As in music, the comings and going of the nightlife patron traffic can flip, as to when places are super busy or there are at least a few spaces unoccupied at the bar.
This was the case last Friday night in downtown Hudson, when the weather finally warmed to a point where it was statistically significantly above freezing. Most everywhere was hopping and full, even venues that often are not, or have fallen from grace as far as the fullness of their space.
But then that downside. The Smilin’ Moose was as empty as I have seen it, but there was likely a reason. As the Nine O’Clock Hour approached, the temps again started descending fast. About the time the Moose really sees their increase in traffic — as the food service draws many people too, but its the DJ service that really packs ’em in — the degrees started decreasing, and it showed in the number of people there and throughout most of the downtown. There were some who stayed on, but they had been around the scene since the happy hour and before.
A couple from Woodbury, Minn., could be seen as an example of the travels some were doing, at least early on that night. They started over to the north at T-Buckets near Somerset, where we accidentally met up, then it was down to Hudson to Dick’s, which had the most people I had seen there this year, than to Agave up the street, and then to Ziggy’s — where I ran into them again. (And yes, dear lady we all know, as I am listening to Stairway To Heaven as I’m typing to this, to be sung at karoake later, I will promise to tip better than what you had seen). All this was well before the Tim Sigler Band came on upstairs. Despite all this, the next guy that happened by thought there have been a few more people around. He did want to find a place to sit at the bar, and he had to wait a bit, but one eventually availed itself next to me — one of the few.
A commonality: Despite the early-on balminess, women wearing boots was still a staple. It had only been a couple of weeks earlier that I had seen the first muck-lucks.
(For a trivia question on fashion — broadly — as seasons continue to unfold and St. Patrick’s Day runs its course, see the Where Did You See It department).
Tis still spring now, and the green will soon be from flower stems and leaves, not just the recently passed Irish holiday. But when our snow dictated, and doggies were being walked more, their paw prints could be seen looking much like clover in their leaves patterns. In stretches of mud also, along the sidewalks.
But now I take you back to another summer time when there were more then hundreds clamoring around — on a Thursday! It was one of the first times that Hudson’s bar scene reopened from the pandemic while Minnesota stayed closed, so guess what happened? The border was overwhelmed with soon-to-be-partiers going eastward.
I that night, for one of the first times, became Hudson’s unofficial nightlife ambassador.
A beyond tipsy guy came over to me at Hudson Tap and tapped my brain. At length. Making not too much sense. One of his friends, a lovely and composed woman, came over a saved me and asked me to join her and her more sober friends a couple of tables away. But there was a main man who engaged me in captivating conversation. He wanted to know all there was to know about the local nightspots.
He wanted to talk almost exclusively about what were their next places they should hit in Hudson. So my website came up and he was entruiged and asked even more questions. It seemed I was doing all the talking, so I tried to draw him into the conversation.
And then the guy dropped a bomb, after I queried, two times. What does he do for a living? He works for the U of M? And what does he do there?
You can’t make this up.
He is a brain surgeon!
As I walked up the way, I encountered a foursome of partiers and they were … black! Interracially, sort of, the most talkative woman who singled me out said it was her birthday and they’d never been to Hudson before, but here we go, they came here, on this of all nights. So I told her, as well, where to go in this place. Quite at length. Suddenly she cut it off and said they’d be on their way, to explore on their own.
Interestingly, this interchange came on the east side of the interchange that is the main drag. It shows if you know the lay of the bar land, you know that the happening side of the street is the other.
On that side, there was one man, no two, with slung guitar cases on their back going I know not where to find a gig. More recently, as warmth again came to the city, their was a punker chic who also had that instrument across her shoulders. Like Tommy Tutone of “Jenny” fame, here in days of yore when he’d come into clubs and take over the stages. But that is another story.
In this year’s shortest month, several shovels cut a slit sideways, on a diagonal through certain yards, to create another point of entry to the houses when the residents were super cold. They were still, for long, in OK shape, just with maybe a bit of ice. But now they have been replaced with the cracks running at diagonal angles through the ice, grooves that were cut by runoff from the now melted snow.
And with this season comes spring cleaning. On the warm weekend there were people throwing boatloads, almost literally, into bigger than waste disposal containers, of their old plywood and two-by-four and paneling and such. One of those houses with diagonals through snow now had a bright lime green dumpster and truck with big enclosed trailer in about the same area. A man was counting what looked to by a whole bunch of coins, or maybe on second look it was not a counting, but collecting, of silverware. So I joked to his smiling wife, “must be a mega-garage-sale. Or you’re moving out.”
Across the way, that one big Christmas ball had earlier fallen off the tree, but did not break, into the at that time softer snow …
Many T-shirts were still being worn, through the winter, and also shorts as part of a small package of clothing, and even a bit of belly showing, even on the coldest of days. Of course all this now has really picked up pace and become practically the norm. As it warmed, there were a few outdoor-style house parties, or just people enjoying the new warm with a cold one on their front porch, and some of them had the tiki lights back up and glowing through the now later nightfall.
By the recently past snow-buried hydrant and other such things, like a cable box that was dismantled with the box laying sideways and wiring running amok, there only a week or two earlier had been no walkable cutaway at all from the curb due to heavy snows. As time went on, the sidewalk clearance became slower and more iffy, and where there was that for-sale vacant lot of the Flaming Moe’s joke, at the expense of those local Realtors and I hope they have a sense of humor, from an earlier post, shoveling stalled even more right toward the end. Would those going by the name of Boe have followed suit?
As this extra snow, of course, put a lot of pressure on local homeowners and Realtors alike to keep the sidewalks clear. If I were a councilman, I’d suggest a new rule that after a seasonal snow total exceeded a certain number of inches, city crews would step in and pick up the slack. Of course that would mean more hires and/or overtime, and the taxpayers would end up footing the bill, so I think the extra pushing of snow would bring pushback from those with no sidewalks in front of their houses.
And lastly, the second and final chapter of Ye Ol’ Ice Boulder, the big knee-high-and-sometimes-more lump that is/was at the end of the entryway to my street and now thank goodness is just rather wet cement. (Scroll down to see a previous post).
It has drawn various comments, based on my quasi-complaints, from cabbies, drivers and friends who have picked me up. Take an ice pick to the steel, and for a day or two its just a Puddle of Mudd, then back to ice. Tough if you go for a smoke and want to roam? Near the end, there was an angle cutting sideways, across most of the ice. So you Twist and Shout, really going at it, but then hey its gone. Throughout my tales of the weather, I saw the boulder build up then back off.
I need to carry it forward, as when I’d stride over the mound, it took a few feet into the street to stop my momentum, then retrace my steps. Gimme Three Steps?
I must refer to that lady and gent seen at a Hudson corner, as he helped she over it. So beware of those white painted stripes at intersections, as they can be slick as ice. To do a Dio take, even though you know those stripes are clean, some light can never be seen (of course even moreso at night watch your step.)