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OverviewCity blue laws drove the liquor trade and its customers hard-drinking lumberjacks, pensioners, farmhands, and railroad workers into the oldest quarter of Minneapolis. In the fifty-cent-a-night flophouses of the city s Gateway District, they slept in cubicles with ceilings of chicken wire. In rescue missions, preachers and nuns tried to save their souls. Sociology researchers posing as vagrants studied them. And in their midst John Bacich, aka Johnny Rex, who owned a bar, a liquor store, and a cage hotel, documented the gritty neighborhood s last days through photographs and film of his clientele.""The King of Skid Row"" follows Johnny Rex into this vanished world that once thrived in the heart of Minneapolis. Drawing on hours of interviews conducted in the three years before Bacich s death in 2012, James Eli Shiffer brings to life the eccentric characters and strange events of an American skid row. Supplemented with archival and newspaper research and his own photographs, Bacich s stories re-create the violent, alcohol-soaked history of a city best known for its clean, progressive self-image. His life captures the seamy, richly colorful side of the city swept away by a massive urban renewal project in the early 1960s and gives us, in a glimpse of those bygone days, one of Minneapolis s most intriguing figures spinning some of its most enduring and enthralling tales."" Full Product DetailsAuthor: James Eli ShifferPublisher: University of Minnesota Press Imprint: University of Minnesota Press Dimensions: Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 20.30cm Weight: 0.227kg ISBN: 9781517916596ISBN 10: 1517916593 Pages: 192 Publication Date: 14 November 2023 Audience: General/trade , Professional and scholarly , General , Professional & Vocational Format: Paperback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: Temporarily unavailable  The supplier advises that this item is temporarily unavailable. It will be ordered for you and placed on backorder. Once it does come back in stock, we will ship it out to you. Table of ContentsReviews""In its final years, Skid Row was avoided by everyone except the police, storefront Bible-thumpers, slumming sociologists, and the occasional entrepreneur such as John Bacich—‘Johnny Rex’ to the drunks, drifters, and down-and-outers he served as publican and hotelier. James Eli Shiffer recalls the life and times of Johnny, Polack Wally, Moon Face Mary Ann, and other late-stage denizens of that dingy corner of Old Minneapolis with insight, wit, and compassion. The King of Skid Row is terrific urban history, beautifully told.""—William Swanson, author of Stolen from the Garden: The Kidnapping of Virginia Piper and Dial M: The Murder of Carol Thompson ""The King of Skid Row brings to boozy life the alcohol-sodden, corruption-filled era when Minneapolis’ lost Gateway District harbored flop houses, slop joints, cage hotels, brothels, and raunchy speakeasies filled with B-girls and ‘gandy-dancers.’ Exceptionally literate, relentlessly humane, Shiffer peels back the veil from a dark and often violent past that, until now, had been literally paved over and believed forgotten. The King of Skid Row is a deft book that stirs together memoir, mystery, and history with the heartbreaking drama of how a city treats its most despondent and destitute. Moving and fascinating.""—Paul Maccabee, author of John Dillinger Slept Here: A Crook’s Tour of Crime and Corruption in St. Paul ""Many interesting stories.""—Razorcake ""Shiffer vividly evokes the neighborhood at its violent and drunken peak in this vivid and fascinating account of a bygone era.""—City Pages ""The King of Skid Row makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of urban history in the Midwest."" —Middle West Review """In its final years, Skid Row was avoided by everyone except the police, storefront Bible-thumpers, slumming sociologists, and the occasional entrepreneur such as John Bacich—‘Johnny Rex’ to the drunks, drifters, and down-and-outers he served as publican and hotelier. James Eli Shiffer recalls the life and times of Johnny, Polack Wally, Moon Face Mary Ann, and other late-stage denizens of that dingy corner of Old Minneapolis with insight, wit, and compassion. The King of Skid Row is terrific urban history, beautifully told.""—William Swanson, author of Stolen from the Garden: The Kidnapping of Virginia Piper and Dial M: The Murder of Carol Thompson ""The King of Skid Row brings to boozy life the alcohol-sodden, corruption-filled era when Minneapolis’ lost Gateway District harbored flop houses, slop joints, cage hotels, brothels, and raunchy speakeasies filled with B-girls and ‘gandy-dancers.’ Exceptionally literate, relentlessly humane, Shiffer peels back the veil from a dark and often violent past that, until now, had been literally paved over and believed forgotten. The King of Skid Row is a deft book that stirs together memoir, mystery, and history with the heartbreaking drama of how a city treats its most despondent and destitute. Moving and fascinating.""—Paul Maccabee, author of John Dillinger Slept Here: A Crook’s Tour of Crime and Corruption in St. Paul ""Many interesting stories.""—Razorcake ""Shiffer vividly evokes the neighborhood at its violent and drunken peak in this vivid and fascinating account of a bygone era.""—City Pages ""The King of Skid Row makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of urban history in the Midwest."" —Middle West Review" Author InformationJames Eli Shiffer has been a professional journalist for thirty years and is an editor at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. In 2010, he partnered with Ewen Media to create Rubbed Out, a multimedia history of the murder of a journalist in Minneapolis in 1945. He was a member of the Star Tribune team whose coverage of the killing of George Floyd and subsequent civil unrest was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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