A Rare Southeast Dive Slated for So-Called Improvement

[Image from MN Daily.]

It is with a leaden heart that I report that another Minneapolis dive is slated to be improved.

Sporty's (formerly the Sportsmen's Inn) is one of the only dives in Southeast Minneapolis, an otherwise relatively quiet working-class and student-oriented slice of the city. Along with Manning's across the street, Sporty's displays a lived in patina and a idiosyncratic veneer that made it seem like someone's 1980s basement. I first came across it during a Stupor Bowl ride, and have returned there often.

The article in the Minnesota Daily reads:

The bar's last day of operation will be June 30, said owner Chris Chistopherson. A new restaurant, Como Tap, is expected to open at the location of 22nd Avenue Southeast and Como Avenue Southeast in late August. 

Christopherson’s lease for the bar, nicknamed Sporty’s for decades, will end in July after unsuccessful renewal negotiations. Renewing the lease would have included a substantial rent increase that Christopherson found unsustainable, he said.
During negotiations, Christopherson said he received a letter informing him the lease would not be renewed. 

“This is not my intent, it breaks my heart. Because I feel like we're allowing an institution to die,” Christopherson said. “But I understand it, I understand business. I understand maximizing profits and I don't know that I'd have done anything different if I was in Joe's spot, because he owns the building. He operated Sporty’s for 14 years.”

It seems like the place will remain a bar, so that's good. Less good is the certitude that it'll be a fancier and "cleaned up". I assume  all the cool kitschy idiosyncratic "your uncle's basement" stuff will be gone.

Here are some fun facts about Sporty's, from last year's Noteworthy Dive Bars of the Southeast Borderlands tour:

• It's an old mixed-use building with apartments over the bar. Lots of people have lived here over the century, families and kids growing up above the place. Back in 1936, for example, a woman named Margaret Reimers lived upstairs and, in a classic "eyes on the street" moment, witnessed a group of men commit a burglary of company across the street. The place was called United Chemical Co., and the burglars spent two hours breaking into a "strongbox" to steal a grand total of $42. (The safe had had over $1,600 inside earlier in the day, so they were working with bad information. That's $30,000 in today's dollars.) Margaret did not call the police because she did not have a phone.  
• In 1937, the city granted a license for a restaurant in this location. At that time it was not a bar, and only served soft drinks and sold cigarettes.
• In 1962, the place was called the Como Inn. Being outside the Minneapolis' 1880s "liquor patrol limits", there's always been a struggle to allow alcohol here. For decades, concerned neighbors have pushed back against having bars on this part of Como. In 1963, organizations in Southeast sent 17 letters to the city to protest the (re)opening of a bar here. The Alderman at the time, a man named Robert McGregor, led the charge to stop the opening of the bar. (He failed, obviously.)
• By 1969, the bar got a new owner and the name changed to the Sportsmen's Inn.
• It became Sporty's more recently, and was remodeled about five years ago to add large windows. Maybe that was the beginning of the end? Fenestrating a dive bar is never a good sign. 

Go check out Sporty's before it changes. Be sure to make a pilgrimage to the Kramer painting.

[One of my favorite movie posters, because she is destroying a freeway.]

[The patron saint of Sporty's.]

[An excellent dive bar bathroom, one of the diveyist in Minneapolis.]