A Perfect Duluth Day

If it's happening. It's happening in Duluth. Duluth is a micro-brewery of what is goin' on every- where, where the people fight to have some sort of say ... and leave it to the outlaws to come up with something ... leave it to the guys in the jails and carry- ing skateboards, leaning up against the light pole at two in the morning, to come up with something. It's the home of Piker McNuggett, Karel Kopecky, Froz- tee Pine, Winnie Blood Feather, some Twenty-Three Toivonens, Diamond Griffin and Penny Jones. ... Families from Minneapolis and Saint Paul and St. Peter and Mankato and Des Moines, thundering up Interstate 35 hit full throttle on Friday afternoon, ac- celerating past Hinckley and Sandstone, past Pine City, Barnum, Cloquet, to get away, to let their hair down, to get bugs and branches in their hair. You turn your phone to vibrate or heave it into the ditch, grenade- style, change your radio from WCCO to "The Moose." Up and up and around and over the hill and there it is ... the view. Lake Superior. The Big Lake. And there is The Lift Bridge and Morgan Park and New Page paper plant, the bridges to Superior, Wisconsin, the bay, the big boats. Turn right to Canal Park for the tourists, turn left, up- hill for those who have already decided to stay. Duluth is big burritos and apricot wheat beer and a parade to celebrate cold weather. Duluth can be murder. It's the big lake, big woods, big tradition, big, old build- ings, like an old sailor headed back to his boat at four in the morning, stumbling, never falling down. It's the sauna and the secrets of the north woods. It's schools and it's adventure and it's being able to be yourself. Duluth can be murder. It's the trains, the taconite, guns, tattoos, bowling, brawls, bigfoot and ballgames. It's laser tag. It's the bomb. It's the gold.