The Gold Medal Flour Building

A couple weeks ago I walked past a guy on Lake Street in Minneapolis who was wearing the coolest

t-shirt, it had nothing on it but a painted picture of the Gold Medal Flour building located down on the Minneapolis waterfront.  

Instantly, upon seeing this guy, I knew I wanted to do that building in glass and I just so happened to have a large old storm window in waiting.  I also had all of last week off work, a week in which we would receive record rainfall (a "perfect storm" so to speak).

It is quite large, but I was able to complete the entire piece in my basement while riding out the rain and hail THAT NEVER SEEMED TO END.  Next up, perhaps, an ark.

The CC Club

In 1996 a friend and I quit our jobs and backpacked around Europe for a few months.  One night in Prague we went to a rock club in an old military building called The Bunker.  In concert that night, from England, legendary old-school punk band, The UK Subs. We arrived early and found ourselves chatting for quite some time with the lead singer of the band, Charlie Harper (a very nice guy by the way).  At one point Charlie asked me where I was from, and when I responded, "Minneapolis," he enthusiastically jumped forward (in his heavy English accent) with "Minneapolis! a lot of great sh** comes out of that town."

By the end of the1970's Bob Dylan had "made it," Prince was about to "make it," and the Minneapolis music scene was erupting.  The Suicide Commandos, The Suburbs, The Wallets, Husker Du, Soul Asylum, Gary Louris/The Jayhwaks, and The Replacements (to name a few) were about to turn things upside down in our city.  At a time the rest of the world was doing the disco, on the Uptown corner of 26th and Lyndale, Oar Folkjokeopus, had become a record store and hangout to the smoldering punk underground of the Midwest.  All the musicians hung out at Oar Folk (as it was known until it closed in 2001 and became Treehouse Records). And most then made way, kiddy-corner from Oar Folk, to a little bar by the name of the The CC Club, another hangout to that scene.  Peter Jasperson, former Oar Folk employee and Twin/Tone record founder, once said, "if a bomb was dropped on that corner (26th and Lyndale) it would've wiped out 90% of the local music scene!"      

The CC Club is still going, though I haven't been in many years, because it is one of those places geared to quantity, and I can't drink like that anymore.  Though I was never "a regular," I do have fond memories of the place.  So, now finished, the second in "the Dive Bar series," The CC Club, in glass.  

 

Charlie Harper was right, a lot of  "great sh*t" does come out of Minneapolis, Bob Dylan, Prince, and Paul Westerberg, musical geniuses.  And nothing quite sums up the CC Club like the Paul Westerberg song, Here Comes a Regular, supposedly penned one day while sitting at the CC (something he famously often did).

Nye's Polonaise Room

Oh Nye's, how I do love thee.  Heck!  Esquire magazine named you "best bar in America" back in 2006, and not much has changed there since then.  Actually, though some of the players have passed on, not much has changed at Nye's since 1950 when it opened.  Brian Setzer, Stray Cats et al, lives in Minneapolis and he's tilted a few there, he even name checks Nye's in his song, The Hennepin Avenue Bridge, and there aren't many on Earth cooler than Brian Setzer, so nuff said on that!

I remember well sitting at the piano bar in the early 1990's on the birthday of Elvis, singing and swaying with the rest of the bar while Lou Snyder played "Love Me Tender" and "Viva Las Vegas," and "Don't Be Cruel."  Sweet Lou first sat down to that piano at the age of 31, she retired last year (2011) at the age of 71.  Nye's/Minneapolis will never be the same.

My friends and I had dinner on the piano side a couple of times back then too, though I don't know that we were all that hungry really.  We just wanted an excuse to sit in one of those high-backed-sparkly- "banana seat"-booths, and to be the recipient of one of their three-tiered relish trays of pickled Herring, Cherry peppers, green onions, and the like.  Decadence!

But most of our time was spent on the old side, the rowdy side of the bar, with the Ruth Adams Band-"Worlds Most Dangerous Polka Band!"  Joe Hayden on trumpet, famous to my friends and me for his use of the Ronco product, GLH, (seen in infomercials then as the aerosol, in a color to match your hair, that when sprayed on covered the annoying bald spot at the top of the middle-aged head).  And Al Ophus, drummer, our friend.  He was in his 80's when he told my wife and me he was involved in a long distance relationship with a younger woman (she lived in St. Paul, he in Minneapolis, she was in her 70's).  Al died in 2003 at the age of 88, he was a really nice man.  Ruth Adams, accordion, started the band in 1974, she passed away in 2011.  And Roger, the dancer that knew all the waltzes and polkas, always on the look out for a cute girl to spin, dip, and delight on the dance floor.  He may still be at it over there today, I can't say for sure.

My wife and I held our Minneapolis wedding reception (we had one in Seattle too) in the basement party room of Nye's, December 2001.  On that night, several months prior to Al's death, we were handed a Sharpie, like many before us, to sign the snare of his drum kit, I think we wrote "Chris + Chiharu" in a heart, or something like that.  When Al passed away that drum kit was moved to permanent display at the Minnesota History Museum in St. Paul.  I've been told our signature is visible.

Anyway, all noted above because Nye's Polonaise, in glass, is now complete.  Placed on a large old window, chewed into submission by a squirrel that made it's way down a chimney and into the living room of a friend up Nordeast, not that far from Nye's Polonaise Room.  SKOL!