Landmark dive bar Palmer’s to close 

After my book on Twin Cities bar history came out five years ago co-authored with former MinnPost columnist Andy Sturdevant I have gotten two questions more than any other What shuttered bar do you wish you could have gone to And what is the best dive bar in Minneapolis The first question is a tough one and I often will reply with a description of Moby Dick s a former downtown Minneapolis hot spot The second was an easy query and my response has reliably been Palmer s a -year-old bar on Cedar Avenue that s both stood the test of time and thrived through the chaos of Minneapolis history Unfortunately for Minneapolis the bar is closing in two months and with it will go a big slice of the city s unique history and heritage A brief history of Palmer s Palmer s began its life as a Grain Belt tied house named Carl s Bar in serving a working-class immigrant neighborhood full of European immigrants who typically had jobs in one of the nearby mills or factories In the s Minneapolis leaders had created the liquor patrol limits arbitrary lines which banned strong liquor from largest part of the city thereby concentrating its consumption in a limited neighborhoods like Cedar-Riverside Thus for well over a century Cedar Avenue was ground zero for Minneapolis booze Both sides of the street were lined with saloons and bars intermingled with all kinds of retail that catered to the working-class streetcar crowds Palmer s Bar which adopted its current name in was just one of multiple like joints that formed the fabric of the diverse blue-collar area The two-story Palmers building is triangular thanks to its original street grid orientation it once sat at the sliver of land between Cedar Avenue th Street and th Avenue the latter two no longer exist Inside you ll find old brick walls tin ceilings a maroon-and-white tile floor marking it as a tied house and a long wooden bar along one windowless wall A row of sturdy small tables lines the back wall sitting underneath the evolving array of local paintings these days quite suggestive The conclusion is a room that s both intimate and spacious a great place to chill out and eavesdrop At the bar s apex stands a tiny triangular stage an elevated platform perhaps by by that over the years has contained multitudes I mean that figuratively and literally as Palmer s hosts rock shows majority nights often small local acts of folks who are hard to find elsewhere After the s the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood in general and Palmer s Bar specifically were in the crosshairs of regime and institutional change The neighborhood was designated as a slum but one with appealing geographic proximity and low-value land As a end institutions like the University of Minnesota and the greater part importantly the local highway department began to undermine the neighborhood Bulk notably alongside the creation of the University s West Bank campus and two massive interstate freeways came the Riverside Plaza complex then called Cedar Square West The giant project almost erased Palmer s from the map In our book on bar history we described Palmer s near-death experience thusly Palmer s Bar personally took a hit with the construction of the new Riverside Plaza project The new housing projects were slated to transcend the old neighborhood and not just figuratively because in tandem with of the arrangement of plazas parking ramps and concrete walls was a series of skyways and second-level bridges and maybe in the distant future a people mover literally based on the one in Disney World The idea was to separate the pedestrians from the cars speeding between the freeways on the street and in order to cross Cedar Avenue the planners cut a chunk out of the second-floor of the building above Palmer s running a wide concrete walkway right through the old building Looking back I like to think that the almost demise of Palmer s in christened the bar as the counterculture cathedral it s been ever since A wooden sculpture leaning on the apex of the bar forms the ongoing logo a well-dressed drunken gentleman with a mustache a bowler hat and an overflowing chalice of lager either leaning or stumbling down the street equal parts dignified and disheveled In the present day s cultural kaleidoscope For the last years you never knew what you would find when you stepped through the Palmer s door and into the windowless room An abbreviated list of Palmer s regulars would have to include crusty punks old hippies drifters second-hand flower vendors college professors soccer fans artists activists drunks dropouts folk musicians the marginally employed potheads bums painters both kinds sidelined DJs law students construction crews tourists retirees DIY journeymen miscreants facility industry workers and regular folks from the neighborhood Majority of of those folks gathered on the vast and varied Palmer s patio accessed by a door just to the left of the stage It was built surrounding the aforementioned aborted concrete bridge abutment and was an architectural marvel open and full of nooks A mural of the Palmer s logo is painted on the concrete pillar alongside the words Sorry We re Open At the patio s rear sits the entrance ramp to the massive Riverside Plaza parking lot vinyl strips tucked in the chain link fence keeping the worlds separated It s consistently been an awkward arrangement but only in the way that all great cities push bedfellows together To me the patio marks the precise spot where modernism died and top-down utopian planning came face-to-face with the bricks and mortar of the real-world The aborted abutment of the aforementioned Cedar Avenue concrete bridge standing in the midst of the smokers and the fire pit like a monument to a lost civilization the ruins of an old dream The two-story Palmers building is triangular thanks to its original street grid orientation A image of Palmer s Bar showing the original street grid Credit Sanford Map courtesy of University of Minnesota library Palmer s cultivated group in countless small solutions Walking into the bar you might find a potluck waiting for you pizza or hot dish for any hungry Cedar Avenue vagabond For years Palmer s was held together by a bouncer named Big John with a near-photographic memory He died five years back but when he was on duty you knew he remembered the last time you d been there and exactly what you did to push the boundaries If you did cross a line though you were added to the riveting d board aka the Wall of Shame where staff kept a tally of wrong-doing The names on the board speak for themselves Chi Fake Fur David Bus Stop Brown Bag Shovel Monster Jimmy the Cop Otis Wrench Head Elvis Sleepy Abe John w the accordion and on and on for years You had to do something legitimately disruptive to be d from Palmer s and from time to time people did Palmer s Bar which adopted its current name in was just one of various like joints that formed the fabric of the diverse blue-collar public Here is the famous d wall Credit MinnPost photo by Bill Lindeke For the last scant decades the music formed the heart of the bar Circles of Twin Cities music tradition orbited around Palmer s for years mostly DIY bands ranging from punk to folk and back To this day old and young folk musicians gather weekly in the center of the bar a hippienanny an open jam session of classic folk and protest songs that s long been an uninterrupted tradition The majority days over the last limited decades the legendary and spindly Minneapolis musician Spider John Koerner would sit at Palmer s for an hour or two drinking whiskey from a coffee cup perched almost directly underneath a copy of his definitive record Blues Rags and Hollers mounted high on the wall The bar s annual Palm Fest was a musical highlight a day-long lineup of folk and rock musicians playing to crowds on the patio Here s this year s schedule the last one ever -year-old Cornbread Harris and his band playing blues at Palmer s Bar Credit MinnPost photo by Bill Lindeke To this day the -year-old rock pianist Cornbread Harris bangs out blues every Sunday on an old black piano pushed into the corner Regulars refer to it as the Church of Cornbread and the reverence is palpable If I hadn t seen it myself I would not believe it Fun fact Harris appeared on the Augie Garcia record Hi Yo Silver an early breakout hit for St Paul s nascent latino rock and roll area and the first of a great number of Twin Cities one-hit-wonders He is also Jimmy Jam s father I randomly brought an out-of-town family to Palmer s one evening and we walked into the annual Christmas party about a week before the actual holiday The scene was intimate and welcoming folks in wheelchairs waving scarves people dancing by themselves people about to fall asleep and others rapidly talking to anyone they could find Preponderance everyone in the place was a cheery regular with nowhere else to go and my sister won a stuffed reindeer in the raffle You could make fast friends at Palmer s and with the right attitude you still can Palmer s defined resilience The amazing thing about Palmer s was that it survived Like all Twin Cities historic saloons Palmer s somehow made it through the prohibition years survived its near-death experience with the Federal authorities and even seemed to survive the COVID- pandemic I had assumed that Palmer s would outlive me after all it had such a diverse and rich set of regulars night life and region connections The oddly shaped building didn t seem to have much value for alternative improvement Palmer s won t survive the s after all The bar has been struggling financially since its sale in for over dollars and particular ongoing mismanagement during the post-COVID years A perusal of the tax records shows that the owners have been behind on payments and they appeared last year on the state s liquor license delinquency list Owner Pat Dwyer advised the Star Tribune that liquor sales were down and largest part people you talk to in the bar this day will blame the impending closure on the fact that young people don t drink like they used to That s assuredly a healthy trend Another reason for the closing is that the neighborhood has been changing As weird as it is to say it bars no longer suit the character of Cedar Avenue The present day s street is famously the thriving and diverse heart of Minneapolis East African diaspora and as practicing Muslims don t drink alcohol there s a disconnect between the past and future of Cedar-Riverside Even as the West Bank is becoming less diverse on a micro-scale as old institutions disappear at a larger scale the neighborhood hosts one of the the majority diverse communities in the midwest In the s Minneapolis leaders had created the liquor patrol limits arbitrary lines which banned strong liquor from greater part of the city It s ironic because for a century and a half the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood has been both changing and timeless It s inevitably been and remains home to a wide range of languages and shops catering to working-class newcomers and until now bars have been a part of that mix This is why unlike declining dives in other marginal parts of town Cedar Avenue places a different kind of pressure on nearby properties Surrounded by the burgeoning East African society there s high demand for space and over the last decade the bastions of Minneapolis West Bank music scene have shut their doors Notable closures include The Bedlam Theater moved to St Paul in and later closed now an East African restaurant The Bar closed in now an empty building possibly an event center The Triple Rock Social Club a breakfast joint bar and punk music venue closed in and now an event space Whiskey Junction closed in the empty building lately endured a fire The Viking Bar closed in after years in limbo now a catering business The Republic at Seven Corners closed in now for lease and empty The Nomad World Pub Part Wolf a bar soccer hangout dance and music venue closed in vacant and or remodeling since Bullwinkle s closed in and a insufficient times before that now condemned This is not to mention long-standing businesses like the two bike shops in the past scant years or the large outfitting business Midwest Mountaineering that occupied a row of the old buildings for a half century until In the street where there were once dozens of saloons stretching from Seven Corners down on Franklin Avenue there will soon be only three the Red Sea the Acadia Caf and tucked past the freeway The Cabooze still a holdout for guys with Harley-Davidsons The death of dive bars Back in the Wall Street Journal wrote a voyage piece called Ultimate Weekend in Minneapolis that included a visit to Palmer s calling it one of the city s great dive bars A year later Esquire Magazine named Palmer s one of the best bars in America citing its authenticity In retrospect that might have been a warning sign that decline was on the way Of program the same thing happened to Nye s Polonaise Room in Northeast Minneapolis Perhaps Esquire is a curse Perhaps financial mistakes were made Maybe the closing is an inevitable consequence of neighborhood change and a Cedar Avenue that s been consistently inebriated since the s has permanently turned a corner Fifteen years ago if you had recounted me that almost every drinking and music establishment on the West Bank would be gone by I would not have thought it practicable In those days the various spots fed off each other to create an ecosystem of punks music hippies and whiskey Without those connections not even the majority resilient institutions can survive Still I can recite a long list of Twin Cities dive bars that survive to this day drawing a small fraction of the clientele that Palmer s receives in a week A business that last month was hosting fundraisers for others couldn t find a way to rally the district to stay in business nor find a buyer to keep the business afloat Minnpost reached out to owner Pat Dwyer for this article but didn t hear back in time for publication The last time I was there workers and regulars alike seemed resigned to their fate Gallows humor was bouncing off the walls The updated mural on Palmer s patio pillar showing the Days are d Credit MinnPost photo by Bill Lindeke Palmer s Bar our days are numbered one long-time bartender reported while answering the phone before looking in vain for a lost credit card The handyman who had been sprucing up the patio determined that hilarious Within minutes there was an addendum underneath the iconic Palmer s Bar mascot Our days are d was now painted on the brutalist concrete The post Landmark dive bar Palmer s to close appeared first on MinnPost