Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
A Bermuda Triangle, But for Booze. And Also Located Here.
Jack Riely over at Streets.mn just wrote a story I’ve been wondering about for years: Where the hell are all the liquor stores in south Minneapolis?
Riely gives it the more professional title “South Minneapolis Cold Case: Kingfield’s Missing Beer Stores,” but the point stands. “Neither Kingfield nor any surrounding neighborhoods contain a beer store,” he writes. “East Harriet? Beerless. East Bde Maka Ska? South Uptown? Go jump in the lake. Lyndale? Central? Not in this neighborhood, buddy. Bancroft? Bryant? Regina? Forget it. Tangletown? Lynnhurst? Teetotalers all.”
As you might expect from a Streets.mn story, they’re not content to just say “Isn’t this weird? Oh well.” Instead, we get a few fun rounds of creative urbanist speculation (including the The Lowbrow Neighborhood Association Conspiracy), followed by the real reason: zoning. Kingfield and its surrounding neighborhoods are zoned CM2, which explicitly bans alcohol shops. Unless zoning regulations are updated, you’ll never see a bottle shop (except for an NA bottle shop, like Marigold) in these sections of the city…