Streets and Songs; Minneapolis, MN and "Lake Street is for Lovers" by Lifter Puller

Lake Street is for Lovers by Lifter Puller 

(Yes, yes, y'all) Standing on the corner making eyes at the commuters making eyes 

(Yes, yes, y'all) Living on a barstool and lying to the barflies telling lies 

(Alright, alright) Your arms look just like speaker cords, you crawled out of the pager store 

(Smoking weed and making money) Your eyes they look like open sores you made love to the Jersey shore 

(Living large, living large) These bathroom stalls, they're speaking volumes on your ethical slips 

(Alright, alright, Lifter Puller) Matriculated New Haven and Bridgeport's when you're turning all your tricks 

(Smoking weed and making money) The swindles and the bindles are keeping you from sleeping 

(Yes, yes, y'all) Tattoo mags and the sandwich bags, and now you've lost your feeling

"As a kid we used to go to the Uptown area just for something to do. I lived in a nearby suburb and it took about fifteen minutes to get there by car. Once parked we would walk around, check out the preening punks in front of McDonald’s, poke through records in various stores, or watch street musicians. Sooner or later we’d cross over Lake on Hennepin and slow our walk to look in the darkened front windows of the Uptown. It was beery and mysterious to us, all smoke and neon. There was a stage on the far wall and sometimes a band might be setting up." (Manning 2014).

The Lake Street is for Lovers song was not adding much to the equation. I was clueless at this point until the"oh fuck, this is a Concept Album!" came to my mind. All songs, connected. They refer to places and a storyline with repeating characters jumping from song to song. Cops, drug dealers, addicts, and prostitutes. Nightclub Dwight (business owner), Katrina, Jenny, Juanita, the Eye-patched guy, and the private investigator who narrates the story. This is not just a concept album; this is the Punk-Wave Music Opera that Minneapolis has craved for all these years. Minneapolis Noir. The straight-line stream of consciousness in all the songs brings us on a late-night journey throughout the streets of Minneapolis (reimagined as Boston). We go from crime to crime, clue to clue, and interrogation after interrogation. Introducing as many shadowed characters as impossible situations between drug dealers and addicts. No saints, only sinners. As for places, one name keeps repeating song after song. The Nice, Nice nightclub. Our next stop. 

One problem. There is no Nice, Nice nightclub in the Twin Cities. It's fictional. Shite. 

Since I'm not getting much about the Nice, Nice this way (besides the image of a vacated Apple store above), it was time to hit the album Fiestas and Fiasco by Lifter Puller. This is about to get better from here (also open to interpretation). You can listen to the whole album here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhukKR8dpA8

My reading? All songs are narrated from the perspective of a private investigator hired to resolve the arson of a nightclub called Nice, Nice. Soon, we get introduced to many characters, including the owner of Nice, Nice, Mr. Night Club Dwlight. The first song is actually at the very end of the story when the police show up at the airport to arrest and interrogate one of the main suspects in the arson. The suspect name is Jenny, and she will appear in many songs of the album, as she knows something about it. The song is called Lonely in a Limousine. 

The second song, Candy's Room, takes us to the interrogation of Jenny (we'll learn her name later). The narrative here blooms as Jenny starts describing the Nice, Nice nightclub, the main location of this mystery: "Baby, ain't you heard about the nightclub called the Nice, Nice? They got the dry ice and the knife fights on every other Wednesday night," but warning us that this place corrupts whoever stays too long, "You'll be covered up with powdered drugs by the end of the night If you're still at the Nice Nice." We are also introduced for the first time to Mr. Night Club Dwilight, who is facing debts for some unknown reason ("Getting nice with Nightclub Dwight in the bathroom stall/He got the margin call/Now let's get a little marginal."). The song ends with Jenny "casually" leaving while putting her "lipstick in her pocket," and our unknown private investigator breathing with a "pipe up to his mouth."

Again, from here, this will be opened to interpretations. My best shot was finding Craig Finn's favorite bar....which is closed (The Uptown bar); since his favorite bar is closed, we cannot get a fair shot of what he saw, but at the very least, we know about other bars in the cities that he liked. Two barstools shine in one of his interviews (referenced below): Triple Rock and Grumpy’s. To be honest, I have not been in any of those, but if those share the same vibe, I could make a fair assumption that the line "Living on a barstool and lying to the barflies telling lies" would look like this. 

I turned on my phone, wrote down Triple Rock, and.... dead end again. Triple Rock got permanently shut down on November 22, 2017. The final show at the Triple Rock occurred on November 21, headlined by Negative Approach and Dillinger Four. I'm left with only one lead. This sucks. My anxiety skyrockets. Dead end again? I type Grumpy's, fearing the worst again. This is 2023, and Minneapolis was badly beaten by COVID. And the... jackpot. It's open. 

Grumpy's Bar. Location. 4th Street Northeast, Minneapolis, MN. 12 minutes away, driving from Caffetto Coffee House. My golden govel. I entered the place and ordered a pint of Leinenkugel’s cause that was the first drink ever that Craig Finn ordered at The Uptown Bar, trying his best poker face to hide the fact that he was an underage prick with a fake ID. After passing by the bouncer, I realized I had been here -probably one of those long nights, as I don't remember the place's name. "One Leinenkugel, please," I said with my worst English accent. Foreign words are particularly difficult in the United States because you always have to pronounce them with the worst English accent for people to understand. After all, they would never bother to learn how to pronounce a foreign word. Unheard. This makes it especially difficult for a foreigner of a third language who has to fake TWO DIFFERENT ACCENTS simultaneously. Besides being mentally unprepared to enter a dive bar alone on a Tuesday night, this is always a disaster for me. Whatever it takes for my aficionado journalism. After several tries, the bartender replies that they don't have Leinenkugel -so much ado about nothing. I got a porter. I feel grumpy myself. 

Next song. Space Humpin' $19.99. A glorious rockabilly mess. We get to talk for the first time with the infamous Mr. Night Club Dwilight, owner of Nice, Nice. He gets defensive about his wife's addictions to nightlife, drugs, and sex ("Don't call her lazy cause she's crazy about the daytime TV Channel 3, look at me, I'm a real whale watcher."). Instead of blaming her, Night Club Dwight begins commanding his desire to have "everybody who's been eyeing my girl to slowly close their eyes." I suspect we are no longer welcome here. 

In the fourth song, Manpark sets an interrogation with a pimp of kids, who openly describes his horrible business, "I'm like a Pied Piper Lead the kids into rats, lead the rats to the water I'm turning teens into fiends, lead them straight to the slaughter I got the stuff that gets 'em slipping in the shower." As a location, I venture that Manpark refers to Loring Park ("outskirts of downtown), which was known to be a place where people would search for drugs, hookups, and sex-for-money ("power to the people, making money with your mouth."). Here, the songs get confusing. We are introduced to the Eye-Patch guy and Juanita, who seemed to assault our narrator and leave him unconscious to "Woke up on 15th and Franklin." A second reading indicates that the narrator is actually a drug addict, too, and he just got drugs from the Eye-Patched guy. The song finishes with a call to Katrina, a new character in the story, to tell her and Juanita to eat the evidence coss "the manhunts always start down in the manpark /the manhunts always start out in the manpark/it starts with the sharks." This shows that the narrator is also a stakeholder in the very crime we are investigating. 

Fifth song, Lake Street for Lovers. Knowing that the narrator most likely just woke up from an overdose of drugs, the lyrics are much better. 

Sixth song, we are back at the Nice, Nice. More about Nightclub Dwilight is described as someone deceiving and taking advantage of young girls, but also as a drug dealer ("He's talkin 'bout the diamonds and where we can find 'em And who we can sell them to and stuff like that."). There is also a mention of how Jenny was in love with Nightclub Dwight, but his crack addiction made her leave him, but she seems to get back to Nice, Nice for more drugs. I must say that it is kinda funny that all characters are drug addicts and dealers. This is almost like how to write a punk song 101. We only miss the part about smocking cigars and falling asleep on a bench. Good stuff. 

Seventh song. The narrator looks for Katrina in Katrina and the K-hole," she is also at the Nice, Nice, the best place to look for K, a double reference to Katrina and Ketamine. 

Eight song. Things are heating up. In Cruissed and Accused of Cruissing, Katrina tells us how Juanita is recruited for the arson by someone (who I believe is revealed in the last song; keep reading). The lines here are amazingly catchy "Do you like lighting fires? Well, I been looking for a fire lighter for hire.". 

Ninth song. Touch my Stuff.  At this point, we have learned that Juanita may have been the one who burned down the Nice, Nice instead of Jenny. This song is a weird addition at this point. It's a brake, and I think that Lifter Puller is inserting itself into the story, playing in the background of Nice, Nice. The lyrics are too resonant with Craig Finn's voice and his hate for music critics: "We used to fight with our fists/We used to fight over chicks and we kissed at the flicks/And people got pissed, and they spit from the balcony/These English majors want to be some super genius novelists/They end up music journalists, chicks ain't that into it." Real punks hate music critics, I guess, and, of course, Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan (depending on which side of the big pond you are). 

Tenth song. Lie Down on Landsdowne. This is a very interesting song because, as mentioned, the actual location of this story is not Minneapolis itself but a fictional mix between Minneapolis and Boston (Landsdowne is one of the main streets in Boston, where Craig Finn was born and spent part of his life). We are reintroduced to Katrina and Holy (another character), who narrate their daily interactions between drugs and self-claimed gangsters. I have read opinions that this song is narrated from Juanita's perspective. I disagree. 

Eleventh song. Lifter Puller vs. the End of the Evening. Here, I wanna say that there is nothing, but nothing more Minnesota than starting a song saying, "We hit the nightlife like deer in the headlights/ Frozen, jonesing, and uptight with the stage frights/Think it's gonna be alright." I cannot stop laughing every time I hear this line. To give you some context, hitting a deer in the Midwest is as easy as seeing a cat running across the street. Here, more description of the live hell of the Nice, Nice, but finishing with a very interesting line about Nightclub Dwight at the end, who seems to be aware of everything but refuses to become responsible ("And Pontius Pilate was just Nightclub Dwight in disguise."). I stopped feeling sad about his business blazing into flames. 

Twelveth. The Flex and the Buff Result. This song wraps the mystery. It's revealed that Nightclub Dwight is trying to sell the Nice, Nice. But surprise. We finally get the final piece of the puzzle. We have been double-crossed all this time. The private investigator was socked in the mug. Eyepatch guy arrives, "drippin' wet with gin fizz, with the needle-marked arms like the frontman in some grunge band," after cooling down, he starts, "Dwlight was pretty nice when he took out that loan from us/ Now Dwlight don't go the courtesy to pick up the phone from us/ I want Night Club Dwight dead in his grave/ I want the Nice, Nice up in blazes." Damn. The narrator is meeting with the Eye-Patched guy, who happens to be one who lent money from Nightclub Dwight. Then, the narrator got Juanita to burn down the club. We have been double-crossed by the narrator, who was also involved with the arson of Nice, Nice. Crime solved.

As for the actual location of the Nice, Nice? I started writing this entry back in December 2023, and for an unexpected twist, I happened to meet with Craig Finn in a small music venue in Dublin. After the show, I approached him and asked him about the Nice, Nice. I thought there was no way he could tell me about some obscure reference from an album from his first band. How can he remember? But guess what. We got to talk excitedly about it and other places around the city. It was amazing. Craig also asked me about my time in his home city. I told him I fucking love it. I thanked him and left, but not before inviting him a guinness, which he accepted with a big smile. A truly great guy. 

I left the venue with a treasure. The answer to this puzzle. I know the name of the bar that inspired the Nice, Nice, a bar still open and in business in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Was Craig aware that corners of the Web are still fighting about this? I felt like I was given the Excalibur in exchange for nothing -well, a pint of guiness. This felt wrong. For ages, the Lifter Puller community has debated about the bar that inspired the Nice, Nice. In contrast, I started listening to Craig Finn about two months ago when I began writing this article after listening Lake Street is for Lovers. A newcomer gifted with the holy grail that would put an end to this wonderful debate. I think it is not my place to kill this heated discussion that easily. Also, I don't wanna lie; I love mysteries, and the fact that there is an open debate about a 2000 album released by a small local band located in Minneapolis, MN, is frankly amazing. Where is the nightclub or bar that inspired the Nice, Nice? Who knows.