Just Another Night at the Uptown Bar

Back in the eighties, I lived across the alley from the now-defunct Uptown Bar in south Minneapolis. Not only is the bar no longer there, the building is gone. In its place, there's now an Apple store.

Quite literally across the alley. In the picture above, that building on the far right is the duplex I lived in. The lit up window on the right was my kitchen, the smaller window to the left of it was my bedroom.

The Uptown was so close that it almost functioned as an extension of my living room. Back then, I was very much into mail art. I was constantly trading mail art with artists from all over the planet. I once covered my walls with their art and invited a bunch of local artists along with friends of mine to what I billed as The First Annual Minneapolis Mail Art Show. Everybody invited showed up, plus a bunch of friends of friends. One hell of a party. Until the point when, simultaneously, the beer and wine ran out and we lost power. 80+ people in my smallish apartment on a hot summer night with suddenly nothing but tap water to drink and no air conditioning. Almost everyone was in the Uptown Bar three minutes later.

The Uptown Bar had live music every night. Lots of local bands played there. I may be conflating some of them with other locations, but I'm pretty sure that the local bands The Wallets, Curtiss A, Farm Accident, Run Westy Run, The Magnolias, and Safety Last all played there at one point or another, as well as bands from other parts of the country. One night, the lead singer of one of the bands (Run Westy Run?) thought that it would be fun to have a pyrotechnics show. By which I mean he started a fire on stage. Yeah, he'd been drinking. My fight-or-flight autonomic nervous system took control and I immediately headed for the door. But human psychology is strange. Something like 80% of the patrons who were standing moved toward the fire, like moths drawn to light. As I headed for the front exit I saw the bouncer headed my way, carrying a fire extinguisher. Too loud to hear him, but it was easy to lip read his "Oh shit!"

Another night, coming across the alley I saw something atop the stop sign at the back of the small parking lot, just before the alley. As I got closer, I realized that it was the head of a deer. Not some stuffed taxidermy remnant; a fresh kill, dripping blood. WTF? I went into the Uptown and told the same bouncer, with the preface that I was not pulling his leg. His response was unexpected.

"Again?"

image source = StarTribune

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