Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
An Actual Papal Local Angle
Earlier this month, we sat down with Robert Prevost—by which, of course, we are referring to the local PR man, not the newly elected pope.
Hey, as tenuous local angles sourced on a day's notice go, that's not too bad. But the Pioneer Press really outdid us this weekend with a genuine papal local angle from reporter Jared Kaufman. It turns out Prevost, now known by Pope Leo XIV, actually spent the summer of 1980 in the Twin Cities.
Here's how the piece begins:
In the summer of 1980, the man now known as Pope Leo XIV saw the new movie “The Blues Brothers” with a Lutheran friend at Roseville 4, a now-demolished theater on Larpenteur Avenue.
They also ate at the Black Forest Inn in Minneapolis and spent time at Luther Seminary, where friend John Snider lived. The Rev. Snider is now the senior pastor at St. Stephen’s Lutheran Church in West St. Paul, and during that summer of 1980, he, Bob Prevost, as the pope was then known, and three others served together in a clinical pastoral education group at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis.
Prevost apparently lived on the hospital's Minneapolis campus, and Kaufman notes that his time here makes him one of just a few popes ever to have visited Minnesota pre-papacy. Three months in Minnesota means we can claim him as a local, right? Hey, if we're gonna count fellow Christian Chris Pratt.
George Floyd, 5 Years Later
With the fifth anniversary of George Floyd's murder coming up on May 25, news outlets locally and nationally have been publishing their retrospectives and remembrances. (Luckily, most are doing so with quite a bit more accuracy than the New York Post's recent tour of the "still burning" city.)
For the New York Times, Ernesto Londoño asks, "What Is the Future of George Floyd Square?" (gift link). The multimedia piece, with photos and video by Joshua Rashaad McFadden, finds Londoño sitting down with Floyd's aunt Angela Harrelson, Minneapolis City Council Members Jason Chavez and Andrea Jenkins, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey to ask about the future of 38th & Chicago. It concludes with a survey asking readers about their connection to the square.
Closer to home, the Star Tribune has published a positively sprawling oral history (gift link) in which witnesses remember the days after George Floyd's murder. The 12-byline piece is broken up by day and includes interviews with activists and police officers as well as AG Ellison, former Minneapolis Chief of Police Medaria Arradondo, and Lake Street business owners. This is also a multimedia feature, with first-person video accounts from George Floyd's aunt Angela Harrelson, Unicorn Riot co-founder Niko Georgiades, Gov. Tim Walz, and others. (The unmute button is hidden in the top left, if you struggle to figure out the audio.) I'm setting aside some time to finish this one later tonight.
Household Math
Why does Minneapolis have a housing crisis now, when the population was higher 50+ years ago? Good question! And one that Zak Yudhishthu and Joshua Christianson tackle for Streets.mn today.
The relatively straightforward answer is that while Minneapolis has nearly 60,000 fewer people than it did in 1960, the city has more households today than it ever has before. There were 161,141 households in the city in 1970, but that number increased to 187,670 by 2020. That's a 16% increase, which means Minneapolis needs more housing to accommodate everyone—thus, our current housing crunch.
As for why there are more households these days? Well, there's been an increase in households made up of just one person, and there are more childless households. At the end of the day, the duo reports, it's not just that Minneapolis needs more housing, "it needs to build more types of housing to accommodate different kinds of households."
Watch Bob Mould Deliver Macalester's 2025 Commencement Address
Hüsker Dü may have gotten its start at Mac, but Bob Mould never would get his degree from the St. Paul college—he dropped out before graduating so his band could help define indie rock for generations. But Mould was back in town this weekend to accept an honorary doctorate from his old college, an honor that also let the legendary rocker deliver this year's commencement address.
"Over the course of my life and my career, I've come to realize that life is like a song, with verses, and choruses, and bridges," Mould tells the assembled graduates, before sharing his story and weaving an extended metaphor about the phases of life and the parts of a song. "In a way, leaving school is like the bridge of a song—into the unknown—and that can be scary, or it can be a great opportunity," Mould says. He also cites rising authoritarianism and the need to defend our democracy among the challenges this graduating class will face in the coming years: "At times like this, we go to the chorus.”
You can watch the speech in full below. It's a good'un.
