Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories. Except that today, it's actually a very special navel-gazing anniversary edition!
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Em Cassel
What can I say here that I have not already said in exhaustive-bordering-on-tedious detail in one of our five annual reports? Writing and editing Racket is the great joy of my life. I can't believe I spend my days interviewing people about bikes and movie rentals and... I don't know, sign painters and Big Peppers, and that y'all read about all of it. I can't believe you wear our goofy shirts. In public, even! I can't believe you tell your friends and loved ones and also strangers about our website and buy them gift subscriptions to it. I can barely believe you spend your money on your own subscription!
Thank you for being here, thank you for being a part of it. I'm the luckiest little freak on this side of the Mississippi.
Jessica Armbruster
Five years ago I was unemployed, carless, and trapped in a tiny apartment hoping to flatten that pandemic curve. I had worked at City Pages for 20-something years, watching as our corporate overlords continued to shrink our newsroom in order to maximize profit. I should have been finished working in journalism, but I wasn’t. And I am still not done. Spending $1,000 getting Racket off the ground was the best investment I’ve ever made, and I have no regrets.
It’s been a rough five years; I’ve lost a parent, a few friends, and a grandma. We’re still living through an ongoing pandemic, a second Trump term, and a federal siege on Minnesota. But nothing about Racket has been rough. It’s an absolute joy and privilege to be able to do what I do for a living, and I will always be grateful. Thank you coworkers for always being rad and thank you readers for making my weird-ass life choices financially sustainable. I’ll never stop loving you, Minnesota.
PS: I am still carless. No regrets!
Keith Harris
Here’s a fun little bit of personal lore I just realized the other day: Five years is the longest I have ever worked consecutively for the same company. (If you add up my two stints at City Pages, in the early ’00s and the late ’10s that might tie.) Despite nearly four decades in the workforce, I’ve jumped around a lot. That’s more often been due to restlessness rather than insubordination. Yes, I’ve been fired from a job (twice), but more often something better or at least different came along.
Anyway, the fact that I continue to write what I want—about music and movies and what have you—with no interference, in collaboration with my friends, and people pay to read it, is a gift I try not to take for granted. Five years is nothing. I hope to someday die on the job, compiling listings, checking for the umpteenth time whether the venue is called "Metronome Brewing" or "Metronome Brewery."
Jay Boller
At this very moment, I'm absolutely scrambling to finish editing the podcast, transport a giant-ass birthday cake to Arbeiter Brewing Co. for our anniversary/book release party, and get freelancers paid—still too busy after all these years! Here's to at least 500 more.
