Duluth, you’re terrific!
This old plastic grocery bag from the Denfeld Super Valu asserts Duluth is terrific. The grocery store at 4501 Grand Ave. closed in 2001 and was replaced with a Walgreens.
This old plastic grocery bag from the Denfeld Super Valu asserts Duluth is terrific. The grocery store at 4501 Grand Ave. closed in 2001 and was replaced with a Walgreens.
A few weeks back PDD reported a Duluth reference in a new episode of Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, prompting vague assertions that Duluth had been mentioned in an episode of the original run of Gilmore Girls.
Well, a more specific tip finally came in.
Duluth was name dropped in season 2, episode 3, “Red Light on the Wedding Night.” Lorelai’s fiance Max has his bachelor party cut short because his brother leap frogged a parking meter and didn’t make it, resulting in a hospital visit. According to Max, his brother “claims he wasn’t drunk. He’s saying that the parking meters in Hartford are taller than the parking meters in Duluth, so he just miscalculated.”
The episode originally aired Oct. 16, 2001. The Duluth reference is just after the 18-minute mark of the full episode; the bootleg clip above isolates the reference.
From the Sept. 7, 1975, Duluth News Tribune; photos by Charles Curtis.
This is how some of more than 1,000 square dancers looked from the top of the scoreboard in the Duluth Arena Saturday. The terpsichoreans, from a five-state region and Canada, are here through today for Shindig ’75, sponsored by the Duluth Square Dance Association.
Adam Ruins Everything is at least the fifth television series to reference Duluth in 2016. Episode 23, which aired Dec. 6 on the cable network TruTV, features Adam Conover discussing “how deep Facebook’s tentacles really go,” with an example of a man who bought a “bacon double heart-attack burger” in Duluth after seeing an ad targeted through his Facebook likes.
Other shows that have referenced Duluth in 2016 include Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, Robot Chicken, Vinyl and Lady Dynamite.
The fall colors in 2009 received mixed reviews. I thought they were outstanding.
“I’m sorry, but the colors were TERRIBLE this year,” one Perfect Duluth Day reader wrote at the time. “Very disappointed.” Another agreed. “They’ve been very dim up the shore.” One advised that it was important to “get off the shore 5 miles inland” to see the colors at their best.
It’s human nature, I suppose, to consider all things in relation to whatever else might be possible. Just this past week I was at Bent Paddle’s busy tap room and my wife quickly ordered two Harness IPAs, knowing it’s a beer I love. While that was happening, I was a few feet away looking at the beer options on the board and elated to see Barrel-aged Double Shot Double Black Ale was available. When a Harness landed in front of me I wanted to take that beer I generally love and pour it directly into a urinal to make a clear path for the Double Black—the only acceptable beer in the world at that moment.
So when I say the fall colors were excellent in 2009 and show a few pictures, it’s with the understanding that maybe they were the 974th-best fall colors of all time.
Where are you now, Danny Tanner?
This image is from a postcard printed by the College of St. Scholastica featuring photography by student Danny Tanner. Searching the internet to determine if Danny Tanner is still involved in photography is a bit complex; it turns out Danny Tanner is the name of a character on the television sitcom Full House, which had recently wrapped up its eight-season run around the same time the real Danny Tanner was doing his thing on Superior Street.
Although the date the photo was shot and date the postcards were printed are unknown, this one is postmarked Nov. 2, 1998. In the background are the Electric Fetus store, Strand Theater and a Duluth Transit Authority bus headed to New Duluth.
On the Halloween episode of The Dana Gould Hour, guest Joel Hodgson briefly mentions his family lived in Duluth for a year. The conversation had steered to small-town television shows and personalities, and Hodgson recalled “picturesque slides of lighthouses” and how it gave a “mood of where you were.”
Hodgson, of course, is best known as the creator of the hit television show Mystery Science Theater 3000.
This photo is dated Dec. 5, 1996. It’s a shot of the exterior mural on the parking lot side of the former Wild West Liquor, 318 N. Central Ave. in West Duluth.
At the time it was probably a fairly new mural; the liquor store changed its name from West Duluth Liquor to Wild West Liquor at some point in the mid 1990s. I don’t remember when the mural was painted over, but I’d guess the side of the building has been plain white for at least ten years. The liquor store closed in 2015.
The building is being remodeled to open as Zenith Bookstore in summer 2017.
For those who missed the exhibition of D. R. Martin photos on display at the Red Herring Lounge this past summer, or those who want to revisit it, the images are now available online at curator Kip Praslowicz’s website. It’s a collection of street photography shot in the Duluth area between 1968 and 1971. As evidenced by the sample above, these are hot!
The American Wrestling Association brought some of its finest grapplers to Duluth 30 years ago, as the newspaper ad above attests. It was six months before the World Wrestling Federation juggernaut brought a series of shows to the Duluth Arena. The AWA, of course, was a smaller promotion and held its card in the Duluth Auditorium, with the ring placed on the stage the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra typically occupies.
As noted in the Perfect Duluth Day story “Planners take another look at West Duluth’s Memorial Park,” a majority of the bronze plates memorializing West Duluth servicemen who died in World War I are either missing or damaged. Above are images of some of the more deteriorated and/or vandalized markers. Of the original 22, just seven remain in place and in good condition.
The markers were planted under trees in 1928 and read: “This tree planted in memory of (name) killed (date) for God and country.”
Demolition of the former West Duluth Baptist Church at 5907 Grand Ave. is underway. In August the Duluth City Council unanimously approved the plan to tear down the structure, built in 1938.
This clip is from the Sept. 10, 1976, Duluth News-Tribune; photo by Joey McLeister.
Duluth Square Dance Association members let it all out as they prepare for participation in Shindig 1976–Duluth, the third annual square and round dance festival fast becoming a traditional event in the city. Dancing times are from 7:30 to 11:45 p.m. today in the Duluth Arena, and the action continues from 9 a.m. to 11:15 p.m. Saturday and from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Sunday. Spectators are welcome and there is no charge.
About 11 miles outside Duluth at the junction of Midway Road and Old Highway 61 is the Eldes Corner Spring, a rundown white building with two free-flowing spigots on the exterior.
Also known as the “Midway Artesian Well” or “Eldes Well House,” it is a public well, owned and maintained by the township, channeled by pipes from four aquifers. That’s about the extent of info a quick internet search brings up. Who knows more? When was it built? Share your knowledge.
