Great Escapes 2008: Duluth-Superior

While the city swells every June for the big Grandma’s Marathon weekend (June 19–21 this year), and again for the Bayfront Blues Festival (August 7–10), I have acquired a strange affinity for the annual Park Point Garage Sale (June 13–14), Park Point being the long spit of land on the other side of the Lift Bridge. The two-day sale is full-on Duluth. Which is to say if you’re thinking “Wayzata estate sale,” forget it. If you’re on the dawn patrol, you may pick off something one of a kind and truly valuable, but otherwise the chances of scoring some of Aunt Beulah’s Swarovski crystal at five cents on the dollar are nil to worse. On the other hand, if you’re in the mood to stroll a couple of miles out and back, dipping into garages, across front lawns, and then paw around in the back of pickups and sift through more nicked propellers, mismatched cutlery sets, Anchor Bar cozies, and BOB DYLAN AT BUDOKAN T-shirts than you ever thought possible, it’s a good time.

The characters out on the Point are a distinctive bunch. They are of Duluth, but a breed apart, by virtue of being separated by the Lift Bridge. They are proudly sturdy in the face of constant wind and waves off the big lake and mildly eccentric due to a much higher than usual quotient of gnarly boatheads and shade-tree mechanics, all of whom are happy to tell you more than you ever wanted to know about how they got that ’83 Mercury outboard running. There’s a good-natured ambience.

In between Grandma’s Marathon, the Park Point Garage, and the Blues Festival, the big event this year is the August 1–3 visit by three majestic, tall sailing ships, the Niagara (which came through in ’02), the Madeline, and the Pride of Baltimore II. They’re coming to mark both Duluth’s Maritime Festival and Minnesota’s Sesquicentennial. And, yes, you will be able to go onboard.

Not forgetting Bob Dylan, the city is slowly getting around to celebrating its most famous native son. Bob Dylan Way, a walking tour pretty much from the Depot through downtown to the old armory two miles east, is being fixed up with Bob–related signage. It’s a work in progress. Stop in at Electric Fetus and get a BOB DYLAN WAY pin for a $5 contribution. Also, if you’re a true Bob–head and you’re in town at 6 p.m. on a Saturday, you must tune in KUMD 103.3 FM’s Highway 61 Revisited, an hour of Dylan bootlegs and classic performances.

Downtown itself is coming back from years of being pretty much wall-to-wall curio shops interrupted only by the Original Coney Island and Fond-du-Luth Casino. A block-long restoration is rapidly transforming handsome old storefronts just east of the Fetus, and, good news for film buffs, a small two-screen art-film theater is under construction and is expected to open sometime this summer.

Across Superior Street from the new Sheraton Hotel is a new favorite of mine, Carmody Irish Pub. Although a wee bit upscale, it’s not quite lace curtain and has an excellent assortment of beers, single-malt scotches, and whiskeys. It’s a civilized place and quite often there’s live music.

Back across Superior is Hacienda del Sol, the place that nine out of ten Duluthites claim has the best Mexican food in the world. The other one out of ten says it can be hit or miss. Whatever, it is very popular. The back garden is a pleasant spot on warm nights. (It’s out of the wind. But find a seat with your back to the parking ramp.)

More first-rate beer and live music are, of course, available at Fitger’s Brewhouse, at Fitger’s on the Lake, as they have been for years. I like the place, but too often feel like I’m on Grand Avenue in St. Paul. Better for the colloquial vibe and view is the Lakeview Coffee House just down the hall. When I have to go online, there’s no better place in either city to set up temporary shop than at one of the tall tables overlooking the lake. And the soups are excellent.

In the Chester Park neighborhood of east Duluth is another hero to the local/slow-food movement, the little place with a lot of names—At Sara’s Table Chester Creek Café. Don’t get further confused by the bigger sign that reads, TARAN’S MARKETPLACE. That’s the name of the old neighborhood minimarket that ASTCCC replaced. The owners may not understand marketing and branding, but the food is first-rate. It’s also an all-day operation, at least in terms of serving breakfast (and coffee), lunch, and dinner.

For what it’s worth, my wife took her corporate exec/expense-account-sated older sister to only two Twin Ports restaurants when she made one of her commissar-like visits, The Boathouse and Sara’s Table. Big sister was delighted with both. (Again, very high praise.)

There’s a literary quality to Duluth’s east side you don’t get down on Central in West Duluth. It may have a lot to do with the east side’s proximity to UMD, St. Scholastica, and pricier real estate. But I’d never label the west end folks less than literate. In fact, in my experience, the Duluthians are generally a well-read bunch, at least judging by the heaps of used paperbacks and newspapers piling up in just about every coffee joint and bar I walk into.

And that’s a lot of them.

LODGING

Right on the Lakewalk at the entrance to Canal Park is Canal Park Lodge. It contains 116 rooms, and some of those on the Lake Superior side have small balconies for enjoying the sun and balmy lake breezes or testing your tolerance for gales. (Two-room suites have in-room hot tubs). There’s free wi-fi and hard-line Internet, plus refrigerators and microwaves in all the rooms.

For lakeside, or we should say “bayside,” ambience, it is tough to beat the South Pier Inn, a cottagelike white building just on the other side of the Aerial Lift Bridge looking into St. Louis Bay. The view of giant freighters passing close enough to chat with the deck hands is pretty special, and at rates from $127 to $347 during the summer, the price is within everyone’s range.