Another Dive Down as the Hexagon Burns Up, Goes by the Wayside

The Hexagon Bar was unique, a small weird oasis on the concrete streets of the Seward neighborhood. Its loss marks another minor absence for the city’s music scene, and the disappearance of small weird venues like the nearby Triple Rock and the 400 Bar. 

For music, the Hexagon Bar was always cover-free. It was the kind of place you could just pop your head into as you were passing through South Minneapolis, to see who was playing, with little commitment, and whether it sucked or not. There was often a flock of hipsters, crusty punks, U students, and/or random South Minneapolis bozos hanging around outside the door. Late at night, the fenced-in patio was like a petting zoo where people fed each other American Spirit cigarettes. 


At other times, the Hexagon Bar was a classic dive, if there wasn’t a show, you’d find a maybe a dozen regulars drinking out of plastic cups, staring blankly at the claw machine, passing time in a place that slowly changed around them.

I wrote of the place's mercurial nature, back in the 2nd Guide Booklet:

The gritty wedding of dives and music is perfectly suited to another dive characteristic, the daily pattern of regulars, drunks, workers, and the late-night young. Any good dive in an urban area will have a distinct rhythm to the day, a stride and pace of alcoholic progression that mirrors its social reach and the neighborhood around it. In a way, this is like how Jane Jacobs described the “urban ballet,” the passage of a New York sidewalk through the hours, of streets through the day and night. Some dives begin their days in old age, with the retired or hopeless, weary men escaping loneliness, reading the paper, complaining. As the night wears on, years fall off the faces, a time-lapse in reverse. The old man in the olive jacket is replaced by a 30-something in plaid, then again by a black shirted groupie straight out of college. Midnight is for the young and restless and the music takes over the bar, pouring out of the adjacent room like a spilled Grain Belt, impossible to ignore. If you’re here, why would you want to?







It's also wroth pointing out that the Hexagon Bar was the last real remnant of the hub of hell, along with the Schooner Bar a few blocks away. …

The Hub of Hell, also known as Hell’s Half-Acre, was its own special place, where the Puffer-Hubbard gang (from the nearby foundry) was just as likely to police social norms as the actual Minneapolis police.

…


The Hexagon Bar sat on the seam that separated the factories and warehouses of Seward from the working-class homes to the north and east. In those days, there were a lot of industrial facilities in the area, like the Milwaukee Road rail yards, which employed hundreds of working stiffs; Minneapolis-Moline, a farm implement factory; or Flour City Ornamental Iron Works Company, a foundry that crafted large, decorative railings, gates, and doorways. The railroad tracks through the neighborhood were lined with smokestacks and the streets full of men roving around and looking for work and fun.






Heck I’ve been writing odes to the Hexagon Bar for almost ten years now. I think the second ever dive bar bike tour wound up there, back in 2013. Since then, I wrote about the Hexagon Bar in my South Minneapolis Dive guide booklet, researched it as part of work I did on the history of the Seward Neighborhood, and then again included it in my book Closing Time.

I didn’t know it when I was going to shows, but music at the Hexagon Bar was part of a long tradition. Researching the bar book, I dug into an audio history archive from the 1990s that included a colorful interview with the bar’s long-time owner, Aurelea Hupp. Her story is fascinating, but includes this description of the bar in mid-century: 


It was mostly truck drivers. . . . There would be fights in the bar, because we had a hexagon-shaped bar and there only was the one room. We had the oom-pa band there in the corner, three fellas playing, and they’d be four deep at the bar on a Friday or Saturday. The fellas would be arguing, you know, and my husband, who was a friendly guy, he and Jack Reilly would have to stop these fights.


Hupp’s husband inherited the place from his stepdad, who had opened it up after prohibition in 1935. She passed it along to her kids, and apart from losing the original hexagonal shaped bar, it didn’t change all that much. (I put an extended rough transcription of the Hupp interview below.)

The bar was torched during the unrest this summer. The demolition of the ruins this week mark the end of the real Hub of Hell bars that once defined the Seward neighborhood.. Most of them were demolished intentionally through city-led projects, aimed at changing the area, reducing crime, and getting rid of the old bars. While the bowling alley and the Eagles club remain, and though I love them both, neither is really a traditional bar. It’s a bit sad to see the Hex go this way, because I think it had made it through the hardest years of the 1990s and early 2000s.

RIP Hexagon Bar. You had a good run.

[Rough Exerpts from an interview with Aurelia Ann Marie Hupp, long-time proprietor of the Hexagon from the 1950s-1990s.]

I started singing at the Tempo Bar, owned by Roy [???] at the time. Charles Mathews was one of our regular customers, [???] Eckberg was the owner, he was a very regular customer. He was in the Tempo every day in the 1940s, I started singing at the age of 2. 

Somebody had coxed me to enter a contest at the Café Exceptionale. I didn’t take the [waitressing] job be a singer, so I was scared. 

One night we stopped in the Tempo they got me up to sing, Roy Eckberg was there and said, I want you to come and work for me. 

I was a singing waitress. All popular songs of the 40s, and everything that was popular semi-classics. There was a piano player and a violin player and my brothers made a little stage for the waitresses, and they used to be packed every night [with people] from the university. Just packed.

Night and Day, Paper Moon, Summertime, Chattanooga Choo Choo. Bernie Bane Hanson was the piano player. 

The band would be on 20 minutes and the girl would be on 20 minutes, and the girl only lasted two weeks. 

So he sez, You want to come down and try it? 

I don’t mind, I sez. I might not last very long. What was she getting? I asked. 

I was getting 40 dollars a week at the Tempo, so we went down to start it, and the fellow asked me what I expected to get. 

I expect to get 60 dollars a week, I sez.  

If you last more than two weeks, I’ll see that ya get it, he sez. 

The third week came, I got 40 dollars. I said to him, remember me? 

You got it, he sez. 

I worked there about two years. It was after the Tempo, that was like in ’45, [owned by] Gus Nelson. Roy Eckberg had sold it to Gus Nelson and then there was another bar, the Minnesota Bar, I’m pretty sure it was called the Minnesota bar on Franklin. It was a beer parlor. Beer parlor, liquor and beer, 3.2 and liquor, as opposed to hard liquor. 

Then I got the job downtown at the Casablanca, when it was owned by White/ Mitch from Mendota was one of the owners, [???] went to jail because of the murder that was there.  And Tommy Banks. Shetsky took the rap for Tommy Banks, who was the guy that killed him at the time I was singing downtown. 

I was also Rosie the riveter at the St Paul airport because I was working on a specials crew. And when the new B24s came into the St. Paul airport you had to go all over them to see where the rivets were missing.

My husband’s stepdad started the Hexagon at the end of prohibition. It was a beer bar, where you make beer, a Schlitz brewery was there, in the building. That was the building and my husband’s stepdad stared a bar right there and that was in about ’36, 

It had been Schlitz before prohibition. After, it was a natural place for a bar. It had the right smell. So we started a bar there, and when he decided to retire, he gave the bar to his own son and my husband who was his stepson, he was married to my husband’s mother, turned the place over to the two boys in 1945. And they worked there. They were partners, and they added on, and they were partners until his son died. That was Riley, our name was Riley. Our telephone is still listed as William Riley he’s been dead since…

Riley married Hupp, and that was where the two boys came from. One boy in each family, that was the extent of the family. 

He died when he was about 59 years old, my husband had along in about 77, my husband got Alzheimer's and he had Alzheimer's until he passed away. And my son will help him run it and when he died, I stepped in and did it. And now the boys are running it, the one boy is the manager now, and we’re on the corner.

When we were first in here it was The Magic. The bar where emerge is, and meet to us there, where you the city bought it you, it had been formally Duffys. It was Genes, and then Pearsons was always there, and Pearson Bustard his name was, he and his wife both had Cadillacs and beanies and he had a ring on his finger that was a big diamond. 

And he was held up, they said give me that diamond. 

I can’t, he sez. I haven’t had that off my hand in 20 years.

And [the robber] says, cut it off or I’ll cut the damn finger off.

And so it came right off. Heck, you don’t want to get too scared because that what can happen, your fingers shrink.

There are just as many [bars] now, in fact, they gave all ways was the ones that’s owned by the what’s the one a block down from Pearson’s well anyway it's Franky… name of the bar down there that… 

The Eagles', I know it well, they do sell liquor there. One they gave a license to. The FOI / VFW. They gave a liquor license to the Stardust, then Henna’s became Differs, then Duffy’s became an insurance man, Foster. Then Foster became Norma Jeans, then the city took it back. Mr Nib’s was after the Magic Bar, Magic Bar then Mr. Nibs, then it was go right to Mirage called it … now its not any more. 

Gone by the wayside, and Norma Jeans has gone by the wayside and Pearson’s has gone by the wayside. 

[Transcript ends.]

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.]

West Bank Bar History Walking Tour Tonight

I'm leading a little walking tour of bar history in Minneapolis' West Bank tonight. It'll be a bit different than the dive bar tours in the past, as we'll be looking at what's left of the historic landscape of the area as much as visiting current saloons.

This part of the city (or was) one of the hearts of Minneapolis bar culture for at least a century, and there's are a few stories to share about it. I hope to see you there! It'll be at least three (3) bar stops and a mile or two stroll.

Cheers!

[Facebook invite is here.]

What: walking tour of west bank bars
When: 6:20pm - 9:00
Who: anyone
Where: Republic at Seven Corners (I know it's not a dive, but there's something there I have to share)
Why: because it's the last part of town I haven't done a tour of...

Another Dive Down as Timeless Lee's Liquor Lounge Relinquishes

This one is particularly sad, because Lee's was one of the least likely stories of dive bar survival. It lasted in the last place one would think a bar would linger, centered in a vortex of freeway on-ramps, municipal parking lots, homeless shelters, garbage burners, bus garages, and over-built roads on the far west edge of the downtown.

Lee's Liquor Lounge features prominently in the upcoming book that Andy Sturdevant and I are writing about the history of bars and saloons in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, and I was dearly hoping that we could host a reading on the stage at Lee's this fall, when the book is scheduled for publication, accompanied of course by some honkytonk country. It's a damn shame that won't happen.

Lee's also featured prominently in my Taxidermy Tour of Minneapolis bike ride, which I daresay might be resurrected soon before the place disappears. Lee's has the metro area's absolutely finest collection of mid-century bar kitsch, including a fine case of Elvii, and amongst the throng is some fifty-year-stuffed animals, including a black bear in a shriner's fez and a perched cougar.

[Highlights from the 2015 taxidermy tour.]

The story of Lee's cannot be told without mentioning Louie Siriam, and nobody will ever tell that story better than Brad Zellar did in his 1997 feature piece for the City Pages [see below]. I'm excerpting it here because it's not online, and please read it. Zellar chronicles one of the most amazing bar stories in Twin Cities history. Siriam started his working life as a kid sweeping up the floor at a South Saint Paul slaughterhouse (imagine the yuck!), and would end up in his later years meticulously cleaning Lee's each and every night until the formica gleamed in the limelight.

The bar's owner claims that parking is the culprit for the closure, but I am chalking this up to the absence of Louie. Never take a great dive for granted, folks. They rarely last.

[Louie's office and mop rack from the basement of Lee's.]

[Excerpts from and photos of Brad's 1997 column below.]

Louie’s foot is not an attractive sight. Horribly stunted with splayed, twisted toes and squashed arch, it is the casualty of years of foot-binding labor--20-hour days, seven days a week, including many long hours behind a floor scrubber in the dead of night. Clean floors are an obsession with Louie, the man who has owned Lee’s since 1976, Seriously clean floors. Waxed gleaming floors. They mean something; represent an ethic, a correct way of doing things.

…

As Louie likes to say,” the horse that shits the fastest don’t shit for long.”

For more than 20 years Lee’s has been Louie’s bar.

No matter how many hours he worked, nothing he did was going to stop the flight of blue-collar jobs that was taking his best customers and their paychecks out to the suburbs or wherever the hell it was taking them. Street bars like his all over the city were being eradicated. … with 394 wrapped around it like a moat that cut him off from downtown.

For a time Vikings’ great Carl Eller ran a liquor store out of the place that was now Lee’s dance floor. There was a short-lived attempt at a game room as well.

The band Trailer Trash… evolved into a regular weekday Wednesday night gig. “You know, where it’s no big deal to play 200 minutes a night. Where people don’t go to see a band but to dance, to have fun. The band’s job was simply to rock the place…. .. the revamped Trailer Trash … kept right on ripping through their catalog of more than 300 roadhouse and honkytonk staples.

Louie once said, “Nate [the Trailer Trash musician] is very impressive and he puts himself across very well. He’s a real gifted salesman. The whole group is just a bunch of fine young fellows, so clean-cut and likable. … The young folks have such clean good fun, and often they will say thank you as they leave."

...

[Another quote from a regular]: “You know, just neighborhood drinking. Friday nights we’d get all gussied up and come to Lee’s. In the old days there was a jukebox with a bunch of country oldies, and maybe twice a year this band would come in and play. I think that first Wednesday with Trailer Trash there was just Ed the bartender, me, and a handful of other people. And then all of a sudden it was the place to see and be seen.”

...

The marriage of band and bar was successful beyond anyone’s imagination, and led to a couple of major renovations designed to open up the room and improve sight lines.

“Because, essentially, Lee’s is a roadhouse. It’s a bona fide honkytonk right in the middle of a city.”

...

Louie has a favorite word: schmaltzy. He’ll say something’s “almost schmaltzy, “ and that’s the spot-on description of the appeal of Lee’s, with the careful emphasis on almost. There’s certainly an element of nostalgia in the bar’s appeal; the place seems to touch a familiar chord even in people who didn’t grow up in the world of servicemen’s clubs and small-town Saturday night dances… There’s something int he bar’s smoky, paneled 1950s roadhouse authenticity -- with its beer signs, stuffed fish, … that resonates in young urban types who’ve received their notions of Americana from, say, David lynch.

...

Lee and Sally Triemert had run Lee’s since 1962 and when Lee passed away Sally started looking for a buyer.

“I looked at the place a couple times and I had my second thoughts…" [says Louie] "But Mrs. Triemert gave me a real nice deal and I went ahead and bought the bar. … I found out quick that this is a very tough racket that requires a lot of hard work… Every night I was in here, doing everything. I was janitor, bartender, bouncer, and bookkeeper. Seven days a week I was working 21 hours just to pay the bills…"

The bar was once surrounded by industry: Kemps, Munsingwear, McGarvey coffee, Shopmaster, the Boyer Ford dealership -- and Louie depended on the business of the working men and women who sopped in after work to drink and cash their paychecks. Freeway construction just outside his front door cut him off form downtown and the neighborhoods to the north and disrupted business for years… It was the first of “many isolations… right from the get go this area started going through enormous transitions. The neighborhood’s pretty much been wiped out a couple different times.

“The last time I took a vacation, I got drafted," said Louie

Louie is out on the sidewalk in front of his bar with a brush and a pail, cleaning windows.

...

Dive Bars of the Southeast Borderland Walking Tour on 6/21

'm almost done with my epic cycle of Minneapolis and Saint Paul dive bar tours, but there are a few spots on the map that remain un-explored. This is one of them. 

[The border.]

Southeast Minneapolis is without doubt the most obscure of the four "quadrants" of the city. It has an odd and mercurial identity, part historic, part residential enclave, part active industrial area, and part massive and continually growing University. In some ways, the neighborhood's identity has always been driven by these contradictions and tensions, and the presence of the few bars of in area reflect this. They are odd places that (as you can see in the clippings below) have been sources of unease and/or community in the Como neighborhood for generations.

Then you throw into the mix the city border, and all the de-regulation and  nonsense that comes with that... Saint Paul lurks on the edge of the Southeast Minneapolis like a sunset at dusk, and there you will find some weird stuff.

We'll be walking around Southeast and the border together and visiting a few bars, as well as some other noteworthy spots in this overlooked part of the Twin Cities. Hope to see you then!

[Facebook invite here.]

[What is this land of mystery?]

What: Walking tour of three (3) historic bars in Minneapolis and Saint Paul
When: This Thursday at 6:21pm
Why: Because it's there
Who: Anyone
Where: Meet at Sporty's Pub on SE Como Avenue

[Newspaper clippings about one of the buildings follow.]

Another Dive in Limbo as Malina's Sports Bar Goes Up For Sale

The unique Dale Street dive, Malina's Sports Bar, was on the City Council agenda last week, which is something that fans of dive bars never want to see. Malina's is one of the last remaining bars on Dale Street, which used to have a bunch of dives but has become more economically marginalized ever since half of Dale Street was bulldozed and the street expanded back in the 1960s.

Back when I living in Saint Paul's North End, Malina's was the most thriving place to go to hang out. The place was unusual, for sure. It was either very closed or very open, and you could tell which was which by just scoping out the parking lot. If there were a dozen cars there, then they were open. My roommate and I used to go there whenever we were bored to drink Beer Lao and watch the best karaoke in town. This was back in the day when a man named Vone owned the place, a guy who was already friendly towards us and often insisted on me singing Sinatra songs on the karaoke stage.

(I usually obliged.)

Here's an expert from my blog when Vone was shot, trying to close up the bar one night:

The other strange thing was that Malina's was either packed or empty. There was very little in between. About half the time you'd walk in to find yourself alone with either Vone or the woman I presume was his wife. She never really spoke to us, and did all the cooking. On the other hand, Vone was gregarious. He was the bartender/owner, and he seemed to like when we'd visit. He'd chat with us, always knew how long it'd been since we'd been there last. We'd talk in vague platitudes about the bar, the neighborhood. He told us he had been a social worker, but not a lot of other details. It didn't matter. 

The bar was almost all young Hmong people from the neighborhood. I have one or two Hmong friends, and when I'd tell them that I enjoyed going to Malina's, they'd roll their eyes. "That's where guys go to cheat on their wives," one told me. Those dynamics were lost on me. All I noticed was the karaoke. I've been to a lot of karaoke bars over the years, but none of them could hold a candle to Malina's. The standards were high; there was a set of about two dozen 80s pop ballads, and you'd often see a shy looking girl wearing a sweatshirt take the stage and absolutely crush some Céline. "I Will Always Love You" was popular, and something about crying eyes, anything with gradually escalating key changes.  Usually Vone would try to get me to sing too, for some reason, and after a few beers I'd oblige with a crap rendition of some Sinatra. Nobody clapped for me, but Vone seemed to enjoy it. 

I'd often bring people to Malina's who were visiting from out of town, you know, like from Minneapolis. Vone usually made us feel comfortable there. The food was good, too. Malina's served a few different kinds of larb (a meat salad), or you could get a plate of papaya salad for a few bucks. Maybe its my imagination, but Vone seemed to delight in making it as spicy as possible. I'd sweat for fifteen minutes after eating it. There were other things on the menu too that were beyond my degree of difficulty limit.  

Over the years, Vone spent a lot of time trying to fix the place up. He always seemed to be in a struggle with the neighborhood. The other Hmong bar down the street, Moonlight Magic on Western and Thomas,  was a lot more of a dive. A few years prior, it had had a gunshot incident and been closed down by the city. That was the neighborhood. Lots of places had that problem, bars on Rice Street, anywhere with lots of young people.  

When my roommate moved away, I started going there a bit less often. Each time I'd return, Vone seemed to have done some remodeling. He painted the walls. He installed booths all around the old pool-hall room. The last time I was at Malina's was about a year ago. There was a live band, a buffet, and everybody was dancing. I'd brought a date, and we joined them. 

On the recent Frogtown dive bar tour last summer, I brought the group back into Malina's. This was years after Vone's tragic death at the hands of a disgruntled customer, but the place seemed like it was back up and running. The owner was welcoming and gracious to our tour, and everyone seemed to enjoy the eclectic space that is Malina's.

It sounds like the bar owners are trying to sell the place and keep it open, and that CM Thao is supportive of helping with the process. I hope that the owner can transfer the bar and liquor license to someone who can keep it running, and I hope the city can help make that happen. The city would be much better off with a welcoming and thriving bar instead of another vacant building on Dale Street.

[Follows are some pics of Malina's from the 2017 Frogrtown Dive Bar tour.]

[Malina's parking lot.]

[A nice Malina's sign.]

[Newspaper article on Malina's from the Hmong Times.]

[Rules.]

[Not sure this is actually a real ordinance thing...]

[The telephone pole outside Malina's is also one of those kitchen-style growth charts.]

[The stage.]

[Amazing Malina's poem.]

[The Betty Boop thing is a weird remnant from the previous bar's incarnations...]

Noteworthy Dive Bars of the North End Guide Booklet Now Available!

Hot off the presses, I have a new Guide Booklet completed. It's a good one, too, featuring all the bars from my North End dive bar tour from the summer of 2016. The North End is my old neighborhood, and so this one is a lot closer to my heart than many of the other neighborhood's I've written about.

It features a short essay about the North End, and descriptions, anecdotes, pictures, and bullshit about at least five existing and vanished bars in the North End neighborhood.

Featured bars include: Schroeder's/Geraldine's (now gone), Hoover's, The Foundry, the Half Time Rec, and Ted's Rec up on Larpenteur Avenue.

There's even a bonus feature, a "Dive Bar Wine Guide" written by Dana DeMaster.

The cover art is a lovely painting of Ted's Rec by Rebecca Silus.

Get yours today in the online store!

[The 2016 tour inaction.]

Noteworthy Dive Bars of Downtown Saint Paul Walking Tour, 1/25

The time has come once again to sally forth and wend our way through the streets of the city in search of the marginal.

This time, our gaze turns to the oldest part of the Twin City core, downtown Saint Paul, once home to the riverboats, gamblers, drunks, refugees, and traders who gave Pig's Eye its unsavory reputation.

Here's a quote to whet your appetite, describing (downtown) Saint Paul in 1846:

Almost every house is either a shop or a grocery [a euphemism for tavern] and certainly a grocery keeper cannot complain that he has had no patronage, for drinking whisky seems to occupy at least half the time of the worthy citizens of St Paul’s while the balance of their time is employed in cheating each other or imposing upon strangers.

Since it's very first days, downtown Saint Paul has been ground zero for booze and ill repute, a home for the homeless, a refuge for the shady. And yet, since Father Galtier first planted his boulder, built his church, and re-christened the city to honor of the saintly, downtown has proved a bitter contest. Old saloons have given way to the new offices, the swank hotels, the civilized parks. The downtown dives have moved around and replaced themselves, continually thorns in the sides of the realtors, the police, the building inspectors

Things are mostly different today, mostly "cleaned up" in today's downtown, with its heated real estate market and burgeoning craft culture. All the more reason to search for the dives, lost and found, forgotten and clinging on. We will walk less then two (2) miles, stopping along the way at four (4) actual bars and countless ghosts to experience the few remaining holes in the historic or modern walls of the center city.

Plus, it'll be the first day of winter carnival. We won't be going on the official "Moon Glow Pedestrian Parade", which ends at 6:15, but we'll be making our own version, trying to glean what the moon was like a century back, when dives were prolific in the streets of the city.

[Facebook invite here.]

[A downtown Saint Paul saloon in 1910.]

What: Guided walking tour of dive bars of Saint Paul, past and present
When: Thursday 1/25, departing at 6:30
Where: Leaving from Kelly's Depot Bar
Who: Anyone of proper age and ability
Why: Because some of it is still there

See you then!

[The carpeted wall of the Hat Trick, decorated for Christmas.]