Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
Bob Kroll Is Now a Guy Who Calls in to Talk Radio Shows
Bob Kroll, disgraced former Minneapolis cop and (not yet disgraced) current burger podcaster, is back in the news. Well, on the news. Er, on the Jon Justice show, at least.
Professionally indignant right-wing loudmouth Justice took time out from frothing about “irrational leftist rage” on his KTLK-AM rant-a-thon to field a call from Liz Collin’s mustachioed life partner. Kroll offered to share info about Tuesday’s militarized federal raid on Minneapolis's Las Cuatro Milpas that he claimed to be “privy” to as, presumably, a guy shitty cops like to talk to.
Kroll went on to claim that the feds seized 700 pounds of fentanyl during the raid, which seems unlikely since the internet hasn’t been flooded with photos of agents posing smugly behind a table of drugs like they’d just stormed the beaches of Normandy. (The largest fentanyl bust in DEA history yielded 400 kilograms, or about 882 pounds, so 700 would surely be the stuff of press releases.) But it would explain why the federal agents covered their faces during the raid—after all, fentanyl is instantly fatal to police when their skin comes into contact with it. Thanks to Chad Davis for the tip off; I sure as hell wasn't gonna listen to this noise for my own enjoyment.
Back in the real world, Minneapolis residents continue to be justifiably concerned about a military-style incursion into their city. Gov. Tim Walz has called the raid chaotic, adding, “I don’t see how anybody can think it’s a good situation to see a heavy militarized presence in a residential neighborhood.” And one protester has been arrested for assaulting a police officer, with another possibly facing similar charges.
The D’s Banh Mi Saga Continues
Perhaps you’ve read about D’s Bahn Mi in Racket—here, or here, or here.
That’s a lot of coverage for a place that still hasn’t opened its doors. The sandwich joint announced in 2022 that it was taking over the south Minneapolis site at 1848 E. 38th St. formerly occupied by Milk Jam and, for many years before that, Dave’s Popcorn. In the summer of 2023 D’s began delivering its enormous, hoagie-style banh mi and promised that the restaurant itself would open soon. But there were further delays, and then this past January a driver struck the building and started a fire.
Well, we’ve got big news about D’s: They’re still not open.
But! The owners posted on Instagram earlier this week that they expect to finally open their brick and mortar site this summer. The bad news: They’ll be suspending their delivery service temporarily while they get everything in order.
“We really wanted it in this part of the city," Hilda Tov told Racket of her sons' venture in '22. “If you’ve had banh mi elsewhere, you’ve not had this type of banh mi."
Good luck, folks. I’m running out of fingers to cross!
What’s the Deal With the 29th Street Railroad Depression?
I know you dorks love local history, so let me direct you to Streets.mn, where Brian Mitchell continues his look at the history of Minneapolis’s 29th Street Railroad Depression, the sunken corridor we know now as the Minneapolis Greenway. In his first installment, Mitchell discussed the corridor’s initial use as a rail line, and the legal conflicts, dangers, and adjustments to city infrastructure that arose as a result of running a train through Midtown Minneapolis.
For part two, Mitchell takes up his story in the 1950s, carries us through the discontinuation of the railway, and brings us up to the construction of the Greenway. In addition to valuable historical info, the piece contains lots of great photos (particularly the aerial shots) and what Mitchell slightly oversells as “the coolest video you will ever see”—a trip on the railroad sometime in the ’90s, during its final days.
Raspberry Bill-Rave
Over at MinnPost, Bill Lindeke visits Raspberry Island, downtown’s St. Paul’s last river island and one of the area’s “marginal public spaces,” as he refers to them, a place typically haunted only by “skateboarders and/or fans of recreational cannabis.” That may change this summer, however, as there’s a new installation of statuary called “Alebrijes: Keepers of the Island,” the work of visiting Mexico City artists, that sounds fantastic in both senses of the word.
This collection of “imaginary spirit creatures” is curated by the Minnesota Latino Museum, and, because of the materials used, is strictly temporary. “This is an ephemeral art form, it doesn’t last forever,” museum curator Aaron Johnson-Ortiz says. “It requires constant upkeep and maintenance, repainting, redoing. We’re going to be here every day keeping track of our creatures.”
