For months now, Guides #4 (Noteworthy Dive Bars of Old Fort Road), #5 (Noteworthy Parking Lots of Minneapolis) and #6 (Noteworthy Dive Bars of Outer Northeast) have been out of print for a few months.
But they are back IN STOCK and now 100% typo-free.*
Last but certainly not least, I am happy to introduce:
Guide Booklet #7: Noteworthy Dive Bars of Payne and Arcade
In this lovely 36-page booklet you will find a map, some useful information, grainy photos, quotations or hearsay, atmospheric speculation, daydream transcriptions, and historical trivia about noteworthy dive bars located on Payne Avenue and Arcade Street in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
The featured establishments are six (6) past and present dive bars from the heart of Saint Paul's East Side. They are based on last year's popular walking tour:
- Louies
- Schweitz's/Brunson's
- The Arcade Bar
- Governor's
- Vogel's
- Porky's
In the meantime, I'm attaching an excerpt at the end of this post.
* probably
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| [The walking tour crowding the Arcade Bar.] |
[Sample introduction follows.]
The Industrial East Side
When I was growing up, my family dentist had his office on Payne
Avenue and, though I absolutely hated going there, about every six
months we would venture up the old street. I didn’t notice at the
time the ironic symbolism, a dentist’s office on a street named “pain.”
What bright bulb thought that a good idea? It’s like opening a bar
on Temperance Street, or a casino on Default Drive. Looking back, I
suppose the odd locale was testament to the powerful draw of Payne
Avenue, the way it transcended language itself in its role as the cultural heart of Saint Paul’s East Side.
As the story is told, immigrants came to Saint Paul in great numbers during the late 19th century, and the poorest among them flowed into marginal nooks and crannies of the new city. These were places forgotten by topography or erased routinely by the rhythm of the river’s big floods, and of all the old squatting settlements, the most extreme was Swede Hollow.
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| [1975.] |
As the story is told, immigrants came to Saint Paul in great numbers during the late 19th century, and the poorest among them flowed into marginal nooks and crannies of the new city. These were places forgotten by topography or erased routinely by the rhythm of the river’s big floods, and of all the old squatting settlements, the most extreme was Swede Hollow.
Swede Hollow is thin creek canyon chiseled into the eastern river
bluffs between old Trout Brook, downtown, and Dayton’s Bluff. The
hollow formed the eastern border of Railroad Island, a triangle of
land separated from the city by the railroad tracks that, beginning
in the 1870s, knit the town crudely like the stitches of Frankenstein.
Many stories are told about the old hollow. There were few pathways
in and out, dozens of hand-built homes, and a constant churn of
refugees that trod into and out of the social cracks. In the hollow, I
imagine a world without privacy, brimming with opportunity, where
collectivism and moxie mixed in equal measure. I picture men and
women scavenging what they could from halted boxcars, gleaning
from dumps and construction sites, bringing greasy treasures back
to the hollow and making do. I have seen old pictures of outhouses
opening up onto the creek that flowed through the middle of the
ravine, a circumstance that does not sound appealing for the folks
living at the bottom.
At some point in the 20th century, the hollow crossed the thin line into a slum. The essence of the place itself probably didn’t change very much, but the problem was that Saint Paul changed around it. Or perhaps the stories the city told itself transformed as the Italians and churches moved up the hill, perhaps reflections changed as Mexicans moved in and the post-war boom exploded around the rickety homes, as businessmen through the country began planning modern destinies. Somewhere the hollow became a black sheep, an unredeemable sign of the past suited only for the scrapbook of history, and in 1956 the city set fire to the last of the hollow houses while hundreds of people vanished. Sixty years later there are almost no traces of the old tight-knit neighborhood: a scrap of metal, an old foundation, an empty glen.
At some point in the 20th century, the hollow crossed the thin line into a slum. The essence of the place itself probably didn’t change very much, but the problem was that Saint Paul changed around it. Or perhaps the stories the city told itself transformed as the Italians and churches moved up the hill, perhaps reflections changed as Mexicans moved in and the post-war boom exploded around the rickety homes, as businessmen through the country began planning modern destinies. Somewhere the hollow became a black sheep, an unredeemable sign of the past suited only for the scrapbook of history, and in 1956 the city set fire to the last of the hollow houses while hundreds of people vanished. Sixty years later there are almost no traces of the old tight-knit neighborhood: a scrap of metal, an old foundation, an empty glen.
The other big pillar of the East Side was the factory, the logical twin
to the railroad. The East Side factories put thousands of workers to
work at all hours of the day and night. The Hamm’s brewery sat at the
top of the hollow, with old man Hamm’s mansion glooming across
the hillside. The big Seeger refrigerator factory was over on Arcade,
there was a complex of 3M factory buildings huddled around the
tracks, and a healthy handful of machine shops, warehouses, and
more scattered in between. These days, globalization, automation,
and consolidation have made mincemeat of urban industry, leaving huge holes in Saint Paul’s fabric, and the East Side has become
a miniature rust belt. One old factory is a strip mall; the assembly
line, a parking lot; and the industrial products lab is but a patch of
grass waiting for an angel investor. Sometimes the neighborhood too
seems on hold, waiting for a past or future self to appear.
Yet the streets bear proudly the traces of the past. Payne and Arcade, where the workers built their kingdoms, run north out of view from downtown to rise up the hills towards the suburbs. All along you see the signs of the old days - faded paint on an empty building or a black-and-white photo nailed to a wall - and everywhere, as always, the eternal youth of immigration. These streets brim with generations, a multi-layered mash-up of centuries. A hundred-year- old Swedish shoe store sits alongside a Salvadorean bodega, the betta fishmonger beside a room full of Catholic uniforms, the linoleum dealer lingering by the Hmong radio station. Today they seem to hold the idea of America: Payne and Arcade, the country’s crux, past and future suspended in time.
Yet the streets bear proudly the traces of the past. Payne and Arcade, where the workers built their kingdoms, run north out of view from downtown to rise up the hills towards the suburbs. All along you see the signs of the old days - faded paint on an empty building or a black-and-white photo nailed to a wall - and everywhere, as always, the eternal youth of immigration. These streets brim with generations, a multi-layered mash-up of centuries. A hundred-year- old Swedish shoe store sits alongside a Salvadorean bodega, the betta fishmonger beside a room full of Catholic uniforms, the linoleum dealer lingering by the Hmong radio station. Today they seem to hold the idea of America: Payne and Arcade, the country’s crux, past and future suspended in time.
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[An old Payne Avenue print shop.]
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