Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
Worst Super Bowl Halftime Show Ever? Look to Minneapolis.
Last night I, Racket's resident Eagles fan Em Cassel, watched in awe as a generational talent took the field at Super Bowl LIX, and I'm not talking about Saquon Barkley. No, I'm thinking of one Kendrick Lamar, who put on a hell of a show and made light wash flared jeans cool again—no easy feat.
Not everyone was so impressed; there was, of course, the predictable outcry from boomers, MAGA chuds, and Drake fans, many of whom logged on to complain. Some folks are trying to label the performance the "worst halftime show ever."
To which we'd counter: You clearly haven't seen the Super Bowl XXVI halftime show from the Metrodome in Minneapolis, a 1992 performance "so abysmal it spurred the NFL to rethink the halftime experience entirely," Jared Hemming wrote for City Pages in a 2016 reflection.
Take it in...
You've got figure skaters Dorothy Hamill and Brian Boitano, folks dressed like extras in a county playhouse production of Frozen, and kids rapping about snowmen. Players from the 1980 Miracle on Ice Olympic hockey team make an appearance, and so does Gloria Estefan, but to no avail. "No amount of frigid wonder and Gloria Estefan could keep viewers tuned into CBS for the halftime show, which got beat out in the ratings by a live In Living Color special on FOX," according to Hemming.
So, sorry, no, not a chance that this is the worst Super Bowl halftime show ever, even if you didn't personally enjoy it. The Metrodome performance was so abysmal that the following year, the NFL went with Michael Jackson for the halftime show, and the era of star-studded mid-game entertainment began. In that sense, we all have Minnesota to thank. (In 2018, the U.S. Bank Stadium-hosted Super Bowl, another Eagles victory, featured Justin Timberlake... that one isn't aging well, either.)
And if you're on the right side of history (enjoyer of Kendrick's Super Bowl halftime performance), let us remind you that tickets for his April 19 U.S. Bank Stadium tour stop are on sale now.
In other locally angled Super Bowl news: Apparel brand UNRL filmed its ad in Minneapolis; a Minnesota dog won "Most Valuable Puppy" at the Puppy Bowl; and, unrelated to all that, large-headed U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer enjoyed the game with weird-dicked President Trump.
Mankato: Surveillanceville, USA?
If you find yourself in Mankato, you're likely being watched. That's because the modestly sized central Minnesota city, population 46,000, has installed 541 public cameras since 2005, the Mankato Free Press reports. The public schools bring that camera count even higher, and all of 'em feed live footage into the Blue Earth County Justice Center. “Blue Earth dispatch actually monitors our cameras 24/7,” Doug Storm, the city's IT director, tells the Free Press.
To make matters even more disconcerting, the City Council is apparently gung-ho about investing an additional $130,000 to boost the surveillance network. “At this price, ‘How fast can you buy them?’ is my thought,” observed Council Member Jessica Hatanpa. Those upgrades, courtesy of something called Flock Technologies, will include "AI-driven analytics and license plate readers," according to the local newspaper.
Why is small city most famous for its adjacency to bison herds fortifying a RoboCop-esque techno police state? Very unclear. But Council Member Michael McLaughlin, who's pushing for privacy provisions, anticipates some public backlash. “That’s the stuff that’s going to show up right away, the Big Brother aspect,” he says. Here's hoping!
Let's Give It Up for the Northwestern Life Insurance Building
Strib columnist James Lileks is at his best when he's musing about architecture. While we could quibble about the head-scratching framing of his latest piece (Why 10 reasons? Is this BuzzFeed? Is this 2012?), we'd much rather just agree with him: The Northwestern National Life Insurance Building at 20 Washington Ave. in downtown Minneapolis is cool as hell.
Lileks chose to author a love letter to it because the seven-story homage to Roman temples is currently vacant and for sale, the MSP Biz Journal reports. We learn that the white quartz stunner, with its towering 80-foot-plus columns, was built in 1965 by celebrated Japanese architect Minoru Yamasaki, and that it represents a rare W for the urban renewal project that saw much of downtown's old Gateway District replaced by lifeless concrete structures. Larry Millett, the great local architectural critic, once called the building a major victory for '60s modernism, describing it as, "a temple to the gods of underwriting, built by an insurance company and mixing luxury and high camp in way that, say, Liberace would have appreciated."
Lileks's pitch? Let's turn it into a museum honoring the many wonderful downtown buildings we've bulldozed in the past.
A Case for Chasing Down Tow Trucks
We learned something new today, which is that in Minneapolis, we've got a city ordinance (Minneapolis Code of Ordinances § 478.1080, to be exact) that says if your vehicle gets hooked up to a tow truck but you catch 'em before they've left the block, you can get your car back for just $15. Legally, they have to do it! That is some true townie shit! We should be able to pay 15 bucks to make all kinds of annoying life problems go away. This little factoid comes to Racket HQ courtesy of Bluesky user @nickeyrobo.bsky.social, who accurately notes that the "useful, little known ordinance... could come in handy during this snow emergency," but you can go ahead and look it up for yourself right here.
