Let’s Hear from MN’s Uncommitted Delegates

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

Pro-Palestinian Delegates Shut Down by DNC

Gov. Tim Walz’s likability metrics are off the charts, whether we’re talking his (apparent) Sega Dreamcast addiction or his (alleged) balloon infatuation. GOP hitmen are risking permanent spinal damage the way they’re twisting themselves into pretzels trying to find a line of attack that sticks. But the guv is vulnerable from the left, according to this DNC dispatch from The Nation's Jack Mirkinson and Sarah Lazare. (Lazare is editor of Minneapolis-based Workday Magazine, which Racket once profiled.)

In it, we hear from two uncommitted Minnesota delegates who’re withholding their support of the Harris-Walz ticket, mostly as a way of protesting wishy-washy ceasefire pledges to end the U.S.-bankrolled bloodshed in Gaza. One of them, Asma Mohammed, participated in an overnight sit-in Wednesday outside of Chicago’s United Center. 

“What we are doing on the inside is an act of protest itself, and what protesters are doing on the outside is another dignified form of protest,” she told The Nation. “The ground was cold and hard, and we waited and waited for a response from the DNC. They gave us a ‘no’ to a Palestinian-American speaker, and then they called again and asked if we would be willing to meet with them instead. We asked if the meeting would be about a speaker, and they said no, so we said no.”

Rep. Illhan Omar briefly joined the sit-in, and some mainstream media voices like Daily Show host Jon Stewart voiced solidarity with the movement’s unmet demands. Another uncommitted delegate from Minnesota, Dan Engelhart, addressed his state’s latest VP candidate directly. 

“It’s weird to say ‘ceasefire’ and keep sending the fire,” he said from Chicago. “That’s weird, Walz!”

How the State Fair Free Music Sausage Gets Made

As far as I know, we've not yet used precious Flyover space to praise The Minnesota Star Tribune's "Scene Makers" series. Let me be the first to do so, then: It's great! Music guys Chris Riemenschneider and Jon Bream take turns talkin' tunes with an array of underappreciated or lesser-known folks in the local music community, from the childhood besties who helm the state's biggest rural EDM fest to the U of M professor teaching the youths about Prince.

The latest installment is a fun Q+A with Nate Dungan, whose job it is to book all the free music stages at the Minnesota State Fair.

"Nate Dungan spent more than $500,000 on 102 acts so we can enjoy free music at the Minnesota State Fair. And he probably won’t hear more than a song or two here and there over the 12 days," Bream's story begins. "He’s too busy putting out fires, making sure the bands know where to park and the drummer didn’t forget his gate admission ticket. Yes, everyone who enters the fairgrounds—even employees and entertainers—needs a ticket."

What follows is a delightful chat between two MN music legends. This is Dungan's 25th year as the State Fair's entertainment supervisor; he's fronted the long-running Twin Cities honky-tonk band Trailer Trash for about the same amount of time. (And yes, his day job does explain why you've never seen Trailer Trash at the fair.) He also dishes about the free entertainment budget, the fires he's put out over the years, and his schedule (he's at the State Fair from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. on "a good day").

Kim's Closes

You've gotta hand it to Ann Kim, it's objectively hilarious that she made this announcement yesterday, when every goddamn food writer in town was preoccupied by day one of the Minnesota State Fair.

Yes, two months after its staff unionized, Kim's will close, citing “ongoing financial losses.” The news was shared via the Uptown restaurant's Instagram page, though that account is still private and comments on the post are turned off. Not that that's stopped people from behaving very normally about it in various comment sections around the internet: blaming the freshly unionized workers; blaming Unite Here Local 17, which helped organize them; blaming "communists"; and in some cases, blaming Kim herself—we assume this was her decision, after all. But we don't know anything else; representatives for Kim's have declined to speak with Bring Me the News, the Strib, and Twin Cities Business, among others.

It's true that construction in Uptown has been particularly tough to navigate this spring and summer, a factor Kim cited when cutting lunch service and closing Kim's subterranean sister spot Bronto Bar in July. It's true that Kim was vocally opposed to her staff's unionization effort. It's true that running a restaurant is difficult and that most fail even under ideal circumstances. It's true that this timeline is awfully fishy.

And it's a shame she won't talk reporters about it. What ever happened to "fuck fear"?

Kim's workers shared the following message via the organizers at Unite Here:

Look at These Bike Racks!

File this one under "listicles we wish we thought of first!" Over on Medium, Bennet Hartz has started keeping track of all the location-appropriate bike racks in the Twin Cities. You know: the bowling ball and pins in front of Bryant-Lake Bowl, or the treble clef racks by Minnesota Orchestra Hall, or the leaning Palmer's Guy over at Palmer's.

I feel so certain that I've seen other examples of this phenomenon before, but... right now I can't come up with any of them. Know of one Hartz missed? You can let him know over on Bluesky.