Thursday, October 29, 2020

Hey Kitten, Oh No Oh No

Just like the Village Voice two years ago and seemingly every local city cultural paper by now, Minneapolis' City Pages is shuttering its doors after four decades:

The publication started in 1979 as a monthly newspaper called Sweet Potato that was devoted to the local music scene. But by 1981, founders Tom Bartel and Kristin Henning were eager to grow the business. They decided to expand its coverage and change into a weekly, which they named City Pages, to challenge an alternative weekly called Twin Cities Reader.

"And the Star Tribune," said Bartel, who with his wife Henning now publishes an online travel site. "What I was proud about is we got people out of jail and we put people in jail. We did a lot of really good stories."

Of course my only connection to the paper as a young lad of discernible taste was endless searches for any nook and cranny of an article or mention about The Replacements, Husker Du or Soul Asylum. Most famously, Paul Westerberg simply read an ad in the paper while the tape rolled for the song Lovelines, from their classic album Hootenanny...and the internet being the miracle it is, we can now see the very ad below.

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