Here's the latest local news of the future -- let's say 10 years down the pike:
The Duluth City Council last night unanimously passed a resolution asking the 2018 Minnesota Legislature to end liquor sales in the city's Lakeside neighborhood.
The appeal follows an unprecedented crime wave in the formerly quiet section of the city where no alcohol sales were allowed until a decade ago. The neighborhood has become a hub of lawlessness, with organized crime competing with organized religion for the dollars and souls of neighborhood residents.
"This is a revolting development," said Demon Rumm, chairman of the Eastern Duluth Youth Corruption Confederation. Rumm, a distant cousin of Evel Knievel, added, "if these do-gooders get a foothold in Lakeside and ban booze again, all hell will break loose."
The Extremely Rev. Willmar Huckenpeller, spokespastor for the Lakeside-Lester Park Council of Mega-Churches, said "all hell broke loose 10 years ago when liquor poured into our neighborhood from sinful parts of Duluth like lower Congdon and the university area." Huckenpeller's stirring "Sermon on Mount Royal" has been widely quoted in the suburban press.
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The Lakeside neighborhood had banned all liquor sales for about a century until 2008, when the City Council, followed by the Minnesota Legislature, broke a compact signed at the time of Lakeside's incorporation into Duluth proper that alcoholic beverages would never be sold in that section of the city, so help them God.
Advocates for the change at the time cited the inconvenience caused for drinkers, who would have to travel up to 20 or more blocks to buy alcohol in an adjacent part of town. Many were forced to patronize a package liquor outlet on busy London Road, where heavy nearby traffic exposed them to surveillance by their ministers or in-laws.
"We need a place where we can sneak in and out a back alley unseen by prying eyes," John "Jack" Daniels, a leader for the change at the time, had said. Daniels was later sentenced to five to 10 in the pen for robbing the Lake Superior Scenic Railroad on horseback after consuming a half-quart of peppermint schnapps chased with eggnog. The train robbery netted the bandit nothing but three wedges of cold Domino's pizza and a stale cola. The drinks netted him a very upset stomach.
Since the train robbery and the rise of other activities, such as cock fighting in schoolyards, pornography malls and terrorist cells, neighborhood leaders have begun to rethink the open policy, which also led to the establishment of pool halls, gambling dens and houses of ... (vivid description deleted but sounds a little like constitution).
Much of the neighborhood's deterioration was attributed to allowing taverns to erect tables on the sidewalks outside their establishments where patrons could smoke, drink, swear and spit, weather permitting. The areas, in full view of passing Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and Luther Leaguers, were declared a "bad influence" on youth, a claim disputed by liberal bloggers.
Following last night's council action, the next step is up to the Legislature, although backers of reviving the liquor ban are not hopeful that the measure will even get to the floor with a packed legislative agenda, which includes a new hockey arena for the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center and an organic milk train connecting Duluth with the Twin Cities.
Film at 10.
E-mail Jim Heffernan at vheffernan@earthlink.net . To read previous columns, go to duluthnewstribune.com.
