Rise Against what? Bad jokes on April Fools Day (In The City). Or how ’bout kicking out the cool weather of spring for good, and welcoming summer via the Memorial Day weekend (see for examples our community calendar)
(And to backtrack, other April Fools Day jokes can be found under this web site’s Notes From The Beat department. And while we’re at it, discover some very last minute — fabulous, sort of? — Mother’s Day finds under the Picks of the Week section, for all you guys who dropped the ball, and now have a chance to pick it up again doin’ some grillin’ out over the Memorial Day weekend):
Got all that?
— Anyway, proceeding with earlier bad humor, the deadline for a kite contest in the city of River Falls was a past Sunday, and the level of participation was so great that the park in which it was held actually rose off the ground by a few inches! The ground resettled when it was discovered that the winning entry would be paid not in 50 US dollars, but in pesos. The National Weather Service, and in a jointly released statement The National Park Service, through their Bureaus of Levitation, could neither conform or deny the report. OK we’re teasing as it is April Fools Day. The only bits that are true are the kite contest and its deadline and the winning amount.
— A pair of unrelated business ventures, posted on bathroom walls at local nightspots, have to do with how to celebrate the beginning and the end of a relationship. The first one, a company that hosts private fireworks displays, touts that their services could be used for “divorce parties.” (OK, that should not be plural). Another advertises that they can have paintball outings, indoors so they could conceivably be held in winter, for bachelor parties (and we’re assuming for bachlorettes, too). However, since most marriages occur in the summer, a moratorium until at least June 1 has been issued by the West Wisconsin Dis-unification Committee. OK, again, the last part of that last sentence is not true.
— A placard outside Broz in River Falls, listing their many cool food and drink specials, was laid flat on the sidewalk by accident. Not to be outdone by the Final Four, the people from Monty Python were in town to get passers-by to “hop” on over it to continue on their way, and at a same time film their newest episope of The Ninny Contest. Just kidding.
And now for items that are not “fake” news:
— Opening Day for baseball and the living is easy at the Village Inn in North Hudson. If not somewhat subdued. There were a handful of people at the bar to witness the home run hit by the Brew Crew (like Harvey’s Wallbangers in the ’80s) to give them a lead — so they were toasting The Crew not crying in their beer — but the applause was scattered and only then by a few of them.
— Hudson Tap is now open, with some of the same cool amenities as its predecessor(s), as described by a cool new bartender I (officially) met at the latest reincarnation. I referenced the entire wall of neon TVs behind the long bar rail that are still there from the relatively short-lived Rio Loco cantina and Mexican grill, but she took it back one more notch to mention when it was the differently designed Ellie’s sports bar a number of years back, and added that she had worked at the Smilin’ Moose and other places before — from which she recognized my face — but hey, now I’m here. And here’s the rub. Her name is, you guessed it, Ellie. (And she looks just like an older version of one of Roseann’s daughters in that landmark sitcom).
— A man entered the Freedom Value Center late one night during the end of the football season, coming from the Village Inn and/or Kozy Korner, to make a purchase I thought might be related. He looked like he was sporting really long dreadlocks. However, further review revealed that it was actually the design down his back of his Starter jacket for the Carolina Panthers. (Its true!) It also looked like Packer pattern, but by that point they were out of the playoffs. Also wearing totally mid-March green and totally there also, in the form of a sweatshirt bearing a slogan in front, was another man whom it turns out was not Irish anyways. Here’s one other slogan, and our take on it. “Nothing beautiful is perfect,” and that includes that bit of toughness you find in corned beef and cabbage.
— Two signs in the windows of downtown businesses. One was for the newly opened Old(e) Coin Shop, named before there was paper money printed, we assume. The other is more sad. J.R. Haubrich’s jewelers is closing after many years of saving dumb blokes butts if they’d forget something like Valentine’s Day, and prices are 70 percent off or more. (Those are not J.R. Ewing type prices). A connection with nightlife can be seen on ads on two different drink coasters elsewhere in the downtown. One shows an ugly bulldog, quoted as saying “I just have to look pretty sometimes.” The other, more famously says, Years of Getting Guys Out of (Last Minute) Trouble.