Go Ask Lyle
By Mitch Berg
Liquor Lyles, my old band’s former headquarters and the “Dive Bar” that made “dive bars” safe for a generation of Gen-X and Millennial hipsters, is yet another casualty of Covid.
I haven’t been down Hennepin Avenue – north or south of the freeway – in over a year. I can’t imagine there’s much left.
March 26th, 2021 at 6:19 am
If you don’t like what you see on the menu feel free to wipe it off.
No risk of sunlight shining in your eyes or bring distracted by what’s going on outside.
I can’t see s bar/restaurant going back in there and don’t think a lot of new apartments are being built that already aren’t under contract that close to downtown.
March 26th, 2021 at 6:52 am
Ohioan legislature strikes a blow for democracy and against the tyranny of one-man rule: https://theohiostar.com/2021/03/24/breaking-republican-lawmakers-override-dewine-just-one-day-after-sb22-veto/?fbclid=IwAR1GIqZI6Kbo_NP5Jif5Vuo_QD4dhklhoIJ8M6T2OZshLZYhEg7bRImUTaQ
March 26th, 2021 at 8:03 am
Let’s hope it remains a dive bar. You can never have too many.
March 26th, 2021 at 8:26 am
I haven’t been to a dive bar with live music in decades.
But if it weren’t for dives, we wouldn’t have the Beatles or hundreds of other bands that shaped pop music.
I guess we’d be stuck with — The Cars? ELO?
March 26th, 2021 at 8:30 am
Texas Covid case count down 28% since Abbot lifted covid restrictions:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/texas-coronavirus-cases.html
The lockdowns were not driven by science, because science depends on empirical data, and there has been no empirical data that shows that mask mandates and social distancing mandates reduce the spread of covid.
March 26th, 2021 at 8:33 am
Uptown died the day the owner sold and tore down The Uptown Bar and replaced it with a Columbia store. Hopefully, Lyle’s can be saved from “Progress”, but based on its location I doubt it.
March 26th, 2021 at 8:35 am
Historian of the holocaust, the holodomar, and 20th century totalitarianism has written that the best way to describe the actions of the Communist Party of the USSR in the 20s and 30s was to think of it as a government that had declared a war of extinction on its own people.
We are not there yet, but we are getting closer everyday.
The concertina wire and 20,000 NG troops are in DC under Pelosi’s orders, not Trump’s.
It is a shameful thing to be a Democrat or a member of our social elite these days.
March 26th, 2021 at 8:42 am
When Texas ended its mask mandate, the event cancellations started — and the losses are adding up
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/03/25/conventions-texas-mask-mandate/
March 26th, 2021 at 8:55 am
So canceling the mandates reduced caseload because people voluntarily stopped holding events?
Is that really the chain of causality you want to follow, Emery? It doesn’t mesh with your pro-lockdown position.
March 26th, 2021 at 9:05 am
My position, re mandatory business closures & restrictions, is that they justify certain, very high economic damage with shaky politicized science. There is no science that says restricting a restaurant to 25% capacity will save X lives.
In a sane world, this pandemic would have been handled as numerous pandemics before have been handled — take common sense precautions, quarantine the sick, and protect vulnerable populations.
The insanity we have been subject for the past year did NOT attempt these tried and true methods. Instead of bottom-up, crowd sourced methods, we used one man rule by politicians empowered to trash the bill of rights, aid their friends and afflict their enemies. All with predictable results.
March 26th, 2021 at 9:28 am
Face diapers are the Pride flag of the 85 IQ community. May they fly long, so those to the right of the Bell Curve may avoid them.
March 26th, 2021 at 9:39 am
I am sure covid was a factor, but then there is this:
O’Gara’s in Saint Paul closed before covid, a victim of gentrification.
It broke my heart.
There is natural change in cities, but then there is covid and then there is stupidity. A stupidity that only The Cities could muster.
March 26th, 2021 at 9:44 am
“Oh, you hate your job? Why didn’t you say so? There’s a support group for that. It’s called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar.” ~ Drew Carey
I believe this story will end just as Nye’s did; new owners pledge to never change a thing, squeeze every cent out of the business while letting it fall into disrepair, and publicly lament the need to sell to a developer because the building is in disrepair while privately knowing it was the plan to sell to developers all along.
March 26th, 2021 at 9:49 am
“…protect vulnerable populations.” But MO, that’s what we’re doing. We’re just doing it better, more extensively, more thoroughly, than ever before. We’re not locking down the sick or frail, we’re locking down EVERYBODY to protect the sick and frail. Because we care so very, very much.
Oddly, medical science has made the problem worse. Whooping cough, consumption, scarlet fever, flu, The Old Man’s Friend, peanut allergies, diabetes, scurvy, gout, polio, heart attack, and starvation all thinned the herd leaving only the strong to survive the next sickness. We have a much larger herd nowadays with far more weak members who demand we protect them from the next sickness, at any cost to greater society. If it saves even one life . . . .
Not saying I want to go back to The Good Olde Days, just noting that medical science and political science have still not managed to subdue Mother Nature. There’s more thinking to be done on the topic of “what should be done.”
March 26th, 2021 at 10:50 am
A single individual who is ill with covid may possess TRILLIONS of copies of the virus in his/her body, and the lifespan of these copies varies from seconds to days, meaning these trillions reproduce in time spans measured in hours. The virii use RNA to reproduce, not DNA, and so are prone to more uncorrected errors than DNA based cells are when they reproduce.
Mutations are common. Whether the mutations are more or less dangerous to humans is driven by evolutionary forces we can only guess at.
Against the spread of the virus we can deploy strategies which have worked in the past, or trust the 80 year old Doctor Fauci and other academic specialists who have thought about the problem really hard.
The cult of experts is a death cult.
March 26th, 2021 at 11:09 am
Tom must be disappointed the MSM completely ignored the ongoing Mr Potato Head controversy during Biden’s presser yesterday.
March 26th, 2021 at 11:13 am
“We’re just doing it better, more extensively, more thoroughly, than ever before.”
This is the first time in the history of the US that healthy people were quarantined.
When buttsecks started spreading HIV, which was and still is a 100% terminal disease, not only was there no quarantine for them, the sodomites were protected from being detected by the healthy population, ie: no mention on medical charts in hospitals; no mention to public schools; employers forced to keep infected people on the payroll until Karposi lesions couldn’t be hidden any longer.
Now, with the advent of a chemical cocktail ($100k+/yr), they’re back in the saddle, and the kids are being invited to the party.
The reprobates don’t gaf about “public health” unless there is something in it that pushes their agenda forward.
March 26th, 2021 at 11:17 am
Is Lee’s liquor lounge still in business? They had a great house band back in the day.
March 26th, 2021 at 12:40 pm
2 jab Tater squeaked “I believe this story will end just as Nye’s did..”
And you can take that to the bank, because aside from parlaying his 85 IQ into careers as a lawyer, stock market guru, championship BirKie shredder, go-to political analyst and inspirational speaker to Downs Syndrome communities world wide, 2 jab is a savvy real estate magnate…has 2 prime$$$$$$$$$$ lakefront properties on an undisclosed, but highly valued lake.
He is also rumored to fly a cape around his mothers basement.
March 26th, 2021 at 1:04 pm
Re: MO’s earlier post about dive bars launching more than a few music careers, I was at a bar and can’t for the life of me remember a few years ago. Mick Sterling was featured and the place was pretty packed. Just as the band took the stage for their second set, this young black man walked up and asked Mick if he could join in for a bit. The looks on the faces of the whole band, especially Mick’s, were priceless. When Prince grabbed a guitar and turned around, the place went crazy. I must say, it was a very nice set.
March 26th, 2021 at 3:32 pm
Guys, is this for real?
ST. PAUL, Minn. – A Republican Minnesota state representative is introducing legislation that would create a pathway for Minnesota counties to secede from the state and join the South Dakota. Rep. Jeremy Munson (R-Crystal Lake) introduced the bill Thursday and tweeted out an image of his vision, which depicted nearly every county west of the Twin Cities metro as part of a newly imagined South Dakota. (Tweet) “Minnesota becomes more politically polarized every year and the metro politicians have shown us that rural Minnesotans are no longer represented by St Paul. It’s time to leave,” read a webpage on Munson’s campaign
March 26th, 2021 at 7:56 pm
Don’t know if any of your reps grew nads that big, how, but counties cedeing from states can be done.
It’s a long haul, but Oregon counties are working on joining Idaho, and draggy d a couple of Cali counties with them.
March 26th, 2021 at 9:59 pm
I’m thinking that if DC or perhaps Puerto Rico was admitted as a state, it could be balanced by Northeast Minnesota, Northern Wisconsin and Upper Michigan joining in a new state called Superior.
All three regions wish to divorce from their dysfunctional states.
March 27th, 2021 at 6:22 am
Uptown Bar.
Best of times. Just close your eyes and remember The Wallets playing “My Girl”.
I saw a lot of bands there.