Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
Mysteriously Financed Documentary to Finally Give Voice to Landlords, Developers, Cops
Scored to dramatic strings, the trailer for A Precarious State leads with mega-landlord Jim Rubin warning that "the city can't survive another four years of this." ("This" isn't defined in the trailer, but it's blurted out here.)
Former Republican lawmaker Pat Garofalo offers his dire assessment of the Twin Cities, as do real estate executive Russ Nelson, developer lobbyist Roz Peterson, Carlson School of Management marketing professor George John, and MPD Chief Brian O'Hara. By now, any dope with a basic understanding of power dynamics can guess what's in the works here: a more palatable, less Alpha Newsy riff on The Fall of Minneapolis, intended to nudge respectable centrists rightward. (Racket has not viewed the film—maybe we're wrong!)
The orchestrator behind this ominous new documentary is Rick Kupchella, an ex-KARE 11 reporter whose bona fides include interviewing "well over 20K people on several continents." (He currently touts himself as CEO of Kupchella Public Affairs, "a journalistically-led group focused on the economic health and wellbeing of Minnesota.") In an interview with the Fargo Forum, Kupchella characterizes the film's benefactors as “business and community leaders," and won't reveal the cost to run it Thursday night via ABC stations across Minnesota. Racket emailed Kupchella asking for the project budget, the names of those "leaders" paying for it, and the cost to air it during primetime TV. Didn't hear back, which is funny considering "transparency" is one of the doc's pillar virtues.
Kupchella, however, has been making the rounds promoting A Precarious State with sympathetic radio cranks like Tom Barnard, Jon Justice, and Joe Soucheray. (The Strib and KSTP both filed credulous normie reports, too.)
"Do you focus on the leftism of the City Council at all?" asks Soucheray, fresh off suggesting, without any pushback, that Tim Walz is the worst governor in the country.
"You're getting to, kind of, the nut of this thing," Kupchella responds.
He continues a bit later: "I actually put together a deck on what I had learned, and went around to business organizations, in particular, because I really think that is the backbone of our society and vitality, certainly economically, and I started getting funding from various organizations."
"These finance folks are also telling me it is getting tough right now, very tough," Kupchella says, seemingly expecting the median Souch listener to relate. "These are financial advisors saying, 'We've come to the conclusion we must sit down with our clients and explain to them they will do better almost anywhere else.'"
Ah. OK. Got it.
Story as old as time: When the interests of capital don't receive sufficient capitulation, chambers of commerce will unleash their lapdogs to browbeat political opposition. Precarious State is packaged as brave truth-telling, but gimme a break, man. This is the polar opposite of afflicting the comfortable—it's carrying their water. Tell us where the money comes from, and why, exactly, those "various organizations" felt comfortable investing in you, Mr. Just Asking Questions Here Journalist, as their messenger.
Anywhoo... A Precarious State airs at 7 p.m.
Minnesotans Prep Excitedly to React Insufferably to Replacements Biopic
We were too busy saying goodbye to Conrad Sverkerson Wednesday to note the other big local music news: Finn Wolfhard of Stranger Things fame is set to star in a Replacements biopic as Paul Westerberg. The 22-year-old actor is writing the screenplay with his dad, Eric, based on the 'Mats biography Trouble Boys by Bob Mehr.
Mehr’s 2016 book really is the gold standard of rock bios, so I’m very excited to see him get paid, even though I am constitutionally incapable of enjoying music biopics and will inevitably have many complaints about it. Hopefully we’ll get some good celeb sightings outta this—if you thought Timothée Chalamet visiting Dinkytown was a big deal, wait till Finn becomes a regular at the CC Club.
Another local angle: Wolfhard is named for Hold Steady frontman Craig Finn. (I may have just made this up.)
According to Mehr, we have another Replacements-affiliated celebrity to thank for this project: Winona Ryder, “who’s been a great pal and champion and was instrumental in bringing me and Finn together,” Mehr writes on Facebook.
Ryder (who is named for the Minnesota county she was born in) was a 'Mats superfan in her teens and also a (non-romantic, both insist) pal of Westerberg’s. As she stated in 1990: “Paul Westerberg is like—I swear, I get teary-eyed when I think about him. If I were to have a hero or a personal god, it would be him.” Thank god nothing I said at 18 is anywhere on the internet.
Dear Landlord…
As we learned recently, almost everyone has a bad landlord anecdote in their past. On Wednesday, a Minneapolis City Council subcommittee voted on one possible way to knock the worst of these property owners back in line—the STOP Slumlords Ordinance, which now proceeds to the full council for a vote.
Under the ordinance, the owners of “Tier 3” properties, those with the most violations, would appear before City Council, which would vote on whether to renew their licenses. Renters who testified said a change was necessary, because despite multiple 311 calls, no action was being taken and licenses were automatically renewed.
“What it is intending to do is to create a moment of conversation when that license comes for renewal,” Council Member Katie Cashman says, according to MPR News. “There’s an opportunity for council members, for city staff, the owner and the tenants to come together on resolving the issues that have made it tenable for the residents who live there.”
But would Mayor Jacob Frey sign such an ordinance? Frey yesterday vetoed another council ordinance that attempted to intervene in the housing market. The ordinance, which supporters say would slow gentrification, requires commercial owners in certain sections of Minneapolis to give 60 days’ notice to the city and any tenants before putting their property on the market.
Kiln? I Don't Even Know'n!
Let’s go out on a little slice of Minnesota history, courtesy of John Lauritsen and WCCO’s “Finding Minnesota” series. On a clear day, it’s said, you can almost see Minneapolis from He Mni Can Barn Bluff in Red Wing. But the bluff isn’t just a remarkable natural limestone formation and a sacred site to local Native American tribes. In the 1880s, Gustavus Adolphus Carlson built a kiln into the bluff, and his company began providing limestone to buildings throughout the state, including the Stone Arch Bridge. The kiln is no longer in use, but visitors can now tour it and take in a bit of local building history.
