Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
John Oliver Roasts Pillow Man’s Latest Cash Grab
Possibly broke MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is in a new era—his Goop era, his Preserve era. What I’m trying to say is, the Minnesota-launched businessman/election denier runs a bespoke website called MyStore, where over the past few years he's been selling American-made goods, Temu-style, with Paltrow/Lively prices.
There’s a little bit of everything at MyStore: a $250 cross necklace made from sterling silver and enamel; a $30 tooth replacement kit; a blood-clotting powder for horses; a decorative cover for your fire extinguisher. You know, the stuff we all use everyday.
The site is so ridiculous that it caught the eye of late-night host John Oliver, who filmed a special rant for Last Week Tonight even though his HBO program’s on break. Items up for ridicule include a $70 meat tenderizer eloquently called Wackerspoon, a plastic tub named Extreme Bucket, and Mutt Butt, a dog toy designed to smell like canine butts “in an amount that is safe for dogs of any weight.”
“I mean, I suppose it’s helpful that they volunteered that information,” Oliver jokes. “As when purchasing a butthole-flavored sac for my dog or whatever I’m not sure I’d have thought to ask, ‘My dog is a dachshund, is this amount of stink medically lethal?’”
Hope Walz Profiled by NYT
As Racket has previously written, Hope Walz is gaining popularity on TikTok. The 24-year-old daughter of Gov. Tim Walz uses the platform to expound on a variety of topics in refreshing, unvarnished ways, from admitting she’s behind on The Summer I Turned Pretty to calling Trump’s militarized takeover of D.C. "bitch-baby, wussy, scaredy-cat behavior."
Hope has already caught the attention of Fox News and the right-wing assholes of the internet, but this weekend she was featured in this cute profile from the New York Times (gift link). For the piece, reporter Callie Holtermann hung out with Walz on a literal trail in Bozeman, Montana, where she currently resides. “We should just be outward in our progressiveness,” she says of her attitude. “We don’t need to pander to people that don’t like us.”
Meet the Family Who Lived on the Fairgrounds for 22 Years
Located at 1263 Cosgrove St., just across from the Ag-Hort Building, the J.V. Bailey House boasts curb appeal in spades. While it’s not currently residential—the State Fair Foundation uses it as office space—it once was. Gardener/groundkeeper Bill Hermes, his wife, and their six kids lived in the home year-round from 1973 to 1994.
Elizabeth Shockman took a tour of the home with four daughters from the Hermes family in this really sweet piece for MPR. And yes, it sounds like it was fun growing up on the fairgrounds. Perks included watching fireworks from the roof, picking up donuts for breakfast and cheese curds for dinner, and being the first to play the arcade games. (“They would give us buckets of quarters to make sure the machines all worked.”)
There were also downsides, of course, like Little Irvy, a giant dead sperm whale that was sometimes exhibited right on their lawn. “We heard this [audio] loop for 12 days, and [the whale] was parked in the yard. You couldn’t go to bed at night until they turn off the little tape.”
Uptown's Vegan(ish) Restaurant Matriarch Closes After Two Months
Welp, that was fast. Matriarch, a plant-based restaurant with non-plant options, opened in June at 1601 W. Lake St., the Minneapolis address formerly occupied by Pinoli, Giorgio’s, and Amore. The food was good; I gave it a solid review when I visited earlier this month. But its time on this Earth proved limited, as co-owners Crystal Brown and Michelle Courtright (Fig + Farrow) just announced that it’s officially finished.
“We have a landlord that will not sign our lease or help us to get our liquor license, and we have a leaky roof,” Courtright explained via Instagram last week. “We have no other option other than to close. And we are beyond sad about this.”
J.D. Duggan at Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal also unearthed a lawsuit; Matriarch’s landlord, Kashi Associates LLC, alleges that the restaurant owes $33,000 in unpaid rent.
“The property’s original leaseholder, KB Investments LLC—an entity tied to restaurateur Kim Bartmann and Pinoli—closed its restaurant in April,” Duggan writes. “Court documents say KB sold its business to Matriarch, but Kashi never agreed to transfer the lease. Instead, Matriarch moved in and launched a soft opening in June without a lease.”
Oddly enough Jane, Courtright and Brown’s low-dose cannabis shop located next door to the former Matriarch space, will remain open.
