maybe wasn’t even certain it was a photo of Duluth.
So … that’s all we’ve got to go on with this Mystery Photo. It looks 1800s-ish. Could be Superior Street. Can anyone verify this as a Duluth photo?
Morgan Park’s only restaurant and beverage purveyor closed on May 25 after nearly four years in business. On June 9 it will reopen under new ownership. The Duluth News Tribune reports Mike Letica is the new proprietor of the Iron Mug. Johnny Northfield will manage the business. Building owner Paul Johnson, who founded the coffee shop, is a silent partner.
The DNT notes Letica plans to steer away from the Iron Mug’s previous food focus, pizza, and is instead planning inexpensive options like Taco Tuesday and 99-cent ice cream cones.
An old promotional flyer for excursions on the “world famous Twin Ports Harbor and Lake Superior.”
Construction on the McDougall Terminal Warehouse began in 1922, with the first unit completed in 1923. It was located at Ninth Avenue West and Railroad Street, just a bit southwest of where Pier B Resort is today. The building became a Jeno’s frozen foods manufacturing plant in the 1970s and was demolished in 1987.
The message on the back of this postcard was written 40 years ago today — May 22, 1978. The card is postmarked the next day.
This undated postcard photo depicts a U.S. Mail boat at a nondescript location. The only clue that it might be on the St. Louis River or some other body of water in the vicinity of Duluth is a penciled note on the back of the card.
The Duluth/Superior radio market is noted for two striking characteristics — an uncommon number of public-interest stations and an uncommon number of Christian stations. The commercial broadcast signals that fill out the rest of dial are mostly owned by two entities — Midwest Communications and Townsquare Media — although there are a few smaller station owners, like Northwoods Radio and Twin Ports Radio.
