By Topic: COVID-19
Key local, national, and international COVID-19 background and preparedness resources, together with a timeline of Lowertown-specific COVID-19 Local Impact updates.
February 18, 2022 | COVID-19 News, Features, Lowertown Art, Music & Culture News, Lowertown Food & Drink News, Lowertown News, Podcasts
Welcome to the second episode of “This Is #Lowertown”, a podcast created by Lowertown.info—an online visitor’s guide, news magazine, and community information portal serving the arts neighborhood of Lowertown, Saint Paul, Minnesota. Hosted by the editor of Lowertown.info, Nigel Parry, this show was recorded on 18th February, 2022. This podcast has been relaunched with a music focus to support Lowertown’s performing artists, which has the added bonus of also making it easier to produce regular episodes. Our main news feature looks at the closing of the Black Dog Café and music from Lowertown musicians and bands, including Eric Carranza and Jest, Steve Kenny, Goodnight Ritual, Jerry Kosak, and Pocket of Resistance.
January 16, 2022 | Lowertown Art, Music & Culture News, Lowertown News
Lowertown.info—“The Black Dog Café was the biomagnetic center of the universe that is or was Lowertown.” Filmmaker, poet, and photographer Mike Hazard remembers the Black Dog Coffee & Wine Bar, one of the last community hubs in Lowertown, Saint Paul, MN.
January 14, 2022 | Lowertown Art, Music & Culture News, Lowertown Food & Drink News, Lowertown News
Lowertown.info—At the beginning of the year, the Black Dog Coffee & Wine Bar in Lowertown posted a simple notice on its front doors announcing that the Lowertown, Saint Paul hub was closing permanently. The poster added a date for the cafe’s final goodbye to the neighborhood—on Saturday, January 15th—the last night of Steve Kenny’s popular “Saturday Night Jazz at the Black Dog” series at the 23-year-old community venue. Come down and say goodbye to the end of an era.
January 3, 2022 | Lowertown Art, Music & Culture News, Lowertown Food & Drink News, Lowertown News
Lowertown.info—On January 2nd, 2022, the Black Dog Coffee & Wine Bar in Lowertown posted a simple notice on its front doors announcing that the Lowertown, Saint Paul hub was closing permanently. It is hard to overstate the importance of the venue to artists, musicians, and the community over the last 20 years.
February 8, 2021 | Lowertown Food & Drink News, Lowertown News
Though we’ve been put through the ringer… we can’t be kept down for long! We are so thrilled to share our next step with you. We scrounged our cash together and bought a food truck! Well, right now it’s sort of just a truck. That’s where you come in. We have called upon your kindness before and are asking once again for your support during this next phase. We’ll be bringing a few just/us menu favorites back, in addition to lots of new items with a street food flair. We’re working towards partnering with breweries, local events, and business parks to park & serve at all around the Twin Cities and maybe even beyond.
December 29, 2020 | COVID-19 News, Lowertown News
Minnesota Department of Health—Today, the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) began accepting January 2021 appointments at its community testing sites across the state. Each site offers safe, no-barrier COVID-19 testing at no cost to participants. Appointments are strongly encouraged, but not required. In order to help prevent further spread of the virus, the Minnesota Department of Health has set up over 20 semi-permanent community testing sites statewide. These sites allow Minnesotans to get tested near where they live so they can make informed decisions to protect their families and communities.
December 27, 2020 | COVID-19 News, Lowertown News
Nigel Parry, Lifeline Tablets—We’ve all seen the heartbreaking stories about how families are not able to say goodbye to their isolated relatives, dying of COVID-19 in the hospitals, and how healthcare workers have been holding up their own phones so that families can say goodbye one last time. Addressing the problem of patients’ isolation is not cost-prohibitive. Amazon Fire tablets can be purchased for $50 a piece. Paired with a gooseneck stand and headphones with a mic, a kit costs just $100.
November 23, 2020 | COVID-19 News, Lowertown Food & Drink News, Lowertown News
The Saint Paul Farmers’ Market in Lowertown announced Friday that it will hold its Winter Market entirely outdoors from December until April, featuring 15-20 vendors each weekend. Downtown Winter Market: December 5th-April 17th (Saturdays from 9am-1pm): The Winter Market will remain outdoors throughout the winter, until April when the outdoor growing season market begins.
November 18, 2020 | COVID-19 News, Lowertown Food & Drink News, Lowertown News
Nigel Parry—According to Yelp data from the end of August 2020, permanent restaurant closures have reached 97,966, representing 60% of closed businesses that will never reopen. The double-whammy, of course, is that many members of the Lowertown community rely on these businesses for income, both as employees but also as artists and musicians who rely on physical spaces to host their public shows and performances.
September 29, 2020 | COVID-19 News, Lowertown Art, Music & Culture News, Lowertown News
By Nigel Parry, Downtown St. Paul Voice—When COVID-19 forced the cancellation of the Spring Art Crawl, the St. Paul Art Collective—the hard-working, mostly volunteer-run organization that has produced the Capital City’s art crawls since 1977—immediately began exploring new options to assist artists in promoting their work. Now that the in-person Fall Art Crawl is not happening either, the Collective and others are ramping up their efforts to help local artists, who need more help now than ever.
September 26, 2020 | COVID-19 News, Lowertown Food & Drink News, Lowertown News
By Nigel Parry, Lowertown.info—At 7pm tonight, local cafe and bakery The Buttered Tin posted an announcement that “We are temporarily closing” on its website and social media after a staff member tested positive for COVID-19. The staff member had become aware of exposure to a positive room mate, and had self-quarantined from work during this last week while awaiting their test result. A few hours after finding out the positive result, the Buttered Tin informed staff it would be closing and made the public announcement:
At The Buttered Tin, our highest priority if the health and safety of our customers and employees. We are reaching out to inform you that today, we learned that a member of our TBT team tested positive COVID-19. Out of an abundance of caution, The Buttered Tin will temporarily close beginning Sunday, Sept. 27th….”
May 19, 2020 | COVID-19 News, Lowertown News
Nigel Parry/Lowertown.info—The Minnesota Department of Health’s changes to counting positive COVID-19 cases by date of sample—not by date of reporting—revealed that between March and May 2020 we had a profound blind spot in case awareness, sometimes resulting in a daily discrepancy of thousands between the number of reported and actual cases—all as the state was working around the clock to formulate policy informed by the best possible scientific advice.
May 16, 2020 | COVID-19 News
Nigel Parry/Lowertown.info—Last week, Ramsey County launched a COVID-19 tracking dashboard, and the Minnesota Department of Health relaunched its positive cases tracker with a major change to how the date of cases is reported.
May 1, 2020 | Lowertown Art, Music & Culture News, Lowertown News
By Nigel Parry, Downtown St. Paul Voice—The cancellation of this year’s St. Paul Art Crawl was a blow to local artists who rely on the event to promote and sell their work. Now, the organizer of the event, the St. Paul Art Collective, is encouraging the public to support artists as much as possible and is exploring options to help artists promote their work throughout the year.
April 15, 2020 | COVID-19 News, Lowertown News
Tracking the local impact of the COVID-19 virus in Lowertown, Saint Paul, MN. This series, tracking the impact of the coronavirus crisis on the 4×4 block square area of just one neighborhood in Saint Paul—Lowertown—was begun on March 6th, the date that Minnesota saw its first official positive test result for COVID-19. At the end of week three of this series, the openings and closings of local hospitality industry businesses, and the news of event cancellations had mostly stabilized, so the series was paused. Today, April 15th, I went back through these last three weeks of social media postings by local businesses, and local news reports, to find developments worth adding to the documentary record.
April 14, 2020 | Lowertown Food & Drink News
The Saint Paul Downtown Alliance has launched a Bingo card featuring local businesses that remain open for takeaway, delivery—or simply have gift cards to sell—as a way of supporting local Downtown and Lowertown businesses during the shutdown resulting from the Coronavirus ‘Stay at Home order’ in Minnesota.
April 14, 2020 | COVID-19 News, Features, Lowertown News, Podcasts
Welcome to the first episode of “This Is #Lowertown”, a podcast created by Lowertown.info—an online visitor’s guide, news magazine, and community information portal serving the arts neighborhood of Lowertown, Saint Paul, Minnesota. Hosted by Lowertown.info editor Nigel Parry, this show was recorded on the Easter weekend of 12th and 13th of April, 2020. Our main news feature explores how the cancellation of the Saint Paul Art Crawl due to the Coronavirus Crisis has impacted local artists • Hear music from Lowertown musicians Eric Carranza and Jerry Kosak from our GREEN LINE TRACKS playlist • Desdamona presents THE LAST INKLING—Spoken Word In The Time Of COVID, to keep your brain occupied and inspire you to create • Learn more about one of Lowertown’s art hubs—THE SHOW GALLERY • Saint Paul’s Queen of Jazz, Pippi Ardennia takes the stress out of songs-stress in a segment called DROP DEM PEARLS • Pick up some new dog care and training tips from local ‘dog-spert’ Tessa Anderson in her segment, PICK IT UP! • And we’ll hear more about news & events in the Lowertown neighborhood…
April 9, 2020 | COVID-19 News, Lowertown Art, Music & Culture News, Lowertown News
Third edition of the series in which artists are asked seven questions about how they are dealing with the coronavirus crisis. This “Art Crawl Cancellation Edition” features interviews with Cecilia Henle, Eric Carranza, JobyLynn Sassily-James, Josephine Geiger, Lisa Mathieson, and Roger Nielsen.—Nigel Parry
March 30, 2020 | COVID-19 News, Lowertown Art, Music & Culture News, Lowertown News
By Nigel Parry, Downtown St. Paul Voice—Tom Dunn is one of many artists affected by the cancellation of the Spring Art Crawl. A photographer and former St. Paul Art Collective president, Dunn know firsthand how important events like this are to local artists. He has participated in the Crawl for the past two decades and has many stories to tell.
March 26, 2020 | COVID-19 News
Wednesday’s big news, of course, was Minnesota governor Tim Walz today signing “Executive Order 20-20 directing Minnesotans to stay at home and limit movements outside of their home beyond essential needs. This order takes effect at 11:59pm on Friday, March 27 and ends at 5:00pm on Friday, April 10.” Among other activities listed, permitted reasons to live your home include for “health and safety activities, such as obtaining emergency services or medical supplies; outdoor activities, such as walking, hiking, running, biking, hunting, or fishing; necessary supplies and services, such as getting groceries, gasoline, or carry-out; and care of others, such as caring for a family member, friend, or pet in another household.” These graphics explain the basics of the Stay At Home order.
March 25, 2020 | COVID-19 News
I had the opportunity to interview a local healthcare worker and Lowertown resident, who was the first known patient in the neighborhood who tested positive for COVID-19. In this interview “Susan” (name changed for privacy), talks about the symptoms and experience of the disease, the difficulty of quarantining family members living together, the wider Coronavirus crisis, and how you can support your local healthcare workers.—Nigel Parry
March 23, 2020 | COVID-19 News
Tracking the local impact of the COVID-19 virus in just one neighborhood in Saint Paul, MN, Lowertown.
March 19, 2020 | COVID-19 News
On March 17th, St. Patrick’s Day, Lowertown photographer Tom Dunn went on a walkabout around Lowertown and Downtown to capture signs of the Coronavirus Crisis’ impact on the neighborhood.
March 19, 2020 | COVID-19 News
As we’ve all been trying to get a handle on the Coronavirus Crisis, how it’s likely to impact our lives, and what we should be doing—the process of trying to understand the bigger picture has back-burnered the personal stories of our neighbors. This Lowertown Community Temperature Check features interviews with Brigette Anderson, Dianne Southard, Lisa Mathieson, Meredith Gear, Pam Krank, and Ta-coumba Aiken.
March 17, 2020 | COVID-19 News
The last 10 days have been a whirlwind, in which many of us have been trying to get a handle on the Coronavirus Crisis, how it’s likely to impact our lives, and what we should be doing—as individuals, families, groups of friends, and local businesses. In the process of trying to understand the bigger picture, the personal stories of our neighbors have been back-burnered. We all need to hear from each other to understand how those around us are thinking, acting and planning during this very personal, community threat. On March 16, Lowertown.info asked members of the community to answer several questions to get a ‘community temperature check’. Please note that several of the responses came before Gov. Walz announced the closures of all restaurants, bars, and cafes in Minnesota. This Lowertown Community Temperature Check features interviews with Chris Beckstrom, Desdamona, Holly Green, Julie Kelly, Tara Weatherly, and Tom Dunn.
March 16, 2020 | COVID-19 News
This report begins ten days after the first reported Minnesotan case of COVID-19, by which time the number of detected infected has risen to 54. Restaurants, bars, and cafes have been remarkably slow to even comment publicly, considering both the local, state, and federal government have been strongly recommending to shut down gatherings.
March 13, 2020 | COVID-19 News
Nigel Parry/Lowertown.info—Tracking the local impact of the COVID-19 virus in Lowertown, Saint Paul, MN. This report begins one week after the first reported Minnesotan case of COVID-19, by which time the number of detected infected had risen to fourteen. Following the shutdowns of the major sports leagues, large and small museums and galleries in and near Lowertown began announcing closures, the 54-year-old Saint Patrick Day Parade was cancelled, and restaurants, bars, and cafes began sporadically posting information to reassure Coronavirus concerns.
March 13, 2020 | COVID-19 News
Nigel Parry/Lowertown.info—Tracking the local impact of the COVID-19 virus in Lowertown, Saint Paul, MN. From the first reported Minnesotan case through the first week, when the number had risen to 14.
