Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily noontime(ish) digest of what local media outlets and Twitter-ers are gabbing about.
New Housing for Low-Income and Former Foster Kids
A new affordable housing apartment complex has opened in Lowry Hill. What makes it unique is that it will offer services and set aside spaces specifically for foster teens who are aging out of the system. Peris Hill, located at 1930 Hennepin Avenue (aka where Bradstreet Crafthouse used to be), will offer 45 units for rent, 15 of them will be reserved for fosters who need help transitioning to independence. It's a critical service, as Peris’s website states that over 50% of foster youth in Minnesota experience homelessness at some point in their life. The building will also offer 24-7 support for these tenants via youth org The Link. The rush of applications indicates that this may be a valuable addition to the city, but it’s certainly not a quick fix: Axios writes that Peris has “received over 70 applications — 17 of which are for the former foster youth units, as of this week.”
Some Racist Asshole Pepper Sprayed Olympian Suni Lee’s Arm
Minnesota gymnast Suni Lee experienced some amazing highs at the Tokyo Olympics this year, winning gold in the all-around, bronze on uneven bars, and silver with her team, making her the first Hmong-American to do so. She’s also faced some major lows, because America is full of fucking racists. Lee recently recounted one shitty incident in an interview with PopSugar, explaining that she and her girlfriends, all of Asian descent, were assaulted by a group in a speeding car while outside waiting for an Uber. The attackers shouted racial slurs and told them to "go back to where they came from" (that would be St. Paul, assholes). Lee also said a passenger managed to pepper spray her arm. "I was so mad, but there was nothing I could do or control because they skirted off," she says. "I didn't do anything to them, and having the reputation, it's so hard because I didn't want to do anything that could get me into trouble. I just let it happen." In other Suni Lee news, the Olympian scored a perfect 10 this week on Dancing with the Stars, which is super cool, since she’ll never see one of those in gymnastics (the sport changed the scoring system over a decade ago).
‘Let’s Go Brandon’ Cookie Controversy Grips Fosston
Bipartisan refusal to materially improve your life got you feeling powerless? Try embroiling yourself in the culture war—the only place ordinary Americans can feel fleeting, misplaced agency. A spectacularly dumb skirmish in said war is playing out in tiny Fosston, located about an hour north of Detroit Lakes. Specifically inside Palubicki’s Family Market, where “Let’s Go Brandon” cookies have descended the sleepy hamlet into lib vs. MAGA bedlam. (“Let’s Go Brandon,” for the blissfully uninitiated, is right-wing code for “Fuck Joe Biden.") “He didn’t even let me check out. He didn’t let me buy my things,” shopper Sarah Schauer told Valley News Live, presumably referring to the grocery store’s owner though the reporting makes that unclear. “He just kicked me out of the store and said I was banned because I raised a question of his moral compass of why that was allowed at the store. Then, they were still being sold today. That’s how I got them.” What a country!
Stop Those Annoying Robocalls with... an Annoying Amount of Work
Robocalls. We all hate them. Now what if I told you could make money by slamming those robocallers for illegal behavior? Sounds good, right? Now what if I told you it sounds like an incredible amount of irritating, detail-oriented work? Sound like, uh, a job, right? And possibly more annoying than the one you already have. KARE 11 spoke with Kristi VonDeyle, an Anoka County woman who has made $42,000 in settlements with these inopportune callers. And as she talked about how she did to cash in, what sounded at first like a get-rich-quick scheme turned out to be a get-slightly-less poor-slowly scheme. Just turn off your ringer like I do. Who wants to talk on the phone anyway?
