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Kitty Cat Klub Has Fallen

Plus overpaid bosses, Don Samuels's GOP backers, and Racket's third birthday plans in today's Flyover news roundup.

Tim Wilson via WikiMedia Commons|

Kitty Cat Klub, photographed in 2010

Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.

Coppy Kat Club: UMNPD Takes Over Kitty Cat Klub

This past May, when Racket visited the relaunched Annie's Parlor, our warm review concluded with: "Now, if the the much-loved Kitty Cat Klub finally reopens below? Dinkytown will really be cookin'." At the time, it didn't seem like a moonshot proposal; in 2021, a full year into KCK's COVID-19 closure, owner John Rimarcik suggested to 89.3 the Current that the beloved (term not used lightly) 400-capacity club could reopen by 2022. That didn't happen, Rimarcik died late last year, and now his sons—Tony and Tom—have leased out the Kitty Cat Klub space to the University of Minnesota for the next five years.

Beginning in September, 315 14th Ave. SE will serve as a "first-of-its-kind Safety Center" for UMNPD, KARE 11 reports, part of enhanced efforts to stem rising crime in Dinkytown. That means shoegaze bands, vintage couches, and cocktails are out, and filing police reports, attending "office hours" with cops, and hosting community groups are in. Apparently students can practice self defense and study there as well. Hm, sounds way less fun than Kitty Cat Klub! "We want to create an informal place for people to come and feel relaxed," says Nicholas Juarez with the U's Department of Public Safety, who tells KARE that efforts are being made to preserve some of KCK's swanky, historic aesthetic as the 122-year-old building gets remodeled.

"I believe it will help to have a Safety Center in Dinkytown," says U of M law prof Richard Painter, who once got mad at Racket for this blog post. "If areas surrounding campus are not safe, students are not going to want to come here."

For the wretchedly old, such as Racket's Jay Boller (turning 37 tomorrow!), this move is yet another reminder that time marches on and—in addition to your mortal coil—the places you remember fondly (KCK, Dinkytowner Café, House of Hanson, Camdi, Vescio’s, etc.) will crumble to dust. Umm... happy weekend!

Target, UnitedHealth Among MN Companies With the Worst CEO/Average Employee Gap

CEOs: They are nothing like us. In fact, many make more in a year than most of their employees will make in a lifetime. Now you can feel even more poor based on this handy database from the AFL-CIO, which allows you to search public companies’ CEO to employee ratio by state, industry, or just by numbers. Neato! For example, Target Corp. CEO Brian Cornell, who took a 47% compensation hit in 2023, still made 719 times what the median employee made. Max Nesterak really puts that number in perspective in his weekly labor roundup for Minnesota Reformer: “The typical Target employee would have to had to start working in 1305–around the time Osman I was establishing the small kingdom that would become the Ottoman Empire–in order to earn the $19.2 million Cornell took home in 2023 alone.”

Other Minnesota-based companies that would force you to time travel to earn what their CEO makes in a year include transportation/logistics giant C. H. Robinson Worldwide’s David Bozeman ($27.9 million; a ratio of 572 to 1), Best Buy’s Corie Barry ($14.4 million; 442 to 1), and UnitedHealth Group’s Andrew Witty ($23.5 million; 352 to 1). The worst offenders outside of our state? MLM NU Skin Enterprises’s Ryan Napierski ($5.8 million; 10,377 to 1?!) and Abercrombie & Fitch’s Fran Horowitz ($15 million; 6,076 to 1).

Republicans for Samuels

As the primary race between Rep. Ilhan Omar and Don Samuels enters the home stretch (vote next Tuesday!), right-wing freaks on the sidelines are looking to get into the game. MN GOP-endorsed U.S. Senate nominee Royce White (sorry, but we’re talking about him two days in a row) is calling on Republicans to vote in the Democratic primary instead, for Samuels, so that Omar loses, and reality-detached “investigative journalist” Laura Loomer seconds White’s strategy. When asked about this apparent effort, Samuels denied involvement while seeming to blame the whole thing on Omar. “We don’t have anything to do with that, and we don’t want anything to do with that,” he told Ana Radelat at MinnPost. “Just because Representative Ilhan Omar attracts a circus doesn’t mean we’re buying a ticket.” This fits in with Samuels’s campaign pitch that Omar is divisive (i.e., takes political positions), while he can bring people together. Well, he’s brought White and Loomer together with his people, whether he likes it or not. Personally, if right-wing crackpot extremists wanted me to win an election, I'd start questioning some of my life choices.

Celebrate Racket's Third Birthday 🎂

As you may have read this very week, in this very local news publication, Fair State Brewing Cooperative has successfully exited chapter 11 bankruptcy. That's cause for celebration! And speaking of causes for celebration (as well as this very local news publication), Racket turns three this month! On August 18, to be exact.

As we have in previous years, we're marking this spin around the sun with a party on Fair State's northeast Minneapolis patio. We'll be out there from 6-9 p.m., sippin' union-made Kölds and Big Doinkses and Hop Waters, and we'll be joined once again by the smash burger specialists at The Salsa Collaborative. That sounds pretty nice, huh? You can RSVP here, if you're still on Facebook (we love AI slop, don't we folks?). And hey, thanks again for reading and supporting Racket.

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