Hi everyone, I’m gathering information for an upcoming home search. Does anyone have recommendations for realtors, home inspectors, or anyone else involved in the homebuying process?

Anybody know what's up with this new coffee shop bookstore that doesn't have restrooms and is perpetually closed?

It looks like another First Street money laundering scheme business and then there's like four other businesses attached to the poorly designed sign on the outside (compass up ministries, P53, North shore 218). I don't know how it's going to stay alive with studio Cafe down the street which is a really lovely space. But 211 fashion was able to stay up for years despite zero traffic in and out of the building.

If we want to revitalize downtown, we should have businesses that are actually open to the public.

This might be a long-shot but, does anyone know where I could sign a non-binary kiddo up for sports? They are 13 and wanting to play volleyball or soccer or try some team sports- haven’t played before really. They haven’t wanted to before because of the Boys team/ Girls team issue. I was wondering if there are any sports teams that include both genders or maybe aren’t gender-based? Outside of that, any teams that are welcoming to queer youth?

There is a reason Duluth is one of the most famous places in the country to watch birds of prey. Hawks, eagles, and falcons heading south for the winter do not like to cross large open water, so when they reach the north shore of Lake Superior they turn and follow the coast, and everything funnels down to the western tip of the lake, right over the city.

The result, every September, is one of the great wildlife spectacles in North America. On the biggest days, tens of thousands of broad-winged hawks ride the thermals overhead in swirling "kettles," sometimes so many that the count runs past a hundred thousand birds in a single day. Hawk Ridge, on the bluff above town, has been logging it for decades.

This map is those raptors, thick along the shoreline and the ridge. Sharp-shinned hawks are the most numerous over a whole season, but the broad-wings are the show, and their calendar is basically right now. Later in the fall the cast changes over to eagles and the occasional goshawk.

If you go, get up to the ridge on a day with a northwest wind behind a cold front. That is when the sky fills.

Data: fall raptors (broad-winged and sharp-shinned hawks, bald eagle, red-tailed hawk) plotted from research-grade iNaturalist observations.