Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
WALZ WATCH: Walz of the Past Edition
What was Gov. Tim Walz going through in 2021? A whole lot, judging from this collaborative article by ProPublica's Jessica Lussenhop and Minnesota Reformer's Michelle Griffith, Madison McVan, and Deena Winter. Using emails, texts, and transcribed phone calls obtained by independent journalist Tony Webster, they've reconstructed an e-paper trail of Walz's struggles, failures, and concessions during the 2021 legislative session.
There’s a call between Walz to Rev. Jesse Jackson on police reform (“Both you and President Obama mentioned that Minnesota should be the state that could get this right”); there are frustrated staff emails wishing the Biden administration would comment on the U.S. Marshals' killing of Winston Smith Jr. in Uptown (“DOJ in DC is a hard ‘no’ on doing a press conference”); there are texts from colleagues asking Walz to call in the National Guard following the Brooklyn Park police killing of Daunte Wright; and there are even more emails where Walz expresses his fears that a police reform bill could trigger a government shutdown. It’s a great accountability journalism, and you should read it.
Moving into the present, if it feels like you're getting blasted daily with new interviews from Sen. JD Vance and former President Donald Trump, yet rarely see anything from VP/presidential nominee Kamala Harris and runningmate Walz, you're not wrong. Alex Thompson and Torey Van Oot at Axios did some number crunching, and found that over the last 59 days “Donald Trump and JD Vance have participated in more than 70 interviews and press conferences with TV and print reporters while Harris and Walz have taken part in seven.” Two campaigns, two very different approaches to press access.
Lookin’ Good, 19 Bar!
Back in March, beloved Loring Park gay dive 19 Bar caught fire after a recycling truck backed into an electrical pole, which then struck the building’s gas supply, igniting a massive blaze—what a nightmare Rube Goldberg-ian chain of events! Despite the fire leaving the Minneapolis bar in need of massive repairs, the 19 vowed to return in a (very cute!) Facebook post.
And now we’re getting a peek at the project. “I’d say there’s one quarter left,” owner Greg Hallberg tells Estelle Timar-Wilcox at MPR. “Then the finish work will be all the minutiae: the glassware, finding pool balls, getting new change machines.” He says that he’s working to keep the new 19 as close to the old one as possible, right down to the photos on the wall. There will be at least one major change though: Hallberg says he'll be retiring after 32 years. He says he'll finalize the sale of the bar to a longtime manager once it's up and running again, which he says could be as soon as this year.
Located just off of Loring Park, the 19 Bar became a gay mecca when Evrett Stolz bought it in 1956. You can read a little bit about its enduring history in this piece by Bill Lindeke for MinnPost.
Tina Smith Writes NYT Op-Ed with AOC
How do we fix the housing crisis? According to New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith, the U.S. should look to social housing, an affordable housing model used all over Europe, including France, Austria, England, Denmark, and the Netherlands.
Together, the two Democrats have authored a new bill that they’re championing via an opinion piece in Wednesday's New York Times. “These homes would be built to last by union workers and then turned over to entities that agree to manage them for permanent affordability: public and tribal housing authorities, cooperatives, tenant unions, community land trusts, nonprofits and local governments,” they write. With this new model, 25% of an approved tenant’s income would go toward rent, while market rate can be applied to up to 30% of the units.
Don’t get too excited about living like Europeans anytime soon, however. As noted by Madison McVan for MinnPost, the bill would need $300 billion in funding to get off that ground, require the creation of a new department within HUD, and is unlikely to pass with a GOP-majority House and a Senate without enough of Democratic majority to clear a filibuster. Buy hey, somebody's gotta shift that Overton window, and it's nice seeing Sen. Smith put in the progressive effort.
North Loop Mural Celebrates MN Labor History
This weekend, Chroma Zone Mural & Art Fest will be celebrating its part in creating over 60 murals in the St. Anthony Park neighborhood of St. Paul. Meanwhile, over in Minneapolis, the North Loop is adding to its collection as well, adding a massive new alleyway mural on the side of the Hall Lofts at 608 N. Third St.
But this mural is different from the others in the area. First, unlike several large-scale works in the area and nearby downtown, this one won’t be about Prince or Bob Dylan. The three-panel piece will instead pay homage to the 1934 Bloody Friday riots, where police fired their guns into a group of picketing workers, killing two. Second, the mural has already been made; folks at Juxtaposition Arts have been painting in-studio using a polytab material that can then be “hung” on the building side using adhesives and a varnish finish.
“I’ve worked on other projects like this that have been up for 10 years, and they look the exact same as they did,” lead artist Drew Peterson tells North Loop Neighborhood. “It’s pretty cool.” Agreed. The work is expected to be finished in early October.
