Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily midday digest of what local media outlets and Twitter-ers are gabbing about.
More Like Harold and Kumar Tribune
The Star Tribune's fearless features intern Jasmine Snow took a page out of the Racket playbook this week and got high for reader enjoyment. A mood-altering-substance newbie, she tried four different newly legal THC products over the course of a week, with mixed results. One edible resulted in her calling her puzzle pieces "maestro," another made Frosted Flakes taste especially delicious, and the new THC-infused drink from Minneapolis Cider Co. didn't make her feel much of anything. Her report includes this wonderful sentence: "I spent a solid 20 minutes feeling really weird about bees." Still no word regarding how Snow convinced Strib brass, who required a negative drug test from three Racket staffers (and every other new hire) as a condition for employment back in our City Pages days, that this was a good idea. Either way—we commend her.
State Cops to Stay in Mpls to Protect Walz Re-Election
It’s an election year, and that means the DFL has to shore up its “public safety” bona fides with outstate voters who don’t want anyone asking them for change on their annual trip into town for a Vikings game. So today Tim Walz announced that the additional members of the State Patrol and Bureau of Criminal Apprehension dispatched to Minneapolis in July will remain for now. (And at least through November, we presume.) Walz pointed to a recent plateau in violent crime as evidence that increase law enforcement has worked, while also assuring Minnesotans that our state’s largest city is not a smoldering hellhole where the living envy the dead. (We’re paraphrasing.) Ah, democracy in action. Oh well, Gov. Dr. Scott Jensen would probably have the National Guard going door to door checking for stolen catalytic converters by now.
Buy Dead Media by the Boxful
Here at Racket, we’re shameless romantics for antiquated media formats. You better believe we’ll be at the ol’ Discland warehouse this weekend for one heckuva deal: $20 to fill provided boxes with all the CDs/DVDs/cassettes/VHS tapes/video games you can find; $10 to cram provided bags with all the vinyl records that'll fit. “There’s around 100,000 CDs, DVDs, vinyl and video games,” Discland co-owner Dave Graves tells us. “We have added a lot of CDs and movies that haven't been dug through. The video games are getting really low and the vinyl has good stuff left but a lot of it is '50s and '60s, but it's pretty cheap—$10 for a grocery bag that’ll fit around 50.” Sadly, Discland’s cavernous Bloomington store closed in 2018, so this sale is going down Friday (5-8 p.m.) and Saturday (11 a.m.-4 p.m.) at the Graves' storage facility at 1155 Cliff Rd. E. in Bloomington. The liquidating owner says he’ll accept cash, credit cards, or Venmo.
Wholesome! People Are Bonding Over Shuffleboard.
Did you know that Loring Park has shuffleboard courts? Bill Lindeke details the history of this park oddity in this sweet story from MinnPost. The courts, which were built in 1939, continue have been enjoyed for decades, including weekly Loring Park Shuffleboard Club meetups. The old game, still popular in old folks' resorts in Florida, is simple: Form teams, then use a shuffleboard stick to push your puck into the region on the board with the highest number designation. “You can come in, and on any given night, someone playing for their first time could beat a long-time player,” says James Ockuly, one of the founders of the current club, which has been meeting since the ‘80s. “You can pick it up really quickly, but even after all the time we’ve been playing, we still feel like there’s a challenge to it.”
