Remember When RNC Hype Man/Noted Scumbag Hulk Hogan Thwarted Jesse Ventura’s Union Plans?

Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.

Brother, Noted Racist Hulk Hogan Is Also a Union Buster

When Hulk Hogan came to Minnesota last month to promote his GOP-coded Real American Beer, the local media (and a lot of folks on social media) slapped on some rose-colored glasses on and helped him shill some product. But with Hogan set to give a speech at the RNC tonight to fire up the crowd pre-Trump, it’s a great time to remember one more locally angled way that, brother, this guy suuuuuuucks. 

Look, most of us probably recall that sex tape where Hogan (real name: Terry Bollea) went on a racist and homophobic rant. With the financial backing of far-too-influential surveillance entrepreneur and all-around creep Peter Thiel, Hogan then sued Gawker into non-existence for sharing an edit of the tape. There’s also that time Hogan told his son, who was in prison at the time for drunk driving into a palm tree (a wreck that left his friend John Graziano with severe head trauma for life), that God had given them a “vibe” that would let them live forever, though he hoped they didn’t come back as “blizz-ack gizz-uys.”

But did you know that the Hulkster is also a union buster? Yes indeed. Turns out that he ratted out Minnesota's future (and now former) governor, Jesse Ventura, to their boss Vince McMahon back in 1986, when Ventura was leading efforts to unionize wrestlers. Ventura learned of the Hulk's betrayal a decade later when he took McMahon and Titan Sports Inc. WWF to court over royalties. 

"It was like someone punched me in the face," he told "Stone Cold" Steve Austin in a 2016 podcast interview. "This was my friend. And I thought, 'Hogan betrayed me? Hogan called Vince and ratted me?'...Hogan made more money than all of us combined, including Andre [the Giant]. So naturally, he didn't want a union."

Watch The Body describe his '80s union rabblerousing below...

Uptown Homeless Services: Bad for Business?

A proposed medical respite shelter in Uptown on Lake Street near Colfax Avenue (that is in Uptown, right?) is meeting resistance from area businesses, who say they don’t want their employees or customers to have to see homeless people. The Strib’s Susan Du sums up the response from many local businesses to the potential introduction of Lakeshore Care Inc. to the area thus: “They want the area's homeless people to receive help, but not in view of their shops.”

The story, which quotes from testimony at a recent Planning Commission hearing, is essentially a case study in being very careful what you say in public meetings, because your words might wind up in a newspaper. For instance, here’s a quote from spa owner Matisse Johnson: "I'm scared at the thought of my clients sitting in these beautiful, $500 swinging chairs that they're too scared to sit in sometimes. I just don't want them to have to sit and view what may or may not be coming out of this building." Or as State Farm agent Stephanie Swanson explained, Lakeshore would make “perceived safety more difficult for everyone.”

Dozens of emails objecting to the center were also received, "the vast majority copies of a letter from the group Vibrant Lyndale, which primarily advocates for the preservation of on-street parking along Lyndale," Du writes.

Low-Wage Workers Demand MN Minimum Wage Increase

Every installment of Racket's Best Budget Bites series begins with the same boilerplate text: "The cost of things these days? Far too expensive!" That's not just a vibes-based throwaway line: Between February 2020 and the current month, consumer prices increased 20.8 percent, according to a Bankrate analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. That’s way, way higher than the historic average for a four-year period; inflation rose just 18.9% in the 2010s, for example.

The minimum wage, meanwhile? That's not exactly skyrocketing. Minnesota's minimum wage did increase in 2024, up to $10.85 for large employers and $8.85 for other state minimum wages, but of the 22 states that bumped up minimum wage this year, Minnesota is just about at the bottom.

Earlier today, a group of retail, warehouse, and factory workers gathered for a press conference to call on elected leaders to raise the minimum wage to $25 an hour.

“We work hard, we require family sustaining wages. $25 needs to be the minimum," Rena Wong, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 663 (UFCW), said in a statement from New Justice Project MN. "For a family of four, two working adults with two kids, the living wage is $31.93 in Hennepin County and $24.51 in Nobles County.

Goldy's Spinning Head, Explained

College Football 25, set for release tonight at midnight, is one of the most-anticipated video games in recent memory. Part of that's due to the fact that, because of licensing rigmarole, there hasn't been a major college football game since NCAA Football 14. And also College Football 25 is expected to be great, which hasn't been the case for football's biggest franchise, the Madden series, since developer EA Sports (resting on its laurels post-acquisition of an exclusive NFL license in 2004) basically stopped trying 15 or so years ago.

Why are we talking about this to you, a seeker of hyper-local alternative news? Because the broader video gaming/sports world has become aware that University of Minnesota mascot Goldy Gopher spins his large, grinning head like he's in the damn Exorcist—thanks to NCAA Football 25.

It's an early indication that EA has stepped up its game considerably for College Football, considering that dome-twirling gimmick actually happens on the sidelines of Huntington Bank Stadium. In fact, MinnPost's Pat Borzi wrote about the strange, mysterious, and often contentious origins of Goldy's spinning head in 2015. We won't give away the whole piece, but please enjoy this tidbit from Cully Orstad, a hoops and hockey Goldy who may have accidentally popularized the move in the mid-'80s: “I grabbed the head and spun it the rest of the way around. The student section went crazy.” Do yourself a favor and read Borzi's entire investigation before firing up the PS5 tonight at 11:59.  

In other U of M news: Some Cerberus-istic alliance of the university, the state, and the country has laid claim to outer space? (We're not sure how this works.)