Duluth, Minnesota plus bonus Holiday Inn Review

I had to do quite a bit of travel on business  a few years ago.  After an assignment in Indiana, I got sent to Duluth, Minnesota for an assignment meant to be one day but turned into a week.  Here's an oldie but goldie  review I wrote back then:

Well, this is the third day of being trapped, er I mean "stay" in Duluth, Minnesota. As I have nothing better to do, I thought I would share my cultural observations of the denizens of the Far North.

This is a very white place - I was downtown the last two days and only saw a handful of black people and one Indian couple. That in of itself is not interesting. However, when compared to West Lafayette, Indiana, there are a couple of interesting differences. First of all, Indiana radio seemed to be dominated by country stations and conservative talk radio. Here, the radio is dominated by actual rock stations (not pop) and sports talk. I think this is positive. Don't get me wrong, this is a God forsaken Hellhole, but I'd rather drive around here with the radio on scan than Indiana.

Second, these people are serious sports fans. I was in a sports bar for game 6 of the Avalanche/Wild playoffs and these people were really freaking out. They also have a kind of fatalistic outlook on the prospects for their teams. The Twins got killed by the Yankees and the sportscaster's lead was hilarious: "The bad news is that Twins hitting got only one run against Yankees pitching. The worse news is that Twins pitching gave up 15 runs to Yankees hitting. The worst news is that the Twins are 0-13 against the Yankees over the past two seasons. The good news is that the Twins don't play the Yankees again until 2004!"

Third, I think they are boozers. I'm pretty sure that this town is smaller than Little Rock, but there is almost literally a bar on every block. I have not seen this many bars per capita outside of New Orleans. They have a Skywalk that connects a lot of the buildings downtown. Almost all of these buildings have bars in them. I checked into the downtown Holiday Inn, and they gave me drink coupons for, I'm not kidding, FIVE bars. Who is checking into this hotel???   If you ain't a member of AA before coming here, you will be when you leave!