Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
The Twins’ Summer Sausage: Is It Still Safe To Eat?
The Twins are on a roll these days. But don’t credit the athletes, coaches, or sheer will of the fans. A mystically powerful package of Cloverdale Original Tangy Summer Sausage is to thank, the team reports. But while the old bag of meat—dubbed the Rally Sausage—continues to raise player morale, no doubt contributing to a current eight-game winning streak, manager Rocco Baldelli worries that it could be dangerous to anyone who touches it. “There’s no doubt in my mind that we are carrying around something that is very, very unhealthy for the human body,” he stated at a presser this weekend.
Enter Dan Hayes at The Athletic, who decided to investigate just how unhealthy this thing is, and, more importantly, could someone still eat it? According to chef/salumist Elias Cairo, it's still perfectly safe to pass around the dugout and yes, it's still edible! Summer sausage is shelf-stable, which means, scientifically speaking, it should be A-OK for human consumption. “It would just lose its quality and oxidize,” says Cairo after telling Hayes he’d still eat it. “It would start tasting a little off, but it’s to a point where no pathogens should grow in there.”
Craving more Rally Sausage content? The Strib's Bobby Nightengale scored an interview with its father, Twins hitting coach David Popkins.
Fool Me Once Ghosts Minneapolis
Well, dang. After about nine months in business, Fool Me Once, the self-proclaimed country bar for aliens, has returned to the mothership. The Lyn-Lake bar, nestled between Wrecktangle and Caffrey’s at 3006 Lyndale Ave. S. in Minneapolis, offered spendy cocktails, midnight stoner-style eats, and $3 Hamm’s beer. So, what the heck happened? Unclear! Yesterday Gigi Berry, who hosted a semi-regular DJ night in the space, tweeted that the business had closed. Today, Southwest Voices reports that the space cowboy art installation has been removed from behind the bar and the windows have been papered up. So far, no local media outlets have received a response from owners. A GoFundMe for ex-Fool Me Once employees seems like the best confirmation we're gonna get, though they might not even know what happened. “Without notice, the owners took the keys and laid off all the staff,” they write.
Next Round Is on Target’s CEO, OK?
Fun fact: CEO Brian Cornell made 719 times more from Target than a typical worker did in 2023. According to this story by Ethan Nelson at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal, Cornell earned (word used very lightly) $19.2 million in total compensation last year from the Minneapolis-based company he heads; the median Target employee took home $26,696. Most of that money is from stock option awards, with a base salary of $1.4 million and an $860K bonus topping that sweet, sweet steady income sundae. That eye-popping number is apparently low, since the Biz Journal does not tally liquidated stock gains. (“We do not believe that methodology serves our readers as it does not accurately reflect companies’ compensation decisions,” Nelson writes.)
Fair enough! But I’m nosey so I went looking for some bigger numbers. According to this older report from Patrick Kennedy at the Star Tribune, in 2022 Cornell recorded the same salary, a slightly lower bonus ($693K), and an estimated total compensation package of $34.2 million. That makes him the 3rd highest paid CEO at a Minnesota-based public company, trailing behind Charles Kummeth at Bio-Techne Corp. (huh?) and James Cracchiolo at Ameriprise Financial Inc. Maybe send some of that money over to those unemployed Fool Me Once staffers, please, Mr. Cornell?
Charlie Parr Profiled in Rolling Stone
Minnesotans love to see our local gems sparkle in the national spotlight, so this Charlie Parr profile from Garret K. Woodward for Rolling Stone sure hits the sweet spot. Turns out Austin, MN-born/current Duluthian Parr has built some good buzz for his 18th studio album, Little Sun, which was produced by Tucker Martine (My Morning Jacket, the Decemberists). The piece covers his days on the road living out of his car (“I’d look at an atlas and call people and ask if I could play at their dumb pizza place”), on turning 57 (“I feel better about myself as a father, as a friend”), and dealing with depression (“I have to do a lot of work to make sure I’m okay”). You can watch Parr headline First Avenue this Friday with support from Mama’s Broke and Marisa Anderson.
