So… Who Got an E-bike Rebate?

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

E-bike Rebate Recap

So, which Minnesotans were able to snag a reimbursement on an e-bike? H. Jiahong Pan has the scoop for the Minnesota Reformer, and the answer might surprise and/or frustrate you!

More than two out of five of the 1,500ish folks who got the tax rebate earned more than $100,000 in annual income, according to Department of Revenue data obtained by the Reformer through a public records request; half of 'em made more than $80,000. "Meanwhile, just under 37% of the roughly 1,500 Minnesotans who received an e-bike tax rebate are low income, falling just short of the law’s 40% mandate, which was intended to give working people a chance at the ascendant transportation option," Pan reports.

Now, you could feel any number of ways about this. One one hand, it's of course valid to be frustrated by the bungled rollout of the ultra-hyped e-bike rebate application process, the near-instant evaporation of extremely limited rebate certificates, and the fact that high earners ended up snagging such a high number of the available rebates.

On the other... this was a small and well-intentioned pilot program that generated a lot of attention. That's a good thing, actually! It shows that there's a ton of interest, which means that maybe in the future (though of course, the bust-up of the DFL trifecta makes this less likely), policymakers could advocate to allocate more money to the program and find ways to ensure that it better serves low-income folks who would benefit most from it.

The North Woods Black Spruce Bandits

"On an 80-acre patch of boggy black spruce swamp outside the small northeast Minnesota town of Babbitt, the telltale signs of a unique North Woods crime are everywhere."

That's MPR News's Dan Kraker reporting from St. Louis County, where Minnesota Department of Natural Resources conservationists like Anthony Bermel have spent "a good chunk" of the fall season hunting spruce thieves who illegally cut and sell tree tops. It turns out there's a booming and totally legal market for balsam, cedar, and birch, especially around the holidays, when stores like Costco sell 'em for $60 to $70 a pop.

But that demand means there's an accompanying black market for winter greenery, and black spruce bandits are known to steal tree tops from private, county, state, and federal land. One guy, 37-year-old Blake Buschman of Babbitt (hm, this is sounding more and more like a children's fable), was arrested earlier this year and accused of illegally cutting more than 5,000 spruce tops—and that's not even his first arrest.

Food Shelves Dig Into Data

"Bottles and cans, just clap your hands," oddball indie musician Beck famously sang. Minnesota food shelves are singin' a different tune: fewer bottles and cans, more fresh fruits and vegetables!

MinnPost's Deanna Pistono reports that fresh food is a priority for area food shelves and their clients, with 7,000 food shelf shoppers indicating in the 2022 Minnesota Food Shelf Client Survey that they'd appreciate increased access to fruits and veggies, as well as meat, dairy, and eggs.

“In North Minneapolis, we’re in a food desert, and access to healthy, fresh food is very limited," NorthPoint Health and Wellness's Marissa Elliott tells MinnPost. "So we have made a very intentional effort to (prioritize) that fresh food."

NorthPoint is among the 200+ food shelves throughout the state working with the Foundation for Essential Needs to get better data about client wants and needs—data they're also using to make their services more efficient and cost-effective.

James Austin Johnson Does Dylan

Apologies to the non-Dylan-heads for all of the Bob Dylan content on the site these last few weeks. I myself am totally indifferent to Minnesota's legendary music export—just don't care! That said... you've gotta see James Austin Johnson's Dylan impression from this weekend's Saturday Night Live. Here, here:

Dune! Hell of a feature. Once you've digested that performance, you're going to want to read Steven Hyden's interview with Johnson for Uproxx. The SNL cast member, who scored a cameo in A Complete Unknown, has some interesting thoughts about the best Bob impressions out there (Tim Heidecker included) and says Timothée Chalamet works as Dylan because of his "jittery, spazzy vibe." Crucially, as Hyden points out, Johnson's detail-rich Dylan mines '00s-era Bob, a much tougher nut to crack than the stock '60s Dylan most comics attempt. My two Dylan-loving male colleagues mansplained that Johnson, who also does Trump for SNL, knocks it out of the park.

Hang in there, fellow Dylan agnostics—an end to these tenuously local-angled stories is in sight. The biopic hits theaters December 25, and then we'll get back to our regular Dylan-posting schedule: once a year or so.