End of the Line for The Terminal Bar's Flem Shows how Dives Are Precious

I was sad to hear of the death of Flem, who had owned and run The Terminal Bar in Northeast Minneapolis for over fifty years.

Think about that for a second.

[Flem.]

Here’s the first half of the obituary:

Fleming, Clarence G. "Flem" 10 year veteran, United States Marine Corps On May 14, 2016, God needed a cribbage partner and he chose the BEST. Flem spent 79 years perfecting the art of telling jokes and becoming a master storyteller. Flem was a faithful son, remarkable brother, devoted husband, proud father, adored grandfather, warm-hearted uncle, helpful neighbor, and valued friend. Flem was also larger than life with his booming voice, infectious laugh, and generous heart. Flem was the ultimate family man, a selfless community supporter, a strong promoter for upcoming musicians, and a contributor to rugby clubs. As owner and bartender extraordinaire at the Terminal Bar for 51 years, he loved to enliven, captivate, and entertain the customers with his sense of humor and joyful hospitality.

Flem's passing holds a special place in my heart because he was synonymous with one of the purest examples of the "dive bar" genre in the Twin Cities. After the tour in January, I recently published a guide booklet that included some stuff about Flem and his bar. Here's an excerpt:

[Flem's back nook.]

The Terminal Bar is Kryptonite to progress, so resistant to change that the walls reflexively tighten with each smart phrase unsheathed. Its timelessness is to the dicey credit of its owner, who recently celebrated his 50th anniversary of owning the place. 
Flem bought the bar in ‘65 coming out of the Marines and unable to find a straightforward job. For the next half-century, he and his wife have run The Terminal, which he calls a “working man’s and families bar”, though he admits it’s a dive. Annette opens it up around 4:30 and Flem gets there at 7:00 to keep it going until nobody remains. 

The bar itself is 84 years old. I assume Flem is around the same age. I also assume the name comes from its proximity to the old Great Northern Depot. These days it has the feel of last legs: piles of strange objects stacked in corners, forgotten walls, a broken scale. It’s a reminder of mortality and, because of that, it’s one of the purest examples of the dive bar genre you’ll find in the Twin Cities. 

Wandering here resembles exploring the basement of an old uncle’s house, decades of accumulated entropy. Unfulfilled intentions, good ideas at the time, areas of taste and gathered acquaintance piled up and fill rooms claustrophobically like spiderwebs. Across the wall from the bar, a display case half-full of classic car models, small plaques, the remnants of long ago trends. In the back past the stage, a large green scale, glass display cracked, a masterpiece of an era when weight was a novelty. Objects settle like calcium marking time, and it reminds me of nothing more than memories of a childhood home, complete with aging humans. But like Grandma’s, there’s something sad about The Terminal, meaning endpoint.

Say what you will about the atmosphere, hours, or stand-up comedy at The Terminal (and I have), owning and running a Northeast bar for fifty years is one hell of an accomplishment. These are not philately shops, and keeping them running requires constant effort. As the years go on, dives reflect their stewards and owners reflect their dives. Walking into The Terminal was like getting to know Flem himself. And half the time, he’d be sitting at the end of the bar anyway with a friendly word.

[So... don't go to The Terminal for fine dining, then?]

Dive Bar Habitat Loss

Thinking about Flem and the Terminal, both of whom were clearly on their last legs for years, makes me think about dive bar mortality. At root, dive bars are overlooked and under appreciated. You rarely see dive bars appear in the newspaper, apart from those periodic lists which typically focus on former dives, hipster magnets, or some of the most famous and/or played out examples like the CC Club, Grumpy’s, or Palmer’s.

Yet few will people speak for dives. There is no dive bar Lorax, and you almost never see politicians say anything nice about them, let alone spend much time in one. Dive bar ownership, and especially the clientele, have few connections to influence, and it’s safe to say that dive bar regulars don’t often vote.

Instead, dive bars become targets, scapegoats for urban problems. When Eric’s Bar on Saint Paul’s East Side was demolished, the mayor was there celebrating. Ramsey County transportation officials seem to delight in destroying corner dive bars like Diva’s Overtime Lounge in the North End, was torn down to add a turn lane to the Maryland Avenue (four-lane death road). When Lake Street dives like Champions or (the original) Country Bar closed down, you could feel deep pockets breathing sighs of relief, because their disappearance represented a cleansing of the neighborhood, pushing crime or poverty out of sight.

[Newspaper at the Sunrise Inn.]

It’s somewhat surprising because, if you hang out in dive bars for long enough, you realize that the people there pay attention to the news and have strong opinions. There are often newspapers laying around, which men pass around and sometimes read out loud. At many dive bars, people actually watch the local TV news and talk about it. And (unfortunately) there’s almost always a few guys who listen to talk radio all day and are chomping at the bit to deliver a tirade about “tree huggers” at the drop of a hat.

This is to say that the urban dive bar is an endangered species. Dives do not make money and are often for sale. Owners and barkeeps work long hours, forced to be both servant and guardian, breaking up arguments, putting up with stress, and world-wearily bouncing rabble. These are marginal businesses caught between the rock of improving tastes and the hard place of the erosion of the working class. A dive must balance on the fine line between the two great threats: remodeling and real estate.

In other words, when a dive bar is gone, it’s gone forever. Precious few are created, because what kind of fool would intentionally set out to open a dive bar? (As with housing, the vast majority of new bars and restaurants are aimed at the wealthy.) And the loss of the dive is a loss for society, because these places offer experiences you cannot find elsewhere, meat raffles and pull tabs and tasteless jokes and all kinds of music. Dives form a foundation for working-class relaxation and do underappreciated work to bring neighborhoods together and grant them rare identity.  

But dives disappear. Ten years ago, my old North End neighborhood had twice as many dive bars as it does today. And places like The Terminal, planted in blistering real estate soil, are fated to change.

I predict a similar fate to Bonnie's Café over in the Midway, which lasted for about a year after the death of its eponymous owner. For a while, relatives or friends might carry on the tradition in honor of the departed. But eventually, someone makes a deal and moves on. And the place is never the same again. Once a dive bar dies, it never comes back.

[The Terminal doorway: open or closed?]

PS. You can purchase the Noteworthy Dive Bars of Outer Northeast booklet in the new store!

PPS. Check out Chris Strouth,'s great 2013 City Pages essay on The Terminal's music scene:

The hipster movement has taken a lot of the ol- time bars and made them if not posh, a comfortable mix of the old and new. For example, the 1029 Bar whose ceiling is literally covered in brassieres, and walls with shot up police car doors (rumored to have been done by Country kitchener Toby Keith). Yet there you can get the best lobster roll this side of Maine. Anyhow, the part of town where my mom didn't like me hanging out has become a foodie paradise that's written about in pull-out sections of newspapers.

The saying goes, evolve or die, and that seems to be the way of most of the bars in Nordeast. This is what makes the Terminal Bar weirdly special: It has done neither. The interior is much the same as I remember it from when I went in as a dare in college. I imagine it's much the same as it was in 1964, when the current owners, the Flemings, took over from the previous owner who happened to be the parents. They had owned it since 1935. Prior to that it was -- you guessed it -- a bar.

For about four years I shared a wall with the Terminal Bar. The shop that I owned with my wife was next door, and my studio above it, which later became my home as well. The Terminal is a dedicated music venue. They have a band playing almost every night. Cover bands, original bands, good ones, bad ones, really really bad ones, metal ones, even hip-hop ones. It is sort of hilarious watching someone go on stage and talk about what a player he is while drinking a 3 dollar Mich Golden.

The booking and the bartending are all handled by Flem. He's a former Marine, owner, bartender, and just all-around good guy. He also has been sober since 1968, which given that he is behind the bar six days a week, eight hours a day is saying quite a bit. Flem is in his 70s, yet spry as a 60-year-old.

While most bars have a strong curative sense, trying to get a specific vibe or groove that sets them apart from the rest, the Terminal tends to roll with anyone that gets butts in the seats, and in doing so is sort of the ultimate bar of the proletariat. Anyone can play.

Read the rest, a lovely piece of dive bar writing.

Join me at the East Side Freedom Library on November 10th for a Dive Bar Discussion and Reading

When I first discovered the East Side Freedom Library, as part of a Minnpost piece I was writing, I was pretty excited. It's a great re-use of a fantastic historic building, an impressive archive, and much-needed example of organizing across social and cultural divides.

While I was there, talking to the library's founder, Peter Rachleff, he mentioned he'd like to help have an event in honor of my Payne/Arcade Dive Bar booklet. Well, that day has finally arrived!

We're going to have the first ever Dive Bar Booklet Release Reading on November 10th at the Library. I'll give a short presentation on Twin Cities dive bars, some of the history of liquor and bars in the area, and focus on place of the East Side within this historical landscape.

I'll also do a quick reading of some of the booklet's better bits, and I am hoping for a lively Q&A at the end!

Best of all, we'll do a mini-recreation of the Payne/Arcade dive bar walking tour from a year ago. That turned out to be one of my favorite of all the dive bar tours, and I see no reason why we shouldn't head right back to the Arcade Bar after the library event for a beer.

I hope to see you there! This should be great fun.

[Facebook event is here.]

Event promo:

Just what is a “dive bar”?

It’s hard to say, but you can be sure the East Side has a lot of them.

The great dive bar debate has no easy answers, but that hasn’t stopped local geography writer Bill Lindeke from publishing a guide booklet called Noteworthy Dive Bars of Payne and Arcade. In it, Lindeke defines a quintessential dive bar as “more than the sum of its parts, a compound of qualities that seem singly inconsequential but, when considered together, come together for better or worse, for a moment or an evening, as delicate as rare jazz.”

Join us for a reading and discussion of where East Side dive bars fall in the pantheon of the Twin Cities historical liquor landscape. Lindeke will share anecodtes about the history of booze and liquor laws in the Twin Cities, talk about why old bars represent a special place within our urban and social landscape, and share some of the best parts of his most recent booklet about Payne and Arcade Streets.

Following his presentation, Bill will lead willing participants on a short walking tour and some site visits.

Bill holds a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Minnesota and has been a frequent contributor to local historical studies and journals, such as MinnPost and streets.mn, and has taught at the University of Minnesota and Metropolitan State University.

TC Sidewalks Live: Noteworthy Dive Bars of South Minneapolis Bike Tour

[Using powertools to cut decorative wine corks inside a South Mpls dive bar.]

[Guided bicycle tour of five "dive bars" of South Minneapolis, focusing on the origin and future of dive bars in a part of the city historically inhospitable to them.

Thursday November 7, leaving from the Schooner Tavern at 6:30PM (the corner of East 29th Street and 27th Avenue South, by the Rainbow Foods).

RSVP on Facebook here.]


Q: Huh?

A: This is a bicycle tour taking place in Minneapolis called "Noteworthy Dive Bars of South Minneapolis."

Q: What is a Dive Bar?

A: Cleanly defining a dive bar is difficult, precisely because dives are not very clean. It's a bit like Justice Potter Stewart's definition of obscenity. Here's what we know...

Windows - These are a minus. Dives eschew fenestration. What happens in the dive, stays in the dive.

Staff - Ideally, there's only one staff. Maybe someone works in the back. The more staff, the less divey.

Regulars - A must. When you walk into a dive, people should stop talking like in a wild west saloon and look at you a bit funny. Unless you are a regular, you really don't belong. 

Daydrinkers -Yep.

Pull Tabs - 90%. Meat raffles are also good. Best is when there's a pot of some sort of free food sitting on a table.

Nonchalance - Dives can't be trying too hard to make money. If they are, they're not dives any more. No fancy menus. No fancy paint jobs, etc.

Cleanliness - Nope.

"Craft Beer" - Nope, unless its brewed within a mile or two of the dive.

Food - Greasy or nothing. Heggie's Pizza is the hallmark of a dive. 

[Minneapolis' historic liquor patrol limits.]

Q: I thought there weren't any dive bars in South Minneapolis?

A: This is kinda true, sorta. South Minneapolis has historically been outside the city's "liquor patrol limits," an odd bit of historical chicanery brought to you by the city's well-off WASP reformers. There are, however, some exceptions.

We will be starting at the Schooner Tavern, located in historic "hell corner," and travelling to four more interesting dive bar locations in the sub-Lake Street city, including the last remaining 3.2 bar, a constitutional exception to the city' strange "five-acre" rule, an "endangered" dive, and a dive with decent food (for the hungry among you).

Q: Do I need a bike?

A: Yep. We'll be biking approximately 10 miles in total. Not too far, all things considered.

Q: It's November, you idiot.

A: I know. Wear a warm coat, gloves, and bring bike lights for the darkness.

Q: Can I come for part of it, but not hang out with you the entire goddam time?

A: Yes. I will be tweeting locations, there will be a quasi-schedule, and you can always call (if you're lucky enough to have my digits) to find out where the tour is at. Come just for one dive, or enjoy the whole diving expedition.

Q: Is it free?

A: Yes, but buying a beer for one of the hosts is appreciated or (failing that) you can always support this blogger by purchasing an artisanal postcard for a reasonable and minimal fee.

[An awaiting cooler.]

TC Sidewalks Live: Noteworthy Dive Bars of Outer Northeast Walking Tour

[Map is here.]

Enough dilly dallying. It's time for the big kahuna: Northeast Minneapolis, the heart of the great city's dive bar beat.

The dive bar landscape of Northeast is too large to tackle all at once, and so we explore it piecemeal, one leg at a time. First up, the "outer rim," a strip of dives along Marshall Avenue and points south that parallel the Mississippi like a fishing line. We will be proceeding Southward from the dive apex at Lowry Avenue straight down into the heart of Hennepin and Central.

Northeast is the mecca of working class industrial Minneapolis, the largest continual stretch of old school urban Catholicism, forming a fraternal twin to the more Protestant South. 

And, like the South Minneapolis' division, the Northeast Minneapolis alcoholic landscape has a stark geography. According to the city's "liquor patrol limits," full liquor establishments weren't allowed East of 4th Street or North of 29th Avenue. 

Thus Northeast's dive bars were contained to a small area alongside the riverfront crotch. This was ostensibly because this is the distance that the city's 19th century "liquor patrol" could efficiently walk from their downtown stations. (But everyone knew the restrictions stemmed from moralistic paternalism by city's economic and religious leaders.) That is why the wealth of the city's shrines to old school libation are as concentrated as an Otter rum and coke.

(Note: 4th Street and its rich vein of dives, along with striking cluster in the "seasonal" streets, are reserved for a future date.) 

A note on walking

This will be a walking tour. (Bicycles are welcome, of course, and faster, and may proceed at their own leisure.) I will be walking at a relatively brisk pace between the dive destinations, and the total distance covered will be about two (2) miles. 

Walking in winter is an exquisite pleasure, and you should try it. For folks who'd like a shorter route, you can always meet the tour at Stop #2: Dusty's at around 7:00 PM.

[Tony Jaros' marks the Northwest corner of Northeast's dive district.]

A note on defining "dive bars"

[The N.E. Yacht Club was named by off-duty Star Tribune reporters.]

The term “dive bar” is a grey bag, a mixed and mumbled blessing. Proper definition eludes, resting close to Potter Stewart’s rule of thumb: “I know it when I see it.” 

That said, just as a litmus test is not a black-and-white affair but a spectrum of acidity, you can train yourself to measure a dive. They are often more than the sum of its parts, qualities that seem singly  inconsequential but, when considered in composition, can come together for a moment or for an evening like rare jazz. (And can be just as excruciating when they go wrong.)

Here are some things to keep your senses in tune:

Windows - These are a minus. Dives eschew fenestration. What happens in the dive, stays in the dive.

Staff - Ideally, there's only one staff. Maybe someone works in the back. The more staff, the less divey.

Regulars - A must. When you walk into a dive, people should stop talking like in a wild west saloon and look at you a bit funny. Unless you are a regular, you really don't belong.

Daydrinkers -Yep.

[A broken scale at the Terminal.]

Pull Tabs - Yes please. Meat raffles are also good. Best is when there's a pot of some sort of free food sitting on a table.

Nonchalance - Dives can't be trying too hard to make money. If they are, they're not dives any more. No fancy menus. No fancy paint jobs, etc.

Cleanliness - No more than absolutely necessary.

"Craft Beer" - Nope, unless its brewed within a mile or two of the dive. If it exists, it's largely symbolic.

Food - Greasy or nothing. Heggie's Pizza is the hallmark of a dive.

No one or two of these things is a hard or fast requirement. but together these qualities create a spatial mood and social atmosphere. While the “neighborhood bar” remains a close cousin of the dive, the distinction is important; a true dive draws from a wider environment, which explains the typical parking lots of pickups. So too with former dives (gentrified). Cop bars and some gay bars might qualify, but really belong in other categorizations. While dive bars are not the right venue for purism, one does ask for some degree of discernment.

 

[Facebook invite here.]

[The flying flag of Northeast.]

What: Walking tour of five dive bars in Northeast Minneapolis

Who: Anyone. Small donation requested, payable in beer upon arrival

When: January 28th, departing at 6:30

Where: Tony Jaros' River Garden

Why: Because it's there

How: Brief historical notes and discussions of each bar will be delivered upon arrival and/or departure. A pause for refreshment, then on to the next.


[See also: Noteworthy Dive Bars of South Minneapolis, Noteworthy Dive Bars of the Green Line, Noteworthy Dive Bars of Old Fort Road.]

Another Dive Goes Down as Tracks Bar Hits the End of the Line

Tracks Bar on University Avenue has long been one of the weirder ones. Probably most people think that it’s called “Tracks” because it's near the railroad tracks. This is absolutely not the case! The true story is weirder, and you can read it below.

I liked Tracks, and would often meet people there to give them the flavor of the Midway neighborhood. Tracks was the bar and restaurant of the Midway Days Inn, and hanging out at Tracks was always food for thought. During the day, the place would be a mix of old alkies and bored budget travelers, the perfect place to wallow in vague depression. It was connected to the hotel hallway, and to get the the bathroom you had to go past both the bar fish tank and the hotel swimming pool, each of which had its own distinct aroma.

I remember drinking beer with a friend and watching a messed-up man fall asleep on the bus stop out the window. He leaned way over, drooling on himself before gradually succumb to gravity and slipping into the sidewalk. After a half-hour or so, a cop came and told him to move along.

Over the years, Tracks has tried to change, adopting a classic University Avenue Asian-American menu, for example, or rearranging their darts machine. Off in the corner sat the last remnants of the old “supper club”, a previous incarnation (described below). It was a great place for pull tabs, darts, odd encounters, frozen pizza, and long beer-fueled silences. It was also a comfy well-fenestrated hangout for people in Saint Paul uninterested in $10+ burgers (as punk poet and Tracks fan Paul D. would tell you).

Tracks was a stop on my 2015 Midway Dive Bar tour, and Dickinson was there to greet us. I think he was grading creative writing assignments, and looking out the window. Midway is a part of town that is rapidly changing, but I thought that Tracks would stand the test of time.

I guess I was wrong.

Get there while you can, because tomorrow is the last day. So long, Tracks.



[My excerpt on Tracks from my Dive Bars of the Midway guide booklet follows. Buy the entire guide online!]

Tracks

Dives come in all shapes, sizes, and temporalities. Tracks, about a half-mile West of Snelling Avenue,
offers a most curious story. 

Far back in time this was a “surf-and-turf” white tablecloth joint named Mr. Joe’s. “It was hopping,” one old patron once reminisced, which is difficult to imagine today because, somehow, Tracks transformed from a swank steakhouse into a drab motel bar the color of an expired nectarine.

Today, Tracks is the bar connected to the Midway Day’s Inn, one of the only hotels around, and here small worlds collide. Midway regulars, railroad drunks, cheapskate travelers, and innocent tourists mix to an unmatched social flavor. Where else can you spend an hour playing pull tabs with tourists in town from Iowa for the Hawkeye game while watching people cross University Avenue.

Adding to the human cocktail is the hotel pool, whose chlorine scent sometimes wafts through the door past the fishtank, occupied by two or three goldfish and an inky bottom feeder, and whose sounds echo through the hallway on your way to the bathroom. I’ve a recurring fantasy of renting a room at the Tracks Day’s Inn over a birthday weekend (or out of impromptu despair) and maintaining an assembly/conga line between the bar, the hotel room, and the hot tub waiting between them. Tracks combines the curt familiarity of the dive bar with the uneasy liberation of the hotel bar, a magical and overlooked fiasco, especially in the middle of the city. 

The hotel dive: likely a creature of circumstance, most often found in the suburbs. But here it encroaches into the Midway.

Should you achieve intimacy with Tracks, you’ll notice the strange gold protuberances punctuating the rail along the bar in the shape of huge horse heads. Funny story. Back in the 80s, when Tracks was weathering its nadir, there was a fire, and the club went through a deep identity crisis. Meanwhile a fantastical development was taking place at the very edges of the Southwest suburbs: speculators were building a racetrack named Canterbury Downs. It was to be the first ever Twin Cities’ horse track, and the imaginations of the risk-prone filled with visions of easy money. It was around this time that Tracks was re-named and re-modeled to capitalize on the soon- to-be-burgeoning culture of pony players. Tracks was to be the city’s first off-track betting (OTB) establishment, conveniently located in the Midway, right between the two downtowns. Everything was going to come together, like a great 80s metal cover. 

Alas t’was not to be. The State of Minnesota never legalized off-track betting, and Tracks became just another Midway hotel / dive bar / former surf-and-turf restaurant with gold horse heads guarding its island of alcohol. 

A common pastime at Tracks is to sit at one of the window-side tables and watch the bus stop on the corner. For some reason, this particular shelter attracts vagrancy, and I’ve wasted many a pleasant hour ignoring my problems with beer, watching a man with more problems struggle to stay upright, people drag large bags across the street, or the transit police appear to deal with the addled over-exuberance emerging from the #16 bus.

It would be remiss to point out that this building is hideously ugly, a monochromatic pale orange with vague late-80s cartoon modernist flair. Tracks and the attached motel form a “U” of bad architecture that belies the fact that, inside, you’ll find some of the city’s finest bartenders, sarcastic and firm. 

Appearances can be deceiving. Highly recommended.

[Get your own copy of Noteworthy Dive Bars of the Midway or any other of my dive booklets today!]  

The Country Bar Revisited

[The neon cowboy.]

The following is an excerpt from Noteworthy Dive Bars of South Minneapolis, a guide booklet available for sale in the online store.

[Excerpt begins.]

The Country Bar is the 
latest in a long line of 
late Lake Street dives.
 These marginal drunken 
ephemera — places like
 the Poodle Club or the
 Yukon Club (R.I.P.) —
lasted for a long time as
 liquor oases amidst the
 upright wasteland of
 gentility that forms Min
neapolis’ Southern half.
 And The Country Bar held out the longest, an Alamo of booze fighting off the moneyed ranks of good taste.

At least, until it didn’t.

So too, the origins of The County Bar seem a Western tale: a pair of roaming poultry purveyors named Shorty and Wags spent years frying around South Minneapolis making their name with their secret chicken recipe, like the cooks from a Cattle drive. Their legend was long as a sunset shadow in summertime, and the chicken craving people of the city flocked to their banner. Or so it was told.

At some point Shorty and Wags brought their fried fowl into the Country Bar, and the magic recipe of karaoke, cheap rail liquor, and barely-vented cooking oil holed up here, coalescing into a crevasse off Lyndale Avenue.

Lake Street is South Minneapolis’ great watershed, a ridge of density and diversity thrusting up like Grand Tetons on the plains of the single-family city. As such, it becomes both a border and a seam, dividing and connecting the relative chaos to the North from the placid neighborhoods stretching off alphabetically Southward. And the Lyndale corner rises a bit higher than the rest, a local peak of aging industry and commerce, now converted into a bourgeois utopia alongside the Midtown Greenway. It remains, with the solid detail-rich five-story edifices meeting at the corner (amplified today by the new, carnivalesque youth-oriented apartment boom), the closest approximation of a coastal cityscape you’ll find East of uptown. And in their midst, The Country Bar crouched like an alley bum.

A small confession: I once knew a couple who lived in one of the adjacent buildings. Stolen wi-fi from the County Bar was painfully slow, but there nonetheless. Their kitchen window opened up out onto its next-door rooftop, and we’d clamber out on autumnal evenings to traverse the grey pebbles like New Yorkers of old. The highlight was a cross-Country Bar trip to the building on the corner, topped with a large diagonal rooftop billboard facing towards the Lyn-Lake intersection. To sit before the 20-foot faces of the all-white KMSP news anchors or Edina realtors illuminated behind us, drink in hand, watching South Minneapolis bustle like a rapid creek below, was a high point. In the background, the short ventilation pipe of the Country Bar stuck like a straw through the rooftop, a periscope venting musky warmth of old grease into the air.

No Wild West cliché would be complete without music, and here too the Country Bar delivered. Instead of a haggard honky-tonk tickled by a nervous man in a bowtie, this was one of the top two most reliably intimate karaoke stages in the city. (The other being Northeast’s Otter Bar, a triangle of squeezed and improper song.) To sing at the Country was to get acquainted with strangers, the usual irony and distance crushed into something felt keenly, a vocal perspiration.

[You can purchase the entire booklet at the Sidewalk store.]

[The Country Bar on its last legs in 2013.]

By the time the official Dive Bar Tour sallied forth into South Minneapolis, the Country Bar had closed. I remember the tour riding by on our bicycles, and gazing at the cardboard that had sealed up the doorway like a tomb. Remembering the good and middling times I’d had at the bar over the years, it was poignant, like a funeral for an admired acquaintance.

But things have changed. The Country Bar has reopened under new management. And what’s more, it’s been completely remodeled, taken from dive territory and elevated firmly into the realm of hipster swank. A set of large red neon signs are mounted over the entrance, a simple animation of a cowboy on a horse. Inside,  gone are the crooked old wooden floors; in with the patterned tile. (Though if you stand by the entrance you can still feel underfoot the wild skew of the old bar floor.) Gone is the old beat-up bar; in with fresh copper top. The ceiling boasts a beautifully designed Wild West-themed mural. The heads of bison hang on the walls. The interior decorator budget was very well spent.

Craft beer taps are nestled amidst spare shelving, carefully adorned with quality bourbon and the like. solid dark wood booths have taken the place of the old awkward tables. This is no longer the dive of yore, the only “poors” inside appear on a pun above the kitchen window. They still have karaoke four nights a week, but it would not be the same, and I doubt we will see the old mixing of black and white, hip and disheveled, within these walls again.  Instead, this place, nodding to the past, positioned as an ironic commentary on the actual douche-ridden “cowboy” themed meat market down the street.

If a dive is to die, to be replaced, let it at least be tasteful. We can drink to that.

[Copper bar, flat screen TVs, a ceiling mural with vintage aesthetics.]

[Old Overholt, the last vestige of the hipster dive.]

[Buffalo on the bricks.]

[You'll find these same brass horses across town at Tracks.]

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.]