Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily midday digest of what local media outlets and Twitter-ers are gabbing about.
When They Say 'Antifa,' They Always Mean 'Insurance Fraud'
You had to be pretty stupid to believe Denis V. Molla. The Brooklyn Center man said his camper was burned down in September 2020 because of a "Trump 2020" flag, and pointed to graffiti reading "Biden 2020," "BLM," and a right-side up anarchy symbol. Molla collected $61,000 in insurance claims, filed claims for hundreds of thousands more, threatened to report his insurance company to the state when they denied those claims, and siphoned up $17,000 more from a GoFundMe. Molla pled guilty Tuesday to all this in federal district court, and now his attorney wants us to know he’s sorry for ripping everyone off. "Unlike many others, he has accepted full responsibility for his actions and is sorry for what happened,” said defense attorney Ryan Garry. "He is a wonderful husband and father who made a mistake that he sincerely regrets.” Oh, I see, he’s one of the good criminals, not those “thugs” his like-minded peers think that bleeding heart judges are too soft on.
Wild Greg’s Comes Wildin’ Back Downtown
You just can’t keep a shitty bar down. When Wild Greg’s Saloon closed its downtown Minneapolis location less than two months ago, owner Greg Urban went out with middle fingers blazing. “Minneapolis is not the place to be right now, unfortunately,” he told Fox News in a segment titled “Blue city biz owners struggle to make comeback.” “It’s slow. People are scared to come out of the suburbs and go downtown… The restaurants out in the suburbs are packed, but downtown is a ghost town.” Apparently he’s had a change of heart, however, as an operating license for Greg’s to reopen in its o.g. space at 315 First Avenue North was OK’ed by the city yesterday. No word yet if Gov. Tim Walz, who Urban referred to as “Dictator Walz,” will still be banned from the establishment when it reopens. The bar declared Walz its foe during the mask/vax mandates, going so far as to file a suit against the city with a handful of downtown businesses.
Uptown Tavern Bows Out
After 17 years, Uptown Tavern & Rooftop has announced that it's closing later this month. "It’s been the journey of a lifetime, unfortunately all great things come to an end," the long-running Lagoon Avenue bar and nightclub posted on Tuesday (first reported by KSTP). The bar/restaurant closed indefinitely starting in January of this year after Minneapolis's mask mandate went into effect, but unlike other Uptown nightlife spots like Pourhouse, it did eventually reopen. Just a few blocks down Lagoon, The Fremont and Hammer & Sickle officially closed this summer after they too had been "temporarily closed" for weeks. You still have a week and change to stop by Uptown Tavern, though; the last night'll be October 22.
Watch This Sick Twofer Fish Vid
"OK, so a Northern ate one Northern… holy shit!" So begins a fresh entry into the internet's last pure, wholesome genre of clickbait: the viral fish video. In this one, we see two young fisherpeople casting lines from a pontoon on the outskirts of the BWCA. (They have a cabin on the Gunflint Trail, original poster mound_hounds tells Reddit.) As the two Northerns in question get closer to the boat, it becomes clear that the lunker fish has its chompers sinking deep into his friend/dinner, who happens to be the only hooked fish. Remarkably, both fish come aboard via net, allowing for a nice pose with the trophy one; the big boy was quickly released post-photo op. As for the smaller pike, uh, well, um, he's on a farm up north. Yeah, that's it! A magical fish farm where he feels no pain and nightcrawlers fall from the sky.
