Dinkytown Cop Shop: Even more fun than the Kitty Cat Klub?

Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked and/or interesting Minnesota news.

Come for the pizza, stay for the people with guns

Hello children! Do you like free pizza And armed agents of the state? Well, I hope you stopped by the new Off-Campus Safety Center in Dinkytown this weekend for a little safety and security. Looks like it was the perfect place.

I guess everyone needs to be out of the box and having a good time. Or maybe they’re at Warehouse District Live.

The center, as you may recall, is located on 14th Avenue SE, on the site of the old favorite, the Kitty Cat Klub. Although it opened a month ago, for many of us, this tweet was our first glimpse of the revamped KCK, and… that doesn’t sound like a trap at all, no.

So next time you’re in Dinkytown, come see us. Looks like there’s still some pizza left (from Papa John’s?). Maybe you’ll even meet public figure and center supporter Richard Painter the next time he decides to run for some random office.

Who knows how Dinkytown will improve next? Maybe next they can turn Al’s Breakfast into an emergency pregnancy center.

Homelessness is literally everyone’s problem

Finding shelter for the homeless is a difficult task for many reasons, and one complicating factor is that the responsibilities of different government and private actors overlap. In MinnPost today, Winter Keefer examines how in Hennepin County the county, city and nonprofit agencies and for-profit businesses interact with unhoused people.

The county, according to Keefer, is offering better news than expected. Official numbers suggest 496 people are sleeping outside in Hennepin County, up from 642 before the pandemic. That’s 1 in 2,700 people, less than half the national average.

While the city’s function has been largely punitive, demolishing encampments, the county has invested 40% of its post-pandemic recovery funds to prevent homelessness. Of course, now that those funds have dried up, the county faces a $30 million deficit. Another reminder that the “emergency” safety net established during the pandemic must actually be an “everyday” safety net.

Local Haitians aren’t exactly thrilled with Trump/Vance’s lies

Even though they haven’t been targeted by white supremacist insurgents (fingers crossed), Haitians in Minnesota are still feeling the effects of the Trump/Vance smear campaign against their fellow immigrants.

Today in the Sahan Journal, Elza Goffaux spoke with some of the 4,000 Haitians in Minnesota, many of whom here benefit from Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a federal grant that allows migrants to work and live legally in the United States for a limited period of time. “Personally, it traumatizes me,” Florencia Pierre, a Haitian artist known as “Maman Fofo,” says of the racist slander spread by the former president. “We feel that we always have to fight to be appreciated by others, we are so stressed that we develop cardiovascular diseases.”

The migration gap created by TPS – once lifted, immigrants must either find another way to stay in the country legally or return to their country of origin – is an additional source of anxiety. And of course, we must not forget that the United States and other colonial powers are responsible for many of Haiti’s misfortunes. As Pierre says: “Many Haitians know that regardless of their level of integration in the United States, since 1804, after the country’s independence, they have been systematically punished by the American government, because of their struggle for their freedom. »

Get drunk… For science!

I hate the phrase “secret weapon” because it’s cheesy and cliché and usually refers to something or someone not very secret, but damn if Richard Chin isn’t the Strib’s actual secret weapon. Every time our official newspaper publishes an offbeat story in which Team Racket says, “Why didn’t we think of that?” there’s a good chance the signature is Chin’s.

His latest story? A look at the many ways University of Manitoba labs test intoxicated people. Chin spoke with Jeff Boissoneault, director of the Minnesota Alcohol and Pain Lab, a newly created entity examining the link between, you guessed it, alcohol and pain. (Insert hangover joke here.) So far, their findings haven’t been surprising: Drinking raises your pain threshold, and drinking a lot raises your pain threshold significantly.

But they did some interesting field work, testing 149 volunteers at the Minnesota State Fair. Unfortunately, they don’t hit test subjects over the head with a cartoon hammer and count the little birds that circle around their heads, as I had quite reasonably assumed. Instead, the lab has a device that applies pressure to the fleshy part of your thumb, which apparently hurts. (Unless you are drunk).