Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily midday digest of what local media outlets and Twitter-ers are gabbing about.
Guv's Bizarre Turkey Ritual, Sorta Explained
In 2019, the Pioneer Press tiptoed around it, writing: "This turkey didn’t travel to the state Capitol to get pardoned." You'd be forgiven if, upon viewing Gov. Tim Walz fraternizing Tuesday with the turkey pictured above, you assumed the bird would live a long, gobbling life on some sanctuary farm. That's the gimmick of the presidential turkey pardon, an annual White House production that just saw President Joe Biden save two turkeys, Chocolate and Chip, from a Thanksgiving dinner fate. But our turkey theatrics are more macabre in Minnesota, where, apparently, an unnamed bird is subjected to a photo op with the grinning faces of the Minnesota Turkey Growers Association, only to later waddle back to the kill floor. (Minnesota is the nation's top turkey producer, accounting for 18% of total birds raised to be eaten.) A pardoned Minnesota bird wouldn't offset the innumerable horrors of industrial meat production—as experienced by animals and humans—but hey, it'd be a nice PR layup and a shade less grim. We reached out to the governor's office to confirm the nuts/bolts of the non-pardon, and also offer unsolicited advice about letting the bird live for the sake of optics. Here's the cryptic response from Walz spokesperson Claire Lancaster: "It’s true it doesn’t have a name… it’s headed to a hobby farm now and then fate will decide."
Tom Emmer: Corrupt "Crypto King"?
Rep. Tom Emmer's colossal head is full of crypto delusions, as we've known since the Minnesota congressman began his relentless cheerleading of the unregulated currency as co-chair of the Congressional Blockchain Caucus; Minnesota Reformer dubbed him "the crypto king of congress." Just last week, as Emmer nabbed the third-ranking position in the U.S. House, the schadenfreudian collapse of crooked crypto powerhouse FTX and its scammy leader, Sam Bankman-Fried, played out at hyper-speed. Did the saga suggest a death rattle from the tanking industry, one that many believe to be a glorified MLM scheme? Not to Emmer, who tweeted Tuesday, "FTX's collapse is not a crypto failure. It's a failure with CeFi, [SEC Chair] Gary Gensler, and Sam Bankman-Fried. Decentralization is the point." (Just last year Emmer was smooching the purported boy-genius' behind, as pointed out by the Reformer's Max Nesterak.) Making matters more interesting and potentially corrupt: The Congressional Leadership Fund, the super PAC associated with the Emmer-headed National Republican Congressional Committee, received millions via the bi-partisan firehose of cash FTX wielded before its downfall, The American Prospect reported this morning. And, in March, Emmer was the lead author of a bi-partisan letter to the the Securities and Exchange Commission that attempted to stall the SEC's investigation into FTX, the Prospect found. Nothing fishy to see here, folks!
RIP, Red Stag Supperclub
When it opened 15 years ago, Red Stag Supperclub was well ahead of the Wisconsin-y supper club trend that's currently popping up in Minneapolis (Creekside), St. Paul (Apostle), and the 'burbs (Mr. Paul's, Shakopee House). It won't be around for the boom time, as restauranter Kim Bartmann announced Tuesday that December 31 will be the northeast Minneapolis restaurant's last day in business. Via press release, she called the move "very difficult and heart-wrenching." Northeast fans of brunch and fish fries will likely be bummed by Red Stag's demise. Elsewhere, in the Biz Journal, Bartmann recently struck a cheerier tone while describing why she still believes in Uptown, the evolving neighborhood whose pulse remains an obsession for many. That prompted yours truly to wonder aloud about a point most local press outlets are eager to gloss over: Bartmann's track record of wage theft. “It just felt like kind of a gut punch,” a worker at Bartmann Group—now rebranded as Placemaker Hospitality—told Racket earlier this year.
Strange Map Befuddles Many
It's not accurate. It's glyph-tastic to the point of resembling a Bon Iver track list. It's the incomprehensible Minneapolis neighborhood map from Art by Aleisha, and it has taken local Twitter by storm. See for yourself:
Creator Aleisha Nelson is a Bay Area-based Minneapolis transplant who churns out similar maps of cities all over the country, according to our cursory Google research. As a resident of the small-but-mighty Field 'hood, I'm choosing to be offended by its omission and, thus, this entire map.
