Pirates in...Minnesota?!

[breacanfeile]

Hello all!

I thought I'd tell you a bit about my home port, which seems strangely lost back in time, as we still have real sailor's pubs and sailors here- not everything's lost to tourism! Could be our terrifying weather, could be that things take a long time to thaw up here.

Duluth, Minnesota, is located at what we call the Nose of the Wolf (Lake Superior looks like a wolf's head on a map). Canal Park, where you can watch the ships come in and out through the canal beneath the Aerial Lift Bridge, has mostly become a tourist mecca. There are still some vestiges of Canal Park's warehouse/whorehouse sailor days (that is now mostly relegated to Superior, WI on the other side of the harbor). For instance, there is a prim little restaurant called Grandma's, which is advertised with the sketch of a rather dour-looking old woman. Grandma was actually the madam of Canal Park's finest whorehouse (they don't usually tell you that). Now you can get a rather expensive burger there, but just remember what the place USED to be!

As far as viewing the big ships, you can watch them come in from land, or take a tour of the harbor on the Vista Fleet. There is a particular Captain Mark there who you should sing Roll Your Leg Over to if you see him- I used to be a deckhand on this particular excursion boat, and the captains are mostly the kind of pirates you envision as being captains- lewd and loud! Captain Ed is another good one, but he's usually looking for Monty Python. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get back on the boat and sing Roll Your Leg Over to Capt. Mark, so if you go, tell him who sent you! We often shared lewd songs while we were sitting in the pilot house on a cold day. Capt. Mark also has nearly run into the pier while looking for hot ladies. He has invited attractive girls into the pilot house and asked, "Want to see the captain's little pirate?", reached into his pocket, and pulled out a tiny pirate figurine. Great senses of humor, and there's nothing like cruising along beside a 1000-foot ore boat!

In Superior, however, is the jewel of this amazing little port of call. It's called the Anchor Bar, where you can get the town's best hamburgers for $2. The place is the kind of pirate bar you could see Quint from Jaws frequenting- dark, with nautical stuff jammed everywhere within it (including a giant pretzel hanging from the ceiling, old scuba gear, dead fish, and who knows what else). The servers are all tattooed and pierced, friendly, and enough to make a pirate feel right at home!

The adventure and grandeur of this place is evident to this day, in the sailors who come into the port from around the world, all the way back to the Voyageurs and the Scots who first made Duluth home. The architecture here is enough to keep bringing me home! Besides, Lake Superior is the true test of any sailor- as I was told when I lived in Hawai'i- 'man, if you can sail there, you can sail ANYWHERE'.

So that's my little plug for my hometown. A lot of other ports of call are overrun and over-touristy (like my former home, Key West). If you want a taste of what things were like 100-200 years ago, Duluth, Minnesota is the best place I can think of. Besides, the water's generally very clean (though cold), and the beach I live on is the best I've seen outside Hawai'i. Let me know if you're going to be in my area, and perhaps I'll take you out for a drink at the Anchor or some similarly seedy bar up here in the last place in the US to live out the sailor's dream.

-Amy Hoff

[the Royaliste]

In another life, I did a lot of steel erection in your backyard...the Iron Range, Superior (the ore bridge), etc....Powerplants and such.. Always enjoyed sailin' a dink on Superior in me off hours...Mebbee I'll stop by sometime...Uff Da!!!!.......Perish the thought!

[maudelynn]

Oh my, a steel erection? You should be careful friend, someone could get umm hurt!

[breacanfeile]

I'm Scottish, so I rarely say Uff Da- and I don't have an accent either (seriously- many people in my hometown ask me where I"m from! They think I have a brogue of some kind- that's what studying Scotland will do to you!)

So, you know my home port! Ever been to the Anchor? My dad says things were much more interesting back when the visa/passport reqs weren't as stringent, and he used to be the caretaker of a lot of sailors' money. He was a trustworthy guy, and a lot of merchants used to swindle the people from other countries who didn't quite understand the pricing system.

There's really nothing like sailing along out on the lake, is there? The harbor's fine as well, but the lake is singularly beautiful, frightening, and unpredictable. I have always thought of the lake as a 'she' for that reason. Anyone interested in reading an article I wrote about Duluth can type 'city immortal amy hoff' into a search engine. I said much more eloquently in that article how I feel about the city than I did in that little topic.

-Amy Hoff

[Sjöröveren]

Oh great! Now ye went and told the whole world about the San Francisco of the North! Now they'll all be down in Canal Park, throwing popcorn to the gulls!

Seriously folks, Duluth is a wonderful town. A bit of everything, if ye look hard enough. It's got it's slightly shabby side on the west, it's high-priced mansions along the lakefront, and big big water. It's just a 3-hour drive from our home in Minneapolis. Every once in awhile, Red Bess and I need our seafaring fix, and it's nice to be able to see actual ocean-going vessels right in the middle of the continent. And the drive up the North Shore, to Thunder Bay, Ontario is quite breathtaking. Lots and lots of pine trees. We're headed up there next week with our boys, camping at Gooseberry Falls State Park, which is a rite of passage for every Minnesotan.

As for your "accent" anyone who doesn't sound like they're right out of the movie "Fargo" sounds funny to us. Or, in native Minnesotan dialect:

"Dat's differnt."

Any other Minnesota/Wisconsin/Iowa pirates out there?

[breacanfeile]

Well, it's better that there are pirates than the usual tourists I see around Canal Park! Actual questions I've had on tour either on the Vista or at Split Rock when I worked there as a guide:

When do the whales migrate?

Do you ever see dolphins?

Where on the lake did the Titanic go down?

Since I live on the beach, the big water is only about fifty feet from my front door. And that's how I like it! The San Francisco of the North could use a few pirates. There used to be a group of pirates who lived in the Apostle Islands and would attack ships. Capt Mark on the Vista also told me that there was a flat rock he used to go by (he was the Apostle Islands boat captain), and every year the locals would do something different. Last year, a lady dressed up like a mermaid and was lying on the rock combing her hair!

It's strange that my 'accent' sounds to some people like a brogue. I grew up in Hibbing and the outskirts (read: wilderness) behind Eveleth, with Finnish and Scottish grandparents (the Finnish one didn't even speak English until he was 10!) I also remember hating '[Fargo' because I didn't talk like that! 'How to Talk Minnesotan' was better. I lived in Duluth from the age of thirteen until I turned eighteen. You'd think I'd have picked up the accent! Maybe that's what living all over the country has done to my speech.

Yes, the drive to Canada is incredible, if only for the cliffs and other such things along the way. There are secrets of the North Shore that even I won't share- but I'll tell you there is a gorgeous black sand beach there. It's very difficult to find, even for me, so there isn't much risk in the telling, but the beaches here are gorgeous.

Warning: DO NOT throw popcorn to the gulls! It is actually against the law, and the gulls get used to that method of finding food. So they end up dying over the winter because they never learned how to get anything a human didn't drop on the ground. I worked at Wildlife Rescue of the Florida Keys , and that was the announcement we had to make on the Vista boats because tourists would throw their food in the water. Not that it's good for the water, either, but the main point was that the gulls would become too dependent upon humans feeding them.

However, there is nothing like this city- it was featured somewhat in Iron Will, because we had the kind of mixed architecture that could make the same city block look like four different places. The Scottish influence (as they and the French were the first Europeans here, and they got along quite well with the Native Americans) is quite obvious in the stone buildings and churches they built. So I think people should come and take a look- as long as they don't throw popcorn to the gulls, or ask me about the dolphins!

-Amy Hoff

[Captain Charlotte Savvy]

Where on the lake did the Titanic go down?

A mate o' mine was leaving the movie theater after viewing "Titanic," and behind her she heard a fellow-moviegoer whisper to her friend, "Gosh, I didn't think it would really go down!"

Hmmm.

[Sjöröveren]

To anyone who has been convinced by this post that Lake Superior is Heaven on Earth:

Yes, it is, but it's Heaven Froze Over. Last night, it was 22 degrees in Embarass, MN, not too far from Duluth. That's 22 degrees Fahrenheit, not Celsius. Tonight, there's frost warnings for as far south as the Twin Cities! It's August! AAAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!! What am I doing here!?!?!

[breacanfeile]

I never said heaven on earth, oh no. I've never thought it was that! And the temperatures of the entire summer are reasons I'm moving back to Hilo, Hawai'i in January! 22 degrees in the last two weeks of August is unacceptable even for here!

By the way, Hawai'i isn't the paradise it's rumored to be either, but that's a whole different subject!

-Amy Hoff

"I fight, tis for vengeance! I love to see flow

at the stroke of my sabre, the life of my foe

I fight for the memory of long-vanished years

I only shed blood where another shed tears

I come as the lightning comes- red from above

O'er the race that I loathe, to the battle I love."

[Red Bess]

To anyone who has been convinced by this post that Lake Superior is Heaven on Earth:

Yes, it is, but it's Heaven Froze Over.  Last night, it was 22 degrees in Embarass, MN, not too far from Duluth.  That's 22 degrees Fahrenheit, not Celsius.  Tonight, there's frost warnings for as far south as the Twin Cities!  It's August!  AAAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!! What am I doing here!?!?!

I don't really know what Sjöröveren is worried about -- it's Minnesota. As they say, if you don't like the weather here, just wait a few minutes. It will be warming up all week --- and we leave for our North Shore camping trip in the morning. And if it gets cold at night, it's my job to keep me matey warm.

Duluth is awesome. I can't wait to get up there!

[breacanfeile]

Yes, it's pretty- but the wind is blowing so hard you can't stand on the beach! However, watching the surfers out the window is always a treat, as I can't even believe they're here on Lake Superior. Then again, what a captain finds a challenge I suppose a surfer does too.

Have fun on the North Shore! Where are you going? Palisade? Gooseberry?

-Amy Hoff