Man of the year, NBA go-to guy, or singer of “The Man Who Stole the World?”
— When the player who has kept the Indiana Pacers afloat in their playoff battle against the Miami Heat, Paul George, was pictured in a television commercial, he was a splitting image for a local man who is just as tall. That man, Rich Metzger, almost ended up in the same league a number of years ago, when he had a tryout with the Portland Trailblazers. However, a few nights later in a sports network interview, the resemblance wasn’t nearly as strong. So you could say, it seems Rich couldn’t quite keep pace with that Pacer.
— After much voting and deliberation at Kozy Korner, the winner of the North Hudson Man of the Year award remained in-house, going to Cory Nelson, who bested Bob Dabruzzi in a final round that featured a several-day, meant-to-sway war of words on the pizzaria’s marquee. Near the start, one side said to vote for Kozy’s own Cory, because “he parties” while the other proclaimed his all-in-fun nemesis to be a “great American hero.” The next day, it got topical, and he was said to be “a nicer guy than the pope,” while the flip side said jokingly about Cory, “he doesn’t know who the pope is!” Perhaps more important is that the voting, at $1 apiece, raised $2,000 for a pair of local charitable causes.
— Word has it that the late Kurt Cobain was once seen partying in Hudson, at a back corner table next to the window at Dick’s Bar and Grill. Other patrons, at Guv’s Place in Houlton, said they had seen Cobain in the Twin Cities, cruising for a party and/or drugs. Does Courtney Love know about this? It also has been revealed that the legendary Deja Vu nude dancing club in Minneapolis once chartered a bus and had its company party, complete with many of its entertainers, by traveling to Dick’s. Word has it that it was quite the party.
The fact that Minneapolis just won the right to host the Super Bowl brought one other such memory to the fore: The first time around for hosting the event, all the Hudson motel rooms were full and the (then named) Best Western Hudson House Inn had to turn down a committee’s request for 30 rooms for a “team hideaway.” The closest thing we’ve had to that recently was the overflow from the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. A not-so-quick check of license plates in parking lots with the help of a friend, Tim, who had worked in the rental car business, revealed that strangers from virtually every state were staying here. (He decifered this even though the rental plates were non-descript). We also saw parked a television news boom truck from hundreds of miles away.
An opponent in that Super Bowl were the Redskins, and an old police report said a fan wearing a coat with their logo was a late night vandal at More-4. Reminds me of another such late-night experience, a couple of blocks to the north, this time when an NCAA championship came to the Twin Cities and fans stayed — and partied — here. In the process of writing a story, I politely asked a guy with a team jersey how he’d liked the game, but it turned out he’d taken their loss in a bad way. He threatened to beat the crap out of me!
— Earlier in the month, rock band frontmen had announced from the stage that there were people in the house, known by their printed sweatshirts, who are fans of Minnesota Wild opponents. But the marquee of Agave Kitchen pointed this out most aptly, in their ongoing series of messages on pro hockey followings, about a longtime local who is often on the scene: “Jon Coty is a Bruins fan.” (And the Wild hadn’t even progressed far enough into the playoffs to have a chance to face them!)

— And was there an overflow of Wild fans into Hudson to celebrate key playoff wins? This from the doorman at Dick’s: Only a few of the hockey principals who brought with them “their 19-year-old daughters” and wanted to gain entry, but needed to be turned away. Another theory was that some of the across-the-river fans turned in early because the next morning was the Minnesota fishing opener.

— We all know at this point that “the Moose is on the loose,” and in the newly popular western Wisconsin bar and grill as well as in Minnesota. But did you know that the beer of the month at Dick’s is a Schell’s product that proclaims “the Goose is loose?”Who has the patent here? And Dick’s also has Shiner’s beer, “made in Shiner by people made in Shiner.” Those people would seem to be living and working in Lakeland, Minn., where a new place called, of course, Shiner’s recently opened.