Is Duluth the New California?

Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily noontime(ish) digest of what local media outlets and Twitter-ers are gabbing about.

Everyone Is Moving to Duluth

Well, not everyone. I’m not, and honestly nobody I know is. But MPR News reports that the Zenith City is already drawing climate migrants from such doomed locales as Utah and Northern California. The idea is that as the rest of the U.S. becomes uninhabitable, the frigid northern reaches of Telly Savalas’s home-away-from-home will become a temperate haven. Duluth’s a great town, of course, but mass migration to the shores of Lake Superior… I dunno, it just seems like inadequate long-term planning for a global climate crisis.

Security Force Blasts Candlelight Vigil with Floodlights, Loud Music

Four months ago yesterday, members of a federal task force shot Winston Smith in an Uptown parking garage. The details of the encounter remain murky and law enforcement seems content to keep it that way. To commemorate the anniversary, mourners and activists gathered Sunday at the site on Lake and Girard where they’d protested months before, as documented by photographer Chad Davis on Twitter. They were met by a military truck (there to protect them, no doubt), and as the night went on, the private security forces that now guard the fenced-off garage bombarded the vigil with harsh floodlights and loud music. Nice.

St. Paul to Kick Smokers in the Butt?

Good news for St. Paul residents who need some incentive to quit smoking (or just want to spend more money on cigarettes, I guess). The Pioneer Press reports that city council is set to propose a massive anti-smoking ordinance that would include raising the minimum cost of a pack of cigarettes to $10. (Pardon my math, but I believe that’s 50 cents a cigarette.) The ordinance would also limit the number of stores that can sell tobacco products, ban the sale of menthol cigs at liquor stores, and impose harsher fines on stores that sell to underage buyers. Look for its introduction Wednesday, the PiPress predicts. 

*Sisqo Voice* Marathon-thon-thon-thon-thon

Last year the Twin Cities Marathon was Marathoff, thanks to the pandemic that I guess we’ve all agreed is over now despite the continual infections and death. But this year about 3,000 people were running around again. The winner was Mohamed Hrezi, from Philadelphia, which is not in Minnesota; Naomi Fulton, who won the women’s title, was at least from nearby Wisconsin. The mayors of St. Paul and Minneapolis both ran in the marathon, each man apparently exhibiting his own particular style. And our greatest living Minnesotan celebrated the event as only he could.