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Two Major Stories We're Monitoring on the SEX NEWS Sex Beat...
First up, the Seville, long considered the classiest titty bar in town, closed suddenly this week, "leaving dancers and staff members out of work and with few answers," Mary McGuire of Bring Me the News reports. The Minneapolis club's homepage now reads "TEMPORARILY CLOSED."
"Out of NOWHERE, our beloved Seville is closing," reads a GoFundMe aimed at supporting those who lost their jobs. "Staff and dancers got a message at 4PM on March 30th, that said the club would be closing indefinitely. People had until midnight to clear their lockers."
Texas-based RCI Hospitality owns Seville in addition to nearby adult joints Downtown Cabaret and Rick’s Cabaret. Last year, New York Attorney General Letitia James indicted five of the company's top execs in a “major, multimillion dollar criminal tax fraud and bribery scheme.” Reps for RCI didn't respond to a request for comment from BMTN.
Speaking of the downtown smut exodus: The vast and horny collection of stuff that once occupied Sex World recently hit the auction block. (H/T to local Realtor Lydia Kauppi for flagging this one.) You'll find slutty cows, vintage pinup signage, Sex World-branded garbage cans, stoner stuff, cleaning equipment that should maybe just be retired, and lots of non-sexy office furnishings that you still probably don't wanna expose to black light.
Sex World closed last June, capping a 22-year run as the city's most prominent adult toy store. The giant/saddled golden dong that once greeted visitors was a veiny North Loop landmark, for better or worse (its twin still resides at the Gay 90's).
"In recent months, it has been observed that Sex World has been struggling to maintain stock and keep customers coming back," employee Jay Limbacher said just ahead of the closure. "So for those who have been regulars at the shop for late night cigarettes or sex-focused fun, it has been clear the end was coming sooner rather than later."
Who Gets to Park in Hastings?
Over at the Strib, Greta Kaul looks at a peculiarly Minnesotan entitlement: the (non-existent) right to park directly in front of your house. (Yes, people can be funny about this parking spot everywhere, but Minnesotans—and especially Twin Cities residents—are ferocious about it.)
The story centers on a dispute in Hastings. That's where residents have long complained that workers with Allina Health United Hospital’s Hastings Regina Campus and the Benedictine’s Regina senior living community park on public streets rather than employee parking lots.
“Who cares?” you might ask, and you’d be right to. But the answer, as you can see from this intense, extended Facebook “discussion,” is a whole mess of Hastings residents who don’t like “strange” cars parked in front of their houses. However, they don’t want their streets to become no parking zones because they want the option to park on the street, and the city doesn’t want to create regulations it can’t enforce. This has led to outlandish demands like “an ordinance requiring employees to park in their lots.”
As Kaul points out, the houses in question have driveways and garages, so this isn’t about fighting for a parking spot. “I think they’re just so fed up with cars being in front of their homes for long periods of time,” Hastings Public Works Director Ryan Stempski says.
Campus Newspapers: Still a Thing
Forgive me, Racket's Jay Boller, for being a romantic about newspapers, generally, but especially about campus papers like the Minnesota Daily, where I worked as a cub reporter for over two years.
As such, I very much enjoyed this status check of the state's student-run newsrooms from Brian Arola at MinnPost. You'll be unsurprised to learn (or not learn) that, given the death-rattling realties of the industry, many papers are reducing print days, going all digital (the Daily's 120-plus-year print era quietly died years ago), or disappearing all together.
Still, the folks Arola talked with remain committed to reporting the news on their campuses. "[They] keep chugging along," he writes, and, if nothing else, the MinnPost piece exposes you to some great newspaper names: Winona State University's The Winonan, UMD's The Bark, University of St. Thomas's The Crest News, Macalester College's The Mac Weekly, Bethel University's The Clarion, St. Olaf College's The Olaf Messager, and, my personal fave, Carleton College's The Carletonian.
“I wasn’t very confident with who I was when I first enrolled here,” says Anahi Zuniga, editor-in-chief of Minnesota State University's The Reporter. “I feel so sure of myself now and who I want to be after graduation. I can use my words as a way to express what I feel and think is necessary.”
The Eyes of Texas Are Upon Us
Over the past few months, we’ve covered multiple instances of Minnesotans stepping up to assist neighbors under threat from federal immigration goons. But today Shubhanjana Das at the Sahan Journal has a story about the Texas organizations that helped those Minnesotans who suddenly found themselves a long way from home.
When detained immigrants were flown out of state to Texas, locating them could be nearly impossible. “Families and attorneys began calling the people who knew the system best: immigrant advocates on the ground in Texas who became an emergency support system for people they did not expect to serve,” Das writes.
Soon, however, various immigrant advocacy groups stepped in to create a network of contacts that allowed concerned Minnesotans to track down their loved ones and clients. As Daniel Hatoum of the Texas Civil Rights Project notes, these advocates are experts at negotiating life at the border, “and now the border is everywhere.”
