Jeremy Stomberg, aka John Maddening, won the Streets.mn Podcast crew over with his playful Nerd Nite talk, “Finding Your Time in Place.” Enjoy this nostalgic, laughter-filled trip through history–and through Jeremy’s brain.
Links
- Jeremy’s Nerd Nite presentation video and slide deck
- Nerd Nite St Paul
- Nerd Nite Minneapolis
- Gale Family Library | Minnesota Historical Society
- NETRonline: Historic Aerials
- CONvergence Convention | Minneapolis, MN Sci Fi & Fantasy Con and Jeremy’s Taskmaster performance
- f1rstwrestling | Instagram, Facebook, TikTok | Linktree
- Minnesota Roller Derby | Flat-track, skater-owned roller derby in St. Paul
- Find Jeremy on Bluesky or Instagram
Attributions
Our theme song is Tanz den Dobberstein, and our interstitial song is Puck’s Blues. Both tracks used by permission of their creator, Erik Brandt. Find out more about his band, The Urban Hillbilly Quartet, on their website.
This episode was produced by Sherry Johnson, was edited by Sherry Johnson and Ian R Buck, and was transcribed by Stina Neel. Many thanks to Jeremy Stomberg for coming on the show. We’re always looking to feature new voices on the show, so if you have ideas for future episodes, drop us a line at [email protected].
Transcript
[00:00:00] Sherry: Okay, so my friend Jeremy is coming up my stairs right now, and he has told me that I’m going to have some kind of reaction to what he’s carrying. Oh my God. Okay, so, um, this looks like, like it was hanging on a bus station wall or something. I’m looking at it.
[00:00:21] Jeremy: That’s most of my decor actually is hanging from old bus station.
[00:00:26] Sherry: So when you say you collect maps, Jeremy, you’re not kidding.
[00:00:34] Ian: Welcome to the Street.MN podcast, the show where we highlight how transportation and land use can make our communities better places. Coming to you from beautiful uptown, Minneapolis, Minnesota. I’m your host Ian R Buck. Many of our podcast team members enjoy attending Nerd Night where anybody can sign up to present about whatever topic they are passionate about.
Back in February, we were delighted as the presenter took a historic map of the Twin Cities and used clues on the map to narrow down when it was produced. As it turns out, our producer, Sherry Johnson, knows the presenter, Jeremy Stomberg, and he was down to come onto the show and talk about it. So let’s jump in.
[00:01:18] Sherry: And we’re here with Jeremy Stomberg. Um, I’m gonna tell you a little bit about the different hats he wears. Uh, he, first of all, this super weird guy helps start Convergence an annual convention for fans of science fiction and fantasy, where he does remain a minor celebrity in including a very nice, uh, performance in the latest task master that we do there.
Um, that was robbed. You were robbed actually. Um, he also dons the persona of John Maddening. That’s where I met him. He did 14 seasons announcing for Minnesota Roller Derby, six Women’s Flat Track Roller Derby Association World Championships, 12 ish regional playoffs in the First World Cup in 2011 in Toronto for roller derby.
So it’s kind of a big deal there. But these days he’s actually a rakish ring announcer for Minnesota’s Best Kept Secret, First Wrestling. He also trolls, NIMBYs, bigots, and misogynists on local social media channels. We thank you for your service, Jeremy, but we’re talking to him about today is his bragging about his knowledge of local history.
In particular, he collects historic maps of St. Paul and talked about it at the lovely Nerd Nite. Jeremy, welcome to the Streets.MN podcast.
[00:02:30] Jeremy: Thank you.
[00:02:32] Sherry: Okay. So if you were to date this map you’d be looking at there.
[00:02:35] Jeremy: I literally just, uh, opened this last night. Okay. I don’t know, but,
uh, let’s see what’s, so right here where St.
Paul College is now it just says vocational school.
[00:02:48] Sherry: Oh.
[00:02:49] Jeremy: So the question is, when did St. Paul College become St. Paul College?
[00:02:52] Sherry: So you’d Google that? Yeah. Okay.
[00:02:55] Jeremy: But here’s Miller Hospital, which is where, uh, the. Uh, history Center is now, oh, so that was again, late, late eighties, early nineties was when, uh, that swap took place.
Ramsey Hospital right here before it became Regions. So again, Ooh. Yeah. So probably mid eighties.
[00:03:18] Sherry: Oh,
[00:03:19] Jeremy: early eighties. Maybe.
[00:03:20] Sherry: This looks pretty ratty for a minute.
[00:03:22] Jeremy: Well, you know, this is a, well, he was up on a, up on a wall.
[00:03:25] Sherry: Some well loved, this looks like something from my grandparents’ garage.
[00:03:30] Jeremy: Yeah. So that’s the kind of thing that I would, uh, I would look for.
[00:03:34] Sherry: So, Jeremy, when I first met you, it wasn’t actually as an announcer for Minnesota Roller Derby. Okay. Um, you were the intimidating nerd at Dream Haven.
[00:03:45] Jeremy: Oh, wow.
[00:03:45] Sherry: When Drew drug me there to buy some comics. Okay. When would that have been?
[00:03:51] Jeremy: Uh, 19 Jan, January of 1996 through. Uh, June of 2003.
[00:04:00] Sherry: Oh my God, you worked there a long time.
So three.
[00:04:02] Jeremy: Yeah. So like se Yeah. So like, uh, seven years.
[00:04:06] Sherry: Yeah. So just for our listeners, if Jeremy’s voice sounds familiar, it was probably that nerdy guy that you felt intimidated by at Dream Haven back in the day at Dinkytown.
[00:04:18] Jeremy: Yeah. And then I grew up so,
[00:04:22] Sherry: right. Yeah. Because the next time I saw you as the announcer for Minnesota Roller Derby mm-hmm.
You were deeply, deeply embedded in localism. Mm-hmm. You were passionate about, uh, gender equal rights. You are passionate about transportation and housing. You take people to task on about it on a regular basis. Mm-hmm. What is it about this place, Minnesota, Minneapolis, St. Paul that you love so much?
[00:04:47] Jeremy: Uh, well, I mean, I’m from, I’m from here.
I mean, I, I live less than 10 miles from the hospital in which I was born. It sounds weird, but, uh, I’ve traveled a lot and around the US around, uh, around the world. And I think that what I like most about the Twin Cities is its potential. Uh, more than I, like a lot of the stuff that is, has happened and will happen.
Mm-hmm.
Like just the very idea that we had for nearly 60 years, one of the greatest public transportation systems in the world. And it’s gone. Except it’s not gone. And you can, you know, if you drive certain streets, uh, as they crumble before they’re milled and overlaid, you still see those tracks. That 70 years ago were just, you know, put somebody, put a layer of tar over them.
Mm-hmm. And those, the tracks from the, uh, twin Cities, uh, twin city lines, uh, streetcars are still there. And technically, technically could still be, you could still run, uh, run cars on ’em if they’re not too warped. Just thinking of, of how for, you know, a ridiculously low sum. You could travel on a streetcar from Stillwater out to Minnetonka, and then when you get out to Minnetonka, you can take a ferry boat that is part of the system out to an amusement park.
Mm-hmm. On Big Island, on Lake Minnetonka and everywhere in between. Um, thinking about how the most useful, uh, current lines, uh, both the light rail lines and bus lines. Are basically where they were the most useful streetcar lines were back in the day.
[00:06:41] Sherry: Mm-hmm.
[00:06:42] Jeremy: The, I mean, the number six line and the number three line are basically the Como Harriet, uh, streetcar line.
And the fact that it is still very useful for, you know, both of those lines. Granted, they’re split up now. Hmm. But there’s, it’s still very useful. It just. It is not as great as it could be. I don’t know. It, it gets frustrating because I know that I have all the, oh, I know that I have all the answers, but I’m not in a position to, uh, you know, and that’s, I’m, I’m joking.
I don’t, I, I don’t actually think of myself, but, uh, I do, uh, I like the potential of the cities. Mm-hmm. And I think that every time I visit somewhere else and I see something, it’s like, oh, this reminds me of. What Grand Avenue could be,
right?
Or this reminds me of, you know, if, if we did a little bit of an of investment in X, we could have this in St.Paul, or we could have this in Minneapolis or Columbia Heights, or wherever the heck you want to go.
[00:07:49] Sherry: I think some of this is calling, you know, I asked you what was it about the Twin Cities that you love, that draws you to localism, that makes you so passionate. Mm-hmm. And you talked a lot about potential.
You talked a lot about. This desire to make it more vibrant, this desire to make it available for people to try things.
[00:08:09] Jeremy: Mm-hmm.
[00:08:10] Sherry: I mean, it’s no wonder that you’d be interested in the minutiae of maps.
[00:08:15] Jeremy: Yeah. Looking at how things used to be and kind of, uh, seeing how things could change in the future.
[00:08:23] Sherry: Mm-hmm.
[00:08:23] Jeremy: Uh, from simply, so something as simple as closing a grade crossing. Over a railroad in a neighborhood to make it, you know, safer for, for folks to travel to. Just a wider idea of changing where a street goes. On my way over here, actually, I dropped my wife off at work in downtown Minneapolis and then came back on university and.
There’s the old firehouse that’s now Buffalo Wild Wings, uh, over by the Gopher, uh, football stadium.
[00:08:53] Sherry: Yeah.
[00:08:54] Jeremy: And I just noticed for the first time, and I, I worked in Dinkytown for a long time. I lived over there for a very long time and I had never noticed on this building, uh, there is, uh, set into the bricks.
There is a concrete signpost, that’s University Avenue on one side and Oak Street on the other side. On one on one corner and one corner. And then I just realized, oh, Oak Street must have gone straight by this way before it was moved for all the various stadiums and, and arenas over there. Yeah, and I wonder when that happened.
So when I get, so I took a picture of it so I’d remember, and then when I get home, I’m gonna go look, go look on historicaerials.com and just kind of go back. I see all these, uh, uh, aerial maps from the last hundred years and kinda see when that happened. And, and I’m not, it’s not like I’m writing a report about it or anything, or writing an article.
It is just more of this is something interesting. I want to take a look at it. I’m interested in. When this happened, and will that change my life in any way? It’s like, no, but it’s, it’s something interesting.
[00:10:01] Sherry: Yeah. But at the same time, when you are involved in any kind of community organizing for change mm-hmm.
People always say, well, this is always the way it’s been. Oh, sure, sure, sure. It’s the way it’s always going to be, and it’s very easy to fall into that mentality that nothing ever changes.
[00:10:16] Jeremy: Yeah.
[00:10:16] Sherry: But you just named a significant change that has happened Yeah. Very recently. What other neighborhoods have you lived in and what small changes or big changes have happened in those neighborhoods?
[00:10:30] Jeremy: Um, I guess really ’cause it was, uh, uh, so Steven’s Square and uh, in Minneapolis. In that little neighborhood I lived down in, uh, like the Wedge
neighborhood. I lived in Uptown, like actual Uptown, not uptown, uptown Like some people kind of pretend the entire southwest quadrant of Minneapolis is uptown.
[00:10:54] Sherry: Oh. Because they wanna say they live in,
[00:10:55] Jeremy: they wanna live in uptown. It’s, it’s, yeah. It’s like people who live in, uh, Brookfield say they live in Chicago, you know, that sort of thing.
[00:11:00] Sherry: Yeah. Or in Summit Hill, that’s, say they live in Crocus Hill. One Crocus Hill is like a two block, like multimillion dollar house.
[00:11:11] Jeremy: And then I, uh, before, right before I moved to St. Paul, I lived, 23rd and Como. Mm-hmm. Basically a lot of those places because they are kind of established.
[00:11:23] Sherry: Mm-hmm.
[00:11:24] Jeremy: So they’re not, there’s not a lot of change that has happened that I moved to St. Paul. Okay. It was very exciting.
[00:11:30] Sherry: And what makes St. Paul better than Minneapolis?
[00:11:32] Jeremy: Well, uh,
[00:11:33] Sherry: you wanna go on record here?
[00:11:34] Jeremy: What I, what I like to say is that, uh, uh, St. Paul is like Minneapolis, but for people. You know, it’s, this is where there are people that get so up in arms about, it’s just a different, it’s a different city. It’s a different vibe and that’s fine. Tommy Miske, who used to be on AM 1500 for a, a lot of years, uh, he used to call it, uh, big time Minneapolis, good old St.
Paul. Hmm. And that’s kind of the way I. I liked think of it too.
[00:12:03] Sherry: Yeah. You, I feel like you, in my time around you, you mm-hmm. You have accumulations of stories about place, um, that contributes to this sense of how much of a localist you are. Mm-hmm. You also talk a lot about individual humans. Mm-hmm. And particular places and memories you have in those places. Where did this localist loyalty begin? Was there a formative experience or an accumulation of them?
[00:12:30] Jeremy: I don’t think so. I think it’s just being a, my parents taught me to read at a very early age and I thought it was pretty heckin’ cool to just go to the library.
[00:12:40] Sherry: Mm-hmm.
[00:12:41] Jeremy: And we had a great library, uh, by us and I. I would get like the Tintin comics. And Tintin was a, is a Belgian boy reporter and he travels around the world and seeing all these kind of Ligne Claire, which is the, uh, the European style of comics, uh, depictions of away places was extremely interesting to me.
Like any child of the eighties. Watching the, uh, the Indiana Jones movies and seeing the red line on the maps and Oh, yes. This is where he’s, this is where the far-flung place he’s going is always just, yeah. Watch how you had a copyright strike. Oh, if you hum too much.
[00:13:25] Sherry: Right. I know. I’ve gotta be careful.
[00:13:28] Jeremy: Um, but yeah, just, I don’t know. It’s, it, it’s, there was no, there was no, uh, aha moment for it. In general. I think the maps thing came from. Um, probably sometime in the early two thousands I was at, uh, my friend Bob’s, uh, scooter shop called Scooterville over in Minneapolis and he had a giant map of the Twin Cities metro area and I was just looking at it and I noticed that 169 kind of ended above the river and it was like, oh man. I do remember our, my parents taking us to Valleyfair and we didn’t go over 1 69. We went all the way out to Chaska and crossed on on 41. Uh, and uh, sometimes in the earlier spring you couldn’t because the river was over the,
[00:14:21] Sherry: yeah.
[00:14:21] Jeremy: Was over the road. And so that got me interested And when did that, ’cause I grew up not in Bloomington or Shakopee or Eden Prairie or out, out that way. So I didn’t really pay attention to Giant Construction Project, and so it, it was more of like, oh, let’s look and see when that bridge took, you know, when that bridge came in and how that kind of changed transportation in the Twin Cities, how that helped that area really grow as a residential as a residential area because people who work in, you know, closer to the central core could live out there and not take an hour and a half to get into the city anymore by having to go over on 41 or coming up on Highway 13. So I think that was, that was my first map. Yeah. I’m curious about this.
I’m gonna check it out. And granted, at that time it was. 10, 15 years prior. Yeah. It wasn’t, it wasn’t, you know, 20 years to 40 years. A hundred years.
[00:15:27] Sherry: So the, I’m also sensing some nostalgia, right? Well, when I used to go to Valleyfair. Mm-hmm. So, okay, you see this map, you think about this, it sends you down a rabbit hole of curiosity.
What’s the first map you remember picking up and. Were you aware when you got your first one? Oh, no, I’m, I’m a collector now. No, it, when was the moment you’re like, oh, yeah, and I’m, I’m collecting
[00:15:53] Jeremy: I, because I, I used to be a, a big, uh, comic collector, like comic speculator kind of person. Everything was, every, uh, issue was boarded and bagged and, and, uh, I wanted to keep everything in pristine condition.
But after a while, I thought that was dumb. Decided that I cared a lot less about condition and of, of the media that I was interested in and more of the content.
[00:16:24] Sherry: Mm-hmm.
[00:16:24] Jeremy: Um, so like now I still, you know, I still get. Comics, but I get mostly like collections. I don’t care about getting, oh, I need the first printing or the first issue of this.Um, I’m more interested in, in reading the story.
[00:16:39] Sherry: Right.
[00:16:39] Jeremy: And the same kind of thing happens when I go to a secondhand store or an antique store and find a, a cool old map because I, I, I have a lot of varied interests. I’m curious about a lot of things. Um. I don’t focus really on any one thing. So I, when I go and I see, oh, this is cool, this is an old map of, uh, map of Minnesota.
I’m gonna take a look and see where this, uh, road used to go, where this highway was. Um, my friend Michael, Michael Rivas, who owned Big Brain Comics in downtown Minneapolis for a lot of years. Uh, when he opened his shop back in 1996 or seven, he had a grand opening party and he sent out, ’cause this is again the mid nineties, he sent out paper invitations to people.
[00:17:35] Sherry: Mm-hmm.
[00:17:36] Jeremy: And the invitations he found in Old Map that basically it told people how to get there by using all of the main highways, which were not the interstates, which were not the, which was not 35 E, it was not 35 w it was not 94. It was, oh, you can come up here on Highway 55, you can go up, uh uh, this, you can go over that way and you could still use those maps today.You can still travel that way. There’s a little nickling little difference, uh, where the freeways get in the way.
[00:18:11] Sherry: Mm-hmm.
[00:18:12] Jeremy: But it was just kind of cool to see. How people traveled from place to place, um without the freeways.
[00:18:20] Sherry: Alright, so what are your favorite places to find and research old maps?
[00:18:26] Jeremy: Well, I mean, just wherever I travel in the cities, in greater Minnesota, anywhere around the world. If I see a little antique shop, I’m gonna go in and I’m gonna look for, I look for postcards, I look for maps. I just, you know, I sometimes am that I, I feel like I’m that, that guy who shows up to the toy store at, at opening time and I, I’m looking for a particular Hot Wheel or a particular Star Wars figure, and I’ll walk into this antique store and they’ll say, oh, you’re looking for anything in particular?
That’s my old person voice, by the way.
[00:19:00] Sherry: Yeah. Uh, that’s clear. That’s very good.
[00:19:02] Jeremy: Yeah. And they’ll say, oh, I’m just looking for, uh, any kind kind of old maps of Minnesota or the Twin Cities. And they’ll say, oh yeah, this person has some in this booth, or this person has some in this booth. Oh, you know what? We don’t really have much of that and say, okay, cool.
I’m outta here.
[00:19:19] Sherry: Right?
[00:19:19] Jeremy: I might swing by if they have some old James Bond soundtracks on vinyl, I might swing by their records and check that out.
[00:19:25] Sherry: But there’s those many interests coming.
[00:19:27] Jeremy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you’re a member of the uh, State Historical Society, you can go. To, uh, the Library up in the History Center.
My old landlord was, uh, part of the Borchard family, which there’s, at the University of Minnesota, there’s the Borchard Map Library. Yeah. So there’s, there’s plenty of places to access, there’s plenty of people and organizations that have maps that you are able to check, Check out to be, to look at, to examine, or again, just swing by, grab an old, uh, Amaco Highway Map.
[00:20:06] Sherry: Mm-hmm.
[00:20:06] Jeremy: And kind of see what, see what was different. See what was, what’s the same.
[00:20:10] Sherry: Yeah. You talked about, uh, gas station maps mm-hmm. In this presentation. Yeah. Quite a bit. What’s so special about gas station maps?
[00:20:18] Jeremy: There were so many of them. You could, at the time, you could, you could swing by a gas station and get a free map.
[00:20:25] Sherry: Oh. Like, these are the things that my mom would yell at my dad to get. Mm-hmm. When he got lost.
[00:20:30] Jeremy: Yeah.
[00:20:30] Sherry: Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay.
[00:20:32] Jeremy: You know, grab you know, just they’re these little I’m for, for, uh, for those who are not watching because there’s not, I have a standard oil map, uh, it’s like, like four inches by eight inches. Yeah. And folded up and it’s just kind of, it was on the counter. Mm-hmm. And you went in and you paid for your gas, and you got yourself a, a snack and said, oh, I’m new to this area. I’m gonna grab this map.
[00:21:07] Sherry: And if you could meaningfully mark them up.
[00:21:09] Jeremy: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Uh, it’s, it’s difficult when you don’t have reception, if you’re in like the Driftless region
[00:21:15] Sherry: mm-hmm.
[00:21:16] Jeremy: Or if you’re up in the Rockies. But if you have. A paper map, you can still, like, we went on a massive, like family vacation in the eighties where we like headed out South Dakota and then down to, uh, Colorado and then over to the Grand Canyon and down into like into Arizona and back around and we hit like 12 states.And we had the big Rand McNally. Yes. Giant road atlas.
[00:21:45] Sherry: I would sit with that on the back seat. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:21:47] Jeremy: But then every time we went to, we got to a new city swing in, grab a map of the city.
[00:21:56] Sherry: Yes. And then
[00:21:56] Jeremy: kind of figure out where we’re going in the city while we’re in that particular town.
[00:22:00] Sherry: And you would ask things of the cashier.
Mm-hmm. Like, Hey, where do you get really good barbecue? Mm-hmm. And then they would give you some meandering way to get there, and you would actually find it on the map could, if you wanted to.
[00:22:11] Jeremy: Yeah. I have these vivid memories of my, of, of my, uh, dad asking at the counters, like, how do you get to this place?
[00:22:19] Sherry: Yeah.
[00:22:20] Jeremy: And the Uh, the clerk at the gas station would tell them, and my dad would have a, a, a pen and he’d just opened the map that was on the uhhuh, on the, on the counter and write it up and kind of,
[00:22:31] Sherry: yeah. My dad was too proud for that. He waited until he was in the car afterward and then he interpreted, wrote on the map.
[00:22:38] Jeremy: That’s how you get lost.
[00:22:39] Sherry: And it was, I can assure you, but we did find some good barbecue that way. Yeah. So in your presentation, you turned historic maps. Into something that felt like a trivia game. Mm-hmm. There was like audience participation, feeling even you said, uh, you called it When the Heck Was This Map Made?
Anyway, how’d you get the idea for this?
[00:22:58] Jeremy: So I had done a couple, uh, presentations at Nerd Night before, and the organizers had asked if I would, I was interested in doing another one. I said, yeah, I have two ideas. Mm-hmm. And one just took a lot more research than the other, so I, I did this one instead.
Mm-hmm. Which was, uh, to make it a little more interactive, because a lot of these presentations are just people talking at the audience.
[00:23:27] Sherry: Yeah. You came up, you kind of threw some overall principles for map dates, sleuthing. Mm-hmm. What were some of those principles?
[00:23:34] Jeremy: Basically it’s context clues. Mm-hmm. It’s if you know when something was built or torn down, It’s fairly easy. Places where there have been like major street renovations often for things like, uh, like sports arenas. Mm-hmm. The area around the Viking stadium has been a, has been that way since like 1980. Uh, how the streets kind of curve around it. But before that, the, those streets went straight.
Mm-hmm. Uh, there was a lumberyard there, there was a nursing school, St. Barnabas that was down there. The same with, uh, uh, Target Center. Mm-hmm. Target Center. It’s, it did have that, uh, that weird corner building that, uh, that little wedge building that has the Irish bar and the strip club, uh, right across from Target Center.
But there was another triangular block that was across the street from that because Seventh just kept on going the area around the NHL arena in downtown St. Paul, which is changing names right now. Yeah, formerly Xcel, now gonna be the Grand Casino Arena. That actually was a huge, huge deal because they were building 35 E at the time as well.
And they totally changed the streets around there. Mm. So they moved, uh, west Seventh up a block. So now, so what, what is now Seventh Place? That was where Seventh Street went straight through.
[00:25:08] Sherry: Oh, sure.
[00:25:08] Jeremy: Uh, and they did that so they could build the old Civic Center back in 1969. And then they tore that down and built the Xcel Center in 1999, I believe.
[00:25:20] Sherry: So you kind of have these like dates in your head Yeah. Yeah. Of when these major renovations happen. And those, your, your eyes are attracted to historic maps for those mm-hmm. I heard you say hospitals.
[00:25:31] Jeremy: Well, hospitals are a big thing just either in names of hospitals mm-hmm. Or the fact that they exist or don’t exist. Uh, Miller Hospital, which is where. The, uh, his, the, uh, Minnesota Historical Society. The History Center is right now, that was torn down in ’88. I think I heard about that when I was at a wedding. At the, um, at the Wabasha Street Caves, one of their cute little tour guide things was, did you know there’s a whole hospital inside these, inside these caves?
And I was like, wow, Cave hospital. That’s crazy. And what they meant is most of the debris, most of the, uh, most of the concrete and bricks and stuff was just buried there. They just tossed it in the, these caves because these caves are pretty unusable because of how airflow Works around. It’s not like the caves along the Mississippi where they, you know, it’s, it’s easy to access. It has a constant, like 50 or so degree temperature. Great for storing beer. Mm-hmm. Or during prohibition, storing cheese in front of the beer. But if you see a hospital that is on a map that is not there anymore, then you can think, oh, when did that hospital move?
[00:26:49] Sherry: Sure.
[00:26:49] Jeremy: Or when did that hospital change its name?
[00:26:51] Sherry: And certainly highways.
[00:26:53] Jeremy: Oh, yep, yep. Highways, uh, when, you know, ’cause we had 94 go through first and then we had the first vestiges of, of, uh, 494. Uh, Highway 100 used to be called the Belt Line that went where Highway 100 is right now, and go,
[00:27:11] Sherry: yeah, this blew my mind. Yeah. Did it really go all the way around?
[00:27:13] Jeremy: It went all the way around. It wasn’t as easy as it is now. It wasn’t like the 494, 694 loop where you could just stay on it and not actually
[00:27:21] Sherry: Was it the same imprint though? No. Was it?
[00:27:23] Jeremy: No, no. It’s, it’s basically, it’s where 100 is now and then it cross it, uh uh, turned east. Along where, uh, 694 is now.
[00:27:33] Sherry: Mm-hmm.
[00:27:33] Jeremy: It went way out to like the Hugo, uh, white Bear Lake area.
[00:27:40] Sherry: Oh, like near 61?
[00:27:41] Jeremy: Yep. Okay. And then, and then went, went south. Uh, and because there was no Mendota Bridge, you had to go on these weird little east, that old swing bridge. Yeah, that’s, uh, that’s down, that’s down there now and yeah, it’s, it’s pretty wild. I think you’ll probably linking to the pre the YouTube Yes. Link their presentation.
[00:28:00] Sherry: Yeah.
[00:28:01] Jeremy: Yeah. I show a map on there of that. Now I’m, now I’m rethinking the question earlier. We used to go to a drive-in as a family called the 100 Twin.
[00:28:12] Sherry: Yes.
[00:28:13] Jeremy: And why was it called the 100 twin when it was on 694? Because when it was built.
That was 100.
[00:28:19] Sherry: Mm-hmm.
[00:28:20] Jeremy: And they just never changed the name to the 694 Twin, because 100 twin just sounds cooler.
[00:28:25] Sherry: It does. Although you have to go Twin. Oh, Twin Cinema. Okay. Got it.
[00:28:30] Jeremy: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. It was not at the time. So when, when I started going, it had two screens, but when it was built, it was one screen, but was still called 100 Twin.Why? Because Twin Cities. Oh, not for a twin theater.
[00:28:42] Sherry: Yeah. Yeah, I imagine that seeing drive-ins on maps is a pretty tracking. Yeah.
[00:28:49] Jeremy: Oh my God, there were so many. There were so many and so many, you know, like there was one down, uh, where basically 494 and 100 are right now. There was one in Roseville at the north east corner of County Road C and Snelling.
[00:29:06] Sherry: Mm-hmm.
[00:29:07] Jeremy: There’s so many things that we’re here for. Either a fleeting amount of time or a an extended period of time, and each one of those clues helps you a little bit.
[00:29:21] Sherry: Mm-hmm.
[00:29:22] Jeremy: And you can shrink your window by a little or by a lot. Curtis Field, the first airstrip in Minnesota is basically on the southeast corner of Snelling and Larpenteur.
[00:29:35] Sherry: Wow.
[00:29:36] Jeremy: Yeah. And there’s, now there’s a, there’s a park there that’s called Curtis Field Curtis after the aircraft manufacturer.
[00:29:43] Sherry: Oh yeah.
[00:29:45] Jeremy: Okay. I mean the Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport is there because the army airfield was there. Mm-hmm. And the Army airfield was there because the Army base was there. And the Army base was there because it was close to the, to Fort Snelling.
[00:29:58] Sherry: Uh, I feel like you and Wolfie Browender need to get together ’cause. He’s the guy for Streets.MN That has the place names. Oh, sure,
[00:30:06] Jeremy: sure, sure.
[00:30:06] Sherry: Yeah. So that maps and place names. Yeah. Yeah. Can you think of the time you had a favorite aha moment when looking at these maps?
Was there one that you just had to run and tell your spouse about?
[00:30:23] Jeremy: No, I know better than that. Uh, I think it was, there’s a, uh, there was a ski jump. I mentioned in the, oh, yes. In the map, uh, out, uh, Battle Creek over by, uh, by Mounds, by, uh, Mounds Park.
[00:30:38] Sherry: Yeah.
[00:30:38] Jeremy: There was, there was a ski jump on this map that I sent, like when the hell was there, a ski jump over by Mounds Park.
And it was actually, I, I thought this is gonna be so difficult.
[00:30:50] Sherry: Yeah.
[00:30:50] Jeremy: Like, I’m not gonna, you know, I’m not gonna be able to find this forever. But luckily it was like the first thing that, that popped up on a very cursory. Web search. Wow. Was this very old, like Web 1.0 site of photos from the ski club? That was that, that, that ran at this.
[00:31:12] Sherry: Where was this? Do have you, uh, lets see. Run over where this thing was. I haven’t in Battle Creek.
[00:31:18] Jeremy: Maybe I will. Yeah, here we go. Battle. Okay. Battle Creek Park. So basically Afton Road,
[00:31:28] Sherry: Uhhuh.
[00:31:29] Jeremy: Where it crosses. What is this little,
[00:31:34] Sherry: is it Ruth?
[00:31:35] Jeremy: No, it’s a, uh, there’s a, there’s a little river here.
[00:31:39] Sherry: Okay.
[00:31:39] Jeremy: But it’s basically, if you extended White Bear Avenue straight south, you’d probably run into it.
So upper after road and. White Bear Avenue.
So maybe I’ll just, yeah, sure enough. Maybe I’ll enough just drive out there today and take a look.
[00:31:52] Sherry: There’s a little ski jump. That’s wild. I think there’s houses in there now,
[00:31:57] Jeremy: probably. Yeah.
[00:31:58] Sherry: Or it’s like, right, like there’s houses and then it’s on the backside or something.
[00:32:04] Jeremy: Yeah, I mean it’s, I mean that whole,
[00:32:05] Sherry: I bet it’s when you go up to the top of the ski hill mm-hmm. In Battle Creek West, and then there’s like this weird wild, super hilly area. Behind there
[00:32:15] Jeremy: there’s, yeah. I mean it just, how much of the cities that was fairly wild or you know, had a different use. Mm-hmm.
Like Woodbury over the last 20 years is amazing ’cause just of how. How much farmland has been changed to, to, uh, to housing. I mean, I’m still shocked that 30, what is this, 33 years later, there are those two farms just to the, uh, west, Southwest, I’m sorry, east Southeast of the Mall of America.
[00:32:52] Sherry: Mm-hmm.
[00:32:53] Jeremy: That are still there. Mm-hmm. It’s wild. I, you know, I remember going down there as a kid. I, I didn’t hang out in the, in the South Metro a lot as a kid. But when I went out there, when the mall opened, I was like, this is crazy. How, why, how is there still a farm this close to the city? Yeah. It’s like this,
[00:33:13] Sherry: like that must be a really good farm.
[00:33:15] Jeremy: Yeah, because like I’m I, my house is just south of Lake Como and it was, when we did the research on it, it was the farmhouse for 140 acre farm. That was outside of the city of St. Paul city limits and the city just kind of expanded over the years.
[00:33:38] Sherry: Mm-hmm.
[00:33:39] Jeremy: And by, you know, it eventually got all the way up to Larpenteur mm-hmm.
And just kind of took over. And so the, this particular house was built in 1885 and that was kind of like nearing the end of the farm because the next. Uh, the next closest next, uh, oldest house is a block over and half block down, and that was 1893. And the farmer that owned this land had sold a little land to a person that wanted a lake cabin.
[00:34:12] Sherry: Mm-hmm.
[00:34:13] Jeremy: And the lake cabin outside of the city was at Lake Como. Oh my gosh. And so there’s still, uh, she, the woman who owns it. Uh, today she had just, she’s just put on, uh, new siding, but it looked like a log cabin.
[00:34:29] Sherry: Mm-hmm.
[00:34:30] Jeremy: It was pretty wild in the, like, in the middle of the city. The, basically, the reason that Como Avenue is diagonal like that is it is coming from the city, which was, you know.
The down the downtown area. And it was coming straight up to the, the planned resort community That’s right around Lake Como, which at the time was Sandy Lake, but a guy named McKinsey bought it, bought a lot of this land spec with, with, uh, with partners and wanted to make a an out of the city kind of community.
[00:35:06] Sherry: I have a question about that. Yeah. Do you happen to know if that had anything to do with trying to. Evoke like the Italian Lake Como
[00:35:14] Jeremy: Oh, it’s named after Lake Como? Yeah. It’s named after the Italian Lake Como, which is a resort place. Yeah. Which is why I, I heavily push back against these people that call it Como Lake.
Oh, there’s a whole, yeah, there’s a I I I, I, I am a, a a A stickler for a lot of things and when in somebody will post about. Lake Como and someone on a neighborhood Facebook group, and someone will say, oh, it’s actually Como Lake. And I have to go and post pictures from some apps that I have somebody wrong on the internet where someone’s wrong on the internet about where uptown, uh, begins and ends, and, uh, whether it’s Lake Como or Como Lake.
And the answer is. Uptown is from 28th to 31st from the lakes to Dupont. That is it. And uh, it is Lake Como. It has always been Lake Como. It will always be Lake Como, except for when it was Sandy Lake and before that, when it was unnamed by settlers. Yeah. You know? Yeah.
[00:36:15] Sherry: Um, alright, so I’m sure our listeners are wrapped with attention at this point.
Oh, I’m sure they haven’t turned this off. They lost anybody. Jeremy, why should people care about old maps? Really
[00:36:24] Jeremy: like, uh. Because it’s fun. It’s, it’s, it’s, uh, it’s time travel. It really is. It’s, look, if you’re interested in looking at old pictures of places that either no longer exist or that, uh, have changed, it is a way to kind of look at, look and see what, what used to be just, was it yesterday or two days ago?
The, the city of Boston posted online a picture of a Chipotle, and it’s an older brick building. And it said there’s utility work being done today on, uh, on this street, uh, in front of the Chipotle where, uh, Thomas Payne wrote Common Sense. No. Oh my God. And, uh, it was probably done in jest, but people just jumped on.
It was like, oh, I God, I can’t believe, and it’s. These buildings have, you know, old buildings have had a million different tenants over the years.
[00:37:26] Sherry: Yeah, that’s true.
[00:37:26] Jeremy: And it’s always fascinating. We were in, uh, Cardiff in Wales and there’s this beautiful white marble building and it’s now A KFC. Yeah. It’s just.
The reuse of, of, of classic buildings. The, uh, the renaming of streets over the years, the, uh, the moving of streets over the years, the, you know, massive urban quote, unquote improvement that has been, that has been done changing the way that the city works sometimes for good, sometimes for bad.
[00:38:01] Sherry: Mm-hmm.
[00:38:01] Jeremy: Uh, it’s just fascinating.
It’s just, it’s really interesting and you, and. You know, the old action of, of those who do not remember the past or condemned or repeat it, right? It’s, it’s not necessarily that you’re gonna save the world by looking at something, but it’s, it, it can be interesting to see how something worked or how something didn’t work and why people at the time thought they had to change it.
The Gateway District in Minneapolis, anything where you used to have something that was a. A centerpiece of city pride. And granted it was skid row by the time that they changed it, but really did tearing down all these buildings and changing the way the streets were laid out, blocking Nicollet Avenue from the river, blocking it with a, a giant building.
Does, did that solve anything? No. Mm-hmm. It just changed things. Yeah. And change can be good. Change can be bad. Change can be neutral. But it’s just very interesting to look at.
[00:39:05] Sherry: Has this hobby, has this worldview kind of shaped the way you’ve looked at the whole debate around I 94, whether to keep it, get rid of it, change it?
[00:39:14] Jeremy: I think there are two ideal.
[00:39:15] Sherry: There are just so many of our listeners. In an ideal world, ideal world.
[00:39:18] Jeremy: In an ideal world, I think that the, uh, I forget what, what it’s called. It’s not abolish 94, whatever it’s called, re the rethink 94. Yes. Or project. In an ideal world, I think it would be a great idea. However, I think that people in general, general to get rid of the Yeah.
To make it a big boulevard and, yeah. But I think people are, are unfortunately, uh, set in their ways and there’s so much, and I try not to travel on 94 when I have a bunch of different options, but. The fact remains that it is the fastest way in most cases, outside of rush hour and special events to move between the cities.
And especially for someone that is, you know, coming from Woodbury and going to Maple Grove, for instance. Are they gonna turn up on. 694. That’s going to add to the pressure. The number of vehicles that are on 694. Will 6 94 have you widened? No. Let’s not widen a freeway. Mm-hmm. That’s, that’s, that’s, that, that way lies madness.
That’s Atlanta. That’s Houston. Mm-hmm. Those are, you know, you can’t just widen your way out of, out of, uh, congestion. It’s, it, it doesn’t work.
[00:40:34] Sherry: Mm-hmm.
[00:40:35] Jeremy: But I think that there are things that can be done to massage it.
Rather than to completely change it, and it puts me in this weird middle position, but there’s great arguments on both sides, which is why somewhere in the middle is where it’s gonna have to be.
[00:40:56] Sherry: Mm-hmm.
[00:40:56] Jeremy: Uh, yeah. It’s, I, I can’t even, I can’t even imagine the massive urban, you know, the. The world’s largest construction project used to be, uh, the Hong Kong airport. Building that island there and filling in an entire freeway trench for that long just seems like, it seems like a huge amount of time and a lot of effort.
And granted, it’s only really been around in like complete since. Man, the mid eighties.
[00:41:36] Sherry: Yeah.
[00:41:37] Jeremy: So it, there was a, there’s ti there’s plenty of people in the world that remember it without it being there. But I mean, I remember too, there’s another map project that I just did on my own because I read about one of the alternative, uh, routes for it was, uh, north, uh, basically the BNSF line that, uh, goes.
That’s basically just north of, uh, Pierce Butler.
[00:42:04] Sherry: Yeah.
[00:42:04] Jeremy: And so I just went on the, the Google maps, my maps, and I kind of figured out where that would go. And it had, uh, it was, some parts were smart and some parts were crazy. Like why would you even this is, would create an even bigger cluster. You know, there’s, there’s so much involved in urban planning.
When it, especially when it’s on so many multiple levels, like hyper-local, local, city, state, county, everything,
[00:42:37] Sherry: let alone railroads.
[00:42:39] Jeremy: Yeah. And the fact that it anything gets done is, is kind of amazing when it comes right down to it.
[00:42:46] Sherry: Yeah. Just kind of curious. Yeah. If you had a perspective, is there anything you weren’t able to share in your presentation or here? That you wish you could have?
[00:42:55] Jeremy: Not really. I mean, it’s, it’s more of like if I had gone through and, and, and found even more stuff, but basically for those that haven’t watched the video, and really Why haven’t you? It’s, it’s amazing really. I kind of narrowed down when I think these map, the idea of the presentation was you have a map that doesn’t have a publication date.
When was it printed? And. I am able to narrow it down generally to, you know, a decade or so, and there’s a few in there that are like, well, maybe it’s within this three years span. And I’m sure if I really went into great detail and took a lot more time, I could find. Something that might narrow it down even more.
[00:43:44] Sherry: Mm-hmm.
[00:43:45] Jeremy: But it was, again, it’s, it’s not meant to be a, you know, my master’s thesis, it was meant to be a fun, you know, TED Talk at a bar
[00:43:56] Sherry: And it was, it was, What’s that? What’s yet to discover for you about St. Paul history? Oh, are you still curious?
[00:44:03] Jeremy: I don’t know. It’s, uh, I have been wanting to do a, uh.
Do you know Andy Sterman?
[00:44:11] Sherry: Yeah.
[00:44:11] Jeremy: Yeah. He used to write that great, like walking around articles.
[00:44:15] Sherry: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
[00:44:16] Jeremy: And he did one that was basically walking the border between Minneapolis and St. Paul. Oh yeah. And I had wanted to do, there’s, there’s this, uh, there’s apparently the kids these days. Yeah. Uh, there’s this TikTok thing where people walk the breadth of a city. Oh. And they walk like from north to south or from east to west, that or whatever, do that. But I don’t know how to use t. Uh, yeah.
[00:44:41] Sherry: Okay. Old man. Yeah.
[00:44:42] Jeremy: Oh, I don’t know how to edit. Yeah. Okay. But like my friend Brandy Brown was just, uh, complaining about a lot of these kids that are doing it in, uh, Minneapolis, because they like basically stop in Camden and they don’t go any farther north.
And it’s like. Yeah, it’s granted, it’s just, there’s a lot of like industrial and, and, uh, railroad stuff over there, but like, go up, it’s, it’s only a few more blocks.
[00:45:06] Sherry: So you could be the man who yells at cloud mm-hmm. Of TikTok. Oh,
[00:45:10] Jeremy: absolutely. Yeah. That sounds like, yeah, that sounds like fun. One of the things I really wanna do is what, there was a spur of the, uh, streetcar line mm-hmm.
That, uh, basically popped off from the, uh, Como Harriet line. Uh, at Eustis.
[00:45:27] Sherry: Mm-hmm.
[00:45:27] Jeremy: And went to the St. Paul campus of the U of M and from, uh, aerial photography, you can still kind of see the scars from it in some place. So I, on a day that’s not super hot or super wet, I just wanna walk that, I wanna walk that whole stretch and see, and just kind of envision how that was.
Up until the, uh, the early fifties, a kid going from one campus to the other campus on a, on a, uh, streetcar.
[00:45:57] Sherry: That’s neat. Yeah. Okay, so if your game were ever formalized mm-hmm. And hosted by dapper local historians. Mm-hmm. So who would be your dream team?
[00:46:07] Jeremy: Well, the host would be me, of course. Well, I’d have to
[00:46:09] Sherry: host.
Well, dapper then, then you can’t play,
[00:46:11] Jeremy: uh, play it. Uh, yeah. I, I think the aforementioned Mr. Stir event Yeah. Uh, is, uh, kind of a, a wildly brilliant, uh, person who would be able to, uh, grab a lot of this stuff very easily. Bill Lindeke, of course. Mm-hmm. Would be a,
[00:46:27] Sherry: a father of the streets.MN. franchise,
[00:46:31] Jeremy: and, uh, yeah, just people that, yeah, anyone that really shares an interest.
Anybody that wants to, to come on and compete would be super fun. Yeah.
[00:46:39] Sherry: Yeah, maybe that’s your future.
[00:46:41] Jeremy: Oh yeah. That’ll be a, that’s very,
[00:46:44] Sherry: that’s very, I’m sure
[00:46:44] Jeremy: that it has a wide appeal. It’s very.
[00:46:48] Sherry: Alright, Jeremy, where can our listeners find you and connect with your many passions?
[00:46:53] Jeremy: I’m on, uh, bluesky @john Maddening.
Uh, all one word on Instagram @John.Maddening because I used to have the at John Maddening and then I forgot about Instagram for a very long time, and then I couldn’t remember my password again. Old man problems. You can find our, uh, our wrestling shows. At first wrestling, that’s @F1 RT Wrestling on all your favorite and least favorite social media platforms.
We’d love to get off Twitter, but people are hanging out on Twitter. Mm-hmm. They still, it’s still necessary to advertise, unfortunately, but you can check it out other places. We do, uh, cool, fun, ridiculous wrestling shows all over. We do stuff at breweries. We do stuff at, uh, First Avenue. We’re doing a show at the library in Oakdale next week.
Uh, we do a huge show at the Mall of America every September. And if you have ever thought of pro wrestling as something less than what you are interested in, uh, just, just come to a show. Ridiculous.
[00:47:58] Sherry: Everybody needs to check it out.
[00:47:59] Jeremy: It’s ridiculous. You know what pro wrestling has always been? It is a live action stunt show with a soap opera element.
And it was a very misogynistic, very homophobic space for a very long period of time. And over the last 20 or so years, uh, especially in the independent wrestling scene, there has been a lot of, uh, forward movement. And is, is everything perfect? Absolutely not. But in our little, uh, aspect of it, we try to make it very welcoming to anyone who just wants to come in and see a fun little show.
[00:48:37] Sherry: Yeah,
[00:48:38] Jeremy: a a lot of queer people and a lot of marginalized people from everywhere turn to wrestling. Like they turn to comic books. Mm-hmm. Uh, uh, very like good versus evil fights.
[00:48:48] Sherry: That’s certainly how I feel.
[00:48:48] Jeremy: You can see us outer space frog beat up on a giant Australian possum.
[00:48:54] Sherry: And with that, I think we’ll, we’ll say goodbye.
Thank you, Jeremy.
[00:48:59] Jeremy: Goodbye to you.
[00:49:02] Ian: And thank you for joining us for this episode of The Streets Dotn podcast. Speaking of Nerd Nite, several members of the Streets.MN podcast team are gonna be presenting in the near future on August 13th at 7:00 PM at the Black Hart. They will have five minute lightning talks where Jeremy, Sherry, and I will be up presenting.
And then in September we’re starting up a Minneapolis branch of Nerd Night. Uh, so on September 23rd at 6:00 PM at Eat Street Crossing, you can see presentations by Brian Mitchell about the history of the railroad trench that became the Greenway, Stina Neel will present about how dating simulation games have made her a better communicator, and I will present about the logistics of bike touring.
So I hope to see you all there. The show is released under a creative, common attribution, non-commercial, non derive license. So feel free to republish the episode as long as you are not altering it and you are not profiting from it. The music in this episode is by Eric Brandt and the Urban Hillbilly Quartet.
This episode was produced by Sherry Johnson, edited by Sherry and I and transcribed by Stina Neel. We are always looking to feature new voices on the Streets Dotn Podcast. So if you have ideas for future episodes, drop us a line at [email protected]. Streets.MN is a community blog and podcast and relies on contributions from audience members like you.
If you can make a onetime or recurring donation, you can find more information about doing so at Streets.MN/donate. Find other listeners and discuss this episode on your favorite social media platform using the hashtag #StreetsMNpodcast. Until next time, take care.