Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
MN Legislature to Help Bridge the Gap Between Drugs
Liquor then beer? In the clear! Beer then weed? The “five-hour rule” you must heed. That’s the recreational marijuana law establishments are supposed to follow in Minnesota: If a patron consumes a THC drink, servers cannot serve them alcohol for the next five hours (and vice versa). But it doesn’t take a toxicologist to figure out the rule is pretty dang unenforceable.
“If I’m in Brainerd and I have a beer with ‘Dutch’ Cragun over at Cragun’s and then I head back to Minneapolis and go to see Tim Mahoney at the Loon Cafe, it would be difficult for Tim to know that three-and-a-half hours earlier I had one beer in Brainerd,” Minnesota Licensed Beverage Association’s Tony Chesak points out, in an odd show of local name-dropping, to Peter Callaghan at MinnPost.
So while that high-five law doesn’t go into effect until spring of 2025, two legislators are working to amend it with something similar to our state's “don’t serve alcohol to obviously drunk people” law. Rep. Brad Tabke (DFL-Shakopee) keeps his House File 4029 short and sweet: “No person may sell, give, furnish, or in any way procure for another lower-potency hemp edibles for the use of an obviously impaired person.” Sen. Robert Kupec (DFL-Moorhead) says he has a companion bill coming soon.
Jesse Ventura Is (Probably?) On RFK Jr.’s VP Shortlist (Shitlist?)
You don't see a lot of yard signs around these parts for the nation’s No. 1 anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy, but he's still making an independent run for president. Now, he’s on the hunt for a running mate, and according to the New York Times former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura is at the top of his list.
In the past, Ventura has said he'd consider teaming up if asked, though his son confirmed yesterday via statement that he hasn't been contacted by the campaign. But he does have some thoughts on Kennedy's campaign so far. “He was coming to Minnesota and he wanted to meet with me,” Ventura said back in November on the JENerational Change podcast. “We were going to spend two days together so I could get him off of this vaccine bullshit and start getting him to truly campaign on something that could win him the presidency.” Good instincts from The Body.
Also on Kennedy’s VP shortlist? Former Green Bay Packer and current New York Jet/Jimmy Kimmel enemy Aaron Rodgers, who knows how to throw a football real good and whose anti-vax stance more closely aligns with ol' Robby's.
Before Closing, Rosenthal Interiors Hosts a Wild Hoarder's Sale
Babs Lebewitz could be described as a collector. Others might say she was a hoarder. But when she died in 2020, her daughter, Rosie (Lebewitz) Rosenthal, realized that she needed to get rid of her stuff. “My house started to close in from all the things,” she tells J.D. Duggan at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal. Rosie is the fourth-generation owner of Rosenthal Interiors, a downtown Minneapolis furniture store that’s been run by the family for over 120 years. Now, as she retires and closes the shop, she estimates she has around 2 million items to auction off, give away, and donate.
In the meantime, she’s turning her Fifth Street store into a gallery for the next few weekends with a show titled “Horde: The Collections of Laverne Wylie” (the name was an alias of Babs’s). The collection includes a wide variety of oddities, including human hair dolls (creepy!), vintage soap (weird!), old newspaper ads (neato!), Fabergé eggs (wow!), and a grape sculpture made from amethyst (fancy!). Selections will be on view from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. March 15-17 and March 22-24. And yes, many of the items will be for sale.
Yet Another Reason Libraries Rock!!!
In case you hadn’t gleaned as much from our feature story this week, we absolutely adore libraries here at Racket. So when reader Auburn Rain commented with this not new, but new to us story set at Hennepin County's Hosmer Library branch, we had to give it a shoutout. Melody Hoffmann at Southwest Voices writes that after meeting at George Floyd Square, Jay Slaughter and Steve Gagner bonded over their mutual love of chess. Since the fall of 2022, the duo have been hosting free intro chess classes for kids and teens in partnership with Hennepin County Library. A true feel-good story—thanks, libraries!
