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One by one by one, longtime local business owners have closed the cash register — Old School style — on their iconic venues for the last time, as the 60s head toward the 70s as far as their age and maybe even the decades in which they began. Retirement well deserved.

Even the most diehard longtime business owners have to retire someday.
Even if like me, they’re German. (On a writer’s salary, I probably will never able to fully hang it up). And these three departures are so recent that its likely their pensions have not yet fully kicked in.
So we start with the Winzer Stube in downtown Hudson, which as a German restaurant had roots there and the owner often returned back for business purposes. You can only globe-trot like that for so long, unless like some former traveling salesmen I know, its for pleasure not work, and they hit it hard for a while after hanging up their shirt and tie for what I’ll call a leisure suit and flip-flops (how’s that for a style combo).
But back to that German joint, it marketed itself as being rated the fifth best in the country. You don’t get that way without having a crazy ethnic-driven work ethic. But places like that never really close, venue-wise, just change hands, so now has been opened the Black Rooster restaurant, perhaps named for those cool dark basement digs.
Then the store in New Richmond that like a model, can go by just one name, Vintage. Packing in all those great finds, in a way that’s orderly, saps the energy of even a young person. There was a slow rollout of deeply discounting items for quick sale, and other much-bigger-than-trinkets set outside on the edge of sidewalk and offered for free. I met the new owners by chance, who had just bought the building, and were moving out the last of it in favor of a second venue on the other end of the Twin Cities. What would become of the big New Richmond building? The couple said I would have to stay tuned.
Last of this trio is Chapter 2 Books, on the east end of Locust Street in Hudson. The owner who seemed to always be behind the counter, and was a combo of slightly terse and pleasant, appeared to just be overtaxed by all the new basics of doing business, in a town that had a transitional clientele during the height of the pandemic. When approached for an ad on my blog, he said he’d prefer to wait until after all those youngsters from the Cities stopped coming over and raising Cain, not to encourage such types to come into his store.
Relatedly, just down the way on the main drag, The 517 eatery ended its short run in a between-blocks building that has not been kind to a series of such business owners. In this day of hard-to-fill-positions, it had been advertising for everything from managers on down — virtually everything but wait staff. The first sign, in early June, said that the venue would be closed for a few weeks while conducting a restructuring. Then later in the month came the axe falling, that they would be closing and the building soon put up for sale. A nice addition, repeated from the first sign, was that if you had unused gift cards, call to have them refunded.
The old Season’s Tavern in North Hudson, now empty for years, falls into this realm. For a long time, one of the the realtors listed on their Big Sign went by the name of “Johnson.” A very unscientific search revealed that in the greater market area for the tavern there are 57 agents by that surname (OK, just kidding).
And also, in New Richmond, despite some heavy housing construction on certain ends of town, there are some name businesses on the south side that now have their lots empty. To wit: The local movie theater, a big box automotive store, and the local Freedom Value Center (or so it was).

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