Black Sheep Eat Street Is Closing

Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.

Bye, Bye Black Sheep

If you’re counting Black Sheep, we’ll soon be down to just one. A sign recently appeared on the coal-fired pizza chain’s Eat Street outpost on Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis with the following message...

Eat Street Black Sheep Pizza will be closing our doors on Saturday, November 30th for the last time. We have had ten wonderful years here and our time is up! We are going to focus our limited and aging attention on our original North Loop location and our grandchildren! Thank you for these 10 years and we hope you all can stop in to the North Loop and see many familiar faces! Jordan, Colleen, Sheila, and the whole Black Sheep Pizza Team.

Damn, that’s waving goodbye to some quality pizza at perhaps Eat Street’s most visible address. 

“Ya know? I’m sad too," owner Jordan Smith told Racket by phone late Friday afternoon. "But I think for most restaurants 10 years is a pretty good run, plus with our grandchildren, and the lease being up? It seems like it’s the smart thing to do.”

At one time, Black Sheep maintained three Twin Cities addresses, though the St. Paul shop closed in 2022. Food Network once named Black Sheep the No. 7 best pizza place in the country, and just last year Taste of Home declared it the best pizza in Minnesota.

Yours truly (Jay) reviewed the original North Loop Black Sheep for the Minnesota Daily when it opened in 2008, back when I had no business reviewing (or, really, writing) anything. For some reason, I cooked up this deeply puzzling closing line: "To be able to provide an appetizer/pizza/dessert/alcohol + leftovers date for around $50 makes Black Sheep far more Robert Kennedy than Billy Carter, and we, as Americans (or, err, Minnesotans if you want to wax specific), only serve to benefit." Yeesh!

Will the North Loop shop keep humming for the foreseeable future?

“Oh my gosh yes," Smith told this (hopefully much improved) journalist with a chuckle. "I’ve gotta have something to do. I’m very excited to be able to re-double my focus on the North Loop location, to make it better and better all the time.” 

Target Pitchdog Bullseye Out of a Job This Holiday

“Joyful, playful, curious, adventurous—it is hard to choose which word best describes Bullseye,” explains Target’s corporate site of its doggy mascot. “This Target dog is full of surprises!”

But this time the surprise is on Bullseye—or, rather, Worldwide Movie Animals, the company that contracts the bull terrier for events, photoshoots, and other showbiz stuff. After 22 years, Target has ended its mascot contract with the company. But, much like an auto-renewing magazine subscriptions, rental agreements, or phone company contacts, WMA alleges in a lawsuit that the Minnesota-based big-box shop terminated the contract three days past deadline, and thus is on the hook for $739,314.01. Mega-corporations: They’re just like us!

"Target seeks brand loyalty from customers,” lawsuit paperwork reads. “It has shown that it is anything but loyal to those responsible for bringing its brand to life." 

In other news, Target stock fell nearly 22% on Wednesday after a third quarter report showed that projected earnings had fallen short by about 20%.

'A Nimrod Queen Is Crowned'

Lots to love about this WCCO dispatch from Nimrod, Minnesota, where the population is—we're not making this up—69!

Nimrod Mayor Keith Frame tells John Lauritsen that the town sign is an attraction for goofs from all over, especially during Jubilee Days on Labor Day weekend, when the population shoots to up to 5,000 thanks to visitors. (That's when the Nimrod queen is crowned.) The town's amateur baseball team, the Nimrod Gnats (not making this up) has even produced an MLB pitcher... Dick Stigman. (Not! Making! This! Up!)

And its residents seem to love the place, with many echoing the sentiments of Pat Pederson: "We have never even thought about leaving. Why would anybody leave Nimrod?"

Remembering Phillip Murphy

"When tragedy struck on Minneapolis’ North Side, Phillip Murphy was among the first to know." So begins a moving obituary by the Star Tribune's Liz Sawyer (gift link) memorializing Murphy, founder of the popular crime Facebook page True North Minneapolis. The citizen journalist with a "distinctive and acerbic tone" was found dead earlier this week inside his St. Louis Park home.

"Murphy’s blunt dispatches informed—and, sometimes inflamed—a legion of social media followers cultivated through relentless street reporting, intended to raise awareness and force change in marginalized neighborhoods," Sawyer writes. But if you know Murphy, you know that already; maybe you even dislike him for it. Instead, read this remembrance for the little things you might not learn about him otherwise, including his childhood love of building go-karts, his habit for "haphazard crime scene remediation," and the standard poodles who sometimes joined him as he zoomed to crime scenes in his "distinctive orange Honda Element," as well as the many big and small acts of love he shared for Minneapolis and its people over the years.