Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
St. Paul Needs to Lawyer Up
Our capital city is looking to keep both assault weapons and crypto kiosks out of its borders. But there’s a catch.
First up: assault weapons, large-capacity magazines, and triggers that enable rapid gunfire. Today the St. Paul City Council unanimously passed an ordinance to ban these types of mass-killing machines from the city. This ordinance is currently unenforceable, as any gun-control measures have to happen at the state level.
Still, council members Hwa Jeong Kim and Anika Bowie were among those who gave very personal and heartbreaking testimonies, calling the passage a rallying cry for the state to follow suit. That’s not going to stop the lawsuits, however, with the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus calling the ordinance “virtue signaling” and vowing to sue “immediately.”
Then there’s a potential banning of crypto ATMs. That ordinance has support of six council members, but the final vote has been delayed until November 19. According to the FBI’s recent Internet Crime Report, victims lost $246.7 million in kiosk fraud in 2024. Stillwater already banned the ATMs in April; Bitcoin Depot, which was also at today's meeting, responded with a lawsuit stating that a city can’t prohibit businesses permitted by the state. St. Paul City Council President Rebecca Noecker doesn’t seem worried about that argument. "This is fully within our police powers. It's licensing business activity within the city," she tells Kyle Stokes for Axios.
Herbivorous Butcher Reopens This Week
Last May, the Herbivorous Butcher was forced to close abruptly after a fire started in the space above the vegan deli’s northeast Minneapolis location. “Our kitchen suffered serious damage,” an Instagram post the morning after explained. “The fire department had to flood the space, and everything is now a mess. We’re still taking it all in—and figuring out what comes next.”
What came next was filing paperwork and dealing with insurance claims, as well as starting up a GoFundMe that has raised $69,336. There would also be some good news: The front of the house and the back area, where the coolers/storage resides, were spared fire damage, so only the kitchen and prep area needed a reno. "How our architect originally designed everything was so perfect, and so we just gave the construction company back the original plans and said, 'Please bring her back to life,'" cofounder Aubry Walch tells Jason Rantala at WCCO.
According to the shop’s Facebook account, Herbivorous Butcher will be open for business once again (including via delivery apps) starting at 10 a.m. this Friday, November 14.
Netflix Sets Hockey Drama in Minnesota… Films In Vancouver
Canada strikes again! In today’s feature story on the Minnesota Film Board (RIP), author Charlie Gillmer writes about how, thanks to the Great White North's sweet tax credits, Minnesota started losing all kinds of film projects to our northern neighbor in the early '00s. Canada remains a popular place to film to this day.
So we’re sad to write that while Netflix’s new unnamed hockey drama will be set in a fictional Minnesota town named “South Dorothy” (did they even try with that name?), it’s not going to be filmed here. The eight-part series will feature Michelle Monaghan as Harper Sullivan (didn’t try with that name, either), a widow who takes over as coach of an NHL-pipelined high school hockey team after her husband and several players die in a bus crash.
“What unfolds is the hopeful and unforgettable story of an underdog team who comes together to galvanize their town, reclaim their way of life, and turn their shared grief into an unstoppable superpower,” writes John Dilillo via Netflix’s news website, Tudum (another cringey name!).
How About That Light Show Last Night?
Did you see the sky last night? It was pretty cool! These space fireworks, often referred to as Aurora Borealis or the Northern Lights, occur when the Sun burps out plasma (the scientific term is "coronal mass ejection") that makes its way to Earth’s magnetic field via solar winds.
If you’re like me, then you’ve probably seen (and shared) a lot of colorful pictures across social media over the last 24 hours, but if you still need a fix there are lots of roundups across local sites today, including the Star Tribune, MPR, WCCO, KARE11, and Pioneer Press.
Meteorologists (...space meteorologists?) are predicting that there might be more coming our way tonight and tomorrow, though cloudy skies could mean less visibility in the Twin Cities.
